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More "Hoax" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not generally known that, contrary to common report, Francis Bacon was not arrested for debt in 1598; but that, during the time he was supposed to have been in prison, he was actually engaged in building up in his own behalf the greatest hoax in history. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... a place. It surely is not a hoax," said Amy, although at first she had thought it was a joke. "And there is ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... fortuitous coincidence of circumstances. They will find this easier. Uncompromising deniers of facts, rebels against evidence, may be all the more positive, and may declare that the writers of these extraordinary narratives are persons fond of a joke, who have written them to hoax me, and that there have been persons in all ages who have done the same thing to mystify thinkers who have taken ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... arranged that, if opened in the ordinary way, the whole would have been fired, and two barrels discharged different ways. No doubt a box so packed was received, but whether anything serious was intended, or whether it was a hoax, cannot be said with any certainty. The Earl of Oxford is said to have met allusions to the subject with a smile, and Swift seems to have been annoyed at the reports ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... the paternal roof in requital of just such profligate conduct as Savage displayed; so that, grant his improbable story, still he was a disorderly reprobate, who in these days would have been consigned to the treadmill. But the whole was a hoax. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... have an evidence of her having been the victim of as well concerted and admirably conducted a hoax, as was ever played off upon any one—it surpasses that which was put upon poor Malvolio in "Twelfth Night." After making the remark upon which we have already commented, that a second work on France from her pen could "alone be ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... weasel teeth bared yellow, draws down his left eye with a finger and barks hoarsely) Hoax! Beware of the flapper and bogus mournful. Lily of the alley. All possess bachelor's button discovered by Rualdus Columbus. Tumble her. Columble her. Chameleon. (More genially) Well then, permit me to draw your attention to item number three. There ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... "It is a hoax," was the first gutteral sound that escaped from Miss Carlyle's throat when speech ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... slowly spreading grins I saw they agreed with me that somebody, signing himself James Skaw, was still trying to hoax the Great ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... borrows and loses a diamond necklace valued at $7200. That, at least, is what Madame Loisel thought for ten terrible years, and that is what the reader thinks till he comes to the last words of the story. The plot belongs, therefore, to that large group known as hoax plots. In most of these stories one person plays a joke on another. In this story a grim fate is made to play the joke. In fact, the current phrase, "the irony of fate," finds here perfect illustration. We use the expression not so much of a great misfortune as of a misfortune that seems brought ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... It may be said that all five were concerned in a complicated hoax on Mr. Gurney. Nor would such a hoax argue any unusual moral obliquity. Surtees of Mainsforth, in other respects an honourable man, took in Sir Walter Scott with forged ballads, and never undeceived his friend. Southey played off a hoax with ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... another hoax, and a most daring and gigantic one, on the part of Jack and his friends, upon ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... the foremost of his transactions, and a bad omen—next, the fire, and all its wonderfuls, the saving of the old bedridden woman's precious life, and the destruction of the poor cat—syne the robbery of the hen-house by the Eirish ne'er-do-weels, who paid so sweetly for their pranks—and lastly, the hoax, the thieving of the cheese-toaster without the handle, and the banishment ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... and his sermons jokes; But both were thrown away amongst the fens; For wit hath no great friend in aguish folks. No longer ready ears and short-hand pens Imbibed the gay bon-mot, or happy hoax: The poor priest was reduced to common sense, Or to coarse efforts very loud and long, To hammer a horse ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... King'?" asked Flavia, leaning over my shoulder, so that the ripple of her hair played on my cheek. "Is it a hoax?" ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... her to the house," he says. "This may be a stupid hoax, or a quarrel exaggerated. See to it yourself, and hear what the doctor says. If it is serious, send word back here directly, and let nobody enter the place or leave it till we come. Stop! You know the form ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... in a curious way along the seat away from his interlocutor. "But you was just a-going to tell me about this here Invisible Man!" protested the mariner. Mr. Marvel seemed to consult with himself. "Hoax," said a Voice. "It's ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... you here? 'Tar'n't a hoax, then, though I was mightily 'feared it was. Them students is the Devil for chivying of a feller,—beggin' your pardon, Mr. Blount. Have you got him yonder, Doctor?" said he, his keen eye noticing Mac and Clarian ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... had been compelled to concoct this other scheme to obtain their assistance against Simms and Ward; then they could throw the three into irons and all would be lovely; but now that fool Ward had upset the whole thing by hitting upon this asinine fire hoax as an excuse for boarding the Lotus in force, and had further dampened Theriere's pet scheme by suggesting to Skipper Simms the danger of Theriere being recognized as they were boarding the Lotus and bringing suspicion upon ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... even your reputation, I resolved to go myself with Dona Rosita to Los Osos and explain the matter to her father. Some rumor of the ridiculous farce I have just witnessed reached us through Ezekiel, and frightened the poor girl so that she declined—and properly, too to face the hoax which you and some nameless impersonator of a disgraced fugitive have gotten up for purposes of your own! I wish you joy of your work! If the play is over now, I presume I may be allowed to ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... filled with confusion and anger. A hoax on the part of some of the Corn Cob Club, he thought to himself. He flushed painfully to recall ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... seeing a gentleman, said afterwards to have been Lord John Scott, the popular but somewhat madcap brother of the Duke of. Buccleugh, gallop up the street bareheaded, waving his hat above his head and shouting "The Queen, the Queen!" The listeners looked at each other and laughed. How well the hoax was gone about; but who would presume to play such a trick, it was too much even from Lord John—did not somebody say it was Lord John? On the line of route too! What were ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... crimes which appear in the chronicles. But who will tell me what 'the Carpet-bag Mystery' was, which my Father and I discussed evening after evening? I have never come across a whisper of it since, and I suspect it of having been a hoax. As I recall the details, people in a boat, passing down the Thames, saw a carpet-bag hung high in air, on one of the projections of a pier of Waterloo Bridge. Being with difficulty dragged down—or perhaps up—this bag was found to be full of human remains, dreadful butcher's business ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... raided round the army, and captured the fowls! Butler's colored troops had got all the turkeys, and had been feeding on fowl for two days! The officers had "gobbled" the whole consignment for their own use! The whole story of the Thanksgiving dinner was a newspaper hoax! Nothing was too incredible ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... that they had no bearing upon it whatever; that for anything seen or heard by him the world might hold no such precious gem, and the Russian's letter to Signor Lampini might be nothing more than an elaborate hoax. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... the Star, in his half-playful and suggestive way, chose to put it as though he regarded the article in the Pall Mall Magazine as a hoax, perpetrated by some clever, unscrupulous writer, intent on provoking both Mr Henley and his friends, and Stevenson's friends and admirers. This called forth a letter from one signing himself "A Lover of R. L. Stevenson," which ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... drawing-room, stood open, and looking into the mirror, he caught sight of the girl shaking with laughter as she gesticulated and made signs to her mother. The old artist understood beyond a doubt that he had been the victim of some cowardly hoax. Pons went slowly down the stairs; he could not keep back the tears. He understood that he had been turned out of the house, but why and wherefore ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... His motive and his personality still remain matters of conjecture. Whether the whole affair was a figment of Shelley's brain, rendered more than usually susceptible by laudanum taken to assuage intense physical pain; whether it was a perilous hoax played upon him by the Irish servant, Daniel Hill; or whether, as he himself surmised, the crime was instigated by an unfriendly neighbour, it is impossible to say. Strange adventures of this kind, blending fact and fancy ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... as we saw the way to Solomon's treasure chamber thrown open at last, that I for one began to tremble and shake. Would it prove a hoax after all, I wondered, or was old Da Silvestra right? Were there vast hoards of wealth hidden in that dark place, hoards which would make us the richest men in the whole world? We should know ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... asleep at all!" she exclaimed, laughing and quite unembarrassed. "But I think you were wicked to hoax us so. Did you hear everything ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... Somewhere there must be a natural explanation; it was only a question of finding it. Among other things it occurred to me that someone, for reason unknown, might be playing a series of practical jokes upon me, but it was hard to believe a hoax of such malignant and serious intent. Besides, it did not explain the death of Price which, I felt more and more convinced, was in some way connected with the bronze statue. I felt it would be my own fault ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... eyes of the public, but he injures his own moral fibre, and he contracts such a habit of unveracity that he never can hope for genuine literary success. For there never was yet any genuine success in letters without integrity. The clever hoax is no better than the trick of imitation, that is, conscious imitation of another, which has unveracity to one's self at the bottom of it. Burlesque is not the highest order of intellectual performance, but it is legitimate, and if cleverly done it may be both useful and amusing, but it ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... no end of fun to scare 'Cousin Maud.' There was no mistaking the official paper on which the document was written, and it bore the seal of the Chancery of the Russian Embassy; but in Lady Maud's opinion the mention of the Patriarch of Constantinople stamped it as an egregious hoax. ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... receiver-general, the colonel in command of the garrison, the head of the Naval School, the president of the Court, and so forth. The poet, poor fellow, was feted so magnificently, and so belauded, that anybody but a young man of two-and-twenty would have shrewdly suspected a hoax. After dinner, Chatelet drew his rival on to recite The Dying Sardanapalus, the masterpiece of the hour; and the headmaster of the school, a man of a phlegmatic temperament, applauded with both hands, and vowed that Jean-Baptiste Rousseau had done nothing finer. ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... card sharping, stacked deck, loaded dice, quick shuffle, double dealing, dealing seconds, dealing from the bottom of the deck; artful dodge, swindle; tricks upon travelers; stratagem &c (artifice) 702; confidence trick, fake, hoax; theft &c 791; ballot-box stuffing [U.S.], barney [Slang]; brace game [Slang], bunko game, drop game [Slang], gum game [U.S.], panel game [U.S.], shell game, thimblerig, skin game [U.S.]. snare, trap, pitfall, decoy, gin; springe^, springle^; noose, hoot; bait, decoy-duck, tub ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... presents itself for consideration under other colors.... What defence can be made against this new crime of giving color to ideas?" As for trifling with the House by presenting a petition which in the course of debate had become pretty well known and acknowledged to be a hoax designed to lead Mr. Adams into a position of embarrassment and danger, he disclaimed any such motive, reminding members that he had given warning, when beginning to present his petitions, that he was suspicious that ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... was the triumph of audacity. In 1834 he had said to Lord Melbourne, who enquired his object in life, "I want to be Prime Minister"—and now that object was attained. At Brooks's they said, "The last Government was the Derby; this is the Hoax." Gladstone's discomfiture was thus described by ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... the point," cried the clerk. "To hoax the travellers and have a bit of fun I told them a lot of stuff about Egypt and Greece and Spain. As I happened to be wearing spurs I have myself out for a colonel of cavalry: ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... means; but heavenly Clouds, great divinities to idle men; who supply us with thought and argument, and intelligence and humbug, and circumlocution, and ability to hoax, and comprehension. ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... breath. He felt as though a cruel hoax had been played on him. After all, Possy could have lied about the cat and the other creatures. And the boy was quite obviously bright enough to learn lines and play a ...
— When I Grow Up • Richard E. Lowe
... feet were as wet as they could get. Unless the river rose to unbelievable height, he could not be drowned in the makeshift oubliette, unless he voluntarily lay down in the shallow water and inhaled it. He worked on the panel slowly, but with the earnestness of a very angry victim of a hoax. The panel fell outward with a splash, and floated away. Philo Gubb bent sideways and squeezed out of the small opening ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... spoken of in his presence. Such an air of reality was given to the narrative by incidental references to actual persons and occurrences that many believed it true, and some were found who remembered Philip Nolan, but had heard different versions of his career. The author of this clever hoax—if hoax it may be called—was Edward Everett Hale, a Unitarian clergyman of Boston, who published a collection of stories in 1868, under the fantastic title, If, Yes, and Perhaps, indicating thereby that some of the tales were possible, some of them probable, and others might even ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... said the Duke. "Either it's a hoax, and we needn't bother about it; or the threat is genuine, and we have the time to ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... Robert Westcote, the stranger, the cause of it all? He had not heard from him since the day of their visit to Mrs. Bean's, and but for the cheque which he had received he would have been inclined to consider the whole thing as a hoax. ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... in the first instance, of showing or recommending a proper spirit. Never let the debutant regard how young or how feeble he may be—he must make head against the first insult—he must avenge the first hoax. No doubt he will be worsted, and get a good beating; but that one will save him from many hundreds hereafter, and, perhaps, the necessity of fighting a mortal duel. Your certain defeat will be forgotten in the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... could unravel what fantasy had seized him to lead him to hoax me in this manner, since for many years I had never opened my mouth concerning the life he led, whilst he, on his side, had said not a word to me relating to it. Yet it is true that sometimes being alone with confidential valets, some complaints have escaped him (but never before ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... who had examined Jeanne, held various opinions concerning her. Some declared that her mission was a hoax, and that the King ought to beware of her.[648] Others on the contrary held that, since she said she was sent of God, and that she had something to tell the King, the King ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... in the church—you say, It's likely, for they're always there. Not Sunday? No? A funeral? Who? Who, Harry? how you shake and stare! All well, you say, and all were out. What ails you, Hal? Is this a hoax? Why don't you tell me like a man: What is the matter with ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... at our house we call 'Paddy': She's not 'goody-goody', but 'baddy'; She loves practical jokes, Or to play us a hoax, Though we tell her such tricks ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... give me a fair ball, you sly fox," cried Ernest, for Tom was notorious for his tricks and dodges of every sort. If a good hoax was played on the school, or on any individual, its authorship was generally traced to him. To do him credit, they were never ill-natured. He generally, when found out, bore his blushing honours meekly, and if not discovered, contented ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... how the Chinaman discovered it, is a most characteristic bit of the productions of Elia. We have cut from a recent paper, what seems an authentic story, of one of this race having obtained a kind of mausoleum. We hope it is not a hoax, but that it is as genuine as all that is in one of ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... barn was about a mile from a similar rise on Sam Atkins' place. They communicated across that distance in all the ways, including various kinds of codes, that Fenwick could think of to find some evidence of hoax. Afterwards, they returned to the laboratory and sawed in two the crystals they had just used. Then they showed him the tests they had devised to determine the nature of the radiation ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... "May be a hoax for all you know. Better wait till the money's in your hand before you run into extravagance piling up debts for us to work off later. I guess it's a true saying that if you put a beggar on horseback, ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... Boswell's record we have a character called Mudge, an "out of the way" name; and in Pickwick we find a Mudge. George Steevens, who figures so much in Boswell's work, was the author of an antiquarian hoax played off on a learned brother, of the same class as "Bill Stumps, his mark." He had an old inscription engraved on an unused bit of pewter—it was well begrimed and well battered, then exposed for sale in ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... compliments, quarrels, cards and custard, which rack the wit of all society? What joys has kind nature provided for us dear creatures! There seems to be no interval between greatness and meanness. When the spirit is not master of the world, then it is its dupe. Yet the little man takes the great hoax so innocently, works in it so headlong and believing, is born red, and dies gray, arranging his toilet, attending on his own health, laying traps for sweet food and strong wine, setting his heart on a horse or a rifle, made happy with a little gossip or a little praise, that the ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... after edition on the strength of it, until the St. James's Gazette put an end to the excitement by publishing a telegram from the Mayor of Liverpool denouncing the report as an insane and criminal hoax. ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... had to take immediately, was to get my guests together. As I have said, I knew nothing of them and for a moment thought it not improbable that even if I did manage to get hold of their names and addresses they might when they received the letter think it was a hoax. However, the thing had to be done, so it was no use to waste time by foreseeing difficulties. My first step was to get the help of my friend, Sir Harry Brittain (then Mr. Brittain). I wrote to him, asking for the names and addresses of all the correspondents of American newspapers ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... a poor hoax, dear President, which proves a miserable failure! I intended to let them loose on the Lunar Continent at the first favorable opportunity. I often had a good laugh to myself, thinking of your astonishment and the Captain's ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... him out of his misery. Intensely agitated, poor little Fresh is hurried by pretended friends into a carriage, and driven off; and it is not till a week afterwards that he learns he has been the victim of a hoax. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... the meaning of this hoax?" the admiral demanded sternly. "Mr. Fitzgerald tells me that he had no idea you were hiring ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... Other conscience stories are "The Man of the Crowd"; "The Tell-Tale Heart," also depicting insanity; and "The Black Cat," of which the atmosphere is horror. "The Adventures of One Hans Pfaal" and "The Balloon Hoax" are examples of the pseudo-scientific tales, which attain their verisimilitude by diverting attention from the improbability or impossibility of the general incidents to the accuracy and naturalness of details. In "The Descent into the Maelstrom," scientific reasoning is skillfully ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... the prompt response. Nevertheless the artist threw an affectionate glance at the painting as one might in saying, "You were my people." The piquancy of the situation caused him to smile. "Gentlemen," he said, "if this is some hoax, believe me it is in very poor taste. Taste? Yes, for I haven't eaten in two days. What's your game? I've just come from a pawnbroker's, where I had gone with the paltry jewels of a model, to try and secure enough to pay my rent. You offer me a crown. Corduroys and blouse," he pointed to ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... no more, but his heart sank like a lump of lead in his breast. The talk of a ship being in sight must be a hoax, unless Crabtree referred ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... throughout the remainder of the Old Regime, and much of the colony's iron came from them to supply the blacksmiths. From time to time rumors of other mineral discoveries came to the ears of the people. A find of lead was reported from the Gaspe peninsula, but an investigation proved it to be a hoax. Copper was actually found in a dozen places within the settled ranges of the colony, but not in paying quantities. Every one was always on the qui vive for a vein of gold or silver, but no part of New France ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... mirth-compelling practical-joker. But in Brattleboro, Newfane, and throughout Vermont everybody says, "That's jest like his uncle Charles Kellogg. There was never such another for jest foolin'. He'd rather play a hoax on the parson that would embarrass him in the face of his congregation than eat." When they were boys, it was Charles that led Roswell into all kinds of mischief. "Uncle Charles Kellogg"—they always give him the benefit of the second name ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... Haven't you heard about it? My letter says Rhoda's invited both of you girls, too, and that Walter is going. Is—it a hoax?" ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... no hoax, it's quite serious. The professor came on behalf of the Society, for so they call themselves, and asked you whether you'd accept the fete. You accepted it; so it ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... the lady in almost stentorious accents, "or is this an unmanly hoax?" Suddenly she stopped in undeniable consternation. "Good heavens," she muttered, "if Abner should believe this. He is SUCH a fool! He has lately been queer and jealous. Oh dear!" she said, turning to Polly Jenkinson with the first indication ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... "Some of the fellows have been sending Ketch an invitation to sup at Jenkins's off tripe and onions, and when he arrived there he found it was a hoax, and Mrs. Jenkins turned him out again. That's what Master Charley must ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... stale and feebly nourishing bread from his mouth, and gave nothing in return. They emptied his heart, and left it starving. What did it boot to tell a man that the orthodox dream of eternal bliss beyond the gates of death was but a hoax, if no substitute be offered? Why point out the fallacies, the puerile conceptions, the worse than childish thought expressed in the religious creeds of men, if they were not to be replaced by life-sustaining ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... linger over the limitations of the tallow-chandler's son. The catalogue of his beneficent activity is a vast one. Balzac once characterized him as the man who invented the lightning-rod, the hoax, and the republic. His contributions to science have to do with electricity, earthquakes, geology, meteorology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, navigation of air and water, agriculture, medicine, and hygiene. In some of these fields he did pioneer work of lasting ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... hoax was recently perpetrated in Paris, where a number of politicians consented to assist in raising a statue to Hegesippe Simon, the educator of the Democracy and author of the famous epigram, "The darkness vanishes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... contemporaneous optimism was confronted with this dusky old-world expedient. To see a woman made for him and for motherhood to his children juggled away in this tragic travesty—it was a thing to rub one's eyes over, a nightmare, an illusion, a hoax. But the hours passed away without disproving the thing, and leaving him only the after-sense of the vehemence with which he had embraced Madame de Cintre. He remembered her words and her looks; he turned ...
— The American • Henry James
... right and left, then up and down, but her pressure was so slight and nervous that it did not stir the heavy wood. She breathed a great sigh of relief, and beginning now to believe herself the victim of some cruel hoax, she dared a firmer pressure. The panel responded—moved—slid slowly behind its fellow—revealing the steel muzzle of a safe let into the solid masonry. It seemed the result of some evil witchcraft; her blood chilled. Yet, ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... imagine, because M. Reybaud has happened to say heedlessly yes and no to a question of which he does not seem to have yet formed a clear idea, that I class him among those speculators of socialism, who, after having launched a hoax into the world, begin immediately to make their retreat, under the pretext that, the idea now belonging to the public domain, there is nothing more for them to do but to leave it to make its way. M. Reybaud, in ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... to the steps. Monck went, half-suspicious of a hoax. But he had barely reached the path below when through the rain there came the sound ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... he had caught her hands in an eager, boyish clasp. "Olga, don't—there's a dear!" he begged with headlong ardour. "I don't love you any the less because I didn't do it. I believe myself it's a beastly hoax, and I'm just as furious as you are. But, I say, can't we found a partnership on it? Is it asking too much? Pull me up if it is! I don't want to be premature. Only I won't have you sick or sorry about it, anyhow so far as I am ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... the house. The cook had eaten the last bit of bread. This could not go on. It did, however, until two, when my sensations were terrible. After all, I began to think the document very absurd. Perhaps it might only be a gigantic hoax. Besides, some means would surely be found to keep my uncle back from attempting any such absurd expedition. On the other hand, if he did attempt anything so quixotic, I should not be compelled to accompany him. Another line of reasoning partially ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... MS. which we kept under our pillow for thirteen days and nights, was beginning to worry us. After all, might it not be a literary hoax, we thought, and might not this Khalid be a myth. And yet, he does not seem to have sought any material or worldly good from the writing of his Book. Why, then, should he resort to deception? Still, we doubted. And one evening we were detained by the sandomancer, or sand-diviner, who was sitting ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... conspiracies are hatched. Not only do his words carry with the crowds that gather before his house to hear his prophecy, but his warnings shape the actions of some of the Transvaal Generals. The Government report will not go so far as to brand "Oom Niklaas" as a hoax. Says ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... one. We were driving to an unknown place, on an unknown errand. Yet our invitation was either a complete hoax,—which was an inconceivable hypothesis,—or else we had good reason to think that important issues might hang upon our journey. Miss Morstan's demeanor was as resolute and collected as ever. I endeavored to cheer and amuse her ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... they were composed of water they could not cause a flood on the earth; the report that some strange, misty object is visible in the starry heavens is based on a misapprehension; and finally, the so-called calculations of the author of this inexcusable hoax are baseless ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... even though he kept his foot firmly in the aperture. The woman still regarded him with a pitying amusement; yet gradually curiosity got the better of her common sense, which told her that he was the victim of some hoax, ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... 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 played upon his imagination. ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... Law Quarterly Magazine says:—To the best of our information, James's coup d'essai in literature was a hoax in the shape of a series of letters to the editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, detailing some extraordinary antiquarian discoveries and facts in natural history, which the worthy Sylvanus Urban inserted without the least suspicion. In 1803, he became a constant contributor to the ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... Newson, ye had better say nothing about this hoax, and take no heed of it. And if the person should say anything to you, be civil to him or her, as if you did not mind it—so you'll take the clever person's laugh away." In speaking his eyes became fixed upon her dress, ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... to discover what lends Such terror to all timid folks— That serpent whose mystery tends To make one believe it a hoax. ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... who was much the oldest of the three. "Did you expect us to fall upon your neck before we could believe it wasn't a hoax ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... word," said he, when Jonathan had concluded, "I hope that you may not have been made the victim of some foolish hoax. Let me see what it is she ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... more surprising, I continued at my own work in the dockyard, besides acting (though really but nominally) as sub-contractor in the excavating work at the cemetery. In about a week, however, Mr Macpherson "smelt a rat," and found out that the job was a hoax so far as I was concerned; nevertheless the work went on all right. The land was very soft and easily worked, being mostly formed of sand and pebbles; and the contract was completed within five weeks. The payment ran ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... very bone) who had with more caution than propriety withheld their names. The article was headed, "The Crayfish-eaters' Ticket." It continued further to say that, had not the publication of this ticket been regarded as a dull hoax, it would not have been suffered to pass for two weeks unchallenged, and that it was now high time the universal wish should be realized in ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... Basham (Dr. Bastian before mentioned), Director of the Museum of Berlin," were pronounced to be of very fine water. It is possible that the sandstone may afford precious stones like the itacolumite of the Brazil ("Highlands of the Brazil," i. 380), but the whole affair proved a hoax. In mid-stream rose No. 2, "One-Tree Island," Zunga chya Nlemba or Shika chya Nzondo; in Tuckey it is called Boola Beca or Blemba (the husband) Rock; the old ficus dying at the head, was based upon a pedestal which appeared groin-shaped from the east. Here the mirage was very distinct, and the ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... look as if they are going to put in an appearance to-night," he said to himself, as the liquor in the glass began to wane. "Can this letter have been a hoax, an attempt to draw me off the scent? If so, by all the gods in Asia, they may rest assured I'll ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... in the negative, and said he had better go and see who it was; for looks of alarm had been exchanged between him, the Squire, and Murphy, lest any stranger should enter without being apprised of the hoax going forward; and Dawson had just reached the dining-room door on his cautionary mission, when it was suddenly thrown wide open, and in walked, with a rapid step and bustling air, an active little gentleman dressed in black, who was at Mrs. Egan's side in a moment, exclaiming ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... Stepanovitch rapped out dryly. "What does he mean by a telegram from the Secret Police and; a pension? It's obviously a hoax." ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... a hoax," commented Admiral Timworth, at last. "Yet it is impossible for me to conceive how two British battleships are to be sunk near Malta, or near anywhere else, and Americans blamed for the act. Captain Allen, can you imagine ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... What did he mean? But when the witty dog reached the declaration that he could only thrive in a high spiritual altitude, then the guests broke into peals of merriment and understood that it was a capital hoax. The merry blade—hadn't he almost fooled them all! "Poor remnants of the intellectual life of the seventies!" Didn't we have Paulsberg and Irgens, and Ojen and Milde, and the two close-cropped poets, and an entire army ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... no difference in his standing or welcome. The people seemed unconscious of the part his father played at Washington. Stoneman's Confiscation Bill had not yet been discussed in Congress, and the promise of land to the negroes was universally regarded as a hoax of the League to win their followers. The old Commoner was not an orator. Hence his name was scarcely known in the South. The Southern people could not conceive of a great leader except one who expressed his power through the ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... down his knife and fork for a moment, then took them up again. Something in the old man's tone made him a bit wary. "Maybe it's just a hoax," he thought to himself. Aloud he said, "it ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... sent information to Calcutta and asked for a strong body of police to be sent at his expense. They arrived, and his country residence was extra well guarded for some time. But nothing happened! Madhub Babu concluded that the letter had been a hoax. So ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... century. Aronius records a curious incident. Charles the Great, between the years 787 and 813, ordered a Jewish merchant, who often used to visit Palestine and bring precious and unknown commodities thence to the West, to hoax the Archbishop of Mainz, so as to lower the self-conceit of this vain dilettante. The Jew thereupon sold him a mouse at a high price, persuading him that it was a rare animal, which he had brought with him from Judea. Early in the eleventh century there was a fully organized Jewish community with ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... days of "hobgoblin lore," it may not be incurious to add, that Woodstock is distinguished in Dr. Plot's History of Oxfordshire (the title of which is well known to all readers of the marvellous) as the scene of a series of hoax and disturbance played off upon the commissioners of the Long Parliament, who were sent down to dispark and destroy Woodstock, after the death of Charles I.; and Sir Walter Scott thinks it "highly probable" that this "piece of phantasmagoria was conducted by means of the secret passages and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... and the followers of Catholicism absolutely worship this mechanism of man, and it has proven a great drawing card, and you can rest assured that Catholicism is pushing the scheme along good and hard, and "The St. Anthony Bread Box" hoax is another scheme that is not very old, but which the Catholic Church has found to be another great paying investment, and they are working "St. Anthony" for ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... to keep it. If I can't get rid of it, I'll bring it back. It's a hoax or an endless chain device or something of the sort. ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... that he did not state "the points which have suggested this notion of its being a hoax." For my own part, I cannot see the motive for such a falsification; and if it is one, it is the contrivance of some one who had more epigraphic skill than is usually ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... I still had a sort of indefinite idea that the whole thing was a masquerading freak got up in my absence, and that the bacchanalian orgie I was witnessing was nothing more than a portion of some elaborate hoax of which I was to be the victim. But when my eyes turned to the corner where I had left a huge and cumbrous piano, and beheld a vast and sombre organ lifting its fluted front to the very ceiling, and convinced ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... really send it? I'm so sorry you did that without telling me first. I'm afraid it's a hoax, dear! It sounds too ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... influential critic, should guess at the real background and the sources of the Forell tales, and if he should misunderstand the motives behind those tales, he would probably publish his thoughts. And those thoughts would be widely read. Many would smile as they read and regard the thing as a hoax. But others might start their own analyses. And some of those might come to highly undesirable conclusions and cause undesirable, even disastrous, reactions. It would be many generations before clear explanations could ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... Henley had been told of the reception awaiting him at Guir House before leaving New York, he would doubtless have considered it a hoax. As it was, he was astounded. The odd character of the house and its inmates had already given him much ground for thought, even amazement; but to suddenly find himself face to face, tete-a-tete with a bewitching girl, at a gorgeous ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... do that! It would be such a cruel hoax. Now, dearest love, do let me have that bottle to take care of. Indeed, if ever I jilt you, you shall have it back. Engaged girls—honourable ones!—always give presents back on jilting. Do let me ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... inquired of me, to no purpose, and expressed a wish that Mr. C. had been clearer in his citation, as "no one could understand it." On my naming this to Mr. Coleridge, he laughed heartily, and said, "It was all a hoax." "Not meeting" said he, "with a suitable motto, I invented one, and with references purposely obscure," as will be explained in the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... remain matters of conjecture. Whether the whole affair was a figment of Shelley's brain, rendered more than usually susceptible by laudanum taken to assuage intense physical pain; whether it was a perilous hoax played upon him by the Irish servant, Daniel Hill; or whether, as he himself surmised, the crime was instigated by an unfriendly neighbour, it is impossible to say. Strange adventures of this kind, blending fact ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... whose effect on the nerves was nil, and on the mucous membrane was not to soothe it, but plough it and harrow it; "and did not that open her eyes?" He then reminded her that all these doctors in consultation would have contrived to agree. "But you," said he, "have baffled the collusive hoax by which Dox arrived at a sham uniformity—honest uniformity can never exist till scientific principles obtain. Listme! To begin, is ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... this appears to me very like a hoax, there is such a weight of negative testimony against it. Dr. Whitaker, the learned historian of Whalley, describes Hurstwood Hall as a strong and well-built old house, bearing on its front, in large characters, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... the water to look for him, and saw a naked sword at the bottom, which he was just about to grasp, when his sister called from the shore to tell him that his father, mother, brothers, and sisters were all dead or dying. He hurried home, but it proved to be a hoax, for they were all ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... husband, is a variant. From au(l)ne, alder, we have aunai, whence our Dawnay. So also frenai has given Freeney, chenai, Chaney, and the Norm. quenai is one origin of Kenney, while the older chesnai appears in Chesney. Houssaie, from hoax, holly, gives Hussey; chastenai, chestnut grove, exists in Nottingham as Chastener; coudrai, hazel copse, gives Cowdrey and Cowdery; Verney and Varney are from vernai, grove of alders, of Celtic origin, and Viney corresponds to the French ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... connection with copperplate engraving and printing; with the official photographer, art photography; with the art director, some scheme for enlarging the local museum in some way. With his enduring love of the fantastic and ridiculous it was not long before he had successfully planned and executed a hoax of the most ridiculous character, a piece of idle drollery almost too foolish to think of, and yet which eventually succeeded in exciting the natives of at least four States and was telegraphed to and talked about in a Sunday feature way, by newspapers all over the country, ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... best to think of some hoax or trick that would be harmless, and yet would startle all the Flemings out ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... variegated stones should be the residence of Henrietta's uncle and guardian seemed obviously but a bit of girlish fun, of a piece with her earlier talk regarding her aristocratic ancestry; for by this time I had construed that strange story into a hoax that was never meant ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... accept the designation they've coined for them—but we'll make it very clear that while highly intelligent, the Fuzzies are not a race of sapient beings. If Rainsford persists in making any such claim, we will brand it as a deliberate hoax." ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... 392-407. Laing (Heimskringla, pp. 182-185) thinks the Yankees must have intended to fool Professor Rafn and the Royal Society of Antiquaries at Copenhagen; "Those sly rogues of Americans," says he, "dearly love a quiet hoax;" and he can almost hear them chuckling over their joke in their club-room at Newport. I am afraid these Yankees were less rogues and more fools than ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... Chronicle of Achimaaz, that Jews visited Jerusalem in the tenth century. Aronius records a curious incident. Charles the Great, between the years 787 and 813, ordered a Jewish merchant, who often used to visit Palestine and bring precious and unknown commodities thence to the West, to hoax the Archbishop of Mainz, so as to lower the self-conceit of this vain dilettante. The Jew thereupon sold him a mouse at a high price, persuading him that it was a rare animal, which he had brought with him from Judea. Early in the eleventh century there was a fully organized Jewish community ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... Or you may leave no wonders to be told. Your book, to sell, must have a subtle plot—Mark the Great Unknown, wily ***** ****: Print in America, publish at Milan; There's nothing like this Scotch-Athenian plan, To hoax the cockney lack-brains. ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... more likely to die than you are, from all I hear." At this time rumors of Mr. Scarborough's improved health had reached the creditors in London. Mr. Tyrrwhit had begun to believe that Mr. Scarborough's dangerous condition had been part of the hoax; that there had been no surgeon's knives, no terrible operations, no moment of almost certain death. "I don't believe he's been ill at ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... quick," pleaded Phil. "I want to see if we've found a fortune, or are only the victims of a practical joke, or gigantic hoax." ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... after seeing the play, commanded Strindberg to appear before him. Strindberg regarded the summons as the perpetration of a practical joke, and only obeyed it after making sure by telegraph that it was not a hoax. ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... his wife, meaning that now he would not be made to suffer for attempting to hoax her. But she was too intensely interested to pursue that matter further. "What in the world do you suppose he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... himself, in his book of Sketches, has set down something concerning the first of these, "The Petrified Man," and of another, "My Bloody Massacre," but in neither case has he told it all. "The Petrified Man" hoax was directed at an official named Sewall, a coroner and justice of the peace at Humboldt, who had been pompously indifferent in the matter of supplying news. The story, told with great circumstance and apparent care as to detail, related the finding of a petrified prehistoric ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... or three unauthorized harum-scarums (that touched the very bone) who had with more caution than propriety withheld their names. The article was headed, "The Crayfish-eaters' Ticket." It continued further to say that, had not the publication of this ticket been regarded as a dull hoax, it would not have been suffered to pass for two weeks unchallenged, and that it was now high time the universal wish should be realized in ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... rather important to understand the technique of rumors. The wise man does not scoff at them, for while they are often absurd, they are rarely baseless. People do not go about inventing rumors, except for purposes of hoax; and even a practical joke is never (to parody the proverb) hoax et praeterea nihil. There is always a reason for wanting to perpetrate the hoax, or a reason for believing it will ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... prudential views rendered this unnecessary. The songs which I so much admired, and which so confirmed my impression of the youth of my mistress, were executed by Madame Stephanie Lalande. The eyeglass was presented by way of adding a reproof to the hoax—a sting to the epigram of the deception. Its presentation afforded an opportunity for the lecture upon affectation with which I was so especially edified. It is almost superfluous to add that the glasses of the instrument, as worn by the old lady, had been exchanged by ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... possibility of his doing such a thing so as to defy recognition by me. So much for your general question. As to this gentleman's being the person I once met as Murray Davenport, I can only wonder what sort of a hoax you're ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... generous quantities. He was happy in this work and had begun to feel that at last he was making progress when evil fortune knocked at his door and, conspiring with circumstances and a friend or two, induced the young poet to devise what afterward seemed to him the gravest of mistakes,—the Poe-poem hoax. He was then writing for an audience of county papers and never dreamed that this whimsical bit of fooling would be carried beyond such boundaries. It was suggested ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... deficient of this article of uniform. Strange to say, a notice was hung up on the board a few weeks later, stating that tunics would henceforth be abolished in Her Majesty's navy. Then followed abundant complaint. "This is a hoax," said one. "Better far had we spent the twenty-six shillings in sausages," remarked another. At the time this notice appeared, I had not even tried on my tunic, and by way of comfort, it was pointed out by the officials that the tunics might be exchanged for fruit ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... his wallet, determining to show it to his good friend Mr. Greenfield that evening, and to ask his advice upon it. So he did show it, and that gentleman's opinion was the same as his—that some wag was minded to play off a hoax upon him, and that the matter of the letter was all ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... often 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 effective than they had been when plainly stated in the pamphlet of 1865. He fully expected ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... twenty months his turn had come to say good-bye to the veldt. As the brigadier bade him farewell in the Bloemfontein Club he clapped him good-naturedly on the back, saying, "I believe that it is all a hoax this story of yours about instructions to proceed home by the first transport. I don't believe that you will ever get farther South than ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... herezo. hermit : ermito. hero : heroo. heron : ardeo. herring : haringo. hesitate : sxanceligxi, heziti. hiccough : singulti. hide : kasxi; felo. hinge : cxarniro. hip : kokso. hire : dungi; lui; pago. hiss : sibli hit : frapi. hoard : amaso. hoar frost : prujno. hoax : mistifik'o, -i. hole : truo, kavo holiday : festo, libertempo. hollow : kav'a, -o. holly : ilekso. honey : mielo, "-comb," mieltavolo. "-suckle," lonicero. hood : kapucxo, kufo. hook : hoko, agrafo; alkrocxi. hope : espero. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... presumption, he thought he could shortly render himself qualified to speak. I admired the very presumption of the theory, and finally told him to call the next day on my agent, Mr. Schenck, at such a number (Martin Baum's) in Maine Street, to whom, in the mean time, I transferred the hoax, and duly informing Schenck of the affair; and I do not recollect, at this time, how he ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... to understand that it was one of Uncle Steve's elaborate jokes, and she didn't know whether further search would reveal a valuable, though tiny gift, or some absurd hoax. ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... thinking that the joke had gone far enough, suddenly dived his head into the porcelain vase, and threw his heels into the air. The surprise and indignation of the solemn Spaniards was such, that they made a most intemperate report of the hoax that had been played on them to Lord Wellington; Dan, however, was ultimately forgiven, ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... Laing's champagne and was pouring it out. He stopped now, and looked at Dora. A sudden gleam of intelligence glanced from her eyes. Rushing up to him, she whispered, "You did it all? It was all a hoax?" ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... been most adroitly thrown off the trace of Miss Gourlay and the stranger; and when Dandy joined his master, who, from principles of delicacy and respect for Lucy, went to the opposite inn, he candidly told him of the hoax he had played off ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... of Ruiz' second respite, the Marshal got two surgeons of the United States Navy, who understood the Spanish language, to attend him in his cell; they, after a patient examination pronounced his madness a counterfeit, and his insanity a hoax. Accordingly, on the morning of Sept. 11th, the Marshal, in company with a Catholic priest and interpreter entered his cell, and made him sensible that longer evasion of the sentence of the law was impossible, and that he must surely die. They informed him that he had but half ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... Karl held out papers and envelope to the other man, who took them. Then he turned to Nikky, and now he raised his voice. "Where did you get this—hoax?" he demanded. ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... curse of Freud be on you for that kindly act of professional assassination. The answer is obvious, of course ... Timmy didn't and couldn't do what we've seen him do with our own wide-open, innocent eyes. We are the victims of a cunning hoax." ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... outside, of it yet," replied Mrs. Blake. "In fact until Buster fell sick, I thought it was a hoax." ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... the matter all day, and by evening I was in low spirits again; for I had quite persuaded myself that the whole affair might be some great hoax or fraud, though what its object might be I could not imagine. It seemed altogether past belief that any one could make such a will, or that they would pay such a sum for doing anything so simple as copying out the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica.' Vincent Spaulding did what he could to cheer me up, ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... unravel what fantasy had seized him to lead him to hoax me in this manner, since for many years I had never opened my mouth concerning the life he led, whilst he, on his side, had said not a word to me relating to it. Yet it is true that sometimes being ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... with her to the house," he says. "This may be a stupid hoax, or a quarrel exaggerated. See to it yourself, and hear what the doctor says. If it is serious, send word back here directly, and let nobody enter the place or leave it till we come. Stop! You know the form if ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... to carry it back to La Verendrye they were not so sure that either it or their own scalps would be safe at the Mandan village, with the ferocious Sioux hovering about. They did not know, of course, that the story of the Sioux was nothing but a hoax. ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee
... I said, "but nobody will know of it if we hold our tongues. We'll have to hold them anyhow, for Sylvia's sake, since she's been goose enough to go and fall in love with the Old Fellow. She'd go wild if she ever found out the letter was a hoax. We have made that match, Ruggles. He'd never have got up enough spunk to tell her he wanted her, and she'd probably have ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... UP, exposed the trick. A prelate publicly denounced the imposture, and an Abbe Deleon, priest in the diocess of Grenoble, printed a work called 'La Salette a Valley of Lies.' In this publication it was maintained, with proofs, that the hoax was gotten up by a Mademoiselle de Lamerliere, a sort of half-crazy nun, who impersonated the character of the Virgin. For the injury done to her character by this book she sued the priest for damages to the tone of twenty thousand francs, demanding also the infliction ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... row, and having inspected it from a little distance he walked up briskly to the door, and rang the bell. He walked up briskly in order that his advance might not be seen; unless, indeed, as he began to think not impossible, Aby's statement was altogether a hoax. ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... Lord Rosse, and the exquisite fifteen- inch refractors of the modern observatories, eliminate from the chaotic rubbish-heap of the surface of old Thornbush much smaller objects than such a circle as I have named. If you have read Mr. Locke's amusing Moon Hoax as often as I have, you have those details fresh in your memory. As John Farrar taught us when all this began,—and as I have said already,—if there were a State House in Thornbush two hundred feet long, the first Herschel would ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... our conduct requires no defense. But it may be well again to explain our position. These people, whose camp-fire glowed so brazenly against the opposite cliff, had for purely mercenary motives committed a cruel hoax. They had posed as bandits, and as bandits they deserved to be treated. They had held up our own clergyman, of a nervous temperament, on a mountain pass, and had taken from him a part of his stipend. It was heartless. It was barbarous. It ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a Rosicrucian sect. The Rosicrucian pamphlets which appeared in Germany at the beginning of the 17th century, dating from the Discovery of the Brotherhood of the Honourable Order of the Rosy Cross, a pamphlet published in 1610, by a Lutheran clergyman, Valentine Andreae, were part of a hoax designed perhaps originally as means of establishing a sort of charitable masonic society of social reformers. Missing that aim, the Rosicrucian story lived to be adorned by superstitious fancy, with ideas of mystery and magic, which in the Comte de Gabalis were methodized into a consistent ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... dozen of us were at Executive Palace for hours, bullying him into that. Why, we almost had to twist one of his arms while he was signing the order with the other. And now he has the gall to run for re-election on the strength of his heroic actions at the time of the Travis Hoax!" ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... was friendly and appears to represent a sincere attempt by another race of intelligent beings to contact the people of Earth. A reply message is being formulated.' Officials further explained that the possibility of the signal's being a hoax has been thoroughly investigated and that there is no doubt whatsoever that the message is a genuine interspatial communication from intelligent beings on Ganymede. Ganymede is one of twelve moons of the planet Jupiter, and is larger than the ...
— Master of None • Lloyd Neil Goble
... evidence is good enough for me to work on," retorted Ferguson. "On discovering that the telegram from Cleveland was a hoax, I concluded Ferguson might be lurking around Washington and so sent a description of him to the different precincts ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... absence of intoxicants, might compare with the worst of the ancient bacchanalia. The singers in the cave were the old men and women who had ensconced themselves in it secretly during the day; but the hoax was not suspected by the children and young people, who firmly believed that the spirits of the dead really assembled that night in the cavern and assisted at the sports and diversions ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... Clovis slightly, and was rather afraid of him. It was not difficult to read between the lines of his successful hoax. In a chastened mood she rapped ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... let as offices to companies or professional men. The names of the occupants were painted up at the bottom on the wall, but there was no such name as the Franco-Midland Hardware Company, Limited. I stood for a few minutes with my heart in my boots, wondering whether the whole thing was an elaborate hoax or not, when up came a man and addressed me. He was very like the chap that I had seen the night before, the same figure and voice, but he was clean shaven ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... spreading grins I saw they agreed with me that somebody, signing himself James Skaw, was still trying to hoax the Great Zooelogical ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... dowager. "It is an infamous hoax you have played off upon me. You couldn't find any excuse for your husband's staying in London, and so invented this. What with you, and what with Kirton's ingratitude, I shall be driven out ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... appears every night in the form of shriekings and groanings. There are crowds at the house every night, and, although they all hear the noises, none can discover from whence they come. The family have quitted the house. I suppose 'tis only a hoax by some rogue which will ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... he sought further advice before opening his purse. Dr. Clark describes a call Harris made on him early one morning, greatly excited, requesting a private interview. On hearing his story, Dr. Clark advised him that the scheme was a hoax, devised to extort money from him, but Harris showed the slip of paper containing the mysterious characters, and was not to ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... himself, as the perfect calm reigning over the whole establishment struck him anew. But before he had decided that he had been made the victim of a hoax, a movement took place in the area under the stoop, and an officer stepped out, with a countenance expressive of sufficient perplexity for Mr. Gryce to motion him back with the hurried inquiry: "Anything wrong? Any blood shed? All ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... delivered at Harvard in 1911; in 1917 by "The Little King", a poetic drama; in 1917 also by "Grenstone Poems", a collection of his lyric work to date. In 1916, in connection with his friend, Arthur Davison Ficke, Mr. Bynner perpetrated the clever literary hoax of "Spectra", a volume of verse in the ultra-modern manner, designed to establish a new "school" of poetry that should outdo "Imagism" and other cults then in the public eye. These poems, published under the joint ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... is in a book published in Germany in 1614, inviting all scholars to join the ranks of a secret society said to have been founded two centuries before by a certain Christian Rosenkreuz who had mastered the hidden wisdom of the East. It seems probable that this book was an elaborate hoax, but it was taken seriously at the time, and the seventeenth century saw the formation of numerous groups of "Brothers of the Rosy Cross." They dabbled in alchemy, spiritualism, and magic, and mingled modern science ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... we have an evidence of her having been the victim of as well concerted and admirably conducted a hoax, as was ever played off upon any one—it surpasses that which was put upon poor Malvolio in "Twelfth Night." After making the remark upon which we have already commented, that a second work on France from her pen could "alone ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... have some conversation with me. He wished to say something to me about the Pyrotechnic Art, as he had read one of my tracts (directed against the Sympathetic Powder of Dr Digby), in which I hinted a suspicion whether the Grand Arcanum of the Sages was not after all a gigantic hoax. He, therefore, took that opportunity of asking me whether I could not believe that such a grand mystery might exist in the nature of things, by means of which a physician could restore any patient whose vitals were not irreparably ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... almost before they left his lips, suggested to him an idea for a mammoth hoax—the best they had tried yet, he told himself. He hastily, and in whispers, unfolded it to "Gibs," whom he found all sympathy, then returned alone, to his friends in Number 28, reporting that he had seen nothing of their ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... this vaunted beauty; and Sazen, drawing aside a screen, showed him O Koyo, who was sitting there. Genzaburo gave a great start, and, turning to Sazen, said, "Well, you certainly are a first-rate hand at keeping up a hoax. However, I cannot sufficiently praise the way in which you have carried ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... and anger. A hoax on the part of some of the Corn Cob Club, he thought to himself. He flushed painfully to recall ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... furthermore, as had never been dreamed of before. If you were to visit Tuxall's barn, you would undoubtedly find on the boulder underneath it a carving resembling a human form, a hoax more ambitious than the Cardiff Giant. He carted the rock in from some quarry and did the scorching and ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... was inclined to declaim in that vigorous vocabulary which is taboo. He had been tricked. He was no longer needed at the Red Chateau. Four millions in a gun barrel; hoax was written all over the face of it, and yet he had been as unsuspicious as a Highland gillie. Madame had tricked him; the countess had tricked ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... involved the disposal of millions of money; and they were in operation at so late a period, that the present generation paid heavy taxes for the purpose of carrying them out—taxes paid for nothing better than the success of a practical hoax. ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... M. Reybaud has happened to say heedlessly yes and no to a question of which he does not seem to have yet formed a clear idea, that I class him among those speculators of socialism, who, after having launched a hoax into the world, begin immediately to make their retreat, under the pretext that, the idea now belonging to the public domain, there is nothing more for them to do but to leave it to make its way. M. Reybaud, in my opinion, belongs rather to the category of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... information from the frightened inhabitants; the latter manufactured theirs with the aid of vivid imaginations. I half suspect the fellows were like the showman in the story, and, at length, religiously believed what they first designed as a hoax. Between the two classes of scouts a large army of ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... eleven o'clock everybody went away, without any tidings having come of Melbourne; the next morning Lord Holland read in the 'Times' that the Government was at an end. Allen swore that it must be a hoax, and it was only upon receiving a summons to the Cabinet at twelve instead of two that Holland began to think there was something in it. He told me that the King had two long conversations with Melbourne, in ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... put him out of his misery. Intensely agitated, poor little Fresh is hurried by pretended friends into a carriage, and driven off; and it is not till a week afterwards that he learns he has been the victim of a hoax. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... for conditions at Greenwood's Rancho. The American Valley. Prospective summer resort. Prodigious vegetables. New England scenery compared with that of California. Greenwood's Rancho. Place of origin of quartz hoax. Beautiful stones. Recruiting-place of overland immigrants. Haggard immigrant women. Death and speedy burial on the plains. Handsome young widow immigrant. Aspirants to matrimony candidates for her hand. Interesting stories of adventures ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... he took, for some unknown reason, to be a chandler; in the shabby young man accompanied by Mistigris, a fellow of no account; in Oscar a ninny, and in Pere Leger, the fat farmer, an excellent subject to hoax. Having thus looked over the ground, he resolved to amuse himself at the ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... Rosita to Los Osos and explain the matter to her father. Some rumor of the ridiculous farce I have just witnessed reached us through Ezekiel, and frightened the poor girl so that she declined—and properly, too to face the hoax which you and some nameless impersonator of a disgraced fugitive have gotten up for purposes of your own! I wish you joy of your work! If the play is over now, I presume I may be allowed to ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... remarkable continent that surrounds it. But while they had sent home many highly interesting reports, there had been nothing to suggest the possibility of such an amazing discovery as that which was now announced. Accordingly, most sensible people looked upon the New Zealand despatch as a hoax. ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... writ; a blue bag cannot be more rational than the British flag. The thing is rubbish read anyway, and the only difficulty is to get a joke good enough to express it. It is a case for the Court Jester. The phantasy of it could only be expressed by some huge ceremonial hoax. Carson ought to be crowned with the shamrocks and emeralds and followed by green-clad minstrels of the Clan-na-Gael, playing "The ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... to me, and you shall have, without a hem or haw, sirs, A Canterbury pilgrimage, much better than old Chaucer's. 'Tis of a hoax I once played off upon that city clever, The memory of which, I hope, will stick to it for ever. With my coal-black beard, and purple cloak, jack-boots, and broad-brimmed castor, Hey-ho! for the knight ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Mburuma against us. All the women of Selole had fled, and the few people we met exhibited symptoms of terror. An armed party had come from Mburuma in obedience to the call; but the head man of the company, being Mburuma's brother, suspecting that it was a hoax, came to our encampment and told us the whole. When we explained our objects, he told us that Mburuma, he had no doubt, would receive us well. The reason why Selole acted in this foolish manner we afterward found to be this: an Italian named Simoens, and nicknamed Siriatomba ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... as if they are going to put in an appearance to-night," he said to himself, as the liquor in the glass began to wane. "Can this letter have been a hoax, an attempt to draw me off the scent? If so, by all the gods in Asia, they may rest assured ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... welcome. The people seemed unconscious of the part his father played at Washington. Stoneman's Confiscation Bill had not yet been discussed in Congress, and the promise of land to the negroes was universally regarded as a hoax of the League to win their followers. The old Commoner was not an orator. Hence his name was scarcely known in the South. The Southern people could not conceive of a great leader except one who expressed his power through the megaphone of oratory. ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... deep breath. He felt as though a cruel hoax had been played on him. After all, Possy could have lied about the cat and the other creatures. And the boy was quite obviously bright enough to learn lines and play a part. But ...
— When I Grow Up • Richard E. Lowe
... comical in the way Newman's thoroughly contemporaneous optimism was confronted with this dusky old-world expedient. To see a woman made for him and for motherhood to his children juggled away in this tragic travesty—it was a thing to rub one's eyes over, a nightmare, an illusion, a hoax. But the hours passed away without disproving the thing, and leaving him only the after-sense of the vehemence with which he had embraced Madame de Cintre. He remembered her words and her looks; he turned them over and tried to shake the mystery out of them and to infuse ...
— The American • Henry James
... he, assuming on the instant a confidence-inspiring smile, "that print was a hoax; it wasn't old Tulliwuddle at all. I ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... the cause of it all? He had not heard from him since the day of their visit to Mrs. Bean's, and but for the cheque which he had received he would have been inclined to consider the whole thing as a hoax. ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... don't let us wait here, let us get back to the quay. This is some beastly hoax. The place is as silent as the grave—it ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... there is no doubt of it—in the most naughty way, had brought Leucha round to her side. But if Leucha were told the truth that a hoax had been played upon her, that there was no real ghost, then indeed her wrath would burn fiercely; and, in fact, to put it briefly, there would start in the school a profound feud. Several of the girls, ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... saving of the old bedridden woman's precious life, and the destruction of the poor cat—syne the robbery of the hen-house by the Eirish ne'er-do- weels, who paid so sweetly for their pranks—and lastly, the hoax, the thieving of the cheese-toaster without the handle, and the ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... in the Star, in his half-playful and suggestive way, chose to put it as though he regarded the article in the Pall Mall Magazine as a hoax, perpetrated by some clever, unscrupulous writer, intent on provoking both Mr Henley and his friends, and Stevenson's friends and admirers. This called forth a letter from one signing himself "A Lover of R. L. Stevenson," ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... that a Prince who could scarcely be induced, by the most earnest entreaties of his friends, to take the most common precautions against assassins of whose designs he had trustworthy evidence, would have been scared by so silly a hoax; and it is quite certain that the stages of his progress had been marked, and that he remained at Oxford as long as was compatible with arrangements previously ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... reality, very little information relating to the stone, and that little is of no very satisfactory kind; and I have never been able to divest myself of the idea that it bears somewhat the semblance of a hoax. Were I inclined to discuss the points which have suggested this notion, the necessity there is for brevity in corresponding with the Editor of "NOTES AND QUERIES" would preclude my doing it; but I must quote the following passage, which comes immediately after the statement ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 66, February 1, 1851 • Various
... accessory to the ruin of the theatre, by insisting upon a return to the former prices. Notwithstanding the little sop he had thrown out to feed the vanity of this roaring Cerberus, the only answer he received was a renewal of the noise, intermingled with shouts of "Hoax! hoax! imposition!" Mr. O'Reilly, the gallant friend of Madame Catalani, afterwards addressed the pit, and said no reliance could be placed on the report of the committee. The profits of the theatre were evidently great: they had saved the heavy salary of Madame Catalani; and by shutting ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... examined Jeanne, held various opinions concerning her. Some declared that her mission was a hoax, and that the King ought to beware of her.[648] Others on the contrary held that, since she said she was sent of God, and that she had something to tell the King, the King should at ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... Bastian before mentioned), Director of the Museum of Berlin," were pronounced to be of very fine water. It is possible that the sandstone may afford precious stones like the itacolumite of the Brazil ("Highlands of the Brazil," i. 380), but the whole affair proved a hoax. In mid-stream rose No. 2, "One-Tree Island," Zunga chya Nlemba or Shika chya Nzondo; in Tuckey it is called Boola Beca or Blemba (the husband) Rock; the old ficus dying at the head, was based upon a pedestal which appeared ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... course of my life only three intentionally falsified statements, and one of these may have been a hoax (and there have been several scientific hoaxes) which, however, took in an American Agricultural Journal. It related to the formation in Holland of a new breed of oxen by the crossing of distinct species of Bos (some of which I happen to know are sterile ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... want to discover what lends Such terror to all timid folks— That serpent whose mystery tends To make one believe it a hoax. ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... forbidden wine. Turning beside the fountain, he glanced back as the Governor was closing the door, and in his vision of the lighted interior he saw Patty Vetch darting airily across the hall. So it was nothing more than a hoax! She hadn't hurt herself in the least. She had merely made a laughing-stock of him for the amusement doubtless of her obscure acquaintances! For an instant anger held him motionless; then turning quickly he walked rapidly past the fountain ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... circumstances. They will find this easier. Uncompromising deniers of facts, rebels against evidence, may be all the more positive, and may declare that the writers of these extraordinary narratives are persons fond of a joke, who have written them to hoax me, and that there have been persons in all ages who have done the same thing to mystify thinkers who have ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... a period of hard work. Laboring in relays of divers, every box that had been locked in the purser's safe was brought out on the submerged cabin table, broken open, and the contents examined. The hoax was even worse than indicated at first. For after the front section of boxes had been taken out none of the others remaining contained any gold at all. ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... and, the actual construction of a bateau; but a Democratic Congress turned its back on the proposed improvement. No boat bigger than a skiff ever ascended Salt River, though there was a wild report, evidently a hoax, that a party of picnickers had seen one night a ghostly steamer, loaded and manned, puffing up the stream. An old Scotchman, Hugh Robinson, when he heard ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... We were not rich enough at that moment to bid higher. Our poor fisherman did not know whether to be angry at a hoax, or to go mad with joy; we drew him from his quandary by giving him the name of our landlady and telling him to take the lobster and ...
— A Drama on the Seashore • Honore de Balzac
... mad?" demanded the lady in almost stentorious accents, "or is this an unmanly hoax?" Suddenly she stopped in undeniable consternation. "Good heavens," she muttered, "if Abner should believe this. He is SUCH a fool! He has lately been queer and jealous. Oh dear!" she said, turning to Polly Jenkinson with the first ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... society? What joys has kind nature provided for us dear creatures! There seems to be no interval between greatness and meanness. When the spirit is not master of the world, then it is its dupe. Yet the little man takes the great hoax so innocently, works in it so headlong and believing, is born red, and dies gray, arranging his toilet, attending on his own health, laying traps for sweet food and strong wine, setting his heart on a horse or a rifle, made happy with a little gossip or a little praise, that the great ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... such know-nothing sort of chaps, though they think themselves so wise that they never will believe what you tell 'em. They are just like the old lady whose nevy had just come from sea. When he told her that he'd seen flying-fish scores of times, she said he was trying to hoax her, and wouldn't listen to him, but when he said he'd been up the Red Sea, and that the water there was the colour of a soldier's coat, she said that she had no doubt about that, and that she was glad to listen to him when he spoke the truth. ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... of a hoax, and were the verses not original? No; they were distinctly original, local in color, and even local in the use of certain old English words that were common in the Southwest. He had before noticed the apparent incongruity of the handwriting and the text, and it was possible that for the purposes ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... doubtless at first sight cause a smile of incredulity, and will be regarded by many as one of the devices which are sometimes put forward to entrap an unsuspecting public into the perusal of a sensational hoax. ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... partisans; and in 1720 Parliamentary seats came to market there as commonly as lottery tickets. Towards the close of Anne's reign, a well-dressed horseman rode furiously down the Queen's Road, loudly proclaiming her Majesty's demise. The hoax answered, the funds falling with ominous alacrity; but it was observed, that while the Christian jobbers kept aloof, Sir Manasseh Lopez and the Hebrew brokers bought readily at the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... that, contrary to common report, Francis Bacon was not arrested for debt in 1598; but that, during the time he was supposed to have been in prison, he was actually engaged in building up in his own behalf the greatest hoax in history. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... allusion is to a hoax played on the Premier, by a presentation made to him of a piece of the then novel fabric, velveteen, stamped with a free-trade design. Peel afterwards wrote that he was unaware that the specimen bore "any allusion to any matters which are ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... things," said the Duke. "Either it's a hoax, and we needn't bother about it; or the threat is genuine, and we have the time to ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... unknown, without influence. There must be some mistake. Yes, that must be the true explanation; or was it possible that some one was attempting a cruel hoax upon him? At any rate, it was too positive a message to be disregarded. He must set off at once and settle the matter one ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... what I think," he asked seriously. "I think the whole thing's a hoax. I'll betcha there never was any settlement there. I'll betcha the colonists have pulled a ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... may stop High School football," commented Mr. Prescott, laying aside the paper. "They may, but it would take a good deal of courage, for that article will start Gridley on a furor of enthusiasm for the game. I wonder who got up that hoax." ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... two curious letters from Charles Lamb to Joseph Hume, not available for this edition, which are printed by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in Lamb and Hazlitt. The first, dated December 29, 1807, contains the beginning of an elaborate hoax maintained by Lamb and Hume (who was Joseph Hume, a clerk in the Victualling Office at Somerset House, and the author of a translation of Tasso), in which Hazlitt, although the victim, played his part. Lamb asserts that Hazlitt has cut his throat. He also incidentally regrets that he ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... made her a few evening visits, and we talked love affairs over muffins and a cup of excellent congou. Then what a variety of jams and jellies! I never returned without a disordered stomach, and wishing Highland heather-honey at the devil. Yet, after all, to prove a hoax!—for even when I was on the point of popping the question, and had fastened my silk Jem Belcher with a knowing leetle knot to set out for that purpose, I learned from Francie, the stable-boy, that she had the evening before eloped with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... they left his lips, suggested to him an idea for a mammoth hoax—the best they had tried yet, he told himself. He hastily, and in whispers, unfolded it to "Gibs," whom he found all sympathy, then returned alone, to his friends in Number 28, reporting that he had seen nothing ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... British flag. The thing is rubbish read anyway, and the only difficulty is to get a joke good enough to express it. It is a case for the Court Jester. The phantasy of it could only be expressed by some huge ceremonial hoax. Carson ought to be crowned with the shamrocks and emeralds and followed by green-clad minstrels of the Clan-na-Gael, playing "The Wearing ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... and minus Cod And sauce, they stood like posts; Oh, prudent folks, for fear of hoax, Put no belief ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... had never been dreamed of before. If you were to visit Tuxall's barn, you would undoubtedly find on the boulder underneath it a carving resembling a human form, a hoax more ambitious than the Cardiff Giant. He carted the rock in from some quarry and did the scorching and carving himself, ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... them had been reported to me for unofficer-like and unbecoming conduct, and requiring them to repair immediately on board the Lee with their luggage, as I felt it to be an imperative duty to take them back to the Confederacy for trial by court-martial. The junior demurred, believing it to be a hoax, but the senior peremptorily ordered him to accompany him on board. They were caught in a drenching shower on their way to the Lee; and they made their appearance in the cabin in a sorry plight, reporting themselves "in obedience to orders," handing me ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... a letter to a Scotch newspaper, stating that the story of his walking 16,000 miles in fifteen months, is a hoax—the whole journey being performed in land conveyances and steam-vessels! Not a line is written of the "Book" of these exploits, said to be "in the press;" the latter is by no means so great a blunder ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... Regime, and much of the colony's iron came from them to supply the blacksmiths. From time to time rumors of other mineral discoveries came to the ears of the people. A find of lead was reported from the Gaspe peninsula, but an investigation proved it to be a hoax. Copper was actually found in a dozen places within the settled ranges of the colony, but not in paying quantities. Every one was always on the qui vive for a vein of gold or silver, but no part of New France ever gave ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... another inquired of me, to no purpose, and expressed a wish that Mr. C. had been clearer in his citation, as 'no one could understand it.' On my naming this to Mr. Coleridge, he laughed heartily, and said, "It was all a hoax. Not meeting," said he, "with a suitable motto, I invented one, and with references purposely obscure, as will be explained in the ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... could shortly render himself qualified to speak. I admired the very presumption of the theory, and finally told him to call the next day on my agent, Mr. Schenck, at such a number (Martin Baum's) in Maine Street, to whom, in the mean time, I transferred the hoax, and duly informing Schenck of the affair; and I do not recollect, at this time, how he ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... tea-time, he packed up the photos, distributed his largesse, and retired. Mary, the housemaid, promised to stand by him in the coming ordeal. Both the servants felt secretly flattered that they should be included in the hoax. The kitchen classes in England have great ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... all a naughty hoax, intended to annoy poor Miss Simpshall. Your brothers and sisters had painted their faces red and purple—they had not measles at all. But since you are at Aunt Maria's I think you may as well ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... ye had better say nothing about this hoax, and take no heed of it. And if the person should say anything to you, be civil to him or her, as if you did not mind it—so you'll take the clever person's laugh away." In speaking his eyes became fixed upon ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... and we got as far as the thirty-eighth before I noted anything at all irregular in the surface of the masonry. Even here there was no mark, and I began to feel very blank, and to wonder if the Abbot's cryptogram could possibly be an elaborate hoax. At the forty-ninth step the staircase ceased. It was with a very sinking heart that I began retracing my steps, and when I was back on the thirty-eighth—Brown, with the lantern, being a step or two above me—I scrutinized the little bit of irregularity in the stonework with ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... I don't mind slanting a story a little far. But this Spencer story of yours is nothing but a hoax." ...
— Get Out of Our Skies! • E. K. Jarvis
... you. Your writing is good. It is inexpedient to repeat the impertinent assertions of those who have not sufficient powers of discernment between the painstaking replies to our thousands of correspondents and what they are pleased to designate "a hoax." ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... occurred when every one of the pursuing planes opened up their machine-guns almost simultaneously upon the first. And even this might have been considered a well-designed hoax, were it not for the unmistakable evidence that the first aeroplane, ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... work in the dockyard, besides acting (though really but nominally) as sub-contractor in the excavating work at the cemetery. In about a week, however, Mr Macpherson "smelt a rat," and found out that the job was a hoax so far as I was concerned; nevertheless the work went on all right. The land was very soft and easily worked, being mostly formed of sand and pebbles; and the contract was completed within five weeks. The payment ran to 10s ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... a curious one. We were driving to an unknown place, on an unknown errand. Yet our invitation was either a complete hoax,—which was an inconceivable hypothesis,—or else we had good reason to think that important issues might hang upon our journey. Miss Morstan's demeanor was as resolute and collected as ever. I endeavored ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... old shops and warehouses? is Liverpool but a brick-kiln? Why, no buildings here look so ancient as the old gable-pointed mansion of my maternal grandfather at home, whose bricks were brought from Holland long before the revolutionary war! Tis a deceit—a gull—a sham—a hoax! This boasted England is no older than the State of New York: if it is, show me the proofs—point out the vouchers. Where's the tower of Julius Caesar? Where's the Roman wall? Show ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... one imagine, because M. Reybaud has happened to say heedlessly yes and no to a question of which he does not seem to have yet formed a clear idea, that I class him among those speculators of socialism, who, after having launched a hoax into the world, begin immediately to make their retreat, under the pretext that, the idea now belonging to the public domain, there is nothing more for them to do but to leave it to make its way. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... Jolly Robin who had started the story. And since he was not in the habit of playing jokes on people, everybody believed what he said—at least, everybody except Jasper Jay. He declared from the first that Jolly Robin's tale was a hoax. ...
— The Tale of Jolly Robin • Arthur Scott Bailey
... in a loud, confidential aside to Stephanie; "this studio ought to be full of young men in velvet coats and bunchy ties, singing, 'Oh la—la!' and dextrously balancing on their baggy knees a series of assorted soubrettes. It's a bluff, a hoax, a con game! Are you going to stand for it? I don't see any absinthe either—or even any Vin ordinaire! Only a tea-pot—a tea-pot!" he repeated in unutterable scorn. "Why, there's more of Bohemia in a Broad Street Trust Company than there is in ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... became a cage; she wanted to push out the strong steel plates and get out into the night: Louis's weakness, which had been all his appeal to her, seemed an intolerable infliction, a cruel hoax on the part of fate, just as though, for her shining lover, someone had substituted a ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... importance. I could believe I was mistaken. I did not care about it one way or other; but on his mind the effect was different. The miserable voice, the spirit in pain, he could think of as the result of ventriloquism, or reverberation, or—anything you please: an elaborate prolonged hoax, executed somehow by the tramp that had found a lodging in the old tower; but the juniper-bush staggered him. Things have effects so different on the ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... fetch, catch, chicane, juggle, reach, hocus, bite; card sharping, stacked deck, loaded dice, quick shuffle, double dealing, dealing seconds, dealing from the bottom of the deck; artful dodge, swindle; tricks upon travelers; stratagem &c (artifice) 702; confidence trick, fake, hoax; theft &c 791; ballot-box stuffing [U.S.], barney [Slang]; brace game [Slang], bunko game, drop game [Slang], gum game [U.S.], panel game [U.S.], shell game, thimblerig, skin game [U.S.]. snare, trap, pitfall, decoy, gin; springe^, springle^; noose, hoot; bait, decoy-duck, tub to the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... there was nothing in the house. The cook had eaten the last bit of bread. This could not go on. It did, however, until two, when my sensations were terrible. After all, I began to think the document very absurd. Perhaps it might only be a gigantic hoax. Besides, some means would surely be found to keep my uncle back from attempting any such absurd expedition. On the other hand, if he did attempt anything so quixotic, I should not be compelled to accompany him. Another line of reasoning partially decided me. Very likely he would make the ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... of his doing such a thing so as to defy recognition by me. So much for your general question. As to this gentleman's being the person I once met as Murray Davenport, I can only wonder what sort of a hoax you're ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... more judgment, and a smattering of scientific knowledge, dismissed the thing as some harmless meteorological manifestation that, while interesting, was not necessarily dangerous. And there were many, inclined to incredulity and skepticism, who believed that they were witnessing a hoax or an advertising scheme of some ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... give my opinion upon a certain paper, marked with various characters, which the doctor confessed he could not decipher, and which the bearer of the note was very anxious to have explained. A very brief examination of the paper convinced me that it was not only a mere hoax, but a very clumsy one. The characters were arranged in columns, like the Chinese mode of writing, and presented the most singular medley I ever beheld. Greek, Hebrew, and all sorts of letters, more or less distorted, either through unskilfulness or from actual design, were intermingled with ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... pleaded Phil. "I want to see if we've found a fortune, or are only the victims of a practical joke, or gigantic hoax." ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... had been told of the reception awaiting him at Guir House before leaving New York, he would doubtless have considered it a hoax. As it was, he was astounded. The odd character of the house and its inmates had already given him much ground for thought, even amazement; but to suddenly find himself face to face, tete-a-tete with a bewitching girl, ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... in the house at all, and could not then have been stolen. It may very probably have been so. Nothing more probable. Mr. Camperdown and the managers of the Eustace estate had gradually come to a belief that the Carlisle robbery was a hoax,—and, therefore, another robbery is necessary to account for the diamonds. Another robbery is arranged, and this young and beautiful widow, as bold as brass, again goes before the magistrate and swears. Either the diamonds ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... suspect a gigantic hoax. A scared native clerk was trying to tell him a most appalling tale. George had not spared energy in his message, and the Oriental imagination as a medium had considerably increased it. The telegrams came in a confused order, hard to piece together, but two facts ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... sense of growing angry incredulity. The fellow couldn't be as much of a fool as he seemed! Therefore, he had devised this hoax after he realised he would be captured, to cover up his real purpose which could only be that of a spy. Menesee saw that Administrator Bradshaw was saying something in a low voice to the spokesman, his face stony. Dorn glanced over at him, then looked back at the prisoner and said impassively, ...
— Oneness • James H. Schmitz
... put away the note into his wallet, determining to show it to his good friend Mr. Greenfield that evening, and to ask his advice upon it. So he did show it, and that gentleman's opinion was the same as his—that some wag was minded to play off a hoax upon him, and that the matter of the letter ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... They all wore smiles of sorts. There was something amusing about this—something out of the regular routine. A little knot of chorus-girls halted in the act of going out the wide doors and stood watching. Was it just a hoax? The suppressed unnatural silence sounded like it. But at what John Galbraith did, one ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Messiah! If the reader will pursue those predictions contained in Appendix, B, or that beautiful compend of them in Pope's "Messiah" he will I believe allow, that if it were possible for such things as the above mentioned, to be really intended by those prophecies, they would be the greatest hoax, and the most flagrant and enormous verification of the old proverb "parturiunt montes nascitur ridiculus mus," ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... between us, (I mean, in the ordinary sense, as to money,) the balance could not be in his favour; since I, on receiving a sum of money, (considerable in the eyes of us both,) had transferred pretty nearly the whole of it to him, for the purpose ostensibly held out to me (but of course a hoax) of purchasing certain law "stamps;" for he was then pursuing a diplomatic correspondence with various Jews who lent money to young heirs, in some trifling proportion on my own insignificant account, but much more truly on the account of Lord A——t, my young friend. On the other side, he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... as one of Brassfield's jokes. His suggestion that he meant to stand on a platform of principles seemed equally humorous. To propose such ridiculous things in a perfectly serious way, and laugh at the victim's credulity in "biting" on the hoax, was quite in harmony with the relations among the members of the set to which they belonged, where practical jokes, merciless chaffing and perpetual efforts to get the best of one another had given the group a more ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... is a variant. From au(l)ne, alder, we have aunai, whence our Dawnay. So also frenai has given Freeney, chenai, Chaney, and the Norm. quenai is one origin of Kenney, while the older chesnai appears in Chesney. Houssaie, from hoax, holly, gives Hussey; chastenai, chestnut grove, exists in Nottingham as Chastener; coudrai, hazel copse, gives Cowdrey and Cowdery; Verney and Varney are from vernai, grove of alders, of Celtic origin, and Viney corresponds to the ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... resided near Cork. He wrote to them from aboard that he was sentenced to be hanged for mutiny, and implored of them to use every interest to save him. Lord Shannon interested himself in the affair, and the greatest trouble was taken to obtain a pardon. But it turned out to be a hoax practised by D'Esterre, when under the influence of the Jolly God. Knowing his character, many even of opposite politics, notwithstanding the party spirit that then prevailed, regretted the ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... College finally consented to hold a press conference in his office, from which telecast cameras were barred. He denied the whole story categorically and stated that the boys in Professor Chalmers' class had concocted the whole thing as a hoax...." ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... a day, as likely as not. That old man came flying to Colebrook three years ago all in black broadcloth (had lost his wife lately then), getting out of a third-class smoker as if the devil had been at his heels; and the only thing that brought him down was a letter—a hoax probably. Some joker had written to him about a seafaring man with some such name who was supposed to be hanging about some girl or other, either in Colebrook or in the neighbourhood. "Funny, ain't it?" The old chap had been advertising in the London papers ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... to their hopes when a letter was received from him stating that the cliffs, the bay, and the head-lands were all built up on the airy foundation of a mirage. The elves and sprites of this desolate region had been playing a hoax upon Goyder's party. But it is no wonder that Goyder had been so open to deception after unexpectedly finding fresh water in the lake that had been so long known ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... A hoax, or as our merry ancestors would have called it, a flam, is usually the most ephemeral and evanescent of human devices. Like a boy's soap bubble, it glitters for a brief moment in iridescent rotundity, then ceases to ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... anyone, outside, of it yet," replied Mrs. Blake. "In fact until Buster fell sick, I thought it was a hoax." ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... thought the war had commenced, sure enough; but it didn't just then. However, there was about thirty thousand men on the march to Boston, and they wouldn't turn back until they found the report was a hoax. Soon after, the Provincial Congress met, and they ordered that a large body of minute-men should be enrolled, so as to be prepared for any attack. The people of our province took the matter into their own hands, and organized a body of minute-men without orders. ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... three unauthorized harum-scarums (that touched the very bone) who had with more caution than propriety withheld their names. The article was headed, "The Crayfish-eaters' Ticket." It continued further to say that, had not the publication of this ticket been regarded as a dull hoax, it would not have been suffered to pass for two weeks unchallenged, and that it was now high time the universal wish should be ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... he, when Jonathan had concluded, "I hope that you may not have been made the victim of some foolish hoax. Let me see what it is she has confided ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... if I were the victim of some hoax, some miserable delusion," he said to himself. "Not till I see her, not till I clasp her by the hand, shall I believe that she is really ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... A foolish hoax is said to have been perpetrated on the authorities at Dublin Castle. An anonymous communication informed them that a Dreadnought had been purchased by the Ulster loyalists, and would shortly make her ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 6, 1914 • Various
... that he could not force an entrance, even though he kept his foot firmly in the aperture. The woman still regarded him with a pitying amusement; yet gradually curiosity got the better of her common sense, which told her that he was the victim of some hoax, and she inquired: ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... Quarterly Magazine says:—To the best of our information, James's coup d'essai in literature was a hoax in the shape of a series of letters to the editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, detailing some extraordinary antiquarian discoveries and facts in natural history, which the worthy Sylvanus Urban inserted without ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... squib (A description of a carnivorous plant supposed to subsist on human beings.) quite gravely, and when I found it stated that Felis and Bos inhabited Madagascar, I thought it was a false story, and did not perceive it was a hoax till I came to ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... surrounds it. But while they had sent home many highly interesting reports, there had been nothing to suggest the possibility of such an amazing discovery as that which was now announced. Accordingly, most sensible people looked upon the New Zealand despatch as a hoax. ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... as bridegroom but very slightly, having met him but once, as we are now reliably informed. In fact, nothing could be farther from her thoughts than marriage with the gentleman in question, he being considerably her junior in years. The cruelty of the hoax thus perpetrated is increased by the fact that for the past several days Miss Stowe has been confined to the bed of illness, suffering from a sudden and violent attack of fever, which illness has naturally been enhanced by the embarrassing position ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... questions relating to title to slaves were to be left to the courts. Meantime it was left in doubt whether Mexican law excluding slavery was still in force. Southern malcontents maintained that this act was a mere hoax, using words which suggested concession when no concession was intended. Northern anti-slavery men criticized the act as the entering wedge for another great surrender to the enemy. Because of the uncertainty regarding the meaning of the law ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... melody in it from beginning to end! He could imagine Richard Wagner sitting in his box and laughing till his sides ached at the sight of all the people who were taking it seriously. It was the greatest hoax of the nineteenth century. He lifted his glass of beer to his lips, threw back his head, and drank till the glass was empty. Then wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... do his words carry with the crowds that gather before his house to hear his prophecy, but his warnings shape the actions of some of the Transvaal Generals. The Government report will not go so far as to brand "Oom Niklaas" as a hoax. Says the preface: ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... going to hoax me in that way," said the host. "The soldier has been here, but went out of the door like an honest fellow. I took care of that. You are the thieves, and you ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... to himself, as the perfect calm reigning over the whole establishment struck him anew. But before he had decided that he had been made the victim of a hoax, a movement took place in the area under the stoop, and an officer stepped out, with a countenance expressive of sufficient perplexity for Mr. Gryce to motion him back with the hurried inquiry: "Anything wrong? Any blood ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... find that his being a Yankee made no difference in his standing or welcome. The people seemed unconscious of the part his father played at Washington. Stoneman's Confiscation Bill had not yet been discussed in Congress, and the promise of land to the negroes was universally regarded as a hoax of the League to win their followers. The old Commoner was not an orator. Hence his name was scarcely known in the South. The Southern people could not conceive of a great leader except one who expressed his power through the megaphone of oratory. They held ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... how to stay in the background, to disappear at the right moment. -Once I was writing, suspecting nothing bad, in our spacious bath and w.c. (here I was safe from surprises) a longer work on the "Hoax of Genius". I explained that genius is a title, not a quality. That fact is often overlooked, and engenders great confusion. The name is accidental, generally suspicious. Whoever is called a genius is therefore not a ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... with a defiant, insolent stare, swinging his chair backwards and forwards, unconcerned at the length of the interview, apparently careless of its issue. The Professor brooded on the terrible chagrin, the wounded vanity of discovering himself the victim of an obviously long-contrived hoax. At his asking ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... herself diligently to the task of organization. Having heard from Dublin of the hoax that was being played on their enemy, the Ladies Cullen consented to join the party, and they brought with them one of the Honourable Miss Gores. The Duffys and Brennans numbered their full strength, including even the famous Bertha, who was staying with her sisters ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... distillery; and the spectre, described in horrible detail, proves to be a harmless idiot, with a red handkerchief round her neck. Apart from these gibes, there is not a hint of the supernatural in the whole book. It is a picaresque novel, written by a sportsman. The title is merely a hoax. ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... showed into the study, having informed him that I should be back in less than ten minutes. He had then proceeded to Denmark Hill railway station only to find, as I had found, that the appointment was a hoax and "the man with a box" ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... Harvard in 1911; in 1917 by "The Little King", a poetic drama; in 1917 also by "Grenstone Poems", a collection of his lyric work to date. In 1916, in connection with his friend, Arthur Davison Ficke, Mr. Bynner perpetrated the clever literary hoax of "Spectra", a volume of verse in the ultra-modern manner, designed to establish a new "school" of poetry that should outdo "Imagism" and other cults then in the public eye. These poems, published under the joint ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... the poor man, than whom no more honest creature ever walked the earth, had been made the victim of a truly diabolical hoax. He was sitting reading the newspaper in a public-house, the Three Hens—he had not even been drinking, mind, simply reading the newspaper—when a perfect stranger, whom he had never seen before nor since, but whom he should know anywhere, came ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... transactions, and a bad omen—next, the fire, and all its wonderfuls, the saving of the old bedridden woman's precious life, and the destruction of the poor cat—syne the robbery of the hen-house by the Eirish ne'er-do-weels, who paid so sweetly for their pranks—and lastly, the hoax, the thieving of the cheese-toaster without the handle, and ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... you heard about it? My letter says Rhoda's invited both of you girls, too, and that Walter is going. Is—it a hoax?" ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... Roger meant what he said," remarked the Story Girl. "I couldn't get a look into his eyes. If he was trying to hoax us there would have been a twinkle in them. He can never help that. You know he would think it a great joke to frighten us like this. It's really dreadful to have no grown-ups you can ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... shown me demonstrates. Well, open them now. They are a cheap imitation, as the second feather proves. The return of the false eider downs, before evening, proves then that they hoped the substitution would pass undetected. That is all. Caracho! Collapse of the hoax. Your health! Vive ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... couldn't help it if this man Carpenter found me while I was unconscious, and made me well. Nor could I fail to be polite to my benefactor, and try to help him about. My Uncle Timothy was amazed, because he had accepted the "Times" story that it was all a "movie" hoax. Everybody will tell you in Western City that they "never believe a word they read in the 'Times'"; but of course they do—they have to believe something, and what else ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... what fantasy had seized him to lead him to hoax me in this manner, since for many years I had never opened my mouth concerning the life he led, whilst he, on his side, had said not a word to me relating to it. Yet it is true that sometimes being alone with confidential valets, some complaints have escaped him (but never before ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... enough, suddenly dived his head into the porcelain vase, and threw his heels into the air. The surprise and indignation of the solemn Spaniards was such, that they made a most intemperate report of the hoax that had been played on them to Lord Wellington; Dan, however, was ultimately forgiven, after a ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... with such treasure as they could carry. Whether this circumstance was true or not, it was at least a current story in the neighborhood, and an enterprising individual, about fifty years ago, caused an old cannon to be "discovered" in the river, and perpetrated the first "Cardiff Giant Hoax." A New York Stock Company was organized to prosecute the work. It was said that the ship could be seen in clear days, with her masts still standing, many fathoms below the surface. One thing is certain—the ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... theatre, he was a dead man. But it is difficult to believe that a Prince who could scarcely be induced, by the most earnest entreaties of his friends, to take the most common precautions against assassins of whose designs he had trustworthy evidence, would have been scared by so silly a hoax; and it is quite certain that the stages of his progress had been marked, and that he remained at Oxford as long as was compatible ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... arrived after much thinking. I had determined, on Naomi's account, to clear the matter up; but it is only candid to add that my doubts of John Jago's existence remained unshaken by the letter. I believed it to be nothing more nor less than a heartless and stupid "hoax." ...
— The Dead Alive • Wilkie Collins
... appear in the chronicles. But who will tell me what 'the Carpet-bag Mystery' was, which my Father and I discussed evening after evening? I have never come across a whisper of it since, and I suspect it of having been a hoax. As I recall the details, people in a boat, passing down the Thames, saw a carpet-bag hung high in air, on one of the projections of a pier of Waterloo Bridge. Being with difficulty dragged down—or perhaps up—this bag was found to be full of human remains, ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... all young people. It may be said that all five were concerned in a complicated hoax on Mr. Gurney. Nor would such a hoax argue any unusual moral obliquity. Surtees of Mainsforth, in other respects an honourable man, took in Sir Walter Scott with forged ballads, and never undeceived his friend. Southey played off a hoax with his book The Doctor. Hogg, ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... on Laing's champagne and was pouring it out. He stopped now, and looked at Dora. A sudden gleam of intelligence glanced from her eyes. Rushing up to him, she whispered, "You did it all? It was all a hoax?" ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... minutes later, to Commander Jephson, commandant of midshipmen. "I had a fight party right under my hands when that call of fire sounded. It was so natural that I bolted away and lost my party before I discovered that it was a hoax." ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... sermons, and his sermons jokes; But both were thrown away amongst the fens; For wit hath no great friend in aguish folks. No longer ready ears and short-hand pens Imbibed the gay bon-mot, or happy hoax: The poor priest was reduced to common sense, Or to coarse efforts very loud and long, To hammer a horse laugh ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... save by some curious finger, now and then, inquisitive to explore the mode of book-keeping in Queen Anne's reign; or, with less hallowed curiosity, seeking to unveil some of the mysteries of that tremendous HOAX, whose extent the petty peculators of our day look back upon with the same expression of incredulous admiration, and hopeless ambition of rivalry, as would become the puny face of modern conspiracy contemplating the Titan size ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... they, WELL KNOWING HOW SUCH THINGS WERE GOT UP, exposed the trick. A prelate publicly denounced the imposture, and an Abbe Deleon, priest in the diocess of Grenoble, printed a work called 'La Salette a Valley of Lies.' In this publication it was maintained, with proofs, that the hoax was gotten up by a Mademoiselle de Lamerliere, a sort of half-crazy nun, who impersonated the character of the Virgin. For the injury done to her character by this book she sued the priest for damages to the tone of twenty thousand francs, ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... eagerly, that at last he went upstairs to see this vaunted beauty; and Sazen, drawing aside a screen, showed him O Koyo, who was sitting there. Genzaburo gave a great start, and, turning to Sazen, said, "Well, you certainly are a first-rate hand at keeping up a hoax. However, I cannot sufficiently praise the way in which you have carried ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... Osos and explain the matter to her father. Some rumor of the ridiculous farce I have just witnessed reached us through Ezekiel, and frightened the poor girl so that she declined—and properly, too to face the hoax which you and some nameless impersonator of a disgraced fugitive have gotten up for purposes of your own! I wish you joy of your work! If the play is over now, I presume I may be allowed to proceed ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... Andy gazed stupidly, unable for the time to understand that he had been made the victim of a hoax. While this was slowly dawning upon him, the door burst open and, with a yell of laughter, the crowd rushed into ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... Rosicrucius or a Rosicrucian sect. The Rosicrucian pamphlets which appeared in Germany at the beginning of the 17th century, dating from the Discovery of the Brotherhood of the Honourable Order of the Rosy Cross, a pamphlet published in 1610, by a Lutheran clergyman, Valentine Andreae, were part of a hoax designed perhaps originally as means of establishing a sort of charitable masonic society of social reformers. Missing that aim, the Rosicrucian story lived to be adorned by superstitious fancy, with ideas of mystery and magic, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... he had been compelled to concoct this other scheme to obtain their assistance against Simms and Ward; then they could throw the three into irons and all would be lovely; but now that fool Ward had upset the whole thing by hitting upon this asinine fire hoax as an excuse for boarding the Lotus in force, and had further dampened Theriere's pet scheme by suggesting to Skipper Simms the danger of Theriere being recognized as they were boarding the Lotus and bringing suspicion ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... "but nobody will know of it if we hold our tongues. We'll have to hold them anyhow, for Sylvia's sake, since she's been goose enough to go and fall in love with the Old Fellow. She'd go wild if she ever found out the letter was a hoax. We have made that match, Ruggles. He'd never have got up enough spunk to tell her he wanted her, and she'd probably have married Micky out ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the ballot. They want us to play the game according to the established rules. But the rules were made by the capitalists. THEY have laid down the laws of the game. THEY hold the pick of the cards. We never can win by political methods. The right of suffrage is the greatest hoax of history. Direct action is the only way."] There is a great deal of idealism among the advocates of violence;[Footnote: Cf, for example, Giovannitti's poem, The Cage, in the Atlantic Monthly, June, 1913.] there is a great deal of sympathy on the part of the public with lawless strikers, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... of "hobgoblin lore," it may not be incurious to add, that Woodstock is distinguished in Dr. Plot's History of Oxfordshire (the title of which is well known to all readers of the marvellous) as the scene of a series of hoax and disturbance played off upon the commissioners of the Long Parliament, who were sent down to dispark and destroy Woodstock, after the death of Charles I.; and Sir Walter Scott thinks it "highly probable" that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... no less than thirty- two rooms in one hotel, would have been undertaken unless the noble Lord considered that the object was a reality, on which the interests of the country and of Europe depended. I think he would have been the last man in the country to lend himself to such a miserable hoax as going to Vienna, not to make peace, but to shame Austria into becoming a faithful and warlike ally. I assume, therefore, that terms were sincerely offered, and that those terms gave guarantees which were sufficient, and a security which was ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... people who, from weakness or a false sense of duty, had not the courage to escape. Do you think that they won't cling like grim death to the liberty which I'm giving them? Nonsense! Why, they would have swallowed a hoax twice as difficult to digest as that which Mlle. Boussignol dished up for them! After all, my version was no more absurd than the truth. On the contrary. And they swallowed it whole! Look at this: before we left, I heard Madame d'Imbleval and Madame Vaurois speak of an immediate removal. ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... Cecile's bedroom, beyond the little drawing-room, stood open, and looking into the mirror, he caught sight of the girl shaking with laughter as she gesticulated and made signs to her mother. The old artist understood beyond a doubt that he had been the victim of some cowardly hoax. Pons went slowly down the stairs; he could not keep back the tears. He understood that he had been turned out of the house, but why and wherefore he ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Clare could not shut his eyes for sheer anxiety. The questions whether the bookseller would have any copies left of the wonderful poem; whether it could really be bought for eighteen-pence; and whether the big farmer's boy did not mean the whole story as a hoax, occupied his mind all night long. It seemed so improbable to him, on reflection, that a book containing the most exquisite verses could be bought for little more than the common fairy tales of the hawkers, and it seemed still more improbable that, being sold so cheap, there would be any ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... manufacturer of the second-class, whom he took, for some unknown reason, to be a chandler; in the shabby young man accompanied by Mistigris, a fellow of no account; in Oscar a ninny, and in Pere Leger, the fat farmer, an excellent subject to hoax. Having thus looked over the ground, he resolved to amuse himself at ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... anyone, but talked to himself as he went along, marking with a sudden stop and a shake of the head the end of an anecdote and the inevitable phrase, 'That's a thing that I have seen.' But he still carried himself upright, and was as fond of a hoax as in the days of the Directory. It was his amusement to impose abstinence from wine, abstinence from meat, and every ridiculous variety of regimen upon cits enamoured of life, crowds of whom wrote to him daily, asking by what diet he had so ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... the victim of the hoax," enigmatically. "If one may call the quirks of fate by the name of hoax," the stranger added. ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... last the evening arrived which was to put an end to his impatience, and bring the time of his interview; and his disappointment and rage may be imagined when he discovered the deception which had been practiced on him. Monsieur d'A—— wished at first to challenge the authors and actors in this hoax, and could ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... Harding, a damsel whose demure looks belied her character. Katherine's innocent grey eyes and doll-like complexion were the vineyards that hide the volcano. She could always be relied upon to support any enterprising project or interesting hoax that was presented for her approval. These seven comrades, close chums in the past, banded themselves together anew to enjoy life to the best of their ability, and to obtain the maximum of fun and diversion out of the forthcoming term. It is with their ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... Lucii Cuspidii Testamentum. Item contractus venditionis antiquis Romanorum temporibus initus. Lugduni apud Gryphium (1532).' Pomponius Laetus and Jovianus Pontanus were apparently authors of the hoax. ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... all seriousness if these alleged lunar photographs were not really taken from a peeled orange. People had got angry with him for laughing at them for asking such a question. Then he gave them an account of the famous moon-hoax which came out, he believed, in 1835. It was full of the most bare-faced absurdities, yet people swallowed it all, and even Arago is said to have treated it seriously as a thing that could not well be true, for Mr. Herschel would have certainly notified him of these marvellous discoveries. The ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... "A hoax, a poor hoax, dear President, which proves a miserable failure! I intended to let them loose on the Lunar Continent at the first favorable opportunity. I often had a good laugh to myself, thinking of your astonishment and the Captain's ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... the incorrigible Tom, with the gravity of a judge. The words were scarcely pronounced when the questioner called the coachman to stop, preferring a ride outside in the rain to a seat within with a thief. Tom greatly enjoyed the hoax, which he used to tell with the merriest of ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... is not a hoax," said James, severely. "I presume that you know too well what is due to learned counsel to attempt to make one of their body the victim of a ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... exquisite fifteen- inch refractors of the modern observatories, eliminate from the chaotic rubbish-heap of the surface of old Thornbush much smaller objects than such a circle as I have named. If you have read Mr. Locke's amusing Moon Hoax as often as I have, you have those details fresh in your memory. As John Farrar taught us when all this began,—and as I have said already,—if there were a State House in Thornbush two hundred feet long, the first Herschel would have seen it. ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... somewhat with the wild stories I had heard in the garden, I still had a sort of indefinite idea that the whole thing was a masquerading freak got up in my absence, and that the bacchanalian orgie I was witnessing was nothing more than a portion of some elaborate hoax of which I was to be the victim. But when my eyes turned to the corner where I had left a huge and cumbrous piano, and beheld a vast and sombre organ lifting its fluted front to the very ceiling, and convinced myself, by a hurried ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... first thought it was a hoax prepared by his companions; but the absolute impossibility of such a conspiracy appeared to him almost as soon as the idea itself, and he sat speechless before that truly infernal power, the incarnation of which borrowed ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... with perhaps a quiet cut at the Flat-Hat gentry; instead of which he had a mixed medley sort of a mess, whose humdrum monotony was only relieved by the absurdities and errors with which it was crammed. At first, Mr. Puffington could not make out what it meant, whether it was a hoax for the purpose of turning run-writing into ridicule, or it had suffered mutilation at the hands of the printer. Calling a good scent an exquisite perfume looked suspicious of a hoax, but then seasonal fox for seasoned fox, scorning to cry for scoring to cry, bay fox for ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... great solidity and columnar strength, it not being given to bounding about, and having enormous bulk to be supported, the scapula, humerus, ulna and radius are all almost in a perpendicular line. Owing to this rigid formation, the elephant cannot spring. No greater hoax was ever perpetrated on the public than that in one of our illustrated papers, which gave a picture of an elephant hurdle-race. Mr. Sanderson, in his most interesting book, says: "He is physically incapable of ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... Jacob Farnum made haste to add, "having perpetrated such a hoax, I shall charge myself with all the expense of painting out the ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... he might have been more struck with the little embarrassment which she could not perfectly control, but at the moment he was not quite himself either. That impudent Doady Donne had played a shameful hoax on him, had actually had the audacity to declare that she had seen his wife—Nina, Mrs. Dacres—in Teddy Vere's hansom! He hadn't taken what she said very pleasantly, for the bare notion made him furious, and—though telling himself all the while that he didn't believe it—until ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... bounds—the theme of wonder Shall Sam go down the cataract of long years: And if there be sublimity in tears, Those shall be precious which the adventurer shed When his frail star gave way, and waked his fears, Lest, by the ungenerous crowd it might be said, That he was all a hoax, or that his ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... obviously skeptical, and betrayed signs of a peeve at having his machine hired for a hoax; but money was money and he agreed to obey our instructions meticulously. His tone was perfunctory, however, despite my desperate attempts to impress him with the seriousness of the matter; and that nonchalance of his came ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... explanations. Was the note really from Miss Waverly? Had she acted in good faith in sending it? What was the danger of which she spoke? Why had she not come, and why had she set an hour like this? Was it a mere hoax? ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... all this appears to me very like a hoax, there is such a weight of negative testimony against it. Dr. Whitaker, the learned historian of Whalley, describes Hurstwood Hall as a strong and well-built old house, bearing on its front, in large characters, the name of "Barnard Townley," its founder, and that it was for several descents the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... was not acquainted with Mr. Dodd, but some information, acquired since the reception of his manuscript, has completely satisfied me, that, however interpreted, Mr. Dodd did not intend in it the perpetration of a hoax. His scientific ability was undoubtedly remarkable, and the facts that his father and himself worked in an astronomical station near Christ Church; that his father died; that his acquaintance with the Dodans was a reality; that ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... negative, and said he had better go and see who it was; for looks of alarm had been exchanged between him, the Squire, and Murphy, lest any stranger should enter without being apprised of the hoax going forward; and Dawson had just reached the dining-room door on his cautionary mission, when it was suddenly thrown wide open, and in walked, with a rapid step and bustling air, an active little gentleman dressed in black, who was at Mrs. Egan's side in a moment, ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... the deep spell on his judgment continues unbroken: and now the very shame and grief of his past failures and punishments seem to co-operate with his palsy of reason in preparing him for a third hoax even more gross and ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... arboretum. Darblay, the name of Fanny Burney's husband, is a variant. From au(l)ne, alder, we have aunai, whence our Dawnay. So also frenai has given Freeney, chenai, Chaney, and the Norm. quenai is one origin of Kenney, while the older chesnai appears in Chesney. Houssaie, from hoax, holly, gives Hussey; chastenai, chestnut grove, exists in Nottingham as Chastener; coudrai, hazel copse, gives Cowdrey and Cowdery; Verney and Varney are from vernai, grove of alders, of Celtic origin, and Viney corresponds to the ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... rejoined Feng Tzu-ying smiling. "You're all far too credulous! It's a mere hoax that I made use of the other day. For so much did I fear that you would be sure to refuse if I openly asked you to a drinking bout, that I thought it fit to say what I did. But your attendance to-day, so soon after my invitation, makes it clear, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Appendix, B, or that beautiful compend of them in Pope's "Messiah" he will I believe allow, that if it were possible for such things as the above mentioned, to be really intended by those prophecies, they would be the greatest hoax, and the most flagrant and enormous verification of the old proverb "parturiunt montes ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... escape from the house without being recognized. His motive and his personality still remain matters of conjecture. Whether the whole affair was a figment of Shelley's brain, rendered more than usually susceptible by laudanum taken to assuage intense physical pain; whether it was a perilous hoax played upon him by the Irish servant, Daniel Hill; or whether, as he himself surmised, the crime was instigated by an unfriendly neighbour, it is impossible to say. Strange adventures of this kind, blending fact and fancy in a now inextricable tangle, are of no unfrequent occurrence ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... again. A rise behind the barn was about a mile from a similar rise on Sam Atkins' place. They communicated across that distance in all the ways, including various kinds of codes, that Fenwick could think of to find some evidence of hoax. Afterwards, they returned to the laboratory and sawed in two the crystals they had just used. Then they showed him the tests they had devised to determine the nature of the ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... established rules. But the rules were made by the capitalists. THEY have laid down the laws of the game. THEY hold the pick of the cards. We never can win by political methods. The right of suffrage is the greatest hoax of history. Direct action is the only way."] There is a great deal of idealism among the advocates of violence;[Footnote: Cf, for example, Giovannitti's poem, The Cage, in the Atlantic Monthly, June, 1913.] ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... offices to companies or professional men. The names of the occupants were painted up at the bottom on the wall, but there was no such name as the Franco-Midland Hardware Company, Limited. I stood for a few minutes with my heart in my boots, wondering whether the whole thing was an elaborate hoax or not, when up came a man and addressed me. He was very like the chap that I had seen the night before, the same figure and voice, but he was clean shaven and his ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... prelate publicly denounced the imposture, and an Abbe Deleon, priest in the diocess of Grenoble, printed a work called 'La Salette a Valley of Lies.' In this publication it was maintained, with proofs, that the hoax was gotten up by a Mademoiselle de Lamerliere, a sort of half-crazy nun, who impersonated the character of the Virgin. For the injury done to her character by this book she sued the priest for damages to the tone of twenty thousand francs, demanding ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... herself, but feeling ever so much bigger and wiser; for he was an only son, a clever and rather conceited young gentleman. He was good-natured, and loved his cousin; but he loved better to tease and hoax her. Having lived all her little life in India, Meggie was exceedingly ignorant of customs and things in her new home, and was continually making laughable mistakes, and asking the most absurd ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... we are all engaged in; I feared this as a great calamity—an injury done to many to gratify the fancy of one. But Natalie, I will confess, scorned me for that doubt; and, indeed, was so foolish as to propose a little hoax, to prove to me that, even if she promised to marry you as a reward, she could not get you to abandon our cause. 'No, no,' she said; 'that is not to be feared. He is not one to ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... whether we had brought the wrong one—but no; there it was, "Heathfield House," four miles from Weybridge, surrounded by its own grounds of four acres, tastefully laid out in lawn, flower and kitchen-gardens, &c, &c. Rent only $350. We began to imagine that we were the victims of some hoax, and were just on the point of telling the driver to return to the station, when a dirty-looking man came to the carriage, and said, "Are ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton
... madcap brother of the Duke of. Buccleugh, gallop up the street bareheaded, waving his hat above his head and shouting "The Queen, the Queen!" The listeners looked at each other and laughed. How well the hoax was gone about; but who would presume to play such a trick, it was too much even from Lord John—did not somebody say it was Lord John? On the line of route too! What were the police ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... Worcester, in whose mind the conception of the steam-engine was already taking shape, informed her that the raving prisoner was not a madman, but a genius. A great stir was made by this letter. The anecdote was copied into standard works, and represented in engravings. Yet it was a complete hoax. De Caus was not only never confined in a madhouse, but he was architect to Louis XIII. up to the time of his death, in 1630, just eleven years BEFORE Marion Delorme was said to have seen him ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... entertainment to Jesuits which, as thou knowest, is felony. Nay;" as Lord Stafford was about to speak, "I would not ask thee if it be true or no. But for that cause do I say, let the girl assume once more her male attire and go with me to the court. Elizabeth likes not to be made the victim of a hoax, but there are times when none enjoys a jest more than she. When the time is propitious, I and other of thy friends, will disclose the matter to the queen. Believe me when I say that it will be ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... people seemed unconscious of the part his father played at Washington. Stoneman's Confiscation Bill had not yet been discussed in Congress, and the promise of land to the negroes was universally regarded as a hoax of the League to win their followers. The old Commoner was not an orator. Hence his name was scarcely known in the South. The Southern people could not conceive of a great leader except one who expressed his power through the megaphone of oratory. They held ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... Baythim, sir. Dodeth. Have you had any reports on a new species—a bipedal one? What? No, sir; I'm not kidding. One of my men has brought in 'graphs of the thing. Frankly, I'm inclined to think it's a hoax of some kind, but I'd like to ask you to check to see if it's been reported in any of the other areas. We're located a little out of the way here, and I thought perhaps some of the stations farther north or south had seen it. Yes. That's right: two locomotive limbs, two handling limbs. Big ...
— The Asses of Balaam • Gordon Randall Garrett
... no purpose, and expressed a wish that Mr. C. had been clearer in his citation, as "no one could understand it." On my naming this to Mr. Coleridge, he laughed heartily, and said, "It was all a hoax." "Not meeting" said he, "with a suitable motto, I invented one, and with references purposely obscure," as will be explained in the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... found it crowded to excess with rough and boisterous diggers. The hour struck as I was getting my articles arranged and spread out upon the table, and they began shouting, "Where's the Missionary?"—"Another hoax!"—indicating that they were not unwilling for a row. I learned that, only a few nights ago, a so-called Professor had advertised a lecture, lifted entrance money till the Hall was crowded, and then quietly slipped ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... abandoned the hope of explaining Greenacre's mysterious circumstances, and the attempt to decide whether his stories were worthy of belief or not. Half suspecting that he might be the victim of a hoax he telegraphed an acceptance, and thought no more of the matter until evening approached. Part of his day was spent in helping a distracted shopkeeper on the verge of failure to obtain indulgence from certain of his creditors he also secured a place as errand boy for ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... Republicans that are behind it all," affirmed El Conejo in his most serious manner, and he would be off to another place to spread the news or perpetrate another hoax. He would join ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... chamber, and connecting them somewhat with the wild stories I had heard in the garden, I still had a sort of indefinite idea that the whole thing was a masquerading freak got up in my absence, and that the bacchanalian orgie I was witnessing was nothing more than a portion of some elaborate hoax of which I was to be the victim. But when my eyes turned to the corner where I had left a huge and cumbrous piano, and beheld a vast and sombre organ lifting its fluted front to the very ceiling, and convinced myself, by a hurried process of memory, that it occupied the very spot in which I had left ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... sect. The Rosicrucian pamphlets which appeared in Germany at the beginning of the 17th century, dating from the Discovery of the Brotherhood of the Honourable Order of the Rosy Cross, a pamphlet published in 1610, by a Lutheran clergyman, Valentine Andreae, were part of a hoax designed perhaps originally as means of establishing a sort of charitable masonic society of social reformers. Missing that aim, the Rosicrucian story lived to be adorned by superstitious fancy, with ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... I did not mean to send you such trash. The man must be either an escaped lunatic or has tried his hand at a hoax. It is a ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... said, "but nobody will know of it if we hold our tongues. We'll have to hold them anyhow, for Sylvia's sake, since she's been goose enough to go and fall in love with the Old Fellow. She'd go wild if she ever found out the letter was a hoax. We have made that match, Ruggles. He'd never have got up enough spunk to tell her he wanted her, and she'd probably have married Micky out ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... took, for some unknown reason, to be a chandler; in the shabby young man accompanied by Mistigris, a fellow of no account; in Oscar a ninny, and in Pere Leger, the fat farmer, an excellent subject to hoax. Having thus looked over the ground, he resolved to amuse himself at ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... have been more struck with the little embarrassment which she could not perfectly control, but at the moment he was not quite himself either. That impudent Doady Donne had played a shameful hoax on him, had actually had the audacity to declare that she had seen his wife—Nina, Mrs. Dacres—in Teddy Vere's hansom! He hadn't taken what she said very pleasantly, for the bare notion made him furious, and—though telling himself all the while that he didn't believe it—until he had found ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... was not so very drunk now; he spoke passably clearly, and did not twist any words. What did he mean? But when the witty dog reached the declaration that he could only thrive in a high spiritual altitude, then the guests broke into peals of merriment and understood that it was a capital hoax. The merry blade—hadn't he almost fooled them all! "Poor remnants of the intellectual life of the seventies!" Didn't we have Paulsberg and Irgens, and Ojen and Milde, and the two close-cropped poets, and an entire army of first-class, sprouting ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... everybody to know from what author it was derived. One and another inquired of me, to no purpose, and expressed a wish that Mr. C. had been clearer in his citation, as 'no one could understand it.' On my naming this to Mr. Coleridge, he laughed heartily, and said, "It was all a hoax. Not meeting," said he, "with a suitable motto, I invented one, and with references purposely obscure, as will be explained in the ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... foovax] Originally, a fictitious Usenet site at the Kremlin, announced on April 1, 1984 in a posting ostensibly originated there by Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko. The posting was actually forged by Piet Beertema as an April Fool's joke. Other fictitious sites mentioned in the hoax were moskvax and {kgbvax}. This was probably the funniest of the many April Fool's forgeries perpetrated on Usenet (which has negligible security against them), because the notion that Usenet might ever penetrate the Iron Curtain seemed so totally ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... volumes, he would frankly say that he yields no credit to the presumed fact, and at the same time he would refer to the vocabulary contained in the second volume, whence it will appear that the words HOAX and HOCUS have been immediately derived from the language of the Gypsies, who, there is good reason to believe, first introduced the system into Europe, to which ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... a small tin box, containing a letter addressed to him, in which a commercial house was mentioned at Nancy, where he might receive the sum buried, with interest, since the year 1812. The soldier supposed this was all a hoax; he went, however, to the house pointed out, where he received his capital, with twelve years' interest. With this sum he established a small business at Nancy, which enables him to live comfortably; but he has never been able, though he has taken some ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various
... I had determined, on Naomi's account, to clear the matter up; but it is only candid to add that my doubts of John Jago's existence remained unshaken by the letter. I believed it to be nothing more nor less than a heartless and stupid "hoax." ...
— The Dead Alive • Wilkie Collins
... only partially satisfied, Roddy now regarded his expedition with little favor. He reverted strongly to the theory that some one was making a fool of him. He reminded himself that if in New York he had received such a note, he either would have at once dismissed it as a hoax or turned it over to the precinct station-house. But as the darkness changed to gray, and the black bulk of the Cafe Ducrot came into view, his interest quickened. He encouraged himself with the thought that while in New York ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... unofficer-like and unbecoming conduct, and requiring them to repair immediately on board the Lee with their luggage, as I felt it to be an imperative duty to take them back to the Confederacy for trial by court-martial. The junior demurred, believing it to be a hoax, but the senior peremptorily ordered him to accompany him on board. They were caught in a drenching shower on their way to the Lee; and they made their appearance in the cabin in a sorry plight, reporting themselves "in obedience to orders," handing ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... at Harvard in 1911; in 1917 by "The Little King", a poetic drama; in 1917 also by "Grenstone Poems", a collection of his lyric work to date. In 1916, in connection with his friend, Arthur Davison Ficke, Mr. Bynner perpetrated the clever literary hoax of "Spectra", a volume of verse in the ultra-modern manner, designed to establish a new "school" of poetry that should outdo "Imagism" and other cults then in the public eye. These poems, published under the joint authorship ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... they know any that are, going to enter into the navy, the necessity, in the first instance, of showing or recommending a proper spirit. Never let the debutant regard how young or how feeble he may be—he must make head against the first insult—he must avenge the first hoax. No doubt he will be worsted, and get a good beating; but that one will save him from many hundreds hereafter, and, perhaps, the necessity of fighting a mortal duel. Your certain defeat will be forgotten in the admiration of the spirit that provoked the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... box-office will be open from three-quarters past two until a quarter before three for the payment of claims." The box-office was besieged at half-past two by a crowd of creditors who had failed to see the hoax. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... young people. It may be said that all five were concerned in a complicated hoax on Mr. Gurney. Nor would such a hoax argue any unusual moral obliquity. Surtees of Mainsforth, in other respects an honourable man, took in Sir Walter Scott with forged ballads, and never undeceived his friend. Southey played off a hoax with his book The Doctor. Hogg, Lockhart, ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... long years: And if there be sublimity in tears, Those shall be precious which the adventurer shed When his frail star gave way, and waked his fears, Lest, by the ungenerous crowd it might be said, That he was all a hoax, or that his ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... need not say, also enjoyed himself there. In Boswell's record we have a character called Mudge, an "out of the way" name; and in Pickwick we find a Mudge. George Steevens, who figures so much in Boswell's work, was the author of an antiquarian hoax played off on a learned brother, of the same class as "Bill Stumps, his mark." He had an old inscription engraved on an unused bit of pewter—it was well begrimed and well battered, then exposed for sale in a broker's shop, where it was greedily purchased by the credulous virtuoso. ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... of you had come to me with such a report," he said finally, "I would have found it incredible; I would have thought you were entirely insane, or trying some wild hoax." ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... seized on Laing's champagne and was pouring it out. He stopped now, and looked at Dora. A sudden gleam of intelligence glanced from her eyes. Rushing up to him, she whispered, "You did it all? It was all a hoax?" ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... his cries to his friends to put him out of his misery. Intensely agitated, poor little Fresh is hurried by pretended friends into a carriage, and driven off; and it is not till a week afterwards that he learns he has been the victim of a hoax. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... gentleman's opinion was the same as his: to wit, that some wag was minded to play off a hoax upon him, and that the matter of the letter was all nothing ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... of a distillery; and the spectre, described in horrible detail, proves to be a harmless idiot, with a red handkerchief round her neck. Apart from these gibes, there is not a hint of the supernatural in the whole book. It is a picaresque novel, written by a sportsman. The title is merely a hoax. ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... I saw they agreed with me that somebody, signing himself James Skaw, was still trying to hoax the Great ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... That old man came flying to Colebrook three years ago all in black broadcloth (had lost his wife lately then), getting out of a third-class smoker as if the devil had been at his heels; and the only thing that brought him down was a letter—a hoax probably. Some joker had written to him about a seafaring man with some such name who was supposed to be hanging about some girl or other, either in Colebrook or in the neighbourhood. "Funny, ain't it?" The old chap had been advertising in the London ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... appearance of a huge bowl of punch. Whereupon Dan, thinking that the joke had gone far enough, suddenly dived his head into the porcelain vase, and threw his heels into the air. The surprise and indignation of the solemn Spaniards was such, that they made a most intemperate report of the hoax that had been played on them to Lord Wellington; Dan, however, was ultimately forgiven, ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... number of those who had tried and failed, and were naturally disgruntled, was large enough to be heard, so a rumor got about that the whole thing was a vast hoax—a mean joke perpetrated upon the helpless public by a lousy old crook who hadn't any ...
— Mr. Chipfellow's Jackpot • Dick Purcell
... undertaken unless the noble Lord considered that the object was a reality, on which the interests of the country and of Europe depended. I think he would have been the last man in the country to lend himself to such a miserable hoax as going to Vienna, not to make peace, but to shame Austria into becoming a faithful and warlike ally. I assume, therefore, that terms were sincerely offered, and that those terms gave guarantees which were sufficient, ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... and what was expected at home from it. 'Of what use,' I asked, 'will it be to the King of the Mice and all our large community that I have seen this beautiful sight? I cannot shake the sausage-stick and say, You see here the stick—now comes the soup! That would be like a hoax.' ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... upon my bed, and began to gather my scattered wits, and reflect upon what I had seen and heard. But the more I reflected the less I could make of it. Was I mad, or drunk, or dreaming, or was I merely the victim of a gigantic and most elaborate hoax? How was it possible that I, a rational man, not unacquainted with the leading scientific facts of our history, and hitherto an absolute and utter disbeliever in all the hocus-pocus which in Europe goes by the ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... appearances it was reassuringly the same as all the others. Gently she pushed it right and left, then up and down, but her pressure was so slight and nervous that it did not stir the heavy wood. She breathed a great sigh of relief, and beginning now to believe herself the victim of some cruel hoax, she dared a firmer pressure. The panel responded—moved—slid slowly behind its fellow—revealing the steel muzzle of a safe let into the solid masonry. It seemed the result of some evil witchcraft; her blood chilled. Yet, with renewed ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... curious one. We were driving to an unknown place, on an unknown errand. Yet our invitation was either a complete hoax,—which was an inconceivable hypothesis,—or else we had good reason to think that important issues might hang upon our journey. Miss Morstan's demeanor was as resolute and collected as ever. I endeavored to cheer and amuse her ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the matter all day, and by evening I was in low spirits again; for I had quite persuaded myself that the whole affair must be some great hoax or fraud, though what its object might be I could not imagine. It seemed altogether past belief that anyone could make such a will, or that they would pay such a sum for doing anything so simple as copying out the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica.' ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... he had that morning received a letter from Trevanion, not mentioning a word about his illness; and on turning to the newspaper, and seeing a paragraph headed, "Sudden and alarming illness of Mr. Trevanion," the marquis had suspected some party manoeuvre or unfeeling hoax, since the mail that had brought the letter must have travelled as quickly as any messenger who had given the information to the newspaper. He had, however, immediately sent down to the office of the journal to inquire on what ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... who was absolutely repulsive to you—whose kisses are poison—so long as you thought he was rich. But directly you are told he is poor you inform him of your real sentiments with a delightful frankness. Suppose this confession of mine were a hoax, and that I really were the wealthy Brian after all—playing off a practical joke to test your feelings—what a sorry ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... Anitchkoff replied with dignity. "He was my master and I can admit no imputation on his memory. Besides, your guess is as good as mine. Whether he bought the picture in his precritical days, keeping it as a warning and imposing it upon his followers as a hoax—this I can merely conjecture. As for Brooks, the case is simple; he couldn't resist a Giorgione at a bargain. But since you will, you may as well hear the rest of the story—at ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... the stranger, the cause of it all? He had not heard from him since the day of their visit to Mrs. Bean's, and but for the cheque which he had received he would have been inclined to consider the whole thing as a hoax. ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... only do his words carry with the crowds that gather before his house to hear his prophecy, but his warnings shape the actions of some of the Transvaal Generals. The Government report will not go so far as to brand "Oom Niklaas" as a hoax. Says the preface: ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... swept a glance across their faces. They all wore smiles of sorts. There was something amusing about this—something out of the regular routine. A little knot of chorus-girls halted in the act of going out the wide doors and stood watching. Was it just a hoax? The suppressed unnatural silence sounded like it. But at what John Galbraith did, one of the bystanders ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... O God!" and she bowed her head upon her clasped and quivering hands. "But, Captain Ambrose—he did not tell you so?" looking up suddenly. "Christian Garth, indeed! his impudence is surprising—another hoax, I suppose," and she tried to smile; ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Director of the Museum of Berlin," were pronounced to be of very fine water. It is possible that the sandstone may afford precious stones like the itacolumite of the Brazil ("Highlands of the Brazil," i. 380), but the whole affair proved a hoax. In mid-stream rose No. 2, "One-Tree Island," Zunga chya Nlemba or Shika chya Nzondo; in Tuckey it is called Boola Beca or Blemba (the husband) Rock; the old ficus dying at the head, was based upon a pedestal which appeared groin-shaped from the east. Here the mirage ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... against each other, to spread angry gossip, and to do as much damage as possible. He knows how to stay in the background, to disappear at the right moment. -Once I was writing, suspecting nothing bad, in our spacious bath and w.c. (here I was safe from surprises) a longer work on the "Hoax of Genius". I explained that genius is a title, not a quality. That fact is often overlooked, and engenders great confusion. The name is accidental, generally suspicious. Whoever is called a genius is therefore not a brilliant person. Brilliant ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... young officers looked hard at Desmond, to discover if he was speaking seriously, for his tone was so quiet, and matter of fact, that they could scarce credit that he had passed through such an exciting adventure; and the three were so accustomed to hoax each other, that it struck them both as simply an invention on the part of their comrade, so absolutely improbable did it seem ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... 'miserable daubing' and a 'sinful waste of time'.[77] In this temper he wrote and published a second installment, which carried the story through what was subsequently known as the first book. In this installment the hoax of the ghost scene is cleared up, but the Armenian remains a mystery. The Prince maintains a sensible, rationalistic attitude, asks many questions, puts this and that together and finally concludes that Armenian and Sicilian are two ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... join the ranks of a secret society said to have been founded two centuries before by a certain Christian Rosenkreuz who had mastered the hidden wisdom of the East. It seems probable that this book was an elaborate hoax, but it was taken seriously at the time, and the seventeenth century saw the formation of numerous groups of "Brothers of the Rosy Cross." They dabbled in alchemy, spiritualism, and magic, and mingled modern science with ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... writing is good. It is inexpedient to repeat the impertinent assertions of those who have not sufficient powers of discernment between the painstaking replies to our thousands of correspondents and what they are pleased to designate "a hoax." ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... diamond necklace valued at $7200. That, at least, is what Madame Loisel thought for ten terrible years, and that is what the reader thinks till he comes to the last words of the story. The plot belongs, therefore, to that large group known as hoax plots. In most of these stories one person plays a joke on another. In this story a grim fate is made to play the joke. In fact, the current phrase, "the irony of fate," finds here perfect illustration. We use the expression not so much of a great misfortune ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... lady in almost stentorious accents, "or is this an unmanly hoax?" Suddenly she stopped in undeniable consternation. "Good heavens," she muttered, "if Abner should believe this. He is SUCH a fool! He has lately been queer and jealous. Oh dear!" she said, turning to Polly Jenkinson with the first indication ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... lugubriously comical in the way Newman's thoroughly contemporaneous optimism was confronted with this dusky old-world expedient. To see a woman made for him and for motherhood to his children juggled away in this tragic travesty—it was a thing to rub one's eyes over, a nightmare, an illusion, a hoax. But the hours passed away without disproving the thing, and leaving him only the after-sense of the vehemence with which he had embraced Madame de Cintre. He remembered her words and her looks; he turned them over and tried to shake the mystery out ...
— The American • Henry James
... Holloway—we'll even accept the designation they've coined for them—but we'll make it very clear that while highly intelligent, the Fuzzies are not a race of sapient beings. If Rainsford persists in making any such claim, we will brand it as a deliberate hoax." ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... wrote to them from aboard that he was sentenced to be hanged for mutiny, and implored of them to use every interest to save him. Lord Shannon interested himself in the affair, and the greatest trouble was taken to obtain a pardon. But it turned out to be a hoax practised by D'Esterre, when under the influence of the Jolly God. Knowing his character, many even of opposite politics, notwithstanding the party spirit that then prevailed, regretted the issue the ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... a false one," continued the Commissioner, "the matter would have been resolved into a meaningless hoax, but the message having been what it was, we find ourselves face to face with no ordinary problem. Remember, Inspector, that voices on the telephone are deceptive. Sergeant Sowerby has marked ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... you think they're going back to it? Here are three people who, from weakness or a false sense of duty, had not the courage to escape. Do you think that they won't cling like grim death to the liberty which I'm giving them? Nonsense! Why, they would have swallowed a hoax twice as difficult to digest as that which Mlle. Boussignol dished up for them! After all, my version was no more absurd than the truth. On the contrary. And they swallowed it whole! Look at this: before we left, I heard Madame d'Imbleval and Madame ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... K. L. MS. which we kept under our pillow for thirteen days and nights, was beginning to worry us. After all, might it not be a literary hoax, we thought, and might not this Khalid be a myth. And yet, he does not seem to have sought any material or worldly good from the writing of his Book. Why, then, should he resort to deception? Still, we doubted. And one evening we were detained by the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... for you," said his wife, meaning that now he would not be made to suffer for attempting to hoax her. But she was too intensely interested to pursue that matter further. "What in the world do you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... twelve o'clock came round. I was hungry, and there was nothing in the house. The cook had eaten the last bit of bread. This could not go on. It did, however, until two, when my sensations were terrible. After all, I began to think the document very absurd. Perhaps it might only be a gigantic hoax. Besides, some means would surely be found to keep my uncle back from attempting any such absurd expedition. On the other hand, if he did attempt anything so quixotic, I should not be compelled to ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... happy in this work and had begun to feel that at last he was making progress when evil fortune knocked at his door and, conspiring with circumstances and a friend or two, induced the young poet to devise what afterward seemed to him the gravest of mistakes,—the Poe-poem hoax. He was then writing for an audience of county papers and never dreamed that this whimsical bit of fooling would be carried beyond such boundaries. It was suggested by ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... the reply, "this story of the Rosario viejo. I have heard it many times and I presume this shaft has been explored by every prospector in this section. In my opinion it is a huge hoax." ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... volunteered the information that the Boches had thrown a grenade at him as he turned the corner "down there"—"It didn't go off." So calm an atmosphere pervaded the cold, sunny, autumnal afternoon that the idea "the trenches" took on the proportions of a gigantic hoax; we might have been masqueraders in the trenches after the war was over. And the Germans were only seventy-five feet away, across those bare poles, stumps, and matted dead ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... heard him calling out that he had found water. At this announcement, our orderly march broke at once into a hasty scramble. Browne alone maintained his dignity, and came on at his usual elephantine pace, probably suspecting that the pretended discovery was a hoax. Morton and I raced along the hollow, "neck and neck," till we suddenly reached a point where there was an abrupt descent to the level of the shore. We were under too much headway to be able to stop, and jumping together ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... had picked up from the floor, and laid it in the physician's hand. As the doctor read, a look of indignant horror swept over his face. Then he said: "Can it be possible! I never suspected such a thing. It must be a cruel, senseless hoax." ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... cottage in time to admit Eric Coverly, whom he showed into the study, having informed him that I should be back in less than ten minutes. He had then proceeded to Denmark Hill railway station only to find, as I had found, that the appointment was a hoax and "the man with a ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... reader, that the gigantic reflector of Lord Rosse, and the exquisite fifteen- inch refractors of the modern observatories, eliminate from the chaotic rubbish-heap of the surface of old Thornbush much smaller objects than such a circle as I have named. If you have read Mr. Locke's amusing Moon Hoax as often as I have, you have those details fresh in your memory. As John Farrar taught us when all this began,—and as I have said already,—if there were a State House in Thornbush two hundred feet long, the first Herschel would have ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... somewhat hurriedly put together these observations. You may rely upon the truth of the facts stated, and they are at your service if coming within the scope and meaning of your intended history. At the same time, if the thing be a newspaper hoax, I must beg you to excuse the liberty I have taken in addressing you, and please burn this and ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... "Sounds like a hoax of some sort," remarked Phil. "But Lizzie has been chafing at the bit all day in the garage and I don't mind a ride. Come on, Dad, let's see what this ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... to think there was a hoax, and certainly the forgery of one letter would have thrown suspicion upon ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... marked by enthusiasm for new experiments in versification, new feats of technique, the borderland between real conquests of novel territory and sheer nonsense verse becomes very hazy. The Spectra hoax, perpetrated so cleverly in 1916 by Mr. Ficke and Mr. Witter Bynner, fooled many of the elect. [Footnote: See Untermeyer's New Era, etc., pp. 320-23.] I have never believed that Emerson meant to decry Poe when he referred to him as "the jingle-man." Emerson's memory for names was ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... sudden fall to their hopes when a letter was received from him stating that the cliffs, the bay, and the head-lands were all built up on the airy foundation of a mirage. The elves and sprites of this desolate region had been playing a hoax upon Goyder's party. But it is no wonder that Goyder had been so open to deception after unexpectedly finding fresh water in the lake that had been so long known as salter ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... unable to believe in the existence of the Supreme. A favourite question to the missionaries was this, "Is your God white or black?" If the European, startled by the question, hesitated for a moment, they would leave him with open signs of disgust at having been made the victims of a hoax. ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... girl visitin' the Carders was kidnapped right out o' the field by an areoplane. Yes, sir, slick as a whistle." Ben's look of interest and amazement rewarded the narrator. "One o' the hands from the farm come in last night and told about it, but the editor o' the paper thought't was a hoax and he didn't dare to work on it last night. Lots of us saw the plane, but the feller's story did sound fishy, and if the Sunburst—that's our paper—should print a lot o' stuff about Carder shootin' guns and foamin' at the mouth when he saw the girl he was goin' ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... reading of this message to the convention, it was openly declared to be a hoax, not one member in twenty believing that a message could possibly have been received. The convention adjourned till the next day, first instructing its president to communicate with Senator Wright by letter. A special messenger, by hard ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... Madagascar squib (A description of a carnivorous plant supposed to subsist on human beings.) quite gravely, and when I found it stated that Felis and Bos inhabited Madagascar, I thought it was a false story, and did not perceive it was a hoax till I came to ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... referred to was a hoax Alex had played on his father the previous First of April. Through an arrangement of wires beneath the office table, by which with his foot, unseen, he could make the instruments above click as though worked from another office, he had ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... at all!" she exclaimed, laughing and quite unembarrassed. "But I think you were wicked to hoax us so. Did you hear ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... in London and New York in 1917, and was increased by the discovery of two distinct issues in the Dowse Library, in the Massachusetts Historical Society. As my material grew in bulk and the history of this hoax perpetrated in the seventeenth century developed, I thought it of sufficient interest to communicate an outline of the story to the Club of Odd Volumes, of Boston, October 23, 1918. The results of my investigations ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... the other around the room, and although he had delivered his ultimatum in a hectoring tone, it was plain that he found himself dissatisfied with the situation. Perhaps he was uncertain whether or not the whole thing was a hoax and himself the butt of a joke, to be laughed at later for treating the affair in a melodramatic way. The faces before him told him nothing. At last he cleared his throat again with finality, and bowing to Lady Clifford with something ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... more, but his heart sank like a lump of lead in his breast. The talk of a ship being in sight must be a hoax, unless Crabtree ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... you jump it!" said Beef McNaughton, when Hicks indignantly denied that he had been scared over the cross-bar, "but indirectly, old man, we helped you to win! If we had not put up a hoax on you—" ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... owner himself; it was evidently fresh from a human jaw, though there had not been the slightest effusion of blood from the man's mouth. The thought had naturally suggested itself to us that the whole thing was a hoax, and that the patient was an accomplice; but if so, the doctor was no novice at sleight of hand, and the expression of astonishment on the other man's face when he found his tooth gone, was as perfect a specimen of histrionic ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... Reminiscences of Newport, pp. 392-407. Laing (Heimskringla, pp. 182-185) thinks the Yankees must have intended to fool Professor Rafn and the Royal Society of Antiquaries at Copenhagen; "Those sly rogues of Americans," says he, "dearly love a quiet hoax;" and he can almost hear them chuckling over their joke in their club-room at Newport. I am afraid these Yankees were less rogues and more fools than ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... rushed out edition after edition on the strength of it, until the St. James's Gazette put an end to the excitement by publishing a telegram from the Mayor of Liverpool denouncing the report as an insane and criminal hoax. ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... who gathered around Mrs. Paxton were inclined to think the note a hoax, but Mrs. Dainty, coming forward, lifted her handsome head, and looking at the men who were lounging comfortably in the large rockers, or sitting upon the piazza railing, spoke the word that spurred ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... colonel talked big, and explained the whole affair to the ladies, quite unconscious that everyone in the company knew that the hoax had been played upon him. Before noon, everyone had re-embarked on board of their respective ships, and their lofty sails were expanded to a light and ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... few moments Andy gazed stupidly, unable for the time to understand that he had been made the victim of a hoax. While this was slowly dawning upon him, the door burst open and, with a yell of laughter, the ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... juggle, reach, hocus, bite; card sharping, stacked deck, loaded dice, quick shuffle, double dealing, dealing seconds, dealing from the bottom of the deck; artful dodge, swindle; tricks upon travelers; stratagem &c (artifice) 702; confidence trick, fake, hoax; theft &c 791; ballot-box stuffing [U.S.], barney [Slang]; brace game [Slang], bunko game, drop game [Slang], gum game [U.S.], panel game [U.S.], shell game, thimblerig, skin game [U.S.]. snare, trap, pitfall, decoy, gin; springe^, springle^; noose, hoot; bait, decoy-duck, tub to the whale, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... other scheme to obtain their assistance against Simms and Ward; then they could throw the three into irons and all would be lovely; but now that fool Ward had upset the whole thing by hitting upon this asinine fire hoax as an excuse for boarding the Lotus in force, and had further dampened Theriere's pet scheme by suggesting to Skipper Simms the danger of Theriere being recognized as they were boarding the Lotus and bringing suspicion upon them ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Macpherson. What may seem more surprising, I continued at my own work in the dockyard, besides acting (though really but nominally) as sub-contractor in the excavating work at the cemetery. In about a week, however, Mr Macpherson "smelt a rat," and found out that the job was a hoax so far as I was concerned; nevertheless the work went on all right. The land was very soft and easily worked, being mostly formed of sand and pebbles; and the contract was completed within five weeks. ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... for having their guest remain in the camp; but Preciosa was against it; and her grandmother said, that she could not go to Seville or its neighbourhood, on account of a hoax she had once played off upon a capmaker named Truxillo, well known in Seville. She had persuaded him to put himself up to his neck in a butt of water, stark naked, with a crown of cypress on his head, there to remain till midnight, when he was to step out, and look for a great treasure, which ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... 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 than they had been when plainly stated in the ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... it's no use losing your head," said the Duke, with quiet firmness. "If this letter isn't a hoax—" ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... concert closed in a nocturnal orgy of unbridled license, which, but for the absence of intoxicants, might compare with the worst of the ancient bacchanalia. The singers in the cave were the old men and women who had ensconced themselves in it secretly during the day; but the hoax was not suspected by the children and young people, who firmly believed that the spirits of the dead really assembled that night in the cavern and assisted at the sports ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... knocked down by a mob, and surely I couldn't help it if this man Carpenter found me while I was unconscious, and made me well. Nor could I fail to be polite to my benefactor, and try to help him about. My Uncle Timothy was amazed, because he had accepted the "Times" story that it was all a "movie" hoax. Everybody will tell you in Western City that they "never believe a word they read in the 'Times'"; but of course they do—they have to believe something, and what else ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... be imagined. He was made to see, gently and by degrees, that it was obviously impossible to court-martial the whole Regiment and equally impossible to proceed against any subaltern who, in his belief, had any concern in the hoax. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... subject, they would not be accessory to the ruin of the theatre, by insisting upon a return to the former prices. Notwithstanding the little sop he had thrown out to feed the vanity of this roaring Cerberus, the only answer he received was a renewal of the noise, intermingled with shouts of "Hoax! hoax! imposition!" Mr. O'Reilly, the gallant friend of Madame Catalani, afterwards addressed the pit, and said no reliance could be placed on the report of the committee. The profits of the theatre were evidently great: they had saved the heavy salary of Madame Catalani; ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... harum-scarums (that touched the very bone) who had with more caution than propriety withheld their names. The article was headed, "The Crayfish-eaters' Ticket." It continued further to say that, had not the publication of this ticket been regarded as a dull hoax, it would not have been suffered to pass for two weeks unchallenged, and that it was now high time the universal wish should be realized ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... yet decided, whereupon my tormentor, after looking at my feet, which I have never succeeded in growing up to, observed, "Well, if I were you, I think I should emigrate to Colorado and help to crush the beetle." Later on in life I was the victim of a cruel hoax, carried out with triumphant ingenuity by a confirmed practical joker, who with the aid of a thread caused what appeared to be a gigantic blackbeetle to perform strange and unholy evolutions in my sitting-room. Worst of all, I was victimised by the presence of a blackbeetle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... anxiety. The questions whether the bookseller would have any copies left of the wonderful poem; whether it could really be bought for eighteen-pence; and whether the big farmer's boy did not mean the whole story as a hoax, occupied his mind all night long. It seemed so improbable to him, on reflection, that a book containing the most exquisite verses could be bought for little more than the common fairy tales of the hawkers, and it seemed still more improbable that, being sold so cheap, there would be any books ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... y wave, gentlemen—and it was on the y wave that the messages came. You may be interested to know that the number of lives lost, the property damage, the business losses due to the panic, have not yet been fully determined; but it makes the hysteria following the Fantafilm hoax very small potatoes ...
— The Fourth Invasion • Henry Josephs
... interrupt a conversation with a pun, turn into ridicule science and the savant; despise all things which they do not know or which they fear; set themselves above all by constituting themselves the supreme judges of all. They would all hoax their fathers, and be ready to shed crocodile tears upon their mothers' breasts; but generally they believe in nothing, blaspheme women, or play at modesty, and in reality are led by some old woman or an evil courtesan. They are ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... marked with various characters, which the doctor confessed he could not decipher, and which the bearer of the note was very anxious to have explained. A very brief examination of the paper convinced me that it was not only a mere hoax, but a very clumsy one. The characters were arranged in columns, like the Chinese mode of writing, and presented the most singular medley I ever beheld. Greek, Hebrew, and all sorts of letters, more or ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... Academy and a greedy collector of antiquities. This MS. bears the date 1514. The recent origin of this parent codex, and the questionable character of Lo Stradino, gave rise to not unreasonable suspicions. Fanfani roundly asserted that the 'Chronicle' must have been fabricated as a hoax upon the uncritical antiquary, since it suddenly appeared without a pedigree, at a moment when such forgeries were not uncommon. Scheffer-Boichorst, in his most recent pamphlet, committed himself to the opinion that either ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... reality, was given to the narrative by incidental references to actual persons and occurrences that many believed it true, and some were found who remembered Philip Nolan, but had heard different versions of his career. The author of this clever hoax—if hoax it may be called—was Edward Everett Hale, a Unitarian clergyman of Boston, who published a collection of stories in 1868, under the fantastic title, If, Yes, and Perhaps, indicating thereby that some of the tales were possible, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
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