"Decipher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very arduous, formidable undertaking. The bill is of prodigious dimensions, about the size of a sheet of foolscap paper, lined and cross-lined for a multitude of entries. When the account finally reaches you, it closely resembles a design for a cobweb factory. Any attempt to decipher the various hieroglyphics is useless—it can't be done. The only thing that can be done is to read the total at the foot of the page and ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... until the poor girl had nearly gone mad; and it was only after long persuasion that I induced her to sign the paper, such a one as most travellers without passports in Austria are obliged to fill out. She finally wrote her name in a great scrawl which nobody could decipher, and gave as her country "Cape Town, Africa;" which again confounded the men, as they had no idea how a "Hottentot" could be an English subject. But they swallowed their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... manuscript; and, as we looked about, we picked up the remains of pencil, which had dropped from the dead man's fingers. Newman opened the manuscript, and though it was rotten, and the characters much defaced, he could still decipher them. He glanced his ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... passed; in that perpetual blackness there was no such thing as day. We saw no one save Desiree and the serving men. Once a messenger appeared carrying a bundle of quipos; I was able to decipher their meaning sufficiently to understand that we were invited to some religious ceremony in the great cavern. But I thought it injudicious to allow a meeting between Harry and the king, ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... to decipher Napoleon's wishes; he seems to have believed that war was inevitable; there is no proof that he desired it. He made preparations; the army was reorganised, the numbers increased, and a new weapon introduced. At the same time he looked about ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... have made our parting none the lighter. By the time you decipher this hieroglyphic I shall be some miles on my way: Address Hotel de Russie, Berlin. Adieu, Damon; ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... we seem to decipher between the lines of M. Turgeneff's minutely written chronicle. He himself has sought to understand as zealously as his most eminent competitors. He gives, at least, no meager account of life, and he has done liberal justice to its infinite variety. This is his great merit; his great ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... he read an unchanged purpose in her eyes, and his own decision strengthened. Some instinct led him to do the right thing; he drew forth the locket from beneath the folds of her dress, holding it open to the light. He noticed now a name engraven on the gold case, and bent lower to decipher it. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... lore, which seemed the fruit not merely of the Professor's own labors, but of those of more ancient sages than he; and often a whole volume seemed to be compressed within the limits of a few lines of crabbed manuscript, judging from the time which it cost even the quick-minded student to decipher them. ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Of what do you speak? I remember that some time back Khan Cochut, in whom I then placed unlimited confidence, at my order examined into the state of my treasures, and found some papers which I was unable to decipher. He informed me that they were of no value; but I directed him to allow them to remain in the casket in which they were placed. Some time afterwards, on visiting my treasury with the intention of placing the documents in the hands of some ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... to my correspondent. It was from Father Rush, my old tutor. I hurried eagerly from the spot, and regaining my quarters, locked the door, and with a beating heart broke the seal and began, as well as I was able, to decipher his letter. The hand was cramped and stiffened with age, and the bold, upright letters were gnarled and twisted like a rustic fence, and demanded great patience and much time ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... to decipher the manuscript, Kate walked towards the middle of the stage. 'I haven't seen the Duke for twenty-four ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... defined. All signs fail in a drought, and all signs fail in a wet season. At one time the south wind brings no rain, at another time the north and northwest winds do bring rain. The complex of conditions over a continental area of rivers and lakes and mountain-chains is too vast for us to decipher; it inheres in the nature of things. It is one of the potencies and possibilities which matter possesses. We can take ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... to rest, repose. descanso repose. descarga discharge, volley. descargar to discharge, unload. descarnar to strip off the flesh. descender to descend. descendiente descending, descendent. descendimiento descent. descerrajar to discharge, fire. descifrar to decipher. descolgar to unhang, let down, unfasten. descomunal uncommon. desconfiar to mistrust, suspect. desconocer not know, be ignorant. desconocido unknown. describir to describe. descubrir to discover, uncover. descuidar to neglect, not to be anxious. desde since, after, ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... their own peculiar page The fingers of the blind Decipher truths of every age, As mind communes with mind, So, one by one, these letters spell A name the ancient world ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... of Turgenev. In all of his works he remains true to the principles which his master summed up in a letter: "One must penetrate the surroundings, and take life in all its manifestations; decipher the laws by which it is governed; get at the very essence of life, while remaining always within the boundaries of truth; and finally, one must not be contented with a ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... difekti. dance : danc'i, -o; balo. dandelion : leontodo. dare : kuragxi. darn : fliki. date : dato; (fruit) daktilo. dawn : tagigxo. dead : senviva, mortinta. -ly, pereiga. dear : kara, multekosta. debauch : dibocxo. debris : rub'o, -ajxo. debt : sxuldo, ("be in"—) sxuldi. decipher : decxifri. deck : ferdeko; ornami. declaration : deklaracio. decoration : ornamajxo; ordeno. decree : dekreto, mandate. decrepit : kaduka. dedicate : dedicxi. deed : ago, faro, farajxo, faritajxo; dokumento. deep : profunda; (sound) basa. deer : cervo. defeat : venki, malvenko. defend ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... undergoes a complete transformation, but in an inverse entomological progression—changing from the butterfly into the chrysalis. He is seldom seen at the hospitals, dividing the whole of his time between the grinder and his lodgings; taking innumerable notes at one place, and endeavouring to decipher them at the other. Those who have called upon him at this trying period have found him in an old shooting-jacket and slippers, seated at a table, and surrounded by every book that was ever written upon every medical subject that was ever discussed, all of which he appears to be reading at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... offspring of God, are "copies" of the ideas of the Infinite Reason—if the universe be "the autobiography of the Infinite Spirit which has also repeated itself in miniature within our finite spirit," then may we decipher its symbols, and read its lessons straight off. Then every approach towards a scientific comprehension and generalization of the facts of the universe must carry us upward towards the higher realities of reason. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... curved her ringed fingers, which had withstood time and fatigue much better than her face; and then she reclined again on the chaise-longue, on her back, and sent up smoke perpendicularly, and through the smoke seemed to be trying to decipher the enigmas of the ceiling. G.J. rose and stood over her in silence. At ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... chiefly with the officers, and I have as yet had but little personal intercourse with the men. They concern me chiefly in bulk, as so many consumers of rations, wearers of uniforms, bearers of muskets. But as the machine comes into shape, I am beginning to decipher the individual parts. At first, of course, they all looked just alike; the variety comes afterwards, and they are just as distinguishable, the officers say, as so many whites. Most of them are wholly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... examine the words in the corner of fly-leaf I had once noticed before and believed to be a monogram. I quieted him a little, then bringing the lamp-light to bear upon the faded ink, I was able to decipher the device, which comprised a crown, three fleurs-de-lis under, and a lamb bearing a banner, with the letters ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... have signed the death-wrarrants during his dictatorship!" exclaimed Capitan Basilio, pale with emotion. He examined it and tried to decipher the seal, but though he turned it over and over he did not understand paleography, so he could ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... the device were so small and faint, that Philippa consumed half an hour ere she could decipher them. At length she succeeded in making out a rude rhyme or measure, in the Norman-French which was to her ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... contact with men of various dispositions; but he conquers all with the same weapons. What a contrast have we often thought he presents to some whose physiognomy looks like a piece of harsh handwriting, in which we can decipher nothing but self, self, self; who seem, both at home and abroad, to be always on the watch against any infringement of their dignity. Poor men! their dignity can be of little value if it requires so much care in order ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... greatly fallen away and blackened even in the fifteen yeas that I have known him. He is a phantom that is about to disappear; in spite of all the care lavished upon him, a poor phantom about to fall to pieces, to sink into nothingness. We move our lantern about his hooked nose, the better to decipher, in the play of shadow, his expression, that still remains authoritative. . . . To think that once the destinies of the world were ruled, without appeal, by the nod of this head, which looks now somewhat narrow, ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... his flight. Nothing was missed, he went without his wages, and no reason could be divined for his departure except the foreign letter. Bedford remembered it, but forgot what postmark it bore, for he had only been able to decipher "Italy." My lady made many inquiries and often spoke of him; but when month after month passed and no news came, she gave him up, and on Lillian's account feigned to forget him. Contrary to Hester's fear, she did not seem the worse ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... the same music, they would soon harmonise their fancies, and decipher the hieroglyphic; and this was a thing clearly demonstrated to the Queen Isabella, that Savoisy's horses were oftener stabled at the house of her cousin of Armagnac than in the Hotel St. Pol, where the chamberlain lived, since the destruction of ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... reach of very few. At the present day, "the merchants do not even possess the rudiments of an education. Many of them can neither read nor write and are forced to keep their accounts in their memory, or by means of ingenious hieroglyphics, intelligible only to their inventors. Others can decipher the calendar and the lives of the saints, and can sign their name with tolerable facility. They can make the simpler arithmetical calculations with the help of a little calculating ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... house, or it may have been devised by the historian to glorify the sage, but we may not, on account of it, discredit the finding of the ancient copies of the Books. We have K'ung An-kwo's own account of their being committed to him, and of the ways which he took to decipher them. The work upon the Analects, mentioned above, has not indeed come down to us, but his labors on the Shu-ching still remain. 5. It has been already stated, that the Lun Yu of Ch'i contained two Books more than that of Lu. In this ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... she will not say the same of me," replied Ligarius. "I am just as able to decipher an obelisk as to read a line ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... going to the burial of our last year's sins," said Irais, as we started; and there certainly was a funereal sort of feeling in the air. Up in our gallery pew we tried to decipher our chorales by the light of the spluttering tallow candles stuck in holes in the woodwork, the flames wildly blown about by the draughts. The wind banged against the windows in great gusts, screaming louder than the organ, and threatening to blow out the agitated ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... nature complex, the synthesis was irresistible. His expression was complicated; he had not a frank gaze, nor did he meet his friends without a nameless reticence. This veiled manner made him difficult to decipher. Upon the stage Belus was like a desert cat, a gliding movement almost incorporeal, a glance of feline intensity, and then—the puissant attack upon the keyboard. As in sullen dreams one struggles to throw off the spell of hypnotic suggestion, so there were many ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... demanded. But the fatality of events precluded the Italians from making it. Their evolution, checked in mid career by the brilliant 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 ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... sequence of species. If paragraphs and pages are missing from the brief embryonic recapitulation, whole chapters and volumes of the fossil series have been lost for all time. The investigators whose task it has been to decipher the story of the earth's evolution have had to meet numerous and exasperating difficulties which do not confront the embryologist and anatomist who study living materials. Nevertheless the library of palaeontological ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... returned, one of the brethren, searching the cave wherein the holy woman dwelt, found nothing there, saving one bracelet of gold, of large size and strange workmanship, engraven with foreign characters, which no one could decipher. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... better than any other place, because his secretary was there, and he lived under less restraint than at Versailles. He wrote so badly that he was often puzzled to read his own letters, and would bring them to me to decipher them. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... opinion as to their weight. The neck rings and brooches also engaged his attention; but Andrew Drever found greater interest in the ancient coins, which he carefully examined, endeavouring to decipher the rough inscriptions upon them. Most of the coins were foreign, but there were two which he recognized as English—a Peter's penny of the tenth century, and an older coin, which he told me was nearly a thousand years old, bearing the ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... profound dislike for her, shifted a foot; then straightened and banished her peremptorily from his environment. His principal interest lay now in casual glimpses of windows and speculation as to what was behind them. He varied this employment in a passing endeavor to decipher sundry signs that obtruded incidentally within ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... it might be in Rabelais' own hand; afterwards that it might be at least a copy of his unfinished work. The task was a difficult one, for the writing, extremely flowing and rapid, is execrable, and most difficult to decipher and to transcribe accurately. Besides, it often happens in the sixteenth and the end of the fifteenth century, that manuscripts are much less correct than the printed versions, even when they have not been copied by clumsy and ignorant hands. In this case, it is the writing of a clerk ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Meinam, where a great floating palace of wood, surmounted by a gorgeous roof and hung with crimson curtains, awaits him. The roof is literally thatched with flowers ingeniously arranged so as to form symbols and mottoes, which the superior beast is supposed to decipher with ease. The floor of this splendid float is laid with gilt matting curiously woven, in the centre of which his four-footed lordship is installed in state, surrounded by an obsequious and enraptured crowd of mere bipeds, who bathe him, perfume him, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... steps, terraces half buried—all showed what the place had been: a water garden of ancient Egypt—probably royal—because, although I am not able to decipher hieroglyphics, I have heard somewhere that these picture inscriptions, when inclosed in a cartouch like ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... The prince royal places unlimited confidence in him, they correspond in characters which we have vainly endeavored to decipher; and the result of this correspondence is, that Suhm has already procured the prince royal a loan of ten thousand dollars from the Duke of Courland, and that he has now secured him the annual sum of twenty-four thousand dollars from the Empress Anne. ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... for the billet of a mistress, and receive your tailor's bill! How provokingly slow are most domestic chieftains in this anxious operation! They turn the letters over and over, and upside and down; arrange, confuse, mistake, assort; pretend, like Champollion, to decipher illegible franks, and deliver with a slight remark, which is intended as a friendly admonition, the documents of the unlucky wight who encourages ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... Cappy, "do I understand you sent this message in cipher, which necessitated on the part of our captain a trip back to his ship before he could decipher it? Why didn't you send him the message in regular code? He would then have decoded it right in the consulate, or at best he could have gone to the cable office and borrowed ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... recollection was of a bleak eastern coast, where Robert Turold had spent long years in a losing game of patience with the sea. He had gone there in the belief that some of his ancestors were buried in a forgotten churchyard on the cliffs, and he spent his time attempting to decipher inscriptions which had been obliterated almost as effectually as the dead whose ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... long; the sides are covered for a great distance with inscriptions of every kind, divided into compartments according to the era of the empire to which they refer. One which I examined, appeared to be a kind of index of the roads in Italy, with the towns on them; and we could decipher on that time-worn block, the very route I had followed from ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... Agriculture, and Dr. Samuel Denton of the first Medical Faculty, are commemorated by the little weather-beaten monument with the broken shaft, which has doubtless aroused the idle curiosity of thousands of students, who have never taken the trouble, however, to decipher the Latin inscriptions which set forth the life ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... his fear that he had not sufficiently concealed his tracks in the latest numbers. Yet, when he died in June, 1870, leaving three completed numbers still unpublished, he left his secret as a puzzle to the curious. Many efforts have been made to decipher his purpose, especially his intentions as to the hero. Was Edwin Drood killed, or ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... decipher illegible inscriptions, to contemplate a throttled centaur on a dilapidated frieze, or a carved acanthus on a fallen capital, grope over the Acropolis and invoke Athenian Pallas," said Mike; "but for me these painted seraglios and terraced, bower-canopied gardens, vocal with nightingales ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... birth He is a countryman of thine, Thora. What writing is this on earth? I can scarce decipher ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... application for the money, Luca declared it to have been already repaid, so that now he—Michelangelo—sees no other way of obtaining his own but by application to the Capitano for justice.[24] This is the gist of the letter; we have to use our own knowledge of the character of the two men to decipher the mystery, since no other document confirms or denies the accusation. The reasonable explanation seems to be that some delay, probably on the road, in the transmission of the money, irritated the notoriously impatient temper ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... characters I will refrain from giving any translation of them for fear of being inaccurate. The photographs given of them facing pages 218, 220, 222, are, however, quite clear enough for any one interested in the matter to decipher them for himself. ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... came straight to it; and twenty if he were obliged to look for me. But this was time enough to allow me to read the cherished letter, whose fragments I hastened to unite again. The writing was already fading, but I managed to decipher it all." ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... lust of the eye, and the pride of life are to be as earnestly repressed and mortified. The seeker after the truth finds it only by frequent meditation amid the solitude of nature. Thither he will go both to study the pages of the sacred books and to decipher the scroll of his own inner consciousness. Thither also will he repair to commune with the one universal spirit which pervades all things, but which reveals itself especially to those who seek for it in the deep stillness of the forests, among the rocks of the mountains, and ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... Victor, he at first put on his spectacles with a scornful smile; but, when he had worn them a moment, he found them very wonderful things. When he looked through them, he could see people's thoughts written out on their faces; he could easily decipher the fine writing which you see traced on green leaves; and found there were long stories written on pebbles in little black and ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... ghastly, and tall,—and the rock was gray. Upon its front were characters engraven in the stones; and I walked through the morass of water-lilies, until I came close unto the shore, that I might read the characters upon the stone. But I could not decipher them. And I was going back into the morass when the moon shone with a fuller red, and I turned and looked again upon the rock and upon the ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... berth, bows hastily and glances furtively at them, and runs by skittishly, then you may know that he is some half-pay colonel or insignificant civil servant. Something, too, may be inferred from the length of time the lord chamberlain takes to decipher the name of the comer on the slip of paper which is handed him. If he scans it long and hard, and holds it a good way from him and says "Major Te—e—e—bosh—bow," then in a loud voice, "Major Tebow," you will be safe in thinking that Major Tebow is not one of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... of my pocket to try and decipher it, held it close up to my eyes, and ran through it, one line after the other. At last I got tired, and put the papers back in my pocket. Everything was still. The sea stretched away in pearly blueness, and little birds flitted ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... and patent dullards as that Z. Z—— Why, he is a European fool! Upon my word, you could not find another like him all over Europe! He lectures—can you imagine?—as though he were sucking a sugar-stick—sue, sue, sue;... he is in a nervous funk; he can hardly decipher his own manuscript; his poor little thoughts crawl along like a bishop on a bicycle, and, what's worse, you can never make out what he is trying to say. The deadly dulness is awful, the very flies expire. It can only be compared with the boredom ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... for Dom Granger. He provided me straightway with Berber vocabularies by Venture, by Delaporte, by Brosselard; with the Grammatical Sketch of the Temahaq by Stanley Fleeman, and the Essai de Grammaire de la langue Temachek by Major Hanoteau. At the end of three months I was able to decipher any inscriptions in Tifinar. You know that Tifinar is the national writing of the Tuareg, the expression of this Temachek language which seems to us the most curious protest of the Targui ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... time remembered that the surname she had given him was the same as that of the prisoner whom he had so severely sentenced. He could now decipher the suggestion in the eyes, which had ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... of the chronological inscriptions which accompanied and explained each medallion. These inscriptions, which were too small and faint to be read with the naked eye from below, were not copied before their destruction. Grimaldi could decipher but a few: SIRICIUS. SEDIT ANN(is) XV. M(ensibus) V. D(iebus) XX.—FELIX. SEDIT ANN(o) I. M(ensibus) ... etc. The heads were bare, and framed by a round halo. They seem to have been painted at the time of Pope Formosus (891-896), as were also the ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... action and foul thought its seal of distortion; and the various aspects of humanity might be read as plainly as a printed history, were it not that the impressions are so complex that it must always in some cases (and, in the present state of our knowledge, in all cases) be impossible to decipher them completely. Nevertheless, the face of a consistently just, and of a consistently unjust person, may always be rightly distinguished at a glance; and if the qualities are continued by descent through a generation or two, there arises a complete distinction of race. Both ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... was small and not very distinct, it required a close observation to decipher it; but the plan was a successful one, nevertheless, and for four long years the blue umbrella had done good service to its mistress, shielding her alike from sunshine and from storm, and now in the crowded city it performed a double part, preventing those ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... could not read them, purchased the scroll and the box, and dismissed the pedlar. Then, being anxious to know what might be the contents of the scroll, he asked the Vizier if he did not know of anyone who might be able to decipher it. ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... used, and on two of them a closely written letter had been blotted several times, showing that there had been several sheets of the letter. Muller held it up to the looking-glass, but the repeated blotting had blurred the writing to such an extent that it was impossible to decipher any but a few disconnected words, which gave no clue. On a page further along on the blotter, however, he saw what appeared to be the impression of an address. He held it up to the glass and gave a whistle of delight. The words could be plainly ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... my feet; gold on my left hand; gold on my right; gold overhead; gold everywhere! I knew from certain inscriptions that I could partly decipher that this hidden treasure was a part of the Incas wealth in the ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... 2. Scylla then, under which character we are here to understand the chief priestess of the place, was no other than a handsome island strumpet. Her name it seems betokened as much, and she did not belie it: [Greek: ou psuthos ounom' echousa]. We may from these data decipher the history of Scylla, as given by Tzetzes. [Greek: En de proton Skulla gune euprepes; Poseidoni de sunousa apetheriothe.] Scylla was originally a handsome wench: but being too free with seafaring people she made herself a beast. She was, like the ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... nature! They looked so honest! I could never have believed it of them! But it looked so much like the "shinplasters" we are forced to use, that no wonder they made the mistake. To discover who had played so mean a trick on the poor old woman, the General asked me if I could decipher the name. I threw myself on my knees by the hearth, and by the flickering light read "S. Kimes. By order of C! H!! Luzenberg!!! Provost Marshal!!!! Onolona, Miss.," with a gasp of astonishment that raised a burst of laughter against me. Thought he was ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... his first letter from Eton to me?' said Venetia. 'I have always treasured it. It certainly was not very diverting; and, if by easy you mean easy to decipher,' she added laughing, 'his handwriting must have improved very much lately. Dear Plantagenet, I am always afraid I never pay him sufficient respect; that I do not feel sufficient awe in his presence; but I cannot disconnect him from the playfellow of my infancy; ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... us: does it satisfy Nature? She is letting us camp for awhile here among the wrecked graveyards of mightier dynasties, not one of which met her tests. Their bones are the message the epochs she murdered have left us: we have learned to decipher ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... have informed her that the calculation which enabled me to decipher the manuscript furnished me also with the key, but the whim took me to tell her that a spirit had revealed it to me. This foolish tale completed my mastery over this truly learned and sensible woman on everything but her hobby. This false ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... his life was written on his dress for any one who can decipher a dress! Above all, what trousers! made, by long wear, as black and shiny as the camlet of which lawyers' gowns are made! A waistcoat, bought in an old clothes shop in the Temple, with a deep embroidered collar! A rusty black coat!—and ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... been solved when the manuscript of Bishop Landa's account of Yucatan was discovered, some twenty years ago, in Madrid. The Bishop gave what he called "an A, B, C," of the language, but which, when applied to the extant manuscripts and the mural inscriptions, proved entirely insufficient to decipher them. ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... the bristling hair on his lips. He shook slightly with a nervous anxiety which made his crayon seem a living thing in his slender hand, and which touched her though she knew not why. She felt sure he was not bad-natured, his rough, surly ways arose from bashfulness. She did not decipher all this very clearly, but she divined it, and began to put herself at her ease, as if ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... canal as we had entered, we found to our comfort that this must be the very city mentioned by Theodolite. As the seeress had declared, a deep and noisome night always prevailed, only broken here and there as a wanderer scratched one of Bryant & May's matches and painfully endeavoured to decipher the number on the door of his house. The streets, moreover, were strewn and interwoven with long strings of iron fallen from ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... general idea as to their nature, but the striped box stood in a good light where I could thoroughly examine it. On the lid, which was clamped and cornered with metal-work, there was engraved a complex coat of arms, and beneath it was a line of Spanish which I was able to decipher as meaning, "The treasure-chest of Don Ramirez di Leyra, Knight of the Order of Saint James, Governor and Captain-General of Terra Firma and of the Province of Veraquas." In one corner was the date, 1606, and on the other a large white label, upon ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... such hieroglyphics, or, to be more exact pictographs, as I have been able to decipher from the old documents, tell of one country, or perhaps it was only a city, over which this great golden ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... which had been glued to the wood, but the greater part of which was torn or worn away. It was evident that the writing was too much defaced to allow of more than a mere guess at its purport, but by the not very good light I copied what I could decipher of the inscription. This ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... dazzling Cross and Star with its ever darting rays of fiery brilliancy, and the effect of its perpetual sparkle of lambent fire was as if an electric current were giving off messages which no mortal skill would ever be able to decipher or put into words, but which found their way to one's deepest inward consciousness. All at once there was a slight movement among the rows of white-garmented, white-cowled figures hitherto sitting so motionless,—and with ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... wall has been too short (too low). "One-sided wear, uneven setting down of the feet, and an unnatural course of the wall are often found together." How much an old shoe can tell us, if we take time and pains to decipher its scars! ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... English tolerably well, he gave me a manuscript to copy, which he was preparing for the press. I worked hard, and made, as I fancied, a beautiful copy; but the printers complained of my upright French hand, which they could not easily decipher:—I began to new-model my writing, to please the taste of my employers; and as I had sufficient motives to make me take pains, I at last succeeded. I found it a great advantage to be able to read and write the English language fluently; and when my employers perceived my education had not been ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... account of the contents of the fragments can yet be given. To decipher them is a work of time and of infinite patience and skill, as will readily be inferred from the account we have given above of the appearance and condition of the slips. But enough has been deciphered to show that the text employed in them exhibits discrepancies of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... everything he knows. He is like a paper-lantern, that turns with the smoke of a candle. He wears his clothes as the ancient laws of the land have provided, according to his quality, that he may be known what he is by them; and it is as easy to decipher him by his habit as a pudding. He is rigged with ribbon, and his garniture is his tackle; all the rest of him is hull. He is sure to be the earliest in the fashion, and lays out for it like the first peas and cherries. He is as proud of leading a fashion as others ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... readers have had a similar experience. A word spoken, but not consciously heard, has a moment afterward been detected by an effort as distinctly conscious as that made by the man who is attempting to decipher some old faint manuscript. This incident and its explanation will serve to illustrate the relation which seems to exist between consciousness and sensation, and also between consciousness and the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... six weeks, and penetrated one hundred and thirty-seven miles among the mountains beyond the Nepean. His journal being wrote in such an unintelligible hand, I have not been able to get it translated or copied, but have sent it open under your address to Lord Hobart. . . . I have not had time to decipher and read it, but am satisfied from what M. Barraillier has done and seen, that passing these barriers, if at all practicable, is of no great moment to attempt any further at present, as it is now well ascertained that the cattle have not, nor cannot, make any progress to the westward, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... to...[editor's note: impossible to decipher this word in Liszt's original letter] anything for you, tell me, and give me your ideas as to cut ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... elaborately and mysteriously marked with numbers and letters and various hieroglyphics, to decipher which would really have turned my assumed eccentricity into positive madness. I therefore sent the whole MS. back to him, and again threatened to strike! This had the desired effect. I then received MS. I could read, although frequently puzzled by its being ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... glistened as it lay at my feet. Stooping, I found a silver ring, beauteously bedecked with one glowing crystal. Round the rim is formed a quaint legend, bearing a fair device, which some learned clerk may perchance decipher." ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... its retrospective inquiries into origins in the past, its everyday observation of the present, is apt practically to overlook that the highest criterion and achievement of science is not to decipher the past, nor record the present, not even to interpret both. It is to foresee: only thus can it subserve action, of which the present task ever lies towards the future, since it is for this that we have to provide. Why then should not Comte's famous aphorism—"Voir ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... precaution of making their wills; Sir Nigel's preparation for a possible early demise always took the form of elaborately and sadly adding up his accounts. He had a large ledger beside him on the sofa, and slips of paper covered with intricate figures which neither he nor any one else could decipher. ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... him what book it was that he had been reading? "It is the Book of Destinies," said the hermit; "wouldst thou choose to look into it?" He put the book into the hands of Zadig, who, thoroughly versed as he was in several languages, could not decipher a single character of it. This only redoubled ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... after the other, turned many pages, stopping now and then to bend closer to look at a picture and decipher painstakingly the legend inscribed under it. Finally, after perhaps ten minutes of this kind of examination, he laid two of them beside him, grasped the other firmly with both awkward hands and began to read. They knew that he was reading, ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... 'skytal,' on which the required message was written lengthwise, so that when unrolled it became unintelligible; the recipient abroad had a staff of the same thickness and pattern, and so was enabled by rewinding the document to decipher the words. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... it. He tried complicated methods first, to find that the body of the letter, after all, was simple enough. By reading every tenth word, he got a consistent message, save that certain supplies, over which the concierge had railed, were special code words for certain regiments. These he could not decipher. ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... constantly encountered this difficulty in reading the language. Write a paragraph of our own language without vowels and look at it. Or, better, ask some one else to treat for you in the same way a paragraph with which you are not familiar, and see if you can decipher it. Undoubtedly, you could with some difficulty make out the sense of most passages. It would puzzle you at first, but after you had had some practice in supplying the vowels you would learn to read quite readily. Stenographers, as I have said, have a somewhat similar ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... understood why you were confined here as a lunatic; why the daughters of Marshal Simon were imprisoned in a convent. Then a thousand recollections returned to my mind; fragments of letters and statements, which had been given me to copy or decipher, and of which I had never been able to find the explanation, put me on the track of this odious machination. To express then and there the sudden horror I felt at these crimes, would have been to ruin all. I did not make ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... striding across the stream of centuries, to connect the past with the present. And yet, after all, what a mere matter of yesterday its extreme antiquity is! My explorations this morning bore reference to but the later eras of the geologist; the portion of the geologic volume which I was attempting to decipher and translate formed the few terminal paragraphs of its concluding chapter. And yet the finis had been added to them for thousands of years ere this latter antiquity began. The boulder-clay had been formed and deposited; the land, in rising over the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Lamb's works themselves. It would be a fatal mode of dependency upon an alien and separable accident if they needed an external commentary. But they do not. The syllables lurk up and down the writings of Lamb, which decipher his eccentric nature. His character lies there dispersed in anagram; and to any attentive reader the re-gathering and restoration of the total word from its scattered parts is inevitable without an effort. Still it is always a satisfaction in knowing a result, to know ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... it to be considerably pocket- worn. The obliterations referred to represented huge blots of black ink covering a lot of scratches and making it impossible to decipher the under writing. Defendant's Counsel immediately requested that the document be turned over to an expert, to see what could be done with it. The judge granted the motion and adjourned the case for several ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... journalists headed their daily bits of romance from Vicksburg and elsewhere. It was with great difficulty that I scrawled detached sentences at long intervals—a difficulty that, I fear, some unhappy compositor, doomed to decipher the foregoing pages, will thoroughly appreciate, though he may decline ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... soon after married a Captain Shrimpton, who thus became possessed of a large collection of manuscripts. These were sold to a bookseller. They were so full of erasures and interlineations that no printer could decipher them. It was necessary to call in the aid of a professed critic; and Theobald, the editor of Shakespeare, and the hero of the first Dunciad, was employed to ascertain the true reading. In this way a volume of miscellanies ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the pupils, but Lydia did not know this. She only knew that by some miracle of kindness she came to understand the classroom system of recitations, that she was introduced to different teachers, that she learned how to decipher the hours of her recitations from the complicated chart on the Assembly room blackboard, and that at noon she started for home with a list of textbooks to be purchased, and a perfectly clear idea of what to do when ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... up his lips, he silently laid it on the piano. It was a romance, which he had composed on the preceding day to old-fashioned German words, in which the stars were alluded to. Liza immediately seated herself at the piano and began to decipher the romance.... Alas, the music turned out to be complicated, and disagreeably strained; it was obvious that the composer had attempted to express some passionate, profound sentiment, but nothing had come of it: so the attempt remained merely an attempt. Lavretzky ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... me to decipher them, but what I read carried no immediate meaning to my mind. There were three sets of characters, one ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... intimacy with The Romance of the Forest, as well as with The Mysteries of Udolpho. The black chest and the cabinet are there in startling fulfilment of his prophecies, and when, just as with beating heart Catherine is about to decipher the roll of paper she has discovered in the cabinet drawer, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... attractions than philology? How can a lover of literary excellence fail to rejoice in the ancient masterpieces? And with what consistency could I, whose business lies so much in the attempt to decipher the past, and to build up intelligible forms out of the scattered fragments of long-extinct beings, fail to take a sympathetic, though an unlearned, interest in the labours of a Niebuhr, a Gibbon, or a Grote? ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... "while I skin this painted viper. I have your oath; you will not reveal. I am an alchemist, sir. Since I was twenty-two years old, I have pursued the wonderful and subtle secret. Yes, to unfold the mysterious Rose guarded with such terrible thorns; to decipher the wondrous Table of Emerald; to accomplish the mystic nuptials of the Red King and the White Queen; to marry them soul to soul and body to body, forever and ever, in the exact proportions of land and water—such ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... faster if the manuscript had been a little clearer," said the girl, smiling slightly. "Some of it was hard to decipher, and the technical terms were new to me. If you will look it over and let me know how nearly correct it is, I will then ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... bed staring me in the face, and not me alone, but also the spurious relatives who often stood or sat near me. On each fresh sheet placed over me I would soon begin to see words, sentences, and signatures, all in my own handwriting. Yet I could not decipher any of the words, and this fact dismayed me, for I firmly believed that those who stood about could read them all and found ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... and the utmost of its malice is bounded by the scaffold. "Deep," says the unhappy man, "is the downward path of anguish which I am called to tread; but it has been trodden by others." For dipus there was no such comfort. What language of man or trumpet of angel could decipher the woe of that unfathomable call, when, from the depth of ancient woods, a voice that drew like gravitation, that sucked in like a vortex, far off yet near, in some distant world yet close at hand, cried, "Hark, dipus! King dipus! come hither! thou art ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey |
