"Puzzle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... didn't intend—" He stopped for she was laughing at him. They went on and her mood continued to puzzle him. Never had he seen her so blithe, so gay. She waved her hand back at the woodland ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... have a sense of humor are so — so, well so QUEER about it, if you get what I mean. That is, if you know they have one, of course you're naturally watching for them to say humorous things; and they're forever saying the sort of things that puzzle you, because you have never heard those things before in just that way, and if you DO laugh they're so apt to act as if you were ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... while you bring Armstrong into the laboratory. By the way, Walter, that was another of the Binet tests, putting a man at solving puzzles. It involves reflective judgment, one of the factors in executive ability. If Whitecap had been defective, it would have taken him five minutes to do that puzzle, if at all. So you see he is not in the class with Miss Sawtelle. The test shows him to be shrewd. He doesn't even touch his own dope. Now ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... first place, they were Icelandic names falling upon the Italian ears of old Nicolo and Antonio, and spelled by them according to their own notions; in the second place, these outlandish names, blurred and defaced withal in the weather-stained manuscript, were a puzzle to the eye of young Nicolo, who could but decipher them according to his notions. The havoc that can be wrought upon winged words, subjected to such processes, is sometimes marvellous.[284] Perhaps the slightest ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... remains to consider, whether a temporary continuance under these sufferings would be paid for, by the amendment it is likely to produce. However, I believe there is no fear that Great Britain will puzzle us, by leaving it in our choice to hasten or ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... to Owen, "we must make the best of it. We must brush up our manners, and set the house tidy, and amuse her as well as we can. The difficulty is where to put her; and, when that is settled, the next puzzle will be, what to order in to make her comfortable. It's a hard thing, brother, to say what will or what will not please ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... The early development of the rabbit is apt to puzzle students a little at first. We have an ovum practically free from yolk (alecithal), and, therefore, we find it dividing completely and almost equally. We naturally assume, from what we have learnt, that the next stages will be the formation of a hollow blastosphere, invagination, ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... We tried to track your pony's footmarks, but as there had been more snow in the night, and it had now set in to thaw, we could see nothing anywhere in the way of footmarks to trust to. Certainly it was a regular puzzle, for we hadn't the slightest idea which way to turn. 'Well, Harry?' I said. 'Well, Master Walter?' he said in reply; but that didn't help us forward many steps. 'Let us ride on till we get to some house where we may make inquiries,' I said. So we set off, and after a bit came to ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... are mistaken, Jasper. I am not cunning. If people think I am, it is because, being made up of art themselves, simplicity of character is a puzzle to them. Your women are ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... there are many things we cannot understand; we puzzle about them a good deal perhaps, and then we ask questions. And sometimes the grown-ups answer our question and make the puzzling things clear to us, sometimes they answer yet do not make the puzzling things any clearer to us, and sometimes they tell us not to trouble, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... to the assistance of a strange girl, whose real identity is a puzzle to all the Blythe girls. Who the girl really was comes ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... wires, and it would be easy enough to do that with one's eyes shut; but it always did puzzle me to see how blind people can tell one color from another with the ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May
... are a puzzle; botanically it is a Primrose, but it is never so called. It has many names, but its most common are Paigle and Cowslip. Paigle has never been satisfactorily explained, nor has Cowslip. Our great etymologists, Cockayne and Dr. Prior ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... Towers of Ireland," but the general trend of scientific opinion is that they are of early Christian origin. Father Matt Horgan, a famous Munster antiquary, humorously started the theory that they were built to puzzle posterity, which they have very successfully done. Lucan is a health resort, possessing a sulphur spa, and situated in a well-wooded country above the Liffey. The Hydropathic stands well sheltered and commanding a splendid view. The drives in the district are many, and the antiquarian ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... little coz, and they wouldn't be flattered by our comparison. They are yelling what, in United States, would be 'extra!' I'll get a paper and see if I can puzzle out some of the French," and he strolled down to intercept one of the ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... 'The Leavenworth Case,' and all that sort of thing," said Felix, whose reading was of the lightest description. "Awfully exciting, like putting a Chinese puzzle together. Gad, I wouldn't mind ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... had not a very sensible effect. I pick up the names of their acquaintance; amours and little squabbles are easily gleaned from among servants and neighbors; and, indeed, people themselves are the best intelligencers in the world for our purpose. They dare not puzzle us for their own sakes, for everyone is anxious to hear what he wishes to believe; and they who repeat it, to laugh at it when they have done, are generally more serious than their hearers are apt to imagine. With a tolerably good memory, and ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... dead and living surfaces, so that to celestial eyes the stones on which we tread are written with our deeds, and the leaves of the forest are but undeveloped negatives where our summers stand self-recorded for transfer into the imperishable record? And what a metaphysical puzzle have we here in this simple-looking paradox! Is motion but a succession of rests? All is still in this picture of universal movement. Take ten thousand instantaneous photographs of the great thoroughfare in a day; every one of them will be as still as the tableau in the "Enchanted Beauty." Yet ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... that my writing has been in the main too hard for many I should have been pleased to communicate with; but I never designedly tried to puzzle people, as some of my critics have supposed. On the other hand, I never pretended to offer such literature as should be a substitute for a cigar or a game at dominoes to an idle man. So, perhaps, on the whole I get my deserts, and something over—not a crowd, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... matter of universal interest in song and story; and that is why quite elderly people, removed by half a century from such frivolities themselves, but nevertheless possessed of memory and a little imagination, and still conscious that life has been throughout a puzzle and a game of chance, and that even in their case it might have turned out very differently, find themselves awaiting with a strange curiosity and anxiety the decision of some child of seventeen, knowing no more of the world than a ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... musty archives of the castle. Everything relating to Thibermesnil interests him greatly. But the quotations that he mentions only serve to complicate the mystery. He has read somewhere that two kings of France have known the key to the puzzle." ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... of her head and hurried away. Mrs. Lee sat on alone, her hands idly clasped over the blouse in her lap. It was her way to puzzle ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... perhaps more desirous of raising the fallen fortunes of his house than of securing the independence of his country. Even at that early age, however, his mind was not easy to read, and his character was somewhat of a puzzle to those who studied it. "I see him much discontented with the States," said Leicester; "he hath a sullen deep wit. The young gentleman is yet to be won only to her Majesty, I perceive, of his own inclination. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... lifting of summer garments laid away, for a peek beneath—a journey on one's stomach under the spare-room bed—a pilgrimage around the cellar with a flaring candle—furtive explorations of the storeroom. And when we came to a door that was locked—Aha! Here was a puzzle and a problem! We tried every key in the house, right side up and upside down. Bluebeard's wife, poor creature,—if I read the tale aright,—was merely seeking her Christmas presents around the ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... girl who had handed the book. The slip of paper she had written it on fluttered to the floor at the feet of the stranger, and the stranger stooped and picked it up, offering it back; but the other girl shook her head, and the stranger kept it, looking wonderingly at the words, trying to puzzle out ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... But he could not see why departed souls should be regarded as the shadows of living men. Rather it was we who lived in a vain show, and would continue to do so until the spirit, the true substance of us, should be set free. Well, whatever the truth of it might be, it was all a charming puzzle, and we should learn all about it some day, and meantime he had been furnished with an entirely new idea—the revealing power of darkness. He loved the light because it was beautiful, and now he loved the darkness because it was mysterious, and held such wondrous secrets in its ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... inches broad and 3 inches long has holes bored into it in the design herewith illustrated. Nails are stuck loosely in all of these holes, excepting the centre one. The puzzle is to jump all of the nails off the board so that only one nail is left, and that in the centre-hole on the board. The nails are jumped off in the same manner that men are jumped in the game of checkers. Jumping is allowed either forward, backward, ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... drawing-room proper there is none; the large front room is the studio, where he and Sabina eat and drink, as well as work and paint but out of it opens a little room, the walls of which are so covered with gems of art (where the rogue finds money to buy them is a puzzle), that the eye can turn nowhere without taking in some new beauty, and wandering on from picture to statue, from portrait to landscape, dreaming and learning afresh after every glance. At the back, a glass ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... She is some charming emigree of Clarence Hervey's acquaintance. But where did you meet with her this morning? You have both of you conspired to puzzle me. Take it upon yourselves, then, if this new acquaintance should not, as Ninon de l'Enclos used to say, quit cost. If she be half as agreeable and graceful, Clarence, as Madame la Comtesse de Pomenars, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... white-sailed stranger, and mumble among themselves as to what in the world he can be. The sun mounts and the breeze presses till we are at the bay of the Somme with its shifting sands, its incomprehensible currents, and its low and treacherous coast, buoyed and beaconed enough to puzzle you right into the shoals. The yacht, with my friend S—- in her, bound for Paris, has just been wrecked on that bank near Cayeux—unpleasant news now—and there is St. Valery, from whence King ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... your tricks well," Sir Ralph said, good-temperedly, "and, in truth, your quick returns puzzle me greatly, and I admit that were we both unprotected I should have no chance with you, but let us see what you could do were we fighting in earnest," and he took down a couple of suits of complete body armour from ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... (oh, he had plenty of words for it!), and who was essentially booked to lose much more than he gained. He disliked "offices" and abominated "hours." I think that even my own modest professional applications sometimes became a puzzle ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... thread and embroidery silk to the side of the table, he touched a spring, and a lid flew up. The table, though presenting the appearance of fragility itself, was really of iron, and contained a vault that would puzzle ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... parchment and held it close to her nose, which was saddled with a pair of iron-bound spectacles. But no sooner had she begun to puzzle over it than she burst into a chuckling laugh, holding both her hands ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of humility, Dennis asked leave to venture on a guess. The perforated paper looked, as he thought, like a Puzzle. "If we wait for a day or two," he suggested, "the Key to it may ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... of restoration was like putting together the parts of a picture puzzle where some of the pieces are lacking. Fragments are still coming to light, and possibly we may have the complete text some day. As it is, the introduction is complete, and perhaps four-fifths of the list of articles with prices attached are extant. The ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... do that?" said Madame. "'Twould puzzle a wise man to do so, for in these parts there are so many turnings. However, I will send a girl to guide you. You could find room for her on the ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Mavors, Mars, because magna vortit, he brings about mighty changes; Minerva, because minuit, she diminishes, or because minatur, she threatens; Venus, because venit ad omnia, she comes to all; Ceres, a gerendo, from bearing. How dangerous is this method! for there are many names would puzzle you. From what would you derive Vejupiter and Vulcan? Though, indeed, if you can derive Neptune a nando, from swimming, in which you seem to me to flounder about yourself more than Neptune, you may easily find the origin of all names, since it is founded only upon the conformity of some one letter. ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... thee understand the first, the nature of it, and the cause why most men are born to it; as for the second, it would be treason for thee and me to do more than whisper it here, and sigh for it when none are listening; but the third need hardly puzzle thee, thy hookah is bright with it; all thy jewels are set in it; gold is inlaid in the ivory of thy bath; thy cup and thy dish are of gold, and golden threads ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... certain old sheets on one side of the table; newer sheets on the other; some half sheets in the middle. It was like an intricate puzzle, and the same one that ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... obliged to explain my actions to every one, am I, Rose?" said the lady. "Children are a sort of a puzzle to me, never having had any of my own; and I don't believe I know how to bring them up. But these of Helen's ...
— Five Happy Weeks • Margaret E. Sangster
... Dallas had gone to sleep after dinner, and his wife was knitting at a sufficient distance. 'The quaint fancies and delicate work are really such as I never imagined before in wood-carving. But your words about it remain a puzzle to me.' ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... out what it is that he has had to do with. Something is wrong somewhere, but what something, what may come of it, to whom, when, and from which unthought of and unheard of quarter is the puzzle of his life. His remote impressions of the robes and coronets, the stars and garters, that sparkle through the surface-dust of Mr. Tulkinghorn's chambers; his veneration for the mysteries presided over by that best and closest of his customers, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... a puzzle to me to observe that so many of my friends who looked on the Last Supper as a mere symbol of love and hospitality, should cling to "The Following of Christ" with such devotion. Even the example of an intellectual ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... running apparently in every direction, would grow bewildered. He would circle, of course, but the circles themselves would lead him off on tracks that turned back on themselves. As an additional puzzle, wherever the old man doubled, he put his arms about a tree and remained, his body pressed against the trunk a moment, as if he had climbed it. "His whiskers will be whiter than they are now," he grinned, "before ever he ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... why had he baited a clumsy trap for me and permitted me to walk out of it untouched? What did they want from me, these people? The thought was utterly confusing. I could find absolutely no explanation. Then, again, another puzzle remained. I remembered Louis' desire, almost command, that I should return to London by this particular train. Had he any reason for it? Was it connected in any way, I wondered, with the presence of this man and girl in the next compartment? ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... But what a puzzle is one's serious mind To open;—oysters, when the ice is thick, Are not so difficult and disinclin'd; And Julio felt the declaration stick About his throat in a most awful kind; However, he contrived by bits to pick His trouble forth,—much like ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... different stamp. Her real ancestry was a puzzle. In some respects she resembled her father. Knowing that she was Giacomo's child, it was easy for the observer to trace the lineage of some of her qualities; but nevertheless they reappeared in her on a different scale, ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... residents of the River Drive district, among them the Flaggs, but was a fairly representative mixture of all grades of society, including the poorest. These last were specimens under spiritual duress rather than free worshippers, and it was a constant puzzle to the reverend gentleman why, in the matter of attendance, they, metaphorically speaking, sickened and died. It had never been so in England. "Bonnets!" responded one day Mrs. Hallett Taylor, who had become Mr. Glynn's leading ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... yet come to a bad pass, and the blind race of man watches helpless the trammels it could shake off did it but greatly dare. My business, ladies and gentlemen, now is, as I have just explained to you, to attempt to puzzle your eyes by the quickness of my fingers. Yours, on the other hand, will be to detect the way—or modus operandi, as old Simon Magus used to say—in which I perform my little wonders—if you can. Will any gentleman lend me ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... of Samoan natural history is Le Manu Mea, or red bird of the natives, the tooth-billed pigeon (Didunculus Strigirostris, Peale), and is peculiar to the Samoan Islands. This remarkable bird, so long a puzzle to the scientific world, is only found in Samoa, and even there it has become so scarce that it is rapidly becoming extinct, as it falls an easy prey to the numerous wild cats ranging the forests. It was first ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... keen now, was dovetailing together the pieces of the puzzle. Those who had originally planned the crime had in some way discovered that the Rat, in the actual theft, had forestalled them. Possibly, for instance, bent on the same errand, they had seen the Rat leaving the building; then, finding the safe already looted, they ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... "what we have to do is to puzzle out some easy way of getting up and down. What do ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... them on to another by a rational discourse. Whereas indeed, we, generally missing this way, do teach children as we do parrots, to speak they know not what, nay which is worse, we, taking the way of teaching little ones by Grammar only at the first, do puzzle their imaginations with abstractive terms and secondary intentions, which till they be somewhat acquainted with things, and the words belonging to them, in the language which they learn, they cannot apprehend what they mean. And this I guess to be the reason, why many great persons ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius
... her upper lip, and here and there A rugged wart with grisly hairs behung; Her breasts shrunk up, her nails and fingers long; Her left leant on a staff, in her right hand She always carried her enchanting wand. Splay-footed, beyond nature, every part So patternless deformed, 'twould puzzle art To make her counterfeit; only her tongue, Nature had that most exquisitely strung, Her oily language came so smoothly from her, And her quaint action did so well become her, Her winning rhetoric met with no trips, But chained the dull'st attention to her lips. With greediness he heard, and ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Teresa, that marvellous woman? The Americans puzzle me," he continued. "You are the most practical people on the globe and yet the most idealistic. When I hear of a new religion, I am morally certain that it is evolved ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... and four females in the party and their ornaments denoted them as members of different hordes, a fact which tended to puzzle me infinitely, since the various hordes of green men of Barsoom are eternally at deadly war with one another, and never, except on that single historic instance when the great Tars Tarkas of Thark gathered a hundred and fifty thousand ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... xxiii. Leaves from the Life of Alexander Hamilton, xix. Leaves from the Diary of an Aged Spinster, vi. Leein' Jamie Murdieston, viii. Leveller, The, xvi. Linton Lairds, The; or, Exclusives and Inclusives, iv. Lord Durie and Christie's Will, ii. Lord Kames's Puzzle, xxiii, Lost Heir of the House of Elphinstone, xx. Lottery Hall, xiii. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... very blunt needles, and a peculiar species of dye obtained from a tree, succeeded, after a good hour's work, in embellishing us—L. with a ring on each shoulder (the sign manual of the tribe), and myself with a bird, whose genus it would puzzle most naturalists to determine, but which was popularly supposed among the Poonans to represent a hornbill, on the arm. Strange to say neither L.'s punctures nor mine showed the slightest signs of inflammation afterwards, and ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... legis estis la "Daily Telegraph" kie oni trovis la sekvantan mallongan kritikajxon "Its meagre scant array of words Could puzzle no beginner; Untutored cannibals by herds, Would learn them ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 1 • Various
... to feel that it is a virtue to stand on the side of unbelief, skepticism, and infidelity. But underneath an appearance of candor, it will be found that such persons are actuated by self-confidence and pride. Many delight in finding something in the Scriptures to puzzle the minds of others. Some at first criticise and reason on the wrong side, from a mere love of controversy. They do not realize that they are thus entangling themselves in the snare of the fowler. But having openly expressed unbelief, they feel that they must ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... The result obtained is always quite satisfactory to the writer, often plausible, sometimes in a measure sound, but it would defy the skill of the most synthetic genius to co-ordinate the results thus obtained, and combine them in one harmonious whole. They are like pieces of a puzzle, each of which has been symmetrically cut and trimmed, till they lie side by side, un-fitting, ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... me you're not doing much good up here. You're always fooling about with those precious juniors of yours, instead of sticking to cricket and tennis and your books. Here's young Aspinall here, ahead of you, by long chalks, in classics, and getting a break on at tennis that'll puzzle you to pick up unless you wake up. You can do as you like; only don't blame me if you get stuck among ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... to where Oliver, by the side of his friend Wraysford, was sitting. Wraysford's face was beaming as he clapped his friend on the back. Oliver looked as unconcerned and indifferent as ever. The fellow was a puzzle, certainly. ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... devices, shoot, leaves, flowers and fruit spring in a short season from a single bud. In the light of this fact, pruning should be looked on as a simple problem to be solved mathematically and not as a puzzle to be untangled, as so many regard it. For an example, a problem in pruning ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... expresses strong differences of opinion with Gandhi at many points. In one place he says: "What a problem and a puzzle he has been not only to the British Government but to his own people and his closest associates!... How came we to associate ourselves with Gandhiji politically, and to become, in many instances, his devoted followers?... He attracted people, but ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... ask, but it 'ud puzzle me to answer for I ain't got no 'ome, unless I may say that London is my 'ome. I come an' go where I pleases, so long's I don't worrit nobody. I sleep where I like, if the bobbies don't get their eyes on me w'en I'm agoin' to bed, an' I heat wotever comes in my way if it ain't too ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... stories of from five to nine thousand words which the average American magazine editor publishes? Why a vivid people like the American should be so dusty and dull in their short stories is a lasting puzzle to the European, who knows that America has produced a large proportion of the great short stories ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... see anything so childish?" observed he, indicating the envelopes. "A big, registered, sealed Chinese puzzle like that is just crying out to be opened. We would have seen the inside of that one even if it had been addressed to the Lord Mayor, and not to—well, someone in whom we are deeply interested, though he ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... far away. The younger woman's pensive gaze rested on the peaceful waters below, taking in the slow approach of the fog that was soon to envelop the land. Neither spoke for many minutes: inscrutable thinkers, each a prey to thoughts that leaped backward to the beginning and took up the puzzle at its inception. ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... that point puzzle you?" exclaimed Florian, greeting the allusion to Browning as the war-horse welcomes the battle. "Then you have never chanced to run across the first edition of Child's Scottish Ballads. You get the story there, of Childe Roland following up the quest for his sister, shut up by enchantment ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... mountains, and that triangle was the chosen stamping ground of Jerry Strann. Jerry was not born in the region of the Three B's and why it should have been chosen specially by him was matter which the inhabitants could not puzzle out; but they felt that for their sins the Lord had probably put his wrath among them in ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... scowled over the puzzle of that fanlike formation of riders. They would hardly begin so soon to herd him and his men into that evil little rock basin with the sinister name, and there was no other reason he could think of which would justify those tactics, unless another party waited ahead ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... chest in an upper room over the chapel on the north side of Redcliff church;" and thence, most rare young conjurer, he evoked its spirit in the shape of fragments of law-parchment, quaintly inscribed with spells of verse and armorial hieroglyphics, to puzzle antiquaries and make fools of scholiasts. Puzzle them he did; and they could not forgive a clever stripling, whom hunger had tempted to don an ancient mask, and impose himself on their spectacled eyes as a reverend elder. Rogue!—vagabond! Profligate impostor! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... his trade, while John was beast of burden. The young master could work up his catalogues, study his famous collections, make his own bibliographical notes, or run off here and there by 'bus or train in quest of books for a customer; he could swallow down his Greek verbs or puzzle out his French for Barbier in the intervals of business; the humbler matters of the shop ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Bill," I will only remark that neither in the preamble nor elsewhere is any information vouchsafed as to the Conventions, out of thirteen drafted at The Hague, which are within the purview of the Bill. The reader is left to puzzle out for himself, supposing him to have the necessary materials at hand, that certain clauses of the Bill relate respectively to certain articles which must be looked for in the Conventions numbered I., V., ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... house was filled with all known kinds of games—instruments and devices to amuse that most unfortunate class of human beings who have no resources within themselves, and must play some foolish game, or do some foolish puzzle in order to get through the life which seems to hang so heavily on ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... sore puzzle to the early telescopic observers. They did not for a long time grasp the fact that it was surrounded by a ring—so slow is the human mind to seek for explanations out of the ordinary course of things. The ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... sounds like a puzzle. If they're not now upon the ground they're probably in the air, but they're not birds, because birds don't belong on the ground. Then they're animals that have ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... all these miscellaneous movements going on all around us without being struck by the similarity of aim between them; each seems to form part of a common plan, which, like the separate pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, convey no meaning, but when fitted together make up a perfectly clear design. That there is somewhere in the background a point of contact is suggested by the fact that we find members of the different groups playing a double and a treble role, the same name occurring in the list of ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... world, I wonder, did you all get that grand look of yours from?—I don't mean your good looks merely, but that look of distinction. Your father and mother have it too; but where did they get it from? You're a puzzle-family—all of you. But wouldn't you like a cup of tea? Come in," and she led the way indoors to a tiny, sweet-smelling boudoir on the left of the hall, of which a dainty glimpse, with its books and water-colours and bibelots, was to be caught ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... girls as she handed the letter to her brother, and he put on his spectacles and opened it. Susan watched him. It was a thin foreign envelope, and the letter inside it was short, but it seemed to puzzle him a great deal. He held it out at arm's length, frowned at it, and gave it an impatient tap with one finger. Then he took off his glasses, rubbed them, put them on, and read it again, after which he rose suddenly, and leaning across ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... you," he almost shouted. "I never knew anyone named Goodwin! I don't care a hoot about your invention. And as for letting me die—why didn't you? That's a puzzle: you were ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... man-forsaken stretch of country it beats anything I ever saw," Walter exclaimed in disgust. "The river itself is about a half mile wide, but it twists, turns, and forks every few yards so as to puzzle a corporation lawyer. The shores for half a mile back from the water are nothing but boggy marsh, with here and there a wooded island. Ugh, the sight of it is enough to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... a verbal puzzle, and I answer, yes! The finite can contain the Infinite, if you are talking about two hearts that love, one of them God's and one of them mine. We have got to keep very clear and distinct before our minds the broad, firm line of demarcation between the creature and the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... have an exact picture of those mysterious excavations some of which still survive to puzzle antiquaries under the name of Dene Holes. They are found in various localities; Kent, Surrey, and Essex being the richest. In Hangman's Wood, near Grays, in Essex, a small copse some four acres in extent, there are no fewer than seventy-two Dene Holes, as close together ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... Vee squared it with Aunty is a puzzle I never expect to find out the answer to; but I'll risk her. She's a pink queen, she is, and after that one waltz with her I can look cold-eyed at a row of Tessie girls stretchin' from here ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... irregularity which exists in the personal terminations of verbs, some of the best early writers using them promiscuously, some using them uniformly, and others making no use of them; and really they are of no use but to puzzle children and foreigners, perplex poets, and furnish an awkward dialect to that exemplary sect of Christians, who in every thing else study simplicity."—Fowle's True E. Gram., Part II, p. 26. Wells, a still later writer, gives this unsafe rule: "When ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... distinct species of chickens. There is the chicken which you find in the barnyard, in the incubator, or on a hat. And there is the type indigenous to State Street, Chicago. Each is known by its feathers. The barnyard variety may puzzle the amateur fancier, but there is no mistaking the State Street chicken. It is known by its soiled, high, white canvas boots; by its tight, short black skirt; by its slug pearl earrings; by its bewildering coiffure. By every line of its ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... the web of one genus! Why, there, As they lie by my desk in that glistering heap, All tangled together like dreams in the sleep Of a bliss-fevered heart, I might turn them and turn Till night, in a puzzle of pleasure, and learn Not a fact, not a secret I prize half so much, As, how rough is this leaf when I think of her touch. There's one now blown yonder! what can be its name? A topaz wine-colored, the wine ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... push open the somewhat frail windows or equally frail door, and to accomplish that deed which had already been attempted. Nora knew well that she must act, she must do something—what, was the puzzle. Squire O'Shanaghgan was one of the most generous, open-hearted, and affectionate of men. His generosity was proverbial; he was a prime favorite with his tenants; but he had, like many another Irishman of his type, a certain hard phase in ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... verbatim copy. Yesterday evening, while I was examining it for the twentieth time, it occurred to me that I had read some portions of it before. Where, and under what circumstances? It was a puzzle which kept me awake most of the night. But this morning I suddenly remembered a book which I had seen in the hands of the workmen at the factory, and which I had often laughed over. So, while I was out this morning I entered a ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... his head sadly, "these women are indeed a puzzle. I fear much that Rosa's mind has changed since your departure. Absence, as the poets say, is love's worst bane. But let her go, Gulielmo; fairer charms than hers will ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... public spirits, were about the year 1700 household words with us. Leibnitz was struck by their significance, but it might now puzzle us to find synonyms, or even to explain the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and lacking in political knowledge they may have been, but it is evident that their mental tone was high, that their minds had not been vulgarized by trash and sensationalism. Hamilton's sole bait was a lucid and engaging style, which would not puzzle the commonest intelligence, which he hoped might instruct without weighing heavily on the capacity of his humbler readers. That he was addressing the general voter, as well as the men of a higher grade as yet unconvinced, there can be no doubt, for as New York State ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... and Ras Za'farnah, higher up, the wind seems to split: a strong southerly gale will be blowing, whilst a norther of equal pressure prevails at the Gulf-head, and vice vers. Suez, indeed, appears to be, in more ways than one, a hydrographical puzzle. When it is low water in and near the harbour, the flow is high between the Straits of Jobal and the Daedalus Light; and the ebb tide runs out about two points across the narrows, whilst the flood runs in on a line parallel with it. Finally, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... "You will puzzle your hearer, my dear uncle," said the same deep-toned woman's voice which had first spoken to me. "As you volunteered the saint's name, Lillian, you shall ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... in letters from friends than even these, which merely puzzle and distress, but do not infuriate. For I feel cheated by casual glimpses of affairs which concern me not; I resent odd scraps of information, not chosen for my palate; I am indignant at news culled ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... mesquites. Then Blanco Sol stopped. His shrill, ringing whistle came distinctly to Gale's ears. The raiders were mounted on dark horses, and they stood abreast in a motionless line. Gale chuckled as he appreciated what a puzzle the situation presented for them. A lone horseman in the middle of the valley did not perhaps seem so menacing himself as the ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... of Hooker, when Sedgwick did eventually arrive within serviceable distance, is so entire a puzzle to the student of this campaign, that speculation upon what he did then actually assume as facts, or how he might have acted under any other ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... began to puzzle, and the old uneasiness came back. The last trailing banner of cloud vanished, and the sun rode clear in an opal sky, smiling benignly down on the forested land. She was thus enabled to locate the cardinal points of the compass. Wherefore she took to gauging their ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... well-authenticated dream which strikes the bull's eye of facts not known to the dreamer nor capable of being guessed by him. If the events beheld in the dream are far away in space, or are remote in time past, the puzzle is difficult enough. But if the events are still in the future, perhaps no kind of explanation except a mere "fluke" can even be suggested. Say that I dream of an event occurring at a distance, and that I record or act on my dream before it is corroborated. ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... reached the level again could he solve the puzzle. Then he perceived that the way in which the cliff bulged out on both sides prevented the ledge from becoming evident in profile, whilst, seen en plein face in the glare of the sunlight, it suggested nothing more than ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... that he did not know her at all. He had once talked to a girl who resembled her, but that was long ago. He could understand a Gomez-Dep and appreciate a brisk sports-suit, but this girl was of a world unintelligible to him. Her hair, in its dips and convolutions, was altogether a puzzle. "How did she ever fix it like that?" Her low evening dress—"what was it made of—some white stuff, but was it silk or muslin or what?" Her shoulders were startling in their bare powdery smoothness—"how dare that young pup dance with her?" And her face, that had seemed so jolly and friendly, ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... they suspected to be a nursery for a popish army, and seemed disinclined to maintain it any longer. The king consequently, in 1683, sent Lord Dartmouth to bring home the troops, and destroy the works; which he performed so effectually, that it would puzzle all our engineers to restore the harbour. It were idle to speculate on the benefits which might have accrued to England, by its preservation and retention; Tangier fell into the hands of the Moors, its importance having ceased, with the demolition ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... should I question the Universe, and puzzle my sad brains about Life—the meaning of Life ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... obligations to one who serves her at such a sacrifice. Indeed, she can make us no adequate return, but to allow me to return—the only return I ask. When, however, that favor will be granted is past my guessing. You ask when the war will terminate? You could not puzzle any of us more than by putting such a question. We are more at our wit's end than the war's end. And yet I do not see that anything has been left undone, that might have been done. The army has moved steadily toward its ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... illustrious Linnaeus the bats had been more or less a puzzle both to scientific folk and to common people. The general notion was that they were a kind of bird with wings of skin, while the German name for the creature, Fledermaus, or fluttering mouse, points to another opinion ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... great a puzzle to attempt to solve on the spur of the moment, and I had first to apply myself to the evident duty of getting my fair and mysterious visitor into my cabin, there to try to undo the effects of whatever untoward accidents had ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... amount of wool covering each might take perhaps a half hour to use up. They were allowed the prize only when the last strand of wool around it was used. They were then occupied for a while with whatever it was—a little book, or a puzzle, or a game. When they grew tired of its novelty, they crocheted again until they came to the next prize. In the end they had also new ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... the puzzle, yes," admitted the young engineer. "You see, we were both of us wrong, and we ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... the whiskered countenance. "Good for you, old top," she responded, cheerfully. "You ought to go into the Sunday puzzle department. You'd be hung all over with gold-filled watches. Where did you blow ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... die out, by those that prosper at shallower depths; otherwise it would be impossible to understand how this variety of building material, as it were, is introduced wherever it is needed. This point, formerly a puzzle to naturalists, has become quite clear since it has been found that myriads of these little germs are poured into the water surrounding a reef. There they swim about till they find a genial spot on which to establish themselves, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... bad—inartistic, as they say, and without taste; a man, at all events, should repent like a gentleman. As far as I can guess at it, I think there ought to be considerable elegance of manner in repentance—a kind of genteel ambiguity, that should seem to puzzle the world as to whether you weep for or against the sin; or perhaps repentance should say—as I suppose it often does—'D—n me, this is no humbug; this, look you, is a grand process—I know what I'm about; let the world look on; I have committed a great many naughty things ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Damon up to the house. I'd be glad to see him again, though I don't fancy he'll call. He's off on a little trip, and won't be back for a week. But watch out, Rad." And with that Tom turned toward the house, shaking his head over the puzzle of ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... were coming in droves and the boys were pouring in from the front half-starved, having been fighting all night with nothing to eat except reserve rations. Some had been longer with only such rations as they took from their dead comrades. The need was most urgent, but the puzzle was how to get there. The roads had been shelled and ploughed by explosives until there was no possible semblance of a way, and there were no conveyances to be had. The Zone Major had gone back for supplies, telling ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... yet comprehend clearly what it was all about. She herself had done nothing to merit such treatment from people whose names she did not even know. She rode for a long time without speaking, trying, in her tragic bewilderment, to puzzle it out. ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... who was seated in my lap, listened, with eyes fixed on the preacher, to every word that was said. At last one or two accounts were given which seemed to puzzle him greatly, and, casting an inquiring glance into my face, he whispered,—"Papa, papa! ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston |
