"Hoax" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... second-class, whom he took, for some unknown reason, to be a chandler; in the shabby young man accompanied by Mistigris, a fellow of no account; in Oscar a ninny, and in Pere Leger, the fat farmer, an excellent subject to hoax. Having thus looked over the ground, he resolved to amuse himself at the expense ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... 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 sandomancer, or sand-diviner, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... child—and all for love of her brother that his uncle had shipped off to a blind orphanage. But there's a providence, Mr. Benny, that watches over children—and you may lay to that." Mrs. Purchase took breath. "Well, naturally, as you may guess, my first thought was to set it down for a hoax, though not in the best of taste. But with Myra's name staring me in the face in the telegram, and blood being thicker than water, on second thoughts I told 'Siah to put on his best clothes and come to the Monument ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it by all means!' cried a number of voices; for it was clear to every one, by this time, that he was involved in a hoax. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the letter 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
... puzzled 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 ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... for the box, and opening it, by the 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 which were put ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... recovered, and now induced the old gentleman to whom he had confided his secret to grant him his daughter's hand. The daughter had no objections to marry a man possessed of such wealth, and the marriage was duly celebrated. Shortly after this the father died—without discovering, it is to be hoped, the hoax that had been perpetrated—and Alexei Petrovitch became virtual possessor of a very comfortable little estate. With the change in his fortunes he completely changed his principles, or at least his practice. In all his dealings he was strictly honest. He lent ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... assuming on the instant a confidence-inspiring smile, "that print was a hoax; it wasn't old Tulliwuddle at all. I ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... Then, as it was close upon tea-time, he packed up the photos, distributed his largesse, and retired. Mary, the housemaid, promised to stand by him in the coming ordeal. Both the servants felt secretly flattered that they should be included in the hoax. The kitchen classes in England have great reverence for young ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... and contents will doubtless at first sight cause a smile of incredulity, and will be regarded by many as one of the devices which are sometimes put forward to entrap an unsuspecting public into the perusal of a sensational hoax. ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... Kappa Poem delivered at Harvard in 1911; in 1917 by "The Little King", a poetic drama; in 1917 also by "Grenstone Poems", a collection of his lyric work to date. In 1916, in connection with his friend, Arthur Davison Ficke, Mr. Bynner perpetrated the clever literary hoax of "Spectra", a volume of verse in the ultra-modern manner, designed to establish a new "school" of poetry that should outdo "Imagism" and other cults then in the public eye. These poems, published under the joint authorship of Emanuel Morgan ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... negative, 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 ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... 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 ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... expedition with little favor. He reverted strongly to the theory that some one was making a fool of him. He reminded himself that if in New York he had received such a note, he either would have at once dismissed it as a hoax or turned it over to the precinct station-house. But as the darkness changed to gray, and the black bulk of the Cafe Ducrot came into view, his interest quickened. He encouraged himself with the thought that while in New York the wording of the note would ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... hoax, finesse, imposition, imposture, swindle, humbug, bubble, wile, deception, stratagem, bunko, blind, thimblerigging; impostor, deceiver, quack, mountebank, thimblerigger, charlatan, empiric, trickster, swindler, blackleg, bamboozler, sharper; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... friendly and appears to represent a sincere attempt by another race of intelligent beings to contact the people of Earth. A reply message is being formulated.' Officials further explained that the possibility of the signal's being a hoax has been thoroughly investigated and that there is no doubt whatsoever that the message is a genuine interspatial communication from intelligent beings on Ganymede. Ganymede is one of twelve moons of the planet Jupiter, and is larger than ...
— Master of None • Lloyd Neil Goble
... 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 are all equally ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... had caught her hands in an eager, boyish clasp. "Olga, don't—there's a dear!" he begged with headlong ardour. "I don't love you any the less because I didn't do it. I believe myself it's a beastly hoax, and I'm just as furious as you are. But, I say, can't we found a partnership on it? Is it asking too much? Pull me up if it is! I don't want to be premature. Only I won't have you sick or sorry about it, anyhow so far as I am concerned. You were quite right ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... Yankee made no difference in his standing or welcome. The people seemed unconscious of the part his father played at Washington. Stoneman's Confiscation Bill had not yet been discussed in Congress, and the promise of land to the negroes was universally regarded as a hoax of the League to win their followers. The old Commoner was not an orator. Hence his name was scarcely known in the South. The Southern people could not conceive of a great leader except one who expressed his power through the megaphone of oratory. They held ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... not rich enough at that moment to bid higher. Our poor fisherman did not know whether to be angry at a hoax, or to go mad with joy; we drew him from his quandary by giving him the name of our landlady and telling him to take the lobster and the ...
— A Drama on the Seashore • Honore de Balzac
... arms!' and we thought the war had commenced, sure enough; but it didn't just then. However, there was about thirty thousand men on the march to Boston, and they wouldn't turn back until they found the report was a hoax. Soon after, the Provincial Congress met, and they ordered that a large body of minute-men should be enrolled, so as to be prepared for any attack. The people of our province took the matter into their own hands, and organized a body of minute-men without orders. ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... said he, when Jonathan had concluded, "I hope that you may not have been made the victim of some foolish hoax. Let me see what it is she has confided ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... the hiding-place of the Diamond, he found that they had no bearing upon it whatever; that for anything seen or heard by him the world might hold no such precious gem, and the Russian's letter to Signor Lampini might be nothing more than an elaborate hoax. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... unauthorized harum-scarums (that touched the very bone) who had with more caution than propriety withheld their names. The article was headed, "The Crayfish-eaters' Ticket." It continued further to say that, had not the publication of this ticket been regarded as a dull hoax, it would not have been suffered to pass for two weeks unchallenged, and that it was now high time the universal wish should ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... 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 rather to the category of dupes, which includes ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... all young 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 his friend. Southey played off a hoax with his book The Doctor. Hogg, Lockhart, and Wilson, ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... most extraordinary—yes, there is no doubt of it—in the most naughty way, had brought Leucha round to her side. But if Leucha were told the truth that a hoax had been played upon her, that there was no real ghost, then indeed her wrath would burn fiercely; and, in fact, to put it briefly, there would start in the school a profound feud. Several of the girls, more especially the English girls, would go over to Leucha's side. Yes, without ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... together. As I have said, I knew nothing of them and for a moment thought it not improbable that even if I did manage to get hold of their names and addresses they might when they received the letter think it was a hoax. However, the thing had to be done, so it was no use to waste time by foreseeing difficulties. My first step was to get the help of my friend, Sir Harry Brittain (then Mr. Brittain). I wrote to him, asking for the names and addresses of all the correspondents ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... stories I had heard in the garden, I still had a sort of indefinite idea that the whole thing was a masquerading freak got up in my absence, and that the bacchanalian orgie I was witnessing was nothing more than a portion of some elaborate hoax of which I was to be the victim. But when my eyes turned to the corner where I had left a huge and cumbrous piano, and beheld a vast and sombre organ lifting its fluted front to the very ceiling, and convinced myself, by a hurried ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... were the victim of some hoax, some miserable delusion," he said to himself. "Not till I see her, not till I clasp her by the hand, shall I believe that she is ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... published in Germany in 1614, inviting all scholars to join the ranks of a secret society said to have been founded two centuries before by a certain Christian Rosenkreuz who had mastered the hidden wisdom of the East. It seems probable that this book was an elaborate hoax, but it was taken seriously at the time, and the seventeenth century saw the formation of numerous groups of "Brothers of the Rosy Cross." They dabbled in alchemy, spiritualism, and magic, and mingled modern science with superstitions handed down from ancient times. ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... of New England, vol. i. pp. 57-59; Mason's Reminiscences of Newport, pp. 392-407. Laing (Heimskringla, pp. 182-185) thinks the Yankees must have intended to fool Professor Rafn and the Royal Society of Antiquaries at Copenhagen; "Those sly rogues of Americans," says he, "dearly love a quiet hoax;" and he can almost hear them chuckling over their joke in their club-room at Newport. I am afraid these Yankees were less rogues and more fools than ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... in 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 ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... sent home many highly interesting reports, there had been nothing to suggest the possibility of such an amazing discovery as that which was now announced. Accordingly, most sensible people looked upon the New Zealand despatch as a hoax. ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... 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 ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... rather important to understand the technique of rumors. The wise man does not scoff at them, for while they are often absurd, they are rarely baseless. People do not go about inventing rumors, except for purposes of hoax; and even a practical joke is never (to parody the proverb) hoax et praeterea nihil. There is always a reason for wanting to perpetrate the hoax, or a reason for believing ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... 