"Mystification" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... laid it on the carved-oak chair, and laid on its lid the painted card; then for a moment they stood side by side, gazing round the room, seeing in imagination the scene which would follow the return of the family from church . . . the incredulity, the amaze, the blind mystification, the joy. . . . Peg beamed in anticipation of the delight of the youngsters; Margaret had the strangest, eeriest feeling of looking straight into a sweet, worn face; of feeling the clasp of work-worn hands. It was imagination, ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... his sympathetic audience. "About five-thirty I happened to be in the club. Medford was there, and as usual catering to Jackson, when the latter was called to the 'phone. Naturally, I put two and two together." He paused to more thoroughly enjoy the look of utter mystification that hovered on the girl's countenance. It was very apparent that this method of deduction through addition was unsatisfying. "What Jackson said to Medford, on his return," the young man continued, "I did not hear; but from the expression on the listener's face I could have wagered ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... hour afterward, as I lay cowering on the sofa, I could hear disconnected speeches from my door-steps, encouraged from time to time with tremendous cheers for Lawk, cheers for Butterby, and cheers for "Jinny." The same general mystification and uncertainty regarding my actions pervaded the entire night; but morning brought relief, and in more ways than one. Mrs. Lawk had disappeared, and her chattels were following. The victory was as sudden as ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... "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 ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... been 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 ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... I wondered what mystification had given rise to these absurd reports, but there was nothing to be gained by pursuing them. The killing of the Chinaman might have been something to my hand, but if Doddridge Knapp had such a perfect alibi it was a waste of time to look ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... very often looking at the reflecting surface of one or the other of the glasses, when he seemed to be looking through them. It put a singular power into his possession, which might possibly hereafter lead to something more significant than the mystification of the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... life if the scientific man simply confessed that he was baffled by this problem of the grasshopper's back legs. Yet, as I have said, if a public speaker may fidget with his back legs while he is stridulating, why not a public grasshopper? The more I see of science the more it strikes me as one large mystification. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... daylight. He had seen her in a glimpse under the flickering hall gas, and again from time to time in the shine of street lamps; but he had never once been with her in daylight. She herself was conscious of this, at first accidental, but now deliberate, mystification; and she dreaded the disclosure that was bound to come. It was not, she knew, that she was ugly; but only that to a man like Toby her small face and sandy hair might mark her down and ruin everything. She feared to notice a change in him, a change from their present and increasingly ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... between us, and met with a 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
... an 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 ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... father's voice was rendered harsh by mystification and foreboding, "tell me what you're talking about. Come to the ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... not to be numerous," said Fritz; "I will, therefore, take Willis, in case this mystification has anything to do ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... went he in his bitter defiance of High God! His attendants looked on in frightened mystification at the changes now preparing in the inner of the two up-stairs rooms in which their master had been wont to work. Some simple carpentry; a large number of unusual articles commanded from Moscow: one, more expensive than all ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... fits almost any kind of a book. It is a nice, non-committal sort of title, and might mean the guilt that bound two sinners, or the tie of affection that binds lovers, or a blood relationship, or it might be a mystification title with nothing in the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... (Regina), Swinburne (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 ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... 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
... and 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... 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 at her watch ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... in 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
... of their calculations; something for them, mentally, to chew on. Mystification is a good thing sometimes. It gives the brain a fillip, stirs memory, puts the gears of imagination in mesh. One man, an old, tobacco-chewing fellow, began to stare harder at the face on the floor. Something moved ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • 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 ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... that Mrs. Adelaide Curtis, of Albany, was the artist's wife's mother,—but then I looked upon the whole address as a mystification, intended especially for myself. I made up my mind, of course, that the box and contents would never get farther north than the studio of my misanthropic friend, in Chambers Street, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... whether the "rules of the service" did not in Scott's opinion occasionally permit a little wilful mystification. The case of Kinmont Willie tempts one to such an explanation. Besides the capital instance of his anonymity as regards the novels, Scott several times seemed to amuse himself in perplexing the public. There was the case of the Bridal of Triermain, which he tried ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... amused at her mystification. "Who am I indeed? Perhaps a personage in disguise. Pity I don't look ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... to question the worthiness of the impulse which had sent her into the north, but she was realizing in fuller measure the difficulties with which she must deal. In the dining room she had felt recklessly intrepid and the utter mystification of Buck Crowley had amused her. But she had had plenty of opportunity in her Vose-Mern work to know the nature of Crowley—he had the shell of an alligator and the scruples of a viper and would double-cross a twin brother if the project could help ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... 