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Cipher   Listen
verb
Cipher  v. t.  
1.
To write in occult characters. "His notes he ciphered with Greek characters."
2.
To get by ciphering; as, to cipher out the answer.
3.
To decipher. (Obs.)
4.
To designate by characters. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cipher" Quotes from Famous Books



... be tolerated; we are not to be persecuted. But they may take a fancy to pay a visit at Castlewood ere our return; and, as gentlemen of my cloth are suspected, they might choose to examine my papers, which concern nobody—at least not them." And to this day, whether the papers in cipher related to politics, or to the affairs of that mysterious society whereof Father Holt was a member, his pupil, Harry Esmond, remains in ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... tries to learn something, though little it be, Each day of her life,—something useful, you see: And in two or three years you will find she can spell, Read, cipher, and write, and ...
— The Nursery, March 1878, Vol. XXIII. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... sketch of the dead emperor in full profile, which was engraved in England and France, and considered a striking likeness. He was meanwhile no doubt perfecting the code of signals for the use of merchant vessels of all nations, including the cipher for secret correspondence, which was immediately adopted, and secured to its inventor the Cross of the Legion of Honour from Louis Philippe. It was not actually published in book form till 1837, from which date its ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... seeming endless strip of paper was rolled upon a reed; at the head of this there were two varieties of the Egyptian sphinx and a cabalistic star drawn in red ink,—and under these mysterious signs I wrote down, upon the full length of the paper and in a cipher of my own invention, daily events and reflections. A year later, however, because of the labor involved in transcribing the cryptographic characters I had chosen I discarded them and used the ordinary letters; but I continued my work with the ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti

... two-thirds to his physical temperament—the latter goading him into the accomplishment of what the former merely gave him the means of accomplishing.... At a very early age, Mr. Willis seems to have arrived at an understanding that, in a republic such as ours, the mere man of letters must ever be a cipher, and endeavored, accordingly, to unite the eclat of the litterateur with that of the man of fashion or of society. He "pushed himself," went much into the world, made friends with the gentler sex, "delivered" poetical addresses, wrote "scriptural" poems, traveled, sought the intimacy ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

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

... while in America is that I at all events connived at the commission of crimes under the direction of officers attached to the Embassy of which I was in charge, or of other German Secret Service agents. The evidence for this consists of certain cipher telegrams from the military authorities in Germany, addressed to the Embassy in Washington; these were decoded in England and said to contain instructions for outrages to be committed in Canadian territory. ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

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

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

... made about my registering a London telegraphic address, which I at the instant saw to be assumed for the purpose of delay and imposing on me a prearranged address, which, however, I accepted with apparent simplicity and good faith. My telegrams were of course to be in cipher, and this was so secure from all attempts at deciphering that I had no anxiety about the Irish chiefs solving it. I have heard in later times that they boasted of having copies of all my messages (which is probable) and having read them, but this was ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... insubstantiality; nothingness, nihility^; no degree, no part, no quantity, no thing. nothing, naught, nil, nullity, zero, cipher, no one, nobody; never a one, ne'er a one [Contr.]; no such thing, none in the world; nothing whatever, nothing at all, nothing on earth; not a particle &c (smallness) 32; all talk, moonshine, stuff and nonsense; matter of no importance, matter of no consequence. thing of naught, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

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

... is everywhere. Reliable dependants, old prospecting friends and clients, keep him informed by private cipher of every changing turn of the brilliant ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

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

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

... There have been hints, indiscreet allusions, that seem to indicate that the menace is a real one. The position is much as though they had got hold of an incriminating document, but couldn't read it because it was in cipher—but we know that the draft treaty wasn't in cipher—couldn't be in the nature of things—so that won't wash. But there's SOMETHING. Of course, Jane Finn may be dead for all we know—but I don't think so. The curious thing is that THEY'RE ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie

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

... strait he telegraphed to me, in Chicago, detailing his predicament, and asking instructions. He was much surprised at receiving an answer from Philadelphia, where I then was. I telegraphed him in cipher, congratulating him on his success so far, and told him not to mind the loss of his baggage; but to change his disguise, and rig himself up as a dashing Southerner. Accordingly, the first thing in the morning, he took a bath, had had his ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton

... Galin it is really amazing that such a bungling, unscientific way of expressing silence should have been tolerated so long. Compare these "pot-hooks and trammels," dotted and double-dotted, with Galin's symbol of silence, the cipher (0)! This is all, and yet it expresses every length of rest, as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... Hundred then become! In those remote realms they have already shrank aghast at the licentious tyrannies of our newspapers. England has freedom of the press, but she also has a law of libel which is not a cipher. Our law of libel is so horribly effete that the purest woman on our continent may to-morrow be vilely slandered, and yet obtain no adequate form of redress. This is what our extolled "liberty" has brought us—a despotism in its way ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... J. Priestman Atkinson—is better remembered by Punch readers, perhaps, by his pencil-name than by his common cipher. In 1864 he was in the General Manager's office at Derby, pleasingly varying his clerical duties by drawing caricatures for the amusement of his fellow-clerks, and designing cartoons for the local satirical ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

