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More "Perplexing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into two classes, the learned and the ignorant. The Dai was to agree with the former, applauding his wisdom, and to impress the latter with his own knowledge by asking him perplexing questions on the Koran. Thus in initiating him into the first degree the Dai assumed an air of profundity and explained that religious doctrines were too abstruse for the ordinary mind, but must be interpreted by men who, like the Dais, had a special knowledge of this ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... noiseless. The telegraph and telephone wires pass through the tunnel, thus avoiding the long detour by Runcorn. Probably, as a feat of engineering, the construction of the new station at Bold Street is not inferior to any part of the scheme advanced. Under very singular and perplexing difficulties it could only be proceeded with in its first stages from midnight until six o'clock the following morning, it being of course essential that the traffic at the Central Station should not be interfered ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... dear to us; every one has seen a mother suffer, in grateful silence, both bodily pain and heart-anguish, in her child's stead, preferring that the child should never know. Suppose it should turn out, hereafter, that many of the afflictions which now seem so perplexing and so grievous have really been given us to bear in order to spare and shield our loved ones, and make it easier for them—tossing on the stormy waters—to reach Home at last? Would not this add a whole world of joy to the glory which shall be revealed? And would it not transform ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... make this offer for the public good and safety, and, therefore, no particular credit can be given them for kindness towards the troublesome mariner. But the relations between Ingle and Cornwallis are rather perplexing. The latter accused Ingle of not returning the value of goods entrusted to him, and also of landing, during his absence, "some men near his house," and rifling "him to the value of 2,500 l at least."[78] All this was done after Cornwallis had showed his ...
— Captain Richard Ingle - The Maryland • Edward Ingle
... and his Majesty never liked painful things. Sometimes he inquired after Prince Dolor, and they told him his Royal Highness was going on as well as could be expected, which really was the case. For, after worrying the poor child and perplexing themselves with one remedy after another, the Crown-Prince, not wishing to offend any of the differing doctors, had proposed leaving him to Nature; and Nature, the safest doctor of all, had come to his help and done ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... imbibe the radiant darkness of Jeremy Bentham, and forthwith set themselves up as the lights of their generation. No professors, even in the subtlest ages of scholastic philosophy, were ever more successful in muddying what they found clear, and perplexing what is in itself intelligible. What are wages?—this, we are told, is the most difficult and the most important of all the branches of political economy, and this, we are also told, has been obscured by ambiguities and fallacies. What is rent? What ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... in his common and daily life, living it out from day to day on the deepest principles and from the highest motives. And the Christian woman, having a similar and an equal vocation, undertook the like responsibilities. But her responsibilities were in that age of transition very perplexing, and more than ever invited friendly counsel and pastoral care. Now what was John Knox's private life? He was twice married, and we know from his correspondence that even before his first marriage there were women of high ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... commencement of my investigations," writes Mr. Darwin, "it seemed to me probable that a careful study of domesticated animals and of cultivated plants would offer the best chance of making out this obscure problem. Nor have I been disappointed; in this and in all other perplexing cases, I have invariably found that our knowledge, imperfect though it be, of variation under domestication, afforded the best and safest clue. I may venture to express my conviction of the high value of such studies, though they have been very ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... quite uncertain. We can say nothing of his doings till he is actually afloat. And with the three mighty forms of William and the two Harolds on the scene, there is something at once grotesque and perplexing in the way in which an English traitor flits about among them. The banished Tostig, deprived of his earldom in the autumn of 1065, had then taken refuge in Flanders. He now plays a busy part, the details of which are lost in contradictory accounts. But ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... river was swollen by spring floods, or shrunk in summer to a yellow ribbon meandering through a Sahara of sand. He had need to recognize at a glance the ripple on the water that told of a lurking sand-bar and distinguish it from the almost identical ripple that a brisk breeze would raise. Most perplexing of the perils that beset river navigation are the "snags," or sunken logs that often obstruct the channel. Some towering oak or pine, growing in lusty strength for its half-century or more by the brink ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... suffered from it morally and physically. Accustomed for ten years past to feeling a woman near him, habituated to her presence every moment, to her embrace each successive day, he had need, an imperious and perplexing need of incessant contact with her and the regular touch of her lips. Since Madame Renardet's death, he had suffered continually without knowing why, he had suffered from not feeling her dress brush against his legs every day, and, above all, from no longer being able to grow calm and languid ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... It was a perplexing situation for this simple-hearted and truthful woman, and, on the other hand, Jean Kennedy was no less devoted and loyal in her own line, a good and conscientious woman, but shrewder, and, by nature and breeding, far less scrupulous as to ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... could succeed as an author, my way was clear, but if I could not, and if ... and if... And so on through a wearying, perplexing series of conditions. ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... distinguishing us from other beings that think, and giving us our personal identity. But the principium indivduationis, the notion of that identity which at death is or is not lost for ever, was to me, at all times, a consideration of intense interest; not more from the perplexing and exciting nature of its consequences, than from the marked and agitated manner ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Palmer. Alfred knew by the postmark that they were from him. He was tempted to open them. The father read the letters and placed them in the desk, never mentioning Palmer's name. This was very perplexing to Alfred. ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... generous Peace with Denmark, and urging the policy of a League of all the northern Protestant Powers for conjoint action against Austria, Poland, and Catholicism universally, the movements of the Swede had been most perplexing. Now he had been turning against the Poles and Austrians; but again Denmark, or even the Dutch, seemed to be the object of his resentment, while there was very quarrelsome negotiation between him and the Elector Marquis of Brandenburg, and every appearance that the Elector might have to ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... mistaken. The new consciousness goes much deeper. Foreign policies that fail to take it into account and that think that relations with China can be conducted upon the old basis will find this new consciousness obtruding in the most unexpected and perplexing ways. ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... to the throne had been disputed by several pretenders, and they lost no occasion to harass him by plot and revolution. It may well be imagined, then, that when he died, leaving his throne to his son Fernando, a child of nine, the situation was most perplexing for the queen-mother, who had been made regent, by the terms of her husband's will, until Fernando should become of age. A further matter which tended to complicate the situation was the fact that ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... notions, unhesitatingly cut this Gordian knot by asserting that our first parent bore within him the undeveloped germ of all mankind, so that sinfulness and souls were propagated together. 5 Thus the perplexing query, "how souls are held in the chain of original sin," was answered. As Neander says, illustrating Tertullian's view, "The soul of the first man was the fountain head of all human souls: all the varieties of individual human nature are but modifications of that one spiritual substance." ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... off at top speed. Royson could have caught him in a few strides, but he did not move. He had not meant to hit, only to scare, yet the incident was perplexing, and the more he pondered over it the less pleased he was at his own lack of finesse, as he might have learnt something without fear of indiscretion, seeing that he had nothing to tell. Nevertheless, his final decision was in favor of the first impulse. Von Kerber had treated him ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... rose from his chair. Aimlessly—as one in perplexing, troubled thought—he went to the window and, standing there, looked out with unseeing eyes upon the cast-iron monument on the opposite corner of the street. Then he moved restlessly to the other window, and, with eyes ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... despair, for it was necessary that his mind should for a time be spared the agitation of business. The physicians who attended him agreed, as to his disorder, only in this, that it was the result of mental fatigue and melancholy, and could be cured only by removing all distressing and perplexing subjects from his thoughts, but all the physicians in the world could not have succeeded in turning his attention for an instant from the great cause of his country. Leyden lay, as it were, anxious and despairing at his feet, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... monotheism in Asia, there came also as remarkable a renaissance of learning, which made the Arabs the teachers of philosophy and art to Europe during a long period. Arab Spain was a focus of light while Christian Europe lay in mediaeval darkness. And still more interesting and perplexing is the character of Mohammed himself. What was he,—an impostor or a prophet? Did his work advance or retard human progress? What is his position in history? Such are some of the questions on which we shall endeavor to throw light in the ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... mind of the truthful maiden, or of her lover. Death even was more endurable than the thought of dishonor—if they had thought of the matter at all. But as I have said, they never even thought of a such thing. And therefore how to manage the affair was a very perplexing question. ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... the Convention, the Princeton president was, indeed, a man of mystery. Who could solve the riddle of this political Sphinx? Who was this man Wilson? What were his purposes? What his ideals? These questions were troubling and perplexing the delegates. Colonel Harvey, the commander-in-chief of the Wilson forces, when interrogated by us, refused to answer. How masterfully the Old Guard staged every act of the drama, and thus brought about the nomination of the ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... the one same and unalterable message of truth, peace and love, and that you are preserved from all errors in faith, and from all illusion in the practice of virtue. You are happily strangers to those interior conflicts, to those perplexing doubts and to that frightful uncertainty which distracts the souls of those whose private judgment is their only guide, who are "ever learning and never attaining to the knowledge of the truth."(130) You are not, like others, drifting helplessly over the ocean of uncertainty and "carried ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... was an eventful one to Eustacia's brain, and one which she hardly ever forgot. She dreamt a dream; and few human beings, from Nebuchadnezzar to the Swaffham tinker, ever dreamt a more remarkable one. Such an elaborately developed, perplexing, exciting dream was certainly never dreamed by a girl in Eustacia's situation before. It had as many ramifications as the Cretan labyrinth, as many fluctuations as the Northern Lights, as much colour as a parterre in June, and was as crowded with figures as a coronation. To Queen Scheherazade ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... he was guarded from all intruders by the assistant who sat in the anteroom. Not even a telephone could sound its insistent note in this place where the doctor gained, in a reclining chair, his few brief moments of rest, or where he worked out the intricacies of perplexing problems. Now and then he saw a patient there, but rarely. Usually he shut his door against all distracting influences, and gave his attention to the things ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... Did the church turn the machine and grind out praises by proxy? How much merit did they accumulate thereby in the eyes of God who is a Spirit, and would be worshiped "in spirit and in truth"? It was very perplexing. She could not argue it all out with him, but ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... to Elizabeth a blessed evening. They held sweet converse one with another as children of the King. For a little time under the old influence of the restful, helpful talk she forgot "the lady," and all the perplexing questions that had vexed her soul. She knew only that she had entered into an atmosphere of peace ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... of the heated discussion Lady Ruth smiles, as though she has suddenly hit upon an idea at last—an idea that offers a solution to the problem that has been perplexing her of late, concerning the courage ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... dead. This was very perplexing, so the squirrel came down the trunk and peeping about made a nervous dash across the grass, to another tree, again to scold from ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... herself, and when her husband asked for the meat she said the cat had stolen it. The husband weighed the cat forthwith, and found that she had not increased in weight by eating so much meat; so, with a hundred perplexing thoughts, he struck his hand on his knee, and, upbraiding his wife, said: "O lady, doubtless the cat, like the meat, weighed one man; the meat would add another man thereto. This point is not clear to me—that two mans should become one man. ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... accents, by the most beautiful of young ladies. She occupied the client's chair in Merton's office, and, as she sat there and smiled, Merton acknowledged to himself that he had never met a client so charming and so perplexing. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... might have saved the ship, or, at least, that they would not have been all drowned as they were; and that, had the men been saved, we might perhaps have built us a boat out of the ruins of the ship to have carried us to some other part of the world. I spent great part of this day in perplexing myself on these things; but at length, seeing the ship almost dry, I went upon the sand as near as I could, and then swam on board. This day also it continued raining, though with no wind ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... heads of new kings and queens,—that dinners, eaten by men and women and children whose bodies had since been eaten by the worms,—that polish for the floors, inches of whose thickness had since been worn away,—that the hundred nameless trifles of a life utterly vanished, should be perplexing, annoying, and worst of all, interesting the soul of a ghost who had been in Hades for centuries! The writing was very old-fashioned, and the words were contracted. I could read nothing but the moneys and ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... from fears, however unreasonable, of Charles's jerking dagger) the day became a sweet one, to be noted unmistakably by various pious and other observances, which still further fixed the thought of that Sunday on Gaston's mind, with continual surmise as to the tendencies of so complex and perplexing a scene. ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... the sight of her unveiled face. It was the man she had loved, now—the emotion which had made him hideous to her was past and gone. To her, as to him the night before, death seemed the solution of all problems, the supreme answer to all perplexing questions. ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... ancient, but not ancient enough; and, though they "handed down the story" (see Medwin, Conversations, p. 173), they depart in numerous particulars from the facts recorded in contemporary documents. Unquestionably the legend, as it appears in Sanudo's perplexing and uncritical narrative (see, for the translation of an original version of the Italian, Appendix, pp. 462-467), is more dramatic than the "low beginnings" of the myth, which may be traced to the annalists ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... was thus engaged with his thoughts upon this perplexing problem, he was informed that two gentlemen from Geneva desired to speak with him. Signifying his readiness to receive them, two well-dressed gentlemen entered and ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... make a circuit of five miles to reach them. Such an immense loss of time and labor troubled him no little, and, as he had no desire to sell his property, he determined by hook or by crook to remedy the evil. Day and night he turned the perplexing problem over in his mind. He might, to be sure, swim across, but then there were his tools to be carried. At last it flashed upon him: Why not make an aerial car? He bought for this purpose some very thick iron wire, stretched it in two parallel lines ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... the window-sill. The moonlight fell on the heavy coils of her brown hair. The scent of the magnolia blooms rose in fragrance around her. The song of a nightingale purled and thrilled in an adjacent wood. The lonely years of the past, the perplexing moments of the present, the uncertain vistas of the future, all rolled away. She sailed with Garth upon a golden ocean far removed from the shores of time. For love is eternal; and the birth of love frees the spirit from all ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... the kitchen—the room itself—is just as much an expression of the family life and aims and ideals as the living room or any other room, we shall be only beating about the bush in our endeavor to find a remedy for some of our perplexing troubles. ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... the air was suddenly filled with perplexing snow-dust from a heavy squall. A white curtain dropped between the anxious watchers on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... was it, I asked myself, that this man was a stranger to me? Why, indeed, was it that all my surroundings were strange to me; for I could not recall that I had ever seen any of them before? And then, as I lay puzzling over this perplexing problem, the past gradually unfolded itself before me; first of all confusedly, as one recalls the images and incidents of an imperfectly remembered dream, and then more clearly, until it had all come back to me in the ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... war. In such cases there always is a main question; but in this case that question is a perplexing compound—Union and slavery. It thus becomes a question not of two sides merely, but of at least four sides, even among those who are for the Union, saying nothing of those who are against it. Thus, those who are for the Union with, but not without, slavery; those for it without, but not with; ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... aware that something was perplexing him, which was floating somewhere below the surface of his consciousness. A thousand thoughts, more or less puzzling, had arisen and been disposed of during the hour that had elapsed since he left Mrs. Belding's. But still he began ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... farthing that she could be said to owe, for her father's sake, who had been so respected in Cranford. My father and I had agreed to say as little as possible about the bank, indeed never to mention it again, if it could be helped. Some of the plans were evidently a little perplexing to her; but she had seen me sufficiently snubbed in the morning for want of comprehension to venture on too many inquiries now; and all passed over well with a hope on her part that no one would be hurried into marriage on her account. When we came to the proposal that she should ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of music in Yarmouth where the learners were perpetually checked at critical points, and told by their callous teacher (tormentor, we had almost written) to "try it again!" and where he first beheld the perplexing and beautiful Fanny. ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... been remarked that Napoleon stood in a perplexing situation in this conflict between the King and his son. This is not correct. King Charles, though he afterwards said that his abdication had been forced from him by violence and threats, had nevertheless tendered it. By this ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... creatures of a kind of alien sex, parodying both. It was certainly a shocking thing to look at them with their horrible prettiness, their archness in which was no charm, their grace which put to shame. Yet whoever beheld these burlesque sisters, must have fallen into perplexing question in his own mind as to whose was the wrong involved. It was not the fault of the public—all of us felt that: was it the fault of the hard-working sisterhood, bred to this as to any other business, and not necessarily conscious of the indecorum which pains my reader,—obliged ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... some scout or other had visited this now memorable spot and marked his initials on the mud, squatting on the log the while. To be sure, the absence of footprints close by, save those easily recognizable as Skinny's, was perplexing, but since there was no other explanation, Tom accepted the one which seemed not wholly unlikely. At all events, what other explanation ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... least, in each perplexing case, Learn the sweet magic of a cheerful face; Not always smiling, but at least serene, When grief and anguish cloud the anxious scene. Each look, each movement, every word and tone, Should tell your patient you are all his own; Not the mere artist, purchased to attend, But the warm, ready, self-forgetting ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... thinking it too complicated to inquire into how, at such a time, he could have allowed himself to be carried away by an impulse of happiness, he confined himself to a gesture which he habitually employed whenever any perplexing question came into his mind: that is, he passed his hand across his forehead, dried his eyes, and wiped his glasses. And he could never be consoled for the loss of his wife, but used to say to my grandfather, during the two years for which he survived her, "It's a funny thing, now; I very often ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... on March 21st, and entered at once upon his duties as Secretary of State. He disapproved of the assumption measure, but was so absorbed in the perplexing details of his new office, in correspondence, and in frequent conferences with the President on the subject of foreign affairs, that he gave the matter little consecutive thought. Moreover, he was dined every day for ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... the time of her own engagement to Joshua. And the fact that the circumstances of that event differed somewhat from those of the present—in regularity, at least, increased rather than detracted from Mrs. Holt's sudden access of tenderness. The perplexing questions as to the probable result of such a marriage were swept away by a flood of feeling. "There, there, my dear, I did not mean to be harsh. What you told me was such a shock—such a surprise, and marriage is such a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... reading renders it all the more important to make a wise and improving selection of that which forms the minds of multitudes, and especially of the young. This selection presents to every librarian and library director or trustee some perplexing problems. To buy indiscriminately the new novels of the day, good, bad, and indifferent (the last named greatly predominating) would be a very poor discharge of the duty devolving upon those who are the responsible ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... me for my wretched brother's son. For who can say that child, at birth, was not Condemned with them—included in their guilt? That God, for David's sake, will grant him favour, And separate him from a hateful race? Alas! the horrible perplexing state, In which heaven represents itself to me, Haunts me incessantly, and frights my soul. The chambers gorged with princes massacred— Inexorable Athaliah, armed With poniard, fires her barbarous soldiery Unto the carnage, and ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley
... thus perplexing myself with vain imaginings, the recollection of the Dashers occurred to my mind. How was it that I had not thought of them before, when they were the very people for my purpose? Why, not a soul could come into Saint Canon's parish without ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... For this perplexing matter the curious may consult Paul Verville's Notice sur la vie de Nicolas de Caen, p. 93 et seq. The indebtedness to Antoine Riczi is, of course, conceded by Nicolas ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... friends whom we feel will do very well for us if nobody—or until somebody—better turns up; and there are others whom we know to be just the right people for the particular needs of our souls at that time. They are the right answers to the questions which have been perplexing us—the correct solutions to the problems over which we have been puzzling our brains. So it was with Elisabeth: Christopher was the correct answer to life's current acrostic; and as long as she was with Christopher she ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... short-styled form were considerably smaller than those from the long-styled, which is the reverse of what occurred in the former instance, and of what is the general rule with heterostyled plants. The whole case is perplexing in the highest degree, and will not be understood until experiments are tried on living plants. The greater length, and more papillose condition of the stigma in the short-styled than in the long-styled flowers, ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... of poems which Mr Morehead had published—'If I were you, however, I would live more with Tuckey, and be satisfied with my gardening and pruning—with my preaching—a good deal of walking and comfortable talking. What more has life? and how full of vexation are all ambitious fancies and perplexing pursuits! Well, God bless you! Perhaps I shall not have an opportunity to inculcate my innocent epicurism upon you for a long time again. It ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... her in birth, and his education had been along totally different lines, and logically they should not have been in sympathy one with the other, for he made her ideals seem somehow bloodless and her enthusiasms sterile and hardly worth while. It was certainly perplexing, for after three months in which she had not seen him, the attraction he exercised upon her had not noticeably lessened. She oddly felt that it would have been more considerate in Smith had he reappeared a little weaker and less vivid than ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... these two perplexing individuals is afraid to approach the Mediator. He feels it to be a kind of presumption. It is difficult to argue with him. It is better to introduce him to Robert Murray McCheyne. McCheyne had the same feeling. 'I am ashamed ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... could fight their way through to the Tonto, but might have just as many more wounded to care for, and be unable to transport them. Moreover, with so many hostiles on every side, was he justified in stripping the post of its defenders? It was no pleasant situation. It was more than perplexing. Presently he turned and, using such signs as he thought might be comprehensible, asked the impassive runner if he knew where the first fight took place, and the Hualpai, as would almost any Indian partially gathering the drift of a question, began a rambling reply, pointing as he spoke, with ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... she faced the darkness of midnight, a peril she dared not contemplate, and the cruel misjudgment which would follow her action if discovered, something deeper awoke in her nature—something kindled into strong, perplexing life when, in his passionate gratitude, he had snatched her in his arms and, as she had said, "given her his whole heart because he couldn't help himself." From that moment, on her part there had been no more merely kind, tranquil thoughts about Scoville, but a shy, trembling, blushing ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... got back to the village inn, and he felt both tired and bewildered. The examination of Silver had been so long, and what he revealed so amazing, that the young man wished to be alone, both to rest and to think over the situation. It was a very perplexing one, as he plainly saw, since, in the light of the new revelations, it seemed almost impossible to preserve the name of the family from disgrace. Seated in his sitting room, with his legs stretched out and his hands ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... of the day. I have to thank you for the ingenious, friendly, and elegant epistle from your friend Mr. Crawford. I shall certainly write to him, but not now. This is merely a card to you, as I am posting to Dumfries-shire, where many perplexing arrangements await me. I am vexed about the Directory; but, my dear Sir, forgive me: these eight days I have been positively crazed. My compliments to Mrs. B. I shall write to you at Grenada.—I am ever, my ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... well informed and intelligent men north of the Tweed, he would find it impossible to make any intelligible communication respecting himself; for of him and his writings there would prevail only a perplexing dream, or the most untroubled ignorance. We cannot see in what the state of literature would have been different had he been cut off in childhood, or had he never been born; for except a few wild and fanciful ballads, he has produced nothing worthy remembrance. Yet, insignificant as he assuredly ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... could care something for him. I can't tell him about Ken—because, after all, what is there to tell? And yet I don't like to behave coldly and distantly when he will be going away so soon. It is very perplexing. I remember I used to think it would be such fun to have dozens of beaux—and now I'm worried to death ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the borders of the Tropics and has propagated its kind, though it has abated some of the vigorous qualities which characterized it in its temperate fatherland. In the real Tropics like India, Cochin China, the Malay Archipelago, and Central Africa, the whole perplexing and urgent problem of European colonization turns on the difficulty or impossibility of acclimatization; and this in turn affects the whole economic, ethnic and political destiny of present colonial holdings. If acclimatization is impossible, ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... magical power of "ifs," "buts," "perhaps's," "what do we know," etc., heaped together, a shapeless and unconnected system is formed, perplexing mankind, by obliterating from their minds, the most clear ideas and rendering uncertain truths most evident. By reason of this systematic confusion, nature is an enigma; the visible world has disappeared, to give place to regions invisible; reason is compelled to yield ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... of the white and black elements of the population was then brought before the planters as a perplexing problem. In this unstable state of affairs the islands could not prosper. Many planters for fear of servile insurrection moved to other islands, as the situation did not soon become inviting. Captain Peter Tamaryn, of the Jaeger Corps (the night guard of the town), was ordered by Governor ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... me why it is, that God, who loveth men, will not have monks and nuns to love each other? The Lord Prior saith He is a jealous God, and demands that we give all our love to Him. Yet I may love the blessed saints without any derogation to Him—but I must not love mine own sister. It is very perplexing. Do earthly fathers forbid their children to love one another, lest they should not be loved themselves sufficiently? I should have thought that love, like other things, increased by exercise, and that loving my sister would rather help me to love God. But they ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... had, ever since the death of the good King Alexander, been such that even honest men could scarcely retain their integrity, nor see with whom to hold. The realm had been seized by a foreign power, with a perplexing show of justice, the rightful King had been first set up and then put down by external force, and the only authority predominant in the land was unacknowledged by the heart of any, though terror had obtained submission from ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... seized the watch in triumph, and proceeded to retrace his steps to his bedchamber. If his progress downward had been attended with difficulties and uncertainty, his journey back was infinitely more perplexing. Rows of doors, garnished with boots of every shape, make, and size, branched off in every possible direction. A dozen times did he softly turn the handle of some bedroom door which resembled his own, when a gruff cry from within of 'Who the devil's that?' ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... clear in our minds, if we would see honestly what our positive modern systems amount to. For what makes them at present so very hard to deal with, is the fact that their exponents are perpetually perplexing themselves between these two classes of answers, first giving one, and then the other, and imagining that, by a kind of confusion of substance, they can both afford solutions of the same questions. Thus ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... the answers she had made to the same, or similar questions, during the former days when under examination. Some of her replies were, as they often had been during those trials, grand in their simplicity. For instance, when asked a difficult and even perplexing question relating to her belief in the Church Militant, she said:—'I believe that the Holy Father, the Bishops, and other clergy, are here for the protection of the Christian faith, and to punish those who deserve it. As to my acts,' she continued, 'I submit them to the ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... does the stricken soul honor God by thus being dumb in the midst of dark and perplexing dealings, recognizing in these, part of the needed discipline and training for a sorrowless, sinless, deathless world; regarding every trial as a link in the chain which draws it to heaven, where the whitest robes will be found to ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... given me," he assured her, "an insight into many things in life which I had found most perplexing. You see, you have traveled and I haven't. You have mixed with all classes of people, and I have gone steadily on in one groove. You have told me many things which I shall find ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 7: As an illustration of the perplexing nature of expert evidence in patent cases, the reader will probably be interested in perusing the following extracts from the opinion of Judge Dayton, in the suit of Bryce Bros. Co. vs. Seneca Glass Co., tried in the United States Circuit Court, Northern District of West ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... after painting the portraits of Meyer and his wife there is a sudden break in the painter's story which has always puzzled his biographers. After such a brilliant start in Basel it is perplexing to find the young man, instead of proceeding to join the Painters' Guild and take the necessary citizenship, suddenly turn his back on all these encouragements and leave the town for a long absence and remote journeys. As will be seen when we come to consider the story of Holbein's ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... offers a somewhat perplexing case. In the first generation the self-fertilised plants, though few in number, greatly exceeded the crossed in height; whilst in the second generation, when the trial was made on a much larger ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... before me, and those clever fellows seldom leave any thing to be gleaned after them. What became of my escort I did not return to enquire; but I heard a prodigious galloping through the village, and found the advantage of the flame in guiding me through as perplexing a maze of thicket and morass as I ever attempted at midnight. The sound of the engagement which followed directed me to the camp; and I remain, a living example to my friend, of the advantage of twelve hours ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... fairly about their business, speaking only of what they know and understand; whereas these fellows, to make parade and to get opinion, mustering this ridiculous knowledge of theirs, that floats on the superficies of the brain, are perpetually perplexing, and entangling themselves in their own nonsense. They speak fine words sometimes, 'tis true, but let somebody that is wiser apply them. They are wonderfully well acquainted with Galen, but not at all with the disease of the patient; they have already deafened ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... filled with these perplexing thoughts, Louis at last reached the house; and Gaston, to his great relief, said that he was so tired that he was going directly ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... one of the perplexing points in Burke's private history to know how he lived during these long years of parliamentary opposition. It is certainly not altogether mere impertinence to ask of a public man how he gets what he lives upon, for independence of spirit, which is so hard to the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... a thorough distrust of Mr. Medler and only half satisfied as to the fact of Marian's safety, Gilbert Fenton lost no time in seeking professional aid in the work of investigating this perplexing social mystery. He went once more to the metropolitan detective who had been with him in Hampshire, and whose labours there had proved so futile. The task now to be performed seemed easy enough. Mr. Proul (Proul ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... on the probable causes through which each separate district in Great Britain came to possess in former times its own peculiar breed of cattle; and the question is, perhaps, even more perplexing in the case of Southern Africa. We now know that the differences may be in part attributed to descent from distinct species; but this will not suffice. Have the slight differences in climate and in the nature of the pasture, in the different districts of Britain, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... September, which, while refusing to recognize the Indians as sovereign nations in the treaty, proposed a stipulation that would leave them in possession of their former lands and rights. This solution of a perplexing problem was finally accepted after another exchange of notes and another earnest discussion at the American hotel, where Gallatin again poured oil on the troubled waters. Concession begat concession. New ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations, not peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented from principle in all parts of the empire; not peace to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... peasant; in half an hour all his work was done, and he would once more stand stock-still in the middle of the courtyard, staring open-mouthed at all the passers-by, as though trying to wrest from them the explanation of his perplexing position; or he would suddenly go off into some corner, and flinging a long way off the broom or the spade, throw himself on his face on the ground, and lie for hours together without stirring, like a caged beast. But man gets used to anything, and Gerasim ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... truth; while those who have seen many things that they cannot well understand, and read many books which they do not fully comprehend, notwithstanding all their parade of knowledge, are apt to wander about it and about it; perplexing themselves and their readers with the various opinions of other men. As to those painters who have written treatises on painting, they were in general too much taken up with giving rules for the operative part of the art, to enter into physical disquisitions ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... another volume of this series, to be entitled: "Dave Porter on Cave Island; or, A Schoolboy's Mysterious Mission." In that book we shall meet Dave and many others of our characters again, and learn the particulars of a happening at Crumville that was as dismaying as it was perplexing. ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... from their careless owners have a weary, perplexing time of it in seeking suitable homes. Most of them make their way to the foot-hills of the mountains, or to the trees that line the banks of the rivers, where some hollow log or trunk may be found. A friend of mine, while out hunting on the San Joaquin, came ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... you,' said the Doctor, becoming eager to escape to that favourite counsellor, the lining of his brougham, which had inspired him with the right theory of many a perplexing symptom, and he trusted would show him how to defend without betraying Leonard. 'I must go and see about it. Is there anything I can do for ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... composition, more especially as seen from the outside, the most perfectly designed building in the world." Elsewhere he speaks of it as "presenting none of those architectural problems so baffling and perplexing at Canterbury, Lichfield, or Lincoln." Its appearance from a distance has been the theme of poets, and a favourite subject for artists. Constable especially delighted to paint it. Among several of his different versions of the theme, the view from the meadows (with the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... pleasantly enough for about half an hour, when the gentlemen of the party, with (to me) perplexing smiles, briskly folded their newspapers and consigned them, not to their pockets or rugs, but to their ladies, by whom the journals were ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... tunnel, I carefully cut out a section of the wall, making an aperture large enough to crawl through, and, when I knew the workmen were asleep, I crept in there and examined both tunnels from end to end. But in solving one mystery I have run myself into another infinitely more perplexing." ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... simple little smile played about her lips when she gave me the branch of lilacs! I have thought her crafty, dissembling, interested sometimes, it is true; but may not much that looks like cunning and dissimulation in her conduct be only the efforts made by a bland temper to traverse quietly perplexing difficulties? And as to interest, she wishes to make her way in the world, no doubt, and who can blame her? Even if she be truly deficient in sound principle, is it not rather her misfortune than her fault? She has been brought up ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... become still more perplexing since Eyelids' return that morning, for in the afternoon, when they were sitting together outside the shack, he also had seen something down-river, and, following his father's and sister's example, had risen to his feet, commenced to wave, and, when it had ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... minutest fibres of sorrow in the branches; when the pruning knife touches them, it touches Him. "He has gone," says a tried sufferer, "through every class in our wilderness school." He loves to bring His people into untried and perplexing places, that they may seek out the guiding pillar, and prize its radiance. He puts them on the darkening waves, that they may follow the guiding light hung out astern from the only Bark of pure and unsullied Humanity that was ever proof against ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... have held the two trunks; and as to conveying us all, it would have taken the united energies of all the Flies in Basingstoke, with the help of the Industrious Fleas to boot, to get us to our destination within a week. While in this perplexing situation, wondering what people could possibly want with such an array of boxes and bags, a quiet-looking man, who had stood by, chewing the lash of a driving-whip in a very philosophical manner, said, "Please sir, I'll take you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... to be read and forgotten on a railway journey, but it is rather a study of the perplexing problems of life, to which the reflecting mind will frequently return, even though the reader does not accept the solutions which the author suggests. In these days, when the output of merely amusing novels is so overpowering, ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... spring which set them in motion had broken; his expression became sombre and savage; he sank back in his chair motionless, a stranger to all that surrounded him, and gave himself up to some mysterious thought against which resistance seemed powerless. Suddenly he appeared to wake from some perplexing dream, and by another powerful effort aroused himself and joined in the conversation with sharp, cutting speeches; he encouraged the noisy humor of his guests, inciting them to drunkenness by setting the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... dessous des cartes," as the perplexing dialect of the aborigines of this country would put it. William and I, when we used to discuss after-the-war prospects o' nights in the old days, were more or less resigned to a buckshee year or two ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... appointment demanded. This requirement was a pair of "Monroe shoes." Now, out in Ohio, what "Monroe shoes" were was a mystery—not a shoemaker in my section having so much as an inkling of the construction of the perplexing things, until finally my eldest brother brought an idea of them from Baltimore, when it was found that they were a familiar pattern ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... Cyrus," he said, "would rather die than lie. I confess no judge was ever placed in so perplexing a position. But were the entire Persian nation to rise up against you, and swear that Cambyses had committed an evil deed, and you were to say, 'I did not commit it,' I, Bartja, would give all Persia the lie and exclaim, 'Ye ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... meditatively down the passage to Fraeulein Kuhraeuber's room. For a moment she thought of omitting this last visit altogether; she was afraid lest the Fraeulein should be in some unlooked-for and perplexing condition of mind. Discouraged? Oh no; she was surely not discouraged already. How had the word come into her head? She quickened her steps. When she reached the door she remembered the cup and the sugar-tongs. Perhaps something in the bedroom was already broken, ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... affection becomes large enough to care for the unworthy among the poor as we would care for the unworthy among our own kin, is certainly a perplexing question. To say that it should never be so, is a comment upon our democratic relations to them which few of us would ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... she was a good girl; whereas Katy tore her dress every day, hated sewing, and didn't care a button about being called "good," while Clover and Elsie shied off like restless ponies when any one tried to pat their heads. It was very perplexing to Aunt Izzie, and she found it hard to quite forgive the children for being so "unaccountable," and so little like the good boys and girls in Sunday-school memoirs, who were the young people she liked best, and understood ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... had never ventured to ask for the girl's confidence, nor even to show that she desired it. Emily was more perplexing to her now than even at the time of Wilfrid Athel's rejection. She consoled herself with the thought that a period of active occupation was no doubt the best means of restoring this complex nature to healthy views of life; that at all events it was ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... motion had broken; his expression became sombre and savage; he sank back in his chair motionless, a stranger to all that surrounded him, and gave himself up to some mysterious thought against which resistance seemed powerless. Suddenly he appeared to wake from some perplexing dream, and by another powerful effort aroused himself and joined in the conversation with sharp, cutting speeches; he encouraged the noisy humor of his guests, inciting them to drunkenness by setting the example himself; then the same mysterious thought would cross his face anew, and he would fall ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... a perplexing character may often be found in the idiosyncrasies of its nearest and dearest; and this reversal of the natural order of things explained much in Quita that appeared difficile and contradictory; explained ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... complicated system. The subject is still but partially worked out by cuneiform scholars; the difficulties in the way of understanding it are great; and in many portions to which special attention has been paid it is strangely perplexing and bewildering. All that will be attempted in the present place is to convey an idea of the general character of the Chaldaean religion, and to give some information with regard to ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... relating to a crocodile, kept at the Museum, had been perplexing the readers of the Oxford Magazine for some time past, and had been distorted into an ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and I found to my surprise that during this story I had grown as calm as he and had quite forgotten, in my sympathy for the little man, just why he had begun to tell it. It was most perplexing. The room had taken on its homely comfort again: the horror ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... the first Secretary of State under Washington, he handled, with consummate skill, the perplexing international questions which grew out of the war declared by France in 1793, against Holland and ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... fastest thing afloat, sir. Nothing can pass her. We have beaten the—, and the—, and the—, in a fair race, sir." To a stranger, seeking correct information, the multiplicity of these statements is perplexing. ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... Steward is often regarded as the most perplexing of all the parables of our Lord. It seems to picture a man who robbed his master and received his master's praise and was pointed to by Jesus as an example for his followers; further, it seems to indicate that a place in heaven can be purchased ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... name." Each was the representative, the ambassador of the King. Each was promised His help; each the baptism through which memory was to be quickened to recall the words He had spoken—the baptism which was to explain sentences which, at the moment of their utterance, were full of perplexing and affrighting mystery to such as heard. Almost His very last words on earth concerned their mission. Then came Pentecost, the gift of power, the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the waiting company in the Upper Room. Signs and wonders filled the hour. The ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... Framboya—Cromer, Kitchener, Curzon, Milner, Gane, for example. So far as that easier task of holding sword and scales had gone, they had shown the finest qualities, but they had returned to the perplexing and exacting problem of the home country, a little glorious, a little too simply bold. They wanted to arm and they wanted to educate, but the habit of immediate necessity made them far more eager to arm ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... judgment, as he proceeded in the composition of the elaborate note, in which he would fain have justified Dryden even at the expense of Shakspeare. And, as it now stands, though beautifully written, it swarms with non-sequiturs, and perplexing half-truths. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... appears to be searching into something which he knows, as if he did not know it, for we have already admitted that he knows all numbers;—you have heard these perplexing questions raised? ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... worrying for a whole hour about what I should do, and where I should begin, I abandoned the idea of attempting any thing myself, in despair, and concluded the perplexing debate by taking another hearty crying-spell. The poor washerwoman was forgotten during most of this afternoon. My own troubles were too near the axis of vision, and ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... courtyard came to his remembrance, a gleaming, rushing river, a background of shadowy hills, and a little coy, wilful, chattering girl, with curly hair and great brown eyes—those very eyes that had been perplexing him ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... can be imagined. At the end of a year the boy's knowledge of Latin would be of a peculiar kind. Of grammar he would know but little; of words and phrases he would have a goodly store; and thus he was learning to talk the language before he had even heard of its perplexing rules. One example must suffice to illustrate the method. The beginner did not even learn the names of the cases. In a modern English Latin Grammar, the charming sight that meets our gaze is ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... ground, its Government might have been thought likely to welcome any security that it should not be abandoned in its utmost need. Haugwitz, however, was at head-quarters, dictating lying bulletins, and perplexing the generals with ridiculous arguments of policy until the French actually opened fire. When the English envoy made known his arrival, he found that no one would transact business with him. Haugwitz had determined to evade all ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... told. Before Crawford left South Harniss, which was not until the end of another week, it had been decided that on a day in June of the following year she should cease to be Mary-'Gusta Lathrop. There was a great deal of discussion before this decision was reached, for many perplexing questions ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... had not deliberately starved her imagination, and emptied her heart of any tenderness of feeling which it might once have possessed, her son's odd behaviour would have interested instead of perplexing her. As it was, her scientific education left her as completely in the dark, where questions of sentiment were concerned, as if her experience of humanity, in its relation to love, had been experience in the cannibal islands. She decided on leaving her niece to repose, and on ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... at the sliding and revolving articles, and shaking his head reflectively, said: "It is a c-u-r-ious thing! It is a c-u-r-ious thing!" as if the migratory boots and cigar-boxes exhibited some new and perplexing phenomena not to be accounted for by any of the known laws of physics. A sudden roll in which the vessel indulged at that particular moment gave additional force to the sentiment of the soliloquy; and with renewed convictions, I have no doubt, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... elsewhere in the world. They, too, by the fortunes of war have lost their old rulers and guides and against their will submit their future to alien hands. To govern them or to train them to govern themselves are tasks almost equally perplexing, nor is the problem made easier or clearer by the clash of contradictory estimates of their culture and capacity which form ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... experienced a public man to risk the possibility of an anticlimax by protracting his leave-taking. And in an ominous shining of Pansy's big eyes as the time approached he felt an embarrassment as perplexing as the odd presentiment of loneliness that was creeping over him. But with an elaborate caution as to the dangers of self-indulgence, and the private bestowal of a large gold piece slipped into her hand, a promise to come again soon, and an exaction that she would write to him often, the colonel ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... calls the river thus passing Dalu Basandra, the Sonabhadra; but Sadhu Ram told me, that its name is the Karanali, or Salasu, for many rivers of these parts have a variety of appellations, that is very perplexing to the geographer. He says, that west from Dalu Basandra, it is a river as wide as the Gandaki, where that river comes into the plain, which I have formerly described. Etawargiri says, that the Karanali passes near the salt mines of Yumila, and then turns west, passing north from Chhinachhin, ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... a column, let the throng rush, tumble, and jostle one another to behold the show, till the Abbey was nearly empty, while he tried to work out the perplexing question whether all this pomp and splendour were truly for the glory of God, or whether it were a delusion for the temptation of men's souls. It was a debate on which his old and his new guides seemed to him at issue, and he ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Potomac. To the thoughtful visitor to the United States this hiding away of the central government in a minute district remote from all the great centres of thought, population and business activity becomes more remarkable more perplexing, more suggestive of an incurable weakness in the national government as he grasps more firmly the peculiarities ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... truth steadfastly in your patients' thoughts, ex- plain Christian Science to them, but not too soon, - not until your patients are prepared for the explanation, - 414:18 lest you array the sick against their own interests by troub- ling and perplexing their thought. The Christian Scien- tist's argument rests on the Christianly scientific basis of 414:21 being. The Scripture declares, "The Lord He is God [good]; there is none else beside Him." Even so, harmony is universal, and discord is unreal. Christian Science de- 414:24 clares that Mind ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... time, I stood there, lost in perplexing thought. 'What does it all mean?' was the cry that had begun to reiterate through ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... he could to fix him, but finding that the Duke was always for delays, and for perplexing all expedients with groundless fears of invincible difficulties, he fell upon an expedient very dangerous to all appearance, but, as it usually happens in extraordinary cases, much less so than at ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... persons who had been robbed by him to repair to Newgate and to see whether they could identify him. To identify him should have been easy; for he had a wound in the face, and had lost a thumb. [340] He, however, in the hope of perplexing the witnesses for the Crown, expended a hundred pounds in procuring a sumptuous embroidered suit against the day of trial. This ingenious device was frustrated by his hardhearted keepers. He was put to the bar in his ordinary clothes, convicted ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... no evidence that the provocation was sufficient to justify the proceeding of Sarah, in peremptorily demanding the expulsion of the mother and her child. Thus did Abraham's concubinage continue to imbitter his domestic peace; and the good old patriarch was again placed in a most difficult and perplexing situation. ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... conclude that the progress of the mechanical arts with the consequent increase in the bulk of the human race has not solved the problem of moral progress, but only placed that problem in a new and more perplexing context. A similar conclusion would meet us if we were to consider the parallel increase of the wealth of the world. The moral question is not about the amount of wealth the world possesses, but about ...
— Progress and History • Various
... was no longer in doubt concerning the place to which he had been conveyed; and the more he reflected on his situation, the more he was overwhelmed with the most perplexing chagrin. He could not conceive by whose means he had been immured in a madhouse; but he heartily repented of his knight-errantry, as a frolic which might have very serious consequences, with respect to his future life and fortune. After mature deliberation, he resolved to demean himself ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... one point in that half-hour before breakfast: if she asked him again to let her go her way in peace, it was only fair to her and right that he should submit to the inevitable. She loved him, he was sure of it. Then there must be a very good reason for her perplexing attitude toward him. He would make one more attempt to have the truth from her. Failing in that, he would accept the situation as hopeless, for the time being at least. She should know that he loved her deeply ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... puzzling, and I could not make it out at all. In fact, the more I tried, the more perplexing it grew, and while I was trying to get my head to think properly, everything grew dull and misty, and I went off to ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... the sober auditor did not approve, because, although they seemed to have been legitimately deduced from the general principles just enunciated, they were somehow at variance with the plain teaching of the facts. At such moments one felt that the man who was charming but perplexing Englishmen by his subtlety and ingenuity was not himself an Englishman in mental quality, but had the love for abstractions and refinements and dialectical analysis which characterizes the Scotch intellect. He had also a large measure of that warmth and vehemence, called in the ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... save themselves in strongholds and in their own land, while if the Persians should meet with any reverse, not even a messenger would escape to the land of the Persians. Chosroes was convinced by this admonition and wished to turn back to his own country, but he found himself in a very perplexing situation. For he supposed that the crossing of the river was being guarded by the enemy, and he was unable to march back by the same road, which was entirely destitute of human habitation, since the supplies which they had at the first when they invaded the land of the ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... we are touching upon taste, Which now-a-days is the thermometer By whose degrees all characters are classed— Was more Shakespearian, if I do not err. The worlds beyond this World's perplexing waste Had more of her existence, for in her There was a depth of feeling to embrace Thoughts, boundless, deep, but silent ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... with the messengers, who had arrived from her elder brother's wife's home, and conversing also about the case of homicide, in which the family of her mother's sister had become involved, and other such relevant topics. Perceiving how pressing and perplexing were the matters in which madame Wang was engaged, the young ladies promptly left her apartments, and came over to the rooms of their widow ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the various non-normal acts, which were all classed together as manifestations of the criminal depravity of ordinary or insane people. To a student beginning to be acutely conscious that his sexual nature differed profoundly from that of his fellows, nothing could be more perplexing and disturbing, and it shut me up more completely in my reserve than ever. I felt that this teaching must be based on some radical error or prejudice or misapprehension, for I knew from my own very clear remembrance of my own development that my peculiarity ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the prophet's thought I speak, or am I raving? What do I know of life? what of myself? I know not even my own work past or present, Dim ever-shifting guesses of it spread before me, Of newer better worlds, their mighty parturition, Mocking, perplexing me. ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... against any prejudicial bias from truth; while those who have seen many things that they cannot well understand, and read many books which they do not fully comprehend, notwithstanding all their parade of knowledge, are apt to wander about it and about it; perplexing themselves and their readers with the various opinions of other men. As to those painters who have written treatises on painting, they were in general too much taken up with giving rules for the operative part ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... was perplexing. Where was he? Perforce he had lost his bearings. He scanned the whole circumference of the horizon, and saw nothing but the vast dark ocean plain and its immense blue dome—never a yard of land, never a stitch of canvas. He had no means ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... she said suddenly, with a return of animation. 'Madame Desforets comes next week, and I am to see her.' She drew herself up and turned a beaming face upon him. Was there a shaft of mischief in her eye? He could not tell. The firelight was perplexing. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... these perplexing thoughts, Calton went down to St. Kilda to have a talk with Madge. He intended to ask her to assist him towards obtaining the information he needed. He had a great respect for Madge, and thought her a really clever woman. It was just possible, he argued, that Brian's great love ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... of the power displayed in this (I will not hesitate to say) sublime print, it seems to me the extreme narrowness of system alone, and of that rage for classification, by which, in matters of taste at least, we are perpetually perplexing, instead of arranging, our ideas, that would make us concede to the work of Poussin above mentioned, and deny to this of Hogarth, the name of ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... possessed, to an extraordinary degree, the power of rapidly transferring his undivided and undisturbed attention to every thing, great and small, which could be brought before it. A single glance of his eye penetrated the most obscure and perplexing parts of a case—a touch of his master-hand disentangled apparently inextricable complexities. He could apply, with beautiful promptitude and precision, some maxim or principle which had not occurred to those who had devoted long and anxious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... into your thoughts, and talked them aloud. Her mind was evidently cultivated with great care, but she was perfectly void of pedantry. A hint, an allusion, sufficed to show how much she knew, to one well instructed, without mortifying or perplexing the ignorant. Yes, there probably was the only woman my father had ever met who could be the companion to his mind, walk through the garden of knowledge by his side, and trim the flowers while he cleared the vistas. On the other hand, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in his having never been dipped in the Shannon. He is so under cow with bashfulness now, that I don't doubt but what in one of his confusions I could asy bring him to say Yes in the wrong place; and sooner than come to a perplexing refusal of a young lady, he might, I'll engage, be brought about to marry the girl he didn't like, in lieu of the girl he did. We shall see—but hark! I hear Ferrinafad's voice, singing, and I must join, and see how the thing's going on, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... dagger) the day became a sweet one, to be noted unmistakably by various pious and other observances, which still further fixed the thought of that Sunday on Gaston's mind, with continual surmise as to the tendencies of so complex and perplexing a scene. ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... of affirmation of clear title, or trade mark of true righteousness, on the part of Spain. It is one of the enduring puzzles in going around the world that a day is gained or lost, and it is not always a sure thing whether there is a loss or gain. The perplexing problem is increased in its persistence if one sails westward over the 180 Meridian west from Greenwich, and goes beyond that line (which is not the one drawn by Alexander VI)—say to the Philippines, and turns back, as is done in the voyage from ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... very perplexing. To go forward without Isaaco to Keminoom, I knew would involve us in difficulties; as Keminoom's sons are reckoned the greatest thieves and blackguards on the whole route. To stop till Isaaco recovered (an event which seemed very doubtful), would throw us into the violence ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... A second perplexing circumstance which happened on the same day, and which took me completely by surprise, added greatly to the sense of uneasiness that was ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... became animated. Mr. S. said that he had a further objection. It leads many, who use it erroneously, into perplexing and fruitless positions. Assuming that the children are members of the church, they discuss the question, as the sermon has stated, Of what church are they members? Some reply, Of the church to which ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... Hindus among women of the harems, and teaching them to read it. No commercial business is conducted with greater energy, enterprise and ability than the work of the Bible Society, in this empire, and while the missionaries have enormous and perplexing difficulties to overcome, they, too, are making ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... side of Colonel Dewes Sybil Linforth flinched as though she had been struck. But it did not need that movement to explain to the Colonel the perplexing problem of her fears. He understood now. The Linforths belonged to the Road. The Road had slain her husband. No wonder she lived in terror lest it should claim her son. And ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... satisfied with such service on their part as the interests of the empire require. The Turcomans would have the same permission, and would hardly be sensible of the change of masters. It is a more perplexing question how England or France, did they on the other hand become their masters, would be able to tolerate them in their reckless desolation of a rich country. Rather, such barbarians, unless they could be placed where ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... jeering word or an impertinent look. We evidently astonished the people, but we never tempted them to forget their natural good-nature, forbearance, and self-restraint. On our side, the attentive scrutiny to which we were subjected, was at first not a little perplexing. It was difficult not to doubt occasionally whether some unpleasantly remarkable change had not suddenly taken place in our personal appearance—whether we might not have turned green or blue on our travels, or have got noses ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... man ran off at top speed. Royson could have caught him in a few strides, but he did not move. He had not meant to hit, only to scare, yet the incident was perplexing, and the more he pondered over it the less pleased he was at his own lack of finesse, as he might have learnt something without fear of indiscretion, seeing that he had nothing to tell. Nevertheless, ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... burst out laughing, still further perplexing his interrogators. His laughter was not intended to be disrespectful to the young "Sahibs," only that he was unable to restrain himself on perceiving the ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... its last words shall be an appeal to the Congress for the most rigid economy in the expenditure of the money it holds in trust for the people. The way to perplexing extravagance is easy, but a return to frugality is difficult. When, however, it is considered that those who bear the burdens of taxation have no guaranty of honest care save in the fidelity of their public servants, the duty ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... you don't, Hugh," returned Dominick, with an agreeable smile, which was a little perplexing as well as exasperating. "You are going into the lagoon; you know you are, and I have come to ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... in her mind; but that she would once more in prayer cry unto our Saviour to help her, and take away those evil things that separated her from Him. On the day following she came again to the missionaries, and, with many tears, declared her thanks to the Lord, that he had delivered her from her perplexing thoughts, and granted to her his peace in her soul, and therefore begged to be admitted to the holy communion. On the 3d of December they partook of this heavenly feast; and it proved a time of refreshing to them all. The season of Christmas was ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... and was urged at length to recant. His opinions on the real presence were peculiar. Christ, he said, was not the sacrament, but was really and truly in the sacrament, as the Holy Ghost was with the water at baptism and yet was not the water. The subtlety of the position was perplexing, but the knot was cut by the crucial question, whether, after the consecration of the elements, the substance of bread and wine remained. He was allowed the night to consider his answer, but he left no doubt what that answer would be. "The bishops told him that ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... jumped over? If so, which way had he gone, up, down, or into the woods beyond? It was a perplexing question. Perhaps if I had been in a story book I might have found some clew to direct me. But I was not that kind of a hero. I was only an everyday boy, and consequently no ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... stirred him, not quieted him; and men who had laid detaining hands on him had had them beaten down for their pains. But this girl had merely touched him gently, and he had been made helpless. It was most perplexing; and while the custom-house officials were passing his luggage, he found himself rubbing his arm curiously, as though it were numb, and looking down at it with an amused smile. He did not comment on the incident, although he smiled at the recollection of his prompt obedience several times during ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... invious|; pathless, trackless; labyrinthine &c (convoluted) 248; intricate, complicated &c (tangled) 59; impracticable &c. (impossible) 471; not feasible &c. 470; desperate &c. (hopeless) 859. embarrassing, perplexing &c. (uncertain) 475; delicate, ticklish, critical; beset with difficulties, full of difficulties, surrounded by difficulties, entangled by difficulties, encompassed with difficulties. under a difficulty; in a box; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... his 'Analytical Geometry, of Two Dimensions,' and 'Conics.' I next obtained De Morgan's 'Differential and Integral Calculus,' then Woolhouse's, and lastly, Todhunter's. I found this department of mathematics difficult and perplexing to the last degree; but I mastered it sufficiently to turn it to some account. This last mathematical course represents eighteen months of hard work, and I often sat up the whole night through. One result of the application was a permanent injury ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... Training in Sex-education.—The need to have the right sort of fathers as well as fit mothers requires a new training in lines of sex-education. One of the most perplexing of all educational problems is how to give the needed training in this line in the best and most effective way. In the admirable volume on Sex-Education written by Professor Maurice A. Bigelow, ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... position, and voluntarily amend it. "I do really think mother might have some consideration for me, Julius," she complained. "It puts me in such a very peculiar position not to take my place at my own table; and it is so trying and perplexing for the servants,—making them feel as if there were ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... glittering armour, past a hundred treasures, with never an eye to notice one of them, and a heart beating fast with agitation. The ascent seemed to last for a year, yet it would be over far too soon; the dreaded moment of introduction would arrive, and, in the name of all that was horrifying and perplexing, what should she do then? By what name should she be announced? What should she state as the object of her visit? What excuse could she offer ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... child," said his mother, "your father has many troubles. It is a great care to provide for his family, and you know he suffers us to want for nothing. He often has most perplexing cases, and his poor brains are almost distracted. You are a happy boy, with no care but to get your lessons, and obey your parents, and try to help them. You know nothing yet of the anxieties which will crowd upon you ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... sculpture that so much piqued the curiosity of both citizens and strangers and was the talk of every seigniory in the land. The tablet of the Chien D'or,—the Golden Dog,—with its enigmatical inscription, looked down defiantly upon the busy street beneath, where it is still to be seen, perplexing the beholder to guess its meaning and exciting our deepest sympathies over the tragedy of which it remains ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... curious to see Mr. Gladstone, 'for he is a man much spoken of as one who will come to the front.' He was greatly disappointed at his personal appearance, 'which is that of a Roman catholic ecclesiastic, but he is very agreeable.'[121] Few men can have been more perplexed, and few perhaps more perplexing, as the social drama of the capital was in time unfolded to his gaze. There he beheld the glitter of rank and station, and palaces, and men and women bearing famous names; worlds within worlds, high diplomatic figures, the partisan leaders, the constant stream of agitated rumours ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... people, and some philosophers, refuse to hold questions in abeyance, however incompetent they may be to decide them. And, curiously enough, the more difficult, recondite, and perplexing the questions or hypotheses are, such, for instance, as those about organic Nature, the more impatient they are of suspense. Sometimes, and evidently in the present case, this impatience grows out of a fear that a new hypothesis may endanger cherished and most important ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... perplexing subjects which claimed the attention of Washington during the winter (1776-1777), while he was holding his headquarters among the hills at Morristown, none gave him more annoyance than that of the treatment of American prisoners in the hands of the enemy. Among the civilized nations of modern times ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... of the colonial governments to England is a far more perplexing matter. From the preceding chapters it appears that we may distinguish the colonies, if we come down to about 1750, as either (1) self-governing or charter colonies, in which liberty was most complete ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... spoken of above, namely, he was perfectly convinced in his own mind that everything understood under the name of law was nothing else but so many phrases artificially hammered out and put together by lawyers, with the sole purpose of perplexing the true feeling of right which had been planted in every virtuous man's breast. Since he could not exactly shut his eyes to the necessity for law-courts, he discharged all his hatred upon the advocates, whom as a class he conceived to be, if not altogether ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... impressions of the thing as a whole, to say things I have come to feel intensely of the laws, traditions, usages, and ideas we call society, and how we poor individuals get driven and lured and stranded among these windy, perplexing shoals and channels. I've got, I suppose, to a time of life when things begin to take on shapes that have an air of reality, and become no longer material for dreaming, but interesting in themselves. I've reached the criticising, novel-writing age, and here I am writing mine—my one novel—without ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... four full days and then came an afternoon to spare, and I sought out Tottenham Court Road through a perplexing network of various and crowded streets. But this London was vast! it was endless! it seemed the whole world had changed into packed frontages and hoardings and street spaces. I got there at last and made inquiries, and I found ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... a little longer, Mr. Barnes," she said, appealingly. "I cannot say anything now. I am in a very perplexing position. You see, I am not quite sure that I am right in my conclusions, and it would be dreadful if I ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... fixed, and it is impossible to tell how much I felt relieved. I had spent the preceding period in such perplexing indecision, that I felt my heart withering within me. Now all was clear. My course was decided. I was in other hands than my own, and whatever might be the result, I was no longer answerable for either ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... enough for about half an hour, when the gentlemen of the party, with (to me) perplexing smiles, briskly folded their newspapers and consigned them, not to their pockets or rugs, but to their ladies, by whom the journals were ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... table of Government House everyone seemed to vie in good humored gaiety and flow of spirited, animating conversation. Each tried to please. All clouds of despondency vanished upon this occasion. Sir Howard always set the example. Pressing cares of state, perplexing questions, and endless grievances, took speedy and ignominous flight when he entered the family circle. All was unrestrained pleasure and genial delight on this evening. Lady Rosamond was seated beside the gay and attractive secretary, ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... was large and sweet, but, for a while, perplexing. An almost instinctive leap to catch the trapeze-bar that had hung in his cage brought his hands in contact with only unresisting air. This confused and somewhat frightened him. The world seemed much broader and brighter since the black bars of his prison no longer striped his vision. And then, ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... Absolutely futile. In my heart even then, I think, I believed you narrow. You see, I'm frank. A few months in the world hasn't changed my opinion. But I do want to think straight." And then with a sigh as he paused alongside of me, "It's very perplexing sometimes." ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... off, the prison gates Fly open, as with magic key; And far from life's perplexing straits, My spirit ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... present state of our knowledge the forms of this genus present withal a most perplexing problem. Are they simply phases of a single species, or are they in style and in structure sufficiently constant in their admitted variety, to claim specific rank ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... two smaller stars would reappear, in consequence of the supposed revolution of the planet round its axis; but the discovery of the ring of Saturn, and of the obliquity of its plane to the ecliptic, was necessary to explain the phenomena which were so perplexing to our author. ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... of this has been a fundamental and perplexing oversight. For proof whereof we need go no farther than the case before us. It having been observed that the most diverging rays brought into the mind the idea of nearest distance, and that still, as the divergency decreased, the distance increased: and ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... that the problem of dramatizing our fight for democracy in competition with the drama of a world-war, was most perplexing. Here were we, citizens without power and recognition, with the only weapons to which a powerless class which does not take up arms can resort. We could not and would not fight with men's weapons. Compare the methods women adopted to those men use in the pursuit of democracy; bayonets, machine ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... hidentically simular, that things in general was to her most amazin', and that there was no accountin' for nothin' in this life, but that w'atever came of it she 'oped the family would live long an' 'appy in a world, w'ich was, she must confess, a most perplexing mixture of good and evil, though of course she wasn't rightly able to understand or explain that, but she was sure of this anyhow, that, although she was by no means able to explain 'erself as well as she could wish, she knew that she wished well to every one who ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... a young man," said Madame von Marwitz, slightly smiling at him, "who would never wish to make speeches to the moon, who is, indeed, not aware of the moon. But he is very much aware of Karen; so much so," and she continued to smile, as if over an amusing if still slightly perplexing memory, "that when she is there he is not aware of me. What do you say ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... idea of the heat and fury of war. In short, he made himself so agreeable in every way that Miss Tewksbury felt at liberty to challenge his opinions on various subjects. They had numberless little controversies about the rights and wrongs of the war, and the perplexing problems that grew out of its results. So far as Miss Tewksbury was concerned, she found General Garwood's large tolerance somewhat irritating, for it left her no excuse for the employment of ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... as a peasant; in half an hour all his work was done, and he would once more stand stock-still in the middle of the courtyard, staring open-mouthed at all the passers-by, as though trying to wrest from them the explanation of his perplexing position; or he would suddenly go off into some corner, and flinging a long way off the broom or the spade, throw himself on his face on the ground, and lie for hours together without stirring, like a caged beast. But man gets used to anything, and ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... of emergency, evidently with the intention that it be of short duration, this law about rentals has become the most perplexing question in the world. Several attempts have been made towards a solution, but all have remained fruitless, unsanctioned; and the property owners ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... very strong objections. She was, moreover, so emphatic in her expressions of horror, and cast on her champion such a look of entreaty, that he would have been more than mortal had he refused her. It was very perplexing. The idea of killing, or being killed, in such a cause was very repulsive. He tried to reason with Grabantak about the sin of injuring a defenceless woman, and the abstract right of females in general to have some say in the selection of their ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... has eradicated the monarchy,—expelled the proprietary, persecuted religion, and trampled upon law,—you may call this France if you please: but of the ancient France nothing remains but its central geography; its iron frontier; its spirit of ambition; its audacity of enterprise; its perplexing intrigue. These, and these alone, remain: and they remain heightened in their principle and augmented in their means. All the former correctives, whether of virtue or of weakness, which existed in the old monarchy, are gone. No single new corrective is ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... few minutes after, I was informed that a lady wished to speak with me. Concluding that it was some old acquaintance, and happy to feel that in this perplexing dilemma I had still a friend to speak to, I followed the waiter into another room. Mr. Robinson was detained ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... interest and variety. Several beautifully engraved wah-wah (long armed monkey) bones, serving as handles for women's knives, are worthy of mention, one of which might be termed exquisite in delicate execution of design. Admirable mats were made by the tribe, but the designs proved perplexing to interpret, as knowledge on the subject seems to be lost. The difficulty about an interpreter was solved when the "onder's" clerk returned from a brief absence; he was an intelligent and trustworthy Kayan ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... Most perplexing was the seeming enlargement of brain. Without having passed through the wall of skull, nevertheless it seemed to me that the periphery of my brain was already outside my skull and still expanding. Along with this was one of the most remarkable ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... it will be seen by the following letter from Whitbread, written on the very eve of the elections in September, that there was no want of inclination, on the part of this honorable and excellent man, to afford assistance to his friend,—but that the duties of the perplexing trust which he had undertaken rendered such irregular advances ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... "When I was a girl," she said, "all the young men in London were at my feet." "My dear lady," said Lord Houghton, "were all the young men of your generation chiropodists?" Mr. C. Milnes Gaskell of Thornes told me of a perplexing situation in which he had once found himself, and of how he sought counsel about it from Lord Houghton, his kinsman. Gaskell's difficulty was this. A friend for whom he was acting as trustee had, without imposing ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... the Papal Church. Three others expressed the same desire; and ten young men took advantage of the death of the civil head of their community to flee, as was supposed, for the sake of greater freedom in religion. Mr. Schauffler's varying and perplexing experience constrained him to believe, that private charity, and sacrifices for individual Jews, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... his ear attends; Insinuates that beauty's frail, That perseverance must prevail; With jealousies his brain inflames, And whispers all her lovers' names. In other hours she represents His household charge, his annual rents, 30 Increasing debts, perplexing duns, And nothing for his younger sons. Straight all his thought to gain he turns, And with the thirst of lucre burns. But when possessed of fortune's store, The spectre haunts him more and more; Sets want and misery in view, Bold ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... objection to make to so comfortable a settlement of a perplexing question; and in due time the Bernals left Sobrante forever; and of their lives at the mission those whom they had known so long were henceforth to hear little, "and care less," ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... it out from day to day on the deepest principles and from the highest motives. And the Christian woman, having a similar and an equal vocation, undertook the like responsibilities. But her responsibilities were in that age of transition very perplexing, and more than ever invited friendly counsel and pastoral care. Now what was John Knox's private life? He was twice married, and we know from his correspondence that even before his first marriage there were women of high position and ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... later they were still bent over the much marked bit of paper. But their interest in it was not that of those who would solve a perplexing problem. It was the lingering, satisfied contemplation of a ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... and, with the sight, an impression was conveyed to me that in the scene before me my old childlike life would pass into some solemn change. So that when I came here, and recognized the picture in my vision, I took an affection for the spot,—an affection not without awe, a powerful, perplexing interest, as one who feels under the influence of a fate of which a prophetic glimpse has been vouchsafed. And in that evening, when you ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... abode in this old place, which would probably have been intolerably dull to most young Englishmen, had for this young American a charm like the freshness of Paradise. In truth it had that charm, and besides it another intangible, evanescent, perplexing charm, full of an airy enjoyment, as if he had been here before. What could it be? It could be only the old, very deepest, inherent nature, which the Englishman, his progenitor, carried over the sea with him, nearly two hundred years ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in each perplexing case, Learn the sweet magic of a cheerful face; Not always smiling, but at least serene, When grief and anguish cloud the anxious scene. Each look, each movement, every word and tone, Should tell your patient you are all his own; Not the mere artist, purchased to attend, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the deputies their intention of portioning out the whole of the kingdom, if any more opposition were offered; but, notwithstanding, the Diet continued stormy, and many bold speeches were made. Of all situations the King's must have been the most perplexing and irksome; but no person was better adapted to act such a part than Stanislaus. He made the most pathetic appeals to his subjects, and frequently spoke in a strain more fit for an unfortunate but patriotic hero than for one who had done nothing but affect a few tears—for we can hardly doubt ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... himself could too often speak of them afterwards as apt to "shame, perhaps to degrade, the beginnings." This is what true dramatic art should never do. In the ending all that may raise legitimate question in the process—all that is confusing, perplexing in the separate parts—is met, solved, reconciled, at least in a way satisfactory to the general, or ordinary mind; and thus such unity is by it so gained and sealed, that in no case can the true artist, whatever faults may ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... the prayer-wheels. Did the church turn the machine and grind out praises by proxy? How much merit did they accumulate thereby in the eyes of God who is a Spirit, and would be worshiped "in spirit and in truth"? It was very perplexing. She could not argue it all out with ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... toilsome tho' renowned years 'T is thine to trace the Law's perplexing maze, Or win the SACRED SEALS, whose awful cares To high ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... that I departed without making our presence known; but I could not refrain from leaving, at the place where we landed, the perplexing legacy of a few presents. With what curious anxiety must these people have traced our footmarks, from which alone they could gather evidence that we belonged to a ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... that he had evidently taken it for granted that the greater security she would enjoy as his wife would appeal to her, though there was a certain satisfaction in the reflection that to leave her dependent upon Mrs. Hastings caused him concern. For another thing, his reserve had been at least perplexing, and it was borne in upon her that it would have cost her a more determined effort to withstand him had he spoken with fire and passion. The restraint, however, had been evident, and he could not have practised it unless there ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... Mr. Redhead was repelled, a fresh difficulty arose. Some one must first move towards a settlement, but a spirit being evoked which could not be allayed, action became perplexing. The matter had to be referred to some independent arbitrator, and my father was the gentleman to whom each party turned its eye. A meeting was convened, and the business settled by the Vicar's conceding the choice to the trustees, and the acceptance of the Vicar's ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... error of assuming that they can think out the whole—or at any rate completely think out definite parts—of the purpose and future of man, clearly and finally; they have set themselves to legislate and construct on that assumption, and, experiencing the perplexing obduracy and evasions of reality, they have taken to dogma, persecution, training, pruning, secretive education; and all the stupidities of self-sufficient energy. In the passion of their good intentions they have not hesitated to conceal facts, suppress thought, ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... hand—(as the Greeks did of death, which, in Hellenic social culture, was not mention'd point-blank, but by euphemisms.) In the civilization of to-day, this condition—without stopping to elaborate the arguments and facts, which are many and varied and perplexing—has led to states of ignorance, repressal, and cover'd over disease and depletion, forming certainly a main factor in the world's woe. A nonscientific, non-esthetic, and eminently non-religious condition, bequeath'd ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... to look into the case his joy abated somewhat, for it was one of the most perplexing that he had ever known. The will contested, which was that of a Yorkshire money-lender, disposed of property to the value of over L80,000, and was propounded by a niece of the testator who, when he died, if not actually weak in his mind, was in his dotage, and superstitious to the verge of insanity. ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... that I put into my observation of Nature—and perhaps into my hearing of music—the same thing that many people experience only in their relations with other people. To myself relations with others are cheerful enough, interesting, perplexing—but seldom absorbing, or overwhelming; such experiences never seem to say the ultimate word or to sound the deeper depth. I suppose that this is the deficiency of the artistic temperament. I write looking out upon a pale wintry sunset. There, at least, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... had caught the declining light again from my half-hour's talk with her I took a private vow to recover while that light still lingers something of the delicate flush, to pick out with a brief patience the perplexing lesson. ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... they passed Caroline's door; and more than once she was so inconsolable, that Marian was obliged to come and stay in her room, and sleep all night with her arm clinging round her. Altogether, it was very desolate and perplexing; and Marian was grieved at herself for dwelling more on this, and on the loss of her dear companion and friend, than on the hope and happiness that ought to occupy her. How different in the two deaths she had known before, where there was none of this weary, harassed, doubtful, ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... taken into consideration; but there was something else which ought also to be borne in mind by thoughtful folk: such a conviction would at the same time offend the French, who were in a fair way to become the masters once more in the place of the English. These matters were very perplexing to the doctors; but the second consideration had less weight with them than the first; they had no idea that the French were so near ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... showing a dexterity that made it probable that his cleverness had been the cause of the loss of a tongue that might have betrayed too much. To young Hope he seemed like a sacred legacy from poor Tam, and a perplexing one, such as he could hardly leave in his dumbness to take the chances of ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and manhood had been spent in roaming the trackless wilderness, and who were, therefore, eminently qualified to guide brigades through the length and breadth of the land; men whose power of threading their way among the perplexing intricacies of the forest had become a second nature, a kind of instinct, that was as sure of attaining its end as the instinct of the feathered tribes, which brings the swallow, after a long absence, with unerring certainty back to its ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... an interesting question. One may at least seek the answer, hoping thereby to solve one of the most interesting phases of this perplexing and most remarkable woman. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... his perplexing duties as editor, and the storm of personal attack which his "impressions" had evoked, Dr. Ryerson received a letter from his Mother. It must have been to him like "good news from a far country." Full of love and gratitude to God, it would be to him like waters ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... a nest of the Long-tailed Sibia from the top of a tall tree, situated at an elevation of about 4000 feet, in the neighbourhood of Rungbee, near Darjeeling. This was on the 17th June, and the nest contained five fresh eggs. The nest is as perplexing as are the eggs; for the nest is that of a Bulbul, the eggs those of a Shrike or Minivet. The nest is a deep compact cup, about 41/2 inches in diameter and 23/4 inches in depth. The egg-cavity is 3 ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... other was a fuller comment on the union of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, into whose name (or power) they were baptised. That the Apostles' Creed received additions after the Apostolic age, seems almost certain; not to mention the perplexing circumstance that so many of the Latin Fathers, who give almost the words of the Apostolic Creed, declare it forbidden absolutely to write or by any material form to transmit the 'Canon Fidei', or 'Symbolum' ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... suffered from living alone, suffered from it morally and physically. Accustomed for ten years past to feeling a woman near him, habituated to her presence every moment, to her embrace each successive day, he had need, an imperious and perplexing need of incessant contact with her and the regular touch of her lips. Since Madame Renardet's death, he had suffered continually without knowing why, he had suffered from not feeling her dress brush ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
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