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, ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... be frank, I felt somewhat annoyed by your evident suspicions touching my sanity, and so resolved to punish you quietly, in my own way, by a little bit of sober mystification. For this reason I swung the beetle, and for this reason I let it fall from the tree. An observation of yours about its great weight suggested ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... a parabola, struck its subjective with fearful impact, Sir," replied the bad boy imperturbably, misquoting from his latest fiction (and calling it a "parry-bowler," to "Grandfather's" considerable and very natural mystification). ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... 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 keyholes ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... utter mystification; his second was more corporeal: the consciousness of physical misery, of consuming fever, of aches that ran over his whole body, converging to a dreadful climax in his head, of a throat so immoderately partched it seemed to crackle, and a thirst ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... from the sky, so out of key were they with the speaker's ragged clothes and the outlandish garb of his daughter. Purcell! Brahms! Strauss! What could these three composers mean to such outcasts? Believing that he was the victim of a mystification, Ferval waited, his pulses beating as if he had been running too hard. The girl slowly moved her glorious eyes in his direction; light as they were in hue, their heavy, dark lashes gave them a fantastic expression—bright flame seen through the shadow of smoke. He ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... again at Lena in a very amiable manner, as though he expected her to be saucy in return, but she blushed with mystification and mortification. She had felt doubtful as to whether she ought to take another of the little cakes, but they were very good, and she was young enough to love goodies, without many chances at anything so ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... continued operating the pole and announcing the results, to the mystification of Joe, who could not comprehend their intimate knowledge of ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... mystification still in this passage, where a writer is said to "plant himself in the very heart of the subject." The general tenor of M. Bergson's philosophy warrants us in taking this quite literally to mean that the field from which ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... said, Is this a joke, and, if so, where is the point of it? And then, as if not content with so much mystification, Mr. Whistler assured his ten o'clock audience that there was no such thing as nationality in art, and that you might as well speak of English mathematics as of English art. We do not stop to inquire if such answers contain one grain of truth; we know they do not—we stop to consider them ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... the next yard. One Gipsy would say paanengro-gujo means sailor, or 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, was Indian enough, no doubt, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... Literary World, March 15, 1851, is the following explanation of this word: "Mr. Phillips's first introduction to Curran was made the occasion of a mystification, or practical joke, in which Irish wits have excelled since the time of Dean Swift, who was wont (vide his letters to Stella) to call these jocose tricks 'a sell,' from selling a bargain." The word bargain, however, which Johnson, in his Dictionary, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... 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 before in all his life had ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... upon her mother and Sir Basil steadily and somberly, while they sat about the tea-table. The long drive, Sir Basil's radiance, her mother's serenity, how must they look to Imogen? Jack could conjecture, though knowing, for his own bitter mystification, that what they looked like was perhaps not what they meant. Imogen must be truly at bay, and he felt a cruel satisfaction in the thought of her hidden, her gnawing anxiety. He was aware of every ring of falsity in her placid voice and of every flash of fierceness under the steeled ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... constable of this place, and other men from the market-town, are doing their utmost; but as yet the result has been only new mystification—new conjecture." ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... at the cost of the objects which ought to be foremost in the eyes of serious people. In truth the men who have done most for the world have taken very little heed of influence. They have sought light, and left their influence to fare as it might list. Can we not imagine the mingled mystification and disdain with which a Spinosa or a Descartes, a Luther or a Pascal, would have listened to an exhortation in our persuasive modern manner on the niceties of the politic and the social obligation of ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... finding 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 M. Valdemar and Von Kempelen's Discovery. In his narratives of this kind ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... that, were it the least bit to fall to pieces, could never, ah never more be put together again. I have, dear Miss Wenham," Granger went on, happy himself in his extravagance, which was yet all sincere, and happier still in her deep but altogether pleased mystification—"I've found, do you know, just the thing one has ever heard of that you most resemble. You're the ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... 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 to understand, and he understood, for ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... I found poor old Roberts here, looking out for a cook that he'd never seen before, and expecting to recognize a woman that he'd never met in his life." He explodes in another fit of laughter. The ladies stare at him in mystification. ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells
... beginning of algebra, even the most intelligent child finds, as a rule, very great difficulty. The use of letters is a mystery, which seems to have no purpose except mystification. It is almost impossible, at first, not to think that every letter stands for some particular number, if only the teacher would reveal what number it stands for. The fact is, that in algebra the mind is first taught to consider general truths, truths which are not asserted ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... finally declares that God knows error and that error can improve 523:6 His creation. Although presenting the exact opposite of Truth, the lie claims to be truth. The crea- tions of matter arise from a mist or false claim, or from 523:9 mystification, and not from the firmament, or under- standing, which God erects between the true and false. In error everything comes from beneath, not from above. 523:12 All is material myth, instead ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... in the amusement of a mystification, he brought down his essay, concealing it ingeniously within a review flanked by blue-books, and, when Lord Ormersfield was taking out a pair of spectacles with the reluctance of a man not yet accustomed to them, he asked him if he would like to ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wanton enterprises and extravagance. When a railroad or a bridge are of real utility, it is sufficient to mention this utility. But if it does not exist, what do they do? Recourse is had to this mystification: "We must find work for ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... some unknown form of 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 ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... of envy and spite—the feeling of a happy and affectionate family, in fact. The sort of thing I don't want is the Athanasian Creed. I can't regard it simply as a picturesque monument of ancient and ferocious piety. It seems to me an overhanging cloud of menace and mystification! It doesn't hurt the unintelligent Christian, of course—he simply doesn't understand it; but to the moderately intelligent it is like a dog barking furiously which may possibly get loose; a little more intelligence, and it is all right. You know the dog is safely tied up! Again, I don't mind ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... festivals, besides a great mass of affiliated legend and ceremonial, are really quite directly derived from, and related to, preceding Nature worships; and it has only been by a good deal of deliberate mystification and falsification that this derivation has been kept ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... 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 ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... 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
... to write the 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
... 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 ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... excellence, then assumes a solemn and incomprehensible immediacy, as if its decrees were absolute and intrinsically authoritative, not of to-day or yesterday, and no one could tell whence they had arisen. Instinct can all the more easily produce this mystification when it calls forth an imaginative activity full of interest and eager passion. This effect is conspicuous in the absolutist conscience, both devotional and rationalistic, as also in the passion of love. For in all these a certain individuality, definiteness, and ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... I 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 ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... made Nick laugh afresh, and not only laugh, but kiss her, which was always an intenser form of mystification for poor Lady Agnes and apparently the one he liked best to inflict; after which he said: "The odd thing is, you know, that Harsh has no wants. At least it's not sharply, not articulately conscious of them. We all ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... originals are again lost; should the passages in question really be underlined, it would follow that Boswell was not unintentionally or unconsciously ridiculous; that all his life he practised an elaborate mystification; that he succeeded in hoodwinking the world; that he enlightened Temple alone, who nevertheless appears to have treated him as though he were what the world took him for; and that Francis, who saw these ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... because you have done so, it is absolutely necessary that you do it again. Your own heart, your conscience, must tell you that after what you have said to me, and after what I have said to you, it is unjust, to say no more, to leave me in this state of cruel mystification; not to tell me why you have set aside your promise to me, or even to tell me, when we talked together of Sylvia, that we were then at the home of ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... art are better respected by natural mist, cloudy gloom of natural rain, natural twilight before night, or natural twilight—Corot's—before day, than by the artificial dimness of our unlovely towns. Those, too, who praise the "mystery" of smoke are praising rather a mystification than a mystery; and must be unaware of the profounder mysteries of light. Light is all mystery when you face the sun, and every particle of the innumerable ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... 