"Mesmeric" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the 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 stomachs. Ignorant peasants, 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 ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... She sat, with hands clasped, and pale, set face, watching her cousin as if his story had a mesmeric effect. ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... 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 for the thousand ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... 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 called Umslopogaas of the Axe, who, ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... broken away from the mesmeric influence of the fire-watchers, he ran quickly with Alec to the knoll where a metal hoop and hammer were kept for the purpose of alarm in case of fire. Almost before the two reached the spot, Alec caught the hammer and was striking the metal at regular intervals. The man then offered to remain ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... may be worth while to note that Swedenborg asserts that it is unlawful in Heaven for any person to look at the back of the head of another, as by so doing he interrupts the divine influx. The foundation of this idea is perhaps the desire to avoid mesmeric ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... by these, the 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 objection; for a merciful familiarity with his ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... (1791-1868), the foremost physician of his day, was the leader of the mesmeric movement in England. In 1837, after seeing Dupotet's work, he commenced to experiment at University College Hospital, and continued, with remarkable success, until ordered to desist by the council of the college. ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... Sleeping Beauty. The ladies had sought their apartments and the downy 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)
... which the other bore with a grin of 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 ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... spirit of the keen eyes that had always burned with an eagle fierceness and an unyielding aggressiveness. Now they were different, and as the guests who had brought the chair and its occupant up the stairs and into the room withdrew in silent respect, the daughter's gaze was held by them with a mesmeric force. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... treatment. Many people, as you are doubtless aware, are less responsive to hypnotic influence than others. An intensified course of the third degree and lack of sleep renders such refractory natures extraordinarily susceptible to mesmeric treatment. It prepares the ground ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... others. They cannot attend to conversation because of the annoyance occasioned by the habit which some people have of invariably taking more butter than they want. Have you not seen the anxious look (almost mesmeric) which such persons fix on the article? They would feel it a relief if they might bury it out of their sight by popping it into their own mouths and swallowing it down; and they are really made happy if the person on whose plate it lies unused suddenly breaks off a piece of toast ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... 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 ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spoke to him as one in a mesmeric sleep. "'Tis a long way home, my child, and we shall not get there ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... not attempt to account for the extreme predilection which I, an old woman in comparison, immediately imbibed for you before we had been an hour in company. Some feelings are unaccountable and inexplicable, but I felt a sympathy, a mesmeric attraction, if I may use the term, which was uncontrollable at our first meeting, and which increased every day during our residence together. It was not the feeling of a mother towards a child—at least I think not, ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... pain, under dangerous surgical operations, is the greatest triumph of Therapeutic Science in the present century. It came first by mesmeric hypnotism, which was applicable only to a few, and was restricted by the jealous hostility of the old medical profession. Then came the nitrous oxide, introduced by Dr. Wells, of Hartford, and promptly discountenanced by the enlightened (?) medical ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... 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 to his influence. And inasmuch as persons are thrown off their guard of reserve ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... 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
... falls asleep, he loses consciousness when en rapport with himself.[2] When he is placed in the "mesmeric" trance, he remains en rapport with the operator, and the deeper the trance, the more complete and effective this rapport is. Explain it as you will, the facts remain. The writings of the early mesmerists are filled with records of cases of this rapport, ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... as if to shake off the effect of some oppressive, mesmeric influence; reluctantly he admitted, "All I can say is you ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... politics when, owing to circumstances[2] which had nothing to do with politics, the faith that many respectable Hindus had placed in her, on the strength of her theosophical teachings, as a vessel of spiritual election was rudely shaken. But nothing shook the mesmeric influence which she had acquired over young India by preaching with rare eloquence the moral and spiritual superiority of Indian over Western creeds, and condemning the British administration of India, root and branch, as one of the worst manifestations of Western materialism. ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... them and 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 reverted to Delhi ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... 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 and therapeutic powers. ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... dream-meetings—the great encounters which all of us 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 ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... 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. There were ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lips; and her eyes, filled with wonderment, travelled from one countenance to the other, as if determined to drag the secret from them by mesmeric force. ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... 