"Hoax" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conversation with me. He wished to say something to me about the Pyrotechnic Art, as he had read one of my tracts (directed against the Sympathetic Powder of Dr Digby), in which I hinted a suspicion whether the Grand Arcanum of the Sages was not after all a gigantic hoax. He, therefore, took that opportunity of asking me whether I could not believe that such a grand mystery might exist in the nature of things, by means of which a physician could restore any patient whose vitals were not irreparably destroyed. I answered, 'Such a medicine would be a most desirable ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... death had come: he believed in a hoax. But, no! all Tarascon was there, waving their hats, all of the same way of thinking. Behold the brave Commandant Bravida, Costecalde the armourer, the Chief Judge, the chemist, and the whole noble corps of cap-poppers, ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... there are in the world, with minds ductile as wax, ready to receive any impression one wishes to give them! Yet I reproached myself for assisting to hoax her, when I saw the smiles excited ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... received a letter from Trevanion, not mentioning a word about his illness; and on turning to the newspaper, and seeing a paragraph headed, "Sudden and alarming illness of Mr. Trevanion," the marquis had suspected some party manoeuvre or unfeeling hoax, since the mail that had brought the letter must have travelled as quickly as any messenger who had given the information to the newspaper. He had, however, immediately sent down to the office of the journal to inquire on what authority the paragraph had been ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for enterprising English journalists.... They will not be backward in getting hold of so much interesting matter.... Can you not see the attractive headlines in 'The London Gazette,' Sir Percy? 'The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel unmasked! A gigantic hoax! The origin of the Blakeney millions!'... I believe that journalism in England has reached a high standard of excellence... and even the 'Gazette de Paris' is greatly read in certain towns of your ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... by incidental references to actual persons and occurrences that many believed it true, and some were found who remembered Philip Nolan, but had heard different versions of his career. The author of this clever hoax—if hoax it may be called—was Edward Everett Hale, a Unitarian clergyman of Boston, who published a collection of stories in 1868, under the fantastic title, If, Yes, and Perhaps, indicating thereby that some of the tales were possible, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... the Star, in his half-playful and suggestive way, chose to put it as though he regarded the article in the Pall Mall Magazine as a hoax, perpetrated by some clever, unscrupulous writer, intent on provoking both Mr Henley and his friends, and Stevenson's friends and admirers. This called forth a letter from one signing himself "A Lover of R. L. Stevenson," which is so good that we ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... night from Sunday to Monday, John Clare could not shut his eyes for sheer anxiety. The questions whether the bookseller would have any copies left of the wonderful poem; whether it could really be bought for eighteen-pence; and whether the big farmer's boy did not mean the whole story as a hoax, occupied his mind all night long. It seemed so improbable to him, on reflection, that a book containing the most exquisite verses could be bought for little more than the common fairy tales of the hawkers, and it seemed ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... personality still remain matters of conjecture. Whether the whole affair was a figment of Shelley's brain, rendered more than usually susceptible by laudanum taken to assuage intense physical pain; whether it was a perilous hoax played upon him by the Irish servant, Daniel Hill; or whether, as he himself surmised, the crime was instigated by an unfriendly neighbour, it is impossible to say. Strange adventures of this kind, blending ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... lore," it may not be incurious to add, that Woodstock is distinguished in Dr. Plot's History of Oxfordshire (the title of which is well known to all readers of the marvellous) as the scene of a series of hoax and disturbance played off upon the commissioners of the Long Parliament, who were sent down to dispark and destroy Woodstock, after the death of Charles I.; and Sir Walter Scott thinks it "highly probable" that this "piece ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... Maurice was inclined to declaim in that vigorous vocabulary which is taboo. He had been tricked. He was no longer needed at the Red Chateau. Four millions in a gun barrel; hoax was written all over the face of it, and yet he had been as unsuspicious as a Highland gillie. Madame had tricked him; the countess had tricked ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... respective partisans; and in 1720 Parliamentary seats came to market there as commonly as lottery tickets. Towards the close of Anne's reign, a well-dressed horseman rode furiously down the Queen's Road, loudly proclaiming her Majesty's demise. The hoax answered, the funds falling with ominous alacrity; but it was observed, that while the Christian jobbers kept aloof, Sir Manasseh Lopez and the Hebrew brokers bought readily at ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... hoax of some sort," remarked Phil. "But Lizzie has been chafing at the bit all day in the garage and I don't mind a ride. Come on, Dad, let's see what ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... the possibility of his doing such a thing so as to defy recognition by me. So much for your general question. As to this gentleman's being the person I once met as Murray Davenport, I can only wonder what sort of a hoax you're trying ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Macpherson. What may seem more surprising, I continued at my own work in the dockyard, besides acting (though really but nominally) as sub-contractor in the excavating work at the cemetery. In about a week, however, Mr Macpherson "smelt a rat," and found out that the job was a hoax so far as I was concerned; nevertheless the work went on all right. The land was very soft and easily worked, being mostly formed of sand and pebbles; and the contract was completed within five weeks. The ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... my master and I can admit no imputation on his memory. Besides, your guess is as good as mine. Whether he bought the picture in his precritical days, keeping it as a warning and imposing it upon his followers as a hoax—this I can merely conjecture. As for Brooks, the case is simple; he couldn't resist a Giorgione at a bargain. But since you will, you may as well hear the rest of the story—at least my part ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... Andrusco. I don't mind slanting a story a little far. But this Spencer story of yours is nothing but a hoax." ...
— Get Out of Our Skies! • E. K. Jarvis
... out edition after edition on the strength of it, until the St. James's Gazette put an end to the excitement by publishing a telegram from the Mayor of Liverpool denouncing the report as an insane and criminal hoax. ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... regard to the French translation, professing to be a monody on Lally Tollendal, and to be found in the Appendix to his Memoirs, it was only a clever hoax from the ready pen of Father Prout, and first appears in Bentley's Miscellany. No greater proof of the inconvenience of facetiae of this peculiar nature can be required than the circumstance, that the fiction, after a time, gets mistaken ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... to know what she meant, and he said, "I shall always think so, too. I tried to revenge myself for the hurt your harmless hoax did my vanity. Of course, I made believe at the time that I was doing an act of justice, but I never was able to brave ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... that he was sentenced to be hanged for mutiny, and implored of them to use every interest to save him. Lord Shannon interested himself in the affair, and the greatest trouble was taken to obtain a pardon. But it turned out to be a hoax practised by D'Esterre, when under the influence of the Jolly God. Knowing his character, many even of opposite politics, notwithstanding the party spirit that then prevailed, regretted the issue the unfortunate ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... and the few people we met exhibited symptoms of terror. An armed party had come from Mburuma in obedience to the call; but the head man of the company, being Mburuma's brother, suspecting that it was a hoax, came to our encampment and told us the whole. When we explained our objects, he told us that Mburuma, he had no doubt, would receive us well. The reason why Selole acted in this foolish manner we afterward found to be this: an Italian named Simoens, and ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... entire affair is not some outre hoax ... a possibility on which I don't entirely close the door ... your 'merchandise' might better ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... One day he stuck up the following notice in the theatre: "To-morrow the box-office will be open from three-quarters past two until a quarter before three for the payment of claims." The box-office was besieged at half-past two by a crowd of creditors who had failed to see the hoax. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... and dig quick," pleaded Phil. "I want to see if we've found a fortune, or are only the victims of a practical joke, or gigantic hoax." ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... by a mob, and surely I couldn't help it if this man Carpenter found me while I was unconscious, and made me well. Nor could I fail to be polite to my benefactor, and try to help him about. My Uncle Timothy was amazed, because he had accepted the "Times" story that it was all a "movie" hoax. Everybody will tell you in Western City that they "never believe a word they read in the 'Times'"; but of course they do—they have to believe something, and what ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... the Messiah! If the reader will pursue those predictions contained in Appendix, B, or that beautiful compend of them in Pope's "Messiah" he will I believe allow, that if it were possible for such things as the above mentioned, to be really intended by those prophecies, they would be the greatest hoax, and the most flagrant and enormous verification of the old proverb "parturiunt montes nascitur ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... into a great rage, without exactly knowing why. "This thing," I exclaimed, "is a contemptible falsehood—a poor hoax—the lees of the invention of some pitiable penny-a-liner—of some wretched concoctor of accidents in Cocaigne. These fellows, knowing the extravagant gullibility of the age, set their wits to work in the imagination of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... cruel hoax has recently been played off upon that deserving class the housemaids of London, by the insertion of an advertisement in the morning papers, announcing that a servant in the above capacity was wanted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... the hoax to be impossible, with him on number three, but he was incautious enough to talk about it freely among the plebes during ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... examined Jeanne, held various opinions concerning her. Some declared that her mission was a hoax, and that the King ought to beware of her.[648] Others on the contrary held that, since she said she was sent of God, and that she had something to tell the King, the King should at ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... heard about it? My letter says Rhoda's invited both of you girls, too, and that Walter is going. Is—it a hoax?" ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... MS. which we kept under our pillow for thirteen days and nights, was beginning to worry us. After all, might it not be a literary hoax, we thought, and might not this Khalid be a myth. And yet, he does not seem to have sought any material or worldly good from the writing of his Book. Why, then, should he resort to deception? Still, we doubted. And one evening we were detained by ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... referred to our 27th No., p. 445., where he will learn that the supposed French original of "Not a Drum was heard" was a clever hoax from the ready pen of Father Prout. The date when P.M. read the poem, and not the date it bore, is a point necessary to be established to prove its existence "anterior to the supposed author of that ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various
... crimes which appear in the chronicles. But who will tell me what 'the Carpet-bag Mystery' was, which my Father and I discussed evening after evening? I have never come across a whisper of it since, and I suspect it of having been a hoax. As I recall the details, people in a boat, passing down the Thames, saw a carpet-bag hung high in air, on one of the projections of a pier of Waterloo Bridge. Being with difficulty dragged down—or perhaps up—this bag ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... of the Grotesque and Arabesque. Literati of New York. Conchologist's First Book (condensed from Wyatt). Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Raven and other Poems. Eureka, a Prose Poem. Gold Bug, Balloon Hoax, &c. ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... you," said his wife, meaning that now he would not be made to suffer for attempting to hoax her. But she was too intensely interested to pursue that matter further. "What in the world do you suppose ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 6, 1602, the building was the scene of the famous hoax known as England's Joy, perpetrated upon the patriotic citizens of London by one Richard Vennar.[269] Vennar scattered hand-bills over the city announcing that at the Swan Playhouse, on Saturday, November 6, a company of "gentlemen and gentlewomen of account" would present ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... apparently unable to believe in the existence of the Supreme. A favourite question to the missionaries was this, "Is your God white or black?" If the European, startled by the question, hesitated for a moment, they would leave him with open signs of disgust at having been made the victims of a hoax. ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... her. The Constabulary blame the Statistos for the package-bomb: they're interested in that because of the discarnation of the three servants by an illegal weapon of indiscriminate effect. They claim that the disappearance of Dirzed and the Lady Dallona was a publicity hoax. The Volitionalists are preparing a line of ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... "I should have thought the stone in it was worth more than that, although, of course, it may be nothing but glass. The engraving, too, is first-rate. Adams," he added with severity, "you are trying to hoax us, but let me tell you what I thought you knew by this time—that you can't take in Ptolemy Higgs. This ring is a shameless swindle; but who did the Hebrew on it? ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... cruel than Mankind. Sometimes we denied that He had ever existed at all; that all the Church told us about Him was so much "fudge," and that Heaven and Hell, the punishment of Sin, the reward of Virtue, were all part of the Great Human Hoax by which Man is cheated and ensnared. "We will be hoaxed no more!" we cried, little realising that this is invariably the Second Stage along the road by which ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... and said he had better go and see who it was; for looks of alarm had been exchanged between him, the Squire, and Murphy, lest any stranger should enter without being apprised of the hoax going forward; and Dawson had just reached the dining-room door on his cautionary mission, when it was suddenly thrown wide open, and in walked, with a rapid step and bustling air, an active little gentleman dressed in black, who was at Mrs. Egan's side in a moment, exclaiming with a very ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... Freud be on you for that kindly act of professional assassination. The answer is obvious, of course ... Timmy didn't and couldn't do what we've seen him do with our own wide-open, innocent eyes. We are the victims of a cunning hoax." ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... lady in almost stentorious accents, "or is this an unmanly hoax?" Suddenly she stopped in undeniable consternation. "Good heavens," she muttered, "if Abner should believe this. He is SUCH a fool! He has lately been queer and jealous. Oh dear!" she said, turning to Polly Jenkinson with the ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... and the detestably grotesque figures which he happened to put together now and then. At one Salon he exhibited a Sower, admirable in every way, while at another he showed an execrable Reaping Woman, so bad that it seemed like a hoax; but he was no less pleased with the later work, feeling sure that he had turned ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... hoax, it's quite serious. The professor came on behalf of the Society, for so they call themselves, and asked you whether you'd accept the fete. You accepted it; so ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... captain was obviously skeptical, and betrayed signs of a peeve at having his machine hired for a hoax; but money was money and he agreed to obey our instructions meticulously. His tone was perfunctory, however, despite my desperate attempts to impress him with the seriousness of the matter; and that nonchalance of his came near to ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... pamphlets which appeared in Germany at the beginning of the 17th century, dating from the Discovery of the Brotherhood of the Honourable Order of the Rosy Cross, a pamphlet published in 1610, by a Lutheran clergyman, Valentine Andreae, were part of a hoax designed perhaps originally as means of establishing a sort of charitable masonic society of social reformers. Missing that aim, the Rosicrucian story lived to be adorned by superstitious fancy, with ideas of mystery and magic, which in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... triumph was the triumph of audacity. In 1834 he had said to Lord Melbourne, who enquired his object in life, "I want to be Prime Minister"—and now that object was attained. At Brooks's they said, "The last Government was the Derby; this is the Hoax." Gladstone's discomfiture was thus described by ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... this easier. Uncompromising deniers of facts, rebels against evidence, may be all the more positive, and may declare that the writers of these extraordinary narratives are persons fond of a joke, who have written them to hoax me, and that there have been persons in all ages who have done the same thing to mystify thinkers who have taken ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... people. It may be said that all five were concerned in a complicated hoax on Mr. Gurney. Nor would such a hoax argue any unusual moral obliquity. Surtees of Mainsforth, in other respects an honourable man, took in Sir Walter Scott with forged ballads, and never undeceived ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... hero put away the note into his wallet, determining to show it to his good friend Mr. Greenfield that evening, and to ask his advice upon it. So he did show it, and that gentleman's opinion was the same as his—that some wag was minded to play off a hoax upon him, and that the matter of the letter ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... operating room surrounded by the President of the United States, the ambassadors of France, Germany, Great Britain, and Russia, and Professor Thornton. The faces of all wore expressions of the utmost seriousness, except that of Von Koenitz, who looked as if he were participating in an elaborate hoax. Several of these distinguished gentlemen had never seen a wireless apparatus before, and showed some excitement as Hood made ready to send the most famous message ever transmitted through the ether. At last he threw over ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... reliquiis venerandae antiquitatis. Lucii Cuspidii Testamentum. Item contractus venditionis antiquis Romanorum temporibus initus. Lugduni apud Gryphium (1532).' Pomponius Laetus and Jovianus Pontanus were apparently authors of the hoax. ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... a hoax," commented Admiral Timworth, at last. "Yet it is impossible for me to conceive how two British battleships are to be sunk near Malta, or near anywhere else, and Americans blamed for the act. Captain Allen, can you imagine any way in which such ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... miserably from microphone fright whenever he has attempted to sing under his own name. When he croons under Denny's name he kindles the divine hope in female breasts clear across this palpitating country. But Denny receives all the credit. This hoax destroys Duffy's personal love life and results in a conspiracy inside Station WWVW. As a sort of undercurrent to the narrative it introduces satiric bits about the buncombe of radio broadcasting. The play offers fine opportunities for the introduction ...
— The Ghost of Jerry Bundler • W. W. Jacobs and Charles Rock
... about the issue of the election to the Speakership. "Your brother William will certainly be Speaker," writes Lord Bulkeley on the 3rd, "and has already stood the hoax at White's, where it was debated last night whether he should wear a wig or his own hair." The election went off to the entire satisfaction of Mr. Grenville, who, reporting the event, says that "the majority, though quite large ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... jury authorizes all this, or it is a sham and a hoax, utterly worthless for protecting the people against oppression. If it do not authorize an individual to resist the first and least act of injustice or tyranny, on the part of the government, it does not authorize him to resist the last and the greatest. If ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... M. Reybaud has happened to say heedlessly yes and no to a question of which he does not seem to have yet formed a clear idea, that I class him among those speculators of socialism, who, after having launched a hoax into the world, begin immediately to make their retreat, under the pretext that, the idea now belonging to the public domain, there is nothing more for them to do but to leave it to make its way. M. Reybaud, in my opinion, belongs ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... which he had picked up from the floor, and laid it in the physician's hand. As the doctor read, a look of indignant horror swept over his face. Then he said: "Can it be possible! I never suspected such a thing. It must be a cruel, senseless hoax." ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... "but nobody will know of it if we hold our tongues. We'll have to hold them anyhow, for Sylvia's sake, since she's been goose enough to go and fall in love with the Old Fellow. She'd go wild if she ever found out the letter was a hoax. We have made that match, Ruggles. He'd never have got up enough spunk to tell her he wanted her, and she'd probably have married Micky ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... nature of the event helped to detract from its importance, for the papers were disinclined to believe the facts as reported to them. More than one of the London journals treated the matter as an ingenious hoax, until the coroner's inquest upon the unfortunate driver (an inquest which elicited nothing of importance) convinced them of ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... remainder of the Old Regime, and much of the colony's iron came from them to supply the blacksmiths. From time to time rumors of other mineral discoveries came to the ears of the people. A find of lead was reported from the Gaspe peninsula, but an investigation proved it to be a hoax. Copper was actually found in a dozen places within the settled ranges of the colony, but not in paying quantities. Every one was always on the qui vive for a vein of gold or silver, but no part of New France ever gave the slightest hint of an ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... professional men. The names of the occupants were painted up at the bottom on the wall, but there was no such name as the Franco-Midland Hardware Company, Limited. I stood for a few minutes with my heart in my boots, wondering whether the whole thing was an elaborate hoax or not, when up came a man and addressed me. He was very like the chap that I had seen the night before, the same figure and voice, but he was clean shaven and his hair ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... confronted with this dusky old-world expedient. To see a woman made for him and for motherhood to his children juggled away in this tragic travesty—it was a thing to rub one's eyes over, a nightmare, an illusion, a hoax. But the hours passed away without disproving the thing, and leaving him only the after-sense of the vehemence with which he had embraced Madame de Cintre. He remembered her words and her looks; he turned them over and tried to shake ...
— The American • Henry James
... like a man wounded and reclining in the bottom of a boat, and pretended it was one of the duelists, badly stricken, whom they were escorting to town for surgical assistance. The explosion of laughter receiving the two principals when the hoax was revealed caused the incident to be a sore point to both Lincoln ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... little drawing-room, stood open, and looking into the mirror, he caught sight of the girl shaking with laughter as she gesticulated and made signs to her mother. The old artist understood beyond a doubt that he had been the victim of some cowardly hoax. Pons went slowly down the stairs; he could not keep back the tears. He understood that he had been turned out of the house, but why and wherefore he ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... volunteered the information that the Boches had thrown a grenade at him as he turned the corner "down there"—"It didn't go off." So calm an atmosphere pervaded the cold, sunny, autumnal afternoon that the idea "the trenches" took on the proportions of a gigantic hoax; we might have been masqueraders in the trenches after the war was over. And the Germans were only seventy-five feet away, across those bare poles, stumps, and matted dead ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... into the study, having informed him that I should be back in less than ten minutes. He had then proceeded to Denmark Hill railway station only to find, as I had found, that the appointment was a hoax and "the man with ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... chap? He was not so very drunk now; he spoke passably clearly, and did not twist any words. What did he mean? But when the witty dog reached the declaration that he could only thrive in a high spiritual altitude, then the guests broke into peals of merriment and understood that it was a capital hoax. The merry blade—hadn't he almost fooled them all! "Poor remnants of the intellectual life of the seventies!" Didn't we have Paulsberg and Irgens, and Ojen and Milde, and the two close-cropped poets, and an entire army ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... presented to the diet from the bishop and clergy of Liege, inveighing against the lying, thieving, avaricious conduct of the Romish minions, in such sharp and violent tones that Luther, on reading it afterward when printed, thought it only a hoax, and not ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... have seen that this paper was a practical joke." Then it burst all of a sudden on Stephen. And all this about "Mr Finis", "Oh, ah," and the rest of it had been a cruel hoax, and no more! ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... to was a hoax Alex had played on his father the previous First of April. Through an arrangement of wires beneath the office table, by which with his foot, unseen, he could make the instruments above click as though worked from another office, ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... interest as the hoax of Brougham's pretended death,[9] which was generally believed for twenty-four hours, and the report elicited a host of criticisms and panegyrics on his life and character, for the most part flattering, ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... dreamers. They were put in practice on a large scale; they involved the disposal of millions of money; and they were in operation at so late a period, that the present generation paid heavy taxes for the purpose of carrying them out—taxes paid for nothing better than the success of a practical hoax. ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... cheeky piece of work, sir," Lieutenant Hall reported, twenty minutes later, to Commander Jephson, commandant of midshipmen. "I had a fight party right under my hands when that call of fire sounded. It was so natural that I bolted away and lost my party before I discovered that it was a hoax." ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... and you shall have, without a hem or haw, sirs, A Canterbury pilgrimage, much better than old Chaucer's. 'Tis of a hoax I once played off upon that city clever, The memory of which, I hope, will stick to it for ever. With my coal-black beard, and purple cloak, jack-boots, and broad-brimmed castor, Hey-ho! for ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... impression at the house until Mose himself was frightened; then Radnor saw that the hoax had reached the point where it was no longer funny, and he determined to get rid of Jeff immediately. While he drove him to the station he left Mose behind to straighten up the loft; and Mose, coming into the house to put some things away, met ghost ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... Army: Why do loaves flame when hit by incendiary bullets? U. S. Customs: If bread intended for export, get export license or face prosecution. Russian Consulate in Chicago: Advise on destination of bread-lift. And some Kansas church is accusing us of a hoax inciting to blasphemy, of faking ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... was completed by Katherine Harding, a damsel whose demure looks belied her character. Katherine's innocent grey eyes and doll-like complexion were the vineyards that hide the volcano. She could always be relied upon to support any enterprising project or interesting hoax that was presented for her approval. These seven comrades, close chums in the past, banded themselves together anew to enjoy life to the best of their ability, and to obtain the maximum of fun and diversion out of the forthcoming term. It is with their immediate adventures ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... head and yielded to her destiny, and since that time has been as happy a specimen of the married life as is often to be met with. Ben-na-Groich, on finding out the hoax, was too much afraid of the ridicule of his friends to make it public; and to this hour, Aunt Alice tells the most wondrous tales of the lawlessness of the Highlands, and the blood-thirstiness and revenge characteristic of ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... to the house," he says. "This may be a stupid hoax, or a quarrel exaggerated. See to it yourself, and hear what the doctor says. If it is serious, send word back here directly, and let nobody enter the place or leave it till we come. Stop! You know the form if ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... plant, bubble, fetch, catch, chicane, juggle, reach, hocus, bite; card sharping, stacked deck, loaded dice, quick shuffle, double dealing, dealing seconds, dealing from the bottom of the deck; artful dodge, swindle; tricks upon travelers; stratagem &c (artifice) 702; confidence trick, fake, hoax; theft &c 791; ballot-box stuffing [U.S.], barney [Slang]; brace game [Slang], bunko game, drop game [Slang], gum game [U.S.], panel game [U.S.], shell game, thimblerig, skin game [U.S.]. snare, trap, pitfall, decoy, gin; springe^, springle^; noose, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... they, WELL KNOWING HOW SUCH THINGS WERE GOT UP, exposed the trick. A prelate publicly denounced the imposture, and an Abbe Deleon, priest in the diocess of Grenoble, printed a work called 'La Salette a Valley of Lies.' In this publication it was maintained, with proofs, that the hoax was gotten up by a Mademoiselle de Lamerliere, a sort of half-crazy nun, who impersonated the character of the Virgin. For the injury done to her character by this book she sued the priest for damages to the tone of twenty thousand francs, ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... at Greenwood's Rancho. The American Valley. Prospective summer resort. Prodigious vegetables. New England scenery compared with that of California. Greenwood's Rancho. Place of origin of quartz hoax. Beautiful stones. Recruiting-place of overland immigrants. Haggard immigrant women. Death and speedy burial on the plains. Handsome young widow immigrant. Aspirants to matrimony candidates for her hand. Interesting stories of adventures on ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... they would not be accessory to the ruin of the theatre, by insisting upon a return to the former prices. Notwithstanding the little sop he had thrown out to feed the vanity of this roaring Cerberus, the only answer he received was a renewal of the noise, intermingled with shouts of "Hoax! hoax! imposition!" Mr. O'Reilly, the gallant friend of Madame Catalani, afterwards addressed the pit, and said no reliance could be placed on the report of the committee. The profits of the theatre were evidently great: they had saved the heavy salary ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... put an end to his impatience, and bring the time of his interview; and his disappointment and rage may be imagined when he discovered the deception which had been practiced on him. Monsieur d'A—— wished at first to challenge the authors and actors in this hoax, and could with great difficulty ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... Jolly Robin who had started the story. And since he was not in the habit of playing jokes on people, everybody believed what he said—at least, everybody except Jasper Jay. He declared from the first that Jolly Robin's tale was a hoax. ...
— The Tale of Jolly Robin • Arthur Scott Bailey
... window, found powder, nails, etc., so arranged that, if opened in the ordinary way, the whole would have been fired, and two barrels discharged different ways. No doubt a box so packed was received, but whether anything serious was intended, or whether it was a hoax, cannot be said with any certainty. The Earl of Oxford is said to have met allusions to the subject with a smile, and Swift seems to have been annoyed at the reports ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... all the men in Montana out to find that girl, if this isn't a hoax," cried Mrs. Haines in a voice that choked. "Go tell the other boys to get ready. The Sheriff will want ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... hoax me in that way," said the host. "The soldier has been here, but went out of the door like an honest fellow. I took care of that. You are the thieves, and you shall pay ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... letter was received from him stating that the cliffs, the bay, and the head-lands were all built up on the airy foundation of a mirage. The elves and sprites of this desolate region had been playing a hoax upon Goyder's party. But it is no wonder that Goyder had been so open to deception after unexpectedly finding fresh water in the lake that had been so long known ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... the shape of a grotesque Semiramis or an imbecile Ninus. But the more serious game, which doubtless really took place, attests the existence of great profligacy in the upper walks of society: it took the form of a most hateful and barbarous hoax. ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... which Ossian was received in France remained, or perhaps only began, after the hoax was exploded in England. In Italy, the misty essence of the Caledonian bard was hailed as a substantial presence. The king took his spear, and struck his deeply sounding shield, as it hung on the willows over the neatly kept garden-walks, and the ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... picked up and very civilly exhibited to us by the owner himself; it was evidently fresh from a human jaw, though there had not been the slightest effusion of blood from the man's mouth. The thought had naturally suggested itself to us that the whole thing was a hoax, and that the patient was an accomplice; but if so, the doctor was no novice at sleight of hand, and the expression of astonishment on the other man's face when he found his tooth gone, was as perfect a specimen of histrionic emotion as it has ever ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... of hard work. Laboring in relays of divers, every box that had been locked in the purser's safe was brought out on the submerged cabin table, broken open, and the contents examined. The hoax was even worse than indicated at first. For after the front section of boxes had been taken out none of the others remaining contained any gold at all. There were only ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... told, have followed. That this compact would have led to a settlement of the Russian problems is more than any one, however well informed, could vouch for, but I had some grounds for believing the move to be genuine and the promises overdone. No reasonable motive suggested itself for a vulgar hoax. Moreover, the overture disclosed two important facts, one of which was known at the time only to the Bolshevist government—namely, that secret pourparlers were going forward between Berlin and Moscow for the purpose of arriving at a workable understanding between the two governments, and that ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... unknown, without influence. There must be some mistake. Yes, that must be the true explanation; or was it possible that some one was attempting a cruel hoax upon him? At any rate, it was too positive a message to be disregarded. He must set off at once and settle the matter one ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not. That old man came flying to Colebrook three years ago all in black broadcloth (had lost his wife lately then), getting out of a third-class smoker as if the devil had been at his heels; and the only thing that brought him down was a letter—a hoax probably. Some joker had written to him about a seafaring man with some such name who was supposed to be hanging about some girl or other, either in Colebrook or in the neighbourhood. "Funny, ain't it?" The old chap had been advertising in the London papers ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... half-witted cobbler who, learning that a tailor had advertised for "frogs," catches a bagful and carries them to him, demanding one dollar a hundred. The testy tailor imagining himself the victim of a hoax, throws his shears at his head, and Timothy, in revenge empties the bag of bull-frogs upon the clean floor of Buckram's shop. Next day Timothy's sign was disfigured to read—Shoes Mended and Frogs Caught. By Timothy ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... capitulation of Genoa; Massena, after eating horses, dogs, cats and rats, had been forced to surrender. Melas spoke of the Army of the Reserves with the utmost contempt; he declared that the story of Bonaparte's presence in Italy was a hoax; and asserted that he knew for certain that the First Consul was ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... the meaning of this hoax?" the admiral demanded sternly. "Mr. Fitzgerald tells me that he had no idea you were ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... pursued Danglars with one of his sinister smiles, "an order for unlimited credit calls for something like caution on the part of the banker to whom that order is given. I am very anxious to see this man. I suspect a hoax is intended, but the instigators of it little knew whom they had to deal with. 'They laugh ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... congregate in the plaza after their day's perambulations, and dance, sing, or bewitch each other with their disguises. There is a party of masqued and dominoed ladies: genuine whites all—you can tell it by the shape of their gloveless hands and the transparent pink of their finger-nails—endeavouring to hoax a couple of swains in false noses and green spectacles, both of whom have been already recognised. The perplexed youths try their hardest to discover their fair interlocutors by peeping at their profiles through their wire masks, but in vain. At the next ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... that, contrary to common report, Francis Bacon was not arrested for debt in 1598; but that, during the time he was supposed to have been in prison, he was actually engaged in building up in his own behalf the greatest hoax in history. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... deal, like me, in puffs, The public smokes, You and your hoax, And turns your empty vapor to rebuffs. Ye through the nose Pay for each puff; when mine the same way flows, It does not run me into debt; And thus, the more I fume, ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... who alone had the necessary knowledge of antiquities, we are still met by the improbability of old Mrs. Hogg being engaged in the hoax. Moreover, Leyden was probably too keen an antiquary to take part in one of the deceptions which Ritson wished to punish so severely. Mr. Child expresses his strong and natural suspicions of the authenticity of the ballad, ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... but somewhat madcap brother of the Duke of. Buccleugh, gallop up the street bareheaded, waving his hat above his head and shouting "The Queen, the Queen!" The listeners looked at each other and laughed. How well the hoax was gone about; but who would presume to play such a trick, it was too much even from Lord John—did not somebody say it was Lord John? On the line of route too! What were the ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... Melbourne was to have dined there on Friday, but did not arrive. At eleven o'clock everybody went away, without any tidings having come of Melbourne; the next morning Lord Holland read in the 'Times' that the Government was at an end. Allen swore that it must be a hoax, and it was only upon receiving a summons to the Cabinet at twelve instead of two that Holland began to think there was something in it. He told me that the King had two long conversations with Melbourne, in which he explained his opinions, motives, and intentions, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... the colonel talked big, and explained the whole affair to the ladies, quite unconscious that everyone in the company knew that the hoax had been played upon him. Before noon, everyone had re-embarked on board of their respective ships, and their lofty sails were expanded to a light ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... sometimes these rises in life come very unexpectedly. I have heard of a man who, when he received a letter from the Prime Minister of the day offering him a place of great dignity, thought the letter was a hoax, and did not notice it for several days. You could not certainly infer from his modesty what has proved to be the fact, that he has filled his place admirably well. The possibility of such material changes must no doubt tend to prolong the interest ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... proposal of all the vile and abusive words in the English language. Jimmy was too big for Andre to chastise, but as the rumor of the incident spread and the comedians began to quote freely some of the indecent phrases of the hoax, Andre fled the scene of torment. He left the company at Buffalo and went to Quebec where English was in limited ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... the humour of the throng was changing, and some began to reflect. In a few minutes doubt swept over them like a shower of rain, and the expression of their faces altered. Almost immediately it was announced that the news of the victory had been a hoax. ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... humor in a subject so weird. Yet we find it. Take, for instance, De Foe's old narrative, "The Apparition of Mrs. Veal." It is a hoax, nothing more. Of our own times is Ellis Parker Butler's "Dey Ain't No Ghosts," showing an example of ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... to himself, as the perfect calm reigning over the whole establishment struck him anew. But before he had decided that he had been made the victim of a hoax, a movement took place in the area under the stoop, and an officer stepped out, with a countenance expressive of sufficient perplexity for Mr. Gryce to motion him back with the hurried inquiry: "Anything wrong? Any blood shed? All ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... nerves was nil, and on the mucous membrane was not to soothe it, but plough it and harrow it; "and did not that open her eyes?" He then reminded her that all these doctors in consultation would have contrived to agree. "But you," said he, "have baffled the collusive hoax by which Dox arrived at a sham uniformity—honest uniformity can never exist till scientific principles obtain. Listme! To begin, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... that you are a little severe towards Brittany, not towards the Bretons who seem to me repulsive animals. A propos of Celtic archaeology, I published in L'Artiste in 1858, a rather good hoax on the shaking stones, but I have not the number here and ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... at rest, in the full conviction that his spiritual guides had found a law which authorized his ancestors, and the tzars and their descendants, and millions of men, to serve as he was doing himself, and that the question I had put him was a kind of hoax or ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... II., Count of Provence, in 1209, and to be adorned not only with his statue, but also with those of his son Raymond Berengarius IV., and of Beatrix, Queen of Naples, the wife of the latter. The monument is, however, a hoax. The statues are there, but are modern, of the namby-pamby school, and of the original tomb possibly a crocket and a ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... enormous wealth. Sometimes it is a trick in which the cupidity of the victims and their readiness to swallow promises of large and immediate profits play as important a part as the ability of the swindler. Sometimes it is a gigantic hoax, in which the deviser himself becomes keenly interested and for the carrying out of which he spends as much talent and energy as would suffice, if employed honestly, to acquire considerable wealth; but the swindler delights in his ingenious fraud ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... with the y wave, gentlemen—and it was on the y wave that the messages came. You may be interested to know that the number of lives lost, the property damage, the business losses due to the panic, have not yet been fully determined; but it makes the hysteria following the Fantafilm hoax very small potatoes ...
— The Fourth Invasion • Henry Josephs
... mouth the Pitt and Coburg of each year; interrupt a conversation with a pun, turn into ridicule science and the savant; despise all things which they do not know or which they fear; set themselves above all by constituting themselves the supreme judges of all. They would all hoax their fathers, and be ready to shed crocodile tears upon their mothers' breasts; but generally they believe in nothing, blaspheme women, or play at modesty, and in reality are led by some old woman or an evil courtesan. They ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... everybody to know from what author it was derived. One and another inquired of me, to no purpose, and expressed a wish that Mr. C. had been clearer in his citation, as "no one could understand it." On my naming this to Mr. Coleridge, he laughed heartily, and said, "It was all a hoax." "Not meeting" said he, "with a suitable motto, I invented one, and with references purposely obscure," as will be ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... Kellogg and Ernst Mallin were being sent to Beta Continent with instructions to prevent publication of any report claiming sapience for the Fuzzies and to fabricate evidence to support an accusation that Dr. Rainsford and Mr. Holloway were perpetrating a deliberate scientific hoax." ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... of Pines" was aroused by the sale of a copy in London and New York in 1917, and was increased by the discovery of two distinct issues in the Dowse Library, in the Massachusetts Historical Society. As my material grew in bulk and the history of this hoax perpetrated in the seventeenth century developed, I thought it of sufficient interest to communicate an outline of the story to the Club of Odd Volumes, of Boston, October 23, 1918. The results of my investigations are more fully ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville |
