"Cipher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and curiosity in regard to the meaning of the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the stones and tablets of Copan, Palenque, and other ruins of Central America. In August, 1880, I determined to see how far the principles which are successful when applied to ordinary cipher-writing would carry one in the inscriptions of Yucatan. The difference between an ordinary cipher-message and these inscriptions is not so marked as might at first sight appear. The underlying principles of deciphering are quite the same ...
— Studies in Central American Picture-Writing • Edward S. Holden
... I must have those papers which he wanted to deliver to the empress; my repose, my safety depends upon it. Oh, I know very well what sort of papers they are with which they are threatening me. They are the letters I had written in cipher to Burton, the English emissary, whom the French Directory a month ago caused to be arrested as a spy and demagogue at Paris, and whose papers were seized at the same time. Those letters, of course, would endanger my position, for there is a receipt among them for a hundred thousand guineas ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... 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 ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... work with a will to educate himself. His father thought that he did not need to learn anything more. He did not see that there was any good in book-learning. If a man could read and write and cipher, what more ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin
... was labeled in full, I was surprised they had spared. Precious letters I found under heaps of broken china and rags; all my notes were gone, with many letters. I looked for a letter of poor ——, in cipher, with the key attached, and name signed in plain hand. I knew it would hardly be agreeable to him to have it read, and it certainly would be unpleasant to me to have it published; but I could not find it. Miriam thinks she saw something answering ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... if you believe in Number, do you deny God? Is not Creation interposed between the Infinite of unorganized substances and the Infinite of the divine spheres, just as the Unit stands between the Cipher of the fractions you have lately named Decimals, and the Infinite of Numbers which you call Wholes? Man alone on earth comprehends Number, that first step of the peristyle which leads to God, and yet his reason stumbles on it! What! you can neither measure nor grasp the first ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... unknown to her, were simple enough. The Ambassador had been informed that a treasure had been discovered, and had telegraphed the fact in cipher to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in St. Petersburg, who had telegraphed the news to Prince Rubomirska, who had telegraphed to the Ambassador, who was his intimate friend, requesting him to receive the Princess for a few days. As the Prince ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... of sinking was illegal. He said that international law had to be changed, that the submarine was a new weapon, and that, anyway, if a break came with America, that they had a lot of new submarines here and would make an effective submarine blockade of England. To-day a cipher from the German Foreign Office came in to be forwarded to the State Department for Bernstorff, so I suppose this is what he referred to. Probably the Germans are in earnest on this proposition. It is now squarely up to the ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... aristocratic feelings, there was a degree of presumption in this novus homo, this Mr. Gilbert Glossin, late writer in—-, presuming to set up such an accommodation at all; but his wrath was mitigated when he observed that the mantle upon the panels only bore a plain cipher of G.G. This apparent modesty was indeed solely owing to the delay of Mr. Gumming of the Lyon Office, who, being at that time engaged in discovering and matriculating the arms of two commissaries from North America, three English-Irish peers, and two great Jamaica traders, had been ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Julius Caesar, but a mere cipher in office; hence his name became a household word ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... 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 ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... containing his portrait set in diamonds. On Maitland's declining, in the circumstances, to accept any present of value, the Emperor begged him to keep as a souvenir a tumbler from his travelling case, bearing the crown and cipher of the Empress Josephine. This relic is still preserved at Lindores. A photograph of it is given at ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... of the morning; yet, knowing Troy, I hesitate to blame her that before noon the whole town was discussing the Millennium, notice of which (it appeared) had come down to the Mayor by a private advice and in Government cipher. ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... came occasionally to Lamb Court, Temple, pretty little satin envelopes, superscribed in the neatest handwriting, and sealed with one of those admirable ciphers, which, if Warrington had been curious enough to watch his friend's letters, or indeed if the cipher had been decipherable, would have shown George that Mr. Arthur was in correspondence with a young lady whose initials were B. A. To these pretty little compositions Mr. Pen replied in his best and gallantest manner; ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... called a cryptogram, or cipher," he said, "in which letters are purposely thrown in confusion, which if properly arranged would reveal their sense. Only think that under this jargon there may lie concealed the clue to ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... the cipher read, and what an easy trick! and yet I had not lighted on it all this while, nor ever should have, but for Sexton Ratsey and his burial verse. It was a cunning plan of Blackbeard; but other folk were quite as cunning as he, and here was all his treasure at our feet. I chuckled over that to ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... fellers round the Shoe-Shop ust to call him; ust to allus make the Shoe-Shop his headquarters-like; and, rain er shine, wet er dry, you'd allus find Wes on hands, ready to banter some feller fer a game, er jest a-settin' humped up there over the checker-board all alone, a-cipher'n' out some new move er 'nuther, and whistlin' low and solem' to hisse'f-like and a-payin' ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... that abstruse Institution.—"JARNI-BLEU!" snuffles the Feldzeugmeister to himself. But "SI DEUS EST NOBISCUM," as Grumkow exclaims once to his beautiful Reichenbach, or NOSTI as he calls him in their slang or cipher language, "If God is with us, who can prevail against us?" For the Grumkow can quote Scripture; nay solaces himself with it, which is a feat beyond what the Devil ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... more fear than ever for your sake, Griffin, and I'm beginning to have some for my own. Those fellows know how to act quickly and surely. Their principal is in Washington. He has had word already by cipher as to what has happened. He won't rest until he finds the witness, ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... face changed as he read his despatch; and Molly Hesketh, shamelessly peeping over his shoulder, exclaimed, "It's cipher! How stupid! Can ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... puppet-like, be mock'd with state, Have nothing but the name of being great; Attend at councils which I must not weigh; Do what they bid, and what they dictate, say; Enrobed, and hoisted up into my chair, Only to be a royal cipher there? 260 Perish the thought—'tis treason to my throne— And who but thinks it, could his thoughts be known Insults me more than he, who, leagued with Hell, Shall rise in arms, and 'gainst my crown rebel. The wicked statesman, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... [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 she ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... being works of art. But suppose a literary artist ventured to go into a painstaking and elaborate description of one of these grisly things—the critics would skin him alive. Well, let it go, it cannot be helped; Art retains her privileges, Literature has lost hers. Somebody else may cipher out the whys and the wherefores and the consistencies of it—I ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... business, spent many hours each day with the ministers and dependants of the court, corresponded with foreign lands, with her brother the Emperor Leopold, and her sister, Queen Caroline of Naples, wrote to them in a cipher intelligible only to them, and sent the letters through the hands of secret agents, imploring of them assistance ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... Bowen was born in New Orleans. His father, Edward Bowen, went to New Orleans from Washington, D. C. He was a free man, a boss carpenter and builder by trade, and able to read, write and cipher. He was highly esteemed, was prosperous in business, accumulated some money and lived in comfort. Dr. Bowen's mother, Rose Bowen, he says, was the grand-daughter of an African Princess of the Jolloffer tribe, on the west coast of Africa. When he was three years old his father bought him and his ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... without the slightest suspicion that the assertion proved nothing but extreme self-satisfaction. Accordingly, as she could not afford to send her daughters to school as well as the boys, she decided to educate them herself. Everybody who could read, write, and cipher was supposed to be able to teach in those days, and Mrs. Caldwell undertook the task without a doubt of her own capacity. But Aunt Victoria ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... overcome these delays and brought the matter to the Cardinal's notice. His Eminence summoned the licentiate Zapata and Dr. Carbajal into his presence and ordered them to sign Zuazo's papers; they obeyed, but contrived to affix a mark in cipher to their signatures which would enable them later to complain to the King that the regent ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... torn nearly in two, across the middle, as if a design, in the first instance, to tear it entirely up as worthless, had been altered, or stayed, in the second. It had a large black seal, bearing the D—— cipher very conspicuously, and was addressed, in a diminutive female hand, to D——" the Minister, himself. It was thrust carelessly, and even, as it seemed, contemptuously, into one of the uppermost divisions of ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... systematically apprised of everything that occurs at court, in the city, or in the council chamber. So you see, he is being well served, whether to an evil purpose or to satisfy his own innate curiosity, I do not know. He has reports almost daily,—voluminous things, partly in cipher, partly free, and he is forever sending men away on secret, mysterious missions. Understand, I do not know that he is actually planning disaster to Graustark. Day before yesterday I saw his secretary in the streets—a man who has been in his employ for five ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... of accomplishments. "I can write, sir, and cipher. And I've learned geography and history, and Master Swift gave I lessons in mechanics, and I be very fond of poetry ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... friends, he will append such explanatory notes to his account of it as will enable me to find out what sort of an accident it was and to whom it happened. I had rather all his friends should die than that I should be driven to the verge of lunacy again in trying to cipher out the meaning of another such ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... the third to the Minister of Finance, giving detailed statistics concerning the age, occupation, and progress of her proteges. "How many know how to read? How many to read and write? How many to read, write, and cipher? What progress has been made since the last report?" These are some of the questions she has to answer; and, meanwhile, if a crowd of little children come in, she turns from her writing and calculations and plays with them as if she had nothing else ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... fragment of a being; as a perfect member of a family—occupying a 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
... literature, as in life, the reaction against Puritanism went to great extremes. The social life of the time is faithfully reflected in the diary of Samuel Pepys. He was a simple-minded man, the son of a London tailor, and became, himself, secretary to the admiralty. His diary was kept in cipher, and published only in 1825. Being written for his own eye, it is singularly outspoken; and its naive, gossipy, confidential tone makes it a most diverting book, as it is, historically, a ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... the cipher telegrams at Washington, in the Executive residence, took the despatch announcing the nomination of Andrew Jackson, of Tennessee, to the vice-presidency with Lincoln for the second term. The latter read it ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... 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
... thousand men, 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 appeared utterly confounded, and made no ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... a rich red and white 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 ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... as a private soldier had possessed sufficient force of character to learn to read, write, and cipher, could clearly understand that as a captain he ought to continue his education. So from this time forth he read new books and romances with avidity, in this way gaining a half-knowledge, of which he made a very fair use. He went so far in his gratitude ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... furnish them with so much even as a door-mat, the real name of each individual to be described should be placed (as a mere aid to memory) by the side of that under which he appears in the drama; and I would strongly recommend the builder to write his real names in cipher; for I have known at least one instance in which the entire list of the dramatis personae of a novel was carried off by a person more curious than conscientious, and afterwards revealed to those concerned—a ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... obviously than most artists. When he was a student he excelled in mathematics; in all his other tales he displays the same power of logical construction; and he delighted in the exercise of his own acumen, vaunting his ability to translate any cipher that might be sent to him and succeeding in making good his boast. In the criticism of 'Barnaby Rudge,' and again in the explanation of the Maelzel chess-player, Poe used for himself the same faculty ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... the lowest depths of vileness, become an unspeakable cipher of cowardice and servility—she signed endless lists of crimes which she had never committed. Was she worth the trouble of burning? Many had given up that idea, but the ruthless Penitentiary clung to it still. He offered money to a Wizard of Evreux, then in prison, if ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... has no sanctity, no spirit of piety. The pride of the tyrant whose legend—'Sigismundus Pandulphus Malatesta Pan. F. Fecit Anno Gratiae MCCCCL'—occupies every arch and stringcourse of the architecture, and whose coat-of-arms and portrait in medallion, with his cipher and his emblems of an elephant and a rose, are wrought in every piece of sculptured work throughout the building, seems so to fill this house of prayer that there is no room left for God. Yet the Cathedral of Rimini remains a monument of first-rate importance for ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... less correct history at hand, and this one, being a philosopher, adds his own theories to further obscure the truth." This in the most perfect English, accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders entirely French. "Chenonceaux being Diane's chateau and this her own room, what more natural than that her cipher should be here, as Rousseau says? And yet, as Honore de Balzac points out, this same cipher is to be found in the palace of the Louvre; upon the columns of la Halle au Ble, built by Catherine herself; ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... chamelion chameleon chimist chemist chimistry chemistry cholic colic chuse choose cimetar cimeter clench clinch cloke cloak cobler cobbler chimnies chimneys chesnut chestnut clue clew connection connexion corset corslet cypher cipher cyphering ciphering dactyl dactyle develope develop dipthong diphthong dispatch despatch doat dote drouth drought embitter imbitter embody imbody enquire inquire enquirer inquirer enquiry inquiry ensnare insnare enterprize enterprise enthral inthrall entrench intrench entrenchment ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... changes of the watery star hath been The shepherd's note since we have left our throne Without a burden: time as long again Would be fill'd up, my brother, with our thanks; And yet we should, for perpetuity, Go hence in debt: and therefore, like a cipher, Yet standing in rich place, I multiply With one we-thank-you many thousands more That go ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems, And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of the farther systems: Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding, Outward, outward, and forever outward: My sun has his sun, and around him obediently wheels; He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit, And greater sets ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... assent to such demands, which seemed to reduce him to a cipher, conferring upon him only the shadow of a crown. Rhodolph, however, who was eager to make any concessions, had his agents busy through the diet, with assurances that the emperor would grant all these ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... 