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 ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... about it one way or other; but on his mind the effect was different. The miserable voice, the spirit in pain, he could think of as the result of ventriloquism, or reverberation, or—anything you please: an elaborate prolonged hoax, executed somehow by the tramp that had found a lodging in the old tower; but the juniper-bush staggered him. Things have effects so different on the minds ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... allusion is to a hoax played on the Premier, by a presentation made to him of a piece of the then novel fabric, velveteen, stamped with a free-trade design. Peel afterwards wrote that he was unaware that the specimen bore "any allusion to any matters which are the ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... to the finer feelings of the heart. He disbelieved her story from beginning to end, and was of the opinion that she was trying to hoax him with a concoction as crude as the vain imaginings of melodrama or the cinema. It was more with the intention of trapping her into a contradiction than of eliciting anything of importance that ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... few moments Andy gazed stupidly, unable for the time to understand that he had been made the victim of a hoax. While this was slowly dawning upon him, the door burst open and, with a yell of laughter, the ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... Burney's husband, is a variant. From au(l)ne, alder, we have aunai, whence our Dawnay. So also frenai has given Freeney, chenai, Chaney, and the Norm. quenai is one origin of Kenney, while the older chesnai appears in Chesney. Houssaie, from hoax, holly, gives Hussey; chastenai, chestnut grove, exists in Nottingham as Chastener; coudrai, hazel copse, gives Cowdrey and Cowdery; Verney and Varney are from vernai, grove of alders, of Celtic origin, and Viney corresponds to the French name ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... never do that! It would be such a cruel hoax. Now, dearest love, do let me have that bottle to take care of. Indeed, if ever I jilt you, you shall have it back. Engaged girls—honourable ones!—always give presents back on jilting. Do ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... down the cataract of long years: And if there be sublimity in tears, Those shall be precious which the adventurer shed When his frail star gave way, and waked his fears, Lest, by the ungenerous crowd it might be said, That he was all a hoax, or that his ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... 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, some of them probable, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... not 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
... because she did not in the least think Nan had been there. She thought it was a hoax; but it put it into her mind to carry the joke further by really stopping herself when she went up, as she meant to ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... 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 ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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
... they could carry. Whether this circumstance was true or not, it was at least a current story in the neighborhood, and an enterprising individual, about fifty years ago, caused an old cannon to be "discovered" in the river, and perpetrated the first "Cardiff Giant Hoax." A New York Stock Company was organized to prosecute the work. It was said that the ship could be seen in clear days, with her masts still standing, many fathoms below the surface. One thing is certain—the company did not see it ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... gossip, and to do as much damage as possible. He knows how to stay in the background, to disappear at the right moment. -Once I was writing, suspecting nothing bad, in our spacious bath and w.c. (here I was safe from surprises) a longer work on the "Hoax of Genius". I explained that genius is a title, not a quality. That fact is often overlooked, and engenders great confusion. The name is accidental, generally suspicious. Whoever is called a genius is therefore not a brilliant person. ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... writ; a blue bag cannot be more rational than the British flag. The thing is rubbish read anyway, and the only difficulty is to get a joke good enough to express it. It is a case for the Court Jester. The phantasy of it could only be expressed by some huge ceremonial hoax. Carson ought to be crowned with the shamrocks and emeralds and followed by green-clad minstrels of the Clan-na-Gael, playing "The Wearing of ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 El Dorado. Prospecting ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... hold of his books. "I must be getting on, I think," he said. He edged in a curious way along the seat away from his interlocutor. "But you was just a-going to tell me about this here Invisible Man!" protested the mariner. Mr. Marvel seemed to consult with himself. "Hoax," said a Voice. "It's a hoax," said ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... that Mr. Westonhaugh cares nothing about it, one way or the other. The little plan for 'amusing brother John' is a hoax. The thing cannot be done. You might as well try to amuse an undertaker as to make a man from Bombay laugh. The hollowness of life is ever upon them. No. It was Kildare; he called and said that Miss Westonhaugh had never seen a tiger, and he seemed anxious to impress upon me his determination ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... were sermons, and his sermons jokes; But both were thrown away amongst the fens; For wit hath no great friend in aguish folks. No longer ready ears and short-hand pens Imbibed the gay bon-mot, or happy hoax: The poor priest was reduced to common sense, Or to coarse efforts very loud and long, To hammer a horse ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... what justice I can; but if you pose as an angel from heaven, it's asking too much." While Ruth considered this, she added, "I don't know if you can put yourself in mamma's place for a moment; but if you can, the hoax ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... 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
... soldier obviously set his mind 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 conundrum on ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... promenade deck of the packet. Looking in the direction indicated, a heavy black cloud appeared in the far horizon; this seemed to extend from right to left, and was so dense that the novices amongst us at once pronounced it, either a mistake or a hoax. The helmsman declared that it was neither, and that we should soon be convinced of it. The cloud seemed now gradually and visibly to spread; in truth, the whole firmament in that direction was totally obscured. By this time a general rummage had commenced in the boat for fire-arms; the ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... Our correspondent will find, on referring to our First Vol., p. 445., that the so-called French original of "Not a drum was heard," is only a clever literary hoax from the pen of Father Prout, which first appeared in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... safe at the Assiniboine village, but if they ventured to carry it back to La Verendrye they were not so sure that either it or their own scalps would be safe at the Mandan village, with the ferocious Sioux hovering about. They did not know, of course, that the story of the Sioux was nothing but a hoax. ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee
... the noble Lord considered that the object was a reality, on which the interests of the country and of Europe depended. I think he would have been the last man in the country to lend himself to such a miserable hoax as going to Vienna, not to make peace, but to shame Austria into becoming a faithful and warlike ally. I assume, therefore, that terms were sincerely offered, and that those terms gave guarantees which were sufficient, and a security which was as ample as the circumstances admitted for ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... much stock in it," said John. "I'm inclined to think it's a hoax. Some one trying to fool the old fellow. If there'd been any treasure, I guess one could have trusted old 'Wrecker' Wicks to get after it.... But, boys, it's bed-time, anyhow. Come down to the office in the morning and we'll ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... and hacked off a bit of his skirtlike garb. "We'll make a fancy job of it, Mr. Trenholm, while we're at it. The backs of those sheets, with the stamps and postmarks and the address to me, will be good proof that it is not a hoax. ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... 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
... 44, page 216, of the Journal, there is an apology. The whole matter is, upon newspaper authority, said to have been a hoax by Negroes, who had pretended to have seen the shower, for the sake of practicing upon the credulity of their masters: that they had scattered the decaying flesh of a dead ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... 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 ...
— 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.
... as exhausted," he amplified, "as if I had been all day digging ditches or shovelling coal. I could scarcely realize that my mission had succeeded; I feared the entire proceeding was only a stupendous, ghastly hoax, which my uncle had in mind, but to what end, or who the intended victim, I could not in the ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... 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 barney*[obs3][U.S.], brace* game, bunko game, drop* game, gum* game, panel game[U.S.]; shell game, thimblerig; skin* game [U.S.]. snare, trap, pitfall, decoy, gin; springe[obs3], springle|; noose, hoot; bait, decoy-duck, tub to the whale, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... it up were curious to know if the venerable statesman would redeem his pledge, and present a petition, no matter who it came from. He was too wily not to detect the plot at the outset; he knew that all was a hoax; but, he resolved to present the paper, and then turn the tables on its authors. [Footnote: Reminiscences of the late John Quincy Adams, by an Old ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... buckles, he mixed the fragments with sand and stones, and represented the result as specimens of ore he had found. A party was sent out under his guidance to examine the locality, but, needless to say, failed in the endeavour, the perpetrator of the hoax confessing to it in the end, and suffering the punishment common ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... a cage; she wanted to push out the strong steel plates and get out into the night: Louis's weakness, which had been all his appeal to her, seemed an intolerable infliction, a cruel hoax on the part of fate, just as though, for her shining lover, someone had substituted ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... together these observations. You may rely upon the truth of the facts stated, and they are at your service if coming within the scope and meaning of your intended history. At the same time, if the thing be a newspaper hoax, I must beg you to excuse the liberty I have taken in addressing you, and please burn this and ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... we talked love affairs over muffins and a cup of excellent congou. Then what a variety of jams and jellies! I never returned without a disordered stomach, and wishing Highland heather-honey at the devil. Yet, after all, to prove a hoax!—for even when I was on the point of popping the question, and had fastened my silk Jem Belcher with a knowing leetle knot to set out for that purpose, I learned from Francie, the stable-boy, that she had the evening before eloped with the coachman, and returned to her post that forenoon metamorphosed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... 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, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... rejoined Feng Tzu-ying smiling. "You're all far too credulous! It's a mere hoax that I made use of the other day. For so much did I fear that you would be sure to refuse if I openly asked you to a drinking bout, that I thought it fit to say what I did. But your attendance to-day, so soon after my invitation, makes it clear, little though ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... were not in the house at all, and could not then have been stolen. It may very probably have been so. Nothing more probable. Mr. Camperdown and the managers of the Eustace estate had gradually come to a belief that the Carlisle robbery was a hoax,—and, therefore, another robbery is necessary to account for the diamonds. Another robbery is arranged, and this young and beautiful widow, as bold as brass, again goes before the magistrate and swears. Either the diamonds were ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... us," I said, "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
... guides. "'Tis not for him, degenerate wight, to say Faults can be mended at this time of day, For Coke himself declared—no matter what— Can Justice suffer what Lord Coke would not? And if 1 Siderfin, p. 10, you scan, Lord Hoax has fixed the rule, that learned man: I cannot, dare not, if I would, be just, My hands are tied, and follow Hoax I must; That very learned Lord could not be wrong. Besides, in fact, it has been settled long, For the great ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the absence of intoxicants, might compare with the worst of the ancient bacchanalia. The singers in the cave were the old men and women who had ensconced themselves in it secretly during the day; but the hoax was not suspected by the children and young people, who firmly believed that the spirits of the dead really assembled that night in the cavern and assisted at the sports and diversions of ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... 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
... a hoax. The box may or may not contain an infernal contrivance, but even if it does, you can't convict Bullard any more than you can arrest the soul of ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... her 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 any statement ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... a boy only two years older than herself, but feeling ever so much bigger and wiser; for he was an only son, a clever and rather conceited young gentleman. He was good-natured, and loved his cousin; but he loved better to tease and hoax her. Having lived all her little life in India, Meggie was exceedingly ignorant of customs and things in her new home, and was continually making laughable mistakes, and asking the most absurd questions. This "greenness," ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... water to look for him, and saw a naked sword at the bottom, which he was just about to grasp, when his sister called from the shore to tell him that his father, mother, brothers, and sisters were all dead or dying. He hurried home, but it proved to be a hoax, for they were all alive ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... exacerbation, lasting for four days, only twenty votes could be found indirectly and remotely to censure. In the course of this discussion circumstances made it probable that the names appended to the petition were not the signatures of slaves, and that the whole was a forgery, and designed as a hoax upon him. On which suggestion Mr. Adams stated to the house that he now believed the paper to be a forgery, by a slaveholding master, for the purpose of daring him to present a petition purporting to be from slaves; that, having now reason to believe it a forgery, ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... for having their guest remain in the camp; but Preciosa was against it; and her grandmother said, that she could not go to Seville or its neighbourhood, on account of a hoax she had once played off upon a capmaker named Truxillo, well known in Seville. She had persuaded him to put himself up to his neck in a butt of water, stark naked, with a crown of cypress on his head, there to remain till midnight, when he was to step out, and ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... therefore seldom spoke to anyone, but talked to himself as he went along, marking with a sudden stop and a shake of the head the end of an anecdote and the inevitable phrase, 'That's a thing that I have seen.' But he still carried himself upright, and was as fond of a hoax as in the days of the Directory. It was his amusement to impose abstinence from wine, abstinence from meat, and every ridiculous variety of regimen upon cits enamoured of life, crowds of whom wrote to him daily, asking by what diet he had so miraculously extended his. He would prescribe sometimes ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... little 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 number two just after ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... theatre, he was a dead man. But it is difficult to believe that a Prince who could scarcely be induced, by the most earnest entreaties of his friends, to take the most common precautions against assassins of whose designs he had trustworthy evidence, would have been scared by so silly a hoax; and it is quite certain that the stages of his progress had been marked, and that he remained at Oxford as long as was compatible with ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... convenient case for a machine that kept your life ticking along. How does one get the idea that all this is good-looking? Ages ago men decided to think so for reasons that have nothing to do with esthetics; they passed the hoax on, and in time these physical features got themselves surrounded with a perfect fog of sentimental and romantic balderdash. Take your face. Your nose is bridged in that so-called ravishing way in order ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... were at Executive Palace for hours, bullying him into that. Why, we almost had to twist one of his arms while he was signing the order with the other. And now he has the gall to run for re-election on the strength of his heroic actions at the time of the Travis Hoax!" ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... mad?" demanded the 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 ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the receiver-general, the colonel in command of the garrison, the head of the Naval School, the president of the Court, and so forth. The poet, poor fellow, was feted so magnificently, and so belauded, that anybody but a young man of two-and-twenty would have shrewdly suspected a hoax. After dinner, Chatelet drew his rival on to recite The Dying Sardanapalus, the masterpiece of the hour; and the headmaster of the school, a man of a phlegmatic temperament, applauded with both hands, and vowed that Jean-Baptiste Rousseau had done nothing ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... 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, he had called his father to the wire, and posing as the despatcher, ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... back presently. He not only bore the basin of warm water but a towel as well. Jud watched operations curiously. He was seeing what was a strange thing according to his ideas. He could not quite bring himself to believe that there was not some cruel hoax hidden in this act of apparent friendliness, and that accounted for the way he kept his teeth tightly closed. He did not wish to be taken unawares and forced ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... A hoax, or as our merry ancestors would have called it, a flam, is usually the most ephemeral and evanescent of human devices. Like a boy's soap bubble, it glitters for a brief moment in iridescent rotundity, then ceases to ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... 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
... these volumes, he would frankly say that he yields no credit to the presumed fact, and at the same time he would refer to the vocabulary contained in the second volume, whence it will appear that the words HOAX and HOCUS have been immediately derived from the language of the Gypsies, who, there is good reason to believe, first introduced the system into Europe, to ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... circumstances he might have been more struck with the little embarrassment which she could not perfectly control, but at the moment he was not quite himself either. That impudent Doady Donne had played a shameful hoax on him, had actually had the audacity to declare that she had seen his wife—Nina, Mrs. Dacres—in Teddy Vere's hansom! He hadn't taken what she said very pleasantly, for the bare notion made him furious, and—though ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... dose would be much to his advantage; but, however, my opinion is, that this invitation to breakfast is, after all, a mere piece of irony; and that, when we get to Walmesley Lodge, we shall not see anything of him; on the contrary, we shall probably find it's a hoax." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... 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 ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... went upstairs to see this vaunted beauty; and Sazen, drawing aside a screen, showed him O Koyo, who was sitting there. Genzaburo gave a great start, and, turning to Sazen, said, "Well, you certainly are a first-rate hand at keeping up a hoax. However, I cannot sufficiently praise the way in which you have ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... bridegroom but very slightly, having met him but once, as we are now reliably informed. In fact, nothing could be farther from her thoughts than marriage with the gentleman in question, he being considerably her junior in years. The cruelty of the hoax thus perpetrated is increased by the fact that for the past several days Miss Stowe has been confined to the bed of illness, suffering from a sudden and violent attack of fever, which illness has naturally been enhanced by ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... that the gigantic reflector of Lord Rosse, and the exquisite fifteen- inch refractors of the modern observatories, eliminate from the chaotic rubbish-heap of the surface of old Thornbush much smaller objects than such a circle as I have named. If you have read Mr. Locke's amusing Moon Hoax as often as I have, you have those details fresh in your memory. As John Farrar taught us when all this began,—and as I have said already,—if there were a State House in Thornbush two hundred feet long, ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... be regretted that he did not state "the points which have suggested this notion of its being a hoax." For my own part, I cannot see the motive for such a falsification; and if it is one, it is the contrivance of some one who had more epigraphic skill than is usually ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... us wait here, let us get back to the quay. This is some beastly hoax. The place is as silent as the ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... me, 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! ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... preface, we have an evidence of her having been the victim of as well concerted and admirably conducted a hoax, as was ever played off upon any one—it surpasses that which was put upon poor Malvolio in "Twelfth Night." After making the remark upon which we have already commented, that a second work on France from her pen could "alone be justified by the ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... 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 ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... were those given by the mirror galvanometer.[It is said to have broken down while Newfoundland was vainly attempting to inform Valentia that it was sending with THREE HUNDRED AND TWELVE CELLS!] The reaction at this news was tremendous. Some writers even hinted that the line was a mere hoax, and others pronounced it a stock exchange speculation. Sensible men doubted whether the cable had ever 'spoken;' but in addition to the royal despatch, items of daily news had passed through the wire; for instance, the announcement of a collision between ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... address was 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 afterwards when printed, thought it only a hoax, and ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... 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 them, if ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... was a hoax prepared by his companions; but the absolute impossibility of such a conspiracy appeared to him almost as soon as the idea itself, and he sat speechless before that truly infernal power, the incarnation of which borrowed ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... was the only allusion ever made by Miss Preston to the midnight ramble, nor was it ever repeated for Mrs. Stone's benefit, although nothing could ever have persuaded the good lady that she had been the victim of a hoax that night. ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... excited to the highest pitch. It never occurred to him to doubt whether this letter might not be a hoax. For many years he had known Simon Ford, one of the former foremen of the Aberfoyle mines, of which he, James Starr, had for twenty years, been the manager, or, as he would be termed in English coal-mines, the viewer. ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... boatyard and, the actual construction of a bateau; but a Democratic Congress turned its back on the proposed improvement. No boat bigger than a skiff ever ascended Salt River, though there was a wild report, evidently a hoax, that a party of picnickers had seen one night a ghostly steamer, loaded and manned, puffing up the stream. An old Scotchman, Hugh Robinson, when he heard of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... before, attempts at refinement in language, really excite improper ideas. As a proof of the ridiculous excess to which this is occasionally carried, I shall insert an address which I observed in print; had such a document appeared in the English newspapers, it would have been considered as a hoax. ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... a huge bowl of punch. Whereupon Dan, thinking that the joke had gone far enough, suddenly dived his head into the porcelain vase, and threw his heels into the air. The surprise and indignation of the solemn Spaniards was such, that they made a most intemperate report of the hoax that had been played on them to Lord Wellington; Dan, however, was ultimately forgiven, ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... proclaimed, with perhaps a quiet cut at the Flat-Hat gentry; instead of which he had a mixed medley sort of a mess, whose humdrum monotony was only relieved by the absurdities and errors with which it was crammed. At first, Mr. Puffington could not make out what it meant, whether it was a hoax for the purpose of turning run-writing into ridicule, or it had suffered mutilation at the hands of the printer. Calling a good scent an exquisite perfume looked suspicious of a hoax, but then seasonal fox for seasoned fox, scorning to cry for scoring ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... hopes when a 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 as salter than ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... Chronicle of Achimaaz, that Jews visited Jerusalem in the tenth century. Aronius records a curious incident. Charles the Great, between the years 787 and 813, ordered a Jewish merchant, who often used to visit Palestine and bring precious and unknown commodities thence to the West, to hoax the Archbishop of Mainz, so as to lower the self-conceit of this vain dilettante. The Jew thereupon sold him a mouse at a high price, persuading him that it was a rare animal, which he had brought with him from Judea. Early in the eleventh century there was a fully organized Jewish community with ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... A rise behind the barn was about a mile from a similar rise on Sam Atkins' place. They communicated across that distance in all the ways, including various kinds of codes, that Fenwick could think of to find some evidence of hoax. Afterwards, they returned to the laboratory and sawed in two the crystals they had just used. Then they showed him the tests they had devised to determine the nature of the radiation between ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... same way the judges in the Franciscan case of 1533, visited the bed of the child where the spirit had been used to scratch and rap, heard nothing, and decided that the affair was a hoax. The nature of the fraud was not discovered, but the Franciscans were severely punished. At Lyons, the bishop and some other clerics could get no response from the rapping spirit which was so familiar with the king's chaplain, Adrien ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... of the celebrated Moon hoax, written by Richard A. Locke, and originally published in ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... providing a snail for each letter, a conversation may thus be carried on. The correspondent of the London Literary Gazette, says that he saw experiments on the subject in Paris, which were attended with complete success. The whole thing is probably an ingenious hoax. A skeptical correspondent of the Literary Gazette proposes an easy method of testing the new telegraph. He says, "If the Presse newspaper will every day for a few weeks give a short abstract of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... toward Pan-at-lee. The latter nodded, her simple mind unable to determine whether or not she and her mistress were the victims of a colossal hoax. "It is even as he says," ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was so intense, as we saw the way to Solomon's treasure chamber thrown open at last, that I for one began to tremble and shake. Would it prove a hoax after all, I wondered, or was old Da Silvestra right? Were there vast hoards of wealth hidden in that dark place, hoards which would make us the richest men in the whole world? We should know in a minute ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... 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
... certainly a very well-behaved, handsome man. He looks like a nobleman in disguise. What an odd thing it would be, aunt, if this should be all a hoax!' ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... for 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 he means ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... from the house without being recognized. His motive and his 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 fact and fancy in a now inextricable ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... came out that the poor man, than whom no more honest creature ever walked the earth, had been made the victim of a truly diabolical hoax. He was sitting reading the newspaper in a public-house, the Three Hens—he had not even been drinking, mind, simply reading the newspaper—when a perfect stranger, whom he had never seen before nor since, but whom he should know ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... excitement tingling in his veins, as if he were feeling the glow of forbidden wine. Turning beside the fountain, he glanced back as the Governor was closing the door, and in his vision of the lighted interior he saw Patty Vetch darting airily across the hall. So it was nothing more than a hoax! She hadn't hurt herself in the least. She had merely made a laughing-stock of him for the amusement doubtless of her obscure acquaintances! For an instant anger held him motionless; then turning quickly he walked rapidly past the ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... of the steam-engine was already taking shape, informed her that the raving prisoner was not a madman, but a genius. A great stir was made by this letter. The anecdote was copied into standard works, and represented in engravings. Yet it was a complete hoax. De Caus was not only never confined in a madhouse, but he was architect to Louis XIII. up to the time of his death, in 1630, just eleven years BEFORE Marion Delorme was said to have seen him at his ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... the presidents, the streets of Babylon rang with the proclamation of the new law. Heralds were sent to and fro, who, at the top of their voices, sounded the peculiar edict throughout every thoroughfare. At first it was thought by many to be a mischievous hoax, but it was soon found to be stern reality. Nothing could exceed the astonishment and consternation produced among the inhabitants when they first heard it; it was so unlike anything they could expect from the mild Mede. Not only among the Hebrews, who were numerous in the city, was this singular ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... his heart sank like a lump of lead in his breast. The talk of a ship being in sight must be a hoax, unless Crabtree referred to ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... 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 of phantasmagoria was conducted by means ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... a place. It surely is not a hoax," said Amy, although at first she had thought it was a joke. "And there is another thing to ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... and that you bid farewell to her Grace, pleading fatigue as the reason for your early departure. Then I will see you to your carriage, and when I return I shall endeavour to get that unlucky telegram from the Duke by telling him I should like to find out whether it is a hoax or not. He will have forgotten about it most likely in the morning. Therefore, all you have to do is to keep up your courage for a few moments longer until you ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... 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 ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... crowded to excess with rough and boisterous diggers. The hour struck as I was getting my articles arranged and spread out upon the table, and they began shouting, "Where's the Missionary?"—"Another hoax!"—indicating that they were not unwilling for a row. I learned that, only a few nights ago, a so-called Professor had advertised a lecture, lifted entrance money till the Hall was crowded, and then quietly slipped off the scene. In our case, though there ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... Micky's voice was full of disgust. He looked down at her from his superior height with sudden suspicion. If this was just a hoax? ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... those attached to the story in later editions are not taken from sketches by Thackeray. This, as far as I know, was the first use of the name Titmarsh, and seems to indicate some intention on the part of the author of creating a hoax as to two personages,—one the writer and the other the illustrator. If it were so he must soon have dropped the idea. In the last paragraph he has shaken off his cousin Michael. The main object of the story is ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... breath. He felt as though a cruel hoax had been played on him. After all, Possy could have lied about the cat and the other creatures. And the boy was quite obviously bright enough to learn lines and play a part. But how ...
— When I Grow Up • Richard E. Lowe
... Uncle Roger meant what he said," remarked the Story Girl. "I couldn't get a look into his eyes. If he was trying to hoax us there would have been a twinkle in them. He can never help that. You know he would think it a great joke to frighten us like this. It's really dreadful to have no grown-ups you can ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a hoax!" cry I, scornfully, standing scarlet and deeply ashamed, facing them all; "it is real, plain, downright, ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... read it. I did not mean to send you such trash. The man must be either an escaped lunatic or has tried his hand at a hoax. It is a tissue ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... mad. Somewhere there must be a natural explanation; it was only a question of finding it. Among other things it occurred to me that someone, for reason unknown, might be playing a series of practical jokes upon me, but it was hard to believe a hoax of such malignant and serious intent. Besides, it did not explain the death of Price which, I felt more and more convinced, was in some way connected with the bronze statue. I felt it would be my own fault if I did not get some part of the mystery cleared ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... questions, and was told that the farmer who lived there had discovered the figure when digging a well. Being asked my opinion, my answer was that the whole matter was undoubtedly a hoax; that there was no reason why the farmer should dig a well in the spot where the figure was found; that it was convenient neither to the house nor to the barn; that there was already a good spring and a stream of water running conveniently to both; that, as to the figure itself, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... laid down his knife and fork for a moment, then took them up again. Something in the old man's tone made him a bit wary. "Maybe it's just a hoax," he thought to himself. Aloud he said, "it was ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... 'Tar'n't a hoax, then, though I was mightily 'feared it was. Them students is the Devil for chivying of a feller,—beggin' your pardon, Mr. Blount. Have you got him yonder, Doctor?" said he, his keen eye noticing Mac and Clarian in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... become so ingenious in weaving together fact and fancy that their tales are sometimes more plausible than truth itself. This was done with peculiar skill by Poe. His story, now known as "The Balloon Hoax," originally appeared in the New York Sun as a correspondent's account of an actual occurrence. The tale gained credence through its remarkable accuracy of detail in regard to recognized scientific principles, ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett |
