Word: pocus
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1920-1929
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...appendicitis to housemaid's knee that is their business. The Pencil Man will not take from any patient more than three Austrian shillings (42?). He seldom pencils a man or woman for more than 30 seconds, treats hundreds of poor "patients" free. In 40 years of eccentric hocus-pocus he has never broken two rules: i) The groups he pencils must always be of assorted sexes, and always seminude; 2) He will pencil no one privately, though hundreds of prominent people, unwilling to endure the public ordeal, have sent him blank checks for a private consultation. He always refuses...
...into a transmitter, let the modulated current pass through his body to his finger tip to the man's ear. The man "heard" Mr. Grace's words. The man felt as though he were thinking Mr. Grace's phrases. It seemed like thought transference. No hocus-pocus was it, however, but an understandable, verifiable, physical-physiological hookup...
...taken, suddenly and forever, out of the world, into an unreal place. This last trick puzzles even people who know just how all the others are accomplished. When someone dies whom they have known, they may go to witch-doctors called mediums who pretend that by saying hocus-pocus or by going into a trance, they can make dead people say things to people who are living. This is false magic; humbler fellows who are content to imitate the mysteries of life and death with 52 cards, a white handkerchief and a tailcoat, are annoyed by such lying fakers; they...
...with as much alacrity as the directors of the party outside. Delegates are to be chosen shortly; then in May will come the march to New Lecture Hall, which will do very well for a convention hall, and the battle proper begins. There is no mystery, gentlemen, no hocus-pocus; every issue plainly before your eyes, every candidate offered for what he is worth. The college side-show serves to whet the appetite while the main tent is being prepared. But the pungency of the 1924 performance is lacking this year. Houston may watch a real struggle: New Lecture Hall...
...matted gray hair and a nose like a spigot who rode on her broomstick way into the sky and ate little children. There was a gingerbread house and a red-hot oven where plop ended the witch pushed by wee Gretel just too stupid to get in herself. "Hocus pocus. . . ." Children loved it. So did grown-ups who quite forgot the tawdry Violanta of early afternoon...