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 that night about seven miles from ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... mere human contrivance or to the agency of evil spirits. The latter opinion has been most general in past ages. A third theory has been advanced since the phenomena of Mesmerism have attracted attention, that something like the mesmeric trance was induced in the Pythoness, and the faculty of clairvoyance ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... at home. Yet 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 ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... the patient. A queer look came over Timothy's face, but he went at once, and was able to soothe the sick man simply by the laying on of hands. After this, while Mr. Sparrow lived, he went often, and comforted him greatly in his last hours, not only by his mesmeric influence, but indirectly as well by keeping those boys out of the way. The money he spent at that time in taking the lads to panoramas and menageries would have constituted him life member of a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... it had not yet occurred that it was a tactical error to leave me between the door and himself. I supposed he relied too implicitly on the mesmeric pistol. He was ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... 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. ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... be strongly mesmeric, and your will acted upon theirs, if you are to take credit for any part in the affair,' ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... 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 legislative bodies and placed directly with the people; ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... any rate, she was an excellent comforter, in the sympathy that was neither too acute nor too obtuse; and purely to oblige her, Ethel for the first time submitted to her favourite panacea of hair brushing, and found that in very truth those soft and steady manipulations were almost mesmeric in soothing away the hard oppressive excitement, and bringing on a gentle and ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in Egypt, for I suppose you did so in your own name, which is not exactly that of Smith or Brown. The third is your wife's sleep-walking propensities, which would have made it quite easy for her to be drawn ashore under some kind of mesmeric influence. The fourth is that you had seen Arabs mounted on camels upon the banks of the Nile. The fifth is the heavy sleep you say held everybody on board that particular night, which suggests ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... needn't grin like that," he added, a little irritably. "There is a legitimate side, and a very wonderful side, only a brain like yours is not capable of assimilating it. You should have heard my paper to-night upon self-directed mesmeric waves." ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... morning and killed six out of seven pullets, first mesmerising them with its eyes and then biting them as they stood helpless. The seventh pullet was one of that French sort, with feathers all over its eyes, so it escaped the mesmeric snare, and just flew at what it could see of the snake and ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... on her back, and after waiting to satisfy himself that she was in a fast mesmeric sleep, he placed one throbbing hand on her hip, and gradually raising it till he found the lovely prominence of one charming bosom, then his other hand sought its companion, and he pressed those ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... traced all the woes of mankind not to "nature," but to kings, priests, and institutions. Shelley's missionaries of liberty preach to a nation of slaves, as the apostles of the Salvation Army preach in the slums to creatures reared in degradation, the same mesmeric appeal. Conversion is a psychological possibility, and the history of revolutions teaches its limitations and its power as instructively as the history of religion. It breaks down not because men are incapable of the sudden effort that can "arise and will," but rather ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... and full of that musty mesmeric quality that changes everything into a waking dream. The maids threw dark veils over them to save their clothing from the dust kicked up by a crowd, and perhaps, too, as a concession to the none-so-ancient, but compelling custom ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... tiresome. These old Greeks made such beautiful things, because they did not imitate. That mysterious vitality which still imbues their remains, and which seems to enchant even the fragments of their marbles, is the mesmeric vitality of fresh, original conception. Art, built upon this, is just like what the shadow of a beautiful woman is to the woman. One gets tired in these galleries of the classic band, and the classic headdress, and the classic attitude, and the endless repetition ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... effacing unpleasant ideas, controlling and overcoming instinctive but undesirable impulses, and so forth, by means of hypnotism, they would have refused to believe the thing possible. Few people knew that an order made during a mesmeric trance, even an order to forget or an order to desire, could be given so as to be obeyed after the trance was over. Yet there were men alive then who could have told them the thing was as absolutely certain to come about as—well, ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... whispering, shuffling, and clicking of the court typewriter ceases, the scene darkens, and the court is blotted out as a scene is blotted out from the sight of a man who has thrown himself into a mesmeric trance. And: ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... exactly, Doctor, but I mostly sleeps very little." And to my no small astonishment she now shut up like an umbrella, and at once recommenced her mesmeric monotone. ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... 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 and affect their national independence; ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... this 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' ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... was therefore milder, and instead of hysteria and violent crises accompanied by sobs, cries, and contractions, there was peaceful slumber. He recognized the rapport between operator and subject, and amnesia on awaking, and other phenomena now well known, but he still held to the Mesmeric theory of the existence of a universal fluid which saturated all bodies, especially the human body. It was electric in nature, and man could display and diffuse this electric fluid ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... Aunt Roxy, when not otherwise 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 this ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... believer in mesmeric influence," plied his trade in early Manhattan. He seems to have belonged to that vast army of persons who seriously believe their own teachings even when they know them to be preposterous. Perkins made a specialty of yellow fever, and insisted that he could cure it by hypnotism. ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... nothing but a high motive and a pure purpose will protect them from the operations of unwise or mischievous intelligences. As well might they go and sit in a public place with their eyes blindfolded, and with an inscription on their breasts, 'Who will come and magnetize me?' * * Mesmeric influence from an experienced operator, for the purpose of inducing susceptibility, is sometimes helpful to a sensitive. If the mesmerist can put you in the trance condition and then hand you over to trustworthy spirits to control you, well and good. In the same way, mesmeric ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... 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
... tossing main, where delirium drove Beryl's consciousness to and fro like a rudderless wreck, did some mysterious communion of spirits survive? Did some subtle mesmeric current telegraph her soul, that her foul wrongs were at last avenged? Whatever the cause, certainly a strangely clear, musical laugh broke suddenly from her lovely lips, mingled with a triumphant "Che sara, sara!" The heavy lids slowly drooped, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... much like it. 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 ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... 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
... a few passes, the Fairy sank into a mesmeric trance. Then, CINDERELLA desired that her Godmother should imagine that she had been the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... reason, because the Indian jungles are so far away, and for another, because we do not want to 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, ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... 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 to stand up, the sight must ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... if 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
... to 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, ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... with that indescribable air of high breeding which marks the polished man of the world. His beautifully-formed head, delicate profile, fascinating sweetness of smile, and, above all, an eye which seemed to have an almost mesmeric power of attraction, were traits which distinguished one of the most celebrated men of the time, and one whose peculiar history yet lives not only in our national records, but in the private annals of many an ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... long 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 was kneeling by ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... 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 ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... his exhibitory passion, could permit, in the full possession of his sensibilities, a needle to be thrust deeply into his flesh without manifestations of a most unmesmeric sort. The conclusion seems warranted that he began by pretending, but that at times he was at least under semi-mesmeric control. At all events, he enjoyed a week of dazzling triumph, though in the end he concluded to stick ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... She sat down and, such was the influence of Mrs. Matilda Pitman's mesmeric eye, she ate a tolerable breakfast. The obedient Amelia never spoke; Mrs. Matilda Pitman did not speak either; but she knitted furiously and chuckled. When Rilla had finished, Mrs. Matilda Pitman rolled up ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... along 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 veritable drama in ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... have been 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 a few truth-seekers who could ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... with the painting in his hand, literally transfixed him in an attitude of surprise and consternation. Like the Ancient Mariner, he held him by his glittering eye, but the spell was not an enduring one. 'Truly,' remarked Dr Garland, as he found the kind of mesmeric influence he had exerted beginning to fail, 'not so very bad a chance resemblance; especially about ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... 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 receive the proposal? Of course she would try ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... for out of his collections for charity. In his inebriated state his wild-looking eyes glowed like coals, and as he looked at me I experienced once more the strange sensation of being enthralled. Truly, there was something mesmeric about that gaze of his, a mystery that ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... women—leastwise, asking pardon, ladies. An evangelical family of most disagreeable girls prowl about here and trip people up with tracts, which they put in the paths with stones upon them to keep them from blowing away. Charles Collins and I having seen a bill yesterday—about a mesmeric young lady who did feats, one of which was set forth in the bill, in a line by ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... early marriage. That odious letter decided her; and now it only remained to make her choice. There are women—and these, though sometimes the most fascinating, by no means the most trustworthy of their sex—who possess over mankind a mesmeric influence, almost akin to witchcraft. Without themselves feeling deeply, perhaps for the very reason that they do not, they are capable of exercising a magic sway over those with whom they come in contact; and while they ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... turning even the hard realities of life into beauty by that living well-spring of sweet thoughts and fancies that I see beaming from her eyes. Look at her now, Ianthe, and confess that surely that countenance breathes more beauty than chiselled features can give." And certainly, whether some mesmeric influence from her enthusiastic Fairy Godmother was working on Hermione's brain, or whether her own quotation upon the doomed tree had stirred up other poetical recollections, I know not; but as she was retracing her steps homewards, she repeated to herself softly ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... us—a young man, doubtless well known in your midst, though, I may say, an entire stranger to myself—I venture to disclose some characteristic trends and tendencies, as indicated by this phrenological depression and development of the skull proper, as later we will show, through the mesmeric condition, the ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... and exercise. Either his tailor had made his trousers too short or he had braced them too high so that he seemed to have grown out of them quite recently. Sir Richmond had been dreading an encounter with some dominating and mesmeric personality; this amiable ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... 