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More "Mystify" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reckoning which, in face of such a catena as this, stretching its links over the whole period, maintains that England wanted Germans to teach her how to admire the writer whom Germans have done more to mystify and distort than even his ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... unlike most German officers and did not understand French, or thought it a good joke to mystify a poor devil of a soldier. He smiled and raised his hand, indicating by his motion that the other was to keep following the road he ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... get fodder, in such impassable weather, for such a herd of horses; but he said that they lived upon straw and sawdust; and he knew that I did not believe him, any more than about his star-shavings. And this was just the thing he loved—to mystify honest people, and be a great deal too knowing. However, I may judge him harshly, because ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... gab' is in this case, as in many others, a very great resource. A striking remark or bon mot will easily mystify the spectators, and attract their attention from what you are DOING. Hence all prestidigitators are always well stocked with anecdotes and funny observations; indeed, they talk incessantly: they speak well, too, and they take care to time the word accurately with the moment when their fingers ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... apologize to you. I mean on behalf of the company. I think it was wrong to offer you money. I think it was more wrong to mystify you with medical language and call the thing delirium. I have more respect for conjurer's patter than for doctor's patter. They are both meant to stupify; but yours only to stupify for a moment. Now I put it to you in plain words and on plain human Christian ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... breath, but had enough sense to lie down again in the straw, and feign slumber; happily the priest did not concern himself with the loft, but the absence of the bird he had expected to find, caged and waiting, seemed to mystify him. He remained for several minutes lost in thought, then setting the lantern on one box, moved others around, strewed them with a thick layer of hay he found on the floor, and lying down with his cloak pulled well ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... the thought and expression should be clear; the poet should not mystify the reader nor tax too far his efforts at comprehension. Browning sometimes grievously offends in this particular. While insisting on clearness, however, we should not forget that the mystical and the musical have their place in poetry. A poem may ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... mysteries to each other," she suggested. "I mystify you because I wonder, and you mystify me because you don't guess why I wonder. We'll let it go at that, ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... to mystify the world to a greater degree. The only thing that came to light was the cause of the bodies' bonelike rigidity. In some inexplicable way the bones in the seamen had dissolved, and according to appearances, while the bodies were plastic, had flattened out. And then, strange and unnatural though ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... thinking he meant to return direct to Spain, in spite of the fact that the ships were too rotten for the long trip. But no; the Admiral hoped, besides escaping currents, to mystify them as to the geographical position of the gold coast. Remembering how Alonzo de Ojeda had gone back and reaped riches from the pearl coast, and how Pedro Nino, that captain who brought slaves to Cadiz and sent word that he had brought a cargo of ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... or agreed upon the appointment of somebody else to act as his substitute. This was, in nine cases out of ten, the eminently unromantic cavalier servitude of fact. The high-flown, complimentary language, the profound bowing and hand-kissing of the period, combined to mystify strangers as to its real significance. Sometimes, when there was really a lover in the question, the cavalier servente must have been a serious impediment; he was always La plante ... a contrecarrer un pauvre tiers, in ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... those days occur to me that I had a rival in Mr. Talbot. Helen and I used to laugh at his crass ignorance, and mystify him now and then by our allusions. Miss Lenox was never vivacious at table, and used to listen languidly to all of us, turning to me now and then and regarding me with a sort of pleased curiosity when she thought ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... you are joking,” he replied, with a slight show of temper, “or trying to mystify me, for only this morning I was on the beach watching the bathing, and I saw a number of ladies in quite short skirts—up to their knees, in fact—with the thinnest covering on their shapely extremities. Were those ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... tricks, Prime," cried Tom, suspecting the negro of an intention to mystify them with a jargon like that he had ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... assured him was the manner of life—with what the necessities of the case led him to believe would be the condition of spirit—of the other? If the tale were to be published, the fun would lie, not in attempting to mystify the reader, but in watching with him the mystification of the hero,—in showing how he played at hoodman-blind with his destiny, and how surprised he was, when, the bandage stripped from his eyes, he saw ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... making Mr. angry, but he did get angry. He left off speaking to me by my Christian name; he called me by my surname. He said: "Let me tell you, Miss Gracedieu, it is not becoming in a young lady to mystify ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... 'cute of "Piccadilly," HARRIS the Prophet, the BLAVATSKY craze, Thibet, Theosophy, and Bounding Brothers— No, Mystic Ones—Mahatmas I should say, But really they seem so much like the others In slippery agility!—day by day Mystify me yet more. Those germs were bad enough, But what are they compared with Astral Bodies? Of Useless Knowledge I have almost had enough, I really envy uninquiring noddies, I would not be a Chela if I could. I have a horror ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... antelope. My chief excuse for doing it is to enable people at home to know the difference between a topi and a sun hat and between a sing-sing and a cob. The names of many of the African antelope family are strange and confusing, so that it is little wonder that they mystify people in America. There are a hundred or more kinds, and no one can hope to know them unless he makes a ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... agreed to provide them with such supplies as they needed. For such as they took with them the girls paid then and there. Harriet chuckled all the way back to the island. She believed that she had planned in such a way as thoroughly to mystify George Baker and his friends, and at the same time convince the latter that the Meadow-Brook Girls ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... be it understood, not for any fault of hers. People did not always understand her; her mother had understood her perfectly, and consequently had never interfered with her ways. Mina loved a mystification too, and especially to mystify uncle Duplay, who thought himself so clever—was clever indeed as men went, she acknowledged generously; but men did not go far. It would be fun to choose Merrion Lodge for her summer home, first because ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... the man as he is at all", said O'Hara: "perhaps you cannot. High finance, the first day he looked into it, ceased to mystify him, for he goes always to the ground of things, touches bottom, where first principles lie, and first principles are simple as two and two. It was because he had discovered a first principle that he escaped ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... play of color again in her cheeks. "Allow me to forbid it unconditionally. I must be plain with you, Mr. Cashel Byron. I do not know what you are or who you are; and I believe you have tried to mystify me ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... histories together form but one—that of NUTRITION, or the act of nourishing; in other words, of supporting life. This is what I called eating at first, that I might not mystify you at the beginning with hard words. But now that we are growing learned ourselves, we must accustom ourselves to the terms in use among learned people, especially when they are not more formidable than those I have just ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... the necessary arrangements, and deciding to exchange dresses with their confidential valets in the hope of being enabled to mystify the necromancer, to whom they were entirely unknown, the Marechal d'Ancre arrived to pay his respects to his royal mistress; and, upon being made acquainted with the project, he determined to join the party in the character of a Venetian noble, of whom there were at ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... drollery, which fixed every eye that beheld it. No one was more generally loved or revered; no one less assuming or more pleasing in his manner. Seeing his external simplicity, persons with whom he was arguing were sometimes tempted to treat him cavalierly; but then the solemnity with which he would mystify his adversary, and ultimately lead him into the most distressing absurdity was one of the most delightful scenes ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... I think, made it quite clear that padlock and ropes have nothing to do with the real performance of the trick, but they serve to mystify spectators, who may be allowed to knot the rope and seal the knots in any ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... is that of a man who finds a piece of parchment on which is a secret writing telling where Captain Kidd hid his treasure off the coast of South Carolina. The gold-beetle has nothing whatever to do with the real story, and is only introduced to mystify. It is one of the principles of all conjuring tricks to have something to divert the attention. Poe's detective story is a sort of conjuring trick, but it is all the more interesting because ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... go further; not breathe a word, not breathe a syllable about; not let the right hand know what the left is doing; hide one's light under a bushel, bury one's talent in a napkin. keep in the dark, leave in the dark, keep in the ignorance; blind, blind the eyes; blindfold, hoodwink, mystify; puzzle &c. (render uncertain) 475; bamboozle &c. (deceive) 545. be concealed &c. v.; suffer an eclipse; retire from sight, couch; hide oneself; lie hid, lie in perdu[Fr], lie in close; lie in ambush (ambush) 530; seclude oneself &c. 893; lurk, sneak, skulk, slink, prowl; steal into, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Lamb and Hazlitt, the founder of modern appreciation. It must be a curious reckoning which, in face of such a catena as this, stretching its links over the whole period, maintains that England wanted Germans to teach her how to admire the writer whom Germans have done more to mystify and distort than even ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... have made politically equal with the wisest in the land. Three young friends came to spend a day with us, and for fun brought in their pockets the absurd noses popular at Epsom races. We came upon some turf-diggers, and my visitors mounted their masks to mystify them. The clodpoles looked scared and very quiet, till I went up to one of them who knew me,—of course I was in my natural physiognomy,—and I said to him, "My friend, these are foreigners:" and ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... dispatched to London an anonymous letter for M r. Noel Vanstone. It will be forwarded to its destination by the same means which I successfully adopted to mystify Mr. Pendril; and it will reach Vauxhall Walk, Lambeth, by the afternoon of to-morrow ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... and her mother maintained in Rosalie that early perception of the wondrousness of her father. She loved her mother, but in the atmosphere surrounding her mother there was often flurry and worry and there was nothing whatever in her mother to mystify and entrance by sudden and violent eruptions of the miraculous. She did not love her father for he was entirely too remote and awe-ful for love, but he entranced her with his marvellousness. This maintained in her also her perception of the altogether greater superiority of all ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... and one calculated to mystify anyone not in the secret, is to transmit the music or speech from a phonograph to another part of the house or even a greater distance. For an outdoor summer party the music can be made to come from a bush, ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... exuberant, luxuriant. Plunder, rifle, loot, sack, pillage, devastate, despoil. Pretty, beautiful, comely, handsome, fair. Profitable, remunerative, lucrative, gainful. Prompt, punctual, ready, expeditious. Pull, draw, drag, haul, tug, tow. Push, shove, thrust. Puzzle, perplex, mystify, bewilder. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... harder still. It was how to mystify, tire out, check short, and then immobilize the converging Federals long enough to let him slip secretly away in time to help Johnston and Lee against McClellan. Jackson, like his enemies, moved ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... hoped to startle her, but she asked, rather quietly, "What do you mean?" and she added, as if to punish him for trying to mystify her: "I've heard that it requires gifts for that. Isn't there ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... as to its name, I really do not care what you call it, so you call it by some name that people will understand. Call it so that people will know what you mean—Salvation, Glory, Happiness, Holiness, Redemption, or what else you please. Do not mystify us by saying we want life, and then, when we are startled by the perfectly intelligible assertion, edge off by explaining that by life you mean something quite different from what we do. There is no good in that. If I were to declare ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... tolerant of the people who made time pass heavily with them, and they revenged their own ennui on all around them. How he would snub the old man for the son's pretensions, and sneer at the young man for his disproportioned ambition; and last of all, how he would mystify poor Kate, till she never knew whether he cared to fatten calves and turkeys, or was simply drawing her on to little details, which he was to dramatise one day ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... methods for obtaining cheap knowledge it is now our intention to adopt. Having got the poorest and least learned authors we could find (of course for cheapness) for our former pieces of information, we have this time engaged a gentleman to mystify a few common-place subjects, in the style of certain articles in the "Penny Cyclopaedia." As his erudition is too profound for ordinary comprehensions—as he scorns gain—as the books he has hitherto published (no, privated) have been ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... did not in those days occur to me that I had a rival in Mr. Talbot. Helen and I used to laugh at his crass ignorance, and mystify him now and then by our allusions. Miss Lenox was never vivacious at table, and used to listen languidly to all of us, turning to me now and then and regarding me with a sort of pleased curiosity when she thought ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... measure. There is more in these people than I should have guessed. How pay them off? By taking no notice of the letter? Dignified, but dull. No, I will go; perhaps some one will be there, and I will mystify them in their turn. Or, if no one is there, how I shall crow over them for their imperfectly carried out plot! Perhaps this is some folly of the Cavalier Muzio's to bring me into the presence of ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... Faun, for example, loses all the poetry and beauty which the Author fancied in it, and becomes nothing better than a grotesque absurdity, if we bring it into the actual light of day. He had hoped to mystify this anomalous creature between the Real and the Fantastic, in such a manner that the reader's sympathies might be excited to a certain pleasurable degree, without impelling him to ask how Cuvier would have classified poor Donatello, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rule the thought and expression should be clear; the poet should not mystify the reader nor tax too far his efforts at comprehension. Browning sometimes grievously offends in this particular. While insisting on clearness, however, we should not forget that the mystical and the musical have ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... Or was the Spaniard less hardened than the Jew, who refrained not from supping at the board of him whom the same night he meant to betray? What imported all those day-long enigmas and contradictions, except they were intended to mystify, preliminary to some stealthy blow? Atufal, the pretended rebel, but punctual shadow, that moment lurked by the threshold without. He seemed a sentry, and more. Who, by his own confession, had stationed him there? Was the negro now lying ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... purposely did not introduce his lordship in return, that she might mystify the ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... when he awoke to sudden and hungry aloneness, he would let his arms feel their hunger for her. The vision of her would be flowers and music and sunlight and time and all things perfect to mystify and delight, to satisfy and—greatest of all boons—to unsatisfy. The thought of her became a rest-house for all weariness; a haven where he was free to choose his nook and lie down away from all that was not her, which was all that was not beautiful. ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... Secretary of State for the Navy pointed out yesterday how rapidly the pride of the British public had faded. The English are now suppressing our reports on the successes of our submarines and our statements as to submarine losses; they dare not make public the amount of tonnage sunk, but mystify the public with shipping statistics which have given rise to general annoyance in the English Press itself. The English Government lets its people go on calmly trusting to the myth that instead of six U-boats sunk there are ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... maltreatment which had plunged me into darkness. Now the Deer Men traded with the Sea Men, and the Sea Men with the whites, especially the whalers. So later I discovered a deck of cards in the possession of one of the women, and I proceeded to mystify the Chow Chuen with a few commonplace tricks. Likewise, with fitting solemnity, I perpetrated upon them the little I knew of parlor legerdemain. Result: I was appreciated at once, and was better ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... Pauline. Ringfield held his breath, but had enough sense to lie down again in the straw, and feign slumber; happily the priest did not concern himself with the loft, but the absence of the bird he had expected to find, caged and waiting, seemed to mystify him. He remained for several minutes lost in thought, then setting the lantern on one box, moved others around, strewed them with a thick layer of hay he found on the floor, and lying down with his cloak ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... fountain head of constitutional law—that branch of our national jurisprudence which can least fluctuate. Judges of a day and not of a generation, or crazy legislators with spasmodic wisdom, may alter, and overturn, and mystify by simplification, the laws and usages of every-day life; but it is scarcely to be apprehended that the current of our constitutional law will ever be diverted from original channels. There is danger rather of its being dammed ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... Such burly, brawny buffetters for hire, Who in ten minutes tire, And clutch the ropes, and turn a Titan back To shun the impending thwack,— Such "Champions" smack as much of trick and pelf As venal JULIA's self. GRAHAM may be a "specialist," no doubt, And "What is a knock-out?" May mystify ingenuous MATTHEWS much; But Truth's Ithuriel touch Applied to pulpy "JEM" and steely "TED," (Of "slightly swollen" head) As well as unsophisticated COBB, (If Truth were "on the job,") Might find False Show and Pharisaic "Stodge," And Law-evading dodge, Dissimulating ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... masterpiece, but the accuracy of such an estimate is doubtful. So heavily weighted is the poem with notes, prefaces, and introductions that the text appears to be smothered by them. It was Pope's aim to mystify his readers, and in this he has succeeded, for the mystifications of the poem even confound the commentators. The personalities of the satire excited a keen interest, and much amusement to readers who were not included in Pope's black list of dunces. At the same time it roused ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... thousand pardons,' I replied, 'but you mystify me all the more, and I beg you will relieve me by telling me whom I have the pleasure ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... a fiction on the part of my friend, designed to mystify the minister. I said nothing, to avoid an introduction; I had stepped aside, and now stood, amused and observant, under the street lamp. Pendlam especially I studied, with one eye (figuratively speaking) on him, and the other on Susan. I compared him with myself, and had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... mother's life. I have no money to pay a lawyer to stand up and mystify matters, and my best policy is to defend myself, by telling ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... proposition to assist in fooling the boys. The woman further agreed to provide them with such supplies as they needed. For such as they took with them the girls paid then and there. Harriet chuckled all the way back to the island. She believed that she had planned in such a way as thoroughly to mystify George Baker and his friends, and at the same time convince the latter that the Meadow-Brook ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... most German officers and did not understand French, or thought it a good joke to mystify a poor devil of a soldier. He smiled and raised his hand, indicating by his motion that the other was to keep following the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... not respect him. They did everything they could to vex him and to retaliate on him for being such a severe task-master. They all laid themselves out to mystify him, speaking of the most matter-of-fact things in dark and covert hints, in order to make old Jeppe suspicious, and if he spied upon them and caught them at something which proved to be nothing at all they had a ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... few rosy clouds, part of that changeless nature which alone did not repel or mystify these two beleaguered waifs, these chance survivors, this man, this woman, left alone together by the hand ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... "I mean to mystify you. No, it's not the least use asking questions, Clary; but mind, you must not tease me any more about running ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Few things mystify poor law-abiding man than this, that the central, the profoundest, the most portentous puzzle of the universe—the weal of woe of two high-aspiring, much-enduring, youthful human souls, should be the sport of what seems to him the veriest and ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... left the pits of Zat Arrras we found the body of the guard Carthoris had slain. It had not yet been discovered, and, in order to still further delay search and mystify the jed's people, we carried the body with us for a short distance, hiding it in a tiny cell off the main corridor of the pits beneath ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... close of his career as an author, Scott never avowed his responsibility for any of these series of novels, and even took some pains to mystify the public as to the identity between the author of Waverley and the author of Tales of my Landlord. The care with which the secret was kept is imputed by Mr. Lockhart in some degree to the habit of mystery which had grown upon Scott during his secret partnership with the ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... preparations for Madeline's mysterious party. Katherine could not be found, and Rachel and Eleanor were both engaged for the evening; but that was no matter, Madeline said. It ought to be mostly a Belden House affair, but a few outsiders would help mystify the freshmen. ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... is fond of quibbles and word-play, and of 'conceits' and turns of thought such as are common in the poets whom Johnson called Metaphysical. Sometimes, no doubt, he plays with words and ideas chiefly in order to mystify, thwart and annoy. To some extent, again, as we may see from the conversation where Rosencrantz and Guildenstern first present themselves (II. ii. 227), he is merely following the fashion of the young courtiers about him, just as in his love-letter to Ophelia[70] he uses for the ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... officers did enter, the culprit would never be found, as Catholic institutions are built with the purpose of sheltering her abominable faithless in case these criminals' desire to hide themselves therein, as the convents, monasteries and cloisters have a labyrinth which would mystify any one who was not used to these ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... me, bacilli Bewildered me, and phagocytes did daze, But now the author 'cute of "Piccadilly," HARRIS the Prophet, the BLAVATSKY craze, Thibet, Theosophy, and Bounding Brothers— No, Mystic Ones—Mahatmas I should say, But really they seem so much like the others In slippery agility!—day by day Mystify me yet more. Those germs were bad enough, But what are they compared with Astral Bodies? Of Useless Knowledge I have almost had enough, I really envy uninquiring noddies, I would not be a Chela if I could. I have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... wishes or the convenience of private individuals. The prosperity and happiness of mankind are at stake; and the welfare of succeeding generations will, in no small degree, be influenced by the establishment of sound principles in education at the present time. Nothing, therefore, should be allowed to mystify or cripple that science, upon which the spread and the permanence of all ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... me: why should we trouble? Of course if you were in any danger or anything, but why need you care? You needn't care a hang for them. We shall have a laugh at them afterwards, and if I were in your place I'd mystify them more than ever. How ashamed they'll be afterwards! Hang them! We can thrash them afterwards, but ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of a prince," the mask went on, "and it is not the actress he lived with who could give it to him. My cousin, who understood him, could not lick him into shape. I should like to know the mistress of this Sargine; tell me something about him that will enable me to mystify him." ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... Euphemie, staring at the smiling, lustrous-eyed Aristide, whose busy brain was wondering how he could mystify this unwelcome ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... to each other," she suggested. "I mystify you because I wonder, and you mystify me because you don't guess why I wonder. We'll let it go ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... of missionaries have killed the joy of living as they have crushed out the old barbarities, uprooting together everything, good and bad, that religion meant to the native. They have given him instead rites that mystify him, dogmas he can only dimly understand, and a little comfort in the miseries brought upon ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... understand them unless he give especial attention to their construction."[36] The worthy Boturini was puzzled by those which he had collected, and writes, "the songs are difficult to explain, because they mystify historical facts with constant allegorizing,"[37] and Boturini's literary executor, Don Mariano Echevarria y Veitia, who paid especial attention to the poetic fragments he had received, says frankly: "The fact is, that as to the songs ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... Report had gone before them; some said that a common labourer had come into the property, others said it was a person in very moderate circumstances; as usual, both these reports were contradicted by a third, which represented him as a half-pay lieutenant in the army. Rushbrook had contrived to mystify even the solicitor as to his situation in life; he stated to him that he had retired from the army, and lived upon the government allowance; and it was in consequence of a reference to the solicitor, made by some of the best families ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... Where is it, then? I ask; which are the dupes, and which the rogues? Do the clergy cheat the laity? Or do the laity (who have quite as much to do with these miracles) cheat the clergy? Do the Jesuits entrap the Pope? Or does the Pope mystify the Jesuits? When missionaries shed their blood in hundreds in heathen lands, are we to believe that they are the fabricators of the wonderful tales which they have been in the habit of sending home to Christendom? Or did they leave Europe with the intention of becoming martyrs, ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... the frontier." Gard grew wary. This knowing and recent familiarity was not becoming entirely agreeable. It would be prudent to mystify ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... pretenders in a double sense," said one of the party; "they can do nothing which it is worth one's while to be made a dupe by. The humblest wayside juggler in India could mystify them to ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... could be announced. Alicia was well aware that Brookshire was looking on; that Brookshire was on the side of Diana Mallory, the forsaken, and was not at all inclined to forgive either the deserting lover or the supplanting damsel; so that while she was not loath to sting and mystify Brookshire by whatever small signs of her power over Oliver Marsham she could devise; though she queened it beside him on his coach, and took charge with Lady Lucy of his army of women canvassers; though she faced the mob with him at Hartingfield, on the occasion of ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you, Colonel, I am not thinking of love or courtship. That is the business of the drawing-room, and not of the camp. But she did mystify ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... you are very good to bear with me. Suppose, now, my father, instead of sending me here, had commanded that I should sojourn and mystify with that righteous Mrs. Lambert, whom he magnifies into a model of holiness; what a time I should have passed! Why, the nuns, whom the holy Sexburga placed up yonder, had not as much loneliness; don't you think the place was admirably adapted for an elopement? I am certain—nay, you need not smile—for ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... left. At one point, however, 'Siah found where two persons—a white man and a red one—had embarked in a canoe which had been hidden under the bank of the creek. Evidently Crow Wing had expected the place would be searched and had done all in his power to mystify the curious. ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... we consider that the interest of this our narration of bygone events is quite sufficient, without condescending to what is called claptrap; and there are so many people in our narrative continually labouring under deception of one kind or another, that we need not add to it by attempting to mystify our readers; who, on the contrary, we shall take with us familiarly by the hand, and, like a faithful historian, lead them through the events in the order in which they occurred, and point out to them how they ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Antonina, The Dead Secret, The Woman in White, No Name, Armadale, The Moonstone, and Man and Wife. There is a sameness in these works; and yet it is evident that the author has put his invention on the rack to create new intrigues, and to mystify his reader from the beginning to the ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... to stand by one another on all occasions, though I don't remember that they did; but further than this we had no purpose, unless it was to accomplish as a body the same amount of mischief which we were sure to do as individuals. To mystify the staid and slow-going Rivermouthians was our frequent pleasure. Several of our pranks won us such a reputation among the townsfolk, that we were credited with having a large finger in whatever ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... bereavement after another. It's mighty hard to be a mother of sons in Homeburg. I worked in the post-office for a year once—handed out mail—and I got to know just exactly what most of the mothers in town wanted. I could please them with a new magazine and mystify them with a circular or a business letter. But if I wanted to light them up until they took the shadows out of the corners as they went out, I would give them a letter from a son, way off somewhere, making good. The best of them didn't write any too ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... had secretly apprehended it might. On the contrary, he was asked to repeat his account, and all who heard it, though a good deal embellished this time, appeared disposed to believe what he said. Encouraged by this success, the poor fellow undertook to mystify a little concerning the Reef; but here he soon found himself met with plump denials. In order to convince him that deception would be of no use, he was now taken a short distance and ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... found little to win him from that self-analysis which later enabled him to mystify a world that rarely pauses to take heed of the ancient exhortation, "Know thyself." In the depths of his own being he found the story of "William Wilson," with its atmosphere of weird romance and its heart of ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... threats, and subjected to imprisonment by command of the Pope; the Inquisition deferring in this whole matter to the papal authority. All the long series of attempts made in the supposed interest of the Church to mystify these transactions have at last failed. The world knows now that Galileo was subjected certainly to indignity, to imprisonment, and to threats equivalent to torture, and was at last forced to pronounce publicly and on his knees his ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
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