"Conjuror" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... house was thrown wide open to begin with; every chair walked out of its place; the new broom which Miriam had gathered with a song, was used for the first time freely on every floor, in every nook and corner; then the new broom was carried away, and locked in a closet like a conjuror who had wrought his spell and need not appear again till some other magic was to be performed. All the chairs were set soberly and steadily against the wall, the windows were closed, and a sacred shade thrown over the house against the ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... English lampoons Luxemburg is nicknamed Aesop, from his deformity, and called a wizard, in allusion to his dealings with La Voisin. In one Jacobite allegory he is the necromancer Grandorsio. In Narcissus Luttrell's Diary for June 1692 he is called a conjuror. I have seen two or three English caricatures ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the old gentleman came to the passage, which you will mark in italics, he always clenched his fist, and exclaimed, 'Nemo me impune lacessit!' which, I presume, are words belonging to the black art, since there is no one in the Modern Athens conjuror enough to understand their meaning, or at least to comprehend the spirit of the sentiment which ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... invocation of the spirit of Mahomet the Second will be censured as over subtle. I could easily have made the Jew a regular conjuror, and the Phantom an ordinary ghost. I have preferred to represent the Jew as disclaiming all pretension, or even belief, in supernatural agency, and as tempting Mahmud to that state of mind in which ideas may be supposed to assume the force of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... never, never know. Yes, I know you'd been fined a hundred pounds if they'd searched me; but I never meant that they should. I daresay you wouldn't smuggle—oh no! you don't think it worth your while. You're quite a conjuror, you are, Caudle. ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... first steps in Spiritualism. I was still a sceptic, but at least I was an inquirer, and when I heard some old-fashioned critic saying that there was nothing to explain, and that it was all fraud, or that a conjuror was needed to show it up, I knew at least that that was all nonsense. It is true that my own evidence up to then was not enough to convince me, but my reading, which was continuous, showed me how deeply other men had gone into it, and I ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... at Looney. But Looney in turning round had caught sight of the dog at his side, and was gazing at it open-mouthed, as a countryman gazes at a pigeon produced from a conjuror's hat. Suddenly he pounced upon it as though he was afraid it would fly away, and kept it ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... Inspruck. Meanwhile the knight, having conceived a high resentment against the conjuror, waylaid him with seven horsemen on the road by which he had to pass. Faustus however perceived them, and immediately made himself invisible. Meanwhile the knight spied on every side to discover the conjuror; but, as he was thus employed, he heard a sudden ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... up-and-down look, and opening a door behind his office desk vanished like a conjuror ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... only about eight miles from Barnsley, and I decided to make for that town, cutting across the fields. I passed the house, I remember, where the father of Bosco, (best known as "Curley Joe"), the famous conjuror, was born. I walked into Barnsley about eight o'clock the same morning. After weighing the matter over in my mind, I sought out and made for the wooden theatre in connection with which I had accepted an engagement at Halifax ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... German books unbound, as you left them, Percy's Ancient Poetry, and one volume of Anderson's Poets. I specify them, that you may not lose any. Secundo: a dressing-gown (value, fivepence), in which you used to sit and look like a conjuror when you were translating "Wallenstein." A case of two razors and a shaving-box and strap. This it has cost me a severe struggle to part with. They are in a brown-paper parcel, which also contains sundry papers ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... impression which he desires to create. It is all like a great piece of legerdemain; your eyes cannot follow the processes, but your mind is amazed and then convinced by the triumphant proof of the conjuror's skill. ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... in a mass of crystallisations from without. The insular Druids, to which our national traditions refer, were far more likely to be mere "wise men," or "witch doctors," with perhaps a spice of the conjuror. This, at all events, seems to be the case at the time when we first acquire any positive information concerning them. Theirs it would be to summon the rain clouds and to terrify the people by their ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... a challenge should be sent to Batterbury, which lay thirteen miles off, and would therefore know nothing of the feast. The Stokebridge team had visited them the summer before and beaten them, therefore they would no doubt come to Stokebridge. They thought that a good conjuror would be an immense attraction, as such a thing had never been seen in Stokebridge, and that the fireworks would be a splendid wind up. Mr. Brook had proposed that a dinner for the contending cricket teams should be served in a marquee, but to this the lads objected, as not only ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... here, inasmuch as these gambols were characteristic of him at the pleasant old season, and were frequently renewed in future years. "The best of it is" (31 Dec. 1842) "that Forster and I have purchased between us the entire stock-in-trade of a conjuror, the practice and display whereof is entrusted to me. . . . In those tricks which require a confederate I am assisted (by reason of his imperturbable good humour) by Stanfield, who always does his part exactly the wrong way, to the unspeakable delight of all beholders. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... a rich dressing-gown, a fanciful present from an admiring Marchesa, curiously embroidered with algebraic figures like a conjuror's robe, and with a skull-cap of black satin on his hive of a head, the man of gravity was seated at a huge claw-footed old table, round as the zodiac. It was covered with printer papers, files of documents, rolls of manuscript, stray bits of strange ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... that Jenkyns Soames, induced to put on a sort of Conjuror's dress, has been waiting to deliver his lecture the same time that I have; he is equally cold, but not cross, as he anticipates being a means of instruction to ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... more one meditates on humanity, the more one becomes disgusted with its artificialness and bad taste. People flock after trifles, they are devoid of refinement, a conjuror will have an immense number of admirers, a third-rate music-hall will fill, even to suffocation, while the man of genius, unless he be rich, often remains unnoticed. He who produces most exquisite poetry, soaring ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... of Balzac's creatures. None of them ever appear to be free agents. Planet-like they revolve in an orbit, or meteor-like they rush headlong, and their course in the one or the other case is guessable from the beginning. Not that change or development is precluded. The conjuror provides for large transformation; but the law of such transformation is one of iron necessity, and, when he brings in at the end his interferences of Providence, they shock us as an inconsequence. ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... 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 conjuror passes a trick orange ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... I, "I am quite at a loss to guess at your meaning. Davus sum, non Oedipus—I am Jedediah Cleishbotham, Schoolmaster of the parish of Gandercleuch; no conjuror, and neither reader of riddles, nor ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... in the dungeon in chains; Bostama and Cavama, the cunning old conjuror's daughters, treating him daily with the same cruelty and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... refuse it. I find it a very hard thing to undergo misfortunes, but to be content with a moderate measure of fortune, and to avoid greatness, I think a very easy matter. 'Tis, methinks, a virtue to which I, who am no conjuror, could without any great endeavour arrive. What, then, is to be expected from them that would yet put into consideration the glory attending this refusal, wherein there may lurk worse ambition than even in the desire itself, and fruition of greatness? Forasmuch as ambition never ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... a personage, then; this woundy Aliasuerus; this man of men; this same Hivohitee, whose name rumbled among the mountains like a peal of thunder, had been seen face to face, and taken for naught, but a bearded old hermit, or at best, some equivocal conjuror. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... have a notion. Couldn't we make a play of the conjuror in disguise? It is Dr. Knowall in German popular tales, Robin the ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... swift that it seemed like a conjuror's miracle, Aunt Amy had slipped from her stand by the door, snatched up the open box, and was back again before the choking cry on the other's lips ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... according to their own sense of good breeding, and therefore whipped in between the justice and the simple esquire. He could not properly take this ill, but I overheard him whisper the steward, "that he thought it hard that a common conjuror should take place of him, though an elder esquire." In this order we marched down Sheer Lane, at the upper ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... The conjuror was congratulated on his skill, and a knife was given to him as a token of gratitude. Taking this knife in his hand, he put out his tongue, and began to cut it. His mouth became full of blood, and he finally cut a piece of his tongue off, and held the piece out in his hand. Here ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... splash he could produce; and suddenly whipping the fish over the side into the boat, he began flapping it about as if it were plunging in the death-struggle. As soon as he had affected to kill it, he held it up in triumph before the castle conjuror, who was quite taken in by the feint, and protested his ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... first time it occurred to him that there were no real hares in Lismore. He threw away his gun in terror and fled home; and next day he heard that a notorious witch was laid up with a broken leg. A man need be no conjuror to guess how she came by that broken leg.[774] Again, at Thurso certain witches used to turn themselves into cats and in that shape to torment an honest man. One night he lost patience, whipped out his broadsword, and put them ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... next time, make a secret mark on it, and I will give it you back turned into gold. But the matter must not go further. And then you will no longer question my chance of discovering the elixir of life. Only I should like to punish that beggarly vagrant, that rascally herb-culler, and pitiful conjuror, as he deserves. Let him only come for once into my quarters! With all his contemptible jugglery, I would astound him! I am so enraged with the fellow, the blood runs into my head at the very thought ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... with whom Fanny and I have been having luncheon, says that Dizzy is like a clever conjuror. "Is that the card you wished for, sir?-and is that yours, and yours, and yours?" But politics are rather disgusting than otherwise. ... Fanny and I went yesterday to see the Queen lay the first stone of the ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... to you so much!' said I. 'It's such a lightening of my heart, only to look at you! If I had had a conjuror's cap, there is no one I should ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the happy family at Gaeta was increased by a new arrival. Had he been better advised, Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, would have never gone to breathe that malarious atmosphere. He had played no conjuror's tricks with his promises to his people; Austrian though he was, he had really acted the part of an Italian prince, and there was nothing to show that he had not acted it sincerely. But a persistent bad luck attended his efforts. Though the ministers appointed ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... cried the eldest maiden. "No gopher would dare to come on our dancing ground. It is a conjuror in disguise!" ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... living skeletons, Irish giants and Welsh dwarfs, children with two heads, and animals without any heads at all, were among the least of the wonders to be seen; while the more rational exhibition of wild beasts joined with the mysterious wonders of the conjuror and the athletic performances of tumblers, in calling forth expressions of surprise and delight from the old, as well as from the young, who were induced to contribute their pennies 'to see ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... the pyramids of Egypt, and which recalled me to Europe, to my own, and thou art one of them."[Footnote: George Schrepfer, the founder of the Secret Free Mason Lodge (at the same time proprietor of a restaurant and a conjuror), invited his intimate disciples and believers in the year 1774, to whom Bischofswerder belonged, to meet him at Rosenthal, near Leipsic. He assembled them around him, beneath some old oaks, to take leave of them, as now he would ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... with wondering what sort of impression the posture of our schooner would have made on the minds of sailors sighting us from their deck. We looked to be floating out of water, and mariners who regard the devil as a conjuror must have accepted us as one of ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... 4. He must be subtle as the fox, and vary as the well-trained hawk; never showing chase too soon, or losing his pigeon by an over eager desire to pluck him. 5. He must be content to lose a little at first, that he may thereby make a final hit decisive. 6. He must practise like a conjuror in private, that his slippery tricks in public may escape observation. Palming the digits requires no ordinary degree of agility. 7. He must secure a confederate, who having been pigeoned, has since ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the possessor of knowledge, might have longed to offer consolation to some suffering fellow, and have found the helplessness of knowledge to console. Browning's imagination as a romantic poet craved a romantic incident and a romantic mise-en-scene. In the house of the Greek conjuror at Constantinople, Paracelsus, now worn by his nine years' wanderings, with all their stress and strain, his hair already streaked with grey, his spirit somewhat embittered by the small success attending a vast effort, his moral ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... the strange interview they had just had with the far-famed wizard of the Moor. "Isabella has all the luck at home and abroad! Her hawk strikes down the black-cock; her eyes wound the gallant; no chance for her poor companions and kinswomen; even the conjuror cannot escape the force of her charms. You should, in compassion, cease to be such an engrosser, my dear Isabel, or at least set up shop, and sell off all the goods you do not mean to keep for ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... upright before them, the witch knew that the king was with her. Though the witch saw Samuel, she could not hear what he said, while Saul heard his words, but could not see his person another peculiar phenomenon in necromancy: the conjuror sees the spirit, and he for whom the spirit had been raised only hears it. Any other person present neither sees nor ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... in the gutter and the dust. And there she caught sight of the string, justices and others, who came flowing out of the office of Mr. Carlyle. So many of them were they that Miss Corny involuntarily thought of a conjuror flinging flowers out of a hat—the faster they come, the more it seems there are to come. "What on earth is up?" cried Miss Corny, pressing her nose flat against the pane, that ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... speculation in his eye. "I've heard that gardeners use it. And I once made six children happy at Christmas when the conjuror didn't ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... shall I know where this damned Gloster is, I'll have the devils rous'd to find that devil, O[r] else I'll conjure the old conjuror. I'll to Blackheath, and there with friends conspire, But I'll have Gloster's head, my ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... feigned that it was she—not he—who had made the difficulty, and who at length gave way; and that the sacrifice was hers—not his. The same feint, with the same polite dexterity, she foisted on Mrs Meagles, as a conjuror might have forced a card on that innocent lady; and, when her future daughter-in-law was presented to her by her son, she said on embracing her, 'My dear, what have you done to Henry that has bewitched ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... am being foolish. I am not. I am a person with a very great deal of common sense, and I tell you that Prince Shan has never desired a thing in life to which he has not helped himself. Maggie is a clever child, but she cannot toss knives with a conjuror." ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Son looked round, and on the outskirts of the crowd he saw a man with a hare-skin cap and a protruding eye who was holding a reddish horse, while he watched the conjuror. The King of Ireland's Son knew the horse—it was the Slight Red Steed that had carried him and Fedelma from the Enchanter's house and had brought him to the Cave where he had found the Sword of Light. He looked at ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... a great mind submits itself to vulgar adulation, and renounces unwillingly, if it renounces at all, the unenviable reputation of supernatural agency. In cases where self-interest and ambition are the basis of this peculiarity of temperament, and in an age when the conjuror and the alchemist were the companions and even the idols of princes, it is easy to trace the steps by which a gifted sage retains his ascendancy among the ignorant. The hecatomb which is sacrificed to the magician, he receives ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... him with an almost musing sweetness. She had the aspect of a conjuror who, with a last light puff of breath or touch of a magic finger, puts forth the final resource of a stupefying dexterity. So delicately, so softly, with a calm that knew no doubt or hesitation, she shook her head. "No; no farewells, now, my Franz. That would not be well. That would ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... which had scared him in his childhood were founded on the tragedy of Snakes Island, and haunted him with an unavowed persistence still. Strange dreams untold had visited him, and a German conjuror, who had made some strangely successful vaticinations, had told him that his worst enemy would come up to him from a lake. He had heard very nearly the same thing from a fortune-teller in France; and once at Lucerne, when he was waiting alone in his room for the hour at which he had appointed ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... and tentative in departure from formality passed between the two. And, as if in the expedient atmosphere of a real summer resort, an acquaintance grew, flowered and fructified on the spot as does the mystic plant of the conjuror. For a few moments they stood on a balcony upon which the corridor ended, and tossed the feathery ball ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... Dakota. My own home was still in Boston. David and his family had reached this little tenement by way of a long trail through Iowa, Dakota, Montana, Oregon and Northern California. We who had all started, from the same little Wisconsin Valley were here drawn together, as if by the magic of a conjuror's wand, in a city strange to us all. Can any other country on earth surpass the United States in the ruthless broadcast dispersion of its families? Could any other land furnish a more incredible ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... of complex figures.[8] There was at that time a great passion for automata in France, which gave rise to many highly ingenious devices, such as Camus's miniature carriage (made for Louis XIV. when a child), Degennes' mechanical peacock, Vancanson's duck, and Maillardet's conjuror. It had the effect of introducing among the higher order of artists habits of nice and accurate workmanship in executing delicate pieces of machinery; and the same combination of mechanical powers which made the steel spider crawl, the duck quack, or waved the tiny rod of the magician, contributed ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... Alderman no Conjuror; a Farce; acted at the Queen's Theatre in the Dorset-Garden 1685. Part of the plot of this piece seems to be taken from Ben. Johnson's Eastward Hoe or ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... and galloping ahead into the centre of the band, until Weucha alone remained nigh the persons of himself and Obed. The very dulness of this grovelling-minded savage, who continued gazing at the supposed conjuror with a sort of stupid admiration, opposed now the only obstacle to the complete success ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... one, Now they stop, and there are none. What intentness of desire In her upward eye of fire! With a tiger-leap halfway Now she meets the coming prey, Lets it go as fast, and then Has it in her power again: Now she works with three or four. Like an Indian conjuror: Quick as he in feats of art, Far beyond in joy of heart. Were her antics played in the eye Of a thousand standers-by, Clapping hands with shout and stare, What would little Tabby care For the plaudits of the ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... deferred till next spring, and the siege of Gibraltar would be the only land expedition for the present campaign. In a few weeks time, when West India successes may be compared to those in Europe, my gazettes and predictions will have a greater degree of certainty, but one must not be a conjuror to see that England is in such a way that one may defy her to get up again, and that a happy peace, blessed with American independence, will, in this or the ensuing campaign, be the certain effect of the ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... acquainted with the character of Tisquantum, the stronger became this fear, and the more he despaired of any influence proving sufficiently strong to break the chains of error and superstition that bound him to heathenism. The Chief was a distinguished Powow, or conjuror; and was regarded by his own people, and even by many other tribes, as possessing great super natural powers. His pretensions were great, and fully accredited by his subjects, who believed that ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... "Home Circle," p. 25, is that of Mr. Bellachini, also a professional conjuror, of Berlin, Germany. His interview was with the celebrated medium, Mr. Slade. From his testimony we quote ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... he put himself to considerable trouble to give me all he could. He made a quantity of Hypadu or Coca powder that I might see the process; going about the task with much action and ceremony, as though he were a conjuror performing some wonderful trick. ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... says he, "Mrs. Nab, it might become you to be more civil; If your money be gone, as a learned divine says, d'ye see: You are no text for my handling; so take that from me: I was never taken for a conjuror before, I'd have you to know." "Law!" said I, "don't be angry, I am sure I never thought you so; You know I honour the cloth; I design to be a parson's wife, I never took one in your coat for a conjuror ...
— English Satires • Various
... no other charm, nor conjuror, To raise infernal spirits up, but Fear, That makes men pull their horns in, like a snail, That's both a prisoner to itself and jail; Draws more fantastic shapes than in the grains Of knotted wood, in some men's crazy brains, When all the cocks they think they are, and ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... well in snaring woodcocks requires both skill and experience, and a thorough knowledge of the woods, the winds, the colour of the clouds, the age of the moon, the state of the atmosphere; and, in fact, short of being a poacher or a conjuror, how is it possible to know that the woodcocks will pass one spot rather than another in a space of several score of square miles, and amongst so many and such intricate paths. The braconnier alone is infallible on these points, and curious specimens ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... opening fire without further parley, "the major has come to ask your aid in a case of singular and mystifying interest. You may or may not have heard of a music-hall artiste—a sort of conjuror and impersonator—called 'Zyco the Magician,' who was assisted in his illusions by a veiled but reputedly beautiful Turkish lady who was billed on the programmes and posters as ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... journey. For my own part, I had charge of a couple of dark lanterns, while Legrand contented himself with the scarabus, which he carried attached to the end of a bit of whip-cord; twirling it to and fro, with the air of a conjuror, as he went. When I observed this last, plain evidence of my friend's aberration of mind, I could scarcely refrain from tears. I thought it best, however, to humor his fancy, at least for the present, or until I could adopt some more energetic measures with a chance of success. In the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of gazers. He had just had time to perceive that the distressed voice came from a young contadina, whose white hood had fallen off in the struggle to get her hands free from the grasp of a man in the parti-coloured dress of a cerretano, or conjuror, who was making laughing attempts to soothe and cajole her, evidently carrying with him the amused sympathy of the spectators. These, by a persuasive variety of words signifying simpleton, for which the Florentine dialect is rich ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... to Nice the next day; and that evening the de Vignolles had gone down to the Casino and Vera hadn't gone. It would have been all right if the children had not been allowed to sit up to see the conjuror conjuring in the lounge. But they had sat up; and that had brought it to ten o'clock before he had Vera for a minute ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... admitting that I was the quaker when I saw a fair and comely young lady up in the air standing still and dancing on nothing at all! Certainly "Aerolithe" is as good as any of her marvellous predecessors, the Vanishing Girl included. As a conjuror, Mr. CARL HERTZ, who I take to be the inventor of the above illusion, is also uncommonly neat, and this "Ten o'Clock," to all lovers of the marvellous, can be ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... that the case does not 'admit of formal proof,' since the proof is as 'formal' and rigorous by this new method of Kant as by the old obsolete methods of Sam. Clarke and the schoolmen.[Footnote: The method of Des Cartes was altogether separate and peculiar to himself; it is a mere conjuror's juggle; and yet, what is strange, like some other audacious sophisms, it is capable of being so stated as most of all to baffle the subtle dialectician; and Kant himself, though not cheated, was never so much perplexed in his life as in the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... So novices sitting at a conjuror see him take a wedding-ring, and put it in a little box before a lady; then cross the theatre with another little box, and put that before another lady: "Hey! presto! pass!" in box 2 is discovered a wedding-ring, which is instantly assumed to be the ring: on this the green minds ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... engage now, than he does of this man's rick of bark and his dog: so I'll keep my tester in my pocket, and not be giving it to this king o' the gipsies, as they call him: who, as near as I can guess, is no better than a cheat. But there is one secret which I can be telling this conjuror himself: he shall not find it such an easy matter to do all what he thinks; he shall not be after ruining an innocent countryman of my own whilst Paddy M'Cormack has a ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... concoction of a squib or the sketching of a caricature— Wake was always ready to take the work upon himself, and let who liked take the credit. He had a mania for verses and epigrams; he was reputed a bit of a conjuror, and no one ever brought a new puzzle to Grandcourt which Wake, of Railsford's, could not, ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... No one had come out of it. As for the dagger with which M. d'Ormeval had been stabbed between the shoulders, it could not be traced. And all this would have suggested the idea of a trick of sleight-of-hand performed by a clever conjuror, had it not concerned a terrible murder, committed under ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... time and tide o'er all prevail - On Christmas eve a Christmas tale, Of wonder and of war—"Profane! What! leave the loftier Latian strain, Her stately prose, her verse's charms, To hear the clash of rusty arms: In Fairy Land or Limbo lost, To jostle conjuror and ghost, Goblin and witch!" Nay, Heber dear, Before you touch my charter, hear; Though Leyden aids, alas! no more, My cause with many-languaged lore, This may I say:- in realms of death Ulysses meets Alcides' WRAITH; ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... experiences at Leipzig, suggest that it was the earliest written. This Scene is followed by another reminiscent of Leipzig—the Scene in Auerbach's cellar, which mainly differs from the later form in being written in prose and not in verse—Faust and not Mephistopheles playing the conjuror in drawing wine from a table. In the completed poem we are next introduced to the Witches' Kitchen, where Faust is rejuvenated, and where he sees Margaret's image in a mirror—the reader being thus prepared for the tragedy that is to follow. In the Urfaust we pass ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... Amadis cycle and in romances like Arthur of Little Britain all this undergoes a change—not by any means for the better. What has been unkindly, but not perhaps unjustly, called the "conjuror's supernatural" takes the place of the poet's variety. One of the personages of the Knight of the Sun is a "Bedevilled Faun," and it is really too much not to say that most of such personages are bedevilled. In Arthur of (so much the Lesser) Britain ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... The tardy conferences speedily break up; the Third Estate, now ready and resolute, the whole world backing it, returns to its Hall of the Three Orders; and Necker to the Oeil-de-Boeuf, with the character of a disconjured conjuror there—fit only for dismissal. (Debates, 1st to 17th June 1789 (in ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... every touch must help to tell the reader what he means; in the second case, most of the touches must conceal or even contradict what he means. You are supposed to see and appreciate the smallest gestures of a good actor; but you do not see all the gestures of a conjuror, if he is a good conjuror. Hence, into the critical estimate of such works as this, there is introduced a problem, an extra perplexity, which does not exist in other cases. I mean the problem of the things commonly called blinds. ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... a livelihood." No, not if support were given only to other ways. A man may make a round sum at a rowing match which cripples his strength for life; or by leaping across Passaic Falls, till he breaks his neck; he may set up for a wizard or a conjuror or a quack doctor,—he may pick your pocket or fire your house,—all in the way of business. The only question is in which way will you help him on. Things must be judged of quite apart from their money-making results. ...
— Tired Church Members • Anne Warner
... have been absurdly self- satisfied, and come very near believing them when they called me the one and only real Greek, and such nonsense. But behold, my gold is turned to ashes; my fame, after all, is little different from that enjoyed by a conjuror. ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... her fan to and fro, playing with it childishly, looking at the light through it, and again dropping it until it hung from her wrist by a ribbon. 'As your highness pleases,' she said at last. 'Only I warn you, that I am not the Bottle Conjuror.' ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... themselves together, year by year to take counsel in reference to the things of the kingdom. The Indian moderator, Artemas Ehnamane, the Santee pastor, was a famous paddle-man, a mighty hunter and the son of a great conjuror and war-prophet, but withal a tender, faithful, spiritual pastor of his people. Rev. Alfred L. Riggs, D.D., the white moderator, who talked so glibly alternately in Sioux and English and smiled so sweetly in both languages at once, was "Good Bird," one of the first white babes born ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... succeeded in humbugging the worthy bumpkins of that place, so decidedly, that a subscription was set on foot to keep her among them; but her fame extending to the metropolis, the dupes of London, a numerous class then as well as now, thought it no trouble to go ten miles to see the conjuror, till at length, she was pleased to bless the afflicted of London with her presence, and once a week drove to the Grecian Coffee-house, in a coach and six with out-riders! and all the appearance of nobility. It was in one of these ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various
... of the Conjuror, the thing is intelligible enough, and one must feel a certain degree of sympathy with the old-established firm that had spent such enormous sums, and made such stupendous preparations, when a ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... be afraid of it till you turn conjuror," said Alice; "so hasten to the well, where you are like still to find the woman, and let her know that Alice Lee desires none of her gifts, any more than she did of ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... holidays, on abstruse points, but twisted innocent events and things, and wrenched them to the same fell purpose. So that if this Uncle took him to the Play, or, on a similar pretence of kindness, carried him to see a Giant, or a Dwarf, or a Conjuror, or anything, Tozer knew he had read up some classical allusion to the subject beforehand, and was thrown into a state of mortal apprehension: not foreseeing where he might break out, or what authority he might not quote ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... plentifully applied, and once they had recourse to conjuring over a sick person. I was informed, however, that the Northern Indians do not make this expedient for the cure of a patient so often as the Crees; but when they do, the conjuror is most assiduous, and suffers great personal fatigue. Particular persons only, are trained in the mysteries of the art of conjuring, to procure the recovery of the sick, ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... his beard was a token of ignominious subjection, and is still a common mode of punishment in some Asiatic countries. And such was the treatment that the conjuror Pinch received at the hands of Antipholus of Ephesus and his man, in the Comedy of Errors, according to the servant's account of the outrage, who states that not only had they "beaten ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... collected a fine library of Greek books, many of which he obtained from Athens. Roger Bacon speaks of his knowledge of the Greek, and says, that he caused a vast number of books to be gathered together in that tongue.[449] His extraordinary talent and varied knowledge caused him to be deemed a conjuror and astrologer by the ignorant and superstitious; and his enemies, who were numerous and powerful, did not refuse to encourage the slanderous report. We find him so represented by ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... and devices with which the robber chief had become familiar, he had learned the conjuror's method of so arranging his limbs while being bound, that he could untie his bonds in a marvellous manner. On the present occasion, however, he had been tied by men who were expert in the use of deerskin thongs, and he found some difficulty in loosening them without ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... have failed to become followers, or at the least to have regarded such a wonder-worker with respect and admiration. One can well imagine how they shook their bearded heads, declared that such occurrences were outside their own experience, and possibly pointed to the local conjuror who earned a few not over-clean denarii by imitating the phenomena. There were others, however, who could not possibly deny, because they either saw or met with witnesses who had seen. These declared roundly that the whole thing was of the devil, drawing from Christ one of those ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... clean, so strong, so fair! Of twenty winters' age he seem'd to be; I (to say truth) was twenty more than he; But vigorous still, a lively buxom dame, And had a wondrous gift to quench a flame. 320 A conjuror once, that deeply could divine, Assured me Mars in Taurus was my sign. As the stars order'd, such my life has been: Alas, alas! that ever love was sin! Fair Venus gave me fire and sprightly grace, And Mars assurance ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... her, pointed her to the seam of yellow-flecked coal, the shale and the bind, the direction of the trend. He had already an airy-fairy kind of knowledge of the whole affair, and seemed like some not quite trustworthy conjuror who had conjured it all up by sleight of hand. In the background the miners stood grey and ghostly, in the candle-light, and seemed to listen sardonically. One of them, facile in his subordinate way as James in his ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... Called God to witness, and damned the Pope; With many more sleights of tongue and hand I couldn't for the soul of me understand. Amazed and posed, I was just about To ask his name, when the screams without, The merciless clack of the imps within, And that conjuror's mutterings, made such a din, That, startled, I woke—leapt up in my bed— Found the Spirit, the imps, and the conjuror fled, And blest my stars, right pleased to see, That I wasn't ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... most pitiless use. He finds himself manoeuvred into "paying the attentions" which society considers the usual prelude to a marriage, with a dexterity which it is all but impossible to evade. The lady is played into his hands with much the same sort of skill that a conjuror exhibits in forcing a card. There are perhaps a number of other ladies present, in promiscuous flirtation with whom he sees, at first glance, an obvious means of escape. But this hope speedily turns out a delusion. ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... cotquean[obs3], henhussy[obs3]. incompetent (insanity) 503. greenhorn &c (dupe) 547; dunce &c (ignoramus) 493; lubber &c (bungler) 701; madman &c 504. one who will not set the Thames on fire; one who did not invent gunpowder, qui n'a pas invente' la poudre [Fr]; no conjuror. Phr. fortuna favet fatuis[Lat]; les fous font les festinas et les sages les mangent [Fr]; nomina stultorum parietibus harrent [Lat]; stultorum plena sunt ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... poem, published some two years later, the strength of his later work is first definitely felt. Taking for theme the life of the sixteenth-century physician, astrologer, alchemist, conjuror,—compound of Faust and Cagliostro, mixture of truth-seeker, charlatan, and dreamer,—Browning makes of it the history of the soul of a feverish aspirant after the finality of intellectual power, the knowledge which should be for man the key to the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... and yards of table unencumbered by the "fiddles." The Captain scorns the aid of such mechanical contrivances, and chatters away unconcerned, gracefully balancing his soup-plate in his hands the while. I followed his example as one to the manner born, but had I not been a bit of an amateur conjuror I am afraid that I should not have been so successful. The Captain challenged me, however, to make a sketch with the same ease as I ate my dinner—and again I was forced ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... laws of the realm in which he is privileged to trade. Let him not stand, as the priest in the Orthodox Church, a looming hierophant. Let him avoid any rhetorical pose, any hint of the grand manner. Above all, let him not wear the smirk of the conjuror when he prepares with flourishes to whip the handkerchief away from his guinea-pig. Here is one who condescends to reader and subject alike. He would do harm all round: moreover he would be a quack, for ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... Now they stop; and there are none— What intenseness of desire In her upward eye of fire! With a tiger-leap half way Now she meets the coming prey, Lets it go as fast, and then Has it in her power again: Now she works with three or four, Like an Indian Conjuror; 30 Quick as he in feats of art, Far beyond in joy of heart. Were her antics play'd in the eye Of a thousand Standers-by, Clapping hands with shout and stare, What would little Tabby care For the plaudits of the Crowd? Over ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... of the picture, I flattered myself, was selected with no little cleverness and originality. A celebrated conjuror who had recently exposed the frauds of the Davenport Brothers was at the moment creating a sensation in the town where the school was situated, and from that incident I determined to draw my inspiration. The magnitude of the design and the importance of ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... almost as quickly supplied by the Waiter with a capacious bowl of punch, and the healths of the newmade Members drank with three times three; when their attention was suddenly drawn to a distant part of the room, where a sprightly Stripling, who was seated by the swarthy Conjuror before mentioned, was singing the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... blazing with jewelled pillars, with a garden that had a pool, the stairs to which were made of splendid gems. After he had bowed low and praised and worshipped the goddess there, he sat down before her in amazement, wondering if it was all a conjuror's trick. ...
— Twenty-two Goblins • Unknown
... then, and have done till to-day. Prophets—so my father believed, and so Madame—must be connected with the suburbs or with outlying districts. They must not, indeed they cannot, be properly prophetic within the radius. A central atmosphere would reduce them to the level of the conjuror or the muscular suggestionist. Malkiel the First, my father, was born himself in Peckham, and met my mother ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... probable men should lie or be deceived, than that things out of the course of Nature should so happen. Mahomet wrought miracles, Brothers [3] the prophet had proselytes, and so would Breslaw [4] the conjuror, had he lived in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... truthfulness that shone at me from the clear, blue eyes, honest and fearless as those of a noble child? Was the writer of "The Secret Doctrine" this miserable impostor, this accomplice of tricksters, this foul and loathsome deceiver, this conjuror with trap-doors and sliding panels? I laughed aloud at the absurdity and flung the Report aside with the righteous scorn of an honest nature that knew its own kin when it met them, and shrank from ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... cricketer, who throughout the "second service" never once turned his back on the congregation, and, so far as I could gather from the Colonel's description, conducted this "second service" very much as a conjuror performs his tricks. When I ventured to argue with the Colonel, he said to me: "That is the worst of you High Churchmen, you make the ritual more important than the Communion itself." All human judgments, my dear Mark, are relative, and I have no doubt that ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... return, and having given an account of the wonders he had seen, announced that he could make money. Satisfaction at such gift being tempered by doubt, the boy took his stand before the expectant semicircle, and having admirably mimicked a conjuror's patter, shouted—"Money!" A half-crown flashed in the air-to be deftly caught and exhibited on the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... betrayed themselves in his actions and conversation, created an opinion in all about him that he was one of the silliest fellows in the universe. The ordinary himself, a very sagacious as well as very worthy person, declared that he was a cursed rogue, but no conjuror. ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... day, let fall unthinkingly this or that scrap of experience or of knowledge, they began to regard me as a miracle. One day one of them, Sam Fox, said to me meaningly, that I liked curious things, and that he knew a nest where he could get me a young raven. The raven is to an Indian conjuror what a black cat is to a witch, and I suppose that Sam thought I must be lonely without a familiar. Which recalls one of the most extraordinary ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... bellows: "Look at my propellers! There's been a wulli-wa down below that has knocked us into umbrella-frames! We've been blown up about forty thousand feet! We're all one conjuror's watch inside! My mate's arm's broke; my engineer's head's cut open; my Ray went out when the engines smashed; and... and... for pity's sake give me my height, ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... work at Drama. Sands again. Crowd—Conjuror. I shall see this time. "I want a soft gentleman's hat," he says, suddenly. "Do you mind?" He takes mine—the crowd roar. "Will I assist him in this trick?" I did not mean to catch his eye—but I don't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... called through the keyhole. 'I only wanted to say that we must be off early to-morrow morning, my dear, because unless we get the start of the dogs and the conjuror, the villages won't be worth a penny. You'll be sure to be stirring early and go with us? I'll ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... realizing my own individuality, in being simply one man having his proper number and ticket. To withdraw within my own individual limits has always seemed to me a strange, arbitrary, and conventional process. I seem to myself to be a mere conjuror's apparatus, an instrument of vision and perception, a person without personality, a subject without any determined individuality—an instance, to speak technically, of pure "determinability" and "formability," and therefore I can only resign myself with difficulty to play the purely arbitrary ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the Italian priest had gone the preceding night. This wretched man had celebrated alone the sacrifice of the mass, and had consecrated several wafers. "Everything confirmed the opinion, that the conjuror, up to the present moment, merely supposed himself sent for to satisfy the curiosity of some country nobleman and his lady, who were both anxious and eager to read their future fortune thro' his assistance. ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... very glad to accept the invitation from my dear Miss Matty, independently of the conjuror, and most particularly anxious to prevent her from disfiguring her small, gentle, mousey face with a great Saracen's head turban; and accordingly, I bought her a pretty, neat, middle-aged cap, which, however, was rather a disappointment ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... to Merlin will be explained by a glance at the parallel sonnets above. Merlin was entirely Coleridge's idea. A conjuror of that name was just then ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... the shaken kaleidoscope, transmigrates bodily into the views of others, and so, in the twinkling of an eye and with a heady rapture, turns questions inside out and flings them empty before you on the ground, like a triumphant conjuror. It is my common practice when a piece of conduct puzzles me, to attack it in the presence of Jack with such grossness, such partiality and such wearing iteration, as at length shall spur him up in its defence. In a moment he transmigrates, ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now the order of the evening, Silver tells of the gun trick being tried in the Far West. One day, just as the conjuror had caught the bullet in his teeth, another whizzed close to his head, and a voice came from the gallery, 'Guess, I nearly had you then, old hoss!' At the next performance a placard was displayed, and gentlemen were ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann |
