"Baffled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... influence then ruled over the destinies of France and Mexico, and the incident naturally impressed itself upon my memory. Upon my arrival in Mexico, where I found men puzzling over the extraordinary lack of concert between the allied invaders, which baffled their understanding, I remembered those words of the Duc de Morny, uttered even before a suitable pretext had been furnished General de Lorencez for breaking through the preliminary treaty of La Soledad, and, of course, before the news ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... other; "it has cost us millions of human lives on the plains of Germany and in the Russian snows." The attempt had failed, and people were preparing to move away, when news arrived that the Commune were not going to be thus baffled, but had sent for more ropes and apparatus, and were determined to have their way at any price. Meanwhile, the great figure looked calmly down upon his persecutors, seemingly as secure as ever, while the bands continued to play, and the horsemen ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... Baffled and hopeless, he turned his back on the town, not knowing where to go. To retrace his steps would be madness. He followed the shore of the White Sea to Onega, a natural direction for pilgrims returning from Solovetsk to take. His lonely way lay through a land ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... hollow tree, and destined by her as her son Lorel's mistress. The swineherd now enters with the object of wooing the imprisoned damsel, whom he releases from the tree, Maudlin and Douce retiring the while to watch his success, which is small. Baffled, he again shuts the girl up in her natural cell, and his mother, coming forward, rates him soundly for his clownish ways, reading him a lecture for his guidance in his intercourse with women, in which she seems ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... don't tell her that." The young man spoke quickly. His tone was half jesting, half earnest. He stood looking at the two faces, glancing from one to the other with a look of baffled resentment. "A living shame!" he muttered ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... Ghosts Present at a Hanging A Cold Greeting A Wireless Message An Arrest Soldier-Folk A Man with Two Lives Three and One are One A Baffled Ambuscade Two Military Executions Some Haunted Houses The Isle of Pines A Fruitless Assignment A Vine on a House At Old Man Eckert's The Spook House The Other Lodgers The Thing at Nolan The Difficulty of Crossing a Field An Unfinished ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... and other necessaries for a long journey—for Carlos had no intention of returning without the accomplishment of his sworn purpose—rescue or revenge. His was no pursuit to be baffled by slight obstacles. He was not going to bring back the report "no los pudimos alcanzar" He was resolved to trail the robbers to the farthest point of the prairies—to follow them to their fastens, wherever that ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... was never troubled with personal violence from Barker or any other boy. But rancor smouldered deep in the mind of the baffled tyrant, and, as we shall see hereafter, there are subtler means of making an enemy wretched than ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... say where your hid retreat, When the frost rages, and the tempests beat; Whence your return, by such nice instinct led, When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head? Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride, The God of nature is your ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... interchanges of social compliment, much badinage, and merry plans for the morrow. The monster Sea-sickness had been defied on the balmy voyage, save in the brief interval of tempest, and his victors mocked him, baffled as he was, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... of King Stephen. It passed into the hands of the Luttrells (its present possessors) by purchase. In the Civil War it was alternately held for the Parliament and the king, and in 1546 it was regarded as Charles's last hope in Somerset. Its resistance was stout; for 160 days Colonel Wyndham baffled the assaults of no less an adversary than Blake, and only surrendered on the total collapse of the Royal cause (p. 17). The grounds are entered under a gateway (Perp.), built by Sir H. Luttrell. The oldest part of the castle lies to the R. of this, flanked by two round ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... she had been trying to get nearer to Hesper, but— much like Hesper's experience with her—had found herself strangely baffled, she could not tell how—the barrier being simply the half innocence, half ignorance, of Hesper. When minds are not the same, words do not convey ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... flashed with baffled rage. He had been trapped. These men had conspired to save his late employer from his clutches. They had lied, deliberately, and he was powerless against their combined assertions, although he knew the falsity of all ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... particularly female character (which, by the bye, is what young men know least about), but the subject he was studying puzzled him; Miss Edwards evinced such a mixture of penetration and simplicity that he could not understand how both could exist together. This sort of character has baffled many wiser persons than Mr. Ashburner, who have investigated it with the same interest. The study of young ladies is dangerous at all times to a young man, and most particularly when he does it from philosophical ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... menstruation? It is easy to describe it, by its obvious symptoms, as a monthly discharge of blood from the uterus, but nearly as much as that was known in the infancy of the world. When we seek to probe more intimately into the nature of menstruation we are still baffled, not merely as regards its cause, but even as regards its precise mechanism. "The primary cause of menstruation remains unexplained"; "the cause of menstruation remains as obscure as ever"; so conclude two of the most thorough and cautious investigators into this subject.[95] It ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... far the political conceptions inherited from an earlier age were valid in the new conditions. For under the pressure of the great transformation political forces also have been transformed, and in all countries political thought is baffled and bewildered by the complexity of the problems by which it is faced. To this in part we owe the dimness of vision which overtook us as we went whirling together towards the great catastrophe. It is only in the glare of a world-conflagration that we begin to perceive, in something like ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... and overthrew the devil. However this may be, it is certain that the bruising of his heel by Satan was the chosen means for his bruising of Satan's head. Our enemy, who brought death into the world, is entirely baffled and defeated, as to the purpose and effect of that calamity, in the case of all who believe in the death of Christ. Their last act of faith gives them "the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." Then the God of peace "finally beats down Satan under their feet." ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... said Ingleborough, laughing; "but we started with fixed plans from Kimberley, and we've been interfered with and baffled ever since." ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... few unfamiliar notes in a loud strange voice, with wings quivering, body swaying from side to side, and tail wide spread. Then lifting both wings high above his back, he repeated the attack. Finding himself a second time baffled, he remained where he had dropped, ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... feel humiliated at the baseness of such enjoyment, she clung to it from habit or from corruption, and each day she hungered after them the more, exhausting all felicity in wishing for too much of it. She accused Leon of her baffled hopes, as if he had betrayed her; and she even longed for some catastrophe that would bring about their separation, since she had not the courage to make up her mind ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... He had baffled with his bemuddled brain, to recall the conversation he had held with his wife since his return home to marry her, and every innocent word she had uttered in jest had seemed guilty and foul. "You've been nothing but a fool, Davy," he told himself. ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... jockeys, their free employees, their slaves, no individual in the least answering to descriptions of Almo. All governmental efforts, all professional efforts, all private efforts, all Vocco's efforts, all Brinnaria's efforts, were completely baffled. ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... from the first expanding of those faculties which evidently lie exposed to his observation and open to his attacks, as far as God permits him to work. Can I feel all this, and not bless the Lord, who so far baffled these designs, and deigned to appoint my field of labor within the sacred ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... of combustion of fuels purchased by the Government, the equipment consists of two Heine, water-tube boilers, each of 210 h.p., set in Building No. 13. One of these boilers is equipped with a Jones underfeed stoker, and is baffled in the regular way. At four points in the setting, large pipes have been built into the brick wall, to permit making observations on the temperature of the gas, and to take samples of ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... loose, dark curls which fell across it. Her hair was short and thick and parted on the side, giving her a youthful, boyish look that was in odd contrast to the sudden terror in her eyes, and for the first time I saw how slight and frail she was, saw that about her which baffled and puzzled me, and which I could not analyze. She wore no hat, and the red scarf around her neck was the only touch of color in her otherwise dark dress. The lips of her large, sweet, sensuous mouth were ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... replaces it; he supposes that in the darkness he has selected the wrong chalice, and so takes the valueless stone from the other. This, too, he replaces, and, infinitely puzzled, makes yet another hopeless trial of the Edmundsbury chalice, and, again baffled, again replaces it, concluding now that the baronet has suspected his designs, and substituted a false stone for the real one. But after this last replacement, the stone assumes its final hue of white, and thus the baronet is led to think that two stones have been substituted ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... attacks, which died down after a few blows; stragglers disappeared, scouts never returned; and when a peasant was brought in and forced to speak, he told with scared face a tale of the great mustering of desperate men in this or that quarter. The Crane was a hardy fighter, but the mystery baffled him, and he became cautious, and—after the fashion of his kind credulous. Bit by bit Jehan shepherded him into the trap he had prepared. He had but one man to the enemy's six, and must drain that enemy's ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... in the war had been more brilliant than the manner in which Stonewall Jackson had baffled the two armies—each greatly superior in force to his own—that had been specially appointed to destroy him if possible, or at any rate to prevent his withdrawing from the Shenandoah Valley and marching to aid in the defense of the Confederate capital. His troops had marched almost day and night, ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... were already close on my back, when I glided round and dashed directly past my pursuers. A wild yell greeted my evolution, and the wolves, slipping upon their haunches, sailed onward, presenting a perfect picture of helplessness and baffled rage. Thus I gained nearly a hundred yards at each turning. This was repeated two or three times, every moment the animals ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... protection dost thou bend Round curtained talk of friend with friend, While the gray snow-storm, held aloof, To softest outline rounds the roof, Or the rude North with baffled strain 120 Shoulders the frost-starred window-pane! Now the kind nymph to Bacchus born By Morpheus' daughter, she that seems Gifted opon her natal morn By him with fire, by her with dreams, Nicotia, dearer to the Muse Than all the grape's bewildering juice, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... or in a sense more strangely beautiful, did I ever witness. Her tremulous, rapid, affectionate, eager, Scotch voice—the swift, aimless, bewildered mind, the baffled utterance, the bright and perilous eye; some wild words, some household cares, something for James, the names of the dead, Rab called rapidly and in a "fremyt" (querulous, trembling) voice, and he starting up, surprised, and slinking off as if he were to blame somehow, or had ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... Marchand, Councillor of State, to give an account to them of the state of the Hotel de Ville funds. He declared that they had never been so well paid, and that there was no cause of complaint against the government. Baffled upon this point, they fastened upon a edict, recently rendered, respecting the money of the realm. They deliberated thereon, deputed a commission to examine the matter, made a great fuss, and came to the conclusion that the edict would, if acted upon, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... universal was the cry, "Now clear the passages, strike down the props, Set every vessel free, launch, and away!" Heaven rang with exclamation of the host All homeward bent, and launching glad the fleet. 180 Then baffled Fate had the Achaians seen Returning premature, but Juno thus, With admonition quick to Pallas spake. Unconquer'd daughter of Jove AEgis-arm'd! Ah foul dishonor! Is it thus at last 185 That the Achaians ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... weary road back. The journey had now no interest for him. He had travelled the road before when going westward, full of high hopes and aspirations, impatient to reach the goal which promised him rest from his labors—now, returning unsuccessful, baffled, and thwarted, when almost in sight of the end, and having to travel the same path back on foot, with disappointed expectations and defeated hopes preying on his mind, no wonder that the old brave spirit almost succumbed, and the strong ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... revolver, and at each discharge of the weapon, shouted to the fugitive to halt! but Glazier gave no heed to the summons, and might have succeeded in reaching the swamps and defied recapture, if he had not unfortunately galloped into a rebel camp! Baffled, he turned his horse, and endeavored to cross an open field, but the corporal continued to shout, "Halt that d——d Yankee!" when a body of Texan Rangers from General Iverson's cavalry division, some mounted and some dismounted, gave chase, hooting and yelping, and finally overtook ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... treasure, the Tamalpais' first officer, and a crew of four men was lost on the rocks shortly after leaving the ill-fated vessel. None of the bodies were ever recovered, and the treasure itself completely baffled the search of divers and salvers. A lidless box bearing the mark of Adams & Co., of the kind in which their treasure was usually shipped, was yesterday found in the woods behind the chapel, half ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... exclamation of delight he thrust his free hand upward for the pin, but he could not reach it. Neither could he pull his coat down through the bands of rope. He worked at it for a long time, and finally stopped his efforts, baffled, despairing, his heart filled with angry hopelessness. Again the breeze fluttered the lapel, and with a sudden impulse of revengeful savagery he thrust down his head and snapped at the coat. Unexpectedly, he caught it in his teeth. Filled with a new ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... rumors were handed down from father to son, throughout the county, and, like all other rumors, had taken to themselves wings, and flown abroad; their crimes became a by-word. How was it they escaped punishment? How came they to evade the hand of justice? Proof was ever wanting; justice was ever baffled. They were a stern and stiff-necked people, of indomitable pride and resolution, with, for the most part, force of character sufficient to enable them to breast difficulties and dangers that would have overwhelmed ordinary individuals. ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... stroke of character to arrive without notice—having utterly baffled Peter at the Junction—and to be in complete possession of the manse on the return of Carmichael and his ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... at the note carelessly at first and the signature momentarily baffled him. Eben Tollman signed his name with such marked originality that it was almost as difficult to decipher ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... here, in this lonely cove, we were probably much nearer the solution of the mystery that had baffled Scarterfield, ourselves, the police, and everybody that we knew. And so, apparently, did Miss Raven, who suddenly turned on Baxter with a look ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... artist's heart throbbed faster in any danger than on the eve of this meeting; but it was no longer love that thrilled it so passionately, far less hate or the desire to let his foe feel that her revenge was baffled. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Would the mighty river never yield up its golden secret? Were the adventurers to be baffled and foiled after their thousands of leagues of journeying? The guide declared that the Spaniards had got hundreds of miles farther up the river, but by means of galleys of forty to sixty oars apiece. The Golden Boar ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... seemed to be in a restless mood, and she soon saw that he was bent upon a swift victory. He made his moves with a quick dexterity that baffled her completely, and but a very few minutes elapsed before he uttered his ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... in another saying of the Upanishads: From Brahma words come back baffled, as well as the mind, but he who knows him by the joy of him is free from all fears. [Footnote: Yato vacho nivartante aprapya manasa saha anandam ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... or life for the good old cause, or for a friend's sake or opinion's sake ... all pains of enthusiasts scoffed at by their neighbors ... all the vast sweet love and precious sufferings of mothers ... all honest men baffled in strifes recorded or unrecorded ... all the grandeur and good of the few ancient nations whose fragments of annals we inherit ... and all the good of the hundreds of far mightier and more ancient nations unknown to us by name or date or location ... all that was ever manfully ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... ingenuity of rogues constantly takes new forms, the ways and means by which they can be baffled in these enterprises are constantly being multiplied. The telegraph and telephone give facilities for promptly verifying a signature where one is ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... must say a few words about it. All that has made you unhappy, and—and—and—" He wanted to explain that his grandfather was ashamed of his baffled attempt, and for that reason was cowed and down at heart at the present moment; but that in the three or four months when this trial would be over and the wonder passed away, all that would be forgotten, and he would be again as well as ever. But Peregrine, though he ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... of his nature, Carlos made two mad attempts on Frank's life, both of which were baffled, and then the young desperado was forced to ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... however, soon found they had mistaken their man. The homespun jacket covered a natural shrewdness which had been sharpened by responsibility. The readiness of resource which had characterised the whilom constable was more than a match for their most ingenious schemes; and baffled by a temper which they were powerless to disturb, their attempts at persecution, apparently more productive of amusement to their victim than to ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... one of the neat maids in the background had to be called up and instructed in undertones, and Mr. Direck saw that for the present Robinson's illuminating experience was not for her ears. A little baffled, but quite understanding how things were, he turned to ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... plan may be pursued when a horse endeavours to turn a corner, contrary to the wish of his rider; and, if he be successfully baffled, three or four times, it is most probable that he will not ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... night when Phoebe had whispered to him.... What now of that hour, that hour which had seemed so utterly broken by what Archelaus had told him all these years after? He still could not see quite clearly, though now it was with no sense of being hopelessly baffled that he fell back awhile from before that curtain. He went on passing again through his life, and he saw the harder years that came crowding along, those definite, clear-cut years of young manhood ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... baffled. 'Mon Dieu! these ends,' and he lifted a handful of the hair on the floor and held it before the ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... my bed for some days, through a fever occasioned by the stump of a tooth, which baffled chirurgical efforts to eject, and which, by affecting my eye, affected my stomach, and through that my whole frame. I am better, but still weak, in consequence of such long sleeplessness and wearying pains; weak, very weak. I thank you, my dear friend, for your late kindness, and in a ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... The mystery baffled him. More than once that day he went up to the crag and stood and stared futilely at the footprint. Conjecture had license and limitations, too. As the hours wore on he became harassed by the sense of espionage. He was a bold man before ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... sigh almost buried the last word. Go when she would, she must leave Constantine behind, leave him without an expectation of beholding him more—without a hope of penetrating the thick cloud which involved him, and with which he had ever baffled any attempt she had heard to discover his birth or misfortunes. She wept over this refinement on delicacy, and "loved him dearer for ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... At Bungay the Churchmen seemed to have determined to make Dissenters as uncomfortable as possible. Actually five years after they had thrown the father into prison, the churchwardens proceeded against the son, having been baffled in repeated attempts to distrain upon his goods, and cited him into the Ecclesiastical Court, where it took two and a half years to determine whether the sum of three shillings and fourpence was due. At the end of that time the judge decided it was not, and the ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... Godfrey tried to pass her with that monosyllable, but Perrote was not to be thus baffled. She laid a detaining hand upon ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... That was apparent as Robert Turold related the history of his long and patient investigation; of scents which had led nowhere; of threads which had broken in his hand; of fruitless burrowings into the graves of past generations. These disappointments had lengthened the search, but they had never, baffled the searcher nor broken ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... the valleys not a drop of blood was shed; justly exasperated though the Waldenses were, they contented themselves with sending to the government a list of the names of the baffled conspirators. ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... art thou? Whence derived? With what intent Placed where perpetual hindrances exhaust Thy wasted strength, in baffled effort spent? Where in blind maze, with crafty windings crossed, With stumbling-blocks beset, with pitfalls strewed, Thou wanderest, in endless error lost; Athirst beside glad rivers that elude, With mocking lapse, thy tantalized pursuit, And hungering where gilded husks delude ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... increased rigour of imprisonment, and then a visit from Vasquez to examine and question me upon the testimony of Enriquez. As you can imagine, the attempt to lure me into self-betrayal was completely fruitless. My enemy withdrew, baffled, to go question my wife, ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... poplar, Uncle Dick and the deputies were able, with great difficulty, to follow the tracks of the outlaw and his prisoner toward the south for a full mile. But at this point, an expanse of outcropping rock baffled them completely. Search as they would, there was no least sign of footsteps anywhere. After an hour of futile questing, they gave up in despair, and hurried to the rendezvous ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... on the little finger of the right hand attracted the notice of Regnar, who with a glad cry seized the stiffened hand and tried to remove it, but the swollen flesh baffled ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... had been able to subdue her unruly sister, found herself baffled, for their mother was ill, and must not be disturbed, and Percy, who might have been on her side, would only lie on the ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... to see the "foreign dog." I gripped him tighter and only breathed freely when with a sharp turn to right or left my chair was lifted high over a threshold and borne through the inn door into the courtyard, the crowd in no wise baffled swarming at our heels, sometimes not even stopping at the entrance to the inner court, sacred (more or less) to the so-called mandarin rooms, the best rooms of the place. I could not but sympathize with the innkeeper, the order of his establishment thus upset, but he ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... fond of pigs as the women of Spain, and our aristocratic damsels who affect, to imitate them, are of poodles. She is never without one, which she nurses with great care. She is now in great tribulation, having lost her last by a croup, which baffled the skill of the most eminent physicians. And so deep was her sympathy for it, that she had it buried in a corner of the garden, with a rose-bush planted to its memory." This so excited the swine driver's pity, that I verily thought he was about to make the major a present ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... Hen had become secretive, openly rebellious, strangely despondent, with now and then flashes of a very real and unpleasant temper. Agnes, baffled, curious, hurt, angry and afraid, had at last taken her burden to the boyish minister and then went in trembling triumph to Hen and told him what ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... wonder how far she of the sunny paths could penetrate an unlighted country. He looked at her—peered at her, fairly—trying to decide. But he could not decide. Katie baffled him ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... sympathize with the prevailing state of the atmosphere, and to contribute to render that which is already too cold for comfort, even colder. So it was now; notwithstanding the preparations that had been made. Baffled twice in his expectations of procuring a blaze, Stephen stopped and took a drink of the hot coffee. As he swallowed the beverage, it struck him that it was fast ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... him at last a truce for two years with the French monarch [z]; almost all the transmarine provinces were ravished from him; and his English barons, though harassed with arbitrary taxes and fruitless expeditions, saw themselves and their country baffled and affronted in every enterprise. [FN [y] M. Paris, p. 146. M. West. p. 265. [z] Rymer, ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... far to go," she went on. "I adore everything that gives a charm to life. I'm intensely sensitive to form. But sometimes I draw back—don't you see what I mean?—I don't quite see where I shall be landed. I only want to be quiet, after all," Miss Ambient continued as if she had long been baffled of this modest desire. "And one must be good, at any rate, must not one?" she pursued with a dubious quaver—an intimation apparently that what I might say one way or the other would settle it for her. It was difficult for me to be very original in reply, and I'm afraid I repaid her confidence ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... ourselves to account for our actions, reason compels us to fix this aim higher and higher, till we come at last to the highest end of our existence: and here that longing for the infinite which is inherent in our being, is baffled by the limits of our finite existence. All that we do, all that we effect, is vain and perishable; death stands everywhere in the back ground, and to it every well or ill- spent moment brings us nearer and closer; and even when a man has been so singularly fortunate as to reach the utmost ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... that the Dyea trail, baffled by ice-jams, swerved abruptly across the Yukon to the east bank. And here they must leave the hard-packed, main-travelled trail, mount the jams, and follow a dim trail, but slightly packed, that hovered the ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... lament that, when the bitterness of death was past, I was inhumanly brought back to life and misery. But a fixed determination is not to be baffled by disappointment: nor will I allow that to be a frantic attempt which was one of the calmest acts of reason. In this respect I am only accountable to myself. Did I care for what is termed reputation, it is by other circumstances that I should ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... granite hardness. But Bellenger's passed from shade to shade of baffled confidence; recovering only when ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... not been able to give in the present volume the unpublished play of Heywood's to which I referred in the Preface to Vol. I. When I came to transcribe the play, I found myself baffled by the villanous scrawl. But I hope that, with the assistance of some expert in old handwriting, I may succeed in procuring an accurate transcript of the piece for ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... I came upon an old graveyard on the top of a barren hill, off from the Governor's road, about two miles from the Campo gate. The stones were all flat and weather-worn; the inscriptions of many were indistinct, and would have baffled the skill of Old Mortality to decipher. Upon one I found the date 1767. None as late as the present century; some were in German, others had the ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... which had hitherto baffled Skepsey in the course of conversational remonstrances with his wife;—that of getting the Idea of Posterity into the understanding of its principal agent, might ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had ever been a student of nature, but never before with such an object in his heart as now filled it. He found no happiness in his investigations, but was appalled at the sights which met him and the mysteries with which the study of them baffled him. Death and discord seemed to reign everywhere, and the strong seemed ever tyrannising ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... which gives the very same thought when it says, 'I will set him on high, because he hath known My name.' The fugitive is taken within the safe walls of the strong tower, and is set up high on the battlements, looking down upon the baffled pursuers, and far beyond the reach of their arrows. To stand upon that tower lifts a man above the region where temptations fly, above the region where sorrow strikes; lifts him above sin and guilt and condemnation and fear, and calumny and slander, and sickness, and separation and loneliness ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Zebek-Dorchi, who, on his part, so deeply resented this discountenance to his ambitious projects that, in conjunction with other chiefs, he had the presumption 5 even to weave nets of treason against the Emperor himself. Plots were laid, were detected, were baffled; counter-plots were constructed upon the same basis, and with the benefit of the opportunities thus offered. Finally, Zebek-Dorchi was invited to the imperial lodge, 10 together with all his accomplices; and, ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... board officer till she is too old for his clutches; but she has a soft spot in her heart for her little brother, and I believe another for Gerard Godfrey. We must be very cautious, and not excite any alarm, or we shall be baffled altogether. I am not sure that I did quite prudently in giving little Alf a fresh boat in exchange for this; but I could not help bringing ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Dean gallantly laying his hand upon his heart. "You are quite an exception to the rule. You have passed through the furnace of marriage and come out unscathed. Time has done its worst with you, and now retreats, baffled and powerless; it can ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... round the steeple, unsubdued of wing: Amusive birds!—say where your hid retreat When the frost rages and the tempests beat; Whence your return, by such nice instinct led, When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head: Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride, The GOD of NATURE is your ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... perceived that. It was that circumstance which finally overcame my reluctance to intrude upon you. You were greatly puzzled, though, baffled, by his extraordinary story." ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... was confined, by severe indisposition, almost entirely to the house. The obstinate nature of my disease baffled the skill of a very clever medical attendant, and created alarm and uneasiness in my family: and I entertained small hopes ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the puzzling shadowed lineaments on the stained glass. He saw now in a flash the resemblance which had baffled him. "It IS like ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... wrongs, I desire to see what regions have been attained by those high-souled heroes, my brothers of high vows, steady achievers of promises, truthful in speech, and distinguished for courage. The high-souled Karna, the son of Kunti, incapable of being baffled in battle, Dhrishtadyumna, Satyaki, the sons of Dhrishtadyumna and those other Kshatriyas who met with death in the observance of Kshatriya practices, where are those lords of Earth, O Brahmana? I do not see them here, O Narada. I desire to see, O Narada, Virata and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... came, Harold pleaded "Guilty" at once, not only for truth's sake, but as meaning to spare me the interrogation; and Crabbe, who was there on Bullock's behalf, looked greatly baffled and disappointed; but the magistrates did not let it rest there, since the amount of the fine of course would depend on the degree of violence, &c., so both Mrs. Jennings and I, and the doctor, were examined ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... again distinguished himself. He, and he alone, passed the ordeal, munching those dreadful mouthfuls without so much as a change of expression on his countenance, while the facial contortions the rest of us went through baffled description. In every subsequent trial it was the same. Peter never made a face, and no one else could help making them. It sent him up fifty per cent in ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... finding and embracing of truth, and not a contest for victory. And thus maxims have their use to put a stop to their perverseness, whose ingenuity should have yielded sooner. But the method of the Schools having allowed and encouraged men to oppose and resist evident truth till they are baffled, i.e. till they are reduced to contradict themselves, or some established principles: it is no wonder that they should not in civil conversation be ashamed of that which in the Schools is counted a virtue and a glory, viz. obstinately to maintain that side of the question they have chosen, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... If baffled in one road, he usually found out another. He therefore wrote a brief note to the Minister, stating that he might require his assistance at a later hour of the evening, and at a time not usually official. This done, he despatched another note to Captain E. F., saying familiarly it was scarcely ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... for him; but the hearts of the boys did not palpitate. Each time the search party came forth with looks of baffled disappointment. Each time the Lord of Mortimer's face was dark and gloomy. He had reckoned somewhat confidently on finding the fugitive in one of these known hiding places. He had hoped Sir Oliver would profess an ignorance of at least one of the two. His face was fierce and vindictive as ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... most entrancing complexity. But there are curious traces in Ibsen's correspondence of the difficulty, very strange in his case, which he experienced in forming a concrete idea of Julian in his own mind. He had been vaguely drawn to the theme, and when it was too late to recede, he found himself baffled by the paradoxes which he encountered, and by the contradictions of a figure seen darkly through a mist of ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... theory. For the idea is suggested by this simple picture of the old theory that the theory itself was simple, whereas it had become so confusing that not merely young learners, but the most profound mathematicians, were baffled when they tried to unravel the motions ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... with unabating vigour and dexterity, and at length, though he could not convince, he so entirely baffled him, that Sir Philip was self-compelled to be quiet-which, with a very good grace, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... from mothers to daughters, adds: "It may be that in the future this kind of initiation will again become an art, and experts will tell us with more confidence how to do our duty to the manifold exigencies, types and stages of youth, and instead of feeling baffled and defeated, we shall see that this age and theme is the supreme opening for the highest pedagogy to do its best and most transforming work, as well as being the greatest of all opportunities for the teacher of religion" (Stanley Hall, Adolescence, vol. i, p. 469). "At Williams ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... reputation as a Christian people, the wishes of our best friends abroad, and the humane instincts of the age, which forbid all unnecessary severity. Happily we are not called upon to take counsel of our fears. Rabbinical writers tell us that evil spirits who are once baffled in a contest with human beings lose from thenceforth all power of further mischief. The defeated rebels are in the precise condition of these Jewish demons. Deprived of slavery, they are like wasps ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... except the case of the Black Warrior, under the late Administration, and that presented an outrage of such a character as would have justified an immediate resort to war. All our attempts to obtain redress have been baffled and defeated. The frequent and oft-recurring changes in the Spanish ministry have been employed as reasons for delay. We have been compelled to wait again and again until the new minister shall have had time to investigate the justice ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... seized her. Constables were dispatched to his den. It was shut up, and, being forced open, was found deserted, and stripped of every thing. He was hunted over the county, but not discovered. He had retired to haunts which baffled the detective skill of the most experienced and alert. This is the first act of the tragedy. It will be necessary to stain these pages by a description of the last. The child became more and more unhappy under the roof of her persecutors, as they soon proved themselves to be. She was taught to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... persistent. Therefore, towards the middle of November, his nerves raw and quivering under baffled attempts to compose against the Devil's Chorus rising to heaven from every side, he sought, and finally found, salvation from incipient madness, in the refuge afforded by a neighboring traktir, much frequented, o' nights, by university students, but as deserted ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... half their number had fallen, the rest, exhausted, broken, and in disorder, fell suddenly back. Gustavus in person then led on his Finlanders, but these, after a struggle as obstinate and heroic as that of their predecessors, in their turn fell back baffled. The Livonians next made the ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... should know The love that consecrates you so. No; furtive, awkward, restless, cold, I basely seemed to set at naught That sudden bliss, undreamt, unsought. What must she think, my girl of gold? I dare not ask; and baffled wit Droops—till sweet hopes begin to flit— Like butterflies that brave the cold— Perhaps she didn't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... often on the warm, still summer evenings, when the young women of the household filled the veranda and overflowed upon the steps. Sylvia's choice of a boarding-house had puzzled Dan a good deal, but there were a good many things about Sylvia that baffled him. For example, this preparation for teaching in a public school when she might have had an assistant professorship in a college seemed a sad waste of energy and opportunity. She was going to school ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... which the city abounded, he gave himself diligently to his business, as clerk in the banking house. His diligence and faithfulness gained for him the esteem of his employers. He soon mastered the business. No accounts baffled him. And, on arriving at manhood, he became a thorough financier. The most important duties were now entrusted to him; and he soon became the travelling agent of the bank; which enabled him also to gratify his taste for the arts and sciences. He made the tour of the French provinces, making ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... moment in baffled silence, then turned, one and all, and slowly marched out of the room. As the door closed upon the last one of the disappointed suitors, the princess picked up her pretty kitten and, turning to her ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... everything to go to waste about it, and cut down all the timber on the estate, laying low many a tract of old Sherwood Forest, so that the Abbey lands lay stripped and bare of all their ancient honors. He was baffled in his unnatural revenge by the premature death of his son, and passed the remainder of his days in his deserted and dilapidated halls, a gloomy misanthrope, brooding amidst the ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... Agatha was baffled by the very simplicity and directness of Mrs. Stoddard's words, even though she felt that her own texts might easily be turned against her. But she had no heart for argument, even if it would lead her to verbal triumph over her companion. Instinctively she felt ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... the three brave men sprang out upon him and carried him off to Schneich. And then, at the appointed hour, came John Augusta himself. He had dressed himself as a country peasant, carried a hoe in is hand, and strolled in the woodland whistling a merry tune. For the moment the hirelings were baffled. They seized him and let him go; they seized him again and let him go again; they seized him, for the third time, searched him, and found a ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... fast to leeward that we should not be able to weather it: so, after standing as near as was safe, we put the ship in stays; she came up almost head to wind, but the wind just at that critical moment baffled her, and she fell off again: nothing could now be done, but to wear her round in as little room as possible, which was done, and the wind hauled upon the other tack, with every sail set as before; but, still perceiving that the ship settled into the bay, and that she shoaled ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... equitable and genuine basis. To the more conservative Briton this is alarming; brought up in a land of reticences, the Briton wonders what the American is "getting at," what does he want? What is his game? The American on his side is baffled by the British habit of keeping things back, and he, too, perhaps wonders why this fellow is going slow with me? Doesn't he ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... He had been baffled by the meaning of the word, which he had seen all his life, inscribed on a brass plate in the Bludston High Street: "E. Thomson, Architect & Surveyor." It had seemed to him ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... interested me so much that I did my best to enter into conversation with him, only to be baffled by the jerky embarrassment with which he met all advances, and when we got out at Esher, curiosity led me to ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... questions more intricate than any that church or school had prepared them to understand. Increasingly they know that they cannot understand them if the facts are not quickly and steadily available. Increasingly they are baffled because the facts are not available; and they are wondering whether government by consent can survive in a time when the manufacture of consent is an unregulated private enterprise. For in an exact ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... have given much to have overheard this speech, but as the door and several passages were between him and the talker, he was ignorant of the incriminating remarks the bishop had let slip. Still baffled, but still curious, he busied himself with attending to some business of the See which did not require the personal supervision of Dr Pendle, and when that prelate took his departure for London by the three o'clock train, Cargrim attended him to ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... light. But the boat's crew are seasoned hands, to whom this dread sight is familiar, and orders are quietly obeyed, the boat backing, circling and darting ahead like a sentient thing under their united efforts. So the infuriated mammal is baffled and dodged, while thrust after thrust of the long lances are got home, and streamlets of blood trickling over the edges of his spouthole give warning that the end is near. A few wild circlings at tremendous speed, jaws clashing and blood ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... Old Cloak about thee Percy Reliques King John and the Abbot Percy Reliques The Baffled Knight, or Lady's Policy Percy Reliques Truth and Falsehood Prior Flattery Williams (Sir C. H.) The Pig and Magpie Peter Pindar Advice to Young Women Peter Pindar Economy Peter Pindar The Country ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... of the most unconstitutional acts he ever committed. The Commons refused to surrender their members; and then the king went down to the house, with an armed force, to seize them. But Pym and others got intelligence of the design of Charles, and had time to withdraw before he arrived. "The baffled tyrant returned to Whitehall with his company of bravoes," while the city of London sheltered Hampden and his friends. The shops were shut, the streets were filled with crowds, and the greatest excitement prevailed. The friends of Charles, who were inclined ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... enough in theory, but its realization in practice presented considerable difficulties. The police had (presumably) searched for this person and failed to find him. How was I, untrained in methods of detection, to succeed where the experts had been baffled? I considered my resources. They consisted of a silver teapot and a salver which had been handled by the murderer and which, together, yielded a complete set of finger-prints, and the wisp of hair that I had taken from the hand of my murdered wife. It is true that the police also ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... not sure whether it was at these assizes or the next in the same town, that he had less success in the case of a certain notorious housebreaker. The man, however, was well aware that no skill could have baffled the clear evidence against him, and was, after his fashion, grateful for such exertions as had been made in his behalf. He requested the young advocate to visit him once more before he left the place. Scott's curiosity induced him to accept ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... The exercise partakes a little of the nature of battering, and danger may be apprehended when next they meet. It is difficult to give any account of this remarkable correspondence; it is too far away from us, and perhaps not yet far enough, in point of time and manner; the imagination is baffled by these stilted literary utterances, warming, in bravura passages, into downright truculent nonsense. Clarinda has one famous sentence in which she bids Sylvander connect the thought of his mistress with the changing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... these dinners, which indeed were relaxing and enjoyable, he found in the obvious duty of getting to know the most important members of his congregation. But invariably he came away from them with an inner sense of having been baffled in this object. With a few exceptions, these modern people seemed to have no time for friendship in the real meaning of the word, no desire to carry a relationship beyond a certain point. Although he was their spiritual pastor, he knew less ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... lightning accompanied the darkness, and this time heavy rain. Baffled by the darkness, the multitude ran hither and thither, aimlessly, wildly, in search of their homes. Presently the vivid lightning flashes gave them fitful direction, and gradually the ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... sides of the Capitoline hill were so steep that for a long time the Gauls were baffled in their attempts to seize it. At last they discovered a path, and one dark night were on the point of scaling the height when some geese, sacred to the goddess Juno, cackled and flapped their wings ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... cut the traces and decamped with the horses. He then bade them gather all the gang waiting in hiding so as to carry her down to some boat below, and then closing the door, he stood on guard outside. They were, however, baffled. Some of the scoundrels had taken the alarm and fled, seeing the lights of the other party moving up from the pier. Then the desperate leader tried to lead a party to steal a horse from the nearest farmhouse. They were busied in their quarreling. I dropped my ladder down, and while they ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... grave, I had felt myself doomed. All efforts I had previously made to secure my freedom had not only failed, but had seemed only to rivet my fetters the more firmly, and to render my escape more difficult. Baffled, entangled, and discouraged, I had at times asked myself the question, May not my condition after all be God's work, and ordered for a wise purpose, and if so, Is not submission my duty? A contest ...
— Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass • Frederick Douglass
... Baffled by the inertia of the Council and the failure of his powerful friends to obtain serious attention for his project, Las Casas had recourse to other influences. The oppression of the Indians and the violation of their rights as free ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... the goat, the horse, the lion, or the ibis, the raven, or the hawk. The seven spirits of tempest, fire, and destruction rose from the depths of ocean, and there were hosts of demons which could not be overcome or baffled by man without the assistance of the gods to whom they were hostile. Many were sexless; having no offspring, they were devoid of mercy ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... the police commissioner, and the public prosecutor had been baffled in their proceedings and inquiries by the effects apparently ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... it had made no difference at any time. He cared for neither praise nor blame. In his actions a materialist, in his mind he was a watcher of life, a baffled inquirer whose refuge was irony, and whose singular habits had in five years become a personal insult to the standards polite society and Puritan morality had set up. Perhaps the insult had been intended, for irregularities were committed with an insolent disdain for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... relic-hunters had his hammer with him, and tried to break a fragment off the upright Needle and could not do it; he tried the prostrate one and failed; he borrowed a heavy sledge hammer from a mason and tried again. He tried Pompey's Pillar, and this baffled him. Scattered all about the mighty monolith were sphinxes of noble countenance, carved out of Egyptian granite as hard as blue steel, and whose shapely features the wear of five thousand years had failed to mark or mar. The relic-hunter battered at these persistently, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... up the argument. Before Esther's face of quiet confidence he felt himself baffled. If she were wrong, he could not prove her wrong. Uneasy and worsted, he gave up the discussion; but thought he would not have any more ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... baffled in all our attempts to account for the differences between the races of man; but there remains one important agency, namely Sexual Selection, which appears to have acted powerfully on man, as on many other animals. I do not intend to assert that sexual ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... on the point of renouncing not his desire to do evil to Josiana, but his hope of doing it; not the rage, but the effort. But how degrading to be thus baffled! To keep hate thenceforth in a case, like a dagger in a museum! How ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... death! I shall never get an opportunity to ask the marquis about those jewels. My cousin was questioning him on the subject when dinner was announced; but he seemed to treat her inquiries as of so little importance that she was quite baffled in obtaining information." ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... to guard my little brood with fine wire-work, for some carrion crows kept hovering near, and a weasel was constantly on the watch to carry them off; but these enemies were successfully baffled, and three of the ducks survived all dangers and grew to beautiful maturity, the fourth having died in infancy from an accidental peck from the hen. In rearing all wild creatures the great thing is to study and imitate, as nearly as possible, ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... by the reaction in Becket's favor, that he gave up any further attempt to formally enforce the Constitutions of Clarendon (S165), by which he had hoped to establish a uniform system of administration of justice. But the attempt, though baffled, was not wholly lost; like seed buried in the soil, it sprang up and bore good fruit in later generations. However, it was not until near the close of the reign of George III (1813) that the civil courts fully ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... the natures to remain inactive at such a crisis. We appealed to her brothers, who promptly declined to express any opinion in the matter beyond a general conviction that their uncle was right in all things. Baffled, we proceeded to beard the uncle in his den. We found him wearing worn carpet slippers, a faded dressing- gown, a serene expression, and an air of absorption in science which did not materially lift at our approach. He listened to us patiently, however, greeting our ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... their three Nantucket irons entered the whale. Blinding vapors of foam and white-fire! The three boats, in the first fury of the whale's headlong rush, bumped the German's aside with such force, that both Derick and his baffled harpooneer were spilled out, and sailed over by the three flying keels. Don't be afraid, my butter-boxes, cried Stubb, casting a passing glance upon them as he shot by; ye'll be picked up presently —all right —I saw some sharks astern —St. Bernard's dogs, you know ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... as if denied admission to the Valley. This kind of storm-work was continued about ten or fifteen minutes; then another change in the play of the huge exulting swirls and billows and upheaving domes of the gale allowed the baffled fall to gather and arrange its tattered waters, and sink down again in its place. As the day advanced, the gale gave no sign of dying, excepting brief lulls, the Valley was filled with its weariless roar, ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... Mike, 'is undoubtedly something in the nature of a set-back. I have drawn blank. The papers bring out posters, "Psmith Baffled." I must try again. Meanwhile, to work. Work, the hobby of the philosopher and the ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... separated the groups of his composition; though the mellowness of his eye nearly always instructed him to connect the two extremes by something that partook of both, as the extremes themselves by the reflexes with the background or the scenery. The general rapidity of his process, by which he baffled his competitors, and often overwhelmed himself, did not, indeed, always permit him to attend deliberately to this principle, and often hurried him into an abuse of practice which in the lights turned breadth into mannered or insipid flatness; and in the shadows into a total extinction of parts. ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... perhaps, its very highest point. And yet the sailors inside that ring of crumbling wall won! At Acre Napoleon experienced his first defeat; and, years after, at St. Helena, he said of Sir Sidney Smith, the gallant sailor who baffled him, "That man made me miss my destiny." It is a curious fact that one Englishman thwarted Napoleon's career in the East, and another ended his career in the West, and it may be doubted which of the two Napoleon hated most—Wellington, who finally overthrew him at Waterloo, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... remembered the fourth counsel of the old guru—never to try to appear the equal of those above him in station—therefore he respectfully declined the great honour of marrying a princess. Of course the prince, baffled at the very beginning of his enterprise, was furious, and determined to work Ram Singh's ruin, and entering the rajah's presence he told him a story about Ram Singh having spoken insulting words of his sovereign and of his daughter. ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... short-sighted strategy, that, finding her more difficult than other mountain girls—the handsome, sturdy young hill-dweller had not been without his conquests among the maidens of his kind; only Madge had baffled him—he had feared that, now when the railroad building in the valley had brought so many "foreigners" into the neighborhood, one of them might fascinate her, and it had been to guard against this, as well as he was able, that he had spoken slightingly of the whole class. ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey |
