FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • More 'Incoherent' Quotes from Famous Books

... a species of spiritual flagellation to BEN HECHT, who, as he says, "ten years ago prided himself upon being as indigestible a type of the incoherent young as the land afforded." And nonsenseorship in general he regards as a war-born Frankenstein, a frenzied virtue grown hugely luminous; "a snowball rolling uphill toward God and gathering furious dimensions, it has escaped the shrewd janitors of orthodoxy who from age to age were able to keep ...

— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... ties, made them impatient of even a spiritual connection. But the Revolution was an outward, visible sign of an organic growth which it accelerated, but did not produce; and the patriotic outcries of the generation were incoherent expressions of a profounder life which had been growing, scarcely heeded, until wakened by this event. The centripetal force of nationality was at work, and it is possible now, even from our near station, ...

— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder

... spirits, and at times to display a liveliness of manner and conversation which would be repugnant to the feelings of a large portion of the congregation of Banff." Others of the objections assert, that his illustrations in the pulpit do not bear upon his text—that his subjects are incoherent and ill deduced; and the reverend gentleman is also charged with being subject to a natural defect of utterance—a defect which it is said increases as he "extends his voice," which is of a "very harsh and grating description," and renders it difficult to hear or follow ...

— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... There were aspects of that unquenchable agitation that were absolutely heroic and aspects that were absolutely pitiful. It was unreasonable, unwise, and, except for its one central insistence, astonishingly incoherent. It was amazingly effective. The very incoherence of the demand witnessed, I think, to the forces that lay behind it. It wasn't a simple argument based on a simple assumption; it was the first crude expression of a great mass and mingling of convergent feelings, of a widespread, ...

— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... as she could see, and ready for sleep; but she would not go, and there sat, with the candle in her hand, her face flushed and her great blue eyes soulfully glowing, while she continued to chatter in an incoherent and strangely irrelevant fashion: so that, astonished into broad wakefulness by this extraordinary behaviour, I sat bolt upright in bed, determined ...

— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan

... inspiration. They do not take us into its true nature; at the most they may teach us concerning some of their physiological conditions. It is not even an inspiration in the strict sense, but rather a beginning, an embryo, an outline, analogous to the creations produced in dreams which are found very incoherent when we awake. One of the essential conditions of creation, a principal element—the directing principle that organizes and unifies—is lacking. Under the influence of alcoholic drinks and of poisonous intoxicants attention and will always ...

— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... the room a slender maiden ran impulsively to him and throwing her arms round his neck hid her face on his breast. A few broken, incoherent words escaped her lips. Isaac disengaged himself from the clinging arms and put her from him. The face raised to his was strikingly beautiful. Oval in shape, it was as white as his own, with a broad, low brow and regular features. The eyes ...

— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... Mrs. Morpher's to inquire after his errant pupil that night, he found Aristides in bed, smelling strongly of soap and water, and sinking into a feverish sleep. As he muttered from time to time some incoherent sentence, tossing restlessly in his cot, the master turned to those about him and asked what it ...

— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... every bosom, from the kitchen to the parlor. Terror and horror had prevented the ladies from being spectators, but they did not feel the less. Frances continued lying in the posture we have mentioned, offering up fervent and incoherent petitions for the safety of her countrymen, although in her inmost heart she had personified her nation by the graceful image of Peyton Dunwoodie. Her aunt and sister were less exclusive in their devotions; but Sarah began to feel, as the horrors ...

— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... meant by such rebellious behaviour, he replied that it was only a trial to see whether destiny had intended him to become an Emperor or to remain a cobbler. On the next day he was shot as a conspirator. I saw the unfortunate man in the Palais Royal; his eyes looked wild, and his words were often incoherent. He was certainly a subject more deserving a place in a ...

— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... address, and possibly was not wholly so in his own mind. But the talk was solid and forceful, and I could hear Vogelstein grunt with inward joy when he contemplated the city, the state, and the nation in their predicted role as customers. I too felt that a real if an incoherent voice had spoken, and that if civic art were indeed to come, it would be through such neo-Roman visionaries ...

— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather

... because of that early training that a good many of us have never yet been able to work up much enthusiasm over the Old Masters. Mind you, we have no quarrel with those who become incoherent and babbling with joy in the presence of an Old Master, but—doggone 'em!—they insist on quarreling with us because we think differently. We fail to see anything ravishingly beautiful in a faded, blistered, cracked, crumbling painting of an early Christian martyr on a grill, ...

— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... overlaid with Pope's conventional ornamentation. The imaginary history proceeds to relate the growth of superstition, which destroys the primeval innocence; but why or when does not very clearly appear; yet, though the general theory is incoherent, he catches a distinct view of one aspect of the question and expresses a tolerably trite view of the question with singular terseness. ...

— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... and then on a young lady, when one night as he sat in the parlour waiting for her to come down, her mother entered the room instead, and asked him in a very grave, stern way what his intentions were. He turned very red and was about to stammer some incoherent reply when suddenly the young lady called down from the head of the stairs: 'Mamma, mamma, that ...

— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon

... his mistress (i.e., his picture) on condition that Poussin persuades his mistress to sit to him for an hour, for he would compare her loveliness with his art. These conditions having been complied with, he draws aside the curtain; but the two painters see only confused colour and incoherent form, and in one corner "a delicious foot, a living foot escaped by a miracle from ...

— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... larger than could ever be realized. He took in the whole situation at a glance. He hastened to consult with Mr. Bellows, but he was listened to with entire apathy. The merchant would say but little, and that was so incoherent and unintelligible, it was evident he was laboring under mental aberration. He continued moody through the day, and the next morning was found dead in his bed. He ...

— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... come mounting up over cheeks and temples, tingling and spreading into her very neck, just because it was the most hateful thing that could happen? And he saw it. She knew he did so, for he dropped his eyes at once, and there was an absolute silence, which she broke in desperation, by an incoherent attempt to say something, and that ended by blundering into the tender subject—the children; she found she had been talking about the place to which she thought of taking them, a quiet spot on the northern coast ...

— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... changing places. The text is here fearfully corrupt and (as in many other parts of the Breslau Edition) so incoherent as to ...

— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... all. Nat scrawled him an incoherent note that bubbled with delight; he had been promoted to the finishing department, and henceforth was to receive ...

— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett

... sarcastic, benignant or malign, but it must be a soul. Art criticism would seem to consist altogether in determining if there be a personality in the work of art, and of what sort. A work that is a failure is an incoherent work; that is to say, a work in which no single personality appears, but a number of disaggregated and jostling personalities, that is, really, none. There is no further correct significance than this in the researches that are made as ...

— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... affably upon both, murmured something incoherent, and passed on hastily towards the scarlet parasol of Eleanor. But he had no sooner reached it than he paused and would have turned had she not seen him, for under a blue parasol beside her he espied, too late, the fair face of Eva, and too clearly perceived ...

— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston

... their creeds and dogmas, have turned back and are returning. It is that we have gone on still further, and are beyond that desolation. Never more shall we return to those who gather under the cross. By faith we disbelieved and denied. By faith we said of that stuffed scarecrow of divinity, that incoherent accumulation of antique theological notions, the Nicene deity, "This is certainly no God." And by faith we have found God. . ...

— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells

... music and melody (cf. VERLAINE'S poem, Art potique, p. 288). This is in general the direction taken by the latest generation of poets, symbolists, decadents, or however otherwise they are styled, for whom VERLAINE'S influence has been conspicuous. They make up rather an incoherent body, whose aims and aspirations, more or less vague, are by no means adequately indicated by this brief statement of their tendency. They have by no means said their last word. But the accomplishment of their movement hitherto has been marred, and its promise ...

— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield

... smiled a sleepy smile. She made a few incoherent remarks. They helped her into the house and into an easy-chair, where she promptly turned her face towards the cushions and resumed her slumber. Sir Leslie moved towards the door, ...

— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... these poets had become accustomed to at a ductile age were contradictory and even incoherent. The passion of pagan antiquity for a long while bewildered him. He wandered among the vestiges of antique art, unable to perceive their relation to modern life, or their original significance. He missed the impress of the individual on classic ...

— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... touching in her incoherent earnestness, which made the Colonel smile, yet wink away some moisture from his eyes, as he again thanked her without either acceptance or refusal. Then he said he was going to Belforest, and asked whether she would not like to ...

— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... herself seemed a bit nervous, for her next message was given with a trifle less assurance. It was an incoherent repetition and re-repetition of the word "daughter" and something about ...

— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln

... o' your races and your expensive company," he growled, after a few incoherent sniffs and snarls; "but I don't lose my half of the horse. No, no! I'm not paid till the money's been handed over. Twenty-five dollars, remember!—and soon, that I don't lose the use of it too long. As for your money and the watch, I've nothing to do with them. ...

— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... tumour. It is rather difficult to prove them wrong. There is, however, a fact which seems to indicate that they would be mistaken. When Mrs Piper is ill, her mediumship decreases or becomes less lucid; she only furnishes incoherent, fragmentary, or quite false communications. The syncope or "trance," which is easy when she is well, becomes difficult or even impossible when she is ill. Her health has been good since her last operation, the syncopes are easy, and the communications obtained in this ...

— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage

... and laughed and kissed each other, and made incoherent exclamations in a way which their puzzled father felt to be most undesirable for an invalid's room. He had been carefully warned not to excite Ambrose, and what could be worse than this ...

— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton

... exhaustion was haunted by painful, incoherent dreams. With the curious freakishness of a disordered mind, he was beset by a vision of the dark, ferret face of Victor Gagnon. The trader seemed to be hovering threateningly over his rude couch, and, behind him, less distinct, but always recognizable, ...

— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... "You are incoherent, dear lad," said I; "and yet you tell me one thing plainly enough; which is that in place of loving this one or that one, or the cordwainer's strapping daughter, you are in love with ...

— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... young gentleman on it, who fell crushed and stunned under the animal; and came to his senses he knows not how long after, only to lose them again from pain and loss of blood. A dim sense, as of people groaning round about him, a wild incoherent thought or two for her who occupied so much of his heart now, and that here his career, and his hopes, and misfortunes were ended, he remembers in the course of these hours. When he woke up it was with a pang of extreme pain, his ...

— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... is in no way felt; we must, on the contrary, hope that the use of the unit adopted by the physicists of the whole world will spread more and more. It is right to remark that a few errors still occur with regard to this unit, and that these errors have been facilitated by incoherent legislation. France herself, though she was the admirable initiator of the metrical system, has for too long allowed a very regrettable confusion to exist; and it cannot be noted without a certain ...

— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... before, in making tests And observations of the patient, have His conversation taken stenographically, In order to preserve his speech exactly, And catch the flow if he becomes excited. So we determine if he makes new words, If he be incoherent, or repeats. I took my secretary once to make A stenographic record. Strange enough He would not talk while she was writing down. And when I asked him why, he would not tell. So I devised a scheme: I took a satchel, ...

— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters

... own anger, something far from being either assumed or inconsiderable, Lanyard was fain to pause, a few paces from the deck-house, and laugh quietly at a vast and incoherent booming which was resounding in the room he had just quitted—Captain Osborne trying to do justice to the emotions inspired in his virtuous bosom by the cheek of ...

— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... subject at once direct and theoretic has been very rare: the problems of nature and morals have attracted the reasoners, and the description and creation of beauty have absorbed the artists; between the two reflection upon aesthetic experience has remained abortive or incoherent. ...

— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... speed through the park, the villain's mind sped more rapidly than the animal he bestrode,—sped from fear to hope, hope to assurance. Grant that the spy lived to tell his tale,—incoherent, improbable as the tale would be,—who would believe it? How easy to meet tale by tale! The man must own that he was secreted behind the tapestry,—wherefore but to rob? Detected by Madame Dalibard, he had coined this wretched fable. And the ...

— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the puzzled housekeeper away, and returned to the office above, and presently Mr. Bell, now beginning so far to recover from his amazement as to express incoherent gratitude, reported that the bonds were correct and complete to ...

— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison

... rife in the community. The extraordinary vote polled by a Socialistic candidate for President, in a time of general prosperity, seems to evidence this, as does the avidity with which many intelligent people read in a cheap 'penny dreadful' magazine the incoherent, self-contradictory, and self-incriminating articles of a notorious frenzied fakir, who, like a crazed Malay, is wildly running amuck, and, without rhyme or reason, slashing at the reputations of ...

— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... And then the telephone rang, and some incoherent person mumbled an address out in the furthest suburb. It was North Baxter Court. You never saw that—a row of yellow houses with the door-sills level to the mud and ashes of the alley, and swarms of children who stare and whisper, ...

— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray

... "your idea is not irrelevant. But the voices of madmen, even in their wildest paroxysms, are never found to tally with that peculiar voice heard upon the stairs. Madmen are of some nation, and their language, however incoherent in its words, has always the coherence of syllabification. Besides, the hair of a madman is not such as I now hold in my hand. I disentangled this little tuft from the rigidly clutched fingers of Madame L'Espanaye. Tell me what ...

— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... him tenderly from the floor, and placed him upon the cushions. This movement seemed to disturb the sufferer, and he opened his eyes, muttering some incoherent words. At the same time he threw his arms and legs about in a frightful manner. Dan was quite as much puzzled and alarmed as Lily had been. He did not know what to do for him. His experience as a nurse had been very limited, and his knowledge of ...

— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic

... took leave of me briefly, and the Duke, after accompanying him outside, returned to his former seat. I ventured upon an incoherent attempt to express my gratitude, which he at once waved aside. He leaned over the table, and he fixed his eyes steadfastly ...

— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... remark is a memory of T.H. Bayly's celebrated song 'We met,' which tells in somewhat incoherent language the story of a maiden who left her true love at the command of her mother, and married ...

— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood

... she believed, and her followers were equally "clear" in their belief in Joanna. This incoherent nonsense was signed in the presence of fifty-eight simpletons, all of whom expressed their confidence in the inspired mission ...

— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... multitudinous confusion when Christianity arose—an austere exclusive faith, with its army of saints, ascetics, and unflinching martyrs, proclaiming worship to be due to one God only, and sternly refusing to acknowledge the divinity of the emperor. Against such a faith an incoherent disorderly polytheism could make no better stand than tribal levies against a disciplined army. The new religion struck directly at the sacrifices that symbolised imperial unity; the passive resistance of Christians was necessarily treated as rebellion, the State ...

— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... unfortunate victim, as they supposed, to his own vague and supernatural terrors, lay without showing the slightest symptom of recognition. Groans and incoherent murmurs, after long intervals of silence, proclaimed that life was yet lingering on the threshold of the tabernacle, unwilling for her flight. A cry of terror would sometimes break forth, and his whole frame become violently convulsed, ...

— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... say, child?" she asked hastily of Molly, who was stammering out an incoherent speech. "Well, never mind; whatever you have to say, I don't want to hear it now. You run right straight home; and if you want to come over to-morrow to see how Marjorie is, you may, but I can't have you bothering around here now. So ...

— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells

... incoherent muttering regarding past incidents or occupations, or about absent friends; or the condition may assume the form of excitement, of dementia, or of melancholia; and the symptoms ...

— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... strike your back with hard stripes; cut deep with a sharp knife, as if you would eradicate the consciousness; cry aloud; put ashes on your head; bruise yourself with stones,—then perhaps God may pardon you. Or, better still (so runs the incoherent feeling), give him something—your ox, your ass, whole hecatombs if you are rich enough; anything, it is but a chance,—you do not know what will please him; at any rate, what you love best yourself,—that is, most likely, your first-born son. Then, after ...

— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... case of industrial organization is fundamentally opposed to that which occurred in the political sphere. The one is working steadily towards an autocratic imperialism and the "servile state," the other towards the fluctuating, incoherent control of the making and administering of laws by the untrained, the uncultivated, and the generally unfit, the issue of which is anarchy. The industrial-commercial-financial oligarchy that dominated society for the century preceding the Great War is the result of the first; Russia, ...

— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... about to rush upon one another, and this incoherent discussion was threatening to degenerate into a battle, when ...

— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... name had been mentioned. On my word, as I saw Follet curving his spinal column, and Schneider lighting up his face with his perfect teeth, I thought with an immense admiration of the unpolished and loose-hung Stires amid the eternal smell of tar and dust. It was a mere discussion of her hair, incoherent and pointless enough. No scandal, even from Schneider. There had been some sense, of a dirty sort, in his talk to me; but more wine had ...

— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... of any other man I have ever heard. He was always clothed in the undress uniform of a Prussian general; and, as he rose, his bulk made him imposing. His first utterances were disappointing. He seemed wheezy, rambling, incoherent, with a sort of burdensome self-consciousness checking his ideas and clogging his words. His manner was fidgety, his arms being thrown uneasily about, and his fingers fumbling his mustache or his clothing or the papers on his desk. He puffed, snorted, and ...

— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... this?" I asked him again, but without result, for he became incoherent and only muttered something about being left alone because the others could not carry him. So I gave him some water, after which he fell asleep, or pretended to do so, and I left him, wondering whether he was delirious, or spoke truth. As ...

— Finished • H. Rider Haggard

... to wear had been removed whilst I slept, and in their stead, suits of the very deepest mourning appeared. I dressed myself in one of these, and upon asking Servilius and his wife the meaning of this change, was answered by Andrea with so wild a burst of grief, and incoherent lamentation, that I durst inquire no further. After they had gone forth to their daily employment I also quitted the cottage for a stroll, and detected a woman pointing me out to her children as "a poor, little boy, who ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various

... and terrified to do anything but drop on his knees and utter incoherent entreaties and ...

— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... riders, as half a mile away an illuminated window beamed invitingly. Encouraged by it, they quickened their steps a little. But almost at the same time La Boulaye stirred on the cloak, and the men who carried him heard him speak. At first it was an incoherent mutter, then his ...

— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... successful. Arcading is a very beautiful decoration where it is employed, as in a triforium, in single storeys, to cover a definite even space. But where it is used to fill up an irregularly-shaped mass of wall which there is no need to decorate, it looks incoherent and confused. Had the wall been left bare it would have afforded an excellent contrast to the elaborate pattern of the central window. As it is, this decoration seems to be conceived in a spirit, of which there are further evidences in the decoration ...

— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock

... retributive scourge, but was in fact nothing but the logical working of the laws of hygiene, the result of overwork. Such, though stated more crudely, were my contentions when desire did not cloud my brain and make me incoherent. And I did not fail to remind Nancy, constantly, that this was the path on which her feet had been set; that to waver now was to perish. She smiled, yet she ...

— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... would not be strong enough to return to her duties for a year or more. If some member of her family could come out to take care of her, it would relieve the school authorities of great anxiety. There was also a letter from a fellow teacher, and a rather incoherent one from Caroline herself. After Claude finished reading them, Mr. Royce pushed a box of cigars toward him and began to talk ...

— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... She went on the Sunday, an unusual day to pay a week-end visit, and she had taken with her two bags. The porter ventured the opinion that she was rather excited, but when asked to define the symptoms relapsed into a chaos of incoherent "you-knows" ...

— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace

... followed Saxham had a letter, written by a man with whom he had been fairly intimate at Gueldersdorp during the strenuous days of the Siege—a man who would undoubtedly not have lived to go through those days but for the Dop Doctor. It was rather an incoherent letter, written by ...

— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... And then, before my dazed brain could work itself back through the mazes of memory, there came the whir of a taxi in the street, an imperative ring of the bell, a tramp of masculine footsteps in the hall, and then—my husband's arms were around me, his lips murmuring disjointed, incoherent ...

— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison

... still weeping bitterly, she led them into a small room adjoining the hall, in which burned a light, and, having closed the door, she sat down between them. After thanking them for the haste they had made, she proceeded to tell them, in words incoherent from agitation, that Sir Robert had in private, and in the most solemn manner, told her that he should die upon that night, and that he had occupied himself during the evening in giving minute directions respecting the arrangements of his funeral. Lady D—— here suggested the ...

— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... to arrive at the place of her mother's residence; and these suggestions utterly deprived him of the small remains of recollection which he had hitherto retained. His eyes rolled about, witnessing rage and distraction; he foamed at the mouth, stamped upon the ground with great violence, uttered incoherent imprecations against himself and all mankind, and would have sallied forth again, he knew not whither, upon the same horse, which he had already almost killed with fatigue, had not his confidant found means to quiet ...

— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... She listened to Ellen's explanations, incoherent enough probably, and then, bursting into a loud laugh, called to some of ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... President and Vice-President and to adopt a platform for the new party. The "Demands" of the Alliances supplied the material from which was constructed a platform characterized by one unsympathetic observer as "that furious and hysterical arraignment of the present times, that incoherent intermingling of Jeremiah and Bellamy." The document opened with a general condemnation of national conditions and a bitter denunciation of the old parties for permitting "the existing dreadful conditions to develop ...

— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck

... if I am a little incoherent," she implored. "To-day I have had a shock. You, too, have read the news? You must know that the Count von Hern is dead—killed in the railway accident ...

— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... this increased the suspicions that had already been aroused. The inn-keeper, who was a zealous patriot, compelled her to go with him to the district Commissioner. Her presence of mind deserted her; and her incoherent replies and her reticence caused her arrest. The Commissioner intended to send her to Nantes; but she begged so hard to be sent to Paris, instead, that he finally granted her request. That same evening a party of prisoners from La Vendee passed ...

— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet

... adversaries were going to fall upon each other, and the incoherent discussion threatened to merge into a fight, when ...

— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... would mingle with it his own fancies, and weave the whole into the loveliest of foolish dreams, all made up of unaccountably reasonable incongruities: the sensible look in dreams of what to the waking mind is utterly incoherent, is the most puzzling of things to him who would understand his own unreason. And the wild MR CHENHAFT lovelinesses that fashioned themselves thus in his brain, outwardly lawless, but inwardly so harmonious as ...

— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... uttering all this stuff. Had he believed it to be true, he ought out of charity to have concealed it; much more, being so very false. They said that I was gone all alone with Father La Combe, strolling about the country, from province to province, with many such fables, as weak and wicked as they were incoherent and badly put together. We suffered all with patience, without vindicating ourselves, ...

— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon

... seized him, his hair stood on end. Richmodis called him by his name and begged him to open the door. At the sound of her voice the old man started, ran upstairs, dashed into his master's room uttering incoherent sounds, and stammering: "O Lord, the dead rise; outside stands our good Mistress and demands entrance!" But the Magistrate shook his head in deep grief: "Richmodis, my beloved wife is dead and will never return, never, never," he repeated in unspeakable ...

— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland

... been absent for six weeks. An incoherent note heralded his return. 'News! great news!' he wrote. 'The Nilghai knows, and so does the Keneu. We're all back on Thursday. Get lunch and clean ...

— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... orchard with many marks of insanity upon him. His air and dress bespoke some elevation of rank and fortune. My mother's compassion was excited, and, as his singularities were harmless, an asylum was afforded him, though he was unable to pay for it. He was constantly declaiming, in an incoherent manner, about some mistress who had proved faithless. His speeches seemed, however, like the rantings of an actor, to be rehearsed by rote or for the sake of exercise. He was totally careless of his person and health, and, by repeated negligences of this kind, at last contracted ...

— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... ceremonies, such as the Yule-log and fires on the eve of Saint John; the herbs of Saint John; the worship of fountains; the worship of trees, and medical prescriptions. Even more, what Guizot calls their "noblest characteristic, a general and strong, but vague and incoherent, belief in the immortality of the soul," was less a particular doctrine of their own than a sentiment innate in the race; "they had only to develop ideas the germ of which had not been imported by them." Nevertheless, so well organized was their communal order that ...

— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... stranger to me. Nevertheless I may remind you that women at our time of life pass through critical moments, as I know by my daily experiences. The letter which I have written to you in a cool reasoning spirit might have been impossible a week or two ago. I should probably have reeled off pages of incoherent abuse. ...

— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis

... winter came and passed. In the spring, Tom Ripon was toddling about; but he had not yet begun to talk, although his mother declared that certain incoherent sounds, which he made, were quite plain and distinct words; but her husband, while willing to allow that they might be perfectly intelligible to her, insisted that—to the male ear—they in no way ...

— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty

... complex international arrangements concerning Post Offices, shipping, banking, codes, sanctions of law, criminal research, and the rest, on which so much of our civilized life depends. This world State is unorganized, incoherent. It has neither a centre nor a capital, nor a meeting place. The shipowners gather in Paris, the world's bankers in Madrid or Berne, and what is in effect some vital piece of world regulation is devised in the smoking room of some Brussels hotel. The world State ...

— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... Mazzini!—Yes, but first Set down thy people's faults; set down the want Of soul-conviction; set down aims dispersed, And incoherent means, and valour scant Because of scanty faith, and schisms accursed That wrench these brother-hearts from covenant With freedom and each other. Set down this, And this, and see to overcome it when The ...

— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... just took her place with a nod of acquiescence. But she often felt like doing as some of the rest of them did; felt it would be a perfectly enormous relief to shriek out incoherent words of abuse, burst into tears and sobs, and rush from the stage. Her position—her new position, she fancied, would entitle her to do that—once. And then the notion that she was saving up that luxurious possibility for some time when ...

— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... well for us frequently to remember that the silence of the dead is no true exponent of their real state. Incoherent and wild as the thoughts and feelings sometimes are, under the distracting influence of affliction and death, and all uncertain as we are about the departure of the soul, we are not left without sure and most satisfying information respecting ...

— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams

... own party, appeared before them, with the book in his hand and Judge Child at his elbow as usual; and I do believe the citizen from my very soul, when he says they gave him no such advice. The committee were composed of sensible men; and after listening to his incoherent display of folly and nonsense on that occasion, it would be literally casting pearl before swine, to have given them any ...

— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector

... close approach to a sermon; and though the words were a little incoherent, yet the tone was solemn, and the intention good. After this the captain dropped the lofty part of a Mentor, and mingled with ...

— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille

... thereby compel the reader to think of the personages of the novel and not of the writer, yet the practice, especially pushed to the extent we have noticed, is a principal cause of the flimsiness and incoherent texture of which his greatest admirers are ...

— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... who reads the voluminous autobiography of "Honest George" can doubt the man's utter truthfulness; and though, in his multitudinous letters, he but rarely rises far above the incoherent commonplaces of a street preacher, there can be no question of his power as a speaker, nor any doubt as to the dignity and attractiveness of his personality, or of his possession of a large amount of practical ...

— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... of unreal sexual unions, not only from the point of view of theoretical but also of practical morality, for no community could tolerate a majority of such unions.[338] In 1857 an act for reforming the system was at last passed with great difficulty. It was a somewhat incoherent and make-shift measure, and was avowedly put forward only as a step towards further reform; but it still substantially governs English procedure, and in the eyes of many has set a permanent standard of morality. The spirit of blind conservatism,—Nolumus leges Angliae ...

— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... I have not yet encountered a character of the type of Lord Bottomley,—a type which I am free to confess I should be sorry to see disappear from our English system, if system it may be called, where so much is the growth of blind and incoherent forces. It is nevertheless obvious that an idle and luxurious class exists in this country, and that it is less exempt than in our own from the reproach of preferring inglorious ease to the furtherance of ...

— The Point of View • Henry James

... thrust the note into the boy's hands, was already some paces off. He called out some rather incoherent reply, of which 'thank you, thank you,' were the ...

— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth

... the lower part of the house, whence it might be possible to escape to the grounds, and so to the village. I returned to the bedside, and shook Emily, but in vain; nothing that I could do availed to produce from her more than a few incoherent words; it was a death-like sleep. She had certainly drunk of some narcotic, as, probably, had I also, in spite of all the caution with which I had examined every thing presented to us to eat or drink. I now attempted, with as little noise ...

— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... heard again the welcome bay of watchdog on the doorstep at home, and saw once more the loved forms of wife and children springing joyfully from the cheery fireside to meet his outstretched arms. A few tossed restlessly, and frequent incoherent mutterings wandered, waif-like up and down the room, sometimes rousing Andrew, who once or twice lifted his head to listen, and then sank back ...

— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... he would see his wife and children again, the friendly soldiers surely had saved them. The young Cossack was still struggling on the ground; now he stretched himself out for his eternal sleep. 'Ah, the villains!' Yakob repeated; the great happiness which filled his heart rushed to his lips in incoherent babblings. 'The villains, they have served ...

— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... interest manifested by every one present, even to the tired little minister himself. The object of their amazed glances fortunately did not keep the good people long in suspense. After a timid prayer—slightly incoherent, but abounding in petitions for single-mindedness and worshipful reverence—from the minister's wife, the Honorable Peter Wentworth rose to his feet and ...

— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter

... which any one without knowing a Word of Grammar or Sense, may, to his great Comfort, be able to compose or rather to erect Latin Verses. His Tables are a kind of Poetical Logarithms, which being divided into several Squares, and all inscribed with so many incoherent Words, appear to the Eye somewhat like a Fortune-telling Screen. What a Joy must it be to the unlearned Operator to find that these Words, being carefully collected and writ down in Order according to the Problem, start of themselves into Hexameter and Pentameter ...

— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... was his during the next few minutes can by no means be exaggerated. With such crises the human mind is not fitted adequately to cope; it retains no record of the supreme moment beyond a vague and incoherent impression of poignant, soul-racking suffering. Kirkwood underwent a prolonged interval of semi-sentience, his mind dominated and oppressed by a deathly fear of drowning and a deadening sense of suffocation, ...

— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... pitiful, wandering creature, incapable of making his existence manifest otherwise than by changing his position from time to time, preferring to die of thirst rather than go near the sideboard, and going away without having said a word, unless we may have stammered one of those incoherent absurdities which we remember for months, and which makes us, when we think of it at night, utter an ah! of frantic shame and bury our face in ...

— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... women, at all times when the Holy Ghost shall help us to look upon him whom we have pierced. Pray God give Mr. K. and myself more of these looks upon a crucified Christ, for then we shall understand this and other such like scriptures otherwise than to draw such incoherent inferences ...

— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... more capable of living out of that atmosphere of assurance than a tadpole is of living out of water. His mental existence may be conditional on that. Deprived of it he may become incapable of sustained social life. He may become frantically self-seeking—incoherent... ...

— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... give it up—never in the world!" she added hysterically. "If you've interfered between any one and his duty in this world, where it seems as if hardly any one had any duty, you've done a very unwarrantable thing." She was aware from his stare that her words were incoherent, if not from the words themselves, but she hurried on: "I am going with him. He was here last night, and I told him I would. I will go with the Savors, and we will keep the child together; and if they will take me, I shall go ...

— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... de Mendoza greeted the stranger, turning upon him the solemn welcome of her eyes, Codlingsby swooned almost in the brightness of her beauty. It was well she spoke; the sweet kind voice restored him to consciousness. Muttering a few words of incoherent recognition, he sank upon a sandalwood settee, as Goliath, the little slave, brought aromatic coffee in cups of opal, and alabaster spittoons, and pipes ...

— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... fears she has used the word love lightly and resolves to no longer invoke God's help, yet in the next line prays Him to let her die as everything is against her, her thoughts are incoherent, she hates herself and everything is contemptible; but she wishes to die peacefully while some one is singing a beautiful air of Verdi. Again she thinks of shaving her head to save the trouble of arranging her hair; is crazed to think that every moment brings ...

— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... of the hut. Cora found room at the other end of the same bed, and presently their young natures gave in to the urgent demands of rest. Jack sat alone watching the white faced man who tossed and turned, muttering incoherent words. ...

— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose

... that the women stood round awe-struck at this revelation, seeing nothing improbable in it. In spite of her dangerous state of excitement, they eagerly pressed her with questions as to what she had seen, and what Jeanne had said, but she had become too incoherent to satisfy them, and only flung herself wildly about, crying, "Let me go—he will kill me—let me go:" till she suddenly sank down motionless on the pillow, was silent for a few moments, and then began to murmur over and over ...

— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall

... seen your Rocky Mountains, it is true, but I had seen them in March; and now I shall see them at the end of January, and that is really one of the main purposes of my journey. If from time to time in my passage I do deliver a few incoherent utterances, these utterances will not be prompted by any desire for pelf. That is far from my thoughts, but still if anyone wants to pay two dollars, or seventy-five cents, to hear those incoherent utterances you may be assured that my managers ...

— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... Texan returned to his friend, he found him in restless slumber. He tossed to and fro, muttering snatches of incoherent talk. The wound seemed to pain him even in his sleep, for he moved impatiently as though trying to throw off some ...

— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine

... Kinlay—"Crafty Carver" he was called by those who knew him well—was a problem which had not yet been solved. I had myself gathered many incoherent hints relating to him, and, bit by bit, I heard fragments of fact as to his first appearance in Pomona; but on this Sunday evening, as I sat with Lothian and Mansie, I added to these hints some certain knowledge which enabled me afterwards to ...

— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton

... been no less ensnared than her companion; that Peschiera, distrustful of her firmness in evil, had precluded her from the power of reparation. She was in a house only tenanted by his hirelings. Not a hope to save Violante from a fate that now appalled her seemed to remain. Thus, in incoherent self-reproaches and frenzied tears, Beatrice knelt beside her victim, communicating more and more the terrors that she felt, as the hours rolled on, and the room darkened, till it was only by the dull lamp which gleamed through the grimy windows from the ...

— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... her mother's sober Presbyterianism to the new and raw creed of her sire. But one evening, when she was goaded by more than usual restlessness, Sleeny asked her if she would go with him to a "sperritual lectur." To escape from her own society, she accepted, and the wild, incoherent, and amazingly fluent address she heard excited her interest and admiration. After that, she often asked him to take her, and in the long walk to and from the Harmony Hall, where the long-haired brotherhood held their sessions, a sort of confidential relation ...

— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... until her mistress returns from the wedding-tour,—- Salome appears in the secret chamber, where the Reverend Manetho sits with his head between his hands. We will not look too closely at this interview. There are words fierce and tender, tears and pleadings, feverish caresses, incoherent promises, distrustful bargains; and it is late before they part. Salome passes out through the great tomb-like hall, where all the lamps save one are burnt out; and the young minister remains to pursue ...

— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... "You are a prosperous and affected pseudo-litterateur!" and all the mummies spoke sepulchrally the word of derision, which is "Tee-Hee": and many said also, "The scavenger has never meddled with us, and we never heard of you," and there was much other incoherent foolishness. ...

— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell

... some duration, and what seemed to be a sort of conflict between the things that were present in her mind, Germinie apparently turned her attention to the circumstances of her present life. The words that escaped her, disjointed, incoherent words, were, as far as mademoiselle could understand them, addressed to some person by way of reproach. And as she talked on, her language became as unrecognizable as her voice, which had taken on the tone and accent ...

— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... fortunate if She ever reached that Castle herself. This action did not escape me; But I concealed the emotion which it excited in my breast. I continued to converse with the Lady; But my discourse was so frequently incoherent, that as She has since informed me, She began to doubt whether I was in my right senses. The fact was, that while my conversation turned upon one subject, my thoughts were entirely occupied by another. I meditated upon ...

— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... Rendered somewhat incoherent by fear, and haste, allied to the ghastly English she had acquired in the streets and been allowed to retain in the Council School, Gertrude Ellen had found it somewhat difficult to arouse the keeper to a realisation ...

— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... woman, a penitent woman!...' wailed the Countess, her arms about her husband's damp feet. She could not speak for sobbing; vague, incoherent sounds broke from ...

— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac

... any verisimilitude. The absurd practice, too, of dressing all the serious characters of the piece in modern costume, and all the comic ones in that of the time at which it was written, renders the whole ridiculously incoherent and manifestly impossible, and destroys it as a picture of the manners of any time; for even stripped of her hoop and powder, and her more flagrant coarseness of speech, Lady Townley is still as unlike, in manners, language, and deportment, any ...

— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... that the mythological system should collapse when once the spontaneous play of imaginative thought gave place to self-conscious, systematising reflection. The mass of incoherent, and often contradictory myths, in which the true was so strangely blended with the false, the beautiful with the ugly or revolting, fell almost by its own weight. The more solid materials it contained were first transmuted into allegories, ...

— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... were roaming in wild excitement along the shore; their torches were seen glimmering in evident commotion about the scene of the calamity, where some were wading into the water in search of the body, and others were shouting incoherent questions and replies. At the rumour of Agrippina's escape they rushed off in a body to her villa to express their congratulations, where they were dispersed by the soldiers of Anicetus, who had already token possession of it. Scattering or seizing the slaves who came in their ...

— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... decoration where it is employed, as in a triforium, in single storeys, to cover a definite even space. But where it is used to fill up an irregularly-shaped mass of wall which there is no need to decorate, it looks incoherent and confused. Had the wall been left bare it would have afforded an excellent contrast to the elaborate pattern of the central window. As it is, this decoration seems to be conceived in a spirit, of which there are further evidences in the decoration of the west front of the east end—the spirit ...

— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock

... arm exhausted. Henderson held her and learned what suffering truly means. He fanned her with his hat, rubbed her cold hands and murmured broken, incoherent things. By and by slow tears slipped from under her closed lids, but when she opened them her ...

— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter

... street bringing up. It was as short as it was fierce, however, and ended amid the cod and the mussels from the overturned bait bucket. But, as the Captain said afterwards, he was "spunky" and rose again, incoherent ...

— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... searchingly and his eyes cleared. He swallowed a mass of incoherent words in an effort to master himself; then his hand pressed ...

— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce

... dwelt another old pioneer, a friend of my companions, and at his cabin we stopped to pass the night. Our host was only remarkable for his great hospitality and greater taciturnity; he had always lived in the wilds, quite alone, and the only few words he would utter were incoherent. It appeared as if his mind was fixed upon scenes of the past. In his early life he had been one of the companions of the celebrated pirate La Fitte, and after the defence of New Orleans, in which the pirates ...

— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... imagination exerted upon real things; but we should have to explain that with Mr. Browning the real includes everything which a human being can think or feel, and that he is realistic only in the sense of being never visionary; he never deals with those vague and incoherent fancies, so attractive to some minds, which we speak of as coming only from the poet's brain. He imagines vividly because he observes keenly and also feels strongly; and this vividness of his nature puts him in equal sympathy with the real ...

— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... of similar caliber, was the leading spirit in the New Haven settlement, assisted by the Reverend Mr. Davenport; many of the colonists were Second-Adventists, and they called the Bible their Statute-Book. The date of their establishment was 1638. The incoherent population of Rhode Island caused it to be excluded from the federation; but Williams, journeying to London, obtained a patent from the exiled but now powerful Vane, and took as the motto of his government, "Amor Vincet Omnia." New Hampshire, which had ...

— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... girl and she started up from the seat into which she had collapsed; frightened at the incoherent lack of sanity that ...

— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... bunting on the walls waved and fluttered with the gyrations of those religious dervishes. Nobody knew—nobody cared how long this frenzy lasted—it ceased only with the collapse of the musicians. Then, with much vague bewilderment, inward trepidation, awkward and incoherent partings, everybody went dazedly home; there was no other dancing after that—the waltz was the one event of the festival and of the history of Santa Ana. And later that night, when the timid Mrs. Wade, in the ...

— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... following day, when she began to be incoherent in her replies, he observed that not only her mind was out of order, but that she was also suffering from a certain malady against which that childlike frame, exhausted by so much suffering, prison, torture ...

— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... was with a slight shock, then, that he realized how completely she had grown up. He remembered her in so many phases of childhood and little girlhood, ranging up from a time when her speech was incoherent, and she had sat on his knee and played with his watch, to the more recent occasions when he had met her riding in the Park with her brother; and she had waved her little whip to him, looking particularly slim ...

— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... as he submitted to their embraces and incoherent congratulations, "it's nothing to make a fuss about. I'm quite myself again, as you can see. And," he added, with an unreasonable outburst of ill-temper, "if one of you had only had the common sense to think of such a simple remedy as sprinkling ...

— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... feet on every side was an unbroken stratum of root dust from 2 to 4 inches thick. Above this, in turn were several thin, undisturbed layers of camp refuse, about 6 inches in all, and then 6 inches of the loose, incoherent surface earth. This discovery is susceptible of two interpretations. One is that between the date when Indians could procure articles from the whites and the date at which they abandoned this fireplace there was time for the accumulation of the given thickness of disintegrated material from the ...

— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... silence succeeded this incoherent burst from the lips of the Delaware prophet. His people readily constructed his unintelligible language into one of those mysterious conferences he was believed to hold so frequently with a superior intelligence and they awaited the issue of the revelation in awe. After a ...

— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... of her diary, during those Sainte-Colombe days, tells us her story far better than the words which it contains. The first few pages are filled with wild and incoherent sentences. There are passages that can scarcely be deciphered and others blotted with tears. Her suffering is not sufficiently well-expressed for it to be understood and more or less identified, but it can be felt ...

— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc

... acute moment past, he released her, and she clung to his hands, her face upturned, her eyes full of pain and joy, and woman's searching power, while she broke into almost incoherent speech; and he responded in feeling, though he caught little of the content of her words, and scarcely ...

— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... known the Duke a long time," said he, "and of course you can judge. Or rather, you know. But to hear those two men talk is enough to make one think there is neither heaven above nor hell beneath." He was rather incoherent. ...

— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford

... a telegram from the Lyalikovs' factory; he was asked to come as quickly as possible. The daughter of some Madame Lyalikov, apparently the owner of the factory, was ill, and that was all that one could make out of the long, incoherent telegram. And the Professor did not go himself, but ...

— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... people, former friends of his, to a great wedding- breakfast; but he seemed to have forgotten them. And once in his carriage, alone with Mrs. Brian, M. Elgin, and the young countess, he broke forth in incoherent imprecations and ...

— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... Didn't I watch 'em go, the whole seven of 'em, Baldy Winch, rot him, jeerin' at me an' me swearin' I'd get him yet, him an' Gus Ingle an' Preacher Ellson an' the first Brodie an' Jimmy Kelp an' Manny Howard an' the Italian? Wasn't I there?" He was almost incoherent. ...

— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... out from unity rather than arrives at it; and the order which it appears to discover subsequently in an experience which at first is manifold and incoherent is only a refraction of the original unity through the prism of a spontaneous analysis. Mr Bergson admirably points out ("Creative Evolution", pages 240-244 and 252-257.) that there are two types of order, geometric and vital, the one a static hierarchy ...

— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy

... soon after, and she dismissed the matter from her mind. But a vivid dream recalled it. She started up in the night, agitated, incoherent, crying that someone wanted her, someone who could not wait, and she must go. She could not tell her husband what the dream had been and in the morning all memory of it had vanished. But it left a vague disquietude behind, a haunting anxiety that hung heavily ...

— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... meanwhile, had been caused to descend to the bottom, to which she was at once secured by her four grip-anchors; immediately after which the professor, with a somewhat hurried and incoherent apology, left his companions and ...

— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... comment, and perhaps hasten the crisis that all good patriots would fain avoid. He talked thus collectedly and fairly while the Baron Giraud could but wipe his forehead with a damp handkerchief and gasp incoherent exclamations of terror. ...

— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman

... her and she continued, in broken, incoherent sentences, to speak of the meadow where she drove the great red cow, of the broad road where she played, of the cakes they cooked, and of a pet house-dog that had ...

— The Dream • Emile Zola

... These incoherent cries came from her lips while Modeste, in alarm, picked up the newspaper and adjusted her silver spectacles upon her nose to read the paragraph. "Monsieur Fred wounded! Holy Virgin! His poor mother! That is a new trouble fallen on her, to be sure. But this quarrel had nothing ...

— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... to the tower. The shaft had been built clear up, though practically unused. Past floors used for store-rooms, past floors used for nothing at all, they went—the man's face white, the boy wailing out incoherent supplications. And then, within ten feet of the top of the shaft, and within a foot of the top floor of the building, the elevator came to a rickety stop. It wabbled back and forth; it did ...

— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell

... told her that the old tires had held, that the car ran wonderfully, that everything was perfectly safe, that she drove as unconsciously as she breathed, and that tomorrow Katy was to go for a long ride, her joy was incoherent. ...

— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... people. They are rather incoherent on the subject of the war, but not more so, perhaps, then are people elsewhere. One citizen, who used to sustain a good character, subscribed for the Weekly New York Herald a few months since, and went ...

— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... mother!" Nettie directed Kate Vollar hovering behind them. "Your fidgeting will make me scream." With an incoherent murmur she vanished from the room. The girl motioned toward a chair, and Gerrit drew it forward to a table that bore water and a small glass bowl partly covered by a sheet of paper, holding a number of symmetrical reddish-black pills. ...

— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... being deeply moved on the grief, so natural and unselfish, of this strong, brave, loyal-hearted woman. In effect, I moved to her side and, gently taking in mine the hand that hung down, murmured some incoherent words of consolation ...

— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... hoofs beating heavily upon the road, but not drowning the King's voice, as every now and then he made his horse lay back its ears to listen to the rider's words, which at times came angrily and fast. But they were incoherent and strange, and it was only now and then that Leoni, on his right, and Denis, on his left, caught their import, always something about the ...

— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn

... memory of T.H. Bayly's celebrated song 'We met,' which tells in somewhat incoherent language the story of a maiden who left her true love at the command of her mother, ...

— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood

... instant everything reeled about Drew and his mind was awhirl. Then he laid his burden down and fell frantically to rubbing her hands. Incoherent cries came from his lips as he sought to restore her to ...

— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes

... not stand hot water,—and as the question of slavery is sure to plunge all who approach it, even with the best intentions, into that fatal element, the patched-up brotherhood, which but yesterday was warranted to be better than new, falls once more into a heap of incoherent fragments. The last trial of the virtues of the Patent Redintegrator by the Special Committee of the Tract Society has ended like all the rest, and as all attempts to buy peace at too dear a rate must end. Peace is an excellent thing, but principle and ...

— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... stroking his arm and a still damp face was being rubbed against his shoulder, and presently a soft voice whispered: "Father, you have always been too good to me. You never said a word and you knew it all along, I guess!" which rather incoherent speech may be excused ...

— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... But we know nothing that would ever enable us even to conceive that Infinite Wisdom and Infinite Power had established a Church which cannot teach, or had sent an ambassador utterly unable to deliver His message. There is no use for such Church as that. Total silence is better than incoherent speech. What is the consequence? The consequence is that in the Anglican community endless variations and differences exist and flourish side by side, not alone in matters where differences are comparatively of little account, but in even the most momentous and fundamental doctrines, ...

— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan

... enjoys bliss not to be surpassed. To maintain then that the word 'that,' which refers back to the Brahman mentioned before, i.e. a Brahman possessing infinite attributes, should aim at conveying instruction about a substance devoid of all attributes, is as unmeaning as the incoherent ...

— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... from her father's room. Had some one lost his way in the night, and had her father taken him in? It did not sound like a conversation; it was monotonous, unvarying, unnatural. She hastily threw on a dressing-gown, and crept to her father's door. She recognized his voice now, but the words were incoherent. He was ill, he was delirious. There was no light within. She opened the door and whispered "Papa," but he did not hear her. In a moment she had lighted a lamp; another moment, and she stood beside him. He was sitting straight up in his bed, talking and gesticulating violently; his eyes glittered ...

— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... vanished, and with them his rationality. He looked queer. His contrasting eyes shot little malignant gleams. He muttered incoherently, and moved back toward the skiff, making violent gestures, and his muttering grew to shouting, though still incoherent. He got in the boat and started to ...

— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... his late uncle Sir Thomas had, in the closing years of his life, shown unmistakable signs of brain-softening, and that a symptom of his complaint had been his addiction to making a number of wills—"two-thirds of 'em incoherent. Every two or three days he'd compose a new one and send for Huskisson, his lawyer; and Huskisson, after reading the rigmarole through, as solemn as a judge, would get it solemnly witnessed and carry it off. He had three ...

— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... Hee had gone over to his office to lock up preparatory to our early start for Brussels. A woman of Louvain stood on the doorstep. How on earth she had ever got back to Ghent, neither Van Hee nor Luther, who was in Van Hee's office and who told me the story, could make out from her incoherent words. She had been torn from her family, driven from house and home with a mob of wretched women, and shipped into Cologne, Germany. She was almost starved; several others went mad for lack of water. ...

— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green

... improved when overlaid with Pope's conventional ornamentation. The imaginary history proceeds to relate the growth of superstition, which destroys the primeval innocence; but why or when does not very clearly appear; yet, though the general theory is incoherent, he catches a distinct view of one aspect of the question and expresses a tolerably trite view of the question with singular terseness. Who, ...

— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... are endless. The prime minister, whose last breath was spent in scolding his nurse, dies with a magnificent apothegm on his lips, manufactured by a reporter. Addison gets up a tableau and utters an admirable sentiment,—or somebody makes the posthumous dying epigram for him. The incoherent babble of green fields is translated into the language of stately sentiment. One would think, all that dying men had to do was to say the prettiest thing they could,—to make their rhetorical point,—and then bow themselves politely ...

— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... however, when, having dismounted, he forgot to tie the horse, and it wandered off in search of herbage. He called, but the beast made no sign of returning. Alone again. Alone in the night; spectral forms about him; the sleeping man adding to the ghostliness of the scene by his incoherent mutterings, his hideous, gulping breath, his ghastly, blood-curdling outcries. Then through the gloom the shining outlines of the white oak, like shreds of shrouds hung on funeral foliage. Ah! he would go mad—he must break the brutish sleep ...

— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... sweet voice, with more of weariness in it than of humility. If he chose to blame her, she was ready to take the blame; but it was Westray who now stammered some incoherent apologies. Would she kindly tell Miss Joliffe that he would be in for dinner at one o'clock, and that he was quite indifferent as to what was provided for him. The girl showed some relief at his blundering courtesy, ...

— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... When I reproach him with these evidences of a failing mind, he smiles and cries. I wish he were here that I might read these lines to him. Then there is Cowen—but I will not fill this letter with incoherent criminations. The enclosed sketch will ...

— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... means with another profounder knowledge. After some passages which have been already made use of in the building up of this narrative, or add nothing new to the psychological side of this disclosure (there is even one more allusion to the silver medal in this last entry), comes a page and a half of incoherent writing where his expression is baffled by the novelty and the mysteriousness of that side of our emotional life to which his solitary existence had been a stranger. Then only he begins to address directly the reader he had in his mind, trying ...

— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... had driven from home; a pansy, in a glass of water, which one of the children had been copying, was still on the chimney-piece. These trivial circumstances, marking repose and tranquillity, struck us at this moment with an unreasonable sort of surprise, and all that had passed seemed like an incoherent dream. The joy of having my father in safety remained, and gratitude to Heaven for his preservation. These feelings spread inexpressible pleasure over what seemed to be a new sense of existence. Even the most common things ...

— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth

... on to the bed and Polly bathed her face with cold water. Angela was tongue-tied, but she patted her hand and murmured incoherent things. Finally the ...

— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill

... on in the afternoon, I suppose, that Tom Jecks' fever came to a height. He muttered, and then began to talk angrily, but in an incoherent way, and his voice grew so loud that at last I roused myself and went up to the look-out, to watch ...

— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... hour. He was as obstinate as a mule and as incoherent as running water. I could grasp him nowhere. It was like groping in a well for a lighted torch. No doubt he had formed in his own mind some obscure, incalculable intrigue, but no reason can guess the plans which are made by ...

— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... still contained a glassful of beer, and gulped it down with relish, as though quenching a flame in his breast. But in another minute the beer had gone to his head, and a faint and even pleasant shiver ran down his spine. He lay down and pulled the quilt over him. His sick and incoherent thoughts grew more and more disconnected, and soon a light, pleasant drowsiness came upon him. With a sense of comfort he nestled his head into the pillow, wrapped more closely about him the soft, wadded quilt which had replaced ...

— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... issued from the press. The erudition and the industry displayed in the gathering together of these vast masses of information, and in their verification by experiment, are indeed amazing; and, in turning over his pages, it is impossible to stifle regret that Cardan's confused method and incoherent system should have rendered his work comparatively useless for the spread of true knowledge, and qualified it only for a place ...

— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... a long dream of night and fear, of passion, pain, and death, and opened eyes whose vision seemed curiously clear, to realise a new world, very unlike that in which the incoherent action of his dream had moved—a world of light and lively air, as sweet and wholesome as glistening white paint, sunshine, and an abundance of pure, cool air could ...

— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... found Mrs. Miller standing at the door, her face expressing alarm and grief, and little Gerty, wrapped in a large woollen shawl, in her arms. Her explanation of what had occurred thus to upset her was at first incoherent enough, but by degrees Mrs. Jernam learned that Mrs. Miller had come to entreat her to take care of the child for a day or two as she was obliged to go to ...

— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... done with mannerly Mr Hunt, who is only magni nominis umbra; the most malicious, and withal, the most incoherent ignorant scribbler of the whole party. I insult not over his misfortunes, though he has himself occasioned them; and though I will not take his own excuse, that he is in passion, I will make a better for him, for I conclude ...

— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... be impossible to convey to my reader, by description, an adequate conception of the scene that followed my landing on the beach, as we stood embracing each other indiscriminately in our dripping garments, and giving utterance to incoherent rhapsodies, mingled with wild shouts. It can be more easily imagined than described, so I will draw a curtain over this part of my history, and carry the reader forward over an ...

— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... that civil war; I have omitted to give an exact account of them, because they are well known by all, and they are described by a great number of Greek and Roman authors; yet for the sake of the connexion of matters, and that my history may not be incoherent, I have just touched upon every thing briefly. Wherefore Vespasian put off at first his expedition against Jerusalem, and stood waiting whither the empire would be transferred after the death of Nero. Moreover, when he heard that Galba was made emperor, he ...

— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... are thus devoutly affected (though few there are so), undergo somewhat of strange alteration, which very nearly approaches to madness; they speak many things at an abrupt and incoherent rate, as if they were actuated by some possessing demon; they make an inarticulate noise, without any distinguishable sense or meaning; they sometimes screw and distort their faces to uncouth and antic ...

— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus

... souls, let my George 'ave such a woman as that? What poor silly creaturs we all are!" and the old woman, bending her head down, shook it mournfully and rubbed her knees with her hand. She was thinking of him as he lay in her lap years and years ago, and pondering, in her disconnected, incoherent way, over the mysteries which are mysteries to us ...

— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... comes and goes, moved by a strange restlessness, never happy away from Ferrara, yet never caring to stay there long. Finally, on one occasion he thought himself so neglected at his return that he made a most violent scene, and became so bitter and incoherent in his complaints that he was pronounced insane and imprisoned by order of the duke. There he remained for seven years, and the most of that time he was in a well-lighted and well-furnished room, where he was allowed ...

— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... Frank, I'm in such trouble!" And in a curiously jumbled and half-incoherent manner ...

— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis

... to take my repose to myself in security, and not to inflict a set of crude and incoherent dreams upon my readers. In the meantime, when I revived, I revived in earnest, and in the course of that month carried on my work with unabated ...

— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... enough that all these reporters had been compelled to go to Grady for their information, and I could fancy them damning him between their teeth as they penned these panegyrics. I could also fancy their city editors damning as they compared these incoherent imaginings with the admirable and closely-written story in the Record, and I suspected that it was the realisation of the Record's triumph which had caused the descent of the phalanx of reporters upon the ...

— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... almost substantiate that. Had not the papers said that Peter Annersley was a hired gunman of The Spider's? And although this man had not given his name, she knew that he was The Spider of Pete's incoherent mutterings. And The Spider, glancing about the room, gazed curiously at the metal oxygen tank and then at ...

— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... back to the car, grumbling incoherent phrases. He affected to busy himself with the mechanism that had just been readjusted, looking at it wisely, thumbing a valve, though with a care to leave things ...

— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... the young man, and Billy's heart went out to him. "Oh, I beg pardon, but you—he—I—" So many things occurred to him to say at one and the same time that he emitted a snort of warring and incoherent syllables. Finally, with supreme control, "Do you know that your 'gentleman of rank' couldn't set foot in a ...

— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... glaring at one another after the episode of the hands, Richard had vastly the better of Storri, who fell into a three-ply mood of amazement, fright, and rage. Finally, Storri seemed to mutter threats while he retreated; and at the last got himself out of the Harley front door in rather an incoherent way. It was understood that he mumbled "Good-afternoon!" to Dorothy; and that "he would talk with him again," to Richard; and all as he found his hat with his left hand, the right meanwhile wrapped in a handkerchief which was a smudge of blood. It could not be described as a graceful exit ...

— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... Herbert Spencer," he began, "do you really find no logical difficulty in regarding Nature as a process of involution, passing from definite coherent homogeneity to indefinite incoherent heterogeneity?" ...

— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll

... Mr. Fink-Nottle himself, sir. He appeared anxious to confide in me. His story was somewhat incoherent, but I had no difficulty in apprehending its substance. Prefacing his remarks with the statement that this was a beautiful world, he laughed heartily and said that he had become ...

— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... stood before the safe working the combination. He trembled, and when at last the mechanism announced its effect, with a slight click of the withdrawing bolt, he gave a violent start. At the same time there came a rough knock at the door, and Northwick called out in the choking, incoherent voice of one suddenly roused from sleep: "Hello! Who's there? ...

— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... CHEEVER, and published by A.S. Barnes and Co. It is the substance of a work published during Mr. Colton's life-time, under the title of "Visit to Athens and Constantinople," with additions from the original manuscripts of the author, and revised and condensed by the editor. Mercurial, sketchy, and incoherent, tasting strongly of the salt water and the ship's-cabin, enlivened with occasional flashes of harmless vanity, it rewards the attention of the reader by its lively, rapid descriptions, its unfailing fund of good humor, and its local and geographical details, ...

— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... a spectator as Bert it presented itself as a series of incidents, some immense, some trivial, but collectively incoherent. He never had a sense of any plain issue joined, of any point struggled for and won or lost. He saw tremendous things happen and in the end his world darkened to ...

— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... express how much this goodness touched his soul; nor could do it any otherwise than by prostrating himself a second time, embracing his knees, and uttering some incoherent acclamations, which more shewed to his master the sincerity of his gratitude, and the perfect love he bore him, than the most elegant speeches ...

— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... cling and sob, interjecting her sobs with incoherent appeals for mercy. Every minute gained was to the good. Moreover, as she grovelled, she moved imperceptibly nearer to ...

— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie

... strange figures of his fancy and cannot be passed over in any history of English art. He was perhaps the most imaginative artist of English birth, though that imagination was often disordered and almost incoherent. He was not a correct draughtsman, a man with no great color-sense, and a workman without technical training; and yet, in spite of all this, he drew some figures that are almost sublime in their sweep of power. His decorative sense in filling space ...

— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... He fell ill on the 27th of April, but recovered his health, as it seemed, to such an extent that Mr. Glennie parted from him on the 21st of May. On the 29th of May, at Damascus, Mr. Buckle died. Among the incoherent utterances of his illness, it was possible to distinguish the exclamation, "Oh, my book, my book, I shall never ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... competent testimony. A Negro slave, when on trial for his life, was accorded the privilege of being tried by twelve honest white colonists before three justices of the peace. This was in striking contrast with the conduct of the colony of New York, where Negroes were arrested upon the incoherent accusations of dissolute whites and terrified blacks. It gave the Negroes a new and an anomalous position in the New World. It banished the cruel theory of Virginia, New York, and Connecticut, that the Negro was a pagan, and therefore should not be sworn in courts of justice, and threw open a wide ...

— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... commanders stole up and down behind us, urging the men to make as little sound as possible—our safety depended on our silence. But pick and shovel, like the rifle, will sing at their toil, and insistent and continuous, as if in threat, they rasped out the almost incoherent song of labour. ...

— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill

... the morning, his mind was wandering; he spoke incoherent words, mostly in Latin. About three in the afternoon, complete weakness came on; his breathing began to be interrupted. About four, he asked for naphtha, but the last syllable died on his tongue. He tried to write, but ...

— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... thus addressed, returning Harry's gripe and stare with interest, "is it possible? no—it cannot—Harry Somerville, my old, dear, unexpected friend!"—and pouring out broken sentences, abrupt ejaculations, and incoherent questions, to which neither vouchsafed replies, the two friends gazed at and walked round each other, shook hands, partially embraced, and committed sundry other extravagances, utterly unconscious of or indifferent to the fact that Hamilton was gazing at them, open- mouthed, in a species ...

— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... the time passed until I might very well expect an answer from my father. Two mails followed each other, and brought nothing. By the third I received a long and almost incoherent letter of remorse, encouragement, consolation, and despair. From this pitiful document, which (with a movement of piety) I burned as soon as I had read it, I gathered that the bubble of my father's wealth was burst, that ...

— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... outworn—to exchange for this a preciousness of quality as against mere rude bulk. It desired to introduce depth of purpose in the place of chaotic moral disorder, originality in place of a frenzied and incoherent eccentricity, and to found a solid structure upon a basis of ...

— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... room a slender maiden ran impulsively to him and throwing her arms round his neck hid her face on his breast. A few broken, incoherent words escaped her lips. Isaac disengaged himself from the clinging arms and put her from him. The face raised to his was strikingly beautiful. Oval in shape, it was as white as his own, with a broad, low brow and regular features. The eyes were large and dark and they dilated ...

— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... spectator from the gallery, as though the rebel forces are growing weaker and more demoralized every moment. Mr. Redbrook's speech, vehement and honest, helps a little; people listen to an honest and forceful man, however he may lack technical knowledge, but the majority of the replies are mere incoherent denunciations of the ...

— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... throw herself down on the straw bed in the far corner of the hut. Cora found room at the other end of the same bed, and presently their young natures gave in to the urgent demands of rest. Jack sat alone watching the white faced man who tossed and turned, muttering incoherent words. ...

— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose

... viewed the courtesans with more than the usual liberalism of mind, had even laughed loudly when one fainted and was upheld by anxious friends, the most zealous and the most intimate of whom bathed her white tragic face and listened in alarm to her incoherent murmurings of "Mike darling, oh, Mike!" John had uttered no word of protest until dear old Laura, who had never, as Mike said, behaved badly to anybody, and had been loved by everybody, sat down at their table, and the discussion ...

— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... Pete drowned his words with an incoherent roar, having apparently reached the conclusion that the time had now arrived when it would be his duty and pleasure to eat Roland alive. Nat saved the young man by the barest inch; he grappled with Pete and drew himself aside just ...

— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... manners. About the eleventh year of her age she was attacked with a fever, and among other symptoms vomited for twenty days. Then she became speechless and so continued for twenty-four days. Then she talked, but her speech was raving and incoherent. Finally she lost all power of motion and of sensibility in the parts below the head and could not swallow. From thenceforth she could not be persuaded to take food. Six months afterwards she regained the use of her limbs, but the inability to swallow remained ...

— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond

... they had been laboring so long suddenly released, the two girls locked their arms around each other in a half-hysterical outburst of relief. Margaret's meaningless words and Dorothy's incoherent praises of her lover and Crane mingled with their racking sobs as ...

— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby

... in tone, high-coloured, violent, carried to the utmost limits of expression, of an aggressive originality, almost dripping with the unheard-of (ruissilant d'inouisme); but back of the double-horned paradoxes, sophistical maxims, incoherent metaphors, swoln hyperboles, and words six feet long, are the poetic feeling of the time and the harmony of rhythm." One hears much in the critical writings of that period, of the mot propre, the vers libre, and the rime brise. It was in tragedy especially that the periphrasis reigned ...

— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... them by word or letter. After this, by Abington law[6], he drew up examinations against them, admitting their enemies the rebels as witnesses in the process, and publickly favouring all who came forwards to speak evil of them. These gave in such villanous and incoherent depositions, that he must have been blind indeed who did not plainly perceive their falsehood and malice. For this reason, their Catholic majesties would not admit of the truth of the charges, and afterwards cleared the admiral, sore repenting that they had sent such ...

— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... of the woman and the son took the other, and they lifted her, without her connivance, to her feet and kept her on them. Then they walked her down the steps. On the level below she showed taller than either of them; she was bundled up in different incoherent wraps; her head was muffled, and she wore a battered bonnet at ...

— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells

... hurry over this awful passage in my marvellous record. It is torture to dwell on the details; and indeed I have so sought to chase them from my recollection, that they only come back to me in hideous fragments, like the incoherent remains of a ...

— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... what followed of his speech was only incoherent savage babblings. He would have darted alone into the thick of the band had not Franklin and Curly caught him each by a leg ...

— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough

... had been left alone with a man mortally hurt in combat, and were likely to be arrested for the deed. He gazed with fascination upon Rose-Black, and wondered to see him stir, and at last rise, and with some incoherent words to them, get himself away. He dared not lift his gaze to the man's eyes, lest he should see there some reflection of the pain that filled his own. He would have gone after him, and tried to say something in condolence, but he was quite helpless to move; ...

— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells

... her with a kind look. She shivered and hesitated; her eyes wavered. Then she began to say a number of rapid, incoherent things, in an under-voice. Manisty drew her hand within ...

— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... to a lecture on Walt Whitman, by Dr. Needler. She had never read any of Whitman's poetry before, she did not even like it. But there were phrases and sentences here and there, sometimes of Whitman's, sometimes of Dr. Needler's, that awakened a strange incoherent music in her soul—a new chord was struck. It was almost dark when she reached her room, at the close of a stormy winter day. She stood at her window watching the crimson and black drifts of cloud piled upon each other in the west. Strife and glory she seemed to read in that sky. She thought ...

— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt

... eagerly drank up one or two small portions of wine, with which I supplied him. His fate was now evidently brought one degree nearer to him. He kept his gaze intently and unceasingly turned to the window of the dungeon. His muttered replies were incoherent, or unintelligible, and his sunk and weakened eye strained painfully on the grated window, as if he momentarily expected to see the first streak of the dawn of that morning, which to him was to be night. His nervous agitation gradually ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various

... falling into multitudinous confusion when Christianity arose—an austere exclusive faith, with its army of saints, ascetics, and unflinching martyrs, proclaiming worship to be due to one God only, and sternly refusing to acknowledge the divinity of the emperor. Against such a faith an incoherent disorderly polytheism could make no better stand than tribal levies against a disciplined army. The new religion struck directly at the sacrifices that symbolised imperial unity; the passive resistance of Christians was necessarily treated as rebellion, the ...

— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... Wild and incoherent words fell from his lips, hot and low, with no reason in them but the overwhelming reason of love itself. For he was not an eloquent man, and now he took no thought of what he said. He was far too natural to be eloquent, and far too deeply stirred to care for the ...

— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... that the dreadful scene into which he had been so unexpectedly cast had passed away without danger, began to rise so exuberantly that his conversation became quite loquacious and mirthful, if not actually, to a certain extent, incoherent. ...

— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... so long as, resting in general {233} notions, you do not ask for particulars. But now, if, dissatisfied with vagueness, we demand that our ideas shall be brought into focus and exactly defined, we discover the hypothesis to be utterly incoherent. If, not stopping at the explanation of social progress as due to the great man, we go back a step, and ask, Whence comes the great man? we find that the theory breaks down completely. The question has two conceivable answers: his origin ...

— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... merriment,—met the adoration in his eyes, and looked down, blushing. He attempted to speak, but the words choked into an incoherent sound like a sob. He jumped from the car and hurried to take the ...

— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... Their country was making a real effort to meet the indemnity; it was not entirely responsible for the delay in trying the war-criminals, and even in the matter of disarmament was not altogether blameworthy. The Bolshevists also were handled more tenderly than usual. Their reply was "incoherent" rather than "impertinent"—it might have been drawn up by a WEDGWOOD-KENWORTHY-CECIL-BOTTOMLEY-THOMAS syndicate. Still they must not be allowed to wipe out Poland, foolish and reckless as the Poles ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various

... open to him. He had then, according to Agnellus, promised to deliver to the pope all the "gold, silver, vessels of price, hoards of money," and so forth stored up in Ravenna. Agnellus tells a long and incoherent tale of the way the pope obtained this treasure and of certain plots to murder him therefor. All that seems fairly certain is that in the first year of his reign pope Paul I. visited Ravenna. Indeed the chief difficulty of ...

— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... life and hope he understood at once, and what was of more force, that she believed and felt in her own heart that every word of her recital was heard by her Creator. Albert had heard prayers and religious exhortations without number; prayers that were incoherent, pointless, vague, or uttered to the hearers instead of God; prayers that contained advice to the Deity galore, but of supplication and thankfulness not a vestige; but never before one that reached his heart and touched his ...

— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn

... she heard the call outside, 'Sir Guy's bag to his room,' and she could not rush out among the servants. At that moment, however, she spied Mary Ross and her father; she darted up to them, said something incoherent about Mary's bonnet, and took her up to her ...

— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... sleep, will yet exists. We can rouse ourselves, and the eye has not yet lost all its power. Non omnibus dormio, said Mecenes, and in this state more than one husband has acquired a sad certainty. Some ideas yet originate but are incoherent. There are doubtful lights, and see indistinct forms flit around. This condition does not last long, for sleep soon ...

— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin

... before long, it was Sara Lee's turn to stand the gaff. There was another letter, a curiously incoherent one from Harvey's sister. She referred to something that the society had done, and hoped that Sara Lee would take it in kindness, as it was meant. Harvey was well and much happier. She was to try to understand Harvey's part. He had been almost desperate. ...

— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... her mouth, with her long dark hair loose and dishevelled, and covering the upper part of her deadly pale face, through which her wild sparkling black eyes, protruding from their sockets, glanced and glared with the fire of a maniac's, while her blue lips kept gibbering an incoherent prayer one moment, and the next imploring mercy, as if she had still been in the hands of those who knew not the name; and anon, a low hysterical laugh made our very blood freeze in our bosoms, which soon ended in a long dismal yell, as she rolled off the couch upon the ...

— Great Sea Stories • Various

... told her mother the whole story; and Mrs. Fisher rejoiced that the kindly darkness hid her smile, as she listened to her little daughter's incoherent explanation of the party and ...

— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray

... last night," said Hamilton, "just as I was going to bed, and knocked me up." He was almost incoherent in his joy. "He offered me three thousand five hundred pounds for my shares, and I took ...

— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... And the hat was pushed back, with a long breath; then, as he only had a little black bag to look after, we all walked together to the lodgings, while the poor man looked bewildered and unrealising under Eustace's incoherent history of the accident—a far more conjectural and confused story than it ...

— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... She had felt inclined to attack the man, to beat him for his stupidity, as slaves are often beaten by their masters when they do wrong. When she was alone, she uttered two or three incoherent exclamations. Her body was burning with a sort of cruel, dry heat. She felt parched all over. An hour passed, and at length she again heard a tap. The messenger came in, and very ...

— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... stepped quickly into the hall and faced the messenger. "I was over at the doctor's office just now," continued her visitor evenly, "he asked me to bring this down for your uncle." She took the package with an incoherent acknowledgment. Without letting her eyes meet his, she was conscious of how fresh and clean and strong he looked, dressed in a livelier manner than usual—a partly cowboy effect, with a broader Stetson and a gayer tie than he ordinarily affected. De Spain kept on ...

— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... I fear you will think, the wild and incoherent, manner in which I have noticed the sale of the Bibliotheca Westiana had nearly driven from my recollection that, in the preceding, the same, and subsequent, year, there was sold by auction a very curious and extraordinary collection ...

— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... lay in that lethargy I do not know; only I remember dreaming incoherent and distorted dreams, because, after all, a chair is no proper place in which to seek slumber. I thought I was wandering in a wood where satyrs grinned at me and nymphs eluded me, and where I was mightily vexed at my ...

— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... Crowe, being sufficiently irritated, snapped his fingers in token of defiance. Honest Crowe thought himself scurvily used by a man whom he had cultivated with such humility and veneration; and, after an incoherent ejaculation of sea oaths, went in quest of his nephew, in order to make him acquainted with this ...

— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... term for the land along the edge of a water course; it may also denote a raised portion of the bed of a river, lake, or ocean; as, the Banks of Newfoundland. A beach is a strip or expanse of incoherent wave-worn sand, which is often pebbly or full of boulders; we speak of the beach of a lake or ocean; a beach is sometimes found in the bend of a river. Strand is a more poetic term for a wave-washed shore, especially as a place for landing or embarking; as, the keel grates on the ...

— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... sighed Dyke, as he looked round despondently, and thought of his brother's words, which, broken and incoherent as they were, told of the disappointment and bitterness which had followed the long, ...

— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn

... leaving us two alone. Nor did Marie speak again, unless it were in distressed incoherent protests, till, an hour later, I delivered her into the charge of the Mother Superior at the convent by the side of the bay. And the old lady bade me wait till she saw Marie comfortably bestowed, and then she returned to me and we walked side by side for a while in the little burying-ground, ...

— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope

... see A handsome woman with a fish's tail, Or a man's head upon a horse's neck, Or limbs of beasts, of the most different kinds, Cover'd with feathers of all sorts of birds; Would you not laugh, and think the painter mad? Trust me that book is as ridiculous, Whose incoherent style, like sick men's dreams, Varies all shapes, and ...

— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... at the air. The tension of her thought relaxed. She remembered that when he walked in streets he was always making pictures. She thought of his words.... "It's a part of me that love hasn't changed, except to increase. A pestiferous sanity keeps demanding of me that I translate incoherent things into words. The city keeps handing itself to me like a blank piece of paper to write on. ...

— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... albeit in his agony of grief and remorse he accused himself wildly as answerable for the tragedy, and gave clear proof that the charge of madness was well founded, if strange looks and desperate, incoherent words were evidence enough. ...

— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman

... Faith's heart. She stumbled towards him and would have fallen at his feet but for his upholding hand. She broke into wild, incoherent words, ...

— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres

... that woman was speaking so bitterly,—but had not recognized her tones, nor once fancied it might be she. Now she easily recalled her words, and understood some of her allusions. And her wild, distracted, incoherent speech in the shop, too,—ah! it was all too plain; that was surely she; but what might be the nature or degree of her trouble Miss Wimple dared not try to guess. This Philip Withers,—was he a villain, after all? "Had he—this poor lady—Oh, God ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... and terror were inexpressible. His last words were incoherent. They denoted the tumult and vehemence of frenzy. They intimated his resolution to seek the presence of your wife. I had furnished a clue which could not fail to conduct him to her presence. What might not be dreaded from the interview? Clithero is a ...

— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... He stood before his easel, on which rested a half-finished canvas. And he painted—painted as true and as sure as if awake, blending the colours, picking out his work, working with all his old artistic touch and finish. All this time his lips were moving, muttering incoherent words I could not hear. At last he laid aside his tools with a sigh that almost raised compassion in my heart. Then walking towards the window at the far end of the room, he appeared to look out ...

— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... caught wildly at her son; and prostrating herself at a safe distance, babbled incoherent and unheeded gratitude. The dog, mad with rage and pain, made a purposeful spring at his one definite assailant; and once again Desmond, half-blinded with sunlight, swung the heavy stick aloft. But before it fell a revolver shot ...

— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... the bed. "You stay here, my darling," he said tenderly. "I'll bring baby to you," and after a solicitous caress he turned toward baby's crib and bent fondly over the little one. "Ah, there's father's man," he said. "Was he lonesome baby? Oh, goodis g'acious," then followed an incoherent muttering of baby talk, as he bore the youngster toward Zoie's bed. "Come, my precious," he called to Zoie, as he sank down on the edge of ...

— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo

... was startled in my sleep by the hurried tramp of several men, who rushed in to say they were Grant's porters—Bogue men who had deserted him. Grant, they said, in incoherent, short, rapid, and excited sentences, was left by them standing under a tree, with nothing but his gun in his hand. All the Wanguana had been either killed or driven away by M'yonga's men, who all turned out and fell upon the caravan, ...

— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... three constitutions, all the while struggling single-handed with Europe, leagued against her. She had undergone the violence of the Reign of Terror, the contradictory passions of the Assemblies, and the incoherent feebleness of the Directory. For the first time since the death of King Louis XIV., her history finds once more a centre, and henceforth revolves round a single man. For fifteen years, victorious or vanquished, ...

— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... in his Majesty's triumph. He then told Sir Henry that he might take his leave of the portrait, for he would never give it up again for any treasure, and that to possess the favour of the original he would forsake all the world. He fell into many more such passionate and incoherent expressions of rhapsody, as of one suddenly smitten and spell-bound with hapless love, bitterly reproaching the ambassador for never having brought him any answers to the many affectionate letters which he had written to the queen, whose silence had ...

— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... whenever he went out, and only for an hour after midnight was the boy ever allowed to emerge into the dark, waste garden at the back of the house. The rest of the time was spent in the cell, and Absalom broke into incoherent wailing as he called Hartley and Coryndon to witness that it ...

— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie

... to shut out the perils of the darkness. I felt Penelope's arms gripped tightly about my neck, her dead weight dragging me down. I heard the last echoes of the shot, faintly, down the narrow valley, and outside the incoherent shouts of men. Then there was a silence, broken only by Penelope's sobs. It seemed to me long hours I was there on my knees before I dared to open my eyes and bring myself into the world again. And when I did it was to see the room darkened and the Professor leaning against the closed door with ...

— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... have ever heard. He was always clothed in the undress uniform of a Prussian general; and, as he rose, his bulk made him imposing. His first utterances were disappointing. He seemed wheezy, rambling, incoherent, with a sort of burdensome self-consciousness checking his ideas and clogging his words. His manner was fidgety, his arms being thrown uneasily about, and his fingers fumbling his mustache or his clothing or the papers on his ...

— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... magic which can be wrought even now by means of music which is both incoherent and elementary. His consciousness of this attains to huge proportions, as does also his instinct to dispense entirely with higher law and style. The elementary factors—sound, movement, colour, in short, the whole sensuousness of music—suffice. Wagner never ...

— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.