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

... upon the hills of Lake George, always in a world of fog which could not be discovered again, had often come to my mind during my journeys, like a self that I had shed and left behind. But Bellenger was a cipher. I forgot him even at the campfire. Now here was this poor crazy potter on my track with vindictive intelligence, the day I set foot in Paris. Time was not granted even to set the lodging in order. He must ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... Augusta. My brother seed him and said "Solomon, what you doin here?" and he said "I am er teaching school to my own color." Then he said they run him out of Virginia cause he was learnin his color and he kept going. Some white folks up North learned him to read and cipher. He used a black slate and he had a book he carried around to teach folks with. He was what they called a ginger cake color. They would whoop you if they seed you with books learnin. Mighty few books to get holt of fo the war. We mark on the ground. The passes ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

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

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

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

... him in the press (it was soon after the Parnell Commission, when Pigott, the informer, had committed suicide in Spain), Whistler one evening thrust this pleasant note into Mr. Menpes's letter-box, scrawled on a half-sheet of paper, with the well-known butterfly cipher attached: ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz

... have found added, by way of complement, "Experience is untranslatable. We write it in the cipher of our sufferings, and the key is hidden ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... the door, young Mr. Cipher walked into the dentist's office instead of the doctor's. "Doctor," he groaned, "I'm in bad shape. My head aches all the time, and I can't do anything with it." "Yes, yes," said Doctor Toothaker, cheerfully. "I see; big cavity in it; must be hollow; you'll ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various

... us Deceives our rash desire; It whispers of the glorious gods, And leaves us in the mire. We cannot learn the cipher That's writ upon our cell; Stars taunt us by a mystery ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

... hastened to the telegraph office, and a cipher message, containing in brief all he had thus far learned, was soon upon ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... cipher, and finally the abridged form zero. The earliest printed work in which is found this final form appears to be Calandri's arithmetic of 1491,[227] while in manuscript it appears at least as early as the middle of the fourteenth century.[228] It also appears in a work, ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith

... dozen echoed. "Nothing!" the head-clerk added brutally. "Nothing, and you add a cipher to the census of Paris! Nothing, and your lying pen led my lord to state the population to be five millions instead of five hundred thousand! Nothing, and you sent his Grace's Highness to the Council ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... of this policy Sir R. Buller sent Sir G. White, next morning, a cipher message, which, with the reply, will be recorded in another chapter.[246] He also directed the Natal line of communication staff to select, on the route Eshowe-Greytown-Estcourt, positions for camps, which the Natal army could occupy "until the weather is cooler." As regards the western theatre ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... that Lord Dunstable was just a cipher? Not at all. He's the real authority here, and when he puts his foot down Rachel always gives in. But of course she's stood in the ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward

... room," the detective hurried on, "and found a lot of his clothes and his stationery and his toilet articles marked with the same cipher. I knew my man had made a big mistake—the sort of mistake every criminal makes no matter how clever he is—and I had him. But that isn't, by any means, all. Don't look so distressed, Mr. Graham. There isn't the slightest chance for him. You see I repaired ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp

... was he to secure his priority if the discovery should turn out correct, and at the same time be enabled to perfect it at his leisure? He adopted the course, usual at the time, of making his first announcement in cipher, and accordingly, on March 5th, 1656, he published a tract, ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... campus-torturing nonentity. You will never grasp the splendid opportunities within your reach! You have no ambition but to strum that banjo, roar ridiculous songs, fuss up like a tailor's dummy, and pester your comrades, or drag them down to Jerry's for the eats! You won't be earnest, you Human Cipher, Before you entered Bannister, you formed your ideas and ideals of campus life from colored posters, moving-pictures, magazine stories, and stage dramas like 'Brown of Harvard"; you have surely lived up, or down, to ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... amulets, which were fastened around the arm, waist, or neck. These amulets were styled ligamenta, ligaturae, or phylacteria, by the writers of the early Middle Ages. They were usually fashioned as gold, silver, or glass pendants. Cipher-writing and runes were commonly inscribed upon them, often for healing, but contrariwise, to bewitch ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

