"Indistinct" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... several miles; but I was intensely excited as I thought of what my mother had endured for a dozen years. I recalled the indistinct visions of the past, which still lingered in my mind; and more vividly than ever before it came to my remembrance that, far back in the past, I had known a motherly lady, who loved and cherished me as a little ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... convexity exists in the plate, the focal plane is disturbed, and the eyepiece must be moved out. If the plate is concave, it must be moved in to obtain a sharp image. Irregular errors in the plate or surface will produce a blurred or indistinct image, and, as in the first instance, no amount of focusing will help matters. These methods are both good, but are not satisfactory in the highest degree, and two or three important factors bar the way to the very best results. One is that the aberrations of the telescopes ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... the flying clouds; to the intermingling sounds arising from the myriads of creatures which are roaring, bellowing, humming, buzzing, hissing, singing, upon the bosom of this primeval world—listen! this is the voice of nature, indistinct and confused, but majestic, solemn, multitudinous, full of mystery and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... life: and this should be his by right that could persever to come at it. What then? Quid multa? The Adventurer pass'd the Gates, and for a whole day's space his Friends without had no news of him, except it might be by some indistinct Cries heard afar off in the Night, such as made them turn in their restless Beds and sweat for very Fear, not doubting but that their Son and Brother had put one more to the Catalogue of those unfortunates that had suffer'd shipwreck on that ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... she would sit there gazing listlessly into the vacant daylight till the evening would come; and then, when the room was shaded and sombre, when the light of the fire merely served to make the objects indistinct, she would lean gently and by degrees upon her mother's bosom, would coax her mother's arm round her neck, and would thus creep as it were into her mother's heart of hearts. And then slow tears would trickle down her cheeks, very slow, one by one, till they ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... is another general form, but one that is completely opposed to the foregoing. It consists of vaguely-outlined, indistinct images that are evoked and joined according to the least rigorous modes of association. It presents, then, two things for our consideration—the nature of the images and of ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... which apply to this last experiment apply to that with the dumb-bell and have already been answered. There is one however which, while applying to that other, more particularly applies here. It would be, that these after-images are too brief and indistinct to be carefully observed, so that judgments as to their shape, size, and color are not valid evidence. This is a perfectly sensible criticism, and a person thoroughly convinced of its force should repeat ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... laughed a specimen or two that struck me as being about the article I wanted, and I gave him a ticket, and appointed him to sit in the second circle, in the centre, and be responsible for that division of the house. I gave him minute instructions about how to detect indistinct jokes, and then went away, and left him chuckling placidly over the novelty of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to a little winding staircase, by which one reached every floor beside the lift, when in a voice which gradually grew more indistinct, he again called: "I beg you, madame, pray wait for me; remain there to warn ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... Ned stood anxiously watching the light of the lanthorn, which was made to run along the rope and the ground till it played only upon the two kegs, which looked dull and indistinct by the shadowy ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... little and grew more indistinct, the sound of the traffic began to dwindle away, voices seemed farther off, ceased altogether, and all was quiet once more where the mirage shimmered and faded, and a bull rhinoceros coming down through the stillness snorted, and ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... across it by sinuous byways where madronas and alders isolated him from the twilit green of the open lawn. Though it was still early the soft winter dusk of the Pacific Northwest was beginning to render objects indistinct. This perhaps may have been the reason he failed to notice the skulking figure among the trees that ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... eye of a diurnal bird would be brought into the condition of that of an owl, which has often been advanced as an excellent instance of adaptation. Short-sight, which is often inherited, permits a person to see distinctly a minute object at so near a distance that it would be indistinct to ordinary eyes; and here we have a capacity which might be serviceable under certain conditions, abruptly gained. The Fuegians on board the {223} Beagle could certainly see distant objects more distinctly than ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... dipped below the blue line of extended plain which lay between the city and the sea; the long shadows of afternoon began to blend into the one deeper shade of evening; the groups of distant buildings became more and more indistinct; the arches of the Colosseum softly faded away, leaving but a broad mass of unbroken wall; upon the Palatine Hill the great house of the Caesars shone less and less gloriously as the sky darkened behind the pile of decorated roofs; here and there a light gleamed from some distant ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... way of this. Phoebe's letter, effaced to make way for the forgery, was to announce Isaac Runciman's death, and was probably written during the first week of June, and posted even later. The English postmark showed two figures for the date; indistinct, as a postmark usually is. Could she utilise this date in any way to sow the seeds of doubt of the authenticity of the letter? She saw no way open. The letter was a thing familiar to Mrs. Prichard, but a sudden thunderbolt to ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... of the stockaded village the train stopped, and Bud Adams came through the car, scrutinising every passenger. Seeing this, Hal began to sob again, and murmured something indistinct to his companion—which caused her to lean towards him, speaking volubly in her native language. "Bud" ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... man departed; and his lantern gleamed along the street, bringing to view indistinct shapes of things, and the fragments of a world, like order glimmering through chaos, or memory roaming over the past. But Margaret stayed not to watch these picturesque effects. Joy flashed into her heart, and lighted it up at once; and breathless, and with winged steps, she flew to ...
— The Wives of The Dead - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... insensibility, when all was dark and strange to her confused senses. She pulled aside the long hair of the buffalo skin that obscured her face, and looked out from her narrow place of confinement. The blue heavens alone met her view above. The incident of the seizure was indistinct in her memory, and she could not surmise the nature of her present condition. She turned hastily on her side, and the occasional bush she espied in the vicinity indicated that she was rushing along by some means with an almost inconceivable rapidity. ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... face still further lengthened by a beard, the domed forehead, the bright eyes, very inscrutable usually, very sympathetic when he chooses to make them so; and when he speaks, a soft voice, quiet and even-toned but often indistinct. Not given to demonstrativeness, he appears the same under all conditions—silent when depressed, silent too when cheerful; he may smile, but he will never laugh outright—unless called upon in society to make a special effort to amuse somebody. Then he does ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... within a circular enclosure of palisades, or that the commerce of the country consisted in an exchange of beads, muskets, and bad whiskey for the furs of the Aborigines. Still his ideas were vague and indistinct, not to say disparaging, and he had already quite unconsciously excited the amusement of Will and the indignation of Rose, by indulging in remarks indicative of a low opinion of things in general in the Queen's dominions. So when he proposed that Will should ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... half-frightened child, shrinking into the protection of his father's shadow. And when again the iron door was closed, then reappeared the tender light of the half-full moon, which vainly strove to trace out the indistinct shapes of the neighboring mountains; and, in the upper sky, there was a flitting congregation of clouds, still faintly tinged with the rosy sunset, though thus far down into the valley the sunshine had vanished long and ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... the grey villages, and scant birch trees,—the whole Russian landscape, so long unseen by him, stirred emotion at once pleasant, sweet and almost painful in his heart, and he felt weighed down by a kind of pleasant oppression. Slowly his thoughts wandered; their outlines were as vague and indistinct as the outlines of the clouds which seemed to be wandering at random overhead. He remembered his childhood, his mother; he remembered her death, how they had carried him in to her, and how, clasping his head to her bosom, ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... about three shots per minute at effective ranges and five or six at close ranges, devoting the minimum of time to loading and the maximum to deliberate aiming. To illustrate the necessity for deliberation, and to habituate men to combat conditions, small and comparatively indistinct targets are ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... below, he reached a wave crest of ground he saw bands of wild horses, enough to make a broken line half across the valley, traveling toward him. They had their heads north, and were moving prettily, probably a couple of miles distant. Beyond them other bands scattered and indistinct, but all in motion, convinced Pan that something had startled the horses, or they had ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... said the mother; and though the words were earnest, the voice was faint; all the effort of nature was in them, but they came feebly from her lips. After that, indistinct sounds and murmured names only were heard; her breath came in gasps, and at longer and longer intervals; till the faint shuddering of her limbs ceased by degrees, and after it had been insensible to the world for a while, the spirit quitted it for ever. Ellen's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... must stand under. The real distance was great enough, but the imagined distance was, to our ignorance, even greater. Every slaveholder seeks to impress his slave with a belief in the boundlessness of slave territory, and of his own almost illimitable power. We all had vague and indistinct notions of the ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... was Protector. He had been nominated, in some indistinct way, by his father on his death-bed; and, though there was missing a certain sealed nomination paper, of much earlier date, in which it was believed that Fleetwood was the man, it was the interest of all parties about ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... asked the prince some question, but the latter did not reply, or if he did, he muttered something so strangely indistinct that there was nothing to be made of it. The officer stared intently at him, then glanced at Evgenie, divined why the latter had introduced him, and gave his undivided attention to Aglaya again. Only Evgenie Pavlovitch observed that Aglaya flushed up for ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in her breast a little old note-book, bound in dark leather, glossy from constant use. With it came a perfume of sandalwood. Turning the yellow leaves of the book, covered with fine Arab lettering, she read in a murmuring, indistinct voice, that sounded to Victoria like one of those desert voices of which Maieddine had spoken. Also she measured spaces between the figures the girl had ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... came a spring when the colors of the flowers seemed paler to the hermit than they used to be; and as summer drew on their shapes became indistinct, and he mistook one plant for another; and when autumn came, he told them by their various scents, and by their form, rather than by sight; and when the flowers were gone, and winter had come, the hermit was ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... upturned and the depression deeper, so that eventually it is more or less broadly funnel-form. The color varies from white to flesh color, tinged with yellow sometimes in spots, and marked usually with faint zones of brighter yellow. The zones are sometimes very indistinct or entirely wanting. The gills are crowded, white then yellow, where bruised becoming yellowish, then dull reddish. The stem is equal or tapering below, hollow or stuffed, paler than the pileus, smooth (sometimes pitted as shown in ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... vapour streaked with pungent bitterness, seemed to make the distant hillside of Hanley quiver. The moon was riding out now from among a drift of clouds, half-way up the sky above the undulating wooded outlines of Newcastle. The steaming canal ran away from below them under an indistinct bridge, and vanished into the dim haze of the ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... first encountered by the people returning from the ceremony at San Corme; therefore made most of by passing friends, with the bottle oftener presented to his lips. As a consequence, when the carriage whirled past him he had but an indistinct idea of why it was going so fast, and none at all as to who were in it. With eyes drowned in aguardiente he stood as one dazed, looking after, but taking no measures to stop it. When at length some one bawled the truth into his ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... sufficient distance to allow of this being done. The runner would then crawl close along the shore, and when as near as could be judged opposite the entrance of the river, would show a light on the vessel's inshore side, which was answered by a very indistinct light being shown on the beach, close to the water's edge, and another at the background. These two lights being got into a line was a proof that the opening was arrived at; the vessels then steered straight in and anchored under ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... and applied to other parts of the globe beside Australasia; but it is particularly applicable to this portion of it. There can be no doubt that many islands and points of land were discovered, which were never traced in maps, even in the vague and indistinct manner in which the Gulf of Carpentaria was traced; that many discoveries were claimed to which no credit was given; and that owing to the imperfect mode formerly used to determine the longitude, some, from being laid down wrong, were afterwards ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... are taking off a man's limb—two or three of them, for that matter. I shan't take you there until the operations are finished.' Then first came the horrid thought that he might be mutilated in the same way. Vague, indistinct, dreadful visions uprose before me, of all sorts and kinds of horrid disfigurement, and I grew sick and faint. 'Not his limb!' I gasped, struggling with a deathly faintness. 'No, not his,' said the doctor, sorrowfully. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... difficult attainment."(86) And he explains that the inconceivableness which, according to his theory, is the test of axioms, "depends entirely upon the clearness of the Ideas which the axioms involve. So long as those ideas are vague and indistinct, the contrary of an axiom may be assented to, though it can not be distinctly conceived. It may be assented to, not because it is possible, but because we do not see clearly what is possible. To a person who is only beginning to think geometrically, there ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... black and motionless, emphasizing the east beyond. The river was white and dead, not even a steam rose from it, but out of the further pastures a gentle mist had lifted up and lay all even along the flanks of the hills, so that they rose out of it, indistinct at their bases, clear-cut above against the brightening sky; and the farther they were the more their mouldings showed in the early light, and the most distant edges ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... above there was a roar and a streak of murky yellow as the landing craft eased down through the haze. Only the top of Control Tower was out of the mud now. The Administration shack gave a lurch, sagging, as a dozen indistinct gray forms pulled and tugged at the supporting structure beneath it. Already a circle of natives was converging on the Earthmen as they gathered near ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse
... A hazy, indistinct flame, the watch-fire of the enemy, on the island of Eslar, was the only object visible in the murky darkness. After a while, however, we could detect another fire on a smaller island, a short distance ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... which they knew to have been violated; they had always kept up the memory of the ancient Saxon liberty; and if they were the conquerors of Britain, they did not think that their own servitude was the just fruit of their victory. They had, however, but an indistinct view of the object at which they aimed; they rather felt their wrongs than understood the cause of them; and having no head nor council, they were more in a condition of distressing their king and disgracing their country by their disobedience ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... immortelles. But oft he fell, and cursed his folly for having left the flowery vale to beat against the barren mountain rocks; but Life upbraided him, and with her soft breath fanned the paling star to brighter flame—the star behind which lay the throne. And Death followed them, shadowy, indistinct, like a spirit wrapt in mist. And Life mocked at Death, crying: "Behold the envious strumpet doth follow, to despoil me of mine own! Faugh! How uncanny and how cold! What lover would hang upon those ashen lips? Her bosom is marble, and ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... ground, perhaps from not having the means of escaping, I saw a small gun glitter for a moment, then there was a sharp report, and a bullet had nearly sent Quesada to his long account, passing so near to the countenance of the general as to graze his hat. I had an indistinct view for a moment of a well- known foraging cap just about the spot from whence the gun had been discharged, then there was a rush of the crowd, and the shooter, whoever he was, escaped discovery amidst ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... is irregular and indistinct, the patient is thirsty during the chill, and the cold stage is long in proportion to the length of the fever, the surface pale and more or less bloated. Arsenicum is the remedy, and should be given from the commencement of the chill, and every ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... thing; but I'm fond of 'em they are all I've got—I was afraid he'd laugh at me that time, so I wouldn't let him look—it was father's birthday, and I felt bad about him and Sanch—" Ben's indignant voice got more and more indistinct as he stumbled on, and broke down over the last words. He did not cry, however, but threw back his little treasures as if half their sacredness was gone; and, making a strong effort at self-control, faced around, asking of Miss Celia, with a ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... man with the snake to go on down into the canon bed. The other Indians were already unsaddling the dead burro. Slade muttered a command to them in the thick indistinct intonations of their language. They at once started to ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... the pencil and turned abruptly towards the bed with the shadowy figure extended full length on it—so much more indistinct than the one over whose breast he had walked without faltering. Was this, too, ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... under the Mexican night, and the strumming of guitars and the tinkle of spurs and tiny bells softly echoed from several houses. The convent of St. Maria lay indistinct in its heavy shadows and the little church farther up the dusty street showed dim lights in its stained windows. Off to the north became audible the rhythmic beat of a horse and soon a cowboy swept past the convent with a ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... at seeing him sitting upright in his bed, and staring wildly around. I held him in my arms, and placing his head gently on my left shoulder, gazed a moment on his pale and altered features; some indistinct expressions quivered on his lips; he strove, but ineffectually, to give them utterance, and expired without a struggle or a sigh. When I found my poor master so very ill, I called out with all my strength, "O God, my master is dying!" which brought Pascoe ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... film on the window through which the street lamps showed blurred and indistinct, and he rubbed the pane clear with the tips of his fingers (he described every action to T. ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... Puddock's voice was heard in an indistinct murmur, upon the lobby. Then there was a silence, or possibly, some speaking in a still lower key. Then Aunt Becky was crying, and the lieutenant's voice cooing through it. Then Aunt Becky, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... in the eleventh book of the Paradise Lost with the last ward of Malebolge in Dante. Milton avoids the loathsome details, and takes refuge in indistinct but solemn and tremendous imagery. Despair hurrying from couch to couch to mock the wretches with his attendance, Death shaking his dart over them, but, in spite of supplications, delaying to strike. What says Dante? "There ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... at home the next day with white cheeks and red eyes, and most indistinct accounts of the wedding. A few monosyllables were extracted with difficulty, among them a "Yes" when Fordham asked whether ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on the hill-tops of deliverance, for you and I are out of Wimbledon. We have left behind us the Pimbles, the Mumbles, the Simcoes, and their multitudinous voices grow indistinct in the distance, as, borne by the rushing steam-steed, we fly on our way in search of our fair traveller, who has got the start of us by several hours. We hardly know whether to go up the Hudson, or hold straight on over the Erie ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... wide enough for two, that diverged from the straight practical path before them. It was indeed a roundabout way home, so roundabout, in fact, that as they wandered on it seemed even to double on its track, occasionally lingering long and becoming indistinct under the shadow of madrono and willow; at one time stopping blindly before a fallen tree in the hollow, where they had quite lost it, and had to sit down to recall it; a rough way, often requiring the mutual help of each other's hands ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... them before the stove as soon as the dishes were washed, retiring to the bedroom at the other end of the log cabin. Far into the night she heard them talking, in low voices that made an indistinct murmur. To the sound of ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... Hiram behind her did the same. They both listened with such tension that the veins in their foreheads swelled; but from the tablinum, which was hardly thirty paces from them, came only very faint and intermittent sounds, indistinct in character and drowned ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... two centuries ago a bold generation of Americans risked their property, their position, and life itself. We are their heirs, and they are sending us a message across the centuries. The words they made so vivid are now growing faintly indistinct, because they are not heard often enough. They are words like "justice," "equality," "unity," "truth," ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... deg. N. lat. by 146 deg. E. long.) on his way to the discovery of those Islands afterwards denominated the Philippines. This group was named by him Islas de las Velas. [18] Legaspi called them the Ladrones. [19] Subsequently several navigators sighted or touched at these Islands, and the indistinct demarcation which comprised them acquired the name of ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... in this room," began Sim Squires, "thet's done been seekin' evidence erginst ther riders, an' he's done secured a lavish of hit, too." So far, his words were running in expected grooves, and as the voice went on a little indistinct because of the pebble under the tongue, his impatient audience accorded him only a ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... remarkable for having its branches sometimes slightly drooping, and at other times erect, with membranous glaucous elliptical leaves, from an inch to an inch and a half long, and three-quarters broad, with very indistinct nerves, and producing a small purple fruit, of very agreeable taste. I had seen this tree formerly at the Gwyder, and in the rosewood scrubs about Moreton Bay, and I also found it far up to the northward, in the moderately open ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... with a throng of worshippers, who knelt and rose and knelt again as mass proceeded. From the altar rose clouds of incense from censers swung by acolytes; now and then could be heard the tinkle of a silver bell at the Elevation of the Host and the voice of the priest, monotonous and indistinct, in that vast edifice. Lights twinkled, the air grew heavy with incense, and great bursts of music rolled from the organ-loft. 'Twas a magnificent ceremonial, and Mr. Morris and Calvert came away thrilled and awed. ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... on the sill. "It is clearly the tread of a shoe. It is remarkably broad; a splay-foot, one would say. Curious, because, so far as one can trace any footmark in this mud-stained corner, one would say it was a more shapely sole. However, they are certainly very indistinct. What's ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... observed the movement of the chair. He employed himself now in stilling the dog. I continued to gaze on the chair, and fancied I saw on it a pale blue misty outline of a human figure, but an outline so indistinct that I could only distrust my own vision. The dog now was quiet. "Put back that chair opposite to me," said I to F——; "put ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... overhead, and pouring out their morning song. Out from the camp the bugles were calling the soldiers for the march; the baggage trains were rumbling over the bridge. But still below on the marge lingered the solitary figure; now walking, now motionless, now silent, now speaking in indistinct monologue. Drusus overheard only an occasional word, "Pompeius, poor tool of knaves! I pity him! I must show mercy to Cato if I can! Sulla is not to be imitated! The Republic is fallen; what I put in its place must not fall." Then, after a long pause, "So this ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... friendship, and please myself with the hopes of enjoying it many years to come in this state of being, trusting always, that in another state, we shall meet never to be separated. Of this we can form no notion; but the thought, though indistinct, is delightful, when the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... waving her hand to the indistinct blur of faces upon the dock, picked up the great clusters of roses which late arrivals had thrust into her arms at the last moment, and descended to her stateroom upon the saloon deck. She spent only a few minutes looking at the arrangement of her things, and then knocked at ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Boston when he was discovered by the frigate that he had outwitted two months before, when the Providence narrowly escaped capture. Night was closing in and the frigate being to windward, her outlines were indistinct. Captain Jones ordered his prizes to steer southward and to pay no attention to the signals displayed on his own vessel. At midnight he hoisted a toplight and tacked to the west, knowing the others would continue to the southward ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... at the Swan—otherwise the Blue Lion—the Pickwick fellowship shared the conviviality of the rival teams, until Mr. Snodgrass's notes of the evening's transactions faded away into a blur in which there was an indistinct reference to "broiled bones" and "cold without". The stately ruins of a Benedictine Abbey, founded by Bishop Gundulf, give to the town an attraction of ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... the shot, as I felt sure that the .577 rifle would cripple the beast, and that we should find it when severely wounded; otherwise it might disappear and give us several hours' hard labour to discover. Taking a very steady aim low down in the indistinct ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... quitted the side of the vessel, pulling off, in diverging lines, into the gloom of the ocean. The boat of Ludlow had not gone fifty fathoms, before he was perfectly conscious of the inutility of a chase; for the obscurity of the night was so great, as to render the spars of his own ship nearly indistinct, even at that short distance. After pulling by compass some ten or fifteen minutes, in a direction that carried him to windward of the Coquette, the young man commanded the crew to cease rowing, and prepared himself to await, patiently, for the ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... stepped on the wharf and got a closer look in the wavering beams of an arc light at the name on the boat's bows. There, in indistinct and shaky, but unmistakable characters, was the title painted by my young ruffians, weeks ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... a powerful Indian, as he laid his rough hand on the shoulder of the minister. "You catch Wonolanset, tie um, shoot um, scare squaw. Old sachem come now, me tie white man, shoot um, roast um;" and the old savage smiled grimly and fiercely in the indistinct moonlight, as he witnessed the alarm and terror of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... young mother was looking at the old man, her child, as she used to look at him so many, many years ago. He stood still as if in a waking dream, his eyes fixed on the drawings till their outlines grew indistinct and they ran into each other, and a pale, sweet face shaped itself out of the glimmering light through which he saw them.—What is there quite so profoundly human as an old man's memory of a mother who died in his earlier years? Mother she remains till manhood, ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... the low, the beautiful and the grotesque, the world of fancy and of fact, all the strange diversities that enter into "such stuff as dreams are made of," running and frisking together, and interchanging their functions and properties; so that the whole seems confused, flitting, shadowy, and indistinct, as fading away in the remoteness and fascination of moonlight. The very scene is laid in a veritable dream-land, called Athens indeed, but only because Athens was the greatest beehive of beautiful visions ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... such sudden ardour, that all listened while he declaimed—"I can imagine no worse fate for a man of true talent than to linger down into the grave; to find the world disappearing from him while he remains in it; his political vision growing indistinct, his political ear losing the voice of man, his passions growing stagnant, all his sensibilities palpably paralyzing, while the world is as loud, busy, and brilliant round him as ever—with but one sense remaining, the unhappy consciousness that, though not yet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... to the worship of Siva, but there is no proof that they introduced it. But Persian and Graeco-Bactrian influence favoured the creation of more definite deities, more personal and more pictorial. The gods of the Vedic hymns are vague and indistinct: the Supreme Being of the Upanishads altogether impersonal, but Mithra and Apollo, though divine in their majesty, are human in their persons and in the appeal they make to humanity. The influence of these foreign conceptions and especially ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... all? Really this is too bad!" An indistinct muttering here from the crowd was followed by an announcement from the doctor that the speaker was an ass, and his head a turnip! "Not one of you capable of translating a chorus from Euripides,—'Ou, ou, papai, papai,' etc.; which, after all, means no more than, 'Oh, whilleleu, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the western horizon, just where the gray outlines of the mountains stood forth like shadows against the deep blue of the sky, huge masses of clouds piled themselves up into strange and fantastic forms, indistinct and dark, from whose bright centre, ever and anon, leaped the fierce lightning, like the tongues of a thousand adders forked in flame, and boomed the loud thunder as the din of a far-off battle. While he gazed, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... nothing but the fire-light in the room, and it threw about great shadows, so that at first entering all was indistinct; but I heard a foot behind father's, and then a form appeared, and something, I never could tell what, made a great shiver rush down my back, just as when a creature is frightened in the dark at what you don't see, and so, though my soul was unconscious, my body felt that there was danger in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... kept his place upon the quarter-deck. He saw objects flitting across the waist of the ship, and heard distinctly the coils flung down with a clang upon the wet decks. There was something weird and ghostly in those half-seen figures, in the indistinct maze of cordage and canvas above, and the phosphorescent streaks of spray ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... in fine style; fast, over the good roads; whisked by Melbourne, sped away along south, catching glimpses of the river from time to time, with the hills on the further side hazily blue and indistinct with the September haze of sunbeams. Near hand the green of plantations and woodland was varied with brown grainfields, where grain had been, and with ripening Indian corn and buckwheat; but more especially with here and there a stately roof-tree or gable of some ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... were a number of young girls, both native and Spanish. Occasionally one of them forgot herself and yawned, but immediately sought to conceal it by covering her mouth with her fan. Conversation was carried on in a low voice and died away in vague mono-syllables, like the indistinct noises heard by night ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... the graveyard the shades of evening had fallen, and the objects around me grown dim and indistinct. As I passed the gateway, I turned to take a parting look. I could distinguish only the chapel on the summit of the hill, and here and there a lofty obelisk of snow-white marble, rising from the black and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... toothy smile, nodded once, and grew more indistinct. In another five seconds the seat was quite empty. Pete leaned back, grinning to himself as the angry rumble rose around him like a wave. He was a Public Relations man to the core—but right now he was off duty. He chuckled to himself, and the passengers ...
— PRoblem • Alan Edward Nourse
... most to the fore, when one hears best the thousand voices of things. Two or three times in my life I have been present at the awakening of this mysterious world. At the end of August toward midnight, when the day has been hot, an indistinct murmur rises about the kneeling villages. It is neither the sound of rivers, nor of springs, nor of the wind, nor of animals cropping the grass, nor of cattle rubbing their chains against the cribs, nor of uneasy watchdogs, nor of birds, ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... distinguished that of Mere St. Borgia, the aunt of Angelique, who led the choir of nuns. In trills and cadences of divine melody the voice of Mere St. Borgia rose higher and higher, like a spirit mounting the skies. The words were indistinct, but Angelique knew them by heart. She had visited her aunt in the Convent, and had learned the new hymn composed by her ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... caution; in the Service for Baptism it is described as one of three great enemies of our souls, and in the ordinary writings and conversation of Christians, I need hardly say, mention is made of it continually. Yet most of us, it would appear, have very indistinct notions what the world means. We know that the world is a something dangerous to our spiritual interests, and that it is in some way connected with human society—with men as a mixed multitude, contrasted with men one by one, ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... hedgerows, or shown to me only for a moment as I followed the footpath. Wendover lay well down in the midst, with mountains of foliage about it. The great plain stretched away to the northward, variegated near at hand with the quaint pattern of the fields, but growing ever more and more indistinct, until it became a mere hurly-burly of trees and bright crescents of river, and snatches of slanting road, and finally melted into the ambiguous cloud-land over the horizon. The sky was an opal-grey, touched here and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ceased to think would be offered some fearful mystery, some cruel obscurity, still clouded all her prospects, and not merely obstructed her view of the future, but made what was immediately before her gloomy and indistinct. ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... dusk when I again found myself on the turnpike, and I followed the few indistinct moving figures in the direction of safety. I stopped for a few minutes near a camp-fire, in a piece of woods, where our infantry halted, and I remember hearing the colored cook of one of their messes asking in piteous tones, over and over ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... day far advanced in autumn, he set off to visit this being. The howling of the wind as it came in fitful gusts through the openings of the forest, formed no bad accompaniment to his thoughts; while the indistinct twilight received little aid from the moon, which waded through heavy masses of clouds. The Baron, however, was a man of daring spirit. He had often been led past the spot, whilst engaged in the chase, near which the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... into a flame, which, unless checked, would consume all those high and praiseworthy resolutions which George had formed, and carefully kept for years. He had cast a shadow over the landscape of his friend's well-being, which made the sign-posts pointing "upward and onward" almost indistinct. He had breathed into the atmosphere a subtle malaria, and George had caught the disease. The little leaven was now mixed with his life, which would leaven the whole. The genus of that moral consumption, which, unless ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... feel like swelled veins that itch so that they long to be torn by the nails. The tongue and eyes seem to expand to twice their usual size. Sound itself loses its sharp conciseness, and reaches the brain only as a blurred and indistinct impression. ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... her husband's arm—her own drawn through his, and her hands clasped together—looking up into his face with a tender and confiding regard. I could not help noticing her manner, and the expression of her countenance. And yet it seemed to me that something of concern was on her face, but so indistinct as to be scarcely visible. Of this I ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... over on his hands and knees and crawled to the opening of the tent and peered around outside. The campfire had burned rather low, so that objects a short distance away were indistinct. He saw that the horses were huddled together and had their heads turned toward a clump of bushes at one ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... neared the mouth of the little bay, and her lines became rather indistinct in the darkness, Eph Somers turned to resume ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... Peace leaned forward in her chair, then sank back among the pillows with a dreadful, sickening sensation gripping at her heart. They were talking about her! She strained her ears to catch the President's reply, but could hear only an indistinct rumble of voices mingled with Allee's sharp sobs. So the angels had carried Sadie Wenzell to her home beyond the Gates! Idly she wondered when it had happened and why she had not been told. It had been one of her dearest ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... traditions, or its scenery. To Scotchmen, the history of their country was little more than a skeleton, till the magic wand of Scott it filled it with flesh and blood, and gave it new life and animation. "Up to the era of Sir Walter," says an eminent Scotchman, "living people had some vague, general, indistinct notions about dead people mouldering away to nothing, centuries ago, in regular kirk-yards and chance burial-places, 'mang muirs and mosses many O,' somewhere or other in that difficultly distinguished and very debatable ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... Halley's comet appeared to announce to the Saxons the approaching conquest of England by William the Norman. A contemporary poet made a singular remark, which may have some profound poetical meaning, but certainly seems a little indistinct on the surface. He said that 'the comet had been more favourable to William than nature had been to Caesar; the latter had no hair, but William had received some from the comet.' This is the only instance, so far as I know, in which a comet has been ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... outset of life (and particularly at this time I felt it so) our imagination has a body to it. We are in a state between sleeping and waking, and have indistinct but glorious glimpses of strange shapes, and there is always something to come better than what we see. As in our dreams the fulness of the blood gives warmth and reality to the coinage of the brain, so in youth our ideas are clothed, and fed, and ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... hemisphere of the brain thinking for itself, and the mind deluded as respects the lapse of time, mistaking these simultaneous actions for successive ones, and referring one of the two impressions to an indistinct and misty past. To Plato such facts as these afforded copious proofs of the prior existence of the soul, and strong foundations for a faith in ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... Sophy's belief as to the kind of use this mischievous-looking piece of property had been put to, it was certainly very odd that Dick should have such a thing at the bottom of his trunk. The Doctor remembered reading or hearing something about the lasso and the lariat and the bolas, and had an indistinct idea that they had been sometimes used as weapons of warfare or private revenge; but they were essentially a huntsman's implements, after all, and it was not very strange that this young man had brought one of them with him. Not ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... upon't, that nod unto the world, And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs: They are black vesper's pageants. Eros. Ay, my lord. Ant. That which is now a horse, even with a thought, The rack dislimns; and makes it indistinct, As water is in water. Eros. It does, my lord. Ant. My good knave, Eros, now thy captain is Even such a body: here I am Antony; Yet cannot hold this visible shape, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... the "organ loft." If he secured the precious "emblems of the broken body and shed blood" of his Divine Master, it was after the "white folks" were through. If the cause of the Negro were mentioned in the prayer or sermon, it was in the indistinct whisper of the moral coward who occupied the sacred desk. And when the fight was on at fever heat, when it was popular to plead the cause of the slave and demand the rights of the free Negro, the Church was the last organization in the country to take a position on the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... People. They recite in a timid and indistinct tone the prescribed fustian. They are followed by ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... [Footnote 5: A long, indistinct, and uninteresting account of this project is here omitted, which Harris alleges might have transferred the whole commerce of Europe to the Dutch, but for which opinion he advances no substantial reasons, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... a good trail, he thought, else how could all that stuff have been packed in there. Most assuredly it could not have come over the trail he had traveled. Presently he heard the men go outside, and their voices became indistinct. Then Knell came in and seated himself without any of his chief's ease. He seemed preoccupied and, as ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... thought that the whole city has been formed into a line of skirmishers. You are startled by a noise on the front pavement, which sounds like an energetic drummer beating the long roll on a barrel-head; and you have an indistinct idea that some improvident urchin (up since the dawn) has ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... moments, there was a busy and earnest, but indistinct hum of the two children's voices, as Violet and Peony wrought together with one happy consent. Violet still seemed to be the guiding spirit; while Peony acted rather as a laborer, and brought her the snow from far and near. And yet the little urchin evidently had a ...
— The Snow-Image - A Childish Miracle • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I was somewhat surprised at the air of confidence with which our guide made this statement; for after a most careful examination of the prints, which were exceedingly indistinct, I could discern nothing to indicate that they had ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the lake were almost lost in the vapors, only spots of forest green appearing now and then, a veil of silver being over the eastern waters. The island on which St. Luc lay encamped was growing indistinct, and the fires there ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... suddenly forth from between the low lines of sunset cloud, a long ray of golden light, that fell full on the uplifted face of the little old man. He did not turn his head, or shrink from its intense brightness, but his lips moved, though the utterance of the words he spoke was so broken and indistinct, that I stooped to hear them. "'Adelais,—O my lost darling,—my Adelais,—let me come to thee and be beloved at last!' " Then I looked again at the western sky, and saw that ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... an indistinct knowledge of the affair," continued his grandson, "from I forget who, and should be grateful to hear it clearly told me, while thus looking on the ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... indistinct and dreamy. Somehow it seemed to have something to do with my first attempt to swim, and I thought I was being pulled out of the water, which kept splashing about and making ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... at the quiet river flecked with spots of white foam and at the indistinct silhouettes of boats trailing along in midstream. She breathed in deeply the calm that surrounded her and felt a resurgence of ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... Rupert was called upon to relate his adventures. Some parts of his narrative were clear enough, but others were singularly confused and indistinct. The first parts were all satisfactory. Rupert's capture was accounted for. He said that in the person of the commanding officer he met an old friend of Colonel Holliday, who took him to Paris, and ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... the officers of the Alabama that from their vessel the armour of the Kearsarge could not be distinguished. There were many reports abroad that she was protected on her sides in some peculiar way; but all were various and indistinct, and to a practical judgment untrustworthy. Moreover, a year previous to this meeting, the Kearsarge had lain at anchor close under the critical eye of Captain Semmes. He had on that occasion seen that his enemy was not artificially defended. He believes now that the reports of her plating ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... Someone touched her, whispered to her. She looked up blankly, and saw the nurse. But understanding seemed to have gone from her during those long hours. She could not take in a word. There arose a great surging in her brain, and the woman's face faded into an indistinct blur. She sat rigid, afraid to move lest she ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... His failure to open it reminded him painfully that he was now a prisoner. He was no longer inclined to sleep, so he continued for some time to gaze out on the troubled sea, as it rolled under the indistinct light of a hazy and often overclouded moon. As he looked he fancied he saw in the distance a boat being rowed towards the shore; and before long he found that he had not been mistaken. The boat, which was a large one, drew nearer and nearer, and as it reached the land ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... his accents indistinct. Both the men had pressed Jernam to drink, while they themselves took very little. They had encouraged him to talk as well as to drink, and the appointment with his brother had been ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... was boiling, hands shook violently, bells rang rapidly, non-passengers flew down to shore-boats; round go the wheels, waving go the kerchiefs, and down fall the tears. The "Isabel" bounds o'er the ripp'less waters; forts and dungeons, as we gaze astern, fade from the view; an indistinct shade is all by which the eye can recal the lovely isle of Cuba; and, lest memory should fail, the piles of oranges, about four feet square, all round the upper-deck, are ready to refresh it. How different the "Isabel" from the "Cherokee!" Mr. Law might do well to take ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... would allow them time to reach school before its opening, with all traces of their conflict removed. The air was crisp and cold,—a trifle colder than usual,—and there was a singular thickening of the sun's rays on the ridge, which made the distant peaks indistinct and ghostlike. However, the two combatants stripped "to the buff," and Fleming patronizingly took position at the "corner," leaning upon a rifle, which, by reason of his superior years, and the wilderness he was obliged to traverse in going to school, ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... came, warm and golden. Haze, soft and indistinct lay in the valley and on the hills. Summer lingered in the garden but on the ridge the nights were cool and in the swamplands, Hughie said, already the maples were coloring with a hint of colder weather. Here and there on birch and poplar fluttered ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... had been relieved from considerable inconvenience, as Sir Geoffrey gave Julian hastily to understand, by an angel, in the shape of a young friend, and she now expected them doubtless with impatience. Humanity, and some indistinct idea of having unintentionally hurt the feelings of the poor dwarf, induced the honest Cavalier to ask this unprotected being to go with them. "He knew Lady Peveril's lodgings were but small," he said; "but it would be strange, if there was not some cupboard ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... with all the speed left in him. He strained every nerve and was going fast when he passed the foul-flag. The bleachers loomed up indistinct in his sight. But he thought only of meeting the ball. The hit was a savage liner, curving away from him. Cinders under his flying feet were a warning that he did not heed. He was on the track. He leaped ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... and the girl, side by side, on the steps of the porch, watched the light go out of the sky and tried to count the stars as they came. As the twilight deepened, the elms in the pasture across the road, the maples along the drive, and the willows down by the creek, became shadowy and indistinct. From the orchard, an owl sent forth his quavering call and was answered by his mate from the roof of the barn. Down in the shadow of the little valley, a whip-poor-will cried plaintively, and, now and then, a ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... broken and indistinct, his step feeble. But as he went on his voice rang clearer and stronger; his step grew quicker and firmer. Half reciting, half chanting, he continued the wild tale of blood, dancing faster and faster, haranguing louder and louder, until ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... more to say," replied John in very indistinct tones. The perspiration was standing upon his forehead; the room swam with him and he felt a terrible, prickly sensation ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... to any speaking person. Sometimes instead of external sounds or voices, the patient has a consciousness of an internal voice that may be as real to him as any external auditory perception. At first the voices may be indistinct, but upon constant repetition and evolution from sub-conscious thought they acquire intensity, eventually dominating the life of the individual."[51] Dr. Ball says: "One patient perceives at the beginning of the attack a toothed ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... burst of quivering sound, while the giant pipes of the organ breathed out their full harmony and the very air shook under the peal. It was like a triumphal strain. The soul became filled with thoughts of power and glory; every sense was changed into one dim, indistinct emotion of rapture which held the spirit ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... not wish to see him again. In the abyss down yonder before her she now heard a slight sound, the indistinct ripple of the waves over the rocks. She rose to her feet with the idea of throwing herself over the cliff and bidding life farewell. Like one in despair, she uttered the last word of the dying, the last word of the young soldier slain in ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... be easily conceived: horror the more aggravated, as it seized them in the midst of their rejoicings occasioned by the first despatch; and this was still more dreadfully augmented, by a subsequent indistinct relation, importing that the army was totally routed, the king missing, and the enemy in full march to Berlin. The battle of Cunersdorf was by far the most bloody action which happened since the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... hand on it, Chiltern. Leave it there." And the instrument was left lying on the table, untouched. Mr. Low went on with his story. He had heard nothing of Yosef Mealyus as connected with the murder, but some indistinct reference to Lord Fawn and the top-coat had been made to him. "There is the coat, too," said Phineas, taking it from the sofa on which he had flung it when he came home the previous night. It was a very light coat,—fitted ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... increased rapidly. He leaned over to see if it would clear the low point below. It did; then he drew back, thinking that now its course was free down to the sea, and he envied the lot of that inanimate thing now growing small and indistinct in the deepening darkness. As he lost sight of it altogether he began to wonder how far out to sea it would drift. Would the current carry it north or south? South, probably, till it drifted in sight of Celebes, as far ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... inconvenience. I was whispering to the doctor that I would need eyes of much greater candle power to enjoy the function, when we arrived at our places. A double row of comfortable cushions ran along the edge of our floor, where it seemed to sink to a lower terrace, whence we could hear the indistinct hum of women's voices. Zaphnath took his seat on a raised cushion in the middle of the row, and motioned me to the cushion on his right and the doctor to his left. Eighteen other guests now reclined upon their cushions to left and right, so that we were all arranged in a direct line, facing the ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... I had an indistinct impression of having met the elder lady somewhere, and under circumstances not entirely agreeable, but beyond a stony and indifferent glance she paid no attention to me. As for the younger lady, she did not look at me at all. ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... quiet in the great building. Recitation room doors were closed. One passing through the corridors would have heard only the indistinct murmur of voices from the different rooms. Within five minutes every one of the instructors detected the fact that, though discipline was as good as ever, Dr. Thornton's words had spoiled the morning's recitations. Try as they would, the young men could not fasten their minds on the work on hand. ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... sure and tell me just when to let him have it, Thad," replied the other, beginning to cover the indistinct moving ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... clay-coloured horse with spinal and leg stripes.) Mr. Swinhoe informs me that he examined two light- dun ponies of two Chinese breeds, viz., those of Shanghai and Amoy; both had the spinal stripe, and the latter an indistinct shoulder-stripe. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... And since to fix an end is to choose, the theory that the content of art must be selected is another form of the same error. A selection from among impressions and sensations implies that these are already expressions, otherwise, how can a selection be made among what is continuous and indistinct? To choose is to will: to will this and not to will that: and this and that must be before us, they must be expressed. Practice follows, it does not precede theory; expression ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... to the present, is known to be attended by four satellites, and Neptune by one. The planets themselves are about equal in size; their diameters, roughly speaking, being about one-half that of Saturn. Some markings have, indeed, been seen upon the disc of Uranus, but they are very indistinct and fleeting. From observation of them, it is assumed that the planet rotates on its axis in a period of some ten to twelve hours. No definite markings have as yet been seen upon Neptune, which body is described by several observers as ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... to gratify the vulgar appetite for the marvellous. For the Dutch army, composed of men who had been born in various climates, and had served under various standards, presented an aspect at once grotesque, gorgeous, and terrible to islanders who had, in general, a very indistinct notion of foreign countries. First rode Macclesfield at the head of two hundred gentlemen, mostly of English blood, glittering in helmets and cuirasses, and mounted on Flemish war horses. Each was attended by ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... countenance. For some moments a death-like stillness, an unnatural calm, reigned around us: it was as though the elements were holding in their breath, and collecting their energies for some mighty outbreak. Then came a low indistinct moaning sound, that seemed to issue from the bowels of the earth. The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... intrepid swimmer rise to the surface, at some distance off, and then lost sight of him altogether behind the curling crests of the waves. He fancied, however, he could hear some indistinct words of encouragement borne back by the wind. After that, the only sounds that reached his ear were the hoarse moanings of the surf, and the ominous plashing of the waves against the ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... ragged garment. There being no window, nor aperture to admit the light, in these wretched cabins, except the door, we found ourselves often in almost total darkness for the first moment of our entrance. But a faint glimmering of a handful of burning straw in one end would soon reveal to us the indistinct images of wan-faced children grouped together, with their large, plaintive, still eyes looking out at us, like the sick young of wild beasts in their dens. Then the groans, and the choked, incoherent entreaties ...
— A Journal of a Visit of Three Days to Skibbereen, and its Neighbourhood • Elihu Burritt
... always attached a meaning to the word water, which was one of the first sounds her baby lips learned to form, and it was the only word which she continued to articulate after she lost her hearing. Her pronunciation of this gradually became indistinct, and when I first knew her it was nothing more than a peculiar noise. Nevertheless, it was the only sign she ever made for water, and not until she had learned to spell the word with her fingers did she forget the spoken symbol. The word water, and the gesture which ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... in all her splendour. The long deep shadows of the breathless forest chequered the silvery whiteness of open sward and intervening glade. Ghostly arose on the knoll before him the grey columns of the mystic Druid,—dark and indistinct the bloody altar of the Warrior god. But there his eye was arrested; for whatever is least distinct and defined in a landscape has the charm that is the strongest; and, while he gazed, he thought that a pale ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... think, for the sake of the strength it lent her to carve her way to freedom. She had just before felt rather the reverse, but she could not exist with that feeling; and it was true that freedom was not so indistinct in her fancy as the idea ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
