"Mystify" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... failed to get what I was driving at. I didn't mean there was no such thing as mystery. That depends on your point of view. It is only people who are easily startled or confused by unusual things who are easily mystified. I don't mean to say that it would be impossible to mystify me under any circumstances. For instance, if the man in the moon should suddenly jump down on the earth and give me a brick of green cheese, and then jump back again before I could say 'thank you' I ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... solitude and darkness. What original views he would have about himself and life! Would he think himself an abstract intelligence, out of space and time? What a riddle his physical sensations would be to him! Or, suppose him to meet with another being brought up in the same way; how they would mystify each other! Would they learn to feel shame, love, hate? or do the passions only grow in sunshine? Would they ever laugh? Would they hatch plots against each other, lie, deceive? Would they ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... must be a curious reckoning which, in face of such a catena as this, stretching its links over the whole period, maintains that England wanted Germans to teach her how to admire the writer whom Germans have done more to mystify and distort than even ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... CRASSUS. Mystify me, girl! It is the right of an elf. Surely your flickering fire Will draw me to ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... of Meshech and Kedar. What makes it base and morbid is the desire to exclude for the sake of exclusion; to indulge in solitary raptures, hoping to be overheard; to keep the tail of the eye upon the public; to attempt to mystify; and to trade upon the inquisitive instinct of human beings, the natural desire, that is, to know what is going on within any group that seems to have exciting business of ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... gaiety. Like a clear fresh spring, it is ever brimming up from the heart into her mischief-loving eyes. By her side merely technically young people seem heavy and serious. And nothing amuses her more than gravely to mystify, or even bewilderingly shock, some proper acquaintance, or some respectable strangers, with her carefully designed mock improprieties of speech or action. To look at the loveliest of grand-mothers, it is naturally somewhat perplexing to the uninitiated visitor ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... want to mystify you," he added, "but the presence of any one else might jeopardize my plan. I don't ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... methods for obtaining cheap knowledge it is now our intention to adopt. Having got the poorest and least learned authors we could find (of course for cheapness) for our former pieces of information, we have this time engaged a gentleman to mystify a few common-place subjects, in the style of certain articles in the "Penny Cyclopaedia." As his erudition is too profound for ordinary comprehensions—as he scorns gain—as the books he has hitherto ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... but with a play of color again in her cheeks. "Allow me to forbid it unconditionally. I must be plain with you, Mr. Cashel Byron. I do not know what you are or who you are; and I believe you have tried to mystify ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... matter beyond any sort of doubt. If they intended to recognize slavery, they could have said so in one word. If they intended not to recognize it, they could have said it in another word. If they intended to mystify and leave in doubt, then they have been very successful ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... righteousness." It is however of the highest importance that the thought of its simplicity be made prominent. Let us not undervalue religious knowledge; for to some extent it is absolutely necessary. But do not mystify the plan of mercy, and perplex the anxious seeker by requirements which the gospel has not made prominent. Many a poor sinner exercises faith in Christ who cannot give a philosophical disquisition as to its nature. It is not necessary to be thoroughly acquainted with the science ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... the frontier." Gard grew wary. This knowing and recent familiarity was not becoming entirely agreeable. It would be prudent to mystify the son. ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... But you really mystify me. I know you are my friend," she said, "but why are you doing all ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... excess. These forms he sometimes used to the exclusion of simpler, or even more literal, words. The nature of the German language, however, keeps these from being as repulsive as they are in English, but they are sufficiently strange to mystify and annoy the reader. ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... by infusing a less prosaic spirit into the language. Knock your previous argument to pieces by calling attention to the fact that we have made progress since the eighteenth century. (Discover the 'progress,' a beautiful word to mystify the bourgeois public.) Say that the new methods in literature concentrate all styles, comedy and tragedy, description, character-drawing and dialogues, in a series of pictures set in the brilliant frame ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... asserts his belief that he is gifted with second sight, and states that he is able, through a closed door, to name any article touched by any person in sympathy with him, notwithstanding the said person may attempt to mystify him by mentioning a lot of other articles. He then chooses his confederate, as being one with whom he may be in sympathy, and ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... further agreed to provide them with such supplies as they needed. For such as they took with them the girls paid then and there. Harriet chuckled all the way back to the island. She believed that she had planned in such a way as thoroughly to mystify George Baker and his friends, and at the same time convince the latter that the Meadow-Brook Girls were not ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... point where we left the pits of Zat Arrras we found the body of the guard Carthoris had slain. It had not yet been discovered, and, in order to still further delay search and mystify the jed's people, we carried the body with us for a short distance, hiding it in a tiny cell off the main corridor of the pits beneath ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a strong conviction that the Runic alphabet and dialect were simply an invention to mystify poor human nature, I was delighted to find that my uncle knew as much about the matter as I did—which was nothing. At all events the tremulous motion of his fingers made me ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... of wrapping things up in mystery? But women delight in it! The more they can mystify and mislead and perplex you, and leave their real or their possible meaning doubtful and involved, the greater the pleasure they have. They will carry on a conversation for hours by hints, suggestions, ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... planned commissariats, and most of all drew from far and near soldiers of fortune to captain a hopeless cause. In such recruiting, Fouquart implied, her loyalty had not flinched at the most personal tests. What seemed to mystify Fouquart was that none of these whilom champions ever attained the grace of forgetfulness. Every year many of these tottering old gentlemen still reported at Castle del Puente, and there she held court as of old. He himself, although their relations had been not military ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... Pontois were secretly denounced and afterwards found innocent, then it would only mystify the French police; the policy pursued towards the Surete, as well as towards Sir Hugh, was a ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... performers were anything but word perfect and hopelessly forgot or confused their business, which, more especially in a play of such a type as this romantic comedy so full of busy and complicated detail demanding close and continuous attention, was enough to mystify the audience completely and foredoom the piece to failure. The worst sinner was Haunce himself, who hardly spoke one of his lines but gagged from start to finish. Not unnaturally, Mrs. Behn resented this and avows that she would have trounced him roundly in print ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... be true: do you suppose the love to dazzle and mystify is not as strong with some natures as that of gold and power with others? Zicci has a moral ostentation; and the same character that makes him rival kings in expenditure makes him not disdain to be wondered at even by ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... only served to mystify the world to a greater degree. The only thing that came to light was the cause of the bodies' bonelike rigidity. In some inexplicable way the bones in the seamen had dissolved, and according to appearances, while the bodies were plastic, had flattened out. And then, strange ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... women of our day, or the knowledge that a man may, if he will, live the life of a Mormon in Utah, on the quiet; and if he present a wife well gilt with gold, and a title, to society; society will fall prostrate; or this knowledge might mystify us." ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... exactly remember what I said—I was trying to mystify you. But it occurred to me that perhaps it was rather imprudent to pretend to be on—on such impossible terms with ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... time that people of the forest had paused on the hill at twilight to look down on Bradleyburg. The sight always seemed to intrigue and mystify the wild folk,—the shadowed street, the spire of the moldering church ghostly in the half-light, the long row of unpainted shacks, and the dim, pale gleam of an occasional lighted window. The old bull moose, in rutting days, was wont to pause and call, listen ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... however, seemed satisfied that he could carry the ship out, and, as this was all we wanted, no one was disposed to be very critical. A word was said about the launch, which the mate had ordered to be dropped astern, out of the way, and the explanation seemed to mystify the captain. In the meanwhile, the pork was boiling furiously in ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... To mystify Jane was the great amusement of the day; Reginald, finding Maurice possessed with the same notion, did more to maintain it than the others would have thought right, and Maurice reporting his speeches to Jane, she had not the least doubt that her idea was ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stake; and the welfare of succeeding generations will, in no small degree, be influenced by the establishment of sound principles in education at the present time. Nothing, therefore, should be allowed to mystify or cripple that science, upon which the spread and the permanence of all useful ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... among us that the Centipedes were to stand by one another on all occasions, though I don't remember that they did; but further than this we had no purpose, unless it was to accomplish as a body the same amount of mischief which we were sure to do as individuals. To mystify the staid and slow-going Rivermouthians was our frequent pleasure. Several of our pranks won us such a reputation among the townsfolk, that we were credited with having a large finger in whatever went amiss ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... parody, but a poor one, of the Epistolae, and in the second edition are attributed to Ortuinus Gratius. If they are by him, he must have been a dull dog indeed; but by some it has been thought that they are the work of a Reuchlinist, to mystify the monks of Cologne, and render them still more ridiculous; yet, as the Pope's bull against the Epistolae, and Erasmus's disapproving letter, find a prominent place, and some other well-grounded inculpations occur, it appears to me that some slender-witted ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... he had managed to get fodder, in such impassable weather, for such a herd of horses; but he said that they lived upon straw and sawdust; and he knew that I did not believe him, any more than about his star-shavings. And this was just the thing he loved—to mystify honest people, and be a great deal too knowing. However, I may judge him harshly, because I ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... she said. "It is the sword-stick I sent papa for the New Year. You ordered it yourself from Toledo. See, here is the crest. Where did you get it? Do not mystify me. Tell me quickly—is he here? Has he ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... have described him doing in the verses) would now give you the notes of birds in trees, and even hens feeding in a farmyard (which was a corner into which I meant to take my companion), and now melt you into grief and pity, or mystify you with witchcraft, or put you into a state of lofty triumph like a conqueror. The phrase of ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... your tricks, Prime," cried Tom, suspecting the negro of an intention to mystify them with a jargon like that he had palmed off; "jumbee ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... don't in Des Vaches," said Colville. They tried to mystify him further about the bouquets; they succeeded in being very gay, and in making themselves laugh a great deal. Mrs. Bowen was even livelier ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... she besought to be forgiven and delivered from levity and folly—to be kept humble and mindful of death. "It is ill tearing up weeds by the roots," she said to herself plainly, when she had risen from her knees, "and I am vain and volatile, and I like to mystify and tease my neighbour ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... the preparation of this substance have been published, almost all of which, however, appear to complicate and mystify a ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... McClellan does not know if the whole army has crossed or only part of it has crossed. He does not know whether we are going to move against Washington, or move against Baltimore, or invade Pennsylvania. Always mystify, mislead, and deceive the enemy ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... of this famous satire were published in 1728. It is generally regarded as Pope's masterpiece, but the accuracy of such an estimate is doubtful. So heavily weighted is the poem with notes, prefaces, and introductions that the text appears to be smothered by them. It was Pope's aim to mystify his readers, and in this he has succeeded, for the mystifications of the poem even confound the commentators. The personalities of the satire excited a keen interest, and much amusement to readers who were not included in Pope's black list of dunces. At the same time it roused a number ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... names he can, hoping that his friends will miss many more than he does. Have ten or more "pieces of art" than are on the catalogue. This is to mystify a little. ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... officer was unlike most German officers and did not understand French, or thought it a good joke to mystify a poor devil of a soldier. He smiled and raised his hand, indicating by his motion that the other was to keep following the road he ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... would spend. Poor fools the muses' fair regards Why court for such a paltry end? I tell you, give them more, still more, 'tis all I ask, Thus you will ne'er stray widely from the goal; Your audience seek to mystify, cajole;— To satisfy them—that's a harder task. What ails ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... then called, and I was asked who was my spokesman. Having pointed to Kolimbota, who knew their dialect best, the palaver began in due form. I explained the real objects I had in view, without any attempt to mystify or appear in any other character than my own, for I have always been satisfied that, even though there were no other considerations, the truthful way of dealing with the uncivilized is unquestionably the best. Kolimbota ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... maintained in Rosalie that early perception of the wondrousness of her father. She loved her mother, but in the atmosphere surrounding her mother there was often flurry and worry and there was nothing whatever in her mother to mystify and entrance by sudden and violent eruptions of the miraculous. She did not love her father for he was entirely too remote and awe-ful for love, but he entranced her with his marvellousness. This maintained in her also her perception of the altogether greater superiority ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... My chief excuse for doing it is to enable people at home to know the difference between a topi and a sun hat and between a sing-sing and a cob. The names of many of the African antelope family are strange and confusing, so that it is little wonder that they mystify people in America. There are a hundred or more kinds, and no one can hope to know them unless he makes ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... Prince Henry. Doubt has been strongly expressed of the implication at all of the favourite in the death of Overbury: the evidence produced at the trial about the poisoning being, it seems, made up to conceal or to mystify the real facts. ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... intellectual foppery," I replied, "which makes you indulge in moral delicacy, ignoring the savage side of truth. This merely helps you to mystify things, and so you fail to do your work with any ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... know you are joking,” he replied, with a slight show of temper, “or trying to mystify me, for only this morning I was on the beach watching the bathing, and I saw a number of ladies in quite short skirts—up to their knees, in fact—with the thinnest covering on their shapely extremities. Were ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... every eye that beheld it. No one was more generally loved or revered; no one less assuming or more pleasing in his manner. Seeing his external simplicity, persons with whom he was arguing were sometimes tempted to treat him cavalierly; but then the solemnity with which he would mystify his adversary, and ultimately lead him into the most distressing absurdity was one of the most delightful scenes that ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... is fond of quibbles and word-play, and of 'conceits' and turns of thought such as are common in the poets whom Johnson called Metaphysical. Sometimes, no doubt, he plays with words and ideas chiefly in order to mystify, thwart and annoy. To some extent, again, as we may see from the conversation where Rosencrantz and Guildenstern first present themselves (II. ii. 227), he is merely following the fashion of the young courtiers ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... echoed Euphemie, staring at the smiling, lustrous-eyed Aristide, whose busy brain was wondering how he could mystify this unwelcome ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... now the author 'cute of "Piccadilly," HARRIS the Prophet, the BLAVATSKY craze, Thibet, Theosophy, and Bounding Brothers— No, Mystic Ones—Mahatmas I should say, But really they seem so much like the others In slippery agility!—day by day Mystify me yet more. Those germs were bad enough, But what are they compared with Astral Bodies? Of Useless Knowledge I have almost had enough, I really envy uninquiring noddies, I would not be a Chela if I could. I have a horror of the Esoterical. BESANT and OLCOTT may be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... read the announcement that she would be buried two days later in the Potter's Field. Perhaps the girl had starved for lack of work, he reflected. Perhaps hunger and cold had driven her to her death. Certainly those two were to blame for many a tragedy calculated to mystify warmly ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... yet imperfect with a light brighter than they could stand. He would therefore impose upon people, as much as he thought was for their good; but, on the other hand, he would not allow inferior men to mystify them. ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... be announced. Alicia was well aware that Brookshire was looking on; that Brookshire was on the side of Diana Mallory, the forsaken, and was not at all inclined to forgive either the deserting lover or the supplanting damsel; so that while she was not loath to sting and mystify Brookshire by whatever small signs of her power over Oliver Marsham she could devise; though she queened it beside him on his coach, and took charge with Lady Lucy of his army of women canvassers; though she faced ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... troops retain the natural visibility; but while the weight and direction of an intended blow may thus be hidden from the enemy a warning is given of the time of its delivery. It is possible, however, to mystify, as well as to surprise, the enemy by the use of smoke, and its strategical and tactical value will ensure its adoption in Modern Warfare. In the closing battles of the Great War "the use of smoke shells for covering the advance ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... he rejoined, heartily. "That little chap's freaks would mystify anybody, especially with Dave humoring 'em the ridiculous way he does. Hamilton Swift, Junior, is the curiousest child I ever saw—and the good Lord knows He made all children powerful mysterious! This ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... consider that the interest of this our narration of bygone events is quite sufficient, without condescending to what is called claptrap; and there are so many people in our narrative continually labouring under deception of one kind or another, that we need not add to it by attempting to mystify our readers; who, on the contrary, we shall take with us familiarly by the hand, and, like a faithful historian, lead them through the events in the order in which they occurred, and point out to them how they all lead to one ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... a third class of these men, who, to arrive at distinction in a turbulent profession, sharpen their mercenary mouths to mystify the truth, and by prostituting their countenances and their vile barking, work their way with the public. These men, whenever the judge is embarrassed and perplexed, entangle the matter before him with further difficulties, and take pains to prevent any arrangement, carefully ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... low tone, "that I want your word you'll get that photograph into my hands by to-morrow afternoon, no matter what transpires in the meantime. And look here, Carruthers, don't think I'm playing the silly thickhead, and trying to mystify you. I'm no detective or anything like that. I've just got an idea that apparently hasn't occurred to any one else—and, of course, I may be all wrong. If I am, I'm not going to say a word even to you, because it wouldn't be playing fair with some one else; if I'm right the ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... both be mysteries to each other," she suggested. "I mystify you because I wonder, and you mystify me because you don't guess why I wonder. We'll let it go at ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... was the direction taken by every one that any one looked at. They cultivated for an hour, on the Row and by the Drive, this opportunity for each observer to amuse and for one of them indeed, not a little hilariously, to mystify the other, and before the hour was over Maisie had elicited, in reply to her sharpest challenge, a further account of her friend's ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... ourselves with the second party, and conceive that we must cease speaking of 'the mind,' and discontinue enlisting in our investigations a spiritual essence, the existence of which cannot be proved, but which tends to mystify and perplex a question sufficiently clear if we confine ourselves to the consideration of organised matter—its forms—its changes—and its aberrations ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... when they were sitting side by side on the upper deck of the Puritan, the magnificent steamer on the Fall River line. "I want you to consent to a little plan that will mystify ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... that have no direct interest in the matter, would treat the affair with indifference or levity, while a few would mystify the truth. It is quite impossible for any man in a private station to make the truth available in any country, in a matter of public interest; and those in public stations seldom or never attempt it, unless they see a direct party ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... equally rejoiced to have something occur which will tend to divert my thoughts. I had not intended to say anything of this kind, but now that I am with you I simply cannot restrain the words. This past month has been, I believe, the hardest I have ever been compelled to live through. You simply mystify me, so that I alternately hope and despair. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... have been steadily working upon the mystery of certain amazing occurrences at De Gex's house in Stretton Street. By slow degrees, and after travelling up and down Europe, I have at last succeeded in finding just a streak of daylight through the impenetrable barrier so cleverly contrived in order to mystify and mislead me. If you desire to ascertain the great ramifications of the desperate plots conceived by De Gex and his friends, and take steps to combat them, it will be best to allow his accomplice Sanz further liberty. Keep vigilant watch, but do not allow him to suspect," I urged. ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... her, but she asked, rather quietly, "What do you mean?" and she added, as if to punish him for trying to mystify her: "I've heard that it requires gifts for that. Isn't ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the gab' is in this case, as in many others, a very great resource. A striking remark or bon mot will easily mystify the spectators, and attract their attention from what you are DOING. Hence all prestidigitators are always well stocked with anecdotes and funny observations; indeed, they talk incessantly: they speak well, too, and they take care to time the ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... They may later prove to be partially or wholly wrong. They have the value, nevertheless, of explaining in many cases why I did or did not do certain things, and of disclosing the state of mind that in a measure determined my conduct which without this recital of contemporaneous impressions might mystify one familiar with what afterwards took place. The notes, letters, and memoranda which are quoted in the succeeding pages, as well as the opinions and beliefs held at the time (of which, in accordance with a practice of years, I kept a record supplementing my daily journal ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... those present always enjoy. By degrees, too, Mr. Richard Avenel came out; and, as the whisper had circulated round the table that he was X. Y., he was listened to with a profound respect, which greatly elevated his spirits. Nay, when the wit tried once to show him up or mystify him, Dick answered with a bluff spirit, that, though very coarse, was found so humorous by Lord Spendquick and other gentlemen similarly situated in the money-market that they turned the laugh against the wit, and silenced him for the rest of the night,—a circumstance which made the party go ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... there is a separate compartment for them. Now, Mr. Heigham." And then, with the able and benign assistance of Sir John, he proceeded to utterly confuse and mystify Arthur, till stocks, preference-shares, consols, and mortgages were all whirling in his bewildered brain. Having satisfactorily reduced him to this condition, he suddenly sprang upon him the proposal he had ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... with the inexplicable indiscretions that Arsene committed every day served to annoy and mystify the officers of the law. There were secrets known only to Arsene Lupin; secrets that he alone could divulge. But for what purpose did he reveal them? ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... "They mystify most people, you will find. Only a person who has been there can understand the situation. And he who has been there does not know the frontier line either, for there is, in fact, no exact boundary. The Pamir plateau lies to the north of Peshawar, and is bounded ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... appearing to my mind to be an invention of the learned to mystify this poor world, I was not sorry to see my uncle suffering the pangs of mystification. At least, so it seemed to me, judging from his fingers, which were beginning to work ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... various prefaces, and especially in the general preface to Lothair (of October 1870), Disraeli has fully explained the origin and aim of these and his other works. It is written, as usual, with his tongue in his cheek, in that vein of semi-bombastic paradox which was designed to mystify the simple and to amuse the acuter reader. But there is an inner seriousness in it all; and, as it has a certain correspondence with his public career and achievements, it must be taken as substantially true. Coningsby (1844) and Sybil ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... "dander" was now fairly up; and the story of the bacon hams soon spreading over the boat, still further heightened the enthusiasm of both passengers and crew. Three loud cheers were given for the young lady, which seemed to mystify the Magnolians, who had now been for some time in the enjoyment of their triumph, and had ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... a meaning, it need not have the definiteness of meaning of logical thought; it may suggest rather than explicate; its music is compatible with vagueness. But vagueness is not obscurity; the poet should always make us feel that we understand him; he should not seek to mystify us, or keep us guessing at his meaning. Yet, since the poet operates with words and not with mere sounds, great subtlety and precision of thought are possible in poetry, although not argument and dialectic. Poetry may express ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... Dockwrath began to talk, one's respect for him began to grow. He talked well and to the point, and with a tone of voice that could command where command was possible, persuade where persuasion was required, mystify when mystification was needed, and express with accuracy the tone of an obedient humble servant when servility was thought to be expedient. We will now accompany him on his little ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... are: Antonina, The Dead Secret, The Woman in White, No Name, Armadale, The Moonstone, and Man and Wife. There is a sameness in these works; and yet it is evident that the author has put his invention on the rack to create new intrigues, and to mystify his reader from the beginning to the end of ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... do me a favour," said Daireh. "A lady—a friend of mine—wants to send a valentine to a man in Ireland, and is anxious to mystify him. She has got me to direct it, and would like it to have the London post-mark. Will you drop ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... mystify you, Leopold," laughed Mr. Hamilton. "The mate of the Orion is in charge of her. She is a new boat, finished just before I left New York, and offered for sale. On the day after you lost your sloop, I sent the mate to purchase her for you. There she is, and she is yours. ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... is a question upon which all the subtilty of jesuitic schoolmen and casuists has been exhausted, to mystify and mislead the honest inquirer in every age. The Jews, Papists, Greeks, English, have each claimed the divine favour as being exclusively limited to their respective sects. Apostolic descent has been considered ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... it necessary to prove that their education had not been neglected or forgotten. Their way was strewn with fragments of classic lore intended to awe and mystify the reader, while evidences of correct religious sentiment were dropped, here and there, to reassure him. The newspapers and magazines of the time, like certain of its books, were salted with little advertisements of religion, and virtue and ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... it be for Dr ——, and Professor ——, if they might be allowed to mystify their readers in Greek! though, to do them justice, they have turned the Queen's English to good account for that purpose, and have produced passages which first-class men, at an Athenian University, might possibly construe, but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... that he might have vanished through the roof, or that he was not put in at all, or that he has evaporated, although, to be sure, they won't know what that means, and I don't know how I could well explain it, as the Kaffir tongue has nothing equivalent to the term. However, I'll do my best to mystify them." ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... functions: he, therefore, appointed or agreed upon the appointment of somebody else to act as his substitute. This was, in nine cases out of ten, the eminently unromantic cavalier servitude of fact. The high-flown, complimentary language, the profound bowing and hand-kissing of the period, combined to mystify strangers as to its real significance. Sometimes, when there was really a lover in the question, the cavalier servente must have been a serious impediment; he was always La plante ... a contrecarrer un pauvre tiers, in the words of the ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... gentlemen, if you will kindly give me your attention for a few moments I will be happy to introduce to your favorable notice an entertainer of world-wide fame who will, I am sure, not only mystify you but, at the same time, interest you. You have witnessed the death-defying dives of the Demon Discobolus; you have laughed with the comical clowns; you have thrilled with the hurrying horses; and you have gasped at the ponderous pachyderms. Now you are to be ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... mother's life. I have no money to pay a lawyer to stand up and mystify matters, and my best policy is to defend myself, by ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... understand them unless he give especial attention to their construction."[36] The worthy Boturini was puzzled by those which he had collected, and writes, "the songs are difficult to explain, because they mystify historical facts with constant allegorizing,"[37] and Boturini's literary executor, Don Mariano Echevarria y Veitia, who paid especial attention to the poetic fragments he had received, says frankly: ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... went on, "and it is not the actress he lived with who could give it to him. My cousin, who understood him, could not lick him into shape. I should like to know the mistress of this Sargine; tell me something about him that will enable me to mystify him." ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... the note, Prosper's rage increased. He was angry and perplexed, for he could not explain the rapidly succeeding events which were so calculated to mystify his ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... tolerant of the people who made time pass heavily with them, and they revenged their own ennui on all around them. How he would snub the old man for the son's pretensions, and sneer at the young man for his disproportioned ambition; and last of all, how he would mystify poor Kate, till she never knew whether he cared to fatten calves and turkeys, or was simply drawing her on to little details, which he was to dramatise one day in ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... attaches, and are nearly always employed by them on their secret missions or love affairs, which, by the way, are very often the same thing. Our own Jehu has a job on to-night, from which we expect some results that will mystify the enemy not a little. We got our first suspicions of Ainsworth from a few incautious words that he spoke in ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... their wonted courses, and the self-conscious Tinker-Quixote takes the road once more and passes on to other achievements: a mad preacher to succour, a priest to baffle, some tramp to pound into a jelly of humility, an applewoman to mystify, a horse-chaunter to swindle, a pugilist to study and help and portray. But whatever it be, Lavengro emerges from the ordeal modestly, unobtrusively, quietly, most consciously magnificent. Circumstantial as Defoe, rich in combinations as Lesage, and with such an instinct of the picturesque, ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... badly. It is possible, perhaps, to excite a hearer's admiration without clearness. There is to be found in some men a curious liking for being puzzled; and they will credit with high talent and deep learning him who is able thoroughly to mystify them. We have more than once heard a man described as "far learned" because of a style in which polysyllables, not always correctly chosen, did duty for thought, as polysyllables often do. But the mere winning of ignorant admiration ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... his mysterious promises, although they come true in a way, turn out to be utterly and completely different from what he would seem to suggest to us by his words; in fact, Lal is like a great happy conjuror or wizard who dearly loves to mystify us with a trick. I am convinced he enjoys our amazement at any of his pet tricks, as much as he enjoys the laugh he has ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... than the Jew, who refrained not from supping at the board of him whom the same night he meant to betray? What imported all those day-long enigmas and contradictions, except they were intended to mystify, preliminary to some stealthy blow? Atufal, the pretended rebel, but punctual shadow, that moment lurked by the threshold without. He seemed a sentry, and more. Who, by his own confession, had stationed him there? Was the ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... more. She loved to mystify and raise expectations. "It is not music," she said. "It is my reason for withdrawing. When you see that, you will understand. You will all say the Contessa is wise. She has foreseen exactly the right ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... Seeing that his feast was at an end—at least above ground—he suddenly raised his hind-quarters, and in a brace of seconds buried himself in the earth. The vultures pecked him behind as he disappeared, but the odd manner of his exit, like that of his entree, seemed to mystify them, and several of them stood for ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... but because the quintessence of the whole geographical problem of the discovery of the New World is in one way or another involved in the discussion. I can think of no finer instance of the queer complications that can come to surround and mystify an increase of knowledge too great and rapid to be comprehended by a ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... causes of his lady's separation from him, round which herself and her legal advisers have thrown such formidable mystery, may have been nothing more than some imposture of this kind, some dimly-hinted confession of undefined horror, which, though intended by the relater to mystify and surprise, the hearer so little understood as to take in sober ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "I mean to mystify you. No, it's not the least use asking questions, Clary; but mind, you must not tease me any more about running ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... should we trouble? Of course if you were in any danger or anything, but why need you care? You needn't care a hang for them. We shall have a laugh at them afterwards, and if I were in your place I'd mystify them more than ever. How ashamed they'll be afterwards! Hang them! We can thrash them afterwards, but let's ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... absconding. My husband investigated the matter, and discovered how his escape was made. It was by means of this key. Here is a memorandum and a plan describing how they are to be applied. I have taken them from the Count's escritoire. And now, once more I must leave to your ingenuity how to mystify the people at the Dragon Volant. Be sure you try the keys first, to see that the locks turn freely. I will have my jewels ready. You, whatever we divide, had better bring your money, because it may be ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... may be arranged between the two. This is the kind of dialectic that goes on at every Church Congress—men who know in their hearts that the "inspired" anthropology of the Bible is contradicted, fully, flatly, irreconcilably, by the undeniable facts discovered by science, continue to mystify themselves and their hearers alike by all the pleadings, glosses, evasions and refinements at their command, with a view to what they call a ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... of the colorless outlines, resembling a drawing of a cataract, which the cave knew by day. He did not pause to wonder whether the sudden transient illumination was visible without, or how it might mystify the untutored denizens of the woods, bear, or deer, or wolf, perceiving it aglow in the midst of the waters like a great topaz, and anon lost in the gloom. He pined to see it; the momentary cessation ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... particularly wroth with what he considers the wilful indefiniteness of the author, and in proof of a charge of a desire not to let the public into the secret of the poem, and of a conscious endeavour to mystify the reader, he deliberately accuses Coleridge of omitting one line of the poem as it was written, which, if printed, would have proved conclusively that Geraldine had seduced Christabel after getting ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... after some nightmare. The man is not assaulting the air; his feet are on firm ground. This is how he proceeds. "Virtue is a mean between excess and defect." In fact, his object appears to have been to teach something, not to mystify everybody and to cover the honourable name ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... was harder still. It was how to mystify, tire out, check short, and then immobilize the converging Federals long enough to let him slip secretly away in time to help Johnston and Lee against McClellan. Jackson, like his enemies, moved through what has been well called the Fog of War—that ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... in my mind whether Sergeant Cuff's last random shot might not have hit the mark. I began to question whether my share in the proceedings was quite as harmless a one as I had thought it. It might be all in the way of the Sergeant's business to mystify an honest woman by wrapping her round in a network of lies but it was my duty to have remembered, as a good Protestant, that the father of lies is the Devil—and that mischief and the Devil are never far apart. Beginning to smell mischief ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... modern Faun, for example, loses all the poetry and beauty which the Author fancied in it, and becomes nothing better than a grotesque absurdity, if we bring it into the actual light of day. He had hoped to mystify this anomalous creature between the Real and the Fantastic, in such a manner that the reader's sympathies might be excited to a certain pleasurable degree, without impelling him to ask how Cuvier would have classified poor Donatello, or to insist upon being told, in so many words, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... quite a jolly little escapade," she said to herself; "that young man certainly thought I was a little black-eyed beauty, and when he does see Elise, of course he'll think she's the one. I believe I'll call him up and mystify him a little more. It's all right, because I've really been introduced to him, and if he doesn't remember me, I can't help it! Probably he'll be out anyway; but I'll have a try ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... to mystify you," he assured me. "But the truth is so hard to believe sometimes that in the present case I hesitate to divulge it. Did you ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... whilst Hoffmann was a son of the town, Hippel's early days had been spent in the country. In another respect, too, they presented a striking contrast in behaviour; Hoffmann's chief delight was to mystify and tease his uncle Otto, but Hippel was most scrupulous in paying to all the proper meed of respect which he conceived he owed them. Once when Hippel reproached his friend about his behaviour towards ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... at the foot of Guanaco Hill, trusting to the dog's sagacity to reveal the retreat where she believed that her lover and many of his men were hidden. If a squad of Indians mounted guard there, the reappearance of Suarez in his war paint, backed by the alarm of a night attack from the sea, might mystify the enemy sufficiently to permit of a landing, while the frequent reports of the revolver would certainly lead to a counter demonstration by Courtenay. Suarez was the only man on the Kansas who could act as guide, ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... but this felucca was a lugger. Tommaso Tonti wished to mystify me about that, too; but I have not been podesta in a seaport so many years for nothing. No, Signori, there are all sorts of feluccas—ship-feluccas, brig-feluccas, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... I confess they mystify me. Though I am the son-in-law of an American multimillionaire, I could not afford to make such ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... an insult, and I felt very angry; but a spirit of revenge quickly whispered to me the best way to mystify them, and the idea made me very joyful. I answered so badly all the questions propounded in Latin by the examiner, I made so many solecisms, that he felt it his duty to send me to an inferior class of grammar, in which, to my great delight, I found myself the companion ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... night, when he awoke to sudden and hungry aloneness, he would let his arms feel their hunger for her. The vision of her would be flowers and music and sunlight and time and all things perfect to mystify and delight, to satisfy and—greatest of all boons—to unsatisfy. The thought of her became a rest-house for all weariness; a haven where he was free to choose his nook and lie down away from all that was not her, which was all that was not beautiful. He would go back to seek the lost sweetness ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... would never be found, as Catholic institutions are built with the purpose of sheltering her abominable faithless in case these criminals' desire to hide themselves therein, as the convents, monasteries and cloisters have a labyrinth which would mystify any one who was not used ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... I cried, drawing back. "You are trying to mystify me. This is deliberate seer-mongery. You are presuming on your powers. But I am not the sort of man to be caught by horoscopes. I decline ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... made politically equal with the wisest in the land. Three young friends came to spend a day with us, and for fun brought in their pockets the absurd noses popular at Epsom races. We came upon some turf-diggers, and my visitors mounted their masks to mystify them. The clodpoles looked scared and very quiet, till I went up to one of them who knew me,—of course I was in my natural physiognomy,—and I said to him, "My friend, these are foreigners:" and the poor ignoramus staring at those portentous noses said seriously, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... rather to mystify the neighborhood, and some old customers of the old codger's came in upon one fictitious errand and another to see about it, and went away without quite making it out. It was a bookstore, all right, they owned in conference, but what did ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... well-thumbed copy of "Little Men," she shook it gently, fluttering the leaves, and turning it upside down. But the volume held nothing except a four-leaf clover, which Lloyd had left there to mark the place one summer day. Betty turned away, as puzzled as any of the others whom she had helped to mystify. ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... rising sea the Forest had surged a moment in their direction through the covering darkness, and this visible movement was its first wave. Thus to her mind it seemed... like that mysterious turn of the tide that used to frighten and mystify her in childhood on the sands. The outward surge of some enormous Power was what she felt... something to which every instinct in her being rose in opposition because it threatened her and hers. In that moment she realized the Personality ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... three histories together form but one—that of NUTRITION, or the act of nourishing; in other words, of supporting life. This is what I called eating at first, that I might not mystify you at the beginning with hard words. But now that we are growing learned ourselves, we must accustom ourselves to the terms in use among learned people, especially when they are not more formidable than those I ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... Palace, by inquiring diligently about him yesterday, and finding no one who knew his name, the first person I should have encountered was himself, and that, too, in his own Palace. The reason of this was, that big men in this country, to keep up their dignity, have several names, and thus mystify the traveller. ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... minority of the committee sent in a very strong report condemning the system. He declares "the system is nothing but an absurd attempt to mystify and perplex a subject, which ought to be left plain and clear to the common apprehensions of common men." Further on he states, "No human ingenuity can show a reason for believing that the way to ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... everybody, the next time Jack had a party of friends with him, he rose up, and putting on that peculiarly sanctimonious expression which his countenance generally assumed when he had a mind to confuse and mystify his auditors by a string of enigmas and Jesuitical reservations, made a long, unintelligible, and inconsistent harangue, the drift of which no one could well understand, except that it bore that "both the Justices and the Quarter-sessions were a set of ignoramuses who could not understand ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... Madeline's mysterious party. Katherine could not be found, and Rachel and Eleanor were both engaged for the evening; but that was no matter, Madeline said. It ought to be mostly a Belden House affair, but a few outsiders would help mystify the freshmen. ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... will find complete instruction in all the latest points about Mind Reading. It tells how Thought Transference is practiced in the scientific laboratory as well as by a public performer. It tells you how to perform feats that will mystify an audience and arouse the deepest interest and enthusiasm, or how you can conduct telepathic experiments with your friends ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... place for Pauline. Ringfield held his breath, but had enough sense to lie down again in the straw, and feign slumber; happily the priest did not concern himself with the loft, but the absence of the bird he had expected to find, caged and waiting, seemed to mystify him. He remained for several minutes lost in thought, then setting the lantern on one box, moved others around, strewed them with a thick layer of hay he found on the floor, and lying down with his cloak pulled well ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... by John Buffet in reading, writing, and arithmetic; to which are added, precepts of religion and morality, drawn chiefly from the Bible and Prayer Book; than which, fortunately, they possess no others that might mystify and perplex their understandings on religious subjects. They seldom indulge in jokes or other kinds of levity; and Beechey says, they are so accustomed to take what is said in its literal meaning, that irony was always considered a falsehood in spite of explanation; and that they ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... each of us to walk home for the sake of the exercise. It seemed to me in no way dangerous or unfitting that I should be otherwise than at ease in my conversation with Mr. Prime; indeed, I was soon conscious of a desire to mystify him by giving him a glimpse of my acquirements. I branched off from the current events of the day to poetry and art, and to my gratification I found that I had touched a sympathetic chord in my companion, which not even wonder could restrain ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... each other with dancing eyes, but said nothing. It had been their sport all their lives to mystify people about their several identities. And here was a situation in which they determined—both of them—to keep their ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... that it was an unfortunate move to bring him between the squire and me, and so she blamed Captain Bulsted. This was partly for the reason that the captain and his wife, charmed by my father, were for advocating his merits at the squire's table: our ingenuity was ludicrously taxed to mystify him on the subject of their extravagant eulogies. They told him they had been invited, and were going to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... look into my little black bag, which clearly escaped his notice. I began to explain, but he ordered silence and beckoned me to follow. He led me up three flights of stairs, along a corridor, down four flights, and so on for about three-quarters of an hour, his idea, I suppose, being completely to mystify me. At length we arrived at a door deep under-ground, upon which Bluteisen knocked mysteriously. Receiving no answer he turned to me and said, "Push." I leaned hard upon the door, fell suddenly forward and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... it quite clear that padlock and ropes have nothing to do with the real performance of the trick, but they serve to mystify spectators, who may be allowed to knot the rope and seal the knots in any way ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... amuse them, for I was resolved to incur no more of the maltreatment which had plunged me into darkness. Now the Deer Men traded with the Sea Men, and the Sea Men with the whites, especially the whalers. So later I discovered a deck of cards in the possession of one of the women, and I proceeded to mystify the Chow Chuen with a few commonplace tricks. Likewise, with fitting solemnity, I perpetrated upon them the little I knew of parlor legerdemain. Result: I was appreciated at once, and was ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... clear. Scissors, inspired by a love of fun, or a desire to mystify Jack, perhaps make him suspect that one of his chums was taking the coins, had come every day into this empty house belonging to his father. Whenever he found the window in Jack's den open he amused himself with this ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... close of his career as an author, Scott never avowed his responsibility for any of these series of novels, and even took some pains to mystify the public as to the identity between the author of Waverley and the author of Tales of my Landlord. The care with which the secret was kept is imputed by Mr. Lockhart in some degree to the habit of mystery ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... he was saved from utter destruction by the heroic courage, against vast odds, of that fragment of his army which fought at Perryville? It is the popular idea that a commander is out-generaled when he is deceived. Military phraseology can mystify the popular mind, but it can not eradicate from it this idea. Buell certainly deceived Bragg, and by sending detachments, numbering in all not more than twelve thousand, through a country from which a mere handful of men could have prevented them from debouching, he kept thirty ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... round George Iredale and—the graveyard. He had discredited the story the girls had told as he would discredit anything which pertained to the supernatural. But now he had learned something which put an entirely different meaning to the adventures the two girls had related. It is easy enough to mystify the simple human mind, but dogs' instincts are purely practical, and, as Hervey argued, ghosts do not leave a hot scent. Neche had lit upon a hot scent. At first the man had been doubtful as to what that scent was. Graveyards on the prairie are places ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... mystery, the interest is maintained chiefly by the deft manipulation of surprise; but even in novels wherein the aim to mystify is very far from being the primary purpose of the author, it is often wise to keep a secret from the reader for the sake of the emphasis by surprise which may be derived at the moment of revelation. ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... mystify you, when there is no need for it, I will say that the scheme Dick had hit upon was simple enough. If you recall Kipling's famous story you know that two drummer boys, of a British regiment in India, when the main body was being defeated by a ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... this state, the sheik and his guests communicating by signs, in such a way as completely to mystify each other; Mr. Monday drinking, Mr. Dodge conjecturing, and parties quitting the camp and arriving every ten minutes, when an Arab pointed eagerly with his finger in the direction of the wreck. The head of the foremast was slowly rising, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... satisfied instinct of self-assertion,—or if he is secretly yearning for the satisfaction of the marriage relation, or for the sense of completion in parenthood; then the tension from these unsatisfied desires shows itself in a hundred little everyday instances of lack of self-control. These mystify him and his friends, but they are understandable when the whole truth ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... the back of the book in Roman numerals was of a year in the seventeen hundreds. What connection could its Desire Michell have with the girl I knew? Perhaps she had adopted the name to mystify me. Or at most, she might be of the family of that unfortunate woman branded ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... put in at all, or that he has evaporated, although, to be sure, they won't know what that means, and I don't know how I could well explain it, as the Kaffir tongue has nothing equivalent to the term. However, I'll do my best to mystify them." ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... call it, so you call it by some name that people will understand. Call it so that people will know what you mean—Salvation, Glory, Happiness, Holiness, Redemption, or what else you please. Do not mystify us by saying we want life, and then, when we are startled by the perfectly intelligible assertion, edge off by explaining that by life you mean something quite different from what we do. There is no good in that. If I ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... or that cannot be, by a peculiar combination of circumstances, more or less invested with mystery; and we hold it to be an unfair and a very paltry device on the part of an author to seek to mystify his readers by keeping them in unnecessary ignorance of that which is in itself simple ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... injustice? Had the abduction been, after all, concerted not by him but by Mr. Thomasson and his confederates? The setting down near Pomeroy's gate, the reception at his house, the rough, hasty suit paid to her—were these all parts of a drama cunningly arranged to mystify her? And was he innocent? Was he still her lover, true, ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... be a mother of sons in Homeburg. I worked in the post-office for a year once—handed out mail—and I got to know just exactly what most of the mothers in town wanted. I could please them with a new magazine and mystify them with a circular or a business letter. But if I wanted to light them up until they took the shadows out of the corners as they went out, I would give them a letter from a son, way off somewhere, making good. The best of them didn't write any too often. Once a week ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... is a noble piece of character-drawing in one of Mr. Henry James's novels, The Portrait of a Lady, where Gilbert Osmond, a selfish dilettante, finding that he cannot make a great success or attain a great position, devotes himself to trying to mystify and provoke the curiosity of the world by retiring into a refined seclusion, and professing that it affords him an exquisite kind of enjoyment. The hideous vulgarity of his attitude is not at first sight apparent; he deceives ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... School, a pupil of Mr. Justice Story; and thus to have drank at the very fountain head of constitutional law—that branch of our national jurisprudence which can least fluctuate. Judges of a day and not of a generation, or crazy legislators with spasmodic wisdom, may alter, and overturn, and mystify by simplification, the laws and usages of every-day life; but it is scarcely to be apprehended that the current of our constitutional law will ever be diverted from original channels. There is danger rather of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various |