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

... about the great new city, the city that seemed written in a cipher to which he could find no key. He even guardedly shadowed the resentful-eyed Advance reporters on their morning assignments, to get some chance inkling of the magic by which the trick was turned. He wandered about the river front and the ship wharves and ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... affairs of the Erie Auriferous Consolidated were presently calculated up by the labours of Skinyer and Beatem and the legal representatives of the Orphans and the Idiots and the Deaf-mutes they resolved themselves into the most beautiful and complete cipher conceivable. The salted gold about paid for the cost of the incorporation certificate: the development capital had disappeared, and those who lost most preferred to say the least about it; and as for Tomlinson, if one added up his gains ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... to prevent the expected rising in Louisiana. Wilkinson was then on the extreme western frontier. He received a cipher message from Burr, and after waiting for some hours to make up his mind, concluded to betray him, sent the letters to the government, went to New Orleans, and there arrested several of Burr's adherents, ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart

... Jarvis, who went from hence to Holland some time ago. About this date, I suppose him to be at Brussels, and that from thence he will inform me, whether, in his way to Madrid, he will pass by this place. If he does, this shall be accompanied by a cipher for our future use; if he does not, I must still await a safe opportunity. Mr. Jarvis is a citizen of the United States from New-York, a gentleman of intelligence, in the mercantile line, from whom you will be able to get considerable information of ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... for fear of spoiling his clothes, and to stay in the house for fear of injuring his complexion. By this kind of education, when Master Merton came over to England he could neither write nor read, nor cipher; he could use none of his limbs with ease, nor bear any degree of fatigue; but he was very proud, ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... land,—one of the poorest of the poor whites. The boy Andrew, born shortly after his father's death in 1767, was reared in poverty and almost without education, learning at school only to "read, write, and cipher;" nor did he have any marked desire for knowledge, and never could spell correctly. At the age of thirteen he was driven from his native village by its devastation at the hands of the English soldiers, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord

... posthumous publicity. Within an hour after the street duel the local representative of the Associated Press had his story on the wire, and at eight-thirty next morning T. Morgan Carey, in his club at Los Angeles, read the glad tidings. By nine o'clock a cipher telegram from Carey was being clicked off to his tool in the General Land Office at Washington, instructing him to expedite the listing of the applications of Bob McGraw's clients for lieu land in ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

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

... inferior to his wife in point of social evolution, for she had learned, from certain episodes which still filled her with mortification, that fibbing was bad form. To Mrs. Lloyd Avalons, her husband was a mere cipher. Placed before her, he added nothing to her value; placed after and in the background, he multiplied her importance tenfold. There were certain privileges accruing to a woman with a husband, certain immunities that followed in the train of matrimony. Mrs. Lloyd Avalons ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray

... Pierrette had a writing-master. She was taught to read, write, and cipher. Enormous injury was thus supposed to be done to the Rogrons' house. Ink-spots were found on the tables, on the furniture, on Pierrette's clothes; copy-books and pens were left about; sand was scattered everywhere, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... Angelique', and sent it to him almost before the ink was dry. The reply came by return of post: "It is almost, or quite, as good as can be. Send me another." So forthwith I sent him 'God's Garrison', and it was quickly followed by 'The Three Outlaws', 'The Tall Master', 'The Flood', 'The Cipher', 'A Prairie Vagabond', and several others. At length came 'The Stone', which brought a telegram of congratulation, and finally 'The Crimson Flag'. The acknowledgment of that was a postcard containing these ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

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

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

... story, unlike those of other stories and of other enterprises, is not half the battle; it is next to being quite unimportant, and, moreover, it is always easy. The unexplained corpse lies weltering in its gore in the first paragraph; the inexplicable cipher presents its enigma at the turning of the opening page. The writer who is secure in the knowledge that he has got a good thing coming, and has arranged the manner and details of its coming, cannot go far wrong with his exordium; he wants to get into action at once, and ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

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

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

... trust and confidence, was the man who stole it. For it he was offered a sum of money which would make him independent for life, and under the temptation he weakened and he stole it. But first he stole the key to the cipher, which would make it possible for anyone having both the key and the message to decode the message. Once this is done the damage is done, for the signature is ample proof of the validity of the document. That is the one thing above all others we ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... with the single strength that God has given him; he cannot reckon on any other aid than chance and opportunity. No one reaps, manufactures, fights, or thinks for him; he is nothing to any one. He is a unit multiplied by the cipher of his own single powers; while the civilized man is a unit multiplied by ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... seem—I believed in the thing. That is why I let them send out their independent expert, and held on when the stock began to drop. At the worst, I'd good reasons for believing Walmer would let me see the cipher report in time to sell. As it happened, he and the other traitor sold their own stock instead and that must have started the panic. Now they've got their report. There's no ore that will pay ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... mysteries are thus revealed which no political sagacity or critical acumen could have divined. He leans over the shoulder of Philip the Second at his writing-table, as the King spells patiently out, with cipher-key in hand, the most concealed hieroglyphics of Parma, or Guise, or Mendoza. He reads the secret thoughts of 'Fabius' [Philip II.] as that cunctative Roman scrawls his marginal apostilles on each dispatch; he pries into all the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... enemy shall not have in his possession at any time or place, or use or operate, any aircraft or wireless apparatus, or any form of signaling device, or any form of cipher code or any paper, document or book written or printed in cipher, or in which there may be ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson

... title of scribe was of no value in itself, and did not designate, as one might naturally think, a savant educated in a school of high culture, or a man of the world, versed in the sciences and the literature of his time; El-kab was a scribe who knew how to read, write, and cipher, was fairly proficient in wording the administrative formulas, and could easily apply the elementary rules of book-keeping. There was no public school in which the scribe could be prepared for his future career; but as soon ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... Memoirs to the effect that Wellington was relying on him for information of Napoleon's plans, and that he—Fouche—played the English commander false. "On the very day of Napoleon's departure from Paris," say the Memoirs, "I despatched Madame D——, furnished with notes in cipher, narrating the whole plan of the campaign. But at the same time I privately sent orders for such obstacles at the frontier, where she was to pass, that she could not reach Wellington's headquarters till after the event. This was the real explanation of the inactivity of the British generalissimo ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... he is a real man. He has wholeness, completeness, soundness, and roundness. He is an integer and never counts for less than one in any relation of life. He cannot be a mere cipher, for he is dynamic. He rings true at every impact of life, is free from dross and veneer, and is genuine through and through. There was arithmetic, back along the line somewhere, but it has been absorbed in the big quality which ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... much speed as we could make to Amida, a city celebrated at a later period for the disaster which befel it. And when our scouts had rejoined us there we found in one of their scabbards a scrap of parchment written in cipher, which they had been ordered to convey to us by Procopius, whom I have already spoken of as ambassador to the Persians with the Count Lucillianus; its terms were purposely obscure, lest if the bearers should be taken prisoners, and the sense of the writing ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... Margaret, you used to be as disgusted with him as I was—we agreed entirely in the view that Neumann was an idiot. "How can that mere cipher dare ..."—those were your very words, Margaret, "How can he dare to set limits to you—to strangle your next book before its birth?" That's what you said! And now you ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... less, Penfield kept his eyes and ears open, and before long he had another detail to report by cipher telegram to the general manager. Ford was evidently preparing for another absence, and from what the chief clerk could overhear, he was led to believe that the pseudo supervisor of track would be left in charge of ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... book of the Mystic astrologer Nostradamus and sees in it the sign, or cipher, of the universe. As he gazes a wondrous vision reveals itself: the mystic lines of the cipher seem to live and move and to form one living whole; and in spirit he beholds the Powers of Nature ascending ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

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

... former number of this Journal.[2] If a parcel of goods weighs 13 cwt., 7 stone, 8 lbs., and it be desired to know how many pounds it contains, it is unnecessary to change a single figure to shew that there are 1378; an additional cipher gives the number of ounces (137,80); another the number of drachms (137,800), instead of requiring the present tedious process of reduction. Again: if any commodity costs, for instance, 2 fl. 3 cents per lb., we know without taking up a pen that it is 2 cents 3 mil. per ounce; that it is L.2, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various

... position that I could not offer up my sense of honor to politics, that both of them, being professional soldiers and consequently without freedom of choice, need not take the same point of view as a responsible Foreign Minister. During our conversation I was informed that a telegram from Ems, in cipher, if I recollect rightly, of about 200 "groups," was being deciphered. When the copy was handed to me it showed that Abeken had drawn up and signed the telegram at his Majesty's command, and I read it out to my guests,[36] whose dejection was so great that they turned away from ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... oracle Is in the pine-tree's organ swell? What may the wind's low burden be? The meaning of the moaning sea? The hieroglyphics of the stars? Or clouded sunset's crimson bars? I vainly ask, for mocks my skill The trick of Nature's cipher still. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... record of the return journey, on a small piece of paper that had remained in my pocket when I had been searched by the Tibetans. My hands being supple, I was able to draw my right hand out of its cuff. Using as a pen a small piece of bone I had picked up, and my blood as ink, I drew brief cipher notes and a rough map of the ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor

... school children is our best index to community health, who is to read the index? Unless the story is told in a language that does not require a secret code or cipher, unless some one besides the physician can read it, we shall be a very long time learning the health needs of even our largest cities, and until doomsday learning the health needs of small towns and rural districts. Fortunately the more important ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

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

... military chieftain for the maintenance of that liberty, the last hope of man. Ten years later he uttered the same opinion in a conversation with Miss Martineau, and he expressed a preference for an annual president, a cipher, so that all would be done by the ministry. But in the impossibility of this plan, he would have preferred a four years' term without renewal or an extension of six years; an idea adopted by Davis in his plan of disintegration ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... under his eyes or lines in his cheek, but in his manner there was no youth whatever. He was tall, commanding, grave, quiet, cold, and even at that age almost majestic. His first sentence, slow and firm, removed the paternal notion that a cipher or a juvenile ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... were angry that his Majesty should dare to do anything without their concurrence, and because their own influence in the states would be diminished. It was their object, he said, to keep the King "in tutelage"—to make him a "shadow and a cipher," while they should themselves exercise all authority in the provinces. It is impossible to exaggerate the effect of such suggestions upon the dull and gloomy mind to which they were addressed. It is easy, however, to see that a minister with such views was likely to be as congenial ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

