"Mystifying" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would be indiscreet, since Colonel Capadose handled the brush—as a raconteur—with such freedom. There might be a ghost and there might not; but the Colonel himself, he inclined to think, was the most mystifying figure in ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... a marked change, now resembling nothing earthly, although some have remarked that it could be likened to the bay of an enormous hound. Some of its later actions have seemingly added further canine attributes, which make the matter all the more mystifying. Veterinaries are asking why this animal should chase automobiles, and why it should carry bones in its mouth ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... a shade that would never excite the cynical commentary which men applied to certain types of blondes. It would be protective; it would with age turn to silver unnoticeably. A disconcerting gray eye that had a mystifying depth. In the artificial light her skin had the tint and lustre of a yellow pearl. She would be healthy, too, and vigorous. Not the explosive vigour of the north-born, but that which would quietly meet physical hardships ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... anyone think that they had not both been born and brought up right there on Kettle. Everything about the house had the mark of a cultured taste, yet the cushioned chairs, the rugs, the soft-toned hangings were worn to shabbiness. And most mystifying of all was Miss Jerry herself, who had appeared at the supper table in a much faded but spotless gingham dress, black shoes and cotton stockings replacing the elkskins and woolen socks, very much a spirited ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... excitement in their faces and in their actions. White uniformed policemen were flocking into the corridors; soldiers, coatless and hatless, fresh from their beds, came dashing upon the scene. There were excited cries, angry shouts and, snore mystifying than ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... useful as when he moves in the dark. Women were born to mystify. Some of us do it one way—some in another. If you wear mannish clothes and a Bath-bun, it is because they become you extraordinarily well and because they form a disguise more complete and mystifying than anything else you ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... the letter was taken up with matters about which they had been conferring for some time. But Penelope was not able to find in them her usual interest, so deep was her absorption in Gordon's mystifying allusions ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... ladies," said the journalist, jumping at an opportunity of mystifying the natives, "it is evident that the brigands are in a cave. But how careless romancers of that date were as to details which are nowadays so closely, so elaborately studied under the name of 'local color.' If the robbers were in a cavern, instead ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... Here they were lured aside and to the north to pretty Woodland, where Billy drove team for a fruit farm, and where Saxon wrung from him a reluctant consent for her to work a few days in the fruit harvest. She made an important and mystifying secret of what she intended doing with her earnings, and Billy teased her about it until the matter passed from his mind. Nor did she tell him of a money order inclosed with a certain blue slip of paper in ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... Thomas of Canterbury had in thus mystifying the monks of Poitiers, or to what prince or pagan he pointed at, remains a secret: whether the holy vial ever was found cannot now be known; or, if any discovery of such was made in that period of discoveries, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... pleased to learn from their trusty messenger that the citizens had advocated his cause not only from the consciousness of its being a just one, but also because they were assured of his zeal for the preservation of religion.(4) This was one of James's mystifying remarks which he was accustomed to throw out in order to raise the hopes of the Catholics, who questioned his title to the crown, whilst affording no cause for alarm or discontent ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... interrupted for two or three days. The insects on which are observed this remarkable circumstance, were the Cantharis oclemero, and some others. Spanish flies, you will say? That accounts for it; but at present we are not mystifying our indulgent readers. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... letter has puzzled and alarmed me. The more I think of it, the more mystifying it all becomes. I must see you, and you must tell me the truth—the whole truth. We love each other, dear heart, and no one shall force you to lie again to me as you did in that letter you wrote from ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... city and its environs were very much intrigued. Such a thing was very exciting and mystifying; but it was so far out of touch with their own lives that it did not affect them very much at any time except when they were reading the paper or discussing it in conversation. The police were the ones who were doing the real worrying. And, when the following week two more safes disappeared, insurance ...
— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer
... is there stronger evidence of any perception, on the part of these much respected artists, that there were such things in the world as mists or vapors. If a cloud under their direction ever touches a mountain, it does it effectually and as if it meant to do it. There is no mystifying the matter; here is a cloud, and there is a hill; if it is to come on at all, it comes on to some purpose, and there is no hope of its ever going off again. We have, therefore, little to say of the efforts of the old ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... puzzled, and said: "Edna, do you know what he meant? He often amuses himself by mystifying me, and I will not gratify ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... to eke out the deficiency by formula or by knack of fingers. Wherever the inspiration leaves him, there is an end of the picture. Beyond that we get only his personalities; no skill, no earnestness of intention, etc., can avail him; he is only mystifying himself or us. At these points we sooner or later come up with him, are as good as he, and the work forthwith begins to tire. What is tiresome is to have thrust upon us the dead surface of matter: this is the prose of the world, which we come to Art ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... their performances for the entertainment of the company. This they did, and though they were handicapped by the absence of the usual stage properties, Larry not having his stage suit with him and Tim being without his clog dancing pumps, the spectators were delighted. Larry tied himself into a mystifying tangle of knots, and his whistling was so sweet and melodious that it roused his audience to the heights of enthusiasm. And Tim's graceful dancing was a revelation of the possibilities of the ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... It has rained every day without exception since it delayed me over Sunday at Bela Palanka, and this morning it begins while I am eating breakfast, and continues a drenching downpour for over an hour. While waiting to see what the weather is coming to, I wander around the crooked and mystifying streets, watching the animated scenes about the bazaars, and try my best to pick up some knowledge of the value of the different coins, for I have had to deal with a bewildering mixture of late, and once again there is a complete change. Medjidis, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... his anxiety to save the literal account in Genesis, has urged that Jehovah tilted and twisted the strata, scattered the fossils through them, scratched the glacial furrows upon them, spread over them the marks of erosion by water, and set Niagara pouring—all in an instant—thus mystifying the world "for some inscrutable purpose, but for ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... over and over again, it was very mystifying. Much depends in this world upon the humour people are in at the time; Mynheer Krause was, at that time, full of Cato-like devotion and Roman virtue, and he took the contents of the letter in ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... converse with Kolchak's authorized agents in Paris they would lay down hard conditions, which were described as immutable; and yet when communicating with the Admiral direct they would submit to him terms considerably less irksome, unknown to his Paris advisers, thus mystifying both and occasioning friction between them. In many cases the contrast between the two sets of demands was disconcerting, and in all it tended to cause misunderstandings and complicate the relations between ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... and gets plenty of movement and colour into it. And if she has elaborated the characters and inter-play of her Anglo-Burmese colony to an extent that is not justified either by their connection with the plot or the necessity of mystifying the reader we must forgive her because she does it very well—so well indeed that we may hope to see The Pointing Man, excellent as it is in its way, succeeded by a contribution to Anglo-Oriental literature that will do ampler justice to Miss ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... well-conducted periodical, The Irish Quarterly Review, which, in the number for September, 1852, after giving a most humorous account of a first interview between Blackwood and his wild Irish contributor, who had for more than a year been mystifying the editor by contributions under various ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... is not the finest of the master's; but it serves again as well as another to transport—there is no other word—those of his lovers for whom, in far-away days when Venice was an early rapture, this strange and mystifying painter was almost the supreme revelation. The plastic arts may have less to say to us than in the hungry years of youth, and the celebrated picture in general be more of a blank; but more than the others any fine Tintoret still carries us back, calling up not ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... have taken to discriminate. She was aware of how little she could judge of the value of a thing till she had looked at it ten minutes; indeed modest little Biddy was compelled privately to add "And often not even then." She was mystified, as I say—Nick was often mystifying, it was his only fault—but one thing was definite: her brother had high ability. It was the consciousness of this that made her bring out at last: "I don't so much care whether or no I please mamma, if ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... like the door into the hall of mysteries opening, but only to make disclosures dimmer and more mystifying still. The postponement of dreadful certainties enabled her, however, to say with some slight relief, "But this—this other person couldn't have been very fond of her himself if he—if he gave her up ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... and drove up-town to my apartments in Riverside. It was eight o'clock by my watch. I leaned back against the cushions, ruminating. There seemed to be something going on that night; the ten of hearts was acquiring a mystifying, not to say sinister, aspect. First it had alarmed the girl in Mouquin's, and now this stranger in the curio-shop. I was confident that the latter had lied in regard to his explanations. The card had startled him, but his reasons were altogether of transparent thinness. A man never likes to ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... Barny, who saw the necessity of mystifying his companions a little, "you see, the captain towld me that I kum around, an' rekimminded me to go th' ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... extraordinary increase of public influence, and that influence produced, in the natural course of such things, an extraordinary crop of adherents. If I could have drunk adulation, no man was in more imminent hazard of mystifying his own brains. I began to be spoken of as one equal to the highest affairs of the state, and to whom the viceroyalty itself lay naturally open. But I still longed for a return to England. Delighted as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... learned, Mrs. Morton, after many years spent in detective work. There is no circumstance, however mystifying it may at first appear, which is not susceptible of some reasonable and often very commonplace explanation. You find this letter on the floor in your daughter's bedroom. It was placed there, either by someone within the apartment, or by someone from without. Now you tell me that it could not have ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... subject. After all, there was something in him so different from other men, even from Arthur Campbell. There was always some deep, happy meaning to his simplest words, and his most commonplace conceptions of things were flavored with this mystifying attraction whatever it was. ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... atmosphere that wrapped about him and me, and the pleasant bright things, the dessert and glasses and napery of the dinner we had shared, making them for the time a bright little world quite cut off from everyday realities, I saw it all as frankly incredible. "He was mystifying!" I said, and then: "How well he did it!... It isn't quite the thing I should have expected him, of all ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... no nearer. It had a grosbeak-like quality, I fancied, and I hoped to find either the pine or the evening grosbeak, for both of which I had been making anxious search. The shifting of the song from point to point struck me as odd, and it was very mystifying. ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... word, but no doubt his feelings were just as strong as those of his companion. And so they had now embarked on what seemed to be the last leg of the strange chase, with the future lying before them as mystifying as that fog bank lying ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... plausible; it is, moreover the only other hypothesis, perhaps, which can be devised to account for these passages, if it were possible to prove that the interpretation that the documents themselves suggest, must be rejected a priori; viz may not Leonardo have written them with the intention of mystifying those who, after his death, should try to decipher these manuscripts with a view to publishing them? But if, in fact, no objection that will stand the test of criticism can be brought against the simple and direct ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... was not much better, for old Mr. King, preferring to use none but the best of French when he employed any, was only succeeding in mystifying the poor man so that he couldn't find his tongue at all, but stared like a clod till the ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... Colonel noticed. "No laughing matter, boys," he said emphatically, at the same time earnestly gesticulating, "your lives, your country, and your honor depend upon right hearts." And thus the old Colonel exhorted each Company previous to its dismissal, amusing some and mystifying others. The heart was his theme, and time or place, a court-martial or a review, did not prevent the introduction ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... of disappointment, but as he passed along the street his name was called by Juliet Burwell, and she fluttered across to him in all her mystifying flounces and ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... to the foreign tribunal, prosecuting Him before this alien power, seeking His death from the hated Imperial government? What can He have done to bring about so unusual a situation? Pilate is perplexed; and the answer of Jesus does not clarify the magistrate's ideas. It seems only more mystifying. Jesus describes His kingdom, so different from any institution bearing the name that Pilate has ever heard of. It is not of the order of things in this world. If it were, of course Christ's servants would fight, as do the servants of the claimants of earthly thrones. But they do not resort to ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... his own type. The fourth and last edition, published in Steevens's lifetime, was prepared by himself in fifteen volumes in 1793. As he grew older, he made some reckless changes in the text, chiefly with the unhallowed object of mystifying those engaged in the same field. With a malignity that was not without humour, he supplied, too, many obscene notes to coarse expressions, and he pretended that he owed his indecencies to one or other of two highly respectable clergymen, Richard Amner ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... you should persist in thus mystifying me as to the sinister motive of that pair of assassins. If they wished to rob me, they could have done so without seeking to take my ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... made a full day for him. He returned to the perfect boarding house just at supper time. During the meal he realized that Mr. Bangs seemed to be trying to attract his attention. Whenever he glanced in that gentleman's direction his glance was met by winks and mystifying shakes of the head. Losing patience at last, he demanded to ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... place my friends in anxiety and trouble by means of a prank in which I indulged. Among us young people who had been at Leipzig, there had been maintained ever afterwards a certain itch for imposing on and in some way mystifying one another. With this wanton love of mischief I wrote to a friend in Frankfort (he was the one who had amplified my poem on the cake-baker Hendel, applied it to /Medon/, and caused its general circulation) a letter dated from Versailles, in which I informed him of ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... appear to have changed it so often, that the Academy was at first addressed by more than one title; Academie des beaux Esprits; Academie de l'Eloquence; Academie Eminente, in allusion to the quality of the cardinal, its protector. Desirous of avoiding the extravagant and mystifying titles of the Italian academies,[275] they fixed on the most unaffected, "L'Academie Francaise; but though the national genius may disguise itself for a moment, it cannot be entirely got rid of, and they assumed ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... minutes he returned with the mystifying news that Mr. Klutchem's letters had been sent to his apartment the night before, and that a telegram had just been received notifying his clerks that he would ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... for the investigation of criminal science, though I saw on a second glance that it was the same, that there was the usual hurly-burly of microscopes, test-tubes, and all the paraphernalia that were so mystifying at first but in the end under his skilful hand made the most ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... said, "I ain't the leastest mite afraid." She laughed a little, in a manner mystifying to him, for it suddenly seemed to her she should never ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... ruling Princes of India are very fond of watching a clever conjuror and can pay enormous fees, but no Indian conjuror appears to appeal to them. A Western performer always wants to give his best to his audience and takes a pride in mystifying them. David Devant, who is one of the greatest living exponents has quite recently written an article in the Strand Magazine of his dreams of tricks that he would like to be able to do. To meet the late Charles Bertram "at home" was a study in itself. To have seen him playing, as a child would ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... now, and there was no mistaking the destination, the intent of its makers. "Honk! honk! honk! honk!" from many throats, in many keys, louder and louder, confused as children's voices at play; then in turn diminishing, retreating. Very mystifying to one who did not understand would have been that augmenting, lessening sound; but to that waiting human boulder it was no mystery. As plainly as though he could see, he knew every movement of that ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... outside his immediate concern. If the actual money had been in Wade's possession, as Podmore had been led to believe, Phil would have been more perplexed about it; even Wade's evident inside knowledge of the transaction was sufficiently mystifying. That probably was part of the "puzzle" which would be divulged in due course. Kendrick knew that in the modern business world with its constant clashes between powerful financial interests there were many undercurrents ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... quickly. "I hadn't noticed anything specially mysterious in her manner. She always did love to be mystifying." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... could and could not do, were, I acknowledge, to a Northern ethical sense a trifle mystifying. A Gaylord might drink and gamble and fail to pay his debts (not his gambling debts; his tailor and his grocer); he might be the hero of many doubtful affairs with women; he might in a sudden fit ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... surely, no apology was needed; and Madame Munster was the fortunate possessor of several New England cousins. In fact, however, Madame Munster struck him as out of keeping with her little circle; she was at the best a very agreeable, a gracefully mystifying anomaly. He knew very well that it would not do to address these reflections too crudely to Mr. Wentworth; he would never have remarked to the old gentleman that he wondered what the Baroness was up to. And indeed ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... great domestic literature; and this unknown literature has actually furnished a basis to our own. Let us understand clearly what it is that Pope means to assert. For it is no easy matter to do that where a man dodges behind texts and notes, and shuffles between verse and prose, mystifying the reader, and designing to do so. Under the torture of cross-examination let us force Pope to explain what literature that is which, having glorified France, became the venerable mother of a fine English literature in an early stage of the fifteenth ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... went to live at Dorking, but stayed there only a year or two. An instance of his love of mystifying us children may be given. It must have been shortly after our arrival at Dorking that one day, having been out to explore the neighbourhood, he returned about tea-time and said, "Where do you think I have been? To Glory!" Of course we were very properly excited, and plied him with ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... front porch again, exactly as if he thought nothing had happened, Penrod, with his younger vision of a father's mood, remained coldly distant from the Jones neighbourhood. With his own family his manner was gentle, proud and sad, but not for long enough to frighten them. The change came with mystifying abruptness at the end of ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... surging and lagging movements of the whole earth's life—an informed, pregnant Aristotle,—Ah! there would be the man to talk with! What satisfaction to see him take, like reins from between his fingers the long ribbons of man's life and trace it through the mystifying maze of all the wonderful adventure of his coming up. The crooked made straight. The 'Daedalian plan' simplified by a look from above—smeared out as it were by the splotch of some master thumb that made the whole involuted, ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... notwithstanding indisputable evidence of the genuineness of the claims put forward by water diviners, many people regard them all as a huge joke, and laugh outright at the credulity of their patrons. Certainly it is true that the faculty is claimed by many, but possessed by few. After all, however mystifying it may be to the ordinary mind, hard facts cannot be ignored, and proof positive has repeatedly been adduced of the good work done by ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... that mystifying and tantalizing tear. Viola hastily searched among the other letters, hoping the missing pieces might ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... Fremont asked his friend to explain the mystifying situation, but never succeeded in gaining satisfactory information on the subject of the frequent halts and seemingly useless journeys back and forth. At various times during the journey he secured newspapers containing wild and improbable theories ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... position. Should the Indians pursue me, and I could succeed in reaching the timber before them, a volley from my comrades would check the pursuers, however numerous. The nine rifles would be enough, with a few shots from the revolvers. The savages would fancy nine hundred under the mystifying shadows of that ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... Cleek," Narkom began, opening fire without further parley, "the major has come to ask your aid in a case of singular and mystifying interest. You may or may not have heard of a music-hall artiste—a sort of conjuror and impersonator—called 'Zyco the Magician,' who was assisted in his illusions by a veiled but reputedly beautiful Turkish lady who was billed on the programmes and posters ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... with Pablo at her heels, Bill Conway unburdened himself of a slightly ribald little chanson entitled: "What Makes the Wild Cat Wild?" In the constant repetition of this query it appeared that the old Californian sought the answer to a riddle not even remotely connected with the mystifying savagery of non-domestic felines. ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... calmly as I could, I went over the whole story, from the night Liddy and I had been alone up to the strange experience of Rosie and her pursuer. The basket still stood on the table, a mute witness to this last mystifying occurrence. ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... The appearance of either seemed to carry to the prisoners a spirit of encouragement and reflect a ray of mercy into the dark corners of their hearts. They indulged the hope that some of those foreign uniforms might conceal trustworthy friends. And they recognized a basis for such a hope in the mystifying movements of one of those uniforms that met their notice day by day. It was near them at the palace when they were thrown upon a maddened world. They saw it following onward as they passed through pathless wilds. They could see it hovering near them on that last historic night. They learned ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... Mr. Browning felt at once that he had no right to keep such poetry as a private possession. "I dared not," he said, "reserve to myself the finest sonnets written in any language since Shakespeare's." They were accordingly published in 1850, under the intentionally mystifying title, Sonnets from ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... turned his back on me. He, most likely, attached no great importance to what he had said to me, he had a reputation for mystifying, and was noted for his power of taking people in at masquerades, which was greatly augmented by the almost unconscious falsity in which his whole nature was steeped.... He only wanted to tease me; but every word he uttered was a poison that ran through ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... and high. Whatever she had done or left undone, he ought not to have been able to conceal that he was glad to see her—he ought not to have been able to think of Lady Dunstable first! She began to take a pleasure in mystifying him. ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... plan for mystifying several great personages, and two or three ladies whom the Emperor designated to me with such minute details that it was impossible to mistake them, and told me some singular things in regard to them, which were not generally known, and were ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... hues of red and gold, but each one whirled around upon its stalk like a miniature wind-mill, completely dazzling the vision of the beholders and so mystifying them that they knew ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... sentimentalities of generations of silly mothers and grandmothers, but left free to be, to grow, to feel, to think, to act. Development is one thing, that system of cramping, restraining, torturing, perverting, and mystifying, called education, is quite another. We have had women enough befooled under the one system, pray let us try the other. The girl must early be impressed with the idea that she is to be "a hand, not a mouth"; a worker, and not a drone, in the great hive of human activity. Like the boy, she must ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... screening me from the light of day. The swamps were submerged, and as the water poured out of the thickets into the river it would shoot across the land from one bend to another, presenting in places the mystifying spectacle of water running up stream, but not up an inclined plain. Festoons of gray Spanish moss hung from the weird limbs of monster trees, giving a funeral aspect to the gloomy forest, while the owls ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... Daughter of the Rhine for the other, stimulated her romantic fancy and made her eager as a girl to have the plot carried into effect. What was to be accomplished by it, she did not trouble herself to define; it only gave her a kind of confused satisfaction to think that she was mystifying somebody who had for a long time been mystifying her. Roeschen was exactly of Miss Jones's height and their figures closely resembled each other. So when they were masked a microscope would be required ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... if the knowledge and acumen of prejudged scientific opponents, or the subtlety of orthodox special pleaders, have yet exerted their full force in mystifying the real issues of the great controversy which has been set afoot, and whose end is hardly likely to be seen by this generation; so that, at this eleventh hour, and even failing anything new, it may be useful to state afresh that which is true, and to put the fundamental positions ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... to face with what would soon be the joint forces of Pope, McClellan, and probably another corps from Washington: the whole well fed, well armed, and certainly more than twice as strong as the united Confederates. But Jackson and Stuart multiplied their forces by skillful maneuvers and mystifying raids, and presently Stuart had his revenge for the affront he had suffered on the seventeenth. On the tempestuous night of the twenty-second he captured Pope's dispatches. On the twenty-fourth, at Jefferson, Lee and Jackson discussed the situation with these ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... mystification. She revelled in "bye-ways" and "crooked ways." She played with grave cabinets as a cat plays with a mouse, and with much of the same feline delight in the mere embarrassment of her victims. When she was weary of mystifying foreign statesmen she turned to find fresh sport in mystifying her own ministers. Had Elizabeth written the story of her reign she would have prided herself, not on the triumph of England or the ruin of Spain, but on the skill with which she had hoodwinked and outwitted ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... fellow under us awhile we'd make a cow-hand out of him. See the wiggle he gets on himself now, will you?" Promptly at the hour, the herd were counted and corralled, Don Mateo Gonzales not troubling to appear, which was mystifying to the North Texas men, but Uncle Lance explained that a mere incident like selling seven hundred cattle was not sufficient occasion to arouse the ranchero of Santa Maria when his corporal could attend ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... arms such as the Gray Seal had never received before—such as the Tocsin had never made before. And if it were true it—True! He laughed aloud a little gratingly. True! Had the Tocsin, astounding, unbelievable, mystifying as were the means by which she acquired her knowledge not only of this, but of countless other affairs, ever by so much as the smallest detail been astray. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... honest enough," corrected Embury; "he owns right up that it was a trick. Why, good heavens, man! if it hadn't been, he couldn't have done it at all. I'm rather keen to know just how he managed, though, for the yarn of Eunice and Aunt Abby is a bit mystifying." ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... the magistrates of Goerlitz, and commanded to leave the pen alone and stick to his wax, that his family might not become chargeable to the parish. He neglected this good advice, and continued his studies; burning minerals and purifying metals one day, and mystifying the Word of God on the next. He afterwards wrote three other works, as sublimely ridiculous as the first. The one was entitled Metallurgia, and has the slight merit of being the least obscure of his compositions. Another was called The Temporal Mirror ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... to conclusions—or conjectures—entirely outside his own province. The element of trickery in the ordinary professional seance is notorious.[75] The ordinary physical phenomena of spiritism have almost without exception been duplicated by conjurers—many of whom have mystifying tricks of their own no medium can duplicate and even the most unusual phenomena, such as Home's apparent ability to handle fire unburnt and his levitation can be paralleled in savage rites or the performance of Indian fakirs, to which no professedly spiritistic ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... face flamed. Oddly enough she looked at her gown. Kenny wondered why. He found her distress and the hot color of her face mystifying and lovely. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... Parsimonious of all he observed, he never related a typical anecdote, or offered a suggestive remark. Praise, even, did not move him, and if by chance he became animated it was to tell some practical joke, some atelier hoaxes, as if he had given himself up to the pleasure of hoaxing and mystifying people. ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... might have worn without trouble Cinderella's magic slipper. Her clothes, coarse and homespun, were clean and variously mended. Her hair, in a thick braid, was the tone of the heart of a chestnut-bur, and her eyes were of that mystifying hazel, sometimes brown, sometimes gray, according to whether the sky was clear or overcast. And there was something above and beyond all these things, a modesty, a gentleness and a purity; none of the bold, rollicking, knowing manner so ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... over and over again; it was very mystifying. Much depends in this world upon the humour people are in at the time; Mynheer Krause was, at that time, full of Cato-like devotion and Roman virtue, and he took the contents of the letter ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... I am about at the end of one of the most shocking and most mystifying affairs known to the human race. In keeping with my resolve I disappeared into the Negro race for the purpose of fathoming the mystery of the murder of my beloved Alene. The fact that I could so disappear is one of far-reaching significance. It shows what an awful predicament the Negroes ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... the love of mystifying; which indeed may be referred to that of mischief. There was no knowing how much or how little to believe of his narratives. Instance:—Mr. Bankes[23] expostulating with him upon a dedication which he had written in extravagant terms of praise to Cam Hobhouse, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... my two companions were more attracted by the 'Gordian Knot'; and it was only because I subordinated my own inclinations to theirs that you were compelled to use force to make us proceed in the right direction. However, it has resulted in our having one of the most exciting and mystifying experiences of our lives; and, now all has ended happily, I do not think any one of us regrets that the ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... these, which is decidedly more complex and mystifying, refers to a rectory in Co. Donegal. It is sent as the personal experience of one of the percipients, who does not wish to have his name disclosed. He says: "My wife, children, and myself will have lived here four years next January (1914). From the first night that ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... Serpent" is a husband's jealousy; and it is the self-forgetful devotion of his wife that finally cures his malady and relieves him of his unpleasant companion. The tale ends with one of those mystifying passages which Hawthorne weaves so skilfully, so that it is difficult to determine from the text whether there was a real serpent secreted under the man's clothing, or only an imaginary one,— although we presume the latter. Francis of Verulam says, "the best ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... which is so much harsher among people near the edge of pauperism, sometimes leaves ugly marks on character, and the charity visitor finds these indirect results most mystifying. Parents who work hard and anticipate an old age when they can no longer earn, take care that their children shall expect to divide their wages with them from the very first. Such a parent, when successful, impresses the immature nervous system of the child ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... that moment I was an ungrateful man for all this high and noble solicitude. One dark doubt shot for an instant across my brain. Maybe her ladyship had "registered a vow" never to syllable a name unchronicled by Debrett, or was actually only mystifying me for mere amusement. A minute's consideration dispelled this fear; for I found myself treated "en Seigneur" by the whole family. As for the daughters of the house, nothing could possibly be more engaging than their manner. The eldest, Lady Jane, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... It was very mystifying, and naturally it served only to pique my curiosity. A certain quality of loneliness which had seemed to belong to the village, even in the brightness of the summer evening, now asserted itself potently. Seated there in the quiet little inn parlor, I recalled ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... the storm in which Clark sat, its unapproachable center. The telegram compiled by Birch and signed by Wimperley, as president, was on his desk, just as the secretary had laid it before he went silently out, unable to meet the mystifying glance of those gray eyes. Clark had never moved nor looked up, nor did he till half an hour later, when he dictated a notice to be posted throughout the works. "All operations will temporarily cease this night at six o'clock. Employees will ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... time much preoccupying Helen, preoccupied her now less than ever. The person who really interested her, now that she had come to look at him and to realise that he was suffering, was Mr. Kane. He was puzzling to her, not mystifying; there was no element of depth or shadow about him; even his suffering—it was odd to think that a person with such a small, flat nose should suffer—even his suffering was pellucid. He puzzled her because he was different from anything she had ever ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... HIM—not go himself, as it were, so much of the way. He must at any rate be clearer as to what—should he continue to do that for convenience—he was still condoning. It was on the detail of this quantity—and what could the fact be but mystifying?-that Bilham and Miss Barrace threw so little light. ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... would induce her to budge from Paris till she had seen her sister through, and Gaston shrank from proposing that she too should spend five weeks in the Place Beauvau or the Rue de Lille. There was moreover a slight element of the mystifying for him in the perverse unsociable way in which Francie took up a position of marked disfavour as yet to any "visiting." AFTER, if he liked, but not till then. And she wouldn't at the moment give the reasons of her refusal; it was only very positive ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... rather gives poignancy to his peculiar appearance; he has a small handsome hand, moreover, and a graceful as well as forcible mode of using it. . . . He has two requisites of a debater, a melodious voice and clear, sharply defined enunciation. His forte in debating is his power of mystifying the point. With the most offhand assured airs in the world, and a certain appearance of honest superiority, like one who has a regard for you and wishes to set you right on one or two little matters, he proceeds to set up some point which is not that in question, but only a family ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... mystifying and oppressive. They saw before them the beautiful country, the hills and valleys, the forest and the blue loom of the mountains, so much that appealed to the eye, and yet the horizon, looking so peaceful in the distance, was barbed with spears. Jackson was there! The sergeant's theory had ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... I had entered and left caused me considerable curiosity. Kemsley was one of those free, bluff, open-hearted, open-handed, men. He was never secretive, never elusive. I could only account for his curious, mystifying actions by the fact that the reputation of a woman was at stake—that he was ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... then, the Major has come, my dear Cleek, to ask you to help in unravelling a puzzle of singular and mystifying interest. Now you may or may not have heard of a Music Hall artiste—a sort of conjurer and impersonator combined—called Zyco the Magician, who was once very popular and was assisted in his illusions by a veiled but reputedly beautiful Turkish ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... quite unable to penetrate the obscurity of expression which masked the meaning of the last remark. Merrington caught the look, but had formed too poor an opinion of his companion's understanding to explain himself further. Besides, he liked mystifying people. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... bulkily rolled slicker forming his only burden. He could not, then, be planning to take her much farther into the wilderness; yet if he did not hide her away, how could he expect to keep her? His motive for marrying her was rather mystifying. He did not seem sufficiently in love with her to warrant an abduction, and he was too cool for such a headlong action, unless driven by necessity. She wondered what he was thinking about as he rode. Not about her, she guessed, except when some bad place ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... say I think he's got any idee of sich a thing, Bildad," replied Bildad himself, who took great delight in mystifying people, and who sometimes, in order to express the most unqualified negation, was accustomed to employ this apparently ambiguous form of speech. "I said for my part, Miss Prouty,—for my part. As for the Doctor, he'll prob'bly have his own ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... most expensive; the ladies however only as spectators, generally speaking, but their attractions are too irresistible to many, for them to suffer the season to pass over without once joining the gay throng, particularly to some who have a great delight in mystifying a friend or acquaintance, and telling them a few home truths under the protecting shield of a mask, having opportunities of so doing at the public balls without fear of being recognised; whereas concealment at private masquerades can ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... his journey and had directed his steps with rare assurance in this direction. Fortune or a will-o'-the-wisp? Or was Marishka calling to him? He had had the impression of her nearness often—there in the hospital—and since, at Selim Ali's—upon the road. It seemed strange and a little mystifying too, that he had never doubted that he would be able to find her.... And now—if ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... I talked, each detail fell into its place, how each little circumstance, formerly so mystifying, grew clear. The alarm of the maitre d'hotel over my sudden departure, his relief when I entered the booths, his corresponding horror when, emerging, I took the elevator for my room, puzzled me no longer. The deserted ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... unrefreshed, and set about the examination of the papers and books intrusted to my care by my departed friend. And oh, the stuff I found there! If I was depressed at starting in, I was stupefied when it was all over, for the collection was mystifying to the point that ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... was mystifying, Philip," put in the girl presently; "we expected nobody else but the Sylvesters, and when we heard your solitary step our hearts sank. We thought that Charles Sylvester had taken it into his head to ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... rainbow stuff of dreams, delighting in it, speaking softly above it. Had he been the king's friend, St. George was asking—but why did no one know anything of him? Or had he been an enemy who had done the king violence—but how was that possible, in his age and feebleness? Mystifying as the matter was, St. George exulted as much as he marveled; for it would be his, at all events, to place the jewels in Olivia's hands and clear her father's name; he longed to step out of the dark and confront the old man ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... particularly some of the circumstances connected with this instructive analogy. By tracing the likeness so conspicuously held out to us in this analogy by Nature herself, we shall be greatly assisted in evading the bewildering and mystifying influence of prejudice, and the reader will be much better prepared to judge of the value of those means recommended for nourishing and strengthening the mind by knowledge, when he finds them to correspond so exactly with similar ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... it all aside now," he would say. "It was a dream such as young men are always mystifying themselves with. Now that I have acquired a little common sense, it makes me laugh ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... War in a mystifying manner, he began to roll the cigarette briskly between his palms. A small shower of tobacco sifted to the floor: the rice-paper cracked and came away; and with the bland smile and gesture of a professional conjurer, Lanyard ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... by side in the rockaway. I noticed with gratification that his voice had sunk a few notes. He had looked askance at my yellow pup when I lifted him to a place at our feet, but had only queried, "Is that part of your baggage?" and had not demurred. His next speech was rather mystifying, for I had understood from Reuben that this man was certainly lord of his manor, and ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... giving him his full title, and thereby mystifying still further the wondering groom. "I do believe that's the very creature that's been scaring such a lot of people everywhere! How came you by it and what ails ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... forsake the amusement of kite-flying even when arrived at maturity. His artistic imitations of birds and dragons float over our housetops. To these are often affixed contrivances for producing hollow, mournful, buzzing sounds, mystifying whole neighborhoods. His game of shuttlecock is to keep a cork, one end being stuck with feathers, flying in the air as long as possible, the impelling member being the foot, the players standing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... mystifying package together with many others. He could even touch it with his hand. In spite of its size, it was very light. It was wider at the bottom than at the top, and it sounded hollow when he knocked at it. His little brain worked at high pressure, but not a guess ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... a snort, which might mean yes, or no, or anything or nothing, and which Mrs. Tope would have found highly mystifying, but that her attention was divided by ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... scholarship no question is admissible, and his reputation justly grew with his years. Yet Steevens's temper was singularly perverse and mischievous. His confidence in his own powers led him to contemn the powers of other people. He enjoyed nothing so much as mystifying those who were engaged in the same pursuits as himself, and his favourite method of mystification was to announce anonymously the discovery of documents which owed all their existence to his own ingenuity. This, he admitted, was his notion of "fun." Whenever the whim seized ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... Number Three. Three gooses instead of three graces," was Amy's addition, after which the three laughed in the fashion which Dorothy found so mystifying, ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... to Doria, I elaborated her reasons for setting Adrian on his towering pinnacle. Liosha nodded. She understood. False gods, whatever degree of godhead they usurped, had for a time the mystifying power of concealing their falsehood. And during that time they were gods, real live dwellers on Olympus, flaming Joves to poor mortal Semeles. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke |
