"Mummery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by this time beginning to feel very tired, as well as distinctly dissatisfied with himself for taking part in all this mummery, noticed vaguely that something out of the common was evidently toward, but he was too thoroughly distrait to even seek an explanation from Motahuana, and he watched, as in a dream, the long procession of priests file out ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... was a pleasanter way of spending the afternoon than listening to the braggings of the coffee house bullies, or watching the mummery of the play, when scarce a word could be heard from the actors, owing to the laughter and talk that buzzed all round the house. The clamour from the footmen's gallery alone almost sufficed to drown the sound from the stage; and, indeed, ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... knew. Viewed at a distance and impartially, such things strike us with aversion, and we are quick to condemn. But the more I thought the nearer I came to concluding it took something more than a mere mummery to make a wife. All the ceremonials and benedictions and lighted candles and high-sounding phrases could not bind a woman's heart, where that heart was free, or called some other man its lord. Yet the bare fact remained, this woman was a wife, and to me, at least, ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... said Charles, composing his features; "but great matter of wonder.—Come, cease this mouthing, and prancing, and mummery.—If there be a jest, come out with it, man; and if not, even get thee to the beaffet, and drink a cup of wine to refresh thee after ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Worship is), about which your whole soul, struck dumb with its excess of feeling, knew not how to form itself into utterance at all, and preferred formless silence to any utterance there possible—what should we say of a man coming forward to represent or utter it for you in the way of upholsterer-mummery? Such a man—let him depart swiftly, if he love himself! You have lost your only son; are mute, struck down, without even tears: an importunate man importunately offers to celebrate Funeral Games for him in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... bothersome and complicated, it is only a childishly easy performance in the way of making a square of seven rows of seven cards, and then of making the rows only three cards deep, at most! Crazy superstition and the aim at mummery have added the details of process that seem tedious. And, really, they are not ineffective ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... vomited forth by the ministerial agents and tools of the rotten borough, or corporate town, of which his master was one of the rotten limbs. How often have I seen one of these self-sufficient cubs, with all the solemn mummery, without half the sense, of an ape, deliver what the fool vainly called his opinion, which consisted of the most stupid and senseless contradictions and assertions, generally finishing with something which he conceived to be unanswerable, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... following crowd, Which scarce found room, begirt with dames and knight, The mighty emperor, mid those greetings loud. Before the royal palace did alight: Where many days he feasted high in hall His lords, mid tourney, mummery, mask and ball. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... as were heard from the crests of the Blue Ridge when Spotswood's horsemen came up from the other side. It has to me the atmosphere and movement of some Greek tragedy, though one writer likens it to mediaval mummery. Perhaps it is only a knowledge of its import and the end that makes it sombre and grave despite the beautiful setting to this prelude which one may read to- day in the French archives. So full of portent and color it is that I wonder no one has woven its incidents, slight ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... God at that moment he was his father's son. If the world, or the world's law, said otherwise, then they were of the devil, and deserving to be damned. What rite, what jabbering ceremony, what priestly ordinance, what legal mummery, stood between him and his claim to his ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... with a newly furnished house and an ample income. My wife is ready to admit that purely from the point of view of common sense she would have preferred to have the child do almost anything peculiar rather than engage in her present mummery, because some people will consider her crazy; but, on the other hand, she maintains that the chances of losing her altogether are much less serious than if she had become a Toynbee Haller, for instance. "Mind you," said Josephine, "however ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... if it either fall Below the exigence, or be not backed With show of love, at least with hopeful proof Of some sincerity on the giver's part; Or be dishonoured in the exterior form And mode of its conveyance, by such tricks As move derision, or by foppish airs And histrionic mummery, that let down The pulpit to the level of the stage; Drops from the lips a disregarded thing. The weak perhaps are moved, but are not taught, While prejudice in men of stronger minds Takes deeper root, confirmed ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... firmness in the cause of truth or virtue is called obstinacy; and strength of soul, a refractory blindness. The bases of morality are sapped in the name of liberty; the discipline of the Church, when not branded as sheer "mummery," is held up as hostile to personal freedom; and her dogmas, with one or two exceptions, are treated as opinions which may be received or rejected with ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... mummery any longer," said Yeo. "Here's a soul perishing before my eyes, and it's on my conscience to speak a word ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... in a piece of silk that lay on a sofa, and rapidly, in a low voice, chanted a kind of hymn in a tongue unknown to Merton. All this he did with a bored air, as if he thought the performance a superfluous mummery. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... compare Goodhart and Cordeaux, the oldest form of the latter being the French name Courdoux. Momerie and Mummery are identical with Mowbray, from Monbrai in Normandy. Molyneux impresses more than Mullins, of which it is merely the dim., Fr. moulins, mills. The Yorkshire name Tankard is identical with Tancred. Stiggins goes back to the illustrious Anglo-Saxon name Stigand, as Wiggins does to wigand, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... The "mummery" consisted in slow, gliding motions, in whirlings about intended to be graceful, in slow liftings of the hands upward, and in the beating ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... skeleton, blackened by age; a necklace of teeth from some animal's jaw; worthless trifles for the mummery of the priests. Then, beneath them, he saw two great fangs, a foot in length. They were curved, sharply pointed and ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... what heart-drawings I feel to thee! what prodigious virtues are these of thine! how constitutional to thee, and incommunicable.' Whilst we speak the loadstone is withdrawn; down falls our filing in a heap with the rest, and we continue our mummery to the wretched shaving. Let us go for universals; for the magnetism, not for the needles. Human life and its persons are poor empirical pretensions. A personal influence is an ignis fatuus. If they say it is great, it ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... haint in that precarious situation which SARY F. NORTON calls "mummery," and the Onida Community says Amen! to, but which good honest folks, like you and I, calls married, then I would say that he mite go further and fare a site wusser, than to come over here and examine my ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... despise all opponents, as well as strong enough to pursue my way without regard to the wickedness of all the bigots in Christendom. Face to face shall we stand, and I defy them all! We have had enough, too, of Spanish etiquette and Italian mummery here. Now we shall have honest German customs; we shall be Germans in thought, in speech, and in sentiment. This is my dream, my bright and beautiful dream! Austria shall one day be Germanized; the kingdoms and provinces which compose my dominions ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... with bitterness. After dismissing him for the supposed murder of her brother, she was to take the actual murderer to her arms. And he, that cur, that false villain!—out of what depths of hell did he derive the courage to go through with this mummery?—had he no heart, no conscience, no sense of decency, ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... with the ostler in quest of the horses, which he had left by the side of the river. His back was no sooner turned, than Ferret, who had been peeping from behind the pantry-door, ventured to rejoin the company; pronouncing with a smile, or rather grin, of contempt, "Hey-day! what precious mummery is this? What, are we to have the farce of Hamlet's ghost?" "Adzooks," cried the captain, "My kinsman Tom has dropped astern—hope in God a-has not bulged to, and gone to bottom." "Pish," exclaimed the misanthrope, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... to her a myth, the crucifix a vague superstition, prayer a mere unmeaning mummery. But the kisses were tangible ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... house was open to intrigues and conspiracies; and it was the rendezvous of all the discontented, of which there were many. The general assumed the task of disapproving all the acts of the First Consul; he opposed the reestablishment of public worship, and criticised as childish and ridiculous mummery the institution of the Legion of Honor. These grave imprudences, and indeed many others, came to the ears of the First Consul, who refused at first to believe them; but how could he remain deaf to reports which were repeated each day ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... for a minute or two, and then turned to the door, saying, "Methinks it is hard that a dying woman cannot have the consolations of the rites of her own faith—mummery though they be. As a magistrate, my good woman, I can give no authority in this business. You must do as you think fit. I myself know of no priest in this neighborhood, or I should be bound to cause his apprehension. I shall take no notice of your word, however, and as to the rest, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... wisdom of Comte was insufficient, the folly of Comte was wisdom. In an age of dusty modernity, when beauty was thought of as something barbaric and ugliness as something sensible, he alone saw that men must always have the sacredness of mummery. He saw that while the brutes have all the useful things, the things that are truly human are the useless ones. He saw the falsehood of that almost universal notion of to-day, the notion that rites and forms are something artificial, additional, and corrupt. Ritual is really much ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... resignation, the Jesuit's voice was neatly agitated. He seemed to feel a hot iron upon his cheek, for never before in his life, whether as a soldier or a priest, had he suffered such an insult. He had thrown himself upon his knees, partly from religious mummery, and partly to avoid the gaze of the marshal, fearing that, were he to meet his eye, he should not be able to answer for himself, but give way to his impetuous feelings. On seeing the Jesuit kneel down, and on hearing his hypocritical invocation, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... from an old ivy-covered church long since undermined, corroded by time and gnawed by vermin, the help must come. Rome, to resume her glory, must cease to be an ecclesiastical capital; must renounce all this gorgeous mummery, whose poetry, whose picture, charms no one more than myself, but whose meaning is all of the past, and finds no echo in the future. Although I sympathized warmly with the warm love of the people, the adulation of ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... unreproaching voice of birds after following a lure through a long Satanic masquerade, which she had entered on with an intoxicated belief in its disguises, and had seen the end of in shrieking fear lest she herself had become one of the evil spirits who were dropping their human mummery and hissing around her ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... But mummery and slummery You must keep in your mind, For every day, mind what I say, Fresh fakements you will find. But stick to this while you can crawl. To stand 'till you're obliged to fall, And when you're wide awake to all You'll ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... us by a variety of action becomes a sort of horrid Harlequin in these pantomimical scenes, we may be delighted by the numerous human characters, which are so vividly presented to us. The origin of this extraordinary invention is supposed to be a favourite pageant, or religious mummery, invented by the clergy, who in these ages of barbarous Christianity always found it necessary to amuse, as well as to frighten the populace; a circumstance well known to have occurred in so many other grotesque and licentious festivals they allowed the people. The practice of dancing ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Maybe it is, but I hardly think so. Perhaps I went back to lectures too soon after the war. I was hardly fit, I guess, and the whole thing, the inside life, the infernal grind of lectures, the idiotic serious mummery of the youngsters, those blessed kids who should have been spanked by their mothers—the whole thing sickened me in three months. If I had waited perhaps I might have done better at the thing. I don't know—hard to tell." The boy ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... "but be a better boy in future! I say, I am ashamed to have to repeat, that, but for that, the Bulls of Rome would never have had the audacity to call their connection, Master Wiseman, your poor father's child, and to appoint him, with his red hat and stockings, and his mummery and flummery, to a portion of your father's estates—though, for the matter of that, there is nothing to prevent their appointing him to the Moon, except the difficulty of getting him there! And so, your poor father's affairs ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... there!" he cried loudly to the attendants in the next room. "I will no more endure these insults," he exclaimed. "Go instantly, take a file of soldiers; place them at all the outlets, and search the rooms adjoining—above, and below. Such mummery is insufferable." ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... levelled pikes, but at a motion from the Seigneur his men fell back before them, and, making a lane, disclosed Michel de la Foret at the end of it. Michel had not approved of Lempriere's mummery of defence, but he understood from what good spirit it sprung, and how it flattered the Seigneur's vanity ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... is going to hang me after all," he said to himself; "then what, in Our Lady's name, means this strange mummery, and how comes that ill-favoured maiden to look at me as if her ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... this nonsense. It is pure mummery. Yet it is worth while to know exactly what the means were which in ancient times were relied on for such purposes, and it is not useless to put this matter on record; for just such formulas are ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... member of the family in the religious sense, and was liable to be vexed by evil or mischievous spirits from the wild woodland, or, as they phrased it in later days, by Silvanus. I have already alluded to the curious bit of mummery which was meant to keep them off. Three men at night came to the threshold and struck it with an axe, a pestle, and a besom, so that "by these signs of agriculture Silvanus might be prevented from entering." The hostile spirits were thus ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... replaced the stone. "I see," he said. "The Emperor is as easily diverted by shows as the Brocken by its clouds. Yet I think I can find a way to make him serve you. Be ready to-night with your puppets and put your own soul into the jesting and the mummery. That is the only thing for you to do. If that fails ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... which waits at the foot of the hill, and have been wrapped comfortably in the pleasant earth, their names are forgotten by those who screamed with pleasure or hooted in disgust at their performance, their faces are no longer remembered, their great drama is become an old-fashioned mummery of the past. Why should they care? Their work is done, they have been rewarded or punished, paid with praise and gold or mulcted in the sum of their reputation and estate. Famous or infamous, in honour or in disrepute, in riches or in poverty, they have reached the end of their time, they are ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... people drew in their breath, and gazed steadfastly at the speaker. To hear of sin and the cross was not new to them, for they had been at churches sometimes at holy days; but it was all a mummery and spectacle, with which the priests alone seemed to have to do. The truths now uttered were assuredly gaining some ...
— The Woodcutter of Gutech • W.H.G. Kingston
... entertainments, which, from the first, were called 'masks,' the word 'masker' being used sometimes of the players, and sometimes of their disguises. The word has come to us, through the French form masque, cognate with Spanish mascarada, a masquerade or assembly of maskers, otherwise called a mummery. Up to the time of Henry VIII. these entertainments were of the nature of dumb-show or tableaux vivants, and delighted the spectators chiefly by the splendour of the costumes and machinery employed in their representation; but, afterwards, the chief actors spoke their ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... has a merrymaking, he is out on the trail. At Delhi he was in the thick of the mummery, beaming on barbaric princes and paynim princesses, blessing banners, blessing trumpeters, blessing proclamations, blessing champagne and truffles, blessing pretty girls, and blessing the conjunction of planets that had placed his lines in such pleasant places. His tight little cob, his perfect ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... the manners of the Saxons, from whom he drew his descent, and which was likely to be at least unpleasing to the Franks as well as Normans, who had already received and become very tenacious of the privileges of the feudal system, the mummery of heraldry, and the warlike claims assumed by knights, as belonging ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... daughter, the sweet, the lovely Crescentia. And I here see her again before me ... yes it is herself ... that funeral procession was a wicked, unseemly jest ... and this disguise, this flight hither into the desert, is again a most unseemly piece of mummery. Acknowledge thyself to me at length, at length, beloved, beautiful Crescentia. Thou knowest it well, my heart only lives within thy bosom. To what end these agonizing trials? Are thy parents perchance in the next room there, and listening to all we are saying? Let ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... strong as harts-horn! Your papists keep these outlandish hours for their masses and mummery. Surely we might let God alone at twelve o'clock! Have ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... not explain thy incantation?" asked Muza; "or is it, as my reason tells me, but the mummery ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... was a well-intentioned but clumsy contrivance of Longways and other of Farfrae's men to get him out of the way for the evening, in order that the satirical mummery should fall flat, if it were attempted. By giving open information they would have brought down upon their heads the vengeance of those among their comrades who enjoyed these boisterous old games; and therefore the plan of sending a letter ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... masquerading. Whether they may not likewise be used as a defence for the head against stones, for which, they seem best designed; or in some of their public games; or be merely intended for the purposes of mummery, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... Cardinal's hat, was jealous of every one who might be a competitor with him. I love this Abbe Saint-Albin, in the first place, because he is attached to me, and, in the second, because he is really very clever; he has wit and sense, with none of the mummery of priests. My son does not esteem him half so much as he deserves, for he is one of the best persons in the world; he is pious and virtuous, learned in every point, and not vain. It is in vain for my son to deny him; any one may see of what race he comes, and I am sorry ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... to a soul, not even to his sister. The following day he set out alone about three in the morning for the Grepon. He took the road up the Nantillons glacier to the Col, and then he must have climbed the Mummery crack by himself. After that he left the ordinary route and tried a new traverse across the Mer de Glace face. Somewhere near the top he fell, and next day a party going to the Dent du Requin found him on the ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... sect formed in 1844 by secession from the Catholic Church of Germany, under the leadership of Johann Ronge, on account of the mummery under papal patronage connected with the exhibition of the Holy Coat of Treves and the superstitious influence ascribed ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... about in front of the captive, menacing him with his tomahawk, now on one side and now on another, and then again in front, in the vain hope of being able to extort some sign of fear by this parade of danger. At length Deerslayer's patience became exhausted by all this mummery, and he spoke for the first time since the ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... ye'll no come into my hoose! An' you, Sir, a blind leader o' the blind, a disciple o' Beelzebub, wi' y'r Babylonish idolatries, wi' y'r incense that fair stinks in the nostrils o' decent folk, wi' y'r images and mummery and crossin' o' y'rsel', wi' y'r pagan, popish practises, wi' y'r skirts and petticoats, I'll no hae ye on my premises, no, not an' ye leave y'r religion outside! An' you, Meester Hamilton, a respectable Protestant, I'm fair surprised to see ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... Richard. "That's funny." He broke into a storm of laughter which ended as abruptly as it began, ended from a sudden realisation that all this folly and mummery was a real and solid effort to compass his escape. "Wait a bit," he said, rubbing his brow fiercely. "It's coming back. I see the idea. Bless you, for trying. We'll have ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... with vigorous, righteous wrath. Alwyn's eyes grew dark with an infinite pain. His thoughts always fled back to his Dream of Al-Kyris, with a tendency to draw comparisons between the Past and the Present. The religion of that long-buried city had been mere mummery and splendid outward show, —what was the religion of London? He ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... his office and which deals with that large class of people who imagine they are ill—those people whose numbers are directly proportionate to periods of so-called prosperity, who call forth innumerable cults of curing, and who are the mainstay of much of the mummery in medicine. ...
— Some Personal Recollections of Dr. Janeway • James Bayard Clark
... Champagne capital, and notable among other things for its magnificent ancient stained-glass windows, and the handsome modern tomb of the popular Remois saint. It was here in the middle ages that that piece of priestly mummery, the procession of the herrings, used to take place at dusk on the Wednesday before Easter. Preceded by a cross the canons of the church marched in double file up the aisles, each trailing a cord after him, with a herring attached. Every one's object was to tread on the herring in front ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... you will hear truth, child? Well, have your way. Will you join us, Nell—the business is a pleasing one, for these knaves have the tricks of their trade. But harkee, friends, give no real heed to the mummery." ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... unjust, like all your haughty race; and idle were reply to one who, of all persons, should have judged me better. For the rest, if this mummery humbles Lord Warwick, gramercy! there is nothing in my memory that should make my share in it a gall to my conscience; nor do I owe the Neviles so large a gratitude, that rather than fret the pile of their ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a world of gnomes and hob-goblins, of ghouls and of laughing angels. The realist of the Thackeray School finds nothing but monstrous exaggeration here—and fantastic mummery. If he were right, par-dieu! If his sleek "reality" were all that there was—"alarum!" We were indeed "betrayed"! But no; the children are right. Dickens is right. Neither "realist" or "psychologist" hits the mark, when it comes to the true diablerie of living ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... hypocrites on earth, who with their apparent righteousness lead unnumbered people into their way, and yet allow them to be without faith, so that they are miserably misled, and are caught in the pitiable babbling and mummery. Of such Christ says, Matthew xxiv: "Beware, if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there"; and John iv: "I say unto thee, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship God, for ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... But I suppose one day or other—when there are no longer any wild Highlanders to benefit by its tender mercies—they will blot it from their records as levelling them with a nation of cannibals. The mummery, too, of exposing the senseless head—they have not the wit to grace mine with a paper coronet; there would be some satire in that, Edward. I hope they will set it on the Scotch gate though, that I may look, even after death, to the blue hills of my own country, which I love so dearly. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... to excess. A man finds far more regulations and definitions in his club, where there are rules, than in his home, where there is a ruler. A deliberate assembly, the House of Commons, for instance, carries this mummery to the point of a methodical madness. The whole system is stiff with rigid unreason; like the Royal Court in Lewis Carroll. You would think the Speaker would speak; therefore he is mostly silent. You would think a man would take off his hat to stop and put it on to go away; therefore he takes ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... ceremony about the matter. The priests went aside for a moment, laid their shaven old crowns together, and went over a little mummery. Whereupon, their leader tore a long strip from his girdle of white tappa, and handed it to one of the French officers, who, after explaining what was to be done, gave it to Jermin. The mate at once went out to the end of the flying ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... to Bornou. Yet these tourists, surrounded with such protection, were actually circumcised at Tripoli by Dr. Dickson[72], and were accustomed to attend the mosques and perform prayer as Mussulmans. Colonel Warrington certainly told me the people saw through all the mummery, and laughed, or were angry. As to the Frenchman, Caillié, his eternal tale of fabrication, repeated every day, and every hour of the day, to every Sheikh, and every merchant, camel-driver, and slave ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... her to judge him more mercifully. She tried to view his case not as with her own eyes, but as it must appear to him. To one who disbelieved the Christian faith, the repetitions of its forms could seem but a mere idle mummery. He suffered, not for having outraged Heaven, but for having outraged his own conscience an agony of self-humiliation which must be to him a living death. Then again there awoke in Olive's heart a divine pity; and once more she dared to pray that ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... are rather disappointing,-though the mummery has some general characteristics that are not unpicturesquel—for example, the predominance of crimson and canary-yellow in choice of color, and a marked predilection for pointed hoods and high- peaked head-dresses, Mock religious costumes also form a striking element in the general ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... Bethlehem Plays. There are elements in all that has come to us from the more morally simple society of the Middle Ages: elements which moderns, even when they are mediaevalists, find it hard to understand and harder to imitate. The first is the primary idea of Mummery itself. If you will observe a child just able to walk, you will see that his first idea is not to dress up as anybody—but to dress up. Afterwards, of course, the idea of being the King or Uncle William will leap to his lips. But it is generally suggested by the ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... seem to have been characterized by feasting and merriment and some undesirable mummery. Puttenham, in his "Arte of Poesie" (1589), observes: "On St. Nicholas' night, commonly, the scholars of the country make them a Bishop, who, like a foolish boy, goeth about blessing and preaching with such childish terms as make the people laugh at his foolish counterfeit." In some quarters ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... sunshine! It's brighter when we're so close together. What of life? It's soon gone—and then? What of convention that says 'no'? It's but a farce that gives the same thing we ask—at the price of a few words of mummery. Our strongest instincts of nature call for each other. Why shouldn't we obey them when we wish?" She hesitated, and her voice became tender. "We would be very ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... you with me everywhere. You shall drink, dice, bully, brawl, cudgel the men, and befool the women to the top of your bent. At the end of twelve months your Whitsun Kingship will be over, you will doff your genteel mummery, and become the leader of my heydukes. You shall then don the red mente, and wait upon those very gentlemen with whom you have been drinking and dicing for a whole year; you shall help into their carriages the same little wenches with whom you used to make merry. I consider that a very good ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... was made by the citizens for disport of the young prince, Richard, son of the Black Prince, in the feast of Christmas, in this manner: On the Sunday before Candlemas, in the night, one hundred and thirty citizens, disguised, and well horsed, in a mummery, with sound of trumpets, sack-butts, cornets, shalmes, and other minstrels, and innumerable torchlights of wax, rode from Newgate, through Cheap, over the bridge, through Southwark, and so to Kennington beside Lambhith, where the young prince remained with his mother and the Duke of Lancaster his ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... tired with all the mummery of the day; moreover, every fibre of our souls had been strained to meet the hours that had passed since we left the gaol at Jamestown. The elation we had felt earlier in the day was all gone. Now, the plaintive song, the swaying figures, the ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... also spoke of me as one. I told him nay, but that thou wert cousin only on my mother's side; but he laughed, and would not listen, and bid me fetch thee, that he might place thee well to see the mummery. So come with me, fair cousin, for we must ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Barbary shore rushed into my mind, and I thought they were acting them over here; above all, the idea that the sweet young ladies, to say nothing of my poor old governor, were, after the conclusion of all this mummery, going to deliver themselves up body and soul into the power of that horrid-looking old man, maddened me, and, rushing forward into the open space, I confronted the horrible-looking old figure with the sugar-loaf hat, the sulphur-coloured garments, and shepherd's crook, and shaking ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... replied, with a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders, 'he has always said he was madly in love with me, and I quite believe it. Poor young man, if this mummery were to console him for the rest of his life, why should I not indulge ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... experiments, I wished to see what sort of mummery my magician would practise if I called upon him to show me some performances of a higher order than those which had been attempted. I therefore entered into a treaty with him, in virtue of which he was to descend with me into the tombs near the Pyramids, and ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... Indians is called Manitou; but He can scarcely be said to be worshipped by them, and the few ideas they have of His attributes are imperfect and erroneous. Indeed, no religious rites exist among them, unless the unmeaning mummery of the medicine tent can be looked upon as such. Of late years, however, missionaries, both of the Church of England and the Wesleyans, have exerted themselves to spread the Christian religion among these tribes, than ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... to it, what can I, a passing stranger, do? I don't want to know anything more about it. Why, man, it's diabolical! To warp and imprison a girl like that! To think of that bewitching creature as a common trickster—appalls me. And to think that good people, millions of them, believe in such mummery! It ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... of religion can theirs be which makes them seek the life of an inoffensive man? I come here, having no one thing to do with either Suni or Shiah, Sufi or Mohamedan: on the contrary, out of compliment to them, I go through all the mummery of five washings and five prayings per day, and still that will not satisfy them; however, I will be even with them. I will go; I will leave their vile hypocritical town; and neither will I wash nor pray until necessity obliges me to pass through ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... lent himself to the mummery of coming there to read a burial service, made ready now, by order of the Queen's ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... the symbols moved in grave morrice, in the mummery of their letters, wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes. Give hands, traverse, bow to partner: so: imps of fancy of the Moors. Gone too from the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... it nothing that a man had been compelled to make all those ridiculous declarations? Children to be brought up Catholics! Wife not to be influenced! Even to keep an open mind himself to all the muss and mummery of the Church! ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... the king, in a voice quivering with rage, fastening his flashing looks on Douglas with an annihilating expression—"who, then, is that woman there? Who has dared with such cursed mummery to deceive the ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... have also added, that there is a species of depravity in endeavouring by ludicrous mummery to efface the salutary effects of pathetic, virtuous, and vigorous sentiments; that it is sporting with the sympathies of our nature, repugnant to correct taste, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... sister! Welcome, here! Away with all this mummery, but quick! Don't take my head off, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... gate this mental mummery paused long enough for him to vacillate between walking in or going around and shouting from the back gate. It is a point of etiquette in Hooker's Bend that negroes shall enter a white house from the back stoop. Peter had no desire to transgress ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... fantastic figures that roam the streets in carnival time. Even the stately dames who gazed from the balconies, which they had hung with antique tapestry, looked more like effigies dressed up for a quaint mummery, than like ladies in their fashionable attire. Every thing, in short, bore the stamp of former ages, as if the world had suddenly rolled back a few centuries. Nor was this to be wondered at. Had not the Island of the Seven Cities been for several hundred years cut ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... general. (3) He was a typical Deist, thinking that the God who had made the myriad stars of the firmament and who had promulgated eternal laws for the universe, would hardly concern Himself with the soul of Pierre or Jean. To him all priests were impostors, and sacraments meaningless mummery, and yet he would not abolish religion entirely. Voltaire often said that he believed in a "natural religion," but never explained it fully. Indeed, he was far more interested in tearing down than ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... a cosmopolitan confusion of Egypt, Rome, Isis, table-turning, the late Mr. Home, religion, and mummery, while Christian hymns of the early Church were being sung, perhaps in the garrets around, outside the Temple of Isis. The discovery that he had a god for his guardian angel gave Plotinus plenty of confidence in dealing with rival philosophers. For example, Alexandrinus Olympius, another mystic, ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... this mummery? Why was he a spectacle for that mob? All the blood rushed to Paul's head and the little pulses in his temples began to beat like hammers. He looked at Alvarez, but the Spaniard had turned his face into a stony mask, and he could read no meaning there. Then he looked at Braxton ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... which through mummery, strange acts, dress and ritual, affect to know and impart the inmost secrets of creation and ultimate destiny, had their rise in Egypt. In Egypt now are only graves, tombs, necropolises and silence. The priests there need no soldiery to keep their secrets safe. Ammon-Ra, ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... popularly reputed to have a complete knowledge of the occult learning of the adepts of India, that nebulous and mysterious philosophy which irreducible to the laws of nature as recognized by Occidentals, is by them pronounced either magic and feared as such, or ridiculed and despised as pretentious mummery and deluding prestidigitation. There was a legend among the students of his department that he was wont to project himself into the fourth dimension and thus traveling downtown, effect a substantial saving of street-car fare. This is clearly impossible, for the yogis do not thus move about ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... remembered that in Great Expectations and elsewhere the ostentation, mummery, and extravagance of the "undertaking ceremony" are severely criticised. The same feeling, and a desire for funeral reform, no doubt prompted Dickens to insert the following clause ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... could have induced Scott to write novels tending to make people Papists and Jacobites, and in love with arbitrary power? Did he think that Christianity was a gaudy mummery? He did not, he could not, for he had read the Bible; yet was he fond of gaudy mummeries, fond of talking about them. Did he believe that the Stuarts were a good family, and fit to govern a country like Britain? He ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... be clerk, and say amen, when I turn chaplain,' growled out the party addressed, in tones which might have become the condition of a dying bear; 'if the gentleman is a whig, he may please himself with his own mummery. My faith is neither in word nor writ, but ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... dressing up a figure to represent the devil, for the purpose of frightening young girls into obedience? And those absurd threats! Surely no sane man, and certainly no Christian teacher, would ever stoop to such senseless mummery!" ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... been present a minute, before one of the men died; and, in ten minutes more, his companion breathed his last. The medicine man turned them over, shook his rattle over them, howled, groaned and grunted; but it would not do; the men were dead, and all his mummery would not bring them back to life again; so, after a few antics of various kinds, he shuffled off with himself, shaking his rattle, and howling and groaning louder than ever. You may remember, that I told you of the death of Oseola, ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... pictures at a distance, sometimes take them for realities: and the Sophist pretends to know all things, and he, too, can deceive young men, who are still at a distance from the truth, not through their eyes, but through their ears, by the mummery of words, and induce them to believe him. But as they grow older, and come into contact with realities, they learn by experience the futility of his pretensions. The Sophist, then, has not real knowledge; he is ...
— Sophist • Plato
... of the Palace, Masters of the Horse, Masters of the Hounds, Madame Mere and a bevy of Imperial Highnesses with their ladies-in-waiting. One thing only was wanting, as a Jacobin bitterly remarked—the million of men who were slain to end all that mummery. The fascinating story of how this amazing transformation was effected cannot be told here. The magician who wrought it was possessed of a soaring imagination, of a mental instrument of incomparable force ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... With more barbaric mummery, flummery and vulgar waste of wealth than characterized even the late Marlborough- Vanderbilt wedding, Nicholas Two-Eyes was crowned Emperor of the rag-tag and bob-tail of creation, officially known as "all the Russias." ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... them; the fearfulest penalty a man pays for yielding to untruth of heart. Self and false ambition had now become his god: self-deception once yielded to, all other deceptions follow naturally, more and more. What a paltry patch-work of theatrical paper-mantles, tinsel and mummery, had this man wrapped his own reality in, thinking to make it more real thereby! His hollow Pope's-Concordat, pretending to be a reestablishment of Catholicism, felt by himself to be the method of extirpating ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... woman, Barbara Trond, whom we met out on the heath on the day of the storm some time back. I saw her only a week ago in Antwerp. Soon after the Duke Alva arrived, she returned to Antwerp; but, instead of selling wax tapers and other Popish mummery, finding her calling of sorceress and witch answer so well in the country, she now pursues it in the city. Nothing takes place with which she is not acquainted. The credulity of the Romanists is unbounded, and she finds it pay her well. ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... athwart the high altar; the files of soldiers kneeling and rising at the tap of the drum; the atmosphere clouded with the fumes of burning incense,—all combined to make up a singularly dramatic picture. The gross mummery witnessed at the temple of Buddha in Ceylon differed only ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... exploit, the very possibility of which from the first step to the last they owed to the sublime magnanimity of their victim—well knowing his own continual danger, but refusing to evade it by any arts of tyranny or distrust—when they had gone through their little scenic mummery of swaggering with their daggers—cutting '5,' '6' and 'St. George,' and 'giving point'—they had come to the end of the play. Exeunt omnes: vos plaudite. Not a step further had they projected. And, staring wildly upon each ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... she who was the protector, he who must be shielded from importunities and given his drops or his beef-juice though the skies were falling. The routine of the sick-room bewildered her; this punctual administering of medicine seemed as idle as some uncomprehended religious mummery. ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... all this mummery, intelligence was brought in that the Egyptian army was within two hours' march of them. The disorder that ensued was dreadful. The hungry soldiers dragged themselves in masses to meet the Arabs. The latter waited ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... last, bear witness to the power of Mrs. Grundy. It is to please her, that the funeral cloaks, hatbands, scarves, mourning coaches, gilded hearses, and processions of mutes are hired. And yet, how worthless and extravagant is the mummery of the undertaker's grief; and the feigned woe of the mutes, saulies, and plume bearers, who are paid for their ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... Fitzurse, "to draw our party to a head, either at York, or some other centrical place. A few days later, and it will be indeed too late. Your highness must break short this present mummery." ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... after quarter of an hour of mummery and remonstrances, so that the roots of the cabbage may not be cut and it can be transplanted without injury, while spadefuls of earth are thrown into the faces of the bystanders,—woe to him who does not step aside quickly enough; though he were a bishop or a prince, he must receive the baptism ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... imprisoned. Then was the steel of the hangman blunted with mangling the ears of harmless men. Then our very minds were fettered, and the iron entered into our souls. Then we were compelled to hide our hatred, our sorrow, and our scorn, to laugh with hidden faces at the mummery of Laud, to curse under our breath the tyranny of Wentworth. Of old time it was well and nobly said, by one of our kings, that an Englishman ought to be as free as his thoughts. Our prince reversed the maxim; he strove to make our thoughts as much slaves as ourselves. To sneer at a Romish pageant, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... The mummery now ceased, and Bunce having been carried elsewhere, the maskers resumed their native apparel, having thrown aside that which had been put on for a distinct purpose. The pedler, in another and more secure department of the ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... a secret society, with the grand and almost awful purposes of the Hetria, spite of some taint which it had received in its early stages from the spirit of German mummery, is fitted to fill the imagination, and to command homage from the coldest. Whispers circulating from mouth to mouth of some vast conspiracy mining subterraneously beneath the very feet of their accursed oppressors; whispers of a great deliverer at hand, whose mysterious Labarum, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... service" is the highest occupation of knightly leisure, the subject of the immense bulk of mediaeval poetry. "Lady's service" in deeds of arms and song, in constant praise and defence of the beloved, in heroic enterprise and madcap mummery, in submission and terror to the wondrous creature whom the humble servant, the lover, never calls by her sacred name, speaking of her in words unknown to Antiquity, dompna, dame, frowe, madonna—words of which the original sense has almost ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... now!" said Tito. "You will forget this ghastly mummery when we are in the light, and can see each other's eyes. My Ariadne must never look backward now—only forward to Easter, when she will triumph with ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... the actions of the Mussulmans. A number of boys, however, soon intruded themselves upon their privacy; and, in truth, they were more amused by the artlessness and playfulness of their manners, than with all the grave and stupid mummery of the Mahommedan worshippers. Groups of people were continually arriving at the spot, and these were welcomed by an occasional flourish of music from a native clarionet, &c. They were clad in all their finery, their apparel being as gaudy as it was various. The coup d'oeil ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... His face was a mask, but I thought—as I have thought before and since when at the council fire—that there was amusement in the very blankness of his gaze, and that my effort to outdo him at his own mummery somewhat taxed his gravity. When he spoke at last he told ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... I stifle with your perfume! Cease Your crazy salutations! peace, I say Begone, or let me go, ere I go mad With all this babble, mummery, and glare, For I am growing dangerous—Air! room! air!— (He rushes in. Music ceases.) Oh but to save the reeling brain from wreck With its bewilder'd senses! (He covers his eyes for a while.) What! E'en now That Babel left behind me, but my eyes Pursued ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... "This mummery is well maintained!" muttered Ludlow, when the skiff had reached a distance that assured him of safety. "Here is a symptom that the rover means soon to quit the coast. The change of dress is some signal to his superstitious and deluded crew. It is my task to disappoint his mistress, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... excellent apostle that he was, denied Christ. Such examples of which the Scriptures are full, ought to warn us not to repose our trust in men. In the papacy appearance counts for everything. Indeed, the whole papacy amounts to nothing more than a mere kowtowing of persons and outward mummery. But God alone is to be ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... no satisfactory definition between the real and the artificial algae, so perfectly do the details of the moving marine garden blend with the fringes and fur of the animal's rugged and misshapen figure and deformed limbs. As an artistic finish to a marvellous piece of mummery, in one of the crude green claws is carried a fragment of coral, green with the mould of the sea. It and the claw are indistinguishable until, in the faintest spasm of fright, the crab abandons the coral, and ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... of the Earl of Rone" which takes place at Combe Martin on Ascension Day is probably the most interesting of all ancient survivals in North Devon. It is a curious ceremony, partaking something of the nature of a Guy Fawkes mummery, something, I consider, of a much older and ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... The rigmarole and mummery Winnie went through affected her exactly as it had affected her sister. It was all a hideous nightmare, and at any moment she expected to wake up in her cozy ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... I must be severe. I have tried gentle means. As your tutor, in whose charge you have been left by your father, I command you to give up all this silly mummery. You have something better to do than to waste time over such childish tricks. Go to your room, and stay there for a while before you come to mine with an ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... the rest of us in holding converse with these people, while I must remain dumb as an oyster, save for a glance of the eye. Perhaps, now that we have time for it, you will kindly explain the meaning of all this mummery with which we passed the night, for, by all the gods of Rome, it was weird enough to turn my hair gray, yet I understood neither word nor deed. How came that grim preacher to attain such honor, taking position beside ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... in the Compter about a week, on the 4th of February, Bonner came to degrade him, bringing with him such ornaments as appertained to the massing mummery; but the Doctor refused these trappings till they were ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... 4, Palm Sunday, he attended the services at the Sistine Chapel, which he found rather tedious, with much mummery. Going from there to the cancellerie he describes the ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... was "raining cats and dogs" just at that time, and when it rains near the equator it does so in earnest; umbrellas become a fallacy: nothing less than an india-rubber coat is of any avail. What an exhibition of mummery it was in that time-begrimed temple! Ceylon is the classic ground of Buddhism, as its ruined temples and monuments prove,—a faith which still prevails so generally ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... captains Martin had met were particular men; one would not find them in such a noisome hole. This Carew must be some rough renegade. Perhaps he was not even white; perhaps he was a half-caste. That would explain his choice of lodgings. One would think from all the secret mummery with which he surrounded himself that he was the Mikado, himself. He certainly was not ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... "Wilfrid Reginald and the Dark Horse," by James Mahoney, and "Mr. Downey Sits Down," by L.H. Robbins. For laughter the reader is recommended to each of these, the latter of which is reprinted in this volume. For humour plus a trifle more of excitement, "Mummery," by Thomas Beer, is included. Mr. Beer has succeeded in handling Mrs. Egg as Miss Addington manages Miss Titwiler, the "Cactus"; that is, as the equal of author and reader, but also—and still without condescension—as reason for twinkles ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... too—but not so stoutly—that she did not believe it; but in her heart she felt that it must be true. As for Thorbeorn, who had heard it all through the wall, whatever he may have thought, he was very indignant, and angry with her too. "Put such mummery out of your head. We are not Christians for nothing, I should hope. A scandalous hag with her bell-wether voice and airs of a great lady! What has she to do with good women, well brought up? A woman's duty is to leave match-making to her parents, and the future to God and ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... nobody denies that), what did He mean by it, if He did not mean the setting forth by symbol of the very same truth which, stated in words, is the doctrine of His atoning death? This rite does not, indeed, explain the rationale of the doctrine; but it is a piece of unmeaning mummery, unless it preaches plainly the fact that Christ's death is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... coach, crept through the sandy streets, Hetty, looking eagerly out, saw men, women, and children falling on their knees by the road-side. She recollected having noted this custom when she was in St. Mary's before: then it had seemed to her senseless mummery; now it seemed beautiful. Hetty had just come through dark places, in which she had wanted help from God more than she had ever in her life wanted it; and these evident signs of faith, of an established relation between ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... and quiv'ring fears, Anxious sighs, untimely tears, Fly, fly to courts, Fly to fond worldling's sports; Where strain'd sardonic smiles are glozing still, And Grief is forced to laugh against her will; Where mirth's but mummery, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... may consider this as a piece of mummery. At the time I did not. As a good Catholic, which I was at that time, and a pretty Frenchwoman, I thought that nothing could be more correct than the decoration des belles. I believe that it has always been the custom to name bells—to consecrate them most certainly—and if we call ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... replied the lady, "lay yourself on the table again. I hear someone coming; and it is not fit that my people should think me your accomplice in this farce and mummery." ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... The Herr was annoyed, as I have never seen him; and I too was angry, the more because what he said had some truth, but it was not, you understand, the moment to say it. After this we had no great trouble until we had passed the place where Herr Mummery turned back. About thirty metres from the summit we came to a bit requiring caution; a small couloir filled with good ice but at a slope—so!" Here Christian held his open hand aslant, but Mr. Frank did not lift his eyes. "They ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... be rash; to have been frightfully rash; but what can he now do? Archbishop thereupon gives absolution of his sins; Archbishop does,—a baddish, unlikely kind of man, as August well knows. August "laid his hand on his eyes," during such sad absolution-mummery; and in that posture had breathed his last, before it was well over. ["Sunday, 1st February, 1733, quarter past 4 A.M." (Fassmann, Leben Frederici Augusti Konigs in Pohlen, pp. 994-997).] Unhappy soul; who shall judge him?—transcendent King of edacious Flunkies; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Excellency order out the guard?" whispered Lord Percy, who, with other British officers, had now assembled round the general. "There may be a plot under this mummery." ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... such mummery!' cried Sergius, suddenly arousing from his spiritual stupor and bursting into a shrill laugh. 'Do we care to listen to your miserable dactyls? Is it not a standing jest through Rome that, for the past month, you have daily read your verses to one person after ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and awed by the demoniacal maledictions of the wretched creature whom I had hitherto so intensely despised, I knew not what to think, or how to act. He had assumed a fresh shape, more marvelous than any he had hitherto put on in the whole round of his extraordinary mummery. The raillery and tipsy recklessness which appeared constitutional in him had suddenly passed away, leaving not a solitary trace behind. Even his figure, while he had been speaking, seemed to heave with a new life, and to dilate into unnatural dimensions. I was perplexed to the last ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... Mummery, who was killed by an avalanche in attempting the ascent of Nanga Parbat in the Himalayas, was probably the greatest climber of his day. He was the first, for example, to ascend that most formidable of the Chamonix Aiguilles, the Grepon, where the "Mummery ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... all respect for the clergy, calling them bottégaie, shopkeepers, as mindful only of the gains of their trade; and the churches bottége, shops. There is no vitality in the religion of the people, the services are a mere mummery, and the system is held together principally by the attractions of the popular festas, such as those described in a former chapter as scenes of bacchanalian revelry tricked out in the paraphernalia of religion. As for the Jesuits, the most obnoxious of the ecclesiastics, my friend ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... are possessed by the Free Cities of the North. If that be your object, the son of the Red Axe is with you—with you to the death, if need be. But for God's sake let us take off these masks and set ourselves down to the tankard and the good brown bread with less mummery—a sham of which others have ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... treating the prince with marked disrespect; and the latter likewise taxed him with the design of converting the monarchy into a republic, with a regent, annually elected, nominally at its head. Against the regency bill he burst into a paroxysm of rage. He exclaimed, "It is a mere mummery, a piece of masquerade buffoonery, formed to burlesque every species of government. A hideous spectre, to which, with Macbeth, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... brain, and preserved a remnant of polytheism. The disciples of Plato, such as Proclus, Ammonius, Jamblicus. Plotinus, Longinus, Porphyrus, and others, dressed it up still more fantastically, added a great deal of superstitious mummery, blended it with magic, and other unintelligible doctrines. The first doctors of Christianity were Platonists, who combined the reformed Judaism with the philosophy taught in Academia. Mahomet, in combating the polytheism of his country, seems to have been desirous of restoring the primitive theism ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... sciamachy[obs3]. sell, pun, verbal quibble, macaronic[obs3]. jargon, fustian, twaddle, gibberish &c (no meaning) 517; exaggeration &c 549; moonshine, stuff; mare's nest, quibble, self-delusion. vagary, tomfoolery, poppycock, mummery, monkey trick, boutade[Fr], escapade. V. play the fool &c. 499; talk nonsense, parler a tort et a travess[Fr]; battre la campagne[Fr][obs3]; <gr/ hanemolia bazein/gr>; be - absurd &c. adj. Adj. absurd, nonsensical, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... antiquarian, and amuses himself with things of this sort. In old times there really was a hermit here, and this is his effigy. Come down these narrow stairs, if you please, and see the rest of the mummery." ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott |
