"Decipher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Well, I can't decipher your signals," he muttered, "but I can give you some kind of a reply—which I don't suppose will be much ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake
... business brings him into contact with men of various dispositions; but he conquers all with the same weapons. What a contrast have we often thought he presents to some whose physiognomy looks like a piece of harsh handwriting, in which we can decipher nothing but self, self, self; who seem, both at home and abroad, to be always on the watch against any infringement of their dignity. Poor men! their dignity can be of little value if it requires so much ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... help, and save me from the gripes Of shame and infamy. Our love is knowne; Your Monsieur hath a paper where is writ Some secret tokens that decipher it. 30 ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... ancient characters I will refrain from giving any translation of them for fear of being inaccurate. The photographs given of them facing pages 218, 220, 222, are, however, quite clear enough for any one interested in the matter to decipher them for himself. ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... a mistress, and receive your 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
... Rhianus, Phemius, Homer, Bion Proconnesius, Onomacritus, and others. Many of the sacred terms could not be understood, nor interpreted; they were however [548]retained with great reverence: and many which they did attempt to decipher, were misconstrued and misapplied. Upon this basis was the theology of Greece founded: from hence were the names of Gods taken: and various departments attributed to the several Deities. Every poet had something different in his theogony: and every variety, however ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... devil has yet come for the Sahib's message. Her soul is torn by curiosity and fear. She longs to know, and if the strange letter still lies in the crevice untouched, herself to break the seal and try to decipher the words. ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... She tried to decipher the mask he wore: it was proof against her imploring eyes. 'If you can ask me—if you can positively wish it—yes,' she said. 'But think of what you are doing. Oh! Alvan, not back ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a Captain Shrimpton, who thus became possessed of a large collection of manuscripts. These were sold to a bookseller. They were so full of erasures and interlineations that no printer could decipher them. It was necessary to call in the aid of a professed critic; and Theobald, the editor of Shakspeare, and the hero of the first Dunciad, was employed to ascertain the true reading. In this way a volume of miscellanies in verse and prose was got up for the market. The collection derives all ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... devised by the historian to glorify the sage, but we may not, on account of it, discredit the finding of the ancient copies of the Books. We have K'ung An-kwo's own account of their being committed to him, and of the ways which he took to decipher them. The work upon the Analects, mentioned above, has not indeed come down to us, but his labors on the Shu-ching still remain. 5. It has been already stated, that the Lun Yu of Ch'i contained two Books more than that ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... knew not of, sentences that, uncomprehended, yet did not puzzle them or give them pause, on topics which they knew only as occasioning cascades of words. To them one word was the same, very nearly the same, as another of similar length; words had features, but no souls; did they fail to decipher the features of one of them, another of the same dimensions would do. And what commas they wielded, what colons, what semis, what stops! But efficient they were, all the same, for they were usually approximately right, and always incredibly quick. Henry knew that those stenographers who ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... to decipher these somewhat mystic lines, her uncle was carrying on a colloquy in Gaelic with their hostess. The consequendes of the consultation were not of the choicest description, consisting of braxy [1] mutton, ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... of Roman art, lies buried the monumental boldness of the Phoenicians, or of a race of giants whose extinction even Homer deplores, and whose name even the Phoenicians could not decipher. For might they not, too, have stood here wondering, guessing, even as we moderns guess and wonder? Might not the Phoenicians have asked the same questions that we ask to-day: Who were the builders? and with what ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... will you tell me what I do know, if I do not read every turn and trick of their tortuous nature? They are occasionally hard to decipher when they're displeased. It's very big print indeed ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... songs dyed with the autumn's heart's-blood of regret that he must yield the sweet, warm earth to his gray rival, winter. She had pretended that the small, crossed veinlets of the leaves were Chinese ideographs which it was given her to decipher. Holding him off with one outstretched arm she would have read to him,—fantastic, exquisite interpreter of love,—but he, mad brute, had caught the little hands, the autumn leaves, and crushed them to one hot glow, crying ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... are members; as well as by the feelings, habits, and modes of thought which characterize the particular class in that community to which they themselves belong. And no one will understand or be able to decipher their system of conduct, who does not take all these things into account. They are also much influenced by the maxims and traditions which have descended to them from other rulers, their predecessors; ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... 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 most of ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... 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 ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the date being recorded by my father, "Received July 24, 1851," one of the frolicsome letters which it requires second-sight to decipher, the handwriting being, apparently, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... try to decipher Dave's deliveries; I'll judge them by what they look like after the ball has ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... however, 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
... sentences of the "Epoques de la Nature" show us how fully Buffon recognised the analogy of geological with archaeological inquiries. "As in civil history we consult deeds, seek for coins, or decipher antique inscriptions in order to determine the epochs of human revolutions and fix the date of moral events; so, in natural history, we must search the archives of the world, recover old monuments from the bowels of the earth, collect their fragmentary remains, and gather into one body of evidence ...
— The Rise and Progress of Palaeontology - Essay #2 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... goody Liu inquired. "I can decipher the characters on this honorary gateway. Over at our place temples of this kind are exceedingly plentiful; and they've all got archways like this! These characters give the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... crumpled card on which are the notes I made of a former discussion of this very issue, a discussion between a number of prominent politicians in the days before Mr. Chamberlain's return from South Africa and the adoption of Tariff Reform by the Unionist Party; and I decipher again the same considerations, unanswered and unanswerable, that leave ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... would be a great deal too much for the University of Oxford, as far as Oriental learning goes," he said. "She can read the Egyptian papyri, she tells me, and she can decipher anything on any of the monuments. I only wish I could persuade her to accompany me ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... and on two of them a closely written letter had been blotted several times, showing that there had been several sheets of the letter. Muller held it up to the looking-glass, but the repeated blotting had blurred the writing to such an extent that it was impossible to decipher any but a few disconnected words, which gave no clue. On a page further along on the blotter, however, he saw what appeared to be the impression of an address. He held it up to the glass and gave a whistle of delight. The words ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... cannot do justice to what I feel for Louisa. Let me read you some lines that I have written about her myself. However slight their literary merit may be, they express what I feel better than any casual words can. [He produces a packet of hotel bills scrawled with manuscript, and kneels at the fire to decipher them, poking it with a stick ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... christening to Tristram ("the most unlucky"). If much learning can make man mad, Walter Shandy was certainly mad in all the affairs of ordinary life. His wife was a blank sheet, and he himself a sheet so written on and crossed and rewritten that no one could decipher the manuscript.—L. Sterne, The Life and Opinions ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... of my fathers,' said Bertram, 'that I landed some days since, in circumstances much resembling those of a vagabond! Its mouldering turrets and darksome arches even then awakened thoughts of the deepest interest, and recollections which I was unable to decipher. I will now visit them again with other feelings, and, I trust, other and ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... property of the atoms of which it is composed. To them some fraction of will, of power, of knowledge, and of feeling may perhaps be attributed, and from their aggregation something of the same kind may perhaps be deduced. If the traveller can decipher that, he may utilise the material object to his advantage; but if he conceives the path to have been made with any teleological object or intelligent purpose, he is abandoning himself to superstition, and is as likely to be led by it to the edge of a precipice ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... all couched in the choicest vocabulary of the ringside, and more than once Young Denny, whose literature had been confined chiefly to harvesters and sulky plows, had to stop and decipher phrases which he only half understood at first reading. But that last paragraph he did not ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... and on the floor a roll of crumpled paper. This he picked up. The light 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 ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... out of my pocket to try and decipher it, held it close up to my eyes, and ran through it, one line after the other. At last I got tired, and put the papers back in my pocket. Everything was still. The sea stretched away in pearly blueness, and little birds flitted noiselessly ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... of scrutinising every point, of weighing evidence in the finest scales, of assaying its precise value. The contemporary writer has to deal with the huge accumulation of material to which I have already referred; he must ransack archives, hunt through records piled up, public and private, must decipher ancient manuscript, must follow the labours of the wandering collector of inscriptions and the excavator of old tombs. He has to make extracts from correspondence, diaries, and notes of travel which are ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... set to school so much," he wrote to Walsingham (27th July, 1584), "as I have been to decipher the cause of the deputies of the Low Countries coming hither, the offers that they made the King here, and the King's manner of dealing ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... his fear that he had not sufficiently concealed his tracks in the latest numbers. Yet, when he died in June, 1870, leaving three completed numbers still unpublished, he left his secret as a puzzle to the curious. Many efforts have been made to decipher his purpose, especially his intentions as to the hero. Was Edwin Drood killed, or did ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... sure I could make nothing of it. — But," she added, as if struck by a sudden thought, "as Lady Emily seems interested in it — suppose we send for Mr. Sutherland. I have no doubt he will be able to decipher it." ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... figure from the depths of the chair, and going over to Landless, dropped upon the table before him a page of hieroglyphics for him to decipher at his leisure. Then with another word of commendation for the beauty of the copy, he walked heavily from the room. A moment later Landless heard him whistle to his dogs, and then break into a stave of a cavalier drinking song, sung at the top of a full manly voice, and dying ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... indeed—crimpled, pierced with pinholes, corner creases torn, soft, tarnished, decrepit while yet young. Some have been half-burned; one has been found half-digested in the stomach of a goat, and one boiled in a waistcoat-pocket by a laundress. No matter; the cashier at the bank will do his best to decipher it; he will indeed take an infinity of trouble to put together the ashes of a burned note, and will give the owner a new note or the value in coin, if satisfied of the integrity of the old one. The bank authorities preserve specimens of this kind as curiosities, ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... town where he first saw the light had a public school for the poorer people, in which he was taught to read and write. By the former of these elementary branches—supplemented by a smattering of Spanish, picked up in South American ports—he is enabled to decipher the writing upon the card—for it is in writing—and so gets the correct address, ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... a 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
... fully five minutes to decipher, and while they were at work upon it the maid came up behind the Marchioness and, without so much as saying "By your leave", took her down struggling from the window seat and drew the shades. Whereupon Flibbertigibbet rose ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... back, after what I suppose was the longest speech I ever made in my life, and studied my lord and master's face. It was not an easy map to decipher, for man, after all, is a pretty complex animal and even in his more elemental moments is played upon by pretty complex forces. And if there was humility on that lean and rock-ribbed countenance of my soul-mate there was also antagonism, ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... glued to the wood, but the greater part of which was torn or worn away. It was evident that the writing was too much defaced to allow of more than a mere guess at its purport, but by the not very good light I copied what I could decipher of the inscription. This ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... Much of this letter is in cipher: but the notes annexed to it, have enabled the Editor to decipher and publish it.] ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... 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 ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... all eagerness to begin, caught at the book, and tried to decipher the roughly-written words, but got on no better than ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... the 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 in the ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... unable to decipher the Duke's purpose in the question he had asked. About an hour afterwards they walked down to the Houses together, Mr. Monk having been kept at his office. "I hope I was not a little short with you just now," said ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... ultimate odium in which the Jesuits were held as well as of their temporary successes, was their desire for speedy results. [Sidenote: Efficiency] Every one has noticed the immense versatility of the Jesuits and their superficiality. They produced excellent scholars of a certain rank, men who could decipher Latin inscriptions, observe the planets, publish libraries of historical sources, of casuistry and apologetic, or write catechisms or epigrams. They turned with equal facility to preaching to naked savages and to the production of art ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... of our history is the development, not of a single human race nor of the movements of a century, but the development of animal life through ages. And even if our attempts to decipher a few pages here and there in the volumes of this vast biological history are not as successful as we could hope, we must not allow ourselves to be discouraged from future efforts. Even if our translation is here and there at fault, we ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... 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 under adverse circumstances, if only I have congenial company. But to lie alone, in a black ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... beheld him, that my parents were under continual apprehension of losing him; his beauty, however, was perhaps surpassed by the quickness of his parts. He mastered his letters in a few hours, and in a day or two could decipher the names of people on the doors of houses and ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... be called away two or three times a day, for half an hour, to study Chinese, with a very exacting teacher, always more or less impatient and dissatisfied with her progress; and yet the irksomeness and difficulty for the mother, in learning to decipher Chinese, would be as nothing compared with that of the child in learning to read. The only thing that could make the work even tolerable to the mother would be a pretty near, distinct, and certain prospect of going to China under circumstances that would make the knowledge of ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... must have signed the death-wrarrants during his dictatorship!" exclaimed Capitan Basilio, pale with emotion. He examined it and tried to decipher the seal, but though he turned it over and over he did not understand paleography, so ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... the characters, of those whom he had satirized, was made intelligible and diverting. The criticks had now declared their approbation of the plan, and the common reader began to like it without fear; those who were strangers to petty literature, and, therefore, unable to decipher initials and blanks, had now names and persons brought within their view; and delighted in the visible effect of those shafts of malice, which they had hitherto contemplated, as shot ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... pupils, but Lydia did not know this. She only knew that by some miracle of kindness she came to understand the classroom system of recitations, that she was introduced to different teachers, that she learned how to decipher the hours of her recitations from the complicated chart on the Assembly room blackboard, and that at noon she started for home with a list of textbooks to be purchased, and a perfectly clear idea of what to do when she ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... said to myself, "thou knowest how to decipher old texts; but thou dost not know how to read in the Book of Life. That giddy little Madame Trepof, whom thou once believed to possess no more soul than a bird, has expended, in pure gratitude, more zeal and finer tact than ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... 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 ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... make out the cipher of my letter of September the 25th, because it contained things which I wished you to know at that time. They have lost now a part of their merit; * but still I wish you could decipher them, as there remains a part, which it might yet be agreeable to you to understand. I have examined the cipher, from which it was written. It as precisely a copy of those given to Messrs. Barclay and Lambe. In order that you may examine whether yours corresponds, I will now translate ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... 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
... wrote. Nor did I need sit on my hands, in alternation, to keep one warm while I rhymed with the other, during those curious spells of inspiration, those times of ecstasy—occurring mostly in the night—when I would write and write so rapidly that morning would find me often not able to decipher the greater part of what I had written ... five or ten poems in a night ... scrawled madly almost like ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... 2 A.M. 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 28, 1917 • Various
... a 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 observed were getting weak, his own ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... 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 ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... some twenty years ago, in Madrid. The Bishop gave what he called "an A, B, C," of the language, but which, when applied to the extant manuscripts and the mural inscriptions, proved entirely insufficient to decipher them. ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... behind the door. It was of a lady leaning against an urn, a weeping-willow tree near by. The lady held a handkerchief in her hand and looked very sorrowful. Edna wondered why she seemed so sad. There were some words written below but they were too faint for her to decipher, and she determined to ask her grandmother about this picture which she had never noticed before. While she was still looking at it, Reliance came to the door to say, "I can go now; I've finished what I had to do." Edna turned with alacrity ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... are just beginning to wear in consequence of the action of the water. Thus, though we cannot trace the formation of such a cylindrical shaft in the glacier from the beginning to the end, we may by combining the separate facts observed in a number decipher their whole history. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... his eyes atoned for the "only," and she bore no resentment, for she had met his look and read there the thought he could not decipher, and it sunk deep into ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... on the piano. It was a romance, which he had composed on the preceding day to old-fashioned German words, in which the stars were alluded to. Liza immediately seated herself at the piano and began to decipher the romance.... Alas, the music turned out to be complicated, and disagreeably strained; it was obvious that the composer had attempted to express some passionate, profound sentiment, but nothing had come of it: so the attempt remained merely an attempt. Lavretzky and Liza both felt this,—and ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... utterly impossible to decipher a certain word of the manuscript. She scrutinized it earnestly, and then, her mind entirely occupied by her desire properly to read the matter, she rose, and came close to the grating, holding the page so that I could ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... 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 her grief, ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... but in their outlook direct and simple as a child's. Remembering as I met them what Mrs. Molyneux had said, I saw and comprehended as well what she meant. Benevolence is but faintly inscribed, on the faces of most men, even of the better sort. "I will love you, my neighbour," we thereon decipher, "when I have attended to my own business, in the first place; if you are lovable, or at least likeable, in the second." But in the transparent gaze that Cecilia de Noel turned upon her fellows beamed love poured forth without stint and without condition. It was as if every man, woman, ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... 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 ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... 