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Cipher   Listen
noun
Cipher  n.  
1.
(Arith.) A character (0) which, standing by itself, expresses nothing, but when placed at the right hand of a whole number, increases its value tenfold.
2.
One who, or that which, has no weight or influence. "Here he was a mere cipher."
3.
A character in general, as a figure or letter. (Obs.) "This wisdom began to be written in ciphers and characters and letters bearing the forms of creatures."
4.
A combination or interweaving of letters, as the initials of a name; a device; a monogram; as, a painter's cipher, an engraver's cipher, etc. The cut represents the initials N. W.
5.
A private alphabet, system of characters, or other mode of writing, contrived for the safe transmission of secrets; also, a writing in such characters. "His father... engaged him when he was very young to write all his letters to England in cipher."
Cipher key, a key to assist in reading writings in cipher.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cipher" Quotes from Famous Books



... tell ye, he was about as handsome a feller as you'd see in a day's travel—straight as an arrow and about six feet tall and well spoken and clean faced. He told me that another master had taught him to read and write and cipher. He's read the Bible through, and many of the poems of Scott and Byron and Burns. Don't it rile ye up to think of a man like that bein' bought and sold and pounded around like a ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... predecessors in this country, in all other countries of the earth, is entirely wasted. We live—that is, we snatch an existence—and ourworks become nothing. The piling up of fortunes, the building of cities, the establishment of immense commerce, ends in a cipher. These objects are so outside my idea that I cannot understand them, and look upon the struggle in amazement. Not even the pressure of poverty can force upon me an understanding of, and sympathy with, these things. It is the human being as the human being of whom I think. That the human ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies

... the honesty of the young man. "And let me tell you," he added, "for your personal benefit, while examining those crescents yesterday, I put a private mark on the back of the settings with a steel-pointed instrument; it was like this"—making a cipher on a card and passing it to him. "If you should ever be fortunate enough to come across them again, you ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... hurried off homewards in despair, leaving a Secretary in his place. The Brandenburg Court, nothing despairing, orders in the mean while, Try another with it,—some other Hofrath, whose name they wrote in cipher, which the blundering Secretary took to mean no Hofrath, but the Kaiser's Confessor and Chief Jesuit, Pater Wolf. To him accordingly he hastened with the cash, to him with the respectful Electoral request; who received both, it is said, especially ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle

... of education, which had been at a dead stand since my removal from Baltimore. I had, on the Eastern Shore, been only a teacher, when in company with other slaves, but now there were colored persons who could instruct me. Many of the young calkers could read, write and cipher. Some of them had high notions about mental improvement; and the free ones, on Fell's Point, organized what they called the "East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society." To this society, notwithstanding it was intended that only free persons should attach themselves, I was admitted, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... relate to the same object, the word to should be used before the first verb and omitted before the others; as, "He taught me to read, write, and cipher." "The most accomplished way of using books at present is to serve them as some do lords— learn their titles and ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel

... Almost the only notices of Dryden that make him alive to me I have found in the delicious book of this Polonius-Montaigne, the only man who ever had the courage to keep a sincere journal, even under the shelter of cipher. ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... Jud holding the light and Ump turning the envelope around in his fingers, peering curiously. They might have been some guardians of a twilight country examining a mysterious passport signed right but writ in cipher, and one that from some hidden angle might ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... pause, then click! click! the instrument gave the code signal that the matter was ended, and I repeated the signal, opened my code-book, and began to translate the instructions into cipher for ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... the last batch of sheep were fleeced and smitten,[Smitten. Marked with the cipher of the owner in a mixture mostly of tar.] and turned on to the hillside; and Charlotte, leaning over the wall, watched them wander contentedly up the fell, with their lambs trotting beside them. Grandfather and the squire had gone into the house; Ducie was calling her from the open door; she ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... and instruments. Such I have already engaged in some forty cities. I furnish them instructions, telling them what to do, in order to participate in the liberation of Germany; they have to send me weekly reports, written of course in cipher and with chemical ink, and, on my part, I address reports to the Emperor Alexander and Baron von Stein, which I forward every week by special couriers to Russia. My agents, as well as myself, will endeavor to hold intercourse with all ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... woman, who has charge of a large household, should regard her duties as dignified, important, and difficult. The mind is so made, as to be elevated and cheered by a sense of far-reaching influence and usefulness. A woman, who feels that she is a cipher, and that it makes little difference how she performs her duties, has far less to sustain and invigorate her, than one, who truly estimates the importance of her station. A man, who feels that the destinies of a nation are turning on the judgement and skill with which ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... owed at a later period his promotion to the rank of sub-director. His routine habits then became great experience; his manners and his silence concealed his lack of education, and his absolute nullity was a recommendation, for a cipher was needed. The government was afraid of displeasing both parties in the Chamber by selecting a man from either side; it therefore got out of the difficulty by resorting to the rule of seniority. That is how Thuillier ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... overspread his face, and gave such meaning to his words that the other heirs began to feel that Massin had let Bongrand deceive him. The tax-collector, a fat little man, as insignificant as a tax-collector should be, and as much of a cipher as a clever woman could wish, hereupon annihilated his co-heir, Massin, with the ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac

... she was, being a woman of some education, his mother had taught him to read and write and cipher—not that he was a great adept at any of those arts, but he possessed the groundwork, which was an important matter; and he did his best to keep up his knowledge by reading sign-boards, looking into book-sellers' windows, and studying any stray ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston

... a cipher dispatch to London if you like, Mr. Hargreave," said the Minister Petkoff, as we sat over our cigars. "The documents will be all signed at the Cabinet meeting at noon to-morrow. In exchange for this loan raised in London, all the contracts for the new quick-firing guns and ammunition go ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux

... Full well the busy whisper circling round Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned. Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught, The love he bore to learning was in fault; The village{8} all declared how much he knew; 'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too; Lands he could measure, terms and tides{9} presage, And e'en the story ran that he could gauge:{10} In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill; For e'en though vanquished, he could argue still; While words of learned length and thundering ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... said Legrand, "the solution is by no means so difficult as you might be led to imagine from the first hasty inspection of the characters. These characters, as any one might readily guess, form a cipher—that is to say, they, convey a meaning; but then, from what is known of Kidd, I could not suppose him capable of constructing any of the more abstruse cryptographs. I made up my mind, at once, that this was of a simple species—such, however, as would appear, to the crude intellect ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... They shadowed Smith for the rest of that day. They stole on tip-toe about the house and burst suddenly into rooms where Smith was at work, coming upon him unexpectedly. They hid in cupboards and behind curtains in rooms which Smith was likely to enter. They left letters, written in cipher, and marked coins in prominent places where Smith could hardly fail to see them. Kalliope conceived that an elaborate game of hide-and-seek was being played. She joined in, enthusiastically but unintelligently, concealing herself in various parts of the house without ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham

... Thee? And what am I then?—Heaven's unnumbered host, Though multiplied by myriads, and arrayed In all the glory of sublimest thought, Is but an atom in the balance, weighed Against Thy greatness—is a cipher brought Against infinity! What ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... birthday I did not go to school, being taught to read and write and cipher by my father himself. But one day he set me before him on his horse and rode into Shrewsbury, where, after a solemn interview with Mr. Lloyd, the master, I was put into the accidence class at King Edward's famous school. As we rode back, I remember that my father, who was generally ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... ring must have been copied from it," Enid said. "It is a very faithful copy indeed, and could not have been made from mere directions—take the engraving inside, for instance. The engraving forms the cipher of the house of Littimer, If Henson has the real ring, if we can find it, the tragedy goes out of our lives ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... with the gratification of the most primitive, the most bestial, wants. It is no excuse to say that the action of one man can have but little influence upon the trend of life in a whole nation. The merest unit in the sum, the cipher even, has power to change the total. The strength of wisdom in the majority of a nation may be more than sufficient to-day to counteract the folly of the unit; but there is always the chance that the folly of the individual may in time ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson

... duelling-celebrity, and after the first shock of surprise he would have been able to show the same contempt of death as a professional fencer accustomed to the duelling-ground, who, with perfect right, considers life—his own namely—to be a mere cipher; he would have awaited the bullets defiantly, with his arms crossed a la Napoleon, and the Elector would have had him shot, would indeed have been forced to have him shot. He can no longer sink to such depths ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... papers he discovered a cipher letter from Rotterdam — probably from Quintana. Cipher was rather in Darragh's line. All ciphers are solved by similar methods, unless the key is contained in a code book known only ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers

... back to the office and examined things. It was evident in a moment how it had been done. Withers had signed an order for the removal of five boxes. The compradore had deftly added a cipher and raised it to fifty. And so on. Done repeatedly, with neatness and precision, over Withers' own signature. No wonder the streets about the godowns had presented an air of activity ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte

... the hills all day and explored many mountain paths and inquired cautiously of the natives. The telegraph operator at the Storm Springs inn was a woman, and the despatch and receipt by Jules Chauvenet of long messages, many of them in cipher, piqued her curiosity. No member of the Washington diplomatic circle who came to the Springs,—not even the shrewd and secretive Russian Ambassador,—received longer or more cryptic cables. With the social diversions of the Springs and the ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson

... it to be taken from the Custom-House, dooties paid etc., and dispatched to Miss ——, New York. Hold your tongue, and don't laugh, you rogue. Why shouldn't she have her paper, and I my pleasure, without your wicked, wicked sneers and imperence? I'm only a cipher in the young lady's estimation, and why shouldn't I sigh for her if I like. I hope I shall see you all at Boston before very long. I always consider Boston as my ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... must be allowed there is no cipher, because they have two figures to support them; but take these two figures away, and the whole wit of mankind may be defied to patch up or recruit the number without having recourse to ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... I die, the scandal will survive, And be an eye-sore in my golden coat; Some loathsome dash the herald will contrive, To cipher me how fondly I did dote; That my posterity, sham'd with the note, Shall curse my bones, and hold it for no sin To wish that I their father ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... added to two times 1,000 dollars. From the number in the units place on the right, every figure to the left is understood to represent a multiple of the particular power of 10 that its position indicates, while a cipher (0) must be inserted where necessary in order to prevent confusion, for if instead of 207 we wrote 27 it would be obviously misleading. We thus only require ten figures, because directly a number exceeds ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... the fifths belonging to the Crown had been remitted to Castile; as Pizarro had appropriated them to his own use. He now took possession of the mints, broke up the royal stamps, and issued a debased coin, emblazoned with his own cipher. *17 It was the most ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... a cipher code would secure the secrecy of a message, but Marconi was looking for a mechanical device that would make it impossible for any but the station to which the message was sent to receive it. He finally hit ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday

... of Gellius (xvii. 9) there was extant a collection of Caesar's letters to C. Oppius and Cornelius Balbus, written in a kind of cipher. (See Suetonius, Caesar, 56.) Two letters of Caesar to Oppius and Balbus are extant in the collection of Cicero's letters (Ad Atticum, ix. 8, 16), both expressed with admirable brevity and clearness. One of them also shows his good sense ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... on Miss Tonk's card the small purple cipher that stood for hm—hm. "I will make enquiries about ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson

... the sheets of paper torn from a blank-book and looked at them under an electric light. "This Syro-Phoenician writing needs what it can't get out here," he said, after a half-minute's pause. "A cipher requires a code, and a code means sitting down. Aren't you cold? You are. Come over here and we'll have some tea and work it out together." And before protest could be made they were in a hotel across the street and at a table on which a shaded light permitted a closer examination of the ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher

... and say so, it is almost sure to go elsewhere. Judging by this test the play of "Julius Caesar" has a glowing future ahead of it. It was written by Gentlemen Shakespeare, Bacon and Donnelly, who collaborated together on it. Shakespeare did the lines and plot, Bacon furnished the cipher and Donnelly called attention to it ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... parry him, but this was not a very smooth start for eight in the morning. Moments of lull there were, when the telegraph called her to the front room, and Billy's young mind shifted to inquiries about the cipher alphabet. And she gained at least an hour teaching him to read various words by the sound. At dinner, too, he was refreshingly silent. But such silences are unsafe, and the weather was still bad. Four o'clock found them much where they ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister

... and sake And cipher of suffering Christ. Mark, the mark is of man's make And the word of it Sacrificed. But he scores it in scarlet himself on his own bespoken, Before-time-taken, dearest prized and priced— Stigma, signal, cinquefoil token For lettering of the lamb's ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins

... had they been in search for the cipher-books they would only have looked for them alone," I remarked decisively. "What on earth could interest them in all these dry, unimportant shipping ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux

... claim on the world; even if that claim rest solely on the fact of her motherhood, and not, alas, on any other. Her life may be a cipher, but when the child comes, God writes a figure before it, ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... Minister of Finance, giving detailed statistics concerning the age, occupation, and progress of her proteges. "How many know how to read? How many to read and write? How many to read, write, and cipher? What progress has been made since the last report?" These are some of the questions she has to answer; and, meanwhile, if a crowd of little children come in, she turns from her writing and calculations and plays with them as if she ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft

... and everywhere. But whatever he did, he knew that only the cipher of him was there, nothing was filled in. He went to the theatre; what he heard and saw fell upon a cold surface of consciousness, which was now all that he was, there was nothing behind it, he could ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... if I thought basely of marriage, I should perhaps accept your offer. There was a time, indeed, when it would have made me proudest among women. I was the more deceived, and have to thank you for a salutary lesson. You chose to count me as a cipher in your rolls of conquest; for six months you left me to my fate; and you come here to-day - prompted, I doubt not, by an honourable impulse - to offer this tardy reparation. No: it is ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson

... slightest suspicion that the assertion proved nothing but extreme self-satisfaction. Accordingly, as she could not afford to send her daughters to school as well as the boys, she decided to educate them herself. Everybody who could read, write, and cipher was supposed to be able to teach in those days, and Mrs. Caldwell undertook the task without a doubt of her own capacity. But Aunt ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... the public, and made from tobacco grown in one of the Balkan States. With them he had, both before the war and after, been constantly supplied by a certain European sovereign whose personal friend he was. They bore the royal crown and cipher, but even to his most intimate acquaintance Walter Fetherston had never betrayed the reason why he was the recipient of so many favours from ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux

... encouraged by the judicious stimulation of an occasional ten-pound note sent to him by devious methods, he has once or twice given me advance information which has been of value—that highest value which anticipates and prevents rather than avenges crime. I cannot doubt that, if we had the cipher, we should find that this communication is of ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... An alien enemy shall not have in his possession at any time or place, or use or operate, any aircraft or wireless apparatus, or any form of signaling device, or any form of cipher code or any paper, document or book written or printed in cipher, or in which ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson

... (No. 14. p. 215.).—Zero Ital.; Fr. un chiffre, un rien, a cipher in arithmetic, a nought; whence the proverb avere nel zero, mepriser souverainement, to value at nothing, to have a sovereign contempt for. I do not know what the etymology of the word may be; but the application is obvious to that point in the scale ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various

... in vain For dubious doorways! May revengeful moths Thy ledgers eat! May chronologic spouts Retain no cipher legible! May crypts Lurk undiscovered! Nor may'st thou spell the names Of saints in storied windows, nor the dates Of bells discover, nor the genuine site Of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... Trogool upon the utter Rim turned a page that was numbered six in a cipher that none might read. And as the golden ball went through the sky to gleam on lands and cities, there came the Fog towards it, stooping as he walked with his dark brown cloak about him, and behind him ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... of the minister, while they disgusted the aristocracy, gave great umbrage to the dean of Louvain, who saw himself reduced to a mere cipher in the administration. In consequence of his representations a second, and afterwards a third minister was sent to Castile, with authority to divide the government with the cardinal. But all this was of little avail. On one occasion, the co-regents ventured to rebuke their haughty ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... of bargain, Told of human gains and losses, Scared away the beasts and birdlings, Locked and dammed and bridged the rivers, Chained the rolling streams and rivers. Schools were opened, where the people Learned to read and write and cipher. Coaches linked the growing city With the busy world around it. Youths and maidens joined in wedlock, Parents knelt at family altars, Children gamboled in the playgrounds, Cats and dogs and cows and horses, Swine and animals of burden, Followed man, the master spirit, ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... said Jonas. "The first evening, Amos may take the arithmetic and the slate, and cipher, while Isabella writes, and Oliver studies a good long spelling lesson. Then, the second evening, Amos shall study the spelling lesson, and Isabella cipher, and ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott

... not understand, and that the actual touching of rare textures—bronze or marble, or velvets flushed with the bloom of age—gave him sensations like those her own beauty had once roused in him. But the next moment he was laughing over some commonplace joke, or absorbed in a long cipher cable handed to him as they re-entered the Nouveau Luxe for tea, and his aesthetic emotions had been thrust back into their own compartment of the great steel ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... remain insensible to the trials of a poor man to whom, for over twenty years, one says good-morning every day on passing him, with whose life one is acquainted, who is not an abstract unit in the imagination, a statistical cipher, but a sorrowing soul and a suffering body.—And so much the more because, since the writings of Rousseau and the economists, a spirit of humanity, daily growing stronger, more penetrating and more universal, has arisen to soften the heart. Henceforth the poor are ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... furnished and apparently surrounded with wealth, they were extremely poor. Yet she did not care for money for their own household use so much as to give him the weight in parish affairs he so sadly needed. She felt that he was pushed aside, treated as a cipher, and that he had little of the influence that properly belonged to him. Her two daughters, their only children, were comfortably, though not grandly, married and settled; there was no family anxiety. But the work, the parish, the people, all seemed to have ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... Mr. Taggett stood paralyzed. Ten minutes afterwards a message in cipher was pulsing along the wires to New York, and before the sun went down that evening Richard Shackford was under the surveillance ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... far from contemptible in intellectual power, and belonging to a race which has shown itself capable of a degree of civilization many of the tribes of the Eastern continents have never approached, should be so absolutely an industrial cipher. The African even exports mats, palm-oil and peanuts, but the Indian exports nothing and produces nothing. He lacks the sense of property, and has no object of acquisition but scalps. Can the assembled ingenuity of the nineteenth century, in presence of this mass of waste ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... it was in the latter part of 1760. For more than seventy years it had been the first institution in the State, and for forty-six years the interest of the sovereign had been to maintain its supremacy. The king was a cipher. Yet a new king had but to appear to change everything. George III. ascended the throne with the determination not to be the slave of any minister, himself the slave of Parliament; and from the day that he became king to the day that the decline of his faculties enforced his retirement, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... The ordinary cipher of the B. S. S. was as readily intelligible to both as if the messages had been couched ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... fifth belonging to the Crown had been remitted to Castile; as Pizarro had appropriated them for his own use. He now took possession of the mints, broke up the royal stamps, and issued a debased coin, emblazoned with his own cipher.17 It was the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... "Let me cipher it out." Amos Green sat on a fallen maple with his head sunk upon his hands. "Well," said he presently, "if it's no good going on, and no good going back, there's only one way, and that is to go to one side. That's so, ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... fellow—intelligent, and never too familiar, but just familiar enough. Women liked him; he was so respectful, almost reverent, in his attitude toward them. It took a better man to be a salesman then than now. Every article was marked in cipher, with two prices. One figure represented what the thing cost and the other was the selling-price. You secured the selling-price, if you could, and if you couldn't, you took what you could get, right down to the cost figure. The motto was, never let a customer ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... the life of the damned. You know well what bitter cup you have made me drink. If I have stood to the world as my father's heir, you have eaten up the inheritance If my father's house was mine, I was no more than a cipher in it. I have had the shadow, and you the substance. You have undermined ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... struggle 'twixt love and duty. No, not duty: I might have sheathed my sword, and wronged no one; I was but a cipher among thousands, whose blade would scarcely have been missed. Nor would I have wronged myself. I was simply, as I have already declared, an adventurer. The country for which I fought could not claim me; I was bound by no political conscience, no patriotic esprit. Perhaps, now and ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... secret representations, sent in cipher for the information of the Government, were given to the Press with a perverted meaning and hostile criticism, he hastened to Cairo. He requested an immediate interview with Tewfik, who excused himself for what had been done by his Ministers on the ground of his youth; ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... which she read could be always construed in two or three senses. But only her father knew the actual meaning which the writer intended to convey. For hours she would often be engaged in reading them. Sometimes, too, telegrams in cipher arrived, and she would then obtain the little, dark-blue covered book from the safe, and by its aid decipher the ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux

... potential content of one's consciousness is accessible from any one of its points. This is why we can never work the laws of association forward: starting from the present field as a cue, we can never cipher out in advance just what the person will be thinking of five minutes later. The elements which may become prepotent in the process, the parts of each successive field round which the associations shall chiefly turn, the possible bifurcations of suggestion, are so ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... is sure. A will may be found, or my uncle's marriage proved; in either case, I sink back into the cipher I was before. I cannot say I'm not glad to have money, but I don't want people blaming me. I can't help it if my uncle made no will and did not marry Amy's mother, and I don't believe he did, or why was he silent ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes

... happen later Vassie could go to what they do call a boarding school to Plymouth church town, seen' as the money won't be Ishmael's yet awhile.... Only she must learn to cipher and make nadlework flowers afore go, or the other maids'll mock ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... brief existence, not alone Do our lives gather what our hands have sown, But we reap, too, what others long ago Sowed, careless of the harvests that might grow. Thus hour by hour the humblest human souls Inscribe in cipher on unending scrolls, The history of nations yet to be; Incite fierce bloody wars, to rage from ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... suffer me to add some further remarks on the subject of the Arabic numerals and cipher; as neither the querists nor respondents seem to have duly appreciated the immense importance of the step taken by introducing the use of a cipher. I would commence with observing, that we know of no people tolerably advanced in civilisation, whose system of notation had made such little progress, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various

... unsuspected treasure may lurk unknown. In a room like this, for over a couple of centuries, stood on one of the shelves an old rudely bound volume of blank paper, the pages covered with a curious straggling cipher; no one paid any heed to it, no one tried to spell its secrets. But the day came when a Fellow who was both inquisitive and leisurely took up the old volume, and formed a resolve to decipher it. Through many baffling ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... something of a fatalist, did not interfere. On this cockleshell of a craft, among these rude spirits of alien races, he was powerless. On land a diplomat and strategist of high order, here he was a cipher. Moreover, he was beaten to his knees, and he knew it. The arrival of the warship had upset his calculations. After many months' planning of flight, he had been forced, by the events of a few hours, into an aggressive campaign. His little cohort had done wonders, ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... I have been secretary to a prince, and learnt to interpret cipher, and to watch every pen-stroke; and, young as I am, I think that I am not easily deceived. Would God I were! Come on, lad; and strike no man hastily, lest thou cut ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... called a cryptogram, or cipher," he said, "in which letters are purposely thrown in confusion, which if properly arranged would reveal their sense. Only think that under this jargon there may lie concealed the clue ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... a cipher in b. b. plans this year and I am good and glad of it," exulted Muriel. "Professor Leonard looks to me like a person who wouldn't show favoritism. He certainly has lots of ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... he began to make entries in it, glancing first at the telegram and then at the book, and writing apparently one letter or figure at a time. Dodds was interested, for he knew exactly what the man was doing. He was working out a cipher. Dodds had often done it himself. And then suddenly the little man turned very pale, as if the full purport of the message had been a shock to him. Dodds had done that also, and his sympathies were all with his neighbours. Then the stranger rose, and, leaving his breakfast untasted, ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... mass-meeting, and was silent when the thousands applauded. In coming out he saw, while unobserved himself, Mr. Vosburgh, and was struck by the proud, contemptuous expression of his face. The government officer had listened with a cipher telegram in his pocket informing ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... communication with Sardis would be kept up, but this communication might be the source of great danger to the plans of Roland Clewe. Whatever messages of importance came from the depths of the arctic regions he wished to come only to him or to Mrs. Raleigh. He had contrived a telegraphic cipher, known only to Mrs. Raleigh, Sammy, and two officers of the Dipsey, and, to insure secrecy, Sammy had been strictly enjoined to send no information in any other way ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... I winced. He meant no harm, I suppose, but I'm bound to say that this tactless speech nettled me not a little. People are always nettling me like that. Giving me to understand, I mean to say, that in their opinion Bertram Wooster is a mere cipher and that the only member of the household with brains and ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... enter into this alliance. By virtue of it I should be obliged to espouse the cause of France against her enemies, and to wage war against Russia, my ally. I am to violate the only sure compact remaining to me in order to become a mere cipher in the hands of Napoleon! I am to betray him who has been faithful to me! The Emperor of Russia is my personal friend. At the grave of Frederick the Great I swore with him to maintain the alliance of both our hearts and our states, and no other voice induced me to take this step but my ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... has, with its subterranean fires! She is none of your cool, calculating creatures, who cipher out from day to day what is policy to do. She will act rightly till there is an irrepressible irruption, and then, beware. And yet these ebullitions enrich her life as the lava flow does the sides of Vesuvius. I shall be greatly disappointed if she is not ten times more kind, sympathetic, ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... Sir W. Coventry, and they and my Lord Bruncker and I went to Sir G. Carteret's lodgings, there to discourse about some money demanded by Sir W. Warren, and having done that broke up. And Sir G. Carteret and I alone together a while, where he shows a long letter, all in cipher, from my Lord Sandwich to him. The contents he hath not yet found out, but he tells me that my Lord is not sent for home, as several people have enquired after of me. He spoke something reflecting upon me in the business of pursers, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... us, and then become the seat of wild chiefs of whom we know nothing, until with their axes they cut their Runic signs into a few of these stones, which then came into the calendar of time. But as for me, I had gone quite beyond all lapse of time, and had become a cipher and a nothing. Then three or four beautiful falling stars came down, which cleared the air, and gave my thoughts another direction. You know what a falling star is, do you not? The learned men are not at all clear about it. I ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... the crown and anchor, and his Majesty's cipher on the appointments of the dead officer, he became convinced of our quality, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various

... he said, "that a resume of certain of these papers should go to Berlin and Russia in cipher, but this may wait. The originals must as soon as possible reach our minister ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell

... to get off this message, so he sat down to work out the cipher known only to himself and ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... the glib repetition of rules was a system that he held in contempt. With the public, ability to recite the rules of such subjects as those went farther than any actual demonstration of the power to cipher ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb

... every now and then to Abrahamson's hut upon the chance of getting a half-dozen fish for breakfast. He always had a kind word or two for Tom, who during the winter evenings would go over to the good man's house to learn his letters, and to read and write and cipher a little, so that by now he was able to spell the words out of the Bible and the almanac, and knew enough to change tuppence ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle

... with you, Cyrus?" said Dr. Lavendar, looking at him over his spectacles. (Dr. Lavendar, in his wicked old heart, always wanted to call this young man Cipher; but, so far, grace had been given him to withstand temptation.) ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors

... was not drinking wine at his betrothal feast, but sending this cipher letter by a swift and ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... were the letters. But into each letter was secretly slipped a private note, addressed to Aunty, begging her to persuade papa to allow the visit to be prolonged as much as possible. Fred added that if the time fixed should be a year, and then a cipher added to the number of days, three thousand six hundred and fifty would not be one too ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri

... terrify it; so that the government was by no means sure of its aid. Gaius Gracchus had not understood the fall of the oligarchy as implying that the new master might conduct himself on his self-created throne, as legitimate cipher-kings think proper to do. But this Cinna had been elevated to power not by his will, but by pure accident; was there any wonder that he remained where the storm-wave of revolution had washed him up, till a second wave came ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... notes to his account of it as will enable me to find out what sort of an accident it was and to whom it happened. I had rather all his friends should die than that I should be driven to the verge of lunacy again in trying to cipher out the meaning of another such production ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... use at all, aunty; I shan't have one more pretty thought in my head for having a gay ribbon on my hair. Use it, aunty, please, to buy me some new books, so I can enter the highest class in school when George Wild does. Mr. Grey says I can read and cipher as well as he, though I am not so ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... CHILTERN. [Sits down at the table and takes a pen in his hand.] Well, I shall send a cipher telegram to the Embassy at Vienna, to inquire if there is anything known against her. There may be some secret scandal she ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde

... the road. No amount of torture could make her betray her friends. They spoke of Antonoff, who was subjected to the thumbscrew, had red-hot wires thrust under his nails, and when his torturers gave him a little respite he would scratch on his plate cipher signals ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman

... fodder. I say Abe was awful lazy, he would laugh and talk, and crack jokes all the time, didn't love work, but did dearly love his pay." He liked to lie under a shade tree, or up in the loft of the cabin and read, cipher, or scribble. At night he ciphered by the light of the fire on the wooden fire shovel. He practised stump oratory by repeating the sermons, and sometimes by preaching himself to his brothers and sister. His gifts in the rhetorical line were high; when ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... same, and you may here have one or more figures in the multiplier, as you choose. The above is a very easy feat; but it is also required to find the two arrangements giving pairs of the highest and lowest products possible. Of course every counter must be used, and the cipher may not be placed to the left of a row of figures where it would have no effect. Vulgar fractions or decimals are ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... stone to the pyramid of the national renown, that our lips have swelled the echoes of imperial glory? What can reconcile the man of powerful intellect to the consciousness that he has passed through life a cipher, and left nothing behind ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... bows and arrows. No sooner does the ferryman land me than the officer in charge of the party, with a wave of his hand in my direction, orders a couple of soldiers to conduct me into the city; his order is given in an off-hand manner peculiarly Chinese, as though I were a mere unimportant cipher in the matter, whose wishes it really was not worth while to consult. The soldiers conduct me to the city and into the yamen or official quarter, where I am greeted with extreme courtesy by a pleasant little officer in cloth top-boots and a pigtail that touches his heels. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... propping him up, and a drawer open on the bed, and bundles of old letters and bills spread out before him. Old love letters; old business letters; his mother's letters to him when he was a boy at Edinburgh College; letters in cipher that no human eye can read but those old, bleared, weeping eyes that fill that too late drawer with their tears. The old voyager is looking over his papers before he takes ship. And he comes on things ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte

... a Cuban cigar-maker to fix up a little cipher code with English and Spanish words, and gave the General a copy, so we could cable him bulletins about the election, or for more money, and then we were ready to start. General Rompiro escorted us to the steamer. On the pier he hugged Denver around the waist and ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... against the said minister: affirming, in proud and insolent terms, that he had, "by an abuse of his influence over the Nabob,—he, the Nabob himself, being (as he ever must be in the hands of some person) a mere cipher in his [the said minister's],—dared to make him [the Nabob] assume a very unbecoming tone of refusal, reproach, and resentment, in opposition to measures recommended by ME, and even to acts done by MY authority": ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... kind of unity. Can you read him today? Emerson rather goes out and shouts: "I'm thinking of the sun's glory today and I'll let his light shine through me. I'll say any damn thing that this inspires me with." Perhaps there are flashes of light, still in cipher, kept there by unity, the code of which the world has not yet discovered. The unity of one sentence inspires the unity of the whole—though its physique is as ragged as ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... Washington spent his childhood. He learned to read, write, and cipher at a small school kept by Hobby, the sexton of the parish church. Among his playmates was Richard Henry Lee, who was afterward a famous Virginian. When the boys grew up, they wrote to each other of grave matters of war and state, but here is the beginning of their correspondence, written when ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... pause he continued: "In settling the question, represent your mother and myself by a cipher. That is all we are, if the logic of your past action counts for anything. Again I ask, What do you propose to do? No matter how pretty and flattered a girl may be, she cannot alter gravitation. There are other facts just as inexorable. Shutting your eyes to them, or any other phase of folly, ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... quarter of the tenth century peremptory edicts were issued to check this state of affairs, but the power of the Court to exact obedience had then dwindled almost to cipher. History records that during the Ho-en era (1135-1140), the regent Fujiwara Tadamichi's manor of Shimazu comprised one-fourth of the province of Osumi. On these great manors, alike of nobles and of temples, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... sound of our locomotives. The telegraph is finished to Mining's Station, and the field-wire has just reached my bivouac, and will be ready to convey this message as soon as it is written and translated into cipher. ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... cipher which I now send to you, on the slip of paper enclosed, is an antidote to that one of the two poisons known to you and to me by the fanciful name which ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins

... the stubborn mind to have mercy on the lacerated body, but without effect. His own wayward heart gave him the key to read the cipher of this man's life. "A noble nature ruined," said he to himself. "What is the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... worship, acquired the accomplishment of public prayer, and made himself a student at their feet. It is thus—it is by the cultivation of similar passing chances—that he has learned to read, to write, to cipher, and to speak his queer, personal English, so different from ordinary 'Beach de Mar,' so much more obscure, expressive, and condensed. His education attended to, he found time to become critical of the new inmates. Like Nakaeia of Makin, he is an ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... that warns you to go through the little passage-way, to find the soldiers of the Douane lounging about the courtyard inside. On the back of the houses that look out upon the street you will see the arms and cipher of Francois Premier, which show that in his days the Mint still remained in a house that was far older. And in 1360 the "Officer of the Mint of the parish of St. Eloi," who quarrelled about the price ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... appear to the wild king that this bishop is the very man that he wants, the very opposite to himself and his wild riders; a man pure, peaceable, just, and brave; possessed, too, of boundless learning; who can read, write, cipher, and cast nativities; who has a whole room full of books and parchments, and a map of the whole world; who can talk Latin, and perhaps Greek, as well as one of those accursed man-eating Grendels, a Roman lawyer, or a logothete from Ravenna; possessed, too, of boundless supernatural ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... Hollingsworth did. He immediately withdrew his head, and I heard him yawning, muttering to his wife, and again yawning heavily, while he hurried on his clothes. Meanwhile I showed Hollingsworth a delicate handkerchief, marked with a well-known cipher, and told where I had found it, and other circumstances, which had filled me with a suspicion so terrible that I left him, if he dared, to shape it out for himself. By the time my brief explanation was finished, we were joined by Silas Foster in ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... you don't mind, I will take my check and go. I'll be back again, but don't think it advisable to come often. I have prepared a short telephone cipher code by which we can carry on a commonplace conversation over the wire and let each other know if all is well or if trouble is brewing or has already broken. Here is ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis

... occasionally to Lamb Court, Temple, pretty little satin envelopes, superscribed in the neatest handwriting, and sealed with one of those admirable ciphers, which, if Warrington had been curious enough to watch his friend's letters, or indeed if the cipher had been decipherable, would have shown George that Mr. Arthur was in correspondence with a young lady whose initials were B. A. To these pretty little compositions Mr. Pen replied in his best and gallantest manner; with jokes, with news of the town, with points ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... cipher. [Reads. 'Sir Peter Carew fled to France: it is thought the Duke will be taken. I am with you still; but, for appearance sake, stay with the Queen. Gardiner knows, but the Council are all at odds, and the Queen hath no force for resistance. ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... from intoxicating liquors. You are not permitted to have any women associates. You will be known to us by a number. You will sign all your reports by that number. Always avoid telephoning, telegraphing and cabling as much as possible. In urgent cases do so, but use the cipher that will be ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves

... According to his aristocratic feelings, there was a degree of presumption in this novus homo, this Mr. Gilbert Glossin, late writer in—-, presuming to set up such an accommodation at all; but his wrath was mitigated when he observed that the mantle upon the panels only bore a plain cipher of G.G. This apparent modesty was indeed solely owing to the delay of Mr. Gumming of the Lyon Office, who, being at that time engaged in discovering and matriculating the arms of two commissaries from North America, three English-Irish peers, and two great ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... February, 1796, Tone, who had sailed from Belfast the previous June, arrived at Havre from New York, possessed of a hundred guineas and some useful letters of introduction. One of these letters, written in cipher, was from the French Minister at Philadelphia to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Charles Lacroix; another was to the American Minister in France, Mr. Monroe, afterwards President of the United States, by whom he was most kindly received, and wisely advised, on reaching Paris. Lacroix received ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... perusal of its apparent proofs, Poe still further increased his popularity and drew attention to his works by putting forward the attractive but less dangerous theorem that "human ingenuity could not construct a cipher which human ingenuity ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... came the astonishing news, by cipher despatch from old Jasper Titus's principal adviser in London, that his offer of one million dollars had been declined by Tarnowsy two days before, the Count having replied through his lawyers that nothing ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... cried my father, with unusual animation; "I did not know it was allowed. I'll wire you in the office cipher, and we'll make it a kind of partnership business, Loudon:—Dodd and Son, eh?" and he patted my shoulder and repeated, "Dodd and Son, Dodd and Son," with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... missionary in China, to communicate his researches in Chinese philosophy. He hoped by means of the latter to operate on the Emperor Cham-Hi with the Dyadik; [9] and even suggested said Dyadik as a key to the cipher of the book "Ye Kim," supposed to contain the sacred mysteries of Fo. He addresses Louis XIV., now on the subject of a military expedition to Egypt, (a magnificent idea, which it needed a Napoleon to realize,) now on the best method of promoting and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... that your world was a paradise of order, equity, and felicity. But they were a very practical people, my contemporaries, and after expressing their admiration for the moral beauty and material splendor of the system, they would presently begin to cipher and ask how you got the money to make everybody so happy; for certainly, to support the whole nation at a rate of comfort, and even luxury, such as I see around me, must involve vastly greater wealth than the nation produced in my day. Now, while I could explain to them pretty nearly everything ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... property by the look of it," remarked Val. "Diamonds, begad! I should have thought Yvonne had better taste. But it must be hers, though the cipher doesn't seem to have a B in it. I'll guarantee it isn't Rosy's." He slipped it into his pocket. "I'll give it to Jack, I shall see ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... one, which stood half built with a sloping plank-roof over it. There he lay wedged into the farthest corner, close wrapped in the happy Nirvana of self-forgetfulness—school zero, and Mrs. Holman a cipher—his body bent down over his knees, his coat pulled up about his neck to keep out the drips, and his boots down in ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie

... man who drove the tarantass during the first stage was, like his horses, a Siberian, and no less shaggy than they; long hair, cut square on the forehead, hat with a turned-up brim, red belt, coat with crossed facings and buttons stamped with the imperial cipher. The iemschik, on coming up with his team, threw an inquisitive glance at the passengers of the tarantass. No luggage!—and had there been, where in the world could he have stowed it? Rather shabby in appearance too. ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... supplies of much-needed medicines, surgical instruments and necessaries for the sick. They brought northern newspapers—and often despatches and cipher letters of immense value; and they ever had tidings from home that made the heart of exiled Marylander, or border statesman sing for joy, even amid the night-watches ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... would not, probably have heard it, had the captain shouted it in their ears. Lucy was intent on opening up a subject which had lain dormant in her mind since the morning of Max's departure, and the gentleman himself was trying to cipher out what new "kink," as he expressed it to himself, had ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... vulgar bumpkin, Cavanagh, I suppose in a state of maudlin drunkenness, that he would make me marry his daughter—to oblige, him!—contempt could go no further; it was making a complete cipher of me." ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... Roger," said Harry; "be not over-hasty, lad. I believe this is more important than it looks. May it not be a cipher of some kind? Let us ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... fierce and hungry; narrow as was her brow, it presented space enough for the legible graving of two words, Mutiny and Hate; in some one of her other lineaments I think the eye—cowardice had also its distinct cipher. Mdlle. Trista thought fit to trouble my first lessons with a coarse work-day sort of turbulence; she made noises with her mouth like a horse, she ejected her saliva, she uttered brutal expressions; behind and below ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... and not the actor of it? Why, every fault's condemn'd ere it be done: Mine were the very cipher of a function, To fine the faults whose fine stands in record, 40 And let ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... Snow Hill in the year of 1896, and there remained for eight years receiving instruction at the hand of a loyal band of self-sacrificing teachers, who not only taught me how to read, write and to cipher, but in addition they taught me lessons of thrift and industry which have proven to be the main saving point ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards

... no signature. Her orders or suggestions were written in the same cipher, and required much more time and thought than had been given to the buying and freeing of Pluto's pickaninny, after which she destroyed all unnecessary writings, and retired with the satisfied feeling of good work done and better in prospect, and in a short time was ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... while it would be easy for him to sway the young Duke of Perth, and he was not long in poisoning the ear of the latter against his companion in arms by representing to him that Lord George treated him as a mere cipher, although of equal rank in the army. The secretary's purpose was even more easily carried out with Prince Charles. The latter was no judge of character, and fell readily under the influence of the wily and unscrupulous Murray, who flattered his weaknesses and assumed ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... that entertaining Diary, wherein Pepys daguerrotyped the age in which he lived, and himself with all his sense and nonsense. That Diary would have remained one of the invisible treasures of libraries, for it was written in a cipher of his own invention, but, by a very curious chance, the key to that cipher was unintentionally betrayed through comparison with another paper, and the journal was brought to light, and many things made visible which the writer dreamed not of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... of vileness, become an unspeakable cipher of cowardice and servility—she signed endless lists of crimes which she had never committed. Was she worth the trouble of burning? Many had given up that idea, but the ruthless Penitentiary clung to it still. He offered money to a Wizard of Evreux, then in prison, if he would bear such ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... this little wreck of fame, Cipher and syllable! thine eye 10 Has travelled down to Matthew's name, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... this morning to bespeak my charity for him. If she didn't know then how little my charity was worth she is at least enlightened about it to-day, and this is just the circumstance that makes the drollery of her visit. As I hold up the torch to the dusky years—by which I mean as I cipher up with a pen that stumbles and stops the figured column of my reminiscences—I see that Lim-bert's public hour, or at least my small apprehension of it, is rounded by those two occasions. It was finis, with a little moralising flourish, that Mrs. Highmore seemed to trace to-day ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... the eccentricities of cipher, changed in the Seventeenth Century to easily read initials, sometimes interlaced, sometimes apart. Later on it became the mode to weave the entire name. An example of these is the two letters C of Charles ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... said I, wrathfully. "What are you to her? Do you suppose she takes you for a symbol? I wish to Heaven she did. A round cipher of naught, the symbol of inanity. She takes you for an honourable gentleman. I've known the child since she was born. As good a little girl as ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... checked Smith's correction with, "You dropped one cipher, doctor. There are three and ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint

... keepers of some of the communal forests in Switzerland are provided with small axes, having the back of the axe-head worked into a large and sharp die, the impression of the die being some letter or cipher indicating the commune. When these foresters wish to mark a tree, they give it first a slice with the edge of the axe, and then (turning the axe) they deal it a heavy blow with the back of the axe-head. ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... way, he presents himself at Rome to give force to the measures which the emperor has resolved on taking to purge this city of the scoundrels to whom it has given asylum, and consequently to all the enemies of France.' You will put in cipher in your despatch the following paragraph: 'The intention of the emperor is to accustom by this note, and by these proceedings, the people of Rome and the French troops to live together, in order that if the court of Rome should continue ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... believe in Number, do you deny God? Is not Creation interposed between the Infinite of unorganized substances and the Infinite of the divine spheres, just as the Unit stands between the Cipher of the fractions you have lately named Decimals, and the Infinite of Numbers which you call Wholes? Man alone on earth comprehends Number, that first step of the peristyle which leads to God, and yet his ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... in the hands of the ingenious person with an idea. Coins, matches, cards, counters, bits of wire or string, all come in useful. An immense number of puzzles have been made out of the letters of the alphabet, and from those nine little digits and cipher, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... opened up signalling communication with Ladysmith by flashing his message with his searchlight at night on to the clouds. The message, which was in cipher, could be easily read by every one, but the garrison was unable to reply as they had ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson

... you brought yourself and the house to?—I think nothing of myself, that am a mere cipher, so to speak; but you, that was your father's sum-total—his omnium,—you that might have been the first man in the first house in the first city, to be shut up in a nasty Scotch jail, where one cannot even get the ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... nodded. "I can put it into the cipher category. Under that system a name is never mentioned; we work ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Mr. Y——, to endeavour to make myself useful to my employer; but it was no easy matter to do this at first, because he had such a dread of my awkwardness that he would never let me touch any of his apparatus. I was always left to stand like a cipher beside him whilst he lectured; and I had regularly the mortification of hearing him conclude his lecture with, 'Now, gentlemen and ladies, I will not detain you any longer from what, I am sensible, is much ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... to that feeling, and started up, afraid to sleep. He saw lying on the table the unopened telegrams, and tore them open. Some referred to sales of oil, and other business transactions; one was to inform Brassfield that a man named Alvord would not meet him in New York as promised, and one was in cipher, ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

... cried the lieutenant. "It was the warning in cipher or code. I didn't think they would neglect to ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton

... hand, and asked me to come in, gave me coffee at once, and expressed the profoundest contempt for the peasant who had charged two rigsdaler for such a trifle, and then left me in the road. I asked at once for pen and paper, and wrote in cipher to a comrade, with whom I had concocted this mysterious means of communication, asking him to tell my parents that I had been most kindly received. I felt a kind of shyness at the schoolmaster seeing what I wrote home from his house. I gave him the sheet, and begged ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... will tell you." And, taking a lamp, he left the room, returning presently with a letter which was written in cipher, and translated upon another sheet in John ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard

... important that you learn to cipher, and Mr. Brownwell is an excellent teacher of arithmetic. It will not take you many months to become a good penman under his tuition, and to acquire considerable knowledge ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer

... but little schooling; she learned to read, but not to write or cipher; hence, books and such interests took none of her time. She was one of those uneducated countrywomen of strong natural traits and wholesome instincts, devoted to her children; she bore ten, and nursed them all—an heroic worker, a helpful neighbor, and a provident ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus



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