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

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

... little country school, where he learned to read, write, and cipher. By the time he was twelve, he could write a clear, bold hand. In one of his writing-books he copied many good rules or sayings. ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery

... teleprinted us back a lot of material on them that looks like the Newgate Calendar. We turned the letters themselves over to Doc Petrie, the Ulleran philology sharp, who is a pretty fair cryptanalyst. He couldn't find any indications of cipher, but there was a lot of gossip about Keeluk's friends and parishioners which might have arbitrary code-meanings. I'm going to explain the situation to Miss Quinton, and advise her to have nothing to do with any of the people Keeluk gave ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... was those letters—that interlaced, old-fashioned cipher. That Z. H. that she knew of old stood for Zachary Hepburn, Philip's father. She knew how Philip valued this watch. She remembered having seen it in his hands the very day before his disappearance, when he was looking at the time in his annoyance at Sylvia's ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell

... known what she was doing in school. She had always thought she was there to pass from one grade to another, and she was ever so startled to get a little glimpse of the fact that she was there to learn how to read and write and cipher and generally use her mind, so she could take care of herself when she came to be grown up. Of course, she didn't really know that till she did come to be grown up, but she had her first dim notion of it in that moment, and it made her feel ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield

... country is impoverished; they rejoice, when obstinacy or ambition adds another year to slaughter and devastation; and laugh, from their desks, at bravery and science, while they are adding figure to figure, and cipher to cipher, hoping for a new contract from a new armament, and computing the profits of a ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... a telegram in cipher from our chief engineer on the territory of the option: "Young Granton has somehow given us the slip and gone home. We suspect he knows all. But we have not divulged the secret ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... knew the gentleman," enthusiastically writes Walsingham (August 12th, 1571) to the Earl of Leicester. "For courage abroad and counsell at home they give him here the reputation to be another [name in cipher]. He is in speech eloquent and pithy; but which is chiefest, he is in religion, as religious in life as he is sincere in profession. I hope God hath raised him up in these days, to serve for an instrument for the advancement of His glory." Digges, 128. ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... saying, "I can arrange the trip without the least difficulty, and I assure you there will be no discomfort. I am in constant cipher communication with my father, and he will be delighted to afford you every courtesy. I can fix it up by ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... Full well the busy whisper circling round, Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd: Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught, The love he bore to learning was in fault; The village all declared how much he knew, 'Twas certain he could write and cipher too; Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, And e'en the story ran that he could gauge: In arguing, too, the parson own'd his skill, For, e'en though vanquished, he could argue still; While words of learned ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... matched Injun cunnin' agin the 'white laws' en got ostracized. He raised his boys by the same standards. This Hulls is jist dumb en ornery but Archie was smart. He l'arned to read, en when Maizie came, he l'arned to write en cipher after he was a grown man. If Archie got the express company's money—en hit sorta looks like he did—he was smart enough to 'duck out' with hit. Maizie knows that Archie ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... Eminent Victorians is pleased to describe "poor Mr. Russell" as little better than a fly buzzing in Manning's "spider's web of delicate and clinging diplomacy." It is not in the memory of those who were behind the scenes that Odo Russell was such a cipher. Though suave in address, he was by no means deficient in decision or force of character, as was evidenced when, some months later, he explained to Mr. Gladstone his reasons for stating to Bismarck, without instructions from the government, that the Black ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... is of crucial importance to Mrs. Gallup and the believers in the cipher wherein Bacon maintains that he is the legal son of a wedding between Dudley and the Queen. Was there such a marriage or even betrothal? Froude cautiously says that this was averted 'SEEMINGLY on Lord Robert's authority;' the Baron says ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang

... Miss Chandore promised us that we should know the truth. M. de Boiscoran and she have formerly corresponded with each other in cipher." ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... Purling in her heart rather liked the notion; it gave her a chance of posing like a queen in search of a consort, and years of independence had made her very queenlike and despotic indeed. So much so, that the only man to suit her must be a mere cipher without a will of his own; and he was difficult to find. Men of the kind are not plentiful unless they plainly perceive substantial advantage from assuming the part. But few guessed what kind of man would exactly suit Isabel Purling, so ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... furnished all the proofs of the Nabob's deposition, but had delicately avoided to declare him expressly deposed. The judges drew, however, this indelicate conclusion; the conclusion they drew was founded upon the premises; it was very just and logical; for they declared that he was a mere cipher. They commended Mr. Hastings's delicacy, though they did not imitate it; but they pronounced sentence of deposition upon the said Nabob, and they declared that any letter or paper that was produced from him could not be considered as an act of government. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke

... uncultivated, Mr. Hunt was a man of warm, tender feelings, and rare nobility of soul. He regretted the absence of early advantages which poverty had denied him; and in teaching Edna to read and to write, and to cipher, he never failed to impress upon her the vast superiority which a thorough education confers. Whether his exhortations first kindled her ambition, or whether her aspiration for knowledge was spontaneous and irrepressible, he knew not; but ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

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

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

... had broken it up into the rays of different color that together make the white light we see. Any boy can do it with a prism, and in the band or spectrum of red, yellow, green, blue, and violet that then appears, he has before him the cipher that holds the key to the secrets of the universe if we but knew how to read it aright; for the sunlight is the physical source of all life and of all power. The different colors represent rays with different wave-lengths; that ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... deciphered by the art of Philips, his clerk; and copies taken of them. Walsingham employed another artifice, in order to obtain full insight into the plot: he subjoined to a letter of Mary's a postscript in the same cipher; in which he made her desire Babington to inform her of the names of the conspirators. The indiscretion of Babington furnished Walsingham with still another means of detection, as well as of defence. That ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... as one may call the kind I am speaking of. Think of them muzzling about in the rily water, free as air; then turn to your learned pig, chained to a master by the forced action of its own intellect—poor thing! obliged to play cards with its fore-foot, teach geography, and cipher out numbers like a schoolmaster—and then say if ignorance isn't bliss! Look in the little black eyes of the animal, and see the sad and hungry look that knowledge has ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... Antonovsky, of the old Russian Military Academy, who also assisted in the drafting of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with the Germans, was a participant in the scheme, and was within an ace of becoming the admiral's Chief of Staff. Everything was working splendidly, when the cipher message from Renoff opened the ball. Beloff was sent to the east, and Antonovsky to the south, and the Absolutists ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward

... had once come to the office a blind man with a knotted twig, and a piece of string which he wound round the twig according to some cipher of his own. He could, after the lapse of days or hours, repeat the sentence which he had reeled up. He had reduced the alphabet to eleven primitive sounds, and tried to teach me his method, but ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various

... since completely altered the face of the earlier educational problem. What was simple once has since become complex, and the complexity has increased with time. Once the ability to read and write and cipher distinguished the educated man from the uneducated; to-day the man or woman who knows only these simple arts is an uneducated person, hardly fit to cope with the struggle for existence in a modern world, and certainly not fitted to participate in the complex political and industrial ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... Venetia, who could not bear to hear herself praised by him on such a day, the last day, burst into tears. Her mother called her to her side and consoled her, and Plantagenet jumped up and wiped her eyes with one of those very pocket-handkerchiefs on which she had embroidered his cipher and coronet with her own beautiful hair. Towards evening Plantagenet began to experience the reaction of his artificial spirits. The Doctor had fallen into a gentle slumber, Lady Annabel had quitted the room, Venetia sat with her hand in Plantagenet's ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

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

... too hurried to look at that. 'Miss Childe's compliments, and Nobby will be round this evening.'" Hardly I suppressed an exclamation. "We're all mad to know what it means. Berry scents an intrigue and says it's a cipher." ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... that they could not read, but they could write in a truly fluent and unconventional style; they could not commit prosaical facts to memory, but they could sing songs containing any number of irrelevant stanzas. They could not "cipher," but they had witty and salient answers ready for any emergency. There seemed to be no particular distinction among them in regard to the degree of literary attainment, so I arranged them in classes, with an eye mainly to the novel and ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... Bowen was born in New Orleans. His father, Edward Bowen, went to New Orleans from Washington, D. C. He was a free man, a boss carpenter and builder by trade, and able to read, write and cipher. He was highly esteemed, was prosperous in business, accumulated some money and lived in comfort. Dr. Bowen's mother, Rose Bowen, he says, was the grand-daughter of an African Princess of the Jolloffer tribe, on the west coast of Africa. When he was three years ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... one of us, chosen by lot, shall go to Paris and keep the rest informed, with the cipher agreed upon, of all that ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... and leave religious ones to the persons who set up the schools, whoever these might be. It seems to me monstrous that the State should be prevented taking any efficient measures for teaching Roman Catholic children to read, write and cipher, merely because they believe in the Pope, and the Pope is an impostor,—which I candidly confess he is! There is no question which I can so ill endure to see made a party one as that of Education."—The following is of ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... away official business any, but he isn't in sympathy with Hall or Wilson. One of them sent a wire to Riverton an hour since. It was to some one the operator never heard of before, evidently a friend of theirs. It mentioned 999, your name, and Fogg. The rest of it was in cipher." ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... ter read de Bible. Dey wuz a free nigger boy in de settlement w'at wuz monst'us smart, en could write en cipher, en wuz alluz readin' books er papers. En Dave had hi'ed dis free boy fer ter l'arn 'im how ter read. Hit wuz 'g'in de law, but co'se none er de niggers didn' say nuffin ter de w'ite folks 'bout it. Howsomedever, one day ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

