"Mesmeric" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... between the slightly parted doors that gave into the next room. But even as he spoke, the last line faltered and halted. His glance slowly stiffened out of widening eyes to the face it had caught there—a face new, strange, mesmeric, that all at once enchained him soul and body. With a splendid, reckless might it assailed him—left him dazed, ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... the stage, this custom is an almost mesmeric one to watch. We certainly do see other people at a disadvantage when they are strutting the Boards of Illusion . . . men especially. But to a foreigner, who is not used to seeing a man's hands disappear the moment he is asked ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... something mesmeric in his touch that overpowered Ideala. She felt a change in herself at the moment, and she was never the ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... gift of prophecy - their vision extended over all the surface of the globe — they could hear and see with their toes and fingers, and read unknown languages, and understand them too, by merely having the book placed on their bellies. Ignorant clodpoles, when once entranced by the grand Mesmeric fluid, could spout philosophy diviner than Plato ever wrote, descant upon the mysteries of the mind with more eloquence and truth than the profoundest metaphysicians the world ever saw, and solve knotty points of divinity with as much ease as waking ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... that Malvina could possibly change anybody! Way back, when the human brain was yet in process of evolution, such things may have been possible. Hypnotic suggestion, mesmeric influence, dormant brain cells quickened into activity by magnetic vibration. All that had been lost. These were the days of George the Fifth, not of King Heremon. What the Professor was really after was: How would Malvina ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... hundred clairvoyants in a hundred cities can produce or see their like in water and in crystal, the difference being only one of size. They were but reflections of scenes familiar to the mind of Ayesha, or perhaps not so much as that. Perhaps they were only phantasms called up in our minds by her mesmeric force. ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... those men—quite inconceivable, I grant you, to the English mind—to surround their wearisome and perilous errand in this country with a certain halo of the marvellous and the supernatural. Their boy is unquestionably a sensitive subject to the mesmeric influence—and, under that influence, he has no doubt reflected what was already in the mind of the person mesmerising him. I have tested the theory of clairvoyance—and I have never found the manifestations get beyond that point. The Indians ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... revelations to our page. But there was a story, for which it is difficult to conceive any foundation, that the posterity of Matthew Maule had some connection with the mystery of the looking-glass, and that, by what appears to have been a sort of mesmeric process, they could make its inner region all alive with the departed Pyncheons; not as they had shown themselves to the world, nor in their better and happier hours, but as doing over again some deed of sin, or in the crisis of life's bitterest sorrow. The popular ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... man in us." Whatever might have been the real nature of these emotional experiences, no one doubted that they possessed a genuine reality of some kind or other, for it was a matter of history in this little community that David Corson had often exercised prophetic, mesmeric ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... authorized to announce that Miss Chandos, whose advertisement appears in another part of this paper, will give a mesmeric seance at the Spiritual Institution, 15, Southampton Row, on Wednesday evening, August 19th, at eight o'clock. Admission will be free by ticket, which may be obtained at the Institution. The object which Miss Chandos has in view is to interest ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... was a sore shock to Richard Gray. When Douglas found him on the trail and broke the news to him as gently as possible, he seemed at first hardly to comprehend it. He was stunned. He said little, but followed Douglas back to the cabin like one in a mesmeric sleep. A few days before he had gone away happy and buoyant, now he shuffled ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... would have seemed fantastic if it had not been for the sound of the machine guns and the rifles and the deeper-throated chorus of the heavy guns, which proved that this was no mesmeric, fantastic spectacle but a game with death, precise and ordered, with nothing that could be rehearsed left to chance any more than there was in the regulation of the traffic which was pressing forward, column after column, to supply the food which fed the artillery-power ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... closed in death; alike in that commanding presence which seems to be the signature of Heaven sometimes placed on a great soul when to that soul is given a fit dwelling-place; alike in that noble carriage and commanding dignity, exercising a mesmeric influence and a hidden power which could not be repressed, upon all who came within its charm; alike in the remarkable combination and symmetry of their intellectual attributes, all brought up to the same equal level, no faculty of the mind ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... there was in him some fibre which the deliberate deception had fretted and frayed beyond reason or forgiveness. He saw all there was to be said about it; he could imagine Baumgartner himself putting the case with irresistible logic, with characteristic plausibility, and all the mesmeric wisdom of a benevolent serpent; but for once, the boy felt, he would not be taken in. It was not coming to that, however, for he had quite decided not to betray his knowledge of the fraud—if only he had not already ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... excellent people whom, as by mesmeric attraction, goodness soon draws to itself, he began to go out a little into society. It could be done, with some personal difficulty and pain, and some slight trouble to his friends, which last was for a long time his chief ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... like a little man at first, he rocks with all his might, and then irregularly, and at long intervals—by fits and starts—and ceases altogether very soon, bobbing his curly head, and falling gently into a deep mesmeric sleep. The older lads are making wooden boats, and two, still older, stand on either side their mother. A book is in the hands of each, full of instruction and fine learning. It was the source of all their knowledge, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... years evidence has been accumulating that we never really forget anything. We have rediscovered the memory of the subconscious mind. It is generally known that in the mesmeric or somnambulistic sleep things hopelessly beyond recall for the habitual mind come to the surface, in fragments, or in whole series, as the case may be. It is perhaps news to some readers, however, that the memory of past lives has been recovered in this way. This ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... mortal span, for hundreds and hundreds of years, indeed; which, as Euclid says, is absurd, and had pretended to supernatural powers, which is still more absurd. Moreover, by a clever use of some hypnotic or mesmeric power, she had feigned to transport me to some place beyond the earth and in the Halls of Hades to show me what is veiled from the eyes of man, and not only me, but the savage warrior Umhlopekazi, commonly ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... once we passed the red-fringed curtain of rata-branches, only the white and shining fairy beach and the gleaming threads of water. As we sat there, perfectly still, and entranced, a sort of delicious mesmeric feeling stole over me; I thought of the lotus-eater's chant, "There is no joy but calm," with, for, the first time in my life, a dim perception of what they meant, perhaps; but it was over all too quickly: prosaic words of direction to back ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... see Mr. Clouston (i. 412): the belief is not wholly extinct in England, and I have often heard of it in the Brazil and upon the African Gaboon. It appears to me that there may be a basis of fact to tints fancy, the abnormal effect of precious stones upon mesmeric "sensitives." ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... hurt an innocent tiger. If we have to meddle with such animals, we always prefer to operate with those that are stuffed. Show us a tiger with sawdust bowels, and we will stand in front of him and make mesmeric motions for a week without the quiver of a nerve. Not that we are timid when the tiger is alive, but simply because a fur-store is more convenient than a jungle, and there is less danger of wetting our feet. If we happened to be in India and we wanted a tiger, we ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... the avowal by the robber: but the conclusion was so far varied, that the jewel having been judiciously hidden, the poet made use of his voice and his guitar to throw the Lady Fiordespina into a mesmeric sleep before the court, and then to cause a table to rap out the letters, which she interpreted so as to ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... four and five, Barty had his interview with the doctor—a splendid, white-haired old man, of benign and intelligent aspect, almost mesmeric, with his assistant ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... considered, as already noted, that spirits do their work through mesmeric power, it is easy to understand how the medium is made to believe that such and such a spirit is communicating when it is not so at all. This question of identity came up in the very early stages of Spiritualism, and is no nearer ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... a thought was there, Where our poor English, striped with foreign phrase, Looks like a zebra in a parson's chaise; Lectures that cut our dinners down to roots, Or prove (by monkeys) men should stick to fruits,— Delusive error, as at trifling charge Professor Gripes will certify at large; Mesmeric pamphlets, which to facts appeal, Each fact as slippery as a fresh-caught eel; And figured heads, whose hieroglyphs invite To wandering knaves that discount fools at sight: Such things as these, with heaps of unpaid bills, And candy puffs and homoeopathic pills, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... account for the nameless fascination he exercised over the young Scotchman? We speak lightly of mesmeric influence, but, after all, there is only one mesmerist for youth—a good woman or a good man. Depend upon it, that is why so many "mesmerists" have mistaken their vocation. Andrew took to prowling about the streets looking for this man, like a dog ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... a doctor on board ship who dabbled in hypnotism told me that I was the most unsympathetic person he had ever struck. He said I was about as good a mesmeric subject as Table Mountain. Suddenly I began to realize that this woman was trying to cast some spell over me. The eyes grew large and luminous, and I was conscious for just an instant of some will battling to subject mine. I was aware, too, in the same moment ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... right, eh? All right!"—he had a strange mesmeric power over her, as if he possessed the sensual secrets, and she was to ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... on him. He had nothing to depend upon but the audacity and address which never failed him, and a quality even higher than courage—I can describe it only as the faculty of subjecting every one to his will, whom he tried to influence; it was almost mesmeric. The prisoners fifty or sixty in number, were paroled in the course of the day and started back to Kentucky by a route which would enable them to avoid meeting detachments of their own army. Our party encamped ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... paralytics to mechanical jerks and convulsions which drove him mad with impatience. Laura drew down the helplessly twitching knee, and ran one firm hand over him from thigh to ankle. Her touch had a mesmeric effect on his nerves when he could endure it, but nine times out of ten he struck it away. He did so now. "Go to the devil! How often have I told you not to paw me about? I wish you'd do as you're told. What do you ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... Setting her before him, he began his incantations in the usual manner, but made frequent passes over her body, and over the bitten place. A gentle perspiration began to break out on her skin, and in a very short time the Ojah had thrown her into a deep mesmeric sleep. After about an hour she awoke perfectly free from pain. In this case no doubt ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... few passes, the Fairy sank into a mesmeric trance. Then, CINDERELLA desired that her Godmother should imagine that she had been the heroine of a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... the water doctors in a style worthy of imitation by the scribe that does the poetical for Moses and Son. Miss Martineau makes a finessing servant girl her physician-general: and Richard Howitt and the Lady aforesaid stand God-father and mother to the contemptible mesmeric vagaries of Spencer Hall.'—Even the sweet incense to me fails of its effect if Paracelsus is to figure on a level with ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... has just been placed on our table; we know its reputation of old; it is an admirable discourse on the subject of supernaturalisms, such as mental illusions, dreams, ghosts, mesmeric phenomena, &c. If any one will but read the first half dozen pages, we will vouch for it he will not neglect the rest of the volume: it is one of the best written books on one of the most curious range of topics that could engage the pen of a writer, or the ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... dearest!" with no change in the mesmeric intentness of his gaze. "I want nothing more than to have you always near me. You have been a good, faithful wife, Mabel, better and nobler—a thousandfold nobler than I deserved. I have thought it all over while you were sleeping so tranquilly ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... fastidious and high-tempered Zenobia, who, disliking him and shrinking, from him at a hundred points, is drawn into the gulf of his omnivorous egotism. The portion of the story that strikes me as least felicitous is that which deals with Priscilla and with her mysterious relation to Zenobia—with her mesmeric gifts, her clairvoyance, her identity with the Veiled Lady, her divided subjection to Hollingsworth and Westervelt, and her numerous other graceful but fantastic properties—her Sibylline attributes, as the author calls them. Hawthorne is rather too fond of Sibylline attributes—a ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... the rail until it touched hers. In her deep absorption she did not notice it, or pretended that she did not; but when he took a step nearer she drew her hand away gently. The star held her gaze as though it possessed some mesmeric power. A smile was upon her face as the situation at the soda-water counter took form, became a ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... sympathetic comprehension, or, at long intervals, returned upon Crailey with devastating effect. Vanrevel was the one steadying thing in his life, and, at the same time, the only one of the young men upon whom he did not have an almost mesmeric influence. In good truth, Crailey was the ringleader in all the devilries of the town. Many a youth swore to avoid the roisterer's company for all time, and, within two hours of the vow, found himself, flagon in hand, engaged in a bout that ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... Warner would have borne almost death itself for the sake of being nursed by the young girl beside him, and he signified his willingness to proceed, while at the same time his hand involuntarily grasped that of Maggie, as if in the touch of her snowy fingers there were a mesmeric power to soothe his pain. In the meantime a hurried consultation had been held between Mrs. Jeffrey and Theo as to the room suitable for the stranger ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... his cobra in a round, flat basket. The basket he places on the ground and raises the cover. Then he rouses and provokes the snake to make it lift up the upper part of its body and expand its hood with the spectacles. All the time he plays his flute with one hand. With the other he makes waving, mesmeric passes. The snake gradually becomes quiet and calm, and the charmer can press his lips against the scales of its forehead. Then the charmer throws it on one side with a sudden movement, for the snake may have waked up again and be just on the point ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... be a vain repetition, darling, especially as I know it all quite well," murmured Mary Grey, with a smile, and still passing her hand with mesmeric gentleness over ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... was living at headquarters. I had a long talk with Perreira, but could not shake his statement, nor that of the three others; nevertheless, I remained a sceptic as to this alleged charming or mesmeric power of the snakes, at least so far ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... in the twilight where they stood. The faint murmur of a prayer came down from above, and while it lasted both were as though held motionless by its mesmeric monotony. Then, at the boom of the organ, the lad's last shred of self-control vanished. He burst again into muffled weary sobs, the light from the furnace glistening redly on his streaming cheeks. "It ain't ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... measured tread, he wept, and with many sighs of grief adjusted the head with much care, caught rain in his shield and poured it over the body; then rubbed and shook the limbs, which by degrees became alive by his mesmeric-like passings and chafings from the feet upwards. Each limb as it revived beat time to the music, first faintly, then with more vigour, till it came to the head; and when that nodded satisfactorily, and ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... Slewing myself partly round in my seat, I observed the little fellow standing bent forward, his hands stretched out before him as if shielding his face from a bush, while his whole body worked to and fro like the subjects in certain mesmeric experiments that I nave observed when first they are brought under 'the influence' of the operator. His face was partly turned from me, but the cheek, which I saw was pale as death, and his cloth cap was trembling on the back part of his head, ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... piercing her face with a pair of compelling, mesmeric eyes that made her stagger back to the wall. Then he advanced a step nearer, covering the space Jinnie ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... judgment of the appearance of the town. Here we were transferred to another train of cars. Among the passengers was a lecturer on Mesmerism with his wife, and a young woman who accompanied them as a mesmeric subject. The young woman, accustomed to be easily put to sleep, seemed to get through the night very comfortably; but the spouse of the operator appeared to be much disturbed by the frequent and capricious ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... in the artistic sense. He was almost beyond belief incapable of intercourse in private conversation. He could tell you his adventures provided you didn't interrupt him (which you were mostly afraid to do, as the man was a mesmeric terror); but as to exchanging ideas, or expressing the universal part of his soul, you might as well have been reading the letters of Charles Dickens to his family—those tragic monuments of dumbness of soul and noisiness of pen. Lord help you if you ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... childhood, he received religious impressions which might almost be described as mesmeric or hypnotic in their influence upon his nerves. These abode with him through manhood; and in later life morbid scruples and superstitious anxieties about his soul laid hold on his imagination. Yet religion did not penetrate Tasso's nature. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... It is as incomprehensible to me as the assertion that the heavens are green, and the leaves of the trees deep blue. Can it be that the faculty of observation and comparison is rare, and that our features are really vague and misty to our best friends? Is it that the Medium exercises some mesmeric influence on her visitors, who are thus made to accept the faces which she wills them to see? Or is it, after all, only the dim light and a fresh illustration of la nuit tous les chats sont gris? The light, be it remembered, is always ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... brandished his razor and swept the Boches back over the Marne, he swept them through Senlis, he swept them across the Aisne. His intensity was inspiring. The smouldering fires of bygone battles leapt into his eyes. But it was not the mesmeric shave of 1914. He apologised humbly and applied ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... followers held, and he inclined to believe himself, that he was a fresh incarnation of Vishnu. It is said that he displayed miraculous powers before his disciples, entrancing whomsoever he cast his eyes upon, and causing them in this mesmeric state (Samadhi) to imagine they saw Sahajanand as Krishna with yellow robes, weapons of war, and other characteristics of the God, and to behold him seated as chief in an ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... in such a manner as to hang perfectly free. The mode of exhibiting it is as follows: The performer, taking a seat facing the company, with his legs slightly apart, places the figure on the ground between them. As might be expected, it falls flat and lifeless, but after a few mesmeric passes it is induced to stand upright, though without visible support, and, on a lively piece of music being played, dances to it, keeping time, and ceasing as soon as the ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... fashion, and he had, above most men, the charm of a voice of singular sweetness and melody. It was clear as a bell, and he could modulate its tones till, like the drip, drip of water on a rock, they fell one by one upon the ear. Masses had often been moved by the power of his words, and the mesmeric influence of persuasiveness was a gift to do him good ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... hours without a dream. It was four o'clock in the afternoon of Monday when I awoke, and only then, I believe, from the mesmeric influence of being gazed at. Eleanor! there is only one such pair of eyes in all the world! George Manners ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... sat up in his chair and by what mesmeric magic it happened I know not, but before my eyes grew the living image of the gross, shapeless creature who had put me to bed ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... injured him with me. He used to meet one's eye as boldly as any man I ever saw; but it was not the simple gaze of honesty and innocence, but an imperious, searching look, as if defying scrutiny. His was a true mesmeric eye, if ever there was one. No wonder it worked ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... been comfortable. Presently a strange feeling came over him, as if some invisible force was pushing and dragging him and forcing him to leave his chair, and throw himself at the Philosopher's feet and confess everything. This was the mesmeric effect of those reproachful eyes fixed steadily upon him. And in the doorway, like some figure in a nightmare—a figure incongruous and out of place—the Man in Possession sitting, passive and unconcerned, with one eye on the street and the other on the ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... persons of a peculiar organization, and diffusing radios salutares vel perniciosos. Though the terms employed by them, as well as their notions of its origin, are very unphilosophical and vague, it is plain that they considered it as a species of mesmeric or biologic power, operating by nervous impression. The fascinator generally endeavored to provoke in his victims an excited and pleased attention, for in this condition they were peculiarly predisposed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... should wed a woman like a flower, Fresh as the dew and royal as a rose, Veined with spring-fire, mesmeric in repose, His world-vext brain to lull with mystic power, Great-souled to track his flight through heavens starred, Upborne by wings of trust and love, yet meek As one who has no self-set goal to seek, His inspiration and his best reward, At once his Art's deep secret ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... the mountainous sides and lighted up by the silvery glint of rushing water, and the breakers, for all the mirror-like calm of the sea out here, a couple of miles from shore, are beating the barrier rocks and dashing their snow aloft with a dull thud which strikes on the ear in mesmeric rhythm. Yes, it is quite the fairest scene one need wish to rest wave-worn and eager eyes upon, and it is still more beautiful if you look over the vessel's side. The sea is of a Mediterranean blue, and is literally alive with fish beneath, and lovely sea-creatures floating upon, the sunlit water. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... city, we understand, but with very infrequent success. Pulling teeth while the patient is asleep is not 'practised to a very great extent in this community;' for no sooner is the glittering instrument of torture 'placed in communication' with the jaw, than it is found to 'disturb the Mesmeric function' to ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... and to have fattened on it, his present weight of one hundred and eighty pounds having been attained, he tells us, together with perfect health, by the judicious employment of "these subtler agencies." One is tempted to ask, in view of such a result, why waste time on the color-cure when the mesmeric system succeeds ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... unknown and unsuspected powers and laws of nature do exist, and that man's five senses are not the only means by which he gains a knowledge of what is going on in other minds than his own. The facts of thought-transference, of mesmeric control, of apparitions of the living, and the like, as critically tested by the members of this society, seem to indicate clearly that mind can affect, influence, and control mind through some other channel than that of the senses, usually over short distances, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... world itself, body and soul; the soul being the sum of all the imponderable forces, such as gravitation, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, galvanism, vegetable and animal life, and especially the mesmeric influence, of which many of them regard intellect as a modification; and the body being the sum of all the ponderable substances, such as air, water, earth, minerals, vegetables, and bodies of animals and ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... to mean. They point onward or upward or downward, as the case may be, and we cannot help following them with the eyes of imagination, sometimes smiling, sometimes weeping, sometimes shuddering, as if we were victims of the mesmeric influence he is so fond of bringing to bear upon his characters. Three of the most perfect Englishmen of our day are Americans,—Irving, Prescott, and this great new writer, Mr. Hawthorne." So far my friend ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... their arms from the reddened soil to gaze, and, gazing, fell back dead. Slowly, mechanically, silently, the living gave way, the weapons dropping from their nerveless grip. Step by step they drew back as if compelled by some strange mesmeric power. ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... animal magnetism, which from his name was afterward called mesmerism. Paris was then the centre of attraction for scientific discoverers and pretenders. Thither Mesmer betook himself and there he soon created a lively sensation by the exhibition of mesmeric trances, some of which were accompanied by clairvoyance—that is, the power of seeing objects concealed from the eyes. He was also supposed ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... with an accuracy which I could not pretend to when awake—tell you what money you had in your pocket—nay, describe your very thoughts—it is not necessarily an imposture, any more than it is necessarily supernatural. I should be, unconsciously to myself, under a mesmeric influence, conveyed to me from a distance by a human being who had acquired power over me ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... I was at Southall. At half-past nine I sat down to endeavour to fix my mind so strongly upon the interior of a house at Kew, where Miss V. and her sister lived, that I seemed to be actually in the house. I was conscious, but I was in a kind of mesmeric sleep. When I went to bed that night I willed to be in the front bedroom of that house at Kew at twelve, and make my presence felt by the inmates. Next day I went to Kew. Miss V.'s married sister told me, without any prompting from me, that she had seen me in the passage going from one room ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... government and of its modification, the City Manager plan, the aim of which is to centralize governmental authority and to entice able men into municipal office. And there are many other manifestations of the new civic spirit. The mesmeric influence of national party names in civic politics is waning; the rise of home rule for the city is severing the unholy alliance between the legislature and the local Ring; the power to grant franchises is being taken away from ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... the address to intimate that the mesmeric crises manifested themselves only in persons endowed with a certain sensitiveness. From that moment, in order not to be ranged among the insensible, both men and women, when near the rod, assumed the ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... unusual attention, the authorship being attributed, among others, to Harold Frederic and Robert Buchanan. Since then "A Dead Man's Diary"—of which Mr. J.M. Barrie, in reviewing it, said, "The vigour of the book is great, and the author has such a gift of intensity that upon many readers it will have mesmeric effect"—has gone through innumerable editions, in England ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... power ascribed to certain persons in a mesmeric state of seeing and describing events at a ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... they were being swindled. Barnum saw here a great opportunity to squelch a rival and increase his own fame at a single stroke. He engaged a bright little girl who was exceedingly susceptible to such mesmeric influences as he could induce. That is, she learned her lesson thoroughly, and when he had apparently put her to sleep with a few passes and stood behind her, she seemed to be duly "impressed," as he desired; raised her hands as he willed, fell ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... preceding specimen, that a conventional catechism involving every object can be contrived by two persons, and adapted to every circumstance. The striking performances of the most notorious mesmeric 'patients' in this line prove the possibility of the achievement. The 'agent' who receives the questions in writing or in a whisper thus communicates the answer to the patient, who is laboriously trained ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... in which he had been specially interested before he quitted London, one or two may properly be named. He had always sympathized, almost as strongly as Archbishop Whately did, with Dr. Elliotson's mesmeric investigations; and, reinforced as these were in the present year by the displays of a Belgian youth whom another friend, Mr. Chauncy Hare Townshend, brought over to England, the subject, which to the last had an attraction for him, was for the time ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... obtained the property at Fort Worth from a Miss Minnie Williams, and transferred it to Pitezel. Pitezel was a drunken "crook," of mean intelligence, a mesmeric subject entirely under the influence of Holmes, who claimed to have considerable hypnotic powers. Pitezel had a wife living at St. Louis and five children, three girls—Dessie, Alice, and Nellie—a boy, Howard, and a baby in arms. At the time of Holmes' arrest Mrs. Pitezel, with her eldest ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... object, Dick made a mesmeric pass or two across young Jack's face, and immediately it appeared ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... these effusions emanated from earthly minds, but had undergone some process that had deprived them of solidity and warmth. In the communications between my wife and her mother, I cannot help thinking that (Miss ——— being unconsciously in a mesmeric state) all the responses are conveyed to her fingers from my wife's mind. . . ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the war-wolves on our trail, Their gaunt fangs sluiced with gouts of blood; Till the Past, in a dead, mesmeric veil, Drooped with ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... rolled in, and that afternoon Crittenden saw the regiment come in for which Grafton had been waiting—a picturesque body of fighting men and, perhaps, the most typical American regiment formed since Jackson fought at New Orleans. At the head of it rode two men—one with a quiet mesmeric power that bred perfect trust at sight, the other with a kindling power of enthusiasm, and a passionate energy, mental, physical, emotional, that was tireless; each a man among men, and both together an ideal leader ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... feel might be, yet are not. There can be few to whom there has not come that imagination of the spiritually compelled presence, which Browning has so marvellously uttered in Mesmerism. Here, in these breathless stanzas,[208:1] so almost literally mesmeric that, as we read them (or rather draw them in at our own breathless lips!), we believe in the actual coming of our loved one, and scarce dare look round lest we should find the terrifying glory true . . . here the man sits alone in his room at dead of night, and wills the ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... it will work," whispered Bickley. Then he lifted the syringe and looked inquiringly at the man, who shook his head, and went on with his mesmeric passes. ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... beneath me, which, since the evident occupancy of that long-deserted hall, had been wound and put in running order, struck twelve, with its deep-mouthed, melodramatic tones, and at the very moment I heard sounds indicative of the resurrection of the mesmeric sleeper. ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... art, like the brave who lived before the time of Agamemnon. Perhaps it is quite as well—"omne ignotum pro mirifico"—and who would lose the pleasure of wonder and conjecture, with all its imaginary phantasmagoria? We might have a mesmeric coma that might put us in possession of the past, if it can of the future—and gratify curiosity wofully at the expense of what is more valuable than that kind of truth. A mesmeric painter may take the portrait of Helen of Troy, and you may knock at your twenty neighbours' doors, and find perhaps ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... calm, and presently she fell asleep. But on awaking she was attacked as before, and try as he might the physician could not effect a permanent cure. To all his "passes" she responded with gratifying promptitude, only to suffer a relapse the moment she was released from the mesmeric influence. ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... on two brawny arms. His feet followed the mesmeric influence of their movement. Was he going into the clouds, he wondered? They stopped to open a gate, the gate leading to the gardens of Mainsail Haul. How did he get there? He had no idea. More movements of his feet, and then unexpected warmth. He looked around him. ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sometimes even laughable. I found it so. It robbed the calamity of something of its supernatural and horrible abruptness; it prevented that monotony of object which is to the mind what it is to the eye, and prepared the faculty for those mesmeric illusions ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... listened to their chant until he began to recognize the strain on the eye-muscles that precedes the mesmeric spell. Then he wrote and read what he had written and wrote again. And after that, for the sake of mental exercise, he switched his thoughts into another channel altogether. He ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... couches; the cook, on a shady bench under the trellis, nodded as she seeded the raisins for the frozen pudding of the six-o'clock dinner; the waiter had succumbed in clearing the lunch-table and made mesmeric passes with the dish-rag in a fantasy of washing the plates; the stable-boy slumbered in the hay, high in the loft, while the fat old coachman, with a chamois-skin in his hand, dozed as he sat on the step of the surrey, ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Under the mesmeric influence of Malkiel he began to feel as if architects were some strange race of sacred beings set apart, denizens of some holy isle or blessed nook of mediaeval legend. Would he ever meet them? Would he ever encounter one ranging unfettered where flowed the ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... of all observers. His stories are thought wonderful and to hear him repeat 'The Raven' is an event in one's life. People seem to think there is something uncanny about him, and the strangest stories are told and what is more, believed, about his mesmeric experiences—at the mention of which he always smiles. His smile is captivating! Everybody wants to know him, but only a few people seem to ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... continued, placing her arm around his neck, "you are clear of the ferns and brambles now, and we can go on. Are you comfortable?" He looked up, read her answer in her burning eyes and the warm lips pressed to his forehead at the roots of his straight dark hair, and again moved onward as in a mesmeric dream. But he did not swerve from his direct course, and with a final dash through the undergrowth parted the leafy curtain ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... tells me that when he was in Florence some years since, an Italian nobleman (a Count Ginnasi of Ravenna), visiting at Florence, was brought to his house without previous introduction, by an intimate friend. The Count professed to have great mesmeric and clairvoyant faculties, and declared, in reply to Mr. Browning's avowed scepticism, that he would undertake to convince him somehow or other of his powers. He then asked Mr. Browning whether he had anything about ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... was varied by the occasional visit of a mesmeric lecturer; and one youth caused peals of canorous laughter by walking round in a pretended mesmeric sleep and kissing the pretty ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... miserable with you. Have you not something of that mesmeric power which draws one back into ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... men" developed great mesmeric powers, and this force, combined with rather clumsy juggling and ventriloquism, enabled them to perform a semblance of "miracles". The Iroquois offered much opposition to Christianity, thinking it would tame their warriors too quickly ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... the company of clear-headed financiers was extremely remarkable. The unknown metal appeared to exercise a kind of mesmeric influence, its soft hues blending together in a chromatic harmony which captivated the sense of vision as the ears are charmed by a perfectly rendered song. Gradually all gathered in an eager ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... engaged, constantly patted with a gentle tattoo, in tune to the steady trot of her knee. All babies knew Miss Roxy's tattoo on their backs, and never thought of taking it in ill part. On the contrary, it had a vital and mesmeric effect of sovereign force against colic, and all other disturbers of the nursery; and never was infant known so pressed with those internal troubles which infants cry about, as not speedily to give over and sink to slumber at ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the Soul. Considered Physiologically and Philosophically. With an Appendix containing Notes of Mesmeric and Psychical Experience. By Joseph ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott |