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 ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... am still at a loss," Julian confessed, "but treated with the cipher it comes out as ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the foot," he added, "are in cipher, and it is the ordinary cipher employed by the French, which in itself proves how deeply Samoval was involved. Here is a translation of it." And he placed before his chief a sheet of paper on which Lord ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... Austin, if I thought basely of marriage, I should perhaps accept your offer. There was a time, indeed, when it would have made me proudest among women. I was the more deceived, and have to thank you for a salutary lesson. You chose to count me as a cipher in your rolls of conquest; for six months you left me to my fate; and you come here to-day - prompted, I doubt not, by an honourable impulse - to offer this tardy reparation. No: ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... full speed. And in this war he disciplined himself so far as to be able to dictate letters from on horseback, and to give directions to two who took notes at the same time, or, as Oppius says, to more. And it is thought that he was the first who contrived means for communicating with friends by cipher, when either press of business, or the large extent of the city, left him no time for a personal conference about matters that required dispatch. How little nice he was in his diet, may be seen in the following instance. When at the table of Valerius ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... were fastened around the arm, waist, or neck. These amulets were styled ligamenta, ligaturae, or phylacteria, by the writers of the early Middle Ages. They were usually fashioned as gold, silver, or glass pendants. Cipher-writing and runes were commonly inscribed upon them, often for healing, but contrariwise, ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... "Court of the Ages." He was overruled because the officials deemed the name not in accord with the contemporaneous spirit of the Exposition. They called it the "Court of Abundance." In spite of the name, however, it is not the Court of Abundance. Mullgardt's title gives a key to the cipher of the statues. Read by it, the groups on the altar of the Tower become three successive Ages of Civilization. ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... those months the king taught him to recite poetry, to draw maps and to make use of arithmetic, but his lessons in arithmetic had to be discontinued because an ignorant guard noticed the multiplication tables that the Prince was learning and reported that he was being taught to speak and write in cipher. One of the king's men was removed from the Temple because it was said that he had used hieroglyphics in order to make secret correspondence between the king and queen easier, and even his explanation that the figures he had made use of were only arithmetic tables which he laid ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... answered, "I will give you a claim upon Lord Sunbury;" and she took from her finger a large ring, such as were commonly worn in those days, presenting on one side a shield of black enamel surrounded with brilliants, and in the centre a cipher, formed also of small diamonds. "Keep this," said the lady, "till all is explained to you, Wilton, and then return it to me. Should the Earl's assistance be required in anything of vital importance, show him that ring, if he be in England, or if he be ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... Segmuller's desk. In an instant the magistrate had opened it, extracting from the centre a tiny slip of the thinnest tissue paper. This he unfolded, and smoothed upon the palm of his hand. As soon as he glanced at it, his brow contracted. "Ah! this note is written in cipher," he ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... fifty words of posthumous publicity. Within an hour after the street duel the local representative of the Associated Press had his story on the wire, and at eight-thirty next morning T. Morgan Carey, in his club at Los Angeles, read the glad tidings. By nine o'clock a cipher telegram from Carey was being clicked off to his tool in the General Land Office at Washington, instructing him to expedite the listing of the applications of Bob McGraw's clients for lieu ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... 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 largest ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... because they were angry that his Majesty should dare to do anything without their concurrence, and because their own influence in the states would be diminished. It was their object, he said, to keep the King "in tutelage"—to make him a "shadow and a cipher," while they should themselves exercise all authority in the provinces. It is impossible to exaggerate the effect of such suggestions upon the dull and gloomy mind to which they were addressed. It is easy, however, to see that a minister with such views was likely to be as congenial ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... satisfaction were speedily put to flight when, after crossing the remains of the plank bridge with some difficulty, he stood before the hideous wreck of his friend's late home, where he had spent so many glad hours listening to marvellous adventures from Paul Bevan, or learning how to read and cipher, as well as drinking in wisdom generally, from ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... not to have disciplined her differently. You and I particularly, for Niemeyer is only a cipher; he leaves everything in doubt. And then, Briest, sorry as I am—your continual use of ambiguous expressions—and finally, and here I accuse myself too, for I do not desire to come off innocent in this matter, I wonder if she was not ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... considerable a cipher suddenly sponged out of his visionary ledger, rather than so much money should vanish clean out of the family, Captain Higginbotham had taken what he conceived, if a desperate, at least a certain, step for the preservation of ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... down the paper without a sign of outward emotion, and nodded his head several times at the one-eyed man facing him. He then extracted his perfumed handkerchief, examined the cipher in the corner, and waved it before his face. Don Ignacio pulled out a red silk bandana, and polished his eye as if it were the lens of a spy-glass. At length the ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... in the field of labor, Mr. Thompson looked out of his cabin door to where he could see dimly through the trees the uncompleted bulk of his church—and he set down a mental cipher against that account. It was waste effort. He felt in his heart that he would never finish it. ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... dismissed, and the government to be entirely in the hands of natives. It is a sort of national movement, with the army at the head of it; and the viceroy, although still nominally the ruler of Egypt, is in fact little more than a cipher in the hands of Arabi and the colonels. They say the French are at the bottom of it, and it is likely enough. They have always been jealous of our influence in Egypt. However, I do not suppose we shall interfere in ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... amnesty. The meanest employe seems to think himself invested with certain occult powers. His civility savours of government patronage; and his frown is inquisitorial. To his fellows, his address is abrupt and diplomatic. He seems to speak in cipher, and to gesticulate by some rule of freemasonry. But to the uninitiated he is explanatory to a scruple, as though mischief might ensue from his being misapprehended. He makes sure of your understanding by an emphasis, which reminds ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... about that," the Colonel said, "and wondered at it. However, we are not discussing past incidents. What I desire you to do is to communicate with your father, in the cipher you sometimes use in your correspondence, and inform him of what I have just told you. Say to him that he is mistaken in the men, and that his building will be destroyed if he attempts to publish the alleged facts ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... was saved from humiliation and discouragement, and at the same time, he was stimulated to making independent researches in the school and public libraries. Each class of honor pupil could whisper, go out, or go to the blackboards to draw or cipher without asking permission. The high sense of honor was thus developed which is so ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... 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 pocket. Translated, ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... terrible Domitian, Isidore Baudoyer was nothing more than a political office-holder, of little ability as head of his department, a cut-and-dried routine man, who concealed the fact that he was a flabby cipher by so ponderous a personality that no scalpel could cut deep enough to let the operator see into him. His severe studies, in which he had shown the patience and sagacity of an ox, and his square head, deceived his parents, who firmly believed him an extraordinary man. Pedantic ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... with the vigor of his thought, with the clearness of his expression, with the amplitude of his knowledge, with the scope of his memory as they had been disclosed the previous night in his conversation with Paterson. No, the fact was that I had not found the key to his motives, the cipher running through the artificial ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... make anything of this," he said. "It's some sort of a note, written in cipher, I should judge. It is signed ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope
... addressed in a careless hand to "Miss Robinson." This, in another obscure street hard by she opened. On half a sheet of notepaper was printed with pen and ink the letters W. S. T.—that was all. Polly had no difficulty in interpreting this cipher. She tore up envelope and paper, and walked ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... substance, not the form. Why should not woman seek her happiness With brow as unabashed as man may wear In seeking his? Ah! lack of candor here Works more regrets, for woman and for man, Than we can reckon. Let but woman feel That in the social scheme she's not a cipher, The remedy, be ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... Wright until April, 1829. During this short time he learned to read, write, and cipher as far as the single rule of three, as it was then called, or simple proportion. During his residence with William Wright, nothing could exceed his kindness or gratitude to the whole family. He learned to graft trees, and thus rendered great ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... use of a cipher code would secure the secrecy of a message, but Marconi was looking for a mechanical device that would make it impossible for any but the station to which the message was sent to receive it. He finally hit upon the plan of focussing the ether waves as the rays of a searchlight ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... a cipher telegram to the Foreign Department, Government of India, at Simla, informing them of the occurrence and of his intention to investigate the affair personally, and, if possible, rescue Miss Benson. He knew that the Heads of the Department, although they would not sanction or approve officially ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... somewhere in the vague world beyond Peking—perhaps that armies were arriving. We were reminded that we were still alive. A dignified reply was sent, and the very next day came an astonishing Washington cipher message, which has been puzzling us ever since. It was only three words: "Communicate to bearer." No one can explain what these words mean; even the American Minister has cudgelled his brains in vain, and asked everybody's opinion. ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... but I'm bound to say that this tactless speech nettled me not a little. People are always nettling me like that. Giving me to understand, I mean to say, that in their opinion Bertram Wooster is a mere cipher and that the only member of the household with brains and resources ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... repaired, and Johnston's 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. ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... my marches here?' And she athwart the shallow shrilled again, 'Here is a kitchen-knave from Arthur's hall Hath overthrown thy brother, and hath his arms.' 'Ugh!' cried the Sun, and vizoring up a red And cipher face of rounded foolishness, Pushed horse across the foamings of the ford, Whom Gareth met midstream: no room was there For lance or tourney-skill: four strokes they struck With sword, and these were mighty; the ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... struggle 'twixt love and duty. No, not duty: I might have sheathed my sword, and wronged no one; I was but a cipher among thousands, whose blade would scarcely have been missed. Nor would I have wronged myself. I was simply, as I have already declared, an adventurer. The country for which I fought could not claim me; I was bound by no political conscience, ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... with big headings; then I'll get the thing printed, and carry it about with me, and study it nights and mornings. But Mabel might find it in my clothes: she is welcome to my secrets, but this is not mine. I might have it printed in cipher; but then I should be sure to lose the key. O, confound it all, I'll have to chance it: I'll be sure to slip up somewhere, and then there'll be a row. Well, why borrow trouble? Let's gather the flowers while we may: only there are ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... involved in the murky affair might be imminent was the thought induced in Peter's mind as the green coast of Japan heaved over the horizon. With each thrust of the Vandalia's screws the cipher was nearing its solution. Each cylinder throb narrowed the distance to the shore lights of China—the lights of ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... her language purposely, for she was Commander-in-Chief and entitled to call herself so, and it was becoming and proper, too; and who was going to surrender anything to the King?—at that time a stick, a cipher? If any surrendering was done, it would be to the noble Maid of Vaucouleurs, already famed and formidable though she had not yet struck ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... to me and took the lantern and the letter from my hands, Jud holding the light and Ump turning the envelope around in his fingers, peering curiously. They might have been some guardians of a twilight country examining a mysterious passport signed right but writ in cipher, and one that from some hidden ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... old fool cotton mill and hire out, to name it to you that Shade Buckheath would stand some watchin'. Your Uncle Pros has got sense—in streaks. Why in the world you'll pike out and go to work in a cotton mill is more than I can cipher." ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... in his manner there was no youth whatever. He was tall, commanding, grave, quiet, cold, and even at that age almost majestic. His first sentence, slow and firm, removed the paternal notion that a cipher or a juvenile had ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... and anchor, and his majesty's cipher on the appointments of the dead officer, he became convinced of our quality, and changed his tone—"Es verdat, son de la marina Englesa;" "But gentlemen, were there not three persons in the hut?" There were indeed—the flames had consumed the dry roof and walls with incredible ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... quizzed me often and puzzled me long, You've asked me to cipher and spell, You've called me a dunce if I answered wrong, Or a dolt if I failed to tell Just when to say lie and when to say lay, Or what nine sevens may make, Or the longitude of Kamschatka Bay, Or the I-forget-what's-its-name Lake, So I think ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... temperament—the latter goading him 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, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... hev applied fur the place o' postmaster?" Tyler prosed on. "All that takes a power o' knowledge—readin' an' writin' an' cipher-in' an' sech. How air ye expectin' to hold out, 'kase I know ye never hed no mo' larnin' than me, an' I war acquainted with ye till ye war ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... the other admitted, "but what am I to do? They keep sending me cipher messages from home to spare no effort to send further news, as you know very well, and two other fellows will be here the day after to-morrow, to relieve me. I must do what I can. There's one thing, Felicia's ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and say so, it is almost sure to go elsewhere. 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 ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... set about it out in the kitchen in a particularly wrathy mood. It was snowing outside. The old Squire had driven to the village; and, after doing the barn chores, Addison had retired to the sitting-room to cipher out two or three hard sums in complex fractions while I had seized the opportunity to read a book of Indian stories that Tom Edwards had lent me. After starting the churning, grandmother Ruth, assisted by the girls, was putting ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... in North Carolina, near the South Carolina line, without owning a single acre of land,—one of the poorest of the poor whites. The boy Andrew, born shortly after his father's death in 1767, was reared in poverty and almost without education, learning at school only to "read, write, and cipher;" nor did he have any marked desire for knowledge, and never could spell correctly. At the age of thirteen he was driven from his native village by its devastation at the hands of the English soldiers, during the Revolutionary ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... his mind by confession, he gave me the slip of paper (written in cipher) which you will find inclosed in this. 'There is my note of the place where the diamonds are hidden,' he said. Among the many ignorant people who know nothing of ciphers, I am one—and I told him so. 'That's how I keep my secret,' he said; 'write from my dictation, and ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... the confusion of the criminal is taught him. He is shown where an expert must be called in, and where his own common-sense must aid him. He is taught something of locks, something of finger-prints, something of cipher-reading. He learns the significance of trivialities, and the ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... found the moss yu' want to gather." As Scipio glanced at the school books again, a sparkle lurked in his bleached blue eye. "I can cipher some," he said. "But I expect I've got my own ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... was addressed to Leckhard, superintendent of the Pannikin Division of the Pacific Southwestern system, at Copah. It was in cipher, and it contained two uncodified words—"Fort" and "McCook," which small circumstance set Dix to thinking—Fort McCook being the army post, twelve miles as the crow flies, down ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... have been secretary to a prince, and learnt to interpret cipher, and to watch every pen-stroke; and, young as I am, I think that I am not easily deceived. Would God I were! Come on, lad; and strike no man hastily, lest thou cut off thine ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... hero of this story. When Cesar at fourteen years of age could read, write, and cipher, he left his native place and came to Paris on foot to seek his fortune, with one louis in his pocket. The recommendation of an apothecary at Tours got him a place as shop-boy with Monsieur and Madame Ragon, perfumers. Cesar owned at this period a pair of hob-nailed ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... that these constituted the cipher; and, seeking for my key-letter, e (that which most frequently occurs in the English language), I found the sign of a full-stop to appear more frequently than any other in the first message, namely ten times, although it only occurred thrice in the second. Nevertheless, I was hopeful ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... Southwick said. "We got instructions to pack up a pretty strange assortment of supplies for the Scorpius, and that's all I know. The order was in special cipher, though, so we're all wondering ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... chances are twenty to one against the MS. ever being found. But granting that it does turn up, the finder of it will probably be some ignorant navvie or incurious official, without either inclination or ability to master the secret of the cipher." ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... fault, and not the actor of it, Why euery fault's condemnd ere it be done: Mine were the verie Cipher of a Function To fine the faults, whose fine stands in record, And let ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... used it for the transportation of boy and impedimenta. In the deep wilderness beyond the Adirondacks they found a cave in one of the rock ledges. They were twenty miles from any post-office but shortly discovered one. Letters in cipher were soon passing between them and their confederates. They learned there was no prospect of getting the ransom. He they had thought rich was not able to raise the money they required or any large sum. Two years went by, and ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... before one of the long windows in the conservatory, listlessly watching the people in the square. And these poor fools envied her! To envy her, who was a prisoner, a chattel to be exchanged for war's immunity, who was a princess in name but a cipher in fact! All was wrong with the world. She had stolen out of the ball-room; the craving to be alone had been too strong. Little she cared whether they missed her or not. She left the window and sat on one of the divans, ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... could help it, parbleu! My message to Napoleon was in my own cipher, and after he had sent it by a scout to Vera Cruz, I informed him that in it I had directed Napoleon to send his answer to me at Queretaro. Otherwise Marquez would have kept me in prison rather than let me go. But as it was, he assisted me through the Republican lines by a secret way he has ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... others talk scandal. There, you see this book is ruled into little squares for the days of the week, a month on a page, and when we get through a day without saying anything against anybody we can put a nice little cross in, but when we have broken the pledge we must mark it with a cipher, and then when we are just horrid and keep on being cross, we must black the day all over. Then once a week we have to show the books to each other and make ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Such stories must be taken with a large grain of salt, for the sake of the amusement they afford to readers at home. In future, whenever I hear a man state how he broke the back of an antelope at 600 yards, I shall incline to believe a cipher had been added by a slip of the pen, or attribute it to a typographical error, for this is almost an impossible feat in an African forest. It may be done once, but it could never be done twice running. An antelope makes a very small target at ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley |
