"Conjuror" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... words, the scene changed as if by the wand of a conjuror. The face of the charming girl, which had expressed nothing but indignation, spite and disdain, took an air of contentment and of placidity delightful to witness. She smiled at her uncle who was much pleased with the change in her countenance, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... wonders. Fat boys and living skeletons, Irish giants and Welsh dwarfs, children with two heads, and animals without any heads at all, were among the least of the wonders to be seen; while the more rational exhibition of wild beasts joined with the mysterious wonders of the conjuror and the athletic performances of tumblers, in calling forth expressions of surprise and delight from the old, as well as from the young, who were induced to contribute their ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... have said as to the position of the actor in China my readers will not be surprised at my saying that the performance of a conjuror should not be encouraged. What pleasure can there be in being tricked? It may be a great display of dexterity to turn water into wine, to seem to cut off a person's head, to appear to swallow swords, to escape ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... sublime enthusiasm, the rapturous faith in herself, of this pure creature? But I admire not stage artifices, which not La Pucelle, but the Court, must have arranged; nor can surrender myself a dupe to a conjuror's leger-de-main, such as may be seen every day for a shilling. Southey's "Joan of Arc" was published in 1796. Twenty years after, talking with Southey, I was surprised to find him still owning a secret bias in favor of Joan, founded on her detection of ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... course," said he, "you're thinking of my friend 'Bias Hunken! I almost took ye for a conjuror, first-along—upon my word I did! But once I get the drift o' your cunning, 'tis easy as easy." He gazed at Mr Benny ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... now had an air of assuming that, for her purpose, the bull's-eye was everywhere, so that there was no need to be flustered in taking aim. This assurance had so facilitated the flow of her eloquence that she seemed to be performing a trick analogous to that of the conjuror who pulls hundreds of yards of white paper out of his mouth. From a large assortment of stock adjectives she chose, with unerring deftness and rapidity, the one that taste and discrimination would most surely have rejected, fitting out her subject ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... incompetent (insanity) 503. greenhorn &c (dupe) 547; dunce &c (ignoramus) 493; lubber &c (bungler) 701; madman &c 504. one who will not set the Thames on fire; one who did not invent gunpowder, qui n'a pas invente' la poudre [Fr]; no conjuror. Phr. fortuna favet fatuis[Lat]; les fous font les festinas et les sages les mangent [Fr]; nomina stultorum parietibus harrent [Lat]; stultorum plena ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... behalf, some of the surviving volumes from the king, that in this way the soul of Brother Lope might be saved from further sin, and the spirit of the defunct marquis consoled by the consciousness, that his books no longer rested on the shelves of the man who had converted him into a conjuror." [21] John de Mena denounces this auto da fe of science in a similar, but graver tone of sarcasm, in his "Laberinto." These liberal sentiments in the Spanish writers of the fifteenth century may put to shame the more bigoted criticism ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... complains that she makes the most pitiless use. He finds himself manoeuvred into "paying the attentions" which society considers the usual prelude to a marriage, with a dexterity which it is all but impossible to evade. The lady is played into his hands with much the same sort of skill that a conjuror exhibits in forcing a card. There are perhaps a number of other ladies present, in promiscuous flirtation with whom he sees, at first glance, an obvious means of escape. But this hope speedily turns out a delusion. One lady is ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... stranger bellows: "Look at my propellers! There's been a wulli-wa down below that has knocked us into umbrella-frames! We've been blown up about forty thousand feet! We're all one conjuror's watch inside! My mate's arm's broke; my engineer's head's cut open; my Ray went out when the engines smashed; and... and... for pity's sake give me my height, ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... once they had recourse to conjuring over a sick person. I was informed, however, that the Northern Indians do not make this expedient for the cure of a patient so often as the Crees; but when they do, the conjuror is most assiduous, and suffers great personal fatigue. Particular persons only, are trained in the mysteries of the art of conjuring, to procure the recovery of the sick, ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... months: it began and continued for one year among the men, when they were gathered together for the second time for the tribute of wax; when the war began it took place that the conjurors came from the west to deceive the people and to set in order the war; the conjuror Cunul and Ah Camal came from the west and killed the Spaniards and two sons of the Spaniards, scholars at Mena; they died at Chamax, where they wished to remain; then came to Valladolid all the Spaniards who were well when the war broke ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... on the night of his return, and having given an account of the wonders he had seen, announced that he could make money. Satisfaction at such gift being tempered by doubt, the boy took his stand before the expectant semicircle, and having admirably mimicked a conjuror's patter, shouted—"Money!" A half-crown flashed in the air-to be deftly caught and exhibited ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... no such seeming derivation in the first part of the word. The Neive, though employed in the game, is not the object addressed. It is held out to him who is to guess—the conjuror—and it is he who is addressed, and under a conjuring name. In short (to hazard a wide conjecture, it may be), he is invoked in the person of NIC NEVILLE (Neivie Nic), a sorcerer in the days of James VI., who was burnt at St. Andrew's in 1569. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... Brown, with speculation in his eye. "I've heard that gardeners use it. And I once made six children happy at Christmas when the conjuror didn't come, entirely ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... narrator, "because one day when I was passing by the palace garden, I met and had a chat with a cuckoo, who, as you know, is a conjuror, and can foretell what will happen. As we were discoursing with each other on the affairs of the palace, ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... by an engine which moved an endless chain to which little paddles were attached. The next year, Fitch's second boat, operated by twelve paddles, six on a side—an arrangement suggesting the "side-wheeler" of the future—successfully plied the Delaware off "Conjuror's Point," as the scene of Fitch's labors was dubbed in whimsical amusement and derision. In 1787 Rumsey, encouraged by Franklin, fashioned a boat propelled by a stream of water taken in at the prow and ejected at the stern. In 1788 Fitch's third boat traversed the distance ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... the other hand, without supposing him less of a conjuror than the Northern Warlock, can, you observed, only have the liberty of selecting his subject amidst the dust of antiquity, where nothing was to be found but dry, sapless, mouldering, and disjointed bones, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... spirits that are everywhere ready to defend men (Dan. x. 13), to be souls that have not attained their rest, through a vehement desire of revealing a murder or notable injury done or received, or a treasure that was forgot in their lifetime on earth, which, when disclosed to a conjuror alone, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... So novices sitting at a conjuror see him take a wedding-ring, and put it in a little box before a lady; then cross the theatre with another little box, and put that before another lady: "Hey! presto! pass!" in box 2 is discovered a wedding-ring, which is instantly assumed ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the central idea of the bill, but they must fill up somehow, and they praise his artfulness, how he dodged this, and dexterously managed that. They have nothing but admiration for his jugglery and House-of-Commons tricks. They bring him down to the level of a practised conjuror or a thimblerigger. But, with all his wonderful cleverness, he is not admired or supported by any intelligent body of public men. The gag-trick ought to settle him. We in Ulster feel sure that a general election to-morrow ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... said that the case does not 'admit of formal proof,' since the proof is as 'formal' and rigorous by this new method of Kant as by the old obsolete methods of Sam. Clarke and the schoolmen.[Footnote: The method of Des Cartes was altogether separate and peculiar to himself; it is a mere conjuror's juggle; and yet, what is strange, like some other audacious sophisms, it is capable of being so stated as most of all to baffle the subtle dialectician; and Kant himself, though not cheated, was never so much perplexed in ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... shall I know where this damned Gloster is, I'll have the devils rous'd to find that devil, O[r] else I'll conjure the old conjuror. I'll to Blackheath, and there with friends conspire, But I'll have Gloster's head, my ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... which he obtained from Athens. Roger Bacon speaks of his knowledge of the Greek, and says, that he caused a vast number of books to be gathered together in that tongue.[449] His extraordinary talent and varied knowledge caused him to be deemed a conjuror and astrologer by the ignorant and superstitious; and his enemies, who were numerous and powerful, did not refuse to encourage the slanderous report. We find him so represented ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... in courtesy and tentative in departure from formality passed between the two. And, as if in the expedient atmosphere of a real summer resort, an acquaintance grew, flowered and fructified on the spot as does the mystic plant of the conjuror. For a few moments they stood on a balcony upon which the corridor ended, and tossed the feathery ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... unearthly scream, and then for the first time it occurred to him that there were no real hares in Lismore. He threw away his gun in terror and fled home; and next day he heard that a notorious witch was laid up with a broken leg. A man need be no conjuror to guess how she came by that broken leg.[774] Again, at Thurso certain witches used to turn themselves into cats and in that shape to torment an honest man. One night he lost patience, whipped out his broadsword, and put them to flight. As they were ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... first two fingers, and placing them on a small object, such as a pea or the top of a lead-pencil, shows us how "mixed" the sense of feeling becomes at times. The many familiar instances of optical delusions show us that even our sharp eyes may deceive us—every conjuror knows how easy it is to deceive the eye by suggestion ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... in the newspapers an account of a masquerade given at Edinburgh, by the Countess Dowager of Fife, at which Boswell had appeared in the character of a dumb conjuror, thus wrote to him:—"I have heard of your masquerade. What says your synod to such innovations? I am not studiously scrupulous, nor do I think a Masquerade either evil in itself or very likely to be the occasion of evil, yet, as the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... shade of the pine, But get the pine out of the way, you may burn The pasture all over until not a fern Or grass-blade is left, not to mention a stick, And presto, they're up all around you as thick And hard to explain as a conjuror's trick." "It must be on charcoal they fatten their fruit. I taste in them sometimes the flavour of soot. And after all really they're ebony skinned: The blue's but a mist from the breath of the wind, A tarnish ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... more one meditates on humanity, the more one becomes disgusted with its artificialness and bad taste. People flock after trifles, they are devoid of refinement, a conjuror will have an immense number of admirers, a third-rate music-hall will fill, even to suffocation, while the man of genius, unless he be rich, often remains unnoticed. He who produces most exquisite poetry, soaring high above ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... I flattered myself, was selected with no little cleverness and originality. A celebrated conjuror who had recently exposed the frauds of the Davenport Brothers was at the moment creating a sensation in the town where the school was situated, and from that incident I determined to draw my inspiration. The magnitude of the design and the importance of the occasion seemed to demand a double-paged ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... a Spanish dress, who, with a friend at his side, had just conferred with the conjuror, was saying, as he passed ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... miseries he was forced to witness and could do nothing to relieve; all the men I have particularly liked I find are more or less pupils of the Sheykh el-Bagooree now dead, who seems to have had a gift of inspiring honourable feeling. Our good Maohn is one; he is no conjuror, but the honesty and goodness are heroic which lead a man to starve on 15 pounds a month, when he is expected to grow ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... from a Vienna newspaper, which I will now read to you, translating as I go. You can see for yourselves; it is printed in the German character.' And he held the cutting out for verification, much as a conjuror passes a trick ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Duke of Buccleuch, with whom Fanny and I have been having luncheon, says that Dizzy is like a clever conjuror. "Is that the card you wished for, sir?-and is that yours, and yours, and yours?" But politics are rather disgusting than otherwise. ... Fanny and I went yesterday to see the Queen lay the first stone of the Hall of Science and Art. [67] ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... find it a very hard thing to undergo misfortunes, but to be content with a moderate measure of fortune, and to avoid greatness, I think a very easy matter. 'Tis, methinks, a virtue to which I, who am no conjuror, could without any great endeavour arrive. What, then, is to be expected from them that would yet put into consideration the glory attending this refusal, wherein there may lurk worse ambition than even in the desire itself, and fruition of greatness? Forasmuch as ambition ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... every touch must help to tell the reader what he means; in the second case, most of the touches must conceal or even contradict what he means. You are supposed to see and appreciate the smallest gestures of a good actor; but you do not see all the gestures of a conjuror, if he is a good conjuror. Hence, into the critical estimate of such works as this, there is introduced a problem, an extra perplexity, which does not exist in other cases. I mean the problem of the things commonly called blinds. Some of the points which we pick out as suggestive ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... he could produce; and suddenly whipping the fish over the side into the boat, he began flapping it about as if it were plunging in the death-struggle. As soon as he had affected to kill it, he held it up in triumph before the castle conjuror, who was quite taken in by the feint, ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... a fanciful present from an admiring Marchesa, curiously embroidered with algebraic figures like a conjuror's robe, and with a skull-cap of black satin on his hive of a head, the man of gravity was seated at a huge claw-footed old table, round as the zodiac. It was covered with printer papers, files of documents, rolls of manuscript, stray bits of strange models in wood ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... machinery for the production of complex figures.[8] There was at that time a great passion for automata in France, which gave rise to many highly ingenious devices, such as Camus's miniature carriage (made for Louis XIV. when a child), Degennes' mechanical peacock, Vancanson's duck, and Maillardet's conjuror. It had the effect of introducing among the higher order of artists habits of nice and accurate workmanship in executing delicate pieces of machinery; and the same combination of mechanical powers which made the steel spider ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... cause to fear—I am thy friend, Merlin by name, a conjuror by trade, And to my art thou ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... The people came fast enough at his bidding; but, somehow or other, they would not go away again when they had done their work. I hope Lord Grey will not see himself or his friends in the woeful case of the conjuror, who, with infinite zeal and pains, called up the devils to do something for him. They came at the word, thronging about him, grinning, and howling, and dancing, and whisking their long tails in diabolic glee; but when they asked him what he wanted of ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... the concoction of a squib or the sketching of a caricature— Wake was always ready to take the work upon himself, and let who liked take the credit. He had a mania for verses and epigrams; he was reputed a bit of a conjuror, and no one ever brought a new puzzle to Grandcourt which Wake, of Railsford's, could not, sooner or ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... time, I think now that it was a rough approximation to the truth. These were my first steps in Spiritualism. I was still a sceptic, but at least I was an inquirer, and when I heard some old-fashioned critic saying that there was nothing to explain, and that it was all fraud, or that a conjuror was needed to show it up, I knew at least that that was all nonsense. It is true that my own evidence up to then was not enough to convince me, but my reading, which was continuous, showed me how deeply other men had gone into it, and I recognised ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... never explain. The conjuror who reveals his mechanism is no longer a conjuror. George Brand only laughed, and said he hoped Miss Lind would always find people ready to welcome her when she ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... history and customs of that ancient people. He had taken numerous drawings of their physiognomy and features, and many casts of Tartar visages. With a view to learn their opinions of the Deity, and a future state, he had officiated for a full year as the conjuror or powwow of a tribe. When he returned to Europe, he brought with him a couple of human teeth, a pipe, a bow and arrow, a jackall, a wild sheep, a sharp-nosed, thievish Siberian cur, with his sleigh and harness, and a very pretty Samoyede girl, the last with a view to ascertain the peculiar cast ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... rather dwelling eyes; you know those long faces one sees in dreams: like a hawk, like a conjuror's.' ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... day, let fall unthinkingly this or that scrap of experience or of knowledge, they began to regard me as a miracle. One day one of them, Sam Fox, said to me meaningly, that I liked curious things, and that he knew a nest where he could get me a young raven. The raven is to an Indian conjuror what a black cat is to a witch, and I suppose that Sam thought I must be lonely without a familiar. Which recalls one of the most extraordinary experiences of ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... no conjuror to tell Aphiz whom that floral letter came from. The shower of buds and blossoms that had been thrown to him by the boy had puzzled him, coming without any apparent design, regularity, or purpose; but this, as he read its hidden mystery, was all clear enough to him, he knew ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... within Scotland.' When the old gentleman came to the passage, which you will mark in italics, he always clenched his fist, and exclaimed, 'Nemo me impune lacessit!' which, I presume, are words belonging to the black art, since there is no one in the Modern Athens conjuror enough to understand their meaning, or at least to comprehend the spirit of the sentiment which my grandfather thought ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... counteth this blessed person, this Son of God, a magician, a conjuror, a witch, or one that did, when he was in the world, what he did, by the power and spirit of the devil (Matt 9:34; 12:24,25,&c.; Mark 3:22-30). Now he that has this opinion of this Jesus, cannot be willing to cast himself at his feet for life, or to come to him as the only ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... say, twenty spectators. No one had entered the cabin. No one had come out of it. As for the dagger with which M. d'Ormeval had been stabbed between the shoulders, it could not be traced. And all this would have suggested the idea of a trick of sleight-of-hand performed by a clever conjuror, had it not concerned a terrible murder, committed under the most ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... most of him. This, as it turned out, proved very useful to me in the course of my future travels. About the middle of March we left for Charlestown in the steamer ISABEL, and thence on to New York. On the passage to Charlestown, we were amused one evening by the tricks of a conjuror. I had seen the man and his wife perform at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly. She was called the 'Mysterious Lady.' The papers were full of speculations as to the nature of the mystery. It was the town talk and excitement ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... mean—oh, please don't go ashore. I am sure either that these dreadful savages are lurking here to destroy us, or that we have been deceived by some wicked conjuror. Oh, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... of this man's rick of bark and his dog: so I'll keep my tester in my pocket, and not be giving it to this king o' the gipsies, as they call him: who, as near as I can guess, is no better than a cheat. But there is one secret which I can be telling this conjuror himself: he shall not find it such an easy matter to do all what he thinks; he shall not be after ruining an innocent countryman of my own whilst Paddy M'Cormack ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... was done only for a joke, he went away unsatisfied: and to the day of his death, he fully believed that the facetious Quaker was a conjuror. ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... original Eagle (now duly repaired) with the velocity and agility of a man long accustomed to the fact that seconds are more precious than six-pences and minutes than banknotes. And Carthew slammed the door on him like a conjuror performing the final act of a trick before an audience of three ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... tedium is relieved by a very audible dispute outside between the Driver of the Baby's Caravan and the Wife of the Conjuror next door, who appears to have excited the Driver's displeasure by consenting to take the money in the absence of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... eight miles from Barnsley, and I decided to make for that town, cutting across the fields. I passed the house, I remember, where the father of Bosco, (best known as "Curley Joe"), the famous conjuror, was born. I walked into Barnsley about eight o'clock the same morning. After weighing the matter over in my mind, I sought out and made for the wooden theatre in connection with which I had accepted an engagement at ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... utmost politeness and good-breeding, she feigned that it was she—not he—who had made the difficulty, and who at length gave way; and that the sacrifice was hers—not his. The same feint, with the same polite dexterity, she foisted on Mrs Meagles, as a conjuror might have forced a card on that innocent lady; and, when her future daughter-in-law was presented to her by her son, she said on embracing her, 'My dear, what have you done to Henry that has bewitched him so!' at the same time allowing a few tears to carry before them, in little ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... "Conjuror's House" is a Hudson Bay trading post where the head factor is the absolute lord. A young fellow risked his life and won a bride ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... had already at the time accepted and promised to sign, I made up my mind to return to His Sheriffian Majesty with a view to setting things right. I considered it advisable to be accompanied by Herr VON POPOFF, as I counted upon that eminent conjuror's valuable aid to assist me in carrying out what I venture to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... myself with wondering what sort of impression the posture of our schooner would have made on the minds of sailors sighting us from their deck. We looked to be floating out of water, and mariners who regard the devil as a conjuror must have accepted us as one ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... have done sacrifice with the people;" [77:2] but the Jews looked on in sullen incredulity, and kept alive an active and implacable opposition. At Cyprus, the apostles had to contend against the craft of a Jewish conjuror; [77:3] at Antioch, "the Jews stirred up the devout and honourable women, and the chief men of the city, and raised persecution" against them, "and expelled them out of their coasts;" [77:4] at Iconium, the Jews again "stirred up the Gentiles, and made ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Quite unable to get up before five o'clock, when he was fortunately, sufficiently recovered to accompany his younger brothers to a juvenile party and Christmas tree. According to SAMMY (my second son) AUGUSTUS danced every dance, and served as an assistant to an amateur conjuror. But this last statement I give with some reserve, as it does not correspond with the report furnished by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... insight these few words outweigh, in my estimation, all the formal learning expended by Mr. Martineau in those disquisitions on Force, where he treats the physicist as a conjuror, and speaks so wittily of atomic polarity. In fact, without this notion of polarity—this 'drawing' and 'driving'—this attraction and repulsion, we stand as stupidly dumb before the phenomena of Crystallisation as a Bushman before ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... choicest cakes, and its hairdresser's the most soothing unguents of any town in our occupation. It has a great market-place, where the peasants do a thriving business every Saturday, producing astonished rabbits by the ears from large sacks, like a conjuror, and holding out live and plaintive fowls for sensual examination by pensive housewives. Also it has a town-hall in which I once witnessed the trial by court-martial of a second-lieutenant in the R.A.M.C. for ribaldry in his cups and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman—a spectacle ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... looked very much abashed at this news: her mother and the young man interchanged signs of wonder and intelligence. Perhaps the conjuror had used the same words to a hundred ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and I, waited on their Royal Highnesses to Spitalfields, to see the manufacture of silk.' In the afternoon off went the same party to Norwood Forest, in private coaches, to see a 'settlement of gypsies.' Then returning, went to find out Bettesworth, the conjuror; but not discovering him, went in search of the little Dutchman. Were disappointed in that; but 'concluded,' relates Bubb Dodington, 'the peculiarities of this day by supping with Mrs. Cannon, the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... and Works, is like eating nice brown bread, homely sweet and nutritive. Apollonius was new to me. I had confounded him with the conjuror of that name. Medea is glorious; but I cannot give up Dido. She positively is the only Fine Lady of Antiquity: her courtesy to the Trojans is altogether queen-like. Eneas is a most disagreeable person. Ascanius a pretty young master. Mezentius for my money. His dying speech shames ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Monk, sir, Joseph of Copertino. A mighty saint and conjuror! Or perhaps you would like some other book? I have many, many lives of santi here. Look at this one of the great Egidio, for instance. I can tell you all about him, for he raised my mother's grand-uncle from the dead; yes, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... wizard in presenting in remarkably brief compass suggestion after suggestion to invest his tales with the proper atmosphere and to hypnotize the reader into an unresisting acceptance of the march of events. Even a hostile critic calls him "a conjuror who does not need to have ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... indeed three scenes are united under the title "Paracelsus attains;" but the attainment is not at first visible. We find him at Constantinople, in the house of the Greek conjuror, nine years after his departure from home. He has not discovered the magical secret which he came to seek; and his tone, as he reviews his position, is full of a bitter and almost despairing sense of failure. His desultory course has borne scanty and confused results. ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... so swift that it seemed like a conjuror's miracle, Aunt Amy had slipped from her stand by the door, snatched up the open box, and was back again before the choking cry on the other's lips had ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... came down in the train with us," said Mrs. Giles to Lothair; "the rest of the troupe will not be here until to-morrow; but they told me they could give you a perfect proverbe if your lordship would like it; and the Spanish conjuror is here; but I rather think, from what I gather, that the young ladies ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... reasoning powers that, in a second, it performed calculations of so vast an extent that they would have required the united labor of fifty thousand fleshy men for a year. (*23) But a still more wonderful conjuror fashioned for himself a mighty thing that was neither man nor beast, but which had brains of lead, intermixed with a black matter like pitch, and fingers that it employed with such incredible speed and dexterity that ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... parson, like the devil.) "Truly," says he, "Mrs. Nab, it might become you to be more civil; If your money be gone, as a learned divine says, d'ye see: You are no text for my handling; so take that from me: I was never taken for a conjuror before, I'd have you to know." "Law!" said I, "don't be angry, I am sure I never thought you so; You know I honour the cloth; I design to be a parson's wife, I never took one in your coat for a conjuror in all my life." With that, he twisted his girdle at me ...
— English Satires • Various
... Cardinals were jealous of the Conjuror, the thing is intelligible enough, and one must feel a certain degree of sympathy with the old-established firm that had spent such enormous sums, and made such stupendous preparations, when a pretender like this ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... gambols were characteristic of him at the pleasant old season, and were frequently renewed in future years. "The best of it is" (31 Dec. 1842) "that Forster and I have purchased between us the entire stock-in-trade of a conjuror, the practice and display whereof is entrusted to me. . . . In those tricks which require a confederate I am assisted (by reason of his imperturbable good humour) by Stanfield, who always does his part exactly the wrong way, to ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... opera, and Madame Tussaud, and the Horticultural Gardens, and the new conjuror who makes a woman lie upon nothing. The idea of my going to London! And then I suppose I shall be one of the bridesmaids. I declare a new vista of life is opening out to me! Mamma, you mustn't be dull while I'm away. It won't be very long, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... contradicted, every one of 'em, seriatim, in to-morrow's newspapers, setting the real man in place of the wrong one; and you 'll draw no profit from them in your fashionable world, where you 've been grinning lately, like a blackamoor's head on a conjuror's plate—the devil alone able to account for the body and joinings. Now ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... change not, What conjuror's cloth was thrown across you, and raised To show you thus transfigured, changed, Your stuff all gone, your ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... to the Place de la Pucelle, and examine the carving on the houses, and on the Hotel Bourgtheroude, before the great Parisian conjuror waves his wand once more. But, hey presto! down they come, in a street hard by—even whilst we write, a great panel totters to the ground—heraldic shields, with a border of flowers and pomegranates, carved in oak; clusters of grapes and diaper patterns of rich design, emblems ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... successful forager that I have ever seen; more than once, in villages which had apparently been swept clean of everything edible by the Belgians or the Germans, he produced quite an excellent dinner as mysteriously as a conjuror produces rabbits ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... the rosy hours of Mazenderan, of which the daroga's narrative has given us a glimpse. Erik had very original ideas on the subject of architecture and thought out a palace much as a conjuror contrives a trick-casket. The Shah ordered him to construct an edifice of this kind. Erik did so; and the building appears to have been so ingenious that His Majesty was able to move about in it unseen and to disappear without a possibility of the trick's being discovered. When the ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... stories with which my nurse used to amuse my childhood," said Mary, "was that of having seen an itinerant conjuror dress a beef-steak ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... continued in the dungeon in chains; Bostama and Cavama, the cunning old conjuror's daughters, treating him daily with the same cruelty and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... consisting of two thin-armed little girls, with pigtails, enter, and perform a stumbling Overture upon a cracked piano. Herr Von KAMBERWOHL, the Conjuror, appears on platform, amidst loud clapping from two obvious ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... adulation, and renounces unwillingly, if it renounces at all, the unenviable reputation of supernatural agency. In cases where self-interest and ambition are the basis of this peculiarity of temperament, and in an age when the conjuror and the alchemist were the companions and even the idols of princes, it is easy to trace the steps by which a gifted sage retains his ascendancy among the ignorant. The hecatomb which is sacrificed to the magician, he receives as an oblation to his science, and conscious of possessing ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... Faustus retired from Inspruck. Meanwhile the knight, having conceived a high resentment against the conjuror, waylaid him with seven horsemen on the road by which he had to pass. Faustus however perceived them, and immediately made himself invisible. Meanwhile the knight spied on every side to discover the conjuror; but, as he was thus employed, he heard a sudden ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... a pair of shoes that would last him seven years?" Ashmedai replied, "Because the man himself was not sure of living seven days." "And why," asked Benaiah, "didst thou jeer when thou sawest the conjuror at his tricks?" "Because," said Ashmedai, "the man was at that very time sitting on a princely treasure, and he did not, with all his pretension, know that it ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... Tait, the Leicestershire cricketer, who throughout the "second service" never once turned his back on the congregation, and, so far as I could gather from the Colonel's description, conducted this "second service" very much as a conjuror performs his tricks. When I ventured to argue with the Colonel, he said to me: "That is the worst of you High Churchmen, you make the ritual more important than the Communion itself." All human judgments, ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... grandmother; cotquean^, henhussy^. incompetent (insanity) 503. greenhorn &c (dupe) 547; dunce &c (ignoramus) 493; lubber &c (bungler) 701; madman &c 504. one who will not set the Thames on fire; one who did not invent gunpowder, qui n'a pas invente' la poudre [Fr.]; no conjuror. Phr. fortuna favet fatuis [Lat.]; les fous font les festinas et les sages les mangent [Fr.]; nomina stultorum parietibus harrent [Lat.]; stultorum ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... his next long poem, published some two years later, the strength of his later work is first definitely felt. Taking for theme the life of the sixteenth-century physician, astrologer, alchemist, conjuror,—compound of Faust and Cagliostro, mixture of truth-seeker, charlatan, and dreamer,—Browning makes of it the history of the soul of a feverish aspirant after the finality of intellectual power, the knowledge which should be for man the key to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... was the conjuror's bag of the Africans. It is called 'waiter,' or 'kunger,' by the Southern blacks, and is supposed to have the power to charm away evil spirits, and to do all manner of miraculously good things for its wearer. Those that I have seen are harmless little ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... had reached this little tenement by way of a long trail through Iowa, Dakota, Montana, Oregon and Northern California. We who had all started, from the same little Wisconsin Valley were here drawn together, as if by the magic of a conjuror's wand, in a city strange to us all. Can any other country on earth surpass the United States in the ruthless broadcast dispersion of its families? Could any other land furnish a more incredible momentary re-assembling ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... to use people according to their own sense of good breeding, and therefore whipped in between the justice and the simple esquire. He could not properly take this ill, but I overheard him whisper the steward, "that he thought it hard that a common conjuror should take place of him, though an elder esquire." In this order we marched down Sheer Lane, at the upper ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... 'I have a notion. Couldn't we make a play of the conjuror in disguise? It is Dr. Knowall in German popular tales, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... when there was a single person present who was not likely to feel much interested in its discussion.—How often have I heard him quote on such occasions Mr. Vellum's advice to the butler in Addison's excellent play of The Drummer: "Your conjuror, John, is indeed a twofold personage—but he eats ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... is by employing this that those who have a fancy to move their ears or toes without moving other organs learn to do so. There is a man at the Agricultural Hall now playing the violin with his toes, and playing it, as I am told, sufficiently well. The eye of the sailor, the wrist of the conjuror, the toe of the professional medium, are all found capable of development to an astonishing degree, even in a single lifetime; but in every case success has been attained by the simple process of making the best of whatever power a man has had at any given time, ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... Thou must hold water in a witch's sieve, 120 And be liege-lord of all the Elves and Fays, To venture so: it fills me with amaze To see thee, Porphyro!—St. Agnes' Eve! God's help! my lady fair the conjuror plays This very night: good angels her deceive! But let me laugh awhile, I've ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... became acquainted with the character of Tisquantum, the stronger became this fear, and the more he despaired of any influence proving sufficiently strong to break the chains of error and superstition that bound him to heathenism. The Chief was a distinguished Powow, or conjuror; and was regarded by his own people, and even by many other tribes, as possessing great super natural powers. His pretensions were great, and fully accredited by his subjects, who believed that he could control the power of the subordinate evil spirits, ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... that I am being foolish. I am not. I am a person with a very great deal of common sense, and I tell you that Prince Shan has never desired a thing in life to which he has not helped himself. Maggie is a clever child, but she cannot toss knives with a conjuror." ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... is both intellectual and moral. No story is too extraordinary to be told of Hindu gods. They are the magicians of the universe who sport with the forces of nature as easily as a conjuror in a bazaar does tricks with a handful of balls. But though the average Hindu would be shocked to hear the Puranas described as idle tales, yet he does not make his creed depend on their accuracy, as many in Europe make Christianity depend on miracles. The value of truth in religion ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... line for line, into English verse, and have just reached the beginning of the Fourth Georgic. He is, I may tell you, a poet, and the most marvellous that ever lived; so marvellous, that the middle ages mistook him for a magician. That any age is likely to mistake me—his translator—for a conjuror I think improbable. Nevertheless I do my best. And while translating I hold this book in my hand, not that I can see to read a line of it, but because the mere touch of it, my companion on many campaigns, seems to unloose my memory. Except in handling this small volume, I have none ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... stop, and there are none. What intentness of desire In her upward eye of fire! With a tiger-leap halfway Now she meets the coming prey, Lets it go as fast, and then Has it in her power again: Now she works with three or four. Like an Indian conjuror: Quick as he in feats of art, Far beyond in joy of heart. Were her antics played in the eye Of a thousand standers-by, Clapping hands with shout and stare, What would little Tabby care For the plaudits of the crowd? Over happy to be proud, Over wealthy in the treasure ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... rather see the tricks which the conjuror did when we went to the Egyptian Hall last year with granny," said Fanny; "I never like to look at people who are doing things by which if they make a mistake they may hurt themselves. I should not like to ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... and in romances like Arthur of Little Britain all this undergoes a change—not by any means for the better. What has been unkindly, but not perhaps unjustly, called the "conjuror's supernatural" takes the place of the poet's variety. One of the personages of the Knight of the Sun is a "Bedevilled Faun," and it is really too much not to say that most of such personages are bedevilled. In Arthur of (so much the Lesser) ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... till next spring, and the siege of Gibraltar would be the only land expedition for the present campaign. In a few weeks time, when West India successes may be compared to those in Europe, my gazettes and predictions will have a greater degree of certainty, but one must not be a conjuror to see that England is in such a way that one may defy her to get up again, and that a happy peace, blessed with American independence, will, in this or the ensuing campaign, be the certain effect of ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... crossed the opening I saw the boy and the tall painted savage standing by the door of a hut on one side, the latter holding a long spear tasselled with feathers, and I supposed him to be the chief, or perhaps only the doctor or conjuror of the village. ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... kind of restless curiosity we have to ascribe the passionate declamations of the tragic actor, and the splendid music of the opera; the cunning feats of the village conjuror, and the lascivious pantomime of the city ballet-dancers; the disgusting varieties of bull-fights, and the celebrated feats of pugilism; the locomotive zeal of the great pedestrians, and the perfect quiescence ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... very respectable sum. Every thoughtless squire supposes that, with the aid of his ignorant bailiff, he can effect a perfect drainage of his estate; but there is a worse man behind the squire and the bailiff,—the draining conjuror. * * * * * * These fellows never go direct about their work. If they attack a spring, they try to circumvent it by some circuitous route. They never can learn that nature shows you the weakest point, and that you ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... conjuror could not do. He told me that on one occasion, dining in a numerous company, he had contrived to pick the pocket of every one present, depriving one of his watch, another of his purse, and a third of his pocket-handkerchief. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... family at Gaeta was increased by a new arrival. Had he been better advised, Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, would have never gone to breathe that malarious atmosphere. He had played no conjuror's tricks with his promises to his people; Austrian though he was, he had really acted the part of an Italian prince, and there was nothing to show that he had not acted it sincerely. But a persistent bad luck attended his efforts. Though the ministers appointed by him included ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... hopes, with the blighting thought in his soul that the faith is a lie, and the hope no more than the folly of the crowd; to read hundreds of times in a twelvemonth with solemn unction as the inspired word of the Supreme what to him are meaningless as the Abracadabras of the conjuror in a booth; to go on to the end of his days administering to simple folk holy rites of commemoration and solace, when he has in his mind at each phrase what dupes are those simple folk and how wearisomely counterfeit their rites: and to know through all that this is really to be ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... slipped off her infirmities and years like an outer garment. All those fine instincts of observation which came straight to her from her savage grandfather looked out of her little eyes. She had a kind of faith that the Doctor was a mighty conjuror, who, if he would, could bewitch any of them. She had relieved her feelings by her long talk with the minister, but the Doctor was the immediate adviser of the family, and had watched them through all their troubles. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... the keyhole. 'I only wanted to say that we must be off early to-morrow morning, my dear, because unless we get the start of the dogs and the conjuror, the villages won't be worth a penny. You'll be sure to be stirring early and go with us? ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... will be explained by a glance at the parallel sonnets above. Merlin was entirely Coleridge's idea. A conjuror of that name was ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... white muslin pianistes, came a fine, full-grown, sulky lady in white satin. She sang. Her singing just affected me like the tricks of a conjuror: I wondered how she did it—how she made her voice run up and down, and cut such marvellous capers; but a simple Scotch melody, played by a rude street minstrel, has often moved ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... lost in a mass of crystallisations from without. The insular Druids, to which our national traditions refer, were far more likely to be mere "wise men," or "witch doctors," with perhaps a spice of the conjuror. This, at all events, seems to be the case at the time when we first acquire any positive information concerning them. Theirs it would be to summon the rain clouds and to terrify the people by their ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... walked out of its place; the new broom which Miriam had gathered with a song, was used for the first time freely on every floor, in every nook and corner; then the new broom was carried away, and locked in a closet like a conjuror who had wrought his spell and need not appear again till some other magic was to be performed. All the chairs were set soberly and steadily against the wall, the windows were closed, and a sacred shade thrown over the house against the ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... alternate three, he received the visits of those who desired to consult him upon abstruse points, only properly to be solved by an acquaintance with the occult sciences. In brief, my honoured master, I soon discovered, was reckoned a very fair conjuror; he consulted the stars, drew horoscopes, cast nativities, was learned in the expositions of dreams and omens, undertook to give information respecting lost property, and matrimonial prospects; composed, and dispensed charms and philtres, and proved himself, as I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various
... possessor, to him who has devoted to it his time, his brains, and his strength. Otherwise, why should he have made it? No necessity of life can be immediately satisfied with instruments of labour; no one eats planes or drinks saws, except, indeed, he be a conjuror. If a man determines to spend his time in the production of such things, he must have been led to it by the consideration of the power which these instruments add to his power; of the time which they save him; of the perfection and rapidity which they give to his labour; ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... praise for. Poor dear wonderful persecuted Pietro d'Abano wrote this quatrain on the people's plaguing him about his mathematical studies and wanting to burn him—he helped to build Padua Cathedral, wrote a Treatise on Magic still extant, and passes for a conjuror in his country to this day—when there is a storm the mothers tell the children that he is in the air; his pact with the evil one obliged him to drink no milk; no natural human food! You know Tieck's novel about him? Well, this quatrain is said, I believe truly, to have been discovered in a well ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Saying this Perseus drew out the Gorgon's head. Holding it by the snaky locks he stood before the company. His mother and his friends averted their faces. But Polydectes and his insolent friends looked full upon what Perseus showed. "This youth would strive to frighten us with some conjuror's trick," they said. They said no more, for they became as stones, and as stone images they still stand in ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum |
