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Cipher   /sˈaɪfər/   Listen
Cipher

noun
1.
A message written in a secret code.  Synonym: cypher.
2.
A mathematical element that when added to another number yields the same number.  Synonyms: 0, cypher, nought, zero.
3.
A quantity of no importance.  Synonyms: aught, cypher, goose egg, nada, naught, nil, nix, nothing, null, zero, zilch, zip, zippo.  "Reduced to nil all the work we had done" , "We racked up a pathetic goose egg" , "It was all for naught" , "I didn't hear zilch about it"
4.
A person of no influence.  Synonyms: cypher, nobody, nonentity.
5.
A secret method of writing.  Synonyms: cryptograph, cypher, secret code.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Cipher" Quotes from Famous Books



... Scipio and again to Cai Tamblyn in the course of the morning; yet, knowing Troy, I hesitate to blame her that before noon the whole town was discussing the Millennium, notice of which (it appeared) had come down to the Mayor by a private advice and in Government cipher. ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... deeply interested in solving this riddle, the more as I belonged to an association which owes its being and position to its skill in penetrating the secrets of others. I shut myself up in my room, and vowed that I would not leave it until I had worked out the cipher." ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau

... that he was about to go to the White House and hold a consultation in which Mr. Arthur and Mr. Platt were to participate, when he received a telegram in cipher from Governor Cornell which, when translated, turned out to be an urgent request that the Senator should vote to confirm Robertson; and that this was regarded as insulting, and Mr. Conkling refused to go to the White House, with a burst of scorn about the dispensation of offices! ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various

... cipher which I now send to you, on the slip of paper enclosed, is an antidote to that one of the two poisons known to you and to me by the fanciful name which you ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins

... to him almost before the ink was dry. The reply came by return of post: "It is almost, or quite, as good as can be. Send me another." So forthwith I sent him 'God's Garrison', and it was quickly followed by 'The Three Outlaws', 'The Tall Master', 'The Flood', 'The Cipher', 'A Prairie Vagabond', and several others. At length came 'The Stone', which brought a telegram of congratulation, and finally 'The Crimson Flag'. The acknowledgment of that was a postcard containing these all too-flattering ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... operating below Petersburg, who caught the telegraphic cipher of the rebels and by tapping their wires caught many messages which were of material assistance to General Grant in the closing movements of the war. It was he also who in like manner caught the movements of Jeff Davis and ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock

... his working-den state-room, having tri-daily weather reports wired to him by way of Carbonate and Argentine station, and busying himself in the intervals with sending and receiving sundry mysterious telegrams in cipher. ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde

... awkward," I said, despondently. "I know no more of shorthand than of Sanskrit, and though I once tried to make out a cipher, the only tangible result was a ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall

... been severer for the last eight days than has ever been recollected by the oldest inhabitant; the thermometer falling as low as 33 degrees under cipher, accompanied with high wind, and never rising during all that time above 15 degrees below—it is at this moment 20 degrees under cipher: fortunate you, that are in a milder climate, for we are suffering dreadfully from excessive cold. By your description ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... seven gentlemen who signed in cipher the secret letter to William, Prince of Orange, were Henry Sidney, brother of Algernon Sidney (S480); Edward Russell, a kinsman of Lord Russell, beheaded by Charles II (S480); the Earl of Devonshire, chief of the Whig party; Lord Shrewsbury; Danby, the old Tory minister of Charles II; Compton, ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... importance to Mrs. Gallup and the believers in the cipher wherein Bacon maintains that he is the legal son of a wedding between Dudley and the Queen. Was there such a marriage or even betrothal? Froude cautiously says that this was averted 'SEEMINGLY on Lord Robert's authority;' the Baron says that Lord Robert ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang

... thing to say of the missionaries of the American Board, that in less than forty years they have taught this whole people to read and to write, to cipher and to sew. They have given them an alphabet, grammar, and dictionary; preserved their language from extinction; given it a literature, and translated into it the Bible, and works of devotion, science, and entertainment, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... richly enamelled. The Waterton collection gives us Fig. 173, a gold enamelled ring, set with a large turquoise in the centre, and surrounded by six raised garnets. This ring is stated to have subsequently belonged to Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, whose cipher is upon it. ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt

... a Cuban cigar-maker to fix up a little cipher code with English and Spanish words, and gave the General a copy, so we could cable him bulletins about the election, or for more money, and then we were ready to start. General Rompiro escorted us to the steamer. On the pier he hugged Denver around the ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... to me and took the lantern and the letter from my hands, Jud holding the light and Ump turning the envelope around in his fingers, peering curiously. They might have been some guardians of a twilight country examining a mysterious passport signed right but writ in cipher, and one that from some hidden angle ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... He relocked the cipher book and replaced it in the desk. Then he strolled over to his easy-chair and helped himself to a whisky and soda from the tray which Mills had just arranged upon ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... go? Just where all public money always goes when parasites govern a country. The inspector found out that many items of cost for supplies to the different posts had a cipher added to them. The officials told him why: 'We have to do it because the price of living has gone up ten times over.' But how did such an increase come about? The goods were sold from favourite to favourite, each man getting his wholly illegal profit, ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood

... which she had entered. At home the latter was more petted and caressed, the object of deeper tenderness, but there she reigned supreme, and the pet of the household would find herself nothing more than a cipher. She was mistaken. It was impossible to look upon Helen without interest, and Master Hightower seemed especially drawn towards her. He bent down till he overshadowed her with his loftiness, then smiling at the quick withdrawal of her soft, ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... as he read his despatch; and Molly Hesketh, shamelessly peeping over his shoulder, exclaimed, "It's cipher! How stupid! Can you ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers

... administration of justice was committed: and, if we may credit the historian,[*] they had formed the plan of other limitations, as well as of associations to maintain them, which would have reduced the king to be an absolute cipher, and have held the crown in perpetual pupillage and dependence. The king, to satisfy them, would agree to nothing but a renewal of the charter, and a general permission to excommunicate all the violators of it; and he received no supply, except ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... his childhood. He learned to read, write, and cipher at a small school kept by Hobby, the sexton of the parish church. Among his playmates was Richard Henry Lee, who was afterward a famous Virginian. When the boys grew up, they wrote to each other of grave matters of war and state, but here is the beginning of their correspondence, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... which she was sent off to Siberia, and died on the road. No amount of torture could make her betray her friends. They spoke of Antonoff, who was subjected to the thumbscrew, had red-hot wires thrust under his nails, and when his torturers gave him a little respite he would scratch on his plate cipher signals ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman

... were deciphered by the art of Philips, his clerk; and copies taken of them. Walsingham employed another artifice, in order to obtain full insight into the plot: he subjoined to a letter of Mary's a postscript in the same cipher; in which he made her desire Babington to inform her of the names of the conspirators. The indiscretion of Babington furnished Walsingham with still another means of detection, as well as of defence. That gentlemen had caused a picture to be drawn, where he himself was represented standing ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... is called a cryptogram, or cipher," he said, "in which letters are purposely thrown in confusion, which if properly arranged would reveal their sense. Only think that under this jargon there may lie concealed the clue to some ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... that had they been in search for the cipher-books they would only have looked for them alone," I remarked decisively. "What on earth could interest them in all these dry, unimportant shipping reports ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux

... (No. 14. p. 215.).—Zero Ital.; Fr. un chiffre, un rien, a cipher in arithmetic, a nought; whence the proverb avere nel zero, mepriser souverainement, to value at nothing, to have a sovereign contempt for. I do not know what the etymology of the word may be; but the application is obvious to that point in the scale of the thermometer ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various

... At length she answered, "I will give you a claim upon Lord Sunbury;" and she took from her finger a large ring, such as were commonly worn in those days, presenting on one side a shield of black enamel surrounded with brilliants, and in the centre a cipher, formed also of small diamonds. "Keep this," said the lady, "till all is explained to you, Wilton, and then return it to me. Should the Earl's assistance be required in anything of vital importance, show him that ring, if he be in England, or if he be abroad, tell him ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... fact, as I ascertained by the following cablegram which came into my hands, Napoleon's instructions for the French evacuation were in Mexico at the very time of this pathetic scene between him and Carlotta. The despatch was in cipher when I received it, but was translated by the telegraph operator at my headquarters, who long before had mastered the key of ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan

... of the earth, is entirely wasted. We live—that is, we snatch an existence—and ourworks become nothing. The piling up of fortunes, the building of cities, the establishment of immense commerce, ends in a cipher. These objects are so outside my idea that I cannot understand them, and look upon the struggle in amazement. Not even the pressure of poverty can force upon me an understanding of, and sympathy with, these things. It is the human being as the human being of whom I think. That the human being as ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies

... important letter in which we discover a clear meaning, and in which it is nevertheless said that the meaning is veiled and obscure, that it is hidden, so that we might read the letter without seeing it, and interpret it without understanding it, what must we think but that here is a cipher with a double meaning, and the more so if we find obvious contradictions in the literal meaning? The prophets have clearly said that Israel would be always loved by God, and that the law would be eternal; and they have said that their ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... the commission of crimes under the direction of officers attached to the Embassy of which I was in charge, or of other German Secret Service agents. The evidence for this consists of certain cipher telegrams from the military authorities in Germany, addressed to the Embassy in Washington; these were decoded in England and said to contain instructions for outrages to be committed in Canadian territory. I cannot say if these messages were ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... lordship knew the gentleman," enthusiastically writes Walsingham (August 12th, 1571) to the Earl of Leicester. "For courage abroad and counsell at home they give him here the reputation to be another [name in cipher]. He is in speech eloquent and pithy; but which is chiefest, he is in religion, as religious in life as he is sincere in profession. I hope God hath raised him up in these days, to serve for an instrument for the advancement of His glory." Digges, 128. In another letter, without date, the ambassador ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... 390. Almost the only notices of Dryden that make him alive to me I have found in the delicious book of this Polonius-Montaigne, the only man who ever had the courage to keep a sincere journal, even under the shelter of cipher. ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... one else off-hand who has so good an education," said Roger. "He can write a fair-copy, cipher, and keep books. I'll warrant, Mr. Johnston, that not even you can catch him napping with a problem in tare and tret. Above all, the Websters know him well and will be glad to ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... have no ambition but to strum that banjo, roar ridiculous songs, fuss up like a tailor's dummy, and pester your comrades, or drag them down to Jerry's for the eats! You won't be earnest, you Human Cipher, Before you entered Bannister, you formed your ideas and ideals of campus life from colored posters, moving-pictures, magazine stories, and stage dramas like 'Brown of Harvard"; you have surely lived up, or down, to ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... of a being; as a perfect member of a family—occupying a full and complete, only a more limited sphere than older members: and all the rules and regulations and arrangements of the family should have a reference to this point. So long as a child is reckoned to be a mere cipher in creation, or at most, as of no more practical importance, till the arrival of his twenty-first birth day, or some other equally arbitrary period, than our domestic animals—that is, of just sufficient consequence to be fed, and caressed, and fondled, and made a pet of—so long will ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott

... attaches, for this purpose. About midnight between the 20th and 21st there came a loud and persistent knocking at my door in the hotel, and there soon entered a telegraph messenger with an enormously long despatch in cipher. Hardly had I set the secretaries at work upon it than other telegrams began to come, and a large part of the night was given to deciphering them. They announced the declaration of war and instructed me to convey to the various parties interested the usual notices regarding ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... the terms were honorable, I could and would not be allowed to enter into this alliance. By virtue of it I should be obliged to espouse the cause of France against her enemies, and to wage war against Russia, my ally. I am to violate the only sure compact remaining to me in order to become a mere cipher in the hands of Napoleon! I am to betray him who has been faithful to me! The Emperor of Russia is my personal friend. At the grave of Frederick the Great I swore with him to maintain the alliance of both our hearts and our ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... man of recognized ability, it is also proper to give the general the choice of the men who are to be his advisers. To impose a chief of staff upon a general would be to create anarchy and want of harmony; while to permit him to select a cipher for that position would be still more dangerous; for if he be himself a man of little ability, indebted to favor or fortune for his station, the selection will be of vital importance. The best means to avoid these dangers is to give the general the option of several ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... know how much sleep he had, but I managed to snatch a few hours' rest, and early in the morning I found him at work again, examining the cipher ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve

... a cipher letter from Rotterdam — probably from Quintana. Cipher was rather in Darragh's line. All ciphers are solved by similar methods, unless the key is contained in a code book known ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers

... for at least under Frederick II.—the Prussian agents had shown a remarkable skill in obtaining secret intelligence, either by purchase or by theft. In one case, in 1755, ten important papers and the key of the cipher were stolen from the Count de Broglie, the French ambassador, by his colleague and intimate friend, Count Maltzahn, the Prussian ambassador, who obtained access to his rooms in his absence. 'There is no doubt,' wrote De Broglie, 'that we are indebted for this to the King of Prussia. I am quite ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... children should be allowed to visit them; nor did they conceal their disapproval of this rough treatment.[5] It is claimed that the new Governor has sent to the sovereigns some letters in the handwriting of the Admiral, but in cipher, in which the latter summoned his brother the Adelantado, who was at that time absent with his soldiers, to hasten back and repel force with force, in case the Governor sought to use violence. The Adelantado preceded his soldiers, and the Governor ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... Minister of the Interior, and the third to the Minister of Finance, giving detailed statistics concerning the age, occupation, and progress of her proteges. "How many know how to read? How many to read and write? How many to read, write, and cipher? What progress has been made since the last report?" These are some of the questions she has to answer; and, meanwhile, if a crowd of little children come in, she turns from her writing and calculations and plays with them as if she ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft

... hospitality as our poverty permits. A cipher telegram forwarded from the nearest station, sixty miles hence, prepared us to expect a newly-married woman searching for a man, known to the secular world as Robert Luke Brentano. You claim to be his nearest ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... so considerable a cipher suddenly spunged out of his visionary ledger—rather than so much money should vanish clean out of the family, Captain Higginbotham had taken what he conceived, if a desperate, at least a certain, step for the preservation of his property. If the golden horn could not be ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... did the sign portend? Linforth puzzled his brains vainly over that problem. He had not the knowledge by which a man might cipher out the intrigues of the hill-folk beyond the Frontier. Did the breaking of the pitcher mean that some definite thing had been done in Chiltistan, some breaking of the British power? They might look upon the Raj as a heavy burden on their heads, ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason

... words," commented Patches thoughtfully, "poor Joe must have someone to depend on; taken alone he counts no more than a cipher." ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... procuresses will write to men of means of their acquaintance, informing them in some cipher or slang phrase that they have a new importation in their house awaiting eligible disposition. Large sums are often paid under such circumstances, and the fresh importation is usually sold in this way five or six times. In other words, she is ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... his waistband; and as I stood above him full of meditated and most reasonable murder, I happened to see upon it, in red letters, his cipher; a coronet, and under that the initials of his name, Amadeo Giraldi. They struck me like the writing on the wall, as if they had been letters of fire. A. G., I read there—the letters of Aurelia's virgin name! A. G.—Aurelia Gualandi, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... eye-sore in my golden coat; Some loathsome dash the herald will contrive, To cipher me how fondly I did dote; That my posterity, shamed with the note, Shall curse my bones, and hold it for no sin To wish that I their father had ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]

... with eager impatience, I opened the packet and trimmed my lamp. Conceive my dismay when I found the whole written in an unintelligible cipher. I present the reader ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... read, write, and cipher in common arithmetic; had been to the United States, and spoke English quite well. His education was as good as that of three-quarters of the Yankees in California, and his manners and principles a good deal better, and he was so quick of apprehension that he might have been taught ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... then click! click! the instrument gave the code signal that the matter was ended, and I repeated the signal, opened my code-book, and began to translate the instructions into cipher for safety's sake. ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... lectures and our concerts—quite distinct, as orthodox circles will understand, from those missionary festivals which went, I never discovered why, by the name of Monthly Concerts—and our Porter Rhets. I believe this cipher stood for Porter Rhetorical; and research, if pushed far enough, would develop the fact that Porter indicated a dead professor who once founded a chair and a debating society for young men. Then we had our ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various

... at night and see the far-sprinkled systems, And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of the farther systems: Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding, Outward, outward, and forever outward: My sun has his sun, and around him obediently wheels; He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit, And greater sets ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... cloth was removed, Bovary did not rise, nor did Emma; and as she looked at him, the monotony of the spectacle drove little by little all pity from her heart. He seemed to her paltry, weak, a cipher—in a word, a poor thing in every way. How to get rid of him? What an interminable evening! Something stupefying like the fumes of opium ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... was our unfortunate conducted, and there he was bidden to empty forth the contents of his pockets. A handkerchief, a pen, a pencil, a pipe and tobacco, matches, and some ten francs of change: that was all. Not a file, not a cipher, not a scrap of writing whether to identify or to condemn. The very gendarme was appalled before ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson

... was, being a woman of some education, his mother had taught him to read and write and cipher—not that he was a great adept at any of those arts, but he possessed the groundwork, which was an important matter; and he did his best to keep up his knowledge by reading sign-boards, looking ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston

... the censor, but who knows if there isn't a secret cipher under the guise of an ordinary letter? They may have all kinds of treasonable secrets in them. Norty might get information and send it to those friends in foreign countries, and they would telegraph it in code through a neutral country ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... mere cipher in other things except in warring for the sake of a woman; O thou most base in avenging thy friends, dost thou fly, turning away from me? But all Agamemnon's services are gone: thou wert then without ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides

... from thence with as much speed as we could make to Amida, a city celebrated at a later period for the disaster which befel it. And when our scouts had rejoined us there we found in one of their scabbards a scrap of parchment written in cipher, which they had been ordered to convey to us by Procopius, whom I have already spoken of as ambassador to the Persians with the Count Lucillianus; its terms were purposely obscure, lest if the bearers should be taken prisoners, and the sense ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... leave it; though born noble, my ambition Is limited: I'd rather be an unit Of an united and Imperial "Ten," Than shine a lonely, though a gilded cipher.— Whom have we ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... the folds of my quickened senses. I became aware of a world which was not his world at all. I watched, I heard, I judged, I studied intently my comrades; and while in secret I shared their own hardy lives, I was more than content to appear a cipher among them. I had no friends and made none. All my comradeship with my school-mates took place in my head, for however salient in mood or inclination I may have been I was a laggard in action. In company I was lower than the least of them; ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... cipher, indicates that you are interested in literary researches, and by constant study you will become well acquainted with the habits and lives ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... herewith, a letter from myself to Monsieur de Montmorin, closing your former mission, your new commission, letters of credence from the President for the States General and Stadtholder, sealed, and copies of them open for your own satisfaction. You will keep the cipher we ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... last quarter of the tenth century peremptory edicts were issued to check this state of affairs, but the power of the Court to exact obedience had then dwindled almost to cipher. History records that during the Ho-en era (1135-1140), the regent Fujiwara Tadamichi's manor of Shimazu comprised one-fourth of the province of Osumi. On these great manors, alike of nobles and ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... most other conscientious girls, we had rules and regulations of our own devising; private codes, generally kept in cipher for our own personal self-discipline, and laws common to us both for the employment of our time in joint duties—lessons, parish ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... to a proper little song Of a naughty little urchin who was always doing wrong: He disobey'd his mammy, and he disobey'd his dad, And he disobey'd his uncle, which was very near as bad. He wouldn't learn to cipher, and he wouldn't learn to write, But he would tear up his copy-books to fabricate a kite; And he used his slate and pencil in so barbarous a way, That the grinders of his governess got ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... discouragement, and at the same time, he was stimulated to making independent researches in the school and public libraries. Each class of honor pupil could whisper, go out, or go to the blackboards to draw or cipher without asking permission. The high sense of honor was thus developed which is so essential to ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... playing about the eccentricities of cipher, changed in the Seventeenth Century to easily read initials, sometimes interlaced, sometimes apart. Later on it became the mode to weave the entire name. An example of these is the two letters C of Charles de Comans on the galloon of Meleager and Atalanta ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... was of no value in itself, and did not designate, as one might naturally think, a savant educated in a school of high culture, or a man of the world, versed in the sciences and the literature of his time; El-kab was a scribe who knew how to read, write, and cipher, was fairly proficient in wording the administrative formulas, and could easily apply the elementary rules of book-keeping. There was no public school in which the scribe could be prepared for his future career; but as soon as a child had acquired the first ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... childish, had a vast importance for us. It showed that something had happened somewhere in the vague world beyond Peking—perhaps that armies were arriving. We were reminded that we were still alive. A dignified reply was sent, and the very next day came an astonishing Washington cipher message, which has been puzzling us ever since. It was only three words: "Communicate to bearer." No one can explain what these words mean; even the American Minister has cudgelled his brains in vain, and asked everybody's ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... imperious ways she had learned from their spoiling. There had been teachers to educate her, but it was an open secret that they had not taught her much. Susan did not take kindly to books. No one had ever been able to teach her how to cipher and learning the piano had been a fruitless effort abandoned in her fifteenth year. It is only just to her to say that she had her little talents. She was an excellent housekeeper, and she could cook certain dishes better, the doctor said, than the chefs in ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... in a game of brag with England.... I am sorry Seward turns out so reckless and ruthless. Adams seems a sensible man[224]." But at Washington Lyons was again hot on the trail of warlike rumours. As a result of a series of conversations with Northern politicians, not Cabinet members, he sent a cipher telegram to Russell on June 6, stating: "No new event has occurred but sudden declaration of war by the United States against Great Britain appears to me by no means impossible, especially so long as ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... He must go out by the mail of November 15. Send him here for instructions.' Some words in cipher ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... safely off the premises, Hurd walked to the telegraph office, and sent a cipher message to the Yard, asking for a couple of plain clothes policemen to be sent down. He wanted to have Hokar and Miss Matilda Junk watched, also the house, in case Mrs. Krill and her daughter should return. Captain Jessop he proposed to look ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume

... small size and consequence. Some of his largest and finest books were reprints of Caxton's folios. Mention has been made of his use of Caxton's original device without addition. In all of his own various devices also, the place of honor in the center is given to Caxton's initials and cipher, plainly as a mark of loyalty to the master, not an advertisement of himself as ...
— Catalogue of the William Loring Andrews Collection of Early Books in the Library of Yale University • Anonymous

... influence over so firm and energetic a character as Lord George Murray, while it would be easy for him to sway the young Duke of Perth, and he was not long in poisoning the ear of the latter against his companion in arms by representing to him that Lord George treated him as a mere cipher, although of equal rank in the army. The secretary's purpose was even more easily carried out with Prince Charles. The latter was no judge of character, and fell readily under the influence of the wily and unscrupulous Murray, who flattered his weaknesses and assumed an air of deference to ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... gates at the lower end of the park, and glanced at the interwoven cipher and crest of the Amelyns still above, she was conscious that the wind was blowing more chill, and that a few clouds had gathered. As she walked on down the long winding avenue, the sky became overcast, ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte

... telegraph-operator of the cipher telegrams at Washington, in the Executive residence, took the despatch announcing the nomination of Andrew Jackson, of Tennessee, to the vice-presidency with Lincoln for the second term. The latter read ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... sixteen "mysterious and illustrious names," amongst which were obscurely whispered those of the Czar, the Crown Prince of Bavaria and of Wurtemburg, of the Hospodar of Wallachia, of Count Capodistria, and some others. The orders of the Grand Arch were written in cipher, and bore a seal having in sixteen compartments the same number of initial letters. The revenue which it commanded must have been considerable; for the lowest member, on his noviciate, was expected to give at least fifty piastres (at this time about two pounds sterling); and those of ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... leash, and who flies emotional signals from every feature in his face, has slender chance of success in an avocation which demands that body and soul, heart and mind, abjure even secret signal service, and deal only in cipher. The youthful naivete with which you permit your countenance to reflect your sentiments, renders it quite easy for me to comprehend the nature of your feeling for my ward. For some weeks your interest has been very apparent, and while I am laying no embargo on your affections, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned. Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught, The love he bore to learning was in fault; The village{8} all declared how much he knew; 'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too; Lands he could measure, terms and tides{9} presage, And e'en the story ran that he could gauge:{10} In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill; For e'en though vanquished, he could argue still; While words of learned length and thundering sound Amazed the gazing rustics ranged ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... that Abraham's household at the time of the circumcision was exactly the same number as before; still the argument of St. Barnabas will stand. As thus: circumcision had from the beginning, a reference to our SAVIOUR, as in other respects, so in this; that the mystical number, which is the cipher of Jesus crucified, was the number of the first circumcised household in the strength of which Abraham prevailed against the powers of the world. So St. Clement of Alexandria, as cited by Fell.' And Keble supports his ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... put down 20s. upon a card when only eight are in hand; the last card was a cipher, so there were four places to lose, and only three to win, the odds against being as 4 to 3. If 10 cards only were in, then it was 5 to 4 against the player; in the former case it was the seventh part of the money, whatever it was, L1 or L100; in the latter case, a ninth. The odds ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... "You touch truth there! Michael Arian is the cipher; Bale-Corphew's the meaning. Bale-Corphew is an interesting man, John—I had almost said a ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... some difficulty, he stood before the hideous wreck of his friend's late home, where he had spent so many glad hours listening to marvellous adventures from Paul Bevan, or learning how to read and cipher, as well as drinking in wisdom generally, ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne

... said Legrand, "the solution is by no means so difficult as you might be lead to imagine from the first hasty inspection of the characters. These characters, as any one might readily guess, form a cipher—that is to say, they convey a meaning; but then, from what is known of Kidd, I could not suppose him capable of constructing any of the more abstruse cryptographs. I made up my mind, at once, that this was of a simple species—such, however, as would appear, to the crude intellect of the sailor, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... Priestman Atkinson—is better remembered by Punch readers, perhaps, by his pencil-name than by his common cipher. In 1864 he was in the General Manager's office at Derby, pleasingly varying his clerical duties by drawing caricatures for the amusement of his fellow-clerks, and designing cartoons for the local satirical journal, the "Derby Ram," which appeared spasmodically and devoted itself principally ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... the telegraph office, and a cipher message, containing in brief all he had thus far learned, was soon upon its ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... it had gathered from so many vineyards, and squeezing out rich viscid juices,—potent wine,—with which the reader might get drunk. Some of it, moreover, seemed, for the further mystification of the officer, to be written in cipher; a needless precaution, it might seem, when the writer's natural chirography was so full ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... gladly gives her life to save another's. Antonoff endures the torture, but no agony can make him prove false to his friends. When his captors give him a respite from the thumbscrews and the red-hot wires that are thrust under his nails, he forgets his own torment, and scratches on his plate his cipher signals to his comrades. Those men and women in that awful country are lawless and dangerous, but they are heroic, and they are true friends one ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... handed her out, accompanying her up-stairs. She turned into the drawing-room, lest he should follow her farther and give her no place to retreat to; then she sat down with a weary air, taking off her gloves, rubbing her hand over her forehead, and making his presence as much of a cipher as possible. But he sat, too, and not far from her—just in front, where to avoid looking at him must have ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... to us, and then become the seat of wild chiefs of whom we know nothing, until with their axes they cut their Runic signs into a few of these stones, which then came into the calendar of time. But as for me, I had gone quite beyond all lapse of time, and had become a cipher and a nothing. Then three or four beautiful falling stars came down, which cleared the air, and gave my thoughts another direction. You know what a falling star is, do you not? The learned men are not at all clear about it. I have my own ideas about shooting stars, as ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... the last batch of sheep were fleeced and smitten,[Smitten. Marked with the cipher of the owner in a mixture mostly of tar.] and turned on to the hillside; and Charlotte, leaning over the wall, watched them wander contentedly up the fell, with their lambs trotting beside them. Grandfather and the squire had gone into ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... object. It rejoiceth in truth, and knows no inconstancy: it is free from jealousy, and feareth no fortune: it breaks the rule of arithmetic by confounding of number, where the conjunction of thoughts makes one mind in two bodies, where neither figure nor cipher can make division of union. It sympathises with life, and participates with light, when the eye of the mind sees the joy of the heart. It is a predominant power which endures no equality, and yet communicates with reason in the rules of concord: it breeds safety in a king and peace in a kingdom, ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... his school days at about the age of seven. He learned to read, to write with a stylus on wax tablets, and to cipher by means of the reckoning board, or abacus. He received a little instruction in singing and memorized all sorts of proverbs and maxims, besides the laws of the Twelve Tables. [5] His studying went ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... foreseen that his married life would not be all plain sailing; but he had by no means realised the gravity and the complication of the difficulties which he would have to face. Politically, he was a cipher. Lord Melbourne was not only Prime Minister, he was in effect the Private Secretary of the Queen, and thus controlled the whole of the political existence of the sovereign. A queen's husband was an entity unknown to the British Constitution. In State affairs ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... He made codes like Justinian, he dictated like Caesar, his conversation was mingled with the lightning-flash of Pascal, with the thunderclap of Tacitus, he made history and he wrote it, his bulletins are Iliads, he combined the cipher of Newton with the metaphor of Mahomet, he left behind him in the East words as great as the pyramids, at Tilsit he taught Emperors majesty, at the Academy of Sciences he replied to Laplace, in the Council of State be held his own against Merlin, he gave a soul to the geometry ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... Hagar, of which the Queen of Sheba is the most brilliant reminder, has given to the world the most of its profound literature, elegant poetry, art, science and occultism. Arabia is the mother of mathematics; from this country was borrowed our one (1) and our cipher (0), from which all ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... l'arn' how ter read de Bible. Dey wuz a free nigger boy in de settlement w'at wuz monst'us smart, en could write en cipher, en wuz alluz readin' books er papers. En Dave had hi'ed dis free boy fer ter l'arn 'im how ter read. Hit wuz 'g'in de law, but co'se none er de niggers didn' say nuffin ter de w'ite folks 'bout it. Howsomedever, ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... put on each tag in Barbara's private cipher, understood only by Aunt Miriam. The highest was the one hoped for, the next the probable one, and the lowest one was to be taken only at the end of ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed

... Episcopacy personally), and while he refrained from committing himself to an acceptance of Presbytery for his English realm, he does not appear to have objected to the impression that on this second matter he might yield to time and reason. And so, while writing in cipher to Queen Henrietta Maria, complaining of the "juggling" of the Scots, because they would not break with the English Parliament in his behalf, and while urging the Queen in the same letters to press upon Cardinal Mazarin, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... last; but he who wounds the body of the bird is complimented with the principal one which weighs at least 65 ounces of silver, and is honoured with the title of the "BIRD KING." These prizes are surmounted with the royal cipher and crown. His Danish majesty opens this ceremony in person, and is entitled to the first shot, and the queen to the second, then they are followed by the other branches of the royal family in succession. The firing continues until the bird ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various

... Elizabeth's death. It had been necessary, however, to ascertain in some way whether her protestations were sincere. A secret watch had been kept over her correspondence, and Babington's letters and her own answers had fallen into Walsingham's hands. There it all was in her own cipher, the key to which had been betrayed by the carelessness of a confederate. The six gentlemen who were to have rewarded Elizabeth's confidence by killing her were easily recognised. They were seized, with Babington and Ballard, when they imagined themselves on the eve of their triumph. Babington ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude

... his philosophical works. To resist the king's wishes was to leave himself at the mercy of his life-long enemy, Coke; he yielded. The king remitted his fine of L40,000 and released him from the Tower. Bacon goes back to his books and writes in cipher: "I was the justest judge that was in England these fifty years; but it was the justest censure that was in Parliament these two hundred years." He meant thereby, that while personally innocent of corruption, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... United States, Great Britain, and Germany, most noticeably, have established shore stations, by which they can "talk all around the world" from any ship or station. In operation secrecy is most important. For in the navy practically all important messages are sent in code or cipher under all conditions while in commercial work the tapping of land wires or the stealing of messages while illegal is physically possible for the evil disposed yet has never proved in practice a serious evil. The problem of interference, however, seems to have been fairly solved by the ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro

... come across interesting things, though. For instance, I discovered a most original cipher ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... secret representations, sent in cipher for the information of the Government, were given to the Press with a perverted meaning and hostile criticism, he hastened to Cairo. He requested an immediate interview with Tewfik, who excused himself for what had been done by his Ministers on the ground of his youth; but General ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... you, Cyrus?" said Dr. Lavendar, looking at him over his spectacles. (Dr. Lavendar, in his wicked old heart, always wanted to call this young man Cipher; but, so far, grace had been given him to withstand ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors

... chief's sent me the word I'm waiting for that way he's—a damn fool. I asked him for cipher mail." ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... kept his eyes and ears open, and before long he had another detail to report by cipher telegram to the general manager. Ford was evidently preparing for another absence, and from what the chief clerk could overhear, he was led to believe that the pseudo supervisor of track would be left in charge of ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... England have done against a foe with thirty or forty submarines, since we only needed six instead of four to complete her destruction! After much talk we decided that the best plan would be that I should dispatch a cipher telegram next morning from a French port to tell them to send the four second-rate boats to cruise off the North of Ireland and West of Scotland. Then when I had done this I should move down Channel with Stephan and operate at the mouth, while the other two boats could work ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... cried Grace Mason, "don't you ever expect to read or write or spell or cipher when ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr

... he had been at work with his slow but accurate thought, framing in secret the most momentous document in American history since the Declaration of Independence. He did this in the cipher-room of the War Department telegraph office, where he was accustomed to spend anxious hours waiting for news from the boys at the front, and also to seek what rest he could in thus hiding away from the never-ending stream ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers

... we again observed flash-signaling over the star-lit sky. It came from Colenso way, and was the attempt of our General to give us news or instructions. It began by calling "Ladysmith" three times. The message was in cipher, and the night before a very little of it was made out. Both messages ended with the words "Buller, Maritzburg." It is said one of the Mountain Battery is to be hanged in the night for signalling ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson

... the Narrative, Napoleon desired to present Captain Maitland with a box containing his portrait set in diamonds. On Maitland's declining, in the circumstances, to accept any present of value, the Emperor begged him to keep as a souvenir a tumbler from his travelling case, bearing the crown and cipher of the Empress Josephine. This relic is still preserved at Lindores. A photograph of it ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland

... decided by reason alone, since they are founded on laws and customs long established. But Mary asks, How far back are we to go to discover their first foundation? Is it in England to the reign of Richard II., whose incapacity rendered him a mere cipher in the hands of the Barons; or to that of Edward III., whose need for money forced him to concede certain privileges to the commons? Is social slavery to be encouraged because it was established in semi-barbarous ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... Mining's Station. The former is already repaired, and Johnston's army has heard the sound of our locomotives. The telegraph is finished to Mining's Station, and the field-wire has just reached my bivouac, and will be ready to convey this message as soon as it is written and translated into cipher. ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... came to Paris, he had known how to read, write, and cipher, and at that point his education had been arrested. There had been no opportunity in his hard-working life of acquiring new ideas and information beyond the perfumery trade. He had spent his time among folk to whom science and literature were matters of indifference, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... the "Court of the Ages." He was overruled because the officials deemed the name not in accord with the contemporaneous spirit of the Exposition. They called it the "Court of Abundance." In spite of the name, however, it is not the Court of Abundance. Mullgardt's title gives a key to the cipher of the statues. Read by it, the groups on the altar of the Tower become three successive Ages ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... Bar Confederation shall we dream of; far be such an attempt from us. It consists of many Confederations, and out of each, PRO and CONTRA, spring many. Like the Lernean Hydra, or even Hydras in a plural condition. A many-headed dog: and how many whelps it had,—I cannot give even the cipher of them, or I would! One whelp Confederation, that of Cracow, is distinguished by having frequently or generally been "drunk;" and of course its procedures had often a vinous character. [In HERMANN (v. 431-448); and especially ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... 1796, Tone, who had sailed from Belfast the previous June, arrived at Havre from New York, possessed of a hundred guineas and some useful letters of introduction. One of these letters, written in cipher, was from the French Minister at Philadelphia to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Charles Lacroix; another was to the American Minister in France, Mr. Monroe, afterwards President of the United States, by whom he was most kindly received, and wisely ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... him, but this was not a very smooth start for eight in the morning. Moments of lull there were, when the telegraph called her to the front room, and Billy's young mind shifted to inquiries about the cipher alphabet. And she gained at least an hour teaching him to read various words by the sound. At dinner, too, he was refreshingly silent. But such silences are unsafe, and the weather was still bad. Four o'clock found them much where they had been ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister

... your property? Why give unnatural prominence to a cipher? Do you think I hold my poor mother to blame for any wrong that is done to me, or to others, in this house? No, Captain Winstanley, I have no resentment against my mother. She is a blameless nullity, dressed in the ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... anxiety of these men was that the official version which attributed the massacre to a Huguenot conspiracy should obtain no credence at Rome. If the Cardinal's enemies were overthrown without his participation, it would confirm the report that he had become a cipher in the State. He desired to vindicate for himself and his family the authorship of the catastrophe. Catherine could not tolerate their claim to a merit which she had made her own; and there was competition between them for the first and largest share ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... Kirk out to supper, and Miss Child having snubbed her faithful lion man for reasons which had appeared good at the time, had no one to give her the key to those dozen mystic words which might as well have been written in cipher. ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... cipher," continued the latter, "which you used in 1655, and which your secretary, Juan Jujan, who is dead, could alone decipher, if he ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... me with a gay and genuine friendship, and as Sandy and I made our salutations to her I saw Nancy at some little distance from us, literally surrounded by fatuous cipher-faced youths, who stood in some awe before her misty beauty and reputed power. There was pride in me that the girl was mine, a pride which Sandy Carmichael shared with me, and as Hugh Pitcairn crossed ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane

... a considerable future before him, unless some complaint of the throat carries him off before his time. He had charge of all arrangements at Liverpool, whilst I was stationed at the inn at Kenyon, where I awaited a cipher signal to act. When the special was arranged for, my agent instantly telegraphed to me and warned me how soon I should have everything ready. He himself under the name of Horace Moore applied immediately for a special also, in the hope that ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... end that he might cast out of his heart, for all time, the love for a woman which had crept in. Sleep had dared not come within range of that titanic struggle. Worn with the battle which had witnessed his defeat, he had just completed his cipher message, when, following a modest knock at the door, Josef entered complacently with the ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... is done of the courier who rode horseback with orders in his belt and was winged in mid-flight; and the day of the secret messenger who tried to creep through the hostile picket lines with cipher dispatches in his shoe, and was captured and ordered shot at sunrise, is gone, too, except in Civil War melodramas. Modern military science has wiped them out along with most of the other picturesque fol-de-rols ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... 'ere things. As for reading, it's well enough for them that has nothing to do, and writing is plaguy apt to bring a man to states-prison, particularly if he writes his name so like another man as to have it mistaken for his'n. Cyphering is the thing—if a man knows how to cipher, he is sure to grow rich. We are a ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... that one of us, chosen by lot, shall go to Paris and keep the rest informed, with the cipher agreed upon, of all that ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... every rich man in New York. I will first find out who she is. I will ask the Master of the Servants, who is a member of our Brotherhood, who were the two ladies out riding at the time of our adventure. I can communicate with him in cipher." ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... incredible for ordinary men to believe them. Such stories must be taken with a large grain of salt, for the sake of the amusement they afford to readers at home. In future, whenever I hear a man state how he broke the back of an antelope at 600 yards, I shall incline to believe a cipher had been added by a slip of the pen, or attribute it to a typographical error, for this is almost an impossible feat in an African forest. It may be done once, but it could never be done twice running. An antelope makes a very small target at 600 yards distance; but, then, all these ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... De la Haye, the French ambassador, was imprisoned in 1658, and his son bastinadoed in the presence of Kiuprili, for being unable or unwilling to give a key to some letters in cipher from the Venetians; and some years later, the envoy of the Czar, Alexis Mikhailowitz, was driven, with blows and violence, from the presence of the sultan, who was irritated by the incompetency of the interpreter to translate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... the more freely because in this conversation it transpired that we had been fellow students together at the University of Heidelberg), decided on June 28 not to go to war with the Allies. Yet that very evening at eight o'clock, unknown to Dr. Daneff, an order in cipher and marked "very urgent" was issued by General Savoff to the commander of the fourth army directing him on the following evening to attack the Servians "most vigorously along the whole front." On the following afternoon, the 29th, General Savoff issued another order to the army commanders ...
— The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 - Third Edition • Jacob Gould Schurman

... over every now and then to Abrahamson's hut upon the chance of getting a half-dozen fish for breakfast. He always had a kind word or two for Tom, who during the winter evenings would go over to the good man's house to learn his letters, and to read and write and cipher a little, so that by now he was able to spell the words out of the Bible and the almanac, and knew enough to ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle

... date, was astounded. But having afterwards shown the bulletin to Drouot, that General said, "Alas! Marshal, the news is but too true. The error of the date is merely a misprint, the 9 is a 6 inverted!" On what trifles sometimes depend the most important events. An inverted cipher sufficed to flatter Bonaparte's illusion, or at least the illusions which he wished to maintain among his most distinguished lieutenants, and to delay the moment when they should discover that the loss they deplored was too certain. On that very day ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton



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