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

... followed one another in rapid succession. His articles on autography and cryptology attracted widespread attention. In the former he attempted to illustrate character by the handwriting; and in the latter he maintained that human ingenuity cannot invent a cipher that human ingenuity cannot resolve. In the course of a few months the circulation of the magazine (if its own statements may be trusted) increased from eight thousand to forty thousand—a remarkable circulation ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter

... of a widow, born under the roof of a Westmoreland farmer; almost from infancy his lot had been the lot of an orphan. No academy had welcomed him to its shade, no college crowned him with its honors; to read, to write, to cipher, these had been his degrees in knowledge. Shakespeare learned little more than reading and writing at school, but by self-culture he made himself the great master among literary men. Burns, too, enjoyed few advantages ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... put down 20s. upon a card when only eight are in hand; the last card was a cipher, so there were four places to lose, and only three to win, the odds against being as 4 to 3. If 10 cards only were in, then it was 5 to 4 against the player; in the former case it was the seventh part of the ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... made it a rule to read everything that has been written respecting Napoleon, and I have had to decipher many of his autograph documents, though no longer so familiar with his scrawl as formerly. I say decipher, because a real cipher might often be much more readily understood than the handwriting of Napoleon. My own notes, too, which were often very hastily made, in the hand I wrote in my youth, have sometimes also ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... by an' by Tom Quartz begin to git sort of reconciled a little, though he never could altogether understand that eternal sinkin' of a shaft an' never pannin' out anything. At last he got to comin' down in the shaft, hisself, to try to cipher it out. An' when he'd git the blues, 'n' feel kind o' scruffy, 'n' aggravated 'n' disgusted—knowin' as he did, that the bills was runnin' up all the time an' we warn't makin' a cent—he would curl up on a gunny-sack in the corner an' go to sleep. Well, one ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various

... when his work was done, he would bend his huge six-foot-four frame close down by the firelight to write and cipher ON THE BACK ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane

... on each tag in Barbara's private cipher, understood only by Aunt Miriam. The highest was the one hoped for, the next the probable one, and the lowest one was to be taken only at ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed

... Code, Cipher. A code of arbitrary words to designate prearranged or predetermined words, figures or sentences. The systems used in commerce have single words to represent whole sentences or a number of words of a sentence. This not only ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... and stopped the sale. Among his books were twenty-one volumes of manuscript correspondence between the governments of Rome and Venice, from the time of Pope Paul Caraffa downwards. Monsignor Molsa, a great friend of the late professor, knowing of these volumes, which were in cipher, with their interpretations, hastened to tell Cardinal Antonelli, who dispatched orders just in time to save the secrets of the state from further exposure. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems, And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of the farther systems: Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding, Outward, outward, and forever outward: My sun has his sun, and around him obediently wheels; He ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... letters from on horseback, and to give directions to two who took notes at the same time, or, as Oppius says, to more. And it is thought that he was the first who contrived means for communicating with friends by cipher, when either press of business, or the large extent of the city, left him no time for a personal conference about matters that required dispatch. How little nice he was in his diet, may be seen in the following instance. When ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

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

... be imagined, and, no doubt, many young gentlemen, after a preliminary training at a colonial academy, were sent home to enter some of the English public schools or universities. From the higher ranks downwards education varied till it reached the 'masses,' with whom its index was a cipher. There is no reason to suppose, however, that the population of Canada, taken as a whole, was less cultivated during the last forty years of the eighteenth century than that of any European nation during the same period. From the consideration of education, one naturally passes ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... woman like rank poison," she said while wading through the stubble behind uncle Nat's barn on her way home, "but her name is Farnham, and it'd be mean as a nigger and meaner too for me to say a word about that document; let Judge Sharp cipher out his own sums if he wants to, I ain't a-going to ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... verbal artifice of 'The Secret in Words', although a mere trifle if compared to the marvellous intricacy of a similar cipher in Tirso's 'Amar por Arte Mayor', from which Calderon's play was taken—loses sadly in a translation; yet the piece, even with this ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... powerless to carry on for herself, she may originate through Persia. And in that we see the remarkable case realized—that two ciphers may politically form an affirmative power of great strength by combining: Russia, though a giant otherwise, is a cipher as to India by situation—viz. by distance, and the deserts along the line of this distance. Persia, though not so ill situated, is a cipher by her crazy condition as to population and aggressive resources. But this will not hinder each power, separately weak ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

