"Mystery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his own childhood. Life was so much simpler then! Life would again be so much simpler when he had Babs driving by his side. . . . (If he could only drag her from the train and take her home to astonish and subjugate his parents! It would be worth a little mystery to ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... made them one and very intimate, was dispelled. John watched her as she moved about the stage, and wondered why it was that the audience had suddenly become a little fidgetty. His eyes were full of astonishment. He gazed at Mrs. Cream as if he were trying to understand some ineluctable mystery.... He remembered how enthralled he had been by the acting of the girl who had played Juliet. He had been caught up and transported from the theatre to the very streets of Verona. He had felt that he was one of the crowd that followed the Montagues or the Capulets, and had been ready to bite his ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... gone out to examine his box and the warm parlor had taken off the chill he had felt from the long drive, "you don't know what I've got in my pockets," nodding his head up and down as a means of rousing her sense of mystery. ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... which Kingsley, Bell, and Dalton, and their clerks were accustomed was suddenly interrupted by an appalling loss. It was discovered that bonds were missing from the safe, bonds to the amount of some L25,000; and whence, how, or when they were taken was an utter mystery. It was this loss which had occasioned the ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... gesture as he answered her, for he saw that she could be fanciful, too. "Unsubstantial moonlight, glamour, mystery—perhaps other things as well," he said. "If you are curious, why shouldn't we go ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... "What means all this mystery?" said the captain in an earnest tone, for he felt that they had something serious ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... without manipulating the hydroplanes or rudders was a performance not anticipated, nor claimed in my original patent on the above-mentioned combination, and what caused these vessels to function in this manner remained a mystery, which was unsolved until I built a model tank in 1905 in Berlin, Germany, and conducted a series of experiments on models of submarines. I then learned that a down pull of a hydroplane at a given degree ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... care of Mr. Henry Thornton. They never told me that Brandon was a very dear friend of his. I have thought also of the circumstances of his death, and they all seem confused. Some say he died in Calcutta, others say in China, and Mr. Thornton once said in Manilla. There is some mystery ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... any of the crew, nor could they tell why the captain had anchored there. But they had seen several canoes with Indians cross the river, but that there appeared to be no white settlement that they could discover." The mystery was, however, cleared up on the following morning. A small boat, which could barely hold eight people, was lowered from the stern, and hauled up alongside. We were taken up, one by one, the scoundrel of a captain ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... a somewhat marked effect in regard to the treatment of animals all round that neighborhood, had never been forgotten, nor in a sense forgiven. In conjunction with the extraordinary peace and mildness of his general behavior, it had endowed Tod with mystery; and people, especially simple folk, cannot bring themselves to feel quite at home with mystery. Children only—to whom everything is so mysterious that nothing can be—treated him as he treated them, giving him their hands ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... She looked at him with her mysterious, half sleepy eyes. He felt that he was falling in love all over again. He forgot his reasonings and his fears, and took acute pleasure in penetrating the mystery of these eyes and studying the vague smile ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... could find me out at Hampstead, must also remain wholly a mystery to me. He may glory in his contrivances—he, who has more wickedness than wit, may glory in his contrivances!—But, after all, I shall, I humbly presume to hope, be happy, when he, poor wretch, will be—alas!—who can ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... 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 ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... aback. An instant told him that Watusk alone of all the tribe was not glad to see the flour. Ambrose scented a mystery. ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... it fit that so aweful a subject should be introduced in a mixed company, and therefore at this time waved the theological question; yet his own orthodox belief in the sacred mystery of the TRINITY is evinced beyond doubt, by the following ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... the incongruity of a verbose and argumentative Deity. Such gods as Virgil's Venus and Juno may hurl rhetorical speeches at each other without much ill effect, but we feel that it was a lack of the sense of mystery in Milton that kept him from realizing that the one God, Creator, Father and Judge of all, cannot with fitness debate or argue: He can only decree. "Let thy words be few"; that is even truer, we {161} instinctively feel, of words put into His mouth than of words addressed to Him. Milton's God ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... thing as being too particular," Annie had the coolness to say. "I am sure I do not go in for indiscriminate marriages or for falling in love," she added with lofty decision. "It has always been a mystery to me what poor Fanny Russell could see to care for, or to do anything save laugh at, in Cyril Carey. I hope the elderly 'competition wallah,' or commissioner, or whatever he is, whom she is going to marry, has more sense ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... of 16 applied for help, telling an elaborate tale of family tragedy which proved to be totally untrue. It was so well done that it deceived the most experienced. Shrewd detective work cleared the mystery. It was found that the girl was a chronic falsifier and had immediately preceding this episode become delinquent in other ways. Given firm treatment in an institution and later by her family, who knew well her peculiarities, this girl in the course of four years apparently has lost ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... the American Sphinx leading in a game of hide-and-seek. The mystery of existence baffles us, not because there is no answer, but because there are so many. They are infinite in number, and all of them are true. They wait for the mind large enough to harbor them in all their variety, and serene enough not to be annoyed because their contradictions ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... Preface, sect. 4, says that Moses wrote some things enigmatically, some allegorically, and the rest in plain words, since in his account of the first chapter of Genesis, and the first three verses of the second, he gives us no hints of any mystery at all; but when he here comes to ver. 4, etc., he says that Moses, after the seventh day was over, began to talk philosophically; it is not very improbable that he understood the rest of the second and the third chapters in some enigmatical, or allegorical, or philosophical sense. The change of ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... the mails being hurried from the train to the noble steamer waiting to plough the Mediterranean and bear the adventurers south and east for the land of mystery with its wonders of a bygone civilisation buried deeply ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... to his purse and put it in the pocket of his blouse. There was an air of mystery about the stranger which puzzled the landlord, and he stood gazing at him, his brow gathered into a knot of wrinkles as if trying to solve some intricate problem. The man was sparing of his words; but when he did speak there was something terrible in his voice; ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... communication with the nearby camps had been almost non-existent. Orders had been received from field headquarters and acknowledged, but its relation in distance or direction to their whereabouts were shrouded in mystery. But not ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping, something louder than before. 'Surely,' said I, 'surely that is something at my window lattice; Let me see then what thereat is, and this mystery explore— Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore; 'Tis ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... profile was endowed with ethereal beauty. The beech trees, with their bleached leaves still clinging to them, were almost spectral, and the oaks in their bronzed foliage stood like black giants by the roadside. There were suggestive vistas of light and shadow that were full of mystery, making it easy to believe that on a night like this the mountain was haunted by creatures as strange as the fancy could shape. The girl at his side was a mystery. Viewless walls incased her spirit. What were her hidden and innermost thoughts? The supreme gift of a ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... spruce saplings spanned a spring trickling down from the rocks, Matthews stopped. This was the place! Old rascal! How did he know? Has age ever been young? Eleanor did not know that he was looking at her, did not know that her face was wrapped in mystery and light. Suddenly he placed ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... has been one of the very best things I have known in a life full of blessings. From the first he was the strongest and most attractive of these four fine personalities to me, and I began to recognize him as my Master who was to lead me into enchanting regions of beauty and mystery, which without his aid must forever have remained unseen by the eyes of my soul. I sat at his feet; and at the feet of his spirit I still sit, a student, absorbed, surrendered, as this "priest of Nature's inmost shrine" unfolds to me the secrets ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... that the name on his card would recall "a family matter" to Mrs. Vanstone's memory. What did it mean? A false statement, on the stranger's part, without any intelligible reason for making it? Or a second mystery, following close on the heels of ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... assorted fervent man and gentle woman seemed to have solved the great mystery of ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... papers to-day fall below the official announcement of the work of yesterday afternoon. Gen. Lee's dispatch says we captured 2700 prisoners near Petersburg on the Weldon Road. No other particulars are given, and the affair is still in mystery, for some purpose, perhaps. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... our knees before the holy cross. The Mexican chiefs were curious to know the meaning of all this, and asked why we adored that piece of wood. On this, at the suggestion of Cortes, Father Olmedo explained the mystery of the cross, by virtue of which the evil spirits were chased away, and endeavoured to instruct them in the principles of Christianity, representing the abomination of their idolatry, and the barbarity ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... unto one alone, Are those sounds and visions known? Wherefore hath that spell of power Dark and dread, On her soul, a baleful dower, Thus been shed? Oh! in those deep-seeing eyes, No strange gift of mystery lies! She is lone where once she moved Fair, and happy, and beloved! Sunny smiles were glancing round her, Tendrils of kind hearts had bound her; Now those silver cords are broken, Those bright looks have left no token, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... ready to take charge of affairs, but Mrs. Crow punctured the project; figuratively, the churches ached for a chance to handle the infant, but Mrs. Crow stood between. And all Tinkletown called upon Anderson Crow to solve the mystery before ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... contributors to the "NOTES AND QUERIES," I feel quite sure that a not inconsiderable number of them will be able to contribute each his portion to the solution of what may till now be considered as almost a mystery. With your permission, I will propose a few queries relating ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... the mysteries lying beyond the common run of information should get a share of that peculiar homage which ignorance paid to knowledge. There were, here and there, individuals, the record of whose eccentricity opens up for us vistas into the marvellous domain of magic and mystery which cast its glamour of romance over the old world of the alchemist in pursuit of the philosopher's stone. One of the most remarkable of latter-day disciples of Peter Woulfe, of whom some interesting ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... resolved, before seeing Lady Gourlay, to pay him a visit. He was induced the more to do this in consequence of the old man's singular conduct on the discovery of Fenton. From the very first interview that he ever had with Corbet until that event, he could not avoid observing that there was a mystery in everything he did and said—something enigmatical—unfathomable, and that his looks, and the disagreeable expression which they occasionally assumed, were frequently so much at variance with his words, that it was ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... which desolated the sixteenth century. There is no romance so wild as the veritable history of those times. The majestic outgoings of the Almighty, as developed in the onward progress of our race, infinitely transcend, in all the elements of profoundness, mystery, and grandeur, all ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... one singular circumstance; Thenardier's manners were not simple; he had not the air of being wholly at his ease; while affecting an air of mystery, he spoke low; from time to time he laid his finger on his mouth, and muttered, "hush!" It was difficult to divine why. There was no one there except themselves. Jean Valjean thought that other ruffians might possibly be concealed in some nook, not very far off, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... will think a far too definite, answer. But for the moment it is possible in the same solely practical manner to give a general answer touching what in actual human history keeps men sane. Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... another with these words." This is the full revelation of the blessed hope in its manner of fulfilment. Nothing like it is found anywhere in the Old Testament Scriptures. In writing later to the Corinthians Paul mentioned it again: "Behold I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed" ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... There are those (a few at least) whose blessing it has been to have kept for many days, in bonds of earthly fellowship, a perfected spirit in whom the work of purifying love was wholly done, who lived in calm victory over sin and sorrow and death, ready at any moment to be called to the final mystery ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... did her best to probe into the mystery—for Bernardine's sake—the girl was strangely obdurate. So she said no more to her on the subject just then; but when she approached David Moore on this topic, his incoherent replies puzzled her ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... like Goethe's dramatic poem, after the prologue, with the scene in Faust's study. The aged philosopher has grown weary of fruitless inquiry into the mystery of nature and its Creator, and longs for death. He has just passed a night in study, and as the morning breaks he salutes it as his last on earth and pledges it in a cup of poison. As he is about to put the cup to his lips, the song of a company ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... did not see what the bother was, but I had not the courage to ask, for I had already conceived a wholesome dread of the mystery of an American lady's nerves. So I merely suggested, "And that is the way ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... velocity and power of the combatants, the men-at-arms stood round, without making one movement to leave the spot; and fearful indeed was that deadly strife; equal they seemed in stature, in the use of their weapons, in every mystery of the sword; the eye ached with the rapid flashing of the blades, the ear tired of the sharp, unwavering clash, but still they quailed not, moved not from the spot ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... the guilt lies. To me it is all a mystery. When you sent me those thirty kopecks, and thereafter those two grivenniks, my heart sank within me as I looked at the poor little money. To think that though you had burned your hand, and would soon be hungry, you could write to ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of the hapless Queen, the soft, light-brown locks which floated around the face of a happy child. Before his mental vision rose the little mistress of the garden of Epicurus. He saw the sparkle of her large blue eyes, which never ceased to question, yet appeared to contain the mystery of the world. He fancied he heard once more the silvery cadence of her voice and the bewitching magic of her pure, childlike laughter, and it was hard to remember what she ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... She had in her quiet way instituted a very thorough inquiry into all the circumstances of her flight, and had kept a watchful eye on every channel from which the faintest light was likely to shine upon the mystery, but at the end of six months it was still unsolved. Liz was as irrevocably lost, apparently, as if the earth ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... cleverness of all this was to be found. It simply disgusted her. Rhoda was not always pleasant to put up with, but Rhoda was sweetness and grace, compared with Molly. Gatty sat quietly, neither rebuking her sister's sallies, nor apparently amused by them. And Rhoda liked this girl! It was a mystery to Phoebe. ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... people seem inclined to make a great mystery about it and talk about "the difficulty of getting at the truth;" but I don't see myself where the mystery comes in. What happened was this. The Highland Brigade (Black Watch, Seaforths, Argyle and Sutherlands, and Highland Light Infantry) was told off for the ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... when Aunt Maria appeared at the early breakfast with a pompadour. Her thin frizzes were carefully puffed over a mystery which she had ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... edge, and able to see into the pit, the mystery is, in part at least, explained: for there stand not only Stangrave and Bursch number two, but a second gendarme, two elderly gentlemen, two ladies, and ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... ideas of God, her love of wild things, her faith in life are quite as inspiring as those of Tess. Her faith and sincerity catch at your heart strings. This book has all of the mystery and tense action of the other ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... I saw the Swan Creek country with new eyes—through the luminous eyes of The Pilot. We rode up the trail by the side of the Swan till we came to the coulee mouth, dark and full of mystery. ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... ascent. With the candle held high above his head he glanced into the passage, that seemed to have several doors on either hand. In a castle so sparsely occupied the very knowledge of this long and empty corridor in the neighbourhood of his sleeping apartment conferred a sense of chill and mystery. He thought he could perceive the odour of damp, decayed wood, crumbled lime, hanging rotten in stagnant airs and covered with the dust of years. "Dieu!" he exclaimed involuntarily, "this is no Cammercy." ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... on this hurried and apparently useless journey. His mind seemed in a whirl. Yet as he pondered, there gradually loomed up the reflection that in the eastern, or constructive, end of the great plan there were the same spirits of evil and mystery as existed in the western, or building, end. Here big men were interested, involved; out there bigger men sweat and burned and aged and died. The difference was that these toilers gave all for an ideal while the ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... still puzzling over the mystery of things, there will come to you like a revelation the knowledge that most of the amazing picturesqueness of these streets is simply due to the profusion of Chinese and Japanese characters in white, black, blue, or gold, decorating everything—even surfaces of doorposts ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... Life, she often thought, however much one tabulated was yet a mystery. There were always some people it was impossible to place. Frederick was one of them. He didn't seem to bear the remotest resemblance to the original Frederick. He didn't seem to have the least need of any of the things he used to say were so important and beautiful—love, ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... of his back, and once he touched his nose; whereupon Mr. Gibney was aware that the said organ had a slight list to port, and he so informed Captain Scraggs. Neither of the gentlemen had the slightest trouble in arriving at the correct solution of the mystery. The royal messenger had been incontinently kicked overboard by ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... well. Anerley picked up Mortimer's binoculars, and a foam-bespattered horse and a weary koorbash-cracking man came cantering up the centre of the field. But there was nothing in his appearance to explain the mystery of his return. Then as he watched them they dipped into a hollow and disappeared. He could see that it was one of those narrow khors which led to the river, and he waited, glass in hand, for their immediate reappearance. But minute passed after minute and there was no sign of them. That narrow ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shining on the round oaken stand in the centre, and the large wooden-bottomed chairs, and the loud-ticking clock, with its tall case, the inside of which, with its pendulum and weights, had been a perpetual mystery and delight, first to Hilary's and then to Ascott's childhood. Then there was the sofa, large and ugly, but, oh! so comfortable, with its faded, flowered chintz, washed and worn for certainly twenty ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... And it was on this subject. And I came to the conclusion, that all this watching—just raise that bandeau a trifle higher—and spying, for it is nothing else, on the part of mammas and governesses, has a very bad tendency, indeed. Don't you see that it throws a kind of mystery about the men, and, right away, young girls—and it's natural for young girls to be curious—want to find out what there is so very awful about them, and go to ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... Andrew Walkingshaw, was an unhappy example. It is the case that his parent's disappearance was not without compensating advantages. He was spared a number of minor annoyances, which of late had been the undeserved accompaniment of his blameless life; but then, the mystery of that disappearance, its unorthodoxy, its appalling suggestions of scandal! He knew now what it must feel like to have a relative engaged upon fashionable divorce proceedings or conspicuously notorious on the music-hall stage. ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... of the mystery seemed to her suddenly weak and inadequate. She simply could not bring herself to believe that in a supreme moment he could be found wanting. It was unthinkable that the giant frame and mighty sinews could belong to a personality that was lacking in ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... his mind to obtain light there came to him the fancy of other things dimly related to the death mystery which had perplexed him and all his kind. There must be some one who made the river rise and fall or the nut-bearing forest be either fruitful or the hard reverse. Who and what could it be? What should he do, what should all his friends do in the ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... Whitehall to my Lord, who did tell me that he would have me go to Mr. Townsend, whom he had ordered to discover to me the whole mystery of the Wardrobe, and none else but me, and that he will make me deputy with him for fear that he should die in my Lord's absence, of which I was glad. Then to the Cook's with Mr. Shepley and Mr. Creed, and dined together, and then I went to the Theatre and there saw ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... spirit world this mystery: Creation is summed up, O man, in thee; Angel and demon, man and beast, art thou, Yea, thou art all thou ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... face; vainly endeavouring to master some task which a child of nine years old, possessed of ordinary powers, could have conquered with ease, but which, to the addled brain of the crushed boy of nineteen, was a sealed and hopeless mystery. Yet there he sat, patiently conning the page again and again, stimulated by no boyish ambition, for he was the common jest and scoff even of the uncouth objects that congregated about him, but inspired by the one eager desire to ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... go-between for Jupiter, was often involved in the most hazardous enterprises, such as abducting Io, who was guarded by Argus of the hundred eyes; Mercury I say, was the God of concord, or eloquence, and of mystery. Except to inspire them with friendly feeling and kind affections, Mercury never went among mortals. Touched by his wand, venomous serpents closely embraced him. Listening to him, Achilles forgot his pride, extended hospitality to Priam and permitted him to ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... that the Oxonian was at the bottom of all this oracular mystery, and was disposed to amuse himself with the general, whose tender approaches to the widow have attracted the notice of the wag. I was a little curious, however, to know the meaning of the dark hints which had so suddenly disconcerted ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... intervention of the gods; that would be a miracle. For a woman to hold a sieve so that it would retain water would mean that her hand was as steady as the hand of a sleep-walker or of the priestess of Isis in her trance in the great yearly mystery-festival. That could happen seldom to any woman; such ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... were over, and, what was more, Wyllard, who pledged the rest to secrecy, fancied that what had become of the schooner would remain a mystery. ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... had come from was something of a mystery. Neighbors were not near by, in those days, in Montana, the nearest being fourteen miles off, and the railway twenty-two, and nothing there but a water tank. There was some discussion regarding the matter which ended in a deadlock. It was certain that none ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... King's adversaries regard them, the cumulative effect of these several grudges (and of the mystery of Gowrie's Catholicism) would urge James to lay his very subtle plot. He would secretly call young Ruthven to Falkland by six in the morning of August 5, he would make it appear that Ruthven had invited him to Perth, he would lure the youth to a turret, managing to be locked in with ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... the most extreme and violent wickedness. The chief of sinners became the chief of saints. Yes; but the man never lost his freedom. In recounting that experience he could say, "I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision." This union of divine constraint and human freedom is an everlasting mystery; but not the less is it ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... yellow Micrococcus cereus flavus and the B. berolinensis. Much work is still necessary before we can estimate the importance of these pigments. Their spectra are only imperfectly known in a few cases, and the bearing of the absorption on the life-history is still a mystery. In many cases the colour-production is dependent on certain definite conditions—temperature, presence of oxygen, nature of the food-medium, &c. Ewart's important discovery that some of these lipochrome pigments occlude oxygen, while others do not, may have bearings on the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... there began The lore of Mystery, the mask of man; There Fraud with Science leagued, in early times, Plann'd a resplendent course of holy crimes, Stalk'd o'er the nations with gigantic pace, With sacred symbols charm'd the cheated race, Taught them new grades of ignorance to gain, And punish truth with more than ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... effected, had, as was his custom, proceeded to the Louvre in order to consult with her on state affairs; and had been panic-struck when denied admission to her presence, and informed that she was then closeted with his mortal enemies. In his consternation he sought a solution of the mystery from Bassompierre, who, after expressing his utter ignorance of its meaning, cunningly insinuated that it was, in all probability, an intrigue of the Marechal de Bouillon, who had effected a reconciliation with the Regent ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... elevations. The hills which inclose the Nile valley have level tops, and sides that are bare of trees, or shrubs, or flowers, or even mosses. The sky is generally cloudless. No fog or mist enwraps the distance in mystery; no rainstorm sweeps across the scene; no rainbow spans the empyrean; no shadows chase each other over the landscape. There is an entire absence of picturesque scenery. A single broad river, unbroken within the ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... secret has, my life too has its mystery, A love eternal in a moment's space conceived; Hopeless the evil is, I have not told its history, And she who was the cause, nor knew it, nor believed. Alas! I shall have passed close by her unperceived, Forever at her side, and yet forever lonely, I shall unto the end have made ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... hours of bereavement Vida's heart went out with a longing cry for her husband. The love that she had stifled and called dead was there, deeper and purer. Now that she had been brought by this divine mystery unto full sympathy with him, he was the one soul on earth whose love ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... and had never been treated with such confidence and received so intimately as I now was. I could not help wondering whether I was to be told the reason of what was going on, whether, indeed, anything was going on at all, and whether the air of depression and mystery which I thought I observed were not the result of my own imagination, rather than of any actual foundation in fact. The professor might be making a visit for his pleasure, but I knew how valuable his time must be, and I wondered how he could afford to spend it in mere amusement. ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... measure this Spaniard's ambition, as no one could foresee what his end might be. These questions, asked by those who were able to see anything of this coalition, which was long kept a secret, might have unveiled a horrible mystery which Lucien himself had known but a few days. Carlos was ambitious for two; that was what his conduct made plain to those persons who knew him, and who all imagined that Lucien ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... were 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, ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... but yesterday; and the words repeated that night seemed now to issue from the marble lips of the statues beside her: "For here we have no continuing city, but seek one to come." With her cheek on her hand, the orphan sat pondering the awful mystery which darkened the last hour of the young sleeper; and, looking back over her own life, during the season when she "was without God and without hope," she saw that only unbelief had clothed death with terror. Once she stood on this same spot, and with trembling horror saw the coffin ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... priest, from the very first I declined having anything to do with this matter. It is now all over, and we can never, by our conjectures, unravel the mystery; let it rest; go, ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... reproach yourself. The fault has been mine, rather than yours. Knowing that some mystery enveloped your early life, I should not have allowed my affections to centre so completely in one concerning whose antecedents I knew absolutely nothing. I have been almost culpably rash and blind,—but I could not look into your beautiful, sad eyes, and doubt that ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... of the savages called for an effectual and permanent check. The idea of being constantly subject to the irruptions of a deadly foe, that moved with stealth and mystery, and was only to be traced by its ravages, and counted by its footprints, discouraged all settlement of the country. The beautiful valley of the Shenandoah was fast becoming a deserted and a silent place. Her people, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... Madame Dobson was another most excellent creature. There was just one thing that disturbed poor Risler, that was his incomprehensible misunderstanding with Sigismond. Perhaps Frantz could help him to clear up that mystery. ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... the Judge, "the fruit shall translate to us the mystery and wisdom of the feminine heart. Take the apple, Miss Garland. Hear our modest tales of romance, and then award the prize as ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... where the ginger-pop stood, when, to his very great astonishment, he saw a bottle move off the board just for all the world as if it had possessed the power of locomotion. A second was about to follow the first, when he popped his head out at the door and the mystery was cleared up, for there he discovered the young delinquent making a rapid retreat on all-fours, with the "ginger-pop," the cork of which had flown out, fizzing from his breeches-pocket. After a smart administration ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... the mystery is said to have been explained; for it would seem that the eminent preacher was not so entirely reticent among his confidential friends as before the public. Uytenbogaert—so ran the tale—in the course of his conversation with the condemned murderer, John of Paris, expressed ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... ravages went on, and the children were kept close housed at night, and cool-eyed old woodsmen went armed and vigilant along the lonely roads. The French habitant crossed himself, and the Saxon cursed his luck; and no one solved the mystery. ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... music we can't understand that comic dance of the last century—its strange gravity and gaiety, its decorum or its indecorum. It has a jargon of its own quite unlike life; a sort of moral of its own quite unlike life too. I'm afraid it's a heathen mystery, symbolizing a Pagan doctrine; protesting, as the Pompeians very likely were, assembled at their theatre and laughing at their games—as Sallust and his friends, and their mistresses protested—crowned ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Forward had been attracting the public attention; the singularity of its build, the mystery which enshrouded it, the incognito maintained by the captain, the manner in which Richard Shandon received the proposition of superintending its outfit, the careful selection of the crew, its unknown destination, scarcely ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... embarrassment at meeting them than, standing on the pavement outside the Stock Exchange, he would have experienced greeting his brother jobbers after a settling day that had transferred a fortune from their hands into his. Sennett, in particular, he liked and encouraged. Our whole social system, always a mystery to the philosopher, owes its existence to the fact that few men and women possess sufficient intelligence to be interesting to themselves. Blake liked company, but not much company liked Blake. Young Sennett, however, could always be relied upon to break the tediousness of the domestic dialogue. ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true original course; A longing to inquire Into the mystery of this heart that beats So wild, so deep, in us; to know Whence our thoughts come, and where they go. And many a man in his own breast then delves, But deep enough, alas, none ever mines; And we have been on many thousand lines, And we have shown on each, talent and power, But hardly ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... one), first developed into a bisexual being; and then the cell, becoming a regular egg, gave forth a unisexual creature. The Third Race mankind is the most mysterious of all the hitherto developed five Races. The mystery of the 'How' of the generation of the distinct sexes must, of course, be very obscure here, as it is the business of an embryologist and a specialist, the present work giving only faint outlines of the process. But it is evident that the units of the Third ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... Bolingbroke, "and I wrote word to Paris that he was gone. Instead of taking post for Lorraine, he went to the little house in the Bois de Boulogne, where his female ministers resided; and there he continued lurking for some days, pleasing himself with the air of mystery and business, while the only real business which he should have ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... does not say. Is it to be decided by the first dozen settlers who arrive there, or is it to await the arrival of a hundred? Is it to be decided by a vote of the people or a vote of the Legislature, or, indeed, by a vote of any sort? To these questions the law gives no answer. There is a mystery about this; for when a member proposed to give the Legislature express authority to exclude slavery, it was hooted down by the friends of the bill. This fact is worth remembering. Some Yankees in the East are sending emigrants to Nebraska to exclude slavery from it; and, so far as I can judge, they ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... an article reprinted in the same booklet, Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, that excellent weaver of mystery stories and sister of Hilaire Belloc, said: "Before all things Hugh Walpole is an optimist, with a great love for and a great belief in human nature. His outlook is essentially sane, essentially normal. He has ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... Biographia Medica (1799), Aikin's General Biog. Dict. (1801), and its successor, Chalmers's Biog. Dict. (1812), due mention is preserved of the Dialogue in enumerating the works of its author. Sir Walter Scott alludes to it in the Introduction to the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802) as a "mystery," but his only knowledge of it is evidently derived from Waldron. Chalmers's Life of Lindsay (Poetical Works, 1806) has also kept it prominently before a considerable class of inquirers, as he gives that part ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... me ask what mystery lowers On Tallien's darken'd brow. Thou dost me wrong— Thy soul distemper'd, can my ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... though around our path some form Of mystery ever lies, And life is like the calm and storm That checker earth and skies, Through all its mingling joy and dread, Permit us, Holy One, By faith to see the golden thread ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... the traditions of his reign seemed still to exercise a secret influence, in order to seek at her little manor-house of Trianon new amusements and rustic pleasures, innocent and simple, and attended with no other inconvenience but the air of cliquedom and almost of mystery in which the queen's guests enveloped themselves. Public rumor soon reached the ears of Maria Theresa. She, tenderly concerned for her daughter's happiness and conduct, wrote ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Our hearts, a-tremble, throbbed in harmony With the wild, restless tone of air and sky. Shall we not call him Prospero who held In his enchanted hands the fateful key Of that tempestuous hour's mystery, And with him to wander by a sun-bright shore, To hear fine, fairy voices, and to fly With disembodied Ariel once more Above earth's wrack and ruin? Far and nigh The laughter of the thunder echoed loud, And harmless lightnings ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... shone once more for Sibyl, and she forgot for a time Gus's cruel words about her father. He was most attentive to her now, and initiated her into the mystery of climbing. Screams of laughter followed her valiant efforts to ascend the leafy heights of certain beech trees which grew not far from the house. This laughter attracted the attention of a lady and gentleman who were pacing the ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... great opinion of Tommy, a mystery to her mistress for a long time, until one day it leaked out that Tommy "and Master Harry, too," had told her that Tommy's great-grandfather was a ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... the neglect of his other acquaintances and of herself in particular. Maud was looking very well, to be sure, but no better than often before, when he had not glanced at her a second time. What might be the clue to this mystery? She remembered, upon reflection, that he had escorted Maud home from the party at her own house the week before, but that explained nothing. Ella was aware of no weapon in the armory of her sex capable of effecting the subjugation of a previously quite indifferent young man in the course of a ...
— A Love Story Reversed - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... but the king. But when he threatened that he would have the truth out of her by a trial, he was told that he was the offspring of a slave. By the evidence of the avowal thus extorted he understood the whole mystery of the reproach upon his origin. Abashed as he was with shame for his low estate, he was so ravished with the young man's cleverness, that he asked him why he had aspersed the queen with the reproach that she had demeaned herself like a slave? But while resenting that ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... stories the people have a common language, which now the Great Mystery has taken away from us, and has put a barrier between us and them, so that we can no longer converse together and understand the speech of the ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... their plummet, almost lost in remote depths, touch bottom. Enough 'meaning' has been educed from 'Childe Roland,' to cite but one instance, to start a School of Philosophy with: though it so happens that the poem is an imaginative fantasy, written in one day. Worse still, it was not inspired by the mystery of existence, but by 'a red horse with a glaring eye standing behind a dun one on a piece of tapestry that used to hang in the poet's drawing-room.'[28] Of all his faults, however, the worst is that jugglery, that ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... give a touch of active realism to all her writings. In "A Spinner in the Sun" she tells an old-fashioned love story, of a veiled lady who lives in solitude and whose features her neighbors have never seen. There is a mystery at the heart of the book that throws over ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... kissed her; and then, while she wept for joy, they rose and hied them there where sate the daughter, all astonied to hear the news, whom, as also her brother, they tenderly embraced, and explained to them, and many others that stood by, the whole mystery. Whereat the ladies, transported with delight, rose from table and betook them with Griselda to a chamber, and, with better omen, divested her of her sorry garb, and arrayed her in one of her own robes of state; and so, in guise of a lady (howbeit in her rags she had shewed as no ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... preached to the barbarous people, and when they tired of his sermon played to them upon his harp, and, anticipating Mr. Sankey, sang David's Psalms to the crowds that moved by him as they passed over the bridge of Avon. These venerable foundations, about whose origin a glamour of mystery had gathered, whose history had become strangely obscured by the body of myths that had grown up in the lapse of centuries—which had survived pillage and anarchy, and all the horrors of fire and sword, desolating, devastating—were there before ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... unite his force with Zollicoffer, and fall on Thomas at Dick Robinson, or McCook at Nolin: Had he done so in October, 1861, he could have walked into Louisville, and the vital part of the population would have hailed him as a deliverer. Why he did not, was to me a mystery then and is now; for I know that he saw the move; and had his wagons loaded up at one time for a start toward Frankfort, passing between our two camps. Conscious of our weakness, I was unnecessarily unhappy, and doubtless exhibited it too much to those near me; but it did seem to me ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... "He thinks he ought to become learned to learne so high a mystery, w^{ch} like ye dye of scarlet is not set well upon a raw cloath, but requires a former tincture."[EC] "He accounts, etc." For "ballast" read "last blast" ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... pains to mystify the public as to the identity between the author of Waverley and the author of Tales of my Landlord. The care with which the secret was kept is imputed by Mr. Lockhart in some degree to the habit of mystery which had grown upon Scott during his secret partnership with the Ballantynes; but in this he seems to be confounding two very different phases of Scott's character. No doubt he was, as a professional man, a little ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... spoken or sung. The mourners were dispersing, when their attention was attracted by a tall figure in a mantle, at some distance in the graveyard, sobbing loudly. No one knew who it was; and for many years the occurrence remained wrapped in mystery, giving rise to strange conjectures. But eventually it turned out to have been Schiller's brother-in-law Wolzogen, who, having hurried home on hearing of the death, had arrived after the procession was already on its way to ...
— Shakespeare's Bones • C. M. Ingleby
... admit of doubt, be largely a question of the personal sympathies of the observer. But Lincoln stands apart in striking solitude,—an enigma to all men. The world eagerly asks of each person who endeavors to write or speak of him: What illumination have you for us? Have you solved the mystery? Can you explain this man? The task has been essayed many times; it will be essayed many times more; it never has been, and probably it never will be entirely achieved. Each biographer, each writer or speaker, makes his little ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... and hitherto unsolved riddle of Tibet, Petrie," he replied—"a mystery concealed from the world behind the veil of Lamaism." He stood up abruptly, glancing at a scrap of paper which he took from his pocket—"Suite Number 14a," he said. "Come along! We have not a moment to waste. Let us make our presence known to ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... which he sunk Burr,—asking him how he liked to be "without a country." But it is clear, from Burr's life, that nothing of the sort could have happened; and I mention this only as an illustration of the stories which get a-going where there is the least mystery at bottom. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... town, which he thought of presenting it to, had prepared a place for the gift. Now his hopes had been dashed. He had no idea that they would be able to get another lion. It was not so easy as all that. But how had the beast gotten away? There was a mystery about it fully as perplexing as had been the loss of Stacy's rifle. Tad was beginning to think, with Dad, that mysterious forces were, indeed, at ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... comparison with the Sonnets of Shakespere. There is no want in them of grace and sweetness, and they ring true with genuine feeling and warm affection, though they have of course their share of the conceits then held proper for love poems. But they want the power and fire, as well as the perplexing mystery, of those of the greater master. His bride was also immortalized as a fourth among the three Graces, in a richly-painted passage in the last book of the Faery Queen. But the most magnificent tribute to her is the great Wedding Ode, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... John was restless, and with youth's ambition rebelled against the narrow restrictions of the little town. Hearing the call of the West, he decided to go to the country of his dreams and find the fortune that he knew was waiting him in that new land of mystery. He tried to persuade Drusilla to marry him and go with him; but her mother, with a sick woman's persistency, demanded that her daughter stay with her. They offered to take her with them, and painted in glowing colors the new life in that ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... formed an impenetrable barrier around the sleeping Palace. The old people of the country died, and their children grew up and died also, and their children, and their children, and the story of the sleeping Princess became a legend, handed down from one generation to another; and a cloud of mystery, as thick and impenetrable as the hedge of thorns, lay over the old castle. Many brave and gallant Princes tried to force their way through the magic hedge, in order to solve the mystery and to see for themselves the beautiful maiden who ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... friends she would have left the Larsagny palace at once, but under existing circumstances prudence prompted her to stay and not to repulse the banker entirely; for she suspected that Larsagny held in his hand the threads of the mystery which threatened the Vicomte of Monte-Cristo. Carmen did not have much time to think, for hardly an hour after Gontram had gone, the banker appeared in the boudoir, and looking with ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... narcotics, and then only but fitfully; and it is from this constant suffering that the peculiar sullen or stolid look so often seen on the woman's face is derived. The origin of this custom is involved in mystery to the Westerns. Some say that the strong-minded among the ladies wanted to interfere in politics, and that there is a general liking for visiting, chattering, and gossip (and China women can chatter and gossip), both and all of which inclinations their lords desired, and ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... serve only as protection to the surfaces of plants; coloring matters, as screens to shut off or admit certain of the sun's rays; but we are still far from penetrating the mystery ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... presence of this mystery of the ocean the boys grew silent as Frank maneuvered the Golden Eagle alongside and ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... terrible questions which she had put to the lawyer; for her immovable determination to fix all the circumstances in her mind, under which Michael Vanstone's decision had been pronounced. There she stood at the window, an unfathomable mystery to the sister who had never been parted from her, to the governess who had trained her from a child. Miss Garth remembered the dark doubts which had crossed her mind on the day when she and Magdalen had met in the garden. Norah ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... therefore, we venture to advance towards the spot where the cloud first comes down, it is rather with the purpose of fully pointing out that there is a cloud, than of entering into it. It is well to have been fully convinced of the existence of the mystery, in an age far too apt to suppose that everything which is visible is explicable, and everything that is present, eternal. But besides ascertaining the existence of this mystery, we shall perhaps be able to form some new conjectures respecting ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... wherever he found it necessary. In the second place, within the shrine itself, other considerations came into play. A certain luminous atmosphere, rather than positive light was what was aimed at, and the deep shadows of these internal colonnades might have helped this effect, adding to the mystery of the figure of ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... selected one man of milder mood, and by Alexius's order, made him understand, that the ask in which he was engaged was to be kept most strictly secret, while the hardened slave was astonished to find that the attentions paid to the sick were to be rendered with yet more mystery than the bloody offices of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... awe and weird mystery stands out the story of the adventures of Peter Priestly, clerk, sexton, and gravestone cutter, of Wakefield, who flourished at the end of the eighteenth century. He was an old and much respected inhabitant of the town, and not at all given to superstitious fears. One Saturday evening he went ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... mind had been busily trying to puzzle out the mystery of the girl's presence here alone. Evidently she came in the most friendly spirit; and thus, quite evidently, her mission, whatever it was, must be very different from that of the invaders who had ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... gifts over which Cornelius was too tender to exhibit them at home, was a certain very small one of song. How he had developed it would have been to the home-circle a mystery, but they did not even know that he possessed it, and the thought that they did not was a pleasant one to him. For all his life he had loved vulgar mystery—mystery, that is, without any mystery in it except what appearance of it may come of barren concealment. He never came ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... only witness to Digby's connoisseurship in the joint mysteries. Better to my mind than even Hartman's are the style and the spirit of Master May. In 1660 appeared The Accomplisht Cook, or the Art and Mystery of Cookery ... approved by the fifty years experience and industry of Robert May, in his attendance on Several Persons of Honour. It is dedicated to Lord Lumley, Lord Lovelace, Sir Wm. Paston, Sir Kenelme Digby, and Sir Frederick Cornwallis, "so well known to the ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... if its every hour is rich with love, and every moment jewelled with a joy, will at its close become a tragedy as sad and deep and dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... drug store and Penrod, undergoing a toilette preliminary to his very slowly approaching twelfth birthday, was adhesive enough to retain upon his face much hair as it fell from the shears. There is a mystery here: the tonsorial processes are not unagreeable to manhood; in truth, they are soothing; but the hairs detached from a boy's head get into his eyes, his ears, his nose, his mouth, and down his neck, and he does everywhere itch excruciatingly. Wherefore he blinks, winks, weeps, twitches, ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... we are misleading one another; I in speaking too harshly, you in refusing to understand me. Forget that I am your husband; see in me only a friend and open your heart; your resistance hides a mystery. You have had some grief ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... American husbandman "piously to believe in the mysterious virtue of wax and parchment." He was using no idle epithet, when he described the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, "moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race." To him there actually was an element of mystery in the cohesion of men in societies, in political obedience, in the sanctity of contract; in all that fabric of law and charter and obligation, whether written or unwritten, which is the sheltering bulwark between civilisation and barbarism. When reason ...
— Burke • John Morley
... reality. . . ." His exquisite politeness was then described, and the ultra acuteness and nervosity which resulted in that power of divination which he possessed. For a portrait to be living, it must have some faults as well as qualities. His delineator does not forget to mention the attitude of mystery in which the Prince took refuge whenever his feelings were hurt. She speaks also of his intense susceptibility. "His wit was very brilliant," she says; "it consisted of a kind of subtle mocking shrewdness, not really playful, but a sort of delicate, bantering gaiety." It ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... over. "Mr. Burke and I are old friends," explained O'Connor. "We try to work together when we can, and very often the city department can give the government service a lift, and then again it's the other way - as it was in the trunk-murder mystery. Show Professor Kennedy ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... though he often chafed and panted to hear the word of Divine command; he never moved at any other. But when the voice of God bade him forward he never flinched at any obstacle. The ever-recurring persuasion that there were so few who saw God's will as he saw it cut him to the heart, and the mystery of the Divine times and moments grew upon him with fatal force till the end, until he drooped and pined away with grief that he could but taste the first-fruits. Yet he was ever submissive to the Divine Will, to live, to die, to begin, to end the work, to ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... wind to find out whether her lost fawn were with me. As yet she knew not what had happened. The bear had frightened her into extra care of the one fawn of whom she was sure. The other had simply vanished into the silence and mystery ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... supreme interest. An interest in the hand is by no means uncommon (it may be noted, for instance, in the course of History XII in Appendix B to vol. iii of these Studies), but the hand does not possess the mystery which envelops the foot, and hand-fetichism is very much less frequent than foot-fetichism, while glove-fetichism is remarkably rare. An interesting case of hand-fetichism, scarcely reaching morbid intensity, is recorded by Binet, Etudes de Psychologie ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... for active play had its effect, in a lowered net and changed laws, and tennis, as we know it, grew into being. From its earliest period, which is deeply shrouded in mystery, came the terms of "love" for "nothing" and "deuce" for "40-all." What they meant originally, or how they gained their hold is unknown, but the terms are a tradition of the game and just as much a part of the scoring system as the "game" or ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... maps, and possibly worked with some of the noted Italian draughtsmen. At the age of twenty-eight, in 1474, he left Genoa for Portugal, famous throughout the world for her recent discoveries, though as yet the Stormy Cape lay veiled in mystery. Columbus wanted to learn all he could about these discoveries; he made voyages to Guinea, Madeira, and Porto Santo. He also went to England and "sailed a hundred leagues to the island of ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... music is still a mystery. We know that it is composed of three principles,—air, vibration, and rhythmic symmetry. Strike an object in an exhausted receiver, and it produces no sound, because no air is there; touch a ringing glass, and the sound stops, because there is no vibration; take away the rhythm of the simplest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... night, for I am at too great a distance to know any news, even if there were any in season. I shall be in town next week, and will not fail you in inquiries, though I am persuaded you will before that have found that all this Genoese mystery was ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... only brother of Laurence de Cinq-Cygne. He emigrated at the outbreak of the Revolution and died for the Royalist cause at Mayence. [The Gondreville Mystery.] ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... it to have been some superstition or perhaps a falsehood. The watermen also of the party say that the Pawnees and Ricaras give the same account of a noise heard in the Black mountains to the westward of them. The solution of the mystery given by the philosophy of the watermen is, that it is occasioned by the bursting of the rich mines of silver confined within the bosom of the mountain. An elk and a beaver are all that were killed to-day: the buffaloe seemed to have withdrawn from our neighbourhood, though several of the ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... spite of her feeling of haste, she paused a moment and looked fearfully through the vestibule to the wide, sombre hall beyond, her thoughts in a whirl. This was John Pendleton's house; the house of mystery; the house into which no one but its master entered; the house which sheltered, somewhere—a skeleton. Yet she, Pollyanna, was expected to enter alone these fearsome rooms, and telephone the doctor that the master ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... a smart address. Miss O'Dwyer's house, for instance, boasted a spacious hall and lofty sitting-rooms, with impressive ceilings and handsome fireplaces; yet she paid for it little more than half the rent which a cramped villa in Clyde Road would have cost her. Even so, it was somewhat of a mystery to her friends how Miss O'Dwyer managed to live there. A solicitor who had his offices on the ground-floor probably paid the rent of the whole house; but the profits of verse-making are small, and a poetess, like meaner women, requires food, clothes, and fire. Indeed, ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... (Ephes. i. 22, 23). So intimately connected are the Saints with their Lord that they are the members of Christ—yea, S. Paul does not hesitate to say, "We are members of His Body, of His Flesh, and of His Bones" (Ephes. v. 30). This is a great mystery; but when faith has accepted it, it is seen to be the ground of the Christian's strength. He is strong through grace, because his strength is not his own, but is derived from Christ his Lord, with Whom through the Spirit he ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... give anything to know! Walter told it to me, and it is about you. He spoke of it in his last letter, and said he meant to—Come, I'll tell you, though he said I mustn't, if you will only let me into the mystery of this ring. The secret is in my letter, and I will let you read it, if ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... circumstance that the book reports the events which happened to a prophet. The sound explanation has been already given by Marckius: "The book is, in a great measure, historical, but in such a manner, that in the history itself there is hidden the mystery of the greatest prophecy, and that Jonah proves himself to be a true prophet, by the events which happened to him, not less than by his utterances." A similar explanation is given by Carpzovius: "By ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... philosophy, in truth, they are so," said Rienzi; "but all my life long, omen and type and shadow have linked themselves to action and event: and the atmosphere of other men hath not been mine. Life itself a riddle, why should riddles amaze us? The Future!—what mystery in the very word! Had we lived all through the Past, since Time was, our profoundest experience of a thousand ages could not give us a guess of the events that wait the very moment we are about to enter! Thus deserted by Reason, what wonder that we recur to the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Later, he proceeded to Europe, where he died in the middle of the century, a great man, the victim of the ingratitude of his fellow citizens, always modest and reserved, and, in many respects, an unsolved mystery. He harbored no resentment towards Bolvar. When he arrived in Callao after the interview, the papers published the following ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell |
