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adjective
Cipher  adj.  Of the nature of a cipher; of no weight or influence. "Twelve cipher bishops."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cipher" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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

... 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 ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... France. A few miles beyond Bayonne they met a messenger from the Earl of Bristol, ambassador at Madrid, bearing despatches to England. They stopped him, opened his papers, and sought to read them, but found the bulk of them written in a cipher beyond their powers to solve. Baffled in this, they bade Gresley, the messenger, to return with them as far as Irun, as they wished him to bear to the king a letter written on ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... would your lordship 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 ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

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

... recovery of that liberty of which she had been cruelly and unjustly deprived. With great effrontery she persisted in denying that she had ever entertained with Babington any correspondence whatever; and she urged that his pretending to receive, or having in fact received, letters written in her cipher, was no conclusive proof against her; since it was the same which she used in her French correspondence, and might have fallen into other hands. But finding herself hard pressed by evidence on this part of the subject, she afterwards hazarded a rash ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... understand that this rider was to employ also the arm of civil power to aid him in the deadly work. How strikingly this represents the historical facts of the case! In all truly Roman Catholic countries the civil governments were only a cipher or tool in the hands of the church, and the ecclesiastics were the real rulers of the kingdom. But whenever any dark work of persecution was to be performed, the wild beast was let loose to accomplish the result. When charged, however, with the bloody work, the Catholics always ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

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

... fellow—intelligent, and never too familiar, but just familiar enough. Women liked him; he was so respectful, almost reverent, in his attitude toward them. It took a better man to be a salesman then than now. Every article was marked in cipher, with two prices. One figure represented what the thing cost and the other was the selling-price. You secured the selling-price, if you could, and if you couldn't, you took what you could get, right down to the cost figure. The motto was, never let a customer go without selling him something. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... Lee requests that all dispatches passing between his headquarters and the War Department be in cipher. He says everything of importance communicated, he has observed, soon becomes the topic of public conversation; and thence is soon ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

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

... shelter, Nikolai, with a certain inborn instinct, had 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 the ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie

... shameful history of the "Tilden barrel" and the "Cipher Dispatches" is too fresh in the public mind ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

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

... 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 ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell

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

... orders from civilians, and he depends on his own sources for information. I am here because he sent me to 'Go, look, see,' and report. I have been wiring him ever since you started from the coast, and since you became president. Your censor has very kindly allowed me to use our cipher." ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... Shall I, true puppet-like, be mock'd with state, Have nothing but the name of being great; Attend at councils which I must not weigh; Do what they bid, and what they dictate, say; Enrobed, and hoisted up into my chair, Only to be a royal cipher there? 260 Perish the thought—'tis treason to my throne— And who but thinks it, could his thoughts be known Insults me more than he, who, leagued with Hell, Shall rise in arms, and 'gainst my crown rebel. The wicked ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... most of the time it was the chiefs of the trust. Now for instance, they were having winter racing in New Orleans and a syndicate was laying out each day's program in advance, and its agents in all the Northern cities were "milking" the poolrooms. The word came by long-distance telephone in a cipher code, just a little while before each race; and any man who could get the secret had as good as a fortune. If Jurgis did not believe it, he could try it, said the little Jew—let them meet at a certain house on the morrow ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... 4) I am the guilty cause. I did the deed, Thy murderer. Yea, I guilty plead. My henchmen, lead me hence, away, away, A cipher, less than ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

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

... a gay and genuine friendship, and as Sandy and I made our salutations to her I saw Nancy at some little distance from us, literally surrounded by fatuous cipher-faced youths, who stood in some awe before her misty beauty and reputed power. There was pride in me that the girl was mine, a pride which Sandy Carmichael shared with me, and as Hugh Pitcairn crossed the long room to salute her gravely but with marked respect, I saw ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane

... 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

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

... flowery letters to distinguished women are preserved. On one occasion he wrote to a certain countess, informing her that he was composing a secret cipher for a key to their correspondence, and added: "I beseech you to accept the within lock (of hair). I am sorry that it is now eighteen inches shorter than it ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood

... principle had these letters been arranged? He who held the paper was alone able to tell. With such cipher language it is as with the locks of some of our iron safes—in either case the protection is the same. The combinations which they lead to can be counted by millions, and no calculator's life would suffice to express them. Some particular "word" has to be ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... darning stockings, and she threaded her needle and snipped off the yarn before she answered, "No, thank you, Becky. Mother couldn't do without me, and I hate going to school. I can read and write and cipher as well as anybody now, and that's enough for me. I'd die rather than teach school for a living. The winter'll go fast, for Will Melville is going to lend me his mother's sewing machine, and I'm going to make white petticoats out of the piece of muslin aunt Jane sent, and have 'em just ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... or ciphers: for instance, the public accounts being kept in two columns, dollars, and cents; suppose in adding up the latter, you find they amount to 27621, you have only to cut off the two right hand figures, and their value stands thus; 276 dollars, 21 cents. To reduce eagles to dollars, add a cipher, and vice versa. To reduce half, and quarter eagles to dollars, you have only to divide by 2 or 4 previous to ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest

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

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

... missionaries came, professing a knowledge of the truth, he readily received them; attended their worship, acquired the accomplishment of public prayer, and made himself a student at their feet. It is thus—it is by the cultivation of similar passing chances—that he has learned to read, to write, to cipher, and to speak his queer, personal English, so different from ordinary "Beach de Mar," so much more obscure, expressive, and condensed. His education attended to, he found time to become critical of the new inmates. Like Nakaeia of Makin, he is an admirer of silence in the island; broods over ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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 ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... "As a matter of fact—strange as it may 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

... When the cook went out that day, she somehow had by mistake placed in her basket a dozen of table-knives and a plated egg-stand. When the lady's-maid took a walk in the course of the afternoon, she found she had occasion for eight cambric pocket-handkerchiefs, (marked with her mistress's cipher), half-a-dozen pair of shoes, gloves, long and short, some silk stockings, and a gold-headed scent-bottle. "Both the new cashmeres is gone," said she, "and there's nothing left in Mrs. Walker's trinket-box but a ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... protector, as he has brought upon me all my distresses, adds to my apprehensions; when I have not even a servant on whose fidelity I can rely, or to whom I can break my griefs as they arise; and when his bountiful temper and gay heart attach every one to him; and I am but a cipher, to give him significance, and myself pain!—These griefs, therefore, do what I can, will sometimes burst into tears; and these mingling with my ink, will blot my paper. And I know you will not grudge me the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... Minister of the Interior, and the third to the Minister of Finance, giving detailed statistics concerning the age, occupation, and progress of her proteges. "How many know how to read? How many to read and write? How many to read, write, and cipher? What progress has been made since the last report?" These are some of the questions she has to answer; and, meanwhile, if a crowd of little children come in, she turns from her writing and calculations and plays with them as if she had nothing else ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft

... table around the well, and at a level with the compass, was marked out into alternate spaces of red and black, bearing—one on each space—the figures from 1 to 36, and ending in 0, so that in all there were thirty-seven spaces, the one bearing the cipher being opposite to the strange woman who presided. As the game began again the players staked their money on one or another of these spaces. I also gathered that they could stake on either black or red, ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... lawyer, so ter speak, bin puzzlin' my head over that alleged crime f'r days on end, an' never c'd make top nor tail of it; an' you, settin' idle at this yer camp fire, have solved it as easy an' as slick 's you might cipher out a sum in ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton

... same evening came 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 ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... have done her some good, but Mr. Bond thought "she knew enough already. She could read, write, and cipher, and didn't she know Pilgrim's Progress from beginning to end; that was all he had ever learned, and hadn't he gone through life well enough ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

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

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

... opened by the censor, but who knows if there isn't a secret cipher under the guise of an ordinary letter? They may have all kinds of treasonable secrets in them. Norty might get information and send it to those friends in foreign countries, and they would telegraph it in code through a ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... his cotton-land? Let the soldier examine coolly, if he can, the next bullet-wound in his leg. He will perceive a puncture which will probably, when traced around the edge and carefully copied, present that circular form generally assigned to a—cipher. This represents, we believe, with tolerable accuracy, what the anti-actionists and reactionists propose to give the soldier as a recompense for that leg. For so truly as we live, so true is it that there is not one anti-Emancipationist ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

