"Legerdemain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... swallowed the gilded bait of sophistry, prepared for their credulity and wonder. Those of us who attended day after day, and were accustomed to have all our previous notions confounded and struck out of our hands by some metaphysical legerdemain, were at last at some loss to know whether two and two made four, till we had heard the lecturer's opinion on that head. He might have some mental reservation on the subject, some pointed ridicule to pour upon the common supposition, some learned authority ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... skilfully selected for comparison the trade had experienced an enormous drop, and afterwards, to all intents and purposes, completely recovered itself; that then a smaller drop had occurred, and that this in turn was being fast made good? The best way to expose the above piece of statistical legerdemain is to give without further comment the whole of the figures for the past fifteen years. They will be found in the following table. With figures such as these before him—and they must have been before him—it is astounding that Mr. Williams should ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox
... almost preferred a painted to a real human being—a picture landscape to a view from a hill-top. He was satisfied that things should come to him filtered through the canvases of his predecessors—content to see with their eyes. He was apt to think painting was little higher than legerdemain, was a conjurer's feat to be detected by constantly watching the performer, was a secret that he might be told by others or might discover for himself by examining their works: not a science open under certain conditions ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... is now distinctly bad form to practise legerdemain or feats of sleight-of-hand at a dinner party. Time was when it was considered correct for a young man who could do card or other tricks to add to the gayety of the party by displaying his skill, but ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... committees were expedients devised to place the power in the hands of a few, in a government of the many. The rule of the majority is so very sacred a thing that it is found necessary to regulate it by legerdemain. No good republican ever disputes the principle, while no sagacious one ever submits to it. There are various modes, however, of defeating all 'sacred principles,' and this particular 'sacred principle' among the rest. The simplest is ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... characters, as in giving them a little social sense. He preaches, not against distinct moral turpitude like hypocrisy and avarice, but against inordinate affection for lap-dogs (Melampe), pietistic objections to masked balls {Masquerades}, and superstitious belief in legerdemain (Witchcraft). Holberg voices the urbane humanistic spirit that characterized the eighteenth century ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... Marshall felt himself crowded towards the brink of ruin. In a moment of weakness he permitted himself a course to which only so great an emergency could have prompted him. The situation was saved by a species of legerdemain—of card-shuffling, so to speak—which was quite outside the lines of mercantile morality, and barely inside the lines of legality itself. An instrument willing to lend itself to this feat of juggling was needed, and was found in a pushing young fellow ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... rheumatism, ciatics, and lumbagos; and the good people of New England, abandoning the study of the occult sciences, turned their attention to the more profitable hocus pocus of trade, and soon became expert in the legerdemain art of turning a penny. Still, however, a tinge of the old leaven is discernible, even unto this day, in their characters; witches occasionally start up among them in different disguises, as physicians, civilians and ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... wages." One would think that the "paying out" of capital is hardly possible without at least a "temporary" diminution of the capital from which payment is made. But "Progress and Poverty" changes all that by a little verbal legerdemain:— ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Whilst they torment us with this complication and confusion of words, it fares with them, methinks, as with jugglers; their dexterity imposes upon our senses, but does not at all work upon our belief this legerdemain excepted, they perform nothing that is not very ordinary and mean: for being the more learned, they are ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... on the wheel. The doll's hand appeared to be turning the handle. As a matter of fact, the machine was electrically driven, and the wheel turned the hand of the doll. In the realm of cause and effect we are frequently the dupes and victims of a very dexterous system of legerdemain. The resultant quantity is invariably clear; the contributing causes are not what ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... epistle. Yes—it was so—in solemn, sober black ink! Beauty's twin had got four fine kittens! Great Jehoshaphat! How could I ever get over those confounded kittens! It was too late to murder them. And my aunt—but stop! Let me read her letter; it might suggest something—some feline legerdemain method of conjuring four fine kittens into a first prize black male cat. So here goes. And this is how it went: "I always considered you to be a fool, Samuel, but nothing worse, until now. Unless the enclosed ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... the crowd with which Polynesians receive a prodigy. As for myself, I stood amazed. The thing was a common conjuring trick which I have seen performed at home a score of times; but how was I to convince the villagers of that? I wished I had learned legerdemain instead of Hebrew, that I might have paid the fellow out with his own coin. But there I was; I could not stand there silent, and the best I could ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sudden decision to be a detective had brought its own anxieties; but all these happenings, though wonderful and unusual, had seemed to be, after all, inside the circle of possible things wonderful as the chemical experiments are where two liquids poured together make fire, surprising as legerdemain, thrilling as a juggler's display, but nothing more. Only now a new feeling came to him as he walked through those gardens; by day those gardens were like dreams, at night they were like visions. ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... the western wing and found the Tressilvains tete-a-tete over a card-table, deeply interested in something that resembled legerdemain; and he stood at the door and watched them with a ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... but the moment it was found that the purloined envelope merely contained a copy of an English newspaper, what might not happen? Would the Russian authorities dare telegraph to the frontier to have her searched, or would the big official who had planned the robbery suspect that she, by legerdemain, had become possessed of the letter so much sought for? Even if he did suspect her, he would certainly have craft enough not to admit it. His game would rather be to maintain that this was the veritable document found in the Englishman's despatch-box; and it was more than likely, taking into ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... shall be undefiled by political or social intrusion. But the day will never come when it will be otherwise than damaging to public morality and humiliating to human dignity to forswear principle for a price, and to make the most awful of mysteries the subject of political legerdemain and theatrical buffoonery. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... lingering farewell, he felt himself forced to bid it adieu. Strange that any man should think his own sincere and confidential overflowings of thought and feeling upon books, men, and public affairs, less valuable in a literary view than the legerdemain of throwing up bubbles into the air for the sake of watching their prismatic hues, like an Indian juggler with his cups and balls. We of this age, who have formed our notions of epistolary excellence from the chastity ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... down off his high horse,—that is, mule,—and I sent the deputy in with him with directions to toss his clothes out to me, for I wanted to keep my eye on Miss Cullen and her brother, so as to prevent any legerdemain on their part. ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... contain'd them, Exemplify'd in the Tinctures of Cochineel, Brasil, Verdigrease, Glass, Litmus, of which last on this occasion several pleasant Phaenomena are related (from 328 to 335.) To which are adjoyn'd certain Cautional Corollaries (335, 336.) The Waterdrinker and some of his Legerdemain tricks related.(337.) ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... to overcome the more palpable difficulties of his profession. The execution of the best artists is always a splendid tour-de-force; and much that in painting is supposed to be dependent on material is indeed only a lovely and quite inimitable legerdemain. Now, when powers of fancy, stimulated by this triumphant precision of manual dexterity, descend uninterruptedly from generation to generation, you have at last, what is not so much a trained artist, ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... foam up and overflow, and at that exciting moment out they bubble into the smoking skillet, the handle of which she seizes at the identical moment that she lets go of the empty bowl with one hand and pushes the red-faced boy over backward with the other. It is legerdemain! But then, how she manages that skillet! How her red cheeks flush, her black eyes sparkle, and her plump hands guide that ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... of no other vessel, that lay in front of the Rock that rode out this gale; and she did it with two hempen cables out, partly protected, however, by a good berth. There was a Swede that came back next day to her anchorage, which was said to have got back-strapped, behind the Rock, by some legerdemain, and so escaped also. I do not know how many lives were lost on this occasion; but the destruction of property must ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... old, as handsome as Nature could make a Man. They consecrate a beautiful Youth from his Infancy, and all Arts are used to compleat him in the finest Manner, both in Beauty and Shape: He is bred to all the little Arts and Cunning they are capable of; to all the legerdemain Tricks, and Slight of Hand, whereby he imposes on the Rabble; and is both a Doctor in Physick and Divinity: And by these Tricks makes the Sick believe he sometimes eases their Pains, by drawing from the afflicted Part ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... idea; the upper part answers to the wings lifted, the lower part to the wings down, and you see both together. Further, in actual fact, you see the wings in innumerable other positions between these two extremes; like the leaves of a book opened with your thumb quickly—as they do in legerdemain—almost as you see the spokes of a wheel run together as they revolve—a ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... but I saw that he had clumsily overturned the bottle and absently set it up again, as though his thoughts were far away. Yet with a cleverness that would have done credit to a professor of legerdemain he had managed to extract two or ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... grown rich by some legerdemain or other, Lucretia. I hear that you have refitted your palace with great magnificence. Has Canossa come into a fortune? or has he been winning ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... obscure. He was seen at the fair of Nijni-Novgorod, where he displayed himself in all his hideous glory. He already sang as nobody on this earth had ever sung before; he practised ventriloquism and gave displays of legerdemain so extraordinary that the caravans returning to Asia talked about it during the whole length of their journey. In this way, his reputation penetrated the walls of the palace at Mazenderan, where the little sultana, the favorite of the Shah-in-Shah, was boring herself to death. A dealer ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... harvest. Some article of stolen property is found in one man's house, and by a little legerdemain it is conveyed to that of another, both of whom are made to pay liberally; the man robbed also pays, and all the members of the village community are made to do the same. They are all called to the court of the Thanadar to give evidence as to what ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... conjurors, who perform prodigies of agility with coins, playing-cards, and other articles of legerdemain, but they are not so quick as was Trowbridge in springing sidewise from the menacing snake. In still quicker movement, the heavy Colt at his side leaped from its holster. The next second the rattle had ceased forever, for the snake's head had been ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... the furniture to the background. And yet to combine many periods in one and commit no anachronism, to put something French, something Spanish, something Italian, and something English into an American house and have the result the perfection of American taste—is a feat of legerdemain that has been ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... would not seem to move from his position, and yet every day, when the things fell to be returned the plug had disappeared; he had found the means to conceal it in the roof, whence he could radiantly produce it on the morrow. Although this piece of legerdemain was performed regularly before three or four pairs of eyes, we could never catch him in the fact; although we searched after he was gone, we could never find the tobacco. Such were the diversions of Uncle Parker, ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were rich, Or thought they were—no matter which— For, every year, the Revenue From their Periwinkles larger grew; And their rulers, skilled in all the trick And legerdemain of arithmetic, Knew how to place 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 and 10, Such various ways, behind, before, That they made a unit seem a score, And proved themselves most wealthy men! So, on they went, a prosperous crew, The people ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... lantern, and the Lecture on Heads?—am I right, or am I in fairy-land?' calling him by his name. It was in vain to hesitate, it was impossible to escape, the discovery was complete. It was plain however that the dealer in magical delusions had not altogether given up the art of legerdemain, which, perhaps, he finds the most profitable ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... instead of his having to pay rates at the end of the year, each member of the commune was something in pocket. Hence the peasants in general understood by "partition," that the State lands, especially the forests, would be divided among the communes, and that, by some political legerdemain or other, everybody would have free fire-wood, free grazing for his cattle, and over and above that, a piece of gold without working for it. That he should give up a single clod of his own to further the general ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... was an entertainment by a gentleman bearing the delightfully sepulchral name of Dr. Sexton, whose mission in life it is to "expose" the tricks of Dr. Lynn and Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke. How those gentlemen are to be "exposed," seeing they only claim to deceive you by legerdemain, I cannot comprehend; but they made the Spiritualists very angry by taking their names in vain on the handbills of the Egyptian Hall, and more than insinuating that there was a family likeness between their performances; and, consequently, the conjurors ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... I was sorry for it. So away hence home, where to the office to do business a while, and then home to supper and to read, and then to bed. I was prettily served this day at the playhouse-door, where, giving six shillings into the fellow's hand for us three, the fellow by legerdemain did convey one away, and with so much grace faced me down that I did give him but five, that, though I knew the contrary, yet I was overpowered by his so grave and serious demanding the other shilling, that I could not deny him, but was forced by myself to give it him. After I come ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the qualities and character of that fact or form, considering it as real and existing, being all the while totally regardless of the signs or symbols by which the notion of it has been conveyed. These signs have no pretence, nor hypocrisy, nor legerdemain about them;—there is nothing to be found out, or sifted, or surprised in them;—they bear their message simply and clearly, and it is that message which the mind takes from them and dwells upon, regardless of the language in which it is delivered. But the ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... Bench. And what substitute does the honourable Baronet give his followers to console them for the loss of their favourite Registration Bill? Even this bill for the endowment of Maynooth College. Was such a feat of legerdemain ever seen? And can we wonder that the eager, honest, hotheaded Protestants, who raised you to power in the confident hope that you would curtail the privileges of the Roman Catholics, should stare and grumble when you propose to give public ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and turned my situation over in my mind, in which kind of agreeable mental legerdemain I was ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... deceptive power of the art is really felt to be a source of interest and amusement. This is the case with a large number of the collectors of Dutch pictures. They enjoy seeing what is flat made to look round, exactly as a child enjoys a trick of legerdemain: they rejoice in flies which the spectator vainly attempts to brush away,[46] and in dew which he endeavours to dry by putting the picture in the sun. They take it for the greatest compliment to their treasures that they should be mistaken for ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... heard, on the Rio Pongo, of a wonderful wizard who dwelt in this region, and took advantage of the last day of my detention to inquire his whereabouts. The impostor was renowned for his wonderful tricks of legerdemain, as well as for cures, necromancy, and fortune-telling. The ill came to him by scores; credulous warriors approached him with valuable gifts for fetiches against musket balls and arrows; while the humbler ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... plausible, and long tormented ourselves with an old spinning-wheel and some medicine bottles, without producing even the smallest result. We nevertheless adhered to our belief, and were much delighted, when at the time of the fair, among other rarities, magical and legerdemain tricks, an electrical machine performed its marvels, which, like those of magnetism, were at ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... considerable reputation by his skill in legerdemain. If you lent him a watch or a coin, with one turn of his hand he would make it disappear; he could do the same thing when you had not lent it. He could make anything disappear that was not absolutely screwed to the floor, and at public-houses where ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... commands the Angel of Death, who with matchless legerdemain, keeps the mirror of illusion, unsuspected, before the consumptive's eyes; and, seeing, in ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... a miracle of doubtful virtue to my relatives as well as to my neighbors. My money came as if by magic, unasked and unwarranted, like the gold of sunset. "I don't see how you do it," my Uncle Frank said to me one day, and his tone implied that he considered my authorship a questionable kind of legerdemain, as if I were, somehow, getting ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... purposes, in the shape of an innocent, yea, and a virtuous man.] Nor can we esteem alterations made in the sufferers, by a look or touch of the accused, to be an infallible evidence of guilt, but frequently liable to be abused by the Devil's legerdemain. ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... require them against the evidence of their senses, to take for a chamber a scene which is ornamented in quite a different style? And how does that which in the first description is a public place become afterwards a hall of audience? In this scenic arrangement there must be either legerdemain or a ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... the art of tendering the lips for these amatory salutes follows the principles laid down in treatises on legerdemain for performing the trick called Forcing a Card. The card is to be shifted nimbly, withdrawn, edged under, and withal not to be offered till the moment the unsuspecting person's hand reaches the pack; this forcing to be done so modestly and yet so coaxingly, ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... the physiological unity at the top of the scale, is far more complete, with all its complexity, than is the integrity of the physiological unity at the bottom of the scale, with its marked simplicity of structure. By no sort of legerdemain or surgical skill can we make an individual mammal become two. If we divide it, the whole dies. Not so, however, with some of the lower grades of animal existence. Cut a hydra into thirty or forty pieces, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that any such mighty magic can lurk in the simple substitution of quantity for value? Surely, X., you are hair-splitting a little in this instance, and mean to amuse yourself with my simplicity, by playing off some logical legerdemain upon me from the "seraphic" or ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... come. I will call in if I may, and chat it over with you when you come home. We have not breakfasted yet. Goodbye!" There was a whir of wheels, and the yellow cloud rolled away down the road again. By some legerdemain the Admiral found that he was clutching in his right hand one of the obnoxious bills. He crumpled it up, and threw ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... true that it was in the power of others, as well as of Hastings, to practise this legerdemain; but in the controversies of governments, sophistry is of little use unless it be backed by power. There is a principle which Hastings was fond of asserting in the strongest terms, and on which he acted ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fathers, their memory fades away and with it their worship gradually falls into complete desuetude. Thus the spirits who receive the homage of these savages were real men of flesh and blood, not mythical beings conjured up by the fancy of their worshippers, which some legerdemain of the mind has foisted into the shrine and encircled with the halo of divinity. Not that the Melanesians do not also worship beings who, so far as we can see, are purely mythical, though their worshippers firmly believe in their reality. ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... with. If our historian means by every little invention to increase the powers of mankind, as an enterprise of such renown, he is deceived; this glory is not due to such as go about with a dog and a hoop, nor to the practicers of legerdemain, or upon the high or low rope; not to every mountebank and his man Andrew; all which, with many other mechanical and experimental philosophers, do in some sort increase the powers of mankind, and differ no ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... biography; books about Indians, flints, and folk-lore; maps and guides-among them several guides to Paris—only twenty-five hundred volumes in all); but they are not the material of his magic. His work was not legerdemain, skilful manipulation, but recreation, and he found the aureate earth in the forests, on the prairies, and in documents ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... has only attained to "general notions," which are purely subjective, that is, to logical definitions, and these logical definitions are subsequently elevated to the dignity of "universal principles and causes" by a species of philosophic legerdemain. Philosophy is thus stripped of its metaphysical character, and assumes a strictly logical aspect. The key of the Aristotelian ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the reverse of John in many particulars; covetous, frugal, minded domestic affairs, would pinch his belly to save his pocket, never lost a farthing by careless servants or bad debtors. He did not care much for any sort of diversion, except tricks of high German artists and legerdemain. No man exceeded Nic. in these; yet it must be owned that Nic. was a fair dealer, and in that way ...
— English Satires • Various
... impostor, but a man of consummate cunning and address, is very evident from this letter. The bishop was fairly taken in by his clever legerdemain, and when once his first distrust was conquered, appeared as anxious to deceive himself as even Delisle could have wished. His faith was so abundant that he made the case of his protege his own, and ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... front of the abbey, or in the square facing the western end, the national guard is exercised in the day time—and troops of fair nymphs and willing youths mingle in the dance on a sabbath evening, while a platform is erected for the instrumental performers, and for the exhibition of feats of legerdemain. You must not take leave of St. Ouen without being told that, formerly, the French Kings used occasionally to "make revel" within the Abbot's house. Henry II, Charles IX, and Henry III, each took a fancy to this spot—but especially the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... said the baronet; "this is some legerdemain trick of yours to get off from the performance of your promise, as you have so often done before. You shall show me that treasure, or ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... was Laure. She was in love with a conjurer, a common, flashy fellow, who gave his mediocre exhibitions of legerdemain at such places as Le Jardin Exterieur, and had recently come to lodge at her mother's. She aspired to marry him, but did not dare to expect it. Her homage was very palpable, and monsieur Eugene Legrand, who had no matrimonial intentions, would often wish that ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... and esoteric doctrine, it was strictly confined to the priests, or to the favoured few who were admitted to initiation. The magic excellence of the magicians, who successfully emulated the miracles of Moses, was apparently assisted by a legerdemain similar to that of the Hindu jugglers of ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... almost the only person in whom she seemed to take any real interest, still followed her footsteps hither and thither, now toying with some pet of the gardens, a parrot or a dog, now performing most incredible feats of legerdemain, running off upon his hands, with his feet in a perpendicular position, to a distance, and coming back again by a series of summersets, until suddenly gathering his limbs and body together like a ball, he went off rolling like a helpless mass down ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... beer, and market ordinaries of Old England... To be dreaming when you should be looking after your cattle is a terrible drawback... There are certain persons who, too lazy and too extravagant to succeed in Europe, sail for Australia under the idea that fortunes are to be made there by a sort of legerdemain, spend or lose their capital in a very short space of time, and return to England to abuse the place, the people, and everything connected with colonization.—Sydney. Australian Handbook (admirable ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thumb—then, fient a hair care they; but, standing beside a ranting, roaring, parrot-coal fire, in a white apron and gingham jacket, they pour sauce out of ae pan into another, to suit the taste of my Lord this, and my Lady that, turning, by their legerdemain, fish into fowl, and fowl into flesh; till, in the long run, man, woman, and wean, a' chew and champ away, without kenning more what they are eating than ye ken the day ye'll dee, or whether the Witch of Endor wore a demity ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... Peter, who viewed it askance, as an object darkly editorial. It made our young man, somehow, suddenly apprehensive; the advantage of which he had just been conscious was about to be transferred by a quiet process of legerdemain to a person who already had advantages enough. Baron, in short, felt a deep pang of anxiety; he couldn't have said why. Mr. Locket took decidedly too many things for granted, and the explorer of Sir Dominick Ferrand's irregularities remembered afresh how clear he ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... that they full fain would have. I warrant you they will never be accused of bastardy; you were to blame to lay it to their charge, they will trace the steps that others have passed before. If I had not espied, though very late, legerdemain, used in these cases, I had never played my part. No, if I did not see the balances held awry, I had never myself come into the weigh house. I hope I shall have so good a customer of you, that all other officers shall do their ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... wire and slack-rope, who was in truth a second Fenella in the sprightliness of her nimble exhibitions. Day Francis, the conjuror, was his admiration. He was delighted with Rannie, the old ventriloquist, and the first in America; and Potter, the late sable and celebrated professor of legerdemain, in slight-of-hand, he thought actually ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... talking to Charley in the first instance, it may be mentioned that Tom had dexterously transferred the bottle of brandy to the keeping of the Turk, who had secreted it behind his back, after turning half aside and pouring out a pretty good dose into his coffee-cup, all with the most rapid legerdemain as if he ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... off, and truth sought more and more for truth's sake. "Black magic" with its Satanic machinery vanished, only reappearing occasionally among marvel-mongers and belated theologians. "White magic" became legerdemain. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... he performed soon ceased to have the literary tincture of the one related above, and they became mere vulgar juggleries and exhibitions of legerdemain, suited to the taste of the multitude. Scholars turned their backs on him, and we find him only among tipplers and associates of the lowest kind. At one of their carousals his half-intoxicated companions asked him for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... the Company's grand day—if not his wife, then his sweetheart, for all were to feast together. During dinner the musicians in their gallery made sweet music. After dinner, actors and tumblers came in, and they had pageants and shows, and marvellous feats of skill and legerdemain. ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... out of your pulpit to pick up an old woman's umbrella?' the squire asked him in wrath, and muttered of requiring none of his clerical legerdemain with books of business. Tears were in Peterborough's eyes. My aunt Dorothy's eyes dwelt kindly on him to encourage him, but the man's irritable nose was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... again going through the patting and "chucking" process as before. But his professions ill correspond with his acts, as the aged sinner is actually detected stealing the knife of Seagriff himself, and from his person, too!—a feat of dexterity worthy the most accomplished master of legerdemain, the knife being adroitly abstracted from its sheath on the old sealer's hip during the exchange of salutations. Fortunately, the theft is discovered by young Chester, who is standing near by, and the thief caught in the very act. On the stolen article being taken from under the pilferer's ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... the ordinary religious ritual of the Algonkins. It consists chiefly in exhibitions of legerdemain, and in conjuring and exorcising demons. A jossakeed is an inspired prophet who derives his power directly from the higher spirits, and not as the ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... and using all such gestures as he did, but when more light appeared, it vanished. Eremites and anchorites have frequently such absurd visions, revelations by reason of much fasting, and bad diet, many are deceived by legerdemain, as Scot hath well showed in his book of the discovery of witchcraft, and Cardan, subtil. 18. suffites, perfumes, suffumigations, mixed candles, perspective glasses, and such natural causes, make men look as if they were dead, or with horse-heads, bull's-horns, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... still confused his vision and his judgment, vaguely suspicious that he missed the main intent of her speech. Suspicious as one who, listening to the clever patter of a conjurer, detects in it the effort to distract attention from some difficult feat of legerdemain, until that feat has passed from attempt merely into ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Mr Mill's essay consists in one simple trick of legerdemain. It consists in using words of the sort which we have been describing first in one sense and then in another. Men will take the objects of their desire if they can. Unquestionably:—but this is an identical proposition: for ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... because I expected as bad as could be: and I was not much mistaken, for it was so. I was prettily served this day at the playhouse-door; where, giving six shillings into the fellow's hand for three of us, the fellow by legerdemain did convey one away, and with so much grace faced me down that I did give him but five, that, though I knew the contrary, yet I was overpowered by his so grave and serious demanding the other shilling, that ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... this more, odd, or indeed absolutely ludicrous, was the circumstance that, by a species of legerdemain, a whisper had passed among the spectators so stealthily, and yet so soon, that the attorney and his companion were the only two on deck who remained ignorant of the person of the man they sought. Even the children ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... of absolute legerdemain he took out his handkerchief and brushed some crumbs from his beard. His cup slid to the edge of the saucer and peeped over, but, throwing the spoon overboard, righted itself just in time. Somewhat pleased with himself he replaced the handkerchief and, drinking the remainder of his ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... meaning: by some legerdemain, such as our own Indians show in telegraphing news from one mountain top to another, word has reached Mustad of what has taken place, and he has been called upon to join the faithful, and has been only too ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... luxury, and by the time it was spent he had established himself in his profession. This profession was a lucrative one. It was that of a swindler. Gifted with a handsome person, facile manner, and ready wit, he had added to these natural advantages some skill at billiards, some knowledge of gambler's legerdemain, and the useful consciousness that he must prey or be preyed on. John Rex was no common swindler; his natural as well as his acquired abilities saved him from vulgar errors. He saw that to successfully ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... which some had fallen last summer, during their absence from us; and we perceived with pain, that in difficult occurrences, or in sickness, they are too hasty to listen to the sorcerers, and take refuge to their legerdemain tricks for help, rather than call upon our Saviour, and trust to him. Some, however, are of a different description, and give us good hopes of their ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... permit me to indulge in the luxury of port. My share of the '45 now reposes amid the moss in the tulip-bowl, which you may remember decorated the dining table! Not desiring to appear churlish, by means of a simple feat of legerdemain I drank your health ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... filled with gunpowder, so to speak, and the train laid. There wants but one spark,—(edition printed in Holland, edition done in Berlin, plenty of editions made or makable by a little surreptitious legerdemain,—and I never knew whether it was AKAKIA in print, or AKAKIA in manuscript, that King and King's Chamberlain were now reading together, nor does it matter much):—your Turkey surreptitiously stuffed with gunpowder, I say; train ready waiting; one ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... suited to that where the hare passed. As I have heard of some painters that have drawn the sky in an huge large landskip, so lively that the birds have flown against it, thinking it free air, and so have fallen down. And if painters and juglers by the tricks of legerdemain can do such strange feats to the deceiving of the sight, it is no wonder that these airy invisible spirits as far surpass them in all such praestigious doings as the air ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... the actors came on and went off, opening the door between the parlour and the drawing-room and hanging it with table-covers to represent the front of the stage. Then he recited Hamlet and King Lear; and we all left off work to look at him; and when he wound up with a performance of legerdemain, and brought a vase that had previously been on the mantel-piece out of Mrs. Marchbold's work-bag, and took eggs from a pillow-case, and took four reels of cotton out of Miss Bailey's chignon, we didn't ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... was the uncanny legerdemain displayed in drawing from and replacing the weapon in its place of concealment. The Indians, attracted from the store by the sounds of shooting, began gabbling and gesticulating affrightedly, but when MacDavid spoke to them sharply ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... to conceal these facts from the lower house and passed lightly over the disclosures of Faber—when the Imperial Chancellor vigorously opposed him—with skillful legerdemain. In the upper house Grey's policy also met with severe criticism, and from his declarations, as well as from those of Lloyd George made at the same time, only one conclusion could be drawn—that official England was determined to remain steadfast in the form of its political co-operation ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... to instruct the Students in State Legerdemain, as how to take off the Impression of a Seal, to split a Wafer, to open a Letter, to fold it up again, with other the like ingenious Feats of Dexterity and Art. When the Students have accomplished themselves in this Part of their Profession, they are to be ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... hoping thus to learn how to offset their neglect of themselves. Conditions among them will be such that this will really be necessary. Few besides impractical sentimentalists will therefore oppose it. But the idea will be to gain health by legerdemain, by a trick, instead of by taking the trouble to live ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... were expert at legerdemain, and, by their astonishing exploits, sustained among an ignorant people a reputation of being magicians. They devoted much time to the study of astrology, observing closely the heavenly bodies, through which they pretended they could predict events ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... disposed of the rest of his food by an act akin to legerdemain, and then fastened a keen eye upon the lady. She was in the midst of a struggle of some sort. But she could not keep ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... bowing. The bird-like case with which she executed the most florid, rapid, and difficult music was so securely easy and unfailing as to excite something of the same kind of wonder with which one would watch some matchless display of legerdemain. ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... in America, and A. T. Stewart issued a special invitation to the ladies of New York to come and see them and see themselves as others saw them. To arrange these mirrors so that a lady could see the buttons on the back of her dress was regarded as the final achievement of legerdemain. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... James's remittances arrived just in time to meet. Indeed, this was the normal condition of his life. He had always a bill coming due—a bill which some good-humoured banker had to be coaxed into renewing, or which was paid at the last moment by some skilful legerdemain in the way of pouring out of one vessel into another, transferring the debt from one quarter to another, so that there may have been said to be always a certain amount of quite fictitious and visionary money floating about Mr. May, money which existed only in the shape of symbol, and ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... that some of Mr. George's feats 'seem to partake of the nature of legerdemain'. 'He sways a popular assembly by waves of almost Hebraic emotion.' 'No man has ever had his ear closer to the ground and listened more attentively to the tramp of the oncoming multitudes.' He 'held Great Britain's end up' at the International conference. A 'magnificent tribute was paid to him ...
— Tract XI: Three Articles on Metaphor • Society for Pure English
... Alonzo Rosello, as he and his young assistant, Joe Strong, stood bowing and smiling in response to the applause of the crowd that had gathered in the theatre to witness the feats of "Black Art, Magic, Illusion, Legerdemain, Prestidigitation and Allied Sciences." That was what the ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... face to face with the Lord Jehovah, and the positive statement that this was the promised Son. By what guessing or critical legerdemain one who claims loyalty to the word of God and ordinary intelligence can attempt to sweep away these definite and determinate statements, and crowd some insignificant worm of the dust into the place given to him who was in the beginning, who was with God ...
— The Testimony of the Bible Concerning the Assumptions of Destructive Criticism • S. E. Wishard
... implies that the faith which is, in its depth, obedience, in its practical issues will produce the practical obedience which the text enjoins. It is no mere piece of theological legerdemain which counts that faith is righteousness. But, just as all sin comes from selfishness, so, and therefore, all righteousness will flow from giving up self, from decentralising, as it were, our souls from their old centre, self, and taking a new centre, God in Christ. Thus ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... with a sigh of relief; and taking his knife, he cut boldly, and, behold—the bullet! It was like a feat of legerdemain. This cut was washed with fluid from a small bottle on the table, smartly stitched, and then, after the wound in front had been treated, the shoulder was firmly bandaged, and Ryder seemed satisfied. He was none too soon, for at that moment Mary ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... all subjects than those who confine their researches in special directions. When we base nations on justice and equality, we lift government out of the mists of speculation into the dignity of a fixed science. Everything short of this is trick, legerdemain, sleight of hand. Magicians may make nations seem to live, but they do not. The Newtons of our day who should try to make apples stand in the air or men walk on the wall, would be no more puerile in their experiments than are they who build nations outside ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... continued he, in a whisper to Lovel, "were they to pillory him for one of the most impudent rascals that ever wagged a tongue, they would square the punishment more accurately with his deserts. But let us see: I think he is about to show us some of his legerdemain." ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... really find Mr. Charteris particularly attractive?" Patricia demanded, so quickly and so innocently that Mrs. Pendomer could not deny herself the glance of a charlatan who applauds his fellow's legerdemain. ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... nothing of the curious transmutation which the wit of man can work, would be very apt to wonder by what kind of legerdemain Aaron Burr had contrived to shuffle himself down to the bottom of the pack, as an accessory, and turn up poor Blennerhassett as principal, in this treason. Who, then, is Aaron Burr, and what the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... gave an exhibition of tricks of legerdemain, which even the older people found interesting and amusing. The little ones were particularly delighted with a marvellous shower of ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... see him again; The ledger returns as by legerdemain; His neckcloth is damp with an easterly flaw, And he holds in his ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the invalid set to work to obey. There was a hideous trick of legerdemain in the last generation, by which an encoffined skeleton was made to struggle to its feet. Something like this took place as Mina's feeble arms were brought into the most violent effort to assist her to rise. But a powerful emotion, a ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... startles you by the legerdemain feat of snatching brand-new ideas out of the blue, like rabbits out of a hat. While you stand at the port-hole of your cabin and watch the rollers rushing back to the beloved home-land you are quitting, he marshals your friends ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... disagreeable creatures: to "kill cankers in the musk-rosebuds," and to "keep back the clamorous owl," are regular parts of their business. Their intense dislike of what is ugly and misshapen is the reason why they so much practise "the legerdemain of changelings," stealing away finished, handsome babies, and leaving blemished and defective ones in their stead. For the same cause they love to pester and persecute and play shrewd tricks upon decrepit old age, wise aunts, and toothless, chattering gossips, and especially such awkward ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... help out. According to one informant, when Blind Mike, one of the well-known doctors in historic times, was becoming a doctor, his teacher required him to smoke four hand-rolled cigarettes in a row without allowing the smoke to escape from his lungs. This was not considered an exercise in legerdemain but a way to develop the younger man's control ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... been, if not accepted, at least listened to respectfully; because while taking it out of its proper place, he contrived to graft it upon Christianity; and succeeded, with a sort of speculative legerdemain, in making it appear to be in harmony with revealed religion. Disguised as a philosophy of Predestination, and connected with the Christian doctrine of Retribution, it steps forward with an air of unconscious innocence, as if interfering with nothing ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... be of the smallest advantage, except to the priests. It must be a self-evident truth, that an argument by men, upon that which is not accessible to man, could only have been invented by knaves, who, like the professors of legerdemain, were determined to riot luxuriously on the ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... tricks in France, Italy, Spain; And Germany too knows his legerdemain; So hearing John Bull has a taste for strange sights, He's coming to London to put ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... also of the possible modes of expressing thought, than is elsewhere to be found, even in writers the most skilled in rhetorical subtilty. The distance between these two opposites De Quincey does not traverse by violent leaps; he does not by some feat of legerdemain evanish from the fields of impassioned eloquence, where he is an unrivalled master, to appear forthwith in those of intellectual gymnastics, where, at least, he is not surpassed. He is familiar with every one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... anything about it. The British Minister, who thought that he understood the people of the country, rose to the occasion. Getting up from his chair, he said with a smile, "We have just witnessed a very clever and very amusing piece of legerdemain. Now we are going to see another little piece of conjuring." The Minister walked quietly to both doors of the room, locked them, and put the keys in his pocket. He then placed a small silver bowl from the side-board in the centre ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... us," the pastor returned, "what legerdemain he made use of." "That will I gladly relate, for all may draw from it a lesson;" So made the neighbor reply. "When a boy I once stood of a Sunday Full of impatience, and looking with eagerness out for the carriage Which was to carry us forth to ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... supposition can a sensible man set off to persuade himself that the half of the moon has gone into a sleeve, and that a Sammonocodom has come down from heaven to play at shuttlecock, cut down a forest, and perform feats of legerdemain? ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... Goshorn's hotel. He was a stout, burly man, shrewd in his way, good-natured, but not without temper and impulses. He looked keenly after business, played the fiddle, and performed a few tricks of legerdemain. He had a ladylike wife, and both were very kind to me, especially after they came to know me pretty well. The lady had a nice, easy horse, which ere long was lent me freely whenever I wanted to ride. One day it was missing. The master ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... of legerdemain this doctrine of non-intervention has come to extend to a paralysis of the Government on the whole subject, to exclude the Congress from any kind of legislation whatever, I am at a loss to conceive. Certain it is, it was ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... persons who have not been puzzled, when witnessing the exhibitions of conjurers and performers of feats of legerdemain, by the magic bottle, out of the neck of which the exhibitor can pour any one of quite a number of liquids at his will. It may interest the reader to see an explanation of the means by which the apparently magical effect is produced, especially as it involves ...
— Harper's Young People, November 4, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... are neither impious nor altogether vnlawfull, though heerein or heereby a naturall thing be made to seeme supernaturall. And Gentlemen, if you will giue me patience, I will lay open vnto you the right Art Iugling and Legerdemain, in what poynt it doth chiefly consist: principally being sorry that it thus fals out, to lay open the secrets of this mistery to the hinderance of such poore men as liue thereby, whose doings heerein are not onely tollerable, but greatly commendable, so they abuse not the name of ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... Monsieur le Comte believes all that; but he does not know so well as I the legerdemain in use among servants, who are accustomed to smuggling. Here, Philippe, you must take off the lid of ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... elegance of his figure, and the beauty of his features, and he aided Nature by a careful attendance to his dress. Besides other accomplishments, he was musical, a good fencer, danced well, had some acquaintance with legerdemain tricks, worked in hair, and could plait willow baskets." He adds that Audubon once swam across the Schuylkill with ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... language he had not spoken for years. It took in each individual of the whole gang, it told them they were dogs and sons of dogs, killers of men, unmentionable carrion, cayotes, kites, and that he would have hanged them each and individually with his own hands (and I believe by some legerdemain of strength he would), but that they were without hearts, souls or intellect, not responsible creatures, tools of villains that he, Adams, would expose and ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... the Devil in return for a few years of supernatural power. The tragic irony of the story might seem to lie in the frivolous use which Faustus makes of his dearly bought power, wasting it in practical jokes and feats of legerdemain; but of this Marlowe was probably unconscious. The love story of Margaret, which is the central point of Goethe's drama, is entirely wanting in Marlowe's, and so is the subtle conception of Goethe's Mephistophiles. Marlowe's handling of the supernatural ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... bosom; and in sunny jubilee, Twenty-five millions burst forth into sound and cannon-smoke! Bright was our Hope then, as sunlight; red-angry is our Hope grown now, as consuming fire. But, O Heavens, what enchantment is it, or devilish legerdemain, of such effect, that Perfect Felicity, always within arm's length, could never be laid hold of, but only in her stead Controversy and Scarcity? This set of traitors after that set! Tremble, ye traitors; dread a People which calls itself patient, long-suffering; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... into the blessing of private instead of public debts, is as ridiculous as the original principle itself. In both cases, the truth is, that capital may be produced by industry, and accumulated by economy: but jugglers only will propose to create it by legerdemain tricks with paper. I have called the actual circulation of bank paper in the United States, two hundred millions of dollars. I do not recollect where I have seen this estimate; but I retain the impression that I thought ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... then you will see a group of men around some temperance lecturer or street orator. You will also hear the voice of some fakir selling his fakes or wares, or some juggler who is delighting his audience with his tricks of legerdemain. ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... is not homogeneous—its density varies: it is honeycombed with streets, it has its caves of clear air, its cliffs of solid vapour, all shifting and changing place with the subtlety of legerdemain. It has also this wizard peculiarity, that it grows with the sinking of the sun and ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... do not share your disdain, and I am absolutely ignorant of, as you say, "the pleasure of doing nothing." As soon as I no longer hold a book, or am not dreaming of writing one, A LAMENTABLE boredom seizes upon me. Life, in short seems tolerable to me only by legerdemain. Or else one must give oneself up to disordered pleasure ... ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... purpose other than to enable man to work out his own salvation? Would we not expect him to operate through this spirit for universal guidance, rather than leave the world in darkness while he retired to an obscure corner thereof and practiced legerdemain for the edification of a few half- civilized people? If we adopt the internal instead of the external view of the origin of Judaism and Christianity, all the other Sacred Books range themselves about the Bible and with it bear ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann |
