"Mummery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mean, sir; but I thought he was a writer of stage plays, and such things as on all sides I hear called foolish, and mummery.' ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... Free Cities of the North. If that be your object, the son of the Red Axe is with you—with you to the death, if need be. But for God's sake let us take off these masks and set ourselves down to the tankard and the good brown bread with less mummery—a sham of which ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... have induced Scott to write novels tending to make people Papists and Jacobites, and in love with arbitrary power? Did he think that Christianity was a gaudy mummery? He did not, he could not, for he had read the Bible; yet was he fond of gaudy mummeries, fond of talking about them. Did he believe that the Stuarts were a good family, and fit to govern a country like Britain? He knew that they were a vicious, worthless crew, and that Britain was a degraded country ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... (according to Pliny, 30, 12,) that the serpent's skin was a remedy for spasms. That the golden serpent kept its place as an ornament of the throat and bosom after the Christian era, we learn from Clement of Alexandria. That zealous father, so intolerant of superstitious mummery under every shape, directs his efforts against this fashion as against ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... form of that cross," said the oyster-man. "It is Spanish. Many a year ago, no doubt, some high-pooped galleon, running close to the coast, went ashore on Chincoteague and drifted piecemeal through the inlet, wider then than now. This mummery, this altar toy, destined for some Papist mission-house, has lain all these years in the brackish Sound. Ha! ha! That Issachar the Jew should raise a cross, and on the Christian's Christmas eve! But it is mine! My tongs, my ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... rhapsody; farrago &c (disorder) 59; betise[Fr]; extravagance, romance; sciamachy[obs3]. sell, pun, verbal quibble, macaronic[obs3]. jargon, fustian, twaddle, gibberish &c (no meaning) 517; exaggeration &c 549; moonshine, stuff; mare's nest, quibble, self-delusion. vagary, tomfoolery, poppycock, mummery, monkey trick, boutade[Fr], escapade. V. play the fool &c. 499; talk nonsense, parler a tort et a travess[Fr]; battre la campagne[Fr][obs3]; <gr/ hanemolia bazein/gr>; be - absurd &c. adj. Adj. absurd, nonsensical, preposterous, egregious, senseless, inconsistent, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... all gone, and when Trabb and his men—but not his Boy; I looked for him—had crammed their mummery into bags, and were gone too, the house felt wholesomer. Soon afterwards, Biddy, Joe, and I, had a cold dinner together; but we dined in the best parlor, not in the old kitchen, and Joe was so exceedingly particular what he did with his knife and fork and the saltcellar and what not, that there ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... stone. "I see," he said. "The Emperor is as easily diverted by shows as the Brocken by its clouds. Yet I think I can find a way to make him serve you. Be ready to-night with your puppets and put your own soul into the jesting and the mummery. That is the only thing for you to do. If that fails we will try ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... before. Once more He saw the pitiful slaughter of the innocent lambs, and witnessed the flow of the sacrificed blood over the altars and the stones of the floor of the courts. Once more He saw the senseless mummery of the priestly ceremonies, which seemed more pitiful than ever to His developed mind. He knew that His vision had shown that He was to be slaughtered even as the sacrificial lambs, and there arose in His mind ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... from thinking it true, I look upon it as one of the greatest follies which exist among men; and to consider things from a philosophical point of view, I don't know of a more absurd piece of mummery, of anything more ridiculous, than a man who takes upon ...
— The Imaginary Invalid - Le Malade Imaginaire • Moliere
... to your help, but I knew you were amply able to take care of yourself. I was sure you would worst the duke in some way. It was better than a mummery, and I was glad to see it. ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... touch awoke his sensibilities—the touch of nature. Before God at that moment he was his father's son. If the world, or the world's law, said otherwise, then they were of the devil, and deserving to be damned. What rite, what jabbering ceremony, what priestly ordinance, what legal mummery, stood between him and his claim ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... will not try!" I told her, again and again. "How can I tak up again with that old mummery? How can I laugh when my heart is breaking, and make others smile when the tears ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... which from the first step to the last they owed to the sublime magnanimity of their victim—well knowing his own continual danger, but refusing to evade it by any arts of tyranny or distrust—when they had gone through their little scenic mummery of swaggering with their daggers—cutting '5,' '6' and 'St. George,' and 'giving point'—they had come to the end of the play. Exeunt omnes: vos plaudite. Not a step further had they projected. And, staring wildly upon each other, they began to mutter, 'Well, what are you up to next?' ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... blood-thirsty heathens! What sort of religion can theirs be which makes them seek the life of an inoffensive man? I come here, having no one thing to do with either Suni or Shiah, Sufi or Mohamedan: on the contrary, out of compliment to them, I go through all the mummery of five washings and five prayings per day, and still that will not satisfy them; however, I will be even with them. I will go; I will leave their vile hypocritical town; and neither will I wash nor pray until necessity obliges me to pass through ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... certainly," said Charles, composing his features; "but great matter of wonder.—Come, cease this mouthing, and prancing, and mummery.—If there be a jest, come out with it, man; and if not, even get thee to the beaffet, and drink a cup of wine to refresh thee after ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... to have played upon as the most effectual chord in the great system which they modulated; some few, by a rare endowment of nature; others, as Napoleon Bonaparte, by elaborate mimicries of pantomimic art. [Footnote: In the true spirit of Parisian mummery, Bonaparte caused letters to be written from the War-office, in his own name, to particular soldiers of high military reputation in every brigade, (whose private history he had previously caused to be investigated,) alluding circumstantially to the leading facts in their personal ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Martin had met were particular men; one would not find them in such a noisome hole. This Carew must be some rough renegade. Perhaps he was not even white; perhaps he was a half-caste. That would explain his choice of lodgings. One would think from all the secret mummery with which he surrounded himself that he was the Mikado, himself. He certainly was not very popular with ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... through mummery, strange acts, dress and ritual, affect to know and impart the inmost secrets of creation and ultimate destiny, had their rise in Egypt. In Egypt now are only graves, tombs, necropolises and silence. The priests there need no soldiery to keep their secrets safe. Ammon-Ra, who once ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... renounce—" But ere he could utter another word, Hugo de Lacy, who, perhaps, felt the freedom of the action as an intrusion on his fallen condition, pulled back his hand, and bid the minstrel, with as stern frown, arise, and remember that misfortune made not De Lacy a fit personage for a mummery. ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... were now but a mummery, Meriting pride's implacable irony, So much the worse for pride. Moreover, Save her or fail, there ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... present a minute, before one of the men died; and, in ten minutes more, his companion breathed his last. The medicine man turned them over, shook his rattle over them, howled, groaned and grunted; but it would not do; the men were dead, and all his mummery would not bring them back to life again; so, after a few antics of various kinds, he shuffled off with himself, shaking his rattle, and howling and groaning louder than ever. You may remember, that I told you of the death of Oseola, ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... fragments of a skeleton, blackened by age; a necklace of teeth from some animal's jaw; worthless trifles for the mummery of the priests. Then, beneath them, he saw two great fangs, a foot in length. They were curved, sharply pointed and ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... With more barbaric mummery, flummery and vulgar waste of wealth than characterized even the late Marlborough- Vanderbilt wedding, Nicholas Two-Eyes was crowned Emperor of the rag-tag and bob-tail of creation, officially known as "all the Russias." Nick has a nice easy job at a salary considerably in ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... lady, "lay yourself on the table again. I hear someone coming; and it is not fit that my people should think me your accomplice in this farce and mummery." ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... must be shielded from importunities and given his drops or his beef-juice though the skies were falling. The routine of the sick-room bewildered her; this punctual administering of medicine seemed as idle as some uncomprehended religious mummery. ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... mummery, my Sergius?" he added, as soon as he had ceased from laughing, "Or wherefore would you have ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... was about to perform, it was unnecessary and must be contemptible. "You talk of your shame and humiliation—no atonement can wipe it out. You came here prating to yourself of blotting out the past—no act of man can do so. Vain, vain, and idle as well as vain! Mere mummery and display, and a blow to the dignity ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... noble birth who had entered religion and taken her vows, when a gallant appears, meets her secretly in the convent garden, promises to marry her if she will fly with him, indeed does go through some mummery of marriage with her—so she says—and the rest of it. Now he has deserted her and she is in trouble, and what is more, should the priests catch her, likely to learn what it feels like to die by inches in a convent wall. She came to me for counsel and brought some ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... never forgive myself. That Whirlwind would adhere to so ridiculous a farce is not to be wondered at; but that we, born and bred among a civilized nation, educated, and with claims to intelligence and refinement, should consent to such mummery, is ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... know where we are now, Murray," said the lieutenant. "Our guide has brought us here to see the mummery of their barbarous religion, and there is no doubt that the people have met to be stirred up to some rising against the planters who own ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... resignation, the Jesuit's voice was neatly agitated. He seemed to feel a hot iron upon his cheek, for never before in his life, whether as a soldier or a priest, had he suffered such an insult. He had thrown himself upon his knees, partly from religious mummery, and partly to avoid the gaze of the marshal, fearing that, were he to meet his eye, he should not be able to answer for himself, but give way to his impetuous feelings. On seeing the Jesuit kneel down, and on hearing his hypocritical invocation, the marshal, whose sword ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... mentioned. They of the Guises reserved the chief of them, after dinner, to make sport for the ladies; the two sexes were ranged at the windows of the castle, as if it were a question of seeing some mummery played. And what is worse, the king and his young brothers were present at these spectacles, as if the desire were to 'blood' them; the sufferers were pointed out to them by the Cardinal of Lorraine with all the signs of a man greatly ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Besides the tournaments and similar sports, with which the upper classes of European society were accustomed at that day to divert themselves, there was a grand masquerade, to which the public were admitted as spectators. In this "mummery" the most successful spectacle was that presented by a group arranged in obvious ridicule of Granvelle. A figure dressed in Cardinal's costume, with the red hat upon his head, came pacing through the arena upon horseback. Before him marched a man ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Christmas; we may next give some attention to English customs of the same sort during the Twelve Days, and then pass on to the strange burlesque ceremonies of the Feast of Fools and the Boy Bishop, ceremonies which show an intrusion of pagan mummery into the sanctuary itself. ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... "Mummery?" repeated Dr. Vaughn, bending his penetrating eyes on Kennedy, as if he would force him to betray ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... some portion of the promise. Spiritual faith, not inherited, nor accepted, but hard-won by personal struggle and experience; that was the key-note to her character and the explanation of her actions. Yet that faith, when examined into, was nothing exotic; no combination of mysticism and mummery, but one founded upon the daily creed of the English and its fellow churches, and understood and applied to the circumstances of a life which was as brief as it seemed to be unfortunate. This was Morris's discovery, open and obvious enough, and ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... addressing mankind from, as good as broken and abolished: alas, yes! if you have any earnest meaning which demands to be not only listened to, but believed and done, you cannot (at least I cannot) utter it there, but the sound sticks in my throat, as when a solemnity were felt to have become a mummery; and so one leaves the pasteboard coulisses, and three unities, and Blair's Lectures, quite behind; and feels only that there is nothing sacred, then, but the Speech of Man to believing Men! This, come what will, was, is, and forever must be sacred; and will one day, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... like the fantastic figures that roam the streets in carnival time. Even the stately dames who gazed from the balconies, which they had hung with antique tapestry, looked more like effigies dressed up for a quaint mummery, than like ladies in their fashionable attire. Every thing, in short, bore the stamp of former ages, as if the world had suddenly rolled back a few centuries. Nor was this to be wondered at. Had not ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... "Loyal"; (4) catch the thumb in the vest or in the waistband and pronounce "League." This ceremony of initiation proved a most effective means of impressing and controlling the Negro through his love and fear of secret, mysterious, and midnight mummery. An oath taken in daylight might be forgotten before the next day; not so an oath taken in the dead of night under such impressive circumstances. After passing through the ordeal, ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... Verner, that we may perhaps get some help from that old woman, Barbara Trond, whom we met out on the heath on the day of the storm some time back. I saw her only a week ago in Antwerp. Soon after the Duke Alva arrived, she returned to Antwerp; but, instead of selling wax tapers and other Popish mummery, finding her calling of sorceress and witch answer so well in the country, she now pursues it in the city. Nothing takes place with which she is not acquainted. The credulity of the Romanists is unbounded, and she finds ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... faith in the Virgin; faith in mummery," says Johns, with a sigh. "'Tis always the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... pride— Think'st thou with all their wondrous spells even they Would triumph thus, had not the constant play Of Wit's resistless archery cleared their way?— That mocking spirit, worst of all the foes, Our solemn fraud, our mystic mummery knows, Whose wounding flash thus ever 'mong the signs Of a fast-falling creed, prelusive shines, Threatening such change as do the awful freaks Of summer lightning ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... is going to hang me after all," he said to himself; "then what, in Our Lady's name, means this strange mummery, and how comes that ill-favoured maiden to look at me as if her life depended ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... here see her again before me ... yes it is herself ... that funeral procession was a wicked, unseemly jest ... and this disguise, this flight hither into the desert, is again a most unseemly piece of mummery. Acknowledge thyself to me at length, at length, beloved, beautiful Crescentia. Thou knowest it well, my heart only lives within thy bosom. To what end these agonizing trials? Are thy parents perchance in the next room there, and listening to all we are saying? Let them come in now at last, at last; ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... world is all nonsense and noise, Fantoccini, or Ombres Chinoises, Mere pantomime mummery Puppet-show flummery; A magical lantern, confounding ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... more remote past; he was a boy again, and at his mother's knee. Half audibly and half unconsciously, he began murmuring, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray—no—I'll be consistent," he added, with a sigh. "I have lived without the mummery of prayer, and ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... accretions of the following three thousand years, this foundation idea is always clearly visible. All the statues, the carved and painted tombs, all the curious little model boats and workshops, all the painted mummies, all the amulets, the scarabs, the little funerary statuettes,—all this mummery which seems to be so characteristic and so essential, is only the means to an end, and an ever changing means to secure a successful comfortable existence of the spirit in the life after death,—in the ghostly ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner
... attendants approached the first of these figures, the men who formed it began to move themselves from side to side, lolling out their tongues, and staring as wide and horribly with their eyes as they could open them. After this mummery had continued some minutes, the men separated for them to pass, and the boys were now led over the bodies lying on the ground. These immediately began to move, writhing as if in agony, and uttering a mournful dismal sound, like very distant thunder. Having passed over these bodies, the ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... in the Compter about a week, on the 4th of February, Bonner came to degrade him, bringing with him such ornaments as appertained to the massing mummery; but the Doctor refused these trappings till they were ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... versifying, acting, became through their means the recreation of many thousands of shop-keepers, artisans and even peasants. And with all their faults of style and taste, their endless effusion of bad poetry, their feeble plays and rude farces, the mummery and buffoonery which were mingled even with their gravest efforts, the "Rhetoricians" effectually achieved the great and important work of attracting an entire people in an age of ignorance and of darkness towards a love of letters, ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... impressive; the bereaved kittens were loud in their grief; when, suddenly, the village-bell tolled for the death of an old gentleman whom everybody loved, and the comedy became a tragedy. The older children were conscience-stricken at the mummery, and they ran, demoralized and shocked, into the house, leaving The Boy and the kittens behind them. Jane Purdy tripped over her veil, and one of the kittens was stepped on in the crush. But The Boy proceeded ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... or rum, when they can get it. In a short time they drink themselves into a soddened semi-intoxicated state, and then commence taking the Parica. For this purpose they pair off, and each of the partners, taking a reed containing a quantity of the snuff, after going through a deal of unintelligible mummery, blows the contents with all his force into the nostrils of his companion. The effect on the usually dull and taciturn savages is wonderful; they become exceedingly talkative, sing, shout, and leap about in the wildest excitement. A reaction soon follows; more drinking is then ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... me still more your debtor. By the Holy Evangels! if I were assured the Abbot Aldam of Kirkstall had aught to do with that attack upon me, I would harry his worthless old mummery shop so clean a mouse ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... wisdom of Comte was insufficient, the folly of Comte was wisdom. In an age of dusty modernity, when beauty was thought of as something barbaric and ugliness as something sensible, he alone saw that men must always have the sacredness of mummery. He saw that while the brutes have all the useful things, the things that are truly human are the useless ones. He saw the falsehood of that almost universal notion of to-day, the notion that rites and forms are something artificial, additional, and corrupt. Ritual is really much ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... thank the company for the manner in which the nominis umbra had been received, and to assure them that the Author of Waverley would, when informed of the circumstance, feel highly delighted—"the proudest hour of his life," etc., etc. The cool, demure fun of Scott's features during all this mummery was perfect; and Erskine's attempt at a gay nonchalance was still more ludicrously meritorious. Aldiborontiphoscophornio, {p.258} however, bursting as he was, knew too well to allow the new novel to be made the subject of discussion. Its name was announced, and success to it crowned ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... the crowds of figures assembled round the chapel moving about in the obscurity of the aisles and columns, produced the most striking effect I ever beheld. It was curious, interesting, and inspiring—little of mummery and much of solemnity. The night here brings out fresh beauties, but of the most majestic character. There is a colour in an Italian twilight that I have never seen in England, so soft, and beautiful, and grey, and the moon rises 'not as in northern climes obscurely bright,' but with far-spreading ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... pleasant earth, their names are forgotten by those who screamed with pleasure or hooted in disgust at their performance, their faces are no longer remembered, their great drama is become an old-fashioned mummery of the past. Why should they care? Their work is done, they have been rewarded or punished, paid with praise and gold or mulcted in the sum of their reputation and estate. Famous or infamous, in honour or in disrepute, in riches or in poverty, they have reached ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... Boy-bishop in procession. The year following, 'the child Bishop, of Paules Church, with his company,' were admitted into the Queen's privy chamber, where he sang before her on Saint Nicholas Day, and upon Holy Innocents Day. After the death of Mary this silly mummery ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... dreamed of such love but never hoped for it, and now all the pretty tricks she had thought of had become as the mummery of fools. She sat in silence for a little space, her eyes upon her girdle, and a new and serious look came ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... too! Was it nothing that a man had been compelled to make all those ridiculous declarations? Children to be brought up Catholics! Wife not to be influenced! Even to keep an open mind himself to all the muss and mummery of the Church! ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... readers may consider this as a piece of mummery. At the time I did not. As a good Catholic, which I was at that time, and a pretty Frenchwoman, I thought that nothing could be more correct than the decoration des belles. I believe that it has always been the custom to name bells—to consecrate them ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... are convivial, they are almost the only race with the souls of artists. Still they act the mystery plays with instinctive fullness of interpretation, they sing strangely in the mountain fields, they love make-belief and mummery, their processions and religious festivals are profoundly impressive, solemn, ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... did not believe it; but in her heart she felt that it must be true. As for Thorbeorn, who had heard it all through the wall, whatever he may have thought, he was very indignant, and angry with her too. "Put such mummery out of your head. We are not Christians for nothing, I should hope. A scandalous hag with her bell-wether voice and airs of a great lady! What has she to do with good women, well brought up? A woman's duty is to leave match-making to her parents, and the future to God and His Angels. Who can foretell ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... "What damned mummery is this?" he cried, and snatching at the sheet, dragged it from the black distorted countenance of the corpse. He shuddered but for a moment he could not stir. He felt the midnight eyes of the girl—he saw the twisted, oozing mouth of the hag, ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... of the firmament and who had promulgated eternal laws for the universe, would hardly concern Himself with the soul of Pierre or Jean. To him all priests were impostors, and sacraments meaningless mummery, and yet he would not abolish religion entirely. Voltaire often said that he believed in a "natural religion," but never explained it fully. Indeed, he was far more interested in tearing down than in building up, and disposed rather to scoff at ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... all rotten," he repeated, looking up at her. "All this—the whole thing—the stupidity of it—the society that's driven to these kind of capers, dreading the only thing it ever dreads—ennui! Look at us all! For God's sake, survey us damn fools, herded here in our pinchbeck mummery—forcing the sanctuary of these decent green woods, polluting them with smoke and noise and dirty little intrigues! I'm ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... an end to that mummery. Ye shall pray in spirit and in truth, and not in words ye ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... his face in a piece of silk that lay on a sofa, and rapidly, in a low voice, chanted a kind of hymn in a tongue unknown to Merton. All this he did with a bored air, as if he thought the performance a superfluous mummery. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... cathedral, when the procession filed by—the singing-men nudging each other, the standard-bearers giggling, and the English tourists craning to see the sight—the face of one white-haired old bishop beneath his canopy transformed for me a foolish piece of mummery into a prayer in action. So it was again, when the young stranger turned to us his pale clear-cut face, solemn with an awe as rapt as if he verily stood before the throne of Him he called upon, and felt Its glory beating on his face; then, by that one earnest ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... unconscious bird. After two or three preliminary feints for the perfect adjustment of his faculties and pose, he bounded into the air with distended talons well over his screeching playmate. The scene would be rehearsed several times before Sultan, tired of mummery and eager for actualities, slunk yawling into the bush, while Baal Burra, whimpering in the dusk, waddled ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... as well. And to go through all this mummery that we believe not in, that we have come to this new country to escape! ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Goodhart and Cordeaux, the oldest form of the latter being the French name Courdoux. Momerie and Mummery are identical with Mowbray, from Monbrai in Normandy. Molyneux impresses more than Mullins, of which it is merely the dim., Fr. moulins, mills. The Yorkshire name Tankard is identical with Tancred. Stiggins goes back to the illustrious Anglo-Saxon name Stigand, as Wiggins does to ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... steel-filing number one! what heart-drawings I feel to thee! what prodigious virtues are these of thine! how constitutional to thee, and incommunicable.' Whilst we speak the loadstone is withdrawn; down falls our filing in a heap with the rest, and we continue our mummery to the wretched shaving. Let us go for universals; for the magnetism, not for the needles. Human life and its persons are poor empirical pretensions. A personal influence is an ignis fatuus. If they ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... letter was a well-intentioned but clumsy contrivance of Longways and other of Farfrae's men to get him out of the way for the evening, in order that the satirical mummery should fall flat, if it were attempted. By giving open information they would have brought down upon their heads the vengeance of those among their comrades who enjoyed these boisterous old games; and therefore the plan of sending a letter recommended ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... quickly and rid himself of his mummery and passed out through the chapel into the college garden. Now that the play was over his nerves cried for some further adventure. He hurried onwards as if to overtake it. The doors of the theatre were all open and ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... turned toward them a perturbed and fear-wrinkled face. Then she said quickly: "I don't know that I owe Grant Adams anything but—you children do—" She did not complete her sentence, but burst out: "I don't care for Tom Van Dorn's court, his grand folderol and mummery of the law. He's going to send a man to death to-night because his masters demand it. And we must stop it—you and Lila ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... missionary must, with a very bad grace, blame the Jugglers, for what himself makes such a point of religion in his auricular confession. Even the appellation of Juggler is not amiss applicable to those of their craft, considering all their tricks and mummery not a whit superior to those of these poor savages, in the eyes of common-sense. Who does not know, that the low-burlesque word of Hocus-pocus, is an humorous corruption of their Hoc est corpus meum, ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... who imagine they are ill—those people whose numbers are directly proportionate to periods of so-called prosperity, who call forth innumerable cults of curing, and who are the mainstay of much of the mummery in medicine. ...
— Some Personal Recollections of Dr. Janeway • James Bayard Clark
... Earl of Rone" which takes place at Combe Martin on Ascension Day is probably the most interesting of all ancient survivals in North Devon. It is a curious ceremony, partaking something of the nature of a Guy Fawkes mummery, something, I consider, of a much older ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... possess rare advantage over the rest of us in holding converse with these people, while I must remain dumb as an oyster, save for a glance of the eye. Perhaps, now that we have time for it, you will kindly explain the meaning of all this mummery with which we passed the night, for, by all the gods of Rome, it was weird enough to turn my hair gray, yet I understood neither word nor deed. How came that grim preacher to attain such honor, taking position ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... on his journey to Salern, And the lovesick girl, whose heated brain Is sowing the cloud to reap the rain; But it's a long road that has no turn! Let them quietly hold their way, I have also a part in the play. But first I must act to my heart's content This mummery and this merriment, And drive this motley flock of sheep Into the fold, where drink and sleep The jolly old friars of Benevent. Of a truth, it often provokes me to laugh To see these beggars hobble along, Lamed and maimed, and fed upon chaff, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... what the Emperor of the East was doing now? The sparkling eyes and the delighted rubbing of hands made eloquent answer—this reverend crowd would like to know what that monarch was at, just as this moment. The fraud went through some more mummery, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... stand this mummery any longer," said Yeo. "Here's a soul perishing before my eyes, and it's on my conscience to speak ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... place, hurled onto the stage, and before my dazzled eyes could accustom themselves to the footlights, I found myself enmeshed in intolerable drama. I was unprepared. I knew my part imperfectly. I missed my cues. I had the blighting self-consciousness of the amateur. And yet the idiot mummery was intensely real. Amid the laughter of the silent shadowy gods I thought to flee from the stage. I came to Verona and find I am still acting my part. I have always been acting. I have been acting since I was born. The reason ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... reception) in the vain hope of deriving advantage therefrom but that in the fulness of our present plenty there is a desire to comply with the wishes of the people in the celebration at the capital of this delusive mummery.... For Buddha was a barbarian. His language was not the language of China. His clothes were of an alien cut. He did not utter the maxims of our ancient rulers nor conform to the customs which they ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... night. Y'r French gab may be foul wi' oaths for all I ken; but ye'll no come into my hoose! An' you, Sir, a blind leader o' the blind, a disciple o' Beelzebub, wi' y'r Babylonish idolatries, wi' y'r incense that fair stinks in the nostrils o' decent folk, wi' y'r images and mummery and crossin' o' y'rsel', wi' y'r pagan, popish practises, wi' y'r skirts and petticoats, I'll no hae ye on my premises, no, not an' ye leave y'r religion outside! An' you, Meester Hamilton, a respectable Protestant, I'm fair surprised to see ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... The mummery of it vexed Margaret. There was no excuse for his looking at her in that way. It irritated her. She was almost as angry with him for doing it as she would have been ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... he intruded himself, were marked in very significant ways. The Elector of Saxony at first refused to acknowledge the new Majesty. Lewis the Fourteenth looked down on his brother King with an air not unlike that with which the Count in Moliere's play regards Monsieur Jourdain, just fresh from the mummery of being made a gentleman. Austria exacted large sacrifices in return for her recognition, and at ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... this mummery? Why was he a spectacle for that mob? All the blood rushed to Paul's head and the little pulses in his temples began to beat like hammers. He looked at Alvarez, but the Spaniard had turned his face into a stony mask, and he could read no meaning there. ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... omitted. The passions are fed, and the morbid sensibilities pandered to; firmness in the cause of truth or virtue is called obstinacy; and strength of soul, a refractory blindness. The bases of morality are sapped in the name of liberty; the discipline of the Church, when not branded as sheer "mummery," is held up as hostile to personal freedom; and her dogmas, with one or two exceptions, are treated as opinions which may be received ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... think of dressing up a figure to represent the devil, for the purpose of frightening young girls into obedience? And those absurd threats! Surely no sane man, and certainly no Christian teacher, would ever stoop to such senseless mummery!" ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... hawk, she flew towards the spot, and seized the sacred and inviolable arm of the holy Druid, which was lifted up to strike the final blow. "Barbarous and inhuman priest," she cried, "cease your vile and impious mummery! No longer insult us with the name of Gods. If there be Gods, they are merciful; but thou art a savage and unrelenting monster. Or if some victim must expire, strike here, and I will thank thee. Strike, and my bosom shall heave to meet the ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... drew his descent, and which was likely to be at least unpleasing to the Franks as well as Normans, who had already received and become very tenacious of the privileges of the feudal system, the mummery of heraldry, and the warlike claims assumed by knights, as belonging only to their ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the public looks at. An apparition like her has no need, thank heaven, of your symbolic mummery. ...
— Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit) - A Tragedy in Four Acts • Frank Wedekind
... an hour of mummery and remonstrances, so that the roots of the cabbage may not be cut and it can be transplanted without injury, while spadefuls of earth are thrown into the faces of the bystanders,—woe to him who does not step aside quickly enough; ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... in consequence of his having licked up the froth and saliva which had been vomited forth by the ministerial agents and tools of the rotten borough, or corporate town, of which his master was one of the rotten limbs. How often have I seen one of these self-sufficient cubs, with all the solemn mummery, without half the sense, of an ape, deliver what the fool vainly called his opinion, which consisted of the most stupid and senseless contradictions and assertions, generally finishing with something which he conceived to be unanswerable, "as our ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... That solemn mummery, the "Peace Congress," might temporarily have turned the tide it was wholly powerless to dam; but the arch seceder, Massachusetts, manipulated even that slight chance of compromise. The weaker elements in convention ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... this profane mummery going on instead of the holy services to which Christina had looked forward for strength and comfort; she was far too well instructed not to be scandalized at the profane deception which was ripening fast for Luther, only thirty years later; and, when the stone ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... picked as in jostling crowds. And as change and alterations are most agreeable to those who are tied to nothing, he appears more zealous and violent for the cause than such as are retarded by conscience or consideration. His religion is a mummery, and his Gospel-walkings nothing but dancing a masquerade. He never wears his own person, but assumes a shape, as his master, the devil, does when he appears. He wears counterfeit hands (as the Italian pickpocket did), which are fastened to his ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... is a world of gnomes and hob-goblins, of ghouls and of laughing angels. The realist of the Thackeray School finds nothing but monstrous exaggeration here—and fantastic mummery. If he were right, par-dieu! If his sleek "reality" were all that there was—"alarum!" We were indeed "betrayed"! But no; the children are right. Dickens is right. Neither "realist" or "psychologist" hits the mark, ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... birds after following a lure through a long Satanic masquerade, which she had entered on with an intoxicated belief in its disguises, and had seen the end of in shrieking fear lest she herself had become one of the evil spirits who were dropping their human mummery and hissing around her ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... specific diseases. This fact has rendered more intimate the relations between dentistry and the general practice of medicine, and has given a powerful impetus to scientific studies in dentistry. Through the researches of Sir J. Tomes, Mummery, Hopewell Smith, Williams and others in England, O. Hertwig, Weil and Rse in Germany, Andrews, Sudduth and Black in America, the minute anatomy and embryology of the dental tissues have been worked out with great ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... shall be clerk, and say amen, when I turn chaplain,' growled out the party addressed, in tones which might have become the condition of a dying bear; 'if the gentleman is a whig, he may please himself with his own mummery. My faith is neither in word nor writ, but ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... moment all was silent. Then the King found voice. "What does this mean?" he cried again. "How have this vagrant and his vile beasts found entrance to my palace? It is the hour for execution, not for mummery. Why is ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... definitions given, you disregard all save the one which enables the word to make sense in its present context, or which fits your preconception of what the word should stand for. Having engaged in this solemn mummery, you mentally record the fact that you have been squandering your time, and enter into a compact with yourself that no more will you so do. At best you have tided over a transitory need, or have verified a surmise. You have not truly learned the word, brought it into ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... which your enervate minds, in their unimaginative sensuality, cannot conceive or dream! Plod on, plod on, fools of ambition and of avarice! your petty thirst for fasces and quaestorships, and all the mummery of servile power, provokes my laughter and my scorn. My power can extend wherever man believes. I ride over the souls that the purple veils. Thebes may fall, Egypt be a name; the world itself furnishes the ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... presence of so many which she otherwise would have felt. She kept her eye on a certain female who had a remote dusky corner to pray in, and the moment she retired from it, this young creature went up and there knelt down. But what a contrast to the calm, unconscious, and insipid mummery which went on at the moment through the whole room! Her prayer was short, and she had neither book nor beads; but the heavings of her bosom, and her suppressed sobs, sufficiently proclaimed her sincerity. Her ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... is pure mummery. Yet it is worth while to know exactly what the means were which in ancient times were relied on for such purposes, and it is not useless to put this matter on record; for just such formulas are believed ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... the craft of Courtiers, for the purpose of keeping up an expensive and enormous Civil List, and a mummery of useless and antiquated places and offices at the public expence, to be continually hanging England upon some individual or other, called King, though the man might not have capacity to be a parish constable. The folly and absurdity of this, is appearing more ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... penniless. It was shuffled through, therefore, in form, but coldly and unfeeling. The well-fed priest moved but a few steps from the church door; his voice could scarcely be heard at the grave; and never did I hear the funeral service, that sublime and touching ceremony, turned into such a frigid mummery of words. ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... or mesmerism, or deception of some kind, why do you insist on all this mummery of soot and ashes for my friend and me?" King demanded. "Why do you use a temple full of Hindu idols to conceal your science, if it is a natural ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... The mummery now ceased, and Bunce having been carried elsewhere, the maskers resumed their native apparel, having thrown aside that which had been put on for a distinct purpose. The pedler, in another and more secure department of the robbers' hiding-place, was solaced with the prospect of a ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... of the horses, which he had left by the side of the river. His back was no sooner turned, than Ferret, who had been peeping from behind the pantry-door, ventured to rejoin the company; pronouncing with a smile, or rather grin, of contempt, "Hey-day! what precious mummery is this? What, are we to have the farce of Hamlet's ghost?" "Adzooks," cried the captain, "My kinsman Tom has dropped astern—hope in God a-has not bulged to, and gone to bottom." "Pish," exclaimed the misanthrope, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... imagination but a human being and an artist who had entered upon a royal possession of her own. She had outstripped him. She had become an artist without loss of humanity. Henceforth she must deal with realities, leaving him to his painted mummery... She could understand his ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... fears, heart tearing cares, Anxious sighes, untimely tears, Fly, fly to Courts, Fly to fond wordlings sports, Where strain'd Sardonick smiles are glosing stil And grief is forc'd to laugh against her will. Where mirths but Mummery, And sorrows ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... There are elements in all that has come to us from the more morally simple society of the Middle Ages: elements which moderns, even when they are mediaevalists, find it hard to understand and harder to imitate. The first is the primary idea of Mummery itself. If you will observe a child just able to walk, you will see that his first idea is not to dress up as anybody—but to dress up. Afterwards, of course, the idea of being the King or Uncle William will leap to his lips. But it is generally suggested by the hat he ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... strong as harts-horn! Your papists keep these outlandish hours for their masses and mummery. Surely we might let God alone at twelve o'clock! Have ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... incessantly by some hidden hand, forced into playing parts they did not want to play, saying words they had no wish to speak, cutting antics for which they had no aptitude or liking. Cruelties lurked everywhere, waiting in the confused mummery. Reality was being left and with it the practical grasp of those powerful simplicities that alone can guide life through confusion. I felt this with stinging certainty. Everyone seemed playing a part, goaded with the urgency of seeking an ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... grew dark with an infinite pain. His thoughts always fled back to his Dream of Al-Kyris, with a tendency to draw comparisons between the Past and the Present. The religion of that long-buried city had been mere mummery and splendid outward show, —what was the religion of London? He ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... unconscious way, with the stuff of all our poetry, law, ritual: and genius has selected from the mass, has turned customs into codes, nursery tales into romance, myth into science, ballad into epic, magic mummery into gorgeous ritual. The world has been educated, but not as man would have trained and taught it. "He led us by a way we knew not," led, and is leading us, we know not whither; ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... terms. Terms perhaps known to August to be rash; to have been frightfully rash; but what can he now do? Archbishop thereupon gives absolution of his sins; Archbishop does,—a baddish, unlikely kind of man, as August well knows. August "laid his hand on his eyes," during such sad absolution-mummery; and in that posture had breathed his last, before it was well over. ["Sunday, 1st February, 1733, quarter past 4 A.M." (Fassmann, Leben Frederici Augusti Konigs in Pohlen, pp. 994-997).] Unhappy soul; who shall judge him?—transcendent ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... "Square," and of "reducing" it, seems at first glance bothersome and complicated, it is only a childishly easy performance in the way of making a square of seven rows of seven cards, and then of making the rows only three cards deep, at most! Crazy superstition and the aim at mummery have added the details of process that seem tedious. And, really, they are ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... there was some who said that when she chose she could "throw the bones" and tell the future better than most, and this without dressing herself up in bladders and snake skins, or falling into fits, or trances, and such mummery. Lastly, amongst the natives about, and some of the Boers too, I am sorry to say, she had the reputation of being the best of rainmakers, and many were the head of cattle that she earned by prophesying the break-up of a drought, or the end of continual rains. Indeed, it is certain ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... that precarious situation which SARY F. NORTON calls "mummery," and the Onida Community says Amen! to, but which good honest folks, like you and I, calls married, then I would say that he mite go further and fare a site wusser, than to come over here and examine my stock ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... surrounded with such protection, were actually circumcised at Tripoli by Dr. Dickson[72], and were accustomed to attend the mosques and perform prayer as Mussulmans. Colonel Warrington certainly told me the people saw through all the mummery, and laughed, or were angry. As to the Frenchman, Caillié, his eternal tale of fabrication, repeated every day, and every hour of the day, to every Sheikh, and every merchant, camel-driver, and slave of The Desert, produces a very painful impression on the mind of the reader. Caillié's ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... Chartrain, did I blame her? Blame Jerome? Yes—no. I hardly knew. Viewed at a distance and impartially, such things strike us with aversion, and we are quick to condemn. But the more I thought the nearer I came to concluding it took something more than a mere mummery to make a wife. All the ceremonials and benedictions and lighted candles and high-sounding phrases could not bind a woman's heart, where that heart was free, or called some other man its lord. Yet the bare fact remained, this woman was a wife, and to me, at ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson |