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

... John Wesley Edward 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. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

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

... army made all pleadings vain. In fact, as I ascertained by the following cablegram which came into my hands, Napoleon's instructions for the French evacuation were in Mexico at the very time of this pathetic scene between him and Carlotta. The despatch was in cipher when I received it, but was translated by the telegraph operator at my headquarters, who long before had mastered the key of ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan

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

... was removed, Bovary did not rise, nor did Emma; and as she looked at him, the monotony of the spectacle drove little by little all pity from her heart. He seemed to her paltry, weak, a cipher—in a word, a poor thing in every way. How to get rid of him? What an interminable evening! Something stupefying like the ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

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

... was at Utrecht, listening to the "solemn-speeches" of the militia-captains and exchanging friendly expressions at stately banquets with Moeurs, he suddenly received a letter in cipher from her Majesty. Not having the key, he sent to Wilkes at the Hague. Wilkes was very ill; but the despatch was marked pressing and immediate, so he got out of bed and made the journey to Utrecht. The letter, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Duke of Bedford's ally, Lord Sandwich. General Conway was appointed lieutenant-general of the ordnance; and the ministry, thus reconstructed, took the name of the Duke of Grafton's administration. As for the Earl of Chatham he was still a cipher, keeping aloof at Bath, or at Burton Pynsent, or at Hayes in Kent, where he would neither see nor speak to anybody. But he still retained the privy seal, and still retained the emoluments of office, and the king was afraid ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... be of some importance, or it would not have been kept where it was, and it would not have been written in cipher." ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... began his school days at about the age of seven. He learned to read, to write with a stylus on wax tablets, and to cipher by means of the reckoning board, or abacus. He received a little instruction in singing and memorized all sorts of proverbs and maxims, besides the laws of the Twelve Tables. [5] His studying went ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... and curiously on the probable sort of process that was involved in turning the expressions of one language into those of another. He concluded that a grammar of the required tongue would contain, primarily, a rule, prescription, or clue of the nature of a secret cipher, which, once known, would enable him, by merely applying it, to change at will all words of his own speech into those of the foreign one. His childish idea was, in fact, a pushing to the extremity of mathematical ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... shown good sense in the choice which they made of their governors. Baker, indeed, who was a military man, was a mere cipher in the matter. Walker was, in reality, the sole governor. He was a man of energy and judgment, as well as enthusiastic and fanatical, and he at once gave evidence of his fitness for the post, and set himself diligently to work to establish order in ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty

... gratefully of your hospitality in Brazil, has sent me a cable on behalf of your brother—Mr. Nicholas Delora. It seems that you have not kept him acquainted with your doings here, and that you have failed to make use of a certain cipher that was agreed upon. He is, therefore, exceedingly anxious to know of your doings, and has begged me to see you at once and report. Will you, for that purpose, be good enough to grant ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... to earn his daily bread. But he was not only endowed with a literary instinct, he had, too, that obstinate perseverance which would, as one of his friends said of him, "have enabled him to learn to read by looking at the signs in the streets, and to cipher by glancing at the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... been blown into the air the preceding May. The Moor, for this lie, obtained the command of four companies of the people. The Fisherman put to death many poor musicians merely because they had been in the service of Maddaloni. The Duke's correspondence was intercepted, but as it was written in cipher it only increased the suspicion. The new master of Naples repaired himself to the palace of Carafa, and wanted to dine there; but he changed his mind, and had a dinner served up with great pomp at ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... straggler, supposed to understand Latin, happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write, and cipher, to the rule of three; but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education I have picked up from time to time under the ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... 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. Sarti died ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... Emily?" said Agnes, her face brightening; "how happy I shall be! aunty has taught Effie and Grace, and they have studied Geography and History, and they can cipher, and I don't know anything at all about those things; why, even little Harry knows more ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely

... Their Majesties were adored. Marie Antoinette, with all her beauty and amiableness, was a mere cipher in the eyes of France previous to her becoming the mother of an heir to the Crown; but her popularity now arose to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

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

... abstruse Institution.—"JARNI-BLEU!" snuffles the Feldzeugmeister to himself. But "SI DEUS EST NOBISCUM," as Grumkow exclaims once to his beautiful Reichenbach, or NOSTI as he calls him in their slang or cipher language, "If God is with us, who can prevail against us?" For the Grumkow can quote Scripture; nay solaces himself with it, which is a feat beyond what the Devil is ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... and I was alone for the first moment since the news had come from the City Bank. I had not then stopped to analyze its character, for there had been only time to announce it. Now, however, I sat down at my desk and with a pencil and a piece of paper began to cipher out what the "412 millions" meant. As I figured, cold sweat began to gather on my forehead, and the further I figured the colder the sweat, until at last in an agony of perplexity I again called up Mr. Rogers. My agitation must have betrayed itself in my voice, though I tried to assume ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... going home to learn how to make apple dumplings and pumpkin pies. In spite of mother, the house is bought, and now she is gone all day, deciding how it shall be furnished, always leaving Katy out of the question, as if she were a cipher, and only consulting Wilford's choice. They will be happier alone, I know. Mrs. General Reynolds says that it is the way for young people to live; that her son's wife shall never come home to her, for of ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... is an article, put a cipher in the place, and 'carry' the tens. If there is no figure to 'carry' ...
— The Earliest Arithmetics in English • Anonymous

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

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

... and puzzled me long, You've asked me to cipher and spell, You've called me a dunce if I answered wrong, Or a dolt if I failed to tell Just when to say lie and when to say lay, Or what nine sevens may make, Or the longitude of Kamschatka Bay, Or the I-forget-what's-its-name ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... up with old Mehitable," as Ellen used to say; and after the usual heated argument he had set about it out in the kitchen in a particularly wrathy mood. It was snowing outside. The old Squire had driven to the village; and, after doing the barn chores, Addison had retired to the sitting-room to cipher out two or three hard sums in complex fractions while I had seized the opportunity to read a book of Indian stories that Tom Edwards had lent me. After starting the churning, grandmother Ruth, assisted by the girls, was putting in order the ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... maid, with her quaint, wistful touch of womanhood, sit beside Dic on the ciphering log inside the fireplace, listening to him read from one of Billy Little's books, watching him trace continents, rivers, and mountains on a map, or helping him to cipher a complicated problem in arithmetic. The girl by no means understood all that Dic read, but she tried, and even though she failed, she would clasp her hands and say, "Isn't it grand, Dic?" And it was grand to ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... how 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 did n' say nuffin ter de w'ite folks 'bout it. Howsomedever, one day Mars Walker—he wuz de oberseah—foun' ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt

... accomplishments in the field of labor, Mr. Thompson looked out of his cabin door to where he could see dimly through the trees the uncompleted bulk of his church—and he set down a mental cipher against that account. It was waste effort. He felt in his heart that he would never finish it. What was ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

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

... we went out into Piccadilly together, and 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 was my ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux

... confessed, bald as it is, and worse than bald. It was the fashion of the day: the Reds took scalps and the Whites took scalps. It were, then, hardly fair in us to find fault with the Blacks for doing the same, especially as they could neither read nor write nor cipher, nor had been taught the absolute truths of any creed whence, as a natural consequence, proceeds that profound fixedness of belief which needs must make itself manifest in the persistent exemplification of every Christian virtue. Had they enjoyed these inestimable advantages, the Blacks—depend ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... nonsense; the cosmopolite is a cipher, worse than a cipher; outside of nationality there is neither art, nor truth, nor life; there ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... parts of the empire the boys are taught by priests to read, write, and cipher. Every monastery is provided with a library, more or less standard. The more elegant books are composed of tablets of ivory, or of palmyra leaves delicately prepared; the characters engraved on these are gilt, the margins and edges adorned with heavy ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... crimes often committed against them when the male criminal goes free. Think of a single one of these votes on election day outweighing all the women in the country. Is it not humiliating for me to sit, a political cipher, and see the colored man in my employ, to whom I have taught the alphabet, go out on election day and say by his vote what shall be done with my tax money. How would ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... room, and worked till late on a cipher dispatch to Napoleon. Its purport was, that now, if ever, Maximilian must be discouraged absolutely. Following on what she herself had done, such would bring his abdication. She implored, above all things, that ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... 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 in the matter, unless they break regularly out and ill-treat Europeans, ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty

... is the noblest of all professions. It contains many learned and able men who devote their lives unselfishly to the amelioration of human misery; but I much doubt whether one-half the M. D.'s now sending people to the drug stores with cipher dispatches, could tell what was the matter with a suffering mortal were he transparent as glass and lit up by electricity. There are doctors doping people with powerful drugs, who couldn't tell whether ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... 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 ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... "A cipher!" said Heideck. "But we shall soon get to the bottom of it. You have some capable interpreters at your disposal, and it might be a good thing if they set to ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann

... put 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 the ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed

... Bunsen at the Capitol; Lovaine, Morier, Haddington, Hamilton, Kestner, Falck, G. Fitzclarence, Sir W. Gell, a little Italian servant, and Mr. Hall, Bunsen's brother-in-law. Haddington told the story of Canning's sending to Bagot a despatch in cipher, containing these lines:— ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... I said, despondently. "I know no more of shorthand than of Sanskrit, and though I once tried to make out a cipher, the only tangible result was a ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall

... copies were kept in what we called the 'President's drawer' of the 'cipher desk.' He would come in at any time of the night or day, and go at once to this drawer, and take out a file of telegrams, and begin at the top to read them. His position in running over these ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... "Nothing is sure. A will may be found, or my uncle's marriage proved; in either case, I sink back into the cipher I was before. I cannot say I'm not glad to have money, but I don't want people blaming me. I can't help it if my uncle made no will and did not marry Amy's mother, and I don't believe he did, or why was he ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes

... when he threw aside the invalid wrappings with a perfect fury, sprang from his chair, and hastened into the inner room. Collins and Blake were seated at a table there, labouring with a telegram in cipher. ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson

... friends in New Salem, and they reflected back his good-will by urging him to run for the State Legislature. Before doing this he consulted Mentor Graham, the village schoolmaster, with whom he had worked as election clerk when he first came to the place. Abe could read, write and cipher, but he felt that if he should succeed in politics, he would disgrace his office and himself by not speaking and writing ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... evident that I had in my hands a letter written in cipher, and I concluded that the ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau

... heart were a cipher, and if passion were calendar-making! . . ." retorted Philippus. "You are a very wise man, and your manuscripts and tables have stood like walls between ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

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

... with Valori, too; "What interloping fellow is this?" gloomed Valori, "A devoted secretary of your Excellency's; on his honor, nothing more!" answered Voltaire, bowing to the ground:—and strives to behave as such; giving Valori "these poor Reports of mine to put in cipher," and the like. Very slippery ice hereabouts for the adroit man! His reports to Amelot are of sanguine tone; but indicate, to the by-stander, small progress; ice slippery, and a twinkle of the comic. Many of them are lost (or lie hidden ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... 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, ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... her granddaughter, Biddy, I struggled through the alphabet, as if it had been a bramble bush, getting considerably worried and scratched by each letter. After that, the nine figures began to add to my misery, but at last I began to read, write, and cipher on the smallest scale. ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... and with so little confidence in the result that I dare not act on it without 'proving' the sum by a further calculation involving more ciphering. But there are men who can neither read, write, nor cipher, to whom the answer to such sums as I can do is instantly obvious without any conscious calculation at all; and the result is infallible. Yet some of these natural arithmeticians have but a small vocabulary; are at a loss when they have to find words for any but the simplest ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

