"Indistinctly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But they had not been seen. The leaders who ran gleefully on ahead were merely in haste. And they were followed more slowly by burly men and lean ones, whole men and limping men, who hauled frantically on long ropes of hide, dragging some heavy thing behind them. Tommy saw it only indistinctly as the filthy, nearly naked bodies moved. But it was an intricate device of a golden-colored metal, and it rested upon the crudest of possible carts. The wheels were sections of tree trunks, pierced for wooden axles. The cart itself was made of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... of Notre Dame were wide open. Within, as we looked over the shoulders of the townspeople who, like us, had come to see what the bells meant by their ringing, within the church there was a rich and sombre dusk; out of this dusk, indistinctly at first, lit by the tremulous flicker of a myriad of candles, came a line of white-veiled heads; then another of young boys, with faces as pale as the nosegays adorning their brand-new black coats; next the scarlet-robed choristers, singing, and behind ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... well.' He is apt to be irritated even by objections to principles on which he acts, and cannot bear with equanimity censure which is pointed and personal. At present I am not sure if this sensitiveness is beneficial. As the exact position of the Bank of England in the Money Market is indistinctly seen, there is no standard to which a Bank governor can appeal. He is always in fear that 'something may be said;' but not quite knowing on what side that 'something' may be, his fear is but an indifferent guide to him. But if the cardinal doctrine were accepted, if it ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... which is pure light, free from all division and distinction, there cannot belong two modes of being, and hence obscuration and light cannot abide in it together.—Let us then say that Brahman, which is homogeneous being, intelligence, bliss, has its nature obscured by avidy, and hence is seen indistinctly as it were.—But how, we ask, are we to conceive the distinctness or indistinctness of that whose nature is pure light? When an object of light which has parts and distinguishing attributes appears in its totality, we say that it appears distinctly; while we say that its appearance is indistinct ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... the tongue, though I'm sure if she didn't do it when I was in the room, she did the minute I was outside. At any rate, she lay in a lump and grunted. Ask the Hawley Boy, dear. I believe the grunts were meant for sentences, but she spoke so indistinctly that I ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... was a shallow, stony river, but deep enough at one point for gingerly swimming. Stefan seemed never to have been cool through the summer except when he was squatting or paddling in this hole. He remembered only indistinctly the boys with whom he bathed; he had no friends among them. But there had been a little girl with starched white skirts, huge blue bows over blue eyes, and yellow hair, whom he had admired to adoration. ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... suffused with hectic, rested on one small hand. The other arm was thrown over the bed-clothes. Her eyes sparkled like diamonds. Her lips murmured indistinctly—the ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... with anger and shame, and though I felt the eyes of the Vicomtesse upon me, I dared not look at her. I heard Auguste but indistinctly as ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... away, and he sat up comparatively composed. A struggle was still going on, for several times he got up and walked a short distance and returned and threw himself down on the ground as before. At length, indistinctly muttering, unheeding the blazing sun that scorched his unprotected head, and lingering as though unwilling to advance, he returned to the scene of his former labors. And now, as if unwilling to trust himself with any delay, lest his resolution ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... large, ranging from 12,000 to 30,000, but it is impossible for me to get correct information either as to their strength or position. Our citizens beyond this are all on their side. Our movements seem to be rapidly communicated to them, while theirs come to us slowly and indistinctly. I have two regiments here, with others coming up. I think we shall shut up this road to the Central Railroad which they strongly threaten. Our supplies come up slowly. We have plenty of beef and can get some bread. I hope you are well and are content. I have ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... down a while and prayed, and I devoutly respected her devotions. The moon had begun to shine in upon one side of each of the three windows, and make a misty clearness in the room, by which I saw her indistinctly. When she re-arose she made the sign of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... opposite: and there is he, Whom wrong or insult seems to gall and shame That he doth thirst for vengeance, and such needs Must doat on other's evil. Here beneath This threefold love is mourn'd. Of th' other sort Be now instructed, that which follows good But with disorder'd and irregular course. "All indistinctly apprehend a bliss On which the soul may rest, the hearts of all Yearn after it, and to that wished bourn All therefore strive to tend. If ye behold Or seek it with a love remiss and lax, This cornice after just repenting lays Its penal torment on ye. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Wings, tail, and lower back with brownish wash, most prominent in autumn plumage. Quills of wings and tail deep blue, margined with light. Female — Plain sienna-brown above. Yellowish on breast and shading to white underneath, and indistinctly streaked. Wings and tail darkest, sometimes with slight tinge of blue in outer webs and on shoulders. Range — North America, from Hudson Bay to Panama. Most common in eastern part of United States. Winters in Central America and Mexico. Migrations ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... a perilous adventure. He discharged himself clumsily from the wagon, his face undergoing singular changes of color the while, and cast a few savage glances at Saunders, who very composedly sat on the box endeavoring with might and main to suppress a vagabond laugh. 'Now, Saunders,' indistinctly sputtered the old man, as that bluff-sided individual turned upon his seat, rather knavely casting a comical glance over his shoulder, 'I'm not afraid—my courage never fails me; but that steamer don't take me to Ostend if you're a passenger! Mind that now!' Saunders lowered himself ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... the same year, and without any notion of the views or plans of Dr. Chalmers, the principle of a common fund, to be distributed in equal shares, was given out by Dr. Candlish at a great public meeting held at Edinburgh, in anticipation of the event which, even then, had begun to loom out, not indistinctly, through the storm and tempest of the time. It was not, however, till the month of November, 1842, that it took the form of a fully-planned scheme for the future support of the church, drawn out in detail and supported by elaborate ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... blowing through the building. The whole vast shining floor was covered with peasants, pressed, packed together. Peasants, men and women—he did not see a single member of the middle-class. In front of him under the altar there was a blaze of light, and figures moved in the blaze uncertainly, indistinctly. Now and then a sudden quiver passed across the throng, as wind blows through the corn. Here and there men and women knelt, but for the most part they stood steadfast, motionless, staring in front of them. He looked at them and discovered that they had the faces of children—simple, ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... that you are looking ill,—that you are falling off physically or mentally. "Surely you have lost some of your teeth since I saw you last," said a good man to a man of seventy-five years: "I cannot make out a word you say, you speak so indistinctly." And so obtuse, and so thoroughly devoid of gentlemanly feeling, was that good man, that, when admonished that he ought not to speak in that fashion to a man in advanced years, he could not for his life see that he had done anything ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... a bird in its nest, murmured indistinctly, her eyelids quivered a second, then the blue eyes opened wide, and directly she ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... on her jacket, and sunk her numbed fingers in its pockets. In spite of her weariness she was troubled and restless, and turning looked first at the beetling crags back of them, then away over the plain at the twinkling lights of the town below. They heard indistinctly the sounds of bells ringing wildly, and overhead flocks of birds circled and called with shrill, uncanny voices. Yet the moonlight was so bright that they saw each other as plainly as if it were day, and its placid radiance seemed strangely at variance with the disturbed wild-fowl, ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... were lying in wait for her. The sunshine was blinding without, but sifted through the green jalousies, it made a gray, crepuscular light within. As the girl approached the table, on which a plate with knife and fork had been laid for breakfast, she noticed, somewhat indistinctly at first, a thin red line running obliquely across the floor from the direction of the sitting-room and ending near the stove, where it had formed a small pool. Mary stopped short, scarcely conscious why, and peered instinctively into the adjoining apartment. Then, ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... "law of substance," by which he sets so much store; the fact which he is really, though indistinctly, trying to emphasise, is what I have preferred to formulate as "the persistence of the really existent," see page 34; and, with that modification, we can agree with Haeckel, or with what I take to be his inner meaning, to some extent. We may all fairly agree, I think, that whatever really ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... which was all society had allowed him, to the violent death by which society would get rid of him—of the wife yearning her heart away—of the boy, whom other human beings, under the name of law, were about to separate from his father for ever. At last she broke out thickly and indistinctly: ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Evans, who was now crumpled together on the ground, his back bending and straightening spasmodically. Then he looked through the pillars of the trees and net-work of creeper stems, to where in the dim grey shadow the blue-clad body of the Chinaman was still indistinctly visible. He thought of the little dashes in the corner of the plan, and in a ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... him to say, what the devil did he want; but it was not easy to make out what he said; he spoke so indistinctly. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... in the forest, and indistinctly, he heard faint sounds—perhaps the cautious tread of roebuck, or rabbits in the bracken, or the patter of a stoat over dry leaves; perhaps the sullen retirement of some wild boar, winding man in the depths of his own domain, and sulkily ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... remarks addressed to him by saying, "What?" or, worse still, "Eh?" Often enough the reason that he does so is not that the child is deaf, nor that he is particularly slow to understand, but simply that he himself speaks so indistinctly that no matter what he says to the grown-up people around him, they bend over him and themselves utter the ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... that there is a peculiar charm in the songs introduced in Shakespeare, which, without conveying any distinct images, seem to recall all the feelings connected with them, like snatches of half-forgotten music heard indistinctly and at intervals. There is this effect produced by Ariel's songs, which (as we are told) seem to sound in the air, and as if the person playing them were invisible. We shall give one instance out of ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... yet come into the valley when the Sophomore opened the window, down in his own room; it was reaching out, still driven before a lazy wind. Indistinctly the singing of the Glee Club, rolling home from practice in the Quad, came through the damp twilight. Jimmie had been with them on the Christmas trip, tasting a social life he had known nothing of till then. Now they were going to run him for leader next year. He sat on his window ledge listening. ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... twentieth word or so is placed between two vertical lines, regarding which the reader is kept in the dark until he comes to this postscript: "In great haste, owing to business affairs, I add a sort of lexicon of indistinctly written words, which I have placed within brackets. This will probably make the letter appear very picturesque and piquant. The idea is not so bad. Adio, clarissima Cara, cara Clarissima." Then follows the "lexicon" of twenty ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... 30-30 and fired. Before the flash and the fumes had blinded me I, too, had seen indistinctly something low and prone gliding around the corner of the entrance. That was all we could make out of it, for as you can imagine the light was almost non-existent. The thing glided steadily, untouched ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... work, and, coming outside, closed the stable door. Then he walked a few paces along the little path stopping from time to time to gaze across the darkening landscape. A light mist was wreathed about the tops of the old lilac-bushes, where it glimmered so indistinctly that it seemed as if one might dispel it by a breath; and farther away the soft evening colours had settled over the great fields, beyond which a clear yellow line was just visible above the distant woods. ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... the morning," cooed the Dove, and with a gentle flutter they disappeared through the window. Indistinctly Marjorie heard the Ark cast away from the windowsill. And the voice of Capt. Noah came faintly ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... and Wyatt wrap themselves in their blankets and also lie down with their feet to the fire. All the Indians were at rest save two sentinels. Henry watched this strange scene a few minutes longer. The coals were dying fast and now he saw but indistinctly the figures of white men and red men, joined in a compact to destroy his people utterly, from the oldest man and woman ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... extent. From the road towards the house they lead through a very fine glen, by the side of a stream falling over a rocky bed, through the dark woods, with great variety on the sides of steep slopes, at the bottom of which the Liffey is either heard or seen indistinctly. These woods are of great extent, and so near the capital, form a retirement exceedingly beautiful. Lord Irnham and Colonel Luttrel have brought in the assistance of agriculture to add to the beauties of the place; they have kept a part of the lands in cultivation ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... concentration as if it had been a recipe for the Philosopher's Stone; he reproduced the lines and angles on fresh paper, and labored over the writing with a magnifying-glass and a dictionary. At times he would mutter indistinctly to himself, lift his eyebrows, nod or shake his head, bite his lips, and rub his forehead, and anon fall to work again with fresh vigor. At last he leaned back in his chair, thumped his hand on the table, ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... me alone. The room was very dark—only one lamp that gave a bad light—so that I saw her very indistinctly. She was in black, and, as far as I could see, extremely pale and weary. And what struck me painfully was her haggard, careless look. All the little details of her dress and hair seemed so neglected. Blanche says she is far too irritable and impatient in the mornings to let her hair be done as usual. ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... what a fool I was to get wet. I stood up and looked round me. A colossal figure, carved apparently in some white stone, loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons through the hazy downpour. But all else of ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Humphreys under a guard of six men, armed with muskets, was arraigned, and Smith and Kidder, seated upon a chest near him. The prisoner was asked a few questions touching his intentions, which he answered but low and indistinctly. The trial, if it may be so called, had progressed thus far, when Comstock made a speech in the following words. "It appears that William Humphreys has been accused guilty, of a treacherous and base act, in loading a pistol for the purpose of shooting Mr. Payne and myself. ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... embracing whole worlds and systems in one calm, searching, exhausting glance, the Divine character and utter holiness of all the truths presented to the view—these are broken words which serve at least to show what we may even 'now indistinctly covet in that bright abode of everlasting bliss. Intelligent intercourse with the angelic choirs, and the incessant transmission of the Divine splendours through them to our minds, cannot be thought ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... smouldering embers, to raise her head with an awakened attention to the whistling and pattering outside, and gradually to let it fall again lower and lower and lower as she sunk into a brooding state of thought, in which the noises of the night were as indistinctly regarded as is the monotonous rolling of a sea by one who sits in contemplation ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Madam Blennerhassett urged her horse along the river road, her vigilant eye kept her aware of a small boat, which, soon after her starting back from Marietta, she had seen glide out of the mouth of the Muskingum and drift down the Ohio, hugging close to the north shore. Indistinctly, through the mist, she could make out the shape of a man rowing the boat. Whenever she quickened the pace of her horse, the man plied his oars rapidly; whenever she slackened reins, the man slowed up; he kept opposite ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... were in fine spirits, intently watching the performance, when a pistol-shot was heard, and the first impression of every one was that it was fired on the stage. So thought Major Rathbone, until, looking around, he saw smoke and a man with a drawn dagger in his hand. The truth indistinctly flashed into his mind; he arose and seized the unknown man with both hands. A momentary scuffle ensued, in which the assassin made a thrust at the Major, grazing his breast and piercing his left arm near the shoulder. Something seemed to give way about the man's coat collar, and he disappeared. ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... again, on the last day of February, before the setting-out for Iceland. Gaud was standing up against her room door, pale and still. For Yann was below, chatting to her father. She had seen him come in, and indistinctly heard his voice. ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... the room. In a panic, Israel fled up the dark stairs, and near the top, in his eagerness, stumbled and fell back to the last step with a rolling din, which, reverberated by the arch overhead, smote through and through the wall, dying away at last indistinctly, like low muffled thunder among the clefts of deep hills. When raising himself instantly, not seriously bruised by his fall, Israel instantly listened, the echoing sounds of his descent were mingled with added shrieks from within the room. They seemed some nervous female's, ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... but rather indistinctly, my mother's white paneled housekeeper's room and the touch of oddness about it that she was not there, and the various familiar faces made strange by black, and I seem to recall the exaggerated self-consciousness that arose out of their focussed attention. No doubt ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... could but indistinctly see the face of the man, half hidden in his bed of fresh leaves. Not far from the hut was a covered fire where, cooking slowly, after the fashion of buccaneers, was a year-old boar. The stove or gridiron was formed by four forks driven into the earth, on which were hung cross-pieces, and on these ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... the Canal Zone police, who, though but twenty-six, was a full corporal, was for that night on duty as "train guard," and was waiting at the rear steps of the last car. As Aintree approached the steps he saw indistinctly a boyish figure in khaki, and, mistaking it for one of his own men, he clasped the handrail for support, ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... consultation with her father. My eye caught an article that interested me, and I read it through, forgetting for a moment all about my call there. Fully ten minutes elapsed, when of a sudden I heard the voice of a man speaking somewhat indistinctly in a room above that in which I was sitting. He seemed to be talking low and gruffly, so that I was unable to distinguish what was said. At last, however, the girl returned, and, asking me to follow her, conducted me to a bedroom ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... muttered, putting the things back into the sack, "unless we're claimed first as victims for the sacrifice," he added with a foolish laugh. He dragged the sack into the tent, for safety's sake, I suppose, and I heard him mumbling to himself, but so indistinctly that it seemed quite natural for me ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... day's fighting in the streets, rumpled all over and dishevelled down to my very heels. And I am afraid I blinked stupidly. All this was bad for the honour of letters and the dignity of their service. Seen indistinctly through the dust of my collapsed universe, the good lady glanced about the room with a slightly amused serenity. And she was smiling. What on earth was she smiling ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... under the ruined walls of the old redoubt called Fort Hut, stood a small group of cadets, indistinctly lighted by several moving dark-lanterns. While they were still twenty yards away, two men sprang out from behind a tree, grasped them by the arms, tied their elbows behind them, and, leading them off through the woods for a short distance, bound them to a tree out of sight ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... task when she glanced up and saw a face at her window—indistinctly, for even as she raised her head it drew back and faded into ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... in front of the depot. I saw the people getting on the train; these people were very indistinct. It is their motions rather than the people themselves which I see. I can feel myself getting on the train, finding a seat, and sitting down. I cannot hear the noise of the train, but can hear rather indistinctly the conductor calling the stations. I believe my mental imagery is more motile (of movement) than anything else. Although I can see some things quite plainly, I seem to feel ...
— Power of Mental Imagery • Warren Hilton
... very indistinctly formulated by the most advanced thinkers of the age, and only gradually developed by practice into actuality, was a vast one. It involved the embitterment of national jealousies, the accentuation of national characteristics, and the complication of antagonistic principles regarding secular ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... them to work out a national existence, broad enough and strong enough to satisfy the ambition of a great nation a century after its birth; Clinton was satisfied to conserve what he had, unmoved by the great possibilities even then indistinctly outlined to the eye of the statesman whose vision was fixed intently upon an undivided America. But Clinton wisely conserved what was given to his keeping. As he grew older he grew more tolerant and humane, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... number of lamps, as if in the air and unsupported. Looking more attentively, he saw standing closely together between the entrance and the lamps a forest of columns, the tops of which were lost in darkness. At a distance, perhaps two hundred yards from him, he saw indistinctly the gigantic legs of a sitting goddess with her hands resting on her knees, from which the lamplight ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... then murmured some few words indistinctly, in a very sweet voice, but showed no indication of feeling, except, as Helen gave one glance, she thought she saw a slight colour, like the inside of a shell, delicately beautiful; but it might be only the reflection from the crimson silk curtain near ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... was once reading inattentively, seated at my ease in a lounging chair, and my thoughts took quite another direction, wandering vaguely from one thing to another. All at once some people entered an adjoining room talking together; I heard what they said indistinctly, but the word Florence reached my ears, and I soon imagined myself to be in that city, and going on from one association to another I continued for some time to see again the places, monuments, and people I had known there. Yet ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... night the haziness cleared away, and in about half an hour afterwards a light was seen. It was imagined to be the light at the mouth of the Christiansand Fiord, the name of which, amidst the bustle and joyousness of the moment, I could but indistinctly learn, and cannot now remember. As midnight approached, our old friend the fog gathered density, and effectually deprived us of the slightest glimpse of the light; and we retired to rest ill at ease, plunged into the vale of anxiety ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... of our nature, that we know not how adequately to appreciate our preservation from an intercepted evil: it is indistinctly seen, like a distant object. The calamity must touch before its powers and magnitude can be estimated. The flames of the neighbouring pile, must stop at our very doors, before our gratitude becomes animated with its highest energies. If Providence were to unfold ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... long talk with Rykov, the President, or rather listened to a long lecture by him, only now and then succeeding in stopping him by forcing a question into the thread of his harangue. He stammers a little, and talks so indistinctly that for the first time (No. The first time was when Chicherin gabbled through the provisions of the Brest Treaty at the fourth All-Russian Assembly.) I felt willing to forgive normal Russians, who nearly always talk as if they were in Petrograd and their ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... choice plants into the position that best suited her good taste, and wiping the dust from its polished shelves. Her father's chair occupied its place by his favorite window that looked out upon the Juniata that was indistinctly seen, peeping its little spots of blue through the thick leaves of the plants that almost hid it from view. She took a last look, passing on to the aviary, where a choice collection of birds filled the ear with their melody. Old nurse had attended to this department, and ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... of the day, with the mingled prayer and chant, "rising and falling as on angels' wings," that duly, at each appointed eve, swell through the consecrated structure, filling its concave with solemn melody. The last flush of evening has died in the west, and the scattered worshippers are indistinctly seen by the dim lights, which, bringing out into strong relief the parts immediately adjacent to the massive yet graceful pillars to which they are attached, throw the rest of the interior into deeper gloom, brought into sharp contrast with the illuminated portions, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... hanging at Jacintha's girdle; he told, with much readiness, the occupation of every figure in the print, and could supply, from his imagination, what is supposed to be hidden by the foremost parts of all the objects. A child of four years old was asked, what was meant by something that was very indistinctly represented as hanging round the arm of a figure in one of the prints of the London Cries. He said it was a glove; though it had as little resemblance to a glove, as to a ribbon or a purse. When he was asked how he knew that it was a glove, he answered, "that it ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... ill-starred Harriet Shelley drowned herself in the Serpentine: her body was only recovered on the 10th of December, and the verdict of the Coroner's Jury was 'found drowned,' her name being given as 'Harriet Smith.' The career of Harriet since her separation from her husband is very indistinctly known. It has indeed been asserted in positive terms that she formed more than one connexion with other men: she had ceased to live along with her father and sister, and is said to have been expelled from their house. ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... chill, a gust of frozen air, and a shake of the room as great as if, in the wild wind, the casement had crashed in. The boy gave a loud, high shriek, which, lost in the rest of the shock of sound, might have seemed, indistinctly, though I was so close to him, a note either of jubilation or of terror. I jumped to my feet again and was conscious of darkness. So for a moment we remained, while I stared about me and saw that the drawn curtains were unstirred and the window tight. ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... preferences. The whole paragraph abounds in obscurities, and the word "cross-voting" is used in such a context as to make it quite uncertain whether the Commission mean by it inter- or intra-party voting, or both. It is somewhat difficult to make a definite answer to a charge so indistinctly formulated. Cross-voting, in the ordinary sense, may certainly affect the result. If the supporters of a Radical candidate prefer to give their second preferences to a Labour candidate rather than to a moderate Liberal, such cross-voting obviously may determine ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... redoubling and smoothing the fold over the now prisoned half-sheets, and he was about to hold up his hand as a sign to the nearest master that he wanted to speak; but he let it fall again upon the desk, and sat gazing down at some indistinctly seen lines upon the blotting-paper, which looked as if a letter had been inserted wet within ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... inquire how many are then flogged, or beaten, or otherwise evil-entreated, because they have flagged in an attention impossible in the days of childhood, and have not remembered a text, perhaps indistinctly or inaudibly given—let those parents or guardians, I say, inquire, and if but one poor youth has so suffered, let them be fully assured that that master, whatever may be his diligence, whatever may be his attainments, however high his ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... I recollected later, though I didn't seem to notice it at the time—that Harry's voice seemed to grow husky, and he spoke indistinctly. He had let the horse have the reins, and his arm was on the back of my seat. I hadn't noticed it; ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... from the dank water of a quarry pool abandoned long since to catfish and willows, a milk-white mist was rising eerily into the moonlight. Brian saw it but he saw it indistinctly. He was thinking of the boy's sister, her sweet face tragic with imploring. It lay in the mist and yet not in the mist, and it was binding him to obligation. He had written a promise. That promise he must keep. The face his memory etched upon the mist made ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... chink in the shutter. The criminal, pale of face, was lying on the floor, holding a pistol in his right hand. The blood-stained sabre was beside him. His expressive eyes were rolling in terror; at times he shuddered and clutched at his head, as if indistinctly recalling the events of yesterday. I could not read any sign of great determination in that uneasy glance of his, and I told the major that it would be better at once to give orders to the Cossacks to burst ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... indistinctly, as if his tongue were thick and unmanageable. He was staring enviously at Pelle's trouser pockets. "Is that your father?" ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... good-humor, and put her on the floor. Then he went back to the partly open door. It was quiet in the darkened room. He listened for a breath or a sob, and could hear neither. A curtain was drawn over the one window, and he could but indistinctly make out the darker shadow where Isobel lay on the bed. His heart beat faster as he softly called Isobel's name. There was no answer. He looked back. Little Isobel had found something on the floor and was amusing herself with it. Again he called the mother, and ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... questions; even the horses took on new energy, and plunged desperately through the frozen snow which one moment supported their weight and the next splintered in broken ice-cakes beneath them. Slowly the mole grew until in the gathering shadows it took on indistinctly the shape of a building, and just as the rising moon crested the ridge of the Pembina hills the travellers swung up at the door. Arthurs had carried the key of the padlock in his hand for the last mile; ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... called Bonci. They belonged to the peasant class, and were poor, even among the Papal peasantry. The family consisted of the father and mother, and of their son and daughter, both grown up. Between the father and son there had long been ill-blood. The cause of this want of family harmony is but indistinctly stated, but apparently it was due to the irregular habits of the son, and to the severity of the father; while all this domestic misery was rendered doubly bitter by the almost abject want of the household. On the night of November the 9th, 1856, Venanzio Bonci, ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... them and bidding them farewell returned to his own abode. When the citizens and Bhishma and Vidura had all ceased following, Kunti approached Yudhishthira and said, 'The words that Kshattri said unto thee in the midst of many people so indistinctly as if he did not say anything, and thy reply also to him in similar words and voice, we have not understood. If it is not improper; for us to know them I should then like to hear everything that had passed between him ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... laughing they returned to the side of the hall. Out of the haze he heard words, and knew indistinctly that they were ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... four nights ago that they were all killed together. I remember the night myself indistinctly—it is like a dream. We were on patrol—they, I, Mesnil Andre, and Corporal Bertrand; and our business was to identify a new German listening-post marked by the artillery observers. We left the trench towards midnight and crept down the slope in line, three or four paces from each other. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... reminiscences of the widely known story of Floire and Blanchefleur; reversing the parts, so that here it is the hero who is the Christian, while the heroine is a Saracen captive baptized in her early years. The general outline of the plot also resembles indistinctly the plot of Floire and Blanchefleur, though its topography is somewhat indefinite, and a certain amount of absurd adventure in strange lands is interwoven with it. With these exceptions, however, few literary productions of the Middle Ages can rival 'Aucassin and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Sundays. One Sunday—it was the coldest day that winter—I went to Falmouth and visited a drinking place kept by one McPhillipps. While there I drank eleven glasses of whisky. At nine o'clock in the evening, I can indistinctly remember, I mounted my horse and started home, and from that moment until the next day I knew nothing whatever that took place. From the way I was bruised and battered I judge that I must have struck almost every fence corner between ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... fiery indignation. "Is it of stealing that bank-note of Galloway's that you presume to accuse my brother?" he asked, speaking indistinctly ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... passing Euston. It was a muggy, slushy night, with a thin brown fog wreathing the houses and fading away above their tops into a dull, slate-blue sky. The wet street looked like a black canal; the blurred forms, less like vehicles than nondescript boats, moving over its inky surface, were indistinctly reflected therein; the gas-lights flared redly through the murky haze. It was not a pleasant evening in which ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... It is face to face, "solus cum solo," in all matters between man and his God. He alone creates; He alone has redeemed; before His awful eyes we go in death; in the vision of Him is our eternal beatitude. "Solus cum solo:"—I recollect but indistinctly the effect produced upon me by this volume, but it must have been considerable. At all events I had got a key to a difficulty; in these sermons (or rather heads of sermons, as they seem to be, taken down by a hearer) there is much of what would be called ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... narrow passage, where unlimited wall stares me in the face. Do I still dream, or is this actually one of 'le mie prigioni'? I rub my eyes for a third time, and look about the semi-darkened vault. Somebody is snoring. I gaze in the direction whence the sound proceeds, and observe indistinctly an object huddled together in a corner. So, this is no dream, after all; and that heap of sleeping humanity is not Napoleon, but my companion, ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... somewhat indistinctly, for he did not remove his cigar from his mouth in speaking, "only a reality which we always cross out again on awaking. Those are experiences which we always throw into the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... with loud shouts, and the thronged city's din, But with such sounds as bid all tumult cease Of the sick heart; the grasshopper's faint pipe Beneath the blades of dewy grass unripe, The bleat of the lone lamb, the carol rude Heard indistinctly from the village green, The bird's last twitter, from the hedge-row seen, Where, just before, the scattered crumbs I strewed, To pay him for his farewell song;—all these Touch soothingly the troubled ear, and please The stilly-stirring fancies. Though my ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... first nearly smothered by the descent of snow, but when the first surprise was over they recognized their prisoner. I am ashamed to say that their feeling was that of unbounded delight, and they burst into a roar of laughter. The sound, indistinctly heard, terrified the old lady beyond measure, and she struggled frantically to escape, nearly poking out Pomp's eye with the ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Tall as the stag of Morven, moved stately before them the King.[5] His shining shield is on his side, like a flame on the heath at night; when the world is silent and dark, and the traveler sees some ghost sporting in the beam. Dimly gleam the hills around, and show indistinctly their oaks. A blast from the troubled ocean removed the settled mist. The sons of Erin appear, like a ridge of rocks on the coast; when mariners, on shores unknown are trembling at ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... his life, the Burgomaster forced his way, through a storm of bullets and falling masonry, into the strong tower that protected the Peter Gate. Having at last succeeded in ascending the narrow stone stairs and reaching the vaulted guard-room, he was able to make out indistinctly, through the smoke and dust that filled the room, the forms of a number of men who were keeping up an incessant and almost deafening fire on the enemy through the narrow loop-holes with which the thick walls ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... detail, with a view to ascertain whether any indication of the presence of a second person having visited the chamber with Merton was discoverable. Nothing, however, appeared, except that the valet mentioned the noise and the exclamations which he had indistinctly heard. ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... guns, I stood near them for about a minute to contemplate the scene: it was grand beyond description. Hougoumont and its wood sent up a broad flame through the dark masses of smoke that overhung the field; beneath this cloud the French were indistinctly visible. Here a waving mass of long red feathers could be seen; there, gleams as from a sheet of steel showed that the cuirassiers were moving; 400 cannon were belching forth fire and death on every side; the roaring ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... was very dark with the blackness of the sky outside, and Jeannie could see Daisy but indistinctly. Then with a wicked flare of lightning it leaped into light, and the thunder rattled round the eaves. But in that moment's flash Jeannie saw Daisy's face again, mute, white, and appealing, and it was intolerable to her. ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... few moments later the canoe grated softly on a pebbly beach. Isaac saw, indistinctly in the morning mist, the faint outlines of tepees and wigwams, and he knew he was once more in the encampment of ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... which swayed idly to and fro with each light air current, and gazed expectantly upward. Nothing happened. Again a jerk, given this time with a certain vindictive delight. A muffled "Ouch!" came from the open window as a splotch of animated white appeared indistinctly behind the dark screen. ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... hanged—a satisfaction to justice, but a wretched consolation to his family, by whom, as the youngest, and amiable as he was gentle, he was most fondly loved. His father and sister, I believe, were never made acquainted with the true cause of his death. A letter of Henry's relating, though indistinctly, for evident reasons, to the sad occurrence, will be placed before the reader. Harriet, as I have said, the only sister (who married a Dr. Leath, a physician in the army, who resides still at Bayswater) died not very ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... this at the homecoming of the troops. They came home twice. The impression they produced the first time was certainly a great, though not a deep one. It was purely external, and indistinctly merged together: garlands on the houses and across the streets, the dense throng of people, the flower-decked soldiers, marching in step to the music under a constant shower of flowers from every window, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... hook, for was not her talk with Meeghan's quite finished? Jack Dalhousie had killed himself. Sackcloth and ashes would not get a telegram to him now.... And then, some flying remembrance of the bearer of the tidings struck through her numbness, and she caught down the receiver again and said indistinctly: ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... sentences were words impossible to catch the meaning of, so indistinctly were they uttered, some being said beneath his breath, some muttered and inarticulate, ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... quiet in her silent walk." The scene accorded with my feelings; it was wild and grand; and the spreading twilight had almost confounded the distant sea with the barren, blue hills that melted from my sight. I sat down on a rising ground; the rays of the departing sun illumined the horizon, but so indistinctly, that I anticipated their total extinction. The death of Nature led me to a still more interesting subject, that came home to my bosom, the death of him I loved. A village-bell was tolling; I listened, and thought ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... the door to an adjoining room was thrown open and the bank's president stood revealed. At his back was the chairman of the board and also the cashier, while somewhat indistinctly associated with the sombre elegance of the room beyond were the figures of a peeping stenographer and an open-mouthed secretary whose neck was gallantly stretched almost to the point of dislocation because he was too much of ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... girl strays away some day with a little bundle of clothes, and a coin or two, or is fetched away by some far-sighted pedlar in such human wares, who buys them as bird-fanciers buy the finches from the nets; and then, years and years afterwards, the town or hamlet hears indistinctly of some great prima donna, or of some lark-throated tenor, that the big world is making happy as kings, and rich as kings' treasurers, and the people carding the flax or shelling the chestnuts say to ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... as a pin or a leaf, being painted with the same care and accuracy as principal objects, this is a defect in drawing, that argues a singular want of reflection. In nature, we see distinctly the figure and its more prominent parts, but we see the minute accessorial parts so indistinctly, that sometimes we can scarcely tell what they are. The precise detailing of these objects, therefore, may have the truth of fact, but it is destitute of the truth ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... others. A shot went off on deck above my head, then another; shot followed shot, nine in all. Johansen and Henriksen rushed down for more cartridges, and declared that the creature was shot, it was roaring so horribly; but so far they had only indistinctly seen a large grayish-white mass out there in the dark, moving about among the dogs. Now they were going on to the ice after it. Four of them set off, and not far away they really did find a dead bear, with marks of two shots. ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... result in the complete eradication of the natural tendency to "baby-talk" which is too often encouraged and aided by the habit of parents in REPEATING THE BABY-TALK. In no case, should defective utterances be repeated, no matter how "cute" the utterance may seem at the time. Many speak indistinctly throughout their entire life simply because of the habit of their parents in repeating baby-talk, thus confirming incorrect images of ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... bags had been placed inside the car, and others were being pushed in after them. What did they contain? For the moment I was puzzled. Then suddenly the obvious truth flashed across me. The group of men—I could see them indistinctly in the darkness—must be poachers, and poaching out of season I knew to be an offence punishable in France with a very heavy sentence. There seemed to be five men engaged in handling the sacks, while a ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... not distinctly hear. In mercy's name, I thought, what a band of ruffians is at work here. I quickened my gait and had come nearly opposite the thick grove, whence the noises proceeded, when my eye caught, indistinctly through the foliage of the scrub oaks and hickories that intervened, glimpses of a man or men who seemed to be in a violent struggle. Occasionally, too, I could catch those deep-drawn, emphatic oaths which men utter when they ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... listlessly at her side. She resembled a statue of darkness seated on a milestone. In her attitude there was an air of stern determination and the necessary patience to wait there forever. The passers-by, the carriages, the street—she saw them all indistinctly and as if they were far away. The tow-horse, waiting to assist in drawing the omnibuses up the hill,—a white horse, he was,—stood in front of her, worn out and motionless, sleeping on his feet, with his head and forefeet in the bright light from the door: she did not see him. ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... active—called on Mrs. le Terry and rode over the Downs once with Robin—but he managed to leave a flock of very active impressions behind him. That, as he knew well, was his strong point. He could not be with you a day without vaguely, almost indistinctly, but nevertheless quite certainly, influencing your opinions. He never said anything very definite, and, on looking back, you could never assert that he had positively taken any one point of view; but he had left, as it were, atmosphere—an assurance that this was the ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... presents a grotesque appearance. If indistinctly viewed in the hazy distance they are easily mistaken for the plumed topknots of a band of prowling Apaches, particularly if the imagination is active with the fear of ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... avenue when they heard a man's steps, rapid and firm. A moment later they could see the figure, though indistinctly, in the shadow. For one moment Gerard hesitated, then with an oath he sprang behind a thick shrub, leaving her free. Immediately she was running towards the house, her heart palpitating, her breath coming and going in gasps. She felt that she must ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... large water-colour, admirably executed, representing a broad moon-lit river, concealed amid the tall reeds of which a man is portrayed, picking off the game as it comes down the opposite bank to drink, the character of the sportsman's "bag" being indicated by several prone shapes that, indistinctly as they are seen in the misty moonlight, yet admirably suggest the idea of slain rhinoceros, buffalo, lion, and giraffe. And so on, all round the walls, each picture in fact being a more or less truthful delineation of some specially thrilling ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... three artists benighted and without shelter, one a woman - a delicate woman - in evening dress - in an interesting situation. This will not fail to touch the woman's heart of Madame, whom I perceive indistinctly behind Monsieur her husband, and whose face speaks eloquently of a well-regulated mind. Ah! Monsieur, Madame - one generous movement, and you make three people happy! Two or three hours beside your fire - I ask it of Monsieur in the name of Art ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as marking the south-east angle of the lake, I again saw; but so indistinctly, though the atmosphere was very clear, that I imagined it to be at least forty miles distant. It is due east of my station on Observatory Hill. I further draw my conclusions from the fact, that all the hills on the ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... flustered indistinctly, and, turning suddenly, ran from him towards it, taking refuge in its ordinariness against Goodwin and all the strangeness with which he seemed to ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... agencies. On moonlight nights a shadowy ship was sometimes seen standing off and on, or when fogs encompassed sea and shore, the noise of oars rising and falling in their rowlocks could be heard muffled and indistinctly during the night. Whatever foundation there might have been for these stories, it was certain that a more weird and desolate-looking spot could not have been selected for their theatre. High hills, verdureless and enfiladed with dark canadas, cast ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... to their friends—others, Anthony Dalaber among them, were placed on their trial, and being terrified at their position, recanted, and were sentenced to do penance. Ferrars was brought to Oxford for the occasion, and we discern indistinctly (for the mere fact is all which survives) a great fire at Carfax; a crowd of spectators, and a procession of students marching up High Street with fagots on their shoulders, the solemn beadles leading them with gowns and maces. The ceremony was ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... no more, nor indeed, knew more until he indistinctly heard a far-off call of "Guard! Guard!" Then he opened his eyes to find he was on the solid earth, once more. Polly was stretched out on the sand. The Guards tumbled out of the barracks and rushed for the spot where ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... lower part of the ball. It is this shading which gives so admirably the effect of light shining on a convex surface. If one of the balls be examined, it will be seen that the lower part is of a brown tint and is indistinctly separated by a curved oblique line from the upper part, which is yellower and more leaden; this curved oblique line runs at right angles to the longer axis of the white patch of light, and indeed of all the shading; but this difference in colour, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... isosyllabic rules of the Welsh englyn, is infinitely more complicated but we believe our readers will agree that the spirit has been well caught. Perhaps it should be added that the effect is greatly increased if Owen's verse be spoken somewhat slowly and indistinctly in a ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... posterity, it is sometimes necessary that he should throw his voice over to them in a vast arch—it must sweep a parabola—which, therefore, rises high above the heads of those next to him, and is heard by the bystanders but indistinctly, like bees swarming in the upper air before they settle on ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... a bold and skilful soldier, with a great desire to distinguish himself. He wished to review this regiment, and had commenced business before the dawn. While the light was still uncertain and feeble, and his battalions were under arms, he indistinctly perceived infantry troops forming at the end of the street, in front of him. He knew by the order's given on the previous evening that no other review was to take place except his own. He immediately feared, therefore, some surprise, marched at once to these troops, whom he found to be Imperialists, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... his horse slowly, and the cab went by the constable, whose lamp showed the interior very indistinctly, the cab window being drawn up, and then the sight and sound of the vehicle died out in the fog, and all was once ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... done suspect de redcoats is comin'; d'ye heah 'em from de woods ober dar?" pointing with trembling hand in the direction of a sound which rang out on the frosty air at first indistinctly, and then resolved ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... place, only a limited number of these prospective teachers were in any real sense acquainted with what may be called the basic traditional material. Rhymes, fables, myths, stories were so vaguely and indistinctly held in mind that they were practically of no great value. It was therefore not possible to assume much real acquaintance with the material needed for use with children, and the securing of such an acquaintance seemed the first essential. After all is said, a discussion of ways and means ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... dog quickened his pace to a trot and began to wave his big, bushy tail in friendly greeting to something that, farther on in the dark, could not be seen by the little girl's mother and the big brothers. And when he came near the wide, closed door of the barn, in front of which showed indistinctly the forms of a large and a small animal, he leaped forward with a welcoming bark that was answered by another from a dog lying in the ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... ended the conversation. Olive resumed her own knitting, seeing it but indistinctly. Her husband did not continue his newspaper reading. Instead he rose and, saying something about cal'latin' he would go for a little walk before turning in, ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Born in orders other than humanity and growing old in their respective acts, even thus they become human beings that are, of course, ordained to return. Coming to sinful births and becoming Chandalas or human beings that are deaf or that lisp indistinctly, they attain to higher and higher castes, one after another in proper turn, transcending the Sudra order, and other (consequences of) qualities that appertain to Darkness and that abide in it in course of migrations in this world.[106] Attachment to objects of desire ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... same mistake with the nail shortly after. I have often made similar observations. We may certainly conclude that the wasp saw something of the size of a fly, but without distinguishing the details; therefore she saw it indistinctly. Evidently a wasp does not only perceive motion; she also distinguishes the size of objects. When I put dead flies on a table to be carried off by another wasp, she took them, one after another, as well as spiders and other insects of but little ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... and gravest going first, with myself closing up the rear, who thought I could not do better than follow the example of such grave and warrantable personages. We got in. The steps went up. The coach drove off. The murmurs of mine hostess, not very indistinctly or ambiguously pronounced, became after a time inaudible, and now my conscience, which the whimsical scene had for a while suspended, beginning to give some twitches, I waited, in the hope that some justification ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... besides, I suspect the story of sweating gold was only one of the many fables got up to make the Jews odious and afford a pretext for plundering them. As for the sound like a woman laughing and crying, I never said it was a woman's voice; for, in the first place, I could only hear indistinctly; and, secondly, he may have an organ, or some queer instrument or other, with what they call the voce umana stop. If he moves his bed round to get out of draughts, or for any such reason, there is nothing very frightful in that simple operation. Most ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... the impulse of her hand until they stood at the gaping window. The murmur, which he had heard indistinctly a moment before, had grown to a roar of voices. The mob, on its return eastward along the Rue St. Honore, was nearing the house. He stood, his arm supporting her, and they waited, a little within the window. Suddenly he stooped, his face hardly less white than hers: their ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... hard to do, for all that," he answered indistinctly. "I have said too much," he continued, stopping before her. "I meant to do the best I could. Perhaps I should have said nothing. This is no time to stop at trifles. The man is dying, and I have a right to say that I believe you might save ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... if his words were inaudible to Lanyard. The lieutenant quite evidently submitted only in form; his salute was punctiliously correct and curt; and as the commander lumbered off down the landing stage, he grumbled indistinctly in ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... indistinctly shown in the yellow glow, was recognized by Jack as the Sauk Hay-uta; the second was Deerfoot the Shawanoe. The latter smiled in his shadowy way, and shook one finger as a warning to his friend not to betray the presence of ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... chair beside the fireplace. There he used to sit, gazing with a somewhat dim serenity of aspect at the figures that came and went, amid the rustle of papers, the administering of oaths, the discussion of business, and the casual talk of the office; all which sounds and circumstances seemed but indistinctly to impress his senses, and hardly to make their way into his inner sphere of contemplation. His countenance, in this repose, was mild and kindly. If his notice was sought, an expression of courtesy and interest gleamed out upon his features, proving that there was ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sang, a voice from the Cabinet, a deep contralto, joined in, loudly. Soon something resembling in outline a human form covered with drapery appeared at the Cabinet. It was indistinctly luminous. No face was visible; nor could the face of any other Spirit, which appeared during the evening, be discerned even in faintest outline. The light seemed to belong entirely to the drapery. ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... moving ray of sunshine touched the plain below. In front, the road ran across a marsh, between deep ditches where tall sedges grew. Beyond the marsh, wet sands stretched back to the blurred woods across a bay, and farther off, low hills loomed indistinctly ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... worthy and ingenious friend, Mr. Andrew Lumisden, by his accurate acquaintance with France, enabled me to make out many proper names, which Dr. Johnson had written indistinctly, and sometimes spelt erroneously. Boswell. Lumisden is mentioned in Boswell's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... length of hind foot, 16.5, 17 (17-18); length of ear, 6.5, 6.6 (6.0-7.0). Color: Upper parts Cream Buff, lined with black and giving a pale olivaceous appearance; lateral line near (16'd) Light Ochraceous-Buff; postauricular patches Cream Buff; subauricular patches and underparts white; tail indistinctly bicolor, dusky above, whitish below. Skull: Size medium for species (see Table 1); braincase and auditory bullae moderately inflated; interorbital region narrow; mastoidal ...
— Geographic Distribution of the Pocket Mouse, Perognathus fasciatus • J. Knox Jones, Jr.
... the colour of the wood was also a great factor in the value, that of wine mixed with honey being most highly prized. The defect in that kind of table was called "lignum," which denoted a dull, log colour, with stains and flaws and an indistinctly patterned grain. Pliny says the barbarous tribes buried the wood in the ground when green, giving it first a coating of wax. When it came into the workmen's hands they put it for a certain number of days under a heap of ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... at the door of the cell now—the key was being turned in the lock, and when the door opened, Adam saw indistinctly that there were several faces there. He was too agitated to see more—even to see that Mr. Irwine's face was one of them. He felt that the last preparations were beginning, and he could stay no longer. Room was silently made for him to depart, and he went to his chamber ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... was mumbling indistinctly in the depths of the cellar, and gave no sign of ascending, his master dived down to him, leaving me vis-a-vis with the ruffianly bitch and half a dozen four-footed fiends that suddenly broke into a fury, while I parried ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... trumpet in the other. Theophilus Parsons, not long afterwards made Chief Justice of the State, was arguing before him one day when the judge, under the misconception into which a deaf old person so easily falls, that the younger generation all speak hurriedly and indistinctly, cried out, "Mr. Parsons, I tell you once for all, take that glove off your tongue." "Certainly, Sir," was the quick retort, "and may I beg your honor to take the wool out of your ears?"[Footnote: "Memoir of Theophilus ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... like a drunken man, with drops of sweat standing on his brow and with parched mouth. Sometimes he unconsciously raised his hand to wipe the dust from his burning eyes, but he cared little that he saw very indistinctly what was passing around him, for there could be nothing more beautiful than what he beheld ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... desires to specify the temperaments of his personages. In the clothes and hair and various parts of the accoutrements, the colour is no more exact nor expressive than is, as I have said, the form itself. When a red appears, it is not of a delicate nature and it indistinctly expresses silk, cloth, or satin. The guard loading his musket is clothed in red from head to foot, from his hat to his boots. Do you perceive that Rembrandt has occupied himself for a moment with the varied physiognomy of this red, its nature or substance, as a true colourist would not have failed ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... to him indistinctly because of the clatter of the birds. "Maitre Ranulph! Ranulph!" She could not see him, for this part of the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... quivering lip, struck to Radclyffe's heart more than her words. He rose involuntarily; his own agitation was marked; he moved several steps towards Constance, and then checked the impulse, and muttered indistinctly to himself. ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... eye had seen I leave the reader to guess. She suppressed the scream that rose to her lips, but the effort cost her dear. Soon the left hand of the hermit began to swim indistinctly before her gloating eyes; and with a deep sigh her head drooped, and she lay like a ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade |