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? ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... it would be impossible to read it without arriving at the conviction that the writer deserves to be listened to with great attention and great confidence. But as yet I feel that we have no sure ground under our feet. The only idea that suggests itself to me is that the medium is in a mesmeric condition; and after giving considerable time and attention to these mysterious mesmeric symptoms, I am persuaded that a patient liable to such influence is in a diseased state. It has often appeared to me that the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... after a 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 ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... to Mesmerize. Knowing this, you can place any person in a mesmeric sleep, and then be able to do with him as you will. This secret has been sold over and ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... dying strove to raise themselves on 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
... something of mesmeric power in his eyes which children seldom resisted; and with a shrinking movement, as if both attracted and repelled, the little ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... his hands gently over the face above him, caressingly over the glorious mass of golden hair and round the columnar throat Bronzino would have left reluctantly alone. Said Irene, from the other end of the room:—"Are you trying Mesmeric experiments, you two?" ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... barber's to-day. Gave him no instructions. Thought of course he was going to cut it; and so fell asleep. I almost always fall asleep when under the mesmeric influence of a capillary administrator. I should like him to keep on doing it; cut and comb again. So soothing! Woke up and found myself—like this. (See Hair Cut.) Herewith please receive portrait, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... upon 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 group around ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... 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
... child! I loved her no less because I did not believe a word she said. I loved her blue eye, her golden hair, her delicious voice, that was true in song, though when she spoke, false as Eblis! You are aware that I possess in rather a remarkable degree what we have agreed to call the mesmeric power. I set the unhappy girl to sleep. THEN she was obliged to tell me all. It was as I had surmised. Goby de Mouchy, my wretched, besotted, miserable secretary, in his visits to the chateau of the Marquis de Bechamel, who was one of our society, had ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mankind. Why not now, like a tired child, weary of futile resistance, yield to her motherly embrace and be at last at peace? Again the temptation which he had stubbornly resisted for a lifetime urged upon him with all its mesmeric insistence. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... 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 the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... engaging, enticing, magnetic, prepossessing, personable, winning, mesmeric, taking, seductive, bewitching. Antonyms: unattractive, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... 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 ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... the rhachis and the nerves or ribs of the leaf. Days pass. The ants are there all the time, examining the leaf and communicating with each other whensoever they meet. Imperceptibly the leaf begins to curl. The ants continue to make mesmeric passes over the nerves ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... or two previous occasions. Then she would beckon and he would run across and entering the room disconcert this odious Mr. Lyman B. Rattray and put an end to his stony wooing. But alas! for Miss Maria and her mesmeric powers! The harder she tried, the less she succeeded. On came Mr. Joseph, supremely unconscious of the injured heart beating behind the windowpane. At one moment it seemed as if he were about to turn and look in her direction. A very brilliant ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... explain the mythical nature of material sense. Sleep shows material sense as either 490:30 oblivion, nothingness, or an illusion or dream. Under the mesmeric illusion of belief, a man will think that he is freezing when he is warm, and that he 491:1 is swimming when he is on dry land. Needle-thrusts will not hurt him. A delicious perfume will seem intolerable. ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... refreshment and an encouragement to 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 don't investigate the matter ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... we follow the process by which Quimby reached his conclusions and it helps us to understand the significance of Belief as one of the key words of Christian Science. Quimby was led to identify sickness and wrong beliefs through this analysis of mesmeric diagnosis and health and right belief through his own experiences as a healer. He had no training to help him to an understanding of the real facts which lay behind the belief in sickness. He became a skillful diagnostician ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... the interests of the young. Watching the couples whirl and turn, advance and recede as gently as spirits, knot themselves like house-flies and part again, and lullabied by the faint regular beat of their footsteps to the tune, the players sank into the peculiar mesmeric quiet which comes over impressionable people who play for a great length of time in the midst of such scenes; and at last the only noises that Christopher took cognizance of were those of the exceptional kind, breaking above the general sea of sound—a casual smart rustle ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... the shrilling of the crickets, the shu-shu of feet, the gentle clapping; and the wavering hovering measure proceeds in silence, with mesmeric lentor,—with a strange grace, which by its very naivete, seems as ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... so her belief in communications with the spirit world was proof against any exposure of fraud on the part of the mediums. Not that she was guilty of the absurdities which marked many of the devotees of spiritualism. She had a great horror of submitting herself to mesmeric influences. She recognised that very many of the supposed revelations of the spirits were trivial, perhaps false; but to the fact that communications did ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... 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
... when, grasping a Troglodyte tablet covered with half-effaced hieroglyphics—his fingers livid with the fixity of his grip—he bent on it that strenuous inquisition, that ardent questioning gaze, till, by a species of mesmeric dominancy, he seemed to wrench from it the arcanum it hid from other eyes; then he lay back, pale and faint from the ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... writes puffs for 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 ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... etc., and the body being flabby and pliable as in natural sleep; third, Somnambulism, so called from its analogies to the ordinary sleep-walking condition to which many persons are subject. This last covers the phenomena of ordinary mesmeric exhibitions at which travelling mesmerists "control" persons before audiences and make them obey their commands. While other scientists properly deny that these three stages are really distinct, they may yet be taken as representing extreme instances of the phenomena, and serve ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... 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
... familiarity with weird and shocking deeds, an utter indifference to human suffering and human life, had strangely affected his inner self. Callous to the woes of others, yet high strung to a degree, his nature at this time presented a stage of complexity which was utterly baffling. That mesmeric property to which Hazon had alluded more than once as one of the effects of the interior was upon him too. It seemed as though he had somehow passed into another world, so dulled was all recollection ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... mesmeric eyes, and yet they are soft, though powerful. I should say that man must have broken many a heart with ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... the iron gates of the "Undiscovered Country" with a yearning cry; but he could get no answer from reason, and would not seek it in any form of superstition, least of all the latest, that of stealing into heaven "by way of mesmeric and spiritualistic trances." His question ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... for stroking and patting the body and limbs of a colt are curious, as proving that an operation which we have been in the habit of performing as a matter of course without attaching any particular virtue to it, has really a sort of mesmeric effect in soothing and conciliating a nervous animal. The directions in Chapter V. for approaching a colt deserve to be studied very minutely, remembering always the maxim printed at p. 57—Fear and anger, a good horseman ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... but more than they appear 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 Mr. Hockey. I forget, dear Mr. Hawthorne, whether I told you that ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... she prescribed for herself nettle-broth; at the third, catnip. The crises became mitigated, then disappeared. It was truly a miracle. The nasal addigitation did not succeed with the others, and, in order to bring on somnambulism, they projected the construction of a mesmeric tub. Pecuchet already had even collected the filings and cleaned a score of bottles, when a scruple made ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... 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 to another ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... the streets. Her story done, Veera entreated me To set my face for Mesched with the dawn. "Not yet," I said, "not yet." And then I made Strange passes with my hands, and braced my will, To sway her will; then with a questioning glance She passed out to a calm Mesmeric sleep. So, well I knew that I had found the soul My purpose needed, and I ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... his hands steady in the violent spasms of shuddering, nor could he call his mind to think. He was one shuddering turmoil. Yet he performed his purpose methodically and exactly. In every particular he was thorough, as if he were the servant of some stern will. It was a mesmeric performance, in which the agent trembled ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... There was the same look in Bell Cameron's eye, a kind of mesmeric influence which commanded obedience. They idolize this Wilford, and I dare say he is worthy of their idolatry. One thing, at least, is in his favor—the crippled Jamie, for whose opinion I would give more than all the rest, seemed to worship his Uncle Will, talking of him continually, ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... 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 ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... and take tea with me. I want to talk to you all the evening. You have just the same mesmeric strength that used to soothe me when a boy. What a milk-and-water cub I must have been! I wonder you did not throw ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... vain repetition, darling, especially as I know it all quite well," murmured Mary Grey, with a smile, and still passing her hand with mesmeric ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... solicitude. Then, moving with a slow, 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 the whole body of his friend was in motion, he gave ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... folk-lore, 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
... state, by trance or vision, in which the thoughts of one brain could be transmitted to another, and knowledge be thus rapidly interchanged. I replied, that there were amongst us stories told of such trance or vision, and that I had heard much and seen something in mesmeric clairvoyance; but that these practices had fallen much into disuse or contempt, partly because of the gross impostures to which they had been made subservient, and partly because, even where the effects upon certain abnormal constitutions were genuinely ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... 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 ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... both his large hands softly on her bowed head and held them there with a soothing, quieting, mesmeric touch, until she had sobbed, and cried, and talked herself into silence, ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... lasting for days or weeks, are really examples of spontaneously developed mesmeric sleep in hysteric patients or subjects of incipient insanity. If the phenomenon in these cases takes the form of catalepsy there is a waxy-like rigidity of the muscles which will allow the limbs to be placed in various positions, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... PSYCHEISM; or, the Science of the Soul, and the Phenomena of Nervation, as revealed by Mesmerism, considered Physiologically and Philosophically; including Notes of Mesmeric and Psychical Experience. By JOSEPH WILCOX HADDOCK, M.D. Second and enlarged Edition, illustrated by Engravings of the Brain ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various |
