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More "Mystery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... the matter over at some length, but could arrive at no satisfactory conclusion regarding Squire Paget's bitter enmity. Time must solve the mystery ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... his only crime was his dislike of the foreigners who were lording it over his countrymen, and that he had fallen a victim to the machinations of Portland, whom he was known to dislike, and whom he had not very politely described as a wooden fellow. The mystery, which from the first overhung the story of Marlborough's disgrace, was darkened, after the lapse of fifty years, by the shameless mendacity of his widow. The concise narrative of James dispels the mystery, and makes ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Dennis drifted away to some distant range, and before he was seen again Tom Barker had appeared. Why Tom, a big, brutal lumberman, desired to marry Mamie, no longer young, never pretty, penniless, and admittedly fond of Dennis, must remain a mystery. Why Mamie married Tom is a question easily answered. Tom was "boss" of a logging-camp, and none had ever denied his Caesarean attributes. He had the qualities and vices conspicuously absent in Dennis. He was Barker, of Barker's Inlet. The mere mention of his name ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... precision.[26] There is no evidence that Avalokita was first worshipped on this Potalaka, though he is often associated with mountains such as Kapota in Magadha and Valavati in Kataha.[27] In fact the connection of Potala with Avalokita remains a mystery. ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... beauty, who by a succession of discourses convinces him of the vanity of regret for the lost gifts of fortune, raises his mind once more to the contemplation of the true good, and makes clear to him the mystery of the ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... fate are stilled for ever— Thy little generous life is done. And all its wistful wonderings cease! Thou traveller to the tideless sea, Where light and dark, and change and peace, Are One—Come, little soul, to MYSTERY! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the inflection of the voice that secretly delights Marcia. She has a taste for mystery and intrigue, but she is not secretive, she has too ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... 'tis a greater mystery in the art Of painting, to foreshorten any part, Than draw it out; so 'tis in books the chief Of all perfections to be ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... they saw with growing amazement that the hand of time and of this maddening mystery had laid its ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... rope from his saddle and leaped to the ground. In two leaps more he had Sombrero about the neck. They fell together, rolling and fighting, while Sombrero's horse reared and plowed the soil with them. Dragoons and Cossacks heaped themselves on all three. It was quite an energetic mystery altogether. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the hut to the cubicle opposite one arrives at the somewhat congested space in which Cherry-Garrard was housed, with Bowers above him. In their corner were store lists, books, and mystery bags which contained material for the "South Polar Times," toys and frivolous presents to liven us up at the midwinter and other festivities. Bowers and Cherry-Garrard were, in a way, worse off than the others, for they had the darkest part of the hut, yet in this gloomy tenement ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... glittering, and august; while, within, its tortuous policy was twisted into murky and inextricable labyrinths, of which Necessity, Secresy, and Suspicion, formed the keystone; where Danger lurked at every winding, and whose darkling portals were watched by Mystery, and Stratagem, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... under partial observation for three years, was during all this time a great mystery. Brought at first to us by her family as being insane because she was such a great liar and unreliable in other ways, we never could find the slightest evidence of aberration. No satisfactory explanation was forthcoming ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... branch, and Miss Balch and Harney were once more hidden. But to Charity the vision of their two faces had blotted out everything. In a flash they had shown her the bare reality of her situation. Behind the frail screen of her lover's caresses was the whole inscrutable mystery of his life: his relations with other people—with other women—his opinions, his prejudices, his principles, the net of influences and interests and ambitions in which every man's life is entangled. Of all these she ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... could never understand, and yet the knowledge of this intensified rather than diminished her love. The mere physical attraction, which she had glorified into passion, was invested with the beauty and the mystery ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... proud and adventurous story, is almost wholly a tale of the sea, full of mystery, cruelty, and beauty, a legend of sea power, a romance of ships. It is a narrative in which sailors, half merchants, half pirates, adventurers every one, put out from the city and return laden with all sorts of spoil,—gold from Africa, slaves from Tunis or ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... well considered it? A sublime and divine mystery is accomplished. Such a being costs nature the most vigilant maternal care; yet man, who would cure you, can think of nothing better than to offer you lips which belong to him in order to teach you ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the public of their devotion to the church, join hands with the Oklahoma saloonkeepers, who never fail to declare that the church is a fanatical obstacle to personal liberty. A queer union it is, but some day the world will discover the mystery which has consummated it! ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... extreme difficulty of following them, and the 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 ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the next morning 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
... so long that they no longer appreciate its marvels. You ask me if I tried to get the secret. I saw the whole apparatus and the more I studied it, the more I was convinced that its storage battery contained heat energy. So I concluded to solve the mystery. I learned that there was a certain element found only in combination. When this element is set loose by chemical process, it will rise at once toward a large planet that revolves around this sun. This planet draws that particular element with six times more force ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... he explained briefly to her of his reasons for disliking this man and of the veil of suspicion and of mystery with which he was surrounded. He did not think him a suitable companion for her, and wished for her own good that she would see ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... reticent about his domestic sorrows while in exile, but when his thoughts were far off, reviewing the great mystery of human destiny, he broke the rule, and with a sort of languid frankness spoke the thoughts that crowded his mind, and it was during these spasmodic periods that he opened his soul by declaring that it was his "having married a princess of Austria that ruined him, and that his marriage ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... result of a conspiracy in which Farmer Weeks, from Bessie's home town, Hedgeville, was mixed up with a Mr. Holmes, a rich merchant of the city. The reason for the persecution of the two girls and of Zara's father was a mystery, but Jamieson had made up his mind ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Long Lake - Bessie King in Summer Camp • Jane L. Stewart
... wherein they have been brought up; It is, therefore, for remedy of the premises, and for the avoiding of a great number of inconveniences which may grow if in time it be not foreseen, ordained and enacted by authority of this present parliament, that no person using the feat or mystery of cloth-making, and dwelling out of a city, borough, market-town, or corporate town, shall keep, or retain, or have in his or their houses or possession, any more than one woollen loom at a time; nor shall ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... mother it is necessary to be cautious. It is true that she has no right to oppose my marriage with Nora; but yet she would oppose it, even to death! Therefore, to save trouble and secure peace, I would marry my dear Nora quietly. Mystery, Hannah, is not necessarily guilt; it is often wisdom and mercy. Do not object to a little harmless mystery, that is besides to secure peace! ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Free Mason's Vindication, being an answer to a scandalous libel entitled (sic) The Grand Mystery of the Free Masons discover'd, etc. (Dublin, 1725). It is curious that this reply is to be found in the British Museum (Press mark 8145, h. I. 44), but not the book itself. Yet Mr. Waite thinks it sufficiently ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... arrangement with the 'goodman of the house'? Most probably the latter; for he was in so far a disciple that he recognised Jesus as 'the Master,' and was glad to have Him in his house, and the chamber on the roof was ready 'furnished' when they came. Why this mystery about the place? The verses before ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... from the first been a haunting mystery for Win, was in the toy department. Her name was Lily Leavitt, and—as Sadie had already told Win—she was "chucking herself" at Earl Usher's head. At first Miss Leavitt "lamped" Miss Child "something awful." ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... the garden, on the empty house, and on the empty room that she had peopled already with her innocent dream. It seemed to him that in that remote gaze of her woman's eyes, abstracted from her lover, unconsciously desirous of the end beyond desire, he saw revealed the mystery, the sanctity, the purity of wedded love. And seeing it he ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... believed in the soundness of the bank and in the character of its directors. Investing my own funds so largely in its stock proves how I trusted it. But I was mistaken. It is a mystery which I cannot solve. Perhaps, when the examination of its affairs is completed, light may be thrown on the subject. I hope that no more of your relations or friends have stock ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... She also carries a small market-basket, and a gold-headed cane. Her stockings are scarlet, her low black shoes have gold buckles. She is, withal, arrestingly picturesque, and there hangs about her a slight air of mystery, that is well in accordance with her profession, which is ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... this same principle of suspense that holds you in a Sherlock Holmes story—you wait to see how the mystery is solved, and if it is solved too soon you throw down the tale unfinished. Wilkie Collins' receipt for fiction writing well applies to public speech: "Make 'em laugh; make 'em weep; make 'em wait." Above all else make them wait; ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... evidences of architectural skill. These sombre stones, unworked, rude as they came from cliff or seashore, are not embellished by man's handiwork like the rich temples of the Nile. But there is about this stone-littered moor a mystery, an atmosphere no less intense than that surrounding the most solemn ruins of antiquity. Deeper even than the depths of Egypt must we sound if we are to discover the secret of Carnac. What mean these stones? What means faith? What signifies belief? What is the answer ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... words 'that the night cometh when no man can work,' yet when at times I think, as think at times I must, of the appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of that creed which once was mine, and the lonely mystery of existence as now I find it—at such times I shall ever feel it impossible to avoid the sharpest pang of which ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... alone is visible. Thought was rare. It seemed to be an effort; its seat was in the heart more than in the head; it led to acts rather than ideas. But, examining that grand old man with sustained observation, one could penetrate the mystery of this strange contradiction to the spirit of the century. He had faiths, sentiments, inborn so to speak, which allowed him to dispense with thought. His duty, life had taught him. Institutions and religion thought for him. He reserved his mind, he and his ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... him off to sleep, but he did not even try, to read it. He had no wish to sleep. The waking dream in which he lost himself was more interesting than any vision of slumber could have been, and he had no desire to end it. In that he could still be talking with the girl whose mystery appealed to him so pleasingly. It was none the less pleasing because, at what might be called her first blushes, she did not strike him as altogether ingenuous, but only able to discipline herself into a final sincerity from a consciousness ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... indistinctly, of course, but as each event was recalled it evoked a corresponding picture in his brain. Many things suddenly became clear which had been hitherto shrouded in mystery. The secret of his birth, concerning which he had so often questioned Countess Drentell without receiving a satisfactory reply, the indistinct recollection of strange events, and, finally, the familiarity of the ritual in the synagogue. When Mendel had ceased speaking, ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... continued, after a pause. Her voice had fallen still another tone. "'Yes,' she said, as if musing, 'dead—dead! A man is as his mother has made him. He is with her from the moment she loves his father. She is evermore thinking of him; he is precious to her before the mystery of his birth is revealed to her. He grows up by her side, and loves her because he knows that she understands him. She does understand him, and she understands his father better by understanding her son.' She said that, Mr. Courtland, and I felt that she had spoken ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... scared-looking woman, with a deep scar across one of her wrists. Her antecedents were full of mystery, and Pip suspected her of being Estella's mother.—C. Dickens, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... is such a mystery about her marriage! She will really be quite an acquisition, and we'll have her ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... which she had looked upon as a costly and invaluable treasure, should be pronounced of little value, seemed to grieve her, and that these clothes were to be worn in America, and ridiculed there, almost bewildered her. And, anyway, what was the meaning of this talk about America? This mystery was soon cleared up, when Farmer Rodel's wife came, and with her, Black ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... pursued Diana. She was conscious of an intense curiosity concerning Errington, quite apart from the personal episodes which had linked them together. The man of mystery invariably exerts a peculiar fascination over the feminine mind. Hence the unmerited popularity not infrequently enjoyed by the dark, saturnine, brooding individual whose conversation savours of ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... baptism through which memory was to be quickened to recall the words He had spoken—the baptism which was to explain sentences which, at the moment of their utterance, were full of perplexing and affrighting mystery to such as heard. Almost His very last words on earth concerned their mission. Then came Pentecost, the gift of power, the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the waiting company in the Upper Room. Signs ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... about Mr. Fortescue, and wondering who he could be. The study of physiognomy is one of my fads, and his face had deeply impressed me; in great wealth, moreover, there is always something that strikes the imagination, and this man was evidently very rich, and the mystery that surrounded him piqued ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... overgrown tea kettle. Water for all other uses had to come out of the barrel. To keep both vessels filled was a heavy task, and waste of water was regarded as little short of a crime. The sacredness of the barrel and its contents was a mystery to Keith until he grew old enough to do some of the carrying. Then ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... Kennedy, ignoring what to me seemed to be the most important feature of the case, the mystery of the silent bullet. "Didn't you see ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... possible that the spirit of Raphael should enter into the man and obtain the mastery of his mind and eye and hand, it would be entirely possible that he should paint this masterpiece; for it would simply be Raphael reproducing Raphael. And this in a mystery is what is true of the disciple filled with the Holy Ghost. Christ, who is "the image of the invisible God," is set before him as his divine pattern, and Christ by the Spirit dwells within him as a divine life, ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... enormous piles, Which no rude censure of familiar time Nor record of our puny race defiles, In dateless mystery ye stand sublime, Memorials of an age of which we see Only the types in things that ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... been duly noted by Monsieur Popinot, by Bibi-Lupin, who stayed there a day to examine every detail, by the public prosecutor himself, and by the sergeant of the gendarmerie at Nanterre, this murder became an agitating mystery, in which the Law ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... saving three-fifths of that. By slow degrees he had made himself rich, but in so doing he had denied himself all but the barest necessaries. What he expected to do with his money, as he was a bachelor with no near relatives, was a mystery, and he had probably formed no definite ideas himself. But it was his great enjoyment to see his hoards annually increasing, and he had no mercy for needy or unfortunate tenants who found themselves unable ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... but barren victory. That she was alienated and resentful he could hardly doubt, while the riddle he had rather meanly used to procure her discomfiture remained unanswered as ever, dipped indeed only deeper in mystery. He was hoist with his own petard, in short; and stood there nonplussed, vexed alike at himself and ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... among other enthusiasts: , a dispassionate judgment must deny that its site has as yet been proven. Even Sir W. Fraser is not convincing. The event happened less than a century ago, but the spot is almost as phantasmal in its elusive mystery as towered Camelot, the palace of Priam, or the ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... the great city was but a house of many rooms, all for his use, his sport, his life. He did not know much of what lay within the houses; but that only added the joy of mystery to possession: they were jewel-closets, treasure-caves, indeed, with secret fountains of life; and every street was a ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... be kind to all Eternity. Thou hast one Virtue more, I pay thee Homage for; I heard from the Alcove how great a Mistress thou art in the dear Mystery of Jilting. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... of shock; it seemed incredible to me that a man of so much intelligence could hold such a view. So far am I from feeling satisfied with any explanation, scientific or other, of myself and of the world about me, that not a day goes by but I fall a-marvelling before the mystery of the universe. To trumpet the triumphs of human knowledge seems to me worse than childishness; now, as of old, we know but one thing—that we know nothing. What! Can I pluck the flower by the wayside, and, ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... showing himself that he is God. [2:5]Do you not remember that when I was with you I told you of these things? [2:6]And now you know what hinders him from being revealed in his time. [2:7]For the mystery of wickedness already works, [God] only restrains it just now, till it shall be out of the way; [2:8]and then shall the wicked one be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of his mouth and destroy with the brightness of his ...
— The New Testament • Various
... opened it, and to my astonishment it was a five-dollar gold piece, the identical pocket-piece I had parted with but a few days before. I knew it was the same, for I had made a mark upon it; how this had been brought about was a mystery, but that the hand of the Lord was in it I could not doubt. 'See,' said I to my wife; 'I thought I gave that money, but I only lent it; how soon has the Lord returned it! Never again will ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... no other eye ever to read it but his own, perplex their brains unnecessarily. Pepys was not the first human being to make his confession in an empty confessional. Criminals, lovers and other egoists, for lack of a priest, will make their confessions to a stone wall or a tree. There is no more mystery in it than in the singing of birds. The motive may be either to obtain discharge from the sense of guilt or a desire to save and store up the very echoes and last drops of pleasure. Human beings keep diaries for as many different reasons as they write lyric poems. With Pepys, I fancy, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... it? the secret which makes one little hand the dearest of all? Whoever can unriddle that mystery? Here she was, her son by his side, his dear boy. Here she was, weeping and happy. She took his hand in both hers; he felt her tears. It was a rapture ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at an all-encircling mystery. Not so the Greek Childe Roland who set the slug-horn to his lips and blew a challenge. Neither Shakespeare nor Browning tells us what happened, and the old legend, Childe Roland, is the incarnation of the Greek spirit, the young, light-hearted master of the modern world, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... your words have a weird sepulchral tone that echoes far and near through the spacious halls and avenues that makes the black pall of mystery all the more uncanny. As you first enter on your journey on this stream of inky blackness you are appalled by the awful darkness, and the stillness so intense is like that of some vast primeval forest at midnight. The ceiling ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... not so old but that Christmas Eve with its little plans for the morrow held yet a certain shade of that delightful suspense and mystery which perhaps never hangs about the greater and graver joys of life. I fancy we drink it to the full, in the hanging up of stockings, the peering out into the dark to see Santa Claus come down the ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... state of our relations with Mexico has involved this subject in much mystery. The first information in an authentic form from the agent of the United States, appointed under the Administration of my predecessor, was received at the State Department on the 9th of November last. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... north. Indications of proximity of the sea. Warm winds. What wind temperatures tell. The missing yak herd. Mystery of the turning water wheel. The mill and workshop. Their home. "Baby" learning civilized ways. The noise in the night. The return of the yaks. The need for keeping correct time. Shoe leather necessary. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... if Starr could have sent them, but that was impossible of course, for she knew nothing of his work, and they were always postmarked New York. He discovered that such thin foreign-looking envelopes could be had in New York, and after that he abandoned all idea of trying to solve the mystery. It was probably some queer, kind person who did not wish to be known. He accepted the help gladly and broadened his plans ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... unamiable and cross to one another, and unamiable and cross to old Hammond, yet always with a certain respect; and the result seemed to be such as treated the old man well enough. And thus he moved about among them, a mystery; the histories of the others, in the general outline, were well enough known, and perhaps not very uncommon; this old man's history was known to none, except, of course, to the trustees of the charity, and to the Master of the Hospital, to whom it had necessarily been revealed, ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... slow and measured grace, Among the lowly takes its place: Nor dreams its future yet shall be A wondrous thing of mystery. ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... hardly demand that his confidence should have a basis in external facts; such confidence, we know, is something less coarse and materialistic: it is a comfortable disposition leading us to expect that the wisdom of providence or the folly of our friends, the mysteries of luck or the still greater mystery of our high individual value in the universe, will bring about agreeable issues, such as are consistent with our good taste in costume, and our general preference for the best style of thing. Fred felt ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... consideration, I have come to the conclusion that I cannot say more than I have said." It is no wonder, then, that Holt, driven to desperation by such treatment, wrote to Speed:—"Your forbearance towards Andrew Johnson, of whose dishonorable conduct you have been so well advised, is a great mystery to me. With the stench of his baseness in your nostrils you have been all tenderness for him, while for me ... you have been as implacable ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... of His death. No Unitarian, no unbeliever, will deny that Jesus died as a good man, choosing rather the shame of the Cross than the deeper shame of treason to the truth. And thus far Christ is an example to all who follow Him. In one sense His cross-bearing was all His own, a mystery of suffering and death into which no man can enter. But in another sense, as St. Peter tells us, He has left us by His sufferings an example that we should follow His steps. It is surely a significant fact that the words ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... are!" said Will. "The case is closed. The Boy Scouts may as well go back to Chicago now. There's one more mystery. Who built the ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... advancement. He had given 'hostages to fortune,' and dreaded the result. He was thus persistently silent on the subject; and, as time went on, it became more and more difficult for him to avow the marriage he had from the first made so much a matter of mystery. And then, too, the prosperous unions of other artists, his contemporaries, excited his jealousy and increased his apprehensions. He began to think it indispensable to the success of a painter that he should marry well. Nathaniel Dance had been united to Mrs. Drummer, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... attachments, he had never imagined anything of the kind apart from loveliness of feature in the chosen object; his instincts were, in fact, revolted by the idea of love for such a person as Janet Moxey. Christian seemed to be degraded by such a suggestion. In his endeavour to solve the mystery, Godwin grew half unconscious of ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... opened, thank God, and no one will rejoice at it more sincerely than M. de Tocqueville—he who is so generous, and whose abolition sentiments are certainly no mystery to any of his colleagues of the Chamber. But his opinion remains in his book, and every one repeats after him, that the blacks and the whites cannot live together on the same soil, unless the latter be subject to ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... the leg of the kitchen table and says to me: 'Friend, thee can just set there while I go to get an officer!' Gave me no chance to explain. Took it all for granted; whereas if he would have listened to me I could have cleared up the whole mystery in ...
— Frictional Electricity - From "The Saturday Evening Post." • Max Adeler
... growing desperate over the mystery. He seized Newt Elkey by the arm and said, "What ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... deeply for the Unitarians in this place; we sometimes think the way may open for us to help them a little. Their great stumbling-stones are, the want of clearness in the mystery of the oneness in the Godhead, and of faith in the practical influences of the Holy Spirit, as operating on the heart of man. Our morning reading opens a suitable door of communication for those whose curiosity prompts ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... different in kind from those of inorganic matter? The philosophy of the present day negatives the question. It is the compounding, in the organic world, of forces belonging equally to the inorganic, that constitutes the mystery and the miracle of vitality. Every portion of every animal body may be reduced to purely inorganic matter. A perfect reversal of this process of reduction would carry us from the inorganic to the organic; and such a reversal is at least conceivable. The tendency, indeed, of modern science ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... tell in this accursed, unhallowed, godless country. The honour and honesty of one man did not, in these days, prompt another to abstain from vice. The only heroism left in the country was the heroism of mystery, of secret bloodshed and ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... the King claimed an absolute right to, and a perfect estate in, all the lands within his dominions; but, how he came by this absolute right and perfect estate, is a mystery which we have never seen unravelled, nor is it our business or design, at present, to inquire. He granted parts or parcels of it to his friends, the great men, and they granted lesser parcels to their tenants. ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... in the room when he uttered this name or title, for The Parson had always been more or less a mystery, and one that was much envied by thieves generally. He was a confidence man of the higher type; the sort of man who would go into strange cities or villages or communities, and represent himself ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... this mystery of intermediate being, entirely subordinate to us, with which we can deal as we choose, having just the greater power as we have the less responsibility for our treatment of the unsuffering creature, most of the pleasures which ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... lay perfectly still for a few moments casting up the strange situation he found himself in. Why the men should have acted as they had, was all a mystery, but thieves or outlaws they evidently were, and outlaws in this country he already well knew were men ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... with a superstitious horror, as a fiendish mystery, and compared it to a fiery dragon with a tail as long as a lance; but it did not actually cause many deaths, and they met with no serious disaster till they came to the canal of Aschmoum, which flowed between them and Mansourah. They ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the face of a happy child. Before his mental vision rose the little mistress of the garden of Epicurus. He saw the sparkle of her large blue eyes, which never ceased to question, yet appeared to contain the mystery of the world. He fancied he heard once more the silvery cadence of her voice and the bewitching magic of her pure, childlike laughter, and it was hard to remember what she ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... into poverty and evil ways, as in the Pyncheon family of Hawthorne's romance. In the preface to the Marble Faun Hawthorne wrote: "No author without a trial can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor any thing but a commonplace prosperity in broad and simple daylight." And yet it may be doubted whether any environment could have been found more fitted to his peculiar genius than this of his native town, or any preparation better calculated ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... and Jerry wagged his head solemnly. "I never killed a tiger yet. I've killed whales, though, aye, and tiger sharks! Think of the mystery of the sea, lads—wave after wave, with the fish down below and us up here above! Fish tell no tales, lads, fish tell no tales. There's strange things out where we be ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... Jewish mob pronounced as if by chance, in accusing Jesus Christ before Pilate, afforded Pilate a reason for sending Jesus Christ to Herod. And thereby the mystery was accomplished, that He should be judged by Jews and Gentiles. Chance was apparently the cause of the ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... sent off on the swiftest pony to the ranch house to report to Rhoda's father, and to bring back a wagon in which to carry away the heavier ornaments and vessels that Lobarto had stolen from the churches in his own country. How the bandit had ever brought such a weight of treasure so far was a mystery. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... drew her into the study, and shut the door. The expression of mystery and amusement gave way to sadness and gravity as he sat down in his arm-chair, and sighed as if much fatigued. She was checked and alarmed, but she could not ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... still a mystery," said the chief. "We have ascertained who the girl is, where she lives. Her actions have been watched and recorded for every hour in the twenty-four for the last three days, and yet we don't know what she does with these ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... to the tannery house and received his orders—orders of which he made a great mystery afterward at the store, although they consisted simply of directions to be prepared to drive Jethro to Brampton the next morning. But the look of the man had frightened Jake. He had never seen vengeance so indelibly written ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... what some poet calls "a tangled trinity," and I am not going to disentangle it. Whatever those three things mean, how or why they co-exist; whether they can be reconciled or perhaps are reconciled already; the three sounds I heard then by an accident all at once make up the French mystery. For the brass band in the Casino gardens behind me was playing with a sort of passionate levity some ramping tune from a Parisian comic opera, and while this was going on I heard also the bugles on the hills above, that told of terrible loyalties and men always arming ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... acquaintance. On this subject he chose to exhibit an unusual—and as Norma felt, unnecessary, degree of curiosity. He cross-questioned the girl vigorously, and failing to elicit satisfactory replies, laughingly accused her of an attempt to earn a cheap notoriety by the elaboration of a petty mystery. ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... them, and consequently nothing came of them. In 1814, Koenig and Bauer, two German printers, conceived the idea of printing by steam, and the younger Walter, now by his father's death permitted to do as he liked, entered warmly into their project. The greatest silence and mystery was observed, but the employes of The Times somehow or other obtained an inkling of what was going on, and, foreseeing a reduction in their numbers, vowed the most terrible vengeance upon everybody connected with the newfangled invention. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... room stood a rose-bush, the first buds formed themselves, and opened their red lips—as pure and tender as these leaves was Sophie's cheek: he bent over the flower, smiled and read there sweet thoughts which were related to his love. A rose-bud is a sweet mystery. ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... don't know!" Francis declared, a little impatiently. "The woman is the mystery, of course. Probably my brain was a little over-excited when I came out of Court, and what I imagined to be an epic was nothing more than a tissue of exaggerations from a disappointed wife. I'm sure ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Certainly not the least strange part of his wondrous career is this mystery which persists in clouding his close. I feel as if he would be like Enoch or Moses—that we shall never be permitted to know more than that—having walked with GOD—he "was not—for GOD took him," and that his ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... it. We may presume that some mystery is hidden under it. This secret of captivating everybody is not an ordinary effect of nature; the Thessalian art must be mixed up in it, and, doubtless, some one has given to her a charm by which she makes ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... what mysterious power is it that millions and millions are drawn from all parts of the world to gaze upon Niagara Falls? There is no mystery about the thing itself. Every effect is just as any intelligent man, knowing the causes, would anticipate without seeing it. If the water moving onward in a great river reaches a point where there is a perpendicular jog of a hundred feet in descent in the bottom of the river, it ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... The fulness of that knowledge. It can bless, Only the eager souls, that willing, press Along the mountain passes, to the peak. Not to the dull, the doubting, or the weak, Will Truth explain, or Mystery confess. ...
— New Thought Pastels • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... solve this mystery, Olinto," I said fiercely, for I was in no trifling mood. "I'll fathom it if it costs me ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... toward ideality is quite strongly indicated; they are painted with a more hesitating and lingering touch than his portraits of men, and with a certain seeming lack of confidence, which throws about them a thin fold of that veil of etherialism and mystery which so enwraps nearly all his pictures of the last eight years. This treatment, however, seems to have been at that time more the result of experiment than conviction; later in life he wrought its suggestions ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... did. His house was a tiny dwelling, too. Just how he and his many children contrived to find places to sleep is a mystery. Some of the youngsters were tucked away in trundle beds, you may be sure. Out behind the kitchen was a sort of woodshed, and it was in this primitive location that Mr. Willard ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... that has seemed a dark mystery is finally explained, it often looks so easy and simple that all of us wonder how we ever could have bothered our heads over such a puzzle. And so it was in this case. Why did it come that no one had guessed the true explanation before, when it was ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... unsuccessful, and that they will be written down Fogies as requested, and duly found guilty, in terms of their own confession. The greater number of Fogies, however, with that modesty which often attends merit, are wholly unconscious of their real proficiency in this great mystery, and are not likely to give us their countenance of their own accord. This consideration will lead to a peculiarity in the constitution of the Club, which is intended to embrace not only the Fogies who apply for admission, but all of any note who possess the qualification, whether they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... live, I can't! I start them just as mild and proper as can be, but before I get half-way through, a murder, or death, or mystery crops in, and I can't ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... the whole art and mystery, the true free-mason secret, of the profession of soucaring; by which a few innocent, inexperienced young Englishmen, such as Mr. Paul Benfield, for instance, without property upon which any one would lend to themselves a single shilling, are enabled at once to take provinces ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Embankment. The lights of Parliament House gleam from a hundred windows, and in the dark shadows by the banks thousands of coloured discs of light twinkle and dance and glow like fairy lamps, and are reflected in the silver surface of the river. That river, as full of mystery and contrast in its course as London itself—where is such another? It has ever been a river of pageants, a river of sighs; a river into whose placid depths kings and queens, princes and cardinals, ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... weary, and awoke to see Dr. Pearsall about to leave my room. He was giving directions to my two anxious daughters. To my surprise my son-in-law remarked, "Mother is so much better, I will return home." Here was a mystery I was unable to solve, and I insisted on knowing why the doctor was there, now nearly 2 o'clock in the morning. I was informed that I had suffered an attack of apoplexy. I was not the least startled, but told them if I had had a fit of that character, ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... put into his hands was "Amadis de Gaul," in four parts; and the priest said: "There seems to be some mystery in this, for I have heard say that this was the first book of chivalry printed in Spain, and that all the rest had their foundation and rise from it; I think, therefore, as head of so pernicious a sect, we ought to condemn him ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the Parent of the Parallelogram, is of great Harmony as a Mystery. Indeed all other Methods of reading fortune in Cards are incomparable ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... the Ducal Palace of Venice owes its complete loveliness in distant effect to the finishing of its cusps. The extremity of the cusp is a mere ball of Istrian marble; and consider how subtle the faculty of sight must be, since it recognizes at any distance, and is gratified by, the mystery of the termination of cusp obtained by the gradated light on ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... The whispers of curious men, the mystery of the thing, were to Lingard a source of never-ending delight. The common talk of ignorance exaggerated the profits of his queer monopoly, and, although strictly truthful in general, he liked, on that matter, to mislead speculation still further ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... only the unattainable horizon round about, and awakened in harbour in a strange land that was warm and lovely and full of sunshine. She closed her eyes again, so that nothing might disturb the contemplation of the mystery. She folded her round arms as a pillow behind her head, her limbs dropped back of their own weight, and her mouth broke into a happy smile. Oh, miracle of miracles! The whole ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... most sublime passages in all literature,— silencing the arguments of his friends, sweeping away all the reasonings which have preceded, explaining nothing, but only affirming his own infinite power and wisdom. Before this august manifestation Job bows with submission; the mystery of evil is not explained; he is only convinced that it cannot be explained, and is content to be silent and wait. The teaching of the book is well summarized in ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... did not seek further to fathom the mystery attending this birth of the artist. He went off carrying his astonishment along with him. But before he left, he again gazed at the canvases and ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... private life the habits of the animal differ most materially according to its sex. The male sometimes keeps an academy and a kit fiddle, but the domestic relations of the female remain a profound mystery; and although Professors Tom Duncombe, Count D'Orsay, Chesterfield, and several other eminent Italian-operatic natural historians, have spent immense fortunes in an ardent pursuit of knowledge in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... covert and startling poem, a doctrine embodied in a character; then two beautiful little Pisgah-Sights, a dainty experiment in metre, and in substance the expression of Browning's favourite lesson, the worth of earth and the need of the mystery of life; Appearances, a couple of stanzas whose telling simplicity recalls the lovely earlier lilt, Misconceptions; Natural Magic and Magical Nature, two magical snatches, as perfect as the "first fine careless rapture" of the earlier lyrics. ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... real and hitherto unsolved riddle of Tibet, Petrie," he replied—"a mystery concealed from the world behind the veil of Lamaism." He stood up abruptly, glancing at a scrap of paper which he took from his pocket—"Suite Number 14a," he said. "Come along! We have not a moment to waste. Let us make our presence known to Sir ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... different way. A leopard, so it is said, prefers a dog to any other food and will take daring chances in an effort to secure one for breakfast, dinner, or supper. Therefore, how little Mosina escaped so long is a mystery yet unsolved. ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... might have ripened into rare qualities and great virtues. But perhaps as Goethe has somewhere said, "Experience, after all, is the best teacher." He kept a constant guard on his vehement temper—his wayward will; he would not have vexed his mother for the world. But, strange to say (it was a great mystery in the woman's heart), in proportion as he became more amiable, it seemed that his mother loved him less. Perhaps she did not, in that change, recognise so closely the darling of the old time; perhaps the very weaknesses and importunities of Sidney, the hourly sacrifices the child entailed ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ten fallow years in the life of Tennyson." But fallow years are not all fallow. The dark brooding night is as necessary for our life as the garish day. Great crops of wheat that feed the nations grow only where the winter's snow covers all as with a garment. And ever behind the mystery of sleep, and beneath the silence of the snow, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... reasoned until his brain was on fire, and still no solution of the mystery was presented to ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... really what they called it. "Montague Nevitt" was written in plain letters on the leather flap; within lay half-a-dozen engraved visiting-cards, a Foreign Office passport in Nevitt's name, and thirty Bank of England notes for one hundred pounds apiece. This was, indeed, a mystery! ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... Inland Sea! Still seems its outlet, as of yore, The anteroom of Mystery, As, through its westward-facing door, I see the vast Atlantic lie In splendor ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... in 1905 Director Reinhardt engaged him as an actor and he married the actress Tilly Niemann-Newes, with whom he has since lived happily, the father of a son, his troubled spirit in safe harbour at last, but not in the least changed, to judge from his play, Franziska, a Modern Mystery. ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... Mr. Dick, with an air of mystery, after imparting this confidence to me, one Wednesday; 'who's the man that hides near our ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... little time, however, she hoped would unravel this mystery; in two days, the entertainment which Mr Harrel had planned, to deceive the world by an appearance of affluence to which he had lost all title, was to take place; young Delvile, in common with every other ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... come forward and make his identity known? G—— is a city, it is true, but it is not a very large city, and any man being on terms of intimate acquaintance with one who was murdered would be apt to come forward in the hope of throwing some light on the mystery." ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... to this momentous mystery since, and I have seen no reason to repent of my unwillingness to hear it. The threatened blow has not been struck yet, and I do not greatly fear it. At present I am pleased with Arthur: he has not positively disgraced himself for upwards of a fortnight, ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... rounds that Jim Robinson, the heavyweight, who goes against Sailor Clancy in the principal event at the Garden tonight, is not Robinson at all, but a well-known society man and millionaire. From the hour when this match was made in May last there has been a mystery attached to the personality of this fighter never before heard of in Fistiana in New York. Flynn, his backer and trainer, could not be found to deny or affirm the rumor, and his sparring partners at Flynn's Gymnasium, of course, denied it, but every circumstance, including the size of the purse, ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... Till I have it, your conduct is a perfect mystery. To Margaret, or to me for her, you must explain yourself, and that immediately. In the mean time, I do not know how to address you— how to ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... Priests unridling make more intricate: They said that he should reign, and so he did, Which lasted not above a pair of Hours. But I my self will be his Oracle now, And speak his kinder Fate, And I will have no other Priest but thee, [To Vallentio. Who shall unfold the Mystery ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... in the following year, bettered his health, and brought him the anecdote of a mystery of the sea which was the germ of "The Wrecker." He saw Samoa, and bought land there—Vailima—the last and best of his resting-places; and here he was joined, in 1891, by his intrepid mother. He was now a lord ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... old town, of charming gray-shingle houses, which, to escape loneliness, crowded close to the edge of the elm-shaded road) we crossed the Housatonic. The shores stretched away into mystery, so broad was the river; and the moment we were out of a town, in the country, the scene was like a dream of Indian days, just interrupted by waking now and then at sight of some houses grouped round a common. There was Milford, for instance, ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... literature is our subject, we begin and end with good books; and that we stand aside while the great writers speak their own message to our pupils. In studying each successive period, let the student begin by reading the best that the age produced; let him feel in his own way the power and mystery of Beowulf, the broad charity of Shakespeare, the sublimity of Milton, the romantic enthusiasm of Scott; and then, when his own taste is pleased and satisfied, a new one will arise,—to know something about the author, the times in which he lived, and finally of criticism, which, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... the lady in a rather strident voice, but with much composure, addressed us in English. Her knowledge of our language, however, proved to be extremely limited, being confined to such expressions as "How are you, sir?" "I am very well," "Yes, sir," "No, sir," and "I know New York." She was a mystery to the town, where she was commonly ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... whole system of taking sights for chronometers had been satisfactorily explained that the lady recovered her good-humour. While the captain was thus employed with Mrs Ferguson, Newton, although it was not necessary, explained the mystery to Miss Revel, who, with Mrs Ferguson, soon after quitted ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... horses over their fences, I cannot help thinking that if they lifted themselves off their backs they would see how much better horses are able to jump without their assistance. Many of my readers doubtless saw the Grand National of 1900, and how poor Hidden Mystery, who, after he had fallen and had unshipped his rider, jumped the fences with safety to himself and the field. Such sights must show how necessary it is for us to interfere as little as possible with our horses ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... invasion of that pure, dim world before them; and the serene mystery of the distance came like a thought, drawn from a state remote and immortal, to clasp the hand of There in ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... most dismal day. The dear and most suffering king was extremely ill, the queen very wretched, poor Mrs. Schwellenberg all spasm and horror, Miss Planta all restlessness, the house all mystery, and my only informant ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... silkworm draws its exquisite stuff from dowdy leaves, so youth finds beauty and mystery in stupid days. Carl went out unreservedly to practise with the football squad; he had a joy of martyrdom in tackling the dummy and peeling his nose on the frozen ground. He knew a sacred aspiration when Mr. Bjorken, the coach, a former University ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... continent being now known, and the mystery of the interior solved, there remained little more for the explorers of later years to do, but follow up the course of some tributary, stream or river, the origin of which, though, perhaps, guessed at, had never been finally ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... prejudices, and to speak of the Catholics in more charitable language, and with more reconciling expressions. From this foundation a panic fear of Popery was easily raised; and every new ceremony or ornament introduced into divine service, was part of that great mystery of iniquity, which, from the encouragement of the king and the bishops, was to overspread the nation.[*] The few innovations which James had made, were considered as preparatives to this grand design; and the further alterations attempted by Charles, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... dear child, we have arrived at the explanation of that great mystery, WHY we breathe. Keep on the alert, for we are now entering into a region where everything will be ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... but never was rivalry friendlier, or mutually more helpful. Our parts were strangely complementary; if I could understand for the life of me the secret of collaboration, which has always been a mystery to me, I should say that I might have collaborated with Pharazyn almost ideally. I had the better of him in point of education, and would have turned single sentences against him for all he was worth; and I don't mind saying so, for there my superiority ended. When ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... "Why, he's even stumped at the start by the mystery of there being no bullet. I'm glad you said nothing about the cartridge, although I can't see for the life of me what good it is ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... to snuff the candles, and, seeing the prince was lying on the sofa, looked at him, noticed his perturbed face, shook his head, and going up to him silently kissed him on the shoulder and left the room without snuffing the candles or saying why he had entered. The most solemn mystery in the world continued its course. Evening passed, night came, and the feeling of suspense and softening of heart in the presence of the unfathomable did not lessen but increased. No ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... understand why men went to Japan and Canada instead of coming to India on better terms. It was a mystery to him. He thought it was either sheer ignorance or the spread ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... not even give herself airs of mystery among the girls, which was an act of creditable self-denial. The rest of the school never doubted that, on the death of Miss Shields' father, she had been removed by one of her friends. As for Maitland, ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... and looked out over the bay. A dying gleam of sunset broke through a cloud and fell across her hair. For a moment she seemed the spirit of the shore personified—all its mystery, all its ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... irresponsible and replied that he was giving his valet instructions to show the Bishop the garments in question, whenever it suited him to inspect them. The Bishop was equally amazed, but took exactly the same view about the Duke as the latter had decided upon concerning the Bishop. No doubt the mystery was eventually cleared up, and Bishop and Duke must have both enjoyed ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... aptitude for the things of the spirit enabled him intuitively to realise this, to understand it, to use it. And there was no mystery, no secret, no subterfuge on the part of Jesus as to the source of his power. In clear and unmistakable words he made it known—and why should he not? It was the truth, the truth of this inner kingdom that ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... log nearest to him, when a thunderbolt appeared to have exploded before him. He started back as though he had received an electric shock. A perfect battery of howls was leveled against him, and for a moment his ears were stunned with the deafening uproar. He determined, however, to solve the mystery. Giving the structure a push that brought it tumbling to the ground, he sprung back and held his rifle prepared for any foe, were he a four-footed or a two-footed one. Instead of either, what was his amazement to see ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... put an end to the present conversation. I stood beside her, affecting to listen and admire, but truly whirled away by my own thoughts. I have always found this young lady to be a lover of the mysterious; and certainly this first interview made a mystery that was beyond my plummet. One thing I learned long after: the hours of Sunday had been well employed, the bank-porter had been found and examined, my visit to Charles Stewart was discovered, and the deduction made that I was pretty ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nuts, damson plums! And those fish! Dry salmon from the Danube, sturgeon, Venetian and Turkish caviare, pikes and pickerel a cubit long, flounders, and capon carp, and noble carp! Finally a culinary mystery: an uncut fish, fried at the head, baked in the middle, and with its tail in a ragout ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... had spread from Kent to Suffolk, Norfolk, Surrey, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Huntingdonshire, and Cambridgeshire, and a great deal of very valuable property had been destroyed. A mystery enveloped these proceedings that indicated organization, and it became suspected that they had a political object. Threatening letters were sent to individuals signed 'Swing,' and beacon fires communicated ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... 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
... in the house, which was a great mystery to Honey when it first came. She could hear voices talking back to mama, yet could not see a person. Was some one hidden away in the horn her mother put to her ear, or was ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... examined it, they saw that it was made of ebony and ivory; whereat they laughed to each other, saying, 'Was it of the like of this horse that the youth spoke? Surely, he must be mad; but we shall soon see the truth of his case. Belike, there hangs some great mystery by him.' Then they lifted up the horse and carrying it to the King, set it down before him, and all the people flocked round it, staring at it and marvelling at the beauty of its fashion and the richness of its saddle and bridle. ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... "A mystery is set before us to unriddle; at the end the author turns round and asks us what is the good of solving it. That the impression of emptiness and un-meaningness thus produced is in itself a blemish to the work no one can deny. Mr. Hawthorne really ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... "The Phantom," which was in the outskirts of the park, sheltered by a thatched roof. Sidonie thought that a charming episode. In the evening she must invent some story, a pretext of some sort for going to "The Phantom" alone. The shadow of the trees across the path, the mystery of the night, the rapid walk, the excitement, made her heart beat deliciously. She would find the letter saturated with dew, with the intense cold of the spring, and so white in the moonlight that she would hide it quickly for ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... by the duties upon what is carried. It is, perhaps, the only mercantile project which has been successfully managed by, I believe, every sort of government. The capital to be advanced is not very considerable. There is no mystery in the business. The returns are not only ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... fancy," interposed Gertie, breaking the pause, "that I'm the best one to explain." She was standing beside old Mrs. Douglass, and as she spoke she gripped at the back of the wicker chair. "I don't like this mystery where I am concerned. Lady Douglass came to the door of the billiard-room whilst Mr. Langham and me—Mr. Langham and I were there. The door was locked. ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... moved, at the close of the civil war, from Georgia to Texas, is to this good hour a mystery to me. While we did not exactly belong to the poor whites, we classed with them in poverty, being renters; but I am inclined to think my parents were intellectually superior to that common type of the South. Both were foreign born, my mother being Scotch ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... desolate, like a desert, only without sand, and led to nowhere except the still more desolate sea-coast; nobody ever crossed it. Whatever mystery there was about the tower, it and the sky and the plain kept ...
— The Little Lame Prince - Rewritten for Young Readers by Margaret Waters • Dinah Maria Mulock
... allusion to a passage in 'King Victor and King Charles' which I think more than rivals the famous utterance of Valence, revealing as it does the same grasp of non-conventional truth, while its occasion lends itself to a far deeper recognition of the mystery, the frequent hopeless dilemma of our moral life. It is that in which Polixena, the wife of Charles, entreats him for duty's sake to retain the crown, though he will earn, by so doing, neither the credit of a virtuous deed nor the sure, persistent ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... problem of their revolutions—the cause of their impulsion[7] as well as of their creation. Baffled in my scrutiny of the sublime puzzle which is domed over the globe at nightfall, dizzy with the contemplation of such abysses of mystery, my thoughts have reverted to this earth, in which pleasure sparkles but to evaporate. No solace in the investigation of those infinitudes, which are only fathomable by a system revolting to my judgment—the system of a theocratic philosophy; no consolation in the dreamings evoked by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... "expression." And she had the oddest complex sensation; she could, through her tightly closed eyes, vision herself kneeling there; while, at the same time, she could feel her spirit floating away, mingling with the air, melting into the night, fusing with all the divine mystery of heaven and earth. And her soul yearned for more mystery, for more divinity, with an ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... not seen Mrs Askerton since that interview between them which was described some few chapters back. Then everything had been told between them, so that there was no longer any mystery either on the one side or on the other. Then Clara had assured her friend of her loving friendship in spite of any edicts to the contrary which might come from Aylmer Park; and after that what could be more natural than that Mrs Askerton should come ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... Latch both disliked him. Had it not been for his influence Mrs. Barfield felt sure her husband would never have returned to his vice. Had it not been for Mr. Leopold Mrs. Latch felt that her husband would never have taken to betting. Legends and mystery had formed around Mr. Leopold and his pantry, and in Esther's unsophisticated mind this little room, with its tobacco smoke and glasses on the table, became a symbol of all that was wicked and dangerous; and when she ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... or I had half what he has spent upon it, you and I would be rich bourgeois. If Madame la comtesse goes there—ha! I tell you what! no more ease and comfort for the Moreaus," said the valet, with an air of mystery. ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... April 10. Felix Woyrsch's Mystery for soli, chorus, orchestra and organ, "Toedtentanz" given by the Apollo Musical ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... (white) lay dead, his right arm extended to the full length, and firmly clenched in his hand was a piece of fancy soap. A bullet had entered his forehead, the blood from the wound was trickling down his face, but the hue of health was still on his cheek. How he came to be there is to me a mystery, as that part of the line was forced by colored troops. Swinging by the right flank we kept our way along the Boydton road. A Confederate light battery in position alongside of a cottage, which stood in a hollow, shelled the column as it advanced, and so accurate had the gunners ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... the mastery that he had achieved not for the mere pleasure of practicing or exhibiting it, but to give fitting and adequate expression to feelings and to thoughts. The domestic affections, the love of country, and the mystery of death had the deepest hold upon him, and whenever he approaches these themes he is almost sure to be genuine and sincere. His pity for the poor and unfortunate was very tender, and was the real spring of a great deal of his democracy, and he had a fine gift ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... bacon, that's all," replied the other calmly; but this explanation only increased the mystery; so far as Steve ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... to see what it meant. His suspicions were aroused. There was some design in that suspended meat, evidently. It was a trap to catch him. He surveyed it from every near branch. He peeked and pried, and was bent on penetrating the mystery. He flew to the ground, and walked about and surveyed it from all sides. Then he took a long walk down about the vineyard as if in hope of hitting upon some clew. Then he came to the tree again, and tried first one eye, then the ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... pack-camels, mules, and attendants on horseback, forming altogether the most imposing cavalcade I have met on a Persian road. How they manage to get the heavily loaded forgans and the Governor's carriage over such places as the pass near Lasgird is something of a mystery—but there may be another route—at any rate, hundreds of villagers would be ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... words, "Alas! madam," said he, in a melancholy tone, "I have just saved your life, and this writing is my death! I do not comprehend all the mystery; but it convinces me I am the most unfortunate of men. Pardon, madam, the liberty I take, but it was impossible for me to see you without giving you my heart. You are not ignorant yourself, that it was not in my power to refuse it you, and that makes my presumption ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... then pass to the rear, and so on till all had seen "Jehovah's rain" far below. It was somewhat comical, yet far more pathetic, to stand by and watch their faces, as man after man peered down into the mystery, and then looked up at me in blank bewilderment! When all had seen it with their own very eyes, and were "weak with wonder," the ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... put it in a nutshell," said Donnegan. "I was tired; dead beat; needed a handout, and rapped at your door. Along comes a mystery in the shape of an ugly-looking woman and opens the door to me. Tries to shut me out; I decided to come in. She insists on keeping me outside; all at once I see that I have to get into the house. I am brought in; your daughter ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... This was soon after the Revolution of 1830, and the mayor had him decently interred at night. The clergy purchased the whole of his library at a nominal price and made away with it. No papers were found which served to elucidate the mystery which had always surrounded him, but in the corner of one drawer was found a packet containing some faded flowers tied up with a tricoloured ribbon. At first this was supposed to be some love-token, and several people built upon this foundation a romantic ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... Spider drew a newspaper clipping from his pocket. The El Paso paper stated that there was one chance in a thousand of Pete recovering. The paper also stated that there had been money involved—a considerable sum in gold—which had not been found. The entire affair was more or less of a mystery. It was hinted that the money might not have been honestly come by in the first place, and—sententiously—that crime breeds crime, in proof of which, the article went on to say; "the man who had been shot by the police was none other than Pete Annersley, ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... hills; and she was conscious—how she could not explain—that the sunset was different from any other sunset that she had ever seen. She had always loved nature with an intense love; but now there seemed a richer gold in the parting sunbeams—a sweeter mystery behind the far-off hills—because of that Figure in the east window. It was as if she saw again a land which she had always loved, and now learned for the first time that it belonged to some one who was dear to her; a new sense of ownership mingled with ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... in that sound, He having prayer, and Ave vainly made, Because he knew not how to swim, was drowned. Others report a Saint bestowed his aid, And dragged him with a visible hand aground. Whichever be the reading of this mystery, Of him I speak no further ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... exclude the strangers, the atheists, the epicureans, and the Christians! The mystery of the basket is unveiled, ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... But another mystery about the loved and lost master, which I longed to have revealed, would not let me leave the city. In the afternoon I sought Boehner, and asked him to walk with me. As soon as we had alluded to the one subject that bound us together, I requested him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Anyway, the mystery was not very comforting. The column were forbidden to talk; they rode on, northward, through the long grass of the rich bottoms; the two scouts led, Scout Gruard every now and again halting, to scan about from the ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... had taken place, and the young officer's words came like a bombshell upon this steady-going and rather dull officer. If it were true, all the mystery of the last few weeks was cleared up. But he could not believe it. Waterman was regarded as one of the most capable and trustworthy of the staff officers. He had shown zeal beyond the ordinary, and his intelligence and quickness of perception ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... the Renaissance. Humanity occupied the attention of poets and painters; and the age was yet far distant when the pantheistic feeling for the world should produce the art of Wordsworth and of Turner. Yet a few great natures even then began to comprehend the charm and mystery which the Greeks had imaged in their Pan, the sense of an all-pervasive spirit in wild places, the feeling of a hidden want, the invisible tie which makes man a part of rocks and woods and streams around him. Petrarch had already ascended the summit of Mont Ventoux, to meditate, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... rifts Of their huge crags, and made small darker spots Upon their wrinkled sides; the jaded horse Stumbled upon loose, rattling, fallen stones, Amidst the gathering dusk, and blindly fared Through the weird, perilous pass. As darkness waxed, And an oppressive mystery enwrapped The roadstead and the rocks, Sir Tannhauser Fancied he saw upon the mountain-side The fluttering of white raiment. With a sense Of wild joy and horror, he gave pause, For his sagacious horse that ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... wonder that we hover about the dark mystery, and find in our researches room for absorbing study, even though we cannot reach absolute certainty? Could you have seen the excitement which prevailed among the half-dozen settlers, I had employed in digging the mound on Rainy River, in August last, when the perfect pottery cup figured ...
— The Mound Builders • George Bryce
... earliest infancy and had seen no indications of any error of the sort. But we had not long to wait for confirmation of our view of the case, as they were soon caught in the act, to which it was found that they were greatly addicted, and the mystery was wholly solved. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... inarticulate anguish, sympathy with a half-idiotic peasant-boy stammering out his hopeless love, that first stirred the poet within him and led him to compose. The music of defeat, the insistent cry of the world's pain, sound out of his music because the Russian folk has always known the great mystery and reality and good of suffering, has known that only the humble, only those who have borne defeat and pain and misfortune can see the face of life, that sorrow and agony can hallow human existence, and that while in the days of his triumph and well-being ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... was as cruel and insulting as ever, Miss Amelia was as peevish, and the servants were as vulgar. Sara was sent on errands, and scolded, and driven hither and thither, but somehow it seemed as if she could bear it all. The delightful sense of romance and mystery lifted her above the cook's temper and malice. The comfort she enjoyed and could always look forward to was making her stronger. If she came home from her errands wet and tired, she knew she would soon be warm, after she had climbed the stairs. In ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... me to conclude something. Eh! has that Robin been chirping out her fancies? And do you mean to say that you are struck all of a heap by the awful discovery of a boarding-school mystery?' ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dismiss him as a rascal, for having practised a sharping trick at play; but, as he is a cunning fellow, he perceived the Duke's love for Mademoiselle de Ligneville, although he pretended to make a great mystery of it. About this time Madame de Lenoncourt, my daughter's dame d'atour, happened to die. The Duke managed to have Mademoiselle de Ligneville appointed in her room; and Craon, who is rich, offered ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Elsewhere it is the blue of the stachys and the spiked veronica that rules. Deeper in the herbage other races of flowers shine in the fair groves of this grassy paradise, and every blossom, however small, is a mystery, a miracle. Here is the star of Bethlehem, wide open in the sunshine and showing so purely white amidst the green, and yonder is the purple fringe-like tuft of the weird muscari. Along the banks of the stream tall lilac-purple, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... of Horncastle! is the popular account of the birth of the great captain of Hungary, as related by Florentius of Buda. There are other accounts of his birth, which is, indeed, involved in much mystery, and of the reason of his being called Corvinus, but as this is the most pleasing, and is, upon the whole, founded on quite as good evidence as the others, I have selected it ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... the mystery of immortality is so untroubled that it now seemed almost natural to be passing to the portal of death from an ice-pan. Quite unbidden, the words of the old hymn ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... to be a very fairyland of tempting mystery, waiting to be explored; and till the trees hid the towering eminences from his sight, he went on planning endless excursions for ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... not impose on me in the least. I was too much accustomed to analytical labors to be baffled by so flimsy a veil. I determined to probe the mystery to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... he kept the gun in his possession, with the hammer pulled back, ready for business. And constantly did he maintain a close watch along the nearer border of the undergrowth that lay there, so dense and filled with mystery. ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... in heaven that can be represented as a pair, coursing across the sky, looking down upon the sea, and having other related properties. My readers will make a shrewd guess, but I prefer to let the texts themselves unfold the transparent mystery. The Veda of the Katha school (xxxvii. 14) says: "These two dogs of Yama, verily, are day and night," and the Br[a]hmana of the K[a]ush[i]takins (ii. 9) argues in Talmudic strain: "At eve, when the sun has ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield
... through the wonder of that vision, she heard the coming of the vast procession. It was like a dream, and yet it was wholly real. As yet lost in distance, veiled in mystery, she heard the tread of the ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... showed the merchant flag and steered for shore. Shortly afterward a second one was reported. This time it proved to be the French torpedo boat Mousquet. It comes straight toward us. That's always remained a mystery to me, for it must have heard the shooting. An officer whom we fished up afterward explained to me that they had only recognized we were a German warship when they were quite close to us. The Frenchman behaved well, accepted ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... that there was some mystery or other, and my imagination conjured up all sorts of romantic stories. "And that young lady," thought I, "is Miss Alice Marlow." "Alice Marlow—Alice Marlow; what a very pretty name," I kept repeating to myself, while my arms were aching with the exertion of ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... months later, made more extended reference to this variety and while its bona-fides as a "split" is established its use as a half stamp is as much a mystery as ever. We cannot do better than give ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... called "the ten fallow years in the life of Tennyson." But fallow years are not all fallow. The dark brooding night is as necessary for our life as the garish day. Great crops of wheat that feed the nations grow only where the winter's snow covers all as with a garment. And ever behind the mystery of sleep, and beneath the silence of the snow, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... forgiuenesse: So wee'l liue, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded Butterflies: and heere (poore Rogues) Talke of Court newes, and wee'l talke with them too, Who looses, and who wins; who's in, who's out; And take vpon's the mystery of things, As if we were Gods spies: And wee'l weare out In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones, That ebbe and flow ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... under torture that you know your father, or that your father had any name than Dick (which wasn't his name, though he was never known by any other), or that he had kith or kin or chick or child. Perhaps the attraction of this mystery, combined with your father's having a damp compartment, to himself, behind a leaky cistern, at the Dust-Bin,—a sort of a cellar compartment, with a sink in it, and a smell, and a plate-rack, and a bottle-rack, ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... These two turned the hues of a dying dolphin, and then laughed. It was Joe. He held a newspaper in his hand. "I reckon ye woz right, Mr. North, about my takin' these yar papers reg'lar. For I allow here's suthin' that may clar up the mystery o' that baby's parents." With the hesitation of a slowly grappling intellect, Joe sat down on the table and read from the San Francisco "Herald" as follows: "'It is now ascertained beyond doubt that the wreck reported by the Aeolus was the American brig Pomare bound hence to Tahiti. The worst ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... and mistress only old David, who, in spite of his eighty-two years, suffices to wait on his mistress. Some of our Jarvis people tell wonderful tales about her. These have a certain weight in a land so essentially conducive to mystery as ours; and I am now studying the treatise on Incantations by Jean Wier and other works relating to demonology, where pretended supernatural events are recorded, hoping to find facts analogous to those which are attributed ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... third part of the city was consumed to ashes. A few incendiaries fell a sacrifice to the rage of the soldiers, and many individuals were arrested on suspicion, but no clue was found to unravel the mystery, though no doubt can exist that the fearful deed was committed by order of the American general. The act has been applauded as one emanating from stern patriotism and self-devotion, but it appears rather to have proceeded from sheer ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... indeed to me that I had my Ann for a friend, and could pour out to her all that filled my young soul with fears. How our cheeks would burn when many a time we spoke of the love which was the bond between Gotz and his fair Gertrude. To us, indeed, it was as yet a mystery, but that it was sweet and full of joy we deemed a certainty. We would have been fain to cry out to the Emperor and the world to take arms against the ruthless parents who were minded to tread so holy a blossom in the dust; but since this was not in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... difficulties, and is their most complete solution; his gospel; the singularity of his mysterious being; his appearance, his empire, his progress through all centuries and kingdoms,—all this is to me a prodigy, an unfathomable mystery. I defy you to cite another life like that of Christ." It has well been said that "Christ is the God who is man, and ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... beast in the guise of an angel—the singing of chansonettes with such a devil in the body—and at the same time a complexion, a look, a smile, which scatters a kind of mystic, lily perfume. This is precisely that dissonance, that snap, that mystery with which she has conquered Europe. This rouses curiosity; it excites; it is opposed to rules, to harmony—do ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... over a green plain unbroken by elevations. The hills which inclose the Nile valley have level tops, and sides that are bare of trees, or shrubs, or flowers, or even mosses. The sky is generally cloudless. No fog or mist enwraps the distance in mystery; no rainstorm sweeps across the scene; no rainbow spans the empyrean; no shadows chase each other over the landscape. There is an entire absence of picturesque scenery. A single broad river, unbroken within the limits of ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... it became intense when the inhabitants saw a procession of twenty females, with veiled faces, proceeding arm in arm, and two by two, to the house of the Governor, who received them in state and provided them with suitable lodgings. What did it mean? The next morning, which was Sunday, the mystery was cleared by the officiating priest reading from the pulpit, after mass, and for the general information, the following communication from the ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... never stretched the pia mater<11> of mine. Methinks there be not impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith: the deepest mysteries our contains have not only been illustrated, but maintained, by syllogism and the rule of reason. I love to lose myself in a mystery; to pursue my reason to an O altitudo! 'Tis my solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those involved enigmas and riddles of the Trinity—with incarnation and resurrec- tion. I can answer all the objections of Satan ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... magic in his lays which few even of his professed enemies have been able to resist. To the young, the gay, and the enthusiastic his verses are ever welcome, and the sage discovers in them a hidden mystery which reconciles him to their subjects. His tomb, near Shiraz, is visited as a sacred spot by pilgrims of all ages. The place of his birth is held in veneration, and there is not a Persian whose heart does not ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... with its immensity, its mystery, its moods, the danger in it, and the man's work in mastering it, was almost irresistibly attractive ...
— Out of the Fog • C. K. Ober
... wanted to marry me, and has asked me every week since. I have told him that I love him, but I have not said I would marry him. I don't think it would be right for me to do so, unless I could clear up this mystery. I believe he is going to be great and rich and famous, and there might come a time when he would be ashamed of me. I don't say that I shall never marry him; for I have hoped—I have a presentiment that in some strange way ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... and sailed away. These men did not talk English, but they had money and quickly made their way to Yokohama. From that day the Japanese village folk never heard anything more about them, and they are still a much-talked-of mystery. As the Russian government never said anything about the incident, the United States is still ignorant of the whereabouts of the lost poacher, nor has she ever heard, officially, of the way in which some of her citizens "shanghaied" ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... mystic, wondrous hope in me, That, when no star from out the darkness bore Gives promise of the coming of the morn, When all life seems a pathless mystery Through which tear-blinded eyes no way can see; When illness comes, and life grows most forlorn, Still dares to laugh the last dread threat to scorn, And proudly cries, Death is not, shall not be? I wonder at myself! Tell me, O ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... Though no mystery was now made concerning the faith in which she died, the duke, from motives of prudence, continued to preserve the secret of his having embraced the same religion. He still publicly attended service on Sundays with the king, but ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... and October 1768 is compelling evidence for dating the pamphlet, in spite of Mr. Griffin, 1768. Walpole once more proves himself a reliable source. Why the publication was delayed for over a year will probably remain a mystery. ...
— A Pindarick Ode on Painting - Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq. • Thomas Morrison
... which the work was intended. It is now ascertained that the unknown patron was a Count Walsegg, an amateur desirous of being thought a great composer. It was his intention to have performed the work as his own. Mozart was now in low spirits, worn out with work, late hours and financial worry. The mystery of the "Requiem" preyed on his imagination none the less that he felt that in it he was writing some of his noblest and best thoughts. He said: "I am sure that this will be my own requiem." Nothing could dissuade him from the idea. It returned again ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... attempted by the voyageurs, a roll of bedding with a coat tied to it was seen floating in the current. It was supposed that somewhere up the river an accident had occurred, but, as it was impossible to tell when or where, no attempt was made to solve the mystery, and the labor of advancing the brigade northward ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... to get across, apparently just as much as if there were no one present to help; although no doubt the presence of the shepherd had a good effect upon their exertions. It is beyond our reach to explain the metaphysical mystery ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... suspected any mystery. She chatted on happily for the rest of the evening, brought down a great collection of old ball-cards, and with a sort of loving recollection described each very minutely, just as some old nurses have a way of doing with the funeral ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... Bonaparte had little right to complain, as they did, that the real state of his disorder was purposely concealed from the world by the English Government. It is more than probable that the constant attempts observed to throw mystery and secrecy around them must have tended to create the suspicion of escape, and to increase the consequent rigour of the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... often, he would cast a timorous hook into its depths and tremble lest he should lure from the pallid waters some portentous and dreadful prey. He never captured, however, anything more terrifying than catfish; but these were clad in no small measure of mystery, for the white waters of the Perdu had bleached their scales to a ghastly pallor, and the opalescence of their eyes was apt to haunt their captor's reveries. He might have said, also, that it was his playmate, little Celia Hansen,—whose hook he would bait whenever she wished to fish, ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... were received at the office by the man who professed to love her. How could she hesitate to believe it when it was confirmed by his avoidance of Eccleston Square and of herself? The cause of it all was a mystery which no amount of speculation could clear up. Sometimes the poor girl would blame herself, as is the way of women in such cases. "I have not seen enough of the world," she would say to herself. "I have none of the charms of these women whom I read of in the ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Hinge returned, with a face and voice of mystery—"do you think, sir, as you'll be able to get about to-morrow? If you can, I'll ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... more than two months in England, and still his intentions were covered with a veil of mystery, which no ingenuity, either of the royalists or of the republicans, could penetrate. Sir John Grenville, with whom the reader is already acquainted, paid frequent visits to him at St. James's; but the object of the Cavalier was suspected, and his attempts[a] to obtain ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
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