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

... sure as Heaven shall rescue me, I have no thought what men they be; Nor do I know how long it is (For I have lain entranced I wis) Since one, the tallest of the five, Took me from the palfrey's back, A weary woman, scarce alive. Some mutter'd words his comrades spoke: He placed me underneath this oak; He swore they would return with haste; Whither they went I cannot tell— I thought I heard, some minutes past, Sounds as of a castle bell. Stretch forth thy hand" (thus ended she), "And ...

— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... brother ventured to ask how the balance would stand when the next accounts were made up, and whether it would be as great in favour of the orphans as when the previous balance-sheet had been prepared. Mr. Mutter's calm but evasive answer was: "It will be as great as the Lord pleases." This was no intentional rudeness. To have said more would have been turning from the one Helper to make at least an indirect appeal to man for help; ...

— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... meaningly, and as she rose to leave the conservatory, for another dance, she heard him mutter: "for ...

— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... face change. Next instant he fell forward to the ground and lay there still. All the company stood struck with horror, only the royal physician ran to him, while Roi and others who were priests began to mutter prayers. ...

— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard

... the gentlemen made a low-voiced but audible remark to his neighbor, and another hummed a line from a love song. The horses moved impatiently amongst the loose stones, and the rangers began to mutter that night would be upon them before they ...

— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... conceited sixteen-year-old when her mother died, so spoiled and so self-centred that old Lady Frothingham had been heard more than once to mutter that the young lady could get down from her high horse and make herself useful, or she could march. But that was six years ago. And now—this! Magsie had evidently decided to make herself useful, but she had managed to make herself beautiful and fascinating ...

— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... Glaucon turned toward the only faces that he saw out of the innumerable host: Themistocles, Democrates, Simonides, Cimon. They beheld him raise his arm and lift his glorious head yet higher. Glaucon in turn saw Cimon sink into his seat. "He wakes!" was the appeased mutter passing from the son of Miltiades and running along every tier of Athenians. And silence deeper than ever held the stadium; for now, with Lycon victor twice, the literal turning of a finger in the next event might win or lose ...

— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... the meantime little Duffy had passed on to the next man, in a side mutter, the significant phrase: "He knows!" It went from lip to lip like a watchword passing along a line of sentinels. Each man heard it imperturbably, completed the sentence he was speaking before, or maintained ...

— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... at my side, related his errand and order, gave the particulars of my arrest, declaimed against our agent, and submitted the journals. He told his story stammeringly, and I heard one of the officers in the background mutter ...

— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... much, anyway," Tubby was heard to mutter to himself, "if only I thought I could stand the terrible sights. You know, seeing blood always used to make me feel faint-like. But then a scout ...

— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson

... mind?" I heard Wolf Larsen mutter, half to himself, half to them as though they could hear. "You want to come aboard, eh? Well, ...

— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... poor Harry, who was quite taken aback at this change in his prospects, and could only mutter, that he had never turned ...

— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... and faint in the Wilderness, then did Amalek set upon them; just so does the Devil set upon the people of God, when their Losses, their Crosses, their Exercises have Enfeebled their Souls within them; and what says the Devil? E'en the same that was mutter'd in the Ear of the Afflicted Job, Is not this the Uprightness of thy Ways? Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being Innocent? If thou wert a Child of God, He would never follow thee, with such Testimonies of his Indignation. This is the Logic of the Devil; and he thus interrupts ...

— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... stab a toad, And mutter swift, as vypers swear; And spectres that the cauldrons wrought, Glare at the storm-swept sins that tell Of monsters that the night-winds rode When bloody plumes stole to a lair Beyond the confines ...

— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque

... shack for days. He was so upset for fear someone would find me that instead of going around as usual without saying much, he would talk all the time. He was cunning enough not to talk loudly, though. He had a glimmer of sense even if he was crazy, for he kept his voice down to a mutter. I dare say my broken leg would have healed a good deal faster, if he had gone on giving me as good care as he gave me at first. He wasn't anxious for me to get well. He used to say, 'When you can walk again, you will have to stay ...

— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower

... was a mutter of bees, And Bill 'gan muttering too,— "If the honey-comb swells in the hollow trees, (What else can a Didymus do?) I'll steer to the purple woods myself And see if this thing be so, Which the chaplain found on his little book-shelf, For Pliny lived ...

— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... Storri stood 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 ...

— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm! Perhaps 'tis tender, too, and pretty, At each wild word to feel within A sweet recoil of love and pity. And what if in a world of sin (O sorrow ...

— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... her with me. I'd rather be on this boat of mine than I would be out there, on the open water, in this fog." But as he walked back to the place where stood the rocket apparatus, Coxeter heard him mutter, "The brutes! Not all seconds or thirds either. I wish I had 'em here, ...

— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... and, hearing the noise of the enemy in the corridor, walked with it in his hand across to the door. He tapped his box with accustomed preciseness, but I, a step behind, having lingered for a last look into Margaret's eyes, heard him mutter, "Damn the wagon!" ...

— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... the nation, it is also fundamentally and eternally right and good that the pecuniary interests of the owners of the material means of life should rule unabated in all those matters of public policy that touch on the material fortunes of the community at large. Barring a slight and intermittent mutter of discontent, this arrangement has also the cordial approval of popular sentiment in these modern democratic nations. One need only recall the paramount importance which is popularly attached to the maintenance and extension ...

— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... was again silent. Then he began to mutter, as I thought, incoherently about the Peninsula and obeying orders; and how some officer woke Lord Wellington at night and said that something or other (I could not catch what,—the phrase was technical and military) was impossible; ...

— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... he had got that title—led her mother in to dinner, Presbury gave her his arm. On the way he found opportunity to mutter: ...

— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips

... mutter, and was glad. He seemed more of a man invoking God in his pain than in waving deity ...

— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... heard him mutter. "Must be something in the Mohammedan business after all. Extremely beautiful woman, and that gold thing looks well ...

— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... had been very restless all this time, but had not once looked up, now turned to Sir John, and ventured to mutter something to the effect that he must go, or my lord would perhaps ...

— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... expected it either, for Ken heard him mutter grimly to himself. He ordered practice at once, and called off the names of those he had chosen to start the game. As one in a trance Ken Ward found himself ...

— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey

... scowl transformed his handsome face into a thing of horror. He began to mutter savagely obscene abuse. A leopard crept into the sunlight, tried to turn again but was prevented by the closing trap, and crouched against ...

— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy

... instantaneously, and if exposed to "the elements"—moisture with a free access of oxygen—decays in a year or two, may be but partially consumed when millions of years have passed. The final result is, however, inevitable, and always the same, viz., the oxidation and escape of the organic mutter, and the concentration of the inorganic matter woven into its composition—in it, but not of it—forming what we call ...

— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various

... of doubt that Cicero made a practice of reading in bed. Why, I can almost see him now, propped up in his couch, unrolling scroll after scroll of his favorite literature, and enjoying it mightily, too, which enjoyment is interrupted now and then by the occasion which the noble reader takes to mutter maledictions upon the slave who has let the lamp run low of oil or has neglected ...

— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... not disappointed. The girl's eyes sparkled at sight of the delicate pink blossoms and she thanked him so heartily that he could only mutter, "Oh, ...

— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston

... habi-tation, Where seated at tea, O'er a dish of Bohea, Brougham was quaffing his 'usual potation' (For you know his indignant ne-gation, When accused once of jollifi-cation), Down went saucer and cup, Which Le Marchant picked up, Not to hear his lord mutter 'd—n-ation.' ...

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

... and as he told all he knew the Colonel groaned again and again and to Dick's horror he heard him mutter to himself:— ...

— Our Soldier Boy • George Manville Fenn

... leaf is a tongue uttering praises, like one who keepeth crying, 'In the name of God.'"[24] And the Afghan poet Abdu 'r-Rahman says: "Every tree, every shrub, stands ready to bend before him; every herb and blade of grass is a tongue to mutter his praises." And Horace Smith, that most pleasing but unpretentious writer, both of verse and prose, has thus finely amplified the idea ...

— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... he commenced to mutter, and I did not like the look of his mouth and teeth as he spoke. The words were at first indistinguishable, and then—with a tremendous start—I recognized something about them which filled me with icy fear till I recalled the breadth of my uncle's education and the interminable ...

— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... do you mutter about a time, rascal? You were the incendiary. There's to put you in mind of your time.—A memorandum. ...

— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... days they would go to bed in the big nursery, sure that no children in the world were so content. When there was no frightening wind in the trees they could hear through the open window the sea across the fields. "It's a quare, good world," Jane would mutter sleepily; and Fly would reply: "The sea's the nicest ould thing in it; you'd think it was hooshin' us to sleep"; and then Patsy's voice would come from the dressing-room: "Mebby it's bringin' our ship ...

— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick

... demanding back her darlings. But Our Lady of Sighs never clamours, never defies, dreams not of rebellious aspirations. She is humble to abjectness. Hers is the meekness that belongs to the hopeless. Murmur she may, but it is in her sleep. Whisper she may, but it is to herself in the twilight. Mutter she does at times, but it is in solitary places that are desolate as she is desolate, in ruined cities, and when the sun has gone down to his rest. This sister is the visitor of the Pariah, of the Jew, of the bondsman to the oar in Mediterranean galleys, of the English criminal in Norfolk ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... because he would have been entirely satisfied with berries and roots, if he could have found enough. Mr. Lynx and Mr. Panther would snarl angrily. Mr. Coyote and Mr. Fox would show their teeth and mutter about what they would do to Mr. Wolf if only they were big enough and strong ...

— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess

... go away at night leaving an expiring fire of drift-wood upon the shore, from the dark depth of the sea might something creep forth, crawl up towards the fire, look at it with wild intentness, and dragging all its limbs up to it, mutter in hoarse complaint: ...

— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev

... you say?" the captain repeated; and as he glanced at us from the corner of his eye, I heard him mutter, "They are not dressed exactly in dinner costume, but there's a plucky look about the fellows that I ...

— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... cricket with much agility, and seated herself on the horse's back. Once she slipped off; but the Crane boy had the address to mutter, "Put your leg over the horn!" and, owing to that timely advice, she remained. But he was to experience the gratitude of an unfeeling world; for Ann Toby, in the irritation of one tried beyond endurance, fell upon him and cuffed him soundly. And ...

— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... heart. No stronger proof can be given that we ourselves are destitute of true religion. The faith or the practice must be totally wanting. We may talk devoutly; we may hie, in due season, to the house of prayer; while there, we may put on solemn visages and mutter holy names. We may abstain from profane amusements or unauthorized words; we may shun, as infections, the company of unbelievers. We may study homilies and creeds; but all this, without rational activity for others' good, is not religion. I see, in all this, nothing ...

— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... is custom and tradition, and the habit of thought it weaves about us, that I have heard ancient and grave farmers, when the fact was mentioned with horror, hum, and ah! and handle their beards, and mutter that 'they didn't know as 'twas altogether such a bad thing as they was hung for sheep-stealing.' There were parsons then, as now, in every rural parish preaching and teaching something they called the Gospel. ...

— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... good son," the old woman began to mutter they led her out. At the door she looked back. Suvaroff turned away. "Once a week he came to me and brought me five dollars," she said, quite calmly. "He was a good son. He even played his music to give pleasure to others. Yes, yes! He was like ...

— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... we have yielded to the infernal temptation, the lying prism vanishes, the halo disappears, and there only remains vice in all its hideousness and repulsive nudity. It is then that we hear a threatening voice mutter secretly in ...

— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... affright in her heart, Oh, if her father were only there! For a long time she dared not move, but stood and watched the quiet face. Then, suddenly, the lips began to mutter unintelligible things, and Polly's eyes dilated in terror. That September night, when Colonel Gresham was so near to death, ...

— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd

... originally, I presume, adopted in engrossing as a safeguard against the intrusion of a forged line between the legitimate text and the attesting signature. He was quite sensible that this ornament might as well be dispensed with; and his family often heard him mutter, after involuntarily performing it, "There ...

— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... seemed, to my eyes, no better than a railway laborer, fresh from tunnelling or boring, and wearing a blouse to hide his working dress. These ill- used men ought to 'strike' for better clothes, in case Antigone should again revisit the glimpses of an Edinburgh moon; and at the same time they might mutter a hint about the ale. But the great hindrances to a perfect restoration of a Greek tragedy, lie in peculiarities of our theatres that cannot be removed, because bound up with their purposes. I suppose that ...

— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... wont to walk about the country breviary in hand, not merely reading, but actually reciting the office to themselves. My green book was taken for a breviary, or for a book of hours, and my mouthings of Dolores or The Garden of Proserpine for "the blessed mutter of the Mass"! Assured by me that I was not a priest, he asked me who I was. I told him my name and he instantly stretched out a huge and grimy hand, and shook mine with a hearty violence, and insisted that I should come home with him and drink a mug of cider. I accepted ...

— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... Bremilu waited, while from the thicket came, at intervals, the savage snuffling, with now and then a grumbling mutter. ...

— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... like unwieldy birds over the fields. "Mercy on us!" cry the maids, for it is milking-time, and they have to fight their way on hands and knees across the yard to the cowshed, dragging a lantern that WILL go out and a milk-pail that WON'T be held. And "Lord preserve us!" mutter the old wives seated round the stove within doors—and their thoughts are far away in the north with the Lofoten fishermen, out at ...

— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer

... aware for the first time, that a mutter of conversation had been going on incessantly since she had come in, in one of the recessed window-seats behind her. Now, when Galbraith's gaze plunged in that direction, she turned and looked too. A big blonde chorus-girl ...

— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... chirography. But Paton set to work upon it with as much concentration as if it had been a recipe for the Philosopher's Stone; he reproduced the lines and angles on fresh paper, and labored over the writing with a magnifying-glass and a dictionary. At times he would mutter indistinctly to himself, lift his eyebrows, nod or shake his head, bite his lips, and rub his forehead, and anon fall to work again with fresh vigor. At last he leaned back in his chair, thumped his hand on ...

— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne

... silent and speechless, and Clymer was quickly infected by the very force and potency of his companion's agitation and distressed surprise. He heard him mutter, "Oh this is intolerable!" and then, it was, as if a cold sense of dislike had sprung up between them.—Both were glad to escape the other's company, and Hyde fled to the privacy of his own room, that he might hide there the almost ...

— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr

... when he woke up, and he slipped off his chair and staggered blindly across the room to his mother, with his knuckles in his eyes like a little, little boy. He climbed into her lap and settled himself down with a grunt of contentment. There was a mutter of thunder in his ears, and he felt great warm drops of rain falling on his face. And into his dreams he carried the dim consciousness that the ...

— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton

... time high noon, and as we returned to the Mutter-Haus, the benevolent superintendent insisted that we should remain and partake with him of the mid-day meal. We complied, and presently were summoned to the dining-hall, where we found a small circle of the Brothers, and the two head teachers. After a brief but appropriate grace, we took ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... the lantern raised it, but its light merely served to blind him. Terry passed on without a word and heard the other mutter behind him: ...

— Black Jack • Max Brand

... new proofs would show, Without much travel you may find a foe. Those foes are neither so remote nor few, That you should need each other to pursue. Lean times and foreign wars should minds unite; When poor, men mutter, but they seldom fight. O holy Alha! that I live to see Thy Granadines assist their enemy! You fight the christians' battles; every life You lavish thus, in this intestine strife, Does from our weak foundations take one ...

— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... unclasping her fingers, her face was strained, her response came in a mutter so low that 'Poleon barely ...

— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... towards the window; but, after interchanging a mutter or two, soon applied themselves to the door-posts below. There they seemed to discover what they wanted, for they disappeared from view by entering at the doorway. 'When they emerge,' said Eugene, 'you shall see me bring them both ...

— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... sensation, for instance, is that which we experience when, after studying the 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' Gibbon tells us how the thought of writing it came to him upon the Capitol, among the ruins of dead Rome, and within hearing of the mutter of the monks of Ara Coeli, and how he finished it one night by Lake Geneva, and laid his pen down and walked forth and saw the stars ...

— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... dreamed all that had passed between them. He ordered another drink, to get the Chinaman out of the room, and then seized the parcel, which was reposing on a chair near him, and with no more than a mutter—"this is something of yours"—he rammed it swiftly into a recess in the counter, at her feet. There! The rest was her affair. And just in time, too. Schomberg turned up, yawning affectedly, almost before Davidson had regained his seat. He cast about suspicious and irate glances. An invincible ...

— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... further her policy; but from the moment that she discovered his actual complicity in the plot for Rizzio's murder she had loathed and avoided him. Ominous words dropped from her lips. "Unless she were free of him some way," Mary was heard to mutter, "she had no pleasure to live." The lords whom he had drawn into his plot only to desert and betray them hated him with as terrible a hatred, and in their longing for vengeance a new adventurer saw the road to power. Of all the border nobles James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell, was the boldest ...

— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... rumors were afloat to the effect that the adjutant had long and important orders to publish, and this would still further prolong the parade. Cadet Private Frazier, First Class, one of the best dancers in the battalion, was heard to mutter to his next-door neighbor in the front rank of the color company: "It'll be nine o'clock before we get things going at the hotel, and we've got to quit at nine-thirty. Confound the orders!" And yet, peering from under the visor of his shako, Mr. Frazier could see without ...

— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King

... landlady put down the harp and began to mutter many apologies, for I was extremely well dressed, and she probably believed me to be some person of consequence who had become the protector and patron ...

— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson

... with her now, examining to find how badly she was hurt, Mrs. Donegan explained. The saints only knew what would become of the family if it should be so that she was laid up long. Her father was bedridden, and her mother so queer in her head that she did nothing but sit in a corner and mutter to herself all day long. Luckily there wasn't more than a foot of water in the cellar, and they got her out right away. It had been half full when little Terence Reilly fell in, for that was the time of the backwater ...

— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston

... and walked to the window, his face a deep scarlet. I heard him mutter, "Beelzebub, prince of devils," so I suppose the cabin boy had given his bird a ...

— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders

... at the dark. I found myself praying that the Heat-Ray might have suddenly and painlessly struck her out of being. Since the night of my return from Leatherhead I had not prayed. I had uttered prayers, fetish prayers, had prayed as heathens mutter charms when I was in extremity; but now I prayed indeed, pleading steadfastly and sanely, face to face with the darkness of God. Strange night! Strangest in this, that so soon as dawn had come, I, who ...

— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... the chintz tent, recited without expression: "Though you travel east or west, may your luck be the best." She dropped her voice to a toneless mutter about a "journey," and some papers that were to be signed, and a "false" dark woman who pretended to be Mrs. Byrne's friend, but would do ...

— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... an Old Person of Prague, Who was suddenly seized with the plague; But they gave him some butter, Which caused him to mutter, And cured that ...

— Book of Nonsense • Edward Lear

... "It is the church of the Huguenots of Vassy," was the answer. "Are there many of them?" asked the duke. He was told that there were, and that they were increasing more and more. "Then," says the chronicler, "he began to mutter and to put himself in a white heat, gnawing his beard, as he was wont to do when he was enraged or had a mind to take vengeance." Did he turn aside out of his way with his following, to pass right through Vassy, or did he confine himself to sending some of his people to bring him an account of what ...

— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... sat down to the breakfast and ate it, but every now and then he would mutter: "Well, I could have sworn—" and he'd get up and search the larder and the cupboards and everything; only, luckily, he ...

— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... praised!" I heard him mutter. Then lifting my beautiful, unconscious burden in my arms, I carried her upstairs to ...

— Uncanny Tales • Various

... viols are playing That grand old wordless rhyme; And still those two ate swaying In perfect tune and time. If the great bassoons that mutter, If the clarinets that blow, Were given a voice to utter The ...

— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... cross and dissatisfied, and mutter somethin' about the milkin'. There was where ...

— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... "DIE Mutter." It is in a little Hebrew school in a small town in Russia. The rabbi has gone to say the evening prayer, leaving the small boys to study. Instead they begin to talk of various subjects. Mothers are discussed and ...

— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... the other, on his face, six paces off, Lay moaning, and the old familiar name He mutter'd through the grass, seem'd like a scoff Of some lost soul remembering ...

— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris

... to mutter, "that would be funny now, for a fact. My dad'd like mighty well to get that stuff ...

— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren

... Doctor opened his purse and took out some gold coins I heard Polynesia, who was sitting on my shoulder watching the whole affair, mutter beneath her breath, ...

— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting

... How now Woolsacke, what mutter you? Fal. A Kings Sonne? If I do not beate thee out of thy Kingdome with a dagger of Lath, and driue all thy Subiects afore thee like a flocke of Wilde-geese, Ile neuer weare haire on my face more. You Prince of Wales? Prin. Why you ...

— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... to his feet. He was becoming delirious with terror. He stepped forward again. The ground seemed solid and he laughed a horrid, wild laugh. Another step and another. He paused, breathing hard. Then he started to mutter,— ...

— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... General and drove the enemy back till they found him again; though what it all meant we never knew till it was over. Then, after mighty little rest, we marched fast and far, with cannon-thunder in our ears in a constant mutter, always growing louder, until in the afternoon we came at a quickstep through a piece of woods out upon the plain by Waterloo, where they had been fighting all day. Our feet sucked in the damp ground, the wet grain brushed our knees, as our compact ...

— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... are the odds That we shall wake up here within the sun, When time is done, And pick up all the treasures one by one Our hands let fall in sleep?" "You have begun To mutter in your dreams," Said John-a-nods to Jock-a-dreams, And they both ...

— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman

... of cosmetics must needs be so splendid an influence, conjuring boons innumerable, that one inclines almost to mutter against that inexorable law by which Artifice must perish from time to time. That such branches of painting as the staining of glass or the illuminating of manuscripts should fall into disuse seems, in ...

— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... at about this time that Copernicus Droop finally awakened. He lay perfectly still for a minute or two, wondering where he was and what had happened. Then he began to mutter to himself. ...

— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... horror. He had been so excited that he had not thought about it until that moment. The officers' laughter confused him still more. He stood before Bagration with his lower jaw trembling and was hardly able to mutter: "I don't know... your excellency... I had no ...

— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... she said frankly, "I believe what you say. And I can't let you leave without expressing my great thanks for your brave act. Ross must have been talking in his delirium. But you know—I remember one German proverb in my schoolgirl exercises—'Jeder Mutter Kind ist schon?' 'Every mother thinks her own child beautiful.' And I couldn't understand how Ross could make such a statement. But why should you have such a ...

— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon

... supper, and, hardly had the dishes been put away, when from the west, where there was a low-flying bank of clouds, there came a mutter of thunder. A little later there was a dull, red illumination amid ...

— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton

... band mechanically mutter the same word, in like tones of apprehension. For although slow to perceive the sign, even yet but slightly perceptible, all of them have had experience ...

— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... man had never possessed in all his life so much money at one time; and so vast was his joy that he could only mutter a few broken sentences ...

— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... minutes or an hour, when, as the enemy's fire had evidently ceased or slackened, I gave the order to cease firing. But it was very difficult at first to make them desist: the taste of gunpowder was too intoxicating. One of them was heard to mutter, indignantly,—"Why de Cunnel order Cease firing, when de Secesh blazin' away at de rate ob ten dollar a day?" Every incidental occurrence seemed somehow to engrave itself upon my perceptions, without interrupting ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... the dramatists have associated the massacre of a mother and her seven sons and the martyrdom of the aged Eleazar, who caused the uprising of the Jews, with the family history of Judas himself. J. W. Franck produced "Die Maccabaische Mutter" in Hamburg in 1679, Ariosti composed "La Madre dei Maccabei" in 1704, Ignaz von Seyfried brought out "Die Makkabaer, oder Salmonaa" in 1818, and Rubinstein his opera in ...

— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... Gaspar, and such other landscapists, painting all Nature's flowery ground as one barrenness, and all her fair foliage as one blackness, and all her exquisite forms as one bluntness; when, in this sluggard gloom and sullen treachery of heart, they mutter their miserable attestation to what others had long ago discerned for them,—the sky's brightness,—we do not thank them; or thank them only in so far as, even in uttering this last remnant of truth, they are more commendable than those who have sunk from apathy to atheism, ...

— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... W. the subject of their serious conversation. One said that "He had seen him wander about by night, and look rather strangely at the moon! and then, he roamed over the hills, like a partridge." Another said, "He had heard him mutter, as he walked, in some outlandish brogue, that nobody could understand!" Another said, "It's useless to talk, Thomas, I think he is what people call a 'wise man.'" (a conjuror!) Another said, "You are every one of you wrong. I know what he is. We ...

— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... his audience grew, the fiercer grew his resentment against this complacent Christendom which took so much from the Jew and gave so little. 'Shylocks!' he would mutter between his clenched teeth ...

— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... confessed in a hollow mutter, staring intently at the Number One bungalow. "It's quite irrational," he declared in a ...

— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... book of Tully's Tusculan questions, and from the great Lord Shaftesbury. In pronouncing these he was one day so eager, that he unfortunately bit his tongue; and in such a manner, that it not only put an end to his discourse, but created much emotion in him, and caused him to mutter an oath or two: but what was worst of all, this accident gave Thwackum, who was present, and who held all such doctrine to be heathenish and atheistical, an opportunity to clap a judgment on his back. Now this was done with so malicious a sneer, that ...

— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... head from his shoulder. Gus could not meet her eyes, but felt them fixed searchingly on his face. There was a distant mutter of thunder like a warning voice. He ...

— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... along the slight track which guided him towards them, he pondered the circumstances in which he then found himself, and, indulging in a habit which he had acquired in his frequent and prolonged periods of solitude, began to mutter his ...

— Fort Desolation - Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land • R.M. Ballantyne

... him loudly that land so fair,[E] "The king thou set'st over us, by a free air Is swept away, senseless." And old Sword then First knew the might of great Captain Pen. So strangely it bow'd him, so wilder'd his brain, That now he stood, hatless, renouncing his reign; Now mutter'd of dust laid in blood; and now 'Twixt wonder and patience went lifting his brow. Then suddenly came he, with gowned men, And said, "Now observe me—I'm Captain Pen: I'll lead all your changes—I'll write all your ...

— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt

... of sabre and clink of spurs; Once more the long grey cloaks adorn The bellicose backs of the high-well-born; Once more to the click of martial boots Junkers exchange their grave salutes, Taking the pavement, large with side, Shoulders padded and elbows wide; And if a civilian dares to mutter They boost him off and ...

— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various

... us, my son, bring calmness to a Christian soul too much troubled with the affairs of this world." He sighed, nodded to me with a friendly, sad smile, and began to mutter his prayers ...

— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... weighed, measured, and trafficked with as so much coin! where is all this going on? Do you suppose it was only going on in the time of David, and that nobody but Jews ever murder the poor? If so, it would surely be wiser not to mutter and mumble for our daily lessons what does not concern us; but if there be any chance that it may concern us, and if this description, in the Psalms, of human guilt is at all generally applicable, as the descriptions in the Psalms of human sorrow are, may it not be advisable to know wherein this ...

— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... shake her head and mutter "Impossible" for some time, while she stared at the candle as if she expected that it would solve the mystery. Then she got up and examined the bedclothes, and found that a good deal of the rhubarb had been ...

— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... thousand lights; clack and mutter of innumerable voices, laughter, footsteps; hiss and rumble of passing trains taking gamblers back to Nice or Mentone; fevered wailing from the violins of four fiddlers with dark-white skins outside the cafe; and above, around, beyond, the dark sky, and the dark mountains, and the dark sea, ...

— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Their little steps are heard upon the hard floor. Nobody speaks; nobody breathes. Lowering and raising their heads, as if measuring each other with a look, the two roosters mutter sounds, perhaps of threat or contempt. They have perceived the shining blades. Danger animates them, and they turn toward each other decided, but they stop at a short distance, and, as they look at each other, they ...

— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal

... rifle over his head. Forward sprang the doctor to his side, his poplar club likewise swung up to strike. Back fell the Indians a pace or two, the Chief following them with a torrential flow of vehement invective. Slowly, sullenly the crowd gave back, cowed but still wrathful, and beginning to mutter in angry undertones. Once more the tent flap was pushed aside and there issued two figures who ran to the side of the Indian boy, now swaying weakly ...

— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor

... long, cold, unpleasant night journey, wedged in between two soldiers wearing arm-bands, who glowered at a Russian general officer opposite, and continued to mutter to each other about imperialists, ...

— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... now—as they slid thro' the pine-woods with their peaks of midnight blue, She heard, in the broadening distance, the deep sound that she knew, A mutter of steady thunder that grew as they glanced along; But ever she glanced before them And glanced away to the darkness, And or ever they heard it rightly, she raised her ...

— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes

... seize the missionary by the hand, and claim him as a countryman. Indeed this feeling was so strong upon him on first hearing Mr Williams's English tone of voice—although the missionary spoke only in the native tongue— that he could scarcely restrain himself, and had to mutter "honour bright" several times, in order, as it were, to hold himself in check. "Honour bright" became his moral rein, or curb, on that trying occasion. But when, in the course of the palaver, Mrs Williams, who had accompanied her husband on this dangerous expedition, ...

— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne

... heard O'Reilly mutter. And leaning comfortably against his shoulder she felt wicked, treacherous, because she had more than once applied the same epithet to him. Whatever happened, never would she ...

— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... Time passed, and to the darkness of the storm was added the darkness of the night. The occupants of the boat, drenched by the rain and the seas she had shipped, shivered with cold. Regulus began to stir and mutter. "He is coming to himself," Landless cried to Darkeih. "When you see that he is conscious, make him lie still. He must ...

— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... would mutter "shocking!" And give her head a sorrowful rocking, And make a clucking with palate and tongue, Like the call of Partlet to gather her young, A sound, when human, that always proclaims At least a thousand pities and shames; But still the darker the tale of ...

— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... my sleeve timidly, and caught a swift glimpse of her eyes. We must carry out the deception now, and go away together. There was no other choice. The policeman stared after us through the mist, rolling his night stick in his hand. I heard him mutter to himself: ...

— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish

... Ellen Seymour from the room, when the door opened and the freshman basketball team filed in. For a brief instant the principal's attention was fixed upon the entering girls, and in that instant Mignon found time to mutter in Marjorie's ear, "I'll never forgive you for this and you'll be sorry. Just wait ...

— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester

... krava shto yoy ye bila mati, Vuk Karajich, p. 158. In the German translation (p. 188) Wie dies nun die Kuh sah, die einst seine Mutter gewesen war. ...

— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... silence fell again. Sophia's breathing and the faint mutter of old Masha's prayers mingled with the wailing of the wind as it rushed round the corner of the house, and the pelt of freezing rain on the windows. In the half-lighted room no one either moved or spoke. Minutes passed. Half an hour. Ivan, standing on ...

— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... his face, six paces off, Lay moaning, and the old familiar name He mutter'd through the grass, seem'd like a scoff Of some lost ...

— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris

... work sixteen hours a day to fix things comfortably for you, and you cannot even look satisfied; while if a train is late, or a hotel proprietor overcharges, you come and bully me about it. If I see after you, you mutter that I am officious; and if I leave you alone, you grumble that I am neglectful. You swoop down in your hundreds upon a tiny village like Ober-Ammergau without ever letting us know even that you are coming, ...

— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome

... picture?" inquired Fuseli. "Much!" said Northcote—"it is clever, very clever, but he'll never hit him." "He shall hit him," exclaimed the other, "and that speedily." Away ran Fuseli with his brush, and as he labored to give the arrow the true direction, was heard to mutter "Hit him!—by Jupiter, ...

— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner

... of words his tongue was mute. "VVhere true affection rules in hottest fires, "Dumbe signes and tokens then shew mens desires: For what he thought he shew'd, he could not vtter, Which made him oft when he shold speak to mutter. She that was wounded with the selfe-same dart, Reueal'd with tongue that which she wisht with hart And fram'd her answere, so much't could not grieue him, For 'twas a salue to wound and to relieue him. ...

— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale

... old woman, as if suddenly recollecting that she had been too matter-of-fact in the way of dealing with us, went to her cauldron, and poking up the fire, began to mutter various cabalistic words, at the same time stirring its contents ...

— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... their ease. The more glibly they could talk, the less, she knew, were they impressed by her. Even a little boorishness was more complimentary than chatter. Sometimes when she played on the piano which Tommy had hired for her, the visitor was so shy that he could not even mutter "Thank you" to his hat; yet she might play to him again, and not to the gallant who remarked briskly: "How very ...

— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie

... carried a letter. Sometimes, when he used to stand chafing his stubbly chin in the evening at the slit cut in the stones for his window, looking at the red brick chimney-pot he could see over the penitentiary-wall, it seemed like something of outer life, and he would mutter, "She said the boys would never know." Once, too, a year or two after that, when the jailer came into "quiet Stevy's" cell, (for so he nicknamed him,) Yarrow came up, and took him by the coat-buttons, looking up and gabbling something ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... fashions. Janie bore the delay more philosophically, observing that she could not have turned the heel of her stocking so correctly while thinking of Nilo and his poor mother. Archie remained silent, only when Aunt Cattie sat down and resumed her narrative, he was heard to mutter to himself ...

— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston

... the meantime—" Van Rycke gestured to the waiting Salariki who were beginning to mutter impatiently. Kallee glanced around, heard those mutters, and made the only move possible, away from the Queen. He was not quite so cocky, but neither ...

— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... could only get as red as the little box, and mutter, "Thanky, boys!" as he fumbled to open it. But when he saw what was inside, his face lighted up, and he seized the long desired treasure, saying so enthusiastically that every one was satisfied, though is language ...

— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... home, leaving Cadman to mutter his wrath, and then to growl it, when his officer ...

— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... thunder-cloud, a triple-pronged dart came hissing and crackling to the earth as though launched by the very hand of Jove, I saw thirteen hands suddenly lifted, thirteen fingers instinctively flying from brow to breast making the sign of the cross, and heard thirteen voices mutter as one, "Nel nome del Padre, e del Figlio, e ...

— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... High over him. One moment's flash of fear, And yet not fear, but rather life's regret, Felt Drake, then laughed a low deep laugh of joy Such as men taste in battle; yea, 'twas good To grapple thus with death; one low deep laugh, One mutter as of a lion about to spring, Then burst that thunder o'er him. Height o'er height The heavens rolled down, and waves ...

— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... of chimeras, his heart of true love, was slowly walking through the woodlands of the Parcq de Charrebourg, towards that haunted spot, the cottage in which the beautiful demoiselle had passed her happiest days, when the storm began to mutter over the rising grounds, and before he had made much way, the thunder burst above his head with fury, and in a little time the rain descended with such tropical violence as to arrest his further progress, under the ...

— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... again and call for her, and she comes. She is dressed all in white, and she looks so beautiful and pale and sad that nobody who was not wicked himself could ever suspect her of doing anything wicked, and all the men about mutter that the one who says that she killed her brother will have to prove it. They have just heard the King say something of the kind, so they feel very righteous and very bold about it. The King, then, asks her if she can say anything about this dreadful accusation, and she tells him how often ...

— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost

... looked at each other in blank surprise, and began to mutter among themselves, "What game is he agate of now?" "Aw, it's true." "True enough, you go bail." "I wouldn't trust, he's been so reckless." "Twenty thousands, they're saying." "Aw, he's been helped—there's ...

— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine

... Yakub began to clear his throat and kept on working at it until my father called to him to come down and have a glass of vodka. Sometimes my father pretended not to hear him, and we smiled at one another around the table, while Yakub's throat grew worse and worse, and he began to cough and mutter and rustle in his straw. Then my father let him come down, and he shuffled in, and stood clutching his cap with both hands, while my father poured him a brimming glass of whiskey. This Yakub dedicated to all our healths, and tossed off to his own comfort. If he ...

— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... priests I saw in that country, and I saw plenty of various nations—they were always upon their guard, and had their features and voice modulated; but this man was subject to fits of absence, during which he would frequently mutter to himself; then, though he was perfectly civil to everybody, as far as words went, I observed that he entertained a thorough contempt for most people, especially for those whom he was making dupes. ...

— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... the old gentleman mutter loud enough for Newton to overhear. A few minutes more were spent in perambulation, when he threw himself into ...

— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... of the Cuzco Basin. At the last point from which one can see the city of Cuzco, all true Indians, whether on their way out of the valley or into it, pause, turn toward the east, facing the city, remove their hats and mutter a prayer. I believe that the words they use now are those of the "Ave Maria," or some other familiar orison of the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, the custom undoubtedly goes far back of the advent of the ...

— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... rage the brave Abencerrages blinds? If of your courage you new proofs would show, Without much travel you may find a foe. Those foes are neither so remote nor few, That you should need each other to pursue. Lean times and foreign wars should minds unite; When poor, men mutter, but they seldom fight. O holy Alha! that I live to see Thy Granadines assist their enemy! You fight the christians' battles; every life You lavish thus, in this intestine strife, Does from our weak foundations take one prop, Which helped to ...

— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... cherries, ditto, ditto, which these maurauders waste— Who never will catch worms and flies, as smaller "warblers" do, But want precisely those nice things which grow for me and you! I muse on all their robberies, and mutter this fierce strain: Confound these odious "Robins," that have now come ...

— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various

... offices will be crowded to-morrow morning," MacIlwaine, chief of detectives, paused long enough from storing away useful information to lean and mutter in ...

— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London

... glance of surprise, but said nothing. Every day made him an older man in look and bearing. His head was turning white. He had begun to mutter to himself as he walked about the parish. Not a man in England who worried more about his own affairs ...

— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... some of these fellows a fright," whispered Dicky Sharpe. "A white sheet and a howl would do it. I could manage to imitate Bobby Smudge's voice, and I should just like to look in on old Chissel when he is taking his first snooze. I'd just mutter, 'Bobby Smudge's ghost come to fetch you away, you old sinner,' and his villainous ...

— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... Dankwart, fearing for their master,—who was doomed to die in case of failure,—began to mutter that some treachery was afoot, and openly regretted that they had consented to lay aside their weapons upon entering the castle. These remarks, overheard by Brunhild, called forth her scorn, and she contemptuously bade ...

— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber

... the chuckling mutter of the tide along the buoys, But the creak of straining cables, but the night wind's mournful noise, Sighing with a rising murmur in among the ropes and spars, Setting every shroud and backstay singing shanties ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various

... of that honor, and encompassed me with a smile so benignant, so winning in its candor, that I could only mutter my acknowledgment, and Colonel Clark must needs apologize, laughing, for ...

— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... the scullery, and the cheerful little explosion when the gas-ring was ignited, and the low mutter of conversation that ensued between Helen and Georgiana—these phenomena were music to the artist in him. He extracted the concertina from its case and began to play "The Dead March in Saul." Not because his sentiments had a foundation in the slightest ...

— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett

... wondering and guessing what the secret could be; for she had not much to amuse her, and little things were very interesting if connected with her friends. Presently Jack rolled over and began to mutter in his sleep, as he often did when too weary for sound slumber. Jill paid no attention till he uttered a name which made her prick up her ears and listen to the broken sentences which followed. Only a few words, but she dropped ...

— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... but sickness had changed him much, and Paul was hardly beside his couch before the colour fleeted away from his cheek, and his eye turned to his mother in such distress, that she was obliged to make a sign to Harold in such haste that it looked like anger, and to mutter something about his being taken worse. And while she was holding the smelling salts to him, and sprinkling vinegar over his couch, they heard the two boys' voices loud under the window, Paul saying he should never come ...

— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge

... country to declare itself, if they wanted the excuse of national emotion before taking the final irrevocable steps into war, they had their desire. From the hour when the news of the sinking of the Lusitania came over the wires, Italy began to mutter and shout. The months of hesitation were ended. There were elements enough of hate, and Germany had given them all focus. "Fuori i Barbari!" I bought a sheet from the old woman who went hurrying up the street ...

— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... to tell the story, and when we had all finished and Aggie had gone to bed in Tish's spare room with hysteria, and Tish had gone to bed with tea and toast, Charlie Sands was still walking up and down the parlor, stopping now and then to mutter: "Well, I'll be——" and then ...

— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... voice. They stood there and listened. Soon they began to nod their heads. I heard them muttering that good old word "Verrno! Verrno!" again. The crowd grew. The men began to shout their approval. "Aye! it's true," I heard a solder near me mutter. "The English are thieves"; and another "Belgium?... After all I could not understand a word of what that little ...

— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... of swaggering with their daggers—cutting '5,' '6' and 'St. George,' and 'giving point'—they had come to the end of the play. Exeunt omnes: vos plaudite. Not a step further had they projected. And, staring wildly upon each other, they began to mutter, 'Well, what are you up to next?' We believe that no act so thoroughly womanish, that is, moving under a blind impulse without a thought of consequences, without a concerted succession of steps, and no arriere pensee ...

— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... followed by one of inquiry, came up from Milburn's eyes, and he pressed his head between his wrists, as if to bring back the blood that might propel his judgment. They heard him mutter, ...

— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... It broke in, not through well-contrived and well-disposed windows, but through flaws and breaches,—through the yawning chasms of our ruin. We were taught wisdom by humiliation. No town in England presumed to have a prejudice, or dared to mutter a petition. What was worse, the whole Parliament of England, which retained authority for nothing but surrenders, was despoiled of every shadow of its superintendence. It was, without any qualification, ...

— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... fall; and glory fade, The scourge of nations ripe for ruin, Planning oft their own undoing! But who in yonder swarming host Locust-like from coast to coast, Reluctant move, an alien few, Sullen, fierce, of sombre hue, Who, forced unhallow'd arms to bear, Mutter to the moaning air, Whose curses on the welkin cast Edge the keen and icy blast! Iberia, sorrow bade thee nurse Those who now the tyrant curse, Whose wrongs for vengeance cry aloud! Lo, the coming of a cloud! To burst in wrath, and ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... art among strangers away from thine own people," cried Wansutis sternly, and then she turned her back upon the young people and began to mutter. ...

— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson

... his rifle," I heard Charley mutter, as he sprang upon the deck to look for Big Alec ...

— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London

... start. As the centuries filed slowly by, and Methuselah got to where all he had to do was to shuffle into his loose-fitting clothes and rest his gums on the top of a large slick-headed cane and mutter up the chimney, and then groan and extricate himself from his clothes again and retire, he rose earlier and earlier in the morning, and muttered more and more about the young folks sleeping away the best of the day, and he said he had ...

— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... and rose unconquered from all. To the end of his life the proudest barons lay bound and blinded in his prison. His hoard grew greater and greater. Normandy, toss as she might, lay helpless at his feet to the last. In England it was only after his death that men dared mutter what evil things they had thought of Henry the Peace-lover, or censure the pitilessness, the greed, and the lust which had blurred the wisdom and ...

— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... Einzelner denkt mit der Consequenz eines Volksgeistes." Schelling may help us over the parting ways: "Der erzeugte Gedanke ist eine unabhaengige Macht, fuer sich fortwirkend, ja, in der menschlichen Seele, so anwachsend, dass er seine eigene Mutter bezwingt und unterwirft." After the philosopher, let us conclude with a divine: "C'est de revolte en revolte, si l'on veut employer ce mot, que les societes se perfectionnent, que la civilisation s'etablit, que la justice ...

— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... starts up from the log, continuing to mutter: "I must hide, or they'll be for havin' a parley. That 'ud never do, for I guess she can't be far off by this. Hang the ...

— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... Dennis laugh, but look a trifle vexed, nevertheless, and mutter that people couldn't do things that way in ...

— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden

... dross to us. The missionary has a modulator, and he trains the young men and women in the sol-fa so that they may sing Sankey's hymns in all the parts." I was dreadfully floored by this answer, and could only mutter mechanically, "Dross," "Missionary,'" "Modulator," in a vain effort to seize the situation. Conversion I understood and approved of, but where, in the wee island of Eigg, were the vain, fleeting joys? There is no public-house in the place, and little temptation of ...

— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... and detail; it would touch nothing but generalities, for they alone are safe, harmless, and respectable; and, if they are also empty, how can that he helped? Starving, it shrank into itself, muttering old incantations; and it continued to mutter them, automatically, some time after it ...

— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... to my office, and there we sat a very full board all the morning upon some accounts of Mr. Gauden's. Here happened something concerning my Will which Sir W. Batten would fain charge upon him, and I heard him mutter something against him of complaint for his often receiving people's money to Sir G. Carteret, which displeased me much, but I will be even with him. Thence to the Dolphin Tavern, and there Mr. Gauden did give us a great dinner. Here we had some ...

— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... in the auto stood up, the better to see, Carrie was revealed. The faker, closely held by the constable who had arrested him, and by a brother officer who had hurried up, gave the strange girl one look. Then those who were near him heard him mutter: ...

— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope

... are given a piano interpretation that reaches a high plane. There is a storm prologue which suggests, in excellent harmonies, the distant mutter of the storm rather than a piano-gutting tornado. "Full Fathoms Five Thy Father Lies" is a reverie of wonderful depth and originality, with a delicious variation on the good old-fashioned cadence. Thence it works up into an immensely powerful close. A dance, "Foot it Featly," follows. It is ...

— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... the cut glass sparkled, and the ruby wine glowed, and even the faces shone, and all invited genial talk. Yet David, on the eve of his departure and of his fate, oppressed with suspense and care, was out of the reach of those genial, superficial influences. He could only just mutter a word of assent here and there, then relapsed into his reverie, and eyed the fire thoughtfully, as if his destiny lay there revealed. Mr. Bazalgette, on the contrary, glowed more and more in manner as well as face, and, like many of his countrymen, seemed to ...

— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... happy," he would mutter, "too content, too well occupied. Good fortune would only spoil them now. I'll wait and watch a little longer; and yet, people who bear poverty with such equanimity should bear the accession of riches with humility; still, I'll wait a little. My old friend's children are bearing their ...

— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... minutes in conversation below, and when the latter returned he found his wife and daughter standing by the bedside, and Margaret exhibiting many signs of restlessness. She kept rolling her head upon the pillow, and throwing her hands about uneasily. In a few minutes she began to moan and mutter incoherently. After a little while her eyes flew suddenly open, and she pronounced the name ...

— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur

... and leaped upon the two surprised miscreants. Then ensued a struggle, brief but awful to the onlooker in its silent, grim ferocity, as the two separate knots of men battled each about their central orbit. The scuffle of many feet on the hard-packed road, the mutter of curses, the dull thud of blows, the hoarse, strangulated breathing of men fighting against odds to the last ounce of their strength, came to the Doctor's startled ears in a confused babel of half-suppressed sound, with the purring drone of the ...

— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... and read him as one reads a barometer. He shrank visibly into his bulb, and the tone of his conversation marked a storm. I heard him mutter 'Diavolo!' under his breath, and then the mercury ...

— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... his greatcoat pocket. It was his cigar-case he wanted. We saw that afterwards. We got a much better view of him then. He didn't look like an Indian but just like a kind of brown, big Englishman, and of course he didn't see us, but we heard him mutter to himself— ...

— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit

... attitude from Mr. Lytton Strachey, delicately "laying bare the facts of some cases." The only real difference consists in the finer tact, the greater knowledge of history—in short, the superior equipment of the English iconoclast. Each of them—and all the troop of opponents who grumble and mutter between their extremes—each of them is roused by an intense desire to throw off the shackles of a dying age, in which they have taught themselves chiefly to see affectation, pomposity, a virtuosity more technical ...

— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... ought to know, fo' he's an earl himself," cried Polly exultantly, unable to restrain herself any longer, while a mutter came from the six little Cavendishes who had been ...

— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... shall we say of Dorothy's conduct? I fancy I can hear you mutter, "This Dorothy Vernon must have been a bold, immodest, brazen girl." Nothing of the sort. Dare you of the cold blood—if perchance there be any with that curse in their veins who read these lines—dare you, I ...

— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major

... covered him by saying: 'If he has to be encountered, he kills none but the cripple,' wherewith the dead pause ensuing from a dose of outlandish speech in good company was bridged, though the youth heard Westlake mutter unpleasantly: 'Jehoiachim,' and had to endure a stare of Dacier's, who did not conceal his want of comprehension of the place he occupied in ...

— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... darling Isabel, very sick, to talk so wildly," said Mary, striving to soothe her excitement; "why, you would seem like a bird of paradise in a robin's nest here at the Old Homestead—yes, yes you are sick, Isabel, your hands are burning, your lips mutter these things strangely; ...

— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... all. He used to stay out all night, and he quite gave up going to dances and places where he could take me. Once or twice he came here in the afternoon, dead beat, without having been to bed at all, and before he could say half-a-dozen words he was asleep in my easy-chair. He used to mutter such horrible things that I had ...

— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... she sat down again. She examined a rent through which wadding peeped out on the world, cautiously. But in spite of her attention fixed on the work she whispered, or rather talked on in a low and monotonous mutter: ...

— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... his pretty cousin Alice, when he assisted her at her lessons, brought water for her flowers, or accompanied her while she sung; and he remembered that while her father looked at them with a good-humoured and careless smile, he had once heard him mutter, "And if it should turn out so—why, it might be best for both," and the theories of happiness he had reared on these words. All these visions had been dispelled by the trumpet of war, which called Sir Henry Lee and himself to opposite sides; and the ...

— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... and the features that sleep had relaxed into inexpressiveness took on a weary apprehension, which they wore like a habit. The man barely raised his surly black eyes, but his wife drew back humbly with a mutter of apology. ...

— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... the only faces that he saw out of the innumerable host: Themistocles, Democrates, Simonides, Cimon. They beheld him raise his arm and lift his glorious head yet higher. Glaucon in turn saw Cimon sink into his seat. "He wakes!" was the appeased mutter passing from the son of Miltiades and running along every tier of Athenians. And silence deeper than ever held the stadium; for now, with Lycon victor twice, the literal turning of a finger in the next event might win or ...

— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... tyrant-ridden, exhausted with the unparalleled activity of the Renaissance, besotted with the vices of slavery and slow corruption, had no ears for spirit-thrilling prophecy. The Church, terrified by the Reformation, when she chanced to hear those strange voices sounding through 'the blessed mutter of the mass,' burned the prophets. The State, represented by absolute Spain, if it listened to them at all, flung them into prison. To both Church and State there was peril in the new philosophy; for the new philosophy was the first birth-cry of the modern ...

— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella

... began to purr, and the car began to move. There was a low mutter from the crowd, a moan of fury and baffled desire; but not a hand was lifted, and the car shot away, and disappeared down the street, leaving Carpenter standing on the curb, making a Socialist speech to a ...

— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair

... gleich Pestalozzi von den hoechsten Ideen der Zeit getragen und suchte die Erziehung an diese Ideen anzuknuepfen. So lange die Mutter nicht nach den Gesetzen der Natur ihr Kind erzieht und bildet und dafuer nicht ihr Leben einsetst, so lange—davon geht er aus—sind alle Reformen der Schule auf Sand gebaut. Trotsdem verlegt er einen Theil der muetterlichen Aufgabe ...

— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel

... they'll have their own dinner off it first; they'll think it a sin to give such meat to a dog," I heard her mutter as I left the kitchen. On my way I met Emily Fleming and Belle Wallace. They laughingly inquired where I was going with my bundles; but I assured them it was an errand of mercy, and could not therefore be explained. Miss Emily's plump features and bright black eyes took a slightly contemptuous ...

— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter

... was such a tiresome child, till at last, when Dr. Gottley threatened serious consequences, the light was allowed, a dim little float that burned on an inch of oil in a glass of water, and made Kitty look so funny when she came up to bed. Kitty began to undress, and at the same time to mutter her prayers, as soon as she got into the room; and sometimes she would go down on her knees and beat her breast, and sigh and groan to the Blessed Virgin, beseeching her to help her. Beth thought at first she was in great distress, and pitied her, but after a time ...

— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... be," she confessed, "but we 're not. The truth is, we like to get far away from civilisation and exchange confidences. Warwick is a great whispering-gallery, full of tale-bearing bats that peep and mutter." ...

— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... sacraments. Towards six in the morning, they arrive. Cardinal Grand-Almoner Roche-Aymon is here, in pontificals, with his pyxes and his tools; he approaches the royal pillow; elevates his wafer; mutters or seems to mutter somewhat;—and so (as the Abbe Georgel, in words that stick to one, expresses it) has Louis 'made the amende honorable to God;' so does your Jesuit construe it.—"Wa, Wa," as the wild Clotaire groaned ...

— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... was fully prepared to see her scream and faint, but on the contrary, to my complete amazement, she merely bowed her head and dropped quietly upon her knees. Then, after a pause of more than a minute, she raised her eyes to the roof and her lips began to mutter as in prayer. Her right hand, meanwhile, which had been fumbling for some time at her throat suddenly came away, and before the gaze of all of us she held it out, palm upwards, over the grey and ancient figure outstretched ...

— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... I've killed at any rate," I heard him mutter as she turned and opened her eyes and smiled faintly up in his face. "I swear the ...

— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... that the reddish Tinto has become the blue ocean sparkling in the early sunshine; but no sparkle enters their timid souls. They can only keep looking longingly backward till the last tawny rocks of Spain and Portugal are left behind, and then there is nothing to do but sigh and mutter a dismal prayer. But Christopher's prayer is one ...

— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley

... the fellow's face! As he went out of the cabin I heard him mutter: 'Well, if I'm to be flogged for this 'ere haction, be hanged if I ever take another fort alone by myself as long ...

— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... come, when the divine leaven which is in the world to-day shall have brought more of the carnal mind's iniquity to the surface, that the Sun of Truth may destroy the foul germs, there shall be old men and women, and they which, looking up from their work, peep and mutter of strange things long gone, who shall fall wonderingly silent when they have told again of the fair young girl who walked alone into the crowded court room that cold winter's morning. And their stories will vary with ...

— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... go from him, I heard him mutter something. I at once, with my hand upon my revolver, came back towards him and inquired, ...

— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott

... my eyes, no better than a railway laborer, fresh from tunnelling or boring, and wearing a blouse to hide his working dress. These ill- used men ought to 'strike' for better clothes, in case Antigone should again revisit the glimpses of an Edinburgh moon; and at the same time they might mutter a hint about the ale. But the great hindrances to a perfect restoration of a Greek tragedy, lie in peculiarities of our theatres that cannot be removed, because bound up with their purposes. I suppose that Salisbury Plain would seem too ...

— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... man struggled to his feet. He was becoming delirious with terror. He stepped forward again. The ground seemed solid and he laughed a horrid, wild laugh. Another step and another. He paused, breathing hard. Then he started to mutter,— ...

— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... creaked under him, the eyes of the others jerked after him, stride by stride. It was beginning to seem possible that this man had done what he said he had done. When the door slammed behind him and his steps went creaking through the room beyond, a mutter of a hum arose ...

— Bull Hunter • Max Brand

... He mutter'd 'My noble life!' with a frown, 'With noble lives I have little to do; My dear, put those frivolous notions down, I am but a man, and a weak one too. My life has been full of confounded things, I am only a man, like other men; But we ...

— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart

... missed the General and drove the enemy back till they found him again; though what it all meant we never knew till it was over. Then, after mighty little rest, we marched fast and far, with cannon-thunder in our ears in a constant mutter, always growing louder, until in the afternoon we came at a quickstep through a piece of woods out upon the plain by Waterloo, where they had been fighting all day. Our feet sucked in the damp ground, the wet grain brushed our knees, as our compact column spread out ...

— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... that I am mistress here and that I will not allow it. If we are to be made fools of in this fashion by the peepings and mutterings of Kaffir witch-doctors we had better give up and die at once to go and live among the dead, whose business it is to peep and mutter. Our business is to dwell in the world and to face its troubles and dangers until such time as it pleases God to call us out of the world, paying no heed to omens and magic and such like sin and folly. Let that come which will come, and let us meet it like men and women, ...

— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard

... pretty fair luck for a while, and then the perch quit taking hold, so I sat down to wait till they got hungry again. And while I squatted there on the log that runs out over the water at my favorite hole, I heard the mutter of voices as some people ...

— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton

... so entombed (on some wager I hazard), in spite of scared squawking and mutter, after the fashion that lean-faced Rajah dealt with trapped heroes, once, in Calcutta. Dared you break the crust and bullyrag 'em—hot, fierce and angry, what wide beaks buzz plain Saxon as ever spoke Witenagemot! Yet, singing, they sing as no white bird does (where none rears phoenix) as ...

— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... center are beginning to be felt. The deep heavings begin to swell beneath us. 'All the old signs fail.' 'God answers no more by Urim and Thummim, nor by dream, nor by prophet.' Men's hearts are failing them for fear and for looking after those things that are coming on the earth. Thunders mutter in the distance. Winds moan across the surging bosom of the deep. All things betide the rising of that final storm of divine indignation which shall sweep away the vain ...

— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith

... seemed to be my fate to be still a scandal and an eyesore to all the waiters. The maid, by the order of her master, showed me a room where I might adjust my dress a little; but I could hear her mutter and grumble as she went along with me. Having put myself a little to rights, I went down into the coffee-room, which is immediately at the entrance of the house, and told the landlord that I thought I wished to have yet one more walk. On this he obligingly directed me to stroll ...

— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz

... a dish of Bohea, Brougham was quaffing his 'usual potation' (For you know his indignant ne-gation, When accused once of jollifi-cation), Down went saucer and cup, Which Le Marchant picked up, Not to hear his lord mutter 'd—n-ation.' ...

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

... to the other. So much were they occupied with these duties, that they scarcely looked at the scenery along the road, though, probably, it is very rare for them to see anything outside of their convent walls. They never failed to mutter a prayer and kiss the crucifix whenever we plunged into a tunnel. If they glanced at their fellow-passengers, it was shyly and askance, with their lips in motion all the time, like children afraid to let ...

— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... was facing the open door, could see the square hall, and the white stair-rail across the first landing, where with the moon and stars about its face, the clock stood; it was just five minutes to nine. This made the lawyer nervous; he played a low trump, in spite of the rector's mutter of, "Look out, Denner!" and thus lost the trick, which meant the rubber, so he threw down his cards in despair. He had scarcely finished explaining that he meant to play the king, but threw the knave by mistake, when Lois entered, followed by Sally with the big ...

— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland

... by reason of usage, come to ability to sleep despite of the fearsome growling; for I had conceived its cause to be the mutter of spirits in the night, and had not allowed myself to be unnecessarily frightened with doleful thoughts; for my lover had assured me of our safety, and that we should yet come to our home. And now, beyond my door, I could hear that fearsome sound ...

— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson

... down and snatched the thingummy from his hand. With bent brows and set teeth she wrenched it round. The engine gave a faint protesting mutter, like a dog that has been disturbed in its sleep, and was still ...

— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse

... A deep angry mutter went about the room, but Colonel Butler, although the flush remained on his face, still shook his head. He glanced at Tom Ross, the oldest ...

— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... he spoke, and a dark frown gathered on his brow, adding, in a low fierce mutter as he left the steward's room, "and with interest too, such as he does not expect." Mr Groocock, however, did not catch the words, and believing the matter settled was glad to get rid ...

— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston

... reconvencion f. reproach, recrimination reconvenir to reproach. recordar to recall, remember. recorrer to run through, traverse, review. recreo recreation. recuperar to recover. rechistar to mutter, protest. red f. net. redactar to edit, compose. redentor m. redeemer. redimir to redeem. redito revenue, rent. redoblar to strengthen, fortify. redoma phial. redondel m. circle. redondo round, rotund. reducir to reduce; confine. referir(se) to ...

— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... pains. In fact, he was always threatening to do that very thing; and the urgency of the case, combined with the impossibility of handling it with safety, made Sterne in his watches below toss and mutter open-eyed in his bunk, for hours, as though he had been ...

— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... it's the same wi' my foremast an' port rigging, sir." The Office does not precisely remember, but if boiler and foremast are on the quay the rest of the ship had better stay alongside. The skipper falls away relieved. (He scraped a tramp a few nights ago in a bit of a sea.) There is a little mutter of gun-fire somewhere across the grey water where a fleet is at work. A monitor as broad as she is long comes back from wherever the trouble is, slips through the harbour mouth, all wreathed with signals, is received by two motherly lighters, and, ...

— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling

... you told it all already to Captain Ashburnham? I'm sure he finds it interesting!" And Leonora would look reflectively at her husband and say: "I have an idea that it might injure his hand—the hand, you know, used in connection with horses' mouths...." And poor Ashburnham would blush and mutter and would say: "That's all right. Don't you ...

— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... succession without sleep. He therefore watched over her through the second night, never, for a single moment, allowing himself to become unconscious. Several times he saw the countryman raise his head and change his position, and when spoken to, heard him mutter something about it being "derned hard to sleep with his head on the soft side of a stone, and one side ...

— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis

... given large money for an engine, to get up with the train that was now some five miles on its route, at treble, quadruple, the common cost of such a magical appliance; but all was vain. He could only look and mutter after it wildly. Vain to conjecture for what station that traveller in the battered hat was ...

— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... dressed in fashion now gone by, Mutter and mumble low, And hither and thither fly: Mere puppets they who come and go At the bidding of a huge formless Thing That shifts the scenery to and fro, Ruling the World from flat and wing— Paris ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various

... sit looking expectantly at the curtain, we hear, not the deep booming of the Rhine, but the patter of a forest downpour, accompanied by the mutter of a storm which soon gathers into a roar and culminates in crashing thunderbolts. As it passes off, the curtain rises; and there is no mistaking whose forest habitation we are in; for the central pillar is ...

— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw

... captain repeated; and as he glanced at us from the corner of his eye, I heard him mutter, "They are not dressed exactly in dinner costume, but there's a plucky look about the fellows ...

— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... for truth? They want you to worship one dead man, and you prefer to worship another dead man. What's the odds to you? Can't you mutter your Latin, and play with your beads, before both, and ...

— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... to shake his head and mutter under his breath, "By George, I wish I had Fenchurch or von Gottschalk here. They're a shade better than I am on intercultural contracts, especially taboo-breakings and ...

— What's He Doing in There? • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... one of their good days they would go to bed in the big nursery, sure that no children in the world were so content. When there was no frightening wind in the trees they could hear through the open window the sea across the fields. "It's a quare, good world," Jane would mutter sleepily; and Fly would reply: "The sea's the nicest ould thing in it; you'd think it was hooshin' us to sleep"; and then Patsy's voice would come from the dressing-room: "Mebby it's bringin' our ship ...

— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick

... Kentucky. As the panic subsided, they were released. No Louisianian suffered in person or property from any retaliatory action of the Government; but lasting good was done by the abject failure of the plot and by the exhibition of unused strength by the American people. The Creoles ceased to mutter discontent, and all thought of sedition died away in ...

— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt

... ." he went on; "here you are teaching all the time, fathoming the depths of the ocean, dividing the weak and the strong, writing books and challenging to duels—and everything remains as it is; but, behold! some feeble old man will mutter just one word with a holy spirit, or a new Mahomet, with a sword, will gallop from Arabia, and everything will be topsy-turvy, and in Europe not one stone will be left ...

— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... the fresh honey, grow Drunk with divine enthusiasm, and utter With earnest willingness the truth they know; But if deprived of that sweet food, they mutter 750 All plausible delusions;—these to you I give;—if you inquire, they will not stutter; Delight your own soul with them:—any man You would instruct may profit if ...

— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... his heavy battle-axe hewed and cut at the wolves as they sprang towards him. In a minute they had cleared their way to the figure, which was that of a knight in complete armour. He leant against the rock completely exhausted, and could only mutter a word of thanks through his closed visor. At a short distance off a number of the wolves were gathered, rending and tearing the horse of the knight; but the rest soon recovering from their surprise, attacked with fury the little party. The thick cloaks of the archers stood them in good ...

— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty

... his own hair, which was coarse and straight, and in an age when every man wore a wig this made him look absurd. He had a trick of making queer gestures with hands and feet. He would shake his head and roll himself about, and would mutter to himself until strangers though that he ...

— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... afternoon we had almost rounded the slough and were gradually closing towards the wooded ground of the river bank. We were within ear-shot of the settlers. They were flying past with terrified cries of "The half-breeds! The half-breeds!" when I heard Grant groan from sheer alarm and mutter— ...

— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... they had gone through their little scenic mummery of swaggering with their daggers—cutting '5,' '6' and 'St. George,' and 'giving point'—they had come to the end of the play. Exeunt omnes: vos plaudite. Not a step further had they projected. And, staring wildly upon each other, they began to mutter, 'Well, what are you up to next?' We believe that no act so thoroughly womanish, that is, moving under a blind impulse without a thought of consequences, without a concerted succession of steps, and no arriere ...

— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... Listen! I never saw a more pitying glance fall from the eye of man than the Intendant cast upon you one day when he saw you kneeling in your oratory unconscious of his presence. His lips quivered, and a tear gathered under his thick eyelashes as he silently withdrew. I heard him mutter a blessing upon you, and curses upon La Pompadour for coming between him and his heart's desire. I was a faithful servant and kept my counsel. I could see, however, that the Intendant thought more of the lovely ...

— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... low white houses, where the air was sweet with the smell of pine and cattle, and the men were splitting firewood and women gossiping at the doors, and then across the fields, where the peasants looked up to mutter a gruffly civil 'G'n Abend' as they turned the ox-plough at the end of the furrow. Now and then they came upon one of the large crucifixes common in the district, and stopped to examine the curious collection of painted wooden emblems grouped around the central ...

— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... heaven knows. Some nights I haven't gone to bed at all. Even at that, I felt a little skittish when I went up for my exam. But I was desperate and went in largely on my nerve. When the Prof. looked over my papers I thought I heard him mutter to himself something that sounded like: 'All Gaul is divided into three parts and you've got two of them.' But that may simply have been my guilty conscience. At any rate I got away with it, and the old sport gave me a clean bill ...

— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield

... a low ebb, were not much elevated by sundry scowling looks directed at him, and by one red-faced, irritable-looking chap seizing the opportunity when Mr. Snelling's back was turned to shake his fist at Bert and Frank, and mutter loudly enough ...

— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley

... vehicle, with the children forming a bodyguard round her. A group of men hung about uneasily, looked sheepish, and waved large, helpless red hands, till a young fellow about seven feet high—who looked more uneasy and had even larger hands than the rest—was hustled forward, and began to mutter ...

— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... be crowded to-morrow morning," MacIlwaine, chief of detectives, paused long enough from storing away useful information to lean and mutter in Colonel Stilton's ear. ...

— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London

... seeking those who might participate My deeper pleasures (nay, I had not once, Though not unused to mutter lonesome songs, Even with myself divided such delight, 240 Or looked that way for aught that might be clothed In human language), easily I passed From the remembrances of better things, And slipped into the ordinary works Of careless youth, unburthened, ...

— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... while she keenly listened with lifted face, had its only response in a mutter from Wachique, who feared any invocation of spirits. Peggy sat looking straight ahead of her without a word. She could not wash her face soft with tears, and she felt no reaching out towards disembodiment. What she wanted was love in this world, and pride in her ...

— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... Ross began to mutter something, but Crowley snapped, "Shut up for a minute, I'm talking." He resumed his condescending tone. "Just for example, take a couple of guys who got to the top. Edison in science and Khrushchev ...

— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)

... and said with inly-mutter'd voice, "It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold; This neither is its courage nor its choice, But its necessity in ...

— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... nothing, Auntie followed him. A minute later she was sitting in a sledge by her master's feet and heard him, shrinking with cold and anxiety, mutter to himself: ...

— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... wrapped about his nose and mouth as though it were still the hour before the dawn. Over the contents of this cart a black cloth was thrown, beneath which were outlined shapes that suggested—but, no, it could not be. Only why did Antonio cross himself and mutter Muerte! or some ...

— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard

... boys outside heard the man mutter to himself. "Phil Lawrence? Oh, it can't be!" Then he raised his voice: "You are trying to play some trick on ...

— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer

... linsey-woolen one lined with yellow flannel. He packed him up in the two blankets and heated stones for his feet and hands. Presently the boy fell into sound sleep for the first time since he was wounded. He had slept before, but always uneasily and restlessly. Now he did not mutter between clenched teeth nor ...

— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine

... to hell!" and the man fades away again, without even looking startled, to mutter "Well, you needn' be so damn peeved about it—I'll say you needn' be so damn peeved—whatcha think you are, anyhow—Marathon Mike?" as Oliver's feet take Oliver swiftly ...

— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... old habit, I kiss Liza's fingers and mutter: "Pistachio... cream... lemon..." but the effect is utterly different. I am cold as ice and I am ashamed. When my daughter comes in to me and touches my forehead with her lips I start as though a bee had ...

— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... to be seen at the river which has not its counterpart in the world. The pious Hindoos come here to perform their devotions; they step into the river, turn towards the sun, throw three handsful of water upon their heads, and mutter their prayers. Taking into account the large population which Benares contains, besides pilgrims, it will not be exaggeration to say that the daily number of devotees amounts, on the average, to 50,000 persons. Numbers of Brahmins sit in small kiosks, or upon blocks of stone on the ...

— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... composed by Pestal, one of the victims of Russian tyranny," said he. "The executioner did his work badly, and Pestal had to be strung up twice. In the interval he was heard to mutter, 'Stupid country, where they don't even know ...

— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall

... revival of cosmetics must needs be so splendid an influence, conjuring boons innumerable, that one inclines almost to mutter against that inexorable law by which Artifice must perish from time to time. That such branches of painting as the staining of glass or the illuminating of manuscripts should fall into disuse seems, in comparison, so likely; these were esoteric arts; ...

— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... her gray head and feel for the beads of her rosary, and mutter many an Ave for the repose of my soul. Much as I wished it, I could never get her to talk about her mistress—it was the one subject on which she was invariably silent. On one occasion when I spoke with apparent enthusiasm of the beauty and accomplishments of the ...

— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... match in a hurry, and was making my way from the hut as quick as I could go, when I caught sight of two bright eyes staring out of a corner. Thinking it was a wild cat, or some such animal, I redoubled my haste, when suddenly a voice near the eyes began first to mutter, and then to send up a succession ...

— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard

... opened, letting in a swirl of raw November evening wind and Ches Maybin. He nodded sullenly to Mr. Fell and passed down the store to mutter a message to a man ...

— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... present: he is intently minding his business; and has been heard to mutter in his breast that "it might be as well if others did ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... little by so dangerous an endowment. Ellen, being persuaded by her maid, craved a specimen of this wonderful art. The hag, a smoke-dried, dirty-looking beldame, with a patch over one eye, and an idiotic expression of face, began to mutter and make an odd noise at the sight of the sick lady. She took a piece of chalk from her handkerchief, and began her work of divination. First she drew a circle on the floor, as a boundary or frame, and within it she put many uncouth and crabbed signs; but their meaning was ...

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

... said Percival. "They're beginning to wake up, down there—beginning to turn over in their sleep and mutter. Pretty soon they'll begin to stretch lazily; when they finally hear something drop and jump out of bed it will be too late. The bulls will be counting their chips to cash in, and the man waiting around to put out the lights. And I don't see why Burman isn't as safe as I am." "I don't, ...

— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... Tinette to come with her. The strange thing was, that none of the servants dared to go anywhere alone and always found an excuse to ask each other's company, which requests were always granted. The cook, who had been in the house for many years, would often shake her head and mutter: "That I should live ...

— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri

... could trim the boat to the wind through narrow channels in weather in which Jean would hardly venture to do it himself: and the way in which the fish took his bait made Jean sometimes cross himself, as he counted over the shining boat-load of bream and cod, and mutter in his guttural Breton speech, "'Tis the blessed St. Yvon aids him." Everybody liked him in the village, and he took a kind of lead among the other lads, but, whether it was the grave gaze of his blue eyes, or his earnest, outright speech, or some other quality about him less ...

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

... He remembered how he had seen her for the first time. He was still a student then. He had met her on the staircase of his lodgings, and, jostling by accident against her, he tried to apologise, and could only mutter, 'Pardon, monsieur,' while she bowed, smiled, and suddenly seemed frightened, and ran away, though at the bend of the staircase she had glanced rapidly at him, assumed a serious air, and blushed. Afterwards, ...

— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... crowd of animated countenances I had seen outside the same building, around Punch, the day before. The devotion before me was a dead, not a living thing. It had been dead before the foundations of this august temple were laid. But it loved to revisit "the glimpses" of these tapers, and to grimace and mutter amid these shadowy aisles. To nothing could I compare it but to the skeleton in the chapel beneath, that lay rotting in a shroud of gorgeous robes. It was as much a corpse as that skeleton, and, like it too, it bore a shroud of purple and scarlet, and fine linen and gold, which ...

— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... few others paid their yearly subscriptions to The Wand every time they got their government allotment. "Your subscription is already paid," I would explain, but they would shake their heads and mutter. This was their newspaper, too, the thing that had signs and their own names printed on a machine. They had the right to trade beadwork or another dollar for it ...

— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... L'Aubespine, the French ambassador; and that minister was obliged to leave the kingdom. The queen, affecting to be in terror and perplexity, was observed to sit much alone, pensive and silent; and sometimes to mutter to herself half sentences, importing the difficulty and distress to which she ...

— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... speed at which St. Justin was passed. I was beyond caring. We missed a figure by inches and a cart by a foot. Then the cottages faded, and the long snarl of the engine sank to the stormy mutter she kept ...

— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates

... of hissings and gutturals. Carmena jerked her hand about in swift signs and cried back in uncouth thick-tongued Apache words. The dispute at last ended in a sullen mutter from below and a sudden thudding of hoofs. The Apaches dashed out from under the cliff, loping their horses toward a corral over across to the left of ...

— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... whose face they had been sprinkling water, began to show signs of life and to mutter fearful oaths against Ashton, Allie, and the young man who had so ...

— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... expressing the views of all, for a murmur of assent, with a mutter of hearty, deep-sea curses, ran ...

— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... throat and kept on working at it until my father called to him to come down and have a glass of vodka. Sometimes my father pretended not to hear him, and we smiled at one another around the table, while Yakub's throat grew worse and worse, and he began to cough and mutter and rustle in his straw. Then my father let him come down, and he shuffled in, and stood clutching his cap with both hands, while my father poured him a brimming glass of whiskey. This Yakub dedicated to all ...

— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... and the ruby wine glowed, and even the faces shone, and all invited genial talk. Yet David, on the eve of his departure and of his fate, oppressed with suspense and care, was out of the reach of those genial, superficial influences. He could only just mutter a word of assent here and there, then relapsed into his reverie, and eyed the fire thoughtfully, as if his destiny lay there revealed. Mr. Bazalgette, on the contrary, glowed more and more in manner as well as face, and, like many of his countrymen, seemed to imbibe friendship with ...

— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... out?"[630] Slander also was busy in the guise of that gadfly, Nicholls, who proposed to thank the King for dismissing him. By way of retort Pitt's friends triumphantly carried a motion of thanks to Pitt for his great services, against a carping minority of fifty-two; but members were heard to mutter their preference for Addington over all ...

— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... in love) that had brought on this mood. Love for himself, love full of hope—warm young love for all that was good in his own soul (and at that moment it seemed to him that there was nothing but good in it)—compelled him to weep and to mutter ...

— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy

... purpose, it must be fully equipped, and thoroughly competent and equal to its work. For God always adapts means to ends. Hence it can never resemble the tribunals existing in man-made churches, which can but mutter empty phrases, suggest compromises, and clothe thought in wholly ambiguous language—tribunals that dare not commit themselves to anything definite and precise. Yea, which utterly fail and break down just at the critical moment, ...

— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan

... life all love and tenderness, endearing words, caressing touches, fond admiring looks, had been utterly unknown to her. To sit in a room with a father who was busy writing letters, and who was wont to knit his brows peevishly if she stirred, or to mutter an oath if she spoke; to be sent to a pawnbroker's in the gloaming with her father's watch, and to be scolded and sworn at on her return if the money-lender had advanced a less sum than was expected on that security—do not compose the most delightful ...

— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... who earned their living as professional assassins; to the Warrows, who wallowed in the marshes; to the Arawaks, or "Flour People," who prepared tapioca; to the Caribs, who sought them that had familiar spirits and wizards that peep and mutter. "It seems very dark," they wrote to the Count, "but we will testify of the grace of the Saviour till He lets the light shine in this dark waste." For twenty years they laboured among these Indian tribes; and Salomo Schumann, the leader of the band, prepared an Indian ...

— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... but a mutter, was fervent indeed. The captain and Elizabeth had turned to the vine-shaded doorway of the Eyrie, and there, in that doorway, was Miss Snowden and, peering around her thin shoulder, the moon face of Mrs. Chase. Sears looked annoyed, Miss Berry looked more so, and Elvira looked—well, she looked ...

— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... this time Charlie had finished the broth. The doctor then bathed his head for some time in hot water, but was obliged to cut off some of his hair, in order to remove the bandage. As he examined the wound, Charlie was astounded to hear him mutter to himself: ...

— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty

... clink of spurs; Once more the long grey cloaks adorn The bellicose backs of the high-well-born; Once more to the click of martial boots Junkers exchange their grave salutes, Taking the pavement, large with side, Shoulders padded and elbows wide; And if a civilian dares to mutter They boost him off and he ...

— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various

... the poor, beggarly dress and the quiet, yielding mien were assumed to baffle observation. Soon another person in similar dress but of fewer years met him. The two joined hands and looked earnestly into each other's eyes, and the older one appeared to mutter a word or two. What was that word, at which the younger bent his head with reverent gesture? Was it a command or a blessing? Whatever it was, in a second it was all said. The hands then unclasped—the bended head raised with a startled glance around, as though with ...

— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... moment of sympathy and apprehension, as her shaking hand dropped the pen, and then the clergyman picked it up and finished the half-written name. I felt a sharp self-reproach, and Dick did not mend matters as he turned from her to me and said, in an indignant mutter,— ...

— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross

... mourn a year, And bear about the mockery of woe To midnight dances, and the public show? What tho' no weeping Loves thy ashes grace, Nor polish'd marble emulate thy face? What tho' no sacred earth allow thee room, Nor hallow'd dirge be mutter'd o'er thy tomb? Yet shall thy grave with rising flow'rs be drest, And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast: There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow, There the first roses of the year shall blow; While angels ...

— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... Don Rodrigo gathered, continued to arrive for the next half-hour, until in the end there must have been some twenty of them assembled in that chamber. The mutter of voices had steadily increased, but so confused that no more than odd words, affording no clue to the reason of this gathering, had ...

— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... Nora. "This is Sophia, and this is Lucy." Sophia and Lucy would have been thoroughly willing to receive their sister's lover with genial kindness if they had been properly instructed, and if the time had been opportune; but, as it was, they had nothing to say. They, also, could only mutter some little sound intended to be more courteous than their ...

— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... occupation any serious interest. All the particulars which Sperver had made me acquainted with appeared clearly before me; sometimes the count, waking up with a start, would half rise, and supported on his elbow, with neck outstretched and haggard eyes, would mutter, "She is ...

— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian

... disturbed; something in Driscoll's voice and look had jarred his nerves, and it cost him an effort not to waken Father Lucien. It was not time yet and the priest needed sleep. Driscoll lay quiet with his eyes shut, but presently moved and began to mutter. Thirlwell, leaning forward, caught the words: "I never had the thing; ...

— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss

... usual alliterative petition for deliverance from Popery, Prelacy, and Peveril of the Peak, which had become so habitual to him, that, after various attempts to conclude with some other form of words, he found himself at last obliged to pronounce the first words of his usual formula aloud, and mutter the rest in such a manner as not to be intelligible even by those who stood nearest ...

— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... all and through and over all, Runs on the cadence of the changeful sea; Now pleasantly the graceful surges fall, And now they mutter in an angry key Ever, throughout their ...

— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall

... matter the interests of Kansas and Missouri are identical." Chester Lamb, a lawyer in Atchison, and Samuel Dickson, a merchant of the place, both pro slavery men, also united with Judge Tutt in pleading that I might be set at liberty. While these gentlemen were speaking, I heard my keepers mutter, "If you don't hush up, we will tar and feather you." But when Kelley saw how matters stood, he came forward and said he "did not take Butler to have him hung, but only tarred and feathered," Yet in the saloon he had sad to the mob: "You shall do as you please." He dared not take the ...

— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... in the slovenly manner which had almost disgusted him when he was well. It was of no use telling him that Simpson, his mother's maid, had superintended the preparation at every point. He offended her by detecting something offensive and to be avoided in her daintiest messes, and made Mrs Morgan mutter many a hasty speech, which, however, Mrs Bellingham thought it better not to hear until her son should be ...

— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... enough of it. Bread, beef, and mutton would be almost unobtainable. But chickens, turkeys, and ducks were abundant, while hard-tack would do instead of bread. Bird-and-biscuit of course became unpopular; and after weeks of it Grant was not surprised to hear a soldier mutter "hard-tack" loudly enough for others to take up the cry. By this time, however, he luckily knew that the bread ration was about to be resumed; and when he told the men they cheered as only men on service can—men to whom battles are ...

— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood

... and palms, of natural flowers, or beautifully executed in silver. Behind come the mourners on foot, a few women, many men, a Grand Duke or two among them, it may be; the carriages follow; the devout of the lower classes, catching sight of the train, cross themselves broadly, mutter a prayer, and find time to turn from their own affairs and follow for a little way, out of respect to the stranger corpse. More touching are the funerals which pass up the Prospekt on their way to the unfashionable ...

— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... Franklin had not paid her rent, crept off, a lugubrious figure, across the bridge. Franklin watched her till she was out of sight, then took off his hat, exposing a high, baldish head. His face was dark, and he began to mutter to himself. ...

— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume

... much. She was fond of mosques, delighting in their airy simplicity, in their casual holiness which seemed to say to her, "Worship in me if you will. If you will not, never mind; dream in me with open eyes, or, if you prefer it, go to sleep in a corner of me. When you wake you can mutter a prayer, or not, just as ...

— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... to the poor fellow when, as he undoubtedly would do in the course of the drive, he inquired of Aline the name of her maid and was told that it was Simpson. He would mutter something about "Reminds me of a girl I used to know," and would brood on the remarkable way in which Nature produces doubles. But he had a bad moment, and it was partly at the recollection of his face that ...

— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... foretaste of the affliction in store for him; for, when he opened his breviary and began to mutter his morning devotion, his new companions gathered about him with faces that betrayed their superstitious terror, and gave him to understand that his book was a bad spirit with which he must hold no more converse. ...

— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... to coward of that mob, changed from three hundred strong to three hundred weak. Then I bowed and withdrew, leaving them to mutter and disperse. I felt well content with the trend of events—I who wished to impress the public and the financiers that I had broken with speculation and speculators, could I have had a better than this unexpected opportunity sharply to define my new course? And as Textiles, unsupported, ...

— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... sailors used to lower their heads almost as low as the table and mutter together before every move, but they muttered so low that you could not ...

— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany

... amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the offices of life. And this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye; lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against him, and deposed him out of life. The hatred of Hyde for Jekyll was of a different order. ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... windows came only a dim, vaporous light. The dull ripple of the water as the ship rocked on the slow swell of the sea made a melancholy sound, and the sick man's heavy breathing seemed to fill the air. The slight noise made by the opening door roused him; he rose on his elbow and began to mutter. Sarah Purfoy paused in the doorway to listen, but she could make nothing of the low, uneasy murmuring. Raising her arm, conspicuous by its white sleeve in ...

— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... philosophically, observing that she could not have turned the heel of her stocking so correctly while thinking of Nilo and his poor mother. Archie remained silent, only when Aunt Cattie sat down and resumed her narrative, he was heard to mutter to himself ...

— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston

... John-a-nods, "What are the odds That we shall wake up here within the sun, When time is done, And pick up all the treasures one by one Our hands let fall in sleep?" "You have begun To mutter in your dreams," Said John-a-nods to Jock-a-dreams, And they ...

— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman

... this time that Copernicus Droop finally awakened. He lay perfectly still for a minute or two, wondering where he was and what had happened. Then he began to mutter to himself. ...

— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... deceptive thickness ahead loomed the sharp, flaring bow of another forty-footer, sheering quickly, as her pilot sighted them. She was upon them, and abreast, and gone, with a watery purl of her bow wave, a subdued mutter of exhaust, passing so near than an active man could have leaped the ...

— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... subject of their serious conversation. One said that "He had seen him wander about by night, and look rather strangely at the moon! and then, he roamed over the hills, like a partridge." Another said, "He had heard him mutter, as he walked, in some outlandish brogue, that nobody could understand!" Another said, "It's useless to talk, Thomas, I think he is what people call a 'wise man.'" (a conjuror!) Another said, "You are every one ...

— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... the hovering boats, and put off in it. Eph watched the boat for a few moments before he turned to Captain Jack to mutter: ...

— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham

... stood I could not see beyond the door, but I saw Mr. Jamieson's face change and heard him mutter something, then he bolted down the stairs, three at a time. When my knees had stopped shaking, I moved forward, slowly, nervously, until I had a partial view of what was beyond the door. It seemed at ...

— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... quiet, except for the mutter of distant thunder and the heavy breathing of exhausted men. Tom Ward crouched in the darkness by ...

— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett

... gossip, no scandal: for somehow in "St. George" Winter's house one felt warmly disposed even to one's enemies; and no unkind words were spoken by any one except General Caradine. He, who had a habit of mumbling his secret thoughts aloud unconsciously, was heard to mutter: "Same old crew: same dull lot, year after year, world without end. ...

— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... those which were actually and physically impossible. But both were, in those ignorant and superstitions times, easily credited as proofs of guilt.—The first class set forth, that Rebecca was heard to mutter to herself in an unknown tongue—that the songs she sung by fits were of a strangely sweet sound, which made the ears of the hearer tingle, and his heart throb—that she spoke at times to herself, and seemed to look upward for a reply—that her garments ...

— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... rainy night, and I have told Topsy, who has a cold, that she cannot come with us to church. After a wild outburst of anger she was heard to mutter that "Teacher wouldn't let her go to church because she was afraid she ...

— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... this, and he let his feeling be seen, though he said no more than to mutter, "He's a willian!" words that had frequently issued from his lips within the last day ...

— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... Judge, whose mind was on the argument, continued to mutter defiantly until his eye ...

— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... the fastnesses of Cape Corso, across which, from this eastern shore to the western, and to the camp at Olmeta, one only pass (so Marc'antonio informed me) was practicable. I guessed we were nearing it when he began to mutter to himself in the intervals of scanning the crags high on our left; for this was to him, he confessed, an almost unknown country. But the gap, when we came abreast of it, could scarcely be mistaken. With a glance around, as though to take our bearings, he abruptly headed ...

— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... last time, your compact, do you hear? Behave properly or I will pay you out!" Miuesov had time to mutter again. ...

— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... was completely off his guard. He started up, stared at Agias, and began to mutter excuses for a ...

— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... before me gazed at me for some seconds in amazement, and his wife in terror; as though there was something alarmingly extraordinary in the fact that anyone could come to see them. But suddenly he fell upon me almost with fury; I had had no time to mutter more than a couple of words; but he had doubtless observed that I was decently dressed and, therefore, took deep offence because I had dared enter his den so unceremoniously, and spy out the squalor and untidiness ...

— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... the old woman, as if suddenly recollecting that she had been too matter-of-fact in the way of dealing with us, went to her cauldron, and poking up the fire, began to mutter various cabalistic words, at the same time stirring ...

— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... I'll fix it. See here, Bradley. This is the place you are thinking of. When Cobb says to Lady Ellen "Fenderson Featherhead," you enter the room, and in a nervous aside you mutter: "What, he! Does he again dare to cross my path?" That's the ...

— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs

... their heads; men and women halted and cried to each other: "The River—the River is rising! If it floods, we are lost! Our beasts will drown; we, even we, shall drown! The River!" And women stood like things of stone, listening; and men shook their fists at the black sky and at that traveling mutter of the winds and waters; and the beasts sniffed at the ...

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

... and consideration by which reality is apprehended—were once more coming back to the girl and beginning to stir in her mind. She began, gently now, and without perturbation, to recall what had passed, the long crescendo of the previous months, the gathering mutter of the spiritual storm that had burst last night—even the roar and flare of the storm itself, and the mad instinctive fight for the conscious life and identity of herself through which she had struggled. And it seemed to her as ...

— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... door. Just then it opened very quietly, and a man staggered down the hall steps, and bent his course toward the northern part of the city suburbs. A female might be observed to follow him at a distance, and ever as he began to mutter his drunken meditations to himself, she approached him more closely behind, in order, if possible, to lose ...

— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... The crash and mutter of the dockside railway, The noise of quarrel, the noise of fist on face, My country's songs, guitars, and gramophones, The noise of boot on stone, The noise of women bargaining their flesh, The noise of singers in the ships, Sounds of threat and ...

— Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse • Thomas Burke

... found myself sitting up in bed, staring at the dark. I found myself praying that the Heat-Ray might have suddenly and painlessly struck her out of being. Since the night of my return from Leatherhead I had not prayed. I had uttered prayers, fetish prayers, had prayed as heathens mutter charms when I was in extremity; but now I prayed indeed, pleading steadfastly and sanely, face to face with the darkness of God. Strange night! Strangest in this, that so soon as dawn had come, I, who had talked with God, crept out of the house ...

— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... und ein Butter Bringen wir auch, nemt es an! Einen Han zu einer Suppen, Wanns die Mutter kochen kann. Giessts ein Schmalz drein, wirds wol guet sein. Weil wir sonsten gar nix han, Sind wir selber arme Hirten, Nemts den guten ...

— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles

... and hide away: creep soon Into your icy beds: the embers die; And on your frosted panes the pallid moon Is glimmering brokenly. Mutter faint prayers that spring will come e'erwhile, Scarring with thaws and dripping days and nights The shining majesty of him that smites And slays you with a smile Upon his silvery lips, of ...

— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman

... pulled in his head and scowled at his aunt, but he dared not disobey, and went out slowly with a sulky mutter. ...

— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... cried out and said, "I would to God, it would please him to take me out of this wretched world; and I would I had died with the good men that have suffered death heretofore, for they were quickly out of their pain."'[T] Then, half wandering, he began to mutter to himself aloud the thoughts which had been working in him in his struggles; and quoting St. Bernard's words about the pope, he exclaimed, 'Tu quis es primatu Abel, gubernatione Noah, auctoritate Moses, judicatu Samuel, ...

— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... presided at his birth and his genii know all about it), what should he do? Let him jump from where he is standing four cubits, or else let him repeat, "Hear, O Israel," etc. (Deut. vi. 4); or if the place be unfit for the repetition of Scripture, let him mutter to himself, "The goat at the butcher's is ...

— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... gentleman mutter loud enough for Newton to overhear. A few minutes more were spent in perambulation, when he threw himself into ...

— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... passed on, and Bill chose to interpret the mutter as consent. He strolled over to the tent, joked condescendingly with the guard who stood before it, and announced that the Captain had said he might talk to ...

— The Gringos • B. M. Bower

... Ancient Mariner would mutter, "strange, and most strange. This is the very place. There can be no mistake. I'd have trusted that youngster of a third officer anywhere. He was only eighteen, but he could navigate better than the captain. Didn't he fetch the atoll after eighteen ...

— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... is coming home!" returned Mrs. Cheyne, with so much interest in her voice that Miss Mewlstone left off counting to look at her. ("Just so, just so," Phillis heard her mutter.) "You must have worked hard to get ready for her so soon. When my foot will allow me to cross a room without hobbling, I will do myself the pleasure of calling on her. But that will be neither this week ...

— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... hear the thunder mutter, The wind is gathering in the west; The upturned leaves first whiten and flutter, Then droop to a fitful rest; Up from the stream with sluggish flap Struggles the gull and floats away; Nearer and nearer rolls the thunder-clap,— ...

— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... morning of September 14th. Scores of neutral flags float from the windows on the Calle de Plateros, and in their shade beautiful women gaze curiously on the scene beneath. Gayly dressed groups throng the balconies, and at the street-corners dark-faced men scowl, mutter deep curses, and clutch their knives. The street resounds with the heavy tramp of infantry, the rattle of gun-carriages, and the clatter of horses' hoofs. "Los Yanquies!" is the cry, and every neck is stretched ...

— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... on a soft carpet of moss, overhead the gentle summer breeze stirred the great branches of the elms, causing the crisp leaves to mutter a long-drawn hush-sh-sh in the stillness of the night. From far away came the appealing call of a blackbird chased by some marauding owl, while on the ground close by, the creaking of tiny branches betrayed the quick scurrying of a squirrel. From the remote and infinite distance came the subdued ...

— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... ne Hu, hearing him mutter; "Why meddle again," she explained, "in things that don't concern you? I had endless trouble in getting to speak to your paternal aunt; and your aunt had, on the other hand, a thousand and one ways and means to devise, ...

— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... ragged half-seen reefs. You saw the flash of foam leaping half the height of the black cliffs. The thunder of the surf was in our ears, now rising to wild clamor, fierce, hungry, menacing, now dying to a vast broken mutter. Now our boat felt the lift of the great shoreward rollers, and sprang forward like a living thing. The other boat, empty of all but the rowers and returning from the island to the ship, passed us with a hail. We steered warily away from a wild welter ...

— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... the man hardly knew how the conviction had come to the child that his father had killed his mother. A vague comprehension perhaps of the doctor's urgings and his father's denials—a head-shaking mutter from the nurse—the memory of all his mother's tears. He was hardly more than a baby, but he had always feared and disliked his father—now he hated him, blindly and intensely. He saw him as the cause not only of his mother's tears and death, ...

— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... the lower plane of mere utility and money value, it would be bondage to them to be kept from other and higher considerations. Moreover, in his own material sphere his narrow prejudices were ever a jarring element that often exasperated Webb, who had been known to mutter, "Such clods of earth ...

— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... arrival of the Prince of Wales; and as the little cavalcade dismounted at the door and entered the noble hall, a figure, habited after the fashion of the ecclesiastics of the day, stepped forth to greet the scion of royalty, and the twin brothers heard their comrades mutter, ...

— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... Talbot heard him mutter; "but they shall burn through me first, little one;" and he stretched himself across the corpse as if to shield it from the approaching flames, and far off the red eyes of the planets sank nearer the horizon, ...

— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross

... Mohun mutter more than once, in a dissatisfied tone, "Why does not that scoundrel show himself? I can't make out Delaney." All at once I heard a stifled cry on my right, and, to my horror, I saw Clontarf dragged over the balustrade in the gripe of a giant, whom I guessed ...

— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... by striking at a fly directly over my head with a flapper made of sugar paper fastened to a stick. He generally spoke in German, and in his kindly voice exclaimed, "Auf, Kinder, auf; es ist Zeit. Die Mutter ist schon im Saal." ("Get up, children, it is time. Your Mother is ...

— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... expression which I could not account for, until I discovered that he had only one eye. At this time an Indian advanced toward us, bearing in his arms a quantity of small stakes; I was at loss to understand what was to transpire, when I heard my one-eyed companion mutter under his breath, "drat 'em, they be a goin' to stake us." Sure enough this was their intention; seizing us one by one, they stretched us on the turf in three files, the heads of one file resting between the feet of the row above him; driving the stakes firmly ...

— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman

... again, villain, and I'll blow your brains out," cried I, seizing Antoine by the throat, and pinning him against the wall; "only dare to mutter it, and ...

— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... that Griscom spoke. Fogg was Ralph's fireman on the present trip. He presented a decided contrast to the brisk, bright engineer of No. 999. He shoveled in the coal with a grim mutter, and slammed the fire door shut with a vicious ...

— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... closer, she saw that he walked with his chin on his breast; when he reached the gate at the end of the avenue, he did not see it and bumped into it. "Dios mio!" she heard him mutter. "Dios! Dios! Dios!" The last word ended in tragic crescendo; he leaned on the gate, and there, in the white silence, the last of the Farrels stood gazing up the avenue as if he ...

— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... a mutter from the west, a hollow, solemn warning; and the cliffs responded with a plaintive moan. Even incredulous Hayoue ...

— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... get out of the way in time, damn them!" I heard Keston mutter. True, but not all the prolats had moved fast enough at the warning shout. Cowering under the saving key-boards, shrinking from the metallic arms not quite long enough to reach them, I could count only a score. The others—but what use to describe the slaughter ...

— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... clamors, never defies, dreams not of rebellious aspirations. She is humble to abjectness. Hers is the meekness that belongs to the hopeless. Murmur she may, but it is in her sleep. Whisper she may, but it is to herself in the twilight. Mutter she does at times, but it is in solitary places that are desolate as she is desolate, in ruined cities, and when the sun has gone down to his rest. This sister is the visitor of the Pariah; of the Jew; of the bondsman to the oar in the Mediterranean galleys; of the English criminal ...

— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... neighboring towns who had turned from their errors on their death-beds, some one exclaimed, "John Hodges! why, he isn't dead,—he's alive and well." Whereat there was a roar of laughter. While holding an argument at table, I heard him mutter to himself at something that his adversary said; and though I could not distinguish what it was, the tone did more to convince me of some degree of earnestness than aught beside. This character might be wrought into a strange portrait of something ...

— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... and did. And without too much effort the three transported the injured man, who was but a light weight, across the yard, into the house, and to a room which Mrs. Candace showed them. He began to groan and mutter before they managed to get ...

— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson

... sentence died in an unintelligible mutter. He seemed to utter a name I could not catch. All the time I was watching him intently, and never shall I forget the look that passed over his face. He had been very pale before, but now his pallor was ghastly. For a moment he looked almost like a dead man, save for the ...

— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking

... life or plans, but wherever you go those eyes are fixed on you. By-and-by he disappears—he is sure to do so if there are no people about the tan—and then reappears with some dark descendant of the Dom and Domni. I have always been under the impression that these dogs step out and mutter a few words in Rommany—their deportment is, at any rate, Rommanesque to the highest degree, indicating a transition from the barbarous silence of doghood to Christianly intelligence. You may persuade yourself that the Gipsies do not mind your presence, but rest assured that though he may lie on ...

— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland

... enough to startle Meg Merrilies, who led the van, and who, having already gained the place where the cavern expanded, had risen upon her feet. She began, as if to confound any listening ear, to growl, to mutter, and to sing aloud, and at the same time to make a bustle among some brushwood which was now ...

— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... said in a low mutter, his once mighty voice sounding hollow and laboring, but fearless and firm—"ye come—not to conquer, vain rebels!—ye whose dark chief I struck down at my feet in the tomb where my spell had raised ...

— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... desperate firmness. In presence of another he says little, But I perceive his lips move now and then; And once or twice I heard him, from the adjoining Apartment, mutter forth the words—"My son!" Scarce audibly. I ...

— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... they commingle always in great music; and therefore it is that music can move us more profoundly than the voice of ocean or than any other voice can do. But in music's larger utterance it is ever the sorrow that makes the undertone, —the surf-mutter of the Sea of Soul.... Strange to think how vast the sum of joy and woe that must have been experienced before the sense of music could evolve in ...

— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... to, Mr. and Mrs. Bracken drifted into the other room and left her alone with Jenny Lind. Mr. Bracken did not take his hat and mutter that he would be back for dinner. He walked over to the window and stood looking down the street. At last he turned around and looked at his wife who was sitting on the davenport as ...

— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett

... those sacraments. Towards six in the morning, they arrive. Cardinal Grand-Almoner Roche-Aymon is here, in pontificals, with his pyxes and his tools; he approaches the royal pillow; elevates his wafer; mutters or seems to mutter somewhat;—and so (as the Abbe Georgel, in words that stick to one, expresses it) has Louis 'made the amende honorable to God;' so does your Jesuit construe it.—"Wa, Wa," as the wild Clotaire groaned ...

— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... have hornless heads, like hinds and does. Thus wethers have small horns, like ewes; and oxen large bent horns, and hoarse voices when they low, like cows: for bulls have short straight horns; and though they mutter and grumble in a deep tremendous tone, yet they low in a shrill high key. Capons have small combs and gills, and look pallid about the head, like pullets; they also walk without any parade, and hover chickens like hens. Barrow- hogs have also ...

— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... super-abundant wisdom; I like to see folk fret, and stew, and scold, as our maids did last week when I cut the line, and let all the sheets, and gowns, and petticoats, and frocks, and shirts, and aprons, and caps, and what not, fall plump into the dirt. O! how I did laugh! and how they did mutter and scold! And do you know, that just as the wash ladies were wiping their coddled hands, and comforted themselves with the thought of their work being all over, and were going to sip their tea by the fireside, I put them all to the scout; and ...

— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner

... but recalling the evening when, wrecked at heart, with stinging feet, he had stumbled at last into the trail to Doc's camp, he could only mutter, "Dash it all!" ...

— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... the minister, and he gave a sigh of relief. They echoed across the river, and rolled away toward the village, and into the distance. Nor did they stop there—those echoes: the Atlantic is wide, but they crossed it; they made Lord North, Thurlow, and Wedderburn start in their chairs, and mutter a curse: they penetrated to the king in his cabinet, and he flushed and bit his lip. More than a hundred years have passed; and yet the vibrations of that shot across Concord Bridge have not died ...

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

... could write? My wife near crazy with ear- ache; the rain descending in white crystal rods and playing hell's tattoo, like a TUTTI of battering rams, on our sheet- iron roof; the wind passing high overhead with a strange dumb mutter, or striking us full, so that all the huge trees in the paddock cried aloud, and wrung their hands, and brandished their vast arms. The horses stood in the shed like things stupid. The sea and the flagship lying on the jaws of the bay vanished in sheer ...

— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Brothers; and that to use a gallant Man (who does his Duty) ill, speaks a Revenge which cannot proceed but from a Coward Soul. He order'd that the Prisoners should leave their Chests; and when some of his Men seem'd to mutter, he bid 'em remember the Grandeur of the Monarch they serv'd; that they were neither Pyrates nor Privateers; and, as brave Men, they ought to shew their Enemies an Example they would willingly have follow'd, and use their Prisoners as they wish'd to ...

— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe

... are withdrawn, And friends like shadows fled, When all your fondest dreams are gone, Your dearest hopes are dead, You curse the fickle goddess, then, Who wrought you such despair, Yet hide chagrin beneath a frown, And mutter, "I don't care!" ...

— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris

... that baffed on their eyelids. The little whisper of the sea by the cliffs joined with the whisper of the wind over the grass, the hum of insects in the thyme, the ruffle and rustle of the flock below, and a thickish mutter deep in the very chalk beneath them. Mr Dudeney stopped explaining, and went on with his knitting. They were roused by voices. The shadow had crept halfway down the steep side of Norton Pit, and on the edge of it, his back to them, Puck sat beside a half-naked ...

— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... said one evening to me, 'dat dis not go on much much longer. De crew getting desperate. Dey talk and mutter among demselves. Me thinks we have ...

— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty

... morning the mutter of cannon on the horizon, and they knew the German conquerors were advancing. They were always advancing. Nothing had stopped them. The metal and masonry of the defenses at Liege had crumbled before their huge guns like china breaking under stone. The giant shells had ...

— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler

... pictures of kittens and grapes and daffodils. After everyone was put on the easel Henrietta Templeton Price would stick her thumb up in the air and sight across it with one eye shut and say "A stunning bit, that!" and the others would gasp with delight and mutter to each other about its ...

— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... the clutching hands. He held the mike up and they heard him say, "There's no point in my talking with you unless you will be quiet and listen." He paused. The roar slowly subsided into an angry mutter. ...

— Criminal Negligence • Jesse Francis McComas

... answer, a heavy step down the hall heralded Mr. Frank Blaisdell's advance, and in the ensuing confusion of his arrival, Mr. Smith slipped away. As he passed the lawyer, however, Mellicent thought she heard him mutter, "You rascal!" But afterwards she concluded she must have been mistaken, for the two men appeared to become at once the best of friends. Mr. Norton remained in town several days, and frequently she saw him and Mr. Smith chatting pleasantly ...

— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter

... thousands Glaucon turned toward the only faces that he saw out of the innumerable host: Themistocles, Democrates, Simonides, Cimon. They beheld him raise his arm and lift his glorious head yet higher. Glaucon in turn saw Cimon sink into his seat. "He wakes!" was the appeased mutter passing from the son of Miltiades and running along every tier of Athenians. And silence deeper than ever held the stadium; for now, with Lycon victor twice, the literal turning of a finger in the next event might win or lose the ...

— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... sent home! She ought to have thought of that possibility before. Now Miss Pomeroy was angry with her and she had made a miserable beginning of the delightful boarding school life she had dreamed so much about. Two hot tears gathered in her eyes again, but just at that minute she heard Chrystobel mutter between her teeth so the principal could not ...

— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown

... Duchess Helen with Sir Hacon at her side had watched the eddying dust-clouds rolling now this way, now that, straining anxious eyes to catch the gleam of a white plume or the flutter of the blue banner amid that dark confusion. And oft she heard Sir Hacon mutter oaths half-stifled, and oft Sir Hacon had heard snatches of her breathless prayers as the tide of battle swung to and fro, a desperate fray whence distant shouts and cries mingled in awful din. But now, as the sun grew low, ...

— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... fill the army. The working people were also liable to be pressed for the navy, or drawn for the militia; and though they could not fail to be discontented under such circumstances, they scarcely dared even to mutter their discontent ...

— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... the door, and Grace heard him mutter: "Nice night to send a pal out in, and on a still hunt, too. Nothing short of soup'll open up that claim. If the rest of the jobs he's goin' to pull off are like this hand out, me ...

— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower

... The mutter died. Some youths at the back started applause, which spread, though somewhat half-heartedly, through the crowd, and for a space the ...

— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell

... unexpected roll to windward saved all our lives. Nobody got a scratch. We were past in a moment and in a breeze then blowing we had the heels of anything likely to give us chase. But an hour afterwards, as we stood side by side peering into the darkness, Dominic was heard to mutter through his teeth: "Le metier se gate." I, too, had the feeling that the trade, if not altogether spoiled, had seen its best days. But I did not care. In fact, for my purpose it was rather better, a more potent influence; like the stronger intoxication of raw spirit. A volley ...

— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... assassins; to the Warrows, who wallowed in the marshes; to the Arawaks, or "Flour People," who prepared tapioca; to the Caribs, who sought them that had familiar spirits and wizards that peep and mutter. "It seems very dark," they wrote to the Count, "but we will testify of the grace of the Saviour till He lets the light shine in this dark waste." For twenty years they laboured among these Indian tribes; and Salomo Schumann, ...

— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... from him, I heard him mutter something. I at once, with my hand upon my revolver, came back towards him and inquired, "what's this ...

— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott

... took hours to tell the story, and when we had all finished and Aggie had gone to bed in Tish's spare room with hysteria, and Tish had gone to bed with tea and toast, Charlie Sands was still walking up and down the parlor, stopping now and then to mutter: "Well, I'll be——" and then going on ...

— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... advantage of a poor, lonely, old woman, whose only husband was in the grave, and only son at sea!" the mate continued to mutter. "Talk about the commandments! I should like to know what commandment this was breaking. The whole ...

— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... upon a rising ground, I stopped to look round me, and observed a woman, on the opposite side of the valley where I landed, calling to her countrymen who attended me. Upon this, the chief began to mutter something which I supposed was a prayer; and the two men, who carried the pigs, continued to walk round me all the time, making, at least, a dozen circuits before the other had finished his oration. This ceremony being performed; we proceeded, and presently met ...

— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... natural indolence made him laugh inwardly. "What on earth is the use?" he would mutter, throwing pebbles into the pond below him. "What has to be—has to be." It was a favourite haunt of his—that pond; in the heart of a wood, with a little waterfall trickling over some rounded stones and falling musically into the pond a few feet below. The afternoon sun used to shine through ...

— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... He went on saying this over to himself, as if he would mutter down every pain in ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... as he was bound to. Then as the cadet corporal marched on with the relief, Dodge glanced after the vanishing squad to mutter to himself: ...

— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock

... night Duncan began to mutter rapidly to himself. He spoke so quickly and incoherently that Elsie could not make out what he was saying. She jumped out of bed, and felt about for the water, thinking he was asking for it. He drank some eagerly, and ...

— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... part, "one of two things—a cure slow but sure, or sudden but imperfect. Or shall I put back the hurt altogether till you get home?" "That, that," said Jock; "if I were ance home I could bear it well enouch." The hag began to pass her hand over the injured part, and to mutter under her breath some potent charm; and as she muttered and manipulated, the swelling gradually subsided, and the livid tints blanched, till at length nought remained to tell of the recent accident save a pale spot in the middle of the breast, surrounded by a thread-like circle of blue. ...

— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... Harry, who was quite taken aback at this change in his prospects, and could only mutter, that he had never ...

— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... she saw that he walked with his chin on his breast; when he reached the gate at the end of the avenue, he did not see it and bumped into it. "Dios mio!" she heard him mutter. "Dios! Dios! Dios!" The last word ended in tragic crescendo; he leaned on the gate, and there, in the white silence, the last of the Farrels stood gazing up the avenue as if he feared ...

— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... no better than a railway laborer, fresh from tunnelling or boring, and wearing a blouse to hide his working dress. These ill- used men ought to 'strike' for better clothes, in case Antigone should again revisit the glimpses of an Edinburgh moon; and at the same time they might mutter a hint about the ale. But the great hindrances to a perfect restoration of a Greek tragedy, lie in peculiarities of our theatres that cannot be removed, because bound up with their purposes. I suppose ...

— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... sacristy to the altar. A fear seized him that in spite of all his practice he was kneeling on the wrong side of the priest; he forgot the first responses; he was sure the Sanctus-bell was too far away; he wished that Mr. Dorward would not mutter quite so inaudibly. Gradually, however, the meetness of the gestures prescribed for him by the ancient ritual cured his self-consciousness and included him in its pattern, so that now for the first time he was aware of the significance of the preface to ...

— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... said Manuela at last, when Chiquito had had enough, and had deigned to relax a little, and even to mutter, "Mi gustan todas!" "Is the senorita not also dying of hunger? for myself, I perish, but that is of little consequence, save that my death will leave the senorita ...

— Rita • Laura E. Richards

... delicately "laying bare the facts of some cases." The only real difference consists in the finer tact, the greater knowledge of history—in short, the superior equipment of the English iconoclast. Each of them—and all the troop of opponents who grumble and mutter between their extremes—each of them is roused by an intense desire to throw off the shackles of a dying age, in which they have taught themselves chiefly to see affectation, pomposity, a virtuosity more technical than emotional, and an exasperating ...

— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... interfere with the men, or their wives, or their servants; that therefore you have put many a sixpence out of her pocket; and that she must have her revenge. Dismiss her jargon from your mind as soon as you can.' 'More easily said than done, Father,' he replied, and he then began to mutter: 'A white cloth and a stain never agree.' ...

— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... Martha smiled back at the giant porker, perched amongst the cases and bags and household goods like the victim of some bawdy chiavari. "I've never heard a pig mutter so," ...

— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang

... was making my way from the hut as quick as I could go, when I caught sight of two bright eyes staring out of a corner. Thinking it was a wild cat, or some such animal, I redoubled my haste, when suddenly a voice near the eyes began first to mutter, and then to send up a succession of ...

— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard

... leaving her: if I go but for one night, I have fulfilled my promise: and if she think not, I can mutter and grumble, and yield again, and make a merit of it; and then, unable to live out of her presence, soon return. Nor are women ever angry at bottom for being disobeyed through excess of love. They like an uncontroulable passion. They like to have ...

— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... low, and distant, was that whisper, like the mutter of an earthquake miles below the soil. And yet, like the earthquake-roll, it had in that one moment jarred every belief, and hope, and memory of his being each a hair's-breadth from its place.... Only one hair's-breadth. But that ...

— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... German, yet are not likely to have dipped often in the massive folios of this heroic reformer, the simple, sinewy, idiomatic words of the original. "Denn man muss nicht die Buchstaben in der Lateinischen Sprache fragen wie man soll Deutsch reden: sondern man muss die Mutter in Hause, die Kinder auf den Gassen, den gemeinen Mann auf dem Markte, darum fragen: und denselbigen auf das Maul sehen wie sie reden, und darnach dolmetschen. So verstehen sie es denn, und merken dass man ...

— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... is apprehended—were once more coming back to the girl and beginning to stir in her mind. She began, gently now, and without perturbation, to recall what had passed, the long crescendo of the previous months, the gathering mutter of the spiritual storm that had burst last night—even the roar and flare of the storm itself, and the mad instinctive fight for the conscious life and identity of herself through which she had struggled. And it seemed to her as if the storm, like others ...

— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... shone, and all invited genial talk. Yet David, on the eve of his departure and of his fate, oppressed with suspense and care, was out of the reach of those genial, superficial influences. He could only just mutter a word of assent here and there, then relapsed into his reverie, and eyed the fire thoughtfully, as if his destiny lay there revealed. Mr. Bazalgette, on the contrary, glowed more and more in manner as well as face, and, ...

— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... quarter, and on still I brought her, And up to his girth, to his breastplate she drew; A short prayer from Neville just reach'd me, "The devil!" He mutter'd—lock'd ...

— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... and a second later the carriage drove away. In spite of his indifference Camaroncocido could not but mutter, "Something's afoot—hands on pockets!" ...

— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... the whole affair apparently striking them both at once, they mutually broke out into laughter, the violence of which threatened to convulse them. From this, however, the padre was the first to recover, when the intruder, mastering his muscles, regained his countenance so far as to be able to mutter something in the shape of an apology, in which, probably, the word "starvation" was the only one intelligible; after it had been good-humouredly received, and the priest had welcomed the strange ...

— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... next tried to mutter Of the fan that she held to her face; She said it was "utterly utter," And waved it with ...

— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... caldron brimming o'er; The drowsy brood that on her back she bore, Imps, in the barn with mousing owlet bred, From rifled roost at nightly revel fed; Whose dark eyes flash'd thro' locks of blackest shade, When in the breeze the distant watch-dog bay'd:— And heroes fled the Sibyl's mutter'd call, Whose elfin prowess scal'd the orchard-wall. As o'er my palm the silver piece she drew, And trac'd the line of life with searching view, How throbb'd my fluttering pulse with hopes and fears, To learn the colour of my future years! Ah, then, what honest triumph flush'd my breast! ...

— Poems • Samuel Rogers

... an hour if she wanted it. So he continued to wait with great patience. Besides it was very comfortable there on the sofa, and the swish of the driving snow against the window-panes was soothing. Now and then the low mutter of the guns came, but it ...

— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler

... All five men hastened to ape the position of the prostrate Arrillians; they knew better to risk committing sacrilege on a strange planet. As Tyndall sank to the ground and covered his eyes, he heard that priest mutter another sentence, in which his own name was included. He thought it was "You, Tyn-Dall ...

— Grove of the Unborn • Lyn Venable

... Tells me I am thoroughly run down, and asks me, "What I've been doing to reduce myself to this state?" I reply that, "I have been assisting the course of Justice." Doctor shrugs his shoulders, and I hear him distinctly mutter, "More fool you!" I agree with Doctor, cordially. Am quite certain now that it was unwise to tell Police that I could identify those criminals. If this is the way in which Witnesses are treated, let Justice in ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various

... officers, passed them by the line of the road. The two parties saluted in silence. Beyond Eva Point there was an observable change for the worse in the reception of the Americans; some whom they met began to mutter at Moors; and the adventurers, with tardy but commendable prudence, desisted from their search after the high chief, and began to retrace their steps. On the return, Suatele and some chiefs were drinking kava in a "big house," and called them in to join—their only invitation. ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... conduct, it struck him that Rodin, notwithstanding the proofs he had brought him, did not yet believe that Djalma was in his power. On that theory, the contempt of Van Dael's correspondent admitted of a natural explanation. But Rodin was playing a bold and skillful game; and, while he appeared to mutter to himself, as in anger, he was observing, with intense anxiety, the ...

— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... account for, until I discovered that he had only one eye. At this time an Indian advanced toward us, bearing in his arms a quantity of small stakes; I was at loss to understand what was to transpire, when I heard my one-eyed companion mutter under his breath, "drat 'em, they be a goin' to stake us." Sure enough this was their intention; seizing us one by one, they stretched us on the turf in three files, the heads of one file resting between the feet of the row above him; driving the stakes firmly into the ground, ...

— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman

... surprised he could only get as red as the little box, and mutter, "Thanky, boys!" as he fumbled to open it. But when he saw what was inside, his face lighted up, and he seized the long desired treasure, saying so enthusiastically that every one was satisfied, though is language was ...

— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... southern side of the church, mean, and of a date some thousand years subsequent to that of the Basilica. They are nearly ruinous, but are still—or were till within a few years—inhabited by one Capucin friar, and one lay brother of the order, whose duty it was to mutter a mass, with ague-chattering jaws, at the high altar, and act as guardians of ...

— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... that had driven the fire. Along it more and more visibly played almost incessant sheet lightning, broken with ripping zigzag flames. A hush had fallen close at hand, for now even the frightened breeze of evening had fled. Now and then, at first doubtful, then unmistakable and continuous, came the mutter and rumble and at length ...

— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... gave a sigh of relief. They echoed across the river, and rolled away toward the village, and into the distance. Nor did they stop there—those echoes: the Atlantic is wide, but they crossed it; they made Lord North, Thurlow, and Wedderburn start in their chairs, and mutter a curse: they penetrated to the king in his cabinet, and he flushed and bit his lip. More than a hundred years have passed; and yet the vibrations of that shot across Concord Bridge have not died away. ...

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

... his snuff-box and, hearing the noise of the enemy in the corridor, walked with it in his hand across to the door. He tapped his box with accustomed preciseness, but I, a step behind, having lingered for a last look into Margaret's eyes, heard him mutter, "Damn ...

— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... the face of the dead I saw how deeply it was rutted with the ruts of age and misery. The priest, strong and portly, fresh, fat, and alive with the life of the animal kingdom, unpaid, or ill paid for his work, would scarcely deign to mutter out his forms, but hurried over the words with shocking haste. Presently he called out impatiently, “Yalla! Goor!” (Come! look sharp!), and then the dead Greek was seized. His limbs yielded inertly to the rude men that handled them, and down he went into his ...

— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... angry. In the first place, his hands hurt him dreadfully, and in the second place she had forced him to disobey orders by going out to save her. He did not mutter his complaints. He told her in plain and violent English what he thought of her, and if she went out there again he'd be damned ...

— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... their berths to visit the night-cloaked deck. It was so with Ahab; only that now, of late, he seemed so much to live in the open air, that truly speaking, his visits were more to the cabin, than from the cabin to the planks. "It feels like going down into one's tomb,"—he would mutter to himself—"for an old captain like me to be descending this narrow scuttle, to go to my ...

— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... blinkard will put me to death in your absence." By the former he meant Requelme the treasurer, who was very fat, and by the latter Almagro, who had lost an eye, whom he had observed frequently to mutter against him, for certain reasons, which will ...

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

... William Felton bade me be carried from his lodgings; the robbers, his men-at-arms, stripped me of all I possessed, and brought me to this dog-hole, to the care of this old hag. Oh, Eustace, I have heard her mutter prayers backwards; and last night—oh! last night! at the dead hour, there came in a procession—of that I would take my oath—seven black cats, each holding a torch with a blue flame, and danced around me, till one ...

— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge

... last extinguisher of our hopes. With no landmark to steer by, with wind and sea dead in our teeth, with the waves breaking in over our sides, and one useless mutineer in our midst, we felt that our fate was fairly sealed. Even Hall for a moment showed signs of alarm, and we heard him mutter to himself, "God help us now!" Next moment a huge wave came broadside on to us and emptied itself into our boat, half filling us with water. In the sudden shock my oar was dashed from my hand ...

— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... him. It was pleasant to lie there, unharmed, and witness its course at a far point. He dozed a while, fell asleep, and awoke again in half an hour. Nothing had changed. There was still an occasional flicker of lightning and mutter of thunder and the darkness remained heavy. He could dimly see the forms of his comrades lying on their blankets. Not one of them stirred. They slept heavily and he rather envied them. They had little imagination, and, when one was in bad ...

— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler

... he left the room there came through the open window the mutter of a crowd. He stopped. General Poineau whipped out his sword, and brought it to the salute. John patted him on ...

— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse

... gone, at the end of her strength, she threw herself, like a mad woman, down upon the divan. Once alone, she gave way utterly, sobbing passionately, and then, suddenly ceasing, with wild eyes fixed upon vacancy, to mutter with ...

— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... lightly fastened, blew open. A rush of rain and wind swept in, the smell of the wet earth, and the sight of the tossing trees, and massed clouds that fled across the sky. For a moment she stood and looked, hearing the wild night voices, the sob of the wet wind, the rustle and mutter of the trees—those primitive inarticulate things that do not lie. And in her heart she felt very weary of shams and pretences, very hungry for the rest of reality and truth. She turned away, and made the round of the barns systematically, and without haste; she did not hurry ...

— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... personal interest in its success. What a powerful sensation, for instance, is that which we experience when, after studying the 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' Gibbon tells us how the thought of writing it came to him upon the Capitol, among the ruins of dead Rome, and within hearing of the mutter of the monks of Ara Coeli, and how he finished it one night by Lake Geneva, and laid his pen down and walked forth and saw the stars ...

— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... disheartened by the prospect of a contest with greatly superior numbers. Although some few took to their arms and occupied the posts assigned them by their officers, the majority seemed more disposed to tell beads and mutter prayers, than to display the energy and decision which alone could rescue them from the double peril by which they were menaced. The pirates, meanwhile, were constantly foiled in their attempts to board by the fury of ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... with yellow flannel. He packed him up in the two blankets and heated stones for his feet and hands. Presently the boy fell into sound sleep for the first time since he was wounded. He had slept before, but always uneasily and restlessly. Now he did not mutter between clenched teeth ...

— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine

... our way, and we will speak our errand out loud, and not mutter and mouth about it. What help shall I have from thee, as thou ...

— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous

... that the goddess was resting in her sleep in such a way that no one could possibly unclasp the necklace without awaking her. Loki stood hesitatingly by the bedside for a few moments, and then began rapidly to mutter the runes which enabled the gods to change their form at will. As he did this, Heimdall saw him shrivel up until he was changed to the size and form of a flea, when he crept under the bed-clothes and bit Freya's side, thus causing her to change her position ...

— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... crosses the lowest pass at the western end of the Cuzco Basin. At the last point from which one can see the city of Cuzco, all true Indians, whether on their way out of the valley or into it, pause, turn toward the east, facing the city, remove their hats and mutter a prayer. I believe that the words they use now are those of the "Ave Maria," or some other familiar orison of the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, the custom undoubtedly goes far back of the advent of the first Spanish missionaries. It is probably a relic of the ancient habit of ...

— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... went out. The expression of his face was such as to cause the clerk to mutter, dazedly: "He didn't seem to be a whole lot interested. I guess I must ...

— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... teasing Heinrich about his rival. When Karl was on the premises Heinrich would sulk in the garage and mutter threats against him. Karl was twice Heinrich's size, but the little blue-eyed, spectacled chauffeur never seemed to question his ...

— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene

... by magic, a subtle change crept through the atmosphere. The sky became darkened, and dense masses of clouds rolled up and blotted out the sun. The thunder began to mutter, and vivid flashes of lightning darted from one end of the heavens to the other, and before an hour had elapsed the rain was descending in torrents all over the land, and the great drought was ...

— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan

... weary of it. —Lie there, ye ensigns Of my unloved preeminence In an age like this! Among a people of children, Who throng'd me in their cities, Who worshipp'd me in their houses, And ask'd, not wisdom, But drugs to charm with, But spells to mutter— All the fool's-armoury of magic!—Lie there, My golden circlet, My ...

— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... Cousin Dempster didn't quite like what I had done, for his face was red as fire when I sat down again, and I heard him mutter something about the eccentricities of genius. Indeed, I'm afraid a profane word came with it, though I pretended not ...

— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... 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 words ...

— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... fundamentally and eternally right and good that the pecuniary interests of the owners of the material means of life should rule unabated in all those matters of public policy that touch on the material fortunes of the community at large. Barring a slight and intermittent mutter of discontent, this arrangement has also the cordial approval of popular sentiment in these modern democratic nations. One need only recall the paramount importance which is popularly attached to the maintenance and extension of ...

— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... scandal: for somehow in "St. George" Winter's house one felt warmly disposed even to one's enemies; and no unkind words were spoken by any one except General Caradine. He, who had a habit of mumbling his secret thoughts aloud unconsciously, was heard to mutter: "Same old crew: same dull lot, year after year, world without end. Damned ...

— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... and the man fades away again, without even looking startled, to mutter "Well, you needn' be so damn peeved about it—I'll say you needn' be so damn peeved—whatcha think you are, anyhow—Marathon Mike?" as Oliver's feet take Oliver swiftly away ...

— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... at their right began to thresh about, with a surprised rustling, and a low mutter, as of smothered warning, ran over the ...

— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley

... be my fate to be still a scandal and an eyesore to all the waiters. The maid, by the order of her master, showed me a room where I might adjust my dress a little; but I could hear her mutter and grumble as she went along with me. Having put myself a little to rights, I went down into the coffee-room, which is immediately at the entrance of the house, and told the landlord that I thought I wished to have yet one more walk. On this he obligingly directed me to stroll down a pleasant ...

— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz

... such work. As nothing in this lower world, however, is complete, Trespolo had strange moments amid this life of delights; from time to time his happiness was disturbed by panics that greatly diverted his master; he would mutter incoherent words, stifle violent sighs, and lose his appetite. The root of the matter was that the poor fellow was afraid of going to hell. The matter was very simple: he was afraid of everything; and, besides, ...

— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... night, and I have told Topsy, who has a cold, that she cannot come with us to church. After a wild outburst of anger she was heard to mutter that "Teacher wouldn't let her go to church because she was afraid she would get ...

— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... husband talk it to his frau, To deat' he should pe led; If a mutter breat' it to her shild, I'd bunch her in de head; Und I'm sure dat none vill atfocate Ids use in public schools, Oonless dey're peastly, nashdy, prutal, ...

— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various

... man realized that he was doomed. Fate had struck at him mercilessly. He could only wait in dumb despair, and mutter prayers too long forgotten, and concoct bogus letters from a cousin's address in the south of England for the benefit ...

— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... under him, the eyes of the others jerked after him, stride by stride. It was beginning to seem possible that this man had done what he said he had done. When the door slammed behind him and his steps went creaking through the room beyond, a mutter of a hum arose ...

— Bull Hunter • Max Brand

... blackbirds, and occasionally fired a pack of crackers, to the infinite dismay of horses and drivers. Little chaps just out of frocks rushed about, with their round, rosy faces hid under grotesque masks; and shouts of laughter, and the squeak of penny trumpets, and mutter of miniature drums swelled to a continuous din, which would have been quite respectable even on the plain of Shinar. The annual jubilee had come, and young and old seemed determined to celebrate it with due zeal. From her window Beulah looked down on the ...

— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... it is polished, and disappearing at last into the heart of the firing-machine—always this insistent whisper of moving dead leaves. Steam-sieves sift it into grades, with jarrings and thumpings that make the floor quiver, and the thunder of steam-gear is always at its heels; but it continues to mutter unabashed till it is riddled down into the big, foil-lined ...

— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... mumbles the woman; "and bad luck to it that I didn't know before; whin I came to ax him for me schore, and might have gone home widout a cint but for a good lad named EDDY who gave me a sthamp.—The same EDDY, I'm thinkin', that I've heard him mutter about in his shlape at my shebang in town, whin he came ...

— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 29, October 15, 1870 • Various

... through life we go, Amid the pomp, and glare, and show, We oft some proverb misconstrue And mutter boldly, "'Tis not true." But in their calm, majestic way, We hear the tongues of wise men say: "You go way back ...

— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck

... least disturbed by what the poor scared young man is muttering. They do not even pay attention to it. "They all mutter something, but we've no time to listen to it, we ...

— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... continued to mutter, without looking round or up; "come in, Pip, how do you do, Pip? so you kiss my hand as if I were a ...

— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... sometimes stated that the man who planted the first field of potatoes in Scotland died within the last forty years. This is an error. The first field planted in the Lowlands was at Liberton Muir, about the year 1738, by a farmer named Mutter, who died in 1808. An attempt had been made some years earlier by a farm-labourer, named Prentice, near Kilsyth, but not ...

— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... without too much effort the three transported the injured man, who was but a light weight, across the yard, into the house, and to a room which Mrs. Candace showed them. He began to groan and mutter before they managed to ...

— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson

... the Germans have come after all!" he was heard to mutter, as he started to feel around ...

— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow

... true, would mutter "shocking!" And give her head a sorrowful rocking, And make a clucking with palate and tongue, Like the call of Partlet to gather her young, A sound, when human, that always proclaims At least a thousand pities and shames; But still ...

— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... to sway and mutter, to push and surge. Jane felt herself lifted and swung to her feet on the seat where she had been sitting, and the Irishman's big body was spread like a shield before her. His hands were clamped upon the ...

— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... the same. The curious expression mutterseelenallein, "quite alone; alone by one's self," is given a peculiar interpretation by Lippert, who sees in it a relic of the burial of the dead (soul) beneath the hearth, threshold, or floor of the house; "wessen Mutter im Hause ruht, der kann daheim immer nur mit seiner Mutterseele selbander allein sein." Or, perhaps, it goes back to the time when, as with the Seminoles of Florida, the babe was held over the mouth ...

— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... to inform us. After all our anticipations of prize-money and pleasure on shore, to have the inside of a French prison alone in view was very galling to our feelings. McAllister could do nothing but mourn his hard fate, and mutter threatenings against France and Frenchmen should he ever regain his liberty. Our only hope was that one of our own cruisers might fall in with the Audacieuse, and that we might thus be set at liberty. Consequently, ...

— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston

... depression which she felt creeping over her, as the fog had crept over the country side. The village children had been called in by their mothers, and there was not the usual sound of boys and girls at play in the street. The rumble of a cart in the distance sounded like the mutter and mumble of a discontented spirit; and as Lucy passed through the square formed by the old timbered houses by the lych gate, ...

— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall

... cartilaginous" tumor of Paget, which grows in the interstitial tissues of the parotid gland, and sometimes attains enormous size. Matas presented the photograph of a negress having an enormous fibroma growing from the left parotid region; and there is a photograph of a similar case in the Mutter Museum of the ...

— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... his forehead. His muscles were at once exerted to withdraw his head, and to vociferate a warning to his fellow; but his movement was too slow. The ball entered above his ear. He tumbled headlong to the ground, bereaved of sensation though not of life, and had power only to struggle and mutter. ...

— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... your mother is coming home!" returned Mrs. Cheyne, with so much interest in her voice that Miss Mewlstone left off counting to look at her. ("Just so, just so," Phillis heard her mutter.) "You must have worked hard to get ready for her so soon. When my foot will allow me to cross a room without hobbling, I will do myself the pleasure of calling on her. But that will be neither this week nor the next, I am afraid. But I shall see a good deal of you and your sister ...

— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... caught fire. It was extinguished by a bold Churchwarden. In future let Churchwardens be prepared with hose whenever a prelate runs any chance of ignition from his own "burning eloquence." If Mr. Punch's advice as above is acted upon, a Bishop if "put out" may probably mutter, "Darn your hose." But this ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various

... they heard him mutter, as he thrust a finger through the hole in the garboard streak ...

— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie

... and demanding back her darlings. But Our Lady of Sighs never clamours, never defies, dreams not of rebellious aspirations. She is humble to abjectness. Hers is the meekness that belongs to the hopeless. Murmur she may, but it is in her sleep. Whisper she may, but it is to herself in the twilight. Mutter she does at times, but it is in solitary places that are desolate as she is desolate, in ruined cities, and when the sun has gone down to his rest. This sister is the visitor of the Pariah, of the Jew, of the bondsman to the oar in Mediterranean galleys, of the English ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... turned toward the only faces that he saw out of the innumerable host: Themistocles, Democrates, Simonides, Cimon. They beheld him raise his arm and lift his glorious head yet higher. Glaucon in turn saw Cimon sink into his seat. "He wakes!" was the appeased mutter passing from the son of Miltiades and running along every tier of Athenians. And silence deeper than ever held the stadium; for now, with Lycon victor twice, the literal turning of a finger in the next event might win or lose ...

— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... by such a plot against her was enough for her. She did not even speak to Souchey on the subject. In the course of the afternoon he came across her as she moved about the house, looking ashamed, not daring to meet her eyes, hardly able to mutter a word to her. But she said not a syllable to him about her desk. She could not bring herself to plead the cause between her and her lover ...

— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope

... bare feet in the mud. The fog was so thick that he could see nothing, not even the battalions of retreating Americans; the forms of his own men were vague and gray of outline. He never had fancied an isolation so complete, but his nerves stood the strain; when they began to mutter he reminded himself of Mr. Cruger's store and St. Croix. There was a false summons, and after turning his back upon his post with a feeling of profound relief, he was obliged to return and endure it for two hours longer. Did the fog lift he would never see another. ...

— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... conductors would all be polar; if the globe were discharged, they would all return to their normal state, to be polarized again upon the recharging of the globe. The state developed by induction through such particles on a mass of conducting mutter at a distance would be of the contrary kind, and exactly equal in amount to the force in the inductric globe. There would be a lateral diffusion of force (1224. 1297.), because each polarized sphere would be in an ...

— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday

... did not, for Mabilla was in the hands of greater and stronger powers. Before Bessie Prawle's shocked eyes she was seen rigid and awake. She was seen to cower as to some threatening shape, then to stiffen, to mutter with her dry lips, and to grow still, to stare with her wide eyes, and then to see nothing. A glaze swam over her eyes; they were open, but as ...

— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... survey of this when he heard the door of the bedroom click behind him. He turned round, jumped for the door, turned the handle and pulled, but it did not yield. As he did so he thought he heard a mutter ...

— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... noon. He is in a kingdom governed by his own class. He inhales an atmosphere impregnated with clerical pride and theocratic omnipotence. Phiz! It is a bottle of champagne saluting him with the cork. By the time he has drunk all the contents of the intoxicating beverage, he will begin to mutter between his teeth that the French clergy does not get its deserts, and that we are a long time in restoring to it the property taken away ...

— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... the country breviary in hand, not merely reading, but actually reciting the office to themselves. My green book was taken for a breviary, or for a book of hours, and my mouthings of Dolores or The Garden of Proserpine for "the blessed mutter of the Mass"! Assured by me that I was not a priest, he asked me who I was. I told him my name and he instantly stretched out a huge and grimy hand, and shook mine with a hearty violence, and insisted that I should come home with him and drink a mug of cider. I accepted with avidity. It ...

— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... which they had been rubbing him, toward the fire that glowed upon the large adobe hearth. The stinging pain was succeeded by a warm glow; a pleasant languor, which made even thought a burden, came over him, and yet his perceptions were keenly alive to his surroundings. He heard the Chinamen mutter something and then depart, leaving him alone. But presently he was aware of another figure that had entered, and was now sitting with its back to him at a rude table, roughly extemporized from a packing-box, apparently engaged in writing. ...

— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte

... He mutter'd, glorying in the work begun, 'Well done, my little Wench; 'twas nobly done!' Then said, with looks more cheering than the fire, And feelings such as Pity can inspire, 'My house has childless been this many a year; While you deserve it you ...

— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield

... thick mutter that sounded like "My God," Oldershaw balanced himself to hit, his face the color of a beet-root,—and instantly Joan was on her feet between them with a ...

— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... praises, like one who keepeth crying, 'In the name of God.'"[24] And the Afghan poet Abdu 'r-Rahman says: "Every tree, every shrub, stands ready to bend before him; every herb and blade of grass is a tongue to mutter his praises." And Horace Smith, that most pleasing but unpretentious writer, both of verse and prose, has thus finely amplified the ...

— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... invested by God Himself with supernatural powers for that specific purpose, it must be fully equipped, and thoroughly competent and equal to its work. For God always adapts means to ends. Hence it can never resemble the tribunals existing in man-made churches, which can but mutter empty phrases, suggest compromises, and clothe thought in wholly ambiguous language—tribunals that dare not commit themselves to anything definite and precise. Yea, which utterly fail and break down just at the ...

— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan

... stabbed repeatedly on the outside of the thighs and in the arms (never once is an artery cut); and if he remains absolutely statuesque at each stab, he comes through the most trying part of the ordeal with flying colours. A motion of the lips, however, or a mutter—these are altogether fatal. Not even a toe must move in mute agony; nor may even a muscle of the eyelid give an uneasy and involuntary twitch. If the candidate fails in a minor degree, he is promptly put back, to come up again for the next examination; ...

— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... of the Huguenots of Vassy," was the answer. "Are there many of them?" asked the duke. He was told that there were, and that they were increasing more and more. "Then," says the chronicler, "he began to mutter and to put himself in a white heat, gnawing his beard, as he was wont to do when he was enraged or had a mind to take vengeance." Did he turn aside out of his way with his following, to pass right through Vassy, or did he confine ...

— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... there no easier path to heaven? Santa Maria! how can I tell What, now for a score of years and more, I've buried away in my heart so deep That, howso tired I've been, I've kept Eyes waking when near me another slept, Lest I might mutter it in my sleep? And now at the last to blab it clear! How the women will shrink from my pictures! And worse Will the men do—spit on my name, and curse; But then up in ...

— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... gazed at me for some seconds in amazement, and his wife in terror; as though there was something alarmingly extraordinary in the fact that anyone could come to see them. But suddenly he fell upon me almost with fury; I had had no time to mutter more than a couple of words; but he had doubtless observed that I was decently dressed and, therefore, took deep offence because I had dared enter his den so unceremoniously, and spy out the squalor ...

— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... more capable of hearing reason. Then the king said only to Faxiondono, "That he should go and do penance for the pride and insolence of his speech, wherein he had made himself a companion of the gods." Faxiondono did not reply, but he was heard to mutter, and grind his teeth, as he withdrew. Being at the chamber door, and ready to go out, "May the gods," said he aloud, "dart their fire from heaven to consume thee, and burn to ashes all those kings who shall presume to speak ...

— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... barbarity!" I heard Craig mutter, for even he, though now and then forced to visit the place when one of his cases took him there, especially when it was concerned with an autopsy, had never become hardened ...

— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... not have turned the heel of her stocking so correctly while thinking of Nilo and his poor mother. Archie remained silent, only when Aunt Cattie sat down and resumed her narrative, he was heard to mutter to himself ...

— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston

... of both boys and men that, when they had confronted the beady, black glitter of Merlier's unfaltering gaze, encountered the patent contempt of his rigid lips, they had subsided into an unintelligible mutter, and had been ...

— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... the least I could do, heaven knows. Some nights I haven't gone to bed at all. Even at that, I felt a little skittish when I went up for my exam. But I was desperate and went in largely on my nerve. When the Prof. looked over my papers I thought I heard him mutter to himself something that sounded like: 'All Gaul is divided into three parts and you've got two of them.' But that may simply have been my guilty conscience. At any rate I got away with it, and the old sport gave me a ...

— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield

... Scots in London] strive every day to keep the House of Commons from falling on the King's answer. We know not what hour they will close their doors and declare the King fallen from his throne; which if they once do, we put no doubt but all England would concur, and, if any should mutter against it, they would be quickly suppressed." And again and again in subsequent letters, through August, September, and October, the honest Presbyterian writes in the same strain, breaking his heart with the thought of the King's continued obstinacy. ...

— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... likewise went his way, and once more began to mutter to himself: 'Ah, if I could but shudder! Ah, if I could but shudder!' A waggoner who was striding behind him heard this and asked: 'Who are you?' 'I don't know,' answered the youth. Then the waggoner asked: 'From whence do you come?' 'I know ...

— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm

... fling themselves by me as I eat my noonday meal. The one, red-eyed, furtive, lies on his side with restless, clutching hands that tear and twist and torture the living grass, while his lips mutter incoherently. The other sits stooped, bare- footed, legs wide apart, his face grey, almost as grey as his stubbly beard; and it is not long since Death looked him in the eyes. He tells me querulously of a two hundred miles tramp since early spring, of search for work, casual jobs with ...

— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless

... as amiably disposed to take his time as was Pete himself, shied suddenly. Through habit, Pete jabbed him with the spur, to straighten him back in the road again. Pete had barely time to mutter an audible "I thought so!" when Blue Smoke humped himself. Pete slackened to the first wild lunge, grabbed off his hat and swung it as Blue Smoke struck at the air with his fore feet, as though trying to climb an invisible ladder. Pete swayed back as the ...

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

... held his piece of money tighter like a miser whose treasure is threatened, and snored the louder. Again the fool essayed to waken him, and this time he opened his eyes, felt for his beads and commenced to mutter a prayer in Latin words, strung ...

— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... and the Queen of the South lived happily ever after, though still at evening those on watch in the trees would see their captain sit with a puzzled air or hear him mutter now and again in a discontented way: "I wish I knew more about the ...

— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany

... There is no danger of his getting more recognition than he deserves, and he is not one whom recognition can injure. He reverences his art too highly to magnify his own exposition of it; and when he reads what I have set down here, he will smile and shake his head, and mutter that I have divined the perfect idea in the imperfect embodiment. Unless I greatly err, however, no one but himself is competent to take that exception. The genuine artist is never satisfied with ...

— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... her youthful history the right way for her lover to take her wouldn't have been to picture himself as acting for her highest good. "I like your calling the feeling with which I inspire you confidence," she presently said; and the deep note of the few words had something of the distant mutter of thunder. ...

— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... audience grew, the fiercer grew his resentment against this complacent Christendom which took so much from the Jew and gave so little. 'Shylocks!' he would mutter between his clenched teeth ...

— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... jabber of hissings and gutturals. Carmena jerked her hand about in swift signs and cried back in uncouth thick-tongued Apache words. The dispute at last ended in a sullen mutter from below and a sudden thudding of hoofs. The Apaches dashed out from under the cliff, loping their horses toward a corral over across to the left ...

— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... abscheuungswurdigste, ubar den Gang der Sonne und die Ruhe des Todten: wer sie nicht Iost, den erschlagt er; trotzig sitzt er unter den Helden, ihre Anerbietungen gefallen ihm nicht, er reitet heim, erschlagt zwolf Zauberweiber, die ihm entgegen kommen, dann seine Mutter, endlich zernichtet er auch sein Saitenspiel, damit kein Wohllaut mehr den wilden Sinn besanftige. Es scheint dieses Lied vor allen in einer eigenen Bedeutung gedichtet, und den Mismuth eines zerstorten herumirrenden ...

— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow

... Pestal, one of the victims of Russian tyranny," said he. "The executioner did his work badly, and Pestal had to be strung up twice. In the interval he was heard to mutter, 'Stupid country, where they don't ...

— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall

... shall have brought more of the carnal mind's iniquity to the surface, that the Sun of Truth may destroy the foul germs, there shall be old men and women, and they which, looking up from their work, peep and mutter of strange things long gone, who shall fall wonderingly silent when they have told again of the fair young girl who walked alone into the crowded court room that cold winter's morning. And their stories will vary with the telling, for no two might agree what ...

— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... it injury, or to cast a spell of jettatura upon it. The modern Greeks are even more jealous of praise, and if you compliment a child of theirs, you are expected to spit three times at him and say, [Greek: Na maen baskanthaes], ("May no evil come to you!") or mutter [Greek: Skordo], ("Garlic,") which has a special power as a counter-charm. So, too, in Corsica, the peasants are strict believers in the jettatura of praise, which they call l'annocchiatura,—supposing, that, if any evil influence attend you, your good wishes ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... the mutter and roar of the artillery, came the Yell. Their shambling trot quickened. Men were running now, forming a great wave to lick up at the breastworks. Men in that line did not know—or care—that they were moving without the promised ...

— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... hardened orbs, "So, you're going to bury us both—Bill and me. Him in a grave and me in a tomb—Bill and me. I never thought 'twould be like that—Bill and me. Buried together—Bill and me." He continued to mutter the words over and over, and when the keeper left the building he shook his ...

— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... idol, I could hear around me the murmur of many tongues. Low, but vast in volume, it seemed as though thousands were there below me, hushed and waiting for the consummation of the sacrifice. At times the murmur rose to a mutter as of distant thunder, then again it would be hushed almost ...

— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell

... particularly arbitrary or obscure command that one must mutter at a system to attain a desired result. Not used of passwords or other explicit security features. Especially used of tricks that are so poorly documented they must be learned from a {wizard}. "This compiler normally locates initialized data in the data segment, but if you {mutter} ...

— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10

... critics of fiction who talk about autobiography in fiction in the tone of a doctor who has found arsenic in the stomach at a post-mortem inquiry. The truth is that whenever a scene in a novel is really convincing, a certain type of critical and uncreative mind will infallibly mutter in accents of pain, "Autobiography!" When I was discussing this topic the other day a novelist not inferior to Mr. Wells suddenly exclaimed: "I say! Supposing we did write autobiography!"... Yes, if we did, what a ...

— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... distance to purchase some trifling culinary articles, and who had no taste for the antique. At every successive guinea which we bade for the patera this good old lady's mouth grew wider and wider with unsophisticated astonishment, until at last I heard her mutter to herself, in a tone which I shall never forget,—'Five-an-twenty guineas! If the parritch-pan gangs at that, what will the kail-pan ...

— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... broth. The doctor then bathed his head for some time in hot water, but was obliged to cut off some of his hair, in order to remove the bandage. As he examined the wound, Charlie was astounded to hear him mutter to himself: ...

— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty

... was an Old Person of Prague, Who was suddenly seized with the plague; But they gave him some butter, which caused him to mutter, And cured that Old Person ...

— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear

... painted these flowers, say what can I do, To render them worthy acceptance from you? I know of no sybil, whose wonderful art Could to them superior virtues impart, Who, of magical influence wonders could tell, And, who over each blossom could mutter ...

— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham

... anyway," Tubby was heard to mutter to himself, "if only I thought I could stand the terrible sights. You know, seeing blood always used to make me feel faint-like. But then a scout ...

— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson

... silent on the burro as if asleep. He had never once roused to give heed to the words or the trail through the long ride. At times where the way was rough he would mutter thanks at the help of Kit and ...

— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... to prepare for it," mused the old man, with a jerk of his shoulders. "France! So the mutter runs. There is a Napoleon in France, but no Bonaparte. Clatter-clatter! Bang-bang!" He laughed ironically and cautiously glanced at his watch, an article which must have cost him many and many a potato-patch. He pulled his hat over his eyes, scratched the irritating ...

— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath

... then the bird exprest: "Sure, since the day I left the nest, I ne'er heard folly utter'd So fit to move a sky-lark's mirth, As what this little son of earth Hath in his grossness mutter'd. ...

— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... a representation of the Siamese twins in old age. On each side of them is a son. The original photograph is in the Mutter Museum, College of ...

— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... for boys," we hear some reader mutter. And yet that same reader, perchance, teaches her little ones to consider the great fact that God is ...

— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne

... vessel warned us that, we must try to cut them adrift without delay. I feared that already they had done some serious damage. Even before we left the captain he seemed to have somewhat recovered his consciousness, for I heard him mutter, "Be smart, lads. Tell ...

— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston

... it but the chuckling mutter of the tide along the buoys, But the creak of straining cables, but the night wind's mournful noise, Sighing with a rising murmur in among the ropes and spars, Setting every shroud and backstay singing shanties to ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various

... last words he seemed to see London rise up before him in the night, with shadowy domes and towers and chimneys; he seemed to hear through the exquisite silence of night upon the sea the mutter of ...

— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens

... Fogg that Griscom spoke. Fogg was Ralph's fireman on the present trip. He presented a decided contrast to the brisk, bright engineer of No. 999. He shoveled in the coal with a grim mutter, and slammed the fire door shut with a ...

— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... just as the brief twilight of that region had begun to veil the scene, we saw a faint glimmer of lightning in the heart of the now slowly advancing cloud, and a few seconds after the low mutter of thunder reached our ears. And before the rumble of this had died away there suddenly darted from the bosom of the cloud a long, vivid, baleful, sun-bright flash that seemed to strike into the sea ...

— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... till late. He had been drawing wood for Horton that day, which was the reason he happened in Quonab's neighbourhood; but his road lay by the tavern, and when he arrived home he was too helpless to do more than mutter. ...

— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... at the speaker as if he'd told them the world had come to an end. It was Morse who managed to mutter: ...

— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White

... mighty rainbow which, like the archangel in the Revelation, plants its western limb amongst the carnage and the magnificence of Waterloo, and the other amidst the vanishing gleams and the dusty clouds of Agamemnon's rearguard—that we may pardon a little exultation to the man who can actually mutter to himself, as he rides home of a summer evening, the very words and vocal music of the old blind ...

— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... manner which had almost disgusted him when he was well. It was of no use telling him that Simpson, his mother's maid, had superintended the preparation at every point. He offended her by detecting something offensive and to be avoided in her daintiest messes, and made Mrs Morgan mutter many a hasty speech, which, however, Mrs Bellingham thought it better not to hear until her son should be strong enough ...

— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... nurse came to her senses and grew gray with fear. She tried to mutter some excuse, but King Theophile dismissed her on the spot and gathering up his baby into his arms, took her into the nursery, and wiped away her tears. Yet her sobs did not cease and she was too little to tell him ...

— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl

... told a string of beads, which they passed from one to the other. So much were they occupied with these duties, that they scarcely looked at the scenery along the road, though, probably, it is very rare for them to see anything outside of their convent walls. They never failed to mutter a prayer and kiss the crucifix whenever we plunged into a tunnel. If they glanced at their fellow-passengers, it was shyly and askance, with their lips in motion all the time, like children afraid to let their eyes wander from their lesson-book. One of them, however, took occasion ...

— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... But the Judge, whose mind was on the argument, continued to mutter defiantly until his eye ...

— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... engaged in mere ablution, so important for health and comfort in that hot climate. They are engaged in worship. You see them taking up the water of the Ganges in the palm of their hands, and offering it up to the sun as they mutter certain prescribed words. You observe them making a circular motion, and if sufficiently near you see them breathing heavily, which you are told is their way of driving away demons, who even in that sacred spot are said to haunt them. There is no united worship: each worshipper apart performs ...

— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... will give him the precedence; and then, from these things which he adduces, I will shoot him dead with new words and thoughts. And at last, if he mutter, he shall be destroyed, being stung in his whole face and his two eyes by my ...

— The Clouds • Aristophanes

... will care for you and not forsake you—and even here on earth I look forward to much peaceful happiness for you, in your children, in books, in nature, in duties zealously done, in the love and sympathy of many—"Mutter Treu ist ewig neu," and that you may find some rest to your aching heart in that Mutter Treue, which is always hovering round you, wherever you are, and to which every day seems to add fresh strength and renewed longing to give you comfort, ...

— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... and it came to pass That, waiting to mutter no funeral mass, A bishop had dealt him the coup ...

— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various

... clear Voice, till I came to the Greek Verse at the End of it. I must confess I was a little startled at its popping upon me so unexpectedly. However, I covered my Confusion as well as I could, and after having mutter'd two or three hard Words to my self, laugh'd heartily, and cried, A very good Jest, Faith. The Ladies desired me to explain it to them; but I begged their pardon for that, and told them, that if it had been proper for them to hear, they may be sure the Author would not ...

— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... man from danger that uses it; and is always secure of prostrating the most vigorous frame, of clouding the most splendid intellect, of benumbing the most delicate moral feelings, of palsying the most eloquent tongue, of teaching those on whose lips listening senates hung, to mutter and babble with the drunkard, and of entombing the most brilliant talents and hopes of youth, wherever man can be induced to drink. The establishment of every distillery, and every dram-shop, and every grocery ...

— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... peered into the parchment and drew back. "The Emperor—" I heard the Commissioner mutter with ...

— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... other; but not until Glover saw there were two plates instead of one, and learned that Gertrude had eaten no dinner because she was waiting for him, did he mutter something about all that an American girl is capable of in the way of making a man grateful and happy. There was nothing to hurry them back to the other end of the car, and they did not rejoin Mr. Brock and Bucks, who were smoking forward, until eleven ...

— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman

... That he should have been capable of being deceived by such a plot against her was enough for her. She did not even speak to Souchey on the subject. In the course of the afternoon he came across her as she moved about the house, looking ashamed, not daring to meet her eyes, hardly able to mutter a word to her. But she said not a syllable to him about her desk. She could not bring herself to plead the cause between her and her lover before ...

— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope

... not sitting on the gate, for I might have fallen and broken my neck. As I felt his eyes staring at me I preserved a dignified composure, and had the satisfaction of hearing him mutter again, "Damn!" ...

— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton

... white under his oil and smoke, for he was an Aleut, and Aleuts are not clean people. Then he began to mutter a prayer. "Don't touch him, Patalamon. There has never been a white seal since—since I was born. Perhaps it is old Zaharrof's ghost. He was lost last year in the ...

— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling

... bellicose backs of the high-well-born; Once more to the click of martial boots Junkers exchange their grave salutes, Taking the pavement, large with side, Shoulders padded and elbows wide; And if a civilian dares to mutter They boost him off and ...

— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various

... them both at once, they mutually broke out into laughter, the violence of which threatened to convulse them. From this, however, the padre was the first to recover, when the intruder, mastering his muscles, regained his countenance so far as to be able to mutter something in the shape of an apology, in which, probably, the word "starvation" was the only one intelligible; after it had been good-humouredly received, and the priest had welcomed the strange guest, the Archbishop's letter was ...

— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... more as friends than the Cossacks themselves as enemies. They seemed to harbour the most unbounded resentment against the people of this country; their countenances bore the expression of the strongest enmity as we walked along their line, and we frequently heard them mutter among themselves, in the most emphatic manner, Sacre Dieu, voila des Anglois!—Whatever the atrocity of their conduct, however, might have been, to the people of their own, as well as every other country, it was impossible not to feel the strongest emotion at the sight of the veteran ...

— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... expecting it to slacken pace or to swerve from him into a different course. Instead, the animal almost brushed him as it dashed past, his face set and hard, his eyes staring. "Get out of this, you fool, get out!" the Mole heard him mutter as he swung round a stump and disappeared down a ...

— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... that specific purpose, it must be fully equipped, and thoroughly competent and equal to its work. For God always adapts means to ends. Hence it can never resemble the tribunals existing in man-made churches, which can but mutter empty phrases, suggest compromises, and clothe thought in wholly ambiguous language—tribunals that dare not commit themselves to anything definite and precise. Yea, which utterly fail and break down just at the critical moment, when men are dividing and disagreeing ...

— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan

... stare and mutter, the Lion's eyes could be seen to shoot out the most brilliant green fires; they looked like the flashing ...

— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton

... thing; and Todd's quit too. Guess they've come to some sort of an understanding. Wish I knew what seven, three, five meant; something pretty interesting, I'll be bound." Andy went on to mutter, half ...

— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy

... presume, adopted in engrossing as a safeguard against the intrusion of a forged line between the legitimate text and the attesting signature. He was quite sensible that this ornament might as well be dispensed with; and his family often heard him mutter, after involuntarily performing it, "There goes the ...

— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... Saint Martin's summer the old gran'dad loved to sit, blithe and hearty, chirping away the soft unseasonable December days. Sometimes in the plenitude of content he would give Valeria a meaning glance and mutter "Oh, leetle Owel! Oh, leetle Owel!" and then break into laughter that must needs pause to let ...

— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... and the worse for Tom Tailor," said the Baron; "but come, sit down, or, if thou needs must e'en give us a cast of thy office, mutter ...

— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... the money and preceded Manuel into the town, chuckling inwardly at his cleverness in outwitting this keen conspirator. But he would have been less elated with his success if he had heard the Cuban mutter, as he turned into the porch of ...

— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... and orphans together shall crowd, To gaze as at heaven's dread rod, And mutter their curses, and mingle their tears, Invoking the ...

— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... the Petrel the water leaped upward in a tiny spout. Dickie's rifle sounded in Gregory's ear and the report of his own prolonged the echoes. As he pumped in another cartridge he noted that the girl's eyes were shining and her red lips were parted in a smile. Between shots he heard her mutter: ...

— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... names of Cardot and Camusot, Oscar made an effort to throw off his sleep; but he could only mutter a few words which were not understood, and then he fell back upon the ...

— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... think. Ach! Gott im Himmel! He's in the hall!" She sank wretchedly into a chair. "Can you do nothing but gape and mutter?" In her ...

— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips

... that troubled the magician. He began to mutter spells and strange words, and all of a sudden he was gone, and in his place was a great black ant, for he had changed himself into an ant. In he ran through a crack of the door (and mischief has got into many a man's house through a smaller hole for the matter of that). In and out ran ...

— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle

... strange fellow, that same new acquaintance of ours, and unlike all the priests I saw in that country, and I saw plenty of various nations—they were always upon their guard, and had their features and voice modulated; but this man was subject to fits of absence, during which he would frequently mutter to himself; then, though he was perfectly civil to everybody, as far as words went, I observed that he entertained a thorough contempt for most people, especially for those whom he was making dupes. I have observed him whilst drinking with our governor, ...

— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... day wore on, heavy clouds began to gather in the western sky. They rolled in darkness over the heavens. The distant thunder was heard to mutter. Nearer and louder it was heard. The lightning began to flash. Presently the storm burst in its fury. It came first in rain, and then in hail. The hail-stones came in lumps of ice as big as eggs. They lay thick in the furrows of the field. The thankful ...

— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton

... on Crabbe, inscribed upon a great red poster. There was something in the lettering of the poster that displeased him exceedingly, for, having scanned over it, he would turn away with a quickened pace, and mutter some incoherent sentences no one present could comprehend, but which his increasing nervousness betold were expressive of anger. The thought of Bessie made me impatient, and following the example of the little deformed man, ...

— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... "Kein Einzelner denkt mit der Consequenz eines Volksgeistes." Schelling may help us over the parting ways: "Der erzeugte Gedanke ist eine unabhaengige Macht, fuer sich fortwirkend, ja, in der menschlichen Seele, so anwachsend, dass er seine eigene Mutter bezwingt und unterwirft." After the philosopher, let us conclude with a divine: "C'est de revolte en revolte, si l'on veut employer ce mot, que les societes se perfectionnent, que la civilisation s'etablit, que la justice regne, ...

— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... of the world, so that every monarch in Europe will find it necessary to keep a palace in Paris, and they will all come to hold the train at the coronation of my descendants—' a spasm of pain passed suddenly over his face. 'My God! for whom am I building? Who will be my descendants?' I heard him mutter, and he passed his ...

— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle

... a few others paid their yearly subscriptions to The Wand every time they got their government allotment. "Your subscription is already paid," I would explain, but they would shake their heads and mutter. This was their newspaper, too, the thing that had signs and their own names printed on a machine. They had the right to trade beadwork or another dollar for it ...

— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... will on the campaign and to make the enemy conform to his movements. When he was on his death-bed in 1913, his thoughts were fixed on the war. 'It must come to a fight,' were the last words he was heard to mutter, 'only give me a strong right wing.' Von Moltke, though he did not absolutely weaken the right wing, weakened it relatively, by using most of the newly formed divisions of the German army for ...

— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... had a foretaste of the affliction in store for him; for, when he opened his breviary and began to mutter his morning devotion, his new companions gathered about him with faces that betrayed their superstitious terror, and gave him to understand that his book was a bad spirit with which he must hold no more converse. ...

— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... thought Badger. He was on the point of rushing to Lee's assistance. But there was no need. Lee, who was light on his feet, avoided the rush and ran for a side door, through which he escaped into the house, leaving Gaston to rave and mutter, and at last retreat into the street and ...

— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish

... Gentile care for truth? They want you to worship one dead man, and you prefer to worship another dead man. What's the odds to you? Can't you mutter your Latin, and play with your beads, before both, ...

— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... beside his mistress and wailed as if he did not like these strange creatures a bit. Scraps began to mutter something about "hoppity, poppity, jumpity, dump!" but no one paid any attention to her. Ojo kept close to the Scarecrow and the Scarecrow kept close to Dorothy; but the little girl turned to the queer ...

— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... the dead. The color died into an ashen gray and the air grew cold, with a heaviness beside that dragged at the very soul. Diccon shivered violently, turned restlessly upon the log that served him as settle, and began to mutter to himself. ...

— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... and eternally right and good that the pecuniary interests of the owners of the material means of life should rule unabated in all those matters of public policy that touch on the material fortunes of the community at large. Barring a slight and intermittent mutter of discontent, this arrangement has also the cordial approval of popular sentiment in these modern democratic nations. One need only recall the paramount importance which is popularly attached to the maintenance and extension of the nation's trade—for ...

— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... ken." Finally he had to be given up as hopeless, and the dragoons rode back, a little shamefacedly and cursing their luck. John Allen, his honest face still full of scared amazement, rode slowly on. Every now and again he would check his horse, look round and listen, mutter to himself bewilderedly, shake his head, and go on once more. The clatter of the dragoons had not long died away when, coming towards him from the other direction, he heard the regular beat of a ...

— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... bring your meals to yuh, Tex. Because if you roost there till I tell yuh, you'll be roosting a good long while!" He got up and lounged out, his hands in his pockets, his well-shaped head carried at a provocative tilt. He heard Tex swear under his breath and mutter something about making the darned little runt come through yet, ...

— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... foreign arms. The thought of Such intervention made the blood, even of the Cavaliers, boil in their veins. Some who had always professed the doctrine of non-resistance in its full extent were now heard to mutter that there was one limitation to that doctrine. If a foreign force were brought over to coerce the nation, they would not answer for their ...

— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... proceeded at once to take up her work-basket. "Lucky there's a window up there, so I can see," I heard her mutter. "I've no time to throw away even ...

— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green

... not know what to say. Evidently any advice he could have given on the subject was now too late. All he could think of was to mutter: ...

— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow

... toward the only faces that he saw out of the innumerable host: Themistocles, Democrates, Simonides, Cimon. They beheld him raise his arm and lift his glorious head yet higher. Glaucon in turn saw Cimon sink into his seat. "He wakes!" was the appeased mutter passing from the son of Miltiades and running along every tier of Athenians. And silence deeper than ever held the stadium; for now, with Lycon victor twice, the literal turning of a finger in the next event might win or ...

— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... as we sit looking expectantly at the curtain, we hear, not the deep booming of the Rhine, but the patter of a forest downpour, accompanied by the mutter of a storm which soon gathers into a roar and culminates in crashing thunderbolts. As it passes off, the curtain rises; and there is no mistaking whose forest habitation we are in; for the central pillar is a mighty tree, and the place fit for the dwelling of a fierce chief. The door opens: ...

— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw

... his helmet to wipe away the sweat of his arduous climb, cry out "Que bec" (What a peak!) as he viewed the magnificent panorama of river and valley and mountain rolling from his feet; or did their Indian guide point to the water of the river narrowing like {14} a strait below the peak, and mutter in native tongue, "Quebec" (The strait)? Legend gives both explanations of the name. To the east Cartier could see far down the silver flood of the St. Lawrence halfway to Saguenay; to the south, far as ...

— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... Later he saw Richardson quit the gambler's presence abruptly. The other took a few steps after him, then fell back with a shrug. Broderick heard the deputy-marshal mutter: "Too damned fresh; positively insulting," but he thought little of it. Richardson was apt to grow choleric while drinking. He often fancied himself insulted, but usually forgot it quickly. So Broderick ...

— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... you, Edith, it was a dangerous business," I heard him mutter. "Only I never contemplated that they'd carry it this far. Now you see what such ...

— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve

... reminding them that they'd have to spend a good deal—maybe a great deal—on the recovery of the suitcase; money that Worth Gilbert would have to spend instead if they sold to him; and finally an ugly mutter from somewhere that maybe young Gilbert wouldn't have to spend so very much to recover ...

— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... person in the hut was the Dutch boy, Hans Dunnerwust, who sat on the ground, his back against the wall, his jaw dropped and his eyes bulging. Occasionally, as he listened to the words of the dying man, he would mutter: ...

— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish

... alive to much enthusiasm. Even these golden prospects did not arouse him to do more than rub his poor old bleared eyes with the cuff of his bedesman's gown, and gently mutter: "he didn't know, not he; ...

— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... that racked him. A dozen feet away he could not be heard. But, close to his shoulder, I could hear his steady, smothered groaning that seemed to take the form of a chant. Also, at regular intervals, he would mutter: ...

— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... with inly-mutter'd voice, "It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold; This neither is its courage nor its choice, But its necessity ...

— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... death, my master; Yet boorish heretics, with grounded throats, Mutter like sullen bulls; the Count of Saym, And many gentlemen, they say, have sworn A fearful oath: ...

— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... his evening stroll in the direction of Champdoce, and, pipe in mouth, would meditate over his schemes. Pausing on the brow of a hill that overlooked the Chateau, he would shake his fist, and mutter,— ...

— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... particularly on the arched eyebrows and finely cut upper lip, which she said were sure marks of high blood, and never found in the lower ranks! With a scornful expression on her face, old Hagar would listen to these remarks, and then, when sure that no one heard her, she would mutter: "Marks of blood! What nonsense! I'm almost glad I've solved the riddle, and know 'taint blood that makes the difference. Just tell her the truth once, and she'd quickly change her mind. Hester's blue, pinched nose, which ...

— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes

... scowl'd and mutter'd low, about "a losing game," And being "done clean out of one," "done brown," and "burning shame," Then hung his head, and slank away, and all his dirty crew Dispersed themselves about the land fresh mischief ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... those bodies piled between the castle and the shore, and it was easy to see that he was laughing and pointing them out to the Scots. At that Brian heard his men mutter no little, and he himself clenched his nails into his palms and cursed bitterly; but he forbade his men to fire and they durst not disobey him. The party rode up under the walls, and the Dark Master grinned at ...

— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones

... raid and a lucky one," said the Viking complacently to himself. "A fairer face and brighter eyes I never saw before. Who can she be? Like enough some lady come to hear the spaeman's mystic jargon, and swallow potions or mutter spells at his bidding. I am in two minds about turning wizard myself, if such visitors be common. Methinks I could give her as wise a rede as Atli. But it is strange how she came here; she is not of this country, I'll ...

— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston

... courage you new proofs would show, Without much travel you may find a foe. Those foes are neither so remote nor few, That you should need each other to pursue. Lean times and foreign wars should minds unite; When poor, men mutter, but they seldom fight. O holy Alha! that I live to see Thy Granadines assist their enemy! You fight the christians' battles; every life You lavish thus, in this intestine strife, Does from our weak foundations take one prop, Which helped to hold ...

— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... hissed Madame, when she had read the note; 'God deliver me from my friends!' She paced up and down the room several times, and at last began to mutter to herself, as people often do in moments of strong emotion: 'Bah! but he'll never get up by daybreak. He'll oversleep himself, especially after to-night's supper. The other will be before him..... Oh, my poor head, you've suffered too much to fail ...

— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... home and was weather-bound for a day, did lament his sad destiny, and mutter half-intelligible nonsense of what he would not rather do than descend to such a melancholy existence; but in all his complainings he never made Kate discontented with her lot, ...

— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... grew, the fiercer grew his resentment against this complacent Christendom which took so much from the Jew and gave so little. 'Shylocks!' he would mutter between his clenched teeth as he ...

— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... off howling and for several minutes would remain silent, still standing on all fours. Then suddenly he would mutter softly, ...

— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev

... in Saint Rochus They made him stand, and wait his doom; And, as if he were condemned to the tomb, Began to mutter their hocus pocus. First, the Mass for the Dead they chaunted. Then three times laid upon his head A shovelful of church-yard clay, Saying to him, as he stood undaunted, "This is a sign that thou art dead, So ...

— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... to join No bribe unhallow'd to a prayer of thine; Thine, which can ev'ry ear's full test abide, Nor need be mutter'd to the gods aside! No, thou aloud may'st thy petitions trust! Thou need'st not whisper; other great ones must; For few, my friend, few dare like thee be plain, And prayer's low artifice at shrines ...

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

... heard the man mutter to himself. "Phil Lawrence? Oh, it can't be!" Then he raised his voice: "You are trying to play some ...

— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer

... they could talk, the less, she knew, were they impressed by her. Even a little boorishness was more complimentary than chatter. Sometimes when she played on the piano which Tommy had hired for her, the visitor was so shy that he could not even mutter "Thank you" to his hat; yet she might play to him again, and not to the gallant who remarked briskly: "How very charming! ...

— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie

... the low mutter of a voice hasty and with the quality of stern exhortation, the snap of the lock, and the door was jerked open. Norton's eyes, probing into every square foot of the chamber, took stock of Jim Galloway, and beyond him of Kid Rickard, slouching forward in a ...

— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory

... river, and rolled away toward the village, and into the distance. Nor did they stop there—those echoes: the Atlantic is wide, but they crossed it; they made Lord North, Thurlow, and Wedderburn start in their chairs, and mutter a curse: they penetrated to the king in his cabinet, and he flushed and bit his lip. More than a hundred years have passed; and yet the vibrations of that shot across Concord Bridge have not died away. Whenever ...

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

... dropped one by one into the beech-trees near us; and a jay, uttering his harsh alarm, hopped in and out of some young hazels fringing the glade beyond the "set." Presently, a brown owl, in a group of tall pines near the little rill that made faint music in the woods, began to mutter and complain, in those low, peculiar notes that are often heard before she leaves her daytime resting place. Then no sound disturbed the stillness but the far-off cawing of the rooks, and the only ...

— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... to them to go faster. She wanted to get out of hearing, monsieur. It was only when we were really here in the City that she quieted, but that was worse. She lay and moaned. I cried, I could not help it, hearing her. She would mutter things, too. 'France, France!' she said once, and it made me shudder. One almost thought she had ...

— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... saw what we supposed to be the master and the mistress snugly ensconced in a room, and asked the master if we could obtain lodgings for the night. He said "yes," but we heard the mistress, who had not seen us, mutter something we could not hear distinctly. My brother said he was sure he heard the words "Shepherd's room." The landlord then conducted us into a room at the end of the long dark passage, in which, we found several shepherds drinking and conversing ...

— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... everywhere, stupefied with embarrassment and fear. But Joan came steadily forward, erect and self-possessed, and stood before the governor. She recognized me, but in no way indicated it. There was a buzz of admiration, even the governor contributing to it, for I heard him mutter, "By God's grace, it is a beautiful creature!" He inspected her critically a moment or two, ...

— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... watched him, a suspicion crossed her that the poor, beggarly dress and the quiet, yielding mien were assumed to baffle observation. Soon another person in similar dress but of fewer years met him. The two joined hands and looked earnestly into each other's eyes, and the older one appeared to mutter a word or two. What was that word, at which the younger bent his head with reverent gesture? Was it a command or a blessing? Whatever it was, in a second it was all said. The hands then unclasped—the bended head raised with a startled glance around, as though with a fear that even such ...

— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... "He's got a steady job," the youthful president declared, and turned to Cappy Ricks for confirmation of this edict. But Cappy, the pious old codger, had bowed his head on his breast and they heard him mutter: ...

— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... Upon this a mutter of astonishment arose, and the waiter-girls, giggling, marvelling, and envious, paused, their platters in hand, to exchange comment on the new-comer's hat and gown. A cowboy at the washing-sink in the corner ...

— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

... of proof; the other party contending that the belief in spiritualism fetters and ties down physiological investigation—that man's intellect is prostrated by the domination of metaphysical speculation—that we have no evidence of the existence of an essence, and that organised mutter is all that is requisite to produce the multitudinous manifestations ...

— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell

... in. Shaking off his assailant he stepped to Benita, and while her father stood behind him with the lifted blade, began to make strange upward passes over her, and to mutter words of command. For a long while they took no effect; indeed, both of them were almost sure that she was gone. Despair gripped her father, and Meyer worked at his black art so furiously that the sweat burst out upon his forehead ...

— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... The scourge of nations ripe for ruin, Planning oft their own undoing! But who in yonder swarming host Locust-like from coast to coast, Reluctant move, an alien few, Sullen, fierce, of sombre hue, Who, forced unhallow'd arms to bear, Mutter to the moaning air, Whose curses on the welkin cast Edge the keen and icy blast! Iberia, sorrow bade thee nurse Those who now the tyrant curse, Whose wrongs for vengeance cry aloud! Lo, the coming of a cloud! To burst in wrath, and sweep away Light as ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... the little pictures, each in a lace fringe of yellowish paper, which she used to mark the places of the greater feasts of the church, my aunt, while she swallowed her drops, began at full speed to mutter the words of the sacred text, its meaning being slightly clouded in her brain by the uncertainty whether the pepsin, when taken so long after the Vichy, would still be able to overtake it and to 'send it down.' "Three o'clock! It's ...

— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... her, and despairing of even making anything of him, she left him to the common charity of the village. He soon after learnt to eat bread when it was given him, and ate whatever else he could get during the day, but always went off to the jungle at night. He used to mutter something, but could never be got to articulate any word distinctly. The front of his knees and elbows had become hardened from going on all fours with the wolves. If any clothes are put on him, he takes them off, and commonly tears them to pieces in ...

— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... who was by this time unbound, seated in a corner of the cabin, his hands fallen on his knees, his eyes staring on vacancy, while the two priests stood as close against the wall as they could squeeze themselves, keeping up a ceaseless mutter of prayers. ...

— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... and he shook his head sadly, but still with a faint smile on his lips. They lifted him tenderly, and placed him on a litter. The movement, gentle as it was, brought back pain, and with the pain strength to mutter, "My mother—-I would ...

— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... were caught by Grogoff's voice. They stood there and listened. Soon they began to nod their heads. I heard them muttering that good old word "Verrno! Verrno!" again. The crowd grew. The men began to shout their approval. "Aye! it's true," I heard a solder near me mutter. "The English are thieves"; and another "Belgium?... After all I could not understand a word of what that ...

— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... and the tenants one and all had so heard. Rents had been raised on them; timber had fallen fast; the lawyer on the estate was growing rich; tradesmen in Barchester, nay, in Greshamsbury itself, were beginning to mutter; and the squire himself would not be merry. Under such circumstances the throats of a tenantry will still swallow, but ...

— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... cried. 'Did—did——' The sentence died in an unintelligible mutter. He seemed to utter a name I could not catch. All the time I was watching him intently, and never shall I forget the look that passed over his face. He had been very pale before, but now his pallor was ghastly. For a moment he looked almost like a dead man, save for the gleam in his eyes. ...

— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking

... an eye not unfamiliar to keyholes, and probably opens his wife's letters. The loud man, who talks with the intention of being overheard, is the same egotist elsewhere. If there was any justice in Iago's sneer, that there were some "so weak of soul that in their sleep they mutter their affairs," what shall be said of the walking revery-babblers? I have met men who were evidently rolling over, "like a sweet morsel under the tongue," some speech they were about to make, and others ...

— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte

... habit, I kiss Liza's fingers and mutter: "Pistachio... cream... lemon..." but the effect is utterly different. I am cold as ice and I am ashamed. When my daughter comes in to me and touches my forehead with her lips I start as though a bee had stung me on the head, ...

— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... to the thought that flashed through his brain the lad bent quickly forward, caught at the King's hand and raised it eagerly to his lips, half rousing him, to mutter in his sleep, while Leoni took out and unscrewed his little flask and applied it ...

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

... came out of her tent. Imbrie hid the knife and turned away. As he passed the breed woman Stonor heard him mutter: ...

— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... and bade them bright forth the gift of Goldburg and open it before the King; and they did so. But when the King cast eyes on the wares his face was gladdened, for he was a greedy wolf, and whoso had been close to his mouth would have heard him mutter: "So mighty! yet so wealthy!" But he thanked Ralph aloud and in smooth words. And Ralph made obeisance to him again, and then turned and went his ways down the hall, and was glad at heart that he had become so mighty a man, for all fell back before him and ...

— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... no easier path to heaven? Santa Maria! how can I tell What, now for a score of years and more, I've buried away in my heart so deep That, howso tired I've been, I've kept Eyes waking when near me another slept, Lest I might mutter it in my sleep? And now at the last to blab it clear! How the women will shrink from my pictures! And worse Will the men do—spit on my name, and curse; But then up in ...

— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... meant pretty much, the same. The curious expression mutterseelenallein, "quite alone; alone by one's self," is given a peculiar interpretation by Lippert, who sees in it a relic of the burial of the dead (soul) beneath the hearth, threshold, or floor of the house; "wessen Mutter im Hause ruht, der kann daheim immer nur mit seiner Mutterseele selbander allein sein." Or, perhaps, it goes back to the time when, as with the Seminoles of Florida, the babe was held over the mouth of the mother, whose death resulted from its birth, in order that her departing spirit might enter ...

— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... as we meet our Reverend Mother in this scene of old affections, the stupendous struggle has already receded into the shadow-land of History. The war is a thing of the past. If hatred still rankles, open hostilities have ceased. If rumblings of the recent tempest still mutter along the track of its former desolation, the storm is over. The conflict is ended. No more conscription of husbands, sons, and brothers for the weary work of destruction; no more the forced march by day, the bivouac at night, and to-morrow the delirium of carnage. ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... the Uncle came out and went and felt in his greatcoat pocket. It was his cigar-case he wanted. We saw that afterwards. We got a much better view of him then. He didn't look like an Indian but just like a kind of brown, big Englishman, and of course he didn't see us, but we heard him mutter to himself— ...

— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit

... dialogue between the tavern-keeper and his newly-wedded spouse might have extended it is impossible with any degree of accuracy to set forth, inasmuch as another loud and desperate lunge, extenuated to an inaudible mutter the testy rejoinder of "Giles o' the Maypole;" this being the cognomen by which he was more ...

— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... spoke another word, but I saw a storm was brewin, and I heard her mutter to herself, 'Creation! what a spot of work! I'll have no teaching of 'mother tongue' here.' Next morning she sent me to Boston of an errand, and when I returned, two days after, Flora was gone to live with sister ...

— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... the thingummy from his hand. With bent brows and set teeth she wrenched it round. The engine gave a faint protesting mutter, like a dog that has been disturbed in its sleep, ...

— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse

... missing; and I overheard her ladyship announcing to her husband that the Frenchman had absconded, carrying off plate and jewelry to a considerable amount. Lord Hawley was extremely shocked and grieved on receiving this (false) intelligence; and I heard him mutter, as he retired in great perturbation of mind to his study,—'What, can it be possible?—Lagrange, whom I esteemed to be the most honest and faithful fellow in the world—of whose fidelity I have had so ...

— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson

... one irritated him with her calm, the other roused him with her fire, and he came to watch for Helen that he might sneer inwardly at her, with almost as much eagerness as he watched for Miriam that he might mutter foul language, like ...

— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young

... freshness breathes, And the clustering ivy thy hair inwreathes; When thy voice shall be soft as the day's last sigh. And hope like a shadow shall over thee lie; Thou wilt call on my name; and from far o'er the sea, Fierce thunders and lightnings shall mutter of me. ...

— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child

... rolling, while the lips smiled. Her words came through deeper and deeper veils, fearless, defiant, a challenge inarticulate, a continuous mutter. Again he looked at the door as he struggled to move with her dragging weight. The drops rolled on his forehead and neck, his shirt was wet, his hands slipped upon her ribbons. Suddenly the drugged body folded ...

— Lin McLean • Owen Wister

... back to the point, and thought we would wait a little while to see if the trout would begin to rise. But they did not. A storm began to mutter and boom along the battlements. Great gray clouds obscured the peaks, and at length the rain came. It was cold and cutting. We sought the shelter of spruces for a while, and waited. After an hour it cleared somewhat, and R.C. ...

— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... stout, conceited sixteen-year-old when her mother died, so spoiled and so self-centred that old Lady Frothingham had been heard more than once to mutter that the young lady could get down from her high horse and make herself useful, or she could march. But that was six years ago. And now—this! Magsie had evidently decided to make herself useful, but she had managed to make herself ...

— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... from the wall!" Their chatter finally reaching her consciousness, Senta turns to them, annoyed. "Oh, keep still! Stop your silly laughing! Do you wish to make me really cross?" Further to tease her, they drown her voice with the refrain of their spinning-song: "Mutter and hum, good little wheel, cheerily, cheerily turn! Spin, spin a thousand threads, good little wheel, mutter and hum!"—"Do stop that foolish song," begs Senta, "my ears are dazed with your muttering and humming. If you wish me to attend, find something ...

— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... and gay—Mr. Wrenn stayed late, under the mercury-vapor lights, making card cross-files of the Southern merchants, their hobbies and prejudices, and whistling as he worked, stopping now and then to slap the desk and mutter, "By ...

— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... hand, there are minds so whimsically constituted, that they may sometimes be profitably interpreted by contraries, a process of which the great Tycho Brahe is said to have availed himself in the case of the little Lackwit, who used to sit and mutter at his feet while he was studying. A mind of this sort we may compare to a magnetic needle, the poles of which have been suddenly reversed by a flash of lightning, or other more obscure accident of nature. It may be safely concluded, that to those whose judgment or information ...

— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... though with less sharpness of outline, his own faults. He will probably decide that the anxieties of children outweigh the joys connected with children. He will admit all the shortcomings of existence, will face them like a man, grimly, sourly, in a sturdy despair. He will mutter: 'Of course I'm angry! Who wouldn't be? Of course I'm disappointed! Did I expect this twenty years ago? Yes, we ought to save more. But we don't, so there you are! I'm bound to worry! I know I should be better if I didn't smoke so much. I know there's absolutely ...

— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett

... in a dream, so Corinth all, Throughout her palaces imperial, And all her populous streets and temples lewd, Mutter'd, like tempest in the distance brew'd, To the wide-spreaded night above her towers. Men, women, rich and poor, in the cool hours, Shuffled their sandals o'er the pavement white, Companion'd or alone; while many a light Flared, here and there, from wealthy ...

— Lamia • John Keats

... well-disposed windows, but through flaws and breaches,—through the yawning chasms of our ruin. We were taught wisdom by humiliation. No town in England presumed to have a prejudice, or dared to mutter a petition. What was worse, the whole Parliament of England, which retained authority for nothing but surrenders, was despoiled of every shadow of its superintendence. It was, without any qualification, denied in theory, as it had been trampled upon in practice. This scene of shame and disgrace ...

— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... still the viols are playing That grand old wordless rhyme; And still those two ate swaying In perfect tune and time. If the great bassoons that mutter, If the clarinets that blow, Were given a voice to utter The ...

— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... tense, his muscles hardened, and in his throat there was the low whispering of a snarl instead of a howl. He sensed danger. He had caught, in the voice of the wolves, the ravening note that had made Pierrot cross himself and mutter of the loups-garous, and he crouched down on his belly at the top ...

— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... packed him up in the two blankets and heated stones for his feet and hands. Presently the boy fell into sound sleep for the first time since he was wounded. He had slept before, but always uneasily and restlessly. Now he did not mutter between clenched teeth ...

— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine

... knights clash in tourney under those frowning towers. Surely a lovelorn maiden spins at that castle window, weaving her heartache into the magic figures of her loom. Stately dames must move behind the shut doors of those pillared mansions; devotees mutter Oriental prayers beneath those sun-smitten domes. And amid the awful inner silence of that cathedral, white-robed priests lift ...

— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... the idea into your head that I am a genius," he would mutter fiercely at her. "I never did, nor work of mine. You don't know good from bad, anyway, and we may both be crazy." He buried his face in his hands, overcome by the awfulness of failure. She put ...

— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick

... in conversation below, and when the latter returned he found his wife and daughter standing by the bedside, and Margaret exhibiting many signs of restlessness. She kept rolling her head upon the pillow, and throwing her hands about uneasily. In a few minutes she began to moan and mutter incoherently. After a little while her eyes flew suddenly open, and she pronounced ...

— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur

... unable to provide for his family, I said: 'Why, Twigsmith, retire to one of your country seats, and live on the interest of some canal or other, or discount bonds and mortgages for the country banks.' Actually, I heard Twigsmith mutter as he went out, that it wasn't right to insult a man's poverty. Now I hadn't the remotest idea of injuring Twigsmith's feelings, for he was a very clever fellow, and we made a good thing out of him in his time, but it seems that my advice might ...

— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... questioned the boatswain and his comrades, whose devotion was unreservedly his, by a long and anxious look, and I heard him mutter between ...

— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne

... says that Feronia corresponds to the Vedic Bhuranyu, a name of Agni, the Vedic fire-god (ii. 800). Mannhardt prefers, of course, a derivation from far (grain), as in confarreatio, the ancient Roman bride-cake form of marriage. Feronia MaterSanskrit bharsani mata, Getreide Mutter. {149a} It is a pity that philologists so rarely agree in their etymologies. In Greek the goddess is called Anthephorus, Philostephanus, and even Persephone—probably the Persephone ...

— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... Moa mutter, "So that is it?" A venomous flashing look—a shaft from me to Anita and back ...

— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... He held the mike up and they heard him say, "There's no point in my talking with you unless you will be quiet and listen." He paused. The roar slowly subsided into an angry mutter. "Thanks. ...

— Criminal Negligence • Jesse Francis McComas

... hastened home, leaving Cadman to mutter his wrath, and then to growl it, when his officer was out ...

— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... of this was lost on the gardener. I heard the brute mutter to himself: "Gammon!" For once I asserted my authority over ...

— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins

... was clear, and the sun's rays dazzling and intense in their heat. Early in the afternoon we were lying around in the shade, about two miles from the State line of Pennsylvania. Two corps had preceded us. Some of our men, with their ears on the ground, declared that they could hear the distant mutter of artillery. The country around was full of ...

— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... bells. As the superb structure of filigree gold goes by, a movement of reverent worship vibrates through the crowd. Forgetful of silks and broadcloth and gossip, they fall on their knees in one party-colored mass, and, bowing their heads and beating their breasts, they mutter their mechanical prayers. There are thinking men who say these shows are necessary; that the Latin mind must see with bodily eyes the thing it worships, or the worship will fade away from its heart. If there ...

— Castilian Days • John Hay

... that there was a chance, as the yellow hunter well knew; and it was that which caused him at intervals to mutter— ...

— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... ill," I heard Esau mutter, as he shook me angrily. "I say, don't, don't have no fevers nor nothink out here in this wild place where there's no doctors nor chemists' shops, to get so much as an ounce ...

— To The West • George Manville Fenn

... when, as the enemy's fire had evidently ceased or slackened, I gave the order to cease firing. But it was very difficult at first to make them desist: the taste of gunpowder was too intoxicating. One of them was heard to mutter, indignantly,—"Why de Cunnel order Cease firing, when de Secesh blazin' away at de rate ob ten dollar a day?" Every incidental occurrence seemed somehow to engrave itself upon my perceptions, without interrupting the main course of thought. Thus I know, that, in one of the pauses of the affair, ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various