"Mystery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tenderly impressed by poor Giustiniani when he arrived at night, travel-stained and drenched with rain, in the first fit of a fever; 'but woman,' said the sagacious narrator, as he received a tumbler of grog from the steward, 'is a mystery'—an opinion I am not ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... at that time took their annual flight southward from Michigan, Indiana and other states in that region, and were never seen again. What became of this prodigious cloud of birds still remains a mystery. Knapendyke now advanced the theory that in skirting the Gulf of Mexico on their way to the winter roosts in Central America they were caught by a hurricane and blown out to sea. By various stages the bewildered survivors of the gale made their way down ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... wilt repose thy trust in the Lord Christ, I will strive to show thee two pictures of thy very self—one, to wit, of the natural Adam in Desiderius, and one of the man redeemed by the blood shed for thee. So in some wise shalt thou come to some dim light of this mystery of grace divine. Will that ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... rainbow-tinted sea, A splendor and a mystery, Floods o'er the fields of faded gray: The roads are full of folks in glee, For lo,—to-day is ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... when Aunt Maria appeared at the early breakfast with a pompadour. Her thin frizzes were carefully puffed over a mystery which she had purchased the ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... were of a lightning playing through the web of life, flashing, and then gone—illuminating or destroying. Her mind was full of love stories. At twenty she had been the confidante of many, both from her married and her unmarried friends. It was all, so far, a great mystery to her. But there was in her a thrilled expectation. Not of a love, tranquil and serene, such as shone on her parents' lives, but of something overwhelming and tempestuous; into which she might fling her life as one flings a flower into the current ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... nail after all; it's too big, too round, for that. I might get up, but if I got up and looked at it, ten to one I shouldn't be able to say for certain; because once a thing's done, no one ever knows how it happened. Oh! dear me, the mystery of life; The inaccuracy of thought! The ignorance of humanity! To show how very little control of our possessions we have—what an accidental affair this living is after all our civilization—let me just count over a few of the things lost in ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... too, is scanty, often consisting of only bread and water. The Government strive to keep their cruel condition a secret from their relatives, who, notwithstanding, are able at times to penetrate the mystery that surrounds them, but only to have their feelings lacerated by the thought of the dreadful sufferings undergone by those who are the objects of their tenderest affection. And what agony can be more dreadful than to know that a father, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... great surprise to me, and how they got there wuz a mystery. But I spoze the nation collected 'em together and sot 'em up there because it sets such a store by me. It is dretful fond of me, the nation is, and well it may be. I have stood up for it time and agin, and then I've done a sight for ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... gold-getting. They make no secret of it; they are of a worldly spirit. Now we want men who are set on soul-saving, who are not ashamed to let everybody know it —men of a Christ-like spirit. There need be no mistake or mystery about it. "By their fruits ye shall know them." Paul and every other man of like spirit has had his fruits, and will have to the end of time. It is "Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... surprised at this, as nothing could be more friendly than our intentions towards the newly emancipated Republic. The mystery was, however, soon cleared up. When at Guayaquil, we met with two officers, General Wavell and Colonel O'Reilly, to whom the Chilian Government had given passports to quit the country, not estimating the value of their services as tantamount ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... in certain quarters that the affliction was not produced by natural causes. In fact, it was a mystery, and one that had never been solved. The first oculists of Europe had peered into and tested his eyes, but all to no purpose. The sight had ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... was thought he would sober up. But I might just as well have gone at first, for at the end of the twenty-four hours the incorrigible old rascal was still dead drunk. How he had managed to get the grog to keep up his spree was a mystery which we could not solve, though we had had him closely watched, so I cut the matter short by packing him into my ambulance and carrying him off to ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... one alone, Are those sounds and visions known? Wherefore hath that spell of power Dark and dread, On her soul, a baleful dower, Thus been shed? Oh! in those deep-seeing eyes, No strange gift of mystery lies! She is lone where once she moved Fair, and happy, and beloved! Sunny smiles were glancing round her, Tendrils of kind hearts had bound her; Now those silver cords are broken, Those bright looks have left no token, Not one trace on all the earth, Save her memory of her mirth. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... unravel this mystery, Madeleine?" Bertha went on. "It depends upon you and you only, to bind me here. When you are ready to stand before the altar with the one you have so long loved, so shall I be! ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... "I mean to say that which all men are bringing to the birth of their bodies and their souls. There is a certain age at which human nature is desirous of procreation; and this procreation must be in beauty and not in deformity; and this is the mystery of man and woman, which is a divine thing, for conception and generation are a principle of immortality in the mortal creature. And in the inharmonical they can never be. But the deformed is always inharmonical with the divine, and the beautiful harmonious. Beauty, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... long-expected battle between the fleets of the great nations, developed during the second six months of the war into a strange series of adventures. The fleets of the British and the Germans stood like huge phantoms—the first enshrouded in mystery somewhere in the Irish and North Seas; the second held in leash behind the Kiel Canal, awaiting the opportune moment to make ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... and polite repartee by his encounter with Transatlantic journalists. In fact everybody is pleased to see him back except perhaps certain curious members, who find him even more chary of information than his deputy, Lord Robert Cecil. The mystery of Lord Northcliffe's visit to the States has been cleared up. Certain journals, believed to enjoy his confidence, had described him as "Mr. Balfour's successor." Certain other journals, whose confidence he does not enjoy, had declined ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... a mystery, for there was no public-house within a mile, and yet the can of beer arrived in about five minutes. It is much to be feared that Slam set the excise law at defiance when he felt perfectly safe from ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... she have got that name? Well, I make no doubt, Ursula, that you are quite as good as she, and she of her namesake of ancient Rome; but there is a mystery in this same virtue, Ursula, which I cannot fathom! how a thief and a liar should be able, or indeed willing, to preserve her virtue is what I don't understand. You confess that you are very fond of gold. Now, how is it that you don't barter your virtue for ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... ancient, or classical, and the romantic. But as there are exclusive admirers of the ancients, who never cease asserting that all deviation from them is merely the whim of a new school of critics, who, expressing themselves in language full of mystery, cautiously avoid conveying their sentiments in a tangible shape, I shall endeavour to explain the origin and spirit of the romantic, and then leave the world to judge if the use of the word, and of the idea which it is intended ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... had come back from the field particularly early, on my account, and had waited for me in vain for nearly an hour. I assured them that I had been there on the minute and had been in the office, and that there was no one there. Mystery! By way of clinching it I said that the office was dark as the tomb. Then a ray of light struck the German, and he said: "Oh, I see, you came at half past six, Belgian time! Of course von der Lancken expected you at half past six, German time!!!" When ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... shall maintain the art and mystery of puffing in all its pristine glory, when the lottery-professors shall have abandoned its cultivation? They were the first, as they will assuredly be the last, who fully developed the resources of that ingenious art,—who cajoled and decoyed the most suspicious and wary reader ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was mystery about them both, in spite of the fact that most of their movements were so amply accounted for. As a rule, they played golf together in the morning, reposed in the afternoon, as could easily be verified by anyone standing on a still day in the road between their houses and listening ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... all her attendants, and to commit her to the custody of Lord John Pelham in the castle of Pevensey.[126] She was charged with having entertained malicious and treasonable designs against the life of the King, her son-in-law. The Chronicle of London, (1419,) throwing[127] an air of mystery and superstition over the whole affair, asserts that Queen Joanna excited her confessor, one friar Randolf,[128] a master in (p. 127) divinity, to destroy the King; "but, as God would, his falseness was at last espied:" "wherefore," ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... in "the region of the Genii," the land of mystery and disembodied spirits; and the whole country is intersected and bounded on every side with the battlemental ranges of black, gloomy, and fantastically-shaped mountains, distinguishing the country of the Ghat ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... times, as I was pondering with the paper before me, a pen in my ear, my elbow on the desk, and my cheek in my hand, thinking of what I should say, there came in unexpectedly a certain lively, clever friend of mine, who, seeing me so deep in thought, asked the reason; to which I, making no mystery of it, answered that I was thinking of the Preface I had to make for the story of "Don Quixote," which so troubled me that I had a mind not to make any at all, nor even publish the achievements of so noble ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... rascals;" and the wooden leg itself would twitch and rap on the floor in his impatient indignation. One of Hetty's earliest recollections was of being led about the farm by this warm-hearted, irascible, old grandfather, whose wooden leg was a perpetual and unfathomable mystery to her. Where the flesh leg left off and the wooden leg began, and if, when the wooden leg stumped so loud and hard on the floor, it did not hurt the flesh leg at the other end, puzzled little Hetty's head for many a long hour. Her ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... absolute impossibility of forecasting their attacks. Without warning, and unseen until the moment they dealt the death stroke, they emerged from their forest fastnesses, the horror they caused being heightened no less by the mystery that shrouded them than by the dreadful nature of their ravages. Wrapped in the mantle of the unknown, appalling by their craft, their ferocity, their fiendish cruelty, they seemed to the white settlers devils and not ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... being now completely out of breath, laid down his scroll (which he appeared to have finished), puffed at his pipe, and took some rum-and-water. I embraced the opportunity of asking how many divisions the art and mystery of bill-sticking comprised? He replied, three - auctioneers' bill-sticking, theatrical ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... "There's a diabolical mystery to your San Francisco!" Enrico Caruso once exclaimed. "Why isn't everyone fat in this city of ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... ejaculated with energy; but though he gave no heed or help to his fair associate, she thought not the worse of him, so heroic can women be toward any creature that will permit himself to be clothed by a mystery. At times the party hung still, fancying the voice aloft, and then, after listening to the unrelieved stillness, they laughed, and trod the stiff dry ferns and soft mosses once more. At last they came to a decided halt, when ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... old when he wrote "There Are Crimes and Crimes." In the same year, 1899, he produced three of his finest historical dramas: "The Saga of the Folkungs," "Gustavus Vasa," and "Eric XIV." Just before, he had finished "Advent," which he described as "A Mystery," and which was published together with "There Are Crimes and Crimes" under the common title of "In a Higher Court." Back of these dramas lay his strange confessional works, "Inferno" and "Legends," and the first ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... theatre. He appears as little as possible in the streets, but when recognized he is stared at as a wonder. He lives hospitably but plainly, and in a palace with few ornaments or luxuries. He enshrouds himself in mystery, but not in gloom. Few dare approach him, for his manners are brusque and rough, and he is feared more even than he is honored. His aspect is stern and haughty, except when he occasionally unbends. In his family he is simple, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... remedy this, Arthur talked from time to time of making a floor of cement, which would dry to the hardness of stone, and through which the moisture from the ground could not penetrate. When asked where lime was to be obtained with which to make his cement he assumed an air of mystery, and merely said that there would be no difficulty on that score. One day, after we had got a large supply of mats completed, and ready for use, he again recurred to the subject of improving our floor, and explained that he ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... the dwellings of the vanished race of cliff-dwellers was a mystery. Who so fit to solve it as a band of adventurous Boy Scouts? The solving of the secret and the routing of a bold band of cattle thieves involved Rob Blake and his chums, including "Tubby" Hopkins, in ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... I can assure you. Such a wonderful combination of poles, ropes, posts, and ladders! You might wonder, at first, what they all meant. But soon every child came along in his turn, without effort, and with such perfect enjoyment, that it explained the mystery. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... returned the other mournfully, stirring up the contents of the desk as though he were making a Christmas pudding. "I've got nothing, except—well, there's this book of Poe's, 'Tales of Adventure, Mystery, and Imagination,' and my clasp-knife; and perhaps some one would buy these fret-saw patterns or ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... repose. A spring is always old and always new. It is ever in movement, yet constant, seldom greater and seldom less, in the case of most natural upspringing waters, syphoned from the deep cisterns of earth. Absolutely material, with no mystery in its origin, it impresses the fancy as a thing unaccountable, like the source of life embodied, something self-engendered. It has pulses, throbbing like the ebb and flow of blood. Its dancing bubbles, rising and bursting, image emotion. It is the only water always ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... that blooms on baby's limbs—does anybody know where it was hidden so long? Yes, when the mother was a young girl it lay pervading her heart in tender and silent mystery of love—the sweet, soft freshness that ...
— The Crescent Moon • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... however, understand a word that was spoken. The tones were first high, then low, never guttural, and possessed a certain sibilant quality. Whether the words spoken were English or not, was likewise a mystery. ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... That was seven or eight years ago, in the Strand. He was then (as usual) out of an engagement, and borrowed half-a-crown. It seemed a privilege to lend anything to him. He was always magnetic. And why his magnetism had never made him successful on the London stage was always a mystery to me. He was an excellent actor, and a man of sober habit. But, like many others of his kind, Hubert le Ros (I do not, of course, give the actual name by which he was known) drifted seedily away into the provinces; and I, like every one ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... our fortune to come into Greece by night, with a splendid moon shining upon the summer sea. The varied outlines of Sunium, on the one side, and AEgina on the other, were very clear, but in the deep shadows there was mystery enough to feed the burning impatience of seeing all in the light of common day; and tho we had passed AEgina, and had come over against the rocky Salamis, as yet there was no sign of Peiraeus. Then came the light on Psyttalea, and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... sent by Mr. E. B. de Lacy, contains a most extraordinary and unsatisfactory element of mystery. He says: "When I was a boy I lived in the suburbs, and used to come in every morning to school in the city. My way lay through a certain street in which stood a very dismal semi-detached house, which, I might say, was closed up regularly about every six months. I would see new tenants coming into ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... narrow escape at Brandy Station, Stuart showed all his old fire and courage, covering the flanks and spreading out a swarm of horsemen who kept off the Northern scouts. Thus Lee was still able to veil his movements in mystery, and the anxious Hooker finally sent forward a great force to find and engage Stuart's cavalry. Stuart, now acting as a rear guard, was overtaken near the famous old battlefield of Manassas. For a long time he fought greatly superior numbers and held them fast until nightfall, ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... other"; is not this the general case and the mystery, young ladies and gentlemen? Goethe's doctrine of "elective affinities" discovered by ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... He brushed his brown curls back from his forehead, and taking up a lute, let his fingers stray across the cords. His heavy eyelids drooped, and a strange languor came over him. Never before had he felt so keenly, or with such exquisite joy, the magic and the mystery of beautiful things. ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... rather impatiently, for the mystery in the affair irritated him. "Of course, you didn't notice. YOU wouldn't notice ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... men to think, is so far an advantage to society. The ideas will not be lost. When King James I talked and wrote upon the doctrine of the divine right of kings, he little thought it would result in the beheading of his son Charles, and the expulsion of his son James from the throne. Shrouded in mystery, it was approached with reverence, and seldom critically examined, until he lifted the veil and invited others to behold its beauty. What had been a mystery was a mystery no longer. He forgot what others remembered—that it might have different aspects for the sovereign ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... severity of the education they had received. Everything connected with love was made a mystery of, and treated with a kind of superstitious awe. Thus Armelline had only let me kiss her hands after a long contest, and neither she nor Emilie would allow me to see whether the stockings I had given them fitted well or not. The severe prohibition that was laid on ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... these mournful customs of the country, nevertheless, Israel's instinct whispered him that Squire Woodcock lived no more on this earth. At once the whole three days' mystery was made clear. But what was now to be done? His friend must have died very suddenly; most probably struck down in a fit, from which he never more rose. With him had perished all knowledge of the fact that a stranger was immured ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... you know my cut, Paul," declared the other. "You reckon I never can stand a mystery. It gets on my nerves, keeps me awake nights, and plays hob with my think-box all the time. Now, there was those boxes—but I guess I'll try and forget all about that matter now, because we've got a sure enough puzzle to solve right on our hands. Who are these four men; what are they hiding ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... my first Care is to make him to sound forth a Voice, without which, almost all labour is lost, but that one point, whereby Deaf Persons do discern a Voice from a Mute Breath, is a great Mystery of Art; and if I may have leave to say so, it is the Hearing of Deaf Persons, or at least equivolent thereunto, viz. that trembling Motion and Titillation, which they perceive in their own Throat, whilst they of their own accord do give forth a Voice; ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman
... pigments on to cloth in a way of his own, nothing more, and the nation to which he had always denied artistic perceptions, the nation which he had always fiercely accused of sentimentality, was thus solemnizing his committal to the earth! Divine mystery of art! The large magnificence of England smote him! He had not suspected his own greatness, ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... so." We had a very pleasant game of cards, though I lost four shillings and Carrie lost one, and Gowing said he had lost about sixpence: how he could have lost, considering that Carrie and I were the only other players, remains a mystery. ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... a brightly written story of a girl of twelve, who, when the mystery of her birth is solved, like Cinderella, passes from drudgery to better circumstances. There is nothing strained or unnatural at any point. All descriptions or portrayals of character are life-like, and the book has an indescribable appealing quality ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... dungeon! there began The lore of Mystery, the mask of man; There Fraud with Science leagued, in early times, Plann'd a resplendent course of holy crimes, Stalk'd o'er the nations with gigantic pace, With sacred symbols charm'd the cheated race, ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... harmonious response is the path along which all human activities should proceed. Finally. 'Let the states of equilibrium and harmony exist in perfection, and a happy order will prevail throughout heaven and earth, and all things will be nourished and flourish.' Here we pass into the sphere of mystery and mysticism. The language, according to Chu Hsi, 'describes the meritorious achievements and transforming influence of sage and spiritual men in their highest extent.' From the path of duty, where we tread on solid ground, the writer suddenly ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... horrible to have to wash up the breakfast dishes, and to polish the silver. And the rooms never needed to be dusted so often before, that she was sure! and wherever the dusters went to after she was done with them was a daily mystery. Dexie offered to solve this trying enigma, but Gussie's wrath waxed hot when she read the words which Dexie printed in large letters on a piece of wrapping-paper and stuck on the wall, ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... within that delicate AURA of charm which radiates from the bursting bud of the finest womanhood. Ralph Peden had kept his affections ascetically virgin. His nature's finest juices had gone to feed the brain, yet all the time his heart had waited expectant of the revealing of a mystery. Winsome Charteris had come so suddenly into his life that the universe seemed newborn in a day. He sprang at once from the thought of woman as only an unexplained part of the creation, to the conception of her (meaning thereby Winsome Charteris) as an ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... awfulness but not final doom. The affirmation of a man's dread responsibility for his fate implies, too, the liberty to change his ways. In the dim mystery of the heart freedom is clear. Similarly, and even more plainly, is this expressed in the earlier call to break up the fallow-ground. This implies that beneath those surfaces of the national life, whether of callous indifference ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... might have given his moral even a keener point, he did not fail to despatch an attendant to inquire into the mystery and stop those sounds so dismally appropriate to such a marriage. A brief space elapsed, during which the silence was broken only by whispers and a few suppressed titterings among the wedding-party and the spectators, who after the first shock were disposed to draw an ill-natured merriment ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... man whom the Reverend Mr. Wilson and the Governor had introduced so openly to the public notice, bidding him speak, in the hearing of all men, to that mystery of a woman's soul, so sacred even in its pollution. The trying nature of his position drove the blood from his cheek, and ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... difference with his own personal life hereafter, how he met Death. He was not satisfied with just meeting Death bravely, with the ardor of patriotism in his breast, as he heard so many about him talk in these days. That was well so far as it went, but it did not solve the mystery of the future life nor make him sure how he would stand in that other world to which Death stood ready to escort him presently. Death might be victor over his body, but he wanted to be sure that Death ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... unworthiness, through adoration and gazing on its treasures, to God's unmotived love as His impulse, and men's knowledge of that love as His aim, and pauses at last, rapt and hushed, before the solitary loftiness of the incomparable God, and the mystery of the love, which has intertwined the personal blessings which it celebrates, with its great designs for the welfare of the people, whose unique position corresponds to the unapproachable ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... other than the great hunting dog, brought him back a keen zest of appreciation and memories of early days among the circus animals, and his first adventures in India with Cadman. Moreover, there was a fresh mystery that had to do with Carlin after Skag's first supper fire afield. He had always resented the fact that it was straight out-and-out pain for him to be away from the place she had made in Hurda. Suffering of ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... was, as I have said, a great philosopher, and the heart and mystery of his philosophy was, to look upon the world as a gigantic practical joke; as something too absurd to be considered seriously, by any rational man. His system of belief had been, in the beginning, ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... you.' James, iv. 7. I was happy to produce so judicious and elegant a supporter[896] of a doctrine, which, I know not why, should, in this world of imperfect knowledge, and, therefore, of wonder and mystery in a thousand instances, be contested by some with an unthinking assurance ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... America were a few Spaniards at St. Augustine, and a few Englishmen at Jamestown. The first attempt of the English, under the inspiration of the great Raleigh, to establish a colony in the fine country to the north of Spanish Florida, then known as Virginia, is only remembered for the mystery which must always surround the fate of Virginia Dare and the little band of colonists who were left on the island of Roanoke. Adventurous Englishmen, Gosnold, Pring, and Weymouth, had even explored the coast of the present United States as far as the Kennebec before the voyages ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... sagacious man, D'Argenson saw the madness of popular anger devoid of all foundation, and which could not hinder M. d'Orleans from being a very considerable person in France, during a minority that—the age of the King showed to be pretty near. He took care, therefore, to avail himself of the mystery which surrounded his office, to ingratiate himself more and more with M. d'Orleans, whom he had always carefully though secretly served; and his conduct, as will be seen in due time, procured ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... mother, she had addressed her, and soon gleaned her whole history; that then she had adopted her to her childless heart as her own, and hurried her away with her, not having time to allow her to communicate the change to any of her friends; hence the long and hitherto unexplained mystery and silence which had so distressed and harassed Guly. They had returned but a few evenings before, and to-day, Blanche, happening to catch sight of her old acquaintance the dwarf, in the street, had seized that ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... we are on the road that will guide us to the man you are in search of. He is at this moment, I venture to say, at the hacienda San Carlos—notwithstanding that the droll humbug appeared to make such a mystery of his whereabouts." ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... whence came that luck of Senor Pelaez's!" another responded, in a tone which indicated that the speaker did know. "It's also assured that there'll be a fiesta and on a grand scale," was added with mystery. ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... he is, he being the competent witness of himself, who it known only by himself, (n. 18, p. 777.) In the second book he explains the Trinity, which we profess in the form of baptism, and says, that faith alone in believing, and sincerity and devotion in adoring, this mystery ought to suffice without disputing or prying, and laments, that by the blasphemies of the Sabellians and Arians, who perverted the true sense of the scriptures, he was compelled to dispute of things ineffable and incomprehensible which only necessity ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... and I will gladly answer. I mystify you; I can see that. Well, whenever you say, I promise to do away with the mystery." ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... Saoud the Avenger on a stricken field at Abu Kem, and Grim and Jeremy played their hands so cleverly that the Avenger was made, unwitting guardian of Jeremy's secret gold-mine, and Feisul's open and sworn supporter in the bargain, the heart of Grim's purpose continued to be a mystery even to me; and I have been as intimate with him as ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... at four o'clock, Sherlock Holmes, the famous English detective, for whom such a thing as mystery does not exist; Sherlock Holmes, the most remarkable solver of enigmas the world has ever known, that marvelous man who would seem to be the creation of a romantic novelist—Sherlock Holmes will ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... this tandem. It is the theory of the man in front that the man behind does nothing; it is equally the theory of the man behind that he alone is the motive power, the man in front merely doing the puffing. The mystery will never be solved. It is annoying when Prudence is whispering to you on the one side not to overdo your strength and bring on heart disease; while Justice into the other ear is remarking, "Why should you do it all? This isn't a cab. He's not your passenger:" ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... was compelled to confess: "Now, this spiral soaring in steady breezes of 5 to 10 miles per hour which are apparently horizontal, and through which the bird maintains an average speed of about 20 miles an hour, is the mystery to be explained. It is not accounted for, quantitatively, by any of the theories which have been advanced, and it is the one performance which has led some observers to claim that it was done through 'aspiration.' i, e., that a bird acted upon by a current, ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... her; She gave out threats of leaving court, To make the desert her resort, And other brav'ries of this sort. Poor Jupiter in silence heard The uproar of his favourite bird. Before his throne the Beetle now appeared, And by a clear complaint the mystery cleared. The god pronounced the Eagle in the wrong. But still, their hatred was so old and strong, These enemies could not be reconciled; And, that the general peace might not be spoiled— The best that he could do—the god arranged That thence the Eagle's pairing ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... of the folk busied themselves with transporting thither vari-coloured stones. One day, as the Master-painter wrought at his work, there came in to him a poor man, who looked long upon him and observed his mystery; whereupon quoth the artist to him, "Knowest thou aught of painting?" Quoth the stranger, "Yes;" so he gave him tools and paints and said to him, "Limn for us a rare semblance." Accordingly the pauper stranger entered one of the bath-chambers and drew on its walls a double border, which he adorned ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... answer convinced her there was some mystery in the transaction; she began to apprehend she had been deceived, and hastily quitting the room, sent for Mrs Hill: but the moment the poor woman appeared, she was satisfied of the contrary, for, almost frantic with joy and gratitude, she immediately flung herself upon her knees, ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... thing, but Emma—isn't her name Emma?—always has to work like a slave when you go out. I don't know why there should be so much more to do: you don't help her to clean the kettles or the steps in the general way, do you? It's a mystery. Anyhow, Lydia has to see after my tea, and then I have buttered toast or muffins and rashers of bacon. Lydia's attentions are just a trifle greasy perhaps, now I come to think of it. But she toasts muffins very well, does that young woman, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... says: "Fully as interesting as his former books, and keeps one guessing to the end. The story begins with the murder of an old lady, with no apparent cause for the crime, and in unraveling the mystery the author is very clever in hiding the real criminal. A pleasing romance runs through the book, which adds ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... ignoring what to me seemed to be the most important feature of the case, the mystery of the silent bullet. "Didn't you see it after all ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... into the notion that he must have reading of the bible and have family worship; and there was a bad boy in the family—a pretty smart boy—and they were reading the bible by course, and in the fifteenth chapter of Corinthians is this passage: "Behold, brethren, I show you a mystery; we shall not all die, but we shall be changed." And this boy rubbed out the "c" in the "changed." So next night the old man got on his specs and got down his bible and said: "Behold, brethren, I show you a mystery; we shall not all die, but we shall be hanged." ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... should have made rapid progress till daybreak unmolested. All was quiet until about one o'clock in the morning, when suddenly, to our dismay, we found a steamer close alongside of us. How she had got there without our knowledge is a mystery to me even now. However, there she was, and we had hardly seen her before a stentorian voice howled out, 'Heave-to in that steamer, or I'll sink you.' It seemed as if all was over, but I determined to try a ruse before giving the little craft up. ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... but was incredulous when he saw the new member in his visual spirits; Mrs. Stokes guessed it, and was astonished; Lady Angleby wrote about it to Lady Latimer with a petition for advice, though why Lady Latimer should be regarded as specially qualified to advise in affairs of the heart was a mystery. She was not backward, however, in responding to the request: Let Mr. Cecil Burleigh hold himself in reserve until Miss Julia Gardiner's marriage was an accomplished fact, and then let him come forward again. Miss Fairfax had behaved naturally under the circumstances, and ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... frames, had always excited astonishment in Chavignolles. But this evening all eyes were directed towards the mahogany table. They would test it by and by, and it had the importance of things which contain a mystery. A dozen guests took their places around it with outstretched hands and their little fingers touching one another. Only the ticking of the clock could be heard. The faces indicated profound attention. At the end of ten minutes several complained of ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... quarrel; but it is not true that he died. On the contrary, I have recently ascertained, beyond a doubt, that he is still alive. Hitherto, I have failed in tracing him out, though I have got a clue to him; but he has enveloped himself in so much mystery that he is difficult of detection. Yet I trust to succeed ere long; and my great business will be to prevent his re-appearance, which would be fraught with danger to us both. I have a scheme on foot in reference to him which will answer more than one purpose. You will learn ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... himself, he proposed that they go together to fight the people of different towns. And they started out at once. Many people were killed by this strong pair, and why they themselves could never be captured was a great mystery. For it was not known that one was the spirit Kaboniyan, and the other the son of ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... near That mystery 'yond thought to plumb, Perchance sometimes in loathed fear They heard cold Danger ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... voices calling, he let the boat float in against the shores of a little island and crept along the boat to kneel, with his head in her lap and whisper, "It is not the love of a woman that grips me, Sue, but the love of life. I have had a peep into the great mystery. This —this is why ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... with an air of polite mystery, "as you'd better walk in. Mrs. Vincent 'asn't been enjyin' very good 'ealth this last ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... afflicted with the wolf-madness, and from the trials of those charged with the crime of lycanthropy in the later Middle Ages, that we can arrive at the truth respecting that form of madness which was invested by the superstitious with so much mystery. ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... waters of the western Atlantic. A very considerable amount of exceedingly valuable property has thus mysteriously disappeared, and strong representations have been made to Whitehall that vigorous measures should be taken to solve the mystery, with the result that I have been ordered to investigate. These orders arrived about a week ago, but up to the present I have been quite unable to obey them, for the very good and sufficient reason that every ship at my disposal is needed for work even more important than the hunting down ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... Frank acquiesced, though reluctantly. "Personally, I'd like to keep the whole thing up my sleeve until we've solved the mystery. But there's danger abroad to-night, and it wouldn't be fair to the boys who are going to take our places not to put them on ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... slow step when one watches. Paul, Sol, and Tom were asleep, but Henry was never wider awake in his life. He tried to put away the feeling of mystery and danger. He assured himself that Long Jim would soon come, delayed by some trail that he had sought to solve. Nothing could have happened to a man so brave and skillful. His nerves must be growing weak when he allowed himself to be ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... I stepped with a world of mystery ahead of me. I remember now it took no slight effort to leave, but though the call away was unmistakable, I knew the reply was the hardest task in my experience. But I set my teeth and trudged down the track ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... the wet from his eyes and led the We're Here to Wouverman's wharf, giving his orders in whispers, while she swung round moored tugs and night-watchmen hailed her from the ends of inky-black piers. Over and above the darkness and the mystery of the procession, Harvey could feel the land close round him once more, with all its thousands of people asleep, and the smell of earth after rain, and the familiar noise of a switching-engine coughing to herself in a freight-yard; and all those ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... loves to cherish some little secret bit of her nature, to which he, on account of his masculinity, will be eternally blind. Of course there are dull men who could not understand a tabbycat or a professional cricketer, let alone an expert autothaumaturgist—a self-mystery-maker—like a woman. But an intelligent and painstaking man should find no difficulty in appreciating what, after all, is merely a point of view; for what women see from that point of view they are as indiscreet in revealing as a two-year-old ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... under the bed, blinked with a sudden light, and his green eyes narrowed. The stranger struck a match and looked about. The Cat saw a face wild and blue with hunger and cold, and a man who looked poorer and older than his poor old master, who was an outcast among men for his poverty and lowly mystery of antecedents; and he heard a muttered, unintelligible voicing of distress from the harsh piteous mouth. There was in it both profanity and prayer, but the ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... that the terrible secret was there. The boys turned ghastly pale, and they felt that not for worlds could they approach to examine the dreadful mystery. ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... in our great dearth of occupation here, I think it might be all the better for you to take a little interest in your neighbours. So I've a great mind to indulge you with an important idea, suggestion, discovery. Harkee, friend!"—and he put on an air of sentimental mystery, not a bad copy of our old acquaintance, Mr. Charles—"what if the—the individual should not be an ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... pleasure to be of any possible use to the affianced wife of my favourite nephew, but there must be no secrets. I hate secrets, especially about women. If your father is a market-gardener it's all right, so long as you can explain exactly who you are and where you came from; but there must be no mystery. Talk it over with her, Guy. I'll look in here on ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... The mystery of woods by moonlight thrilled the little minister. His eyes rested on the shining roots, and he remembered what had been told him of the legend of Caddam, how once on a time it was a mighty wood, and a maiden most beautiful stood on its confines, panting and afraid, for a wicked ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... with her just as you were about to get her into your hands," supplied Philip, fighting to save time. "She didn't even know that you wanted her, Blake, so far as I can find out. It's all a mystery to her. I don't believe she's guessed the truth even now. How the devil did you do it? Playing the friend stunt, eh! And keeping yourself in the background while your Kogmollocks did ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... the deuce of it, she's away with her father, y' know. Bit of a mystery about him, I fancy—she made me promise to be patient a while, and ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... heard you say that before," said Miss Gertrude; "but it is all a mystery to me. You say all who will may have this blessedness; but the Bible says it is the man whom God chooses that ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... have died away. What am I changed to? What do I here, list'ning like to an abject, Or heartless wittol, that must hear no good, If he hear aught? "This shall to the ear of your husband." It was the Widow's word. I guess'd some mystery, And the solution with a vengeance comes. What can my wife have left untold to me, That must be told by proxy? I begin To call in doubt the course of her life past Under my very eyes. She hath not been good, Not virtuous, not discreet; she hath not outrun My wishes still with prompt and ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... mystery hangs on all these desert places! The fear which hath no name hath wrought a spell, Strength, courage, wrath, have been, and left no traces! They came—and fled; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... embarrassment at meeting them than, standing on the pavement outside the Stock Exchange, he would have experienced greeting his brother jobbers after a settling day that had transferred a fortune from their hands into his. Sennett, in particular, he liked and encouraged. Our whole social system, always a mystery to the philosopher, owes its existence to the fact that few men and women possess sufficient intelligence to be interesting to themselves. Blake liked company, but not much company liked Blake. Young ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... work to bring ten years of relentlessly increasing suffering, even impending death, to Ruth Rivers at twenty- seven, when she should have been in the glory of her young womanhood? "Her headaches have always been a mystery," her mother had said again and again, and this saying had been accepted by family and friends. Let us join hands with Understanding, step behind this mystery, and find ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... is," said Priscilla. "All I say is that until we've hunted him down we can't possibly be sure that he isn't. You never can be sure about anything until you've actually tried it. And, anyway, what else can he be? You can't deny that there's some mystery about him. Remember what Peter Walsh said about his looking as innocent as a child. That's the way spies always look. Besides, I don't think his clothes really belonged to him. I could see that at a glance. He had a pair of white flannel trousers with creases down the fronts of ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... his pocket and drew out a dirty piece of pasteboard. It read: "R. Canter, Second Hand Furniture, 20 Second Street." And still he stared at Stephen, as one who gazes upon a mystery. A few curious pedestrians had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of 200,000 to beat us. The coast is all supplied with telephone and telegraph wires, so that any time your boats attempt to land we can have a big force there in a couple of hours to drive them off. Part of Cervera's fleet is in Santiago. There is so much mystery about this! Whether the admiral is there or not, no one seems to know. The rest of the fleet, some fifteen vessels, is somewhere down in the Antilles, and Captain-General Blanco says they are going to attack your ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 24, June 16, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... dim light, of the sleeping figure—asleep to wake nevermore—and so white, so white, all save the dusky curls, sank deep into his young mind and memory. His great grey eyes were wistful with the beauty, and the sadness, and the mystery of it all. ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... night. Margaret had allowed the lamp to burn low. Thinking that her boy slept, she moved softly to his side and spread her shawl over his knees. He had forgotten her. The doctor's warnings scarcely troubled him. He was Babbie's lover. The mystery of her was only a veil hiding her from other men, and he was looking through it upon the face ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... G. serves to unravel what, to one uninitiated, seems quite a mystery: i.e. the frequency with which, in the advertisements of runaway slaves published in southern papers, they are described as having one or two front teeth out. Scores of such advertisements are in southern papers now on our table. We ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... and he put on a longer drawl as he said, "No, no; not a Ganymede—an oracle, my Judah. A few lessons from my teacher of rhetoric hard by the Forum—I will give you a letter to him when you become wise enough to accept a suggestion which I am reminded to make you—a little practise of the art of mystery, and Delphi will receive you as Apollo himself. At the sound of your solemn voice, the Pythia will come down to you with her crown. Seriously, O my friend, in what am I not the Messala I went away? I once heard the greatest logician in the world. His subject was Disputation. One saying I remember—'Understand ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... open-minded young man" (Now what does she mean by that? thought Bennington), "will be asking all about myself. I am going to tell you nothing. I am going to be a mystery." ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... no longer regarded with superstitious awe as in old times, mystery still clings to them. Astronomers can tell what path a comet is travelling upon, and say whence it has come and whither it will go, can even in many cases predict the periodic returns of a comet, can analyse the substance of these strange wanderers, and have recently discovered a singular ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... triumph with which he cancelled one expression to substitute another. Neither changed the sense; both being mono-syllables, neither could affect the scansion; and it was only by looking back on what he had already written that the mystery was solved: the second word contained an open A, and for nearly half a page he had been riding ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heaving swells, the windy lanes, the flight of the sheerwater and the uplifted flukes of the whale, the white wall of tuna on the horizon, the leap of the dolphin, the sweet, soft scent that breathes from off the sea, the beauty and mystery and color and movement of the deep—these are Lone Angler's alone, and he is as rich as if he had found the sands of the Pacific to be pearls, the waters nectar, and ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... Most chemists feel, however, that the purpose of nomenclature is brevity combined with ready recognition of what you are discussing and that it is unnecessary to change the name vitamine until we know exactly what the substances are. The result is that while still a mystery chemically they remain under the name of vitamine and the kinds are distinguished by the McCollum terms "fat-soluble" ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy
... the religious merit of hating the adversaries, and obeying the ministers of the church. When the public peace was distracted by heresy and schism, the sacred orators sounded the trumpet of discord, and, perhaps, of sedition. The understandings of their congregations were perplexed by mystery, their passions were inflamed by invectives; and they rushed from the Christian temples of Antioch or Alexandria, prepared either to suffer or to inflict martyrdom. The corruption of taste and language is strongly marked in the vehement declamations of the Latin bishops; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... sunshine, gleaming under the summer moon, cold and gray beneath a November sky, trickling over the dam in some burning July drought, swollen with turbulent power in some April freshet, how many young eyes gazed into the mystery and majesty of the falls along that river, and how many young hearts dreamed out their futures leaning over the bridge rail, seeing "the vision splendid" reflected there and often, too, watching it fade into ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to them more than their cherished preconceptions, that he had won the mastery over their thought and life. He began then to prepare them for the end he had long foreseen, and at length, after giving them time for that perplexing mystery to find place in their hearts, he was ready to move on toward the crisis which he knew his public appearance in Jerusalem would precipitate. Before setting out on this journey his desire still to seek to win Jerusalem, if perchance it would repent, led him to visit the capital unannounced ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... help the matter. If the heading of this chapter tells the truth, a "discovery" of some sort is inevitable. Let us preliminarize a thought or two, if thereby we can hang some shadowy veil of excuse over a too naked mystery. First and foremost, truth is strange, stranger, et-cetera; and this et-cetera, pregnant as one of Lyttleton's, intends to add the superlative strangest, to the comparative stranger of that seldom-quoted sentiment. To every one of us, in the course of our lives, something quite ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... palpitating, scarcely dared to rise even when the necessity of his office required it. After Mass Malachy spoke to him privately and bade him, as he valued his life, on no account to divulge the mystery which he had seen, as long ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... came a time, in due course, when her students began to think there was something deeper in her teachings than they had been suspecting—a mystery beyond mental-healing, and higher. It is conceivable that by consequence their manner towards her changed little by little, and from respectful became reverent. It is conceivable that this would have ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "He thinks he ought to become learned to learne so high a mystery, w^{ch} like ye dye of scarlet is not set well upon a raw cloath, but requires a former tincture."[EC] "He accounts, etc." For "ballast" read "last ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... remained the unexplored mystery of that little cabin down the slope, from which sounded so much boylike laughter of an evening. She watched and waited till she was positive the coast was clear, then clapped an old hat of J. G.'s upon her head and ran lightly ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... hostility is all about is a mystery to me, the innocent object of sundry scowls and angry gestures. One individual contemplates me for a minute with unconcealed aversion, and then breaks out into a torrent of angry words and excited gestures. From all appearances, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... like the summer dusk to me, The summer dusk when all the world seems still; When purple shadows creep along the hill, And birds are softly crooning in each tree. You are the gentle-cool-eyed mystery Of twilight hours. Sometime I think you will Melt from me out into the dark, until You turn to star-shine, silvering ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... in the calabash, and the water is poured on, the whole assemblage sings appropriate songs in its praise; and this is kept up until the decoction has been strained to its dregs. But here, as the using it as a beverage is an illicit process, a great mystery attends it. It is said that awa drinking is again on the increase, and with the illicit distillation of unwholesome spirits, and the illicit sale of imported spirits and the opium smoking, the ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... people were gone there was but one more incident ere I went to bed. I heard a party of children go up and down the dark street for a while, singing together sweetly. And the mystery of this little incident was so pleasant to me that I purposely refrained from asking who they were, and wherefore they went singing at so late an hour. One can rarely be in a pleasant place without ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... little savage a mighty interesting and companionable person, and I often thanked the kind fate that directed the crossing of our paths. From her I learned much of Caspak, but there still remained the mystery that had proved so baffling to Bowen Tyler—the total absence of young among the ape, the semihuman and the human races with which both he and I had come in contact upon opposite shores of the inland sea. Ajor tried to explain the matter ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... at my gate; I hastened through the crowd which curiosity had attracted to witness my arrival. Enthusiastic shouts resounded under my windows, from whence I showered gold amidst the people; and in the evening the whole town was illuminated. Still all remained a mystery to me, and I could not imagine for whom I had been taken. I sent Rascal out to make inquiry; and he soon obtained intelligence that the good King of Prussia was travelling through the country under ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... nothing to do but to go on, for the more he attempted to imagine some explanation of the mystery, the more he was puzzled. So he walked on ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... was in good spirits, and did all his work cheerily. Instead of seeing him grow thinner day by day, as she had expected, he constantly gained flesh. She soon discovered that Tellerchen must be at the bottom of the mystery, for she perceived that the boy took much better care of him than of the other cattle. How should she manage to find out what he did and ate in the woods? She secretly sent her daughter after him, and ordered her to watch what the youth did while pasturing the cattle. The girl followed ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... pointless as it may appear, partially clears up the mystery as to his being in a corner. He certainly was not there for misdemeanor; for he was a "good boy," at least in his own estimation. What a happy faculty it is, in this world, for a man to have a good opinion ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... portent if thorough study of nature and of man in all his attributes and works, such as befits a university, led scholars to impiety. But it does not; on the contrary, such study fills men with humility and awe, by bringing them on every hand face to face with inscrutable mystery and infinite power. The whole work of a university is uplifting, refining ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... "The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale; Or, Camping and Tramping for Fun and Health." In that is given an account of how the four chums set off to walk about two hundred miles in two weeks, stopping nights at the homes of various friends and relatives on the route. At the very outset they stumbled on the mystery of a five hundred dollar bill, and it was not until the end that the strange affair ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... the story of Henrietta Sloane only added to the mystery. She told it to me, sitting propped in a chair in Mrs. Johns's room, her face white, her lips dry and twitching. The crew were making such breakfast as they could on deck, and Mr. Turner was still in a stupor in his room across the main cabin. The four women, ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... theories which presuppose life and intelligence to exist in matter are so many ancient and modern mythologies. Mystery, miracle, 319:18 sin, and death will disappear when it becomes fairly understood that the divine Mind controls man and man has no Mind ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... cases defeat is due to disorganization through panic. It is said that in daylight the moral is to the physical as three is to one. That being the case, it is hard to say what the ratio is at night, when a general atmosphere of mystery, uncertainty and fear of surprise envelops the operations, and, of necessity affects the nerves of the men. The vital importance, therefore, of accustoming troops as much as we can in peace to the conditions that will obtain ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... there is in these simple melodies, attributed to Mother Goose, which gives them so secure and beloved a place in the home, the school and the public library. Is it the humor, the action, the rhythm, or the mystery of the theme which appeals so strongly to critical little minds in each generation of childhood, and even to adult minds so fortunate as to have retained some of the ...
— Mother Goose - The Original Volland Edition • Anonymous
... and this knowledge rejoiced me not a little. Before me stretched a succession of hills—that chain of hills which, I believe, is called the Weald, and over which the dim road dipped, and wound, with, on either hand, a rolling country, dark with wood, and coppice—full of mystery. The wind had quite fallen, but from the hedges, came sudden rustlings and soft, unaccountable noises. Once, something small and dark scuttered across the road before me, and once a bird, hidden near by, set up a loud complaint, while, from the deeps of ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... expression? Were they but helpless sacrifices, consummately equipped, that the result of their union might be consummately great? Who shall affirm or deny? The very commonplaces of life are components of its eternal mystery. We know absolutely nothing. But we have these facts: that a century and a half ago, on a tropical island, where, even to common beings, quick and intense love must seem the most natural thing in the world, this man and woman met; that the woman, herself born in unhappy ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... that box on the grand tier, striving to unriddle the mystery of his knowledge of those two persons. He needed glasses no longer. His sight had become preternaturally keen. Again the two were talking—and about him, that was somehow evident. And, as they talked, he ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... push ajar the gates of life, And stand within, and all God's workings see, We could interpret all this doubt and strife, And for each mystery could find ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... Duchess went on to make the longest speech that any living person had ever heard issue from her lips, and to reveal more than had yet been heard of that unmysterious mystery which lived within her ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... storks or angels fetch the babies cannot long satisfy the growing mind. Children wish to understand, yet it is easy for them to see that parents do not wish to explain the mystery. Curiosity is aroused, for the desire to know is natural and quite legitimate, and the sad thing is that the explanation is generally left to companions and servants who are devoid ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... is no mystery. Cunning old birds are not to be caught with chaff. When I left you I made for a certain inn where I could count upon finding a friend. There I lay by for a while, en cachette, as the Messieurs call it, while I could work out the plan that was in my head. Donner ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... little," he declared when he had finished. "He is the greatest mystery we have ever encountered. There is no doubt that he is an Indian, but he speaks English like ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... waved his hand to me, "A bientot donc," and was gone. He had seared himself into my mind. I did not understand him nor his mother then; which made them more impressive; but I have discovered since that those two figures required no mystery to make them memorable. Of course it isn't every day that one meets a mother that lives by her wits and a son that lives by his sword, but there was a perfect finish about their ambiguous personalities which is not to be met twice in a life-time. I shall never forget that grey ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... laughed, 'a baby could unriddle it.' She looked at him for a moment to enjoy her triumph of mystery. 'Husband mine, a pig thus stuffed is good eating for Cleves men. I have not kept a hostel for twelve years for envoys and secretaries without learning what each eats with pleasure. And long have I thought ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... What penalty, or that any penalty, was exacted of those who survived to be tried for Hudson's murder remains unknown. Their ignoble fate is hidden in a sordid darkness: fitly in contrast with his noble fate—that lies retired within a glorious mystery. ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... A certain mystery shrouded the locality where our home was situated. Normandy, Brittany, the Chateaux of Touraine, the climate of the Riviera, have, at various seasons been more attractive, not only to foreigners, but to the Parisians themselves, so aside from the art lovers who made special trips to ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard |