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

... remains in college to review his studies; amusing anecdote relative to Professor S. S. Smith, in the Cliosophic Society, while Burr was acting as president; letter from Timothy Dwight; from Samuel Spring; correspondence with Matthias Ogden and others, in cipher; anecdote respecting visit to a billiard-table; enters the family of Joseph Bellamy, D. D. for the purpose of pursuing a course of reading on religious topics; in 1774 determines to study the law; letter ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... friars, where the most necessary branches were taught to those of the unfortunate men who had a mind for them. He was of the number who had a mind. He went to school at the age of forty, and learned to read, to write, to cipher. He felt that to fortify his intelligence was to fortify his hate. In certain cases, education and enlightenment can serve to ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

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

... two women whose memory the girls in this country should especially revere,—Mary Lyon and Catharine Beecher. When it was unfashionable for women to know more than to read, write, and cipher (the "three R's," as reading, writing, and arithmetic were called), these two had the courage to ask that women have an education equal to men, a thing which was laughed at as impracticable and impossible. To these two pioneers we are greatly ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... visit Cuba, to investigate, and, later, to deny the truth of the disgraceful libels published concerning the Spanish officials on the island by the papers of the United States. At the same time he cabled in cipher to the captain-general in Havana to see that the distinguished statesman was closely spied upon from the moment of his arrival until his departure, and to place on the "suspect" list all Americans and Cubans who ventured to give ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... his stock of accomplishments. "I can write, sir, and cipher. And I've learned geography and history, and Master Swift gave I lessons in mechanics, and I be very fond of poetry and painting, ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

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

... was also out of the land of the Grays, but not by Westerling's consent or knowledge. By devious ways it had broken through the censorship of the frontier in cunning cipher. It told of artillery concentrations three days old; it told only what the aeroplanes had already seen; it told what the Grays had done but nothing of what they intended ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... had decided, that of Louis XIII.'s two sons, Monsieur was the one who had inherited the father's character—an uncertain, irresolute character; impulsively good, indifferently disposed at bottom; but certainly a cipher for his friends. He especially cheered De Guiche, by pointing out to him that Madame would, before long, succeed in governing her husband, and that, consequently, that man would govern Monsieur who should succeed ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... down in separate columns on a piece of paper the individual repetitions of letters on the page of "January 7, 1915." He arrived at the conclusion, then, that "R" was used for "E," that "S" took the place of "A" and that "Y" alternated in this cipher for "T" which was second ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... three commissioners to France. The French Minister, Talleyrand, treated them ill, and sent secret agents to them to let them know that nothing would be done until they paid large bribes. The three Americans sent home cipher dispatches in which they told how they had been received. President Adams thought best to publish these dispatches, putting the letters X, Y, and Z in place of the names of the secret agents. These papers ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various

... whom he had, when boys, treated with such barbarity, go back to him, when young men, not so much for education's sake, as for the especial purpose of retaliating upon him for his former cruelty. When cases of this nature occurred, he found himself a mere cipher in his school, never daring to practise excessive severity in their presence. Instances have come to our own knowledge, of masters, who, for their mere amusement, would go out to the next hedge, cut a large branch of furze or thorn, and having first carefully arranged the children on a row round ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

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

... musin', as the feller says, and I'm About o' the conclusion that they ain't no better time, When you come to cipher on it, than the times we used to know When we swore our first "dog-gone-it" sorto ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley

... smiled, but evidently his appetite was flagging also, and he soon went out to send and receive some cipher despatches. ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... 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

... far stronger point is the power of portraiture. Seraphael having been identified, people turned their attention to the other cipher. Disregarding the orchestral similitude of sound in his name, which, by the way, nobody pronounces as Aronach instructed, they chose to infer that Charles Auchester himself was the Herr Joachim, that Starwood ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... opponents by the sheer audacity and cleverness of the steps that he took. His efforts to prevent the resolution of the States-General from taking immediate effect proving unavailing, he put forward the suggestion that on account of its importance the despatch should be sent to the envoys in cipher. This was agreed to, and on June 7 the document was duly forwarded to London by the council-pensionary; but he enclosed a letter from himself to Van Beverningh and Nieuwpoort informing them that the Estates of Holland assented to the request made by the States-General, ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson



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