"Deciphered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hemisphere for a peep at us. How, then, if it be announced in some such telescopic world by those who make a livelihood of catching glimpses at our newspapers, whose language they have long since deciphered, that the poor victim in the morning's sacrifice is a woman? How, if it be published in that distant world that the sufferer wears upon her head, in the eyes of many, the garlands of martyrdom? How, if it should be some Marie Antoinette, the widowed queen, coming forward on the scaffold, and presenting ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... slopes. Already when they ventured on the exposed part of the crest, they were saluted with a hail of shot which did not reach them. Some gun wads, carried by the wind, fell beside them; they were made of printed paper, which Paganel picked up out of curiosity, and with some trouble deciphered. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... of these halcyon days of early summer Rose Macleod was re-reading a letter from her friend Helene; which, though a mere elegant scrawl in the first place, and now yellow and worn with age, has been with some difficulty deciphered by the writers of this ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... explained that the above document has not previously been published, because the code could not be deciphered: the French Foreign Office succeeded only a few days ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... around the house to fetch Billy's horse, Rita was sitting at the window upstairs. She smiled through her tears and tossed a note to Dic, which he deciphered by the light of the moon. It was brief, "Please meet me to-morrow at ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... diary, during those Sainte-Colombe days, tells us her story far better than the words which it contains. The first few pages are filled with wild and incoherent sentences. There are passages that can scarcely be deciphered and others blotted with tears. Her suffering is not sufficiently well-expressed for it to be understood and more or less identified, but it can be felt and divined: it is a landscape of pain, it is the sight of an inner life which has received a grievous ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... figure of a gladiator, with an inscription above, of which only the first letters, PRIMI, remain. On the left wall of the fauces, near the extremity, and level with the eye, is another inscription, or graffito, in small characters, difficult to be deciphered from the unusual nexus of the letters, but which the learned have supposed to express the design of an invalid to get rid of the pains in his limbs by bathing ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... real clue. A bit of paper, evidently a page from a scrap book, which showed faint traces of writing. Parts were entirely eaten away, and after a time the following words were deciphered: ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... a letter, of a finger's breadth, written in cipher, and sealed with the Governor-General's seal. Colonel Frondsberger, commanding in Breda, was in this missive earnestly solicited to hold out two months longer, within which time a certain relief was promised. In place of this letter, deciphered with much difficulty, a new one was substituted, which the celebrated printer, William Sylvius, of Antwerp, prepared with great adroitness, adding the signature and seal of Don John. In this counterfeit epistle; the Colonel was directed to do the best he could ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... safely in her box, and with it a grimy bit of paper, brought to her one day by a trusty hand, to which Hugh found out a way of committing it "before he was took bad entirely." Theresa herself has never deciphered its wild scrawls, being an unlettered person, but its bearer read it over to her until she knew it by heart every word. "For your own self the yella ribin is," the letter ran, "but don't be wearin' it unless you like it. And I'm sorry the man got hit; but I do be dhramin' most nights that it's ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... want of packing than they had suffered from the wrath of the Medes. Among the complete tablets that were found in the two chambers several had colophons inscribed or scratched upon them, and when these were deciphered by Rawlinson, Hincks and Oppert a few years later, it became evident that they had formed part of the library of the ...
— The Babylonian Story of the Deluge - as Told by Assyrian Tablets from Nineveh • E. A. Wallis Budge
... The riddle is deciphered: the Meloid that eats Praying Mantes is Schaeffer's Cerocoma, of whom I find plenty, in the spring, on the blossoms of the everlasting. Whenever I see it, my attention is attracted by an unusual peculiarity: the great difference of size that is able to exist between one specimen and another, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... overboard and drowned. The oldest inhabitants place implicit confidence in the legend, and the title will always cling to the spot. Now and then a little neglected graveyard comes into view, and the moss-covered shafts bear quaint inscriptions. With considerable difficulty we deciphered the ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... House of Yandjali would have told Maxine infinitely more than it told Adams. She would have read in Meeus's face a story that he never deciphered; she would have seen in the people of the Silent Pools a whole nation in chains, when he with his other-people-begotten ideas of niggers and labour only saw a few recalcitrant blacks. It wanted skulls and bones to bring him ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... with a thick rope, and scribbled over, in an almost illegible manner, in all directions. At the top of the bundle was a poem, beginning, 'My love, thou art a nosegay sweet,' which Mr. Drury had no sooner deciphered, than he shook Clare warmly ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... to me, and when I had read that, for the first time in my life and the only time Lorimer's superiority was bitter to me. The rest I deciphered through scalding tears. ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... dandelion, the rose, the pansy, the clover, and a score of other flowers and plants (to say nothing of bushes and trees) have their leaves and petals pulled off, their seeds counted, their fruit examined, their seed-tufts blown away, their markings and other peculiarities deciphered and interpreted to determine the fortune of little questioners, the character of the home they are to live in, the clothes they are to be married in, what they are to ride in, the profession they are to adopt, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies; To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art. Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine That lights the pathway but one step ahead Across a void of mystery and dread. Bid, then, the tender light ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... slowly and painfully across the paper, and it was with extreme difficulty that we deciphered the scrawl. It was like a "spirit message," such as are delivered at seances of spiritualists for ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... service of this Lord Jermyn that Cowley had been introduced through his friendship with the Herveys. He went to Paris as Lord Jermyn's secretary, had charge of the queen's political correspondence, ciphered and deciphered letters between Queen Henrietta and King Charles, and was thus employed so actively under Lord Jermyn that his work filled all his days, and many of his nights. He was sent also on journeys to Jersey, Scotland, Flanders, Holland, or wherever else the king's troubles required his attendance. In ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... further knowledge of a man whose works are at the present moment appearing in Paris in all the pomp of an elaborate and complete edition, every scrap of whose manuscripts is being collected and deciphered with enthusiastic care, and in honour of whose genius the literary periodicals of the hour are filling entire numbers with exegesis and appreciation? The eminent critic, M. Andre Gide, when asked lately to name the novel which stands in his opinion first ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... it proves that the Prussians have given up in despair the idea of reducing us by famine; others that it is a clear evidence that Prince Frederick Charles has been beaten by General Chanzy. On Monday, Admiral La Ronciere received a letter from a general whose name could not be deciphered about an exchange of prisoners. In this letter there was an allusion to a defeat which our troops in the North had sustained. But this we consider a mere wile of our ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... both in his own handwriting. Then come nearly fifty pages of finely-written Latin poems, composed and written by himself, probably in London; then, there are scattered over some of the remaining pages a few short-hand notes which have been deciphered as texts of Scripture. On the last page of this quaint little treasure—only three by four inches large—are written in English some verses, one of which can be clearly read as, "Oh, first seek the kingdom of God ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... in the country was "tapped" and its contents made a matter of record. Every telegram sent by President Lincoln or the members of his Cabinet to the generals in the field, or received by them from those generals, was put on record at Washington, as were all cipher despatches, deciphered by General Eckert. On one occasion a despatch from General Rufus Ingalls to Senator Nesmith puzzled every one at the War Department except Quartermaster-General Meigs, who was positive that it was Bohemian. Finally an officer who had served on the Pacific coast recognized it as "Chinook," a ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... strokes, few vowels: so that their slow deciphering, I can assure the reader, has been no holiday. The letter also was pencilled in shorthand; and this letter, together with the second of the note-books which I have deciphered (it was marked 'III.'), ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... candles, announced the arrival, in the room adjoining, of "the Colonel Goddard and Senor Mellen." They desired an immediate audience. Their business with the President was most urgent. Whether from Washington their agents had warned them, whether in Camaguay they had deciphered the cablegram from the State Department, Everett could only guess, but he was certain the cause of their visit was the treaty. That Mendoza also ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... covered with hieroglyphic devices,—luminous circles and triangles, globes, rings, stars, flowers, figures of animals, even parts of the human body,—mystic symbols, to be deciphered only by the initiated. Ah! could I but have read them as in a book, construing all their allegorical significance, how near might I not have come to the distracting secret of this people! Gazing upon them, my thought flew back a thousand ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... engineer came in the office and I gave them the order. The conductor glanced at it for a moment and then said with a broad grin, "Say, kid, which foot did you use in copying this?" My copy wasn't very clear, but finally he deciphered it, and they both signed their names, the despatcher gave me the "complete," and they left. As soon as the train, which was No. 22, a livestock express, had departed, I made my O. S. report, and then heaved ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... than the Irish. I knew nothing of the world, nothing of the Orient, and here was an Oriental microcosm. The old serang, or bo'sun, was a gnarled and knotted and withered Malay, who took rather a fancy to me. Sometimes I sat in his berth and smoked a pipe with him. At other times I deciphered the wooden tallies for the sails in the sail-locker, for though he talked something which he believed to be English, he could not read a word, even in the Persi-Arabic character. The cooks, or bandaddies, ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... journeys in the furtherance of the Royal cause, visiting Flanders, Holland, Jersey, Scotland, &c. His chief employment, however, was carrying on a correspondence in cipher between the King and the Queen. Sprat says, 'he ciphered and deciphered with his own hand the greatest part of the letters that passed between their Majesties, and managed a vast intelligence in other parts, which, for some years together, took up all his days and two or three nights every week.' This does not seem employment very suitable to a man of genius. He seems, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... sepulchres, and, after a careful investigation, he came at last to a spot overgrown with shrubs and bushes, where presently he descried the top of a small column just rising above the branches. Upon this little column the sphere and the cylinder were at length found carved, the inscription was painfully deciphered, and the tomb of Archimedes stood revealed to the reverent homage of the illustrious ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... on it, supposing that they must not travel very far and because English is understood nearly everywhere. For years my slips brought no reply, so that at last I had it written in Chinese and here in the following November they have returned with other notes which I have had deciphered. One is written in Chinese and is a greeting from the banks of the Hoang-Ho and the other, as the Chinaman whom I consulted supposes, must be in Japanese. But I'm taking your time with these things and haven't asked you what I can ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... of a row of written notes. These things are only signs for the direction of the skilful musician who must himself make the sounds on his instrument before there is any music. So, too, if there is to be any real religion in the world, we Christians must do more than read and approve "the deciphered writings of illuminated men," we must act by the same Spirit that inspired those men, we must be "practitioners of the Divine Light," we must give "living expression to Divine love and righteousness," ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... the matter with the woman?" said I, "surely if I am not Francois—which God be thanked is true—yet I cannot look so frightful as all this would imply." I had not much time given me for consideration now, for before I had well deciphered the number over a door before me, the loud noise of several voices on the floor beneath attracted my attention, and the moment after the heavy tramp of feet followed, and in an instant the gallery was thronged by the men and women of ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... crumpled paper, so greasy from frequent handlings and so much worn by many foldings that the writing could scarcely be deciphered. Home? It was dated from the Union of Liverpool, and had come from his invalid wife and his ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... all the earth, as one gathereth eggs, therefore shall the Lord of Hosts send among his fat ones leanness, and under his glory He shall kindle a burning like the burning of a fire." In the inscriptions which have recently been deciphered on the broken and decayed monuments of Nineveh nothing is more remarkable than the boastful spirit, pride, and arrogance of the Assyrian kings ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... fallen royalty. Her note-book, in which she wrote her Latin prose exercises when a girl, still survives, bound in red morocco, with the arms of France. In a Book of Hours, now the property of the Czar, may be partly deciphered the quatrains which she composed in her sorrowful years, but many of them are mutilated by the binder's shears. The Queen used the volume as a kind of album: it contains the signatures of the "Countess of Schrewsbury" (as M. Bauchart has it), of Walsingham, of the Earl of Sussex, and ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... contrary, every human face is a hieroglyphic, and a hieroglyphic, too, which admits of being deciphered, the alphabet of which we carry about with us already perfected. As a matter of fact, the face of a man gives us a fuller and more interesting information than his tongue; for his face is the compendium of all he will ever say, ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... deciphered. "That crest above it looks familiar. I know, it belonged to that French lady who married ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... that there is anything very new in that. There rarely is in such inscriptions. There are three others, but so far as they have been deciphered they appear to be incomplete, and in two cases, at any rate, to much the same effect as the big one. Just pious reminders. The real interest of them lies in the decorative effect of the imposing procession of letters ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... and days, and weeks, and months, and years, and centuries, and ages of an infinite, an illimitable, an inconceivable past, whose vast divisions unfold themselves slowly, one beyond the other, to our aching vision in the half-deciphered pages of the geological record. Before the Glacial Epoch there comes the Pliocene, immeasurably longer than the whole expanse of recent time; and before that again the still longer Miocene, and then the Eocene, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... little arbor, thickly covered with a mat of vines. Thinking, perhaps, that it was the retreat of some animal, he thrust in his hand, and to his surprise drew forth a glass bottle, partly full of whisky. The enigma of his master's walks and inequalities of temper stood immediately deciphered. After the reflection of a moment, he carefully replaced the bottle in its position, and returned to his place in school. In the evening he communicated his discovery and the result of his meditations ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... Fortunately his anxiety was relieved and the journey rendered unnecessary by the receipt, next day, of a long letter from his son. It was Mirpah who took it from the postman's hand, and Mirpah took it to her father in high glee. She knew the writing and deciphered the post-mark. For once in his life Mr. Madgin was too agitated to read. He put his hand to his side, and motioned Mirpah ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... the sight, after ordering the corpse to be removed, when the position of one of the dead man's hands struck him. On examination, he found the fore-finger extended, as if in the act of writing in the sand, with the following incomplete sentence, nearly illegible, but yet in a state to be deciphered: "Captain, it is true, as I am a gentle—" He had either died, or fallen into a sleep, the forerunner of his death, before the latter ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... The volumes of Napoleon inconnu contain the text of these papers as deciphered for M. Masson and revised by him. My own examination, which antedated his transcription by more than a year (1891), led me to trust their authenticity absolutely, as far as the writer's memory and good faith are concerned. I cannot rely as positively ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... torn apparently from a note book. It was folded three times, and bore on the outside the superscription "To whom it may concern." The handwriting was peculiar, irregular, and not very legible. But as near as it could be deciphered, the note ran thus:— ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... on the envelope; there was not light enough to have deciphered it if there had been—but he had need for neither writing nor light. Those long, slim, tapering fingers, those wonderful fingers of Jimmie Dale, that seemed to combine all human faculties in their sensitive tips, had already telegraphed ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Theophilus and supported the iconoclastic policy pursued by that pupil when upon the throne. Theophilus appointed his tutor syncellus to the Patriarch Antony, employed him in diplomatic missions,[104] and finally, upon the death of Antony, created him patriarch. The name of John can still be deciphered under somewhat curious circumstances, in the litany which is inscribed on the bronze doors of the Beautiful Gate at the south end of the inner narthex of S. Sophia. When those doors were set up in 838, Theophilus and his empress had no son, and accordingly, ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... overlooked. Most manuscripts by ardent literary volunteers are fairly legible. On the other hand there are novelists, especially ladies, who not only write a hand wholly declining to let itself be deciphered, but who fill up the margins with interpolations, who write between the lines, and who cover the page with scratches running this way and that, intended to direct the attention to after-thoughts inserted here and there in corners and on the backs of sheets. To pin in scraps of closely written ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... signified nothing, or if anything, no more than a coincidence. He might have read the note and, at the same time, have been entirely ignorant of the cipher, or he might have received this hidden information from the lips of Peggy herself, who undoubtedly had deciphered ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... eyes," said Vivi with a look of having at last deciphered the mystery. "Besides, girls have spoiled you. You have had things too easily. No wonder ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... an innocent guide-board—the article of all others they most needed at that moment. Like the celebrated laws of Nero, however, the directions were posted very high, but Lemon being tall, our hero mounted on his shoulders and by the light of the moon deciphered the inscription. They had now no difficulty in choosing their way. On they pushed therefore; and during the black darkness of the night, crept through the tangled underwood, and over swamps where loathsome, crawling things that shun by day ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... a slim parchment volume he deciphered the faded legend, hand-written, in rust-coloured ink, "De tintinnabulis by Jerome Magius, 1664"; then, pell-mell, there were: A curious and edifying miscellany concerning church bells by Dom Remi Carre; another Edifying miscellany, anonymous; a Treatise ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... finished—not those words but that sentiment—was the misgiving of my prophetic heart; thought it was that gnawed like a worm, that did not and that could not die. 'How, child,' a cynic would have said, if he had deciphered the secret reading of my sighs—'at six years of age, will you pretend that life has already exhausted its promises? Have you communicated with the grandeurs of earth? Have you read Milton? Have you seen Rome? ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... surprised, and struck. Rising abruptly, he ran to the window, as if to assure himself, by a second examination of the cipher, that he was not deceived. The news announced to him in the letter seemed to be unexpected. No doubt, Rodin found that he had deciphered correctly, for, letting fall his arms, not in dejection, but with the stupor of a satisfaction as unforeseen as extraordinary, he remained for some time with his head down, and his eyes fixed—the only mark of joy that he gave being manifested by a loud, frequent, and prolonged ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... is the objective truth from which both these veracious records have been copied. But the monuments are not written in plain English, and need a key; and we must be first assured that Manetho's list has not been used for this purpose. We are told; for example, [55] that the name "Snefura," deciphered on a tablet found at the copper-mines of Wady Magerah, is the name of a King of the third dynasty, who reigned about 4000 B.C. Now if there were no doubt about the reading of this name on the tablet, and if his date and dynasty were as plainly there recorded, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... wise and vast plans; and these, if possible, would have been adopted. The substance of some of the leading ones I can recall from the journal of Her Highness and letters which I have myself frequently deciphered. I shall endeavour, succinctly, to detail such of ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... action for a daring robbery, and false wives notify their lovers of the time and place of a future meeting. All classes use the personal column for all purposes. Some of the advertisements are utterly unintelligible to any but those for whom they are intended. Others are easily deciphered. ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... APPALACHIAN REGION. We have here an example of an area the latter part of whose geological history may be deciphered by means of its land forms. The generalized section of Figure 70, which passes from west to east across a portion of the region in eastern Tennessee, shows on the west a part of the broad Cumberland plateau. On the east is a roughened upland ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... where rest the bones of the Knights Templar and their dependants, and many of the sculptured stones have become paving-flags. Worn and polished by the passage of many feet, the epitaphs are entirely defaced. Here and there a few letters of antique cut may with difficulty be deciphered; but soon no sign will survive to tell of this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... difficulty we have deciphered the legend thus:—The first letter B has evidently been a mistake of the engraver, who meant it for a P, the similarity of the sounds of the two letters being very likely to lead him into such an error. With this slight alteration, we have only to add the letter O to the first ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... at the order of an excited gentleman in evening dress. He stopped quickly enough, but, by the time his help was available, pursuit was hopeless; the one thing Curtis could do he had done—while running up the street he had deciphered the number ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... theories proposed solve, as it seems to me, the hieroglyphic mystery in which these sculpturings are still involved. They are old enigmatical 'handwritings on the wall,' which no modern reader has yet deciphered. In our present state of knowledge with regard to them, let us be content with merely collecting and recording the facts in regard to their appearances, relations, localities, etc.; for all early theorising will, in all probability, end only in ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... and others. The dexterity of the thing almost passes belief, only a few scarcely perceptible traces of the old writing being visible, the length of the new words being so chosen as to hide most of the old ones. What is even more incredible is that the original letter from Phoebe was deciphered at the British Museum by the courtesy of the gentlemen engaged in the deciphering and explanation ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... feeling, than any other in Richmond, and that night they made the beautiful Yankee their willing queen. She fell in with their spirit: there was nothing that she did not share and lead. She improvised rhymes, deciphered puzzles and prepared others of her own that rivaled in ingenuity the best of Randolph or Caskie or Latham or McCarty or any of the other clever leaders of this bright company. Prescott saw the wit and beauty of Mrs. Markham pale before this brighter sun, and the ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... whose poems are deciphered by the Bostonese and cultured English people. It has been estimated that B. could say more with fewer words and conceal his meaning better than any writer since the adaptation of the alphabet as a ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... He and Nevill looked at each other, but Nevill raised his eyebrows slightly. He had not thought it best, at present, to give the mystery of Cassim ben Halim, as he now deciphered it, into a French officer's keeping. It was a secret in which France would be deeply, perhaps inconveniently, interested. A little later, the interference of the French might be welcome, but it would be just as well not to bring it in prematurely, or separately ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the others, Borodin steeped himself in the lore and legends of the buried empire, familiarized himself with the customs of the Slavs of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, searched libraries for the missals illuminated by the old monks of the Greek church, deciphered epics and ballads and chronicles, assimilated the songs and incantations of the peasants and savage tribes of the steppes, collected the melodies of European and Asiatic Russia from the ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... a short piece of it is seen in the field of view, becomes decidedly manifest if a large scope is seen at once. The binocular glass was very valuable, however, when the words on a buoy, or the colour on the chequers of a beacon had to be deciphered. ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... have been preserved, the completest is the papyrus Sallier IV., which has been admirably treated by F. Chabas. Many days are noted as lucky, unlucky, etc. In the temples many Calendars of feasts have been found, the most perfect at Medinet Abu, deciphered by Dumich.] ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... change of groove he visited on Sundays all the churches within a walk, and deciphered the Latin inscriptions on fifteenth-century brasses and tombs. On one of these pilgrimages he met with a hunch-backed old woman of great intelligence, who read everything she could lay her hands on, ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... reconnoitre of the gentlemen, and then my eyes were naturally turned towards the lady. She was muffled up in a winter cloak, so that her figure was not to be made out; and the veil still fell down before her face, so that only one cheek and a portion of her chin could be deciphered: that fragment of her physiognomy was very pretty, and I watched in silence for ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... contributing something to my hosts. One day there appeared here a trained agriculturalist. I did not hide because during my winter in the woods I had raised a heavy beard, so that probably my own mother could not have recognized me. However, our guest was very shrewd and at once deciphered me. I did not fear him because I saw that he was not a Bolshevik and later had confirmation of this. We found common acquaintances and a common viewpoint on current events. He lived close to the gold mine in a small village where he superintended public works. ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... plague. This symbol was seen, with a goat butting at it, in June, 1896. There followed a famine and plague in India, which country is said to be ruled by the zodiacal sign Capricorn! The symbol was not deciphered till the event came to throw light upon it. In the same way a leaf of shamrock, denoting the Triple Alliance, has been seen split down the centre with a black line, denoting the fracture of the treaty. It would also seem to indicate that Ireland, whose symbol is the shamrock, ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... arrest the French police received additional evidence against him in the form of a cryptic telegram addressed to the Chateau, an infamous and easily deciphered message which, no doubt, had been sent with the distinct purpose of strengthening the amazing charge against him. He protested entire ignorance of the sender and of the meaning of the message, but his accusers would not accept any disclaimer. So cleverly, indeed, had the message been worded ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... dogmas and theologies, I sought thee in vain; in their churches and temples and mosques, I sought thee long, and long in vain; but in the Sacred Books of the World, what have I found? A letter of thy name, O God, I have deciphered in the Vedas, another in the Zend-Avesta, another in the Bible, another in the Koran. Ay, even in the Book of the Royal Society and in the Records of the Society for Psychical Research, have I found the diacritical signs which the infant races of this Planet Earth have not yet ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Provincial Congress of 1774, and physician-general to the patriot army. Pecuniary embarrassment is supposed to have led to his defection from the cause of his country. In September, 1775, an intercepted letter of his, in characters, to Major Cain, in Boston, was deciphered; and October 3, 1775, he was convicted by a court martial, of which Washington was president, of "holding a criminal correspondence with the enemy." Confined in jail at Norwich, Conn., he was released in May, 1776, on account of failing health; sailed for the West Indies, ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... seemed to pour itself forth, unchecked by wars and conquests; the great dynasties which rose and fell, leaving behind them gigantic works, and the records of fabulous luxury in the empires of China, Assyria, India, and Persia, of which the remains have been of late years excavated, deciphered, and confronted with the historical texts which we have inherited, and had only partly believed. And studying these new aspects of history, we are saddened, thinking that the sunrise comes to us from ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... Duke's hand reposes, in a paternal caress on the cherub's head—symbolical doubtless of his love of children. His right elbow rests upon a table, and the slender bejewelled fingers are listlessly pressing open a lettered scroll of parchment on which can be deciphered the words "A CHI T'HA FIGLIATO" (to her who bare thee)—a legend which the bibliographer, whose acquaintance with the vernacular was not on a level with his classical attainments, conjectured to be some fashionable courtly toast ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... pattern was so intricate and yet so suggestive, they were sure that some strange legend was written there in mysterious characters,—something holding a fateful reason for their ride together in the green woods. But just as they had almost deciphered the secret, the broidered shadow disappeared under a bush, leaving them in new perplexity. They looked for the story in the windings of the checkerberry-vine and blue-eyed periwinkle, on the lichens curiously ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... big centre-table the long strip of bluish paper covered with its incomprehensible dashes. "One of the oldest of devices for secret writing," he remarked. "This slip of paper was originally wrapped about a cylinder of a certain diameter and the message traced upon it, and it can only be deciphered by rerolling it upon another cylinder of the same diameter. Easy enough to find the right one by the empiric method—I mean experiment. Once you recognize the fundamental character of the cryptogram the rest ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... my faith in the seriousness of journalism. I had not done laughing when I opened another letter written in a fine, crabbed hand like the scratching of a diamond on a window-pane, and as I slowly deciphered its contents I could hardly believe what I read. It was from Samuel Bowles the elder, editor of the Springfield Republican, then as now one of the sanest, most respected, and influential papers in the country. He wanted a young man to relieve him of some of his drudgery, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... work involved the study of countless photos, covering everything from inscriptions to parts of machinery, and other details which furnished clue after clue to that superancient language. It was not deciphered, in fact, until several years after the explorers had submitted their finds to the world's foremost lexicographers, antiquarians and paleontologists. Even today some of ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... in the sands of "Chaldea," what these precious Tablets of the Gods might be, and particularly—for this was the real cause that had sapped the man's sanity and hope—what the inscription was that he had believed to have deciphered thereon. ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... the seal of her letter and between sobs and laughter deciphered the queer pot-hooks and printed letters with which Miss Moppet had covered the pages. Dear little Moppet; Betty could almost see the frowns and puckered brow with which the ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... words, 'Tragedy,' 'Awful Revelations,' 'Purity,' and other apparently inconsistent hieroglyphics might be deciphered. ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... of poor Louis Laplante lying at the camp-fire in the gorge tossing a crumpled piece of paper wide of the flames, where the Sioux squaw surreptitiously picked it up. The paper was foul and tattered almost beyond legibility; but through the stains I deciphered in delicate ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... to keep his advantage, for there was something to read on the upturned face that must not be deciphered in haste. ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... quoting in full. Its spelling and punctuation are extraordinary; and some of the words can not be deciphered. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... instance, she had mentioned—so I deciphered the intelligence— something about Horner marrying, as I thought, Lizzie Dangler; but, I now found out from Min, that my Downing Street friend was engaged only, not married; and, that the object of his choice was Seraphine Dasher, instead of the former young ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... there and then. It contained half a dozen words in code. He took it upstairs with him, strangely agitated, and there deciphered it. It bade him leave everything, come instantly to ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... correspondence with Gage. He had entrusted to a woman of his acquaintance a letter written in cipher to be forwarded to the British commander. This letter was found upon the girl, she was taken to headquarters, and there the contents of the fatal message were deciphered and the defection of Doctor Church established. When questioned by Washington he appeared utterly confounded, and made no attempt to ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... love in all its splendour, loveliness, fearfulness, terror and utter selfishness. Thousands of years hence, when Europe has sunk under the waves and fresh continents have arisen, perhaps a stray copy by hazard preserved in the Fiji Islands will come to light, will be deciphered by pundits, and a new race will see in it a primitive but consummate work of art, and the pundits will argue themselves black in the face about the name of the composer, whether he was Wagner or another man of the same name. In the meantime ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... this diary some years ago, and a friend of mine printed a few copies in an incomplete form, but the public never got them. Since then I have deciphered some more of Adam's hieroglyphics, and think he has now become sufficiently important as a public character to justify ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... recalled by the arrival of a large van, very handsomely appointed, drawn by valuable horses, mounted by several men of an appearance more than decent, and bearing on its panels, instead of a trader's name, a coat of arms too modest to be deciphered from where I sat. It drew up before my house, the door of which was immediately opened by one of the men. His companions—I counted seven of them in all—proceeded, with disciplined activity, to take from the van and carry ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... material for another work, the latter being written over the former. Such manuscripts are called palimpsests—written again after erasure. The original writing, which is very often the sacred text, can in general be deciphered, especially by the aid of certain chemical applications. Some of our most precious manuscripts ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... and gentle vision. If the feeling is veiled and somewhat aloof from the common ways of men, there is none the less a fine human sympathy concealed in it. I like to think that a new reading of earth may be deciphered from this text. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and kept it. I have it now with me. It has been examined hundreds of times; for a long time I was anxious to know the secret of its changed color, but I have never deciphered it. It is healthy, in good condition, sweet-tempered and very fond of me. It does not talk much, but its talk is innocent and rational. No morbid symptoms have ever appeared in it since I took it from the nunnery in Montreal. Its ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... incised on one of the small stone flags which form the vast floor of the nave. They stooped over it. "PRIAM FARLL," it said simply, in fine Roman letters and then his dates. That was all. Near by, on other flags, they deciphered other names of honour. This austere method of marking the repose of the dead commended itself to him, caused him to feel proud of himself and of the ridiculous England that somehow keeps our great love. His gloom faded. And do you know what idea rushed from his heart to his ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... (fifty-one years and two months after the date of Buddha's Nirvana), and we believe that satisfactory evidence in support of this date can be obtained in India if the inscriptions at Conjeveram, Sringeri, Jaggurnath, Benares, Cashmere, and various other places visited by Sankara, are properly deciphered. Sankara built Conjeveram, which is considered as one of the most ancient towns in Southern India; and it may be possible to ascertain the time of its construction if proper inquiries are made. But even the evidence now brought before the public supports ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... all the chief matters of life we are alone, and our true history is scarcely ever deciphered by others. The chief part of the drama is a monologue, rather an intimate debate between God, our conscience, and ourselves. Tears, griefs, depressions, disappointments, irritations, good and evil thoughts, decisions, uncertainties, deliberations, all these belong to our secret, and are almost ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Rampant too: troth I commend the Herald's wit, he has deciphered him well: A Swine without a head, without braine, wit, anything indeed, Ramping to Gentilitie. You can blazon the rest signior? can you not? . . . . . . . . . ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... has served H.M. faithfully being encouraged by hopes of preferment. He yearly increases H.M. Store to the value of L2,000 by taking the returns of such munitions as return from the seas unspent in H.M. ships, which formerly were concealed and converted to private use. He has deciphered so many deceipts as amount to above L11,000. He is ready to show a number of abuses by which H.M. pays great sums of money which do not benefit her service, and finally by his experience he has been able to do Her ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... fail to regard it as a great achievement of the spirit, which never again in the history of Christianity has made itself at home with such freedom and boldness in religion—is the product of a comparatively long history which needs to be deciphered; for it is obscured by the completed dogma. The Gospel itself is not dogma, for belief in the Gospel provides room for knowledge only so far as it is a state of feeling and course of action, that is ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... in ciphers. It is inserted here exactly as it was first deciphered at the archives of foreign affairs. To avoid repetitions, we have not inserted the answers of the minister; these were written in a tone of confidence and friendship, and accord almost on every point with the ideas of M. de Lafayette, which were, in a measure, adopted by the cabinet ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... history!—as though the career of any people—even of the lowest African savages possessing no record—were not a page in the general history of mankind, written by the hand of God Himself. The very lost races are a palimpsest to be deciphered by a seeing eye. To a philosophic and pious mind, the races themselves are marks of Divine chirography clearly traced in black and white as on their skin; and if this simile holds good, the yellow race forms a precious page inscribed in hieroglyphics ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... old inscriptions, often deciphered with difficulty after scraping away the moss and lichen, we occasionally discover one that has the charm of quaintness, or which touches our heart or sense of humour in such a way as to tempt us to copy it ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... the problem of keeping these conditioned relations crystalline at the same time that I should, in emulation of life, consent to their being numerous and fine and characteristic of the London world (as the London world was in this quarter and that to be deciphered). All of which was to make in ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... work. De Quincey pounces upon the above-named error with profoundest satisfaction, and tells us a pleasant little story about an old woman who thought that four million people had been once collected at Caernarvon. Middleton had found the figure wrongly deciphered and wrongly copied for him, and had translated it as he found it, without much thought. De Quincey thinks that the error is sufficient to throw over all faith in the book: "It is in the light of an evidence against Middleton's good-sense and thoughtfulness that I regard ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... blue, and scarlet, and crimson, on the delicate carving of the pillars on either side. But, on the whole, the boys were most proud of showing their friends the old school-room, on whose rude panels many a name may be deciphered, carved there by the boyish hand of poets, orators, and statesmen, who in the zenith of their fame still looked back with fond remembrance on the home of their earlier days, and some of whom were then testifying by their ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... of the written warning found in the murdered woman's hand—a warning which had been deciphered to read: "Be warned! He means to be at the ball! Expect trouble if—" Was that to be looked upon as directed against a man who, from the nature of his projected attempt, would take no one ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... was beginning to read deciphered a sign in a grocery store, "Families supplied." He asked his mother whether they could not ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... the Lanier letter as deciphered by William Dodge, though Pierre so thoroughly had hedged against possible miscarriage as to render intelligent interpretation impossible, except to one in possession of Dodge's sources ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... experiences in the course of the ascent from the tomb-chamber, and of how that prince of rascals, Ali Baba, and his thieves tried to frighten me into handing over the papyri, and how I worsted them. Then, too, we will get the rolls deciphered. I expect that they only contain the usual thing, copies of the 'Book of the Dead,' but there may be something else in them. Needless to say, I did not narrate this little adventure in Egypt, or I should have had the Boulac Museum people on my track. Good-bye, 'Mafish Fineesh,' as Ali ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... known to naturalists and to common experience, but a spirit, an animated creature that ages ago rose up out of the Yellow River, having on its carapace the mystic writing out of which the legendary founder of Chinese civilization deciphered the basis of moral teachings and the secrets of the unseen. From this divine tortoise which conceived by thought alone, all other tortoises sprang. In the elaboration of the myths and legends concerning the tortoise we find many varieties of this scaly incarnation. ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... See page 1 for an engraving and account of this famous stone. It was found over a century ago and its value was instantly recognized, but many years passed before its secrets were deciphered. It contains an inscription repeated in three forms of writing: the early Egyptian of the hieroglyphics, a later Egyptian ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... handed to the Kadi the little tablet given him yesterday by old Horapollo, describing it as a document addressed to Paula and desiring the Kadi to examine it. The heat had effaced much of what had been written on the wax, but most of the words could still be deciphered. The venerable Horapollo had already made them out, and was quite ready to read to the judges all that the accused—who by his own account, was a spotless dove—had written in his innocence and truthfulness for his fair one. He signed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... forgotten drawer in country book stores. But Michael recognized at once that it was a real certificate. He read it carefully. The blanks were all filled in, the date she gave of the marriage was there, and the name of the bridegroom though evidently written in a disguised hand could be deciphered: "Sty. Carter." Michael did not recognize the names of either the witnesses ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... dramatic. Jack took it with rising curiosity. Really, this began to assume a more serious aspect than he had at first thought could be possible. It was therefore with considerable interest he tore off the end of the envelope, and pulled out the enclosure, which proved to be a full page of writing easily deciphered. ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... being old, is something that still remains to be explained. If one stumbled, in the steppes of Tartary, on the grave of a Megalonyx, and, after long study, had deciphered from some pre-Adamite heiro-pothooks, the following epitaph:—'Hic jacet a Megalonyx, or Hic jacet a Mammoth, (as the case might be,) who departed this life, to the grief of his numerous acquaintance in the seventeen thousandth year of his age,'—of course, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... such blunders at times. A great many of them eased their feelings at the first glance, and then recalled their words as soon as they had deciphered the signature. This ended by making them cautious, and so with furtive glances they made sure of the artist's name before expressing any opinion. Besides, whenever a colleague's work, some fellow committee-man's suspicious-looking canvas, was brought forward, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... to-morrow evening, if you will come to my house, I shall expect to show you the entire letter neatly deciphered." ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... times, and tore it carefully into fragments. Checking his hand in the act of throwing these away, he put them in his pocket, as if unwilling to trust them even to the chances of being re-united and deciphered; and instead of ringing, as usual, for little Paul, he sat solitary, all the evening, in his ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Gratiolet would have easily deciphered in the cranium and physiognomy of this personage indisputable signs of combativity—that is to say, of courage in danger and tendency to overcome obstacles, those of benevolence, and a belief in the marvellous, ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... had ever done anything wonderful (or sometimes, no doubt, if he had not been famous for anything in particular), the history of his great achievements, real or fancied, was sculptured on the stone. These hieroglyphics have been deciphered in several instances, and we have learned from them a great deal ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... our knowledge of that country which is associated with the early history of the Chosen People. But the most valuable aid to Bible study came from the discovery of the Assyrian Royal Library, a series of clay tablets and cylinders covered with cuneiform inscriptions which were deciphered by Mr. George Smith of the British Museum. From these and from the records on the monuments of Egypt historical information has been derived of inestimable value in the ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... well," Morey's voice answered over the radio. "There may be some records we could take back to Earth and have deciphered. In a time like this, I imagine they would leave some records, hoping that some race might come ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... in the corner and began at once to apprehend the worst. I think I have as much assurance as any man, but it took all I had and more, too, when I unwrapped a gold medal the thickness and shape of an enormous checker, and deciphered the ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... after I had deciphered the epistle, I stood as if rooted to the floor. I felt stunned—my last hope was gone; presently a feeling arose in my mind—a feeling of self-reproach. Whom had I to blame but myself for the departure ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... scratching and scraping at what presently showed, even in that rising and falling light, as Roman lettering. Soon Cunningham himself began to lend a hand. He made out a date first, and he could feel it with his fingers before his eyes deciphered it. Gradually, letter by letter—word by word—he read it off, feeling a strange new thrill run through him, as each line followed, like a voice from ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy |
