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Mystery   Listen
noun
Mystery  n.  (pl. mysteries)  
1.
A profound secret; something wholly unknown, or something kept cautiously concealed, and therefore exciting curiosity or wonder; something which has not been or can not be explained; hence, specifically, that which is beyond human comprehension. "We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery." "If God should please to reveal unto us this great mystery of the Trinity, or some other mysteries in our holy religion, we should not be able to understand them, unless he would bestow on us some new faculties of the mind."
2.
A kind of secret religious celebration, to which none were admitted except those who had been initiated by certain preparatory ceremonies; usually plural; as, the Eleusinian mysteries.
3.
pl. The consecrated elements in the eucharist.
4.
Anything artfully made difficult; an enigma.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mystery" Quotes from Famous Books



... school for my vacation, after I had my first year of physical science, I sought out my uncle in his laboratory and asked him to explain the mystery of the little black island standing adamant in the golden ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... the BARNES oration. Made several attempts to catch SPEAKER's eye; at length succeeded; his suppressed fury was terrible to behold: his rage Titanic. He at least knew all about that coal-truck; though, as far as House was concerned, he did not succeed in lifting the mystery in which BARNES had enveloped it. Whether it was WIGGINS's coal, or merely WIGGINS's truck; whether WIGGINS happened to be in the truck when it went astray; or whether it was BARNES that was in it; ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 28, 1891 • Various

... companion gone, and he clung to me like the crotal to the stone. Then it was (I think) that some of the sobriety of life first came to me, a more often cogitation and balancing of affairs. I began to see some of the tanglement of nature, and appreciate the solemn mystery of our travel across this vexed and care-warped world. Before, I was full of the wine of youth, giving doubt of nothing a lodgment in my mind, acting ever on the impulse, sucking the lemon, seeds and all, and finding it unco sappy and piquant to ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... George exclaimed, after they had expressed sufficient surprise and finished their greetings, "who would have expected this? But why are you here, and why all this mystery?" ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld

... man of fine promise he was soon excelled by his less learned but more energetic pupil. At the age of twenty-six we find Andrew presiding at a convention of Free-soilers, the same which nominated Dr. S. G. Howe for Congress. Why he did not appear in politics between 1844 and 1859 is something of a mystery, which may be explained either by his devotion to his profession or his unwillingness to make politics a profession. He was in constant communication with Charles Francis Adams, Frank W. Bird, and other leading independents, and played a part in the election of Sumner as well as at various ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... Townsend, "we're with you whatever you do, but there is a mystery about this island which I would like to fathom before ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... he was in earnest in this last remark: but of course lawyers' fees and court expenses were all a mystery to me. I did not even know that lawyers and courts had anything to do with estates. I did not know what an estate was—so ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick

... arrived at the Cape of Good Hope twelve months ago, and that the crew of one of her boats had been murdered and eaten by the people of New Zealand; so that the story which we heard in Queen Charlotte's Sound was now no longer a mystery. ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook

... tender as the sob of a babe, and majestic as thunder; it then is the temple of living truth, filled with the glory of the Lord's presence; it then is the revelation of the eternal world, showing the beauty of holiness, the mystery of the cross, the conquest of death, the horrors of sin, the doom of the lost, the joy of the saved. Oh, what a Book the Bible is to the inspired reader! It becomes transparent. The light of the face of Jesus flashes from the lines and between the lines, through the words and amidst the letters, ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters

... "There's a mystery about her. I heard her kind of taking on before the dude hushed her up. She was saying something about being sorry that she had come, and that she wished she was back, and that she had always done things on the impulse, and didn't stop to think, and so ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... its mystery— For often I can trace A fellow dreamer's history Whene'er it haunts the face; Your fancy's running riot In a ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley

... days of Caliph Haroun Alraschid, the neighbourhood of Bagdad was infested by a clan of banditti, known by the name of the "Ranger Band." Their rendezvous was known to be the forests and mountains; but their immediate retreat was a mystery time had ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various

... may show they would have employed speculation better in trying to fathom the turnip-face mystery; I beg pardon of my age: I mean the deep mind of ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... lanterns was recommenced, but in the other direction now, and in utter despondency the doctor followed, keeping with the rector and his pupils, all trying in turn to suggest some solution of the mystery, but only for it to close in more darkly round them, in spite ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... and imaginations. Groping in darkness, in almost total ignorance of the discoveries of science, with nothing to guide or correct him, it is no wonder that in his blind struggles to solve the great problems which are more or less a mystery to us all—the origin of man and original creations—that he has wrought out the incongruous mixture of ignorance, superstition and vulgar imagination which mainly compose their legends and traditions. Some of them are doubtless based upon actual ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden

... or its counterpart, was surely the inspiration of "The Old Oaken Bucket." However, their author was never imbued with fascination as alluring as that which influenced the First Born in his desire to solve the, to him, mystery of the old well. ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... performance. But how this boy managed to see the book is more than I can explain. He can hardly have bought it. The price was half-a-guinea. And there is certainly no copy in the School library. The thing is a mystery.' ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse

... about it—he felt that way still. It hurt him to think that Helen should be wearing the badge of his inefficiency. And then, deep down, he had a masculine distaste for sharing his workday world with a woman. He liked to preserve the mystery of those hours spent in the fight for existence, because he knew instinctively that battle grounds lost their glamour at close range. His Californian inheritance had fostered the mining-camp attitude toward females—they were one of two things: men's moral equals or men's moral superiors. It was ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... God." The public prayer for all is long, and it is poured forth to heaven. For this reason the altar is round and is divided crosswise by ways at right angles to one another. By these ways Hoh enters after he has repeated the four prayers, and he prays looking up to heaven. And then a great mystery is seen by them. The priestly vestments are of a beauty and meaning like to those of Aaron. They resemble ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells

... book by George Manville Fenn, full of mystery, suspense and terror—to coin a phrase. Ned, a boy of sixteen, who has just left school, and who has been brought up by an uncle who is a naturalist and who is often away, begs that he may be allowed to come on the uncle's next expedition. By the way, ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn

... will. Visions, such as are recorded in the Old Testament in the case of the prophets, are presented to her faculties. She is introduced into the courts of heaven, and beholds and converses with Saints in glory, with the Mother of God, with Jesus Christ Himself. Or the whole mystery of the Passion is re-enacted before her spiritualised sight, the evangelical history being filled up with all those actual but minuter details which are omitted in the written records of the Gospels. In certain cases, the body itself ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... of the Necropolis had collected on either side of the lines of sphinxes, between which the princess drove up to the Sanctuary. But none asked what these songs of lamentation might signify, for about this sacred place lamentation and mystery for ever lingered. "Hail to the child of Rameses!"—"All hail to the daughter of the Sun!" rang from a thousand throats; and the assembled multitude bowed almost to the earth at the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... a mystery that greatly intrigued us. One morning the mystery was solved. A whiff of tobacco from an upper window came along with a puff of wind. It was a heated whiff, in spite of the cooling breeze. It was from a pipe, a short, black pipe, owned by some one in the Mansard window next door. There was ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... persons do now. Their gaze, as a rule, rose no higher than the first-floor oriel, where the shapely white shoulder of a Parian statue, enhanced by a background of dark-blue silken hanging, caught the wandering eye. What this lacked of luxury and mystery was made up—almost to the Medmenham point in the eyes of the city—by the gleam of girandoles, and the glow, rather felt than seen, of Titian-copies in Florence frames. Sir George, borne along in his chair, peered up at this ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... was the young Sachem of the Narragansetts, and he who, notwithstanding this plausible apology, so palpably sought secrecy rather than solitude was the man that has often been introduced into these pages under the shade of mystery. The instant recognition and the mutual confidence require no further explanation, since enough has already been developed in the course of the narrative, to show that they were no strangers to each other. Still the meeting had not taken place without uneasiness on the one part, and ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... incantations of magic, the most solemn, as well as the most frequent, was that of calling up the spirits of the dead; this indeed was the very acme of their art; and the reader cannot be displeased with having this mystery here elucidated. An affection for the body of a person, who in his life time was beloved, induced the first natives to inter the dead in a decent manner, and to add to this melancholy instance of esteem, those wishes ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... said in talking of the younger children that I feel it unsafe to loose a child in this unsubstantial world before he is fairly well grounded in a sense of reality. Once he has his bearings there is a good deal he will enjoy without confusion. The common defense that the mystery of fairy tales answers to a legitimate need in children, I believe holds good for children of six or seven, or even five, who have had opportunities for rational experiences. We all know how children revel in a secret. They like to live in a world of surprises. To give the children this sense ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell

... the sea-nymph waves, with ashy, streaming hair, flinging themselves into the arms of the land, there was the old pagan rapture, an inexhaustible delight, a passionate soft acceptance of eternal fate, a wonderful acquiescence in the untiring mystery of life. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... confounds all faculty of computation—the eternity which had been, the eternity which was to be. (3) The diffusive love, not such as rises and falls upon waves of life and mortality, not such as sinks and swells by undulations of time, but a procession, an emanation, from some mystery of endless dawn. You durst not call it a smile that radiated from those lips; the radiation was too awful to clothe itself in adumbrations of memorials ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... Coventry haunted by "hellish sorcerers." "The pestilent brood" also in Cheshire. Thomas Cooper, The Mystery ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... inches and a half long. The generation, growth, and alimentation of the foetus of the kangaroo and other marsupial animals (ultra interine and detached from the parent, as it appears to be at all stages,) is a mystery in physiology which has yet ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty

... the Birch canoe was builded In the valley, by the river, In the bosom of the forest; All its mystery and its magic, All the brightness of the birch tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the larch trees supple sinews; And it floated on the river Like a yellow leaf in autumn, Like a ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young

... afflicted my eyes. My bench was occupied by a bum. Hearing the measured footsteps of Terry the Cop, guardian of our destinies, I looked for a swift and painful eviction. Terry, after a glance, passed on. Nothing is worse for insomnia than an unsolved mystery. Slipping into my clothes, I made my way softly to the spot. There in the seat where I was wont to pursue my even tenor as an orchid slumbered Martin Dyke, amateur desecrator of other men's houses, challenger of the ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... mystery of the shot from the darkness was still unsolved. The boys had now reached the mountainous country and the nights were often cold. The days, too, gave promise of winter's coming, and had it not been that they were hopeful of Indian summer weather in November the young travelers ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden

... curious over the name to which Luck Lindsay answered unhesitatingly,—his very acceptance of it proving his willingness to be so identified,—I can easily explain. Some nicknames have their origin in mystery; there was no mystery at all surrounding the name men had bestowed upon Lucas Justin Lindsay. In the first place, his legal cognomen being a mere pandering to the vanity of two grandfathers who had no love for each ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... to resist the charms of book-collecting and book-embellishment. How St. Jerome or St. Austin would have lashed the FERRAR FAMILY[349] for the gorgeous decorations of their volumes, and for devoting so much precious time and painful attention to the art and mystery of Book-binding! Yes, Lisardo; it is truly curious to think upon the Little ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... here till the siege is over, and I should certainly like to have a talk with him. I have never been able to get it quite out of my mind that there has been something mysterious about the whole affair as far as my father was concerned, though where the mystery comes in is more than I can imagine. I expect it is simply because I have never liked Brander, and have always had a strong idea that our popular townsman was at bottom a knave as well as ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... of the Romany people latent in her now broke forth and held her captive. Standing with candle raised above her head, her eyes piercing the space before her, she recalled every word of the exorcism which had caught the drippings from the fountains of Chaldean, Phoenician, and Egyptian mystery. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... still, and the Irishman continued his story. It grew in mystery and in horror as he proceeded, and his audience became entranced, while some of the more superstitious among them cast occasional glances over their shoulders into the forest behind, which ere long was steeped in the blackness of an unusually dark night. A few of those outside the circle rose ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne

... Mystery! Excessively disconcerting for an old lady! In the end Rachel provided another clean serviette, and the meal commenced. But Mrs. Maldon had not been able to "settle down" in an instant. The wise, pitying creatures ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... holy, and good Creator. This is not His work. This is no part of the furniture with which mankind were set up for an everlasting existence. "God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good." (Gen. i. 31). We acknowledge the mystery that overhangs the union and connection of all men with the first man. We know that this corruption of man's nature, and this sinfulness of his heart, does indeed, appear at the very beginning of his individual life. He is ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... of esteem, and honorable attention from the Court, and the ship I now command was lent to the United States in consequence of my application. Nothing has detained me from sailing for this past month, but that my officers and men are still without wages or prize money. There is a strange mystery, which when explained, must surprise you. C., who pretends to exercise authority over these moneys, will I fear persist in withholding them, till he obliges me to lay a second complaint before the Minister against him, and if I am reduced to the necessity of this step, he will not come off so ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various

... Helen and Tom Cameron, and when, the year previous, Helen had gone to Briarwood Hall to school, Ruth had gone with her, and the fun, friendships, rivalries, and adventures of their first term at boarding school are related in "Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall; Or, Solving the Campus Mystery." ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson

... statuary with the head veiled, a symbol of mystery. It is this which Tennyson alludes ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... who he could be. The study of physiognomy is one of my fads, and his face had deeply impressed me; in great wealth, moreover, there is always something that strikes the imagination, and this man was evidently very rich, and the mystery that surrounded him piqued ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall

... qualify myself for this pursuit. Traddles now informed me, as the result of his inquiries, that the mere mechanical acquisition necessary, except in rare cases, for thorough excellence in it, that is to say, a perfect and entire command of the mystery of short-hand writing and reading, was about equal in difficulty to the mastery of six languages; and that it might perhaps be attained, by dint of perseverance, in the course of a few years. Traddles reasonably supposed that this would settle the business; but I, only ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... shortly in a great forest on the side of a mountain. Hanging creepers brushed our faces, tangled vines hung across our view, strange and unexpected openings offered themselves as a means through which we could see a little closer into the heart of mystery. The air was cool and damp and dark. The occasional shafts of sunlight or glimpses of blue sky served merely to accentuate the soft gloom. Save that we climbed always, we could not tell ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... not so old but that Christmas Eve with its little plans for the morrow held yet a certain shade of that delightful suspense and mystery which perhaps never hangs about the greater and graver joys of life. I fancy we drink it to the full, in the hanging up of stockings, the peering out into the dark to see Santa Claus come down the chimney (perfectly conscious that that gentleman is the most transparent of hoaxes, but with a ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... River, proudly sweeping to the sea, Dark and deep and grand, forever wrapt in myth and mystery. Lo he laughs along the highlands, leaping o'er the granite walls; Lo he sleeps among the islands, where the loon her lover calls. Still like some huge monster winding downward through the prairied plains, Seeking rest but never finding, till the ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... main road was reached, and now the vast immensity of the plain lay in front and all round—all the more vast and immense now it seemed, since not even the nodding plumes of maize or tall, stately sunflowers veiled the mystery of ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... too abundant here. How the New-Englander, whose Puritan forefathers were almost Jews, and hardly got beyond the Old Testament in their Scriptural studies, has come to make pork so capital an article in his diet, is a mystery. Small-boned swine of the Chinese breed, which are kept in the temple sties of the Josses, and which are capable of an obeseness in which all form and feature are swallowed up and lost in fat, seem to be plenty in Quincy Market. They are hooked upright ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... ministers of the gods have sometimes made useful discoveries, they have always been careful to give them a dogmatical tone, and envelope them in the shades of mystery. Pythagoras and Plato, in order to acquire some trifling knowledge, were obliged to court the favour of priests, to be initiated in their mysteries, and to undergo whatever trials they were pleased to impose. ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach

... changed. She fixed her eyes upon the Prioress, and spoke with an air of detachment and of mystery. The very simplicity of her language seemed at once to lift the strange tale ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... The mystery of reproduction, which alone distinguishes organic life from mechanic or chemic action, is yet wrapt in darkness. During the decomposition of organic bodies, where there exists a due degree of warmth with moisture, new microscopic animals of the most ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... actual merits. The depth, the mystery, the allegory—the beautiful characters of ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... ventured inside. The door which stood at the bottom of the garret stair was closed. I caught hold of the latch and pulled it towards me. The door held tight. As I struggled with it I had a sense of pulling against a detaining hand that strove to hide a mystery, something fearful, from my eye. It swung towards me slowly and a pile of bricks fell on my feet as it opened. Something dark and liquid oozed out under my boots. I felt myself slip on it and knew that I stood on blood. All the way up the rubble-covered stairs there was blood, ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... he accepts it, rejects it, or is in doubt about it. On the contrary, instead of meeting this question, they all do their best to avoid it, and to hide it from themselves and others in a vague haze of mystery. And there is a peculiarity in the nature of the subject that has made this task an easy one. But the dust they have raised is not impenetrable, and can, with a ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... the countenance of the priest in the course of his argument—"Naruhodo! A big body: 'twas feared the mind would be small. Deign, honoured sir, to wait a moment; a purchase to make...." Off he bolted with the domburi or large bowl, something of a mystery to the priest. It was soon solved by his reappearance with the vessel filled with the small salted squid (ika). "There! Honoured Shukke Sama, sample the best of Odawara town, noted for kamaboku and its small fish-salted; and of these the ika is unsurpassed." ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... think to lure men by the mystery of a tobacco cloud permanently around the head, or to stimulate by the sight of a glass which looks like lemonade but isn't, nestling among the everlasting cards and cigarette debris, disliked her intensely, not so much because she did not ally herself with them, as for ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... the knife, yet did not seem to see it. There was nothing there calculated to set an Englishman at ease. In spite of the Rangar's casual manner, Yasmini's reception room felt like the antechamber to another world, where mystery is atmosphere and ordinary air to breathe is not at all. He could sense hushed expectancy on every side—could feel the eyes of many women fixed on him—and began to draw on his guard as a fighting man draws on armor. There and then he deliberately set ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... enough to wish to go out and unravel the mystery of the west now walked in chains from a Spanish ship to a Spanish prison! It was monstrous ingratitude, all declared; and they did not hesitate to show their sympathy. The story of his disgrace traveled rapidly, and everywhere it brought out the better nature ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley

... his proceedings were wrapped in a veil of mystery which he never entirely threw aside. Rainham, it is true, saw him occasionally at this time, for, indeed, it was soon after his first arrival in Paris that Lightmark made his friend's acquaintance, sealed ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... means of new miracles, it will disappear from the face of the earth, and we shall once more shine in the temples as worshiped divinities. Where will the spirit of man stop, when he has once undertaken to illumine that which he formerly honoured as a mystery? He will dance on the grave of the tyrant, at whose frown he the day before trembled. He will break to pieces the altar on which he lately sacrificed, if he once endeavour to find the way to heaven by his own wisdom. Will the Creator take home to himself a human being, who ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... cross on the altar. Stepping softly, and with reverence, Maryllia went up to the Communion rails, and looked long and earnestly at the white alabaster sarcophagus which, in its unknown origin and antiquity, was the one unsolved mystery of St. Rest. A vague sensation of awe stole upon her,—and she sank involuntarily ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... lawless people with the delicacy belonging to his timid and retiring nature, but it must be owned that Mr. Clive was by no means so squeamish. He did not know, in the first place, the mystery of their iniquities; and his sunny kindly spirit, undimmed by any of the cares which clouded it subsequently, was disposed to shine upon all people alike. The world was welcome to him: the day a pleasure: all nature a gay feast: scarce any dispositions discordant with his own (for ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... powers of hell, I knew you! The inmost mystery stood clear. In one blinding flash of comprehension I felt the fullness of my calamity. This man that I had seen was not a man, but a malign and jealous spirit—using his spectral influences to crush the mortals bold enough to love the woman whom he had loved on earth. ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett

... dressed, and the clothes seemed expensive and fashionable. A few raven locks straggled out from beneath a lace scarf which was tied around the head. The hands, crossed below the breast, were neatly gloved. There she lay, a mystery, for not one of those present had ever ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... to his own case! "Oh, yes, there's Something, because I've watched It working with grubs, getting 'em ready for five-inch moths and hand-colored butterflies, Something that's got the time and the patience and the know-how to build wings as well as worlds." He laid the little inanimate mystery aside. ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... fact that they had learned so many facts about the murder, they as yet had not solved the mystery. Who had murdered Rooney, and why? And where had his blood gone to? In no other rooms could be found any traces ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... wives. Men of family would not be very fond of connecting themselves with a girl of such obscurity—and most prudent men would be afraid of the inconvenience and disgrace they might be involved in, when the mystery of her parentage came to be revealed. Let her marry Robert Martin, and she is safe, respectable, and happy for ever; but if you encourage her to expect to marry greatly, and teach her to be satisfied with nothing ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... going about with a donkey, and a parcel of dirty children tumbling about on the green, being all that remained on the scene. All the able-bodied men had followed the hounds. Why the hounds had ever climbed the long hill seemed a mystery, seeing that they returned ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... quite easy to grow Mushrooms for the greater part of the year in very small gardens, even when such gardens are entirely destitute of the appliances usually considered necessary for the higher flights of horticulture. The idea that Mushroom-growing is somewhat of a mystery, forbidden to all but the strictly initiated, has happily been dispelled. If we examine the conditions under which Mushrooms grow freely in pastures, it is surprising how few and simple are the elements of ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... position taken up under cover of darkness. The other section has been relieved and departs. We are given the 'consigne', by the preceding sentinel, and are left alone behind a mound of dirt, facing the north and the blank, perilous night. Slowly the mystery that it shrouds resolves as the grey light steals over the eastern hills. Like a photograph in the washing, its high lights and shadows come gradually forth. The light splash in the foreground becomes a ruined chateau, the grey street a ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger

... since the assassination occurred, and the affair had lost all interest for the Parisian public; in the provinces it was still spoken of, but at Paris it was a thing of the past. There is no romance about a clerk who cuts the throat of his employer to rob him; there is no woman in the case, no mystery. ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot

... went out one by one: yet Pierre for a long time lingered on the quay, leaning over the blackened river and yielding to hopelessness. There was now no distance to the gloom; all had become dense; no longer did any reflections set a moire-like, golden quiver in the water, or reveal beneath its mystery-concealing current a fantastic, dancing vision of fabulous wealth. Gone was the legend, gone the seven-branched golden candelabrum, gone the golden vases, gone the golden jewellery, the whole dream of antique treasure that had vanished into night, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... illustration in the sharpest form of the mystery. 'After these things and this faithfulness, Sennacherib came'—and he always comes in one shape or another. For, to begin with, a good man's goodness does not lift him out of the ordinary associations and contingencies and laws of life. If he has inherited a diseased constitution, his ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... beautiful woman. But reverence, which is the synthesis of love and fear, is only due from man, and, indeed, only excitable in man, towards ideal truths, which are always mysteries to the understanding, for the same reason that the motion of my finger behind my back is a mystery to you now—your eyes not being made for seeing through my body. It is the reason only which has a sense by which ideas can be recognized, and from the fontal light of ideas only can a man ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... gun. He did not know the use of firearms. The muskets that Robinson had brought from the ship were a great mystery to him. Robinson showed him their use. He showed how they could defend themselves. He told Friday that these weapons would kill at a distance. He took some powder and touched a match to it. Friday was ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison

... storm at sea. The isle afterwards called Porto Santo is discovered. The circumstance related; but the extraordinary appearance of a supernatural shade over the waters at a distance excites many fears and superstitions. The attempt, however, to penetrate the mystery, is resolved on. Zarco reaches the island of Madeira; tomb found; which introduces the episode. At the tomb of the first discoverer (whether this be fanciful or not, is nothing to poetry) the Spirit of Discovery casts ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... suspected the grave, demure Quakeress of having snatched from the English their anticipated victory; but after the return of the British troops Gen. Howe summoned Lydia to his apartment, locked the door with an air of mystery, and motioned her to a seat. After a moment of silence, he said: "Were any of your family up, Lydia, on the night when I received my company here?" "No," she replied, "they all retired at eight o'clock." "It is very strange," said the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... grievances, but a quizzical, humorous expression which shows, when one has torn the subterfuge away, that here is a spirit whom life may menace with its contradictions and fatalities, but never dupe with its circumstance and mystery. ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman

... he answered, "let her be. She'll learn the truth some day, no doubt." And then, as by a second thought, "The farther off the better, perhaps," a saying full of mystery. ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... a notion that he could angle. Old V immediately read himself up in Walton, and soon convinced—himself, that he was perfect in that line, and quite capable of teaching the whole art and mystery. ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... failing of Porthos, who shines more by his imposing appearance, brilliant attire, and bull-dog courage, than by any qualities of the head. To Athos, who is the most interesting of the three, a certain mystery is attached, which, however, is seen through early in the book. He is a man of high birth, princely manners, and chivalrous feeling, but whose stormy life has cast a strong tinge of melancholy over his character, and who now finds his sole consolation in the wine-cup. It ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... would know something about reality! ... So this was Cheyne-Stokes breathing, that rare and awful affliction! What was it? What caused it? What controlled its frequency? No answer! Not only could he do naught, he knew naught! He was equally useless and ignorant before the affrighting mystery. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... but before he could get at the disputants, he had the mortification to see them retreat amicably into a side room, and the next thing announced to him was, that Mistress Clarissa had evanished home, before anybody could get rightly at the bottom of the mystery. ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... mother. Yet, in spite of her worldly knowledge, she felt herself yielding to it as to a delicate flattery. Her eyes were still on him, and presently he caught her gaze and held it by a look which, for all its fervour, had an edge of biting irony. There was a meaning, a mystery in his regard, but his words when at last they came sounded ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... which the understanding offers to us, and if occasionally we come across difficulties like the time-honoured controversy of necessity and free-will, or the Eleatic puzzle of Achilles and the tortoise, we relegate some of them to the sphere of mystery, others to the book of riddles, and go on our way rejoicing. Most men (like Aristotle) have been accustomed to regard a contradiction in terms as the end of strife; to be told that contradiction is ...
— Sophist • Plato

... The difficulties were O'Connell and Spring Rice; the former was got over by his waiving all claim to employment and promising his gratuitous support. By what underhand management or persuasion, and what secret understanding, this was effected will be a mystery for the present, but nobody doubts that it has been accomplished by some juggle. Spring Rice wanted to wash his hands of the concern; he did not think it promised sufficient stability, and without some assurance of its lasting he wished to decline taking office. They would ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... man I want to see," said Kit. "I think myself there is some mystery, and I would like to ask some questions about my uncle Stephen from some one who knew him here. ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.

... these two doctrines of Deism are kept in sight: that there is a God, a Mystery, who dwells apart from the world; and that man ought to be contented, even happy, in his ignorance of matters beyond ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... the bottom and having successfully translated the LIVING language, established a "key" or alphabet. Hence it became possible, although requiring some years, to solve the mystery of writings of 4000 ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... Mrs. Hungerford and to Lady Jane Granville. And it may be recorded as a fact rather unusual, that Caroline was so fortunate as to satisfy all her friends: not to offend one of her relations, by telling any too soon, or too late, of her intentions. In fact, she made no secret, no mystery, where none was required by good sense or propriety. Nor did she communicate it under a strict injunction of secrecy to twenty friends, who were afterwards each to be angry with the other for having, or not having, told that of ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... them quite gaily, 'they are the best things in the world to travel with.' The other man said nothing. I stopped the carriage and asked one of the slave drivers why these men were chained, and how they came to take the matter so differently. The answer explained the mystery. One of them, it appeared, was married, but his wife belonged to a neighboring planter, not to his master. When the general move was made the proprieter of the female not choosing to part with her, she was necessarily left behind. The wretched husband ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... before you enter the house, and tie the chicken firmly to the end of it. Then, when the right time comes, I can haul it up. And look here, don't let's explain to the other chaps how we came by the chicken. Let's make a complete mystery of it for a day or two, and have ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe

... but of all those deities who presided over the motley nations of the empire. It was the city beloved of the Sun; where his worship was maintained in its splendor; "where every fountain, pathway, and wall," says an ancient chronicler, "was regarded as a holy mystery." *24 And unfortunate was the Indian noble who, at some period or other of his life, had not made his pilgrimage ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... our story requires, it is the love itself between these two young persons, whose fates were so remarkable, we have to do with—not the causes, which are a mystery in all cases. Sure it is, humble in position as they were, they could love as strongly, as fervently, perhaps as ecstatically, as great people—nay, probably more so, for education has a greater chance of moderating the passion than increasing it; and so, notwithstanding of what Plutarch says ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... better that you merely admired. Well I would not dishearten you by telling to what a shred of conceit, even of hope, a man can be reduced after twenty-odd years of the discipline. But I can, and do, affirm that the farther you penetrate in these discoveries the more sacred the ultimate mystery will become for you: that the better you understand the great authors as exemplars of practice, the more certainly you will realise what is the ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... altar, void of the Unspeakable Mystery it had housed, fluttered its rearward curtains through the wreckage of the east wall and the cheap little stained-glass window, where the Shepherds and the Magi had bowed before the Virgin Mother and the Divine Child. Within sight of their ruined home, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... Foster reverently, "he may well be praised, for I have indeed good reason to praise him.—So you see I had got to the bottom of the mystery at last, and that little book has become to me now worth a thousand times ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson

... street, under its arch of interlacing boughs, was grateful to the tired little traveller. As he moved along, clinging to Mrs. Allan's hand, his big eyes gazing as far as they might up the long, cool aisle the trees made, the hazy green distance invited his mystery-loving fancy. The odors of a thousand flowering shrubberies were on the air and he felt that it was good to be in this dreaming old town—as old, it seemed to him, as the world; and there was born in him at that ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... was a victim or an accomplice is a question which never has been, and now never can be, decided. The mystery in which the affair is involved must remain a mystery until the secrets of all hearts are revealed at the great day of judgment. If he was the guilty instigator, and the poor countess but his tool and victim, how much has he yet to be accountable ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... lived three weeks, when I remembered that formerly I read newspapers, and opened the nearest. The mystery and foreignness of it was as complete as the red fire of Antares that gleamed so balefully every night across the Lake—a hell of trials and jealousy and suicide, obscenity and passion. It all came up from the sheet to my nostrils like ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... wandered to this remote place. A vague sentiment of awe caused the hunters involuntarily to lower their voices before the supernatural charm of this austere landscape. Those hills, enveloped in mist—even when the plains shone with the blazing rays of the sun—seemed to hide some impenetrable mystery. It might be fancied that the invisible guardians of the treasures, the lords of the mountains according to Indian superstition, were hidden under this veil ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... the horse's head must have swollen since the collar was put on. At last a servant-girl beheld their perplexity. "La, masters," she exclaimed, "you dont set about it the right way." She then seized hold of the collar, turned it broad end up, and slipped it off in a second. The mystery that had puzzled two of the finest intellects of their time was a very simple matter indeed to a country wench who had perhaps never heard that England ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... printing: yet they are not so entirely indebted to us for these discoveries, but that a great part of the invention was their own. We showed them some books printed by Aldus, we explained to them the way of making paper, and the mystery of printing; but as we had never practised these arts, we described them in a crude and superficial manner. They seized the hints we gave them, and though at first they could not arrive at perfection, yet by making many essays they at last found out ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... husbands, fathers, sweethearts, or possible sweethearts. Birds were embroidering the silence of the hour with a silvery whisper that spoke of rest and good-will. The slender brook to the left of me was droning like a bee. Everything was charged with peace and soothing mystery. A feeling of lassitude descended upon me. I was too lazy even to think, but the landscape was continually forcing images on my mind. A hollow in the slope of one of the mountains in front of me looked for all the world ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... not long before I discovered that there was a mystery of some sort attaching to the felucca that lay at anchor in the bay. I had made more than one attempt to go on board her, with the object of giving her an overhaul, but each attempt had been quietly met and frustrated in such a way that ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... the religious history of the world and of the crisis in thought of his own day, will be anticipated. All dogmas, forms and ceremonials, he teaches, are but religious vestments—symbols expressing man's deepest sense of the divine mystery of the universe and the hunger and thirst of his soul for God. It is in response to the imperative necessities of his nature that he moulds for himself these outward emblems of his ideas and aspirations. Yet they are only emblems; and since, like all ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... and lazy, but this afternoon the wind had whipped around to the north, straight off Lake Superior, and all the animals in the Great Tahquamenon Swamp felt as if they had been made over new. How the brook trout could have known of it so quickly, down under the water, is a mystery; but our friend seemed to wake up all of a sudden, and to realize that he hadn't been eating as much as usual, and that he was hungry. He made a dash at the fly and seized it, but he had no sooner got it between his lips than he spat it out again. There was something ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert

... rooms or ventured to sleep. At intervals a loud detonation from the volcano shook the air, and the mystery and awe of the enveloping gloom were so palpable as ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne

... occupied by a mixed population consisting of Bulgarians, Greeks and Turks; the principal Greek colonies are in Stanimaka, Kavakly and Philippopolis. The origin of the peculiar Shop tribe which inhabits the mountain tracts of Sofia, Breznik and Radomir is a mystery. The Shops are conceivably a remnant of the aboriginal race which remained undisturbed in its mountain home during the Slavonic and Bulgarian incursions: they cling with much tenacity to their distinctive customs, apparel ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... Augustus were far superior to those of the popular deities. But it was the misfortune of the former to live in an enlightened age, and their actions were too faithfully recorded to admit of such a mixture of fable and mystery, as the devotion of the vulgar requires. As soon as their divinity was established by law, it sunk into oblivion, without contributing either to their own fame, or to the dignity ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... The three gods in the Koran (c. 4, p. 81, c. 5, p. 92) are obviously directed against our Catholic mystery: but the Arabic commentators understand them of the Father, the Son, and the Virgin Mary, an heretical Trinity, maintained, as it is said, by some Barbarians at the Council of Nice, (Eutych. Annal. tom. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... moldy," and as the garret is in Massachusetts, the "thought" and the "mold" are likely to be quite native. When the same anyone puts his poetry into novels rather than essays, he is likely to have more to say about the life around him—about the inherited mystery of the town—than ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... these. I can still imagine myself strolling with an extremely comely lady along the stretches of natural lawn that crowned the bluff above the river, the gurgle and splashing of the stream loud in our ears as we looked over the unending expanse of jungle below us, vast and full of mystery under the brilliant moonlight of India. In India the moonlight is golden, not silvery as with us. The great grey sea of scrub, with an occasional prominent tree catching this golden light on its clear-cut outline, had something awe-inspiring about ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... play a Mystery on the public place before the church, he gets the part of Herod allotted to him: who could resist a person so much in view? Alison resists, however, not out of virtue, but because she prefers Nicholas. She does not require fine phrases to repel Absolon's ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... stop to remark that this was no proof of my sense. An observer of men who finds himself steadily repelled by some apparently trifling thing in a stranger is right to give it great weight. It may be the clue to the whole mystery. A hair or two will show where a lion is hidden. A very little key will open a ...
— Hunted Down • Charles Dickens

... differ widely in their professed religious creeds and political partialities. Mr. Darwin avows his belief in a Creator. Mr. Huxley votes on the London School Board for the introduction of the Bible into the public schools. Mr. Spencer is willing to allow the existence of some great unknowable mystery. Some of the French and German evolutionists dispense with any reference to God, as an unnecessary hypothesis. Others oppose the idea of God altogether, as inimical to progress. M. Comte proposed a worship of humanity. M. Strauss would ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... mystery and particularly that of man. At the blast of His mouth were the rest of the creatures made, and at His bare word they started out of nothing. But in the frame of man He played the sensible operator, and seemed not so much to create as to make him. When He had separated the materials ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... his autographic quality he is certainly our finest genius, the most creative, the most racial. For our genius, at its best, is the genius of the evasive; we are born lovers of the secret element, the mystery in things. ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... "Ah, that's the mystery I am going to tell you about," said Miss Pompret. "It isn't a very big story, and I won't keep you long. It isn't often I get a chance to tell it, so you must forgive an old lady for keeping you from your play," and again she smiled, in rather a sad fashion, ...
— Bobbsey Twins in Washington • Laura Lee Hope

... doing it under the veils, but when Oswald had done one tune without the veil to see how the others looked he could not help owning that the veils did give a hidden mystery that was a ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit

... thrilling surprise which cleared the lurking mystery of his former letter, and expressed such joyous appreciation of his regained privileges that I once more quote his own words, from the letter yellowed by ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... was fixed upon them in full pursuit, and away they went, faster probably than canoes ever travelled before, till the dark portion was reached where there were no breakers, and the leading canoe rushed out, followed by the others, and away to sea, horror-stricken at the great mystery they had seen, and in no wise lightened by the fact that the star suddenly disappeared as the last canoe dashed ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... taken into their confidence, and allowed to assist; and a proud and happy boy was he, going about with an air of mystery, as one to whom secret and ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley

... the glass and examined the horizon steadfastly, going and coming, stamping his foot and showing more nervous agitation than his superior officer. Besides, this mystery must necessarily be solved, and before long; for, upon an order from Captain Nemo, the engine, increasing its propelling power, made the screw ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... the beach; I see the pale tossing of the surf beside them; I hear the continuous roar borne up and softened about these heights; and this is night at Taormina. There is a weirdness in the scene—the feeling without the reality of mystery; and at evening, I know not why, I cannot sleep without stepping upon the terrace or peering through the panes to see those lights. At morning the charm has flown from the shore to the further heights above me. I glance at the vast banks of southward-lying cloud ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... confident that they had been made by the feet of the wolves; but in spite of these encouraging signs, he was baffled in his main purpose, and how the visitor made his way in and out of the cave remained an impenetrable mystery. ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne

... after a minute's silence. "Odd! Very, very odd! That shows that there's still some extraordinary mystery about this which we haven't even guessed at. Well, now, another question—you got the idea that some one ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher

... very many reasons, which I frankly stated to you, I trust that the opening will not be made immediately, and I as fairly tell you that I will not facilitate it. You know what I mean by all this mystery." He did not facilitate it; and Fitzgibbon was compelled to wait ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... small atom in the awful vastness of the universe. In the fabric of habit which they had so laboriously built for themselves, mankind were to remain no longer. And now it is all gone—like an unsubstantial pageant faded; and between us and the old English there lies a gulf of mystery which the prose of the historian will never adequately bridge. They cannot come to us, and our imagination can but feebly penetrate to them. Only among the aisles of the cathedral, only as we gaze upon their silent figures sleeping on their tombs, some faint conceptions float before us of what these ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... morning the horses and mules had all disappeared. They were nowhere to be seen. There was hurrying to and fro, for a solution of the mystery, when a short investigation revealed the true state of affairs. The cunning Indians had come in a strong party, well mounted, and were concealed at a short distance. Two of their number had gone forward and driven out the animals. The horses and mules are always ready to rush along ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott

... all the babies up, just as you would mix up a delicious fruit salad. We took from the mind all question of mystery and surprise by quickly and honestly answering his question. Thus, his first knowledge of his origin, if he is able to recall it, will ever be associated with oranges, grapes, ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... visit to the park stood out of the girl's memory like a snow-covered peak, vivid and frozen. There was no mercy there. What was far worse, there was an unearthly appeal. Flesh and blood were one thing, but a wild mystery of woodland, the desolate grandeur of a ruined park, the majestic havoc of a proud estate—these were another matter. Looking upon her rival's face, she found it notable.... Valerie set her white teeth. That its beauty ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... interesting account of Mr. Edgeworth. I heartily concur with you in the wish that neither Plato nor any other profane author may lead him from the truths of the Gospel, without which our existence is an insupportable mystery to ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... The sons and daughters of men may then, without mockery, stand before the great throne of love and worship the beauty and the wonder and the glory of the earth, sky, and sea, as brothers and sisters in one holy unity, and be more worthy to fathom the deeper mystery. Thus Socialism, or the law of the religion of love, unfalteringly maintains: That private property in land is public robbery. It is public robbery because, the land being the source of all the necessaries of life, it should belong equally to all, by birthright of our common inheritance ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... for the missing coat, but no trace of it was found. The mystery thickened and deepened. How could a boy lose a coat going across a road in broad daylight? Why would he not confess that he had ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... while it was still a mystery why I escaped while Gallinas fell; but at length the sluggish mind of Prince Freeman began to understand my diplomacy, and, of course, to repent the sudden contract that deprived him of a right to rob me. Vexed by disappointment, the ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... for the successful exercise of his professional skill, was rewarded by a clandestine visit to the shrine of the Mussulman saint. It will appear, from the few details which we are about to select from his volume, that the veil of mystery does not conceal anything really worth seeing. Like Pompey in the Temple, the Christian visiter, whose presence, in like manner, profanes the holy place, feels no other surprise than is occasioned by the ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... tongues were busy in Revonde. Rumour and mystery and an absence of any definite information added zest to the town talk. ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard

... Conde de Lloseta de Mallorca would be looked upon as a mystery, because he lived in a large house by himself; because it was not known what his tastes might be; because the interviewer interviewed him not, and because the Society rags had no opportunity of describing ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... passengers at the "Angel." He climbed upon the roof, and presently was travelling rapidly through Holloway and Highgate. He found, to his relief, that nobody had heard of the murder, and he was left pretty much to his own reflections. His first thoughts were an attempt to unravel the mystery. Why was it so sudden? Why had no word not hint of what was intended reached him? He could not guess. In those days the clubs were so beset with spies that frequently the most important resolutions were taken by one man, who ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... no mystery about that, I think. We can rediscover the institutions of our forefathers—applying them to the regulation of our lives with something of their precision, and not improbably with like success; or we can imitate those who stand ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... of animal heat was always a perfect mystery to me, and I am delighted with its explanation. —But pray, Mrs. B., can you tell me what is the reason of the increase of heat that ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet

... further evidence? The world should not forget that the great apostasy foretold by Paul has taken place; that the man of sin for long ages held almost a monopoly of Christian teaching in the world; that the mystery of iniquity has cast the darkness of its shadow and the errors of its doctrines over almost all Christendom; and out of this era of error and darkness and corruption, the theology of our day has come. Would it then be anything strange if there were yet ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith

... enormous amount of puppyism and affectation, I could trace nothing very unusual in his appearance. Frank, on the other hand, was a fine open-mannered fellow, that one took to at once; and it was a mystery to me how he could be so intimate with a person so different from himself. Pity such a good-dispositioned youth should fall into the hands of such ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... an airedale terrier was driven to Flat Rock by Uncle Zack. When, with an air of mystery, he presented the leash to Jane, grinned and politely bowed himself away, she had stared at him in utter surprise; then down at the dog which seemed to be gazing ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... person who is THUS ORDERD to delegate, to exercise the same power when he pleases; I have not that INTUITIVE knowledge which some men are said to be blessd with, and therefore it will not be thought strange if I do not see clearly through this mystery in POLITICS.—The house further observe, that as his Honor has heretofore repeatedly declared that he has no authority over the Kings troops in the province,2 it was absurd to suppose he COULD have the command of a fort, thus unreservedly surrendered ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... business of the girl spitting blood, the surgeon ascribing it to the liver, the consultation, the final solution of the mystery, is a matter of personal experience accurately recorded. But the rest of the medical truths, both fact and argument, are all from medical books far too numerous to specify. This includes the strange fluctuations of memory in a man recovering ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... that in 1737 Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, who then commanded the post, found himself forced to abandon it. [Footnote: Relation du Sieur de Saint-Pierre, 14 Oct. 1737.] The enterprise had failed in both its aims. The Western Sea was still a mystery, and the Sioux were not friends, but enemies. Legardeur de Saint-Pierre recommended that they should be destroyed, benevolent advice easy to give, and impossible to execute. [Footnote: "Cet officier [Saint-Pierre] a ajoute qu'il ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... SLAVE BOY was intrusted with a card which he was to bear to a person to whom it was directed and so charmed was he with the beautiful inscription drawn upon it that he was seized with an unconquerable desire to learn the mystery it contained. To this end he persuaded a little boy of his master's to teach him the letters of the alphabet. He was discovered in the act and whipped. His curiosity, however, to learn the secret, which was ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... If a mystery existed, either Laura didn't know of it, or she had forgotten it, or else she considered ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist

... it, Dexie?" said Elsie, in a whisper. "'And there was in the synagogue many people possessed of the devil;' that is the only solution of the mystery that I can see," was ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... days; in proportion as the world has grown narrower and the element of fear and mystery diluted, our sympathies have broadened; the Goth, in particular, has learnt the knack of detecting natural charm where the Latin, to this day, beholds ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... understand a syllable. The pleasure is quite appreciable, but it is not great; nor in actual poetic experience do you meet with it, as such, at all. For it is not added to the pleasure of the meaning when you read poetry that you do understand: by some mystery the music is then the music of the meaning, and the two are one. However fond of versification you might be, you would tire very soon of reading verses in Chinese; and before long of reading Virgil and Dante if you were ignorant of their languages. But take ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley

... still pondering the mystery. Nor could I be enlightened during my breakfast, for this was solitary, my hostess being long abroad to far places of the Arrowhead, and the stolid mask of Lew Wee ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... and accept the news I bring. I come to make a solemn mystery clear, One that affects you deeply; for I sing Of a most ancient king Nine hundred years ago in fair Kashmir, Who yearned towards a bride, and—hear, oh hear, Lord of the reboant nose and classic hunch— "Married a princess of the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various

... to hesitate between you? Suppose Madame de Treymes sees the reasonableness of what you ask; suppose, at any rate, she sees the hopelessness of opposing you? Why should she make a mystery of your opinion?" ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton

... counsel with himself for an instant. Probably there was no more to be got, and he saw from the woman's agitation that he had come upon some mystery. The chance of injuring Rodman was more to ...
— Demos • George Gissing



Words linked to "Mystery" :   whodunit, murder mystery, story, closed book, mysterious, perplexity, mystery play, enigma, mystery story, mystery novel, secret, mystify, detective story



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