"Conjurer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was first, closely followed by the mare-owning wit. Then the whole mass seemed to be pressing forward, at once. Like those of a conjurer, the deft hands of the Professor pushed in and out of the light, snatching from below the bottles handed up to him, and taking in the clinking silver and fluttering greenbacks. And still they came, that line of grotesques, hobbling, limping, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... on his hands; he couldn't keep such a fund, and was forced to sell at any price, and lost just one third. Just as he was beginning to pick himself up after the shock and wonder, like the sailor whom the conjurer blew up, what was to come next? Mr. Whitey of the Jacobin, now the honorable Pompey Whitey—and one doesn't see why he shouldn't be, for after all an editor is not, generally speaking, a greater ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... very pretty deception," said the doctor's friends; careless, however, for they had witnessed greater miracles at a conjurer's show; "pray how ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... The Prince assures me that he is not a conjurer in the professional sense, and would be deeply insulted to be called one; also that no amount of money would induce him to give a display of his powers just for money. He will come to-day, if you like, and do wonderful ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... what such talk meant. But then his helplessness only deepened his conviction that the more distinct his idea might become, the more intense would his aversion be, both to the thing meant and to the surpliced conjurer who, as he bitterly supposed, was by sophistic tricks trying ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... hindrance to civilization of a tribe, or that said "medicine man" resorts to any artifice or device to keep the Indians under his influence, or shall adopt any means to prevent the attendance of children at the agency schools, or shall use any of the arts of the conjurer to prevent the Indians from abandoning their heathenish rites and customs, he shall be adjudged guilty of an "Indian offense," and upon conviction of any one or more of these specified practices, or any other, in the opinion ...
— Sioux Indian Courts • Doane Robinson
... taking a trip northward, this warm weather," replied the conjurer, "across the Connecticut first, and then up through Vermont, and may be into Canada before the fall. But I must stop and see the breaking up of ...
— The Seven Vagabonds (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ACLAND had described as bred "by Filial Piety out of the Board of Trade" received the unexpected aid of Sir ALFRED MOND, who disposed of his Cobdenite prejudices as easily as the conjurer swallows his gloves, and unblushingly asserted that the tiny Preference now proposed, far from being the advance-guard of Protection, was in reality a very strong movement towards Free Trade. Comforted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... he swung round on the music-stool, she undid the bag, and drew from it some folded stuff which she slowly shook out, rather in the manner of a conjurer, until it was revealed as a full-sized kimono. ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... sensation.) There is only one way in which it was possible—and that was, of course, a mere conjurer's illusion. To cause a locked door to appear bolted in addition, it would only be necessary for the person on the inside of the door to wrest the staple containing the bolt from the woodwork. The bolt in Mr. Constant's bedroom worked perpendicularly. ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... puzzle. Most children seem to know it, and yet, curiously enough, they are invariably unacquainted with the answer. The question they always ask is, "Do, please, tell me whether it is really possible." I believe Houdin the conjurer used to be very fond of giving it to his child friends, but I cannot say whether he invented the little puzzle or not. No doubt a large number of my readers will be glad to have the mystery of the solution cleared up, so I make no apology for ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... You keep a conjurer in the camp. Indian kill conjurer. Conjurer ought die; him danger, him ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... But a greater marvel was the man with the cool head and the keen sight and nerves of iron, who sat up in his loft, with his hand on a magic wand, and played with trainfuls of his fellowmen—a mere question of life or death to be answered over and over again; played with them as the conjurer tosses his handful of pretty globes into the air and catches them without one click of the ivories. It was a forcible reminder of Clapham Junction; the perfect system that brings order out of chaos, and saves a little world, but a mad one, from ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Magic is a theological argument, disguised in the form of a play, that relies for its effects on clever conversation, the moving of pictures, and a mysterious person who may have been a conjurer and may have also been ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... time the chieftain fell dangerously ill, and a conjurer or "medicine man" was summoned to inquire into the cause or nature of his malady. He gave it as his opinion that the French had bewitched him, in revenge for the great blow he had struck them in ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... grief and sorrow. Among the Hindus such a simple occult occurrence would have caused but little comment, while here among His own people it was considered to be a wonderful miracle by some, while others regarded it as a trick of a traveling conjurer and charlatan. ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... not be a conjurer to see that. It makes itself seen at all moments. You are jealous, my lord, and the maid of honor cannot look at another face without yours beginning to scowl. That which you do is unworthy, Monsieur; is inhospitable—is, is lache, yes, lache:" ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... the big square cuffs of his sleeves, as a conjurer will do, and again repeated the names. This time, however, at each name, he rubbed the palms of his hands together. Walker was seized with a sudden longing to rush down into the village and examine the man's right forearm for ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... Conjurer's Disappointment (Deakins) Frogland (Thomas Beatty) Knave's Disappointment (George Gordon) Discovery (Robert Peter) Resurvey on Salop (John Threlkeld) Pretty Prospect (Benjamin Stoddert) Beall's Levels and ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... thing has weight and that the heaviest thing can be lifted. The rest of the process is simple and has no relation whatever to the realities of life. They agree to some hard and fast impossible definition of Socialism, permit the exponent to extract absurdities therefrom as a conjurer gets rabbits from a hat, and retire with a conviction that on the whole it is well to have had this disturbing ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... remember it. How can I forget it? You go prancing about so like a conjurer that there's not a moment that I don't expect something. If you finish by dragging the murderer from your sleeve, I'll not be at all astonished. Your methods lead me to expect some such ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... with the eyes of a lynx, the dexterity of a conjurer, and the tentacles of a decapod. He invariably saw a floating mine, a buoy, or a lightship long before the man whose proper work it was to see it, and at sea, with a telescope to his eye, I often saw him apparently taking in two signals from opposite points of the compass at one and the ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... which escaped his lips during the journey. For my own part, I had charge of a couple of dark lanterns, while Legrand contented himself with the scarabaeus, which he carried attached to the end of a bit of whip- cord; twirling it to and fro, with the air of a conjurer, as he went. When I observed this last, plain evidence of my friend's aberration of mind, I could scarcely refrain from tears. I thought it best, however, to humor his fancy, at least for the present, or until I could adopt some more energetic measures with a chance of success. In the mean time ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... herb Nor potion found he to purge sadness with. The gray dust gathered on the leaf unturned, And then the spider drew his thread across. Certain bright coins that he was used to count With thrill at fingers' ends uncounted lay, Suddenly worthless, like the conjurer's gold That midst the jeers and laughter of the crowd Turns into ashes in the rustic's hand. Soft idleness itself bore now a thorn Two-pronged with meditation and desire. The cold Griselda that would none of him! The fair Griselda! Not alone ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... they will be, these gods, in their day, each of them an old bearded simian up in the sky, who begins by fishing the universe out of a void, like a conjurer taking a rabbit out of a hat. (A hat which, if it resembled a void, wasn't there.) And after creating enormous suns and spheres, and filling the farthest heavens with vaster stars, one god will turn back and long for the smell of roast flesh, another will call desert tribes to "holy" ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... gentleman, Duchess," I admitted, "but he did not come with me. I can tell you, however, that now he is here he can be made very useful in entertaining your guests—he is a conjurer of very remarkable powers, and I've no doubt whatever but that he would be only too happy to exercise them for ...
— The Mysterious Shin Shira • George Edward Farrow
... mind in which he more or less succeeded in arraying himself was that of one who goes to see a serious conjurer. It would be rather fun, he thought, to see a table dancing. But there was not wholly wanting that inexplicable tendency of some natures deliberately to deceive themselves on what lies ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... goot Master Oldenbuck, dere is de Inquisition and de Auto-da-fethey would burn me, who am but a simple philosopher, for one great conjurer." ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... place of the ordinary musical critic of The Times will be taken at the next performance of Parsifal by Mr. WATERER, the great floricultural expert, and Mr. DEVANT, the eminent conjurer, with a view to their contributing their impressions of the flower maidens and the methods ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... our eye-muscles in focussing, and from the difference between the images on our two retinas. We are unaware of the method by which we arrive at these inferences, and even when we know that the double photograph in the stereoscope is flat, or that the conjurer has placed two converging sheets of looking-glass beneath his table, we can only say that the photograph 'looks' solid, or that we 'seem' to see right under ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... members of the Institute towards audacious beginners. He only became lenient and sociable when he wanted to get a picture accepted, on those occasions showing himself extremely fertile in devices, intriguing and carrying the vote with all the supple deftness of a conjurer. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... tricks, which were not very bewildering to children who had once had a real conjurer from the Stores, as these had, and then a charade played by Mary, Horace, Fizzy, and Shrimp for the ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... said I, "you would believe that every conjurer swallows fire, and smoke, and penknives, and rabbits, because you see him do it; and you would disbelieve the existence of the pyramids, because you don't ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... wants de conjure fixt, Hoo-doo; All you do is to turn de tricks, Hoo-doo; Jes git dat bottle what you had, An' to make your patient glad, Is but to make de conjurer mad, Hoo-doo. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... among 'em 's as good as a conjurer," he declared, "and can conceal just anything up ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... and all was dark again. I peeped through the crevice in the fence, and saw the main fuse spitting out sparks like a conjurer. Assured that the train had not failed, I took to my heels, fearful lest the fuse might burn more rapidly than we calculated, and cause an explosion before I could get home. This, luckily, did not happen. There's a special Providence that watches over ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... kind. We saw much of him in this house; much of all his family; and had grown to love them all right well,—him too, though that was the difficult part of the feat. For in his Irish way he played the conjurer very much,—"three hundred and sixty-five opinions in the year upon every subject," as a wag once said. In fact his talk, ever ingenious, emphatic and spirited in detail, was much defective in earnestness, at least in clear earnestness, of purport and outcome; but went tumbling ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... embodied the legends regarding these great men which had passed current for two hundred years. The same ignorant indifference to useful learning which made Roger Bacon, the great philosopher of the thirteenth century, "unheard, forgotten, buried," represented him after his death as a conjurer doing tricks for the amusement of a king. "The Famous Historie of Frier Bacon," is written in a clear and simple style, very similar to that of "Thomas of Reading," and recounts: "How Fryer Bacon made a Brazen Head to speake, ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... But in the twelfth year the conflict became actually dangerous, and Mr. Clark all at once dropped his consistency. The great suddenness—the extreme abruptness—of the change, gave to it the effect of a trick of legerdemain. The conjurer puts a pigeon into an earthen pipkin, gives the vessel a shake, and then turns it up, and lo! out leaps the little incarcerated animal, no longer a pigeon, but a rat. It was thus with the Rev. Mr. Clark. Adversity, like Vice in the fable, took upon herself the character of a juggler, and stepping ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... seclusion of a monastic cell. Nowadays the image of the world, with all its sheets of detailed news, all its network of communications, sets too deep a mark upon one's spirit. We tend to believe that a man is lost unless he is overwhelmed with occupation, unless, like the conjurer, he is keeping a dozen balls in the air at once. Such a gymnastic teaches a man alertness, agility, effectiveness. But it has got to be proved that one was sent into the world to be effective, and it is not even certain that a man has fulfilled the higher law ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... phenomena, such as Home's apparent ability to handle fire unburnt and his levitation can be paralleled in savage rites or the performance of Indian fakirs, to which no professedly spiritistic explanation is attached. In many instances a trained conjurer would be far more apt to detect fraud than a trained scientist. He would at least know where to ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... Arcady, instead—one should never be in haste to toss his penny into the Fontane de Trevi. Yet in another way it may work for him an immediate spell that defies all other necromancy. Judiciously thrown in, on the very eve of departure, it is the conjurer that insures his return; but at any time prior to this it may even weave the irresistible enchantment that falls upon him and may prevent his leaving at all. Nor can he summon up the moral courage to regret even the missing of all other engagements, and the failure to keep faith with his ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... us say, which the necromancer was uttering, only sounded but too much like "hokey-pokey kickeraboo abracadabra," and the rest of the mysterious sounds with which the conjurer at juvenile parties seeks to invest his performance with additional wonder, for the ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... interment, the corpse is carried from the house in which it has been lying into the orchard of peach-trees and is there deposited in another bundle. Seated upon mats are there congregated the family and tribe of the deceased and invited guests. The medicine man, or conjurer, having enjoined silence, then pronounces a funeral oration, during which he recounts the exploits of the deceased, his valor, skill, love of country, property, and influence, alludes to the void ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... an instantaneous extra whiff of satisfaction is puffed forth, accompanied with the synonimous terms, "Napoleon et Diable." On leaving Gorum we acquired an accession of passengers—a protestant clergyman and a fat man, who looked much like a conjurer or alchymist. A protestant clergyman in Holland may be known by his dress—a cocked hat of a peculiar model covers a lank head of unpowdered hair. Nothing white appears throughout but the pipe in his mouth and ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... end of the corridor we were all marshalled by Sherlock Holmes, the constables grinning and Lestrade staring at my friend with amazement, expectation, and derision chasing each other across his features. Holmes stood before us with the air of a conjurer who is performing ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... scepticism, and every editor has remarked that his plays are heathenish in spirit. Lamb not only calls attention to the fact that "Marlowe is said to have been tainted with Atheistical positions," but remarks that "Barabas the Jew, and Faustus the Conjurer, are offsprings of a mind which at least delighted to dally with interdicted subjects. They both talk a language which a believer would have been tender of putting into the mouth of a character though but in fiction." Dyce could not "resist the conviction" that Marlowe's ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... and social custom, became, in the shadow of the white man's civilization, a pale reflection of their former selves. In time, too, they were mingled and confused with the witchcraft and ghost lore of the white man, and the tricks and delusions of the Indian conjurer. In the old plantation days they flourished vigorously, though discouraged by the "great house," and their potency was well established among the blacks and the poorer whites. Education, however, has thrown the ban of disrepute upon ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... war-whoop, and suddenly the warriors came rushing in from all quarters, preceded by the old squaw trumpeters squalling like mad. The conjurer sprang to his feet, and was ready to sink into the earth when he beheld the ferocious-looking fellows that surrounded him. I stepped up, took him by the hand, and quieted his fears. I told the chief ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... qualifications and outfit for a single man who would thus settle among the natives should be various. If he wished to secure their attention and admiration, he should excel as a rifle shot and sportsman. If musical, he should play ' the Highland bagpipes. He should be clever as a conjurer, and be well provided with conjuring tricks, together with a magic lantern, magnetic battery, dissolving views, photographic apparatus, coloured pictorial illustrations, &c., &c. He should be a good surgeon and general doctor, &c.; and be well supplied with drugs, remembering that ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... knock! Make thy lord's gate A wicket to a workhouse! Let us see it— Subscriptions to a book of poetry! Cornelius Tense, M.A. Which means he construes Greek and Latin, works Problems in mathematics, can chop logic, And is a conjurer in philosophy, Both natural and moral.—Pshaw! a man Whom nobody, that is anybody, knows! Who, think you, follows him? Why, an M.D., An F.R.S., an F.AS., and then A D.D., Doctor of Divinity, Ushering in an LL.D., which means Doctor of Laws—their harmony, no doubt, The difference of their trades! ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... the birds. Presently, they saw approaching them a brahman, splendidly dressed, followed by a servant. He, coming up to the prince, saluted him; and the prince, returning the salute, asked who he was. He answered "My name is Vidyeswara. I am a famous conjurer, and travel about exhibiting my skill for the amusement of kings and nobles. I have now come to Oujein, to show off my skill before the king." Then, with a knowing smile, he added, "But what makes you look ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... of London at the period of Sir Thomas Overbury's murder, now some thirty years agone; he testified to having seen the physician, under some other name, which the narrator of the story had now forgotten, in company with Dr. Forman, the famous old conjurer, who was implicated in the affair of Overbury. Two or three individuals hinted that the man of skill, during his Indian captivity, had enlarged his medical attainments by joining in the incantations of the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... air. Where he went to was a mystery. There was no hole; no depth of water; no hiding-place anywhere that I could discover or that the dog could discover, and yet the mink had disappeared. It was like some conjurer's trick. ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... noiselessly. There lay the envelope, and among other ticketed papers a small roll of greenbacks—such as her father often kept there. It was HIS money; she did not scruple to take it with the envelope. Handing the latter to the Chinaman, who made it instantly disappear up his sleeve like a conjurer's act, she signed him to follow her ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... to lay down my pen and leave the Drudgery of Calculation to those who have more leisure and a Clearer Brain than I can pretend to. Indeed, the Contempt with which a writer of Almanacks is looked on and the Danger he is in of being accounted a Conjurer"—a negro-mancer—"should seem sufficient to deter a man from publishing anything of this kind. But when I consider that all this is the effect of Ignorance, and, therefore, not worth my Notice or Resentment, and that the ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... itinerant, mountebank, conjurer, cheat, sophist, and sorcerer, heaped upon the teachers of Christianity; sometimes to account for the report or apparent truth of their miracles, sometimes to explain their success. Our Lord was said to have learned his miraculous power in Egypt; "wizard, mediciner, cheat, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... 1504, having been played before the King at Woodstock on Palm Sunday. The piece is now lost; but a copy was seen by Warton, who gave an account of it. As the matter is very curious, I must add a few of its points. The persons are a Conjurer, the Devil, a Notary Public, Simony, and Avarice. The plot is the trial of Simony and Avarice, the Devil being the judge, and the Notary serving as assessor. The Conjurer has little to do but open the subject, evoke the Devil, and summon the court. The prisoners ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... once, and she saw there was something wrong with Wally. A shadow of depression hung over him—a shadow which he tried to hide with bursts of cheerfulness. But his old air of eagerness was gone—that air with which he had once looked at the future as a child might stare with delighted eyes at a conjurer drawing rabbits and roses out of ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... (copyright) is approaching, it behoves us all to prepare ourselves in some way to contribute to the gaiety of the Christmas house-party. A clever conjurer is welcome anywhere, and those of us whose powers of entertainment are limited to the setting of booby-traps or the arranging of apple-pie beds must view with envy the much greater tribute of laughter and applause which is the lot of the prestidigitator ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... Scotland; but not for a very long time. BOSWELL. 'Johnson,' as Mr. Croker observes, 'had no doubt seen an account of the masquerade in the Gent. Mag. for January,' p. 43. It is stated there that 'it was the first masquerade ever seen in Scotland.' Boswell appeared as a dumb Conjurer. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... supper of the travellers must be still waited for; but the fire was burning now, the room was cozily warm and bright, and Marion drew up her chair with a look of thoughtful contentment. Fleda felt as if some conjurer had been at work there for the last few hours the room looked so like ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... have heard and have accepted gladly the great salvation thus brought to them. With its reception into their hearts and lives, marvellous have been the transformations. Where the devil-dance, and ghost-dance, and other abominations, performed to the accompaniment of the conjurer's rattle or the monotonous drumming of the medicine man, once prevailed and held the people in a degrading superstition, the house of prayer has now been erected, and the wilderness has become vocal with the sweet songs of Zion. ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... rejoicing at the success of her narrative, for she was convinced that the magistrate placed implicit confidence in her revelations, although during her recital, delivered, by the way, with conjurer-like volubility, not a muscle of M. Segmuller's face had betrayed what was passing in his mind. When she paused, out of breath, he rose from his seat, and without a word approached his clerk to inspect the notes taken during the earlier part of ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... Conjurer but I'll find this Pol-cat, This pilfering Whore: a plague of Vails, I cry, And covers for the impudence of Women, Their sanctity in show will deceive Devils, It is my evil Angel, ...
— Rule a Wife, and Have a Wife - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... surprise, which for a moment had so much in it of bitter realism that it drove the blood from my wife's cheeks. I could not follow Dawson's movements; his hands flickered like those of a conjurer, there came a sharp click, and the handcuffs were upon my wrists! I stared at them speechless, wondering how they got there, and, looking up, met the coldly triumphant eyes of the detective. I realised then exactly how the professional manhunter ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... Graianrhyd, was sent for to lay the Ghost. He came to the Rectory, but the Spirit could not be overcome. It is true Griffiths saw it, but in such a form that he could not approach it; night after night, the Spirit appeared in various forms, but still the conjurer was unable to master it. At last it came to the wise man in the form of a fly, which Griffiths immediately captured, and placed in a small box. This box he buried under a large stone in the river, just below the bridge, near the Llandegla ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... had suffered no harm themselves. A wigwam was erected almost in an instant, where Edward was deposited on a couch of heather. The surgeon, or he who assumed the office, appeared to unite the characters of a leech and a conjurer. He was an old smoke-dried Highlander, wearing a venerable grey beard, and having for his sole garment a tartan frock, the skirts of which descended to the knee; and, being undivided in front, made the vestment serve at once for doublet and breeches. [This garb, which ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... who endured the fearful pain to which he was put without a groan, gazing at the hideous figure, the last sight he was destined to behold on earth; for in a short time his jaw fell, his eyes became fixed, and he was dead. Still the conjurer, utterly unconscious of this, went on with his performance; until at length his eye falling on the body and perceiving what had occurred, he turned round and darted into his tent. The Indians did not appear to be very much surprised, ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston
... Charley's birthday, for which occasion I have provided a magic lantern and divers other tremendous engines of that nature. But the best of it is that Forster and I have purchased between us the entire stock in trade of a conjurer, the practice and display whereof is intrusted to me. And O my dear eyes, Felton, if you could see me conjuring the company's watches into impossible tea-caddies, and causing pieces of money to fly, and burning ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... ever-growing craze for something fresh, a new excitement, and in consequence had slowly but surely been losing their place in public favour. Then the company was broken up. The Swedish giantess went over to an opposition troupe; the German ventriloquist and conjurer had died of apoplexy; their leading lady, who so airily executed the tight-rope performances as well, went off one fine day without saying good-bye, and married the clown, with whom she had serious thoughts of setting up a select show on her own account. The roomy, ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... Christmas tale— Of wonder and of war—'Profane! 135 What! leave the lofty Latian strain, Her stately prose, her verse's charms, To hear the clash of rusty arms: In Fairy Land or Limbo lost, To jostle conjurer and ghost, 140 Goblin and witch!'—Nay, Heber dear, Before you touch my charter, hear; Though Leyden aids, alas! no more, My cause with many-languaged lore, This may I say:—in realms of death 145 Ulysses meets ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... tones of the men chimed in, and the mob of naked children, bringing up the rear of the procession, added their shrill voices to the clamor, which, upon the booming in of a drum and the furious shaking of the conjurer's rattle, became deafening. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... afraid?' thundered the monitor, in towering rage, turning this way and that, uncertain whom to select as the first victim of his heavy hand. Before he could collect his wits, one of the boys yelled, 'Rabbi Isaac, Rabbi Isaac, the candles!'—It worked like a conjurer's charm upon a serpent. In an instant the monitor turned and ran to his room and searched it. Seeing no one there, he sank into his chair, and groaned: 'Wicked, depraved children! Those gallows-birds, I'll mangle their flesh, and flay the skin from their bones!' and he kept on mumbling to himself ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... two (though they never saw the deceased in their lives, and are put in high spirits by his decease), the more honourably and piously they grieve for the dead. The poor people submitting themselves to this conjurer, an expensive procession is formed, in which bits of stick, feathers of birds, and a quantity of other unmeaning objects besmeared with black paint, are carried in a certain ghastly order of which no one understands the meaning, if it ever had any, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... First, I will have this bawdy light damm'd up; And till't be done, some two or three yards off, I'll chalk a line: o'er which if thou but chance To set thy desperate foot; more hell, more horror More wild remorseless rage shall seize on thee, Than on a conjurer, that had heedless left His circle's safety ere his devil was laid. Then here's a lock which I will hang upon thee; And, now I think on't, I will keep thee backwards; Thy lodging shall be backwards; thy walks backwards; Thy prospect, all be ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... people were present at this ceremony. He went before his companions in a sort of solemn silence, speaking to no one until he had paid the last duties to Barangaroo. In his hand was the spear, with which he meant to punish the car-rah-dy, or conjurer, for whom he had sent to attend her in her illness, but who either could not or would not obey the summons; and with the end of this spear he collected the funereal ashes into a heap. Over these he made, with a piece ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... others which may be collected from the books of natural history, we cannot but be convinced that the fetus or embryon is formed by apposition of new parts, and not by the distention of a primordial nest of germs included one within another like the cups of a conjurer. ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... recent measles epidemic a large number of children died on the Agency. At this village, a little child had been conjured until they thought it was dying, and then they sent for me. I found the poor little one all bruised with the hands of the conjurer. I showed the mother how to bathe it, and I poulticed the throat and sent Josephine over again to change the poultice, and she reported the child as breathing quietly. The next morning the swelling had gone down and the baby seemed much better; all day it continued to improve, and the next day sat ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889 • Various
... civilized society is through the necessities of warfare, and the despotic authority indispensable to military command. A military leader is the only superior to whom they will submit, except occasionally some prophet supposed to be inspired from above, or conjurer regarded as possessing miraculous power. These may exercise a temporary ascendancy, but as it is merely personal, it rarely effects any change in the general habits of the people, unless the prophet, like Mohammed, is also a military chief, and goes forth the armed apostle of a ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... allude to, he set up no less than seven defences to account for the unhappy duck's finding its way into his client's pocket, and the charm of them all was their variety. Inconsistency was not the word to apply reproachfully. Inconsistency was Codd's merit. He was like a conjurer who asks you to name a card, and as surely as you do so you draw ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... investigation. Eight of the winning votes were faggot votes manufactured out of the Cow Inn, of Haslemere, which inspired Dr. William King, Principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford, to a ballad of forty-two verses, entitled The Cow of Haslemere, or The Conjurer's Secretary at Oxford. Dr. King liked politics in poetry to ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... is without reverence either for God or man; neither altar nor throne have any dignity in his eyes. He speaks well of nobody but two or three great dead poets, and in so speaking of them he does well; but, alas! Mr. Hunt is no conjurer [Greek: technae ou lanthanei]. He pretends, indeed, to be an admirer of Spencer and Chaucer, but what he praises in them is never what is most deserving of praise—it is only that which he humbly conceives, bears some resemblance to the more ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... the lion tamer kept his eyes open. There were all sorts and conditions of men in Toys, but he was among them as a giant among pygmies; and even if the ex-ship's steward, the ex-trolley driver, the conjurer out of a job, and the smart young men who had been "clerking since they were in long pants," had wished to try their luck with Win, Earl Usher would have shown them the wisdom of turning their ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... least unfortunate member of that family. He was quite able to bear his sufferings—it was as if he had all these complaints to show what a prodigy of health he was. He was the child of his parents' youth and joy; he grew up like the conjurer's rosebush, and all the world was his oyster. In general, he toddled around the kitchen all day with a lean and hungry look—the portion of the family's allowance that fell to him was not enough, and he was unrestrainable ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... force upon us—that between our own mind and its bodily vehicle. He had exorcized the spirits from the rest of nature; and though there was a spirit here which could not be exorcized, the philosophic conjurer had nevertheless confined it and its unaccountable pranks within a minutely narrow magic circle: all mind could do was to turn the one tiny switch at the centre of its [20] animal telephone system. It could ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... owner, Miss Betty Reed. They didn't like her sweetheart. They was going to marry. He bought all her wedding clothes. When she didn't marry him she let him have back all the weddin' clothes and he buried his sister in them. This old man was a conjurer. He give my mother a cup of some kind of herbs and made her drink it. He tole her all her love would go to Henry Deal. He liked him. He was my papa. Her love sure did leave her sweetheart and go to my papa. He bought her some nice clothes. She married ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... commemorate his escape from shipwreck, which he believed to be owing to the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe. We then went to the village to call on the bishop, the Ylustrisimo Seor Campos, whom we found in his canonicals, and who seems a good little old man, but no conjurer; although I believe he had the honour of bringing up his cousin, Seor Posada, destined to be Archbishop of Mexico. We found him quietly seated in a large, simply-furnished room, and apparently ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... that a conjurer might have envied, Morris transferred the pin and ring to his waistcoat pocket and followed ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... life, practice by poison was at length successfully resorted to; and numerous similar instances might be quoted. But supposing that the Hebrew witch proceeded only by charms, invocations, or such means as might be innoxious, save for the assistance of demons or familiars, the connexion between the conjurer and the demon must have been of a very different character under the law of Moses, from that which was conceived in latter days to constitute witchcraft. There was no contract of subjection to a diabolic power, no infernal stamp or sign of such a fatal league, no revellings of Satan and ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... poky little house in Brompton somewhere, and there was no dancing, only boshy games and a conjurer, without any presents. And, oh! I say, at supper there was a big cake on the table, and no one was allowed to cut it, because it was hired. They're so poor, you know. Skidmore's pater is only a clerk, and you should see ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... chance, if I leave to-morrow," he thought. "I shall satisfy myself as to the nocturnal visitor, the magic flautist, and the bewildering Annapla—and probably find the mystery as simple as the egg in the conjurer's bottle ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... the kingdom; nor was there a fair proportion of them wanting here. That, however, which filled the people with the most especial curiosity, awe, and interest, was the general report that nothing less than a live conjurer, who had come to town on that very evening, was then among them. The town, in fact, was crowded as if it had been for an illumination; but as illuminations, unless they could be conducted with rushlights, were pageants altogether unknown in such small remote towns ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... by Miss Kitty. Aurenzebe lay upon the Chair by me. Kitty repeated without Book the Eight best Lines in the Play. Went in our Mobbs to the dumb Man [4], according to Appointment. Told me that my Lovers Name began with a G. Mem. The Conjurer was within a Letter ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... night. A thousand rare chance combinations of matter may occur which are capable of examination, and which, under skilled experiment, will resolve their secret. Nothing it more bewildering than a good conjuring trick till we know how it is done, and Nature is the supreme conjurer. We have not found out all her tricks, and never shall do so; but we very well know that a solution to ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... you all like to do?" demanded Mrs. Jallatt by way of diversion. "The professional conjurer whom I had engaged has failed me at the last moment. Can any of ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... he might be somewhere near," explained Regie, "in a tree or something," looking up into the little yew. "You can't tell with a conjurer like Uncle Dick, can you, Auntie Hester, whatever Mary ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... believed that the seventh son, in a family of sons, was a conjurer by nature. That is, he could work wonders like the fairies and excel ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... performance. But after the curtain was down, the polite husband was the soul of attendance upon the beautiful wife—her coat, her opera glasses, her trappings of various sorts flew in and out of his eager hands as though he were a conjurer playing with them for an audience. For he was a proud man, and she was a vain woman, and they were striving to prove to a disapproving world that the bargain they had made was a ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Byrd beamed at her. It was a perfectly good sensation, each time, to see her. One grew to suspect, between times, that anything so enchanting didn't really exist—and then, suddenly, there she was, like a conjurer's trick, every lovely ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... cried in a loud voice, for her passion overcame her, and she prophesied to those who bare the coffin, "Not one soul of you that lives shall see the land where your conjurer is leading you! Ye shall thirst, ye shall hunger, ye shall call on the Gods of Khem, and they shall not hear you; ye shall die, and your bones shall whiten the wilderness. Farewell! Set go with ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... o' the year for going about," said the latter, "though I s'pose if you can eat and drink as much as you want it don't matter. I s'pose you mightn't be a conjurer ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... way,"—said another—"He must be a kind of descendant of some ancient Egyptian conjurer who had the trick of playing with fire. There is nothing in the line of so-called miracle he cannot do,—and of course those who are ignorant of his methods, and ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... last year to the fete at Fleury, and another how well so-and-so would sing of an evening: and here are a third and fourth making plans for the whole future of their lives; and there is a fifth imitating a conjurer and making faces on his clenched fist, surely of all arts the most difficult and admirable! A sixth has eaten his fill, lights a cigarette, and resigns himself to digestion. A seventh has just dropped in, and calls for soup. Number eight, meanwhile, has left the table, and is once more trampling ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Then her nimble fingers closed over it as if by magic, and conveyed it with a rapid movement at once to her pocket. I do not think even Sebastian himself noticed the quick forward jerk of her eager hands, which would have done honour to a conjurer. He was too much taken aback by her unexpected behaviour ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... us no inkling of what we were to have that night, and my wife conjectured a conjurer! She gave me rather a triumphant smile when we were received in the library and the doors into the drawing-room were seen ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... always accorded a special measure of deference by the colonists. Thus, Miss Catherine Hayes, who was playing at an opposition house, was invited to luncheon by the Bishop of Sydney and to dinner by the Attorney-General; and a Scottish conjurer, "Professor" Anderson, was given an "address of ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... at joining in table-turning or any form of spiritualism—purpled Berenger's scar, now his only manner of blushing; but he instantly perceived that it was the Chevalier's desire that he should consult the conjurer, and therefore became the more resolved ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the blood, which flows freely from the pricks of their riders' spurs, shews you with what earnestness the whole affair is conducted. There, the ring is thrice carried off at the point of the lance. Feats of horsemanship follow in a covered building, to the right; and the juggler, conjurer, or magician, displays his dexterous feats, or exercises his potent spells ... in a little amphitheatre of trees, at a distance beyond. Here and there rise more stately edifices, as theatres ... from the doors of which a throng of heated ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... into the woods along the side of the mountain. We are on the first plateau before the summit; the snow partly supports us, but when it gives way and we sound it with our legs, we find it up to our hips. Here we enter a white world indeed. It is like some conjurer's trick. The very trees have turned to snow. The smallest branch is like a cluster of great white antlers. The eye is bewildered by the soft fleecy labyrinth before it. On the lower ranges the forests were entirely ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... this trip, I have small doubt, that he found the scenery, and perhaps the persons, for that pretty interlude, "The Seven Vagabonds." The story is placed not far from Stamford, and the conjurer in it says, "I am taking a trip northward, this warm weather, across the Connecticut first, and then up through Vermont, and may be into Canada before the fall." The narrator himself queries by what right he came among these wanderers, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... 'exorcist' and 'conjurer' were used indifferently. The former has since come to mean only 'one who drives away spirits'; the latter, 'one who calls ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... his cheroot curl up above the edge, noticed the little hole in his evening socks, and listened to the paragraphs he read aloud as of old. But this was all a veil he spread about himself of purpose. Behind it—he escaped. It was the conjurer's trick to divert the sight to unimportant details while the essential thing went forward unobserved. He managed wonderfully; she loved him for the pains he took to spare her distress; but all the while she knew that the body lolling in that ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... in awe, if they should complain of his abusing them, as in truth he did nothing else. Besides, it was believed, some meetings were at his house, wherein the art of the bawd was more beneficial to him than that of a conjurer, and that he was a better artist in the one than in the other: and that you may know his skill, he was himself a cuckold, having a very pretty wench to his wife, which would say, she did it to try his skill, but it fared with him as with astrologers ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... said this had a power similar to that of the magic words of Oriental tales which held the life of an entire city in suspense, leaving persons and objects immovable in the very attitude in which the powerful conjurer surprised them. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... made me look, or Picts; His villanous, biting, wire-embraces Had seal'd in me more strange forms and faces Than children see in dreams, or thou hast read In arras, puppet-plays, and gingerbread, With angled schemes, and crosses that bred fear Of being handled by some conjurer; And nearer, thou wouldst think—such strokes were drawn— I'd been some rough statue of Fetter-lane. Nay, I believe, had I that instant been By surgeons or apothecaries seen, They had condemned my raz'd skin to be Some walking herbal, or ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... wide open, the head thrown back, and the eyes half shut; then, suddenly changing to another tone, about half a dozen words are strung together, and a sort of dialogue, in recitative, is kept up by the performers. In one direction, a conjurer is seen exhibiting his feats of manual dexterity, surrounded by a motley gaping crowd;—in another, a story-teller exercises the risible faculties of the sedate Turk, as well as of the merry laughter-loving ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... vouchsafed the wondrous miracle of the sword. Some of the kings, when they heard Merlin speak thus, marvelled and believed him; but others, as King Lot, laughed him and his words to scorn, and mocked him for a conjurer and wizard. But it was agreed with Merlin that Arthur should come forth and ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... to me that some travelled priest or conjurer of this strange race may have met Europeans, seen hats, spectacles, steamers, and so forth, and may have written the prophecy as a warning of the dangers of our civilization. In that case the forgery was very cunningly managed, as the document had every appearance of ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... an unexpected realization of her thoughts she uttered a little cry of surprise; but, smiling affably, and in no way disconcerted, he raised his big hat from his head. On account of the softness of the felt this could only be accomplished by passing the arm over the head and seizing the crown as a conjurer would a pocket-handkerchief. The movement was large and unctuous, and it ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... ward) had peeped in to see the nigger minstrels. And everybody was pleased: every jest and every conundrum got its laugh, every ballad its applause. Not that we ever "give the bird" to those who come to amuse us. Offer us skill in any shape or form—pierrots, niggers, pianist, violinist, conjurer, ventriloquist, dancer, reciter: any or all of ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... two days only having been allowed to her for her preparations. There was very much for her to think of in such a journey. It was not only that she would see Emily Dunstable who was to be her cousin's wife, and that she would go to the play and visit the new conjurer's entertainment, but that she would be in the same city both with Adolphus Crosbie and with John Eames. Not having personal experience of the wideness of London, and of the wilderness which it is,—of the distance which is set ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... prophet, seer and savior. He is the acme of human attainment. Verse devoid of insight into the method of nature, and devoid of religious emotion, was to him but as sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. He called Poe "the jingle man" because he was a mere conjurer with words. The intellectual content of Poe's works was negligible. He was a wizard with words and measures, but a pauper in ideas. He did not add to our knowledge, he did not add to our love ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... counter—he really had an extraordinary long body— this amazing person produced the article in the customary conjurer's manner. "Paper," he said, and took a sheet out of the empty hat with the springs; "string," and behold his mouth was a string box, from which he drew an unending thread, which when he had tied his parcel he bit off— and, it seemed to me, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... and his dark figure corresponded with each other. The apartments, choaked up with lumber, scarcely admitted his body, though of the skeleton order. Perhaps leanness is an appendage to the science, for I never knew a corpulent conjurer. ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... below; but no one can see him except the wounded person he is angry with and wants to punish. Upon such a wounded person we always place a naked sword or some other sharp steel instrument, as spirits are much afraid of weapons of this kind. If there be any good conjurer at hand to charm away the spirits from the person wounded he recovers, but nothing else can save him." In one case a dacoit named Ghisa had been severely wounded in an encounter and was seized by the spirit of a banyan tree as he was being ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... itself on the infidel. There are no men more liable to groundless fears, than those who reject the object of legitimate awe. The man who will not believe in a deity, has often believed in witchcraft; and those who will not acknowledge a Providence, have often trembled before a conjurer. At this period, Frederick had grown peculiarly anxious and irascible—a temper for which the ambassador accounts by a sudden impulse of superstition. He says—"Amongst several other incredible follies in so great a character, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... over them. Everywhere you will meet with traces of it, and I have in another chapter told some of the principal phases of these. But the religion has kept itself pure. No hysteric visions, no madman's dreams, no clever conjurer's tricks, have ever shed a tawdry glory on the monkhood of the Buddha. Amid all the superstition round about them they have remained pure, as they have from passion and desire. Here in the far East, the very home, we think, of the unnatural and superhuman, the very cradle of the mysterious ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... system! Come across the street, here, and, entering by a little shop and yard, examine these intricate passages and doors, contrived for escape, flapping and counter- flapping, like the lids of the conjurer's boxes. But what avail they? Who gets in by a nod, and shows their secret working to ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... that bodes no good Unto the Holy Brotherhood. I may be wrong, but I confess— As far as it is right or lawful For one, no conjurer, to guess— It seems to me ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... two dogs to dine and spend the evening; and they came with their master, who was a Frenchman. He had been a teacher in a deaf and dumb school, and thought he would try the same plan with dogs. He had also been a conjurer, and now was supported by Blanche and her daughter Lyda. These dogs behaved at dinner just like other dogs; but when I gave Blanche a bit of cheese and asked if she knew the word for it, her master said she ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott |
