"Mummery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heathens! What sort of religion can theirs be which makes them seek the life of an inoffensive man? I come here, having no one thing to do with either Suni or Shiah, Sufi or Mohamedan: on the contrary, out of compliment to them, I go through all the mummery of five washings and five prayings per day, and still that will not satisfy them; however, I will be even with them. I will go; I will leave their vile hypocritical town; and neither will I wash nor pray until necessity obliges me ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... conspiracies; and it was the rendezvous of all the discontented, of which there were many. The general assumed the task of disapproving all the acts of the First Consul; he opposed the reestablishment of public worship, and criticised as childish and ridiculous mummery the institution of the Legion of Honor. These grave imprudences, and indeed many others, came to the ears of the First Consul, who refused at first to believe them; but how could he remain deaf to reports which were repeated each day with more foundation, though ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... up that mummery, Doctor," broke in Cummings roughly, as he reared his head and squared his shoulders evidently intending to make a strike, "You and your nigger knew all about this, so you may as ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... much milder. But I suppose one day or other—when there are no longer any wild Highlanders to benefit by its tender mercies—they will blot it from their records, as levelling them with a nation of cannibals. The mummery, too, of exposing the senseless head—they have not the wit to grace mine with a paper coronet; there would be some satire in that, Edward. I hope they will set it on the Scotch gate though, that I may look, even after death, to the blue hills of my own country, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... an ample income. My wife is ready to admit that purely from the point of view of common sense she would have preferred to have the child do almost anything peculiar rather than engage in her present mummery, because some people will consider her crazy; but, on the other hand, she maintains that the chances of losing her altogether are much less serious than if she had become a Toynbee Haller, for instance. "Mind you," said Josephine, "however much I might have fumed, I should really have been ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... town, and find your letter, with the notification of Lord Cowper's marriage; I recollect that I ought to be sorry for it, as you will probably lose an old friend. The approaching death of the Pope will be an event of no consequence. That old mummery is near its conclusion, at least as a political object. The history of the latter Popes will be no more read than that of the last Constantinopolitan Emperors. Wilkes is a more conspicuous personage ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... our hearts beat more quickly. Look at the sunshine! It's brighter when we're so close together. What of life? It's soon gone—and then? What of convention that says 'no'? It's but a farce that gives the same thing we ask—at the price of a few words of mummery. Our strongest instincts of nature call for each other. Why shouldn't we obey them when we wish?" She hesitated, and her voice became tender. "We would be very happy ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... of mediaeval dances, carols, or Bethlehem Plays. There are elements in all that has come to us from the more morally simple society of the Middle Ages: elements which moderns, even when they are mediaevalists, find it hard to understand and harder to imitate. The first is the primary idea of Mummery itself. If you will observe a child just able to walk, you will see that his first idea is not to dress up as anybody—but to dress up. Afterwards, of course, the idea of being the King or ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... "Mummery?" repeated Dr. Vaughn, bending his penetrating eyes on Kennedy, as if he would force him to betray ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... faith, not inherited, nor accepted, but hard-won by personal struggle and experience; that was the key-note to her character and the explanation of her actions. Yet that faith, when examined into, was nothing exotic; no combination of mysticism and mummery, but one founded upon the daily creed of the English and its fellow churches, and understood and applied to the circumstances of a life which was as brief as it seemed to be unfortunate. This was Morris's discovery, open and obvious enough, ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... names mentioned. They of the Guises reserved the chief of them, after dinner, to make sport for the ladies; the two sexes were ranged at the windows of the castle, as if it were a question of seeing some mummery played. And what is worse, the king and his young brothers were present at these spectacles, as if the desire were to 'blood' them; the sufferers were pointed out to them by the Cardinal of Lorraine with all the signs of a man greatly rejoiced, and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... these dog-priests now," growled the baron, "who set such price on their ghostly mummery? I have heard old men talk of prayer— prayer by their own voice—such need not to court or to bribe the false ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... unholy arts upon all comers without mercy or distinction as to race, caste, sex, age, colour, or previous condition of servitude. And when trade slackened (as inevitably it did when "the young people" for whose "amusement" this mummery ostensibly was staged asserted their ennui by avoiding the neighbourhood) Ecstatica, nothing daunted, would rise up and go forth and stalk her prey among the more mature, dragging them off forcibly by the hand, when needs must, to sit at her table and ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... The mummery now ceased, and Bunce having been carried elsewhere, the maskers resumed their native apparel, having thrown aside that which had been put on for a distinct purpose. The pedler, in another and more secure department of the robbers' hiding-place, was solaced with the prospect ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... be denied that a secret society, with the grand and almost awful purposes of the Hetria, spite of some taint which it had received in its early stages from the spirit of German mummery, is fitted to fill the imagination, and to command homage from the coldest. Whispers circulating from mouth to mouth of some vast conspiracy mining subterraneously beneath the very feet of their accursed oppressors; ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... man's nature, by abstracting the habitual notions of size, and looking at it in great or in little: would that some one had the boldness and the art to do a similar service, by stripping off the coat from his back, the vizor from his thoughts, or by dressing up some other creature in similar mummery! It is not his body alone that he tampers with, and metamorphoses so successfully; he tricks out his mind and soul in borrowed finery, and in the admired costume of gravity and imposture. If he has a desire to commit a base or a cruel action without remorse and with the applause of the spectators, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... to untruth of heart. Self and false ambition had now become his god: self-deception once yielded to, all other deceptions follow naturally, more and more. What a paltry patch-work of theatrical paper-mantles, tinsel and mummery, had this man wrapped his own reality in, thinking to make it more real thereby! His hollow Pope's-Concordat, pretending to be a reestablishment of Catholicism, felt by himself to be the method of extirpating it, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... the cathedral. This mock dignity lasted till Innocents' day; and, during the intermediate time, the boy performed various episcopal functions. If it happened that he died before the allotted period of this extraordinary mummery had expired, he was buried with all the ceremonials which were used at the funerals of prelates. In the voluminous collections relating to antiquities, bequeathed by Mr. Cole, who was himself of Eton and King's colleges, to the British Museum, is ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... rascal is going to hang me after all," he said to himself; "then what, in Our Lady's name, means this strange mummery, and how comes that ill-favoured maiden to look at me as if her ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... that moment he was his father's son. If the world, or the world's law, said otherwise, then they were of the devil, and deserving to be damned. What rite, what jabbering ceremony, what priestly ordinance, what legal mummery, stood between him and his claim ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... fragments of a skeleton, blackened by age; a necklace of teeth from some animal's jaw; worthless trifles for the mummery of the priests. Then, beneath them, he saw two great fangs, a foot in length. They were curved, sharply pointed and ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... of these experiments, I wished to see what sort of mummery my magician would practise if I called upon him to show me some performances of a higher order than those which had been attempted. I therefore entered into a treaty with him, in virtue of which he was to ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... pass the quaint old church of St. Remi, one of the sights of the Champagne capital, and notable among other things for its magnificent ancient stained-glass windows, and the handsome modern tomb of the popular Remois saint. It was here in the middle ages that that piece of priestly mummery, the procession of the herrings, used to take place at dusk on the Wednesday before Easter. Preceded by a cross the canons of the church marched in double file up the aisles, each trailing a cord after him, with a herring ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... efforts were principally directed towards the erection of religious institutions, being much under the dominion of the priests, and naturally possessing a fanatic zeal. Churches at that period were too often but monuments of superstition for the celebration of mummery, for sheltering criminals, receptacles for pretended relics, and in fact instruments for maintaining the power of priestcraft. This same Saint Louis, so lauded by some authors, had some excellent notions ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... the shepherd's cottage at the corner of the grange. Bless me—here's a modern antique, masquerading in the country!—why a village belle of queen Bess' days, looking as new and as fresh as the young 'squire's lodge, fresh out of the hands of his fancy architect. More mummery! why this gentleman looks as fine and as foolish in his affectation of rugged points and quaint angles, as a staring, white-washed, Gothic villa with the paint not yet dry. Oh! there is certainly no denying that thou art the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various
... know anything more about it. Why, man, it's diabolical! To warp and imprison a girl like that! To think of that bewitching creature as a common trickster—appalls me. And to think that good people, millions of them, believe in such mummery! It ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... pretty well how to handle their instruments; then came halberdiers, and some armed with cross-bows. The principal person in the procession was a priest. Astonished at what he saw, the Councillor asked what was the meaning of all this mummery, and who ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... he. "Do you imagine that citizen Schneider has not thrown off the absurd mummery of priesthood? If you were a little older you would go to prison for calling him Father Schneider—many a man has died for less;" and he pointed to a picture of a guillotine, which was hanging in ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dodges his head, and looks to the one side and to the other, so much with the piteous aspect of that animal, that one would not be sorry to see the ambitious imitator calipashed in his robe, and served up for the entertainment of the gallery.—There is no hint for this mummery in the Play: Whatever there may be of dishonour in Falstaff's conduct, he neither does or says any thing on this occasion which indicates terror or disorder of mind: On the contrary, this very act is a proof of his having all his wits about him, and is a stratagem, such as it is, not improper ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... shirking none of its responsibilities. Now, at the hour of sorrow, I find myself facing my grief alone; there is no power in the church that can help me to bear it. What is religion, I say? Is it a mere mummery of speech? I have been religious all my life; now I ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... by a variety of action becomes a sort of horrid Harlequin in these pantomimical scenes, we may be delighted by the numerous human characters, which are so vividly presented to us. The origin of this extraordinary invention is supposed to be a favourite pageant, or religious mummery, invented by the clergy, who in these ages of barbarous Christianity always found it necessary to amuse, as well as to frighten the populace; a circumstance well known to have occurred in so many other grotesque and licentious festivals ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... innumerable ceremonies, which revolve almost incessantly, furnish a variety of entertainment from one end of the year to the other. If superstition implies fear, never was a word more misapplied than it is to the mummery of the religion of Rome. The people are so far from being impressed with awe and religious terror by this sort of machinery, that it amuses their imaginations in the most agreeable manner, and keeps them always in good humour. A Roman catholic longs as impatiently for the festival of St. Suaire, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... disrespect; and the latter likewise taxed him with the design of converting the monarchy into a republic, with a regent, annually elected, nominally at its head. Against the regency bill he burst into a paroxysm of rage. He exclaimed, "It is a mere mummery, a piece of masquerade buffoonery, formed to burlesque every species of government. A hideous spectre, to which, with ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... my little sister! Welcome, here! Away with all this mummery, but quick! Don't take my head off, too! How ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... that old woman, Barbara Trond, whom we met out on the heath on the day of the storm some time back. I saw her only a week ago in Antwerp. Soon after the Duke Alva arrived, she returned to Antwerp; but, instead of selling wax tapers and other Popish mummery, finding her calling of sorceress and witch answer so well in the country, she now pursues it in the city. Nothing takes place with which she is not acquainted. The credulity of the Romanists is unbounded, and she finds it ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... an unattainable princess. In these two particulars you display such wisdom as would inevitably prompt you to make an end of me. Yet, what the devil! you, the time-battered vagabond, decline happiness and a kingdom to boot because of yesterday's mummery in the cathedral! because of a mere promise given! Yes, I have my spies in every rat-hole. I am aware that my barons hate me, and hate Philibert almost as bitterly,—and that, in fine, a majority ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... in the conjuration of the bee-hunter was, to produce an impression on the minds of his untutored observers, by resorting to a proper amount of mummery and mystical action. This he was enabled to do with some effect, in consequence of having practised as a lad in similar mimicry, by way of pastime. The Germans, and the descendants of Germans in America, are not of a very high class, as respects education, ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... thereby to the manners of the Saxons, from whom he drew his descent, and which was likely to be at least unpleasing to the Franks as well as Normans, who had already received and become very tenacious of the privileges of the feudal system, the mummery of heraldry, and the warlike claims assumed by knights, as belonging only ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... costumes are rather disappointing,-though the mummery has some general characteristics that are not unpicturesquel—for example, the predominance of crimson and canary-yellow in choice of color, and a marked predilection for pointed hoods and high- peaked head-dresses, Mock religious costumes also form a striking ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... notions of "Popery" are limited to what he hears from an evangelical curate or has seen at the opening of a Jesuit church, looks on the whole system as an obsolete mummery; and no more believes that men of sense can seriously adopt it, than that they will be converted to the practice of eating their dinner with a Chinaman's chop-sticks instead of the knife and fork. He pictures to himself a number of celibate gentlemen, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... captains Martin had met were particular men; one would not find them in such a noisome hole. This Carew must be some rough renegade. Perhaps he was not even white; perhaps he was a half-caste. That would explain his choice of lodgings. One would think from all the secret mummery with which he surrounded himself that he was the Mikado, himself. He certainly was not very popular ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... of the priesthood are filled with the superstitions of the old world, coming, as so many do from the lowest classes of Great Britain and Scandinavia, fit subjects for all the mummery imposed upon them in the name of religion. Brigham Young is often quoted as saying, that he had gathered around him a set of people that his satanic majesty himself would not have. Even after polygamy had been openly proclaimed in Utah, their missionaries utterly repudiated it, and in pursuance ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... heart tearing cares, Anxious sighes, untimely tears, Fly, fly to Courts, Fly to fond wordlings sports, Where strain'd Sardonick smiles are glosing stil And grief is forc'd to laugh against her will. Where mirths but Mummery, And ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... (Fiends yell below, and angels weep above!) Their impious march to God's high altar bend, With feet impure the sacred steps ascend; With wine unbless'd the holy chalice stain, Assume the mitre, and the cope profane; 35 To heaven their eyes in mock devotion throw, And to the cross with horrid mummery bow; Adjure by mimic rites the powers above, And plite alternate their ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... night. Y'r French gab may be foul wi' oaths for all I ken; but ye'll no come into my hoose! An' you, Sir, a blind leader o' the blind, a disciple o' Beelzebub, wi' y'r Babylonish idolatries, wi' y'r incense that fair stinks in the nostrils o' decent folk, wi' y'r images and mummery and crossin' o' y'rsel', wi' y'r pagan, popish practises, wi' y'r skirts and petticoats, I'll no hae ye on my premises, no, not an' ye leave y'r religion outside! An' you, Meester Hamilton, a respectable Protestant, I'm fair surprised to see ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... prevail. It is true the prestige of respected names will rise up to oppose the new views, which, I confess, to be sustained in their main features by my own views and researches here on the ground and in the midst of the Indians, and men will rise to sustain the old views—the original literary mummery and philological hocus-pocus based on the papers and letters and blunders of Heckewelder. There was a great predisposition to admire and overrate everything relative to Indian history and language, as detailed by this good and sincere missionary in his retirement ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... have induced Scott to write novels tending to make people Papists and Jacobites, and in love with arbitrary power? Did he think that Christianity was a gaudy mummery? He did not, he could not, for he had read the Bible; yet was he fond of gaudy mummeries, fond of talking about them. Did he believe that the Stuarts were a good family, and fit to govern a country like Britain? He knew ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... dear heart, I hate myself for what I was. What a sad mummery of lisping nothings was my speech—and what a vanity was my attire! Thou wast right, Mary, but oh! with what a ruthless hand didst thou tear the veil from mine eyes! I have seen my fault and will amend it, but oh! tell me it was thy love ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... attendants approached the first of these figures, the men who formed it began to move themselves from side to side, lolling out their tongues, and staring as wide and horribly with their eyes as they could open them. After this mummery had continued some minutes, the men separated for them to pass, and the boys were now led over the bodies lying on the ground. These immediately began to move, writhing as if in agony, and uttering a mournful dismal sound, like very distant thunder. Having passed over these bodies, the boys were ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... man can ever wish to adulterate manly piety (the parent of all that is good in the world) with mummery and parade. But we are strange, very strange creatures, and it is better perhaps not to place too much confidence in our reason alone. If anything, there is, perhaps, too little pomp and ceremony in our worship, instead ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... belief. "What rational man," it may be said, "would ever think of dressing up a figure to represent the devil, for the purpose of frightening young girls into obedience? And those absurd threats! Surely no sane man, and certainly no Christian teacher, would ever stoop to such senseless mummery!" ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... in which animals represent men, "full of broad rustic mirth, inexhaustible in comic devices, a world Saturnalia, where wolves tonsured into monks and nigh starved by short commons, foxes pilgrimaging to Rome for absolution, cocks pleading at the judgment-bar, make strange mummery." The principal characters are Isengrim the wolf and Reynard the fox, the former representing strength incarnated in the baron and the latter representing cunning incarnated in the Church, and the strife for ascendency ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... settle with the bishop his relations with the Audiencia; and he arranged that on the sixth of December all the auditors should be present together in the palace, and that the archbishop should come to meet them, as if by chance, and talk with them, and thus have a sort of absolution conferred—a mummery [mogiganga] by which they could attend that day the feast of St. Javier, which was celebrated at the church ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... so served are seized by the wrists, to ropes stretched fore and aft on the second deck for the officers, and before the mast for the sailors; and after much mummery and monkey tricks, they are let loose, to be led after one another to the main mast, where they are made to swear on a sea chart that they will do by others as is done by them, according to the laws and statutes of navigation: then they pay to save being wetted, but always in vain, for ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... you possess rare advantage over the rest of us in holding converse with these people, while I must remain dumb as an oyster, save for a glance of the eye. Perhaps, now that we have time for it, you will kindly explain the meaning of all this mummery with which we passed the night, for, by all the gods of Rome, it was weird enough to turn my hair gray, yet I understood neither word nor deed. How came that grim preacher to attain such honor, taking ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... made by the citizens for the disport of the young prince Richard, son to the Black Prince, in the feast of Christmas, in this manner:—On the Sunday before Candlemas, in the night, one hundred and thirty citizens, disguised and well horsed, in a mummery, with sound of trumpets, sackbuts, cornets, shalmes, and other minstrels, and innumerable torch lights of wax, rode from Newgate through Cheape, over the bridge, through Southwarke, and so to Kennington beside Lambheth, where ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... so very unlike the person that she lately appeared, that it might have surprized any one who doth not know that besides that of a fine lady, which is all mere art and mummery, every such woman hath some real character at the bottom, in which, whenever nature gets the better of her, she acts. Thus the finest ladies in the world will sometimes love, and sometimes scratch, according to their different natural dispositions, with ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... fool last night and—" She stopped, turned toward them a perturbed and fear-wrinkled face. Then she said quickly: "I don't know that I owe Grant Adams anything but—you children do—" She did not complete her sentence, but burst out: "I don't care for Tom Van Dorn's court, his grand folderol and mummery of the law. He's going to send a man to death to-night because his masters demand it. And we must stop it—you and Lila and ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... "Can you possibly go on thinking of your philanthropic work as something genuine and useful, and not a mere mummery? It was a farce from beginning to end; it was playing at loving your neighbour, the most open farce which even children and stupid peasant women saw through! Take for instance your— what was it called?—house for homeless old women without relations, of which you made me something like ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... All the statues, the carved and painted tombs, all the curious little model boats and workshops, all the painted mummies, all the amulets, the scarabs, the little funerary statuettes,—all this mummery which seems to be so characteristic and so essential, is only the means to an end, and an ever changing means to secure a successful comfortable existence of the spirit in the life after death,—in the ghostly duplicate ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner
... the studio, 'of all the affectations of Paris, of all the hypocrisies of society, the most shameless, the most amusing, is the pretended taste for art. It's enough to make you die of laughing; everyone performing a mummery, which imposes on nobody. And music, the same! You should just see them at ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... whom you mean, sir; but I thought he was a writer of stage plays, and such things as on all sides I hear called foolish, and mummery.' ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... herself was straight. All the same the discussion was beneath her. It was beneath her to listen to opinions of herself coming from such a source. If Rash didn't "think much of her" there was something to "have out" with him, not with this little street-waif dressed up with this ludicrous mummery. The sooner she ended the business on which she had come the sooner she would get a legitimate outlet for the passion of jealousy and rage ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... once in a foreign cathedral, when the procession filed by—the singing-men nudging each other, the standard-bearers giggling, and the English tourists craning to see the sight—the face of one white-haired old bishop beneath his canopy transformed for me a foolish piece of mummery into a prayer in action. So it was again, when the young stranger turned to us his pale clear-cut face, solemn with an awe as rapt as if he verily stood before the throne of Him he called upon, and felt Its ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... He did (and nobody denies that), what did He mean by it, if He did not mean the setting forth by symbol of the very same truth which, stated in words, is the doctrine of His atoning death? This rite does not, indeed, explain the rationale of the doctrine; but it is a piece of unmeaning mummery, unless it preaches plainly the fact that Christ's death is the ground ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... a mere masking or mummery," said Craigdallie, "our townsman, Harry of the Wind, did far wrong to cut off a gentleman's hand for such a harmless pleasantry, and the town may be brought to a heavy fine for it, unless we secure the ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... rash terms. Terms perhaps known to August to be rash; to have been frightfully rash; but what can he now do? Archbishop thereupon gives absolution of his sins; Archbishop does,—a baddish, unlikely kind of man, as August well knows. August "laid his hand on his eyes," during such sad absolution-mummery; and in that posture had breathed his last, before it was well over. ["Sunday, 1st February, 1733, quarter past 4 A.M." (Fassmann, Leben Frederici Augusti Konigs in Pohlen, pp. 994-997).] Unhappy soul; who shall judge ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... we shall have his worship presently, that is, if he means to keep his hour; if not, you may wait for him, Godfrey, if you court his acquaintance. But what, after all, if it should prove but a mummery got up by Vankarp, or some such wag? I wish you had run all risks, and cudgelled the old burgomaster soundly. I'd wager a dozen of Rhenish, his worship would have unmasked, and pleaded old acquaintance ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... girl of noble birth who had entered religion and taken her vows, when a gallant appears, meets her secretly in the convent garden, promises to marry her if she will fly with him, indeed does go through some mummery of marriage with her—so she says—and the rest of it. Now he has deserted her and she is in trouble, and what is more, should the priests catch her, likely to learn what it feels like to die by inches in a convent wall. She came to me for counsel and brought some ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... that you will hear truth, child? Well, have your way. Will you join us, Nell—the business is a pleasing one, for these knaves have the tricks of their trade. But harkee, friends, give no real heed to the mummery." ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... in detail the various ceremonies of Holy Week at Rome, a philosophic mind will take a general review of them: and this question will very naturally suggest itself: What judgment ought I to form concerning them? am I to consider them as mummery, or superstition, or idolatry, as many most confidently pronounce, who are unacquainted with their nature, their origin, and their meaning; and at the same time are little accustomed from early infancy ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... have played upon as the most effectual chord in the great system which they modulated; some few, by a rare endowment of nature; others, as Napoleon Bonaparte, by elaborate mimicries of pantomimic art. [Footnote: In the true spirit of Parisian mummery, Bonaparte caused letters to be written from the War-office, in his own name, to particular soldiers of high military reputation in every brigade, (whose private history he had previously caused to be investigated,) ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... was his cousin, also spoke of me as one. I told him nay, but that thou wert cousin only on my mother's side; but he laughed, and would not listen, and bid me fetch thee, that he might place thee well to see the mummery. So come with me, fair cousin, for we must not ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... not permitted to debate; its only function was to vote in silence for whatever the government proposed. It is not easy to understand how any man who had sat in free and powerful deliberative assemblies could condescend to bear a part in such a mummery. Barere, however, was desirous of a place even in this mock legislature; and a place even in this mock legislature was refused to him. In the whole senate he ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... face in a piece of silk that lay on a sofa, and rapidly, in a low voice, chanted a kind of hymn in a tongue unknown to Merton. All this he did with a bored air, as if he thought the performance a superfluous mummery. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... was at the time about our dresses. As soon as she perceived things growing very serious, she hastily stripped off the upper garments we wore to represent our different characters. I think I should have died with shame, if the child had led me into the drawing-room in the mummery I had worn to represent a nurse. This good lady was of another essential service to me; for perceiving an irresolution in every one how they should behave to us, which distressed me very much, she contrived to place miss Lesley above me at table, and called ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... blunted with mangling the ears of harmless men. Then our very minds were fettered, and the iron entered into our souls. Then we were compelled to hide our hatred, our sorrow, and our scorn, to laugh with hidden faces at the mummery of Laud, to curse under our breath the tyranny of Wentworth. Of old time it was well and nobly said, by one of our kings, that an Englishman ought to be as free as his thoughts. Our prince reversed the maxim; he strove to make our thoughts as much slaves as ourselves. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... above us on the hill. The two finest stone lanterns there are given in the name of my master's dead young wife. Her ihai is in this house, and an altar, and they are well tended, I assure you! My master is a true believer, poor man, and what has his belief brought him? Ma-a-a! all this mummery and service and what ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... and the art of spectacle. There was a great car drawn by milk-white oxen; in the front were ranged sheaves of golden grain, while at the back shepherds and shepherdesses posed with scenic graces. The whole mummery was pagan. It was a bringing back of Cerealia and Thesmophoria to earth. It stands as the most disgusting and contemptible ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... Mere mummery, a laugh to raise! Pray don't be so fastidious! She But as a leech, her hocus-pocus plays, That well with you her potion may agree. (He compels ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... mummery the Australian women attach great sacredness to the very name of the turndun. They are much less instructed in their own theology than the men of the tribe. One woman believed she had heard Pundjel, the chief supernatural being, descend in a ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... here, with your mummery and medicine, when you know the cause of my malady well enough already? Go, sir! and leave me ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... of Comte was insufficient, the folly of Comte was wisdom. In an age of dusty modernity, when beauty was thought of as something barbaric and ugliness as something sensible, he alone saw that men must always have the sacredness of mummery. He saw that while the brutes have all the useful things, the things that are truly human are the useless ones. He saw the falsehood of that almost universal notion of to-day, the notion that rites and forms are something artificial, additional, ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... a well-intentioned but clumsy contrivance of Longways and other of Farfrae's men to get him out of the way for the evening, in order that the satirical mummery should fall flat, if it were attempted. By giving open information they would have brought down upon their heads the vengeance of those among their comrades who enjoyed these boisterous old games; and therefore the plan ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... excellent apostle that he was, denied Christ. Such examples of which the Scriptures are full, ought to warn us not to repose our trust in men. In the papacy appearance counts for everything. Indeed, the whole papacy amounts to nothing more than a mere kowtowing of persons and outward mummery. But God alone is to ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... in the religious sense, and was liable to be vexed by evil or mischievous spirits from the wild woodland, or, as they phrased it in later days, by Silvanus. I have already alluded to the curious bit of mummery which was meant to keep them off. Three men at night came to the threshold and struck it with an axe, a pestle, and a besom, so that "by these signs of agriculture Silvanus might be prevented from entering." The hostile spirits were thus denied entrance to a dwelling in which ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... accession of George the First that the University of Oxford ceased to reprint the Office of Healing together with the Liturgy. Theologians of eminent learning, ability, and virtue gave the sanction of their authority to this mummery; [497] and, what is stranger still, medical men of high note believed, or affected to believe, in the balsamic virtues of the royal hand. We must suppose that every surgeon who attended Charles the Second was a man of high repute for skill; and more than one ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of masquerading. Whether they may not likewise be used as a defence for the head against stones, for which, they seem best designed; or in some of their public games; or be merely intended for the purposes of mummery, we could never ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... in 1844 by secession from the Catholic Church of Germany, under the leadership of Johann Ronge, on account of the mummery under papal patronage connected with the exhibition of the Holy Coat of Treves and the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Mummery, who was killed by an avalanche in attempting the ascent of Nanga Parbat in the Himalayas, was probably the greatest climber of his day. He was the first, for example, to ascend that most formidable of the Chamonix ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... antiquarian, and amuses himself with things of this sort. In old times there really was a hermit here, and this is his effigy. Come down these narrow stairs, if you please, and see the rest of the mummery." ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... high Barbary shore rushed into my mind, and I thought they were acting them over here; above all, the idea that the sweet young ladies, to say nothing of my poor old governor, were, after the conclusion of all this mummery, going to deliver themselves up body and soul into the power of that horrid-looking old man, maddened me, and, rushing forward into the open space, I confronted the horrible-looking old figure with the sugar-loaf hat, the sulphur-coloured garments, and shepherd's ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... trunks at Versailles, scraped together an adequate tip for Mrs. Match, and bade good-bye to Violet (grown suddenly fond and demonstrative as she saw her visitor safely headed for the station)—as Susy went through the old familiar mummery of the enforced leave-taking, there rose in her so deep a disgust for the life of makeshifts and accommodations, that if at that moment Nick had reappeared and held out his arms to her, she was not sure she would have had the courage to return ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... "Either the life of Christ, as the highest standard and example, means something or it means nothing. If something, let us try to follow it; but if nothing, then for God's sake let us put it away as a cruel, delusive, and damnable mummery!" ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... pleasanter way of spending the afternoon than listening to the braggings of the coffee house bullies, or watching the mummery of the play, when scarce a word could be heard from the actors, owing to the laughter and talk that buzzed all round the house. The clamour from the footmen's gallery alone almost sufficed to drown the sound from the stage; and, indeed, ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... pray in presence of so many which she otherwise would have felt. She kept her eye on a certain female who had a remote dusky corner to pray in, and the moment she retired from it, this young creature went up and there knelt down. But what a contrast to the calm, unconscious, and insipid mummery which went on at the moment through the whole room! Her prayer was short, and she had neither book nor beads; but the heavings of her bosom, and her suppressed sobs, sufficiently proclaimed her sincerity. Her petition, indeed, seemed to go to heaven from a broken heart. ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... apparently unconscious bird. After two or three preliminary feints for the perfect adjustment of his faculties and pose, he bounded into the air with distended talons well over his screeching playmate. The scene would be rehearsed several times before Sultan, tired of mummery and eager for actualities, slunk yawling into the bush, while Baal Burra, whimpering in the dusk, waddled home to ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... soul, not even to his sister. The following day he set out alone about three in the morning for the Grepon. He took the road up the Nantillons glacier to the Col, and then he must have climbed the Mummery crack by himself. After that he left the ordinary route and tried a new traverse across the Mer de Glace face. Somewhere near the top he fell, and next day a party going to the Dent du Requin found him on the ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... looked at me, while I stared back as unwinkingly. His face was a mask, but I thought—as I have thought before and since when at the council fire—that there was amusement in the very blankness of his gaze, and that my effort to outdo him at his own mummery somewhat taxed his gravity. When he spoke at last he told ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... in those parts of England where "mumming" and the sword-dance still linger, in which the children do not play some version of St. George's exploits, a little of the dialogue goes a long way, and the mummery (which must almost be seen to be imitated) is the ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... renounce—" But ere he could utter another word, Hugo de Lacy, who, perhaps, felt the freedom of the action as an intrusion on his fallen condition, pulled back his hand, and bid the minstrel, with as stern frown, arise, and remember that misfortune made not De Lacy a fit personage for a mummery. ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... I am ashamed to have to repeat, that, but for that, the Bulls of Rome would never have had the audacity to call their connection, Master Wiseman, your poor father's child, and to appoint him, with his red hat and stockings, and his mummery and flummery, to a portion of your father's estates—though, for the matter of that, there is nothing to prevent their appointing him to the Moon, except the difficulty of getting him there! And so, your poor father's affairs have been brought to this crisis: that he has ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... king, in a voice quivering with rage, fastening his flashing looks on Douglas with an annihilating expression—"who, then, is that woman there? Who has dared with such cursed mummery to deceive the ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... Forbear! I stifle with your perfume! Cease Your crazy salutations! peace, I say Begone, or let me go, ere I go mad With all this babble, mummery, and glare, For I am growing dangerous—Air! room! air!— (He rushes in. Music ceases.) Oh but to save the reeling brain from wreck With its bewilder'd senses! (He covers his eyes for a while.) What! E'en now That Babel left behind me, ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... (both these works contain bibliographies); also a lecture by Leonard Hill delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain on the 25th of May 1906; "Diving and Caisson Disease," a summary of recent investigations, by Surgeon Howard Mummery, British Medical Journal, June 27th, 1908; Diseases of Occupation, by T. Oliver (1908); Diseases of Workmen, by T. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... I have seen," replied Chrysostomus, "neither more nor less. But I think I can assure thee that none will suffer for this mummery except Panurgiades, and that he will at ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... earnest meaning which demands to be not only listened to, but believed and done, you cannot (at least I cannot) utter it there, but the sound sticks in my throat, as when a solemnity were felt to have become a mummery; and so one leaves the pasteboard coulisses, and three unities, and Blair's Lectures, quite behind; and feels only that there is nothing sacred, then, but the Speech of Man to believing Men! This, come what will, was, is, and forever must be sacred; and will one day, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... impression. The Dutch have carried the art of carving in wood to a most extraordinary pitch of perfection. I am surprised it has not been more spoken of; some of their pulpits are really quite marvellous. Religion increases and, I think, improves. There is less mummery here than at Aix and some other places I have lately seen, with the exception of a few little Saviours in powdered wigs and gilt satin and muslin frocks, and a very singular figure as large as life, supposed to represent the deposition in the holy sepulchre, which was covered by ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... vain hope of deriving advantage therefrom but that in the fulness of our present plenty there is a desire to comply with the wishes of the people in the celebration at the capital of this delusive mummery.... For Buddha was a barbarian. His language was not the language of China. His clothes were of an alien cut. He did not utter the maxims of our ancient rulers nor conform to the customs which they have handed down. He did not appreciate ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... the apostolic practices (Sunnat) of the Shafi'i school which, with minor modifications, applies to the other three orthodox. Europe has by this time clean forgotten some tricks of her former bigotry, such as "Mawmet" (an idol!) and "Mahommerie" (mummery[FN315]), a place of Moslem worship: educated men no longer speak with Ockley of the "great impostor Mahomet," nor believe with the learned and violent Dr. Prideaux that he was foolish and wicked enough to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... people who had been long under the care of a regular physician, and who were just at the turning point of receiving benefit therefrom, took an "Eddy sitting" and jumped to the conclusion that said mummery affected a miraculous cure. ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... breath he whispered, "Summary that mummery, Mary," and a thin smile fell about his lips while he listened. "Gave him Karlshaven IV, eh?" he observed when his secretary'd finished. ...
— Citadel • Algirdas Jonas Budrys
... try!" I told her, again and again. "How can I tak up again with that old mummery? How can I laugh when my heart is breaking, and make others smile when the tears ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... the form of that cross," said the oyster-man. "It is Spanish. Many a year ago, no doubt, some high-pooped galleon, running close to the coast, went ashore on Chincoteague and drifted piecemeal through the inlet, wider then than now. This mummery, this altar toy, destined for some Papist mission-house, has lain all these years in the brackish Sound. Ha! ha! That Issachar the Jew should raise a cross, and on the Christian's Christmas eve! But it is mine! My tongs, my vessel, myself brought ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... said Fitzurse, "to draw our party to a head, either at York, or some other centrical place. A few days later, and it will be indeed too late. Your highness must break short this present mummery." ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... It is pure mummery. Yet it is worth while to know exactly what the means were which in ancient times were relied on for such purposes, and it is not useless to put this matter on record; for just such formulas are believed in now by many people. Even in this city there are "witches" ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... there is no safety for them. In his eye there was but one strait gate to the Celestial City, and that any wearing the furbelows of Rome should ever enter thereat could only come of God's exceeding mercy; for himself, it must always be a duty to cry aloud to such to strip themselves clean of their mummery, and do ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... round Morris. 'What—what's that?' he cried, grasping the table. He was miserably conscious the next moment of his shrill tongue and ashen face. 'What do you mean—it will not be presented? Why am I to take care? What is all this mummery?' ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... such love but never hoped for it, and now all the pretty tricks she had thought of had become as the mummery of fools. She sat in silence for a little space, her eyes upon her girdle, and a new and serious look came ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... images; faith in the Virgin; faith in mummery," says Johns, with a sigh. "'Tis always the scarlet woman ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... first glance bothersome and complicated, it is only a childishly easy performance in the way of making a square of seven rows of seven cards, and then of making the rows only three cards deep, at most! Crazy superstition and the aim at mummery have added the details of process that seem tedious. And, really, they are not ineffective in ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... the lady, "lay yourself on the table again. I hear someone coming; and it is not fit that my people should think me your accomplice in this farce and mummery." ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... of mirth, certainly," said Charles, composing his features; "but great matter of wonder.—Come, cease this mouthing, and prancing, and mummery.—If there be a jest, come out with it, man; and if not, even get thee to the beaffet, and drink a cup of wine to refresh thee after thy ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... convivial, they are almost the only race with the souls of artists. Still they act the mystery plays with instinctive fullness of interpretation, they sing strangely in the mountain fields, they love make-belief and mummery, their processions and religious festivals are profoundly ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... are all gone now!" said Tito. "You will forget this ghastly mummery when we are in the light, and can see each other's eyes. My Ariadne must never look backward now—only forward to Easter, when she will triumph ...
— Romola • George Eliot |
