"Legerdemain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... limited to the setting of booby-traps or the arranging of apple-pie beds must view with envy the much greater tribute of laughter and applause which is the lot of the prestidigitator with some natural gift for legerdemain. Fortunately there are a few simple conjuring tricks which are within the reach of us all. With practice even the clumsiest of us can obtain sufficient dexterity in the art of illusion to puzzle the most observant of ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... trouble in the church, Philip went and preached at Samaria with great success, nay so great was the work that an impostor, who had deceived the people with legerdemain tricks for a long time was so amazed, and even convinced, as to profess himself a Christian, and was baptized; but was afterwards detected, and appeared to be an hypocrite. Besides him a great number believed in reality, and being baptized ...
— An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens • William Carey
... invitation to the ladies of New York to come and see them and see themselves as others saw them. To arrange these mirrors so that a lady could see the buttons on the back of her dress was regarded as the final achievement of legerdemain. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... really felt to be a source of interest and amusement. This is the case with a large number of the collectors of Dutch pictures. They enjoy seeing what is flat made to look round, exactly as a child enjoys a trick of legerdemain: they rejoice in flies which the spectator vainly attempts to brush away,[46] and in dew which he endeavours to dry by putting the picture in the sun. They take it for the greatest compliment to ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... that Tom had dexterously transferred the bottle of brandy to the keeping of the Turk, who had secreted it behind his back, after turning half aside and pouring out a pretty good dose into his coffee-cup, all with the most rapid legerdemain as if he ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... the actors came on and went off, opening the door between the parlour and the drawing-room and hanging it with table-covers to represent the front of the stage. Then he recited Hamlet and King Lear; and we all left off work to look at him; and when he wound up with a performance of legerdemain, and brought a vase that had previously been on the mantel-piece out of Mrs. Marchbold's work-bag, and took eggs from a pillow-case, and took four reels of cotton out of Miss Bailey's chignon, we didn't know whether ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... earth, can decide his fate, but the real good or evil of his soul, the genuine fitness or unfitness of his soul, his soul's inherent merits of bliss or bale. There is no time nor power in the instant of death, by any magical legerdemain, to turn away the impending retributions of wickedness and guilt. What is right, within the conditions of Infinite wisdom and goodness, will be done in spite of all traditional juggles and spasmodic spiritual attitudinizations. What can ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... to afford us pleasure by singing a favorite air out of tune. The facility with which the characters are transported from the ends of the earth to meet at a place called Plum Island surpasses any trick in legerdemain. Unless we had read it here we should never have believed that life on the coast of Maine could be so exciting, so cosmopolitan in its scope, so thrilling in its incidents. There is a jumble of notabilities—leaders of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... western wing and found the Tressilvains tete-a-tete over a card-table, deeply interested in something that resembled legerdemain; and he stood at the door and watched them with a smile that ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... directly to Goshorn's hotel. He was a stout, burly man, shrewd in his way, good-natured, but not without temper and impulses. He looked keenly after business, played the fiddle, and performed a few tricks of legerdemain. He had a ladylike wife, and both were very kind to me, especially after they came to know me pretty well. The lady had a nice, easy horse, which ere long was lent me freely whenever I wanted to ride. One day it was missing. The master grieved. They had named it after me in compliment. ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... neither impious nor altogether vnlawfull, though heerein or heereby a naturall thing be made to seeme supernaturall. And Gentlemen, if you will giue me patience, I will lay open vnto you the right Art Iugling and Legerdemain, in what poynt it doth chiefly consist: principally being sorry that it thus fals out, to lay open the secrets of this mistery to the hinderance of such poore men as liue thereby, whose doings heerein are not onely tollerable, but greatly commendable, so they abuse not ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... bowing. The bird-like case with which she executed the most florid, rapid, and difficult music was so securely easy and unfailing as to excite something of the same kind of wonder with which one would watch some matchless display of legerdemain. ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... schoolboy might have done as well. My labour, such as it was, was absorbed instantly in the commercial operations of a great firm. I could not trace it, and I had no means of estimating its value. The money I took for it seemed therefore to come to me by a sort of legerdemain. That some one thought it worth while to pay me was ostensible proof that my work was really worth something; but so little able was I to penetrate the processes that resulted in this judgment, so vivid was the sense of some ingenious jugglery in the whole business, that I did ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... preaches, not against distinct moral turpitude like hypocrisy and avarice, but against inordinate affection for lap-dogs (Melampe), pietistic objections to masked balls {Masquerades}, and superstitious belief in legerdemain (Witchcraft). Holberg voices the urbane humanistic spirit that characterized the eighteenth century at ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... of noted wrestlers. "Kayim" (not El-Kim as Torrens has it) is a term now applied to a juggler or "professor" of legerdemain who amuses people in the streets with easy tricks. (Lane, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... that the negro, although our amended Constitution promises him all the privileges of citizenship, is in many parts of our country practically divested of his vote. By a species of legerdemain in the communities in which he is most numerous and most needs protection, he is to all intents and purposes disfranchised. What will follow as the final outcome we do not know, but that is the beginning of his attempted re-enslavement. It is beyond any question ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... had not spoken for years. It took in each individual of the whole gang, it told them they were dogs and sons of dogs, killers of men, unmentionable carrion, cayotes, kites, and that he would have hanged them each and individually with his own hands (and I believe by some legerdemain of strength he would), but that they were without hearts, souls or intellect, not responsible creatures, tools of villains that he, Adams, would expose and get ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... this wise. Father Higgins had ventured to treat himself to a spectacle. He had attended, for the first time in his life, an exhibition of legerdemain; this one being given by that celebrated master of the black-art, Professor Heller. He had seen the professor change turnips into gold watches, draw a dozen live pigeons in succession out of an empty box, send rings into ladies' handkerchiefs at ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... John in many particulars; covetous, frugal, minded domestic affairs, would pinch his belly to save his pocket, never lost a farthing by careless servants or bad debtors. He did not care much for any sort of diversion, except tricks of high German artists and legerdemain. No man exceeded Nic. in these; yet it must be owned that Nic. was a fair dealer, and in that ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... jump so fast that you see, or seem to. On the other hand, when you see a standing ring of fire produced by whirling a burning stick, you do not believe in its continuous existence. It is the same when witnessing a legerdemain performance. Seeing is not always believing, despite the proverb; but believing is often seeing. It is not to the point that in that little matter of the door Wimp was as hopelessly and incurably wrong as he has been ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... worship gradually falls into complete desuetude. Thus the spirits who receive the homage of these savages were real men of flesh and blood, not mythical beings conjured up by the fancy of their worshippers, which some legerdemain of the mind has foisted into the shrine and encircled with the halo of divinity. Not that the Melanesians do not also worship beings who, so far as we can see, are purely mythical, though their worshippers firmly believe in their reality. But "they themselves make a clear distinction between ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... lantern, and the Lecture on Heads?—am I right, or am I in fairy-land?' calling him by his name. It was in vain to hesitate, it was impossible to escape, the discovery was complete. It was plain however that the dealer in magical delusions had not altogether given up the art of legerdemain, which, perhaps, he finds the most profitable of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... to mount beside him, and drove on again, almost in silence. He was inclined to believe that some supernatural legerdemain had to do with these periodic impacts of Picotee on his path. She sat mute and melancholy till they were within half-a-mile ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... never forget the tipsy cunning of Paul Barr's expression, as he watched the effect of his legerdemain. The portrait was excellent; it was, indeed, a masterpiece. I was sufficiently in my senses to appreciate that, though my absorbing thought was how to get out of the room. For some moments we each kept our pose,—I standing surveying the picture, and he with his eyes bent upon me, leaning against ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... bearing the delightfully sepulchral name of Dr. Sexton, whose mission in life it is to "expose" the tricks of Dr. Lynn and Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke. How those gentlemen are to be "exposed," seeing they only claim to deceive you by legerdemain, I cannot comprehend; but they made the Spiritualists very angry by taking their names in vain on the handbills of the Egyptian Hall, and more than insinuating that there was a family likeness between their performances; and, consequently, the conjurors ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... retina is so short, that they are not visible. This is proved by our not perceiving the motions of cannon and musket balls, and many other kinds of motion. On this principle depends the art of conjuration, or legerdemain; the fundamental maxim of those who practise them, is, that the motion is ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... as if all the knowledge in the world had flashed into his head quicker than the hand of legerdemain could run the leaves of a pack of cards through its fingers. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... Mr Mill's essay consists in one simple trick of legerdemain. It consists in using words of the sort which we have been describing first in one sense and then in another. Men will take the objects of their desire if they can. Unquestionably:—but this is an identical proposition: for an object ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the Angel of Death, who with matchless legerdemain, keeps the mirror of illusion, unsuspected, before the consumptive's eyes; and, seeing, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... any, nor have the power to be so much as witches. The devil hath made them already in a heresy as capital as witchcraft; and to appear to them were but to convert them. Of all the delusions wherewith he deceives mortality, there is not any that puzzleth me more than the legerdemain of changelings. I do not credit those transformations of reasonable creatures into beasts, or that the devil hath a power to transpeciate a man into a horse, who tempted Christ (as a trial of his divinity) to convert but stones into bread. I could believe that spirits use with man the act of ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... nothing, but I saw that he had clumsily overturned the bottle and absently set it up again, as though his thoughts were far away. Yet with a cleverness that would have done credit to a professor of legerdemain he had managed to extract two or three ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... was no ordinary impostor, but a man of consummate cunning and address, is very evident from this letter. The bishop was fairly taken in by his clever legerdemain, and when once his first distrust was conquered, appeared as anxious to deceive himself as even Delisle could have wished. His faith was so abundant that he made the case of his protege his own, and would not suffer the breath of suspicion to be directed against him. Both Louis and his minister ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... And what substitute does the honourable Baronet give his followers to console them for the loss of their favourite Registration Bill? Even this bill for the endowment of Maynooth College. Was such a feat of legerdemain ever seen? And can we wonder that the eager, honest, hotheaded Protestants, who raised you to power in the confident hope that you would curtail the privileges of the Roman Catholics, should stare and grumble when you propose to give ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... them, or they make themselves uncapable of reigning." So that according to them, if either of those two impediments shall happen, then it concerns the protestants of England to do that something, which, if they had spoken out, had been direct treason. Here is fine legerdemain amongst them: they have acknowledged a vote to be no more than the opinion of an house, and yet from a debate, which was abortive before it quickened into a vote, they argue after the old song, "that there is something more to be done, which you cannot chuse but ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... priesthood and unbelieving aristocracy; when oracles were becoming mute, because they could no longer withstand the sly wit of the initiated; when the miracles of the ancients were regarded as mere lies, and of contemporaries as feats of legerdemain. It had come to an evil pass when even statesmen received it as a maxim that when the people have advanced in intellectual culture to a certain point, the sacerdotal class must either deceive them or oppress them, if it means to keep ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... it is now distinctly bad form to practise legerdemain or feats of sleight-of-hand at a dinner party. Time was when it was considered correct for a young man who could do card or other tricks to add to the gayety of the party by displaying his skill, but that time is past, and the guest of today, who thinks ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... like these, I always feel grateful To my late father, who when I was young all seeds of impatience In my mind uprooted, and left no fragment remaining, And I learnt how to wait, as well as the best of the wise men. "Tell us what legerdemain he employ'd," the pastor made answer. "I will gladly inform you, and each one may gain by the lesson," Answer'd the neighbour. "When I was a boy, I was standing one Sunday In a state of impatience, eagerly waiting ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... kill and dissect them, hoping thus to learn how to offset their neglect of themselves. Conditions among them will be such that this will really be necessary. Few besides impractical sentimentalists will therefore oppose it. But the idea will be to gain health by legerdemain, by a trick, instead of by taking the trouble to ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... baronet; "this is some legerdemain trick of yours to get off from the performance of your promise, as you have so often done before. You shall show me that treasure, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... life more liberal and enlightened on all subjects than those who confine their researches in special directions. When we base nations on justice and equality, we lift government out of the mists of speculation into the dignity of a fixed science. Everything short of this is trick, legerdemain, sleight of hand. Magicians may make nations seem to live, but they do not. The Newtons of our day who should try to make apples stand in the air or men walk on the wall, would be no more puerile in their experiments than are they who build nations outside of law, on the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... more, odd, or indeed absolutely ludicrous, was the circumstance that, by a species of legerdemain, a whisper had passed among the spectators so stealthily, and yet so soon, that the attorney and his companion were the only two on deck who remained ignorant of the person of the man they sought. Even the children caught the clue, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... God created the heavens and the earth becomes in this way an affirmation of evolution; the Virgin Birth affirms the reality of Christ's human nature; and the Resurrection of the Flesh affirms the Immortality of the Soul. Performed with skill, this dialectical legerdemain is very soothing to a not unduly intelligent congregation and prevents any breach in the apparent continuity of the Church's belief. It also prevents any undue acrimoniousness of theological debate, for debate ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... that some of Mr. George's feats 'seem to partake of the nature of legerdemain'. 'He sways a popular assembly by waves of almost Hebraic emotion.' 'No man has ever had his ear closer to the ground and listened more attentively to the tramp of the oncoming multitudes.' He 'held Great Britain's ...
— Tract XI: Three Articles on Metaphor • Society for Pure English
... most remarkable believers in that forgotten and despised science, was a late eminent professor of the art of legerdemain. One would have thought that a person of this description ought, from his knowledge of the thousand ways in which human eyes could be deceived, to have been less than others subject to the fantasies of ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... like a trick of legerdemain; one moment he stood before us, and at the next he was gone. At his going, Cummings and the turnkey also disappeared and I was left alone with Benedict. There was a hearty handgrasp to assure me that I was not dreaming, and then ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... long residence in Burma—does not permit me to indulge in the luxury of port. My share of the '45 now reposes amid the moss in the tulip-bowl, which you may remember decorated the dining table! Not desiring to appear churlish, by means of a simple feat of legerdemain I drank your health ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... but to fodder asses with. If our historian means by every little invention to increase the powers of mankind, as an enterprise of such renown, he is deceived; this glory is not due to such as go about with a dog and a hoop, nor to the practicers of legerdemain, or upon the high or low rope; not to every mountebank and his man Andrew; all which, with many other mechanical and experimental philosophers, do in some sort increase the powers of mankind, and differ no more ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... between improvement of manufactures or lands (which tend to the immediate benefit of the public, and employing of the poor), and projects framed by subtle heads with a sort of a deceptio visus and legerdemain, to bring people to run needless and unusual hazards: I grant it, and give a due preference to the first. And yet success has so sanctified some of those other sorts of projects that it would be a kind of blasphemy ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... absolute legerdemain he took out his handkerchief and brushed some crumbs from his beard. His cup slid to the edge of the saucer and peeped over, but, throwing the spoon overboard, righted itself just in time. Somewhat pleased with himself he replaced the handkerchief ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... legerdemain-tricks of Custom: but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous. True, it is by this means we live; for man must work as well as ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... ecstasy the invalid set to work to obey. There was a hideous trick of legerdemain in the last generation, by which an encoffined skeleton was made to struggle to its feet. Something like this took place as Mina's feeble arms were brought into the most violent effort to assist her to rise. But a powerful emotion, a tremendous hope, ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... they torment us with this complication and confusion of words, it fares with them, methinks, as with jugglers; their dexterity imposes upon our senses, but does not at all work upon our belief this legerdemain excepted, they perform nothing that is not very ordinary and mean: for being the more learned, they ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... defraying the cost of yachts and of innumerable appurtenances and luxuries. Not less than $2,500,000 was spent in building Sutherland House in London. Great as was this expense, it was not so serious as to perturb the duchess' father; his $50,000,000 feat of financial legerdemain, in 1898, alone far more than made up for these extravagant outlays. The Marlborough title was an expensive one; it turned out to be a better thing to retain than the man who bore it; after a thirteen years' compact, the couple decided to separate for "good and sufficient reasons," ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... chain, my bunch of keys, and two war-medals for plodding merit, and with a glance at these (as something to fall back upon), I stepped forward doggedly, looking (I fear now) a little like a professor of legerdemain. David was sitting up, and he immediately fixed his ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... almost the only person in whom she seemed to take any real interest, still followed her footsteps hither and thither, now toying with some pet of the gardens, a parrot or a dog, now performing most incredible feats of legerdemain, running off upon his hands, with his feet in a perpendicular position, to a distance, and coming back again by a series of summersets, until suddenly gathering his limbs and body together like a ball, he went off rolling ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... Peeie, a Youth of about sixteen Years old, as handsome as Nature could make a Man. They consecrate a beautiful Youth from his Infancy, and all Arts are used to compleat him in the finest Manner, both in Beauty and Shape: He is bred to all the little Arts and Cunning they are capable of; to all the legerdemain Tricks, and Slight of Hand, whereby he imposes on the Rabble; and is both a Doctor in Physick and Divinity: And by these Tricks makes the Sick believe he sometimes eases their Pains, by drawing from the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... prodigious strength, and was notable for the elegance of his figure, and the beauty of his features, and he aided Nature by a careful attendance to his dress. Besides other accomplishments, he was musical, a good fencer, danced well, had some acquaintance with legerdemain tricks, worked in hair, and could plait willow baskets." He adds that Audubon once swam across the Schuylkill with ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... cure a woman, who lay very ill. I was determined to watch him as narrowly as possible. Both doctor and patient were stark naked. After a series of most horrible grimaces, the sorcerer produced a very large yam, which he held up, pretending that he had limpt it, (for thus they call this species of legerdemain), out of the body of the woman, and that it had been, by witchcraft, the cause of her disorder. When he entered, I particularly noticed that he had nothing in his hands, or about him, nor did there appear any possibility of a substance of that size being concealed in the empty room. At another ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... and turned my situation over in my mind, in which kind of agreeable mental legerdemain I was still occupied when ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... With lightning-like legerdemain the quack had shuffled this bill to the bottom of his pile, and lifting up the one that lay on top, exposed it to the ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... his tricks in France, Italy, Spain; And Germany too knows his legerdemain; So hearing John Bull has a taste for strange sights, He's coming to London to put us to rights. ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... There was legerdemain in her actions. With all the seeming of cutting a slice from the loaf for him, she put loaf and slice back in the bread box and conveyed to him one of her own two slices. She believed she had deceived him, but he had noted her sleight-of-hand. Nevertheless, he took ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... professions ill correspond with his acts, as the aged sinner is actually detected stealing the knife of Seagriff himself, and from his person, too!—a feat of dexterity worthy the most accomplished master of legerdemain, the knife being adroitly abstracted from its sheath on the old sealer's hip during the exchange of salutations. Fortunately, the theft is discovered by young Chester, who is standing near by, and the thief caught in the very act. On the stolen article being taken ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... sense in our faces, dilating upon his simplicity, modesty, fidelity to his friends, indifference to the charms of fame, till we are almost convinced that he has imposed upon himself. By some strange piece of legerdemain he must surely have succeeded in regarding even his deliberate artifices, with the astonishing masses of hypocritical falsehoods which they entailed, as in some way legitimate weapons against a world full of piratical Curlls and deep laid plots. And, indeed, ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... things were done and could recount them, but as to how they were done, he could tell nothing. It must not be thought that of all the marvelous and awe-compelling things the yogis of India are accustomed to do, none can be assigned to any other origin than cunning legerdemain and hypnotism, or to the exercise of supernatural powers. Many of them are due to a strange and wonderful knowledge of nature which the science of the Occident has not yet reached in all its boasted advance. Yet when once explained, the Westerner understands some of these ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... in 1633-36, tells of the great diversions made in Persian coffee houses "by their poets and historians, who are seated in a high chair from whence they make speeches and tell satirical stories, playing in the meantime with a little stick and using the same gestures as our jugglers and legerdemain men do in England." ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Dancing girls, in mask and tinsel, gyrate to the weird strains of the Gamelon, an orchestra of tiny gongs, bamboo tubes, and metal pipes. Actors perform old-world dramas in dumb show, and conjurors in gaudy attire attract people of all ages to those time-honoured feats of legerdemain which once represented the sorcery of the mystic East. The simple Malay has not yet adopted the critical and unbelieving attitude which rubs the gilt off the gingerbread or the bloom off the plum, and his fervid faith in mythical heroes and necromantic exploits ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... know of no other vessel, that lay in front of the Rock that rode out this gale; and she did it with two hempen cables out, partly protected, however, by a good berth. There was a Swede that came back next day to her anchorage, which was said to have got back-strapped, behind the Rock, by some legerdemain, and so escaped also. I do not know how many lives were lost on this occasion; but the destruction of property must ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... If I have now seventy-five pounds to pay in taxes, it will require a hundred and ninety bushels of wheat to pay my share of taxes. Consequently, though my taxes are nominally reduced, they are, in reality, greatly augmented. This has been done by the legerdemain of paper money. In 1812, the pound-note was worth only thirteen shillings in silver. It is now worth twenty shillings. Therefore, when we now pay a pound-note to the tax-gatherer, we really pay him twenty shillings ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... where I was staying. I was out riding alone on an errand for Mrs. Mackenzie when he met me and made me go with him. He has arranged to have me meet his wife in Mexico. The show wouldn't draw well without me. You know I do legerdemain," Frank explained, ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... worth about twenty-five cents for the music, and five cents for the privilege of sleeping on a soft cushion. So you see I lose four dollars and seventy cents every time I attend. You Catholic fellows, with your ceremonial and legerdemain, give a much better entertainment. Besides, I like to hear your priests soak it to their ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... detested, one and all, excepting only such as he happened to write himself. And these were not a few. On all subjects known to man, from the Thirty-nine Articles of our English church down to pyrotechnics, legerdemain, magic, both black and white, thaumaturgy, and necromancy, he favored the world (which world was the nursery where I lived amongst my sisters) with his select opinions. On this last subject especially—of necromancy—he was very great: witness his profound work, though but a fragment, and, unfortunately, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... feast of the Company's grand day—if not his wife, then his sweetheart, for all were to feast together. During dinner the musicians in their gallery made sweet music. After dinner, actors and tumblers came in, and they had pageants and shows, and marvellous feats of skill and legerdemain. ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... that it was in the power of others, as well as of Hastings, to practise this legerdemain; but in the controversies of governments, sophistry is of little use unless it be backed by power. There is a principle which Hastings was fond of asserting in the strongest terms, and on which he acted with undeviating steadiness. It is a principle which, we must ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of their senses, to take for a chamber a scene which is ornamented in quite a different style? And how does that which in the first description is a public place become afterwards a hall of audience? In this scenic arrangement there must be either legerdemain or ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... ignorant of, as you say, "the pleasure of doing nothing." As soon as I no longer hold a book, or am not dreaming of writing one, A LAMENTABLE boredom seizes upon me. Life, in short seems tolerable to me only by legerdemain. Or else one must give oneself up to disordered pleasure ... and ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... he performed soon ceased to have the literary tincture of the one related above, and they became mere vulgar juggleries and exhibitions of legerdemain, suited to the taste of the multitude. Scholars turned their backs on him, and we find him only among tipplers and associates of the lowest kind. At one of their carousals his half-intoxicated companions asked him for a specimen of his witchcraft. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... Devil in return for a few years of supernatural power. The tragic irony of the story might seem to lie in the frivolous use which Faustus makes of his dearly bought power, wasting it in practical jokes and feats of legerdemain; but of this Marlowe was probably unconscious. The love story of Margaret, which is the central point of Goethe's drama, is entirely wanting in Marlowe's, and so is the subtle conception of Goethe's Mephistophiles. Marlowe's handling of the supernatural is ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... trained up his daughter in the solitary companionship of this flower, from which she has acquired its peculiar properties. A handsome young student is induced to enter the garden, partly from curiosity and partly through the legerdemain of Rappacini. The student soon falls under the daughter's influence and finds himself being gradually poisoned. A watchful apothecary, who has penetrated the necromancer's secret, provides the young man ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... legerdemain this doctrine of non-intervention has come to extend to a paralysis of the Government on the whole subject, to exclude the Congress from any kind of legislation whatever, I am at a loss to conceive. Certain it is, it was not the theory of that period, and it was not contended for ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... side of this very hedge sat a gang of gypsies; and near to them sat a gang of beggars. The gypsies were then to divide all the money that had been got that week, either by stealing linen or poultry, or by fortune-telling or legerdemain, or, indeed, by any other sleights and secrets belonging to their mysterious government. And the sum that was got that week proved to be but twenty and some odd shillings. The odd money was agreed to be distributed amongst the poor of their own corporation: ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... Egyptians; but it would seem that the cudgels wielded by the Musree commanders were either not so strong or not so well applied, for on the first appearance of the hostile squadron, the heroes of Nezib evaporated as if by magic, but not before a similar feat of legerdemain had been performed by the rabble rout of Turks and Arabs; and on looking round, to inspire his followers with a speech after the manner of Thucydides, the colonel discovered the last of his escort disappearing at full speed on the other side of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... exceptions. Of these my memory has retained the face of a man who was known as "Carrot Pudding" Moe, a red-headed, broad-shouldered "finger worker," a specialist in "short change," yardstick frauds, and other varieties of market-place legerdemain. One woman, a cross between a beggar and a dealer in second-hand dresses, had four sons, all of whom were pickpockets, but she herself was said to be of spotless honesty. She never allowed them to enter Abner's Court, though every ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... drawing-master, and a professor of legerdemain,' added her brother. 'Expunge him, old ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... conviviality, while actually maintaining a hawk-like watch upon the two conspirators as she now felt them to be. She was amused by the frequency with which Shine Taylor and Reginald Warren plied their guest with cigarettes: Shirley's legerdemain in substituting them was worthy ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... harvest. Some article of stolen property is found in one man's house, and by a little legerdemain it is conveyed to that of another, both of whom are made to pay liberally; the man robbed also pays, and all the members of the village community are made to do the same. They are all called to the court of the Thanadar to give evidence ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman |
