"Clue" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... captured in an exciting raid, how Tom recovered most of the stolen money, and how he gave Andy Foger a deserved thrashing for giving a false clue was told of, and there was an account of a race in which the Red Cloud (as the airship was called) took part, as well as details of how Tom and his friends secured the reward, which Andy ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... that ripe Knowledge takes away The charm that Nature to my childhood wore, For, with that insight, cometh, day by day, A greater bliss than wonder was before; The real doth not clip the poet's wings,— To win the secret of a weed's plain heart Reveals some clue to spiritual things, And stumbling guess becomes firm-footed art: Flowers are not flowers unto the poet's eyes, Their beauty thrills him by an inward sense; He knows that outward seemings are but lies, Or, at the most, but earthly shadows, whence The soul that looks within for ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... picked up her work, and patiently followed the tangled clue until she had recovered her ball; then she wound it all up neatly, wrapped the knitting in a thin white handkerchief, and went to ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... garden. More than that, behind the stable I found where a horse had been tied and had broken away. A piece of worn strap still hung there. It was sufficiently clear, then, that whoever had broken into the house had come on horseback and left afoot. But many people in the neighborhood used horses. The clue, if clue it can be called, ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... examine the paper and envelope, noting its quality, watermark, size, and any feature that may afford a clue. It is always safe to presume that the paper is in every respect unlike that commonly used by the writer, just as it is equally safe to take it for granted that the writing it contains will, so far as its general appearance goes, be the reverse of ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... mountains, we know, running through South America. Perhaps a pun was intended; or possibly it might, in the age of Elizabeth, have been a vulgar term for HANGING, although we find no trace of the expression in other books. We have no clue to guide us here. It might be suggested that Shakspeare, who shines little in geographical knowledge, fancied the Cordilleras to extend into North America, had convicts in his time been transported to those ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... to shun a generous sentiment as one would avoid an infected locality, and usually walked with head tilted and body bent as if engaged in following a clue or intent upon the search of some ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... tended to fix it upon any one of them; and, desirable as it was that they should be brought to that punishment which sooner or later awaited them, it was feared that until some riot or disagreement among themselves should occur, no clue would be furnished that would lead to their detection. The body was therefore brought in from the spot where it had been concealed, about four miles from Parramatta, and buried at that place, after having ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... Steele's apparent attempt to dismiss the Mantell case. I was convinced now. The Godman Field affair must hold an important clue that I had overlooked. It might even be the key to the whole ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... meaning.' You surely don't want me to see that you're rather losing your temper and trying to cover it up by being dignified. You've been so careful with your effects, too! . . . I said 'Ah,' because you'd given me the clue I was looking for. You were a very ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... an admission that she was aware of the identity of the conspirators, and yet she would give me no clue to them. ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... very gently, with a subtle note of apology in her voice; but yet, as it seemed to him, from rather far away. And when they parted, he realized that he had never known more of her than an outer self, which offered but little clue to ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... aroused the servants. I was cunning, sir; and no one could trace my footprints on the turf and rock of Woeful Ness. The missing hand-bag, and the disarray I had been careful to make in the bed-room, provided them at once with a clue—but it did not lead them to the Quick-Boy. For two days they searched; at the end of that time it grew clear to them that grief was turning my brain. Your father, sir, was instant with his sympathy—at least ten times a day I had much ado to keep from laughing ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... attenuated in rapid discourse, but not altogether discarded. Intent though it vaults high must have something to spring from, or it would lend meaning to nothing. The minimal sensuous term that subsists serves as a clue to a whole system of possible assertions radiating from it. It becomes the sign for an essence or idea, a logical hypostasis corresponding in discourse to that material hypostasis of perceptions which is ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... many omissions can be supplied from such mutilated copies as the early Quartos, indicates that there may be many more omissions for the detection of which we have no clue. The text of the Merry Wives given in F1 was probably printed from a carelessly written ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... with a jerk and stared at the wall in front of him fixedly. He made no answer, nor could Fielding distinguish upon his face any expression which gave a clue to his thoughts. He got up from his chair, and Drake turned to him. 'I gather from your tone,' he said in an indifferent voice, 'that Mrs. Willoughby resents ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... the first officer. "I'll take your name, young fellow, for my report," and he drew out a notebook. "I'll also want to find out to whom the horse belongs, but I s'pose the truckman's license number will be a clue." ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... key and clue to History. This also is meeting recognition. No longer are the best histories mainly chronicles of kings and wars, but records of the development and the decline of peoples; and what constitutes a "people," and shapes its destiny, is the very ...
— Anthropology - As a Science and as a Branch of University Education in the United States • Daniel Garrison Brinton
... whizgig. There is the harsh astringent, attractive compression; the bitter compunction, repulsive expansion; and the stinging anguish, duplex motion. The author hints that he has written other works, to which he gives no clue. I have heard that Behmen was pillaged by Newton, and Swedenborg[583] by Laplace,[584] and Pythagoras by Copernicus,[585] and Epicurus by Dalton,[586] &c. I do not think this mention will revive Behmen; but it may the whizgig, a ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... there was her name, "Madeleine Linders," that of the donor, the date, and below, "Hotel des Bains, Chaudfontaine." It was a revelation to Horace. Of course he understood it all now. Here was the clue to his confused recollections, to the strange little scene he had just witnessed. Another moonlit courtyard came to his remembrance, a gleaming, rushing river, a background of shadowy hills, and a little coy, wilful, chattering girl, with curly hair and great brown eyes—those very eyes that ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... blank—that would have been insulting. D—, at Vienna once, did me an evil turn, which I told him, quite good-humoredly, that I should remember. So, as I knew he would feel some curiosity in regard to the identity of the person who had outwitted him, I thought it a pity not to give him a clue. He is well acquainted with my MS., and I just copied into the middle of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... young man was vitally interested now. Was it the prospective vision of almighty dollars that was needed to release the hidden spring that had baffled the girl? With this clue in mind, she watched him closely and fed ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... in the name Neville that Ann thought she detected a clue to Tony's altered demeanour. She recollected having met Lady Doreen on one occasion, about a year ago, when she herself had been paying a flying visit to the Brabazons at their house in Audley Square—a frail slip of a girl with immense grey ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... Frank. "But forget this thing for now. Perhaps tomorrow we may be able to find some clue that will tell which way the wind blows—it might be the print of a shoe in the earth or something like that. Lots of ways to pick up information, if only you keep your ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... be sinful, in such a question, to follow the clue of profane philosophy," said Mr. Wilson. "Better to fast and pray upon it; and still better, it may be, to leave the mystery as we find it, unless Providence reveal it of its own accord. Thereby, every good Christian man hath a title ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... killed her for me that day in the castle; and I am better without her. (He throws away the fragments.) Now everything is gone. You have taken the old meaning out of my life; but you have put no new meaning into it. I can see that you have some clue to the world that makes all its difficulties easy for you; but I'm not clever enough to seize it. You've lamed me by showing me that I take life the wrong way when I'm left ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... anything up to th' cops. They'll raise particular thunder in their sleep, an' we gets th' rough ha! ha! from our frien's, th' enemy. We pipes this little game ourself, an' we wins, too, if we succeed in keepin' th' police from gettin' nex' to anything they'd mistake for a clue." ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... the police hoped to trace the footsteps of the assassin was the booty which his crime had secured to him: the contents of the pocket-book that had been rifled, and the clothes which had been stripped from the corpse of the victim. By means of the clue which these things might afford, the detective police hoped to reach the guilty man. But they hoped in vain. Every pawnbroker's shop in Winchester, and in every town within a certain radius of Winchester, was searched, but without effect. No clothes at all resembling those that had been ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... first wish was to be absolute master at home. Between the incompatible objects on which his heart was set he, for a time, went irresolutely to and fro. The conflict in his own breast gave to his public acts a strange appearance of indecision and insincerity. Those who, without the clue, attempted to explore the maze of his politics were unable to understand how the same man could be, in the same week, so haughty and so mean. Even Lewis was perplexed by the vagaries of an ally who passed, in a few hours, from homage to defiance, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ending were soon put aside. Two of the savages slipped from the stone while the other dropped upon his stomach and hid his face. That something was going to happen we felt certain, but we could not discover the slightest clue that would guide our puzzled wits to a solution. We expected death, but we could not guess in what manner the job was to ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... the old days how Rod took on the tricks of speech, manner, expression, thought even, of whatever man he happened at the time to be admiring. May it not have been this trait of Rod's that gave her the clue to his character, when she was thinking ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... to refuse the Doctor-in-Law's request that I would give him ten shillings worth of penny stamps to put into the letters which he had been writing while we had been away, although he would not give me the slightest clue as to ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... had two sorts of things, the one of which presents no clue as to what it is for, and the other is obviously for some useful purpose—which would you judge to be the result ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... fellers out," said the regimental oracles. "This is no ten-dollar subscription business." And so until late in the afternoon the question that agitated the entire range of regimental camps was: "How did those fellows break away from the prison of the —teenth?" Then came a clue, and then—discovery. ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... anguish, the regret of that hour are best left untold. The number of disks gone from the bottle under the pillow gave the doctor his clue. One final effort must have been made by the desperate invalid to secure for himself the drink which would wash them down without the dreaded ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... Chickamauga. A soldier belonging to the 14th Iowa regiment was discovered, by the Provost-Marshal of Cairo, to be a woman. An investigation being ordered, "Charlie" placed the muzzle of her revolver to her head, fired, and fell dead on open parade-ground. No clue was obtained to her name, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... study than to trace back through many a century of ancestors, the various—often conflicting—elements which go to make up the character of someone whose life (without the clue given by the history of his forbears) is often a strange contradiction. Unable to understand some disability which spoils an otherwise fine personality, one looks back and there is the explanation. One's finger rests on the raison d'etre of this ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... he said, as De Lacy would have risen. "I know you found no trace of the Countess else you would not be here. Yet, perchance, Sir John may speak or some of the scouts return with a clue. If not, the sunlight, doubtless, will reveal what the night has hidden. The King has retired, but he bade me say to you not to depart without word with him. Meanwhile if any of the scouts come in they are ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... whom this conquest was clue was a famous backwoods leader, a mighty hunter, a noted Indian-fighter, George Rogers Clark. He was a very strong man, with light hair and blue eyes. He was of good Virginian family. Early in his youth, he embarked on the adventurous career of a backwoods surveyor, exactly as Washington ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... at the time he was lost. Here's that identical collar turning up soon afterward round the neck of a totally different dog! We must follow this up; we must get at the bottom of it somehow! With a clue like this, we're sure to find out either the dog himself, or what's become of him! Just try to recollect exactly what happened, there's a good fellow. This is just the sort of thing ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... scroll from the FBI," Malone said. "A citation for coming up with the essential clue in this case. Even though he didn't know it was the essential clue. You know," he added reflectively, "one thing puzzles me ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the Saviour's name, 10820070400200888. Precisely so John here tells us what is the numerical value of the letters in the name of the Beast. If we tried the Latin or the Greek names of Nero the clue would not be found; but John was writing mainly for Hebrews, and the Hebrew letters of Kesar Neron, the name by which every Jew knew this Emperor, amount to ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... describe what I felt! I went to the window and looked out. There were scattered lights here and there, marking roads, but as they crossed one another, and now and then stopped where building had ceased, the effect they produced was that of bewilderment with no clue to it. Further off was the great light of London, like some unnatural dawn, or the illumination from a fire which could not itself be seen. I was overcome with the most dreadful sense of loneliness. I suppose it is the very essence of passion, using the word in its literal sense, that no account ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... but the important question is, whether any other testimony can be found to confirm this conjecture, and to give us any definite and authentic information about the fact. This is the question which Mr Hunter has undertaken to answer. The clue which first catches his experienced eye, is the name of an English king. One of the most remarkable adventures which the ballads record of Robin Hood, is his meeting with the king, who induced him, for ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... exclaimed Middleton. "And what can be your connection with all the error and trouble, and involuntary wrong, through which I have wandered since our last meeting? And is it possible that you even then held the clue which I ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... imaginative strain. The multitude of specific allusions to topographical names make it difficult to [Page 54] translate it intelligently to a foreign mind. The poetical units are often so devised that each new division takes its clue from the last word of the previous verse, on the principle of "follow your leader," a capital feature in ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... was imaginable, without setting up Fear, instead of Love, as the ruling principle in the blessed. And what was the moral tendency of the doctrine? I had never borne to dwell upon it: but I before long suspected that it promoted malignity and selfishness, and was the real clue to the cruelties perpetrated under the name of religion. For he who does dwell on it, must comfort himself under the prospect of his brethren's eternal misery, by the selfish expectation of personal blessedness. ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... and whom she had given to one Fabio, my servant. The woman is she whom you see here. Fabio is also in this company; but of Cornelia and her child I can learn nothing. These two days I have passed at Bologna, in ceaseless endeavours to discover her, or to obtain some clue to her retreat, but I have not been ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... "A handsome clue, I call it, something to warm the cockles of your heart," grinned the sea urchin. "Aye, Jack, I should wager he wrote that down whilst he lay ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... a newly full-fledged lawyer, full of my profession, I went so far as to give him to understand that I would leave no stone unturned to get a clue to the business, and so deliver him here in this world into the hands of an earthly judge. I must confess that I was considerably disconcerted when, at the conclusion of my violent and pompous harangue, the Councillor, without answering so much as a single word, calmly fixed his eyes upon ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... the note into the frame of his mirror over the washstand with a vague idea that if anything happened to him this would furnish a clue to ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... the town from her singular house up at Toft End, would be conscious of pleasure in her brisk gait, her slightly malicious but broad-minded smile, and her cheerful greeting. She was always in black. She always wore one of those nodding black bonnets which possess neither back nor front, nor any clue of any kind to their ancient mystery. She always wore a mantle which hid her waist and spread forth in curves over her hips; and as her skirts stuck stiffly out, she thus had the appearance of one who had been to sleep since 1870, and who had got up, thoroughly refreshed ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... start to search for me until some time to-morrow. When I don't show up at the game they'll think it's queer, and I suppose they'll fine me. I wouldn't mind that if they only come and find me. But how can they do it? There isn't a clue they could follow, as far ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... understand, ere he close this narrative, my reason for concealing all clue to the district of which I write, and will perhaps thank me for refraining from any description that may tend ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... works of Campanella and Vanini (Bruno much later, for his works were then exceeding rare. I now have Weber's edition), and also, with intense relish and great profit, an old English version of Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. In which last work I had the real key and clue to all German philosophy and Rationalism, as I in time found out. I must here modestly mention that I had, to a degree which I honestly believe seldom occurs, the art of rapid yet of carefully-observant ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... to study their instincts and intelligence, to ascertain their adaptations and their relations to the forces of Nature, to realize what the world appears to them; these constitute, as it seems to me at least, the true interest of natural history, and may even give us the clue to senses and perceptions of which at present we ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... Achievements high in hall or bower; Or give to fancy's vivid eye, The helms and plumes of chivalry. CLIFFORD has fall'n, howe'er sublime, Mere fragments wrestle still with time; Yet as they perish, sure and slow, And rolling dash the stream below, They raise tradition's glowing scene, The clue of silk, the wrathful queen, And link, in mem'ry's firmest bond, The love-lorn tale of Rosamond[1]. [Footnote 1: Clifford Castle is supposed to have been the ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... travelled down the closely-written sheets one after the other, until the light from the candles grew blurred and indistinct, and his eyes ached. But still he read on. The power and gloom of Andrew's narrative held him in a vice, and then he was searching for a clue in the labyrinth of words. At last he came to the final paragraph, and then ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... lustre and wear the natural hue of the material turned up with caked and venerable slush. The youngest child of his landlady remarks several times a day, as this strange occupant enters or quits the house, "Dere's de author." Can it be that this bright-haired innocent has found the true clue to the mystery? The being in question is, at least, poor enough to belong to that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... when Miriam was gone, attached the interrogative, "I wonder whether she does?" The Spences did not feel it incumbent upon them to direct her in the matter; it were just as well if she followed a mistaken clue. ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... I was recognised by nobody, and remaining as it were concealed in my box, I had a good opportunity to satisfy my curiosity. I arrived at the theatre a little too late, so that I missed the scene of Hamlet in presence of the ghost of his father, the scene which in my judgment contains the clue to that strange character, and from which all the synthetic ideas of Hamlet are developed. I was in time to hear only the last words of the oath of secrecy. I was struck by the perfection of the stage-setting. There was a perfect imitation of the effect of ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... himself admirably adapted to the line of business it was his fortune to learn, and this, of course, together with close attention to business, furnishes the clue to his success. He is emphatically a self-made man, and can therefore appreciate the handsome competence that has crowned his labors so early in life, he being now ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... character. He is so reckless that he will never flinch from the prosecution of any of his schemes, either from personal danger or the dread of shedding human blood. He seems to have no heart, and his countenance is like adamant, for it gives no clue to the thoughts which fill his brain. He is certainly a very remarkable character and one worth studying. His early history is laughable. His various descents upon France were too ridiculous for laughter, and they only excited the pity of the world. His private conduct, ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... that any mistake of mine should have caused you uneasiness, but I hope we have got a clue to William's absence, which may clear up all apprehensions. The people where he lodges in town have received direction from him to forward one or two of his shirts to a place called Winterslow, in the county of Hants ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... our contemporaries. There are, indeed, secret feelings which their prudence conceals, or their fears obscure, or their modesty shrinks from, or their pride rejects; but I have sometimes imagined that I have held the clue as they have lost themselves in their own labyrinth. I know that many, and some of great celebrity, have sympathised with the feelings which inspired these volumes; nor, while I have elucidated the idiosyncrasy of genius, have I less studied ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... he once more raised his glass to his eyes. "You have given me the clue. I can make it out clearly now. Some poor camel that has strayed and lost its way, I suppose. Died ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... was extraordinarily difficult to find any clue to the missing family, and the long, miserable hours passed, and brought Mrs. Beauchamp no nearer to the twins. She trudged up and down the Parade, to the police station, and down the steps to the beach, over and over again, ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... of another clue, started in search of the elusive Macri Georgio, whom he thought he had at last located in the Peneus. So there is another expedition in the boats with sixty men and a twelve-miles pull to Platamona. At a village, Karitza, they hear of an atrocity ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... since the matter at the Tanks. Justine Caron was slyly besieged by the curious, but they went away empty; for Justine, if very simple and single-minded, was yet too much concerned for both Galt Roscoe and Mrs. Falchion to give the inquiring the slightest clue. She knew, indeed, little herself, whatever she may have guessed. As for Hungerford, he was dumb. He refused to consider the matter. But he roundly maintained once or twice, without any apparent relevance, that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... been committed. The sods were scarcely heaped upon the coffin of the murdered man when one of his murderers was securely confined in the cells of the central station. The arrest was one of unusual difficulty. When the detectives visited the scene of the murder, the only clue to the perpetrators was a blood stained handkerchief and the gag used in strangling their victim. With these faint traces there was little hope of ferreting out the murderer, but Detective Joshua Taggart ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... contrived to make herself understood by her friends in this her dire distress: and to acquaint them with her situation and injuries, by rolling a letter up in a clue of yarn, and dropping it out of her window to a confidential person below. Her family then interfered, and the wretched lady was released, by a legal separation, from her miseries. She retired to the house of her sister, and eventually to Edinburgh. When, in after ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... of the century, a conception of the animal kingdom prevailed which was entirely different from our modern ideas. We know now that all animals are bound together by the bond of a common descent, and we seek in anatomy a clue to the degrees of relationship existing among the different animals we know. We regard the animal kingdom as a thicket of branches all springing from a common root. Some of these spring straight up from the common root unconnected with their fellows. Others branch repeatedly, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... cold camp on a desolate snow-covered beach in stormy sleet and darkness. At daybreak I looked eagerly in every direction to learn what kind of place we were in; but gloomy rain-clouds covered the mountains, and I could see nothing that would give me a clue, while Vancouver's chart, hitherto a faithful guide, here failed us altogether. Nevertheless, we made haste to be off; and fortunately, for just as we were leaving the shore, a faint smoke was seen across the inlet, toward which Charley, who now seemed lost, gladly ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... her helmet had no plume. In a moment his horse was at her side. Bowing low over his saddle, he took his own plume from his helmet and fastened it to hers. This man was Prince Gregory Potemkin, and this slight act gives a clue to the influence which he afterward exercised over ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... to the chief points of interest we have arranged an index map (Fig. 27) which will give a clue to the names of the several objects depicted upon the plate. The so-called seas are represented by capital letters; so that A is the Mare Crisium, and H the Oceanus Procellarum. The ranges of mountains are indicated by ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... another, as she bade him do? It was a weary search, with this terrible uncertainty shrouding it. She advertised in mystical language, so none but he could comprehend it. She examined the church records of the denomination with which he was connected, but found no clue there. ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... that you robbed me and tried to murder me—yes, you did, sir!—but when I was in the city I was robbed in the subway by a pickpocket. A thief took my bill-book containing invaluable data I had just received from my agent in China giving me a clue to porcelains, sir, such as you never dreamed of! Some more of your work—Don't you contradict me! You don't contradict me! ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... continuous progress in all things; a fact which we know only after we get hold of the clue. And so, when Mrs. Mary Blyth appeared as Mrs. Mary Dodds, in room of the domesticated Jenny, it was in perfect accordance with the law of cause and effect. No doubt they did their best to be happy, as all creatures do, even the devil's children, only in a wrong shaft; but they had made that fearful ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... Laplace's Mecanique celeste (1793). He discovered eight new comets and calculated their orbits. In his tables of Uranus (1821) he attributed certain perturbations to the presence of an undiscovered planet, but unlike Leverrier and Adams he did not follow up this clue ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... the watch, had set out with a grim purpose of finding boy and man which had been undaunted by any obstacle. With slow but persistent effort he had traced the child over mountain and valley, often losing all clue, but never relaxing till at last he had reached Mr. Follet and learned that the boy was in school. From thence he easily made his way to the school of Mr. Polk's selection, and, arriving by strange providence upon a gala day, had ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... "Any clue to Larry Brainard yet?" Barney whispered also out of a corner of his mouth, glass at his lips. Like-wise he seemed not to notice the ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... than this but not reaching an amount likely to produce the result caused by the first considered. Used in trials of criminal cases it eliminates motives until a single inevitable remainder cannot be argued away. This may be the clue to follow, or it may be the last one of all suspected persons. Burke considered several possible ways of dealing with the American colonies; one he dismissed as no more than a "sally of anger," a second could not be operated because of the distance, a scheme of Lord North's he proved ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... whole," &c. I have translated [Greek: to ti en einai] by "formal cause," as Thomas Taylor has done, and according to the explanation of Trendelenburg, in his edition of Aristotle On the Soul, i. 1, Sec. 2. It is not my business to explain Aristotle, but to give some clue to ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... of any painful facts; or if she came to me with any confession of folly, or change of feeling, or misfortune, or whatever it was, no matter what, I should enter into it and understand her. But Lucia to-night treated me like a stranger, fenced with me like an enemy. I have no clue as to what to think and what to believe. Simply, I see that she is no longer keen on the matter, and there is a large possibility of my not having her at all. By God! ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... dilemma faced me incessantly: "If He can prevent it and does not, He is not good; if He wishes to prevent it and cannot, He is not almighty." I racked my brains for an answer. I searched writings of believers for a clue, but I found no way of escape. Not yet had any doubt of the existence ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... music, piano music, made his ears wince—how he hated music! But afar as were these tonal silhouettes, traced against the evening air, his practised hearing told him that they were made by an artist. He languidly followed the clue, and soon he was at the gate of a villa, almost buried in the bosk, and listening with all his critical attention to a thrilling performance—yes, thrilling was the word—of Chopin's music. What! The ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... windows, and windows are reduced in size or enlarged, or new ones are broken through the walls, apparently, with the greatest freedom, so that they do not, from their finish or method of construction, furnish any clue to the antiquity of the mud-covered wall in which they are found. Occasionally surface weathering of the walls, particularly in Zui, exposes a bit of horizontal pole embedded in the masonry, the lintel of a window long since sealed up and obliterated ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... it was not the Indians who were killing; and the nesters, though a spiritless, shiftless lot, had always been honest enough. But the bunk-house on the MacDonald ranch was often filled with the material of which horse and cattle thieves are made, and Ralston hoped that he might get a clue from some word inadvertently ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... for the war against England is taking on increasingly an almost religious character; from the German point of view, it will soon be, not a war, but a crusade. I get one clue to this in the new phrase of leave-taking that has gained an astounding currency in the past few weeks. Instead of saying "Good-bye" or "Auf Wiedersehen," the German now says: "God punish England!" to which the equally fervent rejoinder is, "May He do so!" This new, polite formula for leave-taking ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... "we have learned little more than the fact, that a child was made to take a false character, without possessing any other clue to the circumstances than is given in the names of the parties, all of whom are evidently obscure, and one of the most material of whom, we are plainly told, must have borne a fictitious name. Even poor Monday, in possession of so much collateral ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... that they do not and cannot hold me; that I look like a stranger from another world upon the business of this one; that I am among you, but not of you; that your motives and aims to me are utterly unintelligible; that you can give no account of them to which I can attach any sense; that I have no clue to the enigma you seem so lightly to solve by your religion, your philosophy, your science; that your hopes are not mine, your ambitions not mine, your principles not mine; that I am shipwrecked, and see around me none but are shipwrecked too; yet, that these, as they ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... conclude this curious episode. With the clue obtained by Fitzwilliam, and confessions twisted out of Story and other unwilling witnesses, the Ridolfi conspiracy was unravelled before it broke into act. Norfolk lost his head. The inferior miscreants were hanged. The Queen of Scots had a narrow escape, and the Parliament ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... his wish to take his wife unawares, and he had previously written her of his intended coming, yet without giving her a clue ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... famous among the houses of London. Of his daughter, Lady Diana, I can learn nothing but that she died unmarried. She seems to have been of a lively, vivacious temperament, and very popular with the other sex. There is a slight clue to her character in the following scrap of letter-writing still preserved among some old manuscript papers of the Hutton family. She writes to Mr. Hutton to escort her in the Park, adding—"This, I am sure, you will do, because I am a friend to the tobacco-box, and such, I am sure, Mr. Hutton ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... here, Pitman: follow me one half minute. I mean to profit by the refreshing fact that we are really and truly innocent; nothing but the presence of the—you know what—connects us with the crime; once let us get rid of it, no matter how, and there is no possible clue to trace us by. Well, I give you my piano; we'll bring it round this very night. To-morrow we rip the fittings out, deposit the—our friend—inside, plump the whole on a cart, and carry it to the chambers of a young gentleman ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Indeed, some fancy they have the power to spring from the ground. Certain it is that they possess the powers of contraction and extension to a very great degree. When fully extended they appear as thin as a thread, and the next moment they can clue themselves up like a pea. This power enables them to pass rapidly from point to point, and also to penetrate into the smallest aperture. They are said to possess an acute sense of smell, and guided by this they approach the traveller ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... are we to explain Gourgaud's conduct at St. Helena and afterwards? Now, in threading the mendacious labyrinths of St. Helena literature it is hard ever to find a wholly satisfactory clue; but Basil Jackson's "Waterloo and St. Helena" (p. 103) seems to supply ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... back upon his pillow. "I haven't any fever. I'm as sane as ever I was. That treasure exists, and that doubloon gave me the clue to its whereabouts. Pancho Cueto knew my father, and HE believed the story. He believed in it so strongly that— well—that's why he denounced my sister and me as traitors. He dug up our entire premises, but he didn't find it." Esteban chuckled. "Don Esteban, my father, ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... and whose dictum on museum matters cannot be questioned—setting forth, under the heading "Scheme A" and "Scheme B," the pros and cons of both, not favouring one or the other in the slightest, giving no clue whatever to my leaning to either, and resolving to be guided entirely by the opinion of the majority, or, should it be a close tie, to refer ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... After this, I served in his Majesty's fleet a whole war, and got as much honour as I could stow beneath hatches. Well, then, I fell in with the Guinea—the black, my Lady, that you see turning in a new clue-garnet-block for the ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... existing bird has acquired his magnificent colours or other ornaments, we ought to behold the long line of his extinct progenitors; but this is obviously impossible. We may, however, generally gain a clue by comparing all the species of the same group, if it be a large one; for some of them will probably retain, at least partially, traces of their former characters. Instead of entering on tedious details respecting ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... dumb before it and guess at the real woman within. Her step on the road as we would come to an unexpected meeting, her handling of a flower I might give her in a courtesy, her most indifferent word as we met or parted, became a precious clue I must ponder on for hours. And the more I weighed these things, the more confused thereafter I became in her presence. "If I were in love with the girl," I had to say to myself at last, "I could not be more engrossed on ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... may possibly be found in Vettorio Ghiberti's drawing of a bell, the rim of which is covered with similar hieroglyphics. The artist has transcribed in plain writing a pleasant Latin motto which one may presume to be the subject of the inscription. If this were accurately deciphered a clue might be found to ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... financier to the keenest good-natured scrutiny, he did not show a sign or give them any clue. He sat down quietly, and began talking casually to the group by the tea-table, while he methodically spread his bread and butter with blackberry jam. Such delicious schoolroom teas the company indulged in, at the hospitable tea-table of Montfitchet! He did not ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... and projects as nothing else does, so that no estimate of its influence can be excessive. When we take a walk, read a book, make a dress, hire a servant, visit a friend, attend a concert, choose a wife, cast a vote, enter into business, we always do it in the hope of attaining something good. The clue of goodness is accordingly a veritable guide of life. On it depend actions far more minute than those just mentioned. We never raise a hand, for example, unless with a view to improve in some respect our condition. Motionless we should remain forever, did we not believe ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... dye wool or other fibres by themselves. Some are coloured bodies, such as fustic, logwood, Persian berries, Anthracene yellow, etc., but many are not so, and some possess but little colour, which, moreover, gives no clue to the colours that can ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... in this house who's responsible, I guess," said Babe. "Babbie's lost a valuable pin too, and Geraldine Burdett has lost a ring. Oh, about two weeks ago Gerry's was taken, and Babbie's before that. They've been keeping dark and trying to get up a clue, but they can't. They'll be all off when they hear ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... cloak, that he might be armed against the devouring beast. And she provided him besides with a ball of thread, bidding him to fasten the end of it to the entrance of the Labyrinth, and unwind it as he went in, that it might serve him as a clue to find his way ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... their hunting they found both the hut and the sheds empty. Loudly they cried: 'Lyma! Lyma!' But no voice answered them; and they fell to searching all about, lest perchance their sister might have dropped some clue to guide them. At length their eyes dropped on the thread which lay on the snow, and they set out to ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... to peace of soul. He never noticed the soft indulgence of Diana, for, as he glanced streetward, he recalled the incident of Josef and the stranger. Drawing an easy-chair into the zone of moonlight he lit a cigar and strove desperately to find a clue. ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... the chance of a clue. "I thought," Macandrew quietly soliloquized, "he knew better than that. He's been a failure, but all the same, he's got a better head than most of us. She's sure to bring him ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... orders and not persons. This would ruin him with the Tiers-Etat, and it is not possible he could continue long to give satisfaction to the Noblesse. I have not hesitated to press on him to burn his instructions, and follow his conscience as the only sure clue, which will eternally guide a man clear of all doubts and inconsistencies. If he cannot effect a conciliatory plan, he will surely take his stand manfully at once with the Tiers-Etat. He will in that case be what he pleases with them, and I am in hopes ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... side, and that the liver and other internal organs show a generous disregard for strict and formal symmetry. In this irregular distribution of those human organs which polite society agrees to ignore, we get the clue to the irregularity of right and left in the human arm, and finally even the particular direction of the printed letters now ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... own. But he did not seem to notice my intent gaze, and following his train of thought, he muttered: 'Chance! It was necessary that they should think so, and they did think so. And yet the cleverest detectives in Paris, from old Tabaret to Fortunat, both masters in the art of following up a clue, had exhausted their resources in helping me in my despairing search.' The agony of suspense I was enduring had become intolerable; and unable to restrain myself longer, I exclaimed, with a wildly throbbing heart: 'Then, ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... to our own times, the names most familiar to our ears are Ude, Francatelli, and Soyer, and they are the names of foreigners [Footnote: A fourth work before me has no clue to the author, but it is like the others, of an alien complexion. It is called "French Domestic Cookery, Combining Elegance and Economy. In twelve Hundred Receipts, 12mo, 1846." Soyer's book appeared in the same year. In 1820, an anonymous writer printed a Latin poem of his own composition, ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... loss to know whether to be pleased or not at his discovery. It might prove to be an important clue, on the other hand it might point to more violence than Berrington had anticipated. It was not an old collar, as Berrington could see by the date of it; apparently it had only been worn once, for there was no laundry mark upon it, though it was dirty, more dirty than a fastidious man like ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... me the link," he said, when I finished, "or, at least, let me see it? I consider it a most important clue." ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... condition so desirable to women, as to induce them to accept it for its own recommendations. It is not a sign of one's thinking the boon one offers very attractive, when one allows only Hobson's choice, "that or none." And here, I believe, is the clue to the feelings of those men, who have a real antipathy to the equal freedom of women. I believe they are afraid, not lest women should be unwilling to marry, for I do not think that any one in reality has that apprehension; but lest they should insist that marriage should be on ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... still remain, their significance having after a half century been interpreted by a lady of the house to whom they had long been familiar, but who had lacked any clue to their origin until, in the course of a private investigation, she determined beyond a doubt their relation to Church. The chamber has two windows in the north front, and two overlooking the ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... and reflected. She had one of her moments of clever guesswork over him. Rookie was a simple proposition. She could always, she had once boasted to him, find him out. And reaching about for the clue, suddenly she had it and ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... at high temperatures, will soften the peroxide, and make the plates unfit for further use. Old positives are soft, clue to the natural deterioration of the paste ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... an addressed envelope, used to hold a few pins—the pins stuck in and the paper rolled up, you know. There was just enough of it to guess the address by—that of the office next door; and it was the only clue they had. So they came along here at once and knocked up the housekeeper. He went with them and instantly recognised Denson, disguised in labourer's clothes, but Denson, ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison |