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 to go ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... but upon what pretext could he refuse so generous a trust? Upon none, he saw, that was not unpardonably wounding; and the bright eyes and the high spirits of his companion had already made a breach in the rampart of Challoner's caution. The whole thing, he reasoned, might be a mere mystification, which it were the height of solemn folly to resent. On the other hand, the explosion, the interview at the public-house, and the very money in his hands, seemed to prove beyond denial the existence of some serious danger; and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 entire parish, from the most insignificant ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... been following us with that air of polite mystification which I had begun to dread in him. "Then, in your good society you postpone, and even forego, the happiness of life in the ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... taking due cognizance of his airy play with the "constants" and "variables" of success, after watching him treat "energetics" (his wonderful new name for the "science" of success) as though because he had made it end in "ics" it resembled mathematics, I thought that the sublime and venerable art of mystification could no further go. If my fellow-pilgrim through this vale of woe, the average young man who arrives at Waterloo at 9.40 every morning with a cigarette in his mouth and a second-class season over his heart and vague aspirations in his soul, was ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... authoress), that he never accepted an invitation to dine with her, unless when his friend Count Gamba did: truly, we may then conclude that these conversations were materially impossible, and must have been a clever mystification,—a composition got up on the biographies of Lord Byron that had already appeared, on Moore's works, Medwin's, Lord Byron's correspondence, and, above all, on "Don Juan." She must have made her choice, without any regard to truth or to ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... are justified, Mr. Merrick." Yet Hedrik Von Taer's face, usually unexpressive, denoted blank mystification. What connection could these girls have with the favor ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... torches, clashing cymbals, or screaming at the top of their voices, while sedater spirits, masked and muffled in mantles of sombre hue, moved through the tumultuous throng and found their abated pleasure in mystification and intrigues. ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... and did, after rather more than 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 ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... boundary-stone, and we pass anew into Spain,—stopping to cross and recross the frontier several times, with grave ceremony, and to the unconcealed mystification of the guide. The path slopes up again, passes a dejected little mountain tarn, and another half hour brings us to the final cone, the summit just overhead. The mists are still whirling down, but as often lift again; the Pic de la Pique has disappeared under a berret of cloud, ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... and 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
... unwarned by the discomfitures of the morning, he propounded some questions which his companions could not answer; among which was, "Why are there black sheep?" How he would have solved this difficult problem in natural history, I do not know. Mystification sat on all faces, when the individual who had before attacked Mr. Latham's misstatements, took up the defence of the puzzled colonists by volunteering to answer the question if he would explain how "impossible roots enter equations." No ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... scarcely necessary to say how much the party with whom the two neophytes in fashion had come, enjoyed all this, though they concealed their amusement under the calm exterior of people of the world. From Mr. Effingham the mystification was carefully concealed by his cousin, as the former would have felt it due to Mrs. Houston, a well-meaning, but silly woman, to put an end to it. Eve and Grace laughed, as merry girls would be apt to laugh, at such an occurrence, and they danced the remainder of the evening with lighter hearts ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... she's 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 ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... these 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 his head, raised ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... was said that Heine had recanted all his heresies; but from the fact that visitors to his sick-room brought away very various impressions as to his actual religious views, it seemed probable that his love of mystification had found a tempting opportunity for exercise on this subject, and that, as one of his friends said, he was not inclined to pour out unmixed wine to those who asked for a sample out of mere curiosity. At length, in the epilogue to the "Romanzero," dated 1851, there appeared, amid ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... was perpetrated to enlarge the liberties or to protect the interests of the people. We long ago got at the truth about the great English rebellion. 'Pride's Purge,' the 'elective kingship without a veto of the 'New Model,' and the merciless mystification of Bradshaw, tell their own story. Steering to avoid the Scylla of Strafford, the luckless Parliamentarians ran the ship of State full into ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Le Gardeur was the only key which ever unlocked her real feelings. When the fox praised the raven's voice and prevailed on her to sing, he did not more surely make her drop the envied morsel out of her mouth than did Angelique drop the mystification she had worn ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... edition (1803) of Chatterton's Works by R. Southey and J. Cottle, published for the benefit of the poet's sister. The neglected condition of the study of earlier English in the 18th century alone accounts for the temporary success of Chatterton's mystification. It has long been agreed that Chatterton was solely responsible for the Rowley Poems, but the language and style are analysed in confirmation of this view by Prof. W.W. Skeat in an introductory essay prefaced to vol. ii. of The Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton (1871) in the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... suddenness of it. 