"Puzzle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... losing no time. He stayed but a few days in London after his victory at Barnet, and on the 19th of April left for Windsor, ordering all his forces to join him there. The Lancastrians had endeavoured to puzzle him as to their intended movements by sending parties out in various directions; but as soon as he had gathered a force, numerically small, but composed of veteran soldiers, he hurried west, determined to bring on a battle at the earliest opportunity. The ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... who took up the study of the puzzle, Judge Jarriquez was one of the most to be pitied. By a natural association of ideas, he also joined in the general opinion that the document referred to the affair at Tijuco, and that it had been written by the hand of the guilty man, and exonerated Joam Dacosta. ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... attentive collector is rewarded by finding that a coherent whole is growing up in his or her mind out of the shreds and patches heard here and there, and it is delight indeed when your own dim suspicion that this part of the puzzle fits into that is confirmed by finding the two incidents preserved side by side in the mouth of some perfectly unconscious witness. Some of the tales in this volume have thus been a year or more on ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... "It's a puzzle to me," said Uncle Lucky, "why we are always having so many accidents. Maybe I had better get a chauffeur." "You won't need any chauffeur after I'm done with you," said a deep growly voice, and out from behind a clump of bushes jumped a wicked wildcat and bit one of the ...
— Billy Bunny and Uncle Bull Frog • David Magie Cory
... ambition of France and the cautious reactionary despotism of Spain, remained suspended. Students are left, face to face with the sixteenth century, to decipher an inscription that lacks its leading verb, to puzzle over a riddle whereof the solution is hidden from us by the ruin of a people. It must ever be an undecided question whether the Italians, undisturbed by foreign interference, could have passed beyond the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... whom it had not a very sensible effect. I pick up the names of their acquaintance; amours and little squabbles are easily gleaned from among servants and neighbors; and, indeed, people themselves are the best intelligencers in the world for our purpose. They dare not puzzle us for their own sakes, for everyone is anxious to hear what he wishes to believe; and they who repeat it, to laugh at it when they have done, are generally more serious than their hearers are apt to imagine. With a tolerably good memory, and some share ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... like getting knowledge first-hand," he continued with modesty, "but it seemed the best I could do. As to this plan of yours, two heads are sometimes better than one, and between us I believe we can evolve an answer to the puzzle." ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... that the perplexities which uniformly puzzle man in the physical world, and even in the little world of his own mind, when he passes a certain limit, are just as unmanageable as those found in the moral constitution and government of the universe, or in the disclosures of the volume Revelation. In both we find ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... are again young. Sometimes I wonder whether Jack was right, who used to say it may be we are never young or old, but merely seem to be so. This is the queer kind of reflection which I find now and then in Jack's diary, or with which he used to puzzle me and please James Wilson. Of course a man is young or is old. and there's an end on 't, as a greater man has said. But Jack has imagination, ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... there was need for it, and the answer ought to have been clear to them; their sin was the all-sufficient reason for their defeat. There are plenty of Christians, like these elders, who, when they find themselves beaten by the world and the devil, puzzle their brains to invent all sorts of reasons for God's smiting, except the true one,—their own ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... "You will puzzle your hearer, my dear uncle," said the same deep-toned woman's voice which had first spoken to me. "As you volunteered the saint's name, Lillian, you shall ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... keep bees, but found they would not thrive at Tapton. Many hives perished, and there was no case of success. The cause of failure was a puzzle to the engineer; but one day his acute powers of observation enabled him to unravel it. At the foot of the hill on which Tapton House stands, he saw some bees trying to rise up from amongst the grass, laden with honey ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... riveted, or welded together so that every section was exactly according to the measurements laid out on the plan. As each part was finished it was marked to correspond with the plan and also to show its relation to its neighbour. It was like a gigantic puzzle. The parts were made to fit each other accurately, so that when the workmen in Burma came to put them together the tangle of beams and rods, of trusses and braces should be assembled into a perfect, orderly ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... nerve, or a disease of the spinal cord; whether it is purely a muscular or purely a nervous lesion, or a compound of both—it still continues, if an etiologist is bound to possess universal knowledge within the scope of his special studies, to be his reproach and his puzzle. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... thought, and money; and many times it was a puzzle to find the latter, though she had been drawing a slight advance in salary for several months, and Morton, by working in the college laboratory at odd hours, was now earning enough to ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... the hot dry weather were a daily occurrence. We did not see imaginary castles and cities turned upside down and all that sort of thing, but apparent lakes of water were often seen, so deceptive as to puzzle even the oldest plainsman. Cattle appeared as big as houses and mounted men as ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... boy, who was seated in my lap, listened, with eyes fixed on the preacher, to every word that was said. At last one or two accounts were given which seemed to puzzle him greatly, and, casting an inquiring glance into my face, he whispered,—"Papa, ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... not difficult to piece together the bits of pasteboard, for I knew pretty well what I should find. Completed, the puzzle read, "Mr. Esper Indiman," and in pencil, "Call at 4020 Madison Avenue at ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... subdued. Her chief interest seemed to be now in her studies, and in music. Her companions she never sought; but they, partly from uneasy, remorseful feelings, partly that they really liked her much better now that she did not puzzle and oppress them, sought her continually. And here the black shadow comes upon her life, the only stain upon ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... approval. 9. Egotism. 10. Unstable, "hair-trigger," conflicting emotions. 11. Altruism, sincere interest in the well-being of others. 12. Religious and moral awakening. 13. New attitude. 14. Aesthetic awakening. 15. Puzzle to everybody. 16. Desire to abandon conventionalities, struggle for self-assertion. 17. Career motive. 18. Period of "palling" and mating; clique and "gang" spirit. 19. Positiveness,—affirmation, denial. ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... to Vienna," she said, with a smile that served to puzzle rather than to delight him. He was more than ever convinced that she was playing with him. "But pray do not look so gloomy, Mr. Schmidt, I shall not make any demands upon your time while I am there. You ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... The puzzle was this, that for three weeks after this eventful discovery Blanche had been, only too eager about her dearest Arthur; was urging, as strongly as so much modesty could urge, the completion of the happy arrangements which ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it ought to be," he said, then drew upon his pipe for reflection, and became murmurous with the symptoms of melancholy laughter. "It don't make things less of a puzzle, though, does it?" ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... you came sailing over the stairs, peeping out from that bunch of lace. I loitered and spoke. Were the eyes green, or blue, or gray; ambition, or love, or indifference to the world? I was at my old puzzle again, while you unfastened the pinks, and, before the butler, who acquiesced at your frivolity in impertinent silence, you held them out to me. Only you know the preciousness of unsought-for favors. "Write me," ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... which immediately occurs to the mind. This Latin expression means a fuller; a person who kneads and presses cloth under a stream of water, making it flexible and ridding it of the asperities of weaving. What connection has the subject of this chapter with the fuller of cloth? I may puzzle my head in vain: no acceptable ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... to pass the acts of repeal only on condition that nothing was said about the royal supremacy. To Mary's insistence they returned a blank refusal to act and she was compelled to wait "while Parliament debated articles that might well puzzle a general council," ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... puzzle for you, then!' he said. 'I have no material doubt myself, but some of these gentlemen are more backward. The lack of education, you know. I make bold to say that a man cannot walk, cannot hear, and cannot see, without the blessings ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on one side of the table; newer sheets on the other; some half sheets in the middle. It was like an intricate puzzle, and the same one that Maclin had ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... keep his thoughts from his puzzle. Supper-time came, and he was still struggling to reach a conclusion. He carved the cold mutton with more than usual precision, and ate it in anxious abstraction. The room was chilly; draughts from the narrow windows made the lamp flare, and the wind from under the closed door raised ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... two leave church after divine service, a car waits them at the nearest street corner, and they slip into it, don trilby hats and civilian overcoats, and sweep outside the restricted area at a haste that causes the slow-witted country policeman to puzzle over the speed of the car and forget its number while groping ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... very real sense of the term, Robert became more reconciled to his isolation. His mind was broadening and deepening, and he felt that it was so. Many things that had before seemed a puzzle to him now became plain. He was compelled, despite his youth, to meditate upon life, and he resolved that when he took up its thread again among his kind he would put his new knowledge ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in the hot sunshine in the cricket-field, she used to lend me her vinaigrette for a cure. But I knew that I had asked you to have it, and that you had done me the favour to accept it. The fascinating puzzle was, how had it come back to me? At last I questioned Barbara Franklin. She could not tell any more than myself at first, and was equally puzzled, until she remembered your sister Annie's running into the room on the night when you were listening for news of my death, and asking for a smelling-bottle, ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... to figure out the puzzle, yes," admitted the young engineer. "You see, we were both of us wrong, and we have ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... His great puzzle was the Anglo-Saxon, cold, austere and uncomplaisant. This Caucasian, fair of skin, with smooth and wavy hair, small cheekbones and elevated forehead, appeared a worshipful master whose station, under God, was of preordained and predestined eminence. Occupying Eurasia from the Channel ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... of me! Another cup of tea, with a thin slice of lemon in it, and then, dear Mr. Fortescue, please explain my absurd little puzzle. One can't help believing gentlemen with Roman noses, even if one ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... about it. It has been such a puzzle to me to know what I could do to support myself. There seemed to be nothing but teaching or stenography, and I should ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... the ground by the run, as though you were struck by lightning, or in the way of a 36-pounder! Ralph Waldo is death and an entire stud of pale horses on flowery expressions and japonica-domish flubdubs. He revels in all those knock-kneed, antique, or crooked and twisted words we used all of us to puzzle our brains over in the days of our youth, and grammar lessons and rhetoric exercises. He has a penchant as strong as cheap boarding-house butter, for mystification, and a free delivery of hard words, perfectly ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... destruction of the ancient cloister a covered way of some kind was erected here. Marks can also be seen, in the masonry, which indicate that the building once had three gables. Two of the Norman buttresses of the south nave aisle have very curious terminations, which might well puzzle any observer. They are fireplaces for the use of plumbers. Passing through the Norman doorway at the north-western corner of the Laurel Court, we come into a narrow passage leading to the ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... positively shuddered as he tried to describe the woman, but he couldn't tell why. She seems to have been a sort of enigma; and I expect if that one dead man could have told tales, he would have told some uncommonly queer ones. And there you are again in another puzzle; what could a respectable country gentleman like Mr. Blank (we'll call him that if you don't mind) want in such a very queer house as Number 20? It's altogether a ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... mechanical puzzle to understand how the vibratory motions called heat could set up light waves in the ether seeing that there is an absence of friction in the latter. In the endeavour to conceive it, the origin of sound-waves has been in mind, where longitudinal ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... put before you a 'Hero-ic' puzzle of mine, but please remember I do not ask for your solution of it, as you will persist in believing, if I ask your help in a Shakespeare difficulty, that I am only jesting! However, if you won't attack it yourself, ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... wrong?—Oh, what a fool I am! The mother and daughter must have suspected that you would raise some obstacles in the way of this affair since they have kept it from you," said Madame Marneffe. "But if you did not live with the young man, my dear, all this is a greater puzzle to me than my ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... heads of offices change together, so very frequently it must be. If twenty offices are vacant at once, there are almost never twenty tried, competent, clever men ready to take them. The difficulty of making up a Government is very much like the difficulty of putting together a Chinese puzzle: the spaces do not suit what you have to put into them. And the difficulty of matching a Ministry is more than that of fitting a puzzle, because the Ministers to be put in can object, though the ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... knew not how to avoid them. He soon learned to distinguish the shriek of a coming shell, and would race off in one direction, looking fearfully back over his shoulder, until a similar sound in another quarter would so puzzle and terrify him that he would stand still awhile until the noise of an explosion utterly demoralized him, when he would frantically dig up the ground, as if trying ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... Boat House as my dwelling was called, from the image of the old Viking vessel that my uncle had carved and set above the door, and I led him in staring about him with all his eyes, which in his thin face looked large as those of an owl, taking him up the stairs, which seemed to puzzle him much, for at every step he lifted his leg high into the air, ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... white and thin, and she is fifty-five. I tell you her age, because in a way it explains many things which would otherwise puzzle you. She was born just before the war. She knew nothing of the luxury of the days of slavery. She has twisted and turned and economized all of her life. She has struggled with all the problems which beset the South ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... restless and intriguing, quarreling with all with whom he came in contact, burning with righteous indignation against corruption and misdoing, generous to a point which crippled his finances seriously, he was a puzzle to all who knew him, and had he died at this time he would only have left behind him the reputation of being one of the most brilliant, gifted, and honest, but at the same time one of the most unstable, eccentric, and ill ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... of the rabbit is apt to puzzle students a little at first. We have an ovum practically free from yolk (alecithal), and, therefore, we find it dividing completely and almost equally. We naturally assume, from what we have learnt, that the next ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... side. But he could not see why departed souls should be regarded as the shadows of living men. Rather it was we who lived in a vain show, and would continue to do so until the spirit, the true substance of us, should be set free. Well, whatever the truth of it might be, it was all a charming puzzle, and we should learn all about it some day, and meantime he had been furnished with an entirely new idea—the revealing power of darkness. He loved the light because it was beautiful, and now he loved ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... that; won't you? If I hadn't I'd been burning the midnight oil yet, I reckon. 'Taint safe to make me a present of a puzzle, because I'm just dead sure to nearly split my poor weak brain trying to figger it out. And Jack, I'll never be happy till I know what was in those boxes; and why did that sly little professor believe someone wanted to steal ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... Over the door was a stone tablet, bearing the name,—River's Cottage. There was a little garden between the road and the house, across which there was a straight path to the door. In front of one window was a small shrub, generally called a puzzle-monkey, and in front of the other was a variegated laurel. There were two small morsels of green turf, and a distant view round the corner of the house of a row of cabbage stumps. If Trevelyan were living there, he had certainly come ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... as it may, this I say, that, of all men, seafaring men are the most likely to solve this great puzzle about the limits of science and of religion, of law and of providence; for, of all callings, theirs needs at once most science and most religion; theirs is most subject to laws, and yet most at the mercy of Providence. ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... little ladies, my dear, Know what they're about: that is clear. 'Tis something important, you see, Though a puzzle to you and to me; For they each look as grave as a judge: So, old folks, don't laugh, and cry, "Fudge!" It may be that your own great affairs Are not any more ...
— The Nursery, September 1877, Vol. XXII, No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... time to think about it, yet!" Fergus laughed. "There is generally a way, if one can but find it out; but I have no doubt that it will take a good deal of thinking before we hit upon it, and if it does nothing else for us, it will be an amusement through the long evenings to have to puzzle it out. There is no hurry, for it is not likely that there will be any more fighting before the army goes into winter quarters; and so that we are there when the campaign opens in the spring, it ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... cold, we are apt to puzzle ourselves to find out when it began, or how we got it; and when that is accounted for, down we sit contented, and let it have its course; or, if it be very troublesome, take a sweat, or use other means to get rid of it. So my dear, before the malady you wot of, yet wot ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... the pity, the admiration of which the lad's heart had been full an hour before, still hungered for expression; but it was not easy to vent such feelings before Louis, nor at a moment when the Syndic's cold eye and the puzzle of his presence there chilled for the time the ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... then, are taxes? The question is one which is apt to come up, sooner or later, to puzzle children. They find no difficulty in understanding the butcher's bill for so many pounds of meat, or the tailor's bill for so many suits of clothes, where the value received is something that can be seen and handled. But the tax bill, though ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... high in the heavens when they had started, and she had taken no note of direction. East, west, north or south were all one to her in her happy care-free life that she had hitherto led. She tried to puzzle it out and remember which way they had turned from the railroad but grew more bewildered, and the brilliant display in the west flamed alarmingly as she realized that night was coming on and she was lost on a great desert with only ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... very beginning of the tale there comes a moment of puzzled hesitation. One way of approach is set beside another for choice, and a third contrived for better choice. Still the puzzle persists, all because the one precisely right way might seem—shall we say intense, high keyed, clamorous? Yet if one way is the only right way, why pause? Courage! Slightly dazed, though certain, let us be on, into the shrill thick of it. ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... what can she pretend to—But I will not puzzle myself about her—Yet she pretend to give disturbance to such a man! You will find her mentioned in Dr. Bartlett's next letter; or she would not have been named ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... his most positive opinion that it had been self-inflicted. And it was inflicted with a razor, Henning's own, as was very clearly proved after inquiry. For the razor was found in the barn by the police, entangled with the blackened frame of an old lantern. Here was still another puzzle; one to which the final revelation of the mystery of the Red Triangle gave an answer, as will be seen in ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... three miles distant. If we could remove the dam of glacial boulders and gravel at the lower end of the lake, the water would be lowered only three hundred feet. The lake would not be drained, for it is very much deeper. Now here is another puzzle for us: the bottom of the lake is more than one thousand feet below the level of the Columbia. We shall have to go still farther back into the past to get ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... farewell and Maud's interview with the crossing-sweeper. He too looked strangely disturbed, pacing up and down an adjoining street, more than once, before he could make up his mind to ring a well-known bell. Verily Miss Bruce seemed to be one of those ladies whose destiny it is to puzzle, worry, and interest every man with whom they come ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... as atheistically disposed a person who regards certain things and events as being what they are through designed laws (whatever that expression means), but as not themselves specially ordained, or who, in another connection, believes in general, but not in particular Providence. We could sadly puzzle him with questions; but in return he might equally puzzle us. Then, to deny that anything was specially designed to be what it is, is one proposition; while to deny that the Designer supernaturally or immediately made ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... dull and lifeless scroll. You shall have soon a tissue of truth and fiction impossible to be extricated, the interleavings shall be so delicate, the partitions perfectly invisible, it shall puzzle you till you return, & [then] I will not explain it. Till then a ... adieu, with kind rem'brces of me both to you & ... [Signature and a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... outsides, too, to women's in some respects. Why all human beings—since they have no coats of their own, and are obliged to buy them—do not buy handsomely marked furs whilst they are about it, is a puzzle to a cat. As to the miserable stuff ladies cover themselves with in an evening, there is about as much comfort and softness in it as in going to sleep on a duster. Men's coats are nothing to boast of, either to look at or to ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... attracted him most, for it was full of toys of the most fascinating kind. A rocking-horse as big as a pony, the finest dolls' house you ever saw, boxes of tea-things, boxes of bricks—both the wooden and the terra-cotta sorts—puzzle maps, dominoes, chessmen, draughts, every kind of toy or game that you have ever had or ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... or hindrance from any foreign source, and with the better part of a continent at their disposal for a field to work in, so great a political problem as that of the American Union has not been solved without much toil and trouble. The great puzzle of civilization—how to secure permanent concert of action without sacrificing independence of action—is a puzzle which has taxed the ingenuity of Americans as well as of older Aryan peoples. In the year 1788 when our Federal Union was completed, the problem ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... of you," he said. "It was womankind needed here. I could do so little—Mrs. Hoden, you look better to-day. I'm glad. And here's baby, all clean and white. Baby, what a time I had trying to puzzle out the way your clothes went on! Well, Mrs. Hoden, didn't I tell you friends would come? ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... containing dried corn-silk, the other hayseed, convenient for the making of amateur cigarettes; the smoker's outfit being completed by a neat pile of rectangular clippings from newspapers. On the shelves of the whatnot were some fragments of a dead pie, the relics of a "Fifteen-Puzzle," a pink Easter-egg, four seashells, a tambourine with part of a girl's face still visible in aged colours, about two thirds of a hot-water bag, a tintype of Hedrick, and a number of books: several by Henty, "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," "100 Practical Jokes, Easy to Perform," "The ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... little coz, and they wouldn't be flattered by our comparison. They are yelling what, in United States, would be 'extra!' I'll get a paper and see if I can puzzle out some of the French," and he strolled down to intercept one of the ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... got at some house plans by accident that they found out where he fitted in. He'd go over a set of them puzzle rolls that mean as much to me as a laundry ticket, and he'd point out where there was room for another clothes closet off some chamber here, and a laundry chute there, and how the sink in the butler's pantry was on the wrong side for a right handed dish washer, and ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... through idle curiosity to know the number of the Angels; nor for the solution of a logical puzzle, nor for that of a question in metaphysics, or of ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... precaution. The major was close-mouthed, and, for him, rather stern. He held aloof from his juniors all day long and seemed to be keeping an eye and an ear attent on Nevins. That officer's conduct was a puzzle. Six months before he was the personification of all that was lavish, hospitable, good-natured, extravagant. Everybody was apparently welcome to the best he had. Then came the collapse, his arrest, his flight, his ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... verbal puzzle, and I answer, yes! The finite can contain the Infinite, if you are talking about two hearts that love, one of them God's and one of them mine. We have got to keep very clear and distinct before our minds the broad, firm line of demarcation between the creature and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... to the sneezer becomes intelligible when we learn that the savage has a good reason for it. He thinks the sneeze expels an evil spirit. Proverbs, again, and riddles are as universally scattered, and the Wolufs puzzle over the same devinettes as the Scotch schoolboy or the Breton peasant. Thus, for instance, the Wolufs of Senegal ask each other, 'What flies for ever, and rests never?'—Answer, 'The Wind.' 'Who are the comrades that ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... should be paid for, and so should the corn; for the proprietor had no right to kill the beast, and it had no right to damage the field. The glorious uncertainty was therefore displayed in ascertaining the relative value of each; and the learned gentlemen managed so to puzzle the cause, that after a hearing of three days the court broke up without coming to any decision, and the cause was ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... of fifteen in a good grammar school of that period and yet not be able to use the multiplication table. As late as 1823 Lamb writes: "I think I lose a hundred pounds a year owing solely to my want of neatness in making up accounts: how I puzzle 'em out at last is the wonder!" There is no evidence, however, to show that Lamb did not overcome his lack of preparation. The contrary impression sometimes prevails, due, perhaps, to his supposed apology for his late arrival by his representation that he made up for it ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... seems to have been a sad puzzle to the hunters, who hardly knew how to come at so valuable a piece of game. Some described the horn as movable at the will of the animal, a kind of small sword, in short, with which no hunter who was not exceedingly cunning in fence ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... the troops had been halted at crossroads, and they had marched by that which they had least expected. The camp at Luray on the 21st presented the same puzzle. One road ran east across the mountains to Warrenton or Culpeper; a second north to Front Royal and Winchester; and the men said that halting them in such a position was an ingenious device of Jackson's to prevent them fathoming his plans.* ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... finding out relationships is delightful!" said Mab. "It is like a Chinese puzzle that one has to fit together. I feel sure something wonderful may be made of it, but I can't ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... settle it that way, after a great deal of talking. You can't imagine, Ring-tail, how queer it makes me feel to be divided up in such a fashion. Sometimes I puzzle over it until I am dizzy. Which of me belongs to Stuart, and which ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... told of an undergraduate who united the hind wings of a butterfly to the body and fore wings of one of a different species, and, thinking to puzzle Professor Westwood, then the entomological authority at Oxford, asked if the Professor could tell him "what kind of a bug" it was. "Yes," was the ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... often employ about Physiological Mysteries, are wont much more to declare the wit of him that uses them, then increase the knowledge or remove the doubts of sober lovers of truth. And such captious subtleties do indeed often puzzle and sometimes silence men, but rarely satisfy them. Being like the tricks of Jugglers, whereby men doubt not but they are cheated, though oftentimes they cannot declare by what slights they are imposed on. And therefore I think you have ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... I've got your number now," he said. "I could pick you out from amongst a hundred wolves." This was merely a casual assertion, a self-congratulation over having solved the puzzle, and the Coyote Prophet made it without a thought that the day would ever come when he might have opportunity to ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... the doubtful kind; A something, nothing, not to be defined; 'Twould puzzle worlds its sex to ascertain, So very empty, and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... servants and negroes, standing about the driveway and outside the fence, people of the village grouped along the sidewalk, everybody out upon their doorsteps to watch the coach go by, and to all the face of the bride was a puzzle and a surprise. They half expected to see another coach coming ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... myself for allowing this tall, simple-hearted country fellow to puzzle me so much. And yet, was he a simple-hearted country fellow? City bred he certainly was not; but his manner, in spite of his awkwardness, had an indescribable air of refinement. Now and then, too, he dropped a word or a phrase that showed his ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... pride is equal to theirs: I won't go out of my way a hair-breadth for them," and he walked in to supper as if he were at home and had an absolute right to be there. He had been at the table but a few moments, however, before the aspect of the Jocelyn family began to puzzle him exceedingly. Belle appeared as if she had been crying; Mrs. Jocelyn looked perplexed and worried, and in Mildred's eyes there were anxiety and trouble. Mr. Jocelyn had not lost his serenity in the least, but his aspect now was grave, and ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... didn't take in this delicate political hint. In fact, anything fine or keen is sure to puzzle ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... we may well suppose, was not without influence in suggesting to his mind the probable shape of the earth. The Milky Way, which doubtless had puzzled astronomers from the beginnings of history and which was to continue to puzzle them for many centuries after the day of Anaxagoras, was explained by the Clazomenaean philosopher on a theory obviously suggested by the theory of the moon's phases. Since the earth-like moon shines by reflected light at night, and since the stars seem obviously brighter on ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... suffering with numerous boils upon his skin has often been a puzzle to his physician, who has in vain attempted to find some cause for the trouble in the general health alone. Had he known that every boil owed its origin to pus bacteria, which had infected a sweat gland or hair follicle, the treatment would probably have been more efficacious. The ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... all dark to me," owned Sally Flint. "I guess 'twould puzzle a saint to explain men-folks, anyway, but I've al'ays thought they was sort o' numb about some things. Anyway, Josh Marden was. Well, things went on that way till the fust part o' the summer, an' then they come to a turnin'-p'int. I s'pose ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... Now the puzzle was, how the palm got there. Naturally one would suppose that a seed of the palm had been deposited on the top of the banyan, and had there germinated and thrown out ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... guess whom I have seen,' she began, when Monica was quite ready to listen. 'We had a letter the other morning which did puzzle us so—I mean the writing before we opened it. And it was ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... II. The Northern Lights. Chapter III. The Bell Rock. Chapter IV. A Family of Boys. Chap. V. The Grandfather. VI. Alan Stevenson. VII. Thomas Stevenson. My materials for my great-grandfather are almost null; for my grandfather copious and excellent. Name, a puzzle. A Scottish Family, A Family of Engineers, Northern Lights, The Engineers of the Northern Lights: A Family History. Advise; but it will take long. Now, imagine if I have been homesick for Barrahead and Island ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... these Psalms are occupied with that standing puzzle to Old Testament worthies—the good fortune of bad men, and the bad fortune of good ones. The former recounts the personal calamities of David, its author. The latter gives us the picture of the perplexity of Asaph its writer, when he 'saw the prosperity ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to hear,' said Burney simply. 'It's always been a bit of a puzzle to me how a chap like you came to be a Tommy in this outfit. With your education, you ought to be an officer ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... 'I'm heart-broken,' in response. Then, as fast as her mischievous little feet could carry her, she raced down one hill and across to the other. Very stealthily she advanced till she found the boy bent over a puzzle on the back stoop, and—and he was ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... They knew a good horse when they saw one, and they let people see how a man, if he chooses, can shift for himself, without being beholden to any one. Anyhow, they have given clever men something to puzzle their brains about, and their language is not, as some would have it, a mere thieves 'patter,' but is a good, if not a better one, than that which the clever ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... the villain was only crushed for the moment, and that he would shortly be revenging himself upon them. No, the only way every to get any peace and quiet was to render the Tanuki harmless for ever. Long did the old man and the hare puzzle together how this was to be done, and at last they decided that they would make two boats, a small one of wood and a large one of clay. Then they fell to work at once, and when the boats were ready and properly ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... lower side while the upper side or that within the dam is gently sloped. the brush appear to be laid in no regular order yet acquires a strength by the irregularity with which they are placed by the beaver that it would puzzle the engenuity ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... down, or rather fall into a chair! Then I sprang up with a bound to look about me; then I sat down again, overcome by astonishment and fear, in front of the transparent crystal bottle! I looked at it with fixed eyes, trying to solve the puzzle, and my hands trembled! Some body had drunk the water, but who? I? I without any doubt. It could surely only be I? In that case I was a somnambulist—was living, without knowing it, that double, mysterious life which makes us doubt whether there are not two beings ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... busy ones for Brewster. Miss Drew saw him quite as often as before the important interview, but he was always a puzzle to her. ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... the reasons for my fellow-traveller's anxiety about my name and occupation, I knew not, yet could not help feeling gratified at thinking that as I had not given my name at the coach office, I was a great a puzzle to him as ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... Puzzle as I did over the words, I managed to eat a good breakfast, and then went into the Cullens' car and electrified the party by telling them of Camp's and Fred's despatches, and how I had come to overhear ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... grimly, and put the thought aside, and moved their worldly goods to the two tiny rooms. When they had got their trunks in, there was no place to sit save on the beds; and though Corydon had cast away all superfluities for this pilgrimage, still it was a puzzle to ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... Natacha relapsed into dreaming and wondering how it had all happened. Not being able to solve the puzzle, she drifted into reminiscence once more. She could see him—him—and feel his impassioned eyes fixed on her face. "Oh, make haste back! I am so afraid he will not come yet! Besides, it is all very well, but I am growing old; I shall ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... talented musicians of the younger generation. It is improbable that Berlioz would have been an easy subject for the wisest and kindest of spiritual guides; but no influence, repellent or attractive, could have been more disastrous for that passionate, quick-witted and yet eminently puzzle-headed mixture of Philistine and genius, than the crabbed old martinet whose regulations forbade the students access to Gluck's scores in the library, and whose only theory of art (as distinguished from his practice) is accurately formulated in the following passage from ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... other; "but for my part, I am often disposed to look upon the man as mad; yet still the puzzle is to think how he lives in such buck style—the vagabond. He certainly is involved in some-mystery, for every one you meet or talk ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... in the missive which seemed of greater interest to him than others. For example, the place whence it had been addressed was an ever recurring puzzle; he also dwelt long upon the sentence which referred so delicately to a paternal relationship. The most exigent passages, however, were those relative to the time he might look for the man's coming. As specially directed, he had taken note of the day of the delivery ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... conspirators. It often since appeared to me odd. Every year, indeed, more odd, as this cumulative case of the marvellous becomes to my mind more and more inexplicable—that underlying my sense of mystery and puzzle, was all along the quiet assumption that all these occurrences were one way or another referable to natural causes. I could not account for them, indeed, myself; but during the whole period I inhabited that house, I never once felt, though much alone, and often up very late at ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... little painting here; but, after all, I don't seem to take as much interest in composing pictures as in trying to puzzle out ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... consideration of his patient's tenderness of brain. "We both of us fought a good fight; for though you struck no actual stroke, you took them as unflinchingly as ever I saw a man, and so turned the fortune of the battle better than if you smote with a sledge-hammer. Two things puzzle me in the affair. First, whence came my assailants, all in that moment of time, unless Satan let loose out of the infernal regions a synod of fiends, hoping thus to get a triumph over me. And secondly, whence came you, my preserver, unless ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Those who were not akin were bound to each other by ties of long acquaintanceship; but the homogeneousness of the people, complete and thorough as it was, was not marked by any monotony. On the contrary, character and individuality ran riot, appearing in such strange and attractive shapes as to puzzle and bewilder even those who were familiar with the queer manifestations. Every settlement had its peculiarities, and every neighborhood boasted of its humorist,—its clown, whose pranks and jests were limited by no license. Out of this has ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... She was a puzzle to all who knew her. Meanwhile, in her own soul she was waging a battle with her desires, to which she knew not how to give a definite form. She asked herself why she lived. She buried herself in books, but found no comfort there. She felt that she must find something that would absorb and ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... strip, and another. Some went on very well, some with heavy travail, and with results that made me grateful for our pictures and furniture. Yet it became fascinating work; it was like piecing out some vast picture-puzzle, one that might be of some use when finished. I improved, too. I was several days finishing the up-stairs, and by the time I got it done I had got back some of the dash I started off with. I could slap on the paste and swing the strip to the ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... can afford to ignore a coincidence, and it so happened that upon the very day that league Poteet's wife presented him with the puzzle of a daughter, Fate presented his countrymen with the problem of war. That night, sitting in the door of his house and smoking his pipe, Teague witnessed other developments of the coincidence. In the next room the baby-girl squalled ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... dramatic entertainments, pageants and tableaus, of varying degrees of grossness, similar to the more elaborate and polished products of the early Javanese and Peruvian drama ... one cannot help fancying must be all pieces out of the same puzzle ... I have with some pains discovered the origin of the name "Arioi." It throws a lurid light on the character of some of the Asiatic explorers who must have visited this part of the Eastern Pacific prior to the Europeans. In Maori the word Karioi ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... naturally perfectly frank. Pity it was she had ever had a secret to keep! These frank people are a sore puzzle to gentlemen of Lawyer Larkin's quaint and sagacious turn of mind. They can't believe that anybody ever speaks quite the truth: when they hear it—they don't recognise it, and they wonder what the speaker is driving at. The best method of hiding your opinion or your ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... good upon the subject," said Holmes. "He remarks that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... did not move. Slowly the heavy brows contracted over intent eyes as he strove to puzzle it out. At length his lips ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... I'm afraid. Those big beech woods are rather a puzzle to anybody who is not familiar with the country. No wonder she became frightened when ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... It was rather a puzzle to her and her brother. All they were sure of was what they saw—that the Yaquis had separated, most of them following Paz, while the captives were left in charge of the villainous Mike and his ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... sensation of discomfort, of apprehension even. Still, when he thought about her it seemed impossible to connect anything sinister with a personality so charming, with a disposition so amiable. No, it was beyond him; it was useless his attempting to puzzle out the problem. Only time could explain it. As they had met at the Savoy, so sooner or later they would meet again. He knew it was useless to try and forget her; that was impossible, but, ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... blazing fire, and plenty of hot tea, toast, and eggs, it was easy to remedy one class of these poor people's wants; but how to rig them out in dry clothes was a puzzle, till the captain bethought him of a resource which answered very well. He sent to several of the officers for their dressing-gowns; and these, together with supplies from his own wardrobe, made capital gowns and petticoats—at least, till the more fitting drapery of the ladies ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... as fair as could be, With her tempting smiles And maidenly wiles, And he was a trifle past seventy-three: Now what she could see Is a puzzle to me, In a ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... occasionally held to her nose. But all her effort was to compose her thoughts—a difficult attempt, as the image of her mother was the one which insisted on taking the pre-eminence in her mind. She ordered it down, with a sort of bitterness. Had her mother been alive, she would have gladly fled from this puzzle into which her life had tangled itself, and gone back to America to rest and mother-love. So she told herself, at least. But then followed the reflection that in her mother's death the refuge of love's calm and protection ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... for a grand saturnalia is best when Mr. Smith goes from home for a day or two. Then I can deny myself to visitors—take full license—set the hydrant running, and puzzle the water commissioners with an extra consumption of Schuylkill. My last exploit in this way was rather disastrous; and I am patiently waiting for its memory to pass away, before I venture even to think of repeating it. Mr. Smith had business in New York—imperative ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... and mutilate, and palm upon me senses which he knows are deliberately disavowed by me, all the while pretending that it is my bad logic which justifies him! We know that very many religious men are bad logicians: if I am as puzzle-headed a fool as Mr. Rogers would make people think me, how does that justify his mocking at my religion? He justifies himself on the ground that I criticize the New Testament as freely as I should Cicero (p. 147). Well, then let him criticize me, as freely (and with ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... now, was dovetailing together the pieces of the puzzle. Those who had originally planned the crime had in some way discovered that the Rat, in the actual theft, had forestalled them. Possibly, for instance, bent on the same errand, they had seen the Rat leaving the building; then, finding the safe already looted, they ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... scene can be witnessed every evening in numerous cafes in the City of New York. Tons of brew have been consumed over theories to account for it. Some have conjectured hastily that all Southerners in town hie themselves to cafes at nightfall. This applause of the "rebel" air in a Northern city does puzzle a little; but it is not insolvable. The war with Spain, many years' generous mint and watermelon crops, a few long-shot winners at the New Orleans race-track, and the brilliant banquets given by the Indiana ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... puzzle to the Red man. To the banks of the Red River and to the east of Lake Winnipeg had come many of the Chippewas. They were known on the Red River as Sauteurs, or Saulteaux, or Bungays, because they had come to the West from Sault Ste. Marie, ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... experience, her four years' nursing, and her people in the old home town. Bit by bit, we picked out her status from the things she dropped inadvertently. And that night in our rooms we assembled the parts of the puzzle thus; one rambling Bedford limestone American castle in the Country Club district; two cars, with garage to match; a widowed mother, a lamented father who made all kinds of money, so naturally some of it was honest money; two brothers, a married sister; a love for ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... to bed, on the night of Lady Kitty's recitation, William Ashe stayed up till past midnight talking with old Lord Grosville. When relieved of the presence of his women-kind, who were apt either to oppress him, in the person of his wife, or to puzzle him, in the persons of his daughters, Lord Grosville was not by any means without value as a talker. He possessed that narrow but still most serviceable fund of human experience which the English ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the narrowest compass, and most clearly set forth, the great standing puzzle of all thought, which can only be solved by action. On the one side there is the distinctest knowledge of a divine purpose that will be executed; on the other side there is the distinctest consciousness ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... obtrudes itself upon me, and I ask, "Suppose Gen. TERRY had a daughter, why would she necessarily be a delightful puzzle? Obviously because she ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... fifty thousand francs to Nicolas Dugrival's wife! Do you call that uninteresting? And what about the way in which you solved the puzzle of the ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... for God's righteous and eternal law, against man's false and unrighteous law. It is a very difficult thing, no doubt, to tell where to draw the line in such matters. But we, thank God, here in England now, have no need to puzzle our heads with such questions. Every man's conscience is free here, and he has full liberty to worship God as he thinks best, provided that by so doing he does not interfere with his neighbour's character, or property, or comfort. There is no single ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... puzzle to me how men could have ever been so foolish as to make such a thing as I am, to put on their heads; these great unmeaning curls, this ugly club, as they called it, hanging down behind, and this horrid ...
— The Talkative Wig • Eliza Lee Follen
... the first time he began to notice the words that showed dimly through the stain, began to read them, to puzzle them out, as if they were new ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... said Phil, struggling into a white, medallioned blouse that fastened as intricately as the working of a prize puzzle. "I've taken such a dislike to her, and ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... good drink, and cheered by the certainty of having water by me, I sat down for a while on the cabin-scuttle that I might puzzle out a plan for getting to some ship so recently storm-slain that aboard of her still would be eatable food. As for rummaging in the hold of the brig, I knew that no good could come of it—she having lain there, as I judged, for a good deal more than half a century; ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... Harry Girdwood had got through the above puzzle once or twice, he was in a regular fog. The only result was to get himself heartily laughed at by ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... that?" said Madame. "'Twould puzzle a wise man to do so, for in these parts there are so many turnings. However, I will send a girl to guide you. You could find room for her on the box-seat, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... is lively, is interesting, and is brief. It can be read with pleasure now, as it was read with pleasure when it first appeared. But, besides this, it is interesting to us as the early work of a writer whose mind has been a puzzle to men of letters. Even should we accept Macaulay's judgment on Boswell, and despise him as he despises him, yet it must surely be worth while to examine closely the early writings of an author, who has, "in an important department of literature, ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... the yard-man, with alacrity; and he went off shaking his head, as if all this was a puzzle beyond his capacity ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... your hair, then you must have a false nose, and put a spot on some part of your face, or a wart, or a few hairs." I laughed, and said, "Help me to contrive this for the next ball; I have not been to one for twenty years; but I am dying to puzzle somebody, and to tell him things which no one but I can tell him. I shall come home, and go to bed, in a quarter of an hour."—"I must take the measure of your nose," said he; "or do you take it with wax, and I will have a nose made: you can get a flaxen ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... puzzle of Zoe Vizard, the reader must be on his guard against his own knowledge. He knows that Severne and Ashmead were two Bohemians, who had struck up acquaintance, all in a minute, that very evening. But Zoe had not this knowledge, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... "That shows our man to be industriously at his task. No, no explanation now; on the twenty-seventh of May we'll come again, and the drain itself shall furnish a solution to the puzzle." ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... wit and resource of the Enterprise huddled around Calloway's puzzle, considering its mysterious ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry |
