"Baffling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beat against light and baffling winds, making but little progress; on the third, the breeze sprang up strong from the southward, until it increased to a gale, and the fleet were blown down to the northward of the bay. On the seventh day the Ter Schilling found herself alone, but the ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... question whether this probability has been even seriously impaired by such advance, seeing that although this advance has revealed a speculative raison d'etre of the mechanical precision of nature, it has at the same time shown the baffling complexity of nature; and therefore, in view of what has just been said, leaves the balance of probability concerning the existence of a God very much where it always was. For stay awhile to contemplate this astounding complexity of harmonious nature! Think of how much ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... officer. "What has he got to do with it?" He turned to MacNair as if expecting an answer. But MacNair remained silent. "Why don't you charge Lapierre with the crimes you told me he was guilty of?" taunted the girl. Again she saw that baffling twinkle in the grey eyes of the ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... himself during the forenoon was a profound mystery. He rose before daybreak, and disappeared no one knew where, or for what purpose. His companions in adversity endeavored in vain to discover his secret; he was determined to conceal his movements, and succeeded in baffling their curiosity. To judge, however, by the ardor with which he worked, he was engaged in some one of those schemes that are termed follies before success, but which, after success, are universally ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... early period of his administration, Fonseca appears to have made some attempts to thwart the admiral's wishes, attempts which Columbus, now at the zenith of royal favour, had no difficulty in baffling. As regards the household, for instance, Fonseca demurred to the number of footmen which the admiral proposed for his domestic establishment. The admiral appealed to the sovereigns, who allowed his claim, ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... slowly up the China Sea on the first of the southwest monsoon. At that period of the year, however, the monsoon is weak and unsteady; and after clearing the northern end of Luzon the Retriever kicked round in a belt of light and baffling airs for a week. Then the monsoon freshened somewhat and the Retriever once more rolled lazily away on her course, with young Matt Peasley humming chanteys on her quarter-deck and pondering the mystery that confronts all mankind in their first adventure in fatherhood. Would it be ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... a newer and better personality dominating that old, unhappy, ignorant self. If at times the man glimpsed that other shadowy self of hers, it was part of her mysterious appeal, her enthralling, baffling charm. It invested her with a shade of inscrutable, prescient sorrow, as of old unhappy far-off things. He hadn't the faintest idea of Nancy Simms, a creature utterly foreign to his experience. And because she did not love him, Anne Champneys never spoke of that old self, never ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... driven back by the baffling smoke and the flames that were now licking all over the dry ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... farther" barred them from fruition of the harvest they should have been the first to reap. The very men who most insisted that specific difference was the accumulation of differences so minute as to be often hardly, if at all, perceptible, could not see that the striking and baffling phenomena of design in connection with organism admitted of exactly the same solution as the riddle of organic development, and should be seen not as a result reached per saltum, but as an accumulation of small ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... departments. To this principle may be ascribed the wonderful ingenuity shown of late years in protracting and interrupting negotiations. Hence the cunning measure of appointing as ambassador some political pettifogger skilled in delays, sophisms, and misapprehensions, and dexterous in the art of baffling argument; or some blundering statesman, whose errors and misconstructions may be a plea for refusing to ratify his engagements. And hence, too, that most notable expedient, so popular with our government, of sending out ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... such conditions as age, sex, occupation, and religion does not offer any problem as difficult and baffling as that involved in the relation of suicide to weather, nor any as curious and suggestive as that which connects suicide with war; but there is hardly a phase of the subject that does not present some more or less interesting question. The researches of Durkheim and Gubski show that, after the period ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... J. L. Hammond with an independence of idealism to which I shall always think that we owe much of the cleaner political criticism of to-day; and Belloc himself was writing in it studies of what proved to be the most baffling irony. To understand how his Latin mastery, especially of historic and foreign things, made him a leader, it is necessary to appreciate something of the peculiar position of that isolated group of "Pro-Boers." We were a minority ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... well that we were unaware of their baffling fears, when the vigorous efforts incited by the memorial presented by Reed to Commodore Stockton, the military Governor of California, were ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... it doesn't matter," spoke up Tom Reade. "We have just one move more to make in this baffling game, and then I fancy we shall have won. When Mr. Sambo Ebony, as I have nicknamed him, is safely jailed I think we shall find ourselves undisturbed in the future. We shall then be permitted to go ahead and ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... ago, when I was on board a sailing ship, that we had baffling winds as we tried to run up the coast; and morning after morning for a week we used to come up on deck, and there were the same windmill, and the same church-tower that we had seen last night, and the night before and the night before that. That is the sort of voyage that a great ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... digging with renewed energy; I should yet find the grand depot where all these passages centred; but the farther I excavated, the more complex and baffling the problem became; the ground was honeycombed with passages. What enemy has this weasel, I said to myself, that he should provide so many ways of escape, that he should have a back door at every turn? To corner ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... effected; very desperate and bloody, we are told by the Naval Beachmaster: and indeed we can see some of the dead, but the Lancashire Fusiliers hold the beach though we don't seem yet to have penetrated inland. By Sedd-el-Bahr, where we hove to about 6.45, the light was very baffling; land wrapped in haze, sun full in our eyes. Here we watched as best we could over the fight being put up by the Turks against our forlorn hope on the River Clyde. Very soon it became clear that we were being held. Through our glasses we could quite clearly watch the sea being ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... remained open, but carefully guarded night and day, while we were permitted on deck for air and exercise only in squads of ten, two hours out of every twenty-four. This alone served to break the dread monotony of the voyage, for while we almost constantly encountered baffling head winds, no other storm of any magnitude obstructed our passage. The brig carried heavy canvas, and the skipper loaded her with all she could bear, but at that she was a slow sailor, dipping so deeply in a seaway as to ship considerable ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... the two sections of the country apart except the possible intervention of foreign soldiery. Hence, all considerations pointed to the wisdom of dislodging the French invaders from American soil, and thus baffling "the designs of Napoleon to subject our Southern people to the ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... completely detached. But Cam had gotten to them somehow—or he would not have returned from his first trip with that pouch of Koros stones. Only, among his records, salvaged on Limbo, he had left absolutely no clue as to how he had beaten down native sales resistance. It was baffling. But patience had to be the middle name of every Trader and Dane had complete faith in Van. Sooner or later the Cargo-master would find a key to unlock ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... hear or read of a case which contains any baffling features, I am apt to feel some hidden chord in my nature thrill to one fact in it and not to any of the others. In this case the single fact which appealed to my imagination was the dropping of the stolen wallet in that upstairs room. Why did ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... what he suffers day by day only those can understand who have had the privilege of access to this hero: the most sensitive and the gentlest of men, silent and reserved; a man of controlled emotions, modest with a timidity that is at once baffling and delightful; loving his people less as a father loves his children than as a son loves his adoring mother. Of all that cherished kingdom, his pride and his joy, the seat of his happiness, the centre of his love and his security, there is left intact but a handful of cities, which are threatened ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... and I could find it in my heart to regret it. Because, to speak frankly, the present volume will do little to add to the reputation so deservedly won by the other. It is a tangle of complications, which, since they have nothing solid to rest upon, begin by baffling, and end by boring, the reader who strives to keep pace with them. A young officer, wishful to dine at a smart hotel and having no appropriate clothes, is struck with the idea of pretending to be a foreign royalty, and thus incapable of sartorial indiscretion. And, as all sorts of assassins ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... own life, so bitter a foe to her own happiness? Leonardo da Vinci might have painted her, less sensual and cruel than his women, more restless and disharmonic, but physically, spiritually enticing, and, by her refusals to surrender either to her spirit or her senses, baffling her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... went during that swoon I cannot tell. Whatever she saw, or wherever she travelled in her trance on that strange night she kept her own secret; never whispering a word to Memory, and baffling imagination by an indissoluble silence. She may have gone upward, and come in sight of her eternal home, hoping for leave to rest now, and deeming that her painful union with matter was at last dissolved. While she so deemed, an angel may have ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... wind is dreaded, with good reason, in Rosnacree Bay. It descends from the mountains in vicious squalls. It catches rushing tides at baffling angles and lashes them into white-lipped fury. Sturdy island boats of the larger size, boats with bluff bows and bulging sides, brave it under their smallest lugs. But lesser boats, and especially light pleasure crafts like the Tortoise do well to lie snug at their moorings till ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... pushed with great vigor. A powerful squadron under Admiral Cervera, which had assembled at the Cape Verde Islands before the outbreak of hostilities, had crossed the ocean, and by its erratic movements in the Caribbean Sea delayed our military plans while baffling the pursuit of our fleets. For a time fears were felt lest the Oregon and Marietta, then nearing home after their long voyage from San Francisco of over 15,000 miles, might be surprised by Admiral Cervera's fleet, but their fortunate ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... all enchanted things of earth and air, this preciousness has been drawn. From the south wind that breathed a century and a half over the green wheat; from the perfume of the growing grasses waving over heavy-laden clover and laughing veronica, hiding the green finches, baffling the bee; from rose-lined hedge, woodbine, and cornflower, azure blue, where yellowing wheat stalks crowd up under the shadow of green firs. All the devious brooklets' sweetness where the iris stays the sunlight; all the wild woods hold of beauty; all the broad hills ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... Clairdyce's broad back kept intervening—almost intentionally, it seemed. When Noble tried to place himself in a position to attract Julia's attention, this back moved, too, and Noble's nose but pressed black cloth. And the noise everybody made was so baffling that, in order to be heard, Julia herself was shouting. Finally Noble contrived to squirm round the obtrusive back, and protruded his strained face among all ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... States partly out of the Union; the yet unfinished ranks of the Southern Confederacy; the baffling questions of compromise with the claims and rights of the South to national property are agitated. The incredulous folly of the North and the newspaper sympathy of the great Northern cities drag the ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... piece of mental work, and encountering a distraction, such as the sound of the phonograph downstairs, may, of course, give up and listen to the music, but, if he is very intent on what he is doing, he puts more energy into his work and overcomes the distraction. When he encounters a baffling problem of any sort, he does not like to give it up, even if it is as unimportant as a conundrum, but cudgels his brains for the solution. As a general proposition, and one of the most general propositions that psychology ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... still in the domain of practice and administration—I should put his singular, perhaps an unrivalled, tact in the management of men, and a judgment of intuitive shrewdness as to the best outlet from perplexed and often baffling situations. He had, in its highest and best development, the genius of common sense. These rare gifts of practical efficiency were, during the whole of his Kingship, yoked to the service of a great ideal. He was animated every day of his ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... the sermons appealed to men to go back into their own thoughts and feelings, and there challenged them; were not the preacher's words the echoes and interpreting images of their own deepest, possibly most perplexing and baffling, experience? From first to last this was his great engine and power; from first to last he boldly used it. He claimed to read their hearts; and people felt that he did read them, their follies and their aspirations, the blended and tangled web of earnestness and dishonesty, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... had ended his task was baffling O'Connor, the bridge contractor. For the irregular, winding gouge in the earth, reminder of the day when some tremendous torrent teemed there from the mountains hundreds of miles to the west, was more than a mere cutting to fill. Eleven hundred yards, one ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... nebular construction of Laplace has its own difficulties; yet what noble or aspiring mind does not find interior warranties for the truth of that audacious synthesis? Is it that the soul darts responsive impartments to the heavens? that the whirl is elemental in the mind? that baffling intervals stretch deeper within us, and shoals of stars with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... and squally, but we made great progress, along the land to the S.W.b.W., and the Griper, by keeping up tolerably with the Hecla, in some measure redeemed her character with us. Having arrived off Cape Providence at eleven P.M., the wind became light and baffling, so that we had just got far enough to see that there was a free and open channel beyond the westernmost point visible of Melville Island, when our progress was almost entirely stopped for want of a breeze to enable us to take advantage ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... it takes no rise From outward things, whate'er you may believe: There is an inmost centre in us all, Where truth abides in fulness; and around Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, This perfect, clear perception—which is truth; A baffling and perverting carnal mesh Blinds it, and makes all error: and 'TO KNOW' Rather consists in opening out a way Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape, Than in effecting entry for a light Supposed ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... be made) is the earliest of the plays of Ibsen in which the psychological interest is predominant, and in which there is no attempt to disguise the fact. Nothing that has since been written about this drama, the very perfection of which is baffling to criticism, has improved upon the impression which Georg Brandes received from it when he first read it forty years ago. The passage is classic, and deserves to be cited, if only as perhaps the very earliest instance in ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... explanation might be made. In the first place, the object in recording these tales has been a literary one, not a linguistic one. In the second place, the number of distinctly different languages represented by the originals might be baffling even to the reader interested in linguistics, especially as our method of approach has been from the point of view of cycles of stories, and not from the point of view of the separate tribes telling them. In the third place, the form of prose ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... light and baffling winds so that labor as they might, it was fully dark when the Pilgrim pinnace entered what is now Barnstable, then Cummaquid Harbor. Anchoring for safety, they lay down to get such rest as the position ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... legal right to inspect the printer's books. But this is valueless. The printer would cook his books to please the publisher. You can have no conception of the villany done under all these sharing agreements. But forewarned forearmed. Think of some way of baffling this invariable fraud. Ask a knowing printer some way. Do ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... read "hypnotism," we shall have a sufficient, and what seems to me the only satisfactory, explanation of the Lyon episode and of the most baffling of Home's feats, his levitations, elongations, and the like. For the rest, bearing in mind the fate of other dealers in turning tables and dancing chairs, he may fairly be regarded in the light Browning regarded him, that is to say ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... She sat for hours baffling the inquisitor, foreseeing his wiles by intuition, evading his masked pitfalls by instinct. She was terribly afraid of him, yet more afraid of herself, afraid that she would break down and become a brainless, weeping thing. It was the sincerity ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... the slanting sunlight on her hair, the turn of her wrist as she held the reins, her apparent unconsciousness of all outward things enthralled him. A spell hung round him like a mist, blinding and baffling all clearer thought. And because Louise knew his heart, knew that his homage was not of books, but of his very self, she lingered in the dream whose thread she might have snapped ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... genteel, a good many were young men of gentle birth from the public schools and universities. Paul's infallible instinct drew him into timid companionship with the last. He knew little of the things they talked about, golf and cricket prospects, and the then brain-baffling Ibsen, but he listened modestly, hoping to learn. He reaped the advantage of having played "the sedulous ape" to his patrons of the studios. His tricks were somewhat exaggerated; his sweep of the hat when ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... at least is clear; that the rock is well nigh insurmountable to those who know not the passes; that strict watch, baffling even Welch spies, is kept night and day; that the men on the summit are desperate and fierce; that our own troops are awed and terrified by the belief of the Welch, that the spot is haunted and the towers fiend-founded. One single defeat may lose us two years ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... plunged outward, falling heavily. Again the sailors rushed, attempting to clinch. They massed upon Dextry only to grasp empty air, for he shifted with remarkable agility, striking bitterly, as an old wolf snaps. It was baffling work, however, for in the darkness his ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... to a day, from the date of our departure from Roua Poua when we at length cleared the calm belt and got the first breath of the north-east Trades in latitude 3 degrees 47 minutes North, and longitude 158 degrees 55 minutes West, having been driven back almost as far east as Christmas Island by the baffling winds and furious squalls with which we had been obliged to contend; and this brought the dangerous Marshall group right athwart our track. Therefore, the poor old skipper being still unwell, and quite unfit for duty, I decided to make a good ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... and wave, and the power of man. It had been the 16th of April when he was rescued from the devouring sea; some days had been spent by the leisurely Dutchman in providing fresh supplies, and the stout bark's favourite maxim seemed to be, "the more haste the less speed." Baffling winds and a dead calm helped to second this philosophy, and the first week of June was past before they swung to their ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... the diviner's knack of reaching their hidden springs. During the days that followed, the young doctor gave Bernald farther details about John Winterman: details not of fact—for in that respect his visitor's reticence was baffling—but of impression. It appeared that Winterman, while lying insensible in the Park, had been robbed of the few dollars he possessed; and on leaving the hospital, still weak and half-blind, he had quite simply and unprotestingly accepted ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... of Doom. A loud sea and ominous, and it was hard for Count Victor, in that welter of midnight voices, to hear the call of an owl, yet it came to him by and by, as he expected, with its repetition. And then the flageolet, with its familiar and baffling melody, floating on a current of the wind that piped about the castle vents and sobbed upon the stairs. He opened his door, looked into the depths that fell with mouldering steps into the basement and upwards to the flight where the Baron had been going. Whether he ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... following her wherever she moved, made no secret of his adoration. He was nearly always by her side, driving off other devotees when he chose with a cool high-handedness which sometimes amused, sometimes infuriated Tony. She found the man a baffling and fascinating combination of qualities, all petty selfishness and colossal egotisms one minute, abounding in endless charms and graces and small endearing chivalries the next; outrageously outspoken at times, at other times, reticent to the point of ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... up of small things. We must break wholes up into fractions, and then seek their common multiple. Only thus can we deal with them. We deal with God by limiting Him and breaking Him up into his attributes, or by conceiving Him under the figure of the Trinity. He is thus less baffling to us. We can handle Him the better. We make a huge man of Him and then try to dodge the consequences of our ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... individual of the wild kindreds, furred, feathered, or finned, achieves the distinction of baffling man's efforts to undo him, his doom may be considered sealed. There is no beast, bird, or fish so crafty or so powerful but some one man can worst him, and will take the trouble to do it if the game seems to be ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... be left to go over his coming feast. There was Latin, English, and, alas! baffling Dutch. High or Low it was all the same to him. What excited his curiosity most was the Enchiridion Militis Christiani of Erasmus—in Latin of course, and that he could easily read—but almost equally exciting ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... and had succeeded, at the point of the pike, in establishing a safe egress for the twelve hundred visitors, it was then first ascertained that all traces of The Masque had been lost in the smoke and subsequent confusion; and that, with his usual good fortune, he had succeeded in baffling his pursuers. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... minds attending her. The "feel" of an audience,—that indescribable sense of the composite human soul waiting on the initiative of your own, the emotional currents interplaying along a medium so delicate that it takes the baffling torture of an obstruction to reveal its existence,—cannot be taught. But it can and does develop with use. And a realisation of the immense latent power of strong desire and resolution vitalises and disembarrasses ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... dignity of its purpose; it had set out to heal. St. Moritz, on the contrary, set out to avoid healing. It was haunted by crown princes and millionaire Jews, ladies with incredible ear-rings and priceless furs; sharp, little, baffling trans-atlantic children thronged its narrow streets, and passed away from it as casually as a ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... against baffling winds, but went quite contentedly in any direction in which the wind chose to blow him. The consequence was that he visited many curious out-of-the-way places, and saw many strange sights; besides having a considerable number of peculiar adventures. ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... to say?' he broke out. 'That, for the present to EVERYBODY, is our only possible story. It will give us what we must have—time. And next—where is the second volume of Quain? I want that. And next—why have you broken faith with me?' Mrs Lawford sat down. This sudden and baffling outburst had ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... arrived in New York city, is drawn into a mystery, partly through financial need and partly through his interest in a beautiful woman, who seems at times the simplest child and again a perfect mistress of intrigue. A baffling detective story. ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... the island for six days—through baffling winds, and not because they did not steer a right course. As Thalassa had said, there was no difficulty in finding it, for they had only been one day at sea when the smouldering smoke of the distant volcanic cone came into vision, making an unholy mark against the clear sky which they never ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... It was baffling, puzzling, unbelievable, bordering, indeed, on the miraculous—herself, everything about her, her acts, her methods, her cleverness, intangible in one sense, were terrifically real in another. Jimmie Dale shook his head. The miraculous and this practical, everyday life were wide and far apart. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... ethereal and tireless than were ever given to mortal creature. From the pains Nature thus takes to sow the thistle broadcast over the land, it might be expected to be one of the most troublesome and abundant of weeds. But such is not the case; the more pernicious and baffling weeds, like snapdragon or blind nettles, being more local and restricted in their habits, and unable to ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... alteration seems quietly taking place in the costume of the pit, and not a few of the young ladies have come very close to a solution of a problem baffling to the Englishwomen belonging to what one may fairly regard as of somewhat higher stratum—the problem of inventing ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... robbers than regular soldiers. But when Pompey also passed over the Pyrenees, and Sertorius pitched his camp near him, and offered and himself accepted every occasion by which military skill could be put to the proof, and in this contest of dexterity was found to have the better, both in baffling his enemy's designs and in counter-scheming himself, the fame of him now spread even to Rome itself, as the most expert commander of his time. For the renown of Pompey was not small, who had already won much ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Nor had Quarrington himself evinced any particular emotion, either of dissatisfaction or otherwise, when she had confided to him the fact that she was expecting her god-daughter. And although the extreme composure exhibited by both Michael and Magda was a trifle baffling, Lady Arabella was fain to comfort herself with her confirmed belief in propinquity as the resolution of most lovers' problems ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... should be pleased; still he did not care whether they were pleased or not, and he did care much that the object of his admiration had not waited to hear him. The Contessa found the greatest amusement in his boyish sulk and resentment, and the rest of the evening was passed in baffling the questions with which, now that Bice was gone, her friends overpowered her. She gave the smallest possible dole of reply to their interrogations, but smiled upon the questioners with sunshiny smiles. ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... draft area is possible in water-tube boilers does not of necessity indicate that proper advantage of this fact is taken in all boilers of the water-tube class. In the Babcock & Wilcox boiler, the large draft area taken in connection with the effective baffling allows the gases to be brought into intimate contact with all portions of the heating surfaces and ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... and tried to make herself feel like a woman engaged to be married. Somehow the fact persisted in baffling her. There was an unreality about it that prevented her from tasting the full sweet. Engaged—to a rich man, and a rich man's son. Well, perhaps when Ward came back, ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... odors is the most baffling of all causes of bad eggs. Here the candler, so expert in other points, is usually helpless. Eggs, by storage in old musty cellars, or in rooms, with lemons, onions and cheese, may become so badly ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... had seldom been absent from Hamilton's face in life withdrew its very impress with his spirit. His features had something more than the noble repose, the baffling peace, of death; they looked as if they had been cast long ago with the heads of the Caesars. Gouverneur Morris, staring at him through blistered eyeballs as he lay in his coffin, recalled the history of the House of Hamilton, of its direct and unbroken descent—through ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... May a royal message was delivered, referring to the seditious practices of democratic societies, and intimating the necessity of taking measures for baffling their dangerous designs. The message stated that seditious practices had been carried on by societies in London in correspondence with other societies, for the purpose of assembling a convention to represent the people, in defiance of and in opposition ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... ladies who talk the snappiest of slang. But the mist and the sea have swept across Miss Holme's pages and blotted out the rest of the affair. Not Meredith nor Robert Browning at their most complex have been more baffling. I must admit, however, that the description of a game of mixed hockey, somewhere in the middle of the book, was delightfully fresh and vivid. Here, for a page or two, I could rest from my grapplings ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... Agg, who very seldom smoked, was puffing violently at a cigarette. She reclined on one elbow on the settee, her eyes fixed on the portrait of herself. George was really perturbed by the baffling queerness of the scenes through which ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... and dancing. But if the lad Albert, remembering the promise of his garrulous nurse, and the prophecy of his fond grandmamma, and the wish of his father and uncle Leopold, sought to read his destiny in the baffling blue eyes of the gay young girl, he seems to have failed, for he could only write home: "Our cousin is most amiable." Perhaps Victoria's own wonderful destiny, now drawing near, left little room in her heart or thought for lesser romances; perhaps the crown of England suspended over her head ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... Hesitation at this moment, when, in the fulness of time, the rivals stood face to face with arms in their hands, was the last thing that would have been expected of such dauntless warriors, such born leaders of men! and the battle of Prevesa presents a psychological problem of the most baffling and perplexing description. We are, however, anticipating events which will fall into their proper ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... three pairs of eyes drilling him as he answered: "It seems to me, sir, that—disregarding such baffling obstacles to independence as their absolute defenselessness as a nation, the profound ignorance of the masses, lack of a common tongue, and all that,—I think that in view of the fact that under our guidance they have advanced further than under four hundred ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... her speak on: and she not being forward, weightily pondering what she might say. "Should he dismiss his attendants and let her speak with him in the presence of fewer listeners?" the Grand Turk asked her kindly.' Again came an uncourtly monosyllabic 'No,' followed by another baffling silence. ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... in her eyes was baffling. Then there shot through the inscrutability of it a sudden gleam of malice that was like a spurt of flame. It was the fire which before now Howard's attitude ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... and the dimness of coming eventide had already spread over the water, but there was no rain. In fact, it had turned too cold for that. A fine baffling mist was falling, however, and this was condensing into ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... The doctrine at which such things hint that "Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness," but trailing vague traces and enigmas from a bygone history, "do we come" yields the secret of many a mood and dream, the spell of inexplicable hours, the key and clew to baffling labyrinths of mystery. The belief in the doctrine of the metempsychosis, among a fanciful people and in an unscientific age, need be no wonder to any cultivated man acquainted with the marvels of experience and aware that every one ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... With speed, thought baffling, unabating, Earth's splendor whirls in circling flight; Its Eden-brightness alternating With solemn, awe-inspiring night; Ocean's broad waves in wild commotion, Against the rocks' deep base are hurled; And with the spheres, both rock and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... she sat in the witness chair and coolly swore his life away, baffling with keenest wit at every turn the shrewd lawyer who baited, harassed and cross-questioned ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... very few moments, with his smile and his manner, find his way to any Dutchman's heart; he had that divine gift of winning over to him quickly all sorts and conditions of men; and my account of the ingenious and law-baffling contrivances, which you found at these little grocery shops, at once roused his curiosity to make a trial; but he decided that the club was better, if less picturesque. And he told me that all the men of the automobile party had received ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... her arm a friendly squeeze. Then he studied her again, the most baffling member of his staff. About five feet six. Lithe, hard, trained down fine—as a tennis champion, she would be. Stacked—how she was stacked! Not as beautiful as Sandra or Teddy ... but with an ungodly lot of something that neither of them had ... nor any other ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... play towards Elena. Both young men are in love with her, and the description of their after relations as friends, and the feelings of Elena towards them, and her own self-communings are interwoven with unfaltering skill. All the most complex and baffling shades of the mental life, which in the hands of many latter-day novelists build up characters far too thin and too unconvincing, in the hands of Turgenev are used with deftness and certainty to bring to light that great kingdom which ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... around the British Islands. There were four ships in this squadron: the Good Richard; the Alliance, under Pierre Landais (a depraved and dishonest Frenchman); the Pallas, under Cottineau (an honest Frenchman); and the Vengeance, a sloop-of-war. The prevailing winds were light and baffling, so the squadron ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... was so baffling and complex that Tom became completely oblivious to the passage of time. He sketched out plan after plan, only to crumple ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... lying on a mattress in the stern and giving his orders; for, though greatly recovered, he was still in want of quiet. We laid her head for the nearest port in Spanish America, for we could not risk the voyage home without fresh hands; and as it was, what with baffling winds and a couple of fresh gales, we were all worn out before we ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... proceeded to join his family at Rockstone Place, Southampton, where he was then doubly welcomed, as his father was in declining health, and died soon afterwards. Here Gordon passed a quiet six months, refusing all invitations with extreme modesty, and in every way baffling the attempts of relations, friends, and admirers to make a lion of him. He would not permit anyone to say that his suppression of the Taeping rebellion was a marvellous feat, and he evaded and resented all the attempts made by those in power to bring ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Boyce a long time before they remarked that his eyes were not quite of the same colour. The common English grey-green-blue was in both of them, but one had a bluer glint than the other. The oddity, when it was discovered, seemed to make the challenge of the eyes more defiant and more baffling, as though they gleamed from ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... months the little force moved about in Catalonia, the rapidity of its marches baffling the attempts of the archduke's forces to interfere with its operations. These were principally directed against various small fortresses, held by partisans of Charles. Several of these were captured, thus ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... The wind was very baffling just where we were; moreover we happened, unfortunately, to be on the lee side of the canal, and for a couple of minutes after cutting adrift we were in imminent danger of taking the ground after all our trouble. Between us, however, we succeeded in so far ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... card, I think," said the unknown, with baffling solemnity—"a card with my real name, my titles, offices, and ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... the situation in which the squirrel was. It was evident he regarded the trees at some distance with a wistful and anxious look; for, although he had succeeded so far in baffling his enemy, he still appeared to ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... the effort to adapt the framework of the administrative system to the fast changing conditions of a rapidly growing population Parliament piled act upon act, the result being a sheer jungle of interlacing jurisdictions alike baffling to the student and subversive of orderly and economical administration. It is computed that in 1883 there were in England and Wales no fewer than 27,069 independent local authorities,[257] and that the rate-payer was taxed by eighteen different ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... he may succeed well enough to deceive the ordinary man, but is rarely successful in baffling the expert. Even the most skilful culprit cannot wholly hide his individuality, as he is sure to relapse into his ordinary method occasionally. Then again, great care has to be used, and this can be detected by the ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... upon it we founded a strong hope for ultimate success; though we recognised more and more the fact that we had to cope with men who were more than ordinarily keen, clever, and skilled in the fine art of dodging and baffling pursuit. In fact, I was now thoroughly convinced that they were living and working upon the supposition that they were constantly watched and pursued, and that they governed their movements ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... the complexity of a written language. I dare say our use of it is quite baffling to him. And if he thinks of symbols as being unable to convey much information, then he might not be able to learn to read ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... figure was familiar by this time, and the subdued silken rustle of her skirts was a wonted sound. Ruth's face, naturally mobile, had been schooled into a certain reserve, but her deep, dark eyes were eloquent, and always would be. Hepsey wondered at the opaque whiteness of her skin and the baffling arrangement of her hair. The young women of the village had rosy cheeks, but Miss Thorne's face was ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... the king. But George was as obstinate for war as ever; and the country, stung to the quick by the attack of France, backed passionately the obstinacy of the king. But unlike George the Third, it instinctively felt that if a hope still remained of retaining the friendship of the Colonies and of baffling the efforts of the Bourbons, it lay in Lord Chatham; and in spite of the king's resistance the voice of the whole country called him back to power. The danger indeed which had scared Lord North into resignation, and before which ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... I won't distress you too much," the detective apologized grimly, "if I ask you a few questions. Fact is, I must. I'm investigating the circumstances surrounding what may turn out to be a baffling crime, and, irrespective of your personal wishes, Mr. Sloane, I can't let go of it. This ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... Nan the soul of her French ancestress lived anew. The charm of the frail and fair Angele de Varincourt—baffling, elusive, but irresistible—was hers, and the soul of the artist, with its restless imagination, its craving for the beautiful, its sensitive response to all ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... to pretend a misunderstanding; the man hit was to have thought that his opponent would fire only one shot, the man who escaped would express deepest regret, but maintain that the arrangement had been for two successive shots. I had very little doubt that these arrangements for baffling inconvenient inquiry would prove thoroughly adequate. For the rest, I made up a packet for Varvilliers containing a present for Coralie. To make any other preparations would not have been fair to Wetter; for my death, if it happened, must seem absolutely accidental. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... so sudden and so amazing that she didn't know what she had said in response to it, and she was quite sure that she hadn't done at all what Jean expected. Then this confirmation of her suspicions about Jean gave her an uneasy feeling about Georgia. That baffling young person was just leaving the gym as Betty got back to it, and the sight of her surrounded by a bevy of her admiring friends reassured Betty wonderfully. Nevertheless she decided to go and see Miss Ferris. There was something ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... doubt, had extended without a break till it merged into that of Epping—leagues away to the south. The modern clearance and tillage, however, which separated it now from Epping had served as a curiously effective barrier—more baffling than the Romans and Angles in their turn had found the original wildwood. No stranger seemed ever to find his way into that broad, minutely-cultivated fertile plain which High Thorpe looked down upon. No railway had pushed its cheapening course across it. Silent, embowered ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... affectionate to this sister, who was good, and who, in her way, he knew, loved him. But, somehow, she grew less herself as the years went by, and more and more baffling. It was the hard work, the many children, and the nagging of her husband, he decided, that had changed her. It came to him, in a flash of fancy, that her nature seemed taking on the attributes of stale vegetables, smelly soapsuds, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... felony, broke out of His Majesty's jail at Quebec.' He was '25 years of age, about 5 feet high.' We are not told whether or not he was captured as the advertisement is continued to the end of the year, but if he did not change his dress he could not have succeeded in baffling very long the keen eye of a detective, for "he had on, when he made his escape, a brown coat, red plush waistcoat, white stockings and cock'd hat.' If such a gentleman made his appearance in the streets of any Canadian ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... the strange incidents, it lay in the fact of a subtle undercurrent of connections, as if Fate were dimly pointing all the while toward the invisible culmination. Suddenly there would be a new manifestation of Auber's faculty, and a new instance would be added, illusive, baffling, and yet forming each time new threads in the vague warp and woof of something that we called our theory. "There it is again," we would say to ourselves, as we sent the ghostly shuttle flying in our ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... captain received orders to proceed to Malta, and to place himself under the order of the admiral there. For a time matters proceeded quietly, for the winds were light and baffling, and it took a fortnight to get to their destination. Here the ship was thoroughly examined, and the damage she had suffered more satisfactorily repaired than had been possible while ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... Till they seemed years, torture and solitude, Scorn and despair,—these are mine empire. More glorious far than that which thou surveyest From thine unenvied throne, O, Mighty God! Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain, Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb, Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life. Ah me! alas, ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... which he put the owner of the pony-horse Pansy, whom he visited repeatedly in a neighboring town, at a loss of time and money to himself, and with no result but to embarrass Pansy's owner in his relations with people who had hired him and did not wish him sold. Something of the old baffling mystery hung over Pansy's whereabouts; he was with difficulty produced, and when en evidence he was not the Pansy my friend had expected. He paltered with his regrets; he covered his disappointment with ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... have regarded the so-called negro problem as something which little concerns them. The South has struggled for years to solve this problem, with its many phases and angles, and never yet has found a satisfactory solution. Should the same baffling questions be forced on the North it would give the people something to think about, and many will gain a new appreciation of the perplexities of the southern whites. And the necessity of facing this new problem may come to the North much sooner ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... admirably, and at the Comedie Francaise less successfully by Got, is a second Figaro, with a strong likeness to Balzac himself. He is continually on the stage, and keeps the audience uninterruptedly amused by his wit, good-humour, hearty bursts of laughter, and ceaseless expedients for baffling his creditors. The action of the play is simple and natural, and the dialogue scintillates with bon mots, gaiety, and amusing sallies. The play had been conceived and even written in 1839 or 1840, and never did Balzac's ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... will; that is, he has power by one act of choice to choose another; by an antecedent act of will to choose a consequent act, and therein to execute his own choice. And if this be their meaning, it is nothing but shuffling with those they dispute with, and baffling their own reason. For still the question returns, wherein lies man's liberty in that antecedent act of will which chose the consequent act? The answer, according to the same principle, must be, that his liberty lies also in his ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... a sort of unacknowledged friendship. Their common love of books may have helped; for Casey—Heaven knew where or how—had picked up an education far above Gilbart's, and amazing in a common stoker. Also he wore some baffling, attractive mystery behind his reserve. Once or twice— certainly not half a dozen times—he had at a casual word pulled open for an instant the doors of his heart and given Gilbart a sensation of looking into a furnace, into white-hot ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is innocent of the ways of modern pedagogy, and deep and complicated are the snares of the Tamil alphabet with its two hundred and sixteen elusive characters. Baffling, too, are the mysteries of number combination. "If six mangoes cost three annas, how much will one mango cost?" Arul never had an anna of her own, how should she know? The teachers bamboo falls on her hard, little hand, ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... was that, having left the letter in the post for some years while I formed fours and saluted, I picked up a magazine in the Mess one day and began to read a detective story. It was a very baffling one, and I really didn't see how the murderer could possibly have committed his foul deed. But the detective was on to it at once. He searched the wastepaper basket, and, picking an envelope therefrom, said "Ha!" It was just about then that I said "Ha!" too, ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... morale of a group. "Nothing succeeds like success"; morale was at its best when the army was advancing and seemingly nearing the goal. Morale was also wonderfully good when the enemy was advancing, provided your side was holding well with a good prospect of bringing the enemy to a halt and baffling his offensive. On the other hand, nothing was so hard on morale as the failure of an ambitious offensive of one's own side; the sense of futility and hopelessness then reached its maximum—except, of course, for the case of obviously approaching ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... of politics, Octavio's conduct is unimpeachable. He does his duty in baffling a powerful traitor in the most effective way. It is not his fault that Wallenstein is deceived in him, and nothing requires that he go and undeceive him. He resorts to no tricks, he feigns no sentiments that are not his. He but tells the ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... however, Aria da Capo was written not only to be read but also to be acted, and being conscious that the exclusion of the usual directions, while clarifying the play to the reader, may make it bare of suggestions and somewhat baffling to the producer, I am adding here some remarks which have been found of value in preparing it ...
— Aria da Capo • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... then, madam, that if Hund was gone to join the pirates, Nipen would be very ready to give them a wind just now. A baffling wind would be our only defence; and we cannot expect ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... favourable until the vessel rounded the Land's End. After that it became baffling and fickle, and it was more than three weeks after the date of her sailing from Glasgow that the vessel entered the mouth of the Thames. By this time Ronald's boyish spirits had allayed all suspicion ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... motive of Lady Glencora's visit, and thought that she would at any rate gain something in the very triumph of baffling the manoeuvres of so clever a woman. Let Lady Glencora throw her aegis before the Duke, and it would be something to carry off his Grace from beneath the protection of so thick a shield. The very flavour of the contest was pleasing to Madame ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... carried by the King-Bear to his home amid inaccessible mountains. There they make a second attempt at escape, trusting this time to an eagle's aid; but it meets with exactly the same fate as their first trial. At last they are rescued by a bull-calf, which succeeds in baffling all the King-Bear's efforts to recover them. At the end of their perilous journey the bull-calf tells the young prince to cut its throat, and burn its carcase. He unwillingly consents, and from its ashes spring a horse, a dog, and an apple-tree, all of which play important ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... underneath the rare "Pour le Merite Order, with Swords." His bill amounts to about 7 francs, for he consumed the regular 4-franc table d'hote, plus a full bottle of red Burgundy. He tenders a blue 100-mark bill in payment and gets in return a baffling heap of change, including 1 and 2 franc Belgium paper notes, 5 and 10 mark German bills, Belgian and German silver, and Belgian nickel coins with holes punched in the centres. The General takes out his pencil and begins elaborate ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... clear, china-blue eyes, as shallow and baffling as bits of porcelain. "Hasn't he been here once for you already, while ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... purred Marjorie, highly delighted with the new venture. "And of course we'll arrange a password and signals, and I don't see why we shouldn't have a cryptogram, and write each other notes. It would be ever so baffling for the rest to find letters lying about that they couldn't read. ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... from his laboratory in the Bureau of Standards had sent forth many new things in the realms of chemistry and physics, and who, incidentally, had been instrumental in solving some of the most baffling mysteries which the secret service had been called ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... an eye disease very baffling to oculists, sapping the vision slowly but surely, as a rule, but occasionally destroying eyesight in a very short time. Electricians and those working in chemical laboratories are susceptible to ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... Flanders fought stoutly and well; at a third, such of the Templars as had not fallen at Mansourah, headed by their grand master who had so narrowly escaped the carnage, exhibited the fine spectacle of a handful of men baffling a multitude, and, despite the showers of Greek fire and missiles which fell so thick that the ground was literally covered with arrows and javelins, kept the enemy at bay. Even when the grand master fell mortally wounded, the Knights of the Temple continued to struggle; and when ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... silver-buttoned functionaries at the gates. Within rose two Wonder Houses gorgeous with dome and pinnacle, bewildering with gold and snow, displaying before the aching sight the long cool stretch of verandahs, and offering the baffling glimpse of vast interiors whence floated the dim sound of music and laughter; and bright, happy beings, in wondrous raiment, wandered in and out unchallenged, unconcerned, as if the Wonder Houses were ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... represent a distinctive epoch in aeroplane design and construction. Many problems still await solution, such as the capacity to hover over a position, and it is quite possible that these complex and baffling questions will be settled definitely as the result of operations in the field. The aeroplane has reached a certain stage of evolution: further progress is virtually impossible unless something revolutionary is revealed, perfected, and brought to ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all, That mystic baffling wonder alone ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... Baffling questions these, even to young philosophers. Dismissing them as foolish, Cally Heth turned from the rain-swept window, designing to rest awhile in her own room, before dressing for a little dinner at Evey McVey's. Forsaken as she felt, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... heard him moving about, or letting himself out of the house. He must have been careful. He must have crept about like a cat. Do you feel as I do, Murch, about all this; that it is very, very strange and baffling?' 'That's how it looks,' ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... young Kedar and his trusty slave, Lauto, hunted along the Calawassee, with hope to get a shot at a buck—a buck that wore a single horn and that eluded them with easy, baffling gait whenever they met it in the fens. Kedar was piqued at this. He drained a deep draught and buttoned his coat with an air of resolution. "Now, by my soul," quoth he, "I'll have that buck to-day or die myself!" Then he laughed at the old slave, who begged him to unsay the oath, for ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... of mystery hung about the new life, attracting him, yet baffling him at every step. He could not fathom or grasp the people with whom he lived intimately, they seemed beyond him, and yet he dared ask no questions, dared not go even to Monsignor for explanations. With the prelate his relations had to take that character which suited their individual standing. ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... go with her into her coffin while Constance and her mother had nothing by which to remember her, no tangible souvenir of her beauty. Then she fought for the scissors. She clutched at some one—always through those baffling veils—who was putting her into the bath by the bedside, and fought frantically. It appeared to her that this some one was the rather stout woman who had supped at Sylvain's with the quarrelsome Englishman, four years ago. She could not rid herself ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... gray-headed beneath its roof. Buns, once fresh and tender, become hard and misanthropic in its refreshment rooms, and look as if they had seen the littleness of existence and were disillusioned. But there the station stands, year after year, wrapped in a discreet gloom, always the same, always baffling and inscrutable. Not even the porters understand it. "I couldn't say, sir," is the civil but unsatisfying reply with which research is met. Now and then one, more gifted than his colleagues, will inform the traveler that his train starts from ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... limped badly, had been in his time one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police. As a detective, his flair had been extraordinary, and he had achieved triumphs by unravelling some of the most baffling cases of the day. ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... The baffling smile of the debonair club man returned to Shirley's face, as he twitted back: "Purely an altruistic inquiry, Dick. I feared that you might be risking your own heart and the modicum of freedom which you still possess. But I'll wager a supper-party for four that I'll ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... the French and give them check at Ulm, That fortress-frontier-town, entrenched and walled, A place long chosen as a vantage-point Whereon to encounter them as they outwind From the blind shades and baffling green defiles Of the Black Forest, worn with wayfaring. Here Mack will intercept his agile foe Hasting to meet the Russians in Bohemia, And cripple him, if ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... yet unseen, beaming across the ages, Brimful of fun And wit and wisdom, baffling all the ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... it we are still talking for nonpublication?" When Miles nodded, he continued: "This whole situation is baffling, Miles. It seems that the government here knew all about the weather conditions they could expect at periastron, and had made plans for them. Some of them excellent plans, too, but all based on the presumption that the natives would co-operate or at least not obstruct. You see ...
— Oomphel in the Sky • Henry Beam Piper
... one interpretation. And she was too nice a girl to compromise herself in the slightest degree. Although he told himself that a business reason had prompted her, and reflected that the business methods of women are baffling to the mind of mere man, his reasoning quite failed to reconcile him to the situation. In the end he had to acknowledge that he did not like the look ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... playing there. He seemed to have been wound up to make only one remark, 'It's sixpence.' Under these circumstances the attempt to discover whether the sixpence covered a day's tennis or a week or fifty years was rather baffling. At last I put down the sixpence. This seemed to galvanise him into life. He looked at the clock, which was indicating five past eleven and said, 'It's sixpence an hour—so you'll be all right ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... soaked to the buff despite oilskins, they stuck stubbornly to their posts. Perched beyond reach of shattering wavecrests, the passengers on the boat-deck huddled unhappily in the lee of the superstructure—and snarled in response to the cheering information that better conditions for baffling the ubiquitous U-boat could hardly have been brewed by an indulgent Providence. Sheeting spindrift contributed to lower visibility: two destroyers standing on parallel courses about a mile distant to port and to starboard were more often than not barely discernible, ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... the direction which had always been north to her, but which the sun plainly labeled "south." Certainly the sun mounted steadily toward the zenith, passing successively through the positions corresponding to four, three and two o'clock, in a manner absolutely baffling. ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... mark the sequel: 'She did not outgrow it.' He puts this in italics. 'The power within her gained in mastery, and, what is most singular and baffling to me, she continues to be a hearty, healthy child in all other ways, and yet at times she seems the calm centre of a whirlwind of invisible forces. Chairs, books, thimbles, even the piano, move to and fro without visible pushing. Electric snapping is heard in the carpet under ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... looked out of her twinkling eyes and saw a gentleman promenading on the quarter-deck before her, whom she must have thought she had somewhere seen before, but that his gigantic black mustache was a puzzle, and the little imperial on his chin was a baffling difficulty. Mr. Lovibond puffed the smoke from a colossal cigar, and wondered if the world held two pair of eyes like those big black ones which glanced up at him sometimes from a deck stool, a puffy pile of wool, two long crochet needles, and a couple of white hands, from which ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... more baffling than this simple, ever-recurring one: What am I? If I should decide what I am to-day, I discover that yesterday I was quite a different person. To-day I may be six feet in height, and climb the Alps; yesterday I lay helpless in swaddling clothes. Yesterday I was a thing of laughter ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... pronounced, and the care of the child be legally secured to the mother. The only doubt and the only danger are there. If you are not frightened by the prospect of a desperate venture which some women would shrink from, I believe I see a way of baffling the spies." ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins |