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 Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... Strangers are to be seen. The bright verdure and the bright marbles, the classical purity of the monuments, the desert air, the austere solemnity of every thing about me, came with new force upon my imagination. I walked slowly amongst the tombs, and tried to decipher the inscriptions. The dead are of various nations,—English, American, but principally German. Sometimes a cluster of cypresses shadowed the tomb—sometimes a fair flowering shrub had twined around it. The epitaphs were written with elegance always; at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... she was in another world at once, and the very novelty and strangeness of her surroundings had a great charm for her. Slowly she made her way round the church, looking at every tablet and monument, and trying in vain to decipher the writing upon them. But one amongst them brought her to a standstill: it was the figure of a little girl sculptured in white marble, lying in a recumbent position; her hands were crossed on her breast, with a lily placed between them, her eyes were closed, and ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... that, with my way of viewing things, it would be to me an inexhaustible studio, and that, if life were only long enough, I would live there for years obscure in some corner, from which I could issue forth day by day to watch unobserved the vast stream of life, or to decipher the hieroglyphics which ages have been inscribing on the walls of this vast palace (I may not call it a temple), which human effort has reared for means, not yet used efficaciously, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... down, and gave no sob. Fred and Sophy, though they were only two and three years younger, and though they had seen mamma in her coffin, seemed to themselves to be looking at some strange show. They had not learned to decipher that terrible handwriting of human destiny, illness and death. Dickey had rebelled against his black clothes, until he was told that it would be naughty to mamma not to put them on, when he at once submitted; and now, though ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... turned over for you a few grand and strange pages in the book of nature, and taught you, I hope, a key by which to decipher their hieroglyphics. At least, I have, I trust, taught you to look, as I do, with something of interest, even of awe, upon ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... Mr. Brunner can, from his intimate knowledge, speak with authority on this subject. "Tracks and Tracking" shows how to follow intelligently even the most intricate animal or bird tracks. It teaches how to interpret tracks of wild game and decipher the many tell-tale signs of the chase that would otherwise pass unnoticed. It proves how it is possible to tell from the footprints the name, sex, speed, direction, whether and how wounded, and many other things about wild animals and birds. All material ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... the surface again for other letters. A young girl, in a charming Pompeian wall-painting, has in her hand a double tablet, while with her other hand she holds a pencil to her chin, as if pondering over a letter. Her nurse looking over her shoulder tries to decipher the contents of the love-letter. Besides these tablets, Herodotus mentions the use of paper made of the bark of the Egyptian papyrus-plant. The stalk (three or four feet in length) was cut longitudinally, after which the outer bark was ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... 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 coherence and ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... this must be the very city mentioned by Theodolite. As the seeress had declared, a deep and noisome night always prevailed, only broken here and there as a wanderer scratched one of Bryant & May's matches and painfully endeavoured to decipher the number on the door of his house. The streets, moreover, were strewn and interwoven with long strings of ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... conducting than of that of singing, who is generally a 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 ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... I proceeded, however, to decipher the substance of the manuscript as well as I could, and move it into the following Tale, in which, following in part, though not entirely, my friend Tinto's advice, I endeavoured to render my narrative rather descriptive ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... whistles blew for dinner, he again went back to Dick and stood looking over his shoulder at a bad bit of copy the latter was trying to decipher. "Well, what do you think ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... shared her fate; when civilization and knowledge shall have fixed their abode in distant continents; when the scepter shall have passed away from England; when, perhaps, travelers from distant regions shall in vain labor to decipher on some moldering pedestal the name of our proudest chief, shall hear savage hymns chanted to some misshapen idol over the ruined dome of our proudest temple, and shall see a single naked fisherman wash his nets in the river ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... had found a little thing like a bullet wrapped up in paper; but it was no bullet; it was a bead, a large gold bead, and on the paper which surrounded it were written words so fine I could not at first decipher them, but as soon as I had stepped away far enough to be out of the reach of the eyes I both loved and feared more than any in the world, I managed, by dint of great patience, and by placing the almost transparent paper on which they were written over ...
— The Hermit Of ——— Street - 1898 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... mere "Rousseau's Dream," or rather, a "Wilson's Dream of Rousseau." But we disdain to have recourse to such evasions. We admit that there is in the University of Paris a professor "agrege a la faculte des lettres," who bears the name of Rosseeuw St. Hilaire; we admit Mr. Wilson's incapacity to decipher foreign names or words, even when they stand before him in the clearest print,—an incapacity of which his book affords numerous examples,—and that this incapacity, and not any mental hallucination, has been the cause of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... companion was reading with frowning brows. But Fandor might squint in the glass for the reflection of the message, pass behind the abbe to peep over his shoulder while pretending to examine the posters decorating the garage walls: he had his pains for his reward: it was impossible to decipher the text.... He must ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... 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, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... extremely mysterious. Upon the marble top of the washhand-stand in the bedroom the police found some scrawled words in a character they could not decipher. Experts were brought in, when it was found that the writing was in Russian character, and the words were: "The ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... ambition. He made of his son—a sensible and intelligent boy—a machine to copy documents, and spend his days guessing the conundrums in the illustrated newspapers, which he read as easily as M. Ledrain would decipher the cuneiform inscriptions on an Assyrian brick. Also—an admirable result, which should rejoice the old watch-maker's shade—his son had become a gentleman, a functionary, so splendidly remunerated by the State that he was obliged to wear patches of ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... are they for ever deposited in heaven where reigns immortality? Some burnt leaves of manuscripts, which have been found at Herculaneum, and Pompei, and which scholars at Portici are employed to decipher, are all that remain to give us information of those unhappy victims, whom the Volcano, that thunder-bolt of earth, has destroyed. But in passing near those ashes, which art has succeeded in reanimating, we are afraid to breathe lest a breath should carry away ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... I hardly looked at the stage. My eyes and attention were magnetized by the green object on my knee. I occasionally peeped at its pages; but the light, while the play was in progress, was too dim to render the print legible. Between the acts, however, I began to decipher stanzas such as the following, and notes new to the world ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... piece of old cloth tied about him from the middle to the knees, leaving a pair of legs visible, that were mottled over with characters which would, if found on an Egyptian pillar, put an antiquary to the necessity of constructing a new alphabet to decipher them. This, or the inverted breeches, with his father's flannel waistcoat, or an old coat that swept the ground at least two feet behind him, constituted his state dress. On week days he threw off this finery, and contented himself, if the season ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... others bearing similar inscriptions and evidently from the same source, but which were found in 1847 in the Parvis-Notre-Dame, having been taken in later days to construct the wall of fortification of the city. By placing three of these fragments in order, M. de Longperier was enabled to decipher the names of two of the Gaulish emperors who lived in the second half of the third century of our era, from which he concluded that it was a portion of the imperial inscription, and that the construction of the amphitheatre accordingly dated ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... much labor we have been able to decipher a morsel which we give to the public: and of the authenticity of which there can be no doubt. We render homage to the brave French army to which we ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... my sleeve. Sit down and we'll decipher it." They dropped to the nearest bench and smoothed ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... even that decipher, Let us be still, nay, thank him for his care, Contented that we soon shall know—hereafter— When we the fullness of ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... authenticity. The desire of Torinus to interpret to his medieval readers the ancient text is pardonable. How much or how little he succeeded is attested to by some of his contemporary readers, former owners of our copies. Scholars plainly confess inability to decipher Apicius by groans inscribed on the fly leaves and title pages in Latin, French and other languages. One French scholar of the 16th century, apparently "kidded" for studying an undecipherable cook book, stoically inscribes ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... me as to my correspondent. It was from Father Rush, my old tutor. I hurried eagerly from the spot, and regaining my quarters, locked the door, and with a beating heart broke the seal and began, as well as I was able, to decipher his letter. The hand was cramped and stiffened with age, and the bold, upright letters were gnarled and twisted like a rustic fence, and demanded great patience and much time in unravelling. It ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the sheet was put aside, and when used again was turned over, so that what ordinarily would have been page 4 became page 1 for the second object. No "Daniel" in Strood or Rochester had ever been able to decipher the mysterious hieroglyphics, or make known the interpretation thereof, during twenty years, or give any explanation of the sketches. But everybody thought that in some way or other they related to The Mystery of Edwin Drood—and possibly contained a clue to the solution of that ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes |
