"Mystification" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a magnificent drawing of the series of "Le Public du Salon," old classicists looking up, horrified and scandalized, at the new romantic work of 1830, in which the faces have an appalling gloom of mystification and platitude. We feel that Daumier reproduces admirably the particular life that he sees, because it is the very medium in which he moves. He has no wide horizon; the absolute bourgeois hems him in, and he is a bourgeois himself, without poetic ironies, to whom a ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... regard the Lane of the Mad Eccentrics from the point of view of metropolitan sophistication; to dismiss the Vermilion Hound and the Hell Hole and the Pirate's Den and the Purple Pup and Polly's as clap-trap and tinsel designed for the mystification of yokels and social investigators from Long Island City. But it is impossible to deny that the crazy decorations have added a touch of real colour to what had been a drab corner of the town. The present writer has no intention of going into a detailed sketch of this fragment of ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... have got up a little mystification," she said after a pause, "and I am sure I can trust you; besides, you don't know the parties. There is a gentleman here who is supposed to be with his regiment at Moscow; but there is a sweetheart in the case, and you know when there are ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... mystery as of course, but mystification is another thing, and the tendency to befog a theme which needs to be clarified, is to be regretted. Here lies, perhaps, the real reason for the feeling of resentment against the idea of a Secret Doctrine, and one must admit that it is not without justification. For example, we are ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... to him, said the receipt was the only one of the kind he had seen in the course of a long experience.) Very much surprised was the old lady, of whom I made the purchase in my capacity of stage-manager, at so uncommon a customer in her line of business; and when, after enjoying her mystification for some time, I let her into the secret, so delighted was she at the notion, that she gave me sundry hints as to the management of the female toilet, and offered to get made up for me any dresses that might be required. So I introduced Leicester and his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... He explained that even if never a dollar were to come to him from the other house he would nevertheless cherish this one; and he dwelt, further, while they lingered and wandered, on the fact of the stupefaction he was already exciting, the positive mystification ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... really better—!" But he checked himself, wanting only to be easy about it and above all not to appear engaged to the point of mystification. "We shall miss her the more ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... he was no milksop, and he resolved that Mr. Billiter should not baulk him. Where is the actor who does not delight in stratagems and mysteries? Bless their honest hearts, they could not endure life without an occasional plot or mystification! Two months after Letty's incarceration, a decently-dressed man called at Mr. Billiter's with a parcel. The visitor was clad in tweed; his smart whiskers were dexterously trained and he looked like a natty draper's assistant. "These things were ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... Of course, I may be wrong in the motives which I ascribe to this Whitehall agent, but misunderstanding is certain to arise out of a system of such deliberate mystification, which can only be compared to that employed by the Russian ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... outer ribs of the board and the sides of the vehicle. To this he added a roll of rag carpet, the end of which hung from the tailboard, and a roll of pink calico temptingly displayed on the seat. The mystification and curiosity of the young girl grew more intense at these proceedings. It looked like the ordinary exhibition of a traveling peddler, but the gloomy and embattled appearance of the man himself scouted ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... mystification to you, isn't it? You can't understand—luckily for you. What I mean is that I have a pretty fair chance of going mad if I try to live quite alone—— Don't think too hardly of me, if you can help it; I am not altogether the vicious brute you ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... explain the outcome of this, her first step in the meadows of meditation, which she took without help and without intention, and in which she has become so versed, to the mystification of those about her, who look upon woman as a bearer of children, a plaything for sunny hours, useful in time of rain, endowed with the brain of a pea-hen, and as much soul as the priests see fit to ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... fifty-dollar drafts from Eastern periodicals, and he had touched these with reverent hands: but two thousand dollars in a lump from one of the best-known publishers in the country staggered Amzi. To add to his mystification, half the amount plus one cent, to-wit, $1057.58, was immediately transferred to Thomas Kirkwood's account, and this left Amzi away up in the air. Just what right Tom Kirkwood had to participate in Nan's earnings Amzi did not know, nor did he see immediately ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... been called, before his time, the Peaks. He gave it its present name and lived here shut up, day and night poring over the wicked heaps of papers in the suit and hoping against hope to disentangle it from its mystification and bring it to a close. In the meantime, the place became dilapidated, the wind whistled through the cracked walls, the rain fell through the broken roof, the weeds choked the passage to the rotting door. When I brought what remained of him home here, the brains ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... well he did so; the evidence is too clear for doubt or mystification; he knew he had no chance, and has taken the seemliest course; and, doubtless, the best for ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... surprise and mystification, her cheeks and brow flushed rosily; she was obviously ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... revelation that comes by the way, made manifest in the effort to conceal it, overlaid by all sorts of cryptic sentences and self-deprecatory phrases, half hidden by the protective coloring taken on by a sensitive mind commonly employing paradox and delighting in perverse and teasing mystification. One can never be sure what the book means; but taken at its face value the Education seems to be the story of a man who regarded life from the outside, as a spectator at the play, a play in which his own part as spectator was taken by a minor character. The play was amusing ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... a new variety in her eyes, and entertained her greatly. Where the bounds of banter ended, was not easy to define, but whenever he tried a little mystification, she either entered merrily into the humour, or threw it over with keen wit that he kept constantly on the stretch. They were always discovering odd, unexpected bits of knowledge in each other, and a great deal more accordance in views and ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Emperor repeated to me the words I had heard the night before, 'You are a traitor,' etc.) He acknowledged, in fact, continued the Emperor, 'that he had received such a letter, but that it was not signed and that he had looked upon it as a mystification. He showed it me. Now that letter was evidently an answer, in which the writer again declared that he would listen to nothing more concerning the Emperor, but that, his person excepted, it would be easy to agree to all ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... end of this mystification," he said, putting Oscar back from him, sharply, at arm's length. "I want a plain answer to a plain question. She knows that the boy knocked at the door, and asked if Blue Face was at home. Does she know what the boy's impudence meant? ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... two of his three years' probation, run away is indisputable. His mother was living at Chester, and the calf was not killed for this prodigal son; but he had liberty given him to wander about Wales on an allowance of a guinea a week. That there is some mystery, or mystification, about all this is nearly certain. If things really went as he represents them, his mother ought to have been ashamed of herself, and his guardians ought to have had, to say the least, an experience of the roughest side of Lord Eldon's tongue. The wanderings in Wales ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... conference, and as to whether it was or was not an advance, as the Chamberlainites claimed, towards Mr Chamberlain. Meanwhile the party was getting more and more disorganized, and the public were getting tired of the apparent mystification. The opposition used the situation to make capital in the country, and loudly called for ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... more or less ingenious. A venial wickedness, a self-complacent malice, is an enjoyment for those who have neither resources in themselves nor a wholesome external activity. No age is quite exempt from such pruriences. We had often tricked each other in our childish years: many sports turn upon mystification and trick. The present jest did not seem to me to go farther: I gave my consent. They imparted to me many particulars which the letter ought to contain, and we ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... reading an amusing book by Lady Grove called "The Social Fetich," which is a positive riot of this new specialism and mystification. It is due to Lady Grove to say that she has some of the freer and more honourable qualities of the old Whig aristocracy, as well as their wonderful worldliness and their strange faith in the passing fashion of our politics. For instance, she speaks of Jingo Imperialism ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... account of the system adopted at a new settlement in Australia. We will state at once, that our official authority is a Blue Book—one of those huge volumes printed from time to time, by order of parliament, for the edification—or as some facetious folks say, for the mystification—of M.Ps. Having carefully waded through its voluminous pages, we have jotted down the passages that especially struck us, and propose to present the pith and substance of our labour—for it is nothing less—in a condensed and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... to be without cause—all these things mingled with a very deep and heartfelt affection for us, and with a vehement, feverish devotion when either of us was ill. And this woman possessed an energetic character, a force of will, a skill in mystification, to which nothing can be compared. Yes, yes, all those frightful secrets kept under lock and key, hidden, buried deep in her own heart, so that neither our eyes, nor our ears, nor our powers of observation ever detected aught amiss, even in her hysterical attacks, when nothing escaped her but ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... for my fallen country, who are the proudest citizen of the proudest of lands? Why should you feel for its debasing thraldom—you who, in the religious mystification of man, have, at least, the noble privilege of being ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... term to the mystification that had gripped him as well as the others. He raised a hand to the dog's throat, to restrain the too eager demonstrations of affection. At the collar he felt something unaccustomed. He looked, idly enough, and saw that a leathern thong had been tied firmly in the ring. To the thong ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... was run over and under the mattress and along every crack and cranny of the brass bed. This done and this dust also carefully stowed away, we departed, very much to the mystification of Marie and, I could not help feeling, of other eyes that peered in through ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... conversation to the Duke and Capraja, not wishing to be the victims of mystification. Only Vendramin and the French doctor listened to them for a few minutes. The opium-smoker understood these poetic flights; he had the key of the palace where those two sensuous imaginations were wandering. The doctor, too, tried ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... the course and the referees were now seen to be running hither and yon in great excitement. A long delay and much putting of heads together ensued, to the great mystification of the audience. At length, just as a number of small boys in the gallery had begun to stamp their feet in military time and whistle their indignation, the official announcer officially announced that there had been a slight hitch in ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... precociously impudent boy of fourteen meddling with the plot and acting as Penelope's prime minister, such mixed-up situations and harum-scarum talk, cannot be found between ordinary lovers, but the result is amusing, to say nothing more. The best character in the book is the old duchess, for whose mystification Penelope's scheme is planned, and who only at the climax discovers, like the rest of us, which of six men her niece has married, though all of them lay claim ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... near the shop door during this interchange. Dan forgot, in his increasing interest and mystification, that the "Courier's" city editor was waiting for news of Thatcher, the capitalist. Young Thatcher's narrative partook of the nature of a protest. He was seriously in rebellion against his own expatriation. He stood erect ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... instinct for a brother tar, though a passenger, and a due respect is paid to Neptune in answering his inquiries, while half the time the maiden traveller meets with a grave equivoque, a marvel, or a downright mystification. ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... merely laughed away the good woman's fears and, with a hasty good-bye, ran out of the house and disappeared in the dark. For several minutes Mrs. Thorlakson continued to stand in the doorway, the lamp above her head, her face shining in the mellow glow with a queer mixture of apprehension and mystification. These city people were beyond ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... when the city saw McClellan sweeping toward it from the Chickahominy, when senators and clergymen gathered with the slaves to raise the breastworks, and men turned blankly to ask one another "Where is the army?" With the girl the question meant only mystification; she felt none of the white terror that showed in the faces round her. There was in her heart an unquestioning, childlike trust in the God of battles—sooner or later he would declare for the Confederacy ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... Mr. Kearney. "Kearney will do—Kearney's good enough for me," commented the soi-disant Kearney half-aloud, to my own horror and Sylvester's evident mystification, and then he blandly excused himself for a moment that he might personally supervise the care of his own beast. When he was out of ear-shot I drew the puzzled ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... had smoked, and Furneaux had contributed some personal reminiscences the whole aim and object of which was the perplexing and mystification of that discreet person, Tomlinson, the two retired to their room at an early hour. The butler pressed them hospitably to try the house's special blend of Scotch whisky, but they had declined resolutely. Both acknowledged to an unwonted lassitude and sleepiness—symptoms which ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... and mistaking mystification for mastery, enters the fog of dilettantism, and, graduating connoisseur, ends its days in a bewilderment of bric-a-brac ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... ruler, pleased with this almost magical power of getting a revenue with little trouble, continued to issue coins until suddenly the heavier coins began to be exported or melted, and the value of the other money fell, to the mystification alike of the prince and of his people. The reason is now perfectly plain: the number of coins was not kept within the proper limits and they went down to their bullion value. The only way a further profit could be made in this way was to debase the coin again. By successive ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... that's your part," answered Wyndham, enjoying his mystification. "S'posing we go for the old game—'Hot boiled beans and very good butter'? Hallo!" The smile died from his face as his glance went to the roadway. "Here are some of your lot! They haven't got wind of our meeting, ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... pieces were, in manuscript, in this volume, and as there were circumstances of mystification attendant upon their prior publication, what does the captain do but claim them all, Songs of Zion and sentimental ballad alike, as Marvell's. This of course brought the critics, ever anxious to air their erudition, down upon ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... do you mean?" Jane asked. There was a pucker of mystification between her eyes as she looked ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... glad to have two of the students loitering in the patio play just such a trick on a carter at the gate as school-boys might play in our own land. While his back was turned they took his whip and hid it and duly triumphed in his mystification and dismay. We did not wait for the catastrophe, but by the politeness of another student found the booth of the custodian, who showed us to the library. A noise of recitation from the windows looking into ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... received by Madeline's guests as it had been by Stillwell. They were highly amused and speculative to the point of taking sides and making wagers on their choice. Moreover, this situation so frankly revealed by Stillwell had completed their deep mystification. They were now absolutely nonplussed by the singular character of American cowboys. Madeline was pleased to note how seriously they had taken the old cattleman's story. She had a little throb of wild expectancy that ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... schemes in the beginning; they may only rejoice with you over their happy outcome." "To mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy," is one of the first principles in war, as had been frequently pointed out. But how about the other process—the mystification of one's own men? Those who may think that Sun Tzu is over-emphatic on this point would do well to read Col. Henderson's remarks on Stonewall Jackson's Valley campaign: "The infinite pains," he says, "with which Jackson ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... to a southerly one, for a hunting morning. This is all simple enough, and needs not the mystification with which it has been surrounded. A valuable account of this may be found in Johnson's Shooting Companion, a work that is ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... a lord,' and this amiable weakness is fully realized by the jokers on the other side—but the fault does not wholly rest with them! Their too confiding and credulous mediums are too often in the main responsible for their own mystification and misleading. They are often so anxious to be guided by some 'eminent' person who will be to them an 'authority,' that they practically invite spirit pretenders to fool them to the top of their bent. This does not apply to all cases of real or supposed deception, ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... see anything amusing in this sort of stupid mystification," cried Mrs. Ormonde, in ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... ground with his flashlight showed him that he had come to the right spot. He could see the tracks made by the wheels of the machine; he could see, also, evidences of the brief struggle between Harry and Graves. For a moment his mystification continued. But then, with a low laugh, Jack Young emerged from the cover in ...
— The Boy Scout Aviators • George Durston
... general mystification. Kate, who could have thrown a light, did not come down to breakfast. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... determined to continue the mystification, "you are unjustly severe in your animadversions on poor Monsieur ——. Does he not prove himself a true philanthropist in devoting the time to the affairs of others that might be usefully occupied in attending to ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... I think I remember telling you the last time we met'-he turned to Trent—'that Manderson shared the national fondness for doings things in a story-book style. Other things being equal, he delighted in a bit of mystification and melodrama, and I told myself that this was Manderson all over. I hurried downstairs with my bag and rejoined him in the library. He handed me a stout leather letter-case, about eight inches by six, fastened with a strap with ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... you that I do not respect secrets. For the present I will not ask; but I may change my mind. Meanwhile we must not hold long conversations. I even hope that we shall not meet. There is only one thing that I am too rich and grand for. That one thing—mystification. Adieu." ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... which has been partially understood by great men at various periods of our history. The whole theory is carefully worked out in the opening pages of 'Sybil.' The most remarkable thing about our popular history, so Disraeli tells us, is, that it is 'a complete mystification;' many of the principal characters never appear, as, for example, Major Wildman, who was 'the soul of English politics from 1640 to 1688.' It is not surprising, therefore, that two of our three chief statesmen in later times should be systematically depreciated. The younger Pitt, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... seeking no object of our own; that when peace is concluded we shall not have acquired one ell of new territory, or secured any advantage whatever for ourselves. It is for Turkey and the general system of Europe that we are struggling.' In fact, the whole matter always resolves itself into some general mystification, and at this moment we are, every man of us, almost entirely in the dark as to what are the ultimate objects ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... at Maigrefontaine, and providentially attended to by Reine Vincart, the return to the chateau in the vehicle belonging to La Thuiliere, the sending of the lilies, were all a source of great mystification to Manette. She suspected some amorous mystery in all these events, commented somewhat uncharitably on every minor detail, and took care to carry her comments all over the village. Very soon the ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... confirmed almost into certainty by the more and more discernible humoristico-satirical tendency of Teufelsdrockh, in whom underground humors and intricate sardonic rogueries, wheel within wheel, defy all reckoning: a suspicion, in one word, that these Autobiographical Documents are partly a mystification! What if many a so-called Fact were little better than a Fiction; if here we had no direct Camera-obscura Picture of the Professor's History; but only some more or less fantastic Adumbration, symbolically, perhaps significantly enough, shadowing forth ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... writers, then, the doctrine of final causes for rudimentary organs was a piece of mystification and an absurdity; no less fatal to any such doctrine were the processes of embryological development. It was plain that the commonly received teleology must be given up; but the idea of design or purpose was ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... excellent notes upon Horace of M. Dacier, the husband, in very just terms, as distinguished from those of his conceited and half-learned wife; and the whole reply of Pope seems very much as though he had been playing off a mystification on his grace. Undoubtedly the pompous duke felt that he had caught a Tartar. Now M. Dacier's Horace, which, with the text, fills nine volumes, Pope could not have read except in French; for they are not even ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... was known the lugger intended to come into the bay, Ghita and 'Maso alone remained on watch, after the vessel was anchored. A loud hail had been given by those intrusted with the execution of the quarantine laws, the great physical bugbear and moral mystification of the Mediterranean; and the questions put had been answered in a way to satisfy all scruples for the moment. The "From whence came ye?" asked, however, in an Italian idiom, had been answered by "Inghilterra, touching at Lisbon and Gibraltar," all ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... suffer their interrogator to remain in ignorance of some circumstance, some mobile secret, through the unveiling of which they would be more admired, or less esteemed, and which they well know how to hide under the subtle smile of an almost imperceptible mockery. Delighting in the pleasure of mystification, from the most spiritual or comic to the most bitter and melancholy, they may perhaps find in this deceptive raillery an external formula of disdain for the veiled expression of the superiority which they internally claim, but which ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... placed his feet on the top of the high stuffed easy-chair which adorned the room. This inverted personal condition relieved his mystification somewhat, or perhaps brought his whole nature more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... about in mystification, wondering if something had happened in the post-office to fire ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... the new novelist who writes under the name of George Eliot. One critic of considerable pretensions, for instance, declared his belief that "George Eliot" was "a gentleman of high-church tendencies"; next came the strange mystification which ascribed the "Eliot" tales to one Mr. Joseph Liggins; and finally, the public learnt on authority that the "gentleman of high church tendencies" was a lady; and that this lady was the same who had given a remarkable proof of mastery over both ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... that Miss Ward was the most beautiful blonde girl he had ever seen. After an hour's chat in the actor's big, comfortable library Mr. Southard proposed that they call upon Mr. Forest that morning. Miss Pierson had written Miss Harlowe about the part, he declared, to the complete mystification of both Kathleen and Evelyn. He was glad Miss Ward had been able to come. He was sure she would be exactly suited to the part in "The Reckoning." Kathleen managed to shoot a warning glance at Evelyn not to betray herself. Later, by adroitly questioning Anne, she managed ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... the Life of Nelson, and his character as involved in this matter, the fact is beyond dispute that he believed himself the father, and Lady Hamilton the mother, of the girl, whose origin he sought to conceal by an elaborate though clumsy system of mystification. This might possibly have left the subject covered with clouds, though not greatly in doubt, had not Lady Hamilton, after wildly unnecessary lying on her own part, recklessly preserved her holdings of a correspondence ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... deal of mystification abroad, and nobody felt at ease. Still, the ebullitions of terror that had accompanied the earlier caprices of the elements were not renewed. People were getting used to ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... influence which paralyzes my vocal cords. However, I got out of this scrape, and many times afterward when I chanced with other operators to meet some of the young ladies on their way home from school, they would smile and nod, much to the mystification of the operators, who were ignorant of ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... astonishment to terror. Chicot I. relinquished his role of apparent terror, threw back his hood, crossed his arms, and, while Gorenflot fled at his utmost speed, sustained, firm and smiling, the first shock. It was a terrible moment, for the gentlemen, furious at the mystification of which they had been the dupes, advanced menacingly on the Gascon. But this unarmed man, his breast covered only by his arms—this laughing face, stopped them still more than the remonstrance of the cardinal, who said to them that Chicot's death could serve ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... may as well be the nom de plume of a man as of a woman, especially if adopted for the purpose of mystification. The handwriting, I remember, WAS more boyish ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... Irish by a confusion of speech and in the English by a confusion of thought. For the Irish bull is a license with the symbol of language. But Bull's own bull, the English bull, is "a dumb ox of thought"; a standing mystification in the mind. There is something double in the thoughts as of the soul mirrored in many waters. Of all peoples they are least attached to the purely classical; the imperial plainness which the French do finely and the Germans coarsely, but the Britons hardly at all. They are constantly ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... no offense; she maintained her curious observation of him; she appeared genuinely interested in acquainting herself with a man who could master such a phenomenal quantity of liquor. There was mystification in her tone when ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... 'judge-then-placed-the-black-cap-on-his-head' manner, his assailant had suddenly begun to babble lightly of sporting literature. He began to entertain doubts of the Headmaster's sanity. It would not have added greatly to his mystification if the Head had gone on to insist that he was the Emperor of Peru, ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... sent for you, Polycarp, made my will, and accompanied you to my safe in your private vault, in order to deposit there some secret instructions. I shall not soon forget your mystification, and how you chafed under my ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... went on to explain that by the Atlantic I did not mean the ocean, nor by America the western continent, but that the Atlantic meant the village green, and America the squire's house on the other side of it, I should justly gain credit for a very silly mystification. As Nicholas Nickleby very justly remarked, If Dotheboy's Hall is not a hall, why call it one? Mr. Squeers, in his reply, no doubt stated the law of the case: If a man chooses to call his house an island, what is ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... Bible, and especially in the Book of Revelation, Knotty passages in the pamphlet I was also required to read from time to time. But the oftener they were read, and the more closely they were examined, the greater was the puzzle, the more complete the mystification. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... gravity seemed to surround the doctor's entire person, and no one would dream that he could become the agent of any mystification, however harmless. ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... conveyed from instruments, played in the next room, to the lyre through a steel rod. The young man spent much time experimenting with the transmission of sound. Having conveyed music through the steel rod to his enchanted lyre, much to the mystification of the Londoners, he proposed to transmit sounds over a considerable distance by this method. He estimated that sound could be sent through steel rods at the rate of two hundred miles a second and suggested the use of such a rod as a telegraph between London and ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... Somerset peremptory, and he could not help replying somewhat more impetuously than usual:— 'Why do you give me so much cause for anxiety! Why treat me to so much mystification! Say once, distinctly, that what I ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... wanted assistance from Therese? No, that was improbable and furthermore, distasteful, so Melicent would not burden herself with the suspicion. It was far more agreeable to believe that affairs were shaping themselves according to her wishes regarding her brother and her friend. Yet her mystification was in no wise made clearer, when David left them ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... the Squire were dumfounded. Their mystification culminated in one grand chorus of amazement when, on Friday, the Squire came to the hotel hugging under ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... lying on the writing-table, a little crumpled from use, but with a certain "displayed-headed" article of three columns' length in full view, he turned round and stared at Cleek with an air of awe and mystification. "My dear fellow, you must be under the guardianship of some uncanny familiar. You surely must, Cleek!" he went on. "Do you mean to tell me that is what kept you at home? That you have been reading about the preparations ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... this mystification, the Suliots retired to their mountains, and Kursheed profited by the discontent Ali's conduct had caused, to win over the Toxide Skipetars, with their commanders Tahir Abbas and Hagi Bessiaris, who only made two conditions: one, that Ismail Pacho ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... phenomena had occurred. Bishop Butler had insisted on spelling his name, "Bubler," for which offence against orthography and good manners he had been dismissed as out of temper. John Milton (suspected of wilful mystification) had repudiated the authorship of Paradise Lost, and had introduced, as joint authors of that poem, two Unknown gentlemen, respectively named Grungers and Scadgingtone. And Prince Arthur, nephew of King John of England, had described himself as tolerably ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... have it at Richmond. Then I say, that might be inconvenient to the people. Then she says, how could it be if we dine late enough? Then I am very much offended without exactly knowing why; and come up here, in a state of hopeless mystification. . . . What do you think? Ellis would be quite as dear as anybody else; and unless the weather changes, the place is objectionable. I must make up my mind to do one thing or other, for we shall meet Lord Denman at dinner to-day. Could it be ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... happen to be we have not the remotest idea. But who would not forgive a little mystification for so brilliant a pun?—THE ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... studies of nature, cannot fairly be censured on this head. Like fairy tales they have a place of their own in art. One of the prettiest of these is Les Dames Vertes, in which the fable seems to lead us over the borders of the supernatural; but the secret of the mystification, well kept till the last, is itself so pleasing and original that the reader has no disappointing sense as of having had a hoax ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... half expecting the waiter to come back for the number again; but to his immense surprise and mystification, the fellow didn't. Instead of that, he returned some minutes later, all respectful attention, bringing the bill on a salver, duly headed and lettered, "Mr. Billington, number 40." In unspeakable trepidation, Guy paid it and walked away. Never ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... Europe; and that they have never gained popularity with us is due probably to the fact that in those which have been translated into our tongue neither the essence nor the form of the original has been preserved. By the title no mystification was ever designed: it came, as it were, of itself, and the purport of the narrative through which the main songs were interwoven being well known, it was never, supposed that a doubt concerning the authorship could arise. Nevertheless, the critics accepted them as translations from the Persian, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... V. Chapter VII. is roughly but satisfactorily drafted: a very little work should put that to rights. But Chapter VI. is no joke; it is a MARE MAGNUM: I swim and drown and come up again; and it is all broken ends and mystification: moreover, I perceive I am in want of more matter. I must have, first of all, a little letter from Mr. Ewing about the phonograph work: IF you think he would understand it is quite a matter of chance whether I use a word or ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the full flood of mystification and resentment, Charles Verity found her when presently he returned. Sensible of something very much amiss, since she stayed within the shadow of the closed shutters, silent and motionless, he crossed the room and stood before her looking ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... except the infirmity of a pose which is impressive only by its correctness; he may be cynical, if the cynicism is wholly free from emphasis; he may be ironical, if the irony is sufficiently disguised; he may mystify his fellows, if he keeps the pleasure of mystification for his private amusement. Should he happen to be an artist, he must appear to be only a dilettante. He must never incur ridicule, and yet his ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... and, aptly enough, immediately after a page devoted to Piranesi, the etcher, architect, and visionary. You may find this page in The Confessions of an English Opium Eater, that book of terror, beauty, mystification, and fudge (De Quincey deluded himself quite as much as his readers in this autobiography, which, like the confessions of most distinguished men, must not be taken too literally): "Many years ago," he wrote, "when I was looking over Piranesi's Antiquities ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... open the letter and scanned it. His brows contracted in astonished mystification, then slowly ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... family having moved west from Camberwell in or shortly before 1832. Mr. R. Barrett Browning tells me that his father "never lived at Richmond, and that that place was connected with 'Pauline,' when first printed, as a mystification."] ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... suggestion. Such perilous ideas, so frequently started by Jenny for his mystification, joggled together in his brain and made there the subject of a thousand ruminations. They tantalised Pa's slowly revolving thoughts, and kept these moving through long hours of silence. Such notions preserved his interest in the world, ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... (first series of Poems and Ballads), Verlaine (Parallelement), and Pierre Louys (Chansons de Bilitis). The last-named book, a collection of homosexual prose-poems, attracted considerable attention on publication, as it was an attempt at mystification, being put forward as a translation of the poems of a newly discovered Oriental Greek poetess; Bilitis (more usually Beltis) is the Syrian name for Aphrodite. Les Chansons de Bilitis are not without charm, but have been ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... or originals, and whether he made the copies, if copies they were, from the Library, which was, however, rigorously closed during the reign of Nicholas I., are literary secrets which it is impossible to fathom. So far as Diderot is concerned, some of the spirit of mystification that haunted literature in the eighteenth century still hovers about it in the nineteenth. This we shall presently find in a still more interesting monument of Diderot than even his letters ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... political injustice. The antagonism between learning and Polytheism was becoming every day more distinct. Of the philosophers, some were obliged to flee into exile, some suffered death. The natural result of such a state of things was to force them to practise concealment and mystification, as is strikingly shown in the history ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... Rube!" I said in an appealing tone. I feared that his secretive instincts would get the better of him, and he would delay giving his reasons, out of the pure love of mystification that was inherent in the old fellow's nature. I was too anxious to be patient; but my appeal ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... the American army—its strength and weaknesses—with an intimate knowledge that greatly surprised and interested the young officer; and when they separated presently it was with a curious mixture of liking and mystification that Claiborne reviewed ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... His wife, who at first had listened with mystification, and then dawning incredulity, changing into a look of relief that was almost triumph, lapsed again into severity. "Silas Lapham, if you was to die the next minute, is this what you started ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a preliminary difficulty in executing this plan of campaign. If your wife is a woman of profound dissimulation, the question is, what signs will indicate to her the motives of your long mystification? ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... which I thought very odd indeed. After several vain attempts to comprehend the motives of these two droll old creatures for inviting me to join them at their gouter, I at last fairly gave it up, and resigning myself to inevitable mystification, I sat and looked first at one, then at the other, taking care meantime to do justice to the confitures, cakes, and coffee, with which they amply supplied me. They, too, ate, and that with no delicate appetite, and having demolished a large portion of the solids, they proposed ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... Kenny sprang to his feet. Queen of Heaven! the girl was real. She had stepped from the page of an old romance into life and laughter, wearing for the mystification of chance beholders, an old-time gown of gold brocade! The mystery of her gown, the river setting, the laughing sweetness of her face, rooted him to the spot in wonder and delight. He knew every subtlety of her coloring in one glance. Her soft exquisite eyes were brown. Tragic, ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... of buried treasure or of a lost document, or the ferreting out of a mysterious crime. After the publication of the Gold Bug he received from all parts of the country specimens of cipher-writing, which he delighted to work out. Others of his tales were clever pieces of mystification, like Hans Pfaall, the story of a journey to the moon, or experiments at giving verisimilitude to wild improbabilities by the skillful introduction of scientific details, as in the Facts in the Case of ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... Susanna, heartily. And she put up her hand, to cover a weary little yawn. "But there 's no mystification. There 's a perfectly plain statement of fact. I 'm ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... feet shorter than the corresponding one below, it was pretty clear where he was. I thought he had not the nerve to lie quiet before an alarm of fire. We could, of course, have gone in and taken him, but it amused me to make him reveal himself. Besides, I owed you a little mystification, Lestrade, for your chaff ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... warning laugh. "You have not yet been formally introduced to this room, and a formal introduction is necessary. You must be made acquainted with the primary law of its being;" and as Mrs. Walters paused, dropping her hands into her lap and regarding me with an air of mystification, I went on: ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... factions, religious schisms, current controversy of creeds, policy of clans or state clipper cliques, I have nothing to do; but when the eternal principles of truth are falsified, and light is turned into darkness by mystification of language or a false delineation of facts, so that the just indignation of the true, virtuous, upright citizens of the commonwealth is aroused into vigilance for the dear-bought liberties of themselves and fathers, and that spirit ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... volume we suppressed the name of the school out of deference to the wishes of the Head Master, and though our own judgment was against the concealment as a wholly superfluous piece of mystification, we continue ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... utter mystification of the boys, they burst out laughing, and laughed as if they would ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... sum that the other might be baffled; but neither De Grammont nor De Montrond would ever have consented to soil his hands with such vile commercial speculations as the Houilleres d'Anzin or the Vieille Montagne, or condescend to such disgraceful financial mystification as the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... their mystification too much to enlighten them at once. "When he received the order he told us fellows to come on over and he'd join us as soon as ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... process from the cane to the crystal lest the sucrose should invert to the less sweet and non-crystallizable glucose. He has tested with polarized light every shipment of sugar that has passed through the custom house, much to the mystification of congressmen who have often wondered at the money and argumentation expended in a tariff discussion over the question of the precise angle of rotation of the plane of vibration of infinitesimal waves in ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... the few words coined by Balzac which have become naturalized—may be divided into several categories. First, there are the publicistes, occupied in scratching the pimples of the body politic. From these pimples they extract a book which is a mystification. Not far removed from the publicistes are the chief managing editors and proprietors general, big wigs who sometimes become prefects, receivers general, or theatrical directors. The type of this class is glory's porter, speculation's trumpeter, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... G. Volrees sat in his office room looking moodily out of the window. Since the desertion of his young bride his life had been one long day of misery to him. His mystification and anger increased with the years, and he had kept a standing offer of a large reward for information leading to the discovery of his wife. He had vowed vengeance upon the author or authors ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... Wouldn't he write, wouldn't he explain, wouldn't he take for granted Lyon had discovered the way he had, as the cook said, served him and deem it only decent to take pity in some fashion or other on his mystification? Would he plead guilty or would he repudiate suspicion? The latter course would be difficult and make a considerable draft upon his genius, in view of the certain testimony of Lyon's housekeeper, who ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... my head in mystification. "The sports of youth never interested me—indeed, I never ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... him, he turned about in mystification. Not expecting to see Carter there or anywhere, it required time for his mental processes to adjust themselves to the detached conditions, ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... bit of literary trickery, may be inferred from his fate in another department of authorship. He twice got into trouble for a device exactly analogous to that which he afterwards practised in fiction. On both occasions he was punished for assuming a character for purposes of mystification. In the latest instance, it is seen, the pamphlet called 'What if the Pretender Comes?' was written in such obvious irony, that the mistake of his intentions must have been wilful. The other and better-known ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... office at nine o'clock, saw two men come down the courthouse steps, shadowy and indistinct in the dusk of starlight and early night. She paused on her way, wondering, and her wonder and mystification grew when she saw them cut across the square in the direction of Peden's dark and silent hall. One of them was Dell Hutton. The other she had ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... they found Uncle Balla standing by the hen-house with a comical look of mystification and chagrin; the roof had been lifted off at one end and not only the prisoner, ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... well-known teacher of singing and writer on music (1807-88); collaborator of the Neue Zeitschrift.] letter, in your last number, must be regarded as a mystification. In the first few lines a glaring falsehood, founded on facts, is conspicuous, for the Societe de Ste. Cecile has been in existence for years, and was formerly [1848-54] conducted by Seghers [Pupil of Baillot (1801-81)]—not to mention that Berlioz conducted the Societe Philharmonique, ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... this," I replied. "You enjoy mystification, Holgate, and your talents are remarkable. You can beat Sir John out of his boots. But I wish you'd used your talents elsewhere. Better have buried them. For you've given us a stiff job, and we've ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... all of it: how Monsieur de Pepicot was a stranger to me, how I had never spoken to him before yesterday, how I knew nothing of his business, and so forth. Of course I said nothing of his midnight walk or of having conversed with him at all after going to bed. The Count's mystification and annoyance were manifest, the more so when, after some time, the servants returned to say that the missing man could not be found. When he had heard their report, the ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... My mystification was certainly deep enough without this suggestion that I was a mere character in a tale whose awkward beginning aroused only the gravest apprehensions as to the conclusion. She looked ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... course, because there had been no confession of love in the case—because the confession was, in fact, an insult towards the man and towards the sovereign; and finally, because—and the word, too, burnt like a hot iron—because, in fact, it was nothing but a mystification after all. This girl, therefore, who, in strictness, could not lay claim to beauty, or birth, or great intelligence—who had been selected by Madame herself, on account of her unpretending position, had not only aroused the king's regard, but had, moreover, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that I alluded to Dora Forbes in person he informed me, with visible amusement at my being so out of it, that this was the "pen-name" of an indubitable male—he had a big red moustache. "He goes in for the slight mystification because the ladies are such popular favourites. A great deal of interest is felt in his acting on that idea—which IS clever, isn't it?—and there's every prospect of its being widely imitated." Our host at this moment joined us again, and Mr. Morrow remarked invitingly that he should be happy ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... William Hamilton, a man of the world with vast experience of human deceptions and intrigues, could have been put off the scent, in view of all the circumstances, is too great a tax on credulity, but it is wholly characteristic of Nelson's ideas of mystification. But even if there were any further proof needed, Lady Hamilton has settled the matter by preserving the correspondence Nelson urged her to destroy. This will be referred to ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... some circumstance or some secret motive by which they would be the most admired or the least esteemed; they delight in hiding themselves behind a cunning interrogatory smile of imperceptible mockery. Having on every occasion a taste for the pleasure of mystification, from the most witty and droll to the most bitter and lugubrious kinds, one would say that they see in this mocking deceit a form of disdain for the superiority which they inwardly adjudge to themselves, but which they ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... difficulties still remain. Margaret must have been persuaded to answer to the name of Hero. After Borachio's arrest he tells us that Margaret wore Hero's garments. But Shakespeare, deserting Spenser, from whom this mystification appears to be borrowed, gives no reason which induced Margaret to play ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... expected of them, it is not always sought by their readers with sufficient care. Anyhow, it may be suspected that this retort of Tristram's is too often passed over as a mere random absurdity designed for his interlocutor's mystification, and that its extremely felicitous pertinence to the question in dispute is thus overlooked. The point of it, of course, is that the business in which the commissary was then engaged was precisely analogous to that of exacting salt dues from perverse persons ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... Since I have mentioned this reviewal, I may as well, to avoid recurrence to it, express here my conviction, that Erskine, not Scott, was the author of the critical estimate of the Waverley Novels which it embraces—although, for the purpose of mystification, Scott had taken the trouble to transcribe the paragraphs in which that estimate is contained. At the same time I cannot but add that, had Scott really been the sole author of this reviewal, he need not have incurred the severe censure which has been applied to his supposed conduct ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... supposed that the elaborate paraphernalia of mystification which Butler used in The Fair Haven was deliberately designed in order to hoax the public. I do not believe that this was the case. Butler, I feel convinced, provided an ironical framework for his arguments merely that he might render them more effective ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... his mind with conjecture, when the door opened, and to Don Diego's increasing mystification he beheld his best suit of clothes step into the cabin. It was a singularly elegant and characteristically Spanish suit of black taffetas with silver lace that had been made for him a year ago in Cadiz, and he knew each detail of ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... perfectly civil reception despite the liberty. I did not know the boy by sight, nor did Raffles introduce us; but their conversation proclaimed at once a slightness of acquaintanceship and a license on the lad's part which combined to puzzle me. Mystification reached its height when Raffles was informed that the other's father was anxious to meet him, and he instantly consented ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... article for the Gaulois and, in coperation with his friends, he worded it in the terms with which we are familiar, amplifying and embellishing it, yielding to an inborn taste for mystification which his youth rendered excusable. The essential point, he said, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... minor character. A good account of Holbach, though short and incidental, is to be found in M. Avezac-Lavigne's Diderot et la Societe du Baron d'Holbach (Paris, 1875, 8vo), and M. Armand Gaste has a little book entitled Diderot et le cure de Montchauvet, une Mystification litteraire chez le Baron d'Holbach (Paris, 1895, 16vo). There are several works which devote a chapter or section to Holbach. [3:4] The French critics and the histories of philosophy contain slight notices; Rosenkranz's "Diderot's Leben" devotes a chapter ...
— Baron d'Holbach • Max Pearson Cushing
... water gentile, another Gipsy would say it means an Irishman, or potato gentile; another would say poovengri-gujo meant a sailor; another would say it means an Irishman. They glory in contradictions and mystification. I was at an encampment a few days ago, and out of the twenty-five men and women and forty children there were not three that could talk Romany, and there was not one who could spell a single word of it. Their language, like themselves, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith |
