"Decipher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it desire for knowledge, that impelled him to decipher the sacred text in an unknown language at what cost soever? It is certain that no difficulty affrighted him. Word by word he translated the Latin text by dint of comparing it with the Hebrew original, and he succeeded in acquiring a large number of Latin words. He is not alone in this ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... they returned, one of the brethren, searching the cave wherein the holy woman dwelt, found nothing there, saving one bracelet of gold, of large size and strange workmanship, engraven with foreign characters, which no one could decipher. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... of the handwriting points to an early period of Leonardo's life. It has become very indistinct, and is at present exceedingly difficult to decipher. ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... that the type used to print the book had been damaged in many places, which meant that it was sometimes very hard to decipher. After much poring there remains only one damaged word in the book, of which ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... impressed a small school (from what neighbourhood I don't know) to assist in the performances, and it was pleasant to notice frantic garlands of inscription on the walls, especially addressing those poor innocents in characters impossible for them to decipher. There was a remarkably agreeable smell of ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... veiled by a perplexing twilight, albeit the rivulet of sky above was now bright with day. He noted many strange features, understanding none at the time; he even spelt out many of the inscriptions in Phonetic lettering. But what profits it to decipher a confusion of odd-looking letters resolving itself, after painful strain of eye and mind, into "Here is Eadhamite," or, "Labour Bureau—Little Side?" Grotesque thought, that in all probability some or all of these ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... the first men, since the Greek era, who saw nature in its true aspect and not as a hieroglyphic of the divine word. Men had realised with a feeling of helplessness the dangers of the elements, without perceiving their magnificence; they had speculated on and attempted to decipher the secret language of the terrestrial and celestial phenomena. The discovery of the beauty of nature, and with it the revival of aesthetics, was an essential part of the new-born civilisation. This fact was accomplished—in an almost sentimental way—by the troubadours and minnesingers. ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... is a chronogram, that is, it contains a date. To decipher it you take the numeral letters of the line and add them together; the total gives ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... an angle over his eyes, went over to the horses, and looked at their brands which had been hidden from him. One was a Flying U, and the other bore a blurred monogram which he did not trouble to decipher. He turned on his heels ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... garret—let him know't who will— There was my bed—full hard it was and small. My table there—and I decipher still Half a lame couplet charcoaled on the wall. Ye joys, that Time hath swept with him away, Come to mine eyes, ye dreams of love and fun; For you I pawned my watch how many a day, In the brave ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of finding such, but, on the whole, I rather like you; believe you can suit me exactly if you will, and I am disposed to give you a trial. Sit down here and copy this paragraph; let me see what sort of hieroglyphics I shall have to decipher if I make ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... incredible a personage must have destroyed its likelihood—such as it is. There are moments when I do not myself believe in his existence. And yet he must be real; for I have seen him with these eyes; and I am one of the few men living who can decipher the curious alphabet in which he writes his private letters. The man is on public record too. The battle of Trafalgar Square, in which he personally and bodily assailed civilization as represented by the concentrated military ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... in spite of her 'ezack' methods, always a little worried when anything out of the ordinary occurred, and she began to feel slightly flustered directly she saw Maryllia swing open her garden gate. She had already, during the last few days, been at some trouble to decipher various telegrams which the lady of the Manor had sent down by Primmins for immediate despatch, such as one to a certain Lord Roxmouth which had run as follows:—"No time to reply to your letter. In love ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... kitchen, smelling of raw plaster, wondering at the extreme eagerness of the discussion with the mason over the yawning boiler, the Earl referring to his son's letter, holding it half-a-yard off, and at last giving it to Mary to decipher by the ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to decipher illegible inscriptions, to contemplate a throttled centaur on a dilapidated frieze, or a carved acanthus on a fallen capital, grope over the Acropolis and invoke Athenian Pallas," said Mike; "but for me these painted seraglios and terraced, bower-canopied gardens, vocal with ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... sailor until 1475. Meanwhile he had worked as clerk in a Genoese bookshop. We know he must have turned this last opportunity to good account. Printing was still a very young art, but a few books had already found their way to Genoa, and the young clerk must have pored over them eagerly and tried to decipher the Latin in which they ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... his school books. The pages look like well-used drum parchments, and I am certain Jack must often find it hard to decipher the words upon them. His exercises look as if they had been left out in an ink shower, and the very pen he uses is generally wet with ink up to the very tip of the handle, which, by the way, he usually nibbles when he's nothing better to do. Who shall describe ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Productions, that of late they never mention the Q—n or P—l at length, though they speak of them with Honour, and with that Deference which is due to them from every private Person. It gives a secret Satisfaction to a Peruser of these mysterious Works, that he is able to decipher them without help, and, by the Strength of his own natural Parts, to fill up a Blank-Space, or make out a Word that has only the first ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... did the Athenians raise to Aesop; and a poor pariah slave they planted upon an everlasting pedestal. I have not scrupled to introduce the word pariah, because in that way only could I decipher to the reader by what particular avenue it was that the sublimity which I fancy in the passage reached my heart. This sublimity originated in the awful chasm, in the abyss that no eye could bridge, between the pollution of slavery,—the being a man, yet without right or lawful power belonging ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... letter, after all, was simple enough. By reading every tenth word, he got a consistent message, save that certain supplies, over which the concierge had railed, were special code words for certain regiments. These he could not decipher. ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... your hands. I will give you the key to such of its ciphers as I have been able to make out. The language, I believe, for I am no scholar, is Latin of a mediaeval type; but there are words which, if I rightly decipher them, are not Latin, and hardly seem to belong to any known language; most of them, I fancy, quasi-scientific terms, invented to describe various technical devices unknown to the world when the manuscript was written. I only make it a condition that you shall not publish the story ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... they are marrying, and no one but the Lord knows. After the dressmaker, and the milliner, and the jeweler, and the hair-adjuster, and the dancing-master, and the cosmetic art have completed their work, how is an unsophisticated man to decipher the physiological hieroglyphics, and make accurate judgment of who it is to whom he offers hand and heart? This is what makes so many recreant husbands. They make an honorable marriage contract, but the goods delivered are so different from the sample by which they ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... pretenders is marvellous. No sooner has the adventurer who prints himself antiquary, begun to cheat his way on a little, then he addresses himself boldly to some venal professor of archaeology too poor to refuse the bribe; who for a small consideration undertakes to decipher his inscriptions for him, to teach him his history, to furnish him with learned conjectures, and to praise his goods, which last is generally the only part of these educational acquirements which he retains, and recollects to profit by afterwards; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... full knowledge, and I was unexpectedly called upon to begin it before a class of some seventy-five teachers. It was necessary to commence speaking without having definitely determined my first point. I had, however, a few notes which I was attempting to decipher and arrange, while talking as best I could, when I became conscious of a slight clatter from all parts of the room. On looking up I found that the noise came from the pencils of my audience, and they were writing down my first pointless ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... and re-read this curious letter, and hummed a tune to himself. He gave a professional twitch to each of the hundred-pound notes, and held them up one after the other to the light. Then he examined the post-mark on the envelope, and failed to decipher the name of ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... the opposite direction. All these, even the most illegible examples, give evidence of experience in handling or mishandling the pen. The signature most difficult to read is frequently the production of the hand which writes most frequently, and it is very much harder to decipher than the worst specimens of an untrained hand. The characteristics of the latter are usually an evident painstaking desire to imitate faulty ideals of the letters one after the other, without any attempt to attain a particular effect by the signature as a whole. In very extreme ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... you can't read them,' remarked a solicitor to the chairman at the Devon Appeal Tribunal (Exeter Panel), as he sought to decipher the hand- [Inverted: writing on one of those documents. Previously in the day a certificate had been handed to Lieutenant Stirling with the remark, 'You won't be able to read it.' The] resourceful military representative, however, thought he might succeed, and made the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... being taught by his father, and their aunt, Miss Branwell, who acted as housekeeper, taught them what she could. An immense amount of manuscript dating from this period is in existence—tales, dramas, poems, romances, written principally by Charlotte, in a hand it is almost impossible to decipher without the aid of a magnifying glass. They make in the whole twenty-two volumes, each volume containing from sixty to a hundred pages, and all written in about fifteen months. The quality strikes me as of singular merit for a girl of thirteen ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the name of the Oxford bookseller, and Henno Rusticus may be Homo rusticus, "the country gentleman." The hand-writing of this MS. is so small and illegible in some places, that it requires an Oedipus to decipher it; and the public will have much reason to thank those lynx-eyed antiquaries who have taken great pains to render it intelligible. "The Sige of the End," is of course properly explained to be "the Signe ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.01 • Various
... said my companion, after ten minutes' application, "that the man who sent you this letter writes Italian about as badly as we read it. I think I could decipher the meaning of his words if I knew what letters those funny scratches were intended to represent. But let us stick to it. After a while we may get a little used to the writing, and I must admit that I have a curiosity to know what the man has ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... I wrote down their names, but it is difficult to decipher them now. There was the Sawbwa of Keng-tung, forty days' journey from his capital east and south of Mandalay, and north of Siam; the Sawbwa of Yawnghwe; the Sawbwa of Lawksak; and the Myosa of this ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... stood beside the sleeper. After a moment's pause he gently pulled back the unfastened collar of Dare's nightshirt and saw a word tattooed in distinct characters on his breast. Before there was time for Havill to decipher it Dare moved slightly, as if conscious of disturbance, and Havill hastened back to bed. Dare bestirred himself yet more, whereupon Havill breathed heavily, though keeping an intent glance on the lad through his half-closed eyes to learn if he had ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... words that I could not at first understand, but of which finally, by good luck, and with your help, Lady Ruth, I was able to decipher the meaning. They referred, in an obscure and veiled fashion, to the great statue erected by Lord Ashiel in that glen of which his wife had been so fond; where the beginning of the track used by the cattle drivers and robbers of old, which is known ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... -sextarius-, and the -cyathus-, the two last also for dry goods; the Roman -amphora- was equalized in water-weight to the Attic talent, and at the same time stood to the Greek —metretes— in the fixed ratio of 3:2, and to the Greek —medimnos— of 2:1. To one who can decipher the significance of such records, these names and numerical proportions fully reveal the activity and importance of the intercourse between the Sicilians and the Latins. The Greek numeral signs were not adopted; but the Roman probably availed himself of the Greek ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... contrary, there is little doubt left in the minds of students that the Indian races which have peopled Mexico were of Mongolian stock. Many words in some dialects are easily understood by Chinese immigrants. A secretary of the Japanese legation here was able recently to decipher old Mixtec inscriptions found ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... hands was destined to be a link in the chain. She unfolded it slowly and her eyes traced the written words within. It was a hasty scrawl, written on the cheap paper of some obscure hotel in Jersey City, extremely difficult to decipher, the hand of the man who wrote exhibiting plainly the excitement ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... in these my confessions, that I, who a moment before, would have given my best chance of promotion, to be able to pull in my horse, would now have "pledged my dukedom" to be able to give Sir Roger one cut of the whip unobserved. I leave it to the wise to decipher the rationale, but such is the fact. It was complete steeple-chasing, and my ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... the letter in her hand and began, as best she could, for the twentieth time to endeavour to decipher the address. It was very much blotted and besmeared, and presented a very remarkable specimen of caligraphy. The most legible word on it ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... sweet that one can almost taste them. These have their secret purposes, since Nature is not wasteful. If she creates beautiful things, it is to serve some ultimate end; it is her whim to walk in obscure paths, but her goal is fixed and immutable. However, her designs are hidden and not easy to decipher; at best, one achieves, not knowledge, but a ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... fruit not merely of the Professor's own labors, but of those of more ancient sages than he; and often a whole volume seemed to be compressed within the limits of a few lines of crabbed manuscript, judging from the time which it cost even the quick-minded student to decipher them. ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... delivered a slip of parchment into the hand of the host, who turning it once or twice round in the vain attempt to decipher its intention, passed it to the ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... The mosquitoes were singing their nightly chorus, and the situation reports were coming in from the battalions in the line. With his hair sizzling in the flame of the candle, the Brigade Orderly Officer who was on duty for the night tried to decipher the feathery scrawl on the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 28, 1917 • Various
... in the lamentably incorrect epistle—which she could only decipher with difficulty—which her darling had written to her, the paler grew her face, which she several times covered with her trembling hands, from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... only made me dine with him that day, but in a manner live with him. He is not at all blind, as you imagined; so much otherwise, that I saw him read, without spectacles, a difficult hand I could not easily decipher.... Stayed but a day at Berlin;" am rushing after you:—Here is my ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Sherman could decipher Thomas's dispatches, he warned the latter of the danger of a false move, as only Forrest's cavalry was down the river, and Hood's army was known to be at Florence. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxix. pt. iii. p. 647.] When Schofield got to Johnsonville, he soon saw the real state ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... a book some time ago, and it struck me as being especially good from the fact that it consisted entirely of figures, and that it was not necessary to use precisely the same figures every time to represent any particular letter; hence it seems impossible for anyone to decipher it without the key. Now, let me consider: how did it go? Something like this, I think. Can you let me have a pencil and ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... people in so forgotten a community, with its unpaved street, its straggling wooden houses, its background of unbroken bush. There was no water power, no big timber, and, from the look of the country, no mineral. He put the thought out of his mind with luxurious deliberation and tried to decipher why a man like the bishop should waste his time here when, without doubt, he could be a shining light in a great city. After a little the reason became clear, and, smiling to himself, he reached up for ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... on the name of the Thisbe, and the words "all the people are lost," a sickening sensation came over, and her eyes refused to convey to her mind the meaning of the letter. It was dropping from her trembling hands when, by a great effort, she recovered herself, and at length was able to decipher the writing. She read on. The Thisbe and Headland were safe. Poor Harry was lost. She blamed herself for selfishly feeling that this was a relief. Then May, crushed by the agony of ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... penetrating glance, the nostrils somewhat distended, and lips compressed so as hardly to let the breath escape him, denote the character of the man for high-reaching policy and deep designs as plainly as they can be written. How is it that we decipher this expression in the face? First, by feeling it. And how is it that we feel it? Not by re-established rules, but by the instinct of analogy, by the principle of association, which is subtle and sure in proportion as it is variable and indefinite. A circumstance, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... detestable hand; and few can appreciate the immense trouble that it cost Mr. JEAVES to make his transcript. Where Mr. JEAVES' labours ended mine began; I spent many days in minutely comparing the transcript with the original. There are still left passages that neither of us could decipher, ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... again, sat down on the bed and opened the other letter. His hand shook as he unfolded it. He was so scared and excited that he could scarcely decipher the angular, ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... your drives through the woods— bits of fenced-in forest, the old gates dropping off their hinges, the paths green from long disuse, the unchecked trees casting black, impenetrable shadows across the poor, meek, pathetic graves. I try sometimes, pushing aside the weeds, to decipher the legend on the almost speechless headstones; but the voice has been choked out of them by years of wind, and frost, and snow, and a few stray letters are all that they can utter—a last ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... no firm foothold. At one time, in the sixth century, they were in power at Rome. Corsica, too, was at this time under their control. Their commerce was considerable. Many well preserved monuments of their art have been discovered, but no one has yet been able to decipher any of the inscriptions upon them. The power of these people was gradually lessened by the Romans, and after the fall of Veii, in 396, ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... of antiquity possess for him, as they did for the learned men of the Renaissance, or for Petrarch, who cherished a manuscript of Homer without being able to decipher it, a ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... secretary of the ambassador from Holland, who was appealed to, asserted beforehand that he "could read anything that ever was written in Dutch." Yet, after a long inspection, he frankly owned his inability to decipher a single word of it. Mr. Mickley was determined to ascertain the contents. As the document could not be bought at any price, and could not even be removed over-night from its place of keeping, he caused photographs to be taken of it. One such copy was sent to a very learned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... was nearly gone. The company that had been chatting at the front door, and which in warmer weather would have tarried until bedtime, had wandered off; however, by stepping toward the light the young merchant could decipher the letters on the purse. Citizen Fusilier drew out a pair of spectacles, looked over his junior's shoulder, read aloud, "Aurore De G. ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... Craymoor, bearing the figures and escutcheons of knights and dames of "the old family," as the villagers said; but the inscriptions were worn and almost illegible, and for some time we none of us took the pains to decipher them. ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... cab and brought me home; and I don't remember anything about it, for I was queer in the head very soon after they got me to bed. Oh, I was bad! It was just a squeak, '—said Lucy, her voice dropping from exhaustion; but her eyes glittered in her pinched face with a curious triumph, difficult to decipher. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sight and memory.... He told me that he had great materials towards the life of the old Lord Burleigh and Mr. Foxe the martyrologist, which he wished he could have finished, but most of his papers are in "characters"; his grandson is learning to decipher them.' Under the dates of September 1st and 7th Oldys records that 'the Yelverton library is in the possession of the Earl of Sussex, wherein are many volumes of Sir Francis Walsingham's papers'; and a few ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... tremendous rate, and quite forget that I have traveled upward of forty miles to-day, and that I promised my mother, whenever I could, to go to bed early. Good-by, my dear Mrs. Jameson. I hope you will be able to make out this scrawl, and to decipher that ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... opened it; but seeing at a glance that it was unusually long, she decided that she would not try to decipher Percy's irregular, illegible handwriting at that time, but would wait till Maggie and Bessie should have left her and would make the ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... dimensions, about the size of a sheet of foolscap paper, lined and cross-lined for a multitude of entries. When the account finally reaches you, it closely resembles a design for a cobweb factory. Any attempt to decipher the various hieroglyphics is useless—it can't be done. The only thing that can be done is to read the total at the foot of the page ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... since her commerce was, in fact, the mainspring of her wealth and prestige—a very vital part of her—she kept before their eyes on the exterior of this ancient church in the market-place where her merchant-princes daily met, her admonition to uphold them in righteous dealing. One might decipher it wrought into the wall of the apse under the stones of the frieze, in quaint lettering that tempted to the perusal and endowed the mastered motto with the impressiveness of a rite—for the legend assumed a quality of mystery, being ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... more important of the two, on account of the chronological inscriptions which accompanied and explained each medallion. These inscriptions, which were too small and faint to be read with the naked eye from below, were not copied before their destruction. Grimaldi could decipher but a few: SIRICIUS. SEDIT ANN(is) XV. M(ensibus) V. D(iebus) XX.—FELIX. SEDIT ANN(o) I. M(ensibus) ... etc. The heads were bare, and framed by a round halo. They seem to have been painted at the time of Pope Formosus (891-896), as were also ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... occasional pic-nic parties. During one of these visits, at which I {77} was present, I copied an inscription, painted in old characters on a board, and nailed to one of the walls, and as the whole thing had not the appearance of belonging to modern times, and, as far as I could decipher it, it referred to some agreement between Alfred and some of his neighbouring brother kings, concerning boundaries of territory, I send it to you ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... cautiously unfolded the wet letter; but, as he bent himself to decipher the writing, a cloud descended ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... humanity might be read as plainly as a printed history, were it not that the impressions are so complex that it must always in some cases (and, in the present state of our knowledge, in all cases) be impossible to decipher them completely. Nevertheless, the face of a consistently just, and of a consistently unjust person, may always be rightly distinguished at a glance; and if the qualities are continued by descent through a generation or two, there arises a complete distinction of race. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... kindliness. What could you expect of people with such dreary surroundings?—what but that which we know actually was the condition of affairs? The records of crime and outrage in Norfolk six hundred years ago are still preserved, and may be read by any one who knows how to decipher them. I had intended to examine carefully the entries of crime for this neighbourhood for the year 1286, and to give you the result this evening, but I have not had an opportunity of doing so. The work has been done for the hundred of North Erpingham by my friend Mr. Rye, and what ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... throughout: while either at the summit, or else at the foot of the page, the formula with which the Lection was to be introduced is elaborately inserted; prefaced probably by a rubricated statement (not always very easy to decipher) of the occasion when the ensuing portion of Scripture was to be read. The ancients, to a far greater extent than ourselves,(398) were accustomed,—(in fact, they made it a rule,)—to prefix unauthorized formulae to their ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... Edie Ochiltree, who witnessed the finding of the treasure with a keen eye to future operations. Edie had surreptitiously obtained possession of the treasure box-lid, and on it he and the conjurer were able to decipher, "Search number one." The old beggar, who knew many of the traditions of the country, told Dousterswivel that the remains of Malcolm the Misticot were, along with a large amount of gold and silver, buried somewhere ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... fastened his shirt front, and his necktie was tied in a butterfly bow. He displayed some of the nonchalant ease which wealth and position create, smiled a little on catching sight of the jersey worn by a lady who had neglected to fasten the back of her bodice, and strove to decipher the impression the faces conveyed to him. He grew aware of that flitting anxiety which is inseparable from the task of finding a daily living, and that pathos which tells of fidelity to idea and abstinence from ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... mayor to have gratified the sorrowful longing of his friend. Law, constitutional and administrative, begets nothing; it is a barren monster for peoples, for kings, and for private interests. But the peoples decipher no principles but those that are writ in blood, and the evils of legality will always be pacific; it flattens a nation down, that is all. Jacquet, a man of modern liberty, returned home reflecting on ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... requires that God would make it utterly unintelligible. We can gather clear and definite ideas from the significant hieroglyphics of symbolical language, but the literalities of history written in advance would be worse to decipher than the arrow-headed inscriptions of Nineveh. Just imagine to yourself Alexander the Great reading Guizot, instead of Daniel; or Hildreth, as being less mysterious than Ezekiel; and meeting, for instance, such a ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... in the face, and not me alone, but also the spurious relatives who often stood or sat near me. On each fresh sheet placed over me I would soon begin to see words, sentences, and signatures, all in my own handwriting. Yet I could not decipher any of the words, and this fact dismayed me, for I firmly believed that those who stood about could read them all and found them to ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... My efforts to decipher it were baffled, as it was written in neither ancient nor modern Egyptian, new nor old Pali, nor in Greek, Latin, Sanscrit, nor in any other language with which I am acquainted. So I called in the services of two reverend friends of mine—able, ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... investigating magistrate. He jumped in his chair. Feeling that his face was turning crimson, he took up a large bundle of papers from his table, and, to hide his emotion, he raised them to his face, as though trying to decipher an illegible word. He began to understand the difficult duty with which he was charged. He knew that he was troubled like a child, having neither his usual calmness nor foresight. He felt that he might commit the most serious blunders. Why had he undertaken this investigation? ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... in this upper story looking to the front was considerably brighter than in the parlour; and he was able to make out that the paper bore the mark of the hotel at Euston, and even, by peering closely, to decipher the following lines in a very elegant and ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... triumph, it occurred to Mrs Fred that the loss of Nettie would make a serious difference to her own comfort. Who was to take charge of the children, and conduct those vulgar affairs for which Susan's feelings disqualified her? She did her best to decipher the pale face which appeared over the breakfast cups and saucers opposite. What did Nettie mean to do? Susan revolved the question in considerable panic, seeing but too clearly that the firm little hand no longer trembled, and that Nettie ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... given here as they first appeared in 1837 in the Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musik. On applying to the present representative of that firm, I was told that those who now possess these letters decline giving them out of their own hands, and that no copyist can be found able to decipher or ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... his pipe on the mantel-piece and began to cast his eye over the letter, which was much defaced by frequent foldings, and in any case would have been difficult to decipher, so vilely was it scrawled. But Mr. Snowdon's interest was strongly excited, and in a few moments he had made ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... between Exodus XXXIV and Exodus XX, he is at a loss to decipher which are the true commandments that the Lord gave to Moses. The first five books of the Pentateuch, he finds, are attributed to Moses, although they contain the account of the latter's death. On inquiry, he learns that this is still maintained by the synagogue. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... device were so small and faint, that Philippa consumed half an hour ere she could decipher them. At length she succeeded in making out a rude rhyme or measure, in the Norman-French which was to her ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... religion, and not originally moulded by impulses breathing from the native disposition. So that, upon the whole, such as were the gods of a nation, such was the nation: given the particular idolatry, it became possible to decipher the character of the idolaters. Where Moloch was worshipped, the people would naturally be found cruel; where the Paphian Venus, it could not be expected that they should escape the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... reported by Major Frederick Burnham, of the British Army. Later Major Burnham revisited it, and Mr. Holder accompanied him, their purpose to decipher the inscriptions upon ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... have been careful about the label, James. It was not possible to decipher it when smothered with dirt, but we can read it now. Yes, what I thought, original ticket without a doubt. Joseph filius. Bring me that bottle of benzine and the hog-hair brush." This being done, the chief takes the brush wetted ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... intent, but as women want a thing with all the obstinate strength of their mind, without ever saying a word about it or admitting it to themselves. And I was absorbed in chemistry and physics, in physiology and biology, my whole mind was engrossed in the great endeavor to decipher something of the mysterious writ of the phenomena of life and Nature, and in some degree to penetrate the dark recesses ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... where he had wintered last year, but imagine my surprise when he gave me a note from the Commander and said that Benoit and Augustus, two of the men, had just joined them. The note was so confused by the pencil marks being partly rubbed out that I could not decipher it clearly, but it informed me that he had attempted to come with the two men but, finding his strength inadequate to the task, he relinquished his design and returned to Fort Enterprise to await relief with the others. There was another note for the gentleman in charge ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... the beauty of the place the man entered, and, in the deep shade of the old trees, screened from the road by their mossy trunks, found a seat. Here and there, among the old graves under the trees, a few people moved slowly; pausing often to decipher the inscriptions upon the leaning and fallen tombstones. So old was that ancient burying place that there was left among the living no one to keep the flowers upon the graves and visitors came only from ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... showed it to be considerably pocket- worn. The obliterations referred to represented huge blots of black ink covering a lot of scratches and making it impossible to decipher the under writing. Defendant's Counsel immediately requested that the document be turned over to an expert, to see what could be done with it. The judge granted the motion and adjourned the case for ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... knock the clods about, descended the path, and leaning on his visgy began to contemplate the opposite slope of the coombe, as if the answer were written, in letters hard to decipher, along the hill-side. ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... all there is here and welcome," the boy explained, stepping toward the window to decipher the label on a bundle of roots in his hand, "but that's no good unless there's regular practice coming into the office all the while. THAT'S how you learn to be a lawyer. But Gorringe don't have what I call a practice ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... fountain-pen is really a great comfort. I am writing with my new one, so this letter won't, I hope, be such a puzzle to decipher as ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... French was of the finishing school, and Ibsen authorities without a single word of Dano-Norwegian—I met one once who failed to recognize "Et Dukkehjem" as the original title of "A Doll's House,"—and performers upon Hauptmann who could no more read "Die Weber" than they could decipher a ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... ocean and river deposited fresh beds in uninterrupted succession, the accumulation of materials went on as before, a new set of animals and plants were introduced, and a time of building up and renewing followed the time of destruction. These periods of revolution are naturally more difficult to decipher than the periods of rest; for they have so torn and shattered the beds they uplifted, disturbing them from their natural relations to each other, that it is not easy to reconstruct the parts and give them ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... as the Master of Life had made it, in all its original beauty and splendour. Nor was this all. It led me to observe and ponder over the daily pages of the most profound and yet the most fascinating book that man has ever tried to read; and though, it seemed to me, my feeble attempts to decipher its text were always futile, it has, nevertheless, not only taught me to love Nature with an ever-increasing passion, but it has inspired in me an infinite homage toward the Almighty; for, as Emerson says: "In the woods we return to reason and faith. Then I feel ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... side. The stones of three only of these five tombs bore any inscription, name, mark, or sign. On one was a double cross, very coarsely engraved; on the second, a very large escutcheon, which the antiquaries, in spite of their magnifying glasses, their science, and their patience, could never decipher; and on the other, the most curious of the three, a Latin inscription, in a legible, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... standstill. Should I wait for him? I looked at the kneeling figure. So absorbed was the strange young Indian in the document on the floor that I strained my eyes to make out its script, but could not decipher even the corner of the paper exposed to my view. Then it occurred to me that it was a strange thing for an Indian to read. Scarce one among the Iroquois, save Brant and the few who had been to Dr. Wheelock's school, knew A from Zed, or could more ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... was still lying partially exposed on the escritoire just as it had fallen from Sir Jasper's hand ere he had sank into that reverie which had been disturbed by the entrance of Edith; she obtained but a hurried glance, yet it was sufficient for her to decipher its full meaning. As she realized this a dark cloud passed across her features, she moved silently to the window and looked out; when she again turned the cloud had vanished and her face was calm and serene. So occupied with the mail bag had been both uncle and niece that the action of the lady ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... his lamp on the table beside the book, which still lay there opened; he turned over the leaves, but could not decipher their meaning till he came to the ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... October 31st and November 2d, are devoted to unimportant domestic affairs; they show that Lucretia was in Nepi as late as November. Another undated letter to the same Vincenzo Giordano refers to her return to Rome; it purposely contains obscurities which it is now impossible to decipher and fictitious names which had been agreed upon with her servant. Even the signature is a conventional sign. The epistle is word for word as follows: "I am so filled with misgivings and anxiety on account of my returning to Rome that I can scarcely write—I ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... repulsion that was even a physical discomfort. But Lapidoth did not let himself be discouraged, asked leave to stay and hear the reading of papers from the old chest, and actually made himself useful in helping to decipher some difficult German manuscript. This led him to suggest that it might be desirable to make a transcription of the manuscript, and he offered his services for this purpose, and also to make copies of any papers in Roman characters. Though Ezra's young eyes he ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... hours before Captain Dave came in again. Cyril had just finished the work; some of the accounts were long ones, and the writing was so crabbed that it took him some time to decipher it. ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... others had gone. Everything about me was beautiful, and I was treated like a prince, but the word "renegade" was always in my mind's eye, and I went to my rest at last as despondent as ever, after another attempt to decipher the writing, but ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... tailor's bill! How provokingly slow are most domestic chieftains in this anxious operation! They turn the letters over and over, and upside and down; arrange, confuse, mistake, assort; pretend, like Champollion, to decipher illegible franks, and deliver with a slight remark, which is intended as a friendly admonition, the documents of the unlucky wight who encourages ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... from some occult reason that even he could not have given, he held it in his hands for a few moments longer, as if it contained some oracle he dreaded to discover. At length he broke the seal and looked at the signature. It was a faint maze of scratches, so difficult to decipher that he gave it up in despair, and ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... peculiar page The fingers of the blind Decipher truths of every age, As mind communes with mind, So, one by one, these letters spell A name the ancient ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... cymbals struck on high and strident faces Obstreperous in her praise They neither love nor know, A goddess of gone days, Departed long ago, Abandoning the invaded shrines and fanes Of her old sanctuary, A deity obscure and legendary, Of whom there now remains, For sages to decipher and priests to garble, Only and for a little while her letters wedged in marble, Which even now, behold, the friendly mumbling rain erases, And the inarticulate snow, Leaving at last of her least signs and traces ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... the landlady, who had looked sharply at him on his arrival, whispered a little boy, who ran away, and quickly returned with the mayor of the town. LOUVET soon discovered that there was no danger in the mayor, who could not decipher his forged passport, and who, being well plied with wine, wanted to hear no more of the matter. The landlady, perceiving this, slipped out and brought a couple of aldermen, who asked to see the passport. 'O, yes; but drink first.' Then there was a laughing story to tell over again, at ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... very remarkable writer. But it is not Lady Culross's literature that so much interests us and holds us, it is her religion; and it is its depth, its intensity, and the way it grows in winter. After a long and racy introduction, sometimes difficult to decipher, from its Fife idioms and obsolete spelling, she goes on thus: 'Did you get any heart to remember me and my bonds? As for me, I never found so great impediment within. Still, it is the Lord with whom we have to do, and He gives and takes, casts down and raises up, kills and makes alive ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... is a play of mixed authorship. Shakespeare's share in it is large and unmistakable; but much of it was written by an unknown poet of whom we can decipher this, that he was a man of genius, a skilled writer for the stage, and of a marked personality. It cannot now be known how the collaboration was arranged. Either the unknown collaborated with Shakespeare, or the unknown wrote the play ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... dewdrops on a morning cobweb, I may say that a few evenings with my friend J—— were the decisive vibration that moved one more minor poet toward the privilege and penalty of Parnassus. One cannot nicely decipher such fragile causes and effects. It was a year later before the matter became serious enough to enforce abandoning library copies of Keats and buying an edition of my own. And this, too, may have ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... diverging cuts. So far no one to whom the letter has been submitted has given a satisfactory reading. Blacks frankly admit that they do not understand it. They examine it curiously, and almost invariably remark—"Some fella mak' em." No attempt to decipher it is undertaken, because no doubt it was never intended to be read. Yet a plausible elucidation is at hand. The single notch, let it be said, represents a black who wishes to let five white fellows (who ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... most elaborate of all the pictures of reptiles found on ancient Tusayan pottery is shown in plate CXXXII, e, in which the symbolism is complicated and the details carefully worked out. A few of these symbols I am able to decipher; others elude present analysis. There is no doubt as to the meaning of the appendage to the head (figure 269), for it well portrays an elaborate feathered headdress on which the markings that distinguish ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... of Zonda he wrote with charcoal, under a delineation of the national arms: On ne tue point les idees! which inscription, having been reported to the Gaucho chieftain, a committee was appointed to decipher and translate it. When the wording of the significant hint was conveyed to Rosas, he exclaimed,—"Well, what does it mean?" The answer was conveyed to him in 1852; and the sentence serves as epigraph to the present life of his associate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... yearning sadness. According to his usual habit, he ought to go and work a few hours in the office; but he could not do it; he went out to the Carlsberg[5] instead. There he stood and gazed out over the heaving sea, striving to decipher in the waves and in the grey misty clouds which had gathered in wonderful shapes over Hela,[6] as in a magic mirror, his own destiny ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... London; yes—to fear! It had come to that! Realizing it, she felt humiliation. But his eyes had seemed to tell her that she possessed for him great attraction! She longed to see those eyes again, to decipher their message more carefully. The exact meaning of it might have escaped her in that brief instant of encounter. She wondered whether the young man had known who she was, or whether he had merely been suddenly struck by her appearance, and had ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... poor musician, selected from among the worst pianists to be found, or who cannot play the pianoforte at all—some old superannuated individual, who, seated before a battered out-of-tune instrument, tries to decipher a dislocated score which he does not know, strikes false chords major, when they are minor, or vice-versa, and under the pretext of conducting and of accompanying by himself, employs his right hand in setting the chorus-singers wrong in their time, and his left hand in setting ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... what could it be? Was it industry in a taxed cart? Was it youthful gaiety in a gig? Was it sorrow that loitered, or joy that raced? For as yet the snatches of sound were too intermitting, from distance, to decipher the character of the motion. Whoever were the travellers, something must be done to warn them. Upon the other party rests the active responsibility, but upon us—and, woe is me! that us was reduced to my frail opium-shattered self—rests the responsibility ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... in a close, abridged, and, to ordinary readers, a perfectly unintelligible character. The language is Latin; but a modern Latin scholar, without any means other than an inspection of the work, would be utterly unable to decipher it. In fact, though the character is highly wrought, and in some respects elegant, the whole style and arrangement of the work is pretty nearly on a par, in respect to scientific skill, with Queen Emma's designs upon the Bayeux tapestry. About half a century ago, copies of these works were printed, ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... my uncle, adjusting his spectacles and unfolding the paper, "illegible, or almost so. It has evidently been thoroughly soaked with salt water. Come here and see if your young eyes can help me to decipher it." ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... human reason, as the offspring of God, are "copies" of the ideas of the Infinite Reason—if the universe be "the autobiography of the Infinite Spirit which has also repeated itself in miniature within our finite spirit," then may we decipher its symbols, and read its lessons straight off. Then every approach towards a scientific comprehension and generalization of the facts of the universe must carry us upward towards the higher realities of reason. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... as if to read thereon a secret, to decipher a name—Menko's or his own. Her exquisite, delicate features had the rigidity of marble; her dark eyes were staring straight ahead, like two spots of light, where nothing, nothing was reflected. Zilah shuddered ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... steps, terraces half buried—all showed what the place had been: a water garden of ancient Egypt—probably royal—because, although I am not able to decipher hieroglyphics, I have heard somewhere that these picture inscriptions, when inclosed in a cartouch like this"—he ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... that caught my eye was Brenchfield's note on the table. I had the key to it in my mind, so it was easy enough to decipher. You have ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... more than a mere theory of morality, certainly do not constitute a complete theory of religion. Our valiant knight has examined but one side of the shield,—the bright side, turned toward us, whose marvellous inscriptions the human reason can by dint of unwearied effort decipher. But the dark side, looking out upon infinity, and covered with hieroglyphics the meaning of which we can never know, he has quite forgotten to consider. Yet it is this side which genuine religious feeling ever seeks to contemplate. ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... and it seems to me that words of law flowing from such lips might have been suggestive of the harmony of the universe. The chirography of Mr. Choate was equal to any Chinese puzzle; it was even more difficult to decipher than that of Horace Greeley. I once received a note from him and was obliged to call upon my family to aid me in reading it. He had a fund of humor which was universally applauded by an admiring public. Once, in replying to a toast on Yale College at the "Hasty-Pudding" dinner, ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... account, he had been but a very short time in her presence, she wheeled her chair round and reached her hand to one of her bookshelves and took down an Arabic Grammar, and put it into his hand, asking for explanation of some difficult point, which he tried to decipher; but meanwhile she talked to him continuously; when, said he, 'I could not study the Arabic Grammar and listen to her at the same time, so I threw down the book and ran out of the room.' He seems not to have stopped running ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... exchanged glances. There is an Arabian legend of an angel whose trade it is to decipher the language of faces. This angel must have perceived that Alma's eyes said, with the courage of a second in a duel, "Go on, now is the time!" and that Harry's answered, with masculine ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... have as yet had but little personal intercourse with the men. They concern me chiefly in bulk, as so many consumers of rations, wearers of uniforms, bearers of muskets. But as the machine comes into shape, I am beginning to decipher the individual parts. At first, of course, they all looked just alike; the variety comes afterwards, and they are just as distinguishable, the officers say, as so many whites. Most of them are wholly raw, but there are many ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... and there had been no money to spare for repairs of anything of that sort, so she had tied it securely with the strongest of twine, and written on the cover in big schoolgirl hand the words, "DON'T ANY ONE DARE TO TOUCH!" Although Viny was unable to decipher the writing in the least, it was fun enough to attack the string, which presently succumbed to the violent onslaught of tooth and nail, and the precious, precious bits of brightness were soon at the mercy of ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... would have made our parting none the lighter. By the time you decipher this hieroglyphic I shall be some miles on my way: Address Hotel de Russie, Berlin. Adieu, Damon; God bless ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... by allusions to facts and customs which are no longer known and cannot always be guessed at. Now, thanks to Rashi's commentary, a reader possessing a knowledge of the elements of the language and some slight knowledge of Jewish law, can decipher ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... same music, they would soon harmonise their fancies, and decipher the hieroglyphic; and this was a thing clearly demonstrated to the Queen Isabella, that Savoisy's horses were oftener stabled at the house of her cousin of Armagnac than in the Hotel St. Pol, where the chamberlain lived, since the destruction of his residence, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... not surmise, and in the hope of finding a clew to the mystery I groped about in the darkness for the card which the hurried individual had cast at me with his words of encouragement. Ultimately I found it, but was unable to decipher its inscription, if perchance it had one. Nevertheless, I managed to keep my spirits up. This, I think, was a Herculean task, considering the darkness and my extreme lonesomeness. I can be happy ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and the ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... field were compelled to communicate with each other either in plain language which the enemy could read if a despatch fell into his hands, or else in a cipher which neither of the commanders nor any of their staff officers could decipher. They were made absolutely dependent upon the cipher-operators of the telegraph corps. Of course all this cipher correspondence between commanding generals was promptly transmitted to the War Department, so that the Secretary could know what was going on as well ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... italics. But except one obvious misprint of a single letter, "even" for "ever," there is nothing which does "grave wrong" to the sense, or affects it in any way. "And these pages," as Mr. Norton says, with another meaning, "are not exceptional." The later reminiscences were not easy to decipher. Carlyle's handwriting was seriously affected by age, he wrote upon both sides of very thin paper, and I have seen several letters of his which bear out Froude's assertion that, after his hand began to shake, "it became harder to decipher ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... personae include a full cast from the Arcadia; and somewhat more stress appears to be laid on the pastoral elements than is the case in either of the printed plays. From what I have thought it necessary to decipher, however, I see no reason to differ from Mr. Bullen, who dismisses it as 'a dull play.'[299] The prologue may serve as a specimen of the style ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... permanently attached to us. Vitali feels himself in a false position as he thinks that,—had we known, we might not have let him come. Personally, I am quite glad to have him; but we did not have much talk as, immediately after dinner, Braithwaite brought me the decipher of Lord K.'s answer to my reminder to him. This has greatly saddened me and takes up the ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... massy: the capitals of some of them are curiously sculptured. On the lower member of the entablature of one capital there are still traces of an inscription; but it is so injured by neglect and violence, that we were unable to decipher a single word. The capital itself is fanciful and not ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... concise, square, not flowing,—very legible, however, exactly suited to its purpose. People who profess to read character in chirography would decipher but little from these cramped, quiet lines. Only this, probably: that the woman, whoever she was, had not the usual fancy of her sex for dramatizing her soul in her writing, her dress, her face,—kept it locked up instead, intact; that her words and looks, like her writing, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... gather that he wished me to examine the words in the corner of fly-leaf I had once noticed before and believed to be a monogram. I quieted him a little, then bringing the lamp-light to bear upon the faded ink, I was able to decipher the device, which comprised a crown, three fleurs-de-lis under, and a lamb bearing a banner, with the ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... office was told at the expense of a Bostonian, who presented, among other papers, a copy of a letter to Mr. Buchanan from Rufus Choate, with a note stating that he sent a copy because he knew that the President could never decipher the original, and he had left blanks for some words which he could not ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... full of symbols that have no intelligent meaning, symbols that can be interpreted by twenty different expositors in twenty different ways, is so full of monsters and nightmare doings that only an unbalanced mind could have written it and one equally unbalanced would alone attempt to decipher it. ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... mysteriously legal air. Trembling with excitement she unfolded it, and, without stopping to think that it might not be for her eyes, began to read the queer writing, which was somewhat difficult to decipher: ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... acquaintances and friends. When, some twenty years afterward, she first resolved to publish it, she brought me a clear, complete copy in ink. It had cost much trouble, she said; for much of the pencil writing had been made under such disadvantages and was so faint that at times she could decipher it only under direct sunlight. She had succeeded, however, in making a copy, verbatim except for occasional improvement in the grammatical form of a sentence, or now and then the omission, for brevity's sake, of something unessential. The narrative ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... said he, "may all that is evil befall me than that I should tempt fortune so rashly. The idle talk of the Spaniard, Alava, does not move me; how should such a person be able to read the mind of a sovereign so reserved as Philip, and to decipher his secrets? The intelligence which Montigny gives us goes to prove nothing more than that the king has a very doubtful opinion of our zeal for his service, and believes he has cause to distrust our loyalty; and for this I for my part must confess that we have given him only ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... sentence—"and whom I shall never forget"—had been carefully scribbled out, but Edgar had set himself to work, with the care and earnest application of an engineer and a lover, to decipher the words. ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... of the bark still clings to the under side. The dancing-hall is the great room of the building. All that the taste, art and wealth of that day could do, was done to make it a splendid apartment, and it would pass muster still as a comfortable and respectable salon. As we pass out, you may decipher the short prayer cut in the wasting stone over a side portal, "God Save the Vernons." I hope this prayer has been favorably answered; for history records much virtue in the family, mingled with some romantic escapades, which have contributed, I believe, to ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... hours passed; in that perpetual blackness there was no such thing as day. We saw no one save Desiree and the serving men. Once a messenger appeared carrying a bundle of quipos; I was able to decipher their meaning sufficiently to understand that we were invited to some religious ceremony in the great cavern. But I thought it injudicious to allow a meeting between Harry and the king, and returned a ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... premiss) contains not only a record of many particular facts which we have observed or inferred, but also instructions for making inferences in unforeseen cases. Thus the inference is completed in the major premiss; and the rest of the syllogism serves only to decipher, as ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... to find some friend who may have more skill in cryptography than I have, and may be able to decipher it." ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... of which he thirsted to know at least the elements. Between whiles he returned to his Latin, translating Horace and re-reading Virgil. One day his director put an "Imitation" into his hands, with double columns in Greek and Latin. The latter, which he knew fairly well, assisted him to decipher the Greek. He hastened to commit to memory the vocables, and idioms and phrases of all kinds (1/11.), and in this curious fashion he learned the language. This was his only method of learning languages. It is the process which he recommended to his brother, who was commencing ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... he could derive his love of knowledge or the means of acquiring it. The family were totally illiterate. The father was a Scotch peasant, whose ignorance was so great that he could not sign his name. His wife, I believe, could read, and might sometimes decipher the figures in an almanac; but that was all. I am apt to think that the son's ability was not much greater. You might as well look for silver platters or marble tables in his house, as for a book ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... his lawyer had given him the wrong address; not only the wrong number but the wrong street. He pulled out the slip of paper, and was crossing over to decipher it under the lamp, when an errand-boy appeared out of the obscurity, and approached the house. Nick drew back, and the boy, unlatching the gate, ran up the steps and gave ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton |
