"Cypher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... taken notice of it, but that it appears strange to me, that any person should have told us, that he sent a successor to a consular lieutenant of a province, as an ignorant, illiterate fellow, upon his observing that he had written ixi for ipsi. When he had occasion to write in cypher, he put b for a, c for b, and so forth; and instead ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... Kenyon! what have you done? You will know the interpretation of the reproach, your conscience holding the key of the cypher. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... charitable purposes; and requested Allen, if he should refuse the legacy for himself, to pay it to the Bath Hospital. Allen adopted this suggestion, saying quietly that Pope had always been a bad accountant, and would have come nearer the truth if he had added a cypher to the figures. ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... her in the face again? Besides ... well ...! They went to Llandudno, rather scared, and hardly knowing how the change had come about. But they went. And it was the force of Cyril's will, Cyril the theoretic cypher, that took them. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... as we paced along. "A bloomin' cypher. Wot's the sarjint? 'E's got the Inspector over 'im. Over above the Inspector there's the Sooprintendent. Over above 'im's the old red-tape-masticatin' Yard. Over above that there's the 'Ome Sec. Wot's 'e? A cypher, like me. Why?" Judlip looked up at the stars. "Over above ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... but it is still more interesting as, perhaps, the most singular example extant of unreserved self-revelation—all the foibles, peccadilloes, and more serious offences against decorum of the author being set forth with the most relentless naivete and minuteness, it was written in a cypher or shorthand, which was translated into long-hand by John Smith in 1825, and ed. by Lord Braybrooke, with considerable excisions. Later and fuller ed. have followed. P. left his books, MSS., and collections to Magdalene Coll., Camb., ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... reading of the part is masterly, and we think correct. His Dunstan is not wholly sane; he believes himself inspired to read the alphabet of Heaven's stars, and to behold visions beyond the bounds of human foresight; one of the few to whom, 'and not in mercy, is it given to read the mixed celestial cypher: not in mercy, save as a penance merciful in issue.' His mischievous influence over the popular mind is sealed by the partial and latent degree of his insanity, for 'madness that doth least declare itself endangers most, and ever most infects ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... Alleghania, (I should prefer the latter,) in place of America. The title of Appalachian, or Alleghanian, would still announce us as Americans, but would specify us as citizens of the Great Republic. Even our old national cypher of U. S. A. might remain unaltered, designating the ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... is he that weds a Shrew; One that will talk, and wear the Breeches too; Governs, insults, do's what e'er she thinks fit, And he good Man, must to her Will submit; Mannages all Affairs at home, abroad, While he a Cypher seems, and stands for naught; When e'er he speaks, she snaps him, and crys, Pray hold your Tongue, who was't made you so wife? You will be prating, though you nothing know: This he must bear, and be contented too, See his Friends slighted, and must ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... consent in due time, all her prejudices being in favour of the sea and sailors; and should she not, she would soon be her own mistress, and at liberty to dispose of herself and her pretty little fortune as she might choose. But a cypher as she was, in all questions of real moment, Mrs. Budd was not a person likely to throw any real obstacle in the way of the young people's wishes; the true grounds of whose present apprehensions were all to be referred to Spike, his intentions, and his well-known perseverance. Mulford ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... always! On his huge face, where every passing day now leaves some marks, on his round-eyed weakened face with its mouth opened like a cypher, the old smile of yore is spread out. I used to think then that resignation was a virtue; I see now that it is a vice. The optimist is the permanent accomplice of all evil-doers. This passive smile which I admired but lately—I ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... his early tendency in speculation. The other is more trustworthy, and exhibits that inventiveness which was characteristic of his mind. He tells us in the De Augmentis that when he was in France he occupied himself with devising an improved system of cypher-writing—a thing of daily and indispensable use for rival statesmen and rival intriguers. But the investigation, with its call on the calculating and combining faculties, would also interest him, as an example of the discovery of new powers by ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... formed at Syston Park contained some of the rarest incunabula in existence. Among them were copies of the Gutenberg Bible; the Second Mentz Psalter on vellum; the Catholicon of 1460; the Latin Bible of 1462, with the arms and cypher of Prince Eugene on the binding; and the Mirrour of the World, printed by Caxton in 1481. It also possessed one of the earliest of the block-books, the Apocalypse. The library was extremely ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... This rude cypher'd stone. On which a sister's pensive eye shall muse In sorrow, and another relative In sweet, though mournful, recollection, bend, Shall call a tear into the stranger's eye Whene'er he hears the tale, yet make him proud That Britain's hospitable land should ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... three figures each. The first two figures of the first group are 38, and the first two figures of the second group are 40—a difference of 2. Two taken from 8 leaves 6, or the third figure of the first group, and 2 added to the first figure of the second group makes 6. The 40 ends with a cypher, and it is a case of Syn. In. that the last figure of the second group or the third figure of it should likewise be a cypher. Besides, those who know anything at all about the population of Sydney must know that it is vastly more than 38,640, and hence that ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... following morning; neither was there any symptom of the persecution of the previous evening. No murmured words flung at him; no hissing; but only a few stares of wonder, almost, at his recent achievement. He was treated as a mere cypher,—sent to Coventry in fact. But this he did not mind; it certainly was preferable to positive persecution; and as he wished to keep calm for his coming ordeal, he was glad that nothing ensued to cause another fight—a contingency he had been fully prepared ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... there had once come to the office a blind man with a knotted twig and a piece of string which he wound round the twig according to some cypher of his own. He could, after the lapse of days or hours, repeat the sentence which he had reeled up. He had reduced the alphabet to eleven primitive sounds; and tried to teach me his ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... niggers was nobody, could be nobody, and was never intended for nobody, as nobody knew where white niggers come from. But I didn't believe all this; it warn't sensible. Something said-Nicholas! you're just as good as anybody: learn to read, write, and cypher, and you'll be something yet. And this something-I couldn't tell what it was, nor could I describe it-seemed irresistible in its power to carry me to be that somebody it prompted in my feelings. I was white, and ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... sols and a half. They have on one side the impression of the king's head; and on the other, the arms of Savoy, with a ducal crown, inscribed with his name and titles. There are of genuine copper, pieces of one sol, stamped on one side with a cross fleuree; and on the reverse, with the king's cypher and crown, inscribed as the others: finally, there is another small copper piece, called piccalon, the sixth part of a sol, with a plain cross, and on the reverse, a slip-knot surmounted with a crown; the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... at it. They ranked it, together with bowing at the name of Jesus and turning eastward at the Creed, among Romish proclivities. 'What mean,' Barnes had said towards the close of the previous century, 'these rich altar-cloths, with the Jesuits' cypher embossed upon them?'[917] So also that worthy man, Ralph Thoresby, had expressed himself 'troubled' to see at Durham, among other 'superstitions' 'richly embroidered I.H.S. upon the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... when at last she consented to become his wife, she yielded with that air of condescension, which a high-bred dame assumes when she suffers herself to be handed across the way by a person of inferior condition. From that time, Imperitus became a cypher in his own house; for the poor man was not only obliged to submit to all his wife's proceedings, but she expected him to acquiesce in all her opinions. Nothing under absolute authority could satisfy her high opinion ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... had received a cypher telegram at the police station, confirming the news, with the addition that, after replenishing the motor with petrol, they had set off again at once—they had ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... on all hands passes for a cypher to-day, if at all remembered hereafter, will be sure to pass for the same. For there is more likelihood of being overrated while living, than of being underrated when dead. And to insure your fame, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the Watry-Starre hath been The Shepheards Note, since we haue left our Throne Without a Burthen: Time as long againe Would be fill'd vp (my Brother) with our Thanks, And yet we should, for perpetuitie, Goe hence in debt: And therefore, like a Cypher (Yet standing in rich place) I multiply With one we thanke you, many thousands moe, That goe ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... time of Suetonius, Caesar's official despatches to the Senate were extant, and also private letters to Cicero and other friends, e.g. his confidants Balbus and Oppius. In these a cypher was, where necessary, employed. Cf. Sueton. Iul. 56, and Gell. ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... Remember, I have never charged him with falsehood. I shall write and tell him that I accept his word. Has it, or has it not, occurred to you to see Mrs. Widdowson herself? Or, if there are insuperable objections, why not see Miss Madden? We talk to each other in a sort of cypher, dear Rhoda. Well, I desire nothing but your good, as I think you know, and you must decide for yourself where ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... Emperor," murmur the devout in the sacristies. How happy he would be if he could pass in the latter for Constantine, and in the former for Babeuf! Watchwords are repeated, adhesion is declared, enthusiasm spreads from one to another, the Ecole Militaire draws his cypher with bayonets and pistol-barrels, Abbe Gaume and Cardinal Gousset applaud, his bust is crowned with flowers in the market, Nanterre dedicates rosebushes to him, social order is certainly saved, property, family, and religion breathe again, ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... throughout the United States—a control that covered all the main lines in the country. He was subsequently commissioned colonel and aid-de-damp, and assigned to duty in the War Department, and was also placed in charge of the cypher correspondence of the Secretary of War. The cryptograph used throughout the war was perfected by him, and baffled all attempts of the enemy to translate it. At the close of the war he left the active military service of the government, retiring with the brevet of Brigadier General, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... congregations than in former times who have realised the fact that it is every Christian man's task, somehow or other, to set forth the great name of Jesus Christ. But still, alas, in a church with, say, 400 members, you may knock off the last cypher, and you will get a probably not too low statement of the number of people in it who have realised and fulfilled this obligation. What about the other 360 'dumb dogs, that will not bark'? And in that 360 there will probably be several men who can make speeches on political platforms, and in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and which have been petted proportionably, look extravagant enough amid the new spread of good honest grey grass that is now the earth's general wear. So that the significance is lost at once, and whole value of such letters—the cypher changed, the vowel-points removed: but how can that affect clever writing like this? What do you, to whom it is addressed, see in it more than the world that wants to see it and shan't have it? One understands shutting an unprivileged eye to the ineffable mysteries ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... took place on the 29th of January. The jewel resembled a badge rather than a brooch, bearing a St George's Cross in red enamel, and the Royal cypher surmounted by a crown in diamonds. The inscription "Blessed are the Merciful" encircled the badge which ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... 14, and 4 subtracted, leaves 10! Why, sir, I done a whole slate full of letters and signs; and afterward, when I tried by figures, they every one of them came out right and brung the answer! I mean to cypher by ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... man's privilege to read in the English language or in any other. Whether Pepys intended this Diary to be afterwards read by the general public or not—and this was a doubtful question when it was considered that he had left, possibly by inadvertence, a key to his cypher behind him—it was certain that he had left with us a most delightful picture, or rather he had left the power in our hands of drawing for ourselves some, of the most delightful pictures, of the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... a wooden clock, a home-made battery and the wire stretched many times around the walls of the studio. With eager interest we gathered about it as our master explained its operation while, with a click, click, the pencil, by a succession of dots and lines, recorded the message in cypher. The idea was born. The words circled that upper chamber as ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... removed, a gigantic wooden framework was substituted, on which was erected a gorgeous piece of gas illumination. Above the mouldings of the windows, and over the City Arms, waved the Royal Standard and the Union Jack. Above was the Royal cypher, V.R., in very large characters, surmounted by the appropriate word "Welcome," the whole being encircled by an immense wreath of laurels, which terminated, at the lower extremity of the framework, ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... Vergennes to betray a want of confidence in you, which I am persuaded Congress do not entertain, I am led to consider my not having received instructions to communicate them as a mere accidental omission, and accordingly take upon me to enclose a copy of them. You will, I presume, put them in cypher before they are sent off. To give you leisure to do it, I have not sent them to your house, but have ordered my servant to find you ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... him," said Irene, coldly. "Become a cypher, a slave. That will not suit me, Hartley!" And she looked at him with firmly compressed mouth ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... At all his jokes, for many a joke had he; Full well the busy whisper circlin round Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd. 