"Hoodoo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... say, to some reputable man, whom may Heaven assist! and exercising among her ancient mates, the slaves of Cuba, an influence as unbounded as its reason is mysterious. Horrible rites, it is supposed, cement her empire: the rites of Hoodoo. Be that as it may, I would have you dismiss the thought of this incomparable witch; it is not from her that danger threatens us; and into her hands, I make bold to promise, you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... poh chile!—dat same Miss Sally—frow herself down on yo', and put dat baby mouf of hers to de wound and suck out de pizen and sabe de life ob yo' at de risk ob her own? Say? And if dey's any troof in Hoodoo, don't dat make yo' one blood and one soul! Go way, white man! I'm sick of yo'. Stop dar! Lie down dar! Hol' on, co'nnle, for massy's sake. Well, ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... laboratory, you hoodoo," shrilled Berry, "or I swear I'll kill you! I'll not give you the chance ...
— I Was a Teen-Age Secret Weapon • Richard Sabia
... was God's curse on this Klondike gold," he said; "now I'm sure of it. There's a hoodoo on it. What it's a-goin' to cost, what hearts it's goin' to break, what homes it's goin' to wreck no man'll ever know. God only knows what it's cost already. But this last ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... disease, such as the spirits of the dead, either human or animal, independent disease demons, or individuals who might act by controlling the spirits or agencies of disease. We see this today among the negroes of the Southern States. A Hoodoo put upon a negro may, if he knows of it, work upon him so powerfully through the imagination that he becomes very ill indeed, and only through a more powerful magic exercised by someone else can the Hoodoo be ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... don't turn out a hoodoo, you're a winner, sure. But I'll be blessed if this don't sound like a story! But I've heard that story before. The man I got Black Boy from, no matter how I got him, you're too young to understand the ins and outs of poker, ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... summer ranges for Elk is near the southeast corner of the Yellowstone Lake, and here it was my luck to have the curious experience that I call the "Story of a Hoodoo Elk." ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... have known him But for the colored folk That here obtain And ne'er in vain That wizard's art invoke; For when the Eye that's Evil Would him and his'n damn, The negro's grief gets quick relief Of Hoodoo-Doctor Sam. With the caul of an alligator, The plume of an unborn loon, And the poison wrung From a serpent's tongue By the light of a ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... isn't enough to take us another mile. There's a hoodoo in it. We no sooner see those fellows ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... negroes were stevedores from the lower Mississippi levees. They sang as they worked in their white army undershirts, across the chest of which they had penciled in blue and red, strange mystic devices, religious phrases and hoodoo signs, calculated to contribute the charm of safety to the ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... stuck in the sand On the fiery edge of Jou-jou land; The Jou-jous they confiscated him, And the Jim-jam tore him limb from limb; But, dying, he said: "If eaten I am, I'll disagree with this Dam-jim-jam! He'll think his stomach's a Hoodoo's den!" Allah il Allah! ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... whose hand was swathed in a dirty bandage, "Take care of that hand, Mack; don't get funny with it just because it's well enough to use again." To another, "How is the wife, Frank, better? Good, that's fine." Again it was, "You fellows on number six machine made a record this week." Again, "Who's the hoodoo on number seven furnace?—four accidents in six days is going some—better look around for your Jonah." And again, "I heard about that stunt of yours, Bill; the kid would have been killed sure if you hadn't kept your head and nerve. It was great work, old man." And to a lad farther down the ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... something would stop me," he mourned. "The whole plot is a hoodoo. There I was fired back twice onto Cod Lead! Here he is, landin' the same time as I do! And when he stops that check it throws it into law—and I've got ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... as I was, partly by reason of delays, the dealer in his game changing decks on almost every deal, and under Priest's orders, we counted the cards with every change of the deck. A gambler would rather burn money than lose to a citizen, and every hoodoo which the superstition of the craft could invoke to turn the run of the cards was used to check us. Several hours passed and the lamps were lighted, but we constantly added to the good—to the discomfiture of the owners ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... checked in her closets, her pillows bunked in her seats, and her curtains folded in her uppers, save and except in one single instance—Section Eleven, to conform to certain deeply held ideas of the porter, Raz Brown, as to what might and might not constitute a hoodoo, was made up. Raz Brown did not play much: he could not and hold his job; but when he did play he played eleven always whether it fell between seven, twenty-seven, or four, forty-four. And whenever Raz Brown deadheaded a car through, he always made up section eleven, and laid the hoodoo ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... fergot the dum hoodoo!" Zeke muttered, in huge disgust. "An' the chief said I must git another the first chance." Then he grinned vaingloriously into the darkness of the fore-peak. "But I reckon hit hain't put no cuss on me yit—seein' as how I got a job an' a peck ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... at that Smithy, would you; bless me if he ain't got some white sheets, and a regular nightgown. Now, what dye think of that, fellows? Are we going to allow such sissy goings-on in this, our first camp? He'd hoodoo the whole business, sure. No luck with such baby play. Use the sheets for towels when we go in swimming; I've got an extra pair of pajamas along, that I'll lend him, if he promises to be a true scout, ready to rough and ready it in camp. Next ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... Oh, dear, I was never so sorry for a high-born lady in my life, but to encourage her I told her I read of a white woman in Alabama that turned black in a single night, and the niggers would never have anything to say to her, because she was a hoodoo, and wasn't in their class, and then she yelled again and wanted me to send for a doctor, and I told her there wasn't any negro doctor in town, and what she wanted was to send for a scrubwoman, and then I ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... my mind. I need to wear it so that I will be reminded of something—something important as a hoodoo," she said, ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... and abbreviations applied to save time. Some of these have passed into the slang of the day, "73" being well known as a telegrapher's expression of compliments or good wishes, while "23" is an accident or death message, and has been given broader popular significance as a general synonym for "hoodoo." All of this came easily to Edison, who had, moreover, as his Herald showed, an unusual familiarity with train movement along that portion of ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... "It'll be a sure hoodoo if Prescott can't pitch the season's first game," declared a man who seldom missed a High School game on the ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... no hoodoo and I don't believe in none, but a seventh child can more or less tell you things that are a long way off. If you want to beat the devil you got to do right. God's got to be in the plan. I tries to do right. I am not perfect but I do the best I can. I ain't got no bottom ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... in palmistry?" Rex Krane asked. "I never knew a gypsy in all my life who read a different set of prophecies. It's always the dark man—I'm light (darn the luck)—and a journey and a letter. But I thought maybe an African seer, a sort of Voodo, hoodoo, bugaboo, would have it a light man and a legacy and company coming, instead of you taking a ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... offered the man at the fire. He had removed his tin cup and was engaged in stirring its grimy contents with a small stick. "That's a charm; some kind of hoodoo business that one o' them priests gave him to keep him out o' trouble. I know them Cath'lics. That's how come Frenchy got permoted an never got a scratch sence he's been in the ranks. Hey, French! aint I right?" Edmond looked up absently ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... until it's in good running shape. I don't want to 'hoodoo' it. I worked as hard as I could, and never got more than two feet off the ground. Now ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... an' thar's our pretty hoodoo over thar to feed an' amoose," remarked Shady Jones, with a ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... be dignified by the name "religion." It is superstition founded upon charms and hoodoos. It is witchcraft of the maddest kind, involving the most hideous performances. Moreover, it is said that a hoodoo is something of which a French negro is very much afraid, and that his fear is justifiable, for the reason that the throwing of a wanga, or curse, may also involve the administering of subtle poisons ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... years of age, five feet eight inches high, of an athletic make, and very interesting. He is of the district of Teerawittee ... Toogee Teterrenue Warripedo is of the same age as Hoodoo, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... sleep for me this night," cried Crazy Jane. "It's my opinion that that wild Indian chief put a hoodoo on this rock, as well as on the lake below. I shouldn't be surprised at most ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... red-hot cannon ball ware sec'etly dropped ober de side to Tom, yafter firs' temptin' him wid nice pieces ob salt junk. I nab neber seen ole Tom myself, sah, but dey say dat he is 'round heah yet. Lucinda Nelson, de great fortune tellah an hoodoo 'oman done tole me dat Tom's now livin' in a big ware-house down in ole Jamaica an' dat he sel'om comes out 'cause he's getting' quite ole. Ole Jamaica, yo' mus' remembah, sah, is fifteen fathom below de ocean now. Great earthquake ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... Two of 'em, the tall woman an' one of the men, got into the skiff, an' the other two struck off north, keepin' on the grass an' under the shade. I follered after 'em; they went pretty fast, too, till they come most to them Hoodoo tea-shops, you know; we hadn't met a soul so far, but it was lighter there, and I see there was a guard comin' to'rds 'em, an' what d' ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... kindled, and she required her husband to remove it at once from the top of the stove to the mantel under the mirror, which was the natural habitat of such a clock. He said nothing could be simpler, but when he lifted it, it began to fall all apart, like a clock in the house of the Hoodoo. Its marble base dropped-off; its pillars tottered; its pediment swayed to one side. While Mrs. March lamented her hard fate, and implored him to hurry it together before any one came, he contrived to reconstruct it in its new place. Then they ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... grass antelope darted from clump to clump of grass. Once we saw gerenuk-oh, far away in an impossible distance. Of course we tried to stalk them; and as usual we failed. The gerenuk we had come to look upon as our Lesser Hoodoo. ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... of people by a few street-corner or cross-road loungers. The negro he found to be superstitious, just as we find them to-day. Even educated negroes are apt to give credence to many stories which, on the face of them, appear ridiculous. The words "Hoodoo" and "Mascot" have a meaning among these people of which we have only a dim conception, and when sickness enters a family the aid of an alleged doctor, who is often a charlatan of the worst character, is apt to be sought. It will take several generations to work out this characteristic, and perhaps ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... the house and threw open the door for her to enter. The intense heat of two great stoves struck in their faces; and Annie saw the big burner, erected in all its black hideousness in the middle of the front room, like a sort of household hoodoo, to be constantly propitiated, like the gods of Greece; and in the kitchen, the new range, with a distracted tea-kettle leaping on it, as if it would like to loose its fetters and race away over the prairie after its ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... confreres. Jasper has always been king of all Glendale barbecue-pits and he had had them dug the day before and filled with dry hickory fires all night, and his mien was so haughty that I trembled for the slaves under his command. His basket of "yarbs" was under the side of the rock in hoodoo-like shadows and the wagons of poor, innocent, sacrificed lambs and turkeys and sucking-pigs were backed up by the largest infernal pit. Petunia was already elbow deep in a cedar tub of corn meal for the pones, and another minion ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... notion that the stable at Bethany was a common peasant farmer's stable instead of a first-rate racing one, and too savage to believe that anything can really cast out the devil of disease unless it be some terrifying hoodoo of tortures and stinks, the M.O.H. will no doubt for a long time to come have to preach to fools according to their folly, promising miracles, and threatening hideous personal consequences of neglect of by-laws and the like; therefore ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... old man's tones of deep emotion he knew the matter was serious. He thought at once of the Hoodoo. But he could make out no meaning to this ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... propellers if we're going to smash into school towers," remarked Tom. "I seem to be a sort of hoodoo." ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton |
