"Baffled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hounds across the sky, The white clouds scud before the storm; And naked in the howling night The red-eyed lighthouse lifts its form. The waves with slippery fingers clutch The massive tower, and climb and fall, And, muttering, growl with baffled rage Their curses on the ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... in air unseen, some hovering hand, 10 Some chaste and angel friend to virgin fame, With whisper'd spell had burst the starting band, It left unblest her loathed dishonour'd side; Happier, hopeless Fair, if never Her baffled hand, with vain endeavour, 15 Had touch'd that fatal zone to her denied! Young Fancy thus, to me divinest name, To whom, prepared and bathed in heaven, The cest of amplest power is given: To few the godlike gift assigns, 20 To gird their blest prophetic loins, And gaze her visions ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... Beaurepaire was sad, and weighed down with presentiments. She felt as soldiers sometimes feel who know the enemy is undermining them; no danger on the surface; nothing that can be seen, met, baffled, attacked, or evaded; in daily peril, all the more horrible that it imitates perfect serenity, they await the fatal match. She imparted her misgivings to Aubertin; but he assured her she exaggerated ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... an aged man, but through all, from birth to death, from the cradle to the grave, I had felt myself doomed. All efforts I had previously made to secure my freedom had not only failed, but had seemed only to rivet my fetters the more firmly, and to render my escape more difficult. Baffled, entangled, and discouraged, I had at times asked myself the question, May not my condition after all be God's work, and ordered for a wise purpose, and if so, Is not submission my duty? A contest had in fact been going on in my mind for a long time, ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... to compare with his free-and-easy manners of other times. To make matters worse, he had promised to be tall, and had not kept his promise. He was neat, and slim, and well made; but he wasn't by an inch or two up to the middle height. In short, he baffled me altogether. The years that had passed had left nothing of his old self, except the bright, straightforward look in his eyes. There I found our nice boy again, and there I concluded ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... reports of his speeches are mere skeletons, which give but a faint idea of them. Even the few rhetorical passages that are retained have lost much of their original form and beauty. The professional stenographers confessed themselves utterly baffled in the attempt to report him, and he was quite as unfitted to report himself. Indeed, he complained that he never could reproduce the best thoughts, still less the exact ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... He had always been in the habit of playing with the rest of the girls, so thinking that Ling Kuan was like the others, he felt impelled to draw near her and to entreat her, with a forced smile, to get up and sing part of the "Niao Ch'ing Ssu." But his hopes were baffled; for as soon as Ling Kuan perceived him sit down, she impetuously raised herself and withdrew from his side. "I'm hoarse," she rejoined with a stern expression on her face. "The Empress the other day called us into the palace; but I couldn't ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... is sometimes grave, And deepest when 'tis calm. And I am joyful If it be joy, this long forbidden hall Once more to pace, and feel each fearless step Tread on a baffled foe. ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... coort-room th' scene baffled description. It was an inspirin' sight f'r th' judges, whin they were awake. Row on row iv journalists, sharpin' pencils an' slappin' each other's faces, r-rose to th' ceilin'. Here an' there cud be ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... Arthur. She had never returned to the card-playing incident; but as time went on a number of others equally distressing presented themselves. Having constituted herself his special protectress and the saviour of his reputation she tackled each of them with courage. In every case she found herself baffled by the fact that arguments which seemed to her unanswerable made no appeal to him, not because he wasn't anxious to see things with her eyes, but because they came within the area of a kind of blind-spot in his brain. She soon found that she couldn't appeal on moral grounds ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... mother, Eleanor, plunged into intrigue for the forward party (Prince Charlie's party), distrusted by James at Rome. 'She is a mad woman,' said James. She and Carte, the historian, were working up an English rising to join the Prince's Scottish adventure, but were baffled by James's cautious, helpless advisers. Then came the Forty-Five. Eleanor was not subdued by Culloden: the undefeated old lady was a guest at the great dinner, with the splendid new service of plate, which the Prince gave to the Princesse de Talmond and his friends in 1748. He was braving all ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... increased with such violence that she was already partially delirious. The next day Dr. Barvis[7], from Devizes, attended her and pronounced her in considerable danger. I mounted my poney, rode back with him, and soon returned again with the medicine he had prescribed; but my mother's disorder baffled all their skill and attention. My poor father was distracted; he never quitted her bedside for a moment; all his large farming concerns were left to the care of the servants; he desired me to go to them on the Monday morning, the day after my mother was taken ill, and to request them all ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... the meek and the unborn; And a question that has held us heretofore without an answer May abide without an answer until all have ceased to mourn. For the children of the dark are more to name than are the wretched, Or the broken, or the weary, or the baffled, or the shamed: There are builders of new mansions in the Valley of the Shadow, And among them are the dying and the blinded and ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... agitation, and terror were such that Arthur found it impossible to do anything but soothe and hush him, as best might be, till his sobs subsided gradually, still heaving his little chest even after he fell asleep in the arms of his unaccustomed nurse, who found himself thus baffled in using this last and only opportunity of trying to strengthen the child's faith, and was also hindered from pursuing Yusuf, who had left the tent. And if it were separation that caused all this distress, what ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had arrived. It was this reply that lay on the table—a brief, formal note, setting forth Miss Boyd's absolute refusal to accept any portion of the money. This was a development which Bill had not foreseen, and he was feeling baffled. What was the next step? He had smoked many pipes in the endeavour to find an answer to this problem, and was lighting ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... to be able to answer him. Even Staupitz, who was responsible to the others for this gathering of the company, was baffled. He had been told to supply nine swords, and he had supplied them. He had been told by his employer the purpose for which the nine swords were wanted—he had been told by AEsop against whom those nine swords were to ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... by famine and cold, the most miserable modes of death." Those who were experienced in the events which had occurred in Spain, added, that "he would not have to engage with Caius Nero, the general, as an unknown person, whom, when accidentally caught in a difficult defile, he had eluded and baffled like a little child, by drawing up fallacious terms of peace." Under the dictation of fear, which always puts the worst construction upon things, they magnified all the advantages which the enemy possessed, ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... the 26th) I shall, unless baffled or delayed by ice or weather, be with you at Richmond Hill. I will not bid you adieu till the Friday preceding. In the interim, we shall often in ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... Khan told us. Have you forgotten? He is to go to Eton and Oxford. He'll see something of England. He will learn—" and Major Dewes stopped short, baffled by the look of hopelessness upon the Political ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... was only to give one last fatal proof of their incapacity that these unhappy men appeared once more on French soil. Within three weeks after their landing, in a region where for years together the peasantry, led by their landlords, baffled the best generals of the Republic, this invading army of the nobles, supported by the fleet, the arms, and the money of England, was brought to utter ruin by the discord of its own leaders. Before the nobles had settled who ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... though he had been exempted from them. One man, from a complication of causes, is exposed to temptations of which another is ignorant; and in this case he needs much sympathy, which he seldom meets with; while they, who are severe on him are liable to be baffled in another way, which, for want of coincidence in habit, temperature, and situation, he is equally prone to disregard. Thus Christians are often led reciprocally to censure, suspect, or dislike each other, on those very grounds ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... my ability to do so?" he put in. "Oh—well—yes—of course you do; and why shouldn't you? Nevertheless, I have noticed this: At times when I have been baffled in my work a mere hint from another, from one who knew nothing of my work, has carried me on to a solution of my problem. I have read most of your writings, and I have thought over some of them many ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... Ghosts Present at a Hanging A Cold Greeting A Wireless Message An Arrest Soldier-Folk A Man with Two Lives Three and One are One A Baffled Ambuscade Two Military Executions Some Haunted Houses The Isle of Pines A Fruitless Assignment A Vine on a House At Old Man Eckert's The Spook House The Other Lodgers The Thing at Nolan The Difficulty of Crossing a Field An Unfinished ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... and he baffled Jessamine. Indeed, his eagerness with her parcels, his assistance in checking her trunk, his cheerful examination of check and ticket to be sure they read over the same route, plainly failed to ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... Oliver appeared. His long face was distressfully haggard; about his temples and across his forehead, what had been merely lines before were now deep grooves. Yet the fierce, baffled look that had been in his eyes since the escape was entirely gone. He smiled at the group most tenderly, and his moustache wiggled in a ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... He had baffled with his bemuddled brain, to recall the conversation he had held with his wife since his return home to marry her, and every innocent word she had uttered in jest had seemed guilty and foul. "You've been nothing ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... practices, and with the same views of preventing a government of concord, which they foresaw would be republican, and of forcing: through anarchy their way to monarchy. But the mass of that convention was too honest, too wise, and too steady, to be baffled and misled by their manoeuvres. One of these was a form of government proposed by Colonel Hamilton, which would have been in fact a compromise between the two parties of royalism and republicanism. According ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Sphinx—which has baffled all inquisitive inquirers for centuries without number, stands in the sand only a. short distance from Cheops. Imagine, if you can, with what feelings one gazes upon it. It is as old as the Pyramids, perhaps older, and ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... Russians consisted in cutting off and capturing Napoleon and his marshals—and that aim was not merely frustrated but all attempts to attain it were most shamefully baffled—then this last period of the campaign is quite rightly considered by the French to be a series of victories, and quite wrongly considered victorious by ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... example. Ordering them to sheathe their bayonets, he sat on the snow at the edge of slope, and pushing himself by his hands, he slid to the bottom of the valley....All our soldiers, in fits of laughter, did the same, and in no time the whole battalion was gathered together, out of the range of the baffled Austrians. This method of descent, used by the peasants and mountain guides of Switzerland, had surely never before been used by a battalion of troops of the line. I have been assured by generals who were in Massna's division at the time that this incident actually occurred, and, nine ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... Castro, I had forgotten him. I raged at the deception of my thirst, exploring with my tongue the rough surface of the stone till I tasted my own blood. Only then, raising my head to gasp, and clench my fists with a baffled and exasperated desire, I noticed how profound was the silence, in which the words, "Take away his sting," seemed to pronounce themselves over the ravine in the impersonal austerity of the rock, and with the tone ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... were, undoubtedly, aware of the misfortune of admitting under one general government, and on terms of equality, two mutually invasive and destructive social ideas and their corresponding systems of labor. But they were baffled at the time by what appeared to be a political necessity, and so met the grand emergency of the age by concession and a spirit of conciliation. Many of them, indeed, desired on economic as well as on moral grounds the abolition of slavery, and probably ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... the celebrated Duke of Newcastle, and adapted to the stage by the pen of Dryden. The piece turns upon the schemes formed by a clever and intriguing valet to facilitate the union betwixt his master and the heroine of the scene, all of which are successively baffled and disconcerted by the bustling interference of the lover himself. The French original has infinitely the superiority; the character of the luckless lover is drawn with an exquisitely finer pencil. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... as it were from the grave. Not aware of the danger she ran into, she did not think of it till she perceived she had caught the fever. It made such an alarming progress, that she was prevailed on to send for a physician; but the disorder was so violent, that for some days it baffled his skill; and Mary felt not her danger, as she was delirious. After the crisis, the symptoms were more favourable, and she slowly recovered, without regaining much strength or spirits; indeed they were intolerably low: she wanted ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... surprised to see that she had moved as far as the next pillar, following the sunshine. This time, however, she addressed me with some trivial salutation, civilly enough conceived, and uttered in the same deep-chested, and yet indistinct and lisping tones, that had already baffled the utmost niceness of my hearing from her son. I answered rather at a venture; for not only did I fail to take her meaning with precision, but the sudden disclosure of her eyes disturbed me. They were unusually large, the iris golden like Felipe's, but the pupil at that moment so distended ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... believed curative of an oriental disease known as beri-beri. This disease is common in Japan, the Philippines and other lands where the diet consists mainly of rice, and while the disease itself was well known its cause and cure had baffled the medical men for many years. Today in magazines, newspapers and street car advertisements people are urged to use this or that food or medicament on the plea of its vitamine content. In less than ten years the study of ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy
... hither, come hither," 'gan Florice call; And the urchin left his fun; So from the hall of poor Sir Paul Retreats the baffled dun; So Ellen parts from the village ball, Where she leaves a heart ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... meet and are baffled 'mid tempest and wrath, Breezes are skirmishing, angry winds roar, While poised on some desperate plunge of our path We count up the blackening wrecks ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... much in this it might appear; since unfortunately, these hoof-marks can be distinguished no farther than to the summit of the sloping bank. Beyond they are covered up, as elsewhere, by the mud. But Gaspar's keen eye is not to be thus baffled; and a joyful ejaculation escaping his lips tells he has discovered something which gives him gladness. On Cypriano asking what it is, ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... thoroughly satisfied with herself that it never occurred to her that any one whom she honoured with her liking could do aught but be devoted to her in return. And against the granite of her self-sufficiency the iron of the girl's proud anger broke until at length, baffled by the other's conceit, Noreen drifted back into the semblance of her former friendliness. And Ida ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... where you never yet trod towards the point whence your instincts have warned you, there a spectre will seize you. 'Tis Death! I see a ship—it is haunted—'tis chased—it sails on. Baffled navies sail after that ship. It enters the region of ice. It passes a sky red with meteors. Two moons stand on high, over ice-reefs. I see the ship locked between white defiles—they are ice-rocks. I see ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... glared at our hero. He was baffled and did not know what to do next. Presently a crafty look came ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... construction. I was in rapture as I gazed upon the principal fountain which rises in the middle of it. It is easier to imagine than to describe what I felt at that moment, standing opposite the sources which had baffled the genius and courage of the most celebrated men for ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... I ask you questions surely you can answer them," said Mary Grey, who, though very anxious for information later than that afforded by Mrs. Wheatfield's letter, was not ill-pleased at the devotion which baffled her curiosity. ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... 1889 a public meeting was held to form a Women's Suffrage League, which set to work holding meetings and collecting signatures to petitions under the guidance of its Hon. Secretary, Mrs. Mary Lee. The efforts of the parliamentary friends were thrice baffled—in 1890, 1891 and 1893—by the necessity for a majority of the whole House, which stopped further immediate progress though each time the Bill had passed second reading. The growth of support ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... her eyebrows. She looked always by nature for the intricate and concealed motive, so that conduct which sprang from a reason, obvious and simple, was likely to baffle her. She was baffled now by Durrance's resolve to remain in town. Why did he not travel at once to Donegal, she asked herself, since thither his thoughts undoubtedly preceded him. She heard of his continual presence at his Service Club, and could not understand. She did not even have a suspicion ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... Doctors' Commons show, letters of administration on his goods and chattels were granted to Mary Brooks, widow, a creditrix, after summoning in official form the next of kin to appear. Now, if Defoe had been driven from his home by imaginary fears, and had baffled with the cunning of insane suspicion the efforts of his family to bring him back, there is no apparent reason why they should not have claimed his effects after his death. He could not have died unknown to them, ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... Baffled, then, in the attempt to derive any satisfaction from outward documents, we may easily stand excused if we turn our researches towards the internal evidences furnished by the writings themselves, with no other positive 'data' than ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... following, Mr. Fox and others commenced digging in the cellar, but as the house was built on low ground and in the vicinity of a stream then much swollen by rains, it was not surprising that they were baffled by the influx of water at the distance of three feet down. In the summer of 1848, when the ground was dry and the water lowered, the digging again commenced, when they found a plank, a vacant place or hole, some bits of crockery, which seemed to have been a washbowl, ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... can get in and trail them down it will be the biggest feather you ever wore in your cap. But let me tell you, it's a dangerous job. Several of our men have mysteriously vanished. Two we know were assassinated; the others have been done away with. My reputation is at stake. Thus far I have been baffled." ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... ranks military daring had reached, perhaps, its very highest point. And yet the sailors inside that ring of crumbling wall won! At Acre Napoleon experienced his first defeat; and, years after, at St. Helena, he said of Sir Sidney Smith, the gallant sailor who baffled him, "That man made me miss my destiny." It is a curious fact that one Englishman thwarted Napoleon's career in the East, and another ended his career in the West, and it may be doubted which of the two Napoleon hated most—Wellington, who finally ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... One of our most inveterate relic-hunters had his hammer with him, and tried to break a fragment off the upright Needle and could not do it; he tried the prostrate one and failed; he borrowed a heavy sledge hammer from a mason and tried again. He tried Pompey's Pillar, and this baffled him. Scattered all about the mighty monolith were sphinxes of noble countenance, carved out of Egyptian granite as hard as blue steel, and whose shapely features the wear of five thousand years had failed to mark or mar. The relic-hunter ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... prophets and sibyls! Never did the always-baffled, always reaespiring hope of the finite to compass the infinite find such expression, except in the sehnsucht of music. They are buried in the volume. They cannot believe that it has not somewhere been revealed, the word of enigma, the link between the human and ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... warn him at once," replied Agias. "Any premature attempt on his life will certainly fail. But it is not Ahenobarbus that I fear; it is Pratinas. Pratinas, if baffled once, will only be spurred on to use all his cunning in a second trial. We must enmesh the conspirators so completely that when their stab is parried, not merely will their power to repeat it be gone, but they themselves will be in danger ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... its granite hardness. But Bellenger's passed from shade to shade of baffled confidence; recovering only when the ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... a stubborn resistance and fought with great bravery when there was no alternative. Once the Union forces were ready to advance, their rapid movements and forced marches took the Germans by surprise in the midst of their preparations, and baffled and bewildered them. Cut off entirely from help from the outside, and running short of ammunition which could not be replaced, their struggle could only ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... theory, but its realization in practice presented considerable difficulties. The police had (presumably) searched for this person and failed to find him. How was I, untrained in methods of detection, to succeed where the experts had been baffled? I considered my resources. They consisted of a silver teapot and a salver which had been handled by the murderer and which, together, yielded a complete set of finger-prints, and the wisp of hair that I had taken from the hand of my murdered wife. It is true that the police also had finger-marked ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... taken notice of in a weekly paper, the Observator, published at that very time, 23d of August, 1682. Party zeal is capable of swallowing the most incredible story; but it is surely singular, that the same calumny, when once baffled, should yet be ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... am of the fact that he strove to secure me for that purpose, from the first expanding of those faculties which evidently lie exposed to his observation and open to his attacks, as far as God permits him to work. Can I feel all this, and not bless the Lord, who so far baffled these designs, and deigned to appoint my field of labor within the sacred confines ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... Psmith diffidently. "Well, well, perhaps you are right, perhaps you are right. Did you notice the hired ruffian in the flannel suit who just passed? He wore a baffled look, I fancy. And hark! Wasn't that a muttered 'Failed!' I heard? Or was it the breeze moaning in the tree-tops? To-night is a cold, disappointing night for Hired ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... inefficient commander, soon deserted him. Charles V., as soon as he could gather forces, laid siege to Metz, but, after nearly three months of late autumnal operations, was fain to break up and withdraw, baffled and with loss of half his army, across the Rhine. Though some success attended his arms on the northern frontier, it was of no permanent value; the loss of Metz, and the failure in the attempt to take it, proved to the worn-out Emperor that the day of his power and opportunity was ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... perhaps, at any other time since the gold standard was firmly established. Thrown completely out of gear by the premium of 3-1/2 per cent. a day for currency during the panic time, the exchange markets for some time would rise and fall several cents in the pound on the same day. Completely baffled by this erratic movement, many bankers temporarily withdrew entirely from ...
— Elements of Foreign Exchange - A Foreign Exchange Primer • Franklin Escher
... day Eric was never troubled with personal violence from Barker or any other boy. But rancour smouldered deep in the mind of the baffled tyrant, and, as we shall see hereafter, there are subtler means of making an enemy wretched than striking ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... consequently will not interfere with the law of gravitation. In relation to the numerous questions that will spring up from such a position, it is sufficient here to say, that it is believed all objections can be satisfactorily answered; while, by this light, a long range of phenomena that have hitherto baffled the sagacity of the wise, come out ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... baffled in his quest, Nicholas came to a halt before Tom the Piper, and, taking up the cushion, thus preferred his complaint:—"This dance it can ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... ways, now far apart in the glad bright summer, now drawing together in the moonlight of the winter's night. At times the makers of the trails had watched each other in secret, shyly, inquisitively, at a distance; but always fear or cunning had kept them apart, the boy with his keen hunter's interest baffled and whetted by the brutes' wariness, and the wolves drawn to the superior being by that subtle instinct that once made glad hunting-dogs and collies of the wild rangers of the plains, and that still leads ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... and although he searched long and carefully he could not find it. Late that night the baffled hunter returned ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... alien power has been at work, even that wicked enchanter Friston; he it is who has changed those giants into windmills to rob me of the honor of their defeat. But in the end all his evil devices shall be baffled by my good sword." ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... repeated), when Duncan himself appeared, out of breath indeed, and with all the symptoms of having run for his life, but laughing, and in high spirits at the success of the stratagem by which he had baffled his pursuers. This indeed Waverley could easily conceive might be a matter of no great difficulty to the active mountaineer, who was perfectly acquainted with the ground, and traced his course with a firmness and confidence to which ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... fertility of resources, his unflagging energy, and his amazing genius in overcoming difficulties won for him the admiration of that class who idolize strength and success; so that he stands out in history as a struggling gladiator who baffled all his foes,—not a dying gladiator on the arena of a pagan amphitheatre, but more like a Judas Maccabaeus, when hunted by the Syrian hosts, rising victorious, and laying the foundation of a powerful monarchy; indeed, his fame spread, irrespective of his cause and character, from one end of Christendom ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... internal, to their essential nature, he is equally at fault. Though he may succeed in resolving all properties of objects into manifestations of force, he is not thereby enabled to realise what force is; but finds, on the contrary, that the more he thinks about it, the more he is baffled. Similarly, though analysis of mental actions may finally bring him down to sensations as the original materials out of which all thought is woven, he is none the forwarder; for he cannot in the least comprehend ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... mayor's office. Found him as usual in a back street in a shabby office up shaky wooden stairs. The mayor knew nothing of any road to Berane; so baffled, we again found the street. We went to the shabby Turkish shops of the bazaar ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... was the repeated burden of the great men of Israel. They lived in the midst of national calamities and distresses. They were defeated, puzzled, baffled. The way looked dark. Then they fall back on the one great re-establishing thought: after all, it is God's world. It is not going to ruin. Changes which seemed tremendous are not fatal or final. Israel dwells in safety, for God holds us ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... men a sense of quality, a power of divination in regard to value which, on occasions when they are confronted by a stranger whose worth they do not know, informs them immediately of the comparative rarity or commonness of his type. This sense may at first be baffled by the delusive disguises in which men sometimes present themselves, but as a rule a chance word, an artless gesture, or even a glance, quickly corrects the initial error of the eye, and in a moment the ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... talking about that? I would have saved her at the last, and tried hard enough, but the storm was too much for me. After all that, you baffled me and got on shore; the fiends must have guided that pilot boat. I got frightened too. It was not a part of my programme to ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... resented this discountenance to his ambitious projects that, in conjunction with other chiefs, he had the presumption 5 even to weave nets of treason against the Emperor himself. Plots were laid, were detected, were baffled; counter-plots were constructed upon the same basis, and with the benefit of the opportunities thus offered. Finally, Zebek-Dorchi was invited to the imperial lodge, 10 together with all his accomplices; ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... at first surrounded by a mere collection of militia companies. As the pursuit ceased on the evening of the 19th the baffled Americans withdrew from the range of the guns of the fleet. As well as they could they gathered into their organizations and made some kind of a camp, sleeping either out of doors, or in convenient houses. A watch was set at Charlestown Neck, and at Roxbury Prescott of Pepperell ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... far she of the sunny paths could penetrate an unlighted country. He looked at her—peered at her, fairly—trying to decide. But he could not decide. Katie baffled him on that. ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... argument. Before Esther's face of quiet confidence he felt himself baffled. If she were wrong, he could not prove her wrong. Uneasy and worsted, he gave up the discussion; but thought he would not have any more letters ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... seem so poor, so low, The hearts which are so cramped and dull, The baffled hopes, the impulse slow, Thou takest, touchest all, and lo! ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... what the book might be, or what it was about, It would go in at one ear,—at the other 'twould come out! So in his laboratory, baffled Cyrus sitting lone, Strives to correct the sad ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... day of her whole life. She saw in anticipation the happiness of that household broken up. She pictured his coming, but she could not picture his departure. For she had never seen him baffled and defeated. ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... way in which he was being baffled by the superior skill of his adversary, the baron's attack was growing wild as well as fierce; and, savagely determined to end all by a furious onslaught, he made a series of quick feints, letting his point play about Sir Robert's ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... moreover, whose effect on the nerves was nil, and on the mucous membrane was not to soothe it, but plough it and harrow it; "and did not that open her eyes?" He then reminded her that all these doctors in consultation would have contrived to agree. "But you," said he, "have baffled the collusive hoax by which Dox arrived at a sham uniformity—honest uniformity can never exist till scientific principles obtain. Listme! To begin, is the pashint ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... I think, and have good reason for thinking, that the Goth is already on her way to Constantinople, but I have no certainty of it. The one thing I do surely know, is that you are hoodwinked and baffled ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... repute cast upon his father's name. The sun of the yesterday had shone through cloud; the sun of the day rose in a clear firmament. Even Tostig recognised the superiority of his brother; and after a strong struggle between baffled rage and covetous ambition, yielded to him, as to a father. He felt that all Godwin's House was centred in Harold alone; and that only from his brother (despite his own daring valour and despite his alliance with the blood of Charlemagne and Alfred, through the sister of Matilda, ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... trial Hal and Noll journeyed to Denver. Major Davis, of the Seventeenth Cavalry, also traveled from his post, for the trial of the baffled men who had attempted to rob the United States mail was on in the United States District Court. These men, too, were sent away to the ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... which we call diseases, in the stereotyped manner known as "orthodox;" after endless complications, infinite "specializing"—in itself a futility—and unblushing complicity with the powers that be, we find them now at length, baffled, discredited, but unashamed, cast back, discomforted, upon Mother Nature's kindly breast, their victims humbly seeking healing in simple ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... marble monuments at Persepolis, near the site of the ancient Susa, and on the faces of rocks in other places formerly ruled over by the early Persian kings. But for thousands of years they had been mere unintelligible enigmas to the curious but baffled beholder: and they were often referred to as instances of the folly of human pride, which could indeed write its own praises in the solid rock, but only for the rock to outlive the language as well as the memory of the vain-glorious ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... boat put out to the rescue she knew that she was discovered. Too late to do it now, she thought, and, holding both children, swam quickly back to the shore. A made-up story about having fallen into the water satisfied the boatman, and Barbara returned home dripping and baffled. But little Sarah did not recover from the shock, and after a few weeks her short life ended, and she was laid in ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... the stalwart farmer lift his prisoner bodily, he heard a yell and then a splash, and saw the baffled swindler land waist-deep in the ditch, deluged, silk hat, white choker and dress coat, in a cascade of ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... garden door and stood staring in the empty oval. How distracted, how violent he looked, balked of his prey! He was stalking the garden, beating the bushes, walking up and down. All at once he stopped and raised a white baffled face to her window. She shrank away. She was in peril of Harry now. He knew her no longer innocent. She had held the ring against him in the face of the fact he had told her it was stolen. And he must guess her motive. He must ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... arrival he found that the police had already drawn a cordon around it with cords. Groups of morbid curiosity-seekers hung about it in twos and threes, some of them in fours and fives. Policemen were leaning against the fence in all directions. They wore that baffled look so common to the detective force of the metropolis. "It seems to me," remarked one of them to the man beside him, "that there is an inexorable chain of logic about this that I am unable to follow." "So do I," ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... brooding over the days and nights of their married life. Baffled and puzzled, his mind would come back with everlasting persistence to the strange feeling that held him to Ruth—a subtle and sweet mystery, the most intimate relation the soul and body can ever bear on earth, the union in love in ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... angry farmers enraged by the 'bedivilment' of their stock, shot at with silver slugs, and identified next morning with some dreaded hag or other lying groaning and wounded in her bed—of calves' hearts burnt at midnight with awful ceremonies, while the baffled witch outside flung herself in rage and agony against the close-barred doors and windows—of spells and wise men—these things had sent chills of pleasing horror through the boy's frame. They were altogether new to him, in this vivid personal guise ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... paying his court to Reine Vincart; and the unhappy Julien would scrutinize his rival's countenance, seeking eagerly for some trace of the impressions he had received during the loving interview. His curiosity was nearly always baffled; for Claudet seemed to have left all his gayety and conversational powers at La Thuiliere. During their tete-a-tete meals, he hardly spoke at all, maintaining a reserved attitude and a taciturn ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... childhood others whose nature was far stronger than mine yield and recoil at yours; I had seen the giant and bold strength of Gerald quail before your bent brow; I had seen even the hardy pride of Montreuil baffled by your curled lip and the stern sarcasm of your glance; I had seen you, too, in your wild moments of ungoverned rage, and I knew that if earth held one whose passions were fiercer than my own it was you. But your passions were sustained even ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... utter it. The saddest part of it all is, the deeper we delve the less we are satisfied in our intellectual natures. We merely succeed in learning that we are the veriest pygmies. Men like Mr. Wynkoop are simply driven back upon faith as a last resort, absolutely baffled by an inpenetrable wall, against which they batter mentally in vain. They have striven with mystery, only to meet with ignominious defeat. Faith alone remains, and I dare not deny that such faith is above all knowledge. The pity of it is, there are some minds ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... the party reached Fowler's Bay in the great Bight of South Australia. The map shows that a journey of more than 200 miles must have been made before the point was reached. Thence they attempted to make their way round the head of the Bight, but were twice baffled by want of water. Nothing daunted, Eyre made a third attempt, and succeeded in penetrating fifty miles beyond the head of the Bight. But the result was achieved only at a cost which the little party could ill ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... eyes the holy apparitions bless; The stately light of their divinity Hath oft but shone the brightest on the blind;— And their choice spirit found its calm recess In the pure childhood of a simple mind. Unask'd they come—delighted to delude The expectation of our baffled Pride; No law can call their free steps to our side. Him whom He loves, the Sire of men and gods, (Selected from the marvelling multitude,) Bears on his eagle to his bright abodes; And showers, with partial hand and lavish, down The minstrel's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... jaws, armed with a deadly array of tusks; but half a dozen lances were hurled at him, some entering his mouth from a distance of five or six paces. At the same time several men threw handfuls of sand into his enormous eyes. This baffled him more than the lances; he crunched the shafts between his powerful jaws like straws, but he was beaten by the sand, and, shaking his huge head, he retreated to the river. During his sally upon the shore two of the hunters had secured the ropes of the harpoons that had been fastened in his ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... these names?" The lady smiled at the question, and proceeded. He was so pleased, I say, that he resolved to make his addresses to her directly. He did so accordingly, and that with so much warmth and briskness, that he quickly baffled her weak repulses, and obliged the lady to refer him to her father, who, she knew, would quickly declare in favour of ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... will can ne'er be still Though oft its hopes be baffled, It will succeed though victims bleed And die upon ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... that has so often worked what seemed to them miracles,—and ask of it miracles indeed! I tried to explain to her the continued existence of her mother, and she listened to it as if her eyes drank in all that I could say, and more. But the apparent distance between earth and heaven baffled her baby mind, as it so often and so sadly baffles the thoughts of us elders. I wondered what precise change seemed to her to have taken place. This all-fascinating Laura, whom she adored, and who had yet never been to her what ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... farmer, to a great extent, the master of his vocation. With a sloppy, drenched, cold, uncongenial soil, which is saturated with every rain, and takes days, and even weeks, to become sufficiently dry to work upon, his efforts are constantly baffled by unfavorable weather, at those times when it is most important that his work proceed without interruption. Weeks are lost, at a season when they are all too short for the work to be done. The ground must be hurriedly, and imperfectly prepared, and the seed is put in too late, often to rot ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... the baffled spirit of youth with its forceful flood of being continued until it seemed that Emilia was lifted through the fiery circles into daylight; her last cry being as her first: "I have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a rare one. The boy was a deaf-mute, but not blind. His very beautiful eyes—; his father's eyes—seemed to be perpetually interrogating the world about him, and perpetually baffled. He cried—a monotonous wailing sound—but he never smiled. He was capable of throwing all his small possessions into a large basket, and of taking them out again; an operation which he performed endlessly hour after hour; but of purpose, or any ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... passed the gates, I saw Montrecour borne in, wounded. The spirit of the insulter was in him still. He ordered the soldiers to bring his litter near me, and in a voice faint through pain, but bitter with baffled revenge, he murmured—'Countess, you shall not have long to indulge in your caprices. My hurts are trifling. You are still in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... moment the baffled lynx recovered himself, and faced the girl with so menacing a snarl that she hesitated to follow up her advantage, but paused, holding the axe in ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... lesson. Had he agreed at once to go from her, she would have balanced her own account within her own breast, and have kept to herself all her sufferings. There would have been no outward show of baffled love,- -none even in the colour of her cheeks; for such was the nature of her temperament. But she did suffer for him. Day by day she began to think that his love, though boisterous as she had at first ...
— The House of Heine Brothers, in Munich • Anthony Trollope
... now bestowed upon him a glance of hasty and furtive recognition. Curiosity induced Sampson to move Silvertail a little more in advance, in order to be enabled to obtain a better view of the prisoners; but the latter, turning away his head at the moment, although apparently without design, baffled his penetration. Still he had a confused and indistinct idea that the person was not wholly unknown ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... play; unlike the average of children, she was at times much given to retiring within herself, and trying to search out the hidden meanings of the deep things that make the puzzle and pathos of human existence, and in all the ages have baffled the inquirer and mocked him. As a little child aged seven, she was oppressed and perplexed by the maddening repetition of the stock incidents of our race's fleeting sojourn here, just as the same thing has oppressed and perplexed maturer minds from the beginning of time. A myriad of men ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... roadway, bordered by an asphalt pavement on either side, then the high impenetrable oak paling, which had baffled Dominic Iglesias' maiden effort at participation in the amusements of the rich. From Poppy's balcony, however, the palings offered no impediment to observation. All the green expanse of the smaller polo-ground was visible. So was the whole height of the grove of majestic elms on the right and the ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... know what it is," said Andrew J. Burris, Director of the FBI. He threw his hands in the air and looked baffled and confused. ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the battle of Preston, did not double the above numbers, the Prince descended upon the Lowlands, having baffled the attempts of General Cope to intercept his march—occupied the city of Perth and the town of Dundee, and finally, after a faint show of resistance on the part of the burghers, took possession of the ancient capital of Scotland, and once more established a court in the halls of Holyrood. ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... not what he had expected. Not in the least. As he hung up the receiver he was conscious too of a baffled feeling that Becky had, in a sense, held the reins of ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... "Baffled and beaten she turned to the shore, ran hard aground near Tarquino Point, fifty miles from Santiago, and then hauled ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... turn out. Baffled in their game of robbing old men who have all left the city, they have begun to work the chance for blackmail. I will advise Van Cleft to pay them, and then we will follow the money. Here is the mansion and I will be out ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... the full history of that life, its joys and its sorrows, its aspirations, its baffled hopes, its compensations that didn't compensate, the bareness of the life, the dagger-sharp trials with what is called small things, the wild heart struggles veiled by the New England coldness of expression, some as her sharp crags and stuns are covered with the long reign ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... on board just in time, for the baffled shark made one terrific jump out of water as they reached the deck, the gangway having been opened, and banged his nose against the plankshire, falling back into the sea with ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... Barker, whose sturdy simplicity was not to be baffled or disconcerted either by the cunning of Miss Burrage, or by the imposing manner and awful name of Lady Diana Chillingworth. "Insult her! why, 'tis she insults us; she won't ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... virtue of settlements made before the attainders. The result was that a certain number of Irish estates were added to the possessions of a certain number of English families. But Munster was not planted. Burghley's policy, and Walsingham's resolution, and Ralegh's daring inventiveness were alike baffled by the conditions of a problem harder than the peopling of America or the conquest of India. Munster could not be made English. After all its desolation, it reverted in the main ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... enjoyment from the report. He liked the substance of it, and above all, he was tickled by the bitter tone of frustration which characterized it. Oakes was baffled, and his knowledge of Oakes told him that the sensation of being baffled was gall and wormwood to that high-spirited young man. Whatever might be the result of this investigation, it would teach him ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... become of me after the remaining one hundred and seventy-five dollars was spent. It was several weeks before the performances, and Wagner had given strict orders that no one, without exception, should be admitted to the rehearsals. But I was not to be so easily baffled, and one afternoon I sneaked into the lobby and succeeded in catching some wonderful orchestral strains by applying my ear to a keyhole. But my pleasure was short-lived. An attendant espied me and summarily ordered me off the premises, despite my humble entreaties ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... to the edge of the bank, carried on by the dog's momentum. In another moment the thick heavy body of the beaver had slipped like oil from under Kazan and Broken Tooth was safe in his element, two holes bitten clean through his fleshy tail. Baffled in his effort to get a death-hold on Broken Tooth, Kazan swung like a flash to the right. The young beavers had not moved. Astonished and frightened at what they had seen, they stood as if stupefied. Not until they saw Kazan tearing ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... him to lose those pursuing vultures. The last of them fell off, baffled,—or afraid to go deeper into France. Now he emerged again into the clear air and the starlight. The land beneath him was a scudding blur, with a dark-green mass in its center, the forest ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... also surveyed. Here Barbara was baffled by the determination on the part of both of them that she should talk, should think, should dream about all the things concerning which she could not talk, think nor dream. "How to grow up into a nice little girl," "How ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... retard your fall. In vain you try, in vain you struggle, in vain you invoke the angels and call God to your aid; there comes a time, a moment, a minute, a second, in which all your life of struggles and efforts is lost. The angry flesh subdues you in its turn, baffled nature revolts, and the Creator, whose laws you have not recognized, abandons the worthless creature and lets him roll over, falling ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... first aspect is that of a place of torture, a hell of the intellect, in which reason is to be racked for ever by a tribe of sphinx-like monsters, themselves despairing. Good and evil inhabit there, confronting each other, for ever unreconciled: there is omnipotent power baffled, and omnipotent mercy unexercised. Is the will strong enough to hold on through this baffling and monstrous world, and not to shrink back and bid the vision vanish? Can we still resolve to say, 'I believe, although it is impossible'? Is the will to assert our own moral nature—our own birthright ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... discussions with the Canadian always baffled me. I didn't want to restrict my companions' freedom in any way, and yet I had no desire to leave Captain Nemo. Thanks to him and his submersible, I was finishing my undersea research by the day, and I was rewriting my book on the great ocean depths in the midst of its very element. Would I ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... A baffled, desperate note rang in Kathryn's voice. It was not for Northrup, but for her first sense of failure. Then she looked up. All the resentment gone from her face, she was the ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... conspire with his lack of courage to assault and wobble him—at that precise moment his conscience flares into function, and so finishes his business. First he sees difficulty, then he sees the danger, then he sees wrong. The result is that he slinks off in trepidation, and another vampire is baffled of her prey. ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... my comrades greeted me as I rose and left the ground; but at the same moment the attention of all was taken from myself and the baffled Misconna by the arrival of the scout, bringing us information that a party of Chipewyans were in the neighbourhood. In a moment all was bustle and preparation. An Indian war-party is soon got ready. Forty of our braves threw ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... hidden by the loose, dark curls which fell across it. Her hair was short and thick and parted on the side, giving her a youthful, boyish look that was in odd contrast to the sudden terror in her eyes, and for the first time I saw how slight and frail she was, saw that about her which baffled and puzzled me, and which I could not analyze. She wore no hat, and the red scarf around her neck was the only touch of color in her otherwise dark dress. The lips of her large, sweet, sensuous mouth were as colorless as ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... find the escape and the freedom it was so eagerly seeking. Better to be completely changed into foam and spray by one single leap of six hundred feet into empty space, the river seems to say, than be forever baffled and tortured and torn on ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... before long, the organs of the human body; that a light has been found which can penetrate, so as to make a photographic record, through everything from a purse or a pocket to the walls of a room or a house, is news which cannot fail to startle everybody. That the eye of the physician or surgeon, long baffled by the skin, and vainly seeking to penetrate the unfortunate darkness of the human body, is now to be supplemented by a camera, making all the parts of the human body as visible, in a way, as the exterior, appears certainly to be a greater blessing to humanity than even the ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... locked. She pressed the secret spring in vain. Was she doomed to be baffled, after all? She remembered that her own bureau was identical with his Highness's. Resolutely, with that patience which is born of hazardous undertakings, she glided away through the arras door, through the black gallery, and ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... hours to a vain effort to work it out. Heaven knows—it had to be simple, yet I could not make head nor tail of it. And simple it proved to be, when I learned it; and simplest of all proved the trick they employed which had so baffled me. Not only each day did they change the point in the alphabet where the code initialled, but they changed it every conversation, and, often, in the ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... so many actors in the story that the reader is baffled, and each of them is beautifully drawn, so that their characters stand out clearly and consistently. It appears that the action of the story was set ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... fuels purchased by the Government, the equipment consists of two Heine, water-tube boilers, each of 210 h.p., set in Building No. 13. One of these boilers is equipped with a Jones underfeed stoker, and is baffled in the regular way. At four points in the setting, large pipes have been built into the brick wall, to permit making observations on the temperature of the gas, and to take samples of the gas for ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... of the day before which quite baffled me. I had proved that there were, indeed, two women, and I believed them to be mother and daughter, but I could not in the least understand why the younger one had so completely broken down after the departure of the elder with Miss Holladay. ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... had nothing farther to expect than the occupation of tilling the earth, a dull hopeless toil; then it was that the Gitanos paid tribute to the inferior ministers of justice, and were engaged in illicit connection with those of higher station and by such means baffled the law, whose vengeance rarely fell upon their heads; and then it was that they bid it open defiance, retiring to the deserts and mountains, and living in wild independence by rapine and shedding of blood; for as the law then stood they ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... Completely baffled, I descended into the room again and turned on the current. Immediately the shadow appeared on the film, and this time, in consequence of the room now being quite dark, I noticed that it was surrounded by a ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... (which, by the bye, is what young men know least about), but the subject he was studying puzzled him; Miss Edwards evinced such a mixture of penetration and simplicity that he could not understand how both could exist together. This sort of character has baffled many wiser persons than Mr. Ashburner, who have investigated it with the same interest. The study of young ladies is dangerous at all times to a young man, and most particularly when he does it from philosophical motives; and if any caste of character is more dangerous than another, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... anyone that might have shared his fear and discussed it, and all the while he had had to navigate his ship, which even at sea is an arduous responsibility. These things had fretted the calm of that clear judgment that had once baffled five navies. Therefore he cursed the oxen and ordered them rum, and Smerdrak had said "Aye, aye, sir," ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... curds-and-cream: his partner assented; but alas! in Harteneck no particle of curds or cream was to be had. Schiller then made offer for a quarter-cake of cheese; but for this four entire kreutzers were demanded, leaving nothing whatever in reserve for bread! Twice baffled, the little gastronomes, unsatisfied in stomach, wandered on to Neckarweihingen; where, at length, though not till after much inquiry, they did obtain a comfortable mess of curds-and-cream, served up in a gay platter, and silver spoons to eat it with. For all this, moreover, they were charged ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... believing such a thing, Maurice started in to explain. He told of finding something of value on the boat that belonged to George Stormway's wife, Bunny Badgeley that was—how the man with the red-top had tried to steal the packet and was baffled by reason of Thad's cunning trick; how his chum had seen him just outside the hamlet of Morehead Landing, the tracks on the road, and finally the figure seen ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... felt the vast change that had come over his armament during the few weeks since he sailed down among the Western Isles, conquering and winning to his side the island princes as vassals of his flag. He returned as a baffled invader, and encountered many severe rebuffs from the islanders as well as further disasters from the winter storms. The fatigues of that expedition and his bitter disappointments sank deep into ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton |
