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It came to me as a clear duty that I should get out of the land of hotels and leisure and go seeking the facts and clues to human inter-relationship nearer the earthy roots of things, and I turned my thoughts to India and China, those vast enigmas of human accumulation, in a spirit extraordinarily like that of some mystic who receives a call.

Her rule in the Convent was even and serene; but those who came to her flock from the real world, from the trials and temptations of a real experience, were always enigmas to her, and she could scarcely comprehend or aid them. In fact, since in the cloister, as everywhere else, character will find its level, it was old Jocunda who was the real governess of the Convent.

I was going to ask you, surely men witnessing a marked admiration for some one else will naturally be discouraged?" Sir Willoughby stiffened with sudden enlightenment. Though the word jealousy had not been spoken, the drift of her observations was clear. Smiling inwardly, he said, and the sentences were not enigmas to her: "Surely, too, young ladies . . . a little? Too far? But an old friendship!

Considering the variety of interpretations placed upon it by expositors and the opinions generally held respecting it, we might conclude that it is not. The majority of the people look upon these prophecies as "a mass of unintelligible enigmas," and are ready to tell the student of Revelation that this book "either finds or leaves a man mad."

Its walls are hung with black drapery, on which appear the mystical signs of the planetary bodies, Hebrew, Persian, and various cabalistic characters, the dark enigmas of the work of transmutation, and the invocations or prayers for success employed by the alchymist.

I have never been richer than to-day." "How so?" "I am about to give away a kingdom." "You speak in enigmas." "By my translation of to-day I have proved, that your deceased consort was the child of Hophra. Now, our law allows the daughter of a king to succeed to the throne, when there is neither son nor brother living; if she should die childless, her husband becomes her legitimate successor.

He was to join the ranks of those who besieged the ears of God for knowledge, and left behind them to successors yet unborn great traditions of the enigmas they had guessed. In entering upon the study of theology he seemed to become a soldier in the sacred band, the élite of the army which won and guarded truth.

It consists in the application of critical canons to cases outside their jurisdiction. It is related to criticism as logic-chopping is to logic. There are persons who scent enigmas everywhere, even where there are none. They discover traces of forgery in authentic documents. A strange state of mind! By constantly guarding against the instinct of credulity they come to suspect everything.

For wiser than they men experienced in the problems of humanity and trained to solve its enigmas were presently in no better case. A very trivial and innocent remark was prelude to the disaster; and had the speaker guessed what his jest must presently mean in terms of human misery, grief, and horror, it is certain enough that he would not have spoken.

"I do not know, sir," said he, "whether you have found leisure to study these enigmas of that mysterious Sphinx, the earth; for though Count Alfieri has spoken to me of your unusual acquirements, I understand your tastes have hitherto lain rather in the direction of philosophy and letters;" and on Odo's prompt admission of ignorance, he courteously continued: "The physical sciences seem, indeed, less likely to appeal to the imaginative and poetical faculty in man, and, on the other hand, religion has appeared to prohibit their too close investigation; yet I question if any thoughtful mind can enter on the study of these curious phenomena without feeling, as it were, an affinity between such investigations and the most abstract forms of thought.