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 cypher too; Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, And ev'n the story ran—that he could gauge: In arguing, too, the parson own'd his skill; For ev'n though vanquish'd, he could argue still; While words of learned length and thund'ring sound, Amazed the gazing rustics ranged ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... shot rays of gold. This field was encircled by a black band bearing the scroll "Blessed are the merciful." The shield was set in a framework of palm-branches in green enamel tipped with gold, and united at the bottom by a riband of blue enamel inscribed "Crimea" in gold letters. The cypher V.R. surmounted by a crown in diamonds, was charged upon the centre of the cross. On the back was a gold tablet which bore an inscription from the hand of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... Peter Dillon, of the East India Company's service, that two Frenchmen survived at Manicola; he therefore visited the island, where he found several relics of the lost admiral, although the Frenchmen were dead; among the rest his sword guard, marked with his cypher.[8] Dillon was honored by the French government with the title of Chevalier, and ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... says. They meet in sixes, and at ev'ry mart, Are sure to con the catalogue by heart; Or ev'ry day, some one at Rimee's looks, Or bills, and there he buys the name of books. They all get Porta, for the sundry ways To write in cypher, and the several keys, To ope the character. They've found the slight With juice of lemons, onions, piss, to write; To break up seals and close 'em. And they know, If the states make peace, how it will go With England. ...
— English Satires • Various
... "that in our present situation we should all be wrong to play the haughty when a chance offers itself, even outside our art, of putting a figure in front of the cypher that ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... full of ferment. Ursula was wild with excitement. At last her father was going to be something, socially. So long, he had been a social cypher, without form or standing. Now he was going to be Art and Handwork Instructor for the County of Nottingham. That was really a status. It was a position. He would be a specialist in his way. And he was an uncommon man. Ursula felt they were all getting a foothold at last. He ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... the case, which was much more modern than the kind of badge or pendant it contained. This was a fairly large oval stone of a milky green, deeply engraved with strangely formed letters interlaced in a cypher, and surrounded by a border of dark blue gems which Mrs. Stimpson decided instantly must be Cabochon star sapphires of quite exceptional quality. The gold chain attached to it was antique and of fine ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... be read under Mr. H. B. Wheatley's guidance. A cheap edition of his book, in 8 volumes, has recently been published by George Bell & Sons. I have No. 2 of the large paper edition of this book, No. 1 having gone to Pepys's own college of Brazenose, where the Pepys cypher ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... attempted to see, Wyatt. The courier, after leaving the town, was waylaid by a party of Lord Cobham's servants in the disguise of insurgents; his despatches were taken from him and sent to the chancellor, who found in the packet a letter of Noailles to the king in cypher, and a copy of Elizabeth's answer to the queen. Although in the latter there was no treason, yet it indicated a suspicious correspondence. The cypher, could it be read, might be expected to ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... his fealty still unfaltering; for their faith, as their reliance, was mutual. His letter, therefore, was less that of a lover to his mistress than one between man and man, written to a fellow-conspirator, most of it in figurative phrase, even some of it in cypher! ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... brain trouble. Don't mistake. That's so. If there are any pickings at all, TRUST SPEEDY; don't let the creditors get wind of what there is. I helped you when you were down; help me now. Don't deceive yourself; you've got to help me right now, or never. I am clerking, and NOT FIT TO CYPHER. Mamie's typewriting at the Phoenix Guano Exchange, down town. The light is right out of my life. I know you'll not like to do what I propose. Think only of this; that it's life ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... But it will only seem so. Dry and prolix, indeed, it is to me in the writing, full as much as it can be to others in the attempt to understand it. But I know that, once mastered, the idea will be the key to the whole cypher of the AEschylean mythology. The sum stated in the terms of philosophic logic is this: First, what Moses appropriated to the chaos itself: what Moses made passive and a 'materia subjecta et lucis et tenebrarum', the containing [Greek: prothemenon] of the 'thesis' ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... by continual profit and small expenses, he grew rich, and began to turn his thoughts towards rank. He hung the arms of the family over his parlour-chimney; pointed at a chariot decorated only with a cypher; became of opinion that money could not make a gentleman; resented the petulance of upstarts; told stories of alderman Puff's grandfather the porter; wondered that there was no better method for regulating precedence; ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... had spoiled him inordinately and unblushingly. Also, as she contentedly drew at the pipe filled with the offerings of choice smoking-tobacco which he frequently turned out of his pockets into her lap, she had taught him to read in her own broad Scottish accent, and to cypher. ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... himself responsible for me. Also, he'd offered to pump me about what was best in the air world on my side of the water: how many aeroplanes of different sorts America could turn out in six months, etc. We contrived a cypher on diagrams I made. It was a clever one, but ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to go to the Agricultural Bureau, and get him a paper of lettis seed. And Solomon Cypher wanted me to get him a new kind of string-beans, if I could, and ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... and stood stiff and straight at reading. "This is a cypher—code stuff! They know what it means, and we don't. 'Two-nineteen sharp'—I wonder what that means! This is the nineteenth day of the month, isn't it? 'Signal general satisfaction'—Lord! I'd give anything for a good night's sleep. Gage, go on over ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... on the upstairs lodger, whenever the work she was engaged on permitted it. She felt, perhaps, as Uncle Mo felt, that the house warn't like itself without our boy; but if she shared his feeling that it was a waste of early life to spend it in learning to read slowly, write illegibly, and cypher incorrectly, she did so secretly. She deferred to the popular prejudice, which may have had an inflated opinion of the advantages of education; but she acknowledged its growth and the worldly wisdom of giving way ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... hands in lightning strokes are writing Mysterious words upon a cloudy scroll, Know that my pent-up passion is inditing A cypher message for your woman's soul; And when the lawless winds rush by you shrieking, Let your heart say, "Now ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... tended and nursed me in that time of crippledom.[18] Prince Leopold, then an undergraduate of Christ Church, and living at Wykeham House in The Parks, used to lend me his pony-carriage, which, as it strictly belonged to the Queen, and bore her crown and cypher, did not pay toll; and, with an undergraduate friend at my side, I used to snatch a fearful joy from driving at full tilt through turnpike gates, and mystifying the toll-keeper by saying that the Queen's carriages paid no toll. For the ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... the Queen, cypher: French MSS., bundle 13. State Paper Office. Kingston was one of the members of the House of Commons who was imprisoned at the close of the late session, for the freedom of his language in parliament. He was "Vice-Admiral of the Ports about the Severn," and a man of large influence ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... sixty-five men. On Tuesday night, Major O'Bierne's party reached this place, and soon afterwards, a telegraph station was established here by an invaluable man to the expedition, Captain Beckwith, General Grant's chief cypher operator, who tapped the Point Lookout wire, and placed the War Department within a moment's reach ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... sons, and to his favorite generals and officers, there is invariably inscribed on the one side, "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," and on the other, averse from the Bible, surmounted by the imperial cypher. ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... day. The device is of little service in a country where watches are reliable; but it formed part of the equipment of the North Polar expedition commanded by Captain Nares. Wheatstone's remarkable ingenuity was displayed in the invention of cyphers which have never been unravelled, and interpreting cypher manuscripts in the British Museum which had defied the experts. He devised a cryptograph or machine for turning a message into cypher which could only be interpreted by putting the cypher into a corresponding machine ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... made a pillow of his Dutch bonds—indeed the only specimen of humanity up and moving was Corporal Noggs, who expressed his anxiety to know what Marcy would say were he an eye-witness to the preliminaries. As for Pierce! it mattered little what he thought, he being a mere cypher among the boys. Having succeeded in moving the Congress we sallied out to view those suburbs so full of historical lore. To our surprise we were surrounded wherever we went by a clamorous and grotesque crowd of discontented individuals, each bearing a document in his ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... to read the cypher of these legends aright, let us guard against one fault which was unfortunately too often committed in former days, and which is perhaps sometimes committed still. Let us not fall into the mistake of fancying ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... was a monogram, which was formed of the initial letters of the name of Christ, "X" and "P" being joined so as to form one cypher. Some bore a palm branch, the emblem of victory and immortality, the token of that palm of glory which shall hereafter wave in the hands of the innumerable throng that are to stand around the throne. ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... consequences; and a striking instance of this is recorded in the history of Prussia. Frederic I. charged his ambassador Bartholdi with the mission of procuring from the Emperor of Germany an acknowledgment of the regal dignity which he had just assumed. It is said that instructions written in cypher were sent to him, with particular directions that he should not apply on this subject to Father Wolff, the Emperor's confessor. The person who copied these instructions, however, happened to omit the word not in the copy in cypher. Bartholdi was ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... of all, a complete list of the instruments and of the work proposed to be done by them had to be prepared. The weather probabilities being everywhere very unsatisfactory, there was a possibility of all degrees of success or failure, and one thing which had to be prearranged for each station was a cypher code which should be available for all the likely combinations of instruments, weather and results. It was found that about one hundred words would suffice for the necessary code, including words which would indicate ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... what the result of such an experiment would be. I, to whom nature had denied the impromptu faculty; who, in public, was by nature a cypher; whose time of mental activity, even when alone, was not under the meridian sun; who needed the fresh silence of morning, or the recluse peace of evening, to win from the Creative Impulse one evidence of his presence, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... answer to my petition, shortly after the visit to which I have referred, in the usual form of an official negative, "Not sufficient grounds." Being now free from acute pain, I conversed freely with my companions, and taught some of them to spell, read, and cypher. After I was able to get out of bed I read aloud for an hour every evening, for the benefit of all the patients. In time I became popular, and intimate with many of them. I wrote letters and petitions for them, encouraged them with good advice, and succeeded ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... found; but I fancy the scoundrel has made himself scarce out of fright. Since he left Jersey Street, after the murder, he has not been heard of. Even Mrs. Clear does not know where he is. You know she has put advertisements in the papers in the cypher he gave her—according to the arrangement between them—but Wrent has not ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... misfortune had its silver lining. That he was not a mere cypher was clear from the fact that the Anglo-Indian community on the one side and the Congress on the other were each waiting patiently, eager to hook him, and land him on their own side. So Nabendu, beaming with pleasure took the paper to his sister-in-law, and showed her the letter. Looking ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... no second place in numerous state That holds more than a cypher: in a King 35 All places are contain'd. His words and looks Are like the flashes and the bolts of Jove; His deeds inimitable, like the sea That shuts still as it opes, and leaves no tracts, Nor prints of president for meane mens facts: 40 There's but a thred betwixt me and a crowne; I would not ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... bankers. The latter was ruined at the time of the South Sea mania. The following advertisement appeared in the Postman for Jan. 1, 1709: "Lost or mislaid, some time the last summer, at Winchester House, in Chelsea, a gold snuff-box, a cypher graved on the cover, with trophies round it, and over the cypher these words, 'DD. Illust. Princ. Jac. Duci Ormond.' Whoever brings it to Sir Stephen Evance, at the Black Boy in Lombard Street, shall have ten guineas reward, and be asked ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... the service on which Monteath was ordered, could give Broadfoot no orders, and was unwilling to refer to the Envoy on a matter which should have been left to him to arrange. He complained bitterly of the way in which he was reduced to a cypher—'degraded from a general to the "Lord-Lieutenant's head constable."' Broadfoot went from the General to the Envoy, who 'was peevish,' and denounced the General as fidgety. He declared the enemy to be contemptible, and that as for ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... conceits or epitome of time, who by his representation and appearance makes things long past seeme present. He is much like the compters in arithmeticke, and may stand one while for a king, another while a begger, many times as a mute or cypher. Sometimes hee represents that which in his life he scarse practises—to be an honest man. To the point, hee oft personates a rover, and therein comes neerest to himselfe. If his action prefigure passion, he raues, rages, and protests much by his painted heauens, and seemes in the heighth of this ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... has at the top a small engraving of three Fleurs de Lys between two oak branches, surmounted by a crown: at the bottom is another small engraving, with his cypher F. C. it was dated London, 17th July, 1792, 4th year ...
— A Trip to Paris in July and August 1792 • Richard Twiss
... who had been a Salvationist for twenty-seven years, a white- haired, sweet-spirited man, enjoyed his religion in the corps, but was little more than a cypher as a soldier. In a holiness meeting, while the Adjutant spoke from the text, 'Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord,' the old soldier saw in a moment of revelation, that if he were thoroughly yielded to God and obedient to the ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... their share in the matter was unknown, and that the Government was without a particle of evidence against them. And here we find that another blunder was made. Major Robert White, one of the raiders, had brought with him a despatch-box containing the key to a cypher, which had been used during the whole of the negotiations, and with it the names of the principal persons engaged in the conspiracy. Of course, this fell into the hands of the enemy, who were not slow to take ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... and never would write, She neither could cypher nor sew, And little girls whispered, "We never will be So ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... and no more Admits of, then I have all my store; But what mischance hath tane from my Lefthand, It seems did only for a cypher stand, Hence, when I scan my Verse if I do miss, I will impute the fault only to this, A fingers loss, I speak it not in sport, Will make a Verse ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... letter, like some others of this nature, is partly written in cypher, the key to which is lost. Its concluding sentences, therefore, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... bound, to the libraries at Blois and Fontainebleau, and such others as the King should appoint. About eight hundred volumes in the national collection represent the immediate results of this copy-tax; they are all marked with the ambiguous cypher, which might either represent the initials of the King and Queen or might indicate the names of Henri and Diane. Queen Catherine de Medici was an enthusiastic collector. When she arrived in France as a girl she brought with her from Urbino a number of MSS. that ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... treasures—rubies, sapphires, emeralds and diamonds of a size and in a profusion which makes it difficult to realize that they are genuine. It is a veritable cave of Al-ed-Din. The covers of these cases are sealed with strips of paper bearing the royal cypher—nothing more. They have never been locked nor guarded, yet nothing has ever been stolen, for King Sisowath is to his subjects something more than a ruler; he is venerated as the representative of God on earth. For a Cambodian to steal from him would be as unthinkable a sacrilege as ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... and the apprenticeship necessary to make a man tolerated, to enable him to pass as a cypher, or be admitted as a mere numerical unit, in any corporate body: to be a leader and dictator he must be diplomatic in impertinence, and officious in every dirty work. He must not merely conform to established ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... contrary, the merciful prince is safe in love, not in fear. He needs no emissaries, spies, intelligencers to entrap true subjects. He fears no libels, no treasons. His people speak what they think, and talk openly what they do in secret. They have nothing in their breasts that they need a cypher for. He is guarded with his ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... seal and that of the King. This in later times was supplanted by the "Tughr," the imperial cypher or counter-mark (much like a writing master's flourish), with which Europe has now been made familiar through the agency ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... not in love with her husband; but, on the other hand, neither was she in love with Adrien Leroy. It simply added a zest to her otherwise monotonous round of amusements to imagine that she was; and it pleased her vanity to correspond in cypher, through the medium of the Morning Post, though every member of her set might have read the flippant messages if put in an open letter. There was a spice of intrigue, too, in the way in which she planned meetings at their mutual friends' houses, or beneath the trees of Brierly ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... husband made this interview brief and fruitless with regard to business. When he spoke to her about the prisoners, for whose release the Colonnas had desired him to intercede, her Majesty referred him to the council. She was now, in reality, only a state cypher. ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... can't possibly get on without it, as you'll see. You must have something of this sort in a romance. Look at Poe's cypher in the Gold Beetle, and the chart in Treasure Island, and the Portuguee's scroll in King ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... my country shaken to the centre, the capital in the hands of strangers, and to what end? Simply that I, an old and worn-out man should, for a very few years, remain in power here. It would be necessary for those who placed me there to remain as my guardians, and I should be a mere cypher in their hands. Nothing, therefore, would persuade me to seek English aid to retain ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... receiving a harpoon, has effected a complete escape; and, after an interval (in one instance of three years), has been again struck by the same hand, and slain; when the two irons, both marked by the same private cypher, have been taken from the body. In the instance where three years intervened between the flinging of the two harpoons; and I think it may have been something more than that; the man who darted them happening, in the interval, to go in a trading ship on a voyage to Africa, went ashore ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... frightful state of mind, poor girl. But it was only to-day that the contents of the packet reached me, and was shown to the Prime Minister. Then, it was just before I hurried round here to see you that I received a cypher telegram from her, warning me that Count Godensky—of whom you've probably heard—an attache of the Russian embassy in Paris, somehow has come to suspect a—er—a game in high politics which she and I have been playing; her last, according to present intentions, ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... he sot down again. Oh, the fearful excitement and confusion that rained down again! The president got up and tried to speak; the editor of the Auger talked wildly; Shakespeare Bobbet talked to himself incoherently, but Solomon Cypher's voice drowned 'em all out, as he kep' a-smitin' his breast and a hollerin' that he wasn't goin' to be infringed upon, or come in contract ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... perhaps the only occasion upon which she ever seriously opposed Mazarin. With him expires all her political power. She is now as much a cypher as in the time of the late King, when France had only one master, the great Cardinal. He who is just dead, Fareham says, was but a little Richelieu; and he recalls how when the great Cardinal died people scarce dared tell one another ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... A useful code used by the mercantile marine, by an arrangement of flags from a cypher to units, and thence to thousands. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... worldly importance or pomp. Theoretically, the Christian world was under His dominion; practically, Christian affairs were administered by local authorities. It was impossible for a hundred reasons for Him to do what He wished with regard to the exchange of communications. An elaborate cypher had been designed, and a private telegraphic station organised on His roof communicating with another in Damascus where Cardinal Corkran had fixed his residence; and from that centre messages occasionally were despatched to ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... exciting notice of action re Bardell v. Pickwick. There had nearly been Pott v. Pott and Winkle. And yet, all the time, this Trundle listens, and eats and drinks; but there is no sign of him on the record. He is busy maintaining his character as a cypher. ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... babies as four ruthless hands pulled apart their cosey nest, and there, among the nibbled fragments, appeared enough finely printed, greenish paper, to piece out parts of two bank bills. A large cypher and part of a figure one were visible, and that accounted for the ten; but though there were other bits, no figures could be found, and they were willing to take the other ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... as a Journeyman; but on the 23rd of October, 1723, e're the Work was compleat, Sheppard took Occasion to rob the People of the Effects following, viz. seven Pound ten Shillings in Specie, five large silver Spoons, six plain Forks ditto, four Tea-Spoons, six plain Gold Rings, and a Cypher Ring; four Suits of Wearing Apparel, besides Linnen, to a considerable value. This Fact he confess'd to the Reverend Mr. Wagstaff before his Escape from the Condemn'd Hold ...
— The History of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard • Daniel Defoe
... unconstitutional, and Mary Walker declared that no human being except Mrs Proudie would ever have been guilty of such cruelty. "Don't tell me about the bishop, John," she said, "the bishop is a cypher." "You may be sure Dr Tempest would not have a hand in it if it were not right," said John Walker. "My dear Mr John," said Miss Anne Prettyman, "Dr Tempest is as hard as a bar of iron, and always was. But I am ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... the King, "say you have still attachment to me?" "Sir," was the answer, "we do." "Will you give me your hands upon it as men of honour?" They did so. "Well," said the King, "I see you are the men I always took you to be; you shall know all my intentions. I can no longer remain here but as a cypher, or to be a prisoner to the Prince of Orange, and you know there is but a small distance between the prisons and the graves of kings. Therefore I go for France immediately; when there you shall have my instructions—you, Lord Balcarres, shall have a commission to manage ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... the reader desirous of information to the "Oratiunculae de Rebus Praeter-Veteris," of Dundergutz. See, also, Blunderbuzzard "De Derivationibus," pp. 27 to 5010, Folio, Gothic edit., Red and Black character, Catch-word and No Cypher; wherein consult, also, marginal notes in the autograph of Stuffundpuff, with ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe |
