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More "Stammer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hear the far, low summons, When the silver winds return; Rills that run and streams that stammer, Goldenwing with his loud hammer, Icy brooks that brawl and clamor, Where the Indian willows burn; Let me hearken to the calling, When the ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... place stools near the stove, but whether he was quite drunk or whether some narcotic had been mixed with the brandy, he fell back on his seat, trying to stammer ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... which assumption his figures informed him that the gold in this vault amounted to the not altogether insignificant weight of close upon fourteen hundred tons. The sight of such incredible quantities of the precious metals had so paralysing an effect upon the young Englishman that he could scarcely stammer an enquiry as to where it all came from. The custodian of this fabulous wealth replied, with a smile, that the mountains which hemmed the valley about were enormously rich in both gold and silver, and that some hundreds of men had been kept industriously employed in working the mines almost ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... in the street for him to come and take the breast. Did Augustin remember these things? At least he recalled his nurses' games, and the efforts they made to appease him, and the childish words they taught him to stammer. The first Latin words he repeated, he picked up from his mother and the servants, who must also have spoken Punic, the ordinary tongue of the populace and small trader class. He learned Punic without thinking about it, in playing with other children of Thagaste, ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... engagement," I managed to reply calmly. But then, as Di suddenly turned and looked straight at me with marked coldness, the blood sprang up to my face. I began to stammer again like a young ass of a schoolboy. "I'm afraid that I—er—the fact is, I am engaged. A matter of business. I wish I could get out of it, but I can't, and—er—I shall have to run off, or I will be late. Good-bye,—good-bye." Then I mumbled something ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... of his impressions. "This Goethe," he wrote to Fritz Jacobi, "of whom from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof and from the going down thereof to its rising I should like to speak and stammer and rhapsodise with you ... this Goethe has, as it were, transcended all the ideals I had ever conceived of the direct feeling and observation of a great genius. Never could I have so well explained and sympathised with the feelings of the disciples on the way to Emmaus when they ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... were only half parted. She could hardly speak, as she laid a timid hand on her late principal's shoulder, directing his attention to the breakfast tray. "Look away, please, for Cecile's sake if not for mine," she managed to stammer, and, as he turned his head aside, she flung herself upon her knees beside the bed, and took the apparently dead man's hand in her own, covered it with tears and kisses, and transferred the ring she had once worn back to her own hand, replacing it with one of her ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... had not a word to say. He had been meditating upon a thousand possible explanations, excuses, apologies, and his tongue would not utter one of them. He accepted his orders meekly, but as he turned to go he managed to stammer out, "Of ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... his cheeks, and through his sobs he could only stammer again and again: "Heinrich! my dear ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... fine handsome fellow they have stuck on Snow Hill, but one of the griffins of 1809—and you have Tom's phiz, only it wants touching with all the colours of a painter's palette. I was quite frightened, and could only stammer out, "Why T-o-o-m!" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... don't you?" snarled the man, little beads of perspiration gathered on his forehead. "Or blush and stammer any of the idiotic things which a woman says to the man at the moment of his supreme idiocy. Or flatter yourself with the vanity of it. Are you a good woman or a bad? I don't know. Are you generous or mean? I don't know. Are you loyal and stanch and ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... further?" I managed to stammer out as we went down to the basement room that they used ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... of the guests beside them, who wished to hear them talk familiarly, so as to dispel all restraint, made them stammer and colour. They could never make up their minds to treat one another as sweethearts ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... dreams. But some absorb especially whispered words in such a way that their power becomes evident after the waking of the sleeper. Much more is this true of children. A suggestion to give up vicious habits, perhaps in the sexual sphere, or to speak fluently and no longer stammer may thus be beneficial. Yet the danger of this method is not small and extensive use of it is certainly not advisable. The more easily it can be carried into every bedchamber and can thus give to every mother and nurse the tools of a rather powerful therapy, the more a danger signal ought to ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... in His infinite goodness has given me a clear insight into the deep mysteries of Charity. If I could but express what I know, you would hear a heavenly music; but alas! I can only stammer like a child, and if God's own words were not my support, I should be tempted to beg leave to hold my peace. When the Divine Master tells me to give to whosoever asks of me, and to let what is mine be taken without asking it again, it seems to me that ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... to Lamb by accusing him of excess in drinking. The truth is, that a small quantity of any strong liquid (wine, &c.) disturbed his speech, which at best was but an eloquent stammer. The distresses of his early life made him ready to resort to any remedy which brought forgetfulness; and he himself, frail in body and excitable, was very speedily affected. During all my intimacy with him, I never knew him drink immoderately; except once, when, having ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... stare. "I leave it to you, Gov'ner," he continued to stammer at length. "S'y you was me and I was Number One—w'at would ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... stammer a greeting. He felt as though she were some strange person that looked like Dorothy, but like a new Dorothy of such exquisite attitude and grace and so altogether charming that he could do nothing but wonder how the transformation ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... that cellar-like place below the level of the street, repelled the country-bred lad. Were it not for the desperate urgency of his errand he never would have dared to enter. As it was, the fumes of alcohol and steaming, dirty clothes nearly choked him, and he could scarce stammer the name of "citizen Rateau" when a gruff voice ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... the bustling madness of our heaven-touching Babel. Of course, your secret adoration of Manhattan, the greatest wild poem ever begotten by the heart of man, is not readily transmissible. You will stammer something of what it means to climb upward from the subway on a spring morning and see that golden figure over Fulton Street spreading its shining wings above the new day. And they will smile gently, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... the long a[a-macron]nd, we could put e[e-breve]t, or te [tau epsilon]. And there are only three Saxon words in the two lines. But hexameters consisting of purely English words, especially of Anglo-Saxon words, halt and stammer like a schoolboy's exercise. The attempt of Kingsley in Andromeda is most ingenious ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... depicted upon his face. The eyes widened, the features stiffened into a mask, the outstretched hand fell limply to his side. He opened his lips to say something, several things, but the words were unintelligible; a mere broken stammer of apology, as he wheeled round and walked ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... sight of a sword. It is weakness in nature and a wound in patience, the death of hope and the entrance into despair. It is children's awe and fools' amazement, a worm in conscience and a curse to wickedness. In brief, it makes the coward stagger, the liar stammer, the thief stumble, and the traitor start. It is a blot in arms, a blur in honour, the shame of a soldier, and ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... not satisfied with the old-fashioned method of stumping the country from the taff-rail of a Pullman car, and insisted on strapping Bleak into the cockpit of a biplane and flying him from city to city. They would land in some central square, and the candidate, deafened and half-frozen, would stammer a few halting remarks. He felt it rather keenly that Quimbleton looked down on his lack of oratorical gift, and it was a frequent humiliation that when words did not prosper on his tongue his impatient pilot would turn on the motors and zoom off into ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... Poet's art, Daily I learn by the heart. First, all the leather smooth I hammer, Consonants then, and vowels I stammer. Next must the thread be stiff with wax, Then I must learn ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... lark songs of morning from the fields, hermit thrushes in the swamp, bell birds tolling molten notes, in a minor strain a swelling chorus of sparrows, titmice, warblers, vireos, went two strong, healthy young people newly promised for "better or worse." They could only look, stammer, flush, and utter broken exclamations, all about "better." They could not remotely conceive that life might serve them the ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... bright-eyed little girl of about twelve summers the remark that she tho't it was rich to talk about the crooilty of the Spaniards usin thumbscrews, when he was in a Tower where so many poor peple's heads had been cut off. This made the Warder stammer and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... part of a rich man, to squander money, to give myself airs. When one puts on the semblance of anything for a time, it will soon become a portion of our nature. Imitate a stutterer for a while, and you will have to keep diligent watch over yourself not to stammer in earnest. I fell in love, and was on the point of changing into a totally different person; for my passion was sincere and ardent. But new distress. The noble being who soon became my wife, could never give me her heart. The strongest passion must die away when it finds no return; and in such ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... of the Legion, Bonaparte covered, as did the ancient kings of France when they held a bed of justice. A profound silence, a sort of religious awe, then reigned throughout the assembly, and Napoleon, who did not now stammer as in the Council of the Five Hundred, said in ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... to have answered something clever or interesting, as no doubt other girls did, but she could only stammer: ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... bewilderment; then, as the captain's meaning dawned upon him, he stepped forward impulsively and, seizing his hand, began to stammer out ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... in the next room.—My presence of mind was all gone again when I came to be introduced to the emperor, and he must certainly have perceived by my looks that I was not a little confused. I was just going to begin the harangue which I had studied with such pains, and to stammer out something or other about the high and unexpected felicity of being presented to the most powerful, the most celebrated, and the most sincerely beloved monarch in the world, when he relieved me at once from my dilemma. He addressed ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... images and conceptions that they know not what to make of within, nor consequently bring out; they do not yet themselves understand what they would be at, and if you but observe how they haggle and stammer upon the point of parturition, you will soon conclude, that their labour is not to delivery, but about conception, and that they are but licking their formless embryo. For my part, I hold, and Socrates commands it, that whoever has in his mind a sprightly and clear imagination, he will express ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the love of such a woman was enough to pull any broken man together—to drag a man out of his grave. And he thought this with inward despair, which kept him silent as much almost as his astonishment. At last he managed to stammer ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... I began to stammer my contrition for having offended him: but he cut me short with a wave of the hand. "The fact is," he explained, "I was ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... and where we got her. They insisted that we had stolen her and that she was running back to her owner. They declared that we ought to go to prison until the truth could be discovered. At the very mention of the word "prison" I turned pale and began to stammer. I was breathless from my race and could not utter a word. At this moment a policeman arrived, and, in a few words, the whole affair was explained to him. As it did not seem at all clear, he decided to take possession of the cow and have us locked ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... is Sanguine, wished to invest with Messrs. Lure, commission agents (not bookmakers, no, not for a moment), whose telegraphic address is "Pactolus, London," a sum of ten pounds (carburetter) on a horse called St. Vitus to win (stammer), and twenty pounds (tyre) for a place (scream). I had done this for various reasons, none really good, but chiefly because every paper that I had opened had urged me to do so, some even going so far as to dangle a double before me with St. Vitus as one of the horses. Nearly all had described ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... kindliness that is adrift in the world is part of the riddle, the insoluble riddle of life that is born in our blood and tissue. It is agreeable to think that no man, save by his own gross fault, ever went through life unfriended, without companions to whom he could stammer his momentary impulses of sagacity, to whom he could turn in hours of loneliness. It is not even necessary to know a man to be his friend. One can sit at a lunch counter, observing the moods and whims of the white-coated pie-passer, and by the time you ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... that your ideas fly from you when you attempt to express them, that you stammer and flounder about for words which you are unable to find, you may be sure that every honest effort you make, even if you fail in your attempt, will make it all the easier for you to speak well the next ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... most childish tone of anger, his tendency to stammer betraying him, "they k-kid me for liking Frazer. He's—he's the only ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... through all the imitative arts. Foote's mimicry was exquisitely ludicrous, but it was all caricature. He could take off only some strange peculiarity, a stammer or a lisp, a Northumbrian burr or an Irish brogue, a stoop or a shuffle. "If a man," said Johnson, "hops on one leg, Foote can hop on one leg." Garrick, on the other hand, could seize those differences of manner ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Lillian's words was but a trembling stammer. The prospect of facing the girl the thread of whose sinister personality had so marred the fabric of my marital happiness terrified me. Her message to me, posted in San Francisco, where Dicky was, flaunted its insolent ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... hands with the lady, and she said a great many very pretty things to him, which made the gallant little hero blush like a rose in June, and stammer so that he could hardly ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... had uprooted the one hope of his life, or so I thought; and that he expressed this by silence made my heart yearn toward him for the first time since I recognized him as my brother. I tried to stammer some excuse. I was glad when the darkness fell again, for the sight of his bowed head and set features was insupportable to me. It seemed to make it easier for me to talk; for me to dilate upon the purity, the goodness which had robbed me of my heart in spite of myself. My heart! It seemed ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... plump questions of this kind are. The Vicar would have liked to answer "No," but he could not tell a lie. He was also a very bad hand at prevaricating; so with a stammer, he said "Yes!" ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... wee wad be a prood doggie, yer Leddyship," Mistress Jeanie managed to stammer, but ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... brutally direct to shatter information about silk at one shilling the yard with a prayer for matrimonial freedom. The girl would be shocked—he could see her—she would stare at him, and suddenly grow red in the face and stammer; and he would be forced to trail through a lengthy, precise explanation of this matter which was not at all precise to himself. Furthermore, certain obscure emotions rendered him unwilling to be sundered from this girl.—There was the touch of her hand; ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... head. Impetuous always, his first thought was to go and thank Constantine Jopp for having saved his life. As soon as he was able he went forth to find his rescuer, and met him suddenly on turning a corner of the street. Before he could stammer out the gratitude that was in his heart, Jopp, eying him with a sneering ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... to stammer out that he did not come on any such errand; but his wits were bewildered by this unexpected siege, and he could not frame a suitable reply. She mistook his confusion for the natural timidity of love, and went on to express the high opinion she entertained ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... Is he not sailing Lost like thyself on an ocean unknown, and is he not guided By the same stars that guide thee? Why shouldst thou hate then thy brother? Hateth he thee, forgive! For 'tis sweet to stammer one letter Of the Eternal's language;—on earth it is called Forgiveness! Knowest thou Him, who forgave, with the crown of thorns round his temples? Earnestly prayed for his foes, for his murderers? Say, dost ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... neither of them could do: she could coolly and sensibly describe a man. I am not sure that the old great lady who could only smatter Italian was not more vigorous than the new great lady who can only stammer American; nor am I certain that the bygone duchesses who were scarcely successful when they painted Melrose Abbey, were so much more weak-minded than the modern duchesses who paint only their own faces, and are bad at that. But ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... please—strangely so. Truly, the lady who captivates his fancy may count herself fortunate." The old soldier turned in his saddle and, with a grace surprising in one of his rough appearance, removed his hat and swept Alaire a bow the unmistakable meaning of which caused her to start and to stammer something unintelligible. ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... blue-white stream. Ward spied him at the same moment and stepped forward with quick outstretched hands. I remember the flame of adoring zeal in the youngster's eyes as he tried to speak. At length he managed to stammer some congratulatory phrases while Drayle clapped him ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... the governor heartily. "From what I have seen of Mr. Stewart, I should conclude that nothing could be better;" and when I tried to stammer my thanks, he waved his hand to me kindly and rang for wine. "Let us drink," he said, as he filled the glasses, "to the success of our arms and the establishment of his Majesty's dominion on ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... though he turned language into ignoble clay, he made from it men and women that live. He is the most Shakespearian creature since Shakespeare. If Shakespeare could sing with myriad lips, Browning could stammer through a thousand mouths. Even now, as I am speaking, and speaking not against him but for him, there glides through the room the pageant of his persons. There, creeps Fra Lippo Lippi with his cheeks still burning from some girl's ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... remained there, behind the carriage, my face muffled up in my cloak. I desired the servants to make no mention of my sudden appearance. They soon made a sign to me that she was recovering consciousness, and I heard her voice stammer forth these words, as if in a dream: "Oh, if Raphael were here! I thought it was Raphael!" I hastily returned to my own carriage; the horses started afresh, and a wide distance soon lay between us. In the evening I went to inquire after ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... person, and have been able to do work as hard as God has required of me. I recommend God as a physician. At the time I was healed of my other bodily afflictions, I was also relieved of stammering. It is true I stammer some yet, at times, but not nearly so much as I did formerly; and not enough to prevent my ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... the house alone. This man, this peculiar fellow, Nat Parker, found me, took charge of me and did not leave me until I was out of danger. Of course, there was no way to reward him—you can merely stammer your gratitude to the man who has saved your life. He told me that the time might come when I could do him a good turn. Well, I met him the other day in New Orleans, and I incidentally spoke of my intention to sell my paper. He said that he would buy ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... toward you clear enough last night. If I did not, let me say now that I think you have made good in every particular—and that I trust you in every particular. What I wished especially to say now," she went on briskly, giving Larry no chance to stammer out his appreciation, "is that I wish to go ahead without any delay with your proposition for developing the Sherwood properties in New York City which we discussed some time ago. A former objection you raised is now removed: you are ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... articulation was affected by a slight stammer, which, in my opinion, but added piquancy to her epigrammatic sayings. She once remarked to me, "I shall never be c-c-cold until I'm dead." An impulse took possession of me which somehow, in spite of the great difference in our ages, I seemed unable to resist, and I retorted, ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... Uliana tried to stammer out a few words, but I was already outside the door on the street. I dropped the watch into the bottom of my pocket, held it tight with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... of movement. His blue eyes opened wide at the sight of the young lady in gray hat and ostrich plumes, fashionable driving costume edged with fur, for the spring air was yet cool, and bright silk parasol, for the spring sun was beginning to be warm. With almost a stammer, he said:— ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... real and anxious earnestness in his assurance. "It's because I don't see you. If I were face to face with you, I'd stammer and get red and make a regular imbecile of myself. Another reason why I stick down here and ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... interrupted the lady, 'the Senorita Teresa Valdevia. The evening air grows chill. Adios, Senorito.' And before Harry could stammer out a word, she had disappeared ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... and under all these circumstances it was impossible for me to recognize him. I was very anxious to do so in view of the trouble the officer had taken to come away out on the picket line, in the middle of the night, to see me, but I just couldn't, and began to stammer a sort of apology about the darkness of the night hindering a prompt recognition, when the "unknown" gave his head a slant to one side, and, in his never forgettable voice, spoke thus to Keeley: "I told you he ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... motionless, her eyes, only seeming to have life, her eyes shining clear as spring water in her thin withered face. But on this morning, again a sudden rush of tears had streamed down her cheeks, and she had begun to stammer words without any connection; which seemed to prove that in the midst of her senile exhaustion and the incurable torpor of madness, the slow induration of the brain and the limbs was not yet complete; there still were memories stored away, gleams of intelligence still were possible. Then her ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... from an entire stranger was unlooked for by Wilmot. He knew not what to make of it; it was so different from the cold, money-making men of the North. He tried to stammer out his thanks, when Mr. Edson interrupted him by nudging Mr. Woodburn and saying: "Don't you mind old Middleton. He's been tarin' round after a Yankee teacher these six weeks. I ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... in mien, he May also lack some of the art With which Saccharissa the Tweeny Was wooed by Sir Marmaduke, Bart.; His tongue may (conceivably) stammer, His heart (not impossibly) quake, And in stress of emotion his grammar ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... words, but I was not prepared to answer him, and in the rush of his indignant accusation my defence was swept down, and I could only stammer out— ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... Delaford began to stammer out thanks, and promises of explaining the whole of Robson's peculations (little he knew ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to put you in your chair like a queen and wait on you," he said with a soft boyish stammer; "but I am too dazed with happiness to be of ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of honour and repeating that he rejoiced in such a visit. The visitor came in, leaving the door ajar, and after a minute during which, to help her, he charged her with the purpose of telling him that he ought to be ashamed to send her down such rubbish, she recovered herself sufficiently to stammer out that his song was exactly what she had been looking for and that after reading it she had been seized with an extraordinary, irresistible impulse—that of thanking him for it in person and ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... who had thrown the bomb—was already dead. The terrific explosion had sent his soul hard after the puff of white smoke, and in the twinkling of an eye he stood at the bar of the Great Assize. It is to be hoped that he made a good defence there, and did not stammer in the presence ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... dumbly at the weak faced one, who looked at a complete loss, but managed to stammer simperingly that it was a part of the ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... never crossed his lips before, that in his mind were associated only with the printed page. When he suddenly realized that he was using a word for the first time, and probably mispronouncing it, he would become as much confused as if he were trying to pass a lead dollar, would blush and stammer and let some one ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... quietly and the phrenologist entered. He carried a bag with a pumpkin in the bottom of it, and, sitting down on a stool, he let the bag down with a bump on the floor between his feet. Malachi was badly scared, but he managed to stammer out— ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... for dreams. More than this. The new heaven is matched by a new earth. Men who see a new heaven make a new earth. In its cloud of steam, in a kind of splendid, silent stammer of praise and love, the new earth lifts itself to the new heaven, lifts up days out of nights to It, digs wells for winds under It, lights darkness with falling water, makes ice out of vapor, and heat out of cold, ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... It's all been delightful," Lucy contrived to stammer, and then fell to scanning the road, which stretched away for a long half mile ahead ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... unexpected violence, the count could only stammer out a few incoherent words. Henrietta was about to go on, when she felt herself taken by the arm, and gently but irresistibly taken up to the house. It was Sir Thorn, who tried to save her from her own excitement. She looked at him; a big tear was slowly rolling down ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... into the roadway, and started on a zigzag course which seemed likely to upset his balance. Crossing the avenue Henri-Martin, going straight, towards the town hall at the corner of the rue de la Pompe, the good plumber, who was staggering more than a little, began to stutter and stammer ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... position, yet are obviously aware that what they say is entitled to no weight, and are greatly relieved when the unwelcome and disagreeable duty has been discharged. They are the men who hesitate and stammer, whose hats and canes are always in their way, and who have no very clear notions about what should be done with their hands. A visitor who chances to spend an evening in the House of Lords for the first and last time, while noblemen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... matter in the least," Drusie said eagerly, when Hal began to stammer out his shamefaced apologies. "I don't want a present from you one bit. I know quite well that boys must have a great deal to do with their money ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... increased with each day. Occasionally the fever would go down sufficiently to allow him to get something to eat. Then it would be worse than before. In his dire need he wanted to pray, but he was so weak that he could only stammer, "Dear God, help me, ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... And what could he say to his mother's obsession, to which she came back again and again—her longing to see her grandchildren before she died? Madame Dupont waited only long enough for George to stammer out a few protestations, and then in the next breath to take them back; after which she proceeded to go ahead with the match. The family lawyers conferred together, and the terms of the settlement ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... say; honestly he didn't know whether, when the door should open and that tall, elegant, fastidious figure should walk in, he would find himself able to say anything at all. He feared he might only grow hot, and stammer, and slink out. But he pulled himself together; he must do his best; it was quite necessary. He would try to say, "Lord Evelyn, I know it is abominably impertinent of me to come into your house like this. Will you forgive me this once? I have come ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... window down at Higgins' store. Oh! that nearly broke me all up. I felt as if I wanted to throw myself down on my knees before Mm, and say that I didn't deserve new skates, or anything like that this year, because I was a wretched, careless boy, who had done something wicked. But somehow I managed to stammer out that I guessed my old ones were going to be good enough for one more season, though, Jack, they are in bad shape; but then it would have made me feel worse than ever if I'd accepted his offer, after failing ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... Burnt Flesh. Just imagine one of our English Judges of the Land undertaking such a Hangman's Office! The poor Wretch made no other complaint than to murmur that the King had directed that he was not to be ill-treated; and when they further questioned him, could only stammer out some Incoherent Balderdash about the Archbishop, the Parliament, and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... the dull leaden sky, watching the snowflakes falling through the dreary air. There followed then a long, long pause, in which I had time to recover from the effect her words had produced, and to frame and stammer forth such congratulations as seemed required by the occasion. These she did not answer, or even seem to comprehend, but roused from her revery by the sound of my voice, she crossed the room and seated herself beside me, and took my ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Ethel. "What a mess every one will make! Oh, if I could but stay away, like Harry! There will be Dr. Hoxton being sonorous and prosy, and Mr. Lake will stammer, and that will be nothing to the misery of our own people's work. George will flounder, and look at Flora, and she will sit with her eyes on the ground, and Dr. Spencer will come out of his proper self, and be complimentary to people who deserve it no more!—And Norman! I wish ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... not my weak tongue faulter In telling of this goodly company, Of their old piety, and of their glee: 130 But let a portion of ethereal dew Fall on my head, and presently unmew My soul; that I may dare, in wayfaring, To stammer where old Chaucer ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... childhood, black in manhood, and snowy white in age. His brow was broad, and his features regular, save that his left eyelid drooped somewhat, like that of his father, and hid part of the pupil. He spoke with a stammer, which did not, however, detract from the persuasiveness of his eloquence. His sinewy, muscular arms were those of the consummate swordsman, and his long legs gave him a firm hold in the saddle when riding the most spirited of steeds. His chief delight was in ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... meanly servile. He took his part in conversation, but no more than his part, and expressed himself with freedom and decision. His conversation, in fact, astonished the literati even more than his poems had done. Perhaps they had expected some uncouth individual who would stammer crop-and-weather commonplaces in a rugged vernacular, or, worse still, in ungrammatical English; but here was one who held his own with them in speculative discussion, speaking not only with the eloquence of a poet, but with the readiness, clearness, and ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... blur before Marian's eyes, a pressure about her heart which seemed congealing into stone, but she tried to stammer out something, bending over the tiny thing. Wilford Cameron's child, which she could not see for the thick blackness around her. Tears and bitter pangs of grief had the news of that child's birth wrung from Marian, bringing back all the dreadful past, and making her hear again as if it were but yesterday, ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... broke his wand of office, which for some obscure reason was a bulrush painted white, and Thornton and Webb, who had been sitting behind the table, were put up for election and called upon to speak. Webb developed a stammer, and although he had his speech written on his shirt-cuff, no one could hear what he said. He was, however, received with a lot of applause, so that Thornton might think the election was genuine; Dennison had certainly packed the meeting with ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... Kirstie grow to be a decent, religiously minded young woman. Nor did the lass want for good looks in a sober way, nor for wit when it came to reading books; but in speech she was shy beyond reason, and would turn red and stammer if a stranger but addressed her. I think she could never forget that her birth had been on the wrong side of the blanket, and, supposing folks to be pitying her for it, sought to avoid ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... whale has no voice; unless you insult him by saying, that when he so strangely rumbles, he talks through his nose. But then again, what has the whale to say? Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living. Oh! happy that the world is such an ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... this important personage, without lifting up my eyes or observing any of the people round me, who were attending there on the same errand as myself, and dropping her curtsies nine deep, just made a shift to stammer out ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... you ought to have gone. I know my cousin, Miss Winter, is so anxious to help any man out of work, and particularly you; for—" The whole story of Patty flashed into his mind, and made him stop short and stammer, and look anywhere except at Harry. How he could have forgotten it for a moment in that company was a wonder. All his questioning and patronizing powers went out of him and he felt that their positions were changed, and that he was the culprit. It was clear that Harry ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... understand anything by it! It's a piece of hopeless legal gibberish to me. I stammer out some attempt at an answer, and see Baboo looking at me with a pitying, almost reproachful, glance. "Didn't I," he seems to say, "explain it all to you once at dinner? Do you really mean to say that you've forgotten the way in which I arranged ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... avoiding all restraint, he was happy to be at least enabled to offer him the use of his residence. The Prince, taken by surprise, and utterly disconcerted at the failure of so well organized a plot, could only stammer out his acknowledgments; and the Cardinal had no sooner heard them to an end than he requested admission to the King, where, having briefly expatiated upon his escape, he requested permission with ably-acted earnestness ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... point-blank question came leaping upon the tortured girl in the stand, Cynthe rose to her feet. She expected to hear the girl stammer and blurt out something that would give them a chance to ask her further questions. But when she saw the girl reel and quiver in pain, when she saw her gasp for breath and self-control, when she saw ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... the vocal organs is wanting, with those individuals that stammer, or who have an impediment in their speech. Some parts may be more developed than others, but they generally are but imperfectly under the control of the will, and assume an irregular and rapid movement, while ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... came!' he babbled, quivering under the table- cloth they had cast over his nakedness. 'It came—behind me!' and forthwith he began to stammer in his own ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... had an awkward way of doing in his tell-tale face, but before he could stammer a reply, ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... a solitary walk to give Span a run, she saw, with annoyance, James Tapster following her, and to her acute discomfiture he managed to stammer out what was tantamount to an offer of marriage. Though, in a sense, she had certainly tried to attract him, she felt, all at once, miserably ashamed of her success. So much so, indeed, that she pretended at first not to understand what he meant. But at last she had to leave such ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... the morning Jack put a bold face upon the matter, and walked into the giant's room to thank him for his lodging. The giant started when he saw him, and began to stammer out: "Oh! dear me; is it you? Pray how did you sleep last night? Did you hear or see anything in the ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... There was a stammer, a hesitation, a slight attempt to explain, and then the truth came out. He had stolen the extra tickets from two fellow-laborers only a few minutes before, and had not reflected upon the difficulties ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... dismissal and settled himself to sleep. When Culver began to stammer thanks for the ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... He began to stammer out some apology, which I quickly suppressed, by ordering him out of my sight. It is worthy of remark, that his men, instead of apologising for him, called him a coward to his face, and declared that it was he who had restrained ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... by the Sofala. Exasperated out of his quiet superciliousness, without looking at anyone right or left, he accosted Massy straightway in so determined a manner that the engineer, taken aback, began to stammer unintelligibly. Nothing could be heard but the words: "Mr. Van Wyk . . . Indeed, Mr. Van Wyk . . . For the future, Mr. Van Wyk"—and by the suffusion of blood Massy's vast bilious face acquired an unnatural orange tint, out of which the disconcerted coal-black ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... wife. He would look every now and then as if he were going to make a remark, and then evidently restrain himself, and remain silent. It was very curious to see this big, handsome, manly young fellow, who ought to have had any amount of success with women, suddenly stammer and grow crimson in the presence of his own wife. Nor was it the consciousness of stupidity; for when you got him alone, Oke, although always slow and timid, had a certain amount of ideas, and very defined political and social views, and a certain childlike earnestness and desire ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... daytime. Waggoner suffers from an affection which in a large community might prevent him from holding such a job as the one he does hold. He has an impediment of the speech which at all times causes him to stammer badly. When he is excited it is only by a tremendous mental and physical effort and after repeated endeavours that he can form the words at all. In other regards he is a first-rate officer, sober, trustworthy ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... direct to shatter information about silk at one shilling the yard with a prayer for matrimonial freedom. The girl would be shocked—he could see her—she would stare at him, and suddenly grow red in the face and stammer; and he would be forced to trail through a lengthy, precise explanation of this matter which was not at all precise to himself. Furthermore, certain obscure emotions rendered him unwilling to be sundered from this girl.—There was the touch of her hand; more, the ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... usual to her; but thoughtfully, as she sat gazing out on the dull leaden sky, watching the snowflakes falling through the dreary air. There followed then a long, long pause, in which I had time to recover from the effect her words had produced, and to frame and stammer forth such congratulations as seemed required by the occasion. These she did not answer, or even seem to comprehend, but roused from her revery by the sound of my voice, she crossed the room and seated herself beside me, and took my hand ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... rage, eyes blazing with passion, and demanding to know, in furious tones, what we wanted and meant by creating a disturbance in the neighbourhood at that hour in the morning, hammering at her gate in that manner. We were almost struck dumb, at least I was, but Mr. Parsons, I believe, managed to stammer out something or other, in the midst of which the gate was slammed to violently in our faces and we had to beat an ignominious retreat. It is, of course, needless to say we never repeated our visit nor tried to induce the lady ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... and the expression of his face were so full of surprise that Willy felt deeply mortified at his rudeness, and began at once to stammer something to explain himself. ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... humorous points which, if they do not create merriment, may yield some slight amusement. The pedant's endeavours to make a philosopher of his child are sufficiently ludicrous. He is delighted to find that the infant has the wart of Cicero and the very neck of Alexander, and hopes that he may come to stammer like Demosthenes, 'and in time arrive at many other defects of famous men.' As the boy grows up his father invents for him a geographical suit of clothes, and stamps his gingerbread with the letters of the Greek alphabet, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... April Fool's child. But then, the joke is on the original April Fool, for the Senator has fooled him by being one of the brightest men of the State, and certainly its most gifted orator— the Demosthenes of Nevada, in fact. Surely a true son of April Fool should stutter and stumble, and stammer and shy in the most pitiful manner. Well, anyway, the Senator can always have the consolation that he has "put one over" on Father ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... interval less harsh. Yet, he was great: and though he turned language into ignoble clay, he made from it men and women that live. He is the most Shakespearian creature since Shakespeare. If Shakespeare could sing with myriad lips, Browning could stammer through a thousand mouths. Even now, as I am speaking, and speaking not against him but for him, there glides through the room the pageant of his persons. There, creeps Fra Lippo Lippi with his cheeks still burning ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... introduced to any pretty maid, My knees they knock together, just as if I were afraid; I flutter, and I stammer, and I turn a pleasing red, For to laugh, and flirt, and ogle ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... what I had thought, it did not surprise me, and yet I felt sick and giddy. It was some time before I could speak, and then I could only stammer out: ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... with his emotion and desire to be polite, half rose to acknowledge the pretty speech, and to stammer some sort of reply, but as he did so his hand by chance touched her own that was resting upon the table, and a shock that was for all the world like a shock of electricity, passed from her skin into his body. His soul wavered ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... I call sweet names: Helen is too, too dear For me to stammer little words Of love ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... came leaping upon the tortured girl in the stand, Cynthe rose to her feet. She expected to hear the girl stammer and blurt out something that would give them a chance to ask her further questions. But when she saw the girl reel and quiver in pain, when she saw her gasp for breath and self-control, when she saw ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... O'Roon to his friend. "Why do they build hotels that go round and round like catherine wheels? They'll take away my shield and break me. I can think and talk con-con-consec-sec-secutively, but I s-s-stammer with my feet. I've got to go on duty in three hours. The jig is up, Remsen. The jig is ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... her husband came up to Andrea and taking his arm with much effusion, began asking particulars about the duel. He was a youngish man, slim, with very thin fair hair and colourless eyes and projecting teeth. He had a slight stammer. ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... earnest to try me by all methods; and now (persuasion, flattery, and menaces having been tried in vain) I could not but wonder what would be their next expedient. My eyes besides were still troubled, and my knees loose under me, with the distress of the late ordeal; and I could do no more than stammer the same form of words: "I put my life ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with plain-spoken, straightforward, strong-minded men, felt the dreary absurdity of the position. He could only stammer a ridiculous excuse about the clause, having been accidentally left out by a copying secretary. To represent so important an omission as a clerical error was almost as great an absurdity as the original device; but it was necessary for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... more discomposed than he was willing I should perceive. He always spoke rather hurriedly, but I had never heard him stammer before. I was certain that he saw or at least dreaded something fatal in the discrepancy I had pointed out. As to looking into it when he got home, that sounded very like nonsense. He pulled out a note-book, however, ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... it. You needn't stammer. You and Allen are getting a good deal out of the Haneys, and want to be decent in return. Well, I think well of you for it, and I'll do my mite. I'll have young Fordyce in, and Alice; being Quakers and 'plain people,' they won't mind. Ben is crazy to see the ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... will bid you good-bye," he managed to stammer, extending an unwilling hand and again ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... steps of the club a little later. Bob's head was whirling. He tried to stammer out more thanks and was cut short, kindly ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... awkward doggedness which was not going to allow so slight a hint that his further attendance was unnecessary, to baffle him. He did not speak until they had passed down the stone steps to the pavement, and then his utterance began with a half-embarrassed stammer, as if the shadow of displeasure demanded justification ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... conversation, but no more than his part, and expressed himself with freedom and decision. His conversation, in fact, astonished the literati even more than his poems had done. Perhaps they had expected some uncouth individual who would stammer crop-and-weather commonplaces in a rugged vernacular, or, worse still, in ungrammatical English; but here was one who held his own with them in speculative discussion, speaking not only with the eloquence ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... OXONIAN (stammer, as on a former occasion, respectfully omitted).—"With this defect, ma'am!—But to the point. Some days ago I happened to fall in with an elderly person, such as is described, with a very pretty female child and a French dog. The man—gentleman, perhaps I may call him, judging from ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... even self-defense. She could only stammer the fact, hardly believing it as she put ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... unless you insult him by saying, that when he so strangely rumbles, he talks through his nose. But then again, what has the whale to say? Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living. Oh! happy that the world is such an ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... stammers, but she can't speak plainly. She is a very kind woman. And he used to be a house serf. And there are seven children... and it's only the eldest one that stammers and the others are simply ill... but they don't stammer.... But where did you hear about them?" she added ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... they could hardly stammer out the cause of their alarm, but managed to explain that a "terrible man" had suddenly come upon them and chased them. Yet neither Blanka nor Anna went on to say of whom this strange figure ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... teeth, which she seemed always ready to show in a friendly, generous smile, were strong and white and sparkling. Altogether she was such a vision of healthy, unaffected, and smartly gotten-up young womanhood that O'Reilly could only stammer his acknowledgment of the introduction, inwardly berating himself for his awkwardness. He was aware of Alvarado's amusement, and ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... am what I am. Ignorant, rough man I was, with the merest flicker of spiritual life; but she cared for my soul, and was so patiently loving that she led me to know God.' Bailey was afflicted with a stammer when he was converted. Of this, he says, 'She talked to me so calm and quiet. "Go slow, now," she'd say, "Count." She would insist upon my giving my testimony, and if she saw I was going to be fairly stuck, she'd shout. "Glory! Hallelujah!" and beam on me with that lovely ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... he need the next, Let the world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find Him. So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled Hoti's deg. business—let it be!— deg.129 Properly based Oun deg.— deg.130 Gave as the doctrine of the enclitic De deg. deg.131 Dead from the waist down. Well, here's the platform, ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... he rots! Frightened at a thing dressed in a long black coat and a white cravat with a golden-headed cane and a tall hat and a frown; a thing which will stop breathing some fine day and the worms will eat! Shall I tremble when an ecclesiastical Leo utters a roar? Shall I halt and stammer because a top-heavy lad from a theological seminary, hopelessly in love with himself, scowls at ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... seemed to swell to bursting, and the blood rushed through my veins so that I could hear it and nothing else for a while. I managed at last to stammer forth some words of awkward congratulation, and he left me, singing merrily, after asking permission to bring his bride to see me on the morrow as they returned ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... twelve summers the remark that she tho't it was rich to talk about the crooilty of the Spaniards usin thumbscrews, when he was in a Tower where so many poor peple's heads had been cut off. This made the Warder stammer and turn red. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... do you hesitate?" retorted the Moor. "Do Englishmen blush and stammer when they tell the truth? Tell me the truth now. Do you know where the ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... was as well as ever—indeed, better; not only was his hearing fully restored, but he had ceased to stammer, and the thin, almost imperceptible cloud upon his intellect was dissipated. The doctor expressed but little surprise at these phenomena, and, in fact, stated that similar things had occurred often before, and were duly written down in the books of medicine. But ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... emerged, safe and unscratched from the confused heap of men and furniture, it was to cut off instantly the stutter and stammer of poor Shafto's apologies, to bid him go instantly for the ship's doctor, and, with face the color of death, to turn quickly to Armstrong. The blow had burst open the half-healed wound, and the blood was streaming to ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... a triumphant eye. When he began to stammer out what was in effect an apology, she improved the opportunity, threw off her suave manners, and let him understand with a certain plain brutality that she had taken Louie's measure. She would do her best to keep the girl in order—it was lucky for him that he had fallen upon ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in the least," Drusie said eagerly, when Hal began to stammer out his shamefaced apologies. "I don't want a present from you one bit. I know quite well that boys must have a great deal to do ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... trammelled, thus condemned to Flattery's trebles, He toils through all, still trembling to be wrong: For fear some noble thoughts, like heavenly rebels, Should rise up in high treason to his brain, He sings, as the Athenian spoke, with pebbles In's mouth, lest Truth should stammer through his strain. But out of the long file of sonneteers There shall be some who will not sing in vain, And he, their Prince, shall rank among my peers,[307] And Love shall be his torment; but his grief Shall make an immortality of tears, And Italy shall hail ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... like me to blush and stammer like a booby, wouldn't you! That would be an excellent way of ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead: Tussis attacked him.... So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled Hoti's business—let it be!— Properly based Oun— Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, Dead from the waist down. Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: Hail to your purlieus, All ye highfliers of the feathered race, Swallows ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... points of the compass, to know them at sight and tell them quickly; for you see it's of great importance to a pilot to know exactly how a ship's head is; and the men at the helm, although good seamen and steering well, are not so ready at answering as a pilot wishes, and very often stammer at it—sometimes make mistakes. Now, you see, when I'm piloting a vessel, if you stand at the binnacle, watch the compass, and answer me quickly how the ship's head is, you'll be of use to me in a very short time. ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... received by the audience. Tom was beaten. A potato, vast and nobbly, fell from his palsied hand. He was speechless. Then he began to stammer. ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... note of many of these hot, hasty, and often clever pictures, it must be sadly stated that of genuine originality there are few traces. To the very masters they pretend to revile they owe everything. In vain one looks for a tradition older than Courbet; a few have attempted to stammer in the suave speech of Corot and the men of Fontainebleau; but 1863, the year of the Salon des Refuses, is really the year of their artistic ancestor's birth. The classicism of Lebrun, David, Ingres, Prudhon; the romanticism of Gericault, Delacroix, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... these words, but I was not prepared to answer him, and in the rush of his indignant accusation my defence was swept down, and I could only stammer out— ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... ... eh ... your touch, you know, and...." His terms were decent—for the man, and were offered with a flourish that indicated special benevolence and a reference to the hundred pounds. I was at a loss to account for his manner until he began to stammer out an indication. Its lines were that I knew Fox, and I knew Churchill and the Duc de Mersch, and the Hour. "And those financial articles ... in the Hour ... were they now?... Were they ... was the Trans -Greenland railway actually ... did ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... his swarthy-rolling eye are cast:— "Ha! Harrald," scream'd he, "have we met at last?" For the first time, the youth felt terror's force; Pale grew his cheek, as that of clammy corse, Chill was his blood, his nervous arm was faint, While thus he stammer'd forth his ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... Virginia Legislature, then called the House of Burgesses, of which he attended every meeting and was careful to know all about the affairs of the colony. When he first took his seat in the Legislature, he was thanked for his military service to the colony. He rose to reply, but could only blush and stammer. The speaker said, "Sit down, Mr. Washington, your modesty equals ...
— George Washington • Calista McCabe Courtenay
... a startling proposition! His costume, his long hair—there were many things about him not adapted to Broadway at five o'clock in the afternoon! But what could I say? It would be rude to call attention to his peculiarities. All I could manage was to stammer: "I thought ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... grammar side of the school, two of whom were sent up to Cambridge with a hospital exhibition every year, on the understanding that they should take orders. Lamb was one of the Deputy-Grecians from whom the Grecians were chosen, but his stammer standing in his way and a Church career being out of the question, he never became a full Grecian. Writing to George Dyer, who had been a Grecian, in 1831, Lamb says: "I don't know how it is, but I keep my rank in fancy still since ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Prioress, at the head of all her sisters in black dresses, she hardly vouchsafed an inclination of the head in reply to the graceful and courtly welcome with which the princesses, nieces to the great Cardinal, were received. Eleanor, usually in the background, was left in surprise and confusion to stammer out thanks in broad Scotch, seconded by Lady Drummond, who could make herself far more intelligible to these ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you here on this bright morning, Mademoiselle Madeleine. May I en—en—enter?" asked Gaston de Bois, speaking with so much ease that his only stammer ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... inevitable loss of his position there. Sometimes there was a paternal explosion because Bruce liked to murmur vaguely of "dandy chances in Manila," or because Julie, pretty, excitable, and sixteen, had an occasional dose of stage fever, and would stammer desperately between convulsive sobs that she wasn't half as much afraid of "the terrible temptations of the life" as she was afraid of dying a poky old maid in Weston. In short, the home was crowded, ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... he doesn't stammer either. I'll try presently. Positively, if he wore spectacles and a wig of your hair, I shouldn't know ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... pressure of liquefied gases has been but some five hundred pounds to the square inch, about a tenth of that of explosives now used. It is admitted, however, that there may be something in your increase of effectiveness by reiterated emissions—" He began to stammer, as if he were speaking too glibly, but his auditor took no alarm. "He continues that, up to this day, gases have failed as propelling powers from ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... servant trying to prepare a stammering obvious lie. He confronted a tall, thin man about whom—even if his clothes had been totally different—there could be no mistake. He stood awaiting an apology so evidently that Carson—or Bayle—began to stammer himself even before he had time to dismiss from his voice the suggestion of bluster. It would have irritated Coombe immensely if he had known that he—and a certain overcoat—had been once pointed out to the man at Sandown and that—in consequence of ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Morton's nephew from Indiana," the young man managed to stammer, feeling some explanation might bridge the gulf of embarrassment. "I am ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... right cahier found, snatched up, and opened at the well-thumbed solo with which she has already contended for many a long hour, and now hopes to execute for our applause. Alas! the piano sounds as if it had the pip; the paralytic keys halt, and stammer, and tremble, or else run into each other like ink upon blotting paper, and the pedals are the only part of the instrument which do the work for which they were intended. We should be sorry that our favourite dog had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... ran on smilingly: "He promised to shackle you to a table until I could stammer out my halting apologies, and now that I've done so in the presence of press and public won't you forgive me and help me to bury the hatchet in a Welsh rarebit?" He was speaking directly to her with a genuine appeal in his handsome ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... under pretence of a headache from appearing at dinner, and hurried back to the castle as soon as I could do so unobserved. I got in by a window which I had purposely left open, and made my way to the library. The words that Lord Ashiel, as he lay dying, had managed to stammer out to his daughter, were only five. 'Gimblet—the clock—eleven—steps.' I had decided to take the clock in the library as the starting-point of investigation. He might, of course, have referred to any other clock, but only one ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... in that self-same moment Hardy realized how the low-down strategy which he had perpetrated upon his employer had fallen upon his own head a thousandfold. But before he could stammer his apologies, Kitty Bonnair stood before him—the same Kitty, and smiling as he had often seen ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... chorus-girl. It was a loss far more subtle. The recognition of it lamed Robert Stonehouse, knocked the power out of him, as though someone had struck and paralysed a vital nerve centre. He could only stammer futilely: ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... to say. He could not guess what was in it, and all he could do was to stammer a few confused words of thanks. The envelope had a very important look, and he was both impressed and mystified. Ted could not repress his eager curiosity, and came around to Will's side. Even Mrs. Carter was intensely ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... reply. I tried to, tried to utter a prompt denial, but the words would not come. Her "guess" was so close to the truth that I could only stammer and hesitate. ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... well he might. Nature had not endowed him with any great amount of natural courage, and the sight of his old neighbour's rifle-barrel made him feel positively sick. He hesitated and began to stammer excuses. ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... I managed to stammer out something about the Madrono berries being at her "disposicion" (the tree was in her own garden!), and she took the branches in her little brown hand with a soft response to my ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... went into the house: he went up quietly and as he looked in found the house full of women who extinguished the light directly they saw him and rushed out of the house. Then he asked my sister what the light was; but she could only stammer out "What light? I saw no light," so he struck her a blow and went back to the threshing-floor and told the others what he had seen. That night he would not tell them the names of the women he had seen; and before morning his right ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... I wanted to see Miss Greggory," he murmured. Then, as the unconscious rudeness of his reply dawned on him, he made matters infinitely worse by an attempted apology. "That is, I mean—I didn't mean—" he began to stammer miserably. ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... family—with stepchildren, so to speak, who adored him. And what could he say to his mother's obsession, to which she came back again and again—her longing to see her grandchildren before she died? Madame Dupont waited only long enough for George to stammer out a few protestations, and then in the next breath to take them back; after which she proceeded to go ahead with the match. The family lawyers conferred together, and the terms of the settlement were worked out and agreed upon. It happened that immediately afterwards ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... tone from a common sailor were, of course, enough to astonish the young man. But there must be more than this, as Adrian surmised, to cause him to blush, wax angry, and stammer like a very school-boy found at fault. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Miss Walladmor was not the person (as all the country knew) to scan his conduct in this particular (had it even been known to her) with any peculiar severity. He was struck dumb with the belief that at length he was detected: and under that feeling continued to stammer unintelligibly. ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... confusion at this, for he did not know whether she was serious or not. He could do nothing but stammer and get red, and think what a ridiculous ass he was making of himself. He might have considered the help he was getting ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... mother-in-law, sons, daughters, old footman or parlor-maid, confidential clerk, curate, or what not? I smirk and go through the history, giving my admirable imitations of the characters introduced: I mimic Jones's grin, Hobbs's squint, Brown's stammer, Grady's brogue, Sandy's Scotch accent, to the best of my power: and, the family part of my audience laughs good-humoredly. Perhaps the stranger, for whose amusement the performance is given, is amused by it and laughs ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... but since we have no better term, we must employ these. For, as I have said, this article is so far above the power of the human mind to grasp, or the tongue to express, that God, as the Father of his children, will pardon us when we stammer and lisp as best we can, if only our faith be pure and right. By this term, however, we would say that we believe the divine majesty to be three distinct persons ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... a salvo of artillery; and the bursting of a great shell caught Raymond almost full in the body, smashing his right leg and his chest. The captain was hit in the right hand. Notwithstanding his horrible wounds, Bon did not lose consciousness; he was able to stammer out a few words and to press the hand which the captain gave him. In less than two ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... his air of old-fashioned punctilium, would sit near, fixing the speaker with his pale-blue eyes,—a little threateningly; always ready to shatter an exuberance, to check an oratorical flow by some quick double-edged word that would make Manisty trip and stammer; showing, too, all the time, by his evident shrinking, by certain impregnable reserves, or by the banter that hid a feeling too keen to show itself, how great is the gulf between a literary ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with a sudden suspicion that Francoise had been robbing her, that she had set a trap to make certain, and had caught her betrayer red-handed; and being in the habit, when she made up a game of cards by herself, of playing her own and her adversary's hands at once, she would first stammer out Francoise's awkward apologies, and then reply to them with such a fiery indignation that any of us who happened to intrude upon her at one of these moments would find her bathed in perspiration, her eyes blazing, her false ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... confounded I look'd—so well knowing The Colonel's opinions—my cheeks were quite glowing; I stammer'd out something—nay, even half named The LEGITIMATE semptress, when, loud, he exclaimed, "Yes, yes, by the stiching 'tis plain to be seen It was made by that B*rb*n**t b—h, VIOTORINE!" What a word for a hero, but heroes WILL err, And I thought, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... his intellectual delight, and indeed his daily bread; for out of that tremendous horn-book he taught me to stammer the divine Italian language, and illustrated every lesson, from the simplest rule of its syntax to its exceedingly complex and artificially constructed prosody, out of the pages of that sublime, grotesque, and altogether ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... so suddenly to the ground that under the compelling eyes of Mayence he could do no more than stammer his acquiescence. ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... knelt down before the window, covered his face with his hands, and began to stammer and cry to God: "O God! God! God!" ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... again. Poor Hilary looked very uncomfortable. With an apologetic air he began to stammer something about Parish Councils. I was not to be diverted by any such maneuver. It was impossible that he could really wish to talk ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope
... said she, punishing him instantly. "I reckon it does take a decent girl to shock you." And while she stood laughing at him with robust irony, poor Lin began to stammer that he meant no offence. "Why, to be sure you didn't!" said she. "But I do enjoy you ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... his jacket, gave a stifled cry, thrust his hand into his pocket and began to stammer inarticulate syllables, while Mme. Dugrival gasped, ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... acknowledgment of kindness. There was a something, but he could not understand it, for his poor shapeless soul might not read the cosmic mystery embodied in their depths. He stammered—who had never known himself stammer before, broke the joints of an ill-fitted answer, swept the tiles with the long feather in his hat, and found himself parted from her, with the feeling that he had not of himself left her, but had been borne away by some ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... lash, M. Etienne, kneeling, bent his eyes on the ground. He was silent, but as the king spoke not, he felt it incumbent to stammer something: ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... of those cowardly girls huddles away behind you, Esmeralda, and leaves you to stammer, "Y-yes, sir, but you do ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... I would at least preserve something of the stiff and peremptory dignity of age. These gentlemen deal in regeneration: but at any price I should hardly yield my rigid fibres to be regenerated by them,—nor begin, in my grand climacteric, to squall in their new accents, or to stammer, in my second cradle, the elemental sounds of their barbarous metaphysics.[128] Si isti mihi largiantur ut repuerascam, et in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... act to speak, or rather stammer, But sage Antonia cut him short before The anvil of his speech received the hammer, With 'Pray, sir, leave the room, and say no more, Or madam dies.'—Alfonso mutter'd, 'D—n her,' But nothing else, the time of words was o'er; He cast a ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... when he saw him, and he began to stammer out, "Oh, dear me! is it you? Pray how did you sleep last night? Did you hear or see anything in the ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... Snaggs managed to stammer out after a bit, his long face perceptibly longer and his rubicund complexion turned to an ashy grey. He was conscience-stricken and thoroughly frightened at the second-mate thus bringing up again, as he thought, his cruel murder of the negro cook; ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... a moment's pause, and then Kate said, with a cough and a stammer and her head aside, "Is that so ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... thee?" asked Shamamah, and the other answered, "Take and look!" The man hent the ring in hand and coming forward to the light read what was on it and understood that it was the signet of the Vicar of Allah. So a colick[FN167] attacked his entrails and he would have spoken but he could stammer only "Bi, Bi, Bi"[FN168] whereupon quoth the Master of Police, "The rods of Allah are descending upon us, O accurst, O son of a sire accurst: all this is of thy dirty dealing and thy greed of gain: but do thou address thy creditor[FN169] and save thyself alive." Hereat ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... mother stopped dead and shot me one glance I shall never forget. 'Why, Alice, you frighten me!' she said. I feigned surprise and asked 'What is the matter?' Alice, although she was frightened out of her wits, managed to stammer: 'He couldn't see me—you couldn't see me, could you?' appealing to me. But I had managed to collect my senses a bit and although still under that maternal eye I asked,—at last turning slowly around to Alice: 'See? What do you mean? See what?' And I looked so mystified that the mother ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... not by me, but by his wife. He would look every now and then as if he were going to make a remark, and then evidently restrain himself, and remain silent. It was very curious to see this big, handsome, manly young fellow, who ought to have had any amount of success with women, suddenly stammer and grow crimson in the presence of his own wife. Nor was it the consciousness of stupidity; for when you got him alone, Oke, although always slow and timid, had a certain amount of ideas, and very defined political and social views, and ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... be too brutally direct to shatter information about silk at one shilling the yard with a prayer for matrimonial freedom. The girl would be shocked—he could see her—she would stare at him, and suddenly grow red in the face and stammer; and he would be forced to trail through a lengthy, precise explanation of this matter which was not at all precise to himself. Furthermore, certain obscure emotions rendered him unwilling to be sundered from this girl.—There was the touch of ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... a profane expressman, and had become quite imbecile under Mr. Wynn's active heartiness and brotherly horse-play before spectators) managed, however, to feebly stammer with a ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... Waggoner suffers from an affection which in a large community might prevent him from holding such a job as the one he does hold. He has an impediment of the speech which at all times causes him to stammer badly. When he is excited it is only by a tremendous mental and physical effort and after repeated endeavours that he can form the words at all. In other regards he is a first-rate officer, ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... was a curious, kindly little man—lame, with a brown wig, a wrinkled face, and a long mouth, of which he only made use of the half on the right side to stammer out humorous and often witty sayings—at least so they appeared to those who had grace enough to respect his position and his age. As often as reference is made in my hearing to Charles Lamb and his ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... tried to stammer out an apology, but she never sent Annette to a beer saloon again, and in course of time she became a good temperance woman herself, influenced by ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... was poor Jem come back alive, Temple did not know- -he never knew. All he did for him was done for kindness' sake. I—I— " It was inevitable that she should stammer before going to this length of violence, and that the words should burst from her: "I would ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... spectators, and ladies faint away. "It is customary, especially for young women, to be excited, to turn pale, to melt into tears and, generally, to be seriously affected on encountering M. de Voltaire; they rush into his arms, stammer and weep, their agitation resembling that of the most passionate love."[2312]—When a society-author reads his work in a drawing-room, fashion requires that the company should utter exclamations and sob, and that some pretty fainting subject should ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... opened wide at the sight of the young lady in gray hat and ostrich plumes, fashionable driving costume edged with fur, for the spring air was yet cool, and bright silk parasol, for the spring sun was beginning to be warm. With almost a stammer, he said:— ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... might be offended. My great friend is the Maohn (police magistrate) here—a very kind, good man, much liked, I hear, by all except the Kadee, who was displeased at his giving the stick to a Mussulman for some wrong to a Copt. I am beginning to stammer out a little Arabic, but find it horribly difficult. The plurals are bewildering and the verbs quite heart-breaking. I have no books, which makes learning very slow work. I have written to Hekekian Bey to buy me ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... fixing the speaker with his pale-blue eyes,—a little threateningly; always ready to shatter an exuberance, to check an oratorical flow by some quick double-edged word that would make Manisty trip and stammer; showing, too, all the time, by his evident shrinking, by certain impregnable reserves, or by the banter that hid a feeling too keen to show itself, how great is the gulf between a ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to Mollie's cheeks under the scrutiny of the sunken eyes, and, to her consternation, spread even higher and higher, until she was crimson to the roots of her hair. She tried in vain to answer with composure, but could only stammer confusedly— ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... it really doesn't need any plots. For example, she is describing a man who has fallen in love, and who, though he used to be talkative, can now only stammer. He wants to propose to a beautiful girl but he can't. 'One day they were walking through a bluebell wood.... "I must speak," he said to himself unhappily, while he realised he was physically incapable of bringing out the most ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... assemblies, signed by some dolt who cannot even spell the name he assumes—'Pom-de-Tair.' A commissary of police sat yawning at the end of the orchestra, his secretary by his side, while the orators stammer out fragments of would-be thunderbolts. Commissary of police yawns more wearily than before, secretary disdains to use his pen, seizes his penknife and pares his nails. Up rises a wild-haired, weak-limbed silhouette ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the lady, and she said a great many very pretty things to him, which made the gallant little hero blush like a rose in June, and stammer so that he could hardly make ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... the mere mention of his friend, Chester Newcomb's name should cause such a convulsion in the household, and when that gentleman finally arrived, and the family met him for the first time, it certainly seemed strange that they should all redden and stammer as if they had been "awkward nursery children ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... The thirst for revenge, personal, violent, utter, was all that prompted this man; but Burrell had no inkling yet of the father's well-shaped plans, nor how far-reaching they were, and could barely stammer: ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... what to say. He could not guess what was in it, and all he could do was to stammer a few confused words of thanks. The envelope had a very important look, and he was both impressed and mystified. Ted could not repress his eager curiosity, and came around to Will's side. Even Mrs. Carter was intensely ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... and anxious earnestness in his assurance. "It's because I don't see you. If I were face to face with you, I'd stammer and get red and make a regular imbecile of myself. Another reason why I stick down here and decline to ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... lips and my lungs; Walk'd in many a far land, regretting my own; In many a language groaned many a groan; And have often had reason to curse those wild fellows Who built the high house at which Heaven turn'd jealous, Making human audacity stumble and stammer When seized by the throat in the hard gripe of Grammar. But the language of languages dearest to me Is that in which once, O ma toute cherie, When, together, we bent o'er your nosegay for hours, You explain'd what was silently said by the flowers, And, ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... but my heart burned as I listened. And I have heard a man talk with smooth speech, and it rolled off me as easily as it rolled out of him. Do your best, and leave the rest. If we are in touch with God His fire burns whether the tongue stammer or has good control ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... impressed, aye, stamped almost in his mother's womb even, in whom is there not a native instinct, that He is King and Lord, the ruler of all things that be? In fine, if the dumb animals even could stammer forth their thoughts, if they were able to use our languages; nay, if trees, if the clods of the earth, if stones dominated by vital perceptions were able to produce vocal sounds, and to utter articulate speech, would they not in that case, with nature as their ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... document reverently to my breast. Then [I rose up] and walked to and fro in my abode, rejoicing and saying, "How can these things possibly be done to thy servant who is now speaking, whose heart made him to fly into foreign lands [where dwell] peoples who stammer in their speech? Assuredly it is a good and gracious thought [of the King] to deliver me from death [here], for thy Ka (i.e. double) will make my body to end [its existence] in ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... "Why," he managed to stammer, at last, "I don't know what to say. I hadn't any idea that there was anything in the locker, ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... to the porch, there gazing sternly at the grouped lawn chairs where the attentive physician was sitting with Nancy. But, as he approached them, a measure of recollection must have returned to the man of science, for he looked hurriedly at his watch and began to stammer: ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... The key will stammer, and the door reply, The hall wake, yawn, and smile; the torpid stair Will grumble at our feet, the table cry: 'Fetch my belongings for me; I am bare.' A clatter! Something in the attic falls. A ghost has lifted ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... laugh had returned, and made her stammer, interrupting her at each word. It was a loud, cheery laugh, a sonorous outpouring of pearly notes, which sang sweetly to the ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... "'Didn't—didn't'—don't stammer and stutter like that! Confound you! What do you mean by dragging me out of bed in this way? You must have ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... lip, or tooth, or bleeding gum, Tell-tale shells, and shells that whisper Come, Shells that stammer, blush, and yet are ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... This pregnant fluency always characterised his public deliverances. Of late years it has been reported that he had at first a defect of speech, and to this the extraordinary momentum of his utterance was due. In the early time I never heard of this. He did not stammer, nor was there other impediment; only this preternaturally rapid outpouring on occasion, from a man usually quiet. When I heard him preach in later years the peculiarity remained. It was the ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... her request. He had humiliated himself to no purpose. Mortified pride, mingled with rejected passion, formed a compound of deadly hate, which raged with fury against the late object of his desire. He commanded himself sufficiently to stammer out his regrets, and promised not again to introduce the subject; and lifting up the offered hand respectfully to his lips, he quitted her presence to meditate ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... street, did not seem to know why they stopped him, who, lacking West's verbal felicity, could do nothing but take his hand, hot with the fear that they might be betrayed into expressing any feeling, and stammer out: "Doc, if you want anything—why dammit, Doc—you call on ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Admiral, and the careless mirth from his voice. When after a while young Jack Drake, unable to bear the silence that fell between them, began some phrase of blundering boyish affection, the sentence trailed off into a stammer. ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... to English prose and verse of the nineteenth century; the differences being, as a rule, rather matters of spelling or phrase than of actual vocabulary. It is very well suited both to the poet's needs and to the subject; there being little or nothing of that stammer—as it may be called—which is not uncommon in mediaeval work, as if the writer were trying to find words that he cannot find for a thought which he cannot fully shape even to himself. In short, there ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... agreeable, and, at almost any other moment of her life, Mrs. Lee would have liked nothing better than to talk with him from the beginning to the end of her dinner. Tall, slender, bald-headed, awkward, and stammering with his elaborate British stammer whenever it suited his convenience to do so; a sharp observer who had wit which he commonly concealed; a humourist who was satisfied to laugh silently at his own humour; a diplomatist who used the mask of frankness with great effect; Lord Skye was one of the most popular men in Washington. ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... turn the discourse from a subject too tender, and which she found she could not support, bethought herself to ask him a question she never had time to put to him before, "How he came into that room?" He began to stammer, and would, in all probability, have raised her suspicions by the answer he was going to give, when, at once, the door opened, and in ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... all that the astonished courier could stammer out. Then, as the real facts dawned upon him, he knelt at the feet of the young queen and ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... (nor is the Latin, Trinitas, more elegant); but since we have no better term, we must employ these. For, as I have said, this article is so far above the power of the human mind to grasp, or the tongue to express, that God, as the Father of his children, will pardon us when we stammer and lisp as best we can, if only our faith be pure and right. By this term, however, we would say that we believe the divine majesty to be three distinct persons of one ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... and appreciation. Among small tradesmen, the wife always comes to the rescue of her slow spouse when she sees him befogged in a bargain. In the fields, you ask a peasant some question about your journey. He will hesitate, and stammer, and end with, "Quien sabe?" but his wife will answer with glib completeness all you want to know. I can imagine no cause for this, unless it be that the men cloud their brains all day with the fumes of tobacco, and the women ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... is like a maniac. She has lost you; she cannot explain to—to Mademoiselle's father. Mon dieu, when he met her unexpectedly in the hall, he shouts, 'where is my daughter?' And poor Madame she has but to shiver and stammer and—run away! Oui! She dash out into the rain! It is ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Alicia, placed it unnoticed in her hand. The banker's wife flushed and then turned pale. She understood. Annie would spare her. Her lips parted to protest. Even she was taken back by such an exhibition of unselfishness as this. She began to stammer thanks. ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... gazing at him with a sinister light in his eyes. "How can my lord doubt it? Your respected father has known me these thirty years, and do you suppose that I—I do not know the Syrian? Why, who in Memphis can stammer to compare with him? And has he not killed half my children with your wild young horses?—Half killed every one of my children I mean—half killed them, I say, with fright. They are all still alive and well, God preserve them, but none the better for your horsebreaker; ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... disturb our amusement, our good-temper, our toleration. Nothing matters so very greatly. And yet everything—each of us, as we try to make our difficult meanings clear, the meanings of our hidden souls, and each of these meanings themselves as we stammer them forth to one another—matters ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... was troubled by this urgency of hers. He began to stammer a little. "Of course, the—the fellow helped me a lot. He got me on the staff. He went round with me. He—he took down what I said and later he—he kind of edited my copy before I handed it in. He—he was almighty good to me. ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... was beating so fast, and there was such a singing in my ears, that I could scarcely stammer I had ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... had a dry goods store. A woman, a stranger, came in and asked the price of a shawl. She was told it was $15.00. It was done up for her. She had been hunting through her reticule and now put down the money in gold. The Captain looked at it as if hypnotized, but managed to stammer, "My God woman, I thought you had an order. It is ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... kept him from carrying out his purpose; but together they were unromantic. How could he adjure her to tell him for God's sake whether or not she was in love with any one when he saw she was afraid that something was burning on the stove? He could only stammer out excuses for having come. Inventing on the spot new and incoherent directions for the treatment of Mrs. Fay, he took himself away again, ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... statement carefully, expecting to see Henshaw turn pale and stammer in terror. Instead, the captain regarded ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... no great self-conceit to hope one is better company than Maria! But come, before we fall under the dominion of the Queen of the West Wing, I have a secret for you.' Then, after a longer stammer than usual, 'How should you like ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lovely things about them that remain in one's memory just as persistently as though they had been inspired expressions of actual feelings; and the intellect must indeed have been gigantic that could so beautifully pretend. Ordinary blunderers have to feel a vast amount before they can painfully stammer out a sentence that will describe it; and when they have got it out, how it seems to have just missed the core of the sensation that gave it birth, and what a poor, weak child it is of what was perhaps a mighty feeling! I read Goethe ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... I pass you by again, as usual? Or do you want to try—I shall not say to read, but to stammer through ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... averted face, began to stammer a few disconnected and unintelligible words; but old Wardlaw silenced him and said, with much feeling, "Let none but a father tell him. My poor, poor friend—the Proserpine! How can ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... explained that he was a bachelor with hardly any living relation, that he had known my parents in his youth, and that he had always heard of me as a very deserving young man, and was assured that his money would be in worthy hands. Of course, I could only stammer out my thanks. The will was duly finished, signed, and witnessed by my clerk. This is it on the blue paper, and these slips, as I have explained, are the rough draft. Mr. Jonas Oldacre then informed me that there were ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... characteristic of its manifestations. Surely the copy is not to surpass the original, nor the mirror to flash more brightly than the sun which, at the brightest, it but reflects. In such a matter we can but stammer when we try to find words. As our text warns us, we are trying to utter the unutterable when we seek to speak of God's giving up for us; but however such a thought may seem to be forbidden by other aspects of the divine nature, it seems to be involved in the great truth that 'God is love.' Since ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... so," said Margaret, beginning to stammer and get red as she invariably did when Hampstead was mentioned. ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... mother, mother-in-law, sons, daughters, old footman or parlor-maid, confidential clerk, curate, or what not? I smirk and go through the history, giving my admirable imitations of the characters introduced: I mimic Jones's grin, Hobbs's squint, Brown's stammer, Grady's brogue, Sandy's Scotch accent, to the best of my power: and, the family part of my audience laughs good-humoredly. Perhaps the stranger, for whose amusement the performance is given, is amused by ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... proposal; he was a senior with a funny stammer. He went away with his diploma last June, and said he'd never forget. I got his cards to-day. She's a Lafayette girl he had down for the 'Pan' in his senior year. She has golden hair," Phil ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... retorted the Moor. "Do Englishmen blush and stammer when they tell the truth? Tell me the truth now. Do you know where ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... craft and Poet's art, Daily I learn by the heart. First, all the leather smooth I hammer, Consonants then, and vowels I stammer. Next must the thread be stiff with wax, Then I must ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... you know what I think of it? I think they are nothing but shadows of some imperfect images and conceptions that they know not what to make of within, nor consequently bring out; they do not yet themselves understand what they would be at, and if you but observe how they haggle and stammer upon the point of parturition, you will soon conclude, that their labour is not to delivery, but about conception, and that they are but licking their formless embryo. For my part, I hold, and Socrates commands it, that whoever has in his mind a sprightly and clear imagination, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... frankly hadn't any chin, Her hands were rough, her feet she turned invariably in; Her general form was German, By which I mean that you Her waist could not determine To within a foot or two: And not only did she stammer, But she used the kind of grammar That is called, for ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... is going you manage, though almost bursting with the effort, to stammer out—"What do you mean by telling tales of me to all the fellows?" He looks perplexed, as if at a loss for your meaning. "Tell tales of you?" says he. "I don't know what you ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Death to come and release him from his life of toil. The words were scarcely out of his mouth when, much to his dismay, Death stood before him and professed his readiness to serve him. He was almost frightened out of his wits, but he had enough presence of mind to stammer out, "Good sir, if you'd be so kind, pray help me up ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... related the history of the paymaster's recent experiences and bravery so effectively that the poor little man became rosy with confusion, and when at the conclusion of the narrative his health was pledged with a round of cheers, he could only stammer in reply:— ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... Ape, in the days gone by. The Maid was radiant as the sun, The Ape was a most unsightly one, The Ape was a most unsightly one— So it would not do— His scheme fell through, For the Maid, when his love took formal shape, Express'd such terror At his monstrous error, That he stammer'd an apology and made his 'scape, The picture of ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... for him at her table. "And I recommend you to come often," the old lady said, "for Grandjean is an excellent cook, and to be with Laura and me will do your manners good. It is easy to see that you are always thinking about yourself. Don't blush and stammer—almost all young men are always thinking about themselves. My sons and grandsons always were until I cured them. Come here, and let us teach you to behave properly; you will not have to carve, that is done at the side-table. Hecker will give you as much wine as is good for you; ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sxtuparo. Stake paliso, fosto. Stake (wager) veto. Stalactite stalaktito. Stalagmite stalagmito. Stale malfresxa. Stalk (plant) trunketo. Stall (at market, etc.) budo. Stall (for beast) stalo. Stallion cxevalviro. Stamen (bot.) paliseto. Stamin stamino. Stammer balbuti. Stamp (to mark) stampi. Stamp (brand) stampajxo. Stamp, postage posxtmarko. Stamp with foot piedfrapadi. Stamper (marker) stampilo. Stanch (firm) firma, fortika. Stanch (trusty) fidela, fervora. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... candidate. His former fellow-students, and any one present that wishes, stand as opponents. This disputation, whatever may have been its merits in former days, has degenerated in the present into a mere piece of acted mummery, where the partakers not only stutter and stammer over bad Latin, but even help themselves, when their memory fails utterly, with the previously written notes of their extempore objections and answers. The principal requisite for the attainment of the Doctor's degree, when the necessary amount ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... they left her at the mine and Betty mounted Nigger, leading the brown colt by the reins. Meggy had tried to stammer some words of thanks, but the girls would have none of it. They waved to her gayly and ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... on some Saturday or other a Caine or a Barclay; to have it restored to me a moment later by a courteous fellow-passenger—courteous, but with a smile of gentle pity in his eye as he glimpsed the author's name. "Thanks very much," I would stammer, blushing guiltily, and perhaps I would babble about a sick friend to whom I was taking them, or that I was running out of paper-weights. But he never believed me. He knew that he would have ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... and noiseless crossed over to her bed and from underneath it dragged out her suitcase. Into it she tossed toilet articles and a change of clothing, Then she turned to her trunk and quickly dumped in two drawerfulls of lingerie and stammer dresses. She moved quietly. but deadly efficiency, and in three-quarters of an hour her trunk was locked and strapped and she was fully dressed in a becoming new travelling suit that Marjorie had helped ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... unrecognizing gaze brought him back to the consciousness of the utter change in himself. He looked down at his coarse hands and mechanic's dress, and remembered that he was no longer Roland Sefton. His tongue was parched; it was difficult to stammer out ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... was filled with such great and unexpected joy that he became almost delirious. He wanted to laugh, he wanted to cry, he wanted to say a thousand things, and instead he could only stammer out a few confused and broken words. At last he succeeded in uttering a cry of joy, and, opening his arms, he threw them around the little old man's neck, ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... he remembered, he had raved out his passion for Virginia, and to-day he could barely stammer Betty's name. A great silence; seemed to surround ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... questions of this kind are. The Vicar would have liked to answer "No," but he could not tell a lie. He was also a very bad hand at prevaricating; so with a stammer, he said "Yes!" ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... of cards fell so suddenly to the ground that under the compelling eyes of Mayence he could do no more than stammer his acquiescence. ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... tender little Babes, as well as strong men, ... let not anything straiten you, when God moves: And thou, faithful Babe, though thou stutter and stammer forth a few words in the dread of the Lord, they are accepted, and all that are strong, serve the weak in strengthening them and wait in wisdom to give place to the motion of the Spirit in them, that it may ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... hand in dismissal and settled himself to sleep. When Culver began to stammer thanks for ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... young woman when circumstances compel her to speak to a strange young man—though her tone to the more favored cook was kindly, and even sprightly—though Philip himself was red and inclined to stammer—despite all these hindrances to clear judgment, he felt that she was troubled in spirit. His acquaintance with women was of the slightest, since a youth who is taught his business on the Conway, and means to attach himself to one of the great Trans-Atlantic shipping lines, has no time to ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... afternoon's adventures. Had Theodore Mallery been the hero of a first-class novel he would have remained modestly and obstinately silent about a matter in which he had taken so prominent a part, but being very like a flesh and blood young man, it did not occur to him to hesitate or stammer—in fact he thought he had succeeded in doing a good brave deed, and he was very glad and thankful. Presently they left the library ...
— Three People • Pansy
... those who gained it as for him who lost it. To Napoleon it is a panic; Blucher sees nothing in it but fire; Wellington does not understand it at all. Look at the reports: the bulletins are confused; the commentaries are entangled; the latter stammer, the former stutter. Jomini divides the battle of Waterloo into four moments; Muffling cuts it into three acts; Charras, altho we do not entirely agree with him in all his appreciations, has alone ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... three-card trick, the robber of the widow and the orphan. Be smooth-tongued, and the Englishman will withdraw from you as quickly as may be, walking sideways like a crab, and looking askance at you with panic in his eyes. But stammer and blurt to him, and he will fall straight under the spell of your transparent honesty. A silly superstition; but there it is, ineradicable; and through it, undoubtedly, has come the house of Commons manner. Sometimes, through sheer nervousness, a new member achieves ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... nuns built into the wall in the old times likely to come stepping out again. Bobby has at length ceased to offer me every object which it devolves upon him to hand me, with a quavering voice and a prolonged stammer, since, though I was at first excellently vulnerable by this weapon of offense, I am now becoming hornily hard and indifferent to it. We have stepped over the boundaries of June ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... him for the little he might have done. He was so imbued with the idea of his helplessness, that he could only stammer a few broken sentences she ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... average person, and have been able to do work as hard as God has required of me. I recommend God as a physician. At the time I was healed of my other bodily afflictions, I was also relieved of stammering. It is true I stammer some yet, at times, but not nearly so much as I did formerly; and not enough to ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... with rage, eyes blazing with passion, and demanding to know, in furious tones, what we wanted and meant by creating a disturbance in the neighbourhood at that hour in the morning, hammering at her gate in that manner. We were almost struck dumb, at least I was, but Mr. Parsons, I believe, managed to stammer out something or other, in the midst of which the gate was slammed to violently in our faces and we had to beat an ignominious retreat. It is, of course, needless to say we never repeated our visit nor tried to induce the lady to enter ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... shores, but I've never seed un with my own eyes, an' I'm sort o' wantin' t' know how they shapes up alongside o' Twist Tickle. I 'low," says he, "you don't find many harbors in the world like Twist Tickle. Since I been travellin' t' Jimmie Tick's Cove with the mail," he continued, with a stammer and flush, like a man misled from an austere path by the flesh-pots of earth, "I've cotched a sinful hankerin' t' see ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... so furiously, that the boy was frightened and could only stammer: "Before the banquet the prince was walking with you, so I could not speak to him, and now I am waiting for him here, for Mandane promised to give me a piece of gold if I did ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... smelt Onions, mint sauce, and lemon juice behind it. At last there came a pause of brutal force, The cur was silent, for his jaws were full Of tangled locks of tarry wool, The man had whoop'd and holloed till dead hoarse. The time was ripe for mild expostulation, And thus it stammer'd from a stander-by— "Zounds!—my good fellow,—it quite makes me—why, It really—my ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... women fairly cowered beneath Eugene Hautville's eyes, and Margaret Bean began to stammer as if her old tongue were palsied. Then Eugene collected himself, made them one of his courtly bows, turned to Dorothy with another, offered her his arm, and walked away with her out of the lane, before the eyes ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... a little stammer that—that Laurie thought very pretty, and she had a restless little way of playing with her fingers as if on a piano. Oh, my dear, it would have been too dreadful; and now, my ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... beauty and no brains, like a doll of wax!" Then she bent over and murmured smilingly to Zuilika: "I shall make a bigger nincompoop of this big, fair sap-head than Heaven already has done before he leaves here, just for the sake of seeing him stammer ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... pronouncing carelessly and ill; it is still worse when they repeat their lessons; they cannot find the right words, they drag out their syllables. This is only possible when the memory hesitates, the tongue does not stammer of itself. Thus they acquire or continue habits of bad pronunciation. Later on you will see that Emile does not acquire such habits or at least not ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... forth again in these words: "It seems they do not decide to separate so quickly. It is not, however, possible that they will fight.... Can we see them from here?" He approached the window, which indeed looked upon the enclosure. The sight which met his eyes caused the excellent man to stammer.... "The miserable men!... It is monstrous.... They are mad.... They have found seconds.... Whom have they taken?... Those two huntsmen!... Ali, my God! My God!".... He could say no more. The doctor had hastened to the window to see what was passing, regardless of the fact that Florent ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... political and ecclesiastical; confuses the tongues of its evangelical alliances; makes a farce of its Fourth of July celebrations; and, as in the case of the grand Washington procession of 1830, sadly mars the effect of its rejoicings in view of the progress of liberty abroad. There is a stammer in all our exhortations; our moral and political homilies are sure to run into confusions and contradictions; and the response which comes to us from the nations is not unlike that of Father Kyle to the planter's attempt at sermonizing: "It's no use, brother Jonathan; you can't preach liberty with ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... was usually a wide-awake citizen of the land that Lafayette went to save, that I wanted my dinner, and would like to get out. I walked down near enough to the gate to see the policeman, but my courage failed. Before I could stammer out half that explanation to him in his trifling language (which foreigners are mockingly told is the best in the world for conversation), he would either have slipped his hateful rapier through my body, or have ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... continue to weary me he shall go join his father. I give orders now to change him to the chamber above the chapel. If that ye can swear your innocency with a good solid oath and an assured countenance, it is well; the lad will be at peace a little, and I will spare him. If that ye stammer or blench, or anyways boggle at the swearing, he will not believe you; and, by the mass, he shall die. There ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 'I have got you at last, as I wished.' I tried to speak as steadily as he had done; but, as the moment for action came near, my d——d cowardice made me stammer. ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... before archangels. This miserly uncle was keeping from him money that was as incontestably his own as the being which also his mother had given him. Before all the angelic host he would thus have protested- without stammer, without blush; with the inspiration of righteousness, with the integrity of innocence. But to protest his cause before his Mary was another matter. There might be no occasion to protest; his Mary might see eye to eye with him in the matter. She might; but it was an eventuality ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... "What a mess every one will make! Oh, if I could but stay away, like Harry! There will be Dr. Hoxton being sonorous and prosy, and Mr. Lake will stammer, and that will be nothing to the misery of our own people's work. George will flounder, and look at Flora, and she will sit with her eyes on the ground, and Dr. Spencer will come out of his proper self, and be complimentary ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... drawn-out command in a husky, throaty stammer, weaker than a whisper, from an undersized tin-hatted youngster planted in the centre of the trench not ten feet in front of us. His left foot was forward and his bayoneted rifle was held ready for ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... time that Georgina had ever been called Miss Huntingdon, and knowing he said it to tease her, it embarrassed her to the point of making her stammer, when he asked her most unexpectedly while picking out twenty shining new nickels to stuff into ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... think the one he wrote had already been set up in type that afternoon from his manuscript, and consequently they did not go over it to see whether it had been changed or not. He had read three pages and had gone on to the fourth when he lost his place and then he began to tremble and stammer. He then turned it over two or three times, threw the manuscript upon the table, and, as they say in the west, "let himself go." Now the stammering man who had created only silent derision up to that point, suddenly flashed out into an ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... leaves. I hastened to lift it, but she prevented me.—"It is verse," she said, on glancing at the paper; and then unfolding it, but as if to wait my answer before proceeding—"May I take the liberty?—Nay, nay, if you blush and stammer, I must do violence to your modesty, and suppose ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... bow rested motionless. A look of fear came into his face. He sprang up. The cowboys were all stealing from the other side of the wagon. They had arrived and dismounted without his hearing them. He sprang to his feet and began to stammer apologies. Long Jim's hand was ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... new to him, but which they repeated frequently afterwards, sent advice of this to the king, who ordered the children to be brought before him, in order that he himself might be a witness to the truth of what was told him; and accordingly both of them began, in his presence, to stammer out the sounds above mentioned. Nothing now was wanting but to ascertain what nation it was that used this word; and it was found that the Phrygians called bread by this name. From this time they were allowed the honour of antiquity, or rather of priority, which the Egyptians ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... amusement. The pedant's endeavours to make a philosopher of his child are sufficiently ludicrous. He is delighted to find that the infant has the wart of Cicero and the very neck of Alexander, and hopes that he may come to stammer like Demosthenes, 'and in time arrive at many other defects of famous men.' As the boy grows up his father invents for him a geographical suit of clothes, and stamps his gingerbread with the letters of the ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... am introduced to any pretty maid, My knees they knock together, just as if I were afraid; I flutter, and I stammer, and I turn a pleasing red, For to laugh, and flirt, and ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... with a towel; all this time exposing everything to my ardent gaze. But, horror of horrors! she after this came straight to the closet and gave a slight scream on discovering me there. I blushed up to the ears, and tried to stammer out an excuse. She stared at me at first in silent ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... laws of perspective were known. None knew how to draw anything correctly. No color-harmonies had been thought of. These men must needs stammer when they tried to express themselves; but as much greater as thought is than the mere expression of it so much greater are many of their works, in the true sense, than the mass of pictures that make up our exhibitions ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... nature, and bring it half-ashamed, struggling, and deformed into the day—to give words and intelligible symbols to that which was never imagined or expressed before! It is as if the dumb should speak for the first time, as if things should stammer out their own meaning through the imperfect organs of mere sense. I wish that some of our fluent, plausible declaimers, who have such store of words to cover the want of ideas, could lend their art to this writer. If he, 'poor, unfledged' ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... his rugged lines, and to serve a particular purpose, had probably seldom, and never but by accident, composed a smooth one. Such has been the versification of the earliest poets in every country. Children lisp, at first, and stammer; but, in time, their speech becomes fluent, and, if they ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... so strangely rumbles, he talks through his nose. But then again, what has the whale to say? Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to this .. world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living. Oh! happy that the world is such an excellent listener! Now, the spouting canal of the Sperm Whale, chiefly intended as it is for the conveyance of air, and for ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Wilford Cameron's wife; but the sight of Katy, together with the errand on which she came, had unnerved her, and she wept bitterly in her desolation, until Katy's reappearance startled her from her position on the floor, making her stammer out some excuse about "homesickness and the seeing Katy bringing back ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... stern, and at examination a terror to the candidates. Clad in cap and gown, he would reject his own son. Nothing will serve. Recommendations defeat their object. An unquestioned Roumanian ancestry, an extraction indisputably Japanese, find no more favor in his eyes than an assumed stammer, a sham deafness, or a convalescent pallor put on for the occasion. East and west are alike in his sight. The retired registrar, the pensioned usher aspiring late in life to some petty magistrature, are powerless to touch his heart. For him in vain does the youthful volunteer ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... again just as this introduction was over, and a new nervousness attacked Alma. Another tinge of yellowness crept into her skin, her eyes grew wistful, and she began to stammer. ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... what Tony was thinking of, all these years. That is what they all wanted to know; but he didn't seem to tell. When the subject was mentioned he would always try to get away; and if he could not avoid a direct question, he would blush and stammer in so distressing a confusion that the doctor forbade all allusion to the matter, lest the young man should have a convulsion. It was clear enough, however, that the subject of Tony's meditation was "more than average interestin'," as his father phrased it; for sometimes he ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... the hidden things. Suddenly the bow rested motionless. A look of fear came into his face. He sprang up. The cowboys were all stealing from the other side of the wagon. They had arrived and dismounted without his hearing them. He sprang to his feet and began to stammer apologies. Long Jim's hand was ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... harsh voice issued from the lips of a burly, red-faced man. "Mr. President, if you are a Christian, you'll perhaps be good enough to say grace, and let us get to our dinner, which we want very badly." I managed to stammer forth the formula of my childhood, and thought the worst was over. Not a bit of it. No sooner had the soup been audibly consumed than the hated voice from the foot of the table again assailed me. "Mr. President, I really ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... suspense, took in nothing of the president's speech beyond the acceptance of his offer, and, pale with relief, he tried to stammer his thanks and his devotion to his chosen cause. He made no attempt to contradict the president's confident prophecies; he only made the greatest possible haste to the tower-rooms which were to be his ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... wide-awake citizen of the land that Lafayette went to save, that I wanted my dinner, and would like to get out. I walked down near enough to the gate to see the policeman, but my courage failed. Before I could stammer out half that explanation to him in his trifling language (which foreigners are mockingly told is the best in the world for conversation), he would either have slipped his hateful rapier through my body, or have raised an alarm and called out the guards ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... from a common sailor were, of course, enough to astonish the young man. But there must be more than this, as Adrian surmised, to cause him to blush, wax angry, and stammer like a very school-boy found at fault. Speaking ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... fluently enough; but then he began to falter and stammer, and say that for certain reasons he could not marry at all. But if she could be content with anything short of that, he would retire with her into a distant country, and there, where nobody could contradict him, would call her his wife, and treat her as his wife, and pay his debt of gratitude ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... adventures. Had Theodore Mallery been the hero of a first-class novel he would have remained modestly and obstinately silent about a matter in which he had taken so prominent a part, but being very like a flesh and blood young man, it did not occur to him to hesitate or stammer—in fact he thought he had succeeded in doing a good brave deed, and he was very glad and thankful. Presently they left the library and went toward ...
— Three People • Pansy
... way through a stammer which expressed the struggle of courtesy against denunciation. "Come—hang it all!" said he. "It wasn't my romance.... Oh, well, perhaps it wasn't yours either. Only—play fair, Miss Dickenson. Six of the one and half a dozen of the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... idioms my lips and my lungs; Walk'd in many a far land, regretting my own; In many a language groaned many a groan; And have often had reason to curse those wild fellows Who built the high house at which Heaven turn'd jealous, Making human audacity stumble and stammer When seized by the throat in the hard gripe of Grammar. But the language of languages dearest to me Is that in which once, O ma toute cherie, When, together, we bent o'er your nosegay for hours, You explain'd what was silently said by the flowers, And, selecting the sweetest ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... harsh. Yet, he was great: and though he turned language into ignoble clay, he made from it men and women that live. He is the most Shakespearian creature since Shakespeare. If Shakespeare could sing with myriad lips, Browning could stammer through a thousand mouths. Even now, as I am speaking, and speaking not against him but for him, there glides through the room the pageant of his persons. There, creeps Fra Lippo Lippi with his cheeks still burning from some girl's hot kiss. There, stands dread Saul with the lordly male-sapphires ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... part of the vocal organs is wanting, with those individuals that stammer, or who have an impediment in their speech. Some parts may be more developed than others, but they generally are but imperfectly under the control of the will, and assume an irregular and rapid movement, while other parts, the motions of which are essential, remain ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... that Roderick had scarcely any chance to reply. He tried to stammer out his thanks to her for her kindness, but she laughingly interrupted him. It was quite too bad they couldn't say good-bye, Daddy would do that for her. But Mamma was coming to Toronto with them. They were both dreadfully sorry and Mamma ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... Wicker as though he were unable to look elsewhere. "He's a schoolmate of mine. Jakey Harris, his name is, and he really needs the job. I wondered—" Mr. Wicker's eyes, laughing at him just a little, confused Chris and he began to stammer. ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... circumstances it was impossible for me to recognize him. I was very anxious to do so in view of the trouble the officer had taken to come away out on the picket line, in the middle of the night, to see me, but I just couldn't, and began to stammer a sort of apology about the darkness of the night hindering a prompt recognition, when the "unknown" gave his head a slant to one side, and, in his never forgettable voice, spoke thus to Keeley: "I told you he wouldn't know me." "I know you now," said I; "I'd recognize that ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... matter?" No man can [Page 237] answer. We trace it up through the worlds, till its increasing fineness, its growing power, and possible identity of substance, seem as if the next step would reveal its spirit origin. What we but hesitatingly stammer, the ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... gallants, then throw a knot of blue ribbon into their midst, laugh with glee at the scramble that ensued, and finally march off with the wearer of the favor. I saw a neighbor of mine, tall Jack Pride, who lived twelve miles above me, blush and stammer, and bow again and again to a milliner's apprentice of a girl, not five feet high and all eyes, who dropped a curtsy at each bow. When I had passed them fifty yards or more, and looked back, they were still bobbing and bowing. And I heard ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... lips were only half parted. She could hardly speak, as she laid a timid hand on her late principal's shoulder, directing his attention to the breakfast tray. "Look away, please, for Cecile's sake if not for mine," she managed to stammer, and, as he turned his head aside, she flung herself upon her knees beside the bed, and took the apparently dead man's hand in her own, covered it with tears and kisses, and transferred the ring she had once worn back to her own hand, replacing it with ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... in point of health, and am now confirmed I have had a paralytic touch. I speak and read with embarrassment, and even my handwriting seems to stammer. This general failure ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... fell so suddenly to the ground that under the compelling eyes of Mayence he could do no more than stammer his acquiescence. ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... felt in a whirl. What should she ask first? She must do it directly, or Mother would be gone. It all seemed confusion, and at last she could only stammer out: ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... in public. So says WALTER. They mumble, stumble, hammer, stammer, falter! BESANT, why grumble at fate's distribution? To writers, sense; to speakers, elocution! Some books are bosh, but all experience teaches "Rot's" native ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... choose ye out a walie hammer; About the knottit buttress clam'er; Alang the steep roof stoyt an' stammer, A gate mischancy; On the aul' spire, the bells' hie cha'mer, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Englishman's fear of being over-demonstrative. He was easily capable of turning a nice little speech. Apart from the fear of transgressing the canons of negative good form he would have enjoyed turning one. As it was, he assumed a stammer and a drawl, jerking out a few inarticulate phrases of which the lady could distinguish only "so awfully good of you" and "never forget your jolly kindness." This being masculine, soldier-like, and British, he was hurt to notice an amused smile on the ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... should have shown you he did, as foreign critics like to show it) were to say to you: 'He's the one, in this country, whom they consider the most perfect, isn't he?' Is it success to be the occasion of a young Englishman's having to stammer as you would have to stammer at such a moment for old England? No, no; success is to have made people wriggle to ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... moment later she emerged, safe and unscratched from the confused heap of men and furniture, it was to cut off instantly the stutter and stammer of poor Shafto's apologies, to bid him go instantly for the ship's doctor, and, with face the color of death, to turn quickly to Armstrong. The blow had burst open the half-healed wound, and the blood was streaming to ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... she might not see me when she opened her eyes, and remained there, behind the carriage, my face muffled up in my cloak. I desired the servants to make no mention of my sudden appearance. They soon made a sign to me that she was recovering consciousness, and I heard her voice stammer forth these words, as if in a dream: "Oh, if Raphael were here! I thought it was Raphael!" I hastily returned to my own carriage; the horses started afresh, and a wide distance soon lay between us. In the evening I went to inquire after her at the inn where she had alighted at Sens. ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... hast thou betrayed this high commission! Fain would the tongue in clear, triumphant accents draw example from thy story, to encourage the hearts of those who almost faint and die beneath the old oppressions. But we must stammer and blush when we speak of many things. I take pride here, that I can really say the liberty of the press works well, and that checks and balances are found naturally which suffice to its government. I can say that the minds of our people are alert, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... stand and introduced to a party of ladies, became so abashed by unexpectedly finding himself in the midst of such a galaxy of beauties (and, as a matter of course, the conscious cynosure of all eyes) that, blushing to suffusion, and forgetting to lift his hat, he could only manage to stammer out, "Aw, aw—I beg pardon; but—aw—aw—I fancy there's another wicket down, and I must put on my guards, you know;" whereupon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... for this decisive step; but he could only stammer out, 'Really, sir, you are too good;' and Mr Glowry departed to bring Mr ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... his offspring, no uplifted thought of justice. The thirst for revenge, personal, violent, utter, was all that prompted this man; but Burrell had no inkling yet of the father's well-shaped plans, nor how far-reaching they were, and could barely stammer: ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... mute appeal, Wharton ran on smilingly: "He promised to shackle you to a table until I could stammer out my halting apologies, and now that I've done so in the presence of press and public won't you forgive me and help me to bury the hatchet in a Welsh rarebit?" He was speaking directly to her with a genuine appeal in his handsome ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... Creede stared, and in that self-same moment Hardy realized how the low-down strategy which he had perpetrated upon his employer had fallen upon his own head a thousandfold. But before he could stammer his apologies, Kitty Bonnair stood before him—the same Kitty, and smiling as he had often seen her in ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... who gained it as for him who lost it. To Napoleon it is a panic; Blucher sees nothing in it but fire; Wellington does not understand it at all. Look at the reports: the bulletins are confused; the commentaries are entangled; the latter stammer, the former stutter. Jomini divides the battle of Waterloo into four moments; Muffling cuts it into three acts; Charras, altho we do not entirely agree with him in all his appreciations, has alone caught with his haughty ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... it came!' he babbled, quivering under the table- cloth they had cast over his nakedness. 'It came—behind me!' and forthwith he began to stammer in his ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... but I was not prepared to answer him, and in the rush of his indignant accusation my defence was swept down, and I could only stammer out— ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... best policy." But these are acquired habits of thinking. The child has no natural love of truth, as is experienced by all who have the least acquaintance with early youth. If they are charged with a fault while they can hardly speak, the first words they stammer forth are a falsehood to excuse it. Nor is this all: the temptation of attracting attention, the pleasure of enjoying importance, the desire to escape from an unpleasing task, or accomplish a holiday, will at any time overcome the sentiment of truth, so weak is it within ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... where the attentive physician was sitting with Nancy. But, as he approached them, a measure of recollection must have returned to the man of science, for he looked hurriedly at his watch and began to stammer: ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... her teeth, which she seemed always ready to show in a friendly, generous smile, were strong and white and sparkling. Altogether she was such a vision of healthy, unaffected, and smartly gotten-up young womanhood that O'Reilly could only stammer his acknowledgment of the introduction, inwardly berating himself for his awkwardness. He was aware of Alvarado's amusement, and ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... severe look, expressive at once of displeasure and astonishment, were most disconcerting, but Mr. Cornell managed to stammer forth: ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... hotel was nearest to the lair of our boat, but in that wild moment I could discover nothing more appropriate than "I wish immediately some medicine for seasickness," and (hastily turning over the pages) "I have lost my pet cat." I began mechanically to stammer French and the few words of German which for years have lain peacefully buried in the dustiest ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... the more beside himself because he saw the Regent smile, and M. le Duc, who looked at me do the same, but more openly, began to speak, or rather to stammer. He did not dare, however, to decide against the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... it half-ashamed, struggling, and deformed into the day—to give words and intelligible symbols to that which was never imagined or expressed before! It is as if the dumb should speak for the first time, as if things should stammer out their own meaning through the imperfect organs of mere sense. I wish that some of our fluent, plausible declaimers, who have such store of words to cover the want of ideas, could lend their art to this writer. If he, 'poor, unfledged' in this respect, 'who has scarce winged ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... paralysed now. Her tongue refused to move. For an instant, the catastrophe seemed to her of supernatural agency—it was as if a miracle had happened, as she saw her fiance produce her lover's keepsake. All she could stammer at last was: ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... told George he was living more cheaply as a married man than ever he had done as a bachelor; and in the matter of happiness there was no comparison. George rose early to go home; but early as it was Mrs. Mac was up too, and arrayed in a killing morning neglige that fairly made poor George stammer, gave him his chota hazri and stroked his horse's head as he mounted. About half-way home George suddenly shouted, "D——d if I don't do it too!" and brought his hand down on his thigh with a smack that set ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... to swell to bursting, and the blood rushed through my veins so that I could hear it and nothing else for a while. I managed at last to stammer forth some words of awkward congratulation, and he left me, singing merrily, after asking permission to bring his bride to see me on the morrow as they returned ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... with his hands, did not frown or clench his fists, but remained impassively calm. His words, however, cut Rrisa like knives. The orderly remained trembling and sweating, with a piteous expression. Finally he managed to stammer: ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... has this to do with poor Dick? Why do people turn away from me and stammer at the mention of his name, as though they were ashamed? He, poor boy, knew ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... morning. She had yielded and she could not renew it. She had spent three miserable hours framing reasonable arguments why last night should be forgotten. But the sight of her lover coming across the meadow had set her heart so leaping that she could only stammer out a few ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... one else stutter, or when the weather was going to change; the men who knew me well said they could always foretell a storm by my inability to talk. From my own experience, however, I knew that when a stammerer heard another man stammer, he imagined that he was being made fun of, and all the fight in him came at once to the surface; and as this young man was about twice my size, I did my best to keep away from him. But in a few moments he came over to where I was and ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... hesitated, as well he might. Nature had not endowed him with any great amount of natural courage, and the sight of his old neighbour's rifle-barrel made him feel positively sick. He hesitated and began to stammer excuses. ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... command in a husky, throaty stammer, weaker than a whisper, from an undersized tin-hatted youngster planted in the centre of the trench not ten feet in front of us. His left foot was forward and his bayoneted rifle was held ready for ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... her story, and became excited in its narration. Then she would stop and seem to forget it all. Then she went on, as if she was telling a dream. Then there would be another long pause, and confusion, and she would stammer on in the most wild and incoherent fashion, till the old miner became quite impatient, and thought her as big an imposter as the Indian woman whom she called her mother. He finally gave them each a loaf of bread, and told them they could go back to their lodge. This lodge consisted ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... servile. He took his part in conversation, but no more than his part, and expressed himself with freedom and decision. His conversation, in fact, astonished the literati even more than his poems had done. Perhaps they had expected some uncouth individual who would stammer crop-and-weather commonplaces in a rugged vernacular, or, worse still, in ungrammatical English; but here was one who held his own with them in speculative discussion, speaking not only with the eloquence of a poet, but with the readiness, clearness, and fluency of a man of letters. His pure ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... Geoffrey's cabin because we had things to talk over, and it seemed the only place where we could get away from prying eyes. Somehow I stayed on and on, not realizing it was so late . . . and then, and then . . ." She began to stammer; defiance left her . . . "then, that awful knocking . . . those faces staring in! . . . all those brutes of women!" She covered her eyes with her hands and broke down utterly. "My ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... "the Senorita Teresa Valdevia. The evening air grows chill. Adios, Senorito." And before Harry could stammer out a word, she ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to him, look him in the face, and answer sensibly, not staring about or laughing, but audibly and distinctly, your words in due order, or you'll straggle off, or stutter, or stammer, which is ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... not reply. I tried to, tried to utter a prompt denial, but the words would not come. Her "guess" was so close to the truth that I could only stammer and hesitate. ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... in their ears lark songs of morning from the fields, hermit thrushes in the swamp, bell birds tolling molten notes, in a minor strain a swelling chorus of sparrows, titmice, warblers, vireos, went two strong, healthy young people newly promised for "better or worse." They could only look, stammer, flush, and utter broken exclamations, all about "better." They could not remotely conceive that life might serve them ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... this while my father seemed in thought; and so, with my arm over my mother's chair, and my hand in hers, I answered my mother's questions, sometimes by a stammer, sometimes by a violent effort at volubility; when at some interrogatory that went tingling right to my heart I turned uneasily, and there were my father's eyes fixed on mine, fixed as they had been when, and none knew why, I pined and languished, and my father said, "He must ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... un-English things like you: And, if the schemes that fill thy breast Could but a vent congenial seek, And use the tongue that suits them best, What charming Turkish wouldst thou speak! But as for me, a Frenchless grub, At Congress never born to stammer, Nor learn like thee, my Lord, to snub Fallen Monarchs, out of CHAMBAUD'S grammar— Bless you, you do not, can not, know How far a little French will go; For all one's stock, one need but draw On some half-dozen words like toese— ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... it passed rapidly. There were coasting parties of young and old, but it was not often that the snow was favorable. There were literary societies, and we admired "the General" when he recited the part of the lean and hungry Cassius. He didn't stammer then, and he received the additional title of "Shakespeare's hero." These things, with reading, dancing and singing classes, an occasional "social" at the Hive, with private gatherings and chats around the ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... alone, the doctor's courage forsook him, and he could only stammer out some commonplace remarks about the party, asking how Maddy Lad enjoyed it, and if she was sure she had entirely recovered from the effects of her fainting fit. He was not getting on at all, and it ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... oh! for Hogarth's magic pow'r! To show Sir Bardie's willyart glow'r, And how he star'd and stammer'd, When goavan, as if led wi' branks, An' stumpan on his ploughman shanks, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... that afternoon from his manuscript, and consequently they did not go over it to see whether it had been changed or not. He had read three pages and had gone on to the fourth when he lost his place and then he began to tremble and stammer. He then turned it over two or three times, threw the manuscript upon the table, and, as they say in the west, "let himself go." Now the stammering man who had created only silent derision up to that point, suddenly flashed out into ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... then swiftly and noiseless crossed over to her bed and from underneath it dragged out her suitcase. Into it she tossed toilet articles and a change of clothing, Then she turned to her trunk and quickly dumped in two drawerfulls of lingerie and stammer dresses. She moved quietly. but deadly efficiency, and in three-quarters of an hour her trunk was locked and strapped and she was fully dressed in a becoming new travelling suit that Marjorie had ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... these absences that Jim Spalding, the old timber-jack, told Mrs. Gaynor in his abashed stammer that Mark King had showed up while they were gone. Gloria, on her way to her room, whirled and came back, and extracted the tale in its entirety, pumping it out of the brief, few-worded old Spalding in jerky details. King had appeared late yesterday afternoon, coming out of the ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... poor scholar, looking on the ragged regiment of his few books, is helped, consoled, exalted by the reflection: Hic mecum habitant ... Homerus, Plato, Aristoteles. And were one in a moment of inadvertence to inquire of him why he occupied himself with Greek, he might perchance stammer (like Dominie Sampson) an almost inarticulate reply; but more probably he would be stricken speechless by the enormous outrage of the request, and the reason of his devotion would be hidden from ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... broken all his bones. Early in the morning, Jack put a bold face upon the matter, and walked into the giant's room to thank him for his lodgings. The giant started when he saw him, and he began to stammer out, "Oh, dear me! Is it you? Pray, how did you sleep last night? Did you hear or see any thing in the dead of the night?" "Nothing worth speaking of," said Jack carelessly; "a rat, I believe, gave me three or four slaps with his tail, and disturbed me a little; but I ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... remember that I was a free-lance of love, or whether honour bade me forget it. Esther, in the highest spirits, told me that we were going to hear an Italian singer whose voice was exquisite, and noticing my confusion she asked what was the matter. I did not know what to say, and began to stammer out something, but at last succeeded in saying that she was a treasure of whom I was not worthy ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... downcast eye, and cold perspiration on his pallid brow, did not understand him; for he continued to stammer incessantly,— ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... me?" Mr. Darley now appealed to Sydney, who managed to stammer out: "I certainly see ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... that the priest knelt down before the window, covered his face with his hands, and began to stammer and cry to God: "O God! God! ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... haltingly count the stars in the heavens at night, and the rain-drops on the shanty window. She could read the names upon the store signs and had often seated herself on the railroad tracks with a bit of newspaper to stammer forth the ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... Recall too, Can you not? the aid heaven granted When you helped yourself, and prayed for Its assistance: were you not guarded By it when a sweet voice sung, When a keen wit glowed and argued, When the instrument was silenced, When the tongue was forced to stammer, Until now, when with free will You succumb to the enchantment Of one fair and fatal face, Which hath done to you such damage That 't will work your final ruin, If the ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... That, has the world here—should he need the next, Let the world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find him. So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, 125 Ground he at grammar; Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled Hoti's business—let it be!— Properly based Oun— 130 Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, Dead from the waist down. Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: Hail to your purlieus, All ye highfliers ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... was soft and strong, had at its heart a tiny stammer which came out now and then with a hesitating, almost childish, charm. As he stood there, leaning on his stick, smiling at them, there did seem a great deal of the child about him, and Brandon, Ponting and Ronder suddenly seemed ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... Land's End,' says he, his teeth chatterin'. I set it down the man had a stammer, but 'twas only the shock an' the chill of ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... magistrate should ever strive to be like unto the Lord, has made me overlook it till datum, and in return for my goodness she raises this outcry against me." And when I replied, "How does your lordship know that the witch raised such an outcry against you?" he first began to stammer, and then said, "Why, you yourself charged me thereon before the judge. But I bear you no anger therefor, and God knows that I pity you, who are a poor weak old man, and would gladly help you if I were able." Meanwhile he led me up four or five flights of stairs, so that ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... the young man, with a brevity the girl herself could not have surpassed. His shyness had left him, and with it his tendency to stammer. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... door as if they smelt Onions, mint sauce, and lemon juice behind it. At last there came a pause of brutal force, The cur was silent, for his jaws were full Of tangled locks of tarry wool, The man had whoop'd and holloed till dead hoarse. The time was ripe for mild expostulation, And thus it stammer'd from a stander-by— "Zounds!—my good fellow,—it quite makes me—why, It really—my dear ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... such assemblies, signed by some dolt who cannot even spell the name he assumes—'Pom-de-Tair.' A commissary of police sat yawning at the end of the orchestra, his secretary by his side, while the orators stammer out fragments of would-be thunderbolts. Commissary of police yawns more wearily than before, secretary disdains to use his pen, seizes his penknife and pares his nails. Up rises a wild-haired, weak-limbed silhouette ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the world, Mr. Strand, did you come here?" she managed at last to stammer. "We all thought that ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... speaking. There were the same unfinished sentences, ending in a ps—ps—ps—uttered between the teeth. "What's-his-names" and "What-d'ye-call-'ems" at every turn, a sort of lazy, bored, aristocratic stammer, in which one divined profound contempt for the vulgar art of speech. In the duke's circle everybody strove to copy that accent, those disdainful intonations, in which there was an ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... up into a deep bow, but before he had time to stammer out some apologetic self-introduction, ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... filled the room with a wild tumult of movement. I had not heard anything like it in my life. It set every nerve of me dancing. I suppose Paragot found his interest in me because I was such an impressionable youngster. When, at the abrupt finale, he asked me what I thought of it, I could scarce stammer a word. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... of his learning. Destined by his father for the law, at the completion of his legal studies he was admitted an advocate of the parlement of Paris in 1785. His professional success was not great; his manner was violent, his appearance unattractive, and his speech impaired by a painful stammer. He indulged, however, his love for literature, was closely observant of public affairs, and thus gradually prepared himself for the main duties of his life—those of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... harangue I stood gazing on the floor, blushing painfully. I wanted to tell my mistress why I had no longer dresses, but could only stammer 'yes, ma'am' and 'no, ma'am,' and was very glad to escape from the room as soon as my lady ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... conditions, the only one that is considered by Mr. Mahaffy as being absolutely essential to a good conversationalist, is the possession of a musical voice. Some learned writers have been of opinion that a slight stammer often gives peculiar zest to conversation, but Mr. Mahaffy rejects this view and is extremely severe on every eccentricity from a native brogue to an artificial catchword. With his remarks on the latter point, the meaningless repetition of phrases, we entirely agree. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... off only some strange peculiarity, a stammer or a lisp, a Northumbrian burr or an Irish brogue, a stoop or a shuffle. "If a man," said Johnson, "hops on one leg, Foote can hop on one leg." Garrick, on the other hand, could seize those differences of manner and pronunciation, which, though highly characteristic, are yet too slight to ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... little Picklepip Said he hadn't any ship, Any flocks at his command, Nor to feed them any land; Said he never in his life Owned a mine to keep a wife. But the guilty stammer so That his meaning wouldn't flow; So he thought his aim to reach By some figurative speech: Said his Fate had been unkind Had pursued him from behind (How the mischief could ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... unintelligible confession was closing round him like the clasp of an iron collar. He fancied himself side by side with him in the posts of the same pillory. Gwynplaine lost his footing in his terror, and protested. He began to stammer incoherent words in the deep distress of an innocent man, and quivering, terrified, lost, uttered the first random outcries that rose to his mind, and words ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... planned this laconic statement carefully, expecting to see Henshaw turn pale and stammer in terror. Instead, the captain regarded ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... adversary of Napoleon, wounded at Saint-Roch. Birotteau, exasperated, tried to say something about the cupidity of the great banking-houses, their harshness, their false philanthropy; but he was seized with so violent a pain that he could scarcely stammer a few words about the Bank of France, from which the ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... one glance, and ran down the steps into the yard. The doctor, who was the family physician, saluted him, but he scarcely took any notice. He could only stammer out: "My brother is dead. What does it mean? What is this horrible mystery?" There was an unhappy silence; and then the cobbler, the most outspoken man present, answered: "Plenty of horror, sir," he ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... at examination a terror to the candidates. Clad in cap and gown, he would reject his own son. Nothing will serve. Recommendations defeat their object. An unquestioned Roumanian ancestry, an extraction indisputably Japanese, find no more favor in his eyes than an assumed stammer, a sham deafness, or a convalescent pallor put on for the occasion. East and west are alike in his sight. The retired registrar, the pensioned usher aspiring late in life to some petty magistrature, are powerless to touch his heart. For him in vain does the youthful volunteer allow ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... with white-faced, hand-uplifting neighbours, and doctor bursting through their midst and fixing his stethoscope as he went, the policeman shaking a sagacious head beside the body. It was to this he feared that he was driving; in the midst of this he saw himself arrive, heard himself stammer faint explanations, and felt the hand of the constable upon his shoulder. Heavens! how he wished he had played the manlier part; how he despised himself that he had fled that fatal neighbourhood when all was quiet, ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... few hours Tommy was as well as ever—indeed, better; not only was his hearing fully restored, but he had ceased to stammer, and the thin, almost imperceptible cloud upon his intellect was dissipated. The doctor expressed but little surprise at these phenomena, and, in fact, stated that similar things had occurred often before, and were duly written down in the books of medicine. ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... got," he replied, in a kind of stammer; "an' as to Sally, the nerra one o' me knows any thing about her, ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... out on the dull leaden sky, watching the snowflakes falling through the dreary air. There followed then a long, long pause, in which I had time to recover from the effect her words had produced, and to frame and stammer forth such congratulations as seemed required by the occasion. These she did not answer, or even seem to comprehend, but roused from her revery by the sound of my voice, she crossed the room and seated herself beside me, and took ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... godlike stamp on his forehead Readest thou not in his face thou origin? Is he not sailing Lost like thyself on an ocean unknown, and is he not guided By the same stars that guide thee? Why shouldst thou hate then thy brother? Hateth he thee, forgive! For 't is sweet to stammer one letter Of the Eternal's language;—on earth it is called Forgiveness! Knowest thou Him, who forgave, with the crown of thorns on his temples? Earnestly prayed for his foes, for his murderers? Say, dost thou know ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... This voice so strangely recalled those sounds that had been haunting him for days. He could only stammer out, ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... infinite goodness has given me a clear insight into the deep mysteries of Charity. If I could but express what I know, you would hear a heavenly music; but alas! I can only stammer like a child, and if God's own words were not my support, I should be tempted to beg leave to hold my peace. When the Divine Master tells me to give to whosoever asks of me, and to let what is mine be taken without asking it again, it seems to me that He speaks ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... Before I could recover my equilibrium and turn about, I heard the jingle of a tray of glasses and a cool shower of spray flew about my ears. Then the dazed and bewildered eyes of a timid girl looked full into mine; she courageously paused and essayed to stammer out an apology. Her gaze, though, wandered past me, and one sight of the drawn features of those who had seen it all and now sought in vain to restrain their laughter, was too much for this startled ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... soft hat was still sitting under the shadow of the rock smoking, but he rose and threw away his cigar as the deputation of three advanced to address him. Peachy, in her very best Italian, began to stammer out an explanation and excuses. He listened for a moment or two, then shook ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... everyone turned towards the door as it opened noisily to admit a stout, red-faced man, who stood hesitating on the threshold, not as much apparently from shyness as from a kind of bodily stammer of movement. ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... talker on a thousand and one subjects, a thinker and psychologist. Psychology is his strong point. He argues brilliantly on the subject, yet I need only look at him to upset his thesis, to make him stammer ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... and I were alone in my master's room at Bishop Peter's I tried to stammer some sort of thanks, but I could do no more than hold out a hand to him. The old ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... phrase because of its environment. Thus the anecdote of the servant who had been instructed to summon the visiting English nobleman by tapping on his bedroom door and inquiring, "My lord, have you yet risen?" and who could only stammer, "My God! ain't you up yet?" Or the anecdote of the minister who in a sermon on the Parable of the Prodigal Son told how a young man living dissolutely in a city had been compelled to send to the pawnbroker first his overcoat, next his suit, next his silk shirt, and finally his ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the sure and serene master. There are here no echoes of Raff, or Wagner, or Brahms, men that have each influenced mightily the musical thought of to-day. There is the voice of one composer: a virile, tender voice that does not stammer, does not break, does not wax hysterical: the voice of a composer that not only must pour out that which has accumulated within him, but knows all the resources of musical oratory—in a word, the ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... now. Do you suppose it amuses me to investigate the unsavoury details of every society lady's nervous affliction? Do you suppose I'm flattered by such and such a Guardsman's encomiums when I have cured his stammer, or his inability to proceed beyond the letter ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... to, but I know every idea I have would desert me directly I faced an audience. I'm all right with a definite part that I've got into my head, but I can't make up as I go along, and it's no use asking me. I'd only bungle and stammer, and make an utter goose of myself, and spoil the whole thing. Hallo! There's the ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... stupidly each on each. Incredulous amazement and perplexity tied their tongues. Finally Halloway found his voice to stammer, "What's done happened? ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... only stammer over the First Reader at her mother's knee, was obliged to confess that she ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May
... confused again, and he began to stammer. Mr. Cavendish wondered that, in some way, Mr. Balfour did not come to the relief of his witness, but he sat perfectly quiet, and apparently unconcerned. Mr. Cavendish rummaged among his papers, and withdrew two letters. These he handed to the witness. "Now," said he, "will the witness examine ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... however, possible that they will fight.... Can we see them from here?" He approached the window, which indeed looked upon the enclosure. The sight which met his eyes caused the excellent man to stammer.... "The miserable men!.... It is monstrous.... They are mad.... They have found seconds.... Whom have they taken?.... Those two huntsmen!.... Ali, my God! My God!".... He could say no more. The doctor ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... sooner had all this news been digested than somebody discovered a diamond ring on Clara Tuttle's left hand. So Clara was surrounded and an explanation demanded. But before she could conquer her blushes and stammer out her news Max Longman came in from another room and, putting his arms about her, said, "Don't be afraid, girl of mine, I'm here." And so everybody knew then that it was Max, after all, ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... Lord, has made me overlook it till datum, and in return for my goodness she raises this outcry against me." And when I replied, "How does your lordship know that the witch raised such an outcry against you?" he first began to stammer, and then said, "Why, you yourself charged me thereon before the judge. But I bear you no anger therefor, and God knows that I pity you, who are a poor weak old man, and would gladly help you if I were able." Meanwhile ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... Christian revelation. From the natural point of view the whole region of the dead is 'a land of darkness, without any order, where the light is as darkness.' The usual sources of human certainty fail us here. Reason is only able to stammer a peradventure. Experience and consciousness are silent. 'The simple senses' can only say that it looks as if Death were an end, the final Omega. Testimony there is none from any pale lips that have come back to unfold the secrets ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... should know what he was talking about and should have shown you he did, as foreign critics like to show it) were to say to you: 'He's the one, in this country, whom they consider the most perfect, isn't he?' Is it success to be the occasion of a young Englishman's having to stammer as you would have to stammer at such a moment for old England? No, no; success is to have made people wriggle to ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... my breast. Then [I rose up] and walked to and fro in my abode, rejoicing and saying, "How can these things possibly be done to thy servant who is now speaking, whose heart made him to fly into foreign lands [where dwell] peoples who stammer in their speech? Assuredly it is a good and gracious thought [of the King] to deliver me from death [here], for thy Ka (i.e. double) will make my body to end [its existence] in ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... Churchill slowly, "you don't by any chance love some one else? What does that colour mean, Jacqueline? Don't stammer! ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... hat was still sitting under the shadow of the rock smoking, but he rose and threw away his cigar as the deputation of three advanced to address him. Peachy, in her very best Italian, began to stammer out an explanation and excuses. He listened for a moment or two, then ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... it became clear that the limit of the kitchen-maid's endurance had been reached. The obligation of going to the front door to "show in" a visitor was in itself so subversive of the fundamental order of things that it had thrown her faculties into hopeless disarray, and she could only stammer out, after various panting efforts at evocation, "His hat, mum, was ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... said O'Roon to his friend. "Why do they build hotels that go round and round like catherine wheels? They'll take away my shield and break me. I can think and talk con-con-consec-sec-secutively, but I s-s-stammer with my feet. I've got to go on duty in three hours. The jig is up, Remsen. The jig is ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... Newcomb's name should cause such a convulsion in the household, and when that gentleman finally arrived, and the family met him for the first time, it certainly seemed strange that they should all redden and stammer as if they had been "awkward nursery children ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... well aware why Helen had wished to marry him, and had been all along, without seeing anything in that for which to dislike her; he was quite without an answer to her present question, and could only cough and stammer, and reach for his handkerchief. The girl went on quickly, without waiting very long ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... it was not long since he had been a solitary child, moping apart from the rest. Why did people always say "Poor child!" whenever they were speaking about his real mother? Why did they do it? Why, even Peter Ronningen, when he was angry, would stammer out: "You ba-ba-bastard!" But Peer called the pock-marked good-wife at Troen "mother" and her bandy-legged husband "father," and lent the old man a hand wherever he was wanted—in the smithy or in the ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... voices which rose from that cellar-like place below the level of the street, repelled the country-bred lad. Were it not for the desperate urgency of his errand he never would have dared to enter. As it was, the fumes of alcohol and steaming, dirty clothes nearly choked him, and he could scarce stammer the name of "citizen Rateau" when a gruff voice ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... and the long rod in his hand shook like a reed. Then he began to stammer something about the Bishop and the Archdeacon and his new orders and instructions—how the shelter had been taken over by other ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... came: the memories throng Of days that made the friendship strong— The oar he won, the ties he wore, His love of china, fairy lore, (And flappers); and his honest eyes; His stammer, his absurdities; His marmalade, his bitter beer, And all that made him ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... cowardly girls huddles away behind you, Esmeralda, and leaves you to stammer, "Y-yes, sir, but you ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... public. So says WALTER. They mumble, stumble, hammer, stammer, falter! BESANT, why grumble at fate's distribution? To writers, sense; to speakers, elocution! Some books are bosh, but all experience teaches ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... accompanied by one of her swift, half-frightened smiles; but she didn't wait for an answer. Before Chip could begin to stammer out an explanation that would give his point of view she was passing rapidly up the pathway, bordered with irises and peonies and bleeding-hearts, toward ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... "a truly angel" was embracing her, and could only stammer out her thanks, while the other children ran to see the pretty spirit, and touch her soft dress, until she stood in a crowd of blue gowns laughing as they held up their gifts for her ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... almost blinded the little girl—tears of joy over her first success—she could hardly see what the coin was, but when she picked it up she managed to stammer that she ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... already had a family—with stepchildren, so to speak, who adored him. And what could he say to his mother's obsession, to which she came back again and again—her longing to see her grandchildren before she died? Madame Dupont waited only long enough for George to stammer out a few protestations, and then in the next breath to take them back; after which she proceeded to go ahead with the match. The family lawyers conferred together, and the terms of the settlement were worked out and agreed upon. It happened that immediately afterwards ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... steely stare. "I leave it to you, Gov'ner," he continued to stammer at length. "S'y you was me and I was ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... its way through a stammer which expressed the struggle of courtesy against denunciation. "Come—hang it all!" said he. "It wasn't my romance.... Oh, well, perhaps it wasn't yours either. Only—play fair, Miss Dickenson. Six of the one and half a dozen of the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... more transcendent sense, Hearing unchecked, and unimpeded sight. If we who walk now, then should wing the air, Who stammer now, then should discard the voice, Who grope now, then should see with other sight, And send ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... was endeavoring to stammer through a few lines of some Greek play, and at last paused, ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... and remained still long enough for the astonished Powell to stammer out an indistinct: "What do you mean? I don't understand." Then, with a low 'Good-night' glided a few steps, and sank through the shadow of the companion into the lamplight below which did not reach higher than the turn of ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... words Allecto's wrath blazed out. But amid his utterance a quick shudder overruns his limbs; his eyes are fixed in horror; so thickly hiss the snakes of the Fury, so vast her form expands. Then rolling her fiery eyes, she thrust him back as he would stammer out more, raised two serpents in her hair, and, sounding her whip, resumed ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... he turned language into ignoble clay, he made from it men and women that live. He is the most Shakespearian creature since Shakespeare. If Shakespeare could sing with myriad lips, Browning could stammer through a thousand mouths. Even now, as I am speaking, and speaking not against him but for him, there glides through the room the pageant of his persons. There, creeps Fra Lippo Lippi with his cheeks still burning from some girl's hot ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... human life. The thought steals over us that we, too, are liable at any moment to be cut down in the midst of our labors. This liability is increased by the amount of labor which necessarily devolves upon us. Now we are only two in number. As for myself I am only beginning to stammer in this difficult language. This, too, in a field where there is labor enough to be done to employ all the men you can send us. You will not think it strange ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... shall see her receiving my guests with quite a calm, grand manner. Miss Lucy and I will have to look about us, and polish up all our best airs and graces lest we should be thrown into the shade. Still, Polly, there is a little flutter, a little tendency to stammer now and then, and even, to lisp as you lisped when you were six ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... begun to stammer in the last sentence, suddenly self-conscious again. She told him where her chair was on deck, and next minute, without another word, he was half-way along the alley-way, leaving the tea-things where they were. Then he turned back and spoke from ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... should have made a Bow; that's very well, remember to do so; when you speak, don't speak fast, stammer, or speak in your Throat, but use yourself to pronounce your Words distinctly and clearly. If you pass by any ancient Person, a Magistrate, a Minister, or Doctor, or any Person of Figure, be sure to pull off your Hat, and make your Reverence: ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... polish, and instead of introducing artfully his rugged lines, and to serve a particular purpose, had probably seldom, and never but by accident, composed a smooth one. Such has been the versification of the earliest poets in every country. Children lisp, at first, and stammer; but, in time, their speech becomes fluent, and, if they ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... honor, the French lesson was a confused jumble. She heard but dimly the rise and fall of Professor Fontaine's voice as he conducted the lesson, and when he called upon her to recite she stared at him dazedly and finally managed to stammer that she was ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... so. The poor fellow wanted to learn to stammer in his Testament, and Letty, like any true-hearted wife, had given him the little assistance she could render. The whipping failed of its intended effect, however. Going one evening, at a late hour, into Letty's cabin, I found George seated by her on the floor, ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... that I had inadvertently fallen asleep, that I was usually a wide-awake citizen of the land that Lafayette went to save, that I wanted my dinner, and would like to get out. I walked down near enough to the gate to see the policeman, but my courage failed. Before I could stammer out half that explanation to him in his trifling language (which foreigners are mockingly told is the best in the world for conversation), he would either have slipped his hateful rapier through my body, or have raised ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... vocal organs is wanting, with those individuals that stammer, or who have an impediment in their speech. Some parts may be more developed than others, but they generally are but imperfectly under the control of the will, and assume an irregular and rapid movement, while other parts, the motions ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... She had come to him several times for a light, or to apologise for the imaginary depredations of her poodle; but his mouth was closed in the presence of so superior a being, his French promptly left him, and he could only stare and stammer until she was gone. The slenderness of their intercourse did not prevent him from throwing out insinuations of a very glorious order when he was safely alone ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... self-conceit to hope one is better company than Maria! But come, before we fall under the dominion of the Queen of the West Wing, I have a secret for you.' Then, after a longer stammer than usual, 'How should you like a ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... one of these absences that Jim Spalding, the old timber-jack, told Mrs. Gaynor in his abashed stammer that Mark King had showed up while they were gone. Gloria, on her way to her room, whirled and came back, and extracted the tale in its entirety, pumping it out of the brief, few-worded old Spalding in jerky details. King had appeared late yesterday afternoon, coming ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... I had to play the part of a rich man, to squander money, to give myself airs. When one puts on the semblance of anything for a time, it will soon become a portion of our nature. Imitate a stutterer for a while, and you will have to keep diligent watch over yourself not to stammer in earnest. I fell in love, and was on the point of changing into a totally different person; for my passion was sincere and ardent. But new distress. The noble being who soon became my wife, could never give me her heart. The strongest passion must die away ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... I cried on first entering the cars, and now—would you believe it?—I got terribly embarrassed. It seemed as if everything I did or said made matters worse. I was scarcely able to stammer, 'My aunt—' ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... the advance-guard of humanity, the herald of all progress; how often hast thou betrayed this high commission! Fain would the tongue in clear, triumphant accents draw example from thy story, to encourage the hearts of those who almost faint and die beneath the old oppressions. But we must stammer and blush when we speak of many things. I take pride here, that I can really say the liberty of the press works well, and that checks and balances are found naturally which suffice to its government. I can say that the minds of our people are alert, and that talent has a free chance ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... did you bleed? and must I stammer out, Nay, I blush indeed, fair lord, only to rend My sleeve up to my shoulder, ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... should therefore be put to death." The plates, as proposed by the soothsayer, were placed before the child Moses, who immediately seized upon the fire, and put it into his mouth, which caused him henceforward to stammer in ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... letter from her bosom, and quickly approaching Alicia, placed it unnoticed in her hand. The banker's wife flushed and then turned pale. She understood. Annie would spare her. Her lips parted to protest. Even she was taken back by such an exhibition of unselfishness as this. She began to stammer thanks. ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... apparently of respectable antecedents. The first menace of danger had come from Mr. Jarrott himself, who had unexpectedly invited his intelligent employee to lunch with him at a club, in order to talk over a commission with which Strange was to be intrusted. On this occasion he was able to stammer his way out of the invitation; but when later, Mr. Skinner, the second partner, made a like proposal, he was caught without an excuse, being obliged, with some confusion, to eat his meal in a fashionable restaurant in the Calle Florida. Oddly enough, both his refusal on the one ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... heroic effort. He began to stammer, checked himself, and at last succeeded in imposing coherence ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... With a slight stammer but otherwise giving no evidence of the effect made upon him by the passionate intensity with which she had urged this plea, he assured her that his errand was important, but one so quickly told that it would delay her but a moment. "But first," said he, with very natural ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... musicians. This person (since deceased, and by profession a clerk) suffered from nervousness so excessive that, despite a fair knowledge of music, the fact of putting his hands upon the keys produced a maddening sort of stammer, let alone a notable tendency to strike wrong notes and miss his octaves; peculiarities of which he was so morbidly conscious that it was only an accident which revealed to me, after years of acquaintance, that he ever played the piano at all. Yet I know as a fact that this poor blundering ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... They are shadows and Chimeraes, proceeding of some formelesse conceptions, which they cannot distinguish or resolve within, and by consequence are not able to produce them in as-much as they understand not themselves: And if you but marke their earnestnesse, and how they stammer and labour at the point of their deliverle, you would deeme that what they go withall, is but a conceiving, and therefore nothing neere downelying; and that they doe but licke that imperfect and shapelesse lump of matter. ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... amusement, conceit, vanity, pity, and joy in ostentation; these, also, exactly commensurable with his advantage. Strange and sad that this should be so; but so it is. French brings out the worst in all of us—all, I mean, but the few, the lamentably far too few, who cannot aspire to stammer some ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... Orion, who was gazing at him with a sinister light in his eyes. "How can my lord doubt it? Your respected father has known me these thirty years, and do you suppose that I—I do not know the Syrian? Why, who in Memphis can stammer to compare with him? And has he not killed half my children with your wild young horses?—Half killed every one of my children I mean—half killed them, I say, with fright. They are all still alive and well, God preserve them, but none the better ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... with the land of the Innis Fail, O and O! there is friendship here, there is song." But they smile to your face, when you turn they stammer and rail And the song of the singer has ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... new picture, Mr. Bopp inspected every feature of the countenance so near his own; and, as his admiration "grew by what it fed on," he fell into a chronic state of stammer and blush; for the frank eyes were very kind, the smooth cheeks reflected a pretty shade of his own crimson, and the smiling lips seemed constantly suggesting, with mute eloquence, that they were made for kissing, ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... world—the flattering, the soothing, the complimenting. Virtues and vices alike driving us more or less out of the straight line; and, blindfolded by habit, we know not that we are walking circuitously. And they are not the worst among us, perhaps, who walk so deviatingly—seeing, knowing—those that stammer out nightly ere they rest, in confession, their fears that they have been acting if not speaking the untrue thing, and praying for strength in their infirmity, and more simplicity of heart; and would in their penitence shun the concourse that besets them, and hide their heads ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... thine origin? Is he not sailing Lost like thyself on an ocean unknown, and is he not guided By the same stars that guide thee? Why shouldst thou hate then thy brother? Hateth he thee, forgive! For 'tis sweet to stammer one letter Of the Eternal's language;—on earth it is called Forgiveness! Knowest thou Him, who forgave, with the crown of thorns round his temples? Earnestly prayed for his foes, for his murderers? Say, dost thou know him? Ah! thou confessest his name, so follow likewise his example, Think of thy ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... meetings last night. See, I have a pass for all such assemblies, signed by some dolt who cannot even spell the name he assumes—'Pom-de-Tair.' A commissary of police sat yawning at the end of the orchestra, his secretary by his side, while the orators stammer out fragments of would-be thunderbolts. Commissary of police yawns more wearily than before, secretary disdains to use his pen, seizes his penknife and pares his nails. Up rises a wild-haired, weak-limbed silhouette of a man, and affecting ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... French and Greek and Latin, And not acquire, as well, a priggish mien, If you can feel the touch of silk and satin Without despising calico and jean; If you can ply a saw and use a hammer, Can do a man's work when the need occurs, Can sing when asked, without excuse or stammer, Can rise above unfriendly ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... laconic statement carefully, expecting to see Henshaw turn pale and stammer in terror. Instead, the captain regarded McTee with quietly ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... God in His infinite goodness has given me a clear insight into the deep mysteries of Charity. If I could but express what I know, you would hear a heavenly music; but alas! I can only stammer like a child, and if God's own words were not my support, I should be tempted to beg leave to hold my peace. When the Divine Master tells me to give to whosoever asks of me, and to let what is mine be taken without asking it again, ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... train the roll of stammers into settling upon the words immediately preceding the effective one; by which means the key-note of the jest or sarcasm, benefiting by the sudden liberation of his embargoed voice, was delivered with the force of a pistol shot. That stammer was worth an annuity to him as an ally of his wit. Firing under cover of that advantage, he did triple execution; for, in the first place, the distressing sympathy of the hearers with his distress of utterance won for him unavoidably the silence of deep attention; and then, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... ye out a walie hammer; About the knottit buttress clam'er; Alang the steep roof stoyt an' stammer, A gate mischancy; On the aul' spire, the bells' hie ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hand and inquire after my health in so hearty, so honest a fashion that I cannot bear to look him in the face. And as he beams on me and throws his arm over my shoulder, I can only blush and shift from one foot to the other and stammer out some excuse for hurrying away. Passers-by stop and admire the man's affection and concern for one who is evidently some poor devil of a relation from the country. One Sunday he waylaid me on Riverside Drive and introduced me to his wife as one of his ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... have not dropped on some Saturday or other a Caine or a Barclay; to have it restored to me a moment later by a courteous fellow-passenger—courteous, but with a smile of gentle pity in his eye as he glimpsed the author's name. "Thanks very much," I would stammer, blushing guiltily, and perhaps I would babble about a sick friend to whom I was taking them, or that I was running out of paper-weights. But he never believed me. He knew that he would have ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... she were dreaming. How often had she wished she might learn to ride—more often than ever since Blanche's coming! She could hardly find words to stammer out her thanks, but her kind friends could see that she was surprised and delighted ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... wished to see her first among living celebrities; her charm fascinated Sheridan, and overcame the prejudice of Lamb; even Peter Pindar wrote verse in her praise. From the age of eighteen she was wooed on and off the stage, where her slight stammer hindered her complete success; but no breath of scandal tarnished her name. Had John Kemble, the hero of 'A Simple Story', proposed to her, she probably would have married him. Mrs. Butler records that her uncle John once asked ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... put you in your chair like a queen and wait on you," he said with a soft boyish stammer; "but I am too dazed with happiness to be ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... much more likely to reissue thence than was one of the frail nuns built into the wall in the old times likely to come stepping out again. Bobby has at length ceased to offer me every object which it devolves upon him to hand me, with a quavering voice and a prolonged stammer, since, though I was at first excellently vulnerable by this weapon of offense, I am now becoming hornily hard and indifferent to it. We have stepped over the boundaries of ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... frequently afterwards, sent advice of this to the king, who ordered the children to be brought before him, in order that he himself might be a witness to the truth of what was told him; and accordingly both of them began, in his presence, to stammer out the sounds above mentioned. Nothing now was wanting but to ascertain what nation it was that used this word; and it was found that the Phrygians called bread by this name. From this time they were allowed the honour of antiquity, or rather ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... Sometimes there was a paternal explosion because Bruce liked to murmur vaguely of "dandy chances in Manila," or because Julie, pretty, excitable, and sixteen, had an occasional dose of stage fever, and would stammer desperately between convulsive sobs that she wasn't half as much afraid of "the terrible temptations of the life" as she was afraid of dying a poky old maid in Weston. In short, the home was crowded, the Pagets were poor, and every one of the seven possessed a spirited ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... helped, consoled, exalted by the reflection: Hic mecum habitant ... Homerus, Plato, Aristoteles. And were one in a moment of inadvertence to inquire of him why he occupied himself with Greek, he might perchance stammer (like Dominie Sampson) an almost inarticulate reply; but more probably he would be stricken speechless by the enormous outrage of the request, and the reason of his devotion would be hidden ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... shake of the head which gave Philammon courage to stammer out a courteous refusal. The Amal swore an oath at him which made the cloister ring again, and with a quiet shove of his heavy hand, sent him staggering half across the ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... you. My home is in Swainboro', this state—a little town. You might know where it is? And my real name ain't La Mode, neither. I taken it out of a book—the La Mode part—and I always did think Blanche was an awful sweet name for a girl. But my real name is Gussie Stammer. Good night, mister. I'm much obliged to you fer listenin', and I ain't goin' to disturb you no more with my cryin' if I kin ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... he knew who I was! whilst I . . . I had to pass my hand once or twice over my forehead and to close and reopen my eyes several times, for, of a truth, it all seemed like a dream. I tried to stammer out a question or two, but I could only gasp, and the lovely Angele appeared highly amused ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... I look'd—so well knowing The Colonel's opinions—my cheeks were quite glowing; I stammer'd out something—nay, even half named The LEGITIMATE semptress, when, loud, he exclaimed, "Yes, yes, by the stiching 'tis plain to be seen It was made by that B*rb*n**t b—h, VIOTORINE!" What a word for a hero, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... had ebbed surged slowly back again. It surged back under the transparent white skin, as red wine fills a glass. Her lips parted to stammer the confession that she had no clothes except those she wore; but she couldn't utter ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... sudden suspicion that Francoise had been robbing her, that she had set a trap to make certain, and had caught her betrayer red-handed; and being in the habit, when she made up a game of cards by herself, of playing her own and her adversary's hands at once, she would first stammer out Francoise's awkward apologies, and then reply to them with such a fiery indignation that any of us who happened to intrude upon her at one of these moments would find her bathed in perspiration, her eyes blazing, her false hair pushed awry and exposing ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... don't understand anything by it! It's a piece of hopeless legal gibberish to me. I stammer out some attempt at an answer, and see Baboo looking at me with a pitying, almost reproachful, glance. "Didn't I," he seems to say, "explain it all to you once at dinner? Do you really mean to say that you've forgotten the way in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... by a glassy ocean— Stammer strange songs amid an alien host? Or shall I not, refusing such promotion, Bequeath to London my ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson
... little later, his eyes reddened with tears, his hair rumpled, his face flushed. He seemed like a man awed by an entirely new experience. He could not speak, he could only stammer brokenly:— ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... angry stammer in reply; and she suppressed her smile, but felt triumphant in having hit the mark. Unready at retort, he gathered himself up, and said: 'Well, Ave, I have only this to say, that if you choose to support that boy in his impertinences, there will be no bearing it; and I shall see what ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "honesty is the best policy." But these are acquired habits of thinking. The child has no natural love of truth, as is experienced by all who have the least acquaintance with early youth. If they are charged with a fault while they can hardly speak, the first words they stammer forth are a falsehood to excuse it. Nor is this all: the temptation of attracting attention, the pleasure of enjoying importance, the desire to escape from an unpleasing task, or accomplish a holiday, will at any time overcome the sentiment of truth, so weak is ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... madness, till, restored by him to their former temper and wits, they became his friends, worshippers, and disciples. Four hundred other men and women fell into strange ecstasies, foamed at the mouth, and recounted their visions of the Lion of Judah, while infants, who could scarcely stammer out a syllable plainly, repeated the name of Sabbatai, the Messiah; being possessed, and voices sounding from their stomachs and entrails. Such reports, bruited through the world by the foreign ambassadors at Smyrna, the clerks of the English and ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... getting confused again, and he began to stammer. Mr. Cavendish wondered that, in some way, Mr. Balfour did not come to the relief of his witness, but he sat perfectly quiet, and apparently unconcerned. Mr. Cavendish rummaged among his papers, and withdrew two letters. These he handed to the witness. "Now," said he, "will the witness ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... in nothing of the president's speech beyond the acceptance of his offer, and, pale with relief, he tried to stammer his thanks and his devotion to his chosen cause. He made no attempt to contradict the president's confident prophecies; he only made the greatest possible haste to the tower-rooms which were to be his home. His eyes filled with thankfulness at his lot as he paced about them, and, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife; While he could stammer He settled Hoti's business—let it be— Properly based Oun Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, Dead from ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the first time in his life. He had been struck below the belt by a good-natured giant. The best he could do, as Bacon shuffled calmly out, was to stammer: "Will some one please sing?" And while they sang, he stood in deep thought. Just as the last verse was quivering into silence, the full, deep tones of Radbourn's voice rose above the bustle of feet and clatter ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... significance in a phrase because of its environment. Thus the anecdote of the servant who had been instructed to summon the visiting English nobleman by tapping on his bedroom door and inquiring, "My lord, have you yet risen?" and who could only stammer, "My God! ain't you up yet?" Or the anecdote of the minister who in a sermon on the Parable of the Prodigal Son told how a young man living dissolutely in a city had been compelled to send to the pawnbroker first his overcoat, next his suit, next ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... considerations ever consent to go into a room in the dark by himself, being extremely imaginative and nervous; and that on one occasion when he was asked what he expected to befall him, he said with a shudder and a stammer: "To fall over a mangled corpse, squish! ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... him, and reining his horse up under a wide spreading butternut tree, which grew upon the river bank, he sprang out and pretended to be busy with some part of the harness, while he astonished Jerrie by bursting out, without the least stammer, he was so earnest and so excited: 'I've something to say to you, Jerrie, and I may as well say it now as any time, and know the worst, or the best. I can't bear the suspense any longer, and I got out of the cart so as to stand where I could look ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... good-for-nothing chorus-girl. It was a loss far more subtle. The recognition of it lamed Robert Stonehouse, knocked the power out of him, as though someone had struck and paralysed a vital nerve centre. He could only stammer futilely: ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... Hilary looked very uncomfortable. With an apologetic air he began to stammer something about Parish Councils. I was not to be diverted by any such maneuver. It was impossible that he could really wish to ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope
... was such a surprise to Garnett that for the moment he could only stammer out—"You consent then? I may go and ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... gesture with his hands, did not frown or clench his fists, but remained impassively calm. His words, however, cut Rrisa like knives. The orderly remained trembling and sweating, with a piteous expression. Finally he managed to stammer: ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... managed to do, and lived to see Kirstie grow to be a decent, religiously minded young woman. Nor did the lass want for good looks in a sober way, nor for wit when it came to reading books; but in speech she was shy beyond reason, and would turn red and stammer if a stranger but addressed her. I think she could never forget that her birth had been on the wrong side of the blanket, and, supposing folks to be pitying her for it, sought to avoid them and ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hadn't any chin, Her hands were rough, her feet she turned invariably in; Her general form was German, By which I mean that you Her waist could not determine To within a foot or two: And not only did she stammer, But she used the kind of grammar That is called, for sake ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... in bewilderment; then, as the captain's meaning dawned upon him, he stepped forward impulsively and, seizing his hand, began to stammer out incoherent thanks. ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... provision of anecdote and allusion. I find myself somewhat in the position of Heine, who had prepared an elaborate oration for his first interview with Goethe, and when the awful moment arrived could only stammer out that the cherries on the road to Weimar were uncommonly ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... to repeat themselves by the fewness of their words, also escapes from it. When they grow up and have ideas which are beyond their powers of expression, especially in writing, tautology begins to appear. In like manner when language is 'contaminated' by philosophy it is apt to become awkward, to stammer and repeat itself, to lose its flow and freedom. No philosophical writer with the exception of Plato, who is himself not free from tautology, and perhaps Bacon, has attained to any high degree ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... said, and hesitated in the back of the box till Jasper came over to him with an anxious question. Then he began to stammer nervously. "Don't tell her, ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... put a bold face upon the matter and walked into the Giant's room to thank him for his lodging. The Giant started when he saw him, and began to stammer out: "Oh! dear me; is it you? Pray, how did you sleep last night? Did you hear or see anything in the ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... life; yet far from this, we are ill-used, harassed with law-suits, delivered over to the scorn of stripling orators. Our minds and bodies being ravaged with age, Posidon should protect us, yet we have no other support than a staff. When standing before the judge, we can scarcely stammer forth the fewest words, and of justice we see but its barest shadow, whereas the accuser, desirous of conciliating the younger men, overwhelms us with his ready rhetoric; he drags us before the judge, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... that night, and when I returned to my room I thoughtlessly opened the door of her apartment instead of that of my own. The beautiful woman was reading by the light of the lamp and started when she saw me. I was so embarrassed by my mistake that for a moment I could only stammer unintelligible words. My confusion was so evident that she could not doubt for a moment that I had made a mistake. I turned to the door, intent upon relieving her of my presence as quickly as possible, when she said ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... the place of sense.' He is six years old, he reads English and Italian, and writes without lines, and shall I send you a poem of his for 'illumination'? His poems are far before mine, the very prattle of the angels, when they stammer at first and are not sure of the pronunciation of e's and i's in the spiritual heavens (see Swedenborg). Really he is a sweet good child, and I am not bearable in my conceit of him, as you see! My thankful regards to your mother, whom I shall hope to meet with you, and ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... desire; he enjoyed a calm existence, full of comforts; in his studio, almost as splendid as a palace, the facade of which was reproduced in the illustrated magazines, he had a wife who was convinced of his genius and a daughter who was almost a woman and who made the troop of his intimate pupils stammer with embarrassment. The only evidences of his Bohemian past that remained were his soft felt hats, his long beard, his tangled hair and a certain carelessness in his dress; but when his position as a "national celebrity" demanded it, he took out of his wardrobe a dress suit with the lapel covered ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... impossible for me to recognize him. I was very anxious to do so in view of the trouble the officer had taken to come away out on the picket line, in the middle of the night, to see me, but I just couldn't, and began to stammer a sort of apology about the darkness of the night hindering a prompt recognition, when the "unknown" gave his head a slant to one side, and, in his never forgettable voice, spoke thus to Keeley: "I told you ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... details could have kept him from carrying out his purpose; but together they were unromantic. How could he adjure her to tell him for God's sake whether or not she was in love with any one when he saw she was afraid that something was burning on the stove? He could only stammer out excuses for having come. Inventing on the spot new and incoherent directions for the treatment of Mrs. Fay, he took himself away ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... is what you want!" He threw down his hat and stick upon the green-baize-covered table, took one of the Windsor chairs, and crashed it down beside the sofa, and planted his hulking big body on it, and reached out and captured the thin wrist of his victim, who mustered breath to stammer: ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the maid for mate, But thou shalt die, thou knight enamour'd; So make thy shrift 'neath the linden straight, The little birds shall hear it stammer'd. ...
— Proud Signild - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... fierce fire in her bold black eye. "Am I deceived in you both?" quoth she. "If one spark of her father's spirit lives In this girl here—so, this Leigh, Ralph Leigh, Let us hear what counsel the springald gives." Then I stammer'd, somewhat taken aback— (Simon, you ale-swiller, pass ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... it, Dora?" she asked, kindly. Dora, who could only stammer an embarrassed reply, held out the letter. Then she stood with toes turned in, and both hands fumbling nervously with her belt ribbon, while Betty broke ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... children," he said, with a slight stammer that somehow lent an additional kindliness to his tone, "what has the day's work been? You first, Herr Graf," he added, turning to the Count. "I suppose that you have made a thousand ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... know what I think of it? I think they are nothing but shadows of some imperfect images and conceptions that they know not what to make of within, nor consequently bring out; they do not yet themselves understand what they would be at, and if you but observe how they haggle and stammer upon the point of parturition, you will soon conclude, that their labour is not to delivery, but about conception, and that they are but licking their formless embryo. For my part, I hold, and Socrates commands it, that ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... stuttered for pleasure and profit ever since I discovered the efficacy of it at school. When I didn't know my lesson one day I put on a stammer, and my bub—bub—bubbing, as the farmer calls it, made the master so uncomfortable that, ever afterwards, at the first sign of it he passed me over. That's why I'm ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... in dismissal and settled himself to sleep. When Culver began to stammer thanks for the ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... both with the play on words and my uncle's compliment, and turned quickly to the next group before I had time to stammer out how flattered I felt at ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
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