Thus it is difficult to tell whether the Rhetoric required to be read by Oxford students in the fifteenth century[170] is the one or the other.

It would be difficult to tell How many heads, dissevered, fell, Fighting his dreadful way; On every side his falchion gleamed, Hot blood in every quarter streamed On that tremendous day.

He however made use of the labors of his predecessors, so that it is difficult to tell how far he is original.

How far Cromwell himself was a Protestant it is difficult to tell.

How far his saint-like virtues were imitated it is difficult to tell.

How he lived it is difficult to tell.

When, however, one has been intimate with the French for thirty years or so it is not, to my thinking, so very difficult to tell what is likely to happen in a given French crisis.

Although we found it difficult to tell in what direction they had gone, yet it was quite evident that we might, at any time, expect a visit from our Apache friends, and our only course was to be ready when they appeared.

If any one had prophesied before his marriage that he would find it difficult to tell this to Undine he would have smiled at the suggestion; and during their first days together it had seemed as though pecuniary questions were the last likely to be raised between them.

With an alternation of truculence and cajolery, he had got her to lie down and to promise not to talkthat was the important thingand this accomplished he devoted half an hour to the composition of a note to Miss Wollaston (whom it was difficult to tell anything to over the telephone, particularly with long distance rural connections) which he despatched, in charge of Pete, in the big car.

'It's difficult to tell you,' she began, in a pathetic, unsteady voice.

The day seemed long to Maggie, and when at nightfall he came to them again it was difficult to tell which was the more pleased at his return, Margaret or Rose.

It is really very difficult to tell the truth, Father Gogarty; I find it difficult now to tell you why I wrote all these letters.

His face was hard and unsmiling; it was difficult to tell what he was thinking.

the chief points of the compass, we have so many adjectives, and so many modes of varying or comparing them, that it is difficult to tell their number, or to know which to choose in practice.

It had not been difficult to tell his father of the danger before he made his visit, but now he hesitated before he could avow that the young lady's hand had again been offered to him.

"It's so difficult to tell with these people," said Lady Wondershoot.

There is, however, one serious criticism to be made on Haseman: the extreme obscurity of his stylean obscurity mixed with occasional bits of scientific pedantry, which makes it difficult to tell whether or not on some points his thought is obscure also.

He was so terrified, that he tumbled headlong from the tree, and it was difficult to tell which ran away fastest, he or the snake.

Their limbs are "horribly thin" in both sexes; both women and men are "frightfully ugly," and so much alike that, although they go about almost naked, it is difficult to tell them apart.

It is difficult to tell the riches of the life I have had, the significance of the experience.

It would be difficult to tell the number of times that one or the other of the great-hearted trio responded to the summons from a sick or dying bed, and gave without stint of their sympathy, their time, and their labor.

Arthur May Knapp very truly says: "In Hebrew literature it is often difficult to tell whether the writer is speaking of God or of the Commonwealth; of heaven or of Jerusalem; of the Messiah or of the nation itself."

Now how this plan of my Lord Prince's worked in the Palace of Plassenburg I find it difficult to tell without writing myself down a "painted flittermouse," as the Prince expressed it.

Exactly what was meant by this phrase it is difficult to tell, but if it was intended to imply any resemblance between the two pieces its application is confined to the character of a woman to whom age has not taught continence, and an incidental hit at the jargon of astrologers.