"Conjurer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... phenomena, such as Home's apparent ability to handle fire unburnt and his levitation can be paralleled in savage rites or the performance of Indian fakirs, to which no professedly spiritistic explanation is attached. In many instances a trained conjurer would be far more apt to detect fraud than a trained scientist. He would at least know where to ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... maintain "civilized standards of procedure and evidence."[61] An individual who has acquired income by illicit means is not excused from making out an income tax return because he might thereby expose himself to a criminal prosecution by the United States. "He could not draw a conjurer's circle around the whole matter," said Justice Holmes, "by his own declaration that to write any word upon the government blank would bring him into danger of the law."[62] But a witness called to testify before ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... understand that the place of the ordinary musical critic of The Times will be taken at the next performance of Parsifal by Mr. WATERER, the great floricultural expert, and Mr. DEVANT, the eminent conjurer, with a view to their contributing their impressions of the flower maidens and the methods of the magician ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... it was worth twenty-five thousand pounds or twenty- five thousand pennies!" retorted I. "It belonged to Lady Orstline—not to you or your daughter or to me. I know that you are a skillful conjurer and I won't ask you how it found its way into my pocket. I am only glad I have had an opportunity of ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... him, straight out of her clean soul. "The world is good and pure, but many men are corrupt. Panawe, my husband, has travelled, and he has told me things I would almost rather have not heard. One person he met believed the universe to be, from top to bottom, a conjurer's cave." ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... intelligible only to the conjurer, but was said to contain infallible information about the future, and the little man offered to interpret ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... ends, Mr. Ezra Jennings, in a conjuring trick being performed on Mr. Franklin Blake, by a doctor's assistant with a bottle of laudanum—and by the living jingo, I'm appointed, in my old age, to be conjurer's boy!" ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... riders' spurs, shews you with what earnestness the whole affair is conducted. There, the ring is thrice carried off at the point of the lance. Feats of horsemanship follow in a covered building, to the right; and the juggler, conjurer, or magician, displays his dexterous feats, or exercises his potent spells ... in a little amphitheatre of trees, at a distance beyond. Here and there rise more stately edifices, as theatres ... from the doors of which a throng of heated spectators is pouring out, after having indulged ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... itself with all the needs of mankind, impelled to poke its nose into every pot where the good God cooks the future." The theatre offered for a time another form of dissipation than his religious hysteria. He hated concerts, and compared himself to a conjurer or a clever trick poodle; he took up with the Revolution of 1830; Saint-Simonianism enmeshed him; later he fell under the spell of the Abbe Lamennais. Then Paganini came to Paris and fascinated and frightened Liszt, as he frightened the world with his unheard-of fiddling. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... in the midst of strange facts in this little conjurer's room. Or, again, there may be nothing in this poor invalid's chamber but some old furniture, such as they say came over in the Mayflower. All this is just what I mean to, find out while I am looking at the Little Gentleman, who has suddenly ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in thy way a bit of a conjurer—this young person whom I DID NOT describe, and whom you, for that very reason, suspected was not an indifferent object to me—is, I am sorry to say it, in very fact not so much so as in prudence she ought. I will not use the name of love on this occasion; for I have applied it too often ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... The child looked as though she would produce one from her blouse like any conjurer. As yet, however, the article in question had not entered his scheme of life. He declined ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... and beliefs is illustrated in the fact that the formulas used in the Middle Ages in Europe to exorcise evil spirits were Assyrian words, imported probably thousands of years before from the magicians of Chaldea. When the European conjurer cried out to the demon, "Hilka, hilka, besha, besha," he had no idea that he was repeating the very words of a people who had perished ages before, and that they signified Go away, go away, evil one, evil one. (Lenormant, "Anc. Hist. East," vol. i., ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... the Rectory, but the Spirit could not be overcome. It is true Griffiths saw it, but in such a form that he could not approach it; night after night, the Spirit appeared in various forms, but still the conjurer was unable to master it. At last it came to the wise man in the form of a fly, which Griffiths immediately captured, and placed in a small box. This box he buried under a large stone in the river, just below ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... books of natural history, we cannot but be convinced that the fetus or embryon is formed by apposition of new parts, and not by the distention of a primordial nest of germs included one within another like the cups of a conjurer. ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... fun of me? You're not afraid?' thundered the monitor, in towering rage, turning this way and that, uncertain whom to select as the first victim of his heavy hand. Before he could collect his wits, one of the boys yelled, 'Rabbi Isaac, Rabbi Isaac, the candles!'—It worked like a conjurer's charm upon a serpent. In an instant the monitor turned and ran to his room and searched it. Seeing no one there, he sank into his chair, and groaned: 'Wicked, depraved children! Those gallows-birds, I'll mangle their flesh, and flay the skin from their bones!' and he kept on ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... which are capable of examination, and which, under skilled experiment, will resolve their secret. Nothing it more bewildering than a good conjuring trick till we know how it is done, and Nature is the supreme conjurer. We have not found out all her tricks, and never shall do so; but we very well know that a solution ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... contest with one word, but had still been held back by his associates, who themselves thought him too wild, broke through at last and placed himself, with an inflamed visage, and all the motions of a conjurer, before the people's priest, and cried out: "Zwingli, I conjure thee, by the living God, to tell us the truth." The latter answered very calmly: "That shalt thou hear. Thou art as clownish and ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... of any mechanical contrivance or artificial device." This was the merest showman's patter, for, as a matter of fact, it was not a very wonderful illusion. But as he led his wife forward to present her to the audience the conjurer was wondering whether the mishaps that had ruined his chance would meet him even here. If something should go wrong—he felt his wife's hand tremble in his, and he pressed it tightly to reassure her. He must make an effort, an effort of will, and then no mistakes would happen. ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... proposals which Mr. ACLAND had described as bred "by Filial Piety out of the Board of Trade" received the unexpected aid of Sir ALFRED MOND, who disposed of his Cobdenite prejudices as easily as the conjurer swallows his gloves, and unblushingly asserted that the tiny Preference now proposed, far from being the advance-guard of Protection, was in reality a very strong movement towards Free Trade. Comforted by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... mind in which he more or less succeeded in arraying himself was that of one who goes to see a serious conjurer. It would be rather fun, he thought, to see a table dancing. But there was not wholly wanting that inexplicable tendency of some natures deliberately to deceive themselves on what lies nearest to ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... an hour at a time. He was also very much given to voyages of discovery, dark continents having a peculiar fascination for him. Even the lion's mouth had no terror for him. I once produced him from the interior of a brand-new top hat like a conjurer an omelette. Again, we were very much surprised at breakfast one morning to see Peter walk out of a rabbit-pie in which he ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... over the counter—he really had an extraordinarily long body—this amazing person produced the article in the customary conjurer's manner. "Paper," he said, and took a sheet out of the empty hat with the springs; "string," and behold his mouth was a string-box, from which he drew an unending thread, which when he had tied his parcel he bit off—and, it seemed to me, swallowed the ball of string. And then he lit a candle ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... his scepticism, and every editor has remarked that his plays are heathenish in spirit. Lamb not only calls attention to the fact that "Marlowe is said to have been tainted with Atheistical positions," but remarks that "Barabas the Jew, and Faustus the Conjurer, are offsprings of a mind which at least delighted to dally with interdicted subjects. They both talk a language which a believer would have been tender of putting into the mouth of a character though but in fiction." Dyce could not "resist the conviction" that Marlowe's impiety was ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... not a conjurer," pursued the captain, "and don't think me so, or I shall right soon undeceive you. Likewise don't think, if you please, though I do come from that country of the babies, that I am asking questions for question-asking's sake, for ...
— A Message from the Sea • Charles Dickens
... in a mystifying manner, he began to roll the cigarette briskly between his palms. A small shower of tobacco sifted to the floor: the rice-paper cracked and came away; and with the bland smile and gesture of a professional conjurer, Lanyard exhibited a small cylinder of stiff paper ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... these childish devices were intended to deceive Sir Charles Vandrift. Not quite the sort of man (as the City of London knows) to be taken in by hocus-pocus. And all this, I saw, was the cheapest and most commonplace conjurer's patter. ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... regular, his eyes keen, his complexion pale, his mouth vigorous, and his chin prominent. He was well dressed in a frock coat, black tie, and patent leather boots. He would never have been taken for a conjurer or a shop-walker, but he might have been taken for a slightly depraved Art-photographer who had known better days. He sat down near the tea-table opposite Mrs. Bergmann, holding his top hat, which had a slight mourning band round it, in ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... the marks of their missing canoes. Then she turned her pale face and tired eyes to the sun, and unbraided her hair so that it streamed glistening all about her and covered the white sand when she sat down again in front of the smoke-darkened canvas that had become her conjurer's house. ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... shouted the war-whoop, and suddenly the warriors came rushing in from all quarters, preceded by the old squaw trumpeters squalling like mad. The conjurer sprang to his feet, and was ready to sink into the earth when he beheld the ferocious-looking fellows that surrounded him. I stepped up, took him by the hand, and quieted his fears. I told the chief that he was a ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... well as they, A grave Athenian, passing by, Cast on the sage a scornful eye, As on a dotard quite bereaved: Which, when the moralist perceived, (Rather himself a wit profess'd Than the poor subject of a jest) Into the public way he flung A bow that he had just unstrung: "There solve, thou conjurer," he cries, "The problem, that before thee lies." The people throng; he racks his brain, Nor can the thing enjoin'd explain. At last he gives it up—the seer Thus then in triumph made it clear: "As the tough bow exerts its spring, A constant tension breaks the string; But if 'tis ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... the strangeness that is the thing. There is, in short, an inalienable charm in the mere contemplation of mystery and the hazard of fortunes; and it would be a pity to shut them out from our consideration only because there is no second-sighted conjurer on hand to turn them into plain ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... investigation. Eight of the winning votes were faggot votes manufactured out of the Cow Inn, of Haslemere, which inspired Dr. William King, Principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford, to a ballad of forty-two verses, entitled The Cow of Haslemere, or The Conjurer's Secretary at Oxford. Dr. King liked politics in poetry to be hot and ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... regarded as too extravagant, and, it may be, too coarsely worded for publication. It was no doubt in the first instance a 'metrical experiment', but it is to be interpreted allegorically. The 'Rash Conjurer', the me damne, is the adept in the black magic of metaphysics. But for that he might have been like his brothers, a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... back his cuffs and stuck out his elbows. Then he opened the packet and inserted his thumb and fore-finger, slowly, gingerly, like a conjurer performing a sleight-of-hand trick before a puzzled audience, and, beaming all over his face, extracted from the tobacco a glittering object which he held out before ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... things to distract your attention from your object, you may lose it entirely, just as you lose sight of something in the hands of a conjurer who has succeeded in directing your attention to something of momentary interest. In this connection it is well to say that the habit of spending must be avoided. Let a large expenditure be a circumstance. You can afford, however, to spend money on charities ...
— A Jolly by Josh • "Josh"
... whoops.... The slaughter became terrible. Men fell like wheat before the scythe. At one time the Indians ceased firing; ... they seemed to be holding a 'pow-wow'; but the keen and fearless Wyman crept up among the bushes, shot the chief conjurer, and broke up the meeting. About the middle of the afternoon young Fry received a mortal wound. Unable to fight longer, he lay in his blood, praying from time to time for his comrades in a faint but audible voice." One, Keys, received two wounds, ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... except the wounded person he is angry with and wants to punish. Upon such a wounded person we always place a naked sword or some other sharp steel instrument, as spirits are much afraid of weapons of this kind. If there be any good conjurer at hand to charm away the spirits from the person wounded he recovers, but nothing else can save him." In one case a dacoit named Ghisa had been severely wounded in an encounter and was seized by the spirit of a banyan tree as he was being taken away: "We made a litter ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... dark figure corresponded with each other. The apartments, choaked up with lumber, scarcely admitted his body, though of the skeleton order. Perhaps leanness is an appendage to the science, for I never knew a corpulent conjurer. ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... which has often been my bane, I shook the saucepan vehemently, in order to dislodge some more of its contents into my already full dish. As I did so, my treacherous wrist, strained by the weight of the saucepan, gave way, and with the rapidity of a conjurer's trick I found the great black saucepan seated,—yes, that is the only word for it,—seated in the midst of my heap of rice, which was now covered by fine black powder from its sooty outside. All the rice was utterly and completely ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... in the pocket indicated, and with the air of an inexpert conjurer whose trick has succeeded contrary to his expectations produced a silver-plated fork. He regarded it with surprise; then he looked wonderingly ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... ball given by the municipality. The Duke of Wellington was there. He had in his hand an extraordinary sort of hat which had something of a shape of a folding cocked hat, with divers red crosses and figures on it, so that it resembled a conjurer's cap. I understand it is a hat given to his Grace by magnanimous Alexander; St Nicholas perhaps commissioned the Emperor to present it to Wellington, for his Grace is entitled to the eternal gratitude of the different Saints, as well as of ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... years ago, the Virga Divinatoria, or Divining Rod, has a degree of credit given to it. This rod is of hazle, or other light wood, and held horizontally in the hand, and is said to bow towards the ore whenever the Conjurer walks over a mine. A very few years ago, in France, and even in England, another kind of divining rod has been used to discover springs of water in a similar manner, and gained some credit. And in the very last year, there were many in France, and some ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... I.—"E.F.R." states that he has lately discovered, in the lining of an ancient trunk, two or three curious broadsides, one of which purports to be Dr. Dee's petition to James I., 1604, against the report raised against him, namely, "That he is or hath bin a Conjurer and Caller, or Invocator of Divels." He would be glad to know whether this curious broadside has been printed in any memoir ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... him to exhibit to us a specimen of his mysterious talent. To this he at first replied that he was rather seeking to abjure a renown that had become troublesome—half the world viewing him as a conjurer, and the other half as a getter-up of strange comedies; 'but,' he kindly added, 'if you will promise me a strictly private meeting, I will, this evening, do all in my power to convince you that mesmerism is no delusion.' This being agreed upon, with a stipulation that the members of my own family ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... Jean, seconding her father's hospitable invitation. And without another word she produced from various hidden receptacles tablecloth, knives and forks, bread, oatcake, butter, cheese, and jam, with the rapidity of a conjurer—as the dazed Bonar thought. Then down came a frying-pan, and she began to cook eggs and ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... before retiring at night, we like to peep from the front windows and see their gigantic forms grandly silhouetted against the evening sky. Gog is Gog, and Magog is Magog; and the idea of mistaking the one for the other seems ludicrous in the extreme. The solar system is as full of mysteries as a conjurer's portmanteaux; but, of all the mysteries that it contains, the mystery of individuality is surely the most ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... generousitee and trusting which will submit myself to your grant benevolence for avoid the troublesomeness to you and your families, that the servant Ram Zon you have been so honorable and benovelent to engage is a great rogue and conjurer. He will make your mind buzzling and will steal your properties, and can run away with you midway. In proof you please touch his right hand shoulder and see what and how big charm he has. Such a bad temperature man ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... believed that the seventh son, in a family of sons, was a conjurer by nature. That is, he could work wonders like the fairies and excel the doctors in ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... happened at the bulwark which had been formerly won by Timoja at Bardes. By these two severe defeats of his people, Ismael was so excessively alarmed that he left Goa, and his fear was much increased as some conjurer had foretold that he was to be killed by a cannon-shot near some river. He sent several ceremonious messages to Albuquerque, on purpose to discover what was doing on board the ships, and by the threatening answers he received his fears were materially ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... feelings on the subject, how was it that he was able to laugh in his sleeve at the laws, and to come forth at a moment's notice and cause the people to vote, legally or illegally, just as he pleased? It requires no conjurer to tell us the reason. The outside hulls and husks remain when the rich fruit has gone. It was in seeing this, and yet not quite believing that it must be so, that the agony of Cicero's life consisted. There could have been no hope for freedom, ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... side sat Soames. They made a queer contrast in that sunlit room, Soames sitting haggard in that hat and cape, which nowhere at any season had I seen him doff, and this other, this keenly vital man, at sight of whom I more than ever wondered whether he were a diamond merchant, a conjurer, or the head of a private detective agency. I was sure Soames didn't want my company; but I asked, as it would have seemed brutal not to, whether I might join him, and took the chair opposite to his. He was smoking a cigarette, with an untasted salmi of something on his ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... acquainted with the gentleman, Duchess," I admitted, "but he did not come with me. I can tell you, however, that now he is here he can be made very useful in entertaining your guests—he is a conjurer of very remarkable powers, and I've no doubt whatever but that he would be only too happy to exercise them for the ...
— The Mysterious Shin Shira • George Edward Farrow
... Night, in honor of Charley's birthday, for which occasion I have provided a magic lantern and divers other tremendous engines of that nature. But the best of it is that Forster and I have purchased between us the entire stock in trade of a conjurer, the practice and display whereof is intrusted to me. And O my dear eyes, Felton, if you could see me conjuring the company's watches into impossible tea-caddies, and causing pieces of money to fly, and burning pocket-handkerchiefs ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... we were all marshalled by Sherlock Holmes, the constables grinning and Lestrade staring at my friend with amazement, expectation, and derision chasing each other across his features. Holmes stood before us with the air of a conjurer who ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... felt that she received a less measure of love than she gave—not from Jonathan, in whose whole, warm, transparent heart no other woman had ever looked, but something of her own passed beyond him and never returned. To both their life was like one of those conjurer's cups, seemingly filled with red wine, which is held from the lips by the false ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... us say, which the necromancer was uttering, only sounded but too much like "hokey-pokey kickeraboo abracadabra," and the rest of the mysterious sounds with which the conjurer at juvenile parties seeks to invest his performance with additional wonder, for the benefit of ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... case. But, what will perhaps interest you still more, here is a cutting on the subject from a Vienna newspaper, which I will now read to you, translating as I go. You can see for yourselves; it is printed in the German character." And he held the cutting out for verification, much as a conjurer passes a trick orange along the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... time, 'exorcist' and 'conjurer' were used indifferently. The former has since come to mean only 'one who drives away spirits'; the latter, ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... for a moment had so much in it of bitter realism that it drove the blood from my wife's cheeks. I could not follow Dawson's movements; his hands flickered like those of a conjurer, there came a sharp click, and the handcuffs were upon my wrists! I stared at them speechless, wondering how they got there, and, looking up, met the coldly triumphant eyes of the detective. I realised then exactly how the professional manhunter glares at the prey into whom, after ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... as a conjurer," sobbed Patience; "but I wish you hadn't been right in this instance. However, comfort yourself. I'll die with you. We'll be carried to the grave in the ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... bodes no good Unto the Holy Brotherhood. I may be wrong, but I confess— As far as it is right or lawful For one, no conjurer, to guess— It seems to me ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... great Conjurer, as appears by the Sequel. The Seretee or Santee Indians were gone to War against the Hooks and Backhooks Nations, living near the Mouth of Winyan-River. Those that were left at Home, (which are commonly old People and Children) ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... trip northward, this warm weather," replied the conjurer, "across the Connecticut first, and then up through Vermont, and may be into Canada before the fall. But I must stop and see the breaking up of ...
— The Seven Vagabonds (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... picture, or in the mind's eye, without a wand? Does even the most amateurish of prestidigitateurs attempt to emulate the performances of the once famous Wizard of the North, without the aid of the magic staff? The magician, necromancer, soothsayer, or conjurer, is as useless without his wand as a Newcastle ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... realization of her thoughts she uttered a little cry of surprise; but, smiling affably, and in no way disconcerted, he raised his big hat from his head. On account of the softness of the felt this could only be accomplished by passing the arm over the head and seizing the crown as a conjurer would a pocket-handkerchief. The movement was large and unctuous, ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... them up properly," retorted Fanny; "if you really were such a conjurer as you pretended to be just now, you would only have to say 'hocus pocus,' and the cards would all jump into the ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... vanished in the air. Where he went to was a mystery. There was no hole; no depth of water; no hiding-place anywhere that I could discover or that the dog could discover, and yet the mink had disappeared. It was like some conjurer's trick. ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... A conjurer had obtained admittance, and was showing his laughing audience the tricks of his trained cocks ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and invoked every conceivable evil spirit to scare them and drive them about like wild cattle. Men hanker after pain, anger, hate, the flush of passion, sudden flight, and breathless suspense, and they appeal to the artist as the conjurer of this demoniacal host. In the spiritual economy of our cultured classes art has become a spurious or ignominious and undignified need—a nonentity or a something evil. The superior and more uncommon artist must be in the throes ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... be seen—booths full of conjurers, acrobats, dancers, of women who could stretch their necks to the length of their arms, or thrust their lips up to cover their eyebrows, and a hundred other curious tricks. The price of admission was one rin each to children, and finally they chose the conjurer's booth, and saw him spout fire from his mouth, swallow a long sword, and finally exhibit a sea-serpent, which appeared to be made of ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... by being weighted by a plethora of useless detail. One could listen to Maud's efforts to describe her own doings for half an hour on end, and remain almost as much in the dark as at the beginning! On the present occasion she was full of excitement about a wonderful conjurer whose tricks she had witnessed at a children's party in town three nights before, and which she was anxious to enumerate for ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the lake, when we had reached the center, was slightly luminous from the starlight, and the dark, even forest-line that surrounded us, doubled by reflection in the water, presented a broad, unbroken belt of utter blackness. The effect was quite startling, like some huge conjurer's trick. It seemed as if we had crossed the boundary-line between the real and the imaginary, and this was indeed the land of shadows and of spectres. What magic oar was that the guide wielded that it could transport me to such ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... the archimpostor who had been so justly pilloried in Browning's "Mr. Sludge the Medium"; here was a scientist, trained to exact knowledge and close observation, who would not be deceived by the artful tricks of a conjurer. It was pleasant too to learn that in order to circumvent any attempts at sleight of hand, Sir William intended using instruments specially designed for test purposes, and which he was confident could ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... long as he doesn't wear a conjurer's evening dress. I like being surprised. Now let's go and surprise Harry at his studio; we must be quick, he's ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... to account for the unhappy duck's finding its way into his client's pocket, and the charm of them all was their variety. Inconsistency was not the word to apply reproachfully. Inconsistency was Codd's merit. He was like a conjurer who asks you to name a card, and as surely as you do so you ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... sardine tin in much the same manner as the conjurer shows a pack of cards when he entreats you to choose ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... plain and reasonable is a reason against it. The airs he gives himself are infinite, and his caprices as sudden as they are groundless. The whole of his treatment of his wife at home is in the same spirit of ironical attention and inverted gallantry. Everything flies before his will, like a conjurer's wand, and he only metamorphoses his wife's temper by metamorphosing her senses and all the objects she sees, at a word's speaking. Such are his insisting that it is the moon and not the sun which they see, &c. This extravagance reaches its most pleasant ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... keeping company with such a low-bred wretch. It was in vain that I told him he was a great merchant, that he had a great deal of money, and that he played like a child. 'He a merchant,' cried Brinon. 'Do not believe that, sir! May the devil take me, if he is not some conjurer.' 'Hold your tongue, old fool,' said I; 'he is no more a conjurer than you are, and that is decisive; and, to prove it to you, I am resolved to win four or five hundred pistoles of him before I go to bed. With these words I turned him out, strictly ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... enthusiastic admiration of the beauty of Christ's character and teaching. [257] He had shown a strong passion for the stage and loved nothing better than the plays of Shakespeare. He was fond of performing himself, and especially delighted in appearing in the role of a magician or conjurer before his family and friends. The new sect took up the position that all religions were true and worthy of veneration. At the inaugural meeting, texts from the sacred scriptures of the Christians, Hindus, Muhammadans, Parsis and Chinese were publicly read, in order ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... met the conjurer at various parties and despised him utterly. He despised his futile jokes and high-pitched laugh and he knew his tricks by heart. They sat in rows in front of him—shining-faced, well-brushed little boys in ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... the first part, and the second opens ten years afterwards in a Greek Conjurer's house in Constantinople, with Paracelsus writing down the result of his work. And the result ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... front it stood open on the blue bay and the Casco lying there under her awning and her cheerful colours. Overhead was a thatch of puraos, and over these again palms brandished their bright fans, as I have seen a conjurer make himself a halo out of naked swords. For in this spot, over a neck of low land at the foot of the mountains, the trade-wind streams into Anaho Bay in a flood of almost constant volume and velocity, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dealing and double faces, have long been the order of the day. Some men's cards are all trumps, whilst others have carte blanche; some honours count, whilst others stand for nothing. For instance, did not the little man who cast up his final accounts a short time back at St. Helena, like a Corsican conjurer, shuffle and cut about among kings and queens, knaves and asses, (aces I mean) dealing out honours when he liked, and taking trumps as he thought fit?—did he not deal and take up again almost as he pleased, having generally an honour in his sleeve to be played at command, or un roi ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... 1156. A "conjurer" can rub away a "rising" (boil) by coming to your bedside about daybreak, before you speak to any one, and rubbing the "rising" for nine successive days. ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... monsieur! we need not be a conjurer to see that. It makes itself seen at all moments. You are jealous, my lord, and the maid of honour cannot look at another face without yours beginning to scowl. That which you do is unworthy, monsieur; is inhospitable—is, is lache, yes lache:" (he spoke rapidly in French, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... whisperers, with a long list of such cheats, were at the time a prevailing nuisance throughout the kingdom; nor was there a fair proportion of them wanting here. That, however, which filled the people with the most especial curiosity, awe, and interest, was the general report that nothing less than a live conjurer, who had come to town on that very evening, was then among them. The town, in fact, was crowded as if it had been for an illumination; but as illuminations, unless they could be conducted with rushlights, were pageants altogether unknown in such small remote ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... first shuffled ad libitum, then cut three different times, and laid on a table, face upwards, one by one, in the form of a circle, or more frequently nine in a row. If the conjurer is a man he chooses one of the kings as his representative; if a woman, she selects one of the queens. This is on the supposition that persons are consulting for themselves; otherwise it is the fortune-teller who selects the representative card. Then the queen of the chosen king, or the king of the ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... some need to know them in fact; and with him the need of a protection for himself called it forth; he was intuitively a conjurer in self-defence, long-sighted, wanting no directions to the herb he was to suck at when fighting a serpent. His dulness of vision into the heart of his enemy was compensated by the agile sensitiveness obscuring but rendering him miraculously active, and, without supposing his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... best in the world, they say." A sort of reluctant admiration showed in Van Blarcom's face. "There isn't any one that can get him; he does what he wants, goes where he likes—the United States, England, France, Russia—and always gets away safe. You'd think he was a conjurer to read what he does sometimes. A whole country will be looking for him, and he takes some one else's passport, puts on a disguise, and good-by—he's gone! That's Franz von Blenheim. No; that's just an outline of him. And on pretty good authority, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... cried in a loud voice, for her passion overcame her, and she prophesied to those who bare the coffin, "Not one soul of you that lives shall see the land where your conjurer is leading you! Ye shall thirst, ye shall hunger, ye shall call on the Gods of Khem, and they shall not hear you; ye shall die, and your bones shall whiten the wilderness. Farewell! Set ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... altogether, a very fine collection, old maids and young girls, many of them apparently of the servant class, one or two sitting with open mouths and a vacancy of expression that seemed to demand a conjurer with a rabbit and a hat. Some faces were of the true fanatic cast, lit with the glow of an expectancy and a hope that no rational experience had ever actually justified. One girl, whom Maggie had seen with Aunt Anne on some occasion, had especially this prophetic anticipation in ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... many senses, it was they, not the nominal proprietor, that lived Friedrich Wilhelm's life. For the next seven years, a figure went about, not doubting it was Friedrich Wilhelm; but it was in reality Seckendorf-and-Grumkow much more. These two, conjurer and his man, both invisible, have caught their royal wild Bear; got a rope round his muzzle;—and so dance him about; now terrifying, now exhilarating all the market by the pranks he plays! Grumkow, a very Machiavel after his sort, knew the nature of ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... little puzzle. Most children seem to know it, and yet, curiously enough, they are invariably unacquainted with the answer. The question they always ask is, "Do, please, tell me whether it is really possible." I believe Houdin the conjurer used to be very fond of giving it to his child friends, but I cannot say whether he invented the little puzzle or not. No doubt a large number of my readers will be glad to have the mystery of the ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... Waked by Miss Kitty. Aurenzebe lay upon the Chair by me. Kitty repeated without Book the Eight best Lines in the Play. Went in our Mobbs to the dumb Man [4], according to Appointment. Told me that my Lovers Name began with a G. Mem. The Conjurer was within a Letter ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... and showed him the spot. They dug up the hazel tree on which the staff grew and found under it a broad flat stone. This covered the entrance to a cavern in which thousands of warriors lay in a circle sleeping on their arms. In the centre of the entrance hung a bell which the conjurer begged the Welshman to beware of touching. But if at any time he did touch it and any of the warriors should ask if it were day, he was to answer without hesitation: "No; sleep thou on." The warriors' arms ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... name of "The Station." So much used I to be delighted with the view from it, while a little boy, that some years before the first pleasure house was built, I led thither from Hawkshead a youngster about my own age, an Irish boy, who was a servant to an itinerant conjurer. My notion was to witness the pleasure I expected the boy would receive from the prospect of the islands below and the intermingling water. I was not disappointed; and I hope the fact, insignificant as it may appear to some, may be thought worthy of note by others who may cast ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... reminded that Shakespeare has evinced a very decided partiality for ghosts. In "The Second Part of King Henry VI.," Bolingbroke, the conjurer, raises up a spirit. In "Julius Caesar," Brutus is visited in his tent by the ghost of the murdered Caesar. In "Hamlet," we have, of course, the ghost of the late king. In "Macbeth" the ghost of Banquo takes his seat at the banquet, and in the caldron scene we ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... his heroes, his goblins, his feats, his hair-breadth escapes, his imminent deadly breaches, and the poor, foolish, childish old world renews the excitements of its nonage. Perhaps this is a work of beneficence; and perhaps our brave conjurer in his cabalistic robe ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the Jungle Comrades Under Castro For Home and Honor From Switch to Lever Little Snap, the Post Boy Zig-Zag, the Boy Conjurer Zip, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... thee!" cried Cleopatra, clapping her hands; "callest thou that magic? Why, it is an old trick that any wayside conjurer can do. I have seen it ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... then, he wouldn't have had it now. And he needed it now. A mood of quixotic generosity had surged upon him. With swift fingers he jerked the note free from its moorings and displayed it like a conjurer exhibiting a rabbit. ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... like a tax-gatherer," rejoined Allen, squinting diabolically at him; "what is my occupation in life? Why, in my younger days I studied divinity, but at present I am a conjurer by profession." ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... give our statement a false air of mathematical certainty and so muddle up the essential question that the truth is lost from sight like a pea under a thimble. Now you see it and now you don't. The thing is, in fact, a mere piece of intellectual conjuring. The conjurer has slipped the phrase, "quantity of labor," up his sleeve, and when it reappears it has turned into "the expense of hiring labor." This is a quite different thing. But as both conceptions are related somehow to the idea of cost, the substitution is ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... sensible people who believed these gipsies now and then foretold very strange things; and for half an hour together appeared more jocund than ordinary. In the height of his good-humour, meeting a common beggar upon the road who was no conjurer, as he went to relieve him he found his pocket was picked; that being a kind of palmistry at which this race of ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... scorn, though it may have stunted her genius, could not prevent it from bearing unseasonable fruit. Her contributions to the Duncan Campbell literature, "A Spy upon the Conjurer" (1724) and "The Dumb Projector" (1725), in which the romancer added a breath of intrigue to the atmosphere of mystery surrounding the wizard, opened the way for more notorious appeals to the popular taste for personal scandal. In the once well known "Memoirs of a Certain ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... "let me plead with you. Not a costume concert party, please. A simple glee perhaps—just four of us—in evening dress; or even a conjurer. I'll agree to anything. But ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... on a single note, with the mouth wide open, the head thrown back, and the eyes half shut; then, suddenly changing to another tone, about half a dozen words are strung together, and a sort of dialogue, in recitative, is kept up by the performers. In one direction, a conjurer is seen exhibiting his feats of manual dexterity, surrounded by a motley gaping crowd;—in another, a story-teller exercises the risible faculties of the sedate Turk, as well as of the merry laughter-loving Greek. A string of Armenian ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... had always been a favourite, and I forgot not—how was it possible I could forget—those ominous expressions, which intimated a possibility of the hereditary estate and honours being transferred to the elder, instead of the younger son. Now, it required no conjurer to foresee, that should Francis commit this inexpiable crime of secretly allying himself with a Scottish beauty, our sire would lose all wish to accomplish such a transference in his favour; and while my brother's merits were altogether obscured by such an unpardonable act of disobedience, my ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... spreading out his hands, here he was. "We make cakies—li'l cakies—many, lovely li'l cakies," said Li Koo, observing doubt on the gentleman's face; and from somewhere on his person he whipped out a paper bag of them as a conjurer whips a rabbit out of a hat, and offered them ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... muskrat had gone. Dishes less false but equally fair had followed. Now, with the air of a conjurer, the waiter just showed them an entremets which he hastened to ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... of gnats and mosquitoes. The men, resting their foreheads on their arms, were sleeping under the cart. The Indians kept close within their lodge except the newly married pair, who were seated together under an awning of buffalo robes, and the old conjurer, who, with his hard, emaciated face and gaunt ribs, was perched aloft like a turkey-buzzard among the dead branches of an old tree, constantly on the lookout for enemies. He would have made a capital shot. A rifle bullet, skillfully planted, would have brought ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... were all huddled into a twisted mass—a gruesome thing, ladies, and a common thing, too, if you would but think it. Ferrier had to use the knife first, for the accident was not so recent as he could have wished; then for near half an hour he was working like some clever conjurer, while the vessel heaved slowly, and the reek of the cabin coiled rankly round him. What a picture! That man, the pride of his university, the rising hope of the Royal Society, the professor whom students would have idolized, was bending ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... circle, and he forgot to think about that fancy. He wondered what his curiously-encountered chance-acquaintance was going to do. He had not long to wait, for two men in livery came on with a table, arranged in all respects as the conjurer's table had been arranged in the music-hall on Saturday night, and Herr Pauer proceeded to play precisely the tricks the conjurer had played. He was just as adroit and swift and' agile as the original, and the audience stamped and ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... and the conjurer now knew that their wicked course was at an end, and they stood biting their thumbs and shaking within fear. Jack, with his sword of sharpness, soon killed the Giant, and the magician was then carried away ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... this? Good Mr. Conjurer, stand by—and don't fright the Gentlewoman with your elegant Profundities. [Puts ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... case. Then for the first time the members of the Reform Committee became aware of that factor in their case which has since become famous as 'de trommel van Bobby White'—Major Robert White's despatch-box—a veritable conjurer's hat, from which Mr. Kruger produced to an admiring and astonished world the political equivalents of eggs and goldfish, pigeons and white mice. In this box (which was taken with the invading force at Doornkop) it appears Major White had brought as much of his previous correspondence ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... I remember it. How can I forget it? You go prancing about so like a conjurer that there's not a moment that I don't expect something. If you finish by dragging the murderer from your sleeve, I'll not be at all astonished. Your methods lead me to expect some such ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... purchased at the Pantechnicon "a good old shabby devil of a coach," also described as "an English travelling carriage of considerable proportions"; engaged a courier who turned out to be the courier of couriers, a very conjurer among couriers; let his house in Devonshire Terrace; and so started off for Italy, as I calculate the dates, on the 1st ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... procuring a lodging, wait till the morning. At last, the moon shining very bright helped him to come to a resolution of beginning his journey immediately, to which likewise he had some other inducements; which the reader, without being a conjurer, cannot possibly guess, till we have given him those hints which it may be now proper ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... the mean while, continued in the dungeon in chains; Bostava and Cavama, the cunning old conjurer's daughters, treating him daily with the same cruelty and inhumanity as ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... 1885, Mr. Furness, Professor Thompson and Mr. Fullerton, on the part of the Commission, met Mr. Harry Kellar, a professional conjurer, at ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... year for going about," said the latter, "though I s'pose if you can eat and drink as much as you want it don't matter. I s'pose you mightn't be a conjurer from ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... merely to peep and listen at the door. One man is telling how they all went last year to the fete at Fleury, and another how well so-and-so would sing of an evening: and here are a third and fourth making plans for the whole future of their lives; and there is a fifth imitating a conjurer and making faces on his clenched fist, surely of all arts the most difficult and admirable! A sixth has eaten his fill, lights a cigarette, and resigns himself to digestion. A seventh has just dropped in, and calls for ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... less. Good Doctor Pinch, you are a conjurer; Establish him in his true sense again, 45 And I will please you what you ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... Chris thought over the matter the more certain she felt that such was the case. Like most apparently wonderful things, the explanation was absurdly simple. A conjurer's most marvellous tricks are generally ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... have done or said any thing that may argue their confederacy with Evil Spirits, altho' it may be defective enough in point of Conviction; especially at a time, when 'tis possible, some over-powerful Conjurer may have got the skill of thus exhibiting the Shapes of all sorts of Persons, on purpose to stop the Prosecution of the Wretches, whom due Enquiries thus provoked, might have made obnoxious ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... knees, saw the smoke of his cheroot curl up above the edge, noticed the little hole in his evening socks, and listened to the paragraphs he read aloud as of old. But this was all a veil he spread about himself of purpose. Behind it—he escaped. It was the conjurer's trick to divert the sight to unimportant details while the essential thing went forward unobserved. He managed wonderfully; she loved him for the pains he took to spare her distress; but all the while she knew that the body ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... him as he swung round on the music-stool, she undid the bag, and drew from it some folded stuff which she slowly shook out, rather in the manner of a conjurer, until it was revealed as a full-sized ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... obeys his laws, and reveals it to a vagabond gypsy, who runs up and down, breaking the laws both of God and man. King Saul never consulted the witch till he had left off serving God. The Bible will direct us what to do, better than any conjurer; and no days are unlucky but those which we make so by our own ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... Con was the conjurer of the king Ere the coming of Padraig Mor, And a wand he had, and a golden ring, And a five-prong crown he wore; And his robe was trimmed with minever— His robe of the royal blue, For Con was the wonderful conjuror In the days ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... he do this by wicked methods? They answered He is a conjurer, and casts out devils by the prince of the devils; and so all things, become ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... qualifications and outfit for a single man who would thus settle among the natives should be various. If he wished to secure their attention and admiration, he should excel as a rifle shot and sportsman. If musical, he should play ' the Highland bagpipes. He should be clever as a conjurer, and be well provided with conjuring tricks, together with a magic lantern, magnetic battery, dissolving views, photographic apparatus, coloured pictorial illustrations, &c., &c. He should be a good surgeon and general doctor, ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... years. The same ignorant indifference to useful learning which made Roger Bacon, the great philosopher of the thirteenth century, "unheard, forgotten, buried," represented him after his death as a conjurer doing tricks for the amusement of a king. "The Famous Historie of Frier Bacon," is written in a clear and simple style, very similar to that of "Thomas of Reading," and recounts: "How Fryer Bacon made a Brazen Head to speake, by the ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... too big... Mrs. Stubbs prided herself on keeping something of everything. The two windows, arranged in the form of precarious pyramids, were crammed so tight, piled so high, that it seemed only a conjurer could prevent them from toppling over. In the left-hand corner of one window, glued to the pane by four gelatine lozenges, there was—and there had been from time ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... Rome, Cellini witnessed an incantation conducted in the Colosseum by a Sicilian priest and necromancer. The conjurer and the artist, accompanied by two friends, and by a boy, who was to act as medium, went by night to the amphitheatre. The magic circle was drawn; fires were lighted, and perfumes scattered on the flames. Then the spirit-seer ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... professed himself delighted with the vindication of KLINGSOR, who was undoubtedly, like ROGER BACON, a first-rate conjurer, far in advance of his time, and with limited resources was yet capable of producing illusions which would not have disgraced the stage ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... rump, 105 His head like one in doleful dump, Between his knees, his hands apply'd Unto his ears on either side; And by him, in another hole, Afflicted RALPHO, cheek by jowl; 110 She came upon him in his wooden Magician's circle on the sudden, As spirits do t' a conjurer, When in ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... which it has been lying into the orchard of peach-trees and is there deposited in another bundle. Seated upon mats are there congregated the family and tribe of the deceased and invited guests. The medicine man, or conjurer, having enjoined silence, then pronounces a funeral oration, during which he recounts the exploits of the deceased, his valor, skill, love of country, property, and influence, alludes to the void caused by his death, and counsels those who remain to supply his place by following ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... were present at this ceremony. He went before his companions in a sort of solemn silence, speaking to no one until he had paid the last duties to Barangaroo. In his hand was the spear, with which he meant to punish the car-rah-dy, or conjurer, for whom he had sent to attend her in her illness, but who either could not or would not obey the summons; and with the end of this spear he collected the funereal ashes into a heap. Over these he made, with a piece of bark, which served for a spade, a small mound of earth, ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... such scraps on their persons for an hour or two (though they never saw the deceased in their lives, and are put in high spirits by his decease), the more honourably and piously they grieve for the dead. The poor people submitting themselves to this conjurer, an expensive procession is formed, in which bits of stick, feathers of birds, and a quantity of other unmeaning objects besmeared with black paint, are carried in a certain ghastly order of which no one understands the meaning, if it ever had any, to the ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... was indeed audible, coming toward the hollow from the woods beyond. With a burst of cries, the priests and the conjurer whirled away to bear the welcome of Okee to the royal worshipper, and at their heels went the chief men of the Pamunkeys. The werowance of the Paspaheghs was one that sailed with the wind; he listened to the deepening ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... and with him comes the German conjurer, The learned Faustus, fame of Wittenberg, The wonder of the world for magic art; And he intends to shew great Carolus The race of all his stout progenitors, And bring in presence of his majesty The royal shapes and perfect [147] semblances Of ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... triumph of the reason over the imagination, and in this predominance of the real over the ideal. We prefer that common sense should lead the van, and that mere fancy, like the tinselled conjurer behind his hollow table and hollow apparatus, should be taken for what it is, and that its tricks and surprises should cease to bamboozle, however much they may amuse mankind. Nothing, in the course of Providence, conveys so much encouragement as this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... Holiday, with the most provoking perseverance, "I will not say that this same Demetrius for so he wrote himself when in foreign parts, was an actual conjurer, but certain it is that he professed to be a brother of the mystical Order of the Rosy Cross, a disciple of Geber (EX NOMINE CUJUS VENIT VERBUM VERNACULUM, GIBBERISH). He cured wounds by salving the weapon instead of the sore; told fortunes by palmistry; discovered stolen goods by ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... himself that this was impossible, for he did not conceive how the conjurer could perform such a task in the face of open day,—and if he fail, thought he, I have him in my power, ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... wire-embraces Had seal'd in me more strange forms and faces Than children see in dreams, or thou hast read In arras, puppet-plays, and gingerbread, With angled schemes, and crosses that bred fear Of being handled by some conjurer; And nearer, thou wouldst think—such strokes were drawn— I'd been some rough statue of Fetter-lane. Nay, I believe, had I that instant been By surgeons or apothecaries seen, They had condemned my raz'd skin to be Some walking herbal, or anatomy. But—thanks ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... was instantly troubled, and he said with some hesitation, "Darkeye has had many conversations in that store; is he a medicine-man [a conjurer] that he should know what ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... a box of chocs." It was an extra big and beautiful one and Fuller's best. "And besides the chocs., a piece of good news! You're all asked to a party at Mrs. Leslie's. She's going to have all sorts of games and things, with prizes for every one, and a conjurer ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... will be, these gods, in their day, each of them an old bearded simian up in the sky, who begins by fishing the universe out of a void, like a conjurer taking a rabbit out of a hat. (A hat which, if it resembled a void, wasn't there.) And after creating enormous suns and spheres, and filling the farthest heavens with vaster stars, one god will turn back and long for the smell of roast flesh, ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... the "festive season" (copyright) is approaching, it behoves us all to prepare ourselves in some way to contribute to the gaiety of the Christmas house-party. A clever conjurer is welcome anywhere, and those of us whose powers of entertainment are limited to the setting of booby-traps or the arranging of apple-pie beds must view with envy the much greater tribute of laughter and applause which is the lot of the ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... them. The old fellow with the certificate picks out a small box and raises the lid; a huge cobra thrusts out its hideous head and puffs its hooded neck to the size of a man's hand. It then dawns upon me that the gray-bearded Hindoo is a conjurer; and being curious to see something of Indian prestidigitation, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... Prince assures me that he is not a conjurer in the professional sense, and would be deeply insulted to be called one; also that no amount of money would induce him to give a display of his powers just for money. He will come to-day, if you like, and do wonderful things, which, from ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... the billiard tables, and near an aperture with a shelf where all the waiters congregated to shout their orders. A grey-haired waiter, with the rapidity and dexterity of a conjurer, laid a cloth over the marble round which they sat, Audrey and Miss Ingate on the plush bench, and Tommy and Nick, with Musa between them, on chairs opposite. The waiter then discussed with them for five minutes what they should ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... even as I stared without a word, and he crouched laughing in my face, an arm came squeezing out, keys in hand; one was turned in either of the two great padlocks, the whole lid lifted, and out stepped Raffles like the conjurer he was. ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... the Eskimos, Tuavituk by name, was an Angakok, or conjurer, and claimed to possess special powers which permitted him to communicate with Torngak, the Great Spirit who ruled their fortunes just as the Manitou rules the fortunes of the Indians. Tuavituk one ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... instruments, the patches of yellow light on the smooth, varnished bellies of the 'cellos and the bass viols in the rear, the restless, wind-tossed forest of fiddle necks and bows—I recalled how, in the first orchestra I ever heard, those long bow-strokes seemed to draw the heart out of me, as a conjurer's stick reels out yards of paper ribbon from ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... me poorly designed and in bad proportion. Its confused circles and odd figures, giving it the look of a conjurer's apparatus, are enough to frighten a child. The earth is too small; the circles are too many and too large. Some of them, the colures,[3] for instance, are entirely useless. Every circle is larger than the ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... depth of sentiment, no warmth of emotion, and no large understanding of human desire. There are those who would dismiss it carelessly, as making an appeal not far removed from that of the riddle and of the conundrum. There are those again who would liken it rather to the adroit trick of a clever conjurer. No doubt, it gratifies in us chiefly that delight in difficulty conquered, which is a part of the primitive play-impulse potent in us all, but tending to die out as we grow older, as we lessen in energy, and as we feel ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... strangest part was its logic, the nature of its proofs. It relied upon miracle-evidence. A fact was supposed to be demonstrated by an astounding illustration of something else! An Arabian writer, referring to this, says: "If a conjurer should say to me, 'Three are more than ten, and in proof of it I will change this stick into a serpent,' I might be surprised at his legerdemain, but I certainly should not admit his assertion." Yet, for more ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... came Fizzy's conjuring tricks, which were not very bewildering to children who had once had a real conjurer from the Stores, as these had, and then a charade played by Mary, Horace, Fizzy, and Shrimp for ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... in the folds of her apron. Then her nimble fingers closed over it as if by magic, and conveyed it with a rapid movement at once to her pocket. I do not think even Sebastian himself noticed the quick forward jerk of her eager hands, which would have done honour to a conjurer. He was too much taken aback by her unexpected ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... marvel in his way,"—said another—"He must be a kind of descendant of some ancient Egyptian conjurer who had the trick of playing with fire. There is nothing in the line of so-called miracle he cannot do,—and of course those who are ignorant of his methods, and who ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli |
