"Hocus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... then. She wasn't his wife any more. A sort of hocus-pocus ... now you are my wife, now you ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... Saint Rochus They made him stand and wait his doom; And, as if he were condemned to the tomb, Began to mutter their hocus-pocus. First, the Mass for the Dead they chanted, Then three times laid upon his head A shovelful of churchyard clay, Saying to him, as he stood undaunted, "This is a sign that thou art dead, So ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... nearly got blood-poisonin'. The very first time I ever laid eyes on this man and his wife a great misfortune overtook me, and ever since they come to Jonesville I've had a close squeeze to make a live of it. This fellow Strange, with his fortune-tellin' and his charms and his conjures, has hocus-pocussed the whole neighborhood. He's gettin' rich off of the Mexicans. He knows more secrets than a priest; he tells 'em whether their sweethearts love 'em, whether a child is goin' to be a boy or a girl, and how ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... the worst Anscombe stood to lose nothing, I shrugged my shoulders and held my tongue. It was Marnham's deal, and although he was somewhat in the shadow of the hanging lamp and the candles had guttered out, I distinctly saw him play some hocus-pocus with the cards, but in the circumstances made no protest. As it chanced he must have hocus-pocused them wrong, for though his hand was full of trumps, Rodd held nothing at all. The battle ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... his claim; and accepted in lieu of it three hundred-pound shares of the ex-Panama stock, bearing twenty-five per cent., payable half-yearly at the house of Hocus Brothers, St. Swithin's Lane; three hundred-pound shares, and the SECOND class of the order of the Castle and Falcon, with the riband and badge. "In four years, Eglantine, my boy, I hope to get you the Grand Cordon ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... industrial school, in the course of the year, will receive a fraction of this money—perhaps even so large, a fraction as one half. It may be that, ere now, some obliging person about the City Hall has offered to buy the claim for a thousand dollars, and take the risk of the hocus-pocus necessary for getting it—which to him is no risk ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... hocus-pocus of sorcery or sacrifice had but little that was inviting for philosophy to proceed on. If we thus take into account the state of Indian philosophic culture before Buddha, we shall be better able to understand the value of ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... invention, a more or less original one, I am ready to admit, but an invention of not the least practical interest. Just an invention of the detectives, this Fantomas; or, it may be of the journalists only, who have made the gaping public swallow this hocus-pocus pill—this enormous pill!" The lieutenant stared at Fandor defiantly. "And let me add, I speak from knowledge, for, up to a certain point, I ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... back to his cell and stands there as dignified as if he was going to lay a cornerstone. He's a grave rebuke to the whole situation, as you might say. Then the Judge and Cale go through some kind of a hocus-pocus talk, winding up with both of them saying 'Not guilty!' in a loud voice; and Myron says to Pete: 'There! You had your trial; now get out ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... at calling-hours, and then Sophie dresses herself and comes down. Aunt Zeruah insists upon it that the way is to put the whole house in order, and shut all the blinds, and sit in your bedroom, and then, she says, nothing gets out of place; and she tells poor Sophie the most hocus-pocus stories about her grandmothers and aunts, who always kept everything in their houses so that they could go and lay their hands on it in the darkest night. I'll bet they could in our house. From end to end it is ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... anything. What the light of your mind, which is the direct inspiration of the Almighty, pronounces incredible,—that, in God's name, leave uncredited; at your peril do not try believing that. No subtlest hocus-pocus of "reason" versus "understanding" will avail for that feat;—and it is terribly perilous to try it in ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... at the other side of the table and facing the light, was Doctor Stevens, a recently graduated pupil of the famous Schulze of Saint Christopher who as much as any other one man is responsible for the rejection of hocus-pocus and the injection of common sense into American medicine. For upwards of an hour young Stevens, coat off and shirt sleeves rolled to his shoulders, had been toiling with the lifeless form ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... loyalty may be the more impressive, and tell more effectually. Yet I wish sincerely to help poor Hogg, and have written to Lockhart about it. It may be my own desolate feelings—it may be the apprehension of evil from this political hocus-pocus, but I have seldom felt more moody and uncomfortable than while writing these lines. I have walked, too, but without effect. W. Laidlaw, whose very ingenious mind is delighted with all novelties, talked nonsense about ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... legislature, and what recourse is there left to the people but 'Boulangism'? 'Boulangism' is the instinctive, more or less deliberate and articulate, outcry of a people living under constitutional forms, but conscious that, by some hocus-pocus, the vitality has been taken out of those forms. It is the expression of the general sense of insecurity. In a country situated as France now is, it is natural that this inarticulate outcry ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... poetical composition on which I had expended no little pains, he read it attentively, and then remarked 'Unless one's thought pack more neatly in verse than in prose, it is wiser to refrain. Commonplace gains nothing by being translated into rhyme, for it is something which no hocus-pocus can transubstantiate with the real presence of living thought. You entitle your piece, "My Mother's Grave," and expend four pages of useful paper in detailing your emotions there. But, my dear sir, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... prestige of respected names will rise up to oppose the new views, which, I confess, to be sustained in their main features by my own views and researches here on the ground and in the midst of the Indians, and men will rise to sustain the old views—the original literary mummery and philological hocus-pocus based on the papers and letters and blunders of Heckewelder. There was a great predisposition to admire and overrate everything relative to Indian history and language, as detailed by this good and sincere ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... right as far as possible. A warm at the sanctum's fire diminishes the purple in Miss Parkington's cheeks; and the maid, by some hocus-pocus peculiar to her craft, again inflates Miss Waters into a balloon, and stitches up Miss Brindle's flounces and "gathers." The ladies join their respective gentlemen, who have been cooling their toes and uttering warm anathemas in the ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... take whatever other means suggest themselves for luring this girl from her room. I will summon Hazen and hold him very closely under my eye till the whole affair is over. He shall get no chance for any hocus-pocus business, not while I have charge of your interests. He shall do just what he has laid out for himself and nothing more; you may rely ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... by planting a stake at the top of flood, you can neither prevent nor delay the inevitable ebb. There is no hocus-pocus in morality; and even the "sanctimonious ceremony" of marriage leaves the man unchanged. This is a hard saying, and has an air of paradox. For there is something in marriage so natural and inviting, that the step ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... order to win a favour of his beloved, filled his room with skulls and bones like a churchyard?' The most loathsome tasks were prescribed—to draw three teeth from a corpse or a nail from its finger, and the like; and while the hocus-pocus of the incantation was going on, the unhappy participants sometimes ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... by some hocus-pocus the Bank of New York hadn't a cent in coin at this moment, it could redeem the few claims that might be made upon it by borrowing, could ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... had a hand in the whole of that black and midnight business, in which the stocks had been broken, bunged up, and consigned to perdition, and that the Papisher had the evil reputation of dabbling in the Black Art, the hocus-pocus way in which the Lenny he had incarcerated was transformed into the doctor he found, conjoined with the peculiarly strange eldrich and Mephistophelean physiognomy and person of Riccabocca, could not but strike a thrill of superstitious dismay into the breast of the parochial tyrant; ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the source of the sound now. It came from inside the black walls of Layroh's tent, pitched there in its usual isolation on a slight rise fifty yards from the sleeping group. Foster grunted disgustedly to himself. More of Layroh's scientific hocus-pocus! The man seemed to go out of his way to add new phases of mystery to this crazy expedition of his through the ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... or bring into effect. But, in its real, and therefore higher, sense, it means to dedicate, consecrate, and initiate into the arcana of the temple mysteries. But, in the present day it means a piece of imposture, connected with some magical hocus pocus of the ignorant and superstitious mind, a vulgar charm, that is supposed to bring the owner thereof some material benefit, irrespective of his mental, magnetic, and moral condition, "and," says the learned Webster, after describing his idea of such things, "they ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... controversy, which a peace might settle by the imposition or the taking off a duty, with the gain or the loss of a remote island or a frontier town or two, on the one side or the other. This shifting of persons could not be done without the hocus-pocus of abstraction. We have been in a grievous error: we thought that we had been at war with rebels against the lawful government, but that we were friends and allies of what is properly France, friends ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... my host pursued, "we can be good friends all the same. We don't need a hocus-pocus of false sentiment. We are men, aren't we?—men of sublime good sense." And just here, as the old man looked at me, the pressure of his hands deepened to a convulsive grasp, and the bloodless mask of his countenance was suddenly distorted with a nameless fear. "Ah, my dear young ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... great hocus-pocus," he said, "you know, I believe you. If two fellows were having a pitched battle most of the girls I know would quietly faint or run, but I do believe that you would stand by and help a fellow ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... before the throne of God. The things he chiefly argued for were anti-Christian things—the abandonment of the purely moral view of life, the rehabilitation of instinct, the dethronement of weakness and timidity as ideals, the renunciation of the whole hocus-pocus of dogmatic religion, the extermination of false aristocracies (of the priest, of the politician, of the plutocrat), the revival of the healthy, lordly "innocence" that was Greek. If he was anything in a word, Nietzsche ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... him work on sheers, or some hocus-pocusin' arrangement, an' he can't afford to hev him git sick. That's what his kindness ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... went on. "This Bentwood is a doctor who is an expert in the miracles and the hocus pocus of the East. The drug they administered to you is not known in England; the thing has never been seen here. I understand that they could have kept you in a state of suspended animation as long as they pleased. But they desired ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... the hocus-pocus side of the case," he replied, "turns on matters Egyptian, doesn't it? Very well. Who else, that we know about, is associated, or ever has ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... Blumenbach, is the oddest. A Georgian woman's skull was the handsomest in his collection. Hence it became his model exemplar of human skulls, from which all others might be regarded as deviations; and out of this, by some strange intellectual hocus-pocus, grew up the notion that the Caucasian man is the prototypic "Adamic" man, and his country the primitive centre of our kind. Perhaps the most curious thing of all is, that the said Georgian skull, after all, is not a skull of average form, but distinctly ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... heads; it had become a dogma with them—something like the day on which Christ was to reappear and the Millennium to begin had formed in the heads of the Chiliasts. Weakness had, as it ever does, taken refuge in the wonderful; it believed the enemy was overcome if, in its imagination, it hocus-pocused him away; and it lost all sense of the present in the imaginary apotheosis of the future, that was at hand, and of the deeds, that it had "in petto," but which it did not yet want to bring to the scratch. The heroes, who ever seek to refute their established incompetence ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... time-serving judge might do. And, indeed, in a time when justice is, in all its branches, so completely corrupted, I would rather lose my life by open military violence, than be conjured out of it by the hocus-pocus of some arbitrary lawyer, who lends the knowledge he has of the statutes made for our protection, to ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... presence. Never did he show the slightest fear of us or of anything, but he was unwearied in his efforts to regain his freedom. After a few days we put a strap upon his neck and kept him tethered by a chain. But in the night, by dint of some hocus-pocus, he got the chain unsnapped and made off, and he is now, I trust, a patriarch of his ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... Why, in Saint Rochus They made him stand, and wait his doom; And, as if he were condemned to the tomb, Began to mutter their hocus pocus. First, the Mass for the Dead they chaunted. Then three times laid upon his head A shovelful of church-yard clay, Saying to him, as he stood undaunted, "This is a sign that thou art dead, So in thy heart ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... all this hocus-pocus about the ha'nt, that is easily explained. He needed a scapegoat on whom to turn the blame when the bonds should disappear; so he and this Cat-Eye Mose between them invented a ghost. The negro is a half crazy fellow who from the first has been young Gaylord's tool; I don't think he knew what ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... particularly clean, choked with rubbish, badly drained, ill lighted, not always well paved even with good intentions, and beset with dangerous characters, bilious-looking Thugs, prowling about, ready to pounce upon, hocus, strangle, and pillage any new arrival. But all that is now changed. Now, the path of literature is all velvet and roses. The race of quacks and impostors has become as extinct, as are the saurian and the dodo; and every honest flourisher of the pen, instead of being tarred and feathered, ...
— The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil • Edward G. Flight
... For years they've been teaching the natives that a red-coat is a kind of sacred monkey that all must bow down to. And you forget you're only a man like the rest of us. When you meet a man who isn't scared off by all this hocus-pocus it comes pretty hard on you. You have to sing ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... lasted a long time, people drop the usual hocus-pocus of imitative magic altogether, and being far too angry to waste their breath in prayer they seek by threats and curses or even downright physical force to extort the waters of heaven from the supernatural being who has, so to say, cut them off at the main. In a Japanese village, when the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... in Phrase, and quack Destruction; Or roar like Marshal, that Geneva Bull, Hell and Damnation a Pulpit full: Yet to express a Scot, to play that Prize, Not all those Mouth-Granadoes can suffice. Before a Scot can properly be curst, I must, like Hocus, swallow Daggers first. Scots are like Witches; do but whet your Pen, Scratch till the Blood comes, they'll not hurt ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... Andrew Ferrary, in single combat; whereupon, as might reasonably be expected, he would, in the twinkling of a farthing rushlight, fall down as dead as a bag of sand; yet, by their rictum-ticktum, rise-up-Jack, slight-of-hand, hocus-pocus way, would be on his legs, brushing the stour from his breeches knees, before the green curtain was half-way down. James Batter himself once told me, that, when he was a laddie, he saw one of these ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... harm in trying! A pound's a pound, there's no denying; But think what thousands and thousands of pounds We pay for nothing but hearing sounds: Sounds of Equity, Justice, and Law, Parliamentary jabber and jaw, Pious cant, and moral saw, Hocus-pocus, and Nong-tong-paw, And empty sounds not worth a straw; Why, it costs a guinea, as I'm a sinner, To hear the sounds at a public dinner! One pound one thrown into the puddle, To listen to Fiddle, Faddle, and Fuddle! Not to forget the sounds ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... it, and thus sin became as safe as it was easy. Inevitably also such a theory of worship often degenerated into an utter formalism which made hyprocrisy and unreality patent, until the hoc est corpus of the mass became the hocus-pocus of the scoffer. ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... and ambassadors were everywhere in the utmost confusion; and, by the way, they have never been able to find the balance since that time, and all the fine speeches upon the subject, with which your newspapers are every now and then filled, are all mere hocus-pocus and rhodomontade. However, the caldron was soon set on, and the air was darkened by witches riding on broomsticks, bringing a couple of folios under each arm, and across each shoulder. I remember the time exactly: it was ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... go." He opened his hand, and looked at the coin. "Heads! Very good. Go on with your hocus-pocus, ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... have sent some thirty men into a bye-street of London to distribute patronage and govern a great country. The Government of India would then have been made a department of the Government, with a Council and a Minister of State. But it appears that the old system of hocus- pocus is ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... speculated—maybe for only the better part of ten seconds—but he speculated upon the entity of the small human being that had fallen within the bounds of his court. Was it really for this little girl's best good to let this aunt by marriage take charge of her? Did any hocus-pocus contriving, with which he had become only too familiar, lie beneath this ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... proprietors. If a valley intervenes, he will bridge it with a viaduct, which shall put to shame the grandest relics of antiquity. He has no knowledge of such bugbears as steep gradients or dangerous curves; a little hocus-pocus with the compasses transforms all these into gentle undulations, and sweeps of the most graceful description. He will run you his rails right through the heart of the most populous city,—yea, even Glasgow herself,—and across the streets, without ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... am aware that these things are but trifles to the Theosophists and Esoteric Buddhists, who profess to project their astral bodies, and play many other hocus pocus tricks of transmitting voices and articles to immense distances. They may therefore be able to explain these phenomena, I cannot; still I have the belief that there is some spirit-force which can and does act as a medium between distant persons ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... said the fat detective, pompously. "House is full of Indian curiosities. Thaddeus brought this up, and if this splinter be poisonous Thaddeus may as well have made murderous use of it as any other man. The card is some hocus-pocus,—a blind, as like as not. The only question is, how did he depart? Ah, of course, here is a hole in the roof." With great activity, considering his bulk, he sprang up the steps and squeezed through into the garret, and immediately afterwards we heard his exulting ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hocus pocus by throwing out all the cards in the pack under seven. She shuffled the rest with her left hand for luck; and then she gave them to me to cut. "Wi' yer left hand, Francie. Mind that! Pet your trust in Proavidence—but ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... or drunk, or dreaming, or was I merely the victim of a gigantic and most elaborate hoax? How was it possible that I, a rational man, not unacquainted with the leading scientific facts of our history, and hitherto an absolute and utter disbeliever in all the hocus-pocus which in Europe goes by the name of the supernatural, could believe that I had within the last few minutes been engaged in conversation with a woman two thousand and odd years old? The thing was contrary to the experience of human nature, and absolutely and utterly impossible. It must ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... transformations—only the transformations are so infinitely slow, and attended with such struggle and suffering. Strike out the element of time and we have before us a spectacle more novel and startling than any hocus-pocus or legerdemain that ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... worshiped the truth, but he did not. He knew that the truth was everything, but a lie came that seemed better than the truth. In his soul he knew he was not acting truly; that had he honestly loved the truth, he would not have played hocus-pocus with metaphysics and logic, but would have made haste to a manly conclusion. He took the package, and on his way to the dining-room, dropped it into the post-box in ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... experience, that one would be justified in believing either that one's senses were deluded, or that one had not really got to the bottom of the phenomenon. Of course, if one could vary the conditions, if one could take a little silex, and by a little hocus-pocus a la crosse, galvanise a baby out of it as often as one pleased, all the philosopher could do would be to hold up his hands and cry, "God is great." But short of evidence of this kind, I don't mean to believe ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... to compel dieting and exercise. She had the tact which he lacked; she made the allowances for human nature's ignorance and superstition which he refused to make; she lessened the hardship of taking her common-sense prescriptions by veiling them in medical hocus-pocus—a compromise of the disagreeable truth which her father had always inveighed against as ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... be kept secret, and since adolescents in possession of a secret are under constant temptation to hint mysteriously in the presence of outsiders, this hocus-pocus of ritual and password and countersign had to be resorted to. He'd been in conspiratorial work of other kinds, and knew that there was a sound psychological basis for most of what seemed, at first glance, to be ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... poor Sister is quite harmless"; and Valguanera rose, stretching himself. "My servants say she wants a mass said over her, or something of that kind; but I haven't much love for such priestly hocus-pocus,—I beg your pardon" (turning to me), "I had forgotten that you were a ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... haunts and abysses of perfection; for this reason I need music. But Wagner makes one ill—What do I care about the theatre? What do I care about the spasms of its moral ecstasies in which the mob—and who is not the mob to-day?—rejoices? What do I care about the whole pantomimic hocus-pocus of the actor? You are beginning to see that I am essentially anti-theatrical at heart. For the stage, this mob art par excellence, my soul has that deepest scorn felt by every artist to-day. With a stage success a man sinks ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... the plain, and carry the whole coast in a campaign, and no one would ever interfere to disturb us. Why should they? The Turks could not, and the natives of Fran-guestan would not. Leave me to manage them. There is nothing in the world I so revel in as hocus-sing Guizot and Aberdeen. You never heard of Guizot and Aberdeen? They are the two Reis Effendis of the King of the French and the Queen of the English. I sent them an archbishop last year, one of my fellows, Archbishop Murad, who led them a pretty dance. ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... over while I was eating breakfast. There was some sort of hocus-pocus going on, connected with this excursion and the gold company. Anybody could see that. Whether they really expected Captain Bannister to come on the steamboat, or whether that was all a lie to make me stay, I could not tell. Captain Bannister had said, according ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... In one church a Protestant lawyer raised a dog in his hands when the priest elevated the host. The most sacred words of the old worship, the words of consecration, "Hoc est corpus," were travestied into a nickname for jugglery as "Hocus-pocus." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... law is a sort of hocus-pocus science, that smiles in yer face while it picks yer pocket; and the glorious uncertainty of it is of mair use to the professors than the ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... Conservatives were in their hearts as angry as were their opponents. What was to be gained but the poor interval of three months? There were clever men who suggested that Mr. Daubeny had a scheme in his head—some sharp trick of political conjuring, some "hocus-pocus presto" sleight of hand, by which he might be able to retain power, let the elections go as they would. But, if so, he certainly did not make his scheme known to ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... extraordinary process does Comstockery conjure decency into the stomach and indecency into the bowels? But how rejoiced we should be that it is no worse than indecent to speak of the receptacle of the intestines by its common name. By some hocus pocus of which Comstockery is easily capable it might have been obscene to speak of the digestive process or of any of the digestive organs. We might easily have been taught that digestion was a moral matter, not to be talked of, not to be studied; ignorance of which was a virtue, knowledge ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... think he ought to be deposed. So long as the darkeys who came into his grove of a Sunday had passes from their masters, it was all right; but there was something that was not all right, and it was the occasion of no little uneasiness and perplexity to Mr. Riley. By some hocus-pocus Toby had learned to read his Bible. There was nothing wrong in that, of course, but a darkey who could read his Bible would be likely to read papers as well; and from them, especially if they chanced to be Northern papers, ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... a regiment of Oregon mounted volunteers under command of Colonel James W. Nesmith—subsequently for several years United States Senator from Oregon. The whole force was under the command of Major Rains, Fourth Infantry, who, in order that he might rank Nesmith, by some hocus-pocus had been made a brigadier-general, under an appointment from the Governor ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... being an old woman, and afraid of the ship's losing reputation while he was in charge, told them all to be good boys and he would speak to the Captain when he came aboard; and served them out three fingers of rum apiece, which the bo'sun took upon himself to hocus. By latest accounts, they're sleeping it off and—I say, waiter, you might tell the cook to ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... upon her of raiment and ornaments and fine linen and taking Nur al-Din in her arms strained him to her bosom. And they ceased not, she and he, from kissing and clipping and strumming to the tune of "hocus-pocus,"[FN524] saying the while, "How short are the nights of Union and the nights of Disunion how long are they!" ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... anxious to meet Acton, for Phil, in the holidays, had given Jack a pretty correct inkling of Acton's character, and he began to see—in fact, he did see—that Raffles and the shooting and the billiards, and the hocus pocus of "hedging on Grape Shot," and the trip to London, etc., was only one involved, elaborate plot to strike at Phil. Jack now fully realized that he had played a very innocent fly to Acton's consummate spider, ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... Greek asked I would fain ask too, Who knows if all the Spectacle be true, Or an illusion of the gods [the Will, To wit] some hocus-pocus to fulfil? ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... have found it in me to laugh at the whole miserable hocus-pocus, had I been less indignant. The situation was, besides, sufficiently grave; and as I listened to this silly and profane juggling, and observed the wildness of my grandfather's bearing, it became plain to me ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... gnashed their teeth and looked on. Nor was the whole truth told by a long way, but a garbled version about foreign coves who worked the business and bolted, and a doting father who never consented to it—and such a hash-up and hocus-pocus as would have made a ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... absurdities of their own theology. Nor was the unity of the Supreme Being ousted from the Christian creed by the force of reason, but by the sword of civil government, wielded at the will of the fanatic Athanasius. The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs. And a strong proof of the solidity of the primitive faith, is its restoration, as soon as a nation arises ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... plateau, 3,674 feet above sea-level, with abundance of wild grapes and other fruits, yams, nuts, flax, tobacco, etc.; but the travelling was difficult owing to the high grass. The people are pleasant-featured and good-natured, and the chief, Katchiba, maintains his authority by a species of hocus-pocus, or sorcery. He is a merry soul, has a multiplicity of wives—a bevy in each village—so that when he travels through his kingdom he is always at home. His children number 116, and the government is quite a family affair, for he has one of his sons as chief ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... see! Pipes and iron safes and hocus-pocus! But I do not care!" He turned to Doloria and, taking one of her hands, said: "You, mon ami, shall find your heart's best desire. It is I who say it!—I, who have the authority!" The way he clung to that authority ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... proclaimed that he would pass that night in Wizard's Glen, where, by invocations, he would learn the divine will. At sunset he stalked forth, but he had not gone far ere the Mohawk joined him, and the twain proceeded to Wahconah Falls. There was no time for magical hocus-pocus that night, for both of them toiled sorely in deepening a portion of the stream bed, so that the current ran more swiftly and freely on that side, and in the morning Tashmu announced in what way the Great Spirit would show his choice. Assembling the tribe ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... what sort o' hocus-pocus might that be, I want to know—did somebody blow that light out just when I was hopin' big things might come from it, or was it only a bunch o' cabbage palms that come in between me ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... don't want things explained, any more'n Abe here! You prefer hocus-pocus. And nothin' will teach you. Take Rhody! Sees Michaelis flunk his job miserable. Sees Mary go down like a woman shot, hands and legs paralyzed again,—Doctor says, for good, this time. And what does the girl do about it? Spends the night out yonder laborin' ...
— The Faith Healer - A Play in Three Acts • William Vaughn Moody
... I thy satire's darts To gie the rascals their deserts, [give] I'd rip their rotten, hollow hearts, An' tell aloud Their jugglin', hocus-pocus arts To ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... of detachable cuffs, emerges from the wings and crosses the stage, his shoes squeaking hideously at each step. Arriving at the piano, he opens it with solemn slowness. The job seems so absurdly trivial, even to so mean an understanding, that he can't refrain from glorifying it with a bit of hocus-pocus. This takes the form of a careful adjustment of a mysterious something within the instrument. He reaches in, pauses a moment as if in doubt, reaches in again, and then permits a faint smile of conscious sapience and efficiency to illuminate his face. All ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... to me robur et aes triplex. I disposed of the snake, put out the gas; and down we three sat, amid profound darkness, like three male witches in "Macbeth," having previously locked the door to prevent any one disturbing our hocus-pocus. ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... much better; the Mexicans, for instance, with whose language they were familiar, would have been more serviceable; again, why should they take anyone into the tribe? Later, all this was explained. It seems that the medicine man is averse to initiating any of his own people into the secrets and hocus-pocus of his art, as the apprentice, with the knowledge thus gained, might in time become a formidable rival. By adopting a captive this risk is obviated, as under no circumstances could he aspire ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... words on the roll, the roll that wasn't, as though they were engraved on his eye-retinas: As a beginning, and to prove this isn't just a bit of hocus-pocus, one of the people at your Center is due to leave ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... seriously. Behind the hocus-pocus of such fine-sounding words, the bombast, the theatrical clash and clang of the swords and pasteboard helmets, there was always the incurable futility of a Sardou, the intrepid vaudevillist, playing Punch and Judy with history. When ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... principle, either of property or population, must have been fatal to the Whigs; they, therefore, very dexterously adopted a small minority of the nation, consisting of the sectarians, and inaugurating them as the people with a vast and bewildering train of hocus-pocus ceremonies, invested the Dissenters with political power. By this coup-d'etat they managed the House of Commons, and having at length obtained a position, they have from that moment laid siege to the House of Lords, with the intention of reducing that ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... see. And it is NOT hocus-pocus. To do it properly, we should kill something to please him; but perhaps he will answer Caesar without that if we ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... in Illinois called St. Genevieve. By some hocus-pocus known to accomplished politicians, this city has had no Mayor since the 4th of June, 1867. In the absence of definite information upon the subject, we take it for granted that St. Genevieve must be a most delightful place to live in, and specially so, because, as we are further informed, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... minutes than a million of maggots could have done in three weeks. After cheese comes nothing; then all we desired was a clear stage and no favour; accordingly everything was whipped away in a trice by so cleanly a conveyance, that no juggler by virtue of Hocus Pocus could have conjured away balls with more dexterity. All our empty plates and dishes were in an instant changed into full quarts of purple nectar and unsullied glasses. Then a bumper to the Queen led the van of our good wishes, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... the mayor. 'And now, Doc Waugh-hoo,' he goes on, 'why don't you demonstrate? Can't you pull the cork out of your magnetism with your teeth and hocus-pocus them handcuffs off?' ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... be so much harm done, if it can be so easily repaired by a few magical words; as I Robert take thee, Clarissa; and I Clarissa take thee, Robert, with the rest of the for-better and for-worse legerdemain, which will hocus pocus all the wrongs, the crying wrongs, that I have done to Miss Harlowe, into acts of kindness and benevolence to ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... ring,' said Rufus. His voice was shaky, and if there had been light enough to see it, his face was gray with terror of his own hocus-pocus. The cat's head had dropped out of the line of sunlight, and she had coiled herself up on the dresser among a disorderly litter of crockery ware. Dick, relieved from the fascination of her too-visible presence, obeyed the summons, and Rufus, seating himself upon a broken stool, ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... Sarabroth, Who begat Faribroth, Who begat Hurtali, that was a brave eater of pottage, and reigned in the time of the flood; Who begat Nembroth, Who begat Atlas, that with his shoulders kept the sky from falling; Who begat Goliah, Who begat Erix, that invented the hocus pocus plays of legerdemain; Who begat Titius, Who begat Eryon, Who begat Polyphemus, Who begat Cacus, Who begat Etion, the first man that ever had the pox, for not drinking fresh in summer, as Bartachin witnesseth; Who begat Enceladus, Who begat ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... that was a session devoted merely to ways and means. But she's not saying hocus-pocus and stirring caldrons on his account, you may be certain. She admitted that he was an ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... it that LEDEBOUR said of it? Did he not describe it as "a political hocus-pocus"? Such men ought to be at once taken out and shot. But we Prussians have always been too gentle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... her to the laughing; and I wouldna wonder but what that was the next best. But see to the pair of them! If I didna feel just sure of the lassie, and that she was awful pleased and chief with Alan, I would think there was some kind of hocus-pocus about yon." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this is hocus-pocus to me," said Aunt Judy, suspending her knitting-work, and scratching her forehead with one of the needles, "I don't understand a bit more of the business than I did ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... last drop, with all the horrors and delights that may lie hidden at the bottom of it. Just as it is our evident duty every day to commit every good deed and every rascality lying within our capacity.... No, I won't let you rob me of my death moments by any kind of hocus-pocus. It would imply a small-minded attitude, worthy neither of yourself nor of me.—Well, Felix, the twenty-sixth of November then! That's still seven weeks off. In regard to any formalities that may be required, you need ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... whilst Mr. Tupman, Mr. Snodgrass and Sam repaired to the "Peacock." They all first dined together at the "Town Arms" and arranged to reassemble there in the morning. It was here the barmaid was reported to have been bribed to "hocus the brandy and water of fourteen unpolled electors as was a stopping in the house," and where most of the exciting scenes of the election either took place, or had ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... toiled for years, or even a lifetime, without having been able to draw a single dollar, or but few dollars in actual cash,' in 'debt until the day they died;' refuse to fix the wages in advance, but pay them upon some hocus-pocus sliding-scale, varying with the selling price in New York, which the railway slides to suit itself; and most extraordinary of all, refuse to let the miners know the prices on which their living slides, a 'fraud,'" says the report of Congress, "on ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... stranger, and they fear him with a vague, nameless fear. Forty years he wears the mysterious thing, dies and is buried with it, and in all that time they never have a glimpse of his face. Though there is a deal of nonsense in the story, and a hocus-pocus instead of a mystery, we must remember that veil as a striking symbol of the loneliness of life, of the gulf that separates a human soul ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... adopted into our flabby culture. Compare Hauptmann and Brieux, the one a great artist, the other no more than a raucous journalist. Brieux's elaborate proofs that two and two are four have been hailed as epoch-making; one of his worst plays, indeed, has been presented with all the solemn hocus-pocus of a religious rite. But Hauptmann remains almost unknown; even the Nobel Prize did not give him a vogue. Run the roll: Maeterlinck and his languishing supernaturalism, Tagore and his Asiatic wind music, Selma Lagerloef ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... no retainers but two, whose common names were Hocus and Pocus, but as he hated the use of common names and as no one had heard of Hocus' lineage (nor did he himself know it) he called him, Hocus, "Freedom" as being a high-sounding and moral name for a footman and Pocus (whose name was of an ordinary decent kind) ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... off a steak at the 'One Tun' with Sam Snaffle the jockey, Captain O'Rourke, and two or three other notorious turf robbers, than with the choicest company in London. He likes to announce at 'Rummer's' that he is going to run down and spend his Saturday and Sunday in a friendly way with Hocus, the leg, at his little box near Epsom; where, if report speak true, many 'rummish plants' ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... scrambling up again, and scratching his broken head,) to be sure I have heard of sleight-of-hand, hocus-pocus and sich like; but by gum this here be a new manouvre called sleight of legs; however as no boanes be broken between us, I'll endeavour to make use on 'em once more in following the game in view: so ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... may be in the toad. It might be a real toad (though actuated and guided by a daemon) which was cut in pieces, and that also which was whipt about, and at last snatcht out of sight (as if it had vanished) by these aerial hocus-pocus's. And if some juglers have tricks to take hot coals into their mouth without hurt, certainly it is not surprising that some small attempt did not suffice to burn that toad. That such a toad, sent by ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... believe any nonsense of that sort, do you? There's nothing in the least mystical in the kind of sympathy that exists between Cyril and myself. It's all purely physical. We're very like one another. But that's all. There's none of the Corsican Brothers sort of hocus-pocus about us in any way. The whole thing is a simple caste of ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... Author Knows better how to juggle than to write: Alas! a Poet's good for nothing now, Unless he have the knack of conjuring too; For 'tis beyond all natural Sense to guess How their strange Miracles are brought to pass. Your Presto Jack be gone, and come again, With all the Hocus Art of Legerdemain; Your dancing Tester, Nut-meg, and your Cups, Out-does your Heroes and your amorous Fops. And if this chance to please you, by that rule, He that writes Wit is ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... he suppose all this hocus-pocus is going to do us?" muttered Harry irritably, "as if an old fire could tell us anything we didn't know already. It's all ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... only done to smoke us; Don't be so serious, my man! She must, as Doctor, play her hocus-pocus To make the dose work better, that's the plan. [He constrains FAUST ...
— Faust • Goethe
... the conjurors hypnotise the spectators, and make them believe they see these things. This is practically the suggestion of a wise Mohammedan, who is quoted by Yule as saying, "Wallah! 'tis my opinion there has been neither going up nor coming down; 'tis all hocus-pocus," hocus-pocus being presumably the ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... appears to be no law against anybody who wishes to pose as a physician, and to sell his inexperience and his quack nostrums. Vendors of every sort of cure-all abound, as well as creatures who work on the superstitions and pretend to cure by charms and hocus-pocus. In the market there is such a swarm of these charlatans of healing that they bring the whole medical profession into contempt. Certain people go so far as to distrust the efficacy of any part of the lore of Asclepius. Says one ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... accounts for it, with little inadequate concessions, little false measures and preposterous evasions and childish hopes. Her great terror is now that Iffield, who already has suspicions, who has found out her pince-nez but whom she has beguiled with some unblushing hocus-pocus, may discover the dreadful facts; and the essence of what she wanted this morning was in that interest to square me, to get me to deny indignantly and authoritatively (for isn't she my 'favourite sitter'?) that she has anything whatever ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... two dollars a week, and some never go beyond a dollar. Many of them are mothers, and most of them have some one or more dependent upon them. Food, rent, clothes, and fuel, all have to come out of these small earnings By what hocus-pocus it is done, I must confess, puzzles ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... find rudimental organs and similarity of plan, because it has pleased the Creator to set before Himself a "divine exemplar or archetype," and to copy it in His works; and somewhat ill, those who hold this view imply, in some of them. That such verbal hocus-pocus should be received as science will one day be regarded as evidence of the low state of intelligence in the nineteenth century, just as we amuse ourselves with the phraseology about Nature's abhorrence of a vacuum, wherewith Torricelli's compatriots were satisfied ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... Hocus pocus, witches' charm! Move not as you fear my arm. Back or forward, do not try, Fixed you are, ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... by statesmen, as well as the Odes and the Book; but, even if the First August Emperor did not entertain the suspicion that the first were (as, indeed, they are according to our Western lights) all "hocus-pocus," he was himself very credulous and superstitious, and the learned word-juggling of the Changes was in any case harmless to him; so that really his rage was confined to the four or five books, known by heart throughout China, setting forth ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... believe in these childish mysteries," responded Miller, "and it is strange to me that men like Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir William Crookes should believe in slate-writing and levitation and all the rest of that hocus-pocus." ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... to allow him to take three steps. He recalled the expression on Eleanore's face during the performance of the symphony; his greedy eyes had rested on her all the while. He became enraged: "You don't imagine that progress can be made by such amateurish efforts?" he said with a roar. "It is all hocus-pocus. There is as a matter of fact no such thing as progress in art, any more than there is progress in the course of the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... are German missionaries in the country, doing good work in a funny, fussy, rigorous fashion of their own. They'd raise a dickens of a hocus-pocus back in Germany if they once suspected their government of playing that game. No. But Germany intends to stand off the other powers, while Turks tackle the Armenians; ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... said Kantwise, "only this, you know, if I hocus you, why you hocus me in return; so it isn't ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... gray bulls as hocus-pocus would be to describe a puzzling situation much too subjectively, since the Government has apparently no evidence that these are not genuine prophecy. The best the Government can do is to call them "extraordinary ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Baker is not a name to be ashamed of, and if you think that by any of your underhand hocus pocus you can trespass on my premises and prevent my caring for my own property you ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... forms, sweeping the attendants' room,[n] occupying the position of a menial, not of a free-born boy! {259} Then, when you became a man, you used to read out the books[n] to your mother at her initiations, and help her in the rest of the hocus-pocus, by night dressing the initiated[n] in fawnskins, drenching them from the bowl, purifying them and wiping them down with the clay and the bran, and (when they were purified) bidding them stand up and say, 'The ill is done, ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... laugh to raise! Pray don't be so fastidious! She But as a leech, her hocus-pocus plays, That well with you her potion may agree. (He compels FAUST ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... Who was this spick foreigner who ran hooting after her? It was not like Davidge to be either curious or suspicious. But love was beginning its usual hocus-pocus with character and turning a tired business ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... let a lot of the men go, they might get all chawed up, and it wouldn't help the boy any, so he thinks we kin get him out of their hands by some hocus pocus or other." ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... young Barnacle had 'got up' the Department in a private secretaryship, that he might be ready for any little bit of fat that came to hand; and he fully understood the Department to be a politico-diplomatic hocus pocus piece of machinery for the assistance of the nobs in keeping off the snobs. This dashing young Barnacle, in a word, was likely to become a statesman, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... know. I can't determine Clarke's share in the hocus-pocus. It all takes place in ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland |
