"Cipher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... really Theobald's intense flirtation with Lady Bolsover, is the flattest piece of dull indecorum that ever met my virtuous eyes. They are dull, these people—keep him from quadrupeds, and Theobald is a cipher; and Lady B. has little more than the few ideas which she gets sent over with her dresses from Paris. I know it is mauvais ton to cry them down—but I cannot help it. My sincerity will ruin ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... Adams had sent three commissioners to France. The French Minister, Talleyrand, treated them ill, and sent secret agents to them to let them know that nothing would be done until they paid large bribes. The three Americans sent home cipher dispatches in which they told how they had been received. President Adams thought best to publish these dispatches, putting the letters X, Y, and Z in place of the names of the secret agents. These papers came to be known as the X, Y, and Z dispatches, and they caused great excitement ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... first moment since the news had come from the City Bank. I had not then stopped to analyze its character, for there had been only time to announce it. Now, however, I sat down at my desk and with a pencil and a piece of paper began to cipher out what the "412 millions" meant. As I figured, cold sweat began to gather on my forehead, and the further I figured the colder the sweat, until at last in an agony of perplexity I again called up Mr. Rogers. My agitation must have betrayed ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Snow Hill in the year of 1896, and there remained for eight years receiving instruction at the hand of a loyal band of self-sacrificing teachers, who not only taught me how to read, write and to cipher, but in addition they taught me lessons of thrift and industry which have proven to be the main saving ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... glass and wiping the cipher off, made a 5 in its place. Our customer quickly asked what ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... which it related. All was in order, but in alarming order for him, because each note only referred to the very essence of the business it alluded to, and related only to the exact point of its then relations with France. These laconic notes proved as enigmatic to Louis, as did the letters in cipher which covered the table. Here all was confusion. An edict of banishment and expropriation of the Huguenots of La Rochelle was mingled with treaties with Gustavus Adolphus and the Huguenots of the north against the empire. Notes on General Bannier ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... you have one big principle of the difference between sending messages and receiving them," said Bob. "Skill in learning to take messages either in code or cipher comes with practice. The more you work at it the faster you can go. You have a keyboard all installed and the only thing standing between you and an expert operator is patience. Speed comes sooner than you ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... and devoted the evening to the concoction of a letter to Senor Montijo, at Lucerne, reporting all that he had thus far done, also referring to Don Hermoso the important question of the yacht's armament, and somewhat laboriously transcribing the said letter into cipher. ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... wealth, they were extremely poor. Yet she did not care for money for their own household use so much as to give him the weight in parish affairs he so sadly needed. She felt that he was pushed aside, treated as a cipher, and that he had little of the influence that properly belonged to him. Her two daughters, their only children, were comfortably, though not grandly, married and settled; there was no family anxiety. But the work, the parish, ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... far as to be able to dictate letters from on horseback, and to give directions to two who took notes at the same time, or, as Oppius says, to more. And it is thought that he was the first who contrived means for communicating with friends by cipher, when either press of business, or the large extent of the city, left him no time for a personal conference about matters that required dispatch. How little nice he was in his diet, may be seen in the following instance. When at the table of Valerius Leo, who entertained him at supper at Milan, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Ambassador wrote that it was all labor lost; and even hurried off homewards in despair, leaving a Secretary in his place. The Brandenburg Court, nothing despairing, orders in the mean while, Try another with it,—some other Hofrath, whose name they wrote in cipher, which the blundering Secretary took to mean no Hofrath, but the Kaiser's Confessor and Chief Jesuit, Pater Wolf. To him accordingly he hastened with the cash, to him with the respectful Electoral request; who received ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... incapacity for telling the truth. In that, he was inferior to his wife in point of social evolution, for she had learned, from certain episodes which still filled her with mortification, that fibbing was bad form. To Mrs. Lloyd Avalons, her husband was a mere cipher. Placed before her, he added nothing to her value; placed after and in the background, he multiplied her importance tenfold. There were certain privileges accruing to a woman with a husband, certain immunities that followed in the train of matrimony. Mrs. Lloyd Avalons was quite ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... (SS479, 507) families of rank and wealth had now held uninterrupted possession of the government for nearly half a century. Their influence was so supreme that the sovereign had practically become a mere cipher, dependent for his authority on the political support which he received. The King was resolved that this state of things should continue no longer. He was determined to reassert the royal authority, secure a ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... machinery, the intricate mechanism of the underworld is at work to assist us! I tell you as little as possible, but I neglect nothing. All communications in cipher, and you can see that the telegraph clerks think we are persons of ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... happiness,—that would have no attractions for me; there must be deficiencies in my heaven, to leave room for progression. A realm of unqualified rest were a stagnant pool of being, and the circle of absolute perfection a waveless calm, the abstract cipher of indolence. But I believe I shall be gifted with higher faculties, greater powers, and therefore be capable of higher aspirations, better achievements, and a nobler appreciation of God and ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... afterward came to know, he sent Philip an account of the whole lamentable affair, from Ned's reappearance to Tom's death; it was written in a cipher agreed upon between the two, and 'twas carried by Bill Meadows. Mr. Faringfield deemed it better that Philip should know the whole truth from his relation, than learn of Madge's departure, and Tom's fate, from other accounts, which must ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... real name of each individual to be described should be placed (as a mere aid to memory) by the side of that under which he appears in the drama; and I would strongly recommend the builder to write his real names in cipher; for I have known at least one instance in which the entire list of the dramatis personae of a novel was carried off by a person more curious than conscientious, and afterwards revealed to those concerned—a circumstance which, though it increased the circulation of the story, ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... thought he could confide in him, needed help, but the matter was delicate. In the meantime, the other waited with a smile that implied that he guessed his thoughts, until Dick, leaning forward with sudden resolution, picked up the telegram, which was written in cipher. ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... happened somewhere in the vague world beyond Peking—perhaps that armies were arriving. We were reminded that we were still alive. A dignified reply was sent, and the very next day came an astonishing Washington cipher message, which has been puzzling us ever since. It was only three words: "Communicate to bearer." No one can explain what these words mean; even the American Minister has cudgelled his brains in vain, and asked everybody's opinion. ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... a cipher suddenly spunged out of his visionary ledger—rather than so much money should vanish clean out of the family, Captain Higginbotham had taken what he conceived, if a desperate, at least a certain, step for the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... seven gentlemen who signed in cipher the secret letter to William, Prince of Orange, were Henry Sidney, brother of Algernon Sidney (S480); Edward Russell, a kinsman of Lord Russell, beheaded by Charles II (S480); the Earl of Devonshire, chief of ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... well the busy whisper circling round Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned. Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught, The love he bore to learning was in fault; The village all declared how much he knew: 'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too: Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, And e'en the story ran that he could gauge: In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill; For e'en though vanquished, he could argue still; While words of learned ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... naval officer, though I have given a good deal of attention to the study of nautical subjects in connection with this enterprise, and I am not a cipher," continued Corny, after he had handed the sealed envelope to his companion. "I expect to be treated with reasonable consideration, even while I defer to you in all nautical matters. ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... soon as the messenger had moved off, I tore open the envelope and read the message. Fortunately, it was not in cipher, the rules against any such use of the wires, except by the ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... Condemne the fault, and not the actor of it, Why euery fault's condemnd ere it be done: Mine were the verie Cipher of a Function To fine the faults, whose fine stands in record, And let goe ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... crimson satin, ornamented with gold beads and frilled with thread-lace, I had the same right to know it as to know the screens—I had made it myself. Rising with a start from the bed, I took the cushion in my hand and examined it. There was the cipher "L. L. B." formed in gold beds, and surrounded with an oval wreath embroidered in white silk. These were the initials of my ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Thus the title of scribe was of no value in itself, and did not designate, as one might naturally think, a savant educated in a school of high culture, or a man of the world, versed in the sciences and the literature of his time; El-kab was a scribe who knew how to read, write, and cipher, was fairly proficient in wording the administrative formulas, and could easily apply the elementary rules of book-keeping. There was no public school in which the scribe could be prepared for his future career; but as soon as a child had acquired ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... school children is our best index to community health, who is to read the index? Unless the story is told in a language that does not require a secret code or cipher, unless some one besides the physician can read it, we shall be a very long time learning the health needs of even our largest cities, and until doomsday learning the health needs of small towns and rural districts. Fortunately the more important signs ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... being a woman of some education, his mother had taught him to read and write and cipher—not that he was a great adept at any of those arts, but he possessed the groundwork, which was an important matter; and he did his best to keep up his knowledge by reading sign-boards, looking into book-sellers' windows, and studying ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... All this magnificence in Thee is lost:— What are ten thousand worlds compared to Thee? And what am I then?—Heaven's unnumbered host, Though multiplied by myriads, and arrayed In all the glory of sublimest thought, Is but an atom in the balance, weighed Against Thy greatness—is a cipher brought Against infinity! What am ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... importance to Mrs. Gallup and the believers in the cipher wherein Bacon maintains that he is the legal son of a wedding between Dudley and the Queen. Was there such a marriage or even betrothal? Froude cautiously says that this was averted 'SEEMINGLY on Lord Robert's authority;' the Baron says that Lord Robert makes the assertion; Mr. Gairdner ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... belonging to the Crown had been remitted to Castile; as Pizarro had appropriated them to his own use. He now took possession of the mints, broke up the royal stamps, and issued a debased coin, emblazoned with his own cipher. *17 It was the most ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... broke, but I have provided a fine buffalo-horn, on which I am going to affix the same cipher which you will remember was on the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... protective and defensive amulets, which were fastened around the arm, waist, or neck. These amulets were styled ligamenta, ligaturae, or phylacteria, by the writers of the early Middle Ages. They were usually fashioned as gold, silver, or glass pendants. Cipher-writing and runes were commonly inscribed upon them, often for healing, but ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... children might learn to read the Scriptures, and thus that they might get right ideas of their religious duty. Even after this aim was outgrown, our schools for generations did little more than to teach the use of the mere tools of knowledge; to read, to write, and to cipher were the great gains of the schoolroom. Even geography and grammar were rather late arrivals. Then came the idea that the school should train children for citizenship, and it was argued that the chief ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... faither deed I went to work. The law would not let me gie up my schoolin' altogether. But three days a week I learned to read and write and cipher, and the other three I worked in a flax mill in the wee Forfarshire town of Arboath. Do ye ken what I was paid? Twa shillin' the week. That's less than fifty cents in American money. And that was in 1881, thirty eight years ago. I've my bit siller the noo. I've my wee hoose amang the heather ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... Pegler. 'No such a thing, sir. Never! For shame on you! My dear boy knows, and will give you to know, that though he come of humble parents, he come of parents that loved him as dear as the best could, and never thought it hardship on themselves to pinch a bit that he might write and cipher beautiful, and I've his books at home to show it! Aye, have I!' said Mrs. Pegler, with indignant pride. 'And my dear boy knows, and will give you to know, sir, that after his beloved father died, when he was ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... thumb. "They are all alike, and yet"—He clutched his white hair with big knuckles, and tugged; replaced his mushroom helmet; held the paper at a new focus. "Ah!" he said doubtfully; and at last, "Yes." For some time he read to himself, nodding. "A Triad cipher." ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... and she threaded her needle and snipped off the yarn before she answered, "No, thank you, Becky. Mother couldn't do without me, and I hate going to school. I can read and write and cipher as well as anybody now, and that's enough for me. I'd die rather than teach school for a living. The winter'll go fast, for Will Melville is going to lend me his mother's sewing machine, and I'm going to make white petticoats out of the piece of muslin aunt Jane sent, and have ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... they had added to the laurels already won by the Army of the Potomac!" If a succession of defeats are equal to one victory—on the principle of two negatives making an affirmative—or if nothing added to a cipher brings out a substantial product, there may possibly be something in these words beyond the ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... certain inborn instinct, had chosen the foremost and most unsuspicious looking one, which stood half built with a sloping plank-roof over it. There he lay wedged into the farthest corner, close wrapped in the happy Nirvana of self-forgetfulness—school zero, and Mrs. Holman a cipher—his body bent down over his knees, his coat pulled up about his neck to keep out the drips, and his boots ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... sugar, coffee, molasses, vinegar, tobacco, and coarse clothing for himself and family. An account was kept by "a young white man," and at the end of the season "a reckoning" was had. Unable to read or cipher, the poor, credulous, unsuspecting Negroes always found themselves in debt from $50 to $200! This necessitated another year's engagement; and so on for an indefinite period. There was nothing to encourage the Negroes; ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... London is asking for you. Who it is I don't know. But the message came through in a secret cipher and it might be important. I think you should pack your affs. and hurry along to Senga, where I shall ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... a dozen echoed. "Nothing!" the head-clerk added brutally. "Nothing, and you add a cipher to the census of Paris! Nothing, and your lying pen led my lord to state the population to be five millions instead of five hundred thousand! Nothing, and you sent his Grace's Highness to the Council to be corrected by low clerks and people, and made a laughing-stock ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... Wesley Edward Bowen was born in New Orleans. His father, Edward Bowen, went to New Orleans from Washington, D. C. He was a free man, a boss carpenter and builder by trade, and able to read, write and cipher. He was highly esteemed, was prosperous in business, accumulated some money and lived in comfort. Dr. Bowen's mother, Rose Bowen, he says, was the grand-daughter of an African Princess of the Jolloffer tribe, on the west coast of Africa. When he was three years old ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... shoulders, and accepted my offer for a bear speculation. We agreed that from time to time we should communicate with each other in cipher. Telegrams were to ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... "A cipher!" said Heideck. "But we shall soon get to the bottom of it. You have some capable interpreters at your disposal, and it might be a good thing if they set to ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... He from beyond the roaring shallow roared, 'What doest thou, brother, in my marches here?' And she athwart the shallow shrilled again, 'Here is a kitchen-knave from Arthur's hall Hath overthrown thy brother, and hath his arms.' 'Ugh!' cried the Sun, and vizoring up a red And cipher face of rounded foolishness, Pushed horse across the foamings of the ford, Whom Gareth met midstream: no room was there For lance or tourney-skill: four strokes they struck With sword, and these were mighty; the new knight Had fear he might be shamed; but as the Sun Heaved ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... and cipher with easy facility—pity but all our petted voters could. In California they rent little patches of ground and do a deal of gardening. They will raise surprising crops of vegetables on a sand pile. They waste nothing. What is rubbish ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... relations under the direction of a man of talent and experience, who had already exercised an important influence on British policy and who was more in sympathy with the policy of the prime minister than Dudley had been, but who was not content, like Dudley, to be a mere cipher in the department over which he was called to preside. Aberdeen, though opposed to the narrow boundaries which Wellington wished to assign to liberated Greece, was no less antagonistic than his chief to any attempt to make the new Greek state politically important; and he was ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... old Darby, as he had begun to be called—cut off Little Darby from his "schoolin'", in the middle of his third year, and before he had learned more than to read and cipher a little and to write in a scrawly fashion; for he had been rather irregular in his attendance at all times. He now stopped altogether, giving the teacher as his reason, with characteristic brevity: "Got ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... then we come across interesting things, though. For instance, I discovered a most original cipher the other day." ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... open the telegram and then stared in surprise. Not one word of it could he make out. It was in cipher! ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... him by devious methods, he has once or twice given me advance information which has been of value—that highest value which anticipates and prevents rather than avenges crime. I cannot doubt that, if we had the cipher, we should find that this communication is of the ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... satirical smile overspread his face, and gave such meaning to his words that the other heirs began to feel that Massin had let Bongrand deceive him. The tax-collector, a fat little man, as insignificant as a tax-collector should be, and as much of a cipher as a clever woman could wish, hereupon annihilated his co-heir, Massin, with the words:—"Didn't ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... sojourn in the neighborhood he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course, when I came of age I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the Rule of Three, but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education I have picked up from time to time under the pressure ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... "Solomon, what you doin here?" and he said "I am er teaching school to my own color." Then he said they run him out of Virginia cause he was learnin his color and he kept going. Some white folks up North learned him to read and cipher. He used a black slate and he had a book he carried around to teach folks with. He was what they called a ginger cake color. They would whoop you if they seed you with books learnin. Mighty few books to get ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... anything, a slight look of shame; and Richter himself could not rouse him again. Readers who have any tincture of Psychology know how much is to be inferred from this; and that no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. How much lies in Laughter: the cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man! Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies a cold glitter as of ice: the fewest are able to laugh, what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snigger from the throat outwards; or at best, produce some whiffling ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... business any, but he isn't in sympathy with Hall or Wilson. One of them sent a wire to Riverton an hour since. It was to some one the operator never heard of before, evidently a friend of theirs. It mentioned 999, your name, and Fogg. The rest of it was in cipher." ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... I am a monk of the Order of the Barnabites, which has given Doctors and Saints without number to the Church. It is only a half-truth to refer its origin to St. Charles Borromeo; we must account as the true founder the Apostle St. Paul, whose cipher it bears on its arms. I have been compelled to quit my cloister, now headquarters of the Section du Pont-Neuf, and ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... to the triple of the number thought of, and to multiply the sum by three; then bid him add to this product the number thought of, and the result will be a sum from which if 3 be subtracted, the remainder will be ten times the number required; and if the cipher on the right be cut off from the remainder, the other figure will indicate the ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... to read everything that has been written respecting Napoleon, and I have had to decipher many of his autograph documents, though no longer so familiar with his scrawl as formerly. I say decipher, because a real cipher might often be much more readily understood than the handwriting of Napoleon. My own notes, too, which were often very hastily made, in the hand I wrote in my youth, have sometimes ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... thing to say of the missionaries of the American Board, that in less than forty years they have taught this whole people to read and to write, to cipher and to sew. They have given them an alphabet, grammar, and dictionary; preserved their language from extinction; given it a literature, and translated into it the Bible, and works of devotion, science, and entertainment, etc. They have established schools, reared up ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... over the fireplace in which the wireless was concealed and to escape into his own bedroom. The arrangement was ideal. And already information picked up in the halls below by Marie had been conveyed to Anfossi to relay in a French cipher to the German General Staff ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... discouragement, and at the same time, he was stimulated to making independent researches in the school and public libraries. Each class of honor pupil could whisper, go out, or go to the blackboards to draw or cipher without asking permission. The high sense of honor was thus developed which is so essential ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... won everything, for Cetewayo was now supreme—by right of the assegai—and his father but a cipher. Although he remained the "Head" of the nation, Cetewayo was publicly declared to be its "Feet," and strength was in these active "Feet," not in the bowed and sleeping "Head." In fact, so little power was left to Panda that he could not protect his own household. ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... complete, only a more limited sphere than older members: and all the rules and regulations and arrangements of the family should have a reference to this point. So long as a child is reckoned to be a mere cipher in creation, or at most, as of no more practical importance, till the arrival of his twenty-first birth day, or some other equally arbitrary period, than our domestic animals—that is, of just sufficient consequence to be fed, and caressed, and fondled, and made a pet of—so long will our ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... "I thought," replied the boy, "when I read the story, that the best way is to hold on to what we are sure of, and not grab after a shadder and lose the whole." "Your idea is certainly a correct one," said the master, "and now we will turn to some other branch of study; can you cipher?" "Don't know, I never tried," replied the boy, with the greatest coolness imaginable. "Well," replied the teacher, "we will after a time see how you succeed, when you do try. Can you tell me what the study of Geography teaches us!" "O," said the boy, "geography tells ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... says Bitters, 'stop right where you be; You can't go in athout a pass from me.' 'All right,' says t'other, 'only step round smart; I must be home by noon-time with the cart.' 580 Bitters goes round it sharp-eyed as a rat, Then with a scrap of paper on his hat Pretends to cipher. 'By the public staff, That load scarce rises twelve foot and a half.' 'There's fourteen foot and over,' says the driver, 'Worth twenty dollars, ef it's worth a stiver; Good fourth-proof brimstone, that'll make 'em squirm,— I leave ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... his head. "He cabled to us in cipher," he said; "a cipher which he had composed himself and wrote down for us before he started. The paper has been safely locked up in our strong-room, and it was the only copy in the world, for he told us that, for himself, he should carry ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... squares for the days of the week, a month on a page, and when we get through a day without saying anything against anybody we can put a nice little cross in, but when we have broken the pledge we must mark it with a cipher, and then when we are just horrid and keep on being cross, we must black the day all over. Then once a week we have to show the books to each ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... proposed stage, or, more properly speaking, his platform, and he seated himself, with a look of perplexity on his face and a remarkably small piece of lead-pencil in his mouth, to figure up the grand total of inches. He could multiply the cipher easily enough, for he was positive that the answer would be the same, however large the multiplier might be; but the question of how much eight times ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... accomplishments in the field of labor, Mr. Thompson looked out of his cabin door to where he could see dimly through the trees the uncompleted bulk of his church—and he set down a mental cipher against that account. It was waste effort. He felt in his heart that he would never finish it. What was ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... in cipher which I now send to you, on the slip of paper enclosed, is an antidote to that one of the two poisons known to you and to me by the fanciful name which you ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... her private sphere. I know not how otherwise to describe her subtle charm, than by saying that she was at once a clairvoyante and a magnetizer. She read another's bosom-secret, and she imparted of her own force. She interpreted the cipher in the talisman of one's destiny, that he had tried in vain to spell alone; by sympathy she brought out the invisible characters traced by experience on his heart; and in the mirror of her conscience he might see the image of his very self, as dwarfed in actual appearance, or developed after ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... that they be taught to read, to write, and to cipher, and that they be sent to Africa. I further will and direct, that the issue of any of the females, who are so to be entitled to their freedom, at the age of twenty-five, shall be free at their birth, and that they be bound ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... despatch was also out of the land of the Grays, but not by Westerling's consent or knowledge. By devious ways it had broken through the censorship of the frontier in cunning cipher. It told of artillery concentrations three days old; it told only what the aeroplanes had already seen; it told what the Grays had done but nothing of ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... of it, the best friend Montcalm had in the province; and though he held aloof from bringing punishment to Bigot, he despised him and his friends, and was not slow to make that plain. D'Argenson made inquiry of Doltaire when Montcalm's honest criticisms were sent to France in cipher, and Doltaire returned the reply that Bigot was the only man who could serve Canada efficiently in this crisis; that he had abounding fertility of resource, a clear head, a strong will, and great administrative faculty. This was all he would say, save that when the war was over other ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... time Their Majesties were adored. Marie Antoinette, with all her beauty and amiableness, was a mere cipher in the eyes of France previous to her becoming the mother of an heir to the Crown; but her popularity now arose to a ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... to prevent the expected rising in Louisiana. Wilkinson was then on the extreme western frontier. He received a cipher message from Burr, and after waiting for some hours to make up his mind, concluded to betray him, sent the letters to the government, went to New Orleans, and there arrested several of Burr's adherents, by ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... them; attended their worship, acquired the accomplishment of public prayer, and made himself a student at their feet. It is thus—it is by the cultivation of similar passing chances—that he has learned to read, to write, to cipher, and to speak his queer, personal English, so different from ordinary 'Beach de Mar,' so much more obscure, expressive, and condensed. His education attended to, he found time to become critical of the ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Father said, "took to larnin'," though in seventy-five years of poring over books and periodicals I have not become "learned." But I easily distanced the other children in school. The others barely learned to read and write and cipher a little, Curtis and Wilson barely that, Hiram got into Greenleaf's Grammar and learned to parse, but never to write or speak correctly, and he ciphered nearly through Dayball's Arithmetic. I went through Dayball and then Thompkins and Perkins and got well on into algebra in the district ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... men in every organization east of the Mississippi to foregather at once at Madison, and to report to him there. He was in constant touch with those Governors who were in sympathy with the progressive or insurgent cause, and he wired the Governor of Wisconsin, in cipher, informing him ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... single-handed encounter an impetuous multitude. He thought of raising up a party among those youthful aspirants who had not yet been habitually depraved. He had a brother whose talent could never rise beyond a poor copyist's, and him he had the judgment, unswayed by undue partiality, to account as a cipher; but he found two of his cousins men capable of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... far more obviously than most artists. When he was a student he excelled in mathematics; in all his other tales he displays the same power of logical construction; and he delighted in the exercise of his own acumen, vaunting his ability to translate any cipher that might be sent to him and succeeding in making good his boast. In the criticism of 'Barnaby Rudge,' and again in the explanation of the Maelzel chess-player, Poe used for himself the same faculty of divination, the same power of seizing the one clue needful, however tangled amid other ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... ink was dry. The reply came by return of post: "It is almost, or quite, as good as can be. Send me another." So forthwith I sent him 'God's Garrison', and it was quickly followed by 'The Three Outlaws', 'The Tall Master', 'The Flood', 'The Cipher', 'A Prairie Vagabond', and several others. At length came 'The Stone', which brought a telegram of congratulation, and finally 'The Crimson Flag'. The acknowledgment of that was a postcard containing these all too-flattering words: "Bravo, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... confessed that she had several times missed money to a considerable amount, I showed her a safe place in which to conceal our little treasure for the future. My mind was already made up. Benedetto could read, write, and cipher perfectly, for when the fit seized him, he learned more in a day than others in a week. My intention was to enter him as a clerk in some ship, and without letting him know anything of my plan, to convey him some morning on board; by this means his future treatment ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was what made Susan so gracious about my leaving home? But I don't believe she did—I mean that Susan suspected that George and Rhoda had any particular reason for inviting me. I wonder if I shall ever make Susan see that I am not a cipher? Of course if George and Rhoda really have any particular reason, and Susan comes to know it, that will show her that other people do not consider me a cipher. I wonder what most people would think of Mr. Iglesias? Of course ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... attaches, for this purpose. About midnight between the 20th and 21st there came a loud and persistent knocking at my door in the hotel, and there soon entered a telegraph messenger with an enormously long despatch in cipher. Hardly had I set the secretaries at work upon it than other telegrams began to come, and a large part of the night was given to deciphering them. They announced the declaration of war and instructed me to convey to the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one side amongst the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust, and raising m-o-r-e racket with her coughing and sneezing and blowing her nose—and always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead, as near as you could cipher it down. ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... our cipher telegrams to Washington were sent back from the telegraph office with word that under the latest instructions from the Government they could not be forwarded. The Minister and I hurried over to the Foreign ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... They 'phoned in cipher to Angus, Mrs. Angus being a sister of Mrs. Alex Porter. Mrs. Angus told them to speak out plain, and say what they wanted to, even if all the Conservatives on the line were listening. Then Mrs. Porter said that John Thomas was lost over at Milt Kennedy's. ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... city of Mexico, where we were presented to Porfirio Diaz, the president of that republic, who seemed to be a man of great shrewdness and strength. I recall here the fact that the room in which he received us was hung round with satin coverings, on which, as the only ornament, were the crown and cipher of Diaz' unfortunate predecessor, the Emperor Maximilian. Thence we went to California, and zigzag along the Pacific coast to Tacoma and Seattle; then through the Rocky Mountains to Salt Lake City meeting everywhere interesting men and things, until at ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... not content, however, to be the cipher that I found myself, and when I had been at school for about a year, I 'broke out', greatly, I think, to my own surprise, in a popular act. We had a young usher whom we disliked. I suppose, poor half-starved ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... professionals; the serious business is, that in this country no child, how poor soever it may be, shall have the slightest let or hindrance in the equal chance with every other child to learn to read, and write, and cipher, and do raffia-work. ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... heart From the world's prying eyes. Yet men read through the cover, And knew that the story was food for a lover. (The dullest of men seemed possessed of the art To read what the passions inscribe on the heart. Though written in cipher and sealed from the sight, Yet masculine eyes will interpret aright.) Worn out with the unceasing conflict at last, Zoe fled from herself and her sorrowful past, And turned to new ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... I finished writing my autobiography, which I call 'The Sins of Youth'. I have drawn up the balance-sheet of my life of thirty years and one month, and I am deeply grieved to see that the sum total is a cipher. How heavily the hand of fortune has lain upon me! The education I received was the reverse of everything I had need of later. I was raised with the idea of becoming a distinguished Rabbinical authority, and here I am a business man; I was raised in an imaginary world, to be a faithful ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... fodder. I say Abe was awful lazy, he would laugh and talk, and crack jokes all the time, didn't love work, but did dearly love his pay." He liked to lie under a shade tree, or up in the loft of the cabin and read, cipher, or scribble. At night he ciphered by the light of the fire on the wooden fire shovel. He practised stump oratory by repeating the sermons, and sometimes by preaching himself to his brothers and sister. His gifts in the rhetorical line were high; when it was announced in the harvest ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... United States of having stolen the cipher key of the Luxburg dispatches. It is this sort of thing that is gradually convincing Germany that it is beneath her dignity to fight with a nation like America. And the growing conviction in the United States that there can be no peace with the Hohenzollerns only ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... her hastily, before misgivings had time to assail him, and when they did, he hoped for the best. For a painter's portfolio is, after all, hardly less confidential than a diary, and may be on occasion almost as compromising, in spite of the fact that the records it contains are written in cipher. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... woman, who has charge of a large household, should regard her duties as dignified, important, and difficult. The mind is so made, as to be elevated and cheered by a sense of far-reaching influence and usefulness. A woman, who feels that she is a cipher, and that it makes little difference how she performs her duties, has far less to sustain and invigorate her, than one, who truly estimates the importance of her station. A man, who feels that the destinies of a nation are turning on the judgement and skill with which he plans and executes, ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... any doubt as to his complete guilt. As you know yourself, the cipher letter warning certain people in London of the coming raid, passed through his hands. He even came here to warn you. There were other charges against him which could have been proved up to the hilt. While we are upon this subject, Geraldine, let me finish with it absolutely. ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... made by Julius Caesar, not as here to Antipater, but to Hyrcanas, Antiq. B. XIV. ch. 8. sect. 5, has hardly an appearance of a contradiction; Antipater being now perhaps considered only as Hyrcanus's deputy and minister; although he afterwards made a cipher of Hyrcanus, and, under great decency of behavior to him, took the real authority ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... the wise young women—fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old—who read ST. NICHOLAS, who understand the most complex vulgar fractions, who cipher out logarithms "just for fun," who chatter familiarly about "Kickero" and "luliuse Kiser," and can bang a piano dumb and helpless in fifteen minutes—they, I suppose, will think me frivolous and unaspiring if I beg them to lay aside their science,—which is admirable,—and let ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... out loads of coal while the miners were at dinner in order that he might earn a few extra shillings to buy a spelling-book and an arithmetic. His associates thought he was very foolish, and asked him what good it would do to learn to read and cipher. He told them he was determined to improve his mind; so he studied whenever he could snatch a minute before the engine's fire, and in every possible situation until he had ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... The rebel might not come home, or the note might have been written with the intention of having it intercepted, in order to throw the one into whose hands it might fall on the wrong scent; or it might be written in cipher, and mean directly opposite to what Frank had supposed. But he consoled himself with the thought that he had done, and would still continue to do, all in his power to obey the admiral's general order, and if he failed, the blame would not rest ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... last batch of sheep were fleeced and smitten,[Smitten. Marked with the cipher of the owner in a mixture mostly of tar.] and turned on to the hillside; and Charlotte, leaning over the wall, watched them wander contentedly up the fell, with their lambs trotting beside them. Grandfather and the squire had gone into the house; Ducie was ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... soporific vapors had the effect of those mathematical devices whereby restless people cipher themselves to sleep. His languid head fell to his breast. In another moment, he drooped half-lengthwise upon a chest, his legs outstretched ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... that the truth may make a lasting impression on my mind—in the hope that God may guide thee to the faith of Islam, and to surrender to him and to us, that so you and they may obtain everlasting good and happiness. Now, first among the documents seized is the cipher dated September 22, 1884, 'to the Mudir of Dongola.' . . . On the back of which is your telegram to the Khedive of Egypt . . . We have also taken knowledge of your journal (daily record) of the provision in the granary . . . Also your letters written in European all about the size of Khartoum; ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... cleverness of the steps that he took. His efforts to prevent the resolution of the States-General from taking immediate effect proving unavailing, he put forward the suggestion that on account of its importance the despatch should be sent to the envoys in cipher. This was agreed to, and on June 7 the document was duly forwarded to London by the council-pensionary; but he enclosed a letter from himself to Van Beverningh and Nieuwpoort informing them that the Estates of Holland assented to the request made by the States-General, and that they ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... could go out again; out by lack of fuel mainly. One of the fellest wars on record, especially for burning and ruining; above '300,000 fighting-men' are calculated to have perished in it; and of towns, villages, farmsteads, a cipher which makes the fancy, as it were, black and ashy altogether. Ritterdom showed no lack of fighting energy; but that could not save it, in the pass things were got to. Enormous lack of wisdom, of reality and human veracity, there had long been; and the ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... love and duty. No, not duty: I might have sheathed my sword, and wronged no one; I was but a cipher among thousands, whose blade would scarcely have been missed. Nor would I have wronged myself. I was simply, as I have already declared, an adventurer. The country for which I fought could not claim me; I was ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... the latter valuable for the notes of proceedings in parliament, are often the only authority for incidents and speeches during that period, and are amusing from the glimpses the diarist affords of his own character, his good estimation of himself and his little jealousies; some are in a cipher and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... name was Ethan French; and he had come from Illinois with Mr. Grant to work on the farm. He had no parents living, and was expected to remain with his employer till he was twenty-one. He was an uncouth fellow, and though he could read, write, and cipher, he seemed to be as uncultivated and bearish as the wild Indians that roamed through the country. Fanny tried to be his friend, and never neglected an opportunity to do him a kindness; but the more she tried to serve ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... clerk named Westerfeltner, a man who held a place of trust and confidence, was the man who stole it. For it he was offered a sum of money which would make him independent for life, and under the temptation he weakened and he stole it. But first he stole the key to the cipher, which would make it possible for anyone having both the key and the message to decode the message. Once this is done the damage is done, for the signature is ample proof of the validity of the document. That ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... want the boys and girls of our high schools taught, or rather directed in their upward development, by mere specialists—doctors of philosophy, who know everything about nothing, and nothing about everything. Nor do I want them directed by men and women who are obliged to "cipher on page twenty while the class is working on page nineteen." But I do want them directed by men and women who are thoroly acquainted with the subjects which they teach, and who know how to handle the same; but especially by men and women of broad, liberal ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... by little in the variety of love's issues. But love, as it is, and should be understood—not the faint ghost that arrays itself in stolen robes, and says, "I am love," but love the strong and the immortal, the passkey to the happy skies, the angel cipher we read, but cannot understand—such love as this, and there is none other true, can find no full solace here, not ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... the slaves were procured, by sale on shipboard, by auction, or by scramble, they received the private marks of their owners. Each planter had a silver plate, perforated with his letter, figure, or cipher, which he used to designate his own slaves by branding. If two planters happened to be using the same mark, the brand was placed upon different spots of the body. The heated plate, with an interposing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... privacy of his working-den state-room, having tri-daily weather reports wired to him by way of Carbonate and Argentine station, and busying himself in the intervals with sending and receiving sundry mysterious telegrams in cipher. ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... of naughtiness; and so most families slummock along and muddle through until the children cease to be children. In the few cases when the parties are energetic and determined, the child is crushed or the parent is reduced to a cipher, as the case may be. When the opposed forces are neither of them strong enough to annihilate the other, there is serious trouble: that is how we get those feuds between parent and child which recur ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... by the golden glitter of her yellow hair—beautiful in herself, but made bewilderingly beautiful by the gorgeous surroundings which adorn the shrine of her loveliness. Drinking-cups of gold and ivory, chiseled by Benvenuto Cellini; cabinets of buhl and porcelain, bearing the cipher of Austrain Marie-Antoinette, amid devices of rosebuds and true-lovers' knots, birds and butterflies, cupidons and shepherdesses, goddesses, courtiers, cottagers, and milkmaids; statuettes of Parian marble and biscuit china; gilded baskets ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... if she would like to sleep, sleep for an indefinite period. She was wearied to death of The Cause, and the Brotherhood, with their intrigues and plots and interminable cipher messages. ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... condition of the atmosphere as to heat, weight and moisture, the velocity of the wind, the kind, amount and speed of the clouds, and measures the rainfall and the ocean swell: all these observations are recorded, and three are daily reported to headquarters at Washington. In these telegrams a cipher is used—as much, we presume, to ensure accuracy in the figures as for purposes of secresy. In this cipher the fickle winds are given the names of women with a covert sarcasm quite out of place in the respectable old weather-prophet whom every housewife consults before the day's work begins. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... did I find out?" His hand moved in an airy circle as he inscribed a flowing cipher with a graceful Delsarte wave. "Nothing. In the first place, I already knew it, and in the second, it wasn't practical information. There's a slight difference in diffusion between the two forms, but it's nothing to rave about." His expression became suddenly serious. "I hope your information ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... one and then went to the wireless office, where he wrote out a message in cipher and directed the operator to waste no time in relaying it to his offices in Paris. His wife was right. It would be the height of folly to offer Scoville money and it would be even worse to inspire the temporary ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... to know, you all to know, Dare's light on de shore, Says little Bill to big Bill, There's a li'l nigger to write and cipher.' ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... Narrative, Napoleon desired to present Captain Maitland with a box containing his portrait set in diamonds. On Maitland's declining, in the circumstances, to accept any present of value, the Emperor begged him to keep as a souvenir a tumbler from his travelling case, bearing the crown and cipher of the Empress Josephine. This relic is still preserved at Lindores. A photograph of it is given ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... fellow—intelligent, and never too familiar, but just familiar enough. Women liked him; he was so respectful, almost reverent, in his attitude toward them. It took a better man to be a salesman then than now. Every article was marked in cipher, with two prices. One figure represented what the thing cost and the other was the selling-price. You secured the selling-price, if you could, and if you couldn't, you took what you could get, right down to the cost figure. The motto was, never let a customer go without selling him ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard |