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

... things. As for reading, it's well enough for them that has nothing to do, and writing is plaguy apt to bring a man to states-prison, particularly if he writes his name so like another man as to have it mistaken for his'n. Cyphering is the thing—if a man knows how to cipher, he is sure to grow rich. We are a 'calculating' people, we ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... place they wanted a lot of Europeans who hold berths to be dismissed, and the government to be entirely in the hands of natives. It is a sort of national movement, with the army at the head of it; and the viceroy, although still nominally the ruler of Egypt, is in fact little more than a cipher in the hands of Arabi and the colonels. They say the French are at the bottom of it, and it is likely enough. They have always been jealous of our influence in Egypt. However, I do not suppose we shall interfere ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty

... present rights of man cannot be decided by reason alone, since they are founded on laws and customs long established. But Mary asks, How far back are we to go to discover their first foundation? Is it in England to the reign of Richard II., whose incapacity rendered him a mere cipher in the hands of the Barons; or to that of Edward III., whose need for money forced him to concede certain privileges to the commons? Is social slavery to be encouraged because it was established in semi-barbarous days? ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... curve of a woman's hair behind her ears. For reports he wrote verses in modern Greek, and through one of those inadvertences which make tragedy, the Minister of War down in troubled Bulgaria once received between the pages of a report in cipher on the fortifications of the Danube a verse in fervid hexameter that made even ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... lived amongst the volatile Latins on the other side of the Pacific. Come to think of it the one man I had seen closely had been a dark type. It was just barely possible that Bryce had somehow tangled himself in something of the kind. But then that cipher business—I was fully convinced by now that it was some original kind of cryptogram—rather pointed the other way. One of the things I had noticed had been a L sign, and anything dealing with any of the Latin Republics would almost assuredly have been written with a $ sign. ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh

... I have made it quite plain to you that we're down and out. I have about as much weight in financial circles as a second-story man, and am regarded in much the same light, while you are as important as a cipher ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... assent to such demands, which seemed to reduce him to a cipher, conferring upon him only the shadow of a crown. Rhodolph, however, who was eager to make any concessions, had his agents busy through the diet, with assurances that the emperor would grant all these concessions. But Rhodolph had fallen too low to rise again. ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... of pictures were lying about in disorder: with them were mingled furniture, and books with the cipher of the former owner, who never was moved by any laudable desire to glance into them. Chinese vases, marble slabs for tables, old and new furniture with curving lines, with griffins, sphinxes, and lions' paws, gilded and ungilded, chandeliers, sconces, all were heaped ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... of Darby—of old Darby, as he had begun to be called—cut off Little Darby from his "schoolin'", in the middle of his third year, and before he had learned more than to read and cipher a little and to write in a scrawly fashion; for he had been rather irregular in his attendance at all times. He now stopped altogether, giving the teacher as his reason, with characteristic ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page

... than his wont. Some one has been on the trail. He asks no questions. His cipher-book is at San Francisco. Who is on the track? He cannot divine. The man applying was a stranger who attracted no attention. The Judge telegraphs to the mine for his foreman to come to San Francisco. He returns to his house on the hill. From his private safe he extracts the last ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... object of endeavoring to disprove and discredit these stories that the emperor caused a telegram, to be sent to the czar from Hubertusstock, not written, as usual, in cipher, but in ordinary language. There is an old French proverb according to which "he who seeks to prove too much, proves nothing," and thus it happened that this open telegram which reached the czar at Chalons, and which was published in the German newspapers, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

... situation, he said, rendered it incumbent on us to express an opinion, at least, in favour of the German people, or we must be thought to take part with their rulers. He could not recommend a foolish and hasty interference with foreign states, yet he could not consent that England should be a cipher in the political combinations of Europe, looking with indifference on the continent, as though no changes could affect her interests. And if there was any one thing more than another which immediately ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... there, standing at the kerb, I saw a car that caused my heart to bound with delight—a magnificent six-cylinder forty horse-power "Napier," of the very latest model. The car was open, with side entrance, a dark green body with coronet and cipher on the panels, upholstered in red, with glass removable screen to the splashboard—a splendid, workmanlike car just suitable for long tours and fast runs. Of all the cars and of all the makes, that was the only one which it ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux

... greater part of France, all the children above six years of age are daily acquiring useful knowledge and good habits under the influence of moral, religious, and learned teachers. ALL the youth of the greater part of these countries, below the age of twenty-one years, can read, write, and cipher, and know the Bible History, and the history of their own country. No children are left idle and dirty in the streets of the towns—there is no class of children to be compared in any respect to the children who frequent our "ragged schools"—all the children, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... Banks land the scheme? I know him. You put him on that German cipher-code job down Honolulu way, an' it cost you about a thousand before you could pull out. We'll give ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris



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