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 a lock on it. I could just squeeze ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... to make them speak or sing better than they do. The fear of his sarcasms prevented Dr Johnson from hearing one literal version during his whole sojourn in the Highlands. Sir Walter Scott wished that somebody might have the manliness to recover Highland poetry from the mystification of paraphrase or imposture, and to present it genuine to the English reader. In that spirit we promise to execute our task; and we shall rejoice if even a very moderate degree of success should attend our endeavours to obtain for the sister muse some share of that ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... letters which the loyal and unsuspecting Marquis sent in reply. At length the Marquis's interest became so eager that they resolved that the best way of ending his torment was to make the nun die. When the Marquis de Croismare returned to Paris, the plot was confessed, the victim of the mystification laughed at the joke, and the friendship of the party seemed to be strengthened by their common sorrow for the woes of the dead sister. But Diderot had been taken in his own trap. His imagination, which he had set to work in jest, was caught ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... a much bepillowed davenport and The Hopper sank down on it, still with his hands up. To his deepening mystification she backed to the windows and lowered the shades, and this done she sat down with ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... corned beef, potted ham, canned corn and tomatoes, some flour and yeast powders, a skillet or two, the coffee pot, some cups, dishes, etc., and these, too, were placed close to the ambulance, to Kate's entire mystification; and then, sending Jim down for another little load, Pike set to work to build a tiny fire far back in a ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... said Gentz, offering his arm to her. "I see very well that there is a mystification in store for me, but I shall follow you wherever you will take me, to the ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... a few steps from the house door, and began grubbing with her hands around the roots of a bunch of balsams. Daisy looked a minute or two, very still, and then bade the boy hold her pony; while, without troubling herself about his mystification, she got out of the chaise, and, basket in hand, opened the wicket, and softly went up the path. The neat little shoes and spotless white dress were close beside the poor creature grubbing there in the ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... and she'll be right.... Was that her voice?..." A sound had come from the cottage. Keziah might be wanted. She wished the farmer good-night; and he drove off, no longer mystified, but dumfoundered with what had removed his mystification. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the drawing referred to had been sent by the Lambs to William Hazlitt at Wem, whereas Hazlitt, instead of seeking his father's roof as arranged, had sought his betrothed's, and had himself helped in the mystification. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... society, though the adjective 'Free' should by rights attract the masses." On the second Sunday we reversed the order of things, and found the Established bonnet much finer than the Free bonnets, which was a source of mystification to us, until we discovered that it was a question of morning or evening service, not of the form of Presbyterianism. We think, on the whole, that, taking town and country congregations together, millinery ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... answered, demurely. She knew there was some manner of mystification forward and yearned for the key to it. "He chafes in ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... useless weapon with an improvised execration and was about to hurl myself upon the virtuous victim, the pistol in the wings obeyed the pressure of the prompter's finger, and the leading man dropped to a shot from nowhere, to the great mystification of the audience. ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... that the fate of the worm taught the wisdom of remaining in bed until a later hour. Then an illustration may be even less clear than the argument to be illustrated. We have heard scientific illustrations of this character, from which the hearer derived a supplementary dose of mystification rather than an elucidation of the problem with which he was already manfully grappling. An illustration may be too pathetic, and people may weep from the wrong cause, an event which often occurs in church. It is one thing to shed tears over a touching story and another ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... 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 ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... was at first inclined to be angry. The whole thing was a mystification—absurd, discreditable. His daughter had grossly deceived him. It needed all the stepmother's gentle influence to soften the outraged father's feelings. But Lady Palliser said all that was kindly about Ida's youth and inexperience, her impulsive nature; and a man who has just dropped ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... of similar phenomena of culture, recurring in different parts of the world, actually supply incidental proof of their own authenticity. . . . The test of recurrence comes in. . . . The possibility of intentional or unintentional mystification is often barred by such a state of things as that a similar statement is made in two remote lands by two witnesses, of whom A lived a century before B, and B appears never to ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... 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 ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... mean by style?" He explained, moved by the mad lust for mystification which seizes a man in the presence of adorable simplicity. "I don't mean anything in the least resembling a Beaver's coat (there really isn't any style about a Beaver's coat). And if you want me to say it's the clothing of your ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... of the Mission school had not yet reached with the folks in Happy Valley he began to realize the amazing good that St. Hilda was doing in the hills. What a place he was earning for himself he was yet to learn, but through some mystification an inkling came. To be sure, everybody spoke to him as though he were a fixture in the land. He could pass no door that somebody did not ask him to come in and rest a spell, or stay all night. He never went by the mill that Aunt Jane did not have a glass of buttermilk for him and Uncle Jerry ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... no importance, Merriman was a little intrigued, and he looked more closely at the vehicle. As he did so his surprise grew and his trifling interest became mystification. The lorry was the same. At least there on the top was the casting, just as he had seen it. It was inconceivable that two similar lorries should have two identical castings arranged in the same way, and at the same time and place. And yet, ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... restrain his smiles as he listened to the explanations of Uncle Will, Professor Tartlet did not laugh in the least! He was excessively mortified at what he heard! To have been the object of such a mystification, he, a professor of dancing and deportment! And so advancing with much ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... espied Madame von Platen in the back ground, and had the scent of mischief very strong. But he preserved an air of innocent mystification. He rose and answered ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... 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
... Germans have taught us folk of English blood and speech to understand Shakespeare is the most absurd and arrogant that could be set up. Shakespeare owes them nothing; and we have received from them little more than some maundering mystification and much ponderous platitude. Like the western diver, they go down deeper and stay down longer than other critics, but like him too they come up muddier. Above all of them, avoid Ulrici and Gervinus. The first is a mad mystic, the second a very literary Dogberry, endeavoring to comprehend all ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... sturdy Protestant, if he had lived so long, would have received Benjamin's famous "Parable against Persecution," which the author used to pretend to read as the last chapter of Genesis, to the great mystification of his audience,—"And it came to pass after these things that Abraham sat in the door of his tent," etc. Try the trick to-day, and you will find most of your hearers equally mystified, so perfectly has Franklin imitated the tone of Old ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... Borachio. But if Theobald's emendation be received, 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 ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... met this remarkable engineer, musician, diplomatist and professor of mystification, in London, when he was complaining with facetious bitterness that Mr. Frederic Gye had not sent him a box for one of Angiolina Bosio's ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... In ghastly mystification, the two watchers stared at the last weird gleams that marked the foundered schooner. The waves reached the dinghy, raised it and dropped it with a slow gurgling, then died away in firefly glimmers. The sea presented once more a dim gray surface. To Madden's ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... my head in mystification. "The sports of youth never interested me—indeed, I never ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... the men on board, also, had discovered the perfect uselessness of the signals of distress which had excited their sympathy; and their indignation was great at what they considered a stupid mystification. They surrounded the sailor with a threatening air, while he struggled in the captain's hand, and cried ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... force having its impulse originally from him. At this moment, perhaps because the events immediately impending have cast their shadows across the sensitive consciousness of an at times prophet, he is in no uneasiness whatever with regard to the fate of the Ring. To Alberich's mystification, he actually rouses Fafner. "Who disturbs my sleep?" comes a hollow roar from the cave. The Fafner-motif is the old motif of the giants, slightly altered so that instead of the ponderous tread of the brothers it suggests the muffled ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... capitalist cried gaily,—"with joy! He bested me proper the other night at the Athletic Club—he dusted the mat with me—and I want to play even." Seeing that Bruce's face did not lose its look of mystification he curbed his exuberance: "You see I've got some little reputation as a wrestler so when Billy Harper ran across this fellow in Central America he imported him on purpose to reduce the swelling in my head, he said, and he did ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... The mystification of Fergus was now complete. Unimaginative as he was by practice and profession, he had an explanation a minute until the time was up, when the truth beat them all for wild improbability. Macbean had risen, ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... affairs, has vitiated, and in the end defeated, much German policy. And Brandeis was introduced to the islands as a clerk, and sent down to Leulumoenga (where he was soon drilling the troops and fortifying the position of the rebel king) as an agent of the German firm. What this mystification cost in the end I shall tell in another place; and even in the beginning, it deceived no one. Brandeis is a man of notable personal appearance; he looks the part allotted him; and the military clerk was soon the centre of observation and rumour. Malietoa wrote ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... replied Robert with equal composure, though he felt inclined to laugh at Playdon's mystification. "I only wished to secure a sufficient number of witnesses for a verbal declaration. When I have a few minutes to spare I will affix a legal notice on the wall in ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... evenly, "that I'll be here some time, but the chances are I'll only stay a day or so. After to-night we'll probably not see much of each other, maybe nothing at all, ever. We're rather different types and our roads lead differently." He smiled to dissipate the mystification he saw gathering on the other's face. "This is a preface. What I'm aiming at directly is to say a thing or two that have been on my mind for some time—in case I don't have the opportunity again." Once more ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... the very essence of the conveyance of matter from mind to mind, as in words; from mind to eye, as by pencil, brush, or chisel; palpable or otherwise, the impression intended should be beyond doubt, and that this end may be secured, mystification by high flown figures of rhetoric, or false drawing, or sculpture out of line or proportion, must at the outset of all work, art work above all, be sternly trodden under foot, and the solid and truthful experience of ripe years offered with ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson |
