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More "Inaudible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... MILNER tells me his earliest idea was to get a pair of the boots, put 'em on, and surprise SPEAKER by approaching with noiseless tread from behind Chair, lean over his shoulder, and suddenly say, "Boo!" That, MILNER thought, would be conclusive proof of the efficacy of the boots as making the tread inaudible. On other hand, SPEAKER mightn't like it. So, by way of compromise, brought down odd boot in tail-pocket of his coat, and shook it at HOME SECRETARY ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 25, 1893 • Various
... a single month makes wild changes in the prospects of the system, and involves us not only in new calculations but in a newer phase of things. At any rate it can do no harm, in the present period of excitement, to preach a little moderation, even though our voice should be as inaudible as the chirp of a sparrow on the house-top. The speculative spirit of the age may be checked and controlled, but it cannot be put down, nor would we wish to see it pass away. All great improvement is the fruit ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... she is listening—listening to the sobs, almost inaudible, which now and then escape from the beloved one at her side. As they grow fainter and fainter and gradually die away altogether till stillness reigns through the whole dormitory, she rouses and bending forward on her elbow, looks long and ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... she expected to come upon the Russian girl. At every other step she paused and listened, but no sound met her ears except a slight, regular, thudding noise, which she presently discovered, with something of a shock, to be the beating of her own heart. The sound of her progress was almost inaudible. As the day was damp, she was wearing goloshes, and her small, rubber-shod feet fell upon the stone floor with a gentle ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... about her head to the measure; buckled her boots and buttoned her habit; and then, veiled and gauntleted she went down the stairs, still keeping time to the inaudible tune:— ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... say more, but his words were inaudible, and at a signal from the Captain four of the men hurried up, to lace their hands into a bearing, and, keeping step, they bore the ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... of his breast. It was as unintentional as the birth of a thought in the head, and he heard nothing of it himself. It all became extinct at once—thought, intention, effort—and of his cry the inaudible vibration added to the tempest waves ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... was almost inaudible, and no wonder, for poor Hans had fainted. There he lay under the huge bulk of the gorilla, just his nose and mouth appearing between the brute's body and its arm. Had it not been for the soft cushion of wet moss in which he reclined, ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... that a message should be sent, through Sir Charles Wood, expressive of his love and devotion to the Queen, and of his determination to do his work to the last possible moment. His voice, faint and inaudible at first, gained strength with the earnestness of the words which came forth as if direct from his heart, and which, as soon as pronounced, left him prostrate with the exertion. He begged, at the same time, that his "best blessing" might be sent to the Secretaries of the Indian Government, ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... engulfed him, had been spent amid just such surroundings, in just such silences, on the banks of just such wilderness rivers. The same sky line of dark, heaven-reaching spruce had fronted him of old. He sprang up, his eyes blazing. "I remember everything," an inaudible voice spoke within him. Then he whispered, fervently, to his familiar wilds. "And I have ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... embraces her. There is tenderness between them. Their bodies, indeed, seem to have become overtones that mate in a delicious and inaudible melody. But this melody must be brought closer so that its beauty may be more definitely enjoyed. This melody must be played on instruments and ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... was even lower that answered him. The sharp tap of a pipe on the mantelpiece cancelled the words. And perhaps Jacob only said "hum," or said nothing at all. True, the words were inaudible. It was the intimacy, a sort of spiritual suppleness, when mind prints ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... she threw herself back and imprinted her burning lips upon the cold paper. With one letter pressed to her heart, and another pressed to her lips, she gave herself up completely, exclaiming in an inaudible voice: "I love ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... another man on the platform at the rear attempted to address the crowd, but his voice was inaudible in the din of howls, catcalls, hooting and obscene curses. After about an hour of this, as the crowd began pushing against the van and trying to overturn it, the terrified horses commenced to get restive and uncontrollable, and the man on the box ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... down the stun-pistol trigger and traversed the rushing men. The whining buzz of the weapon was inaudible, at first, but before he released the trigger it was plainly to be heard. Then there was silence. His attackers formed a very untidy heap on the floor. They breathed stertorously. Hoddan began to retrieve his possessions. He rolled a ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... hesitated a moment. Then he too leaned forward, the band pressing into his chest. He was breathing heavily. There was an almost inaudible click. ...
— Double Take • Richard Wilson
... four times, or oftener, that after proceeding a certain way in the service, he has on a sudden stopped short, and after a silence, apparently quite unable to resume, he has fallen into solitary, inaudible prayer, his hands and his eyes uplifted, and then pale as death, and in the agitation of a strange shame and horror, descended trembling, and got into the vestry-room, leaving his congregation, without ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... in the books of power which silently moves them forward with the inaudible advance of the successive files in the ranks of the generations, and which makes them contemporary with each generation. For while the mediaeval frame-work upon which Dante constructed the "Divine Comedy" becomes obsolete, ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... approach of the Mohawk, was his cautious "'Sh!" uttered just loud enough to reach their ears. Not one of the three had been able to detect the slightest sound that indicated what the scout was doing, so skillfully had he conducted the whole affair. Ned returned the almost inaudible exclamation to apprise their friend that they were expecting him. A minute later, the Mohawk appeared among them with the silence ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... Sarah's answer was quite inaudible to ordinary ears, but it caused Dan to loosen his hold; and the girl, bounding away like a frightened gazelle, ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... Phillip Lawson's reply was inaudible for the merry group came on at a rapid rate and surrounded them with all the fishing ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... the steps four at a time and rushed into the fencing-school. Here we heard the cry of the wolf alone, prolonged beneath the echoing arches the distant barking and yelling of the pack became almost inaudible in the distance; the dogs were hoarse with rage and excitement, their chains were getting entangled together. Perhaps they were strangling ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... Christianity with indifference, under any form which it might assume, or however masked. Yet there were quarters in which it lurked not liable to the ordinary modes of attack. Christianity was creeping up with inaudible steps into high places,—nay, into the very highest. The immediate predecessor of Decius upon the throne, Philip the Arab, was known to be a disciple of the new faith; and amongst the nobles of Rome, through the females ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... demanded he, in a whisper which would have been inaudible to an ear less quick than that of the ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... urgent, in an undertone. The woman added inaudible persuasion to his argument. The boy looked from one to another with a semi-stupid smile; but wagged ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... spoiling, by never letting me feel its effects. By the time I had sense enough to regret this as a fault, I had grown too old for changing of ingrain, long-nurtured habits—perhaps I never wished it really. You have seen," and his voice was nearly inaudible, "what my carelessness has come to—let that suffice at least, as a lesson that may spare you—what your father must feel as long ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... patio, and which were perfectly quiet, as we could perceive from the trolley-cars grinding and squealing under their windows. The manager (if that was the quality of the patient and amiable old official who received us) seemed surprised to see the cars there, perhaps because they were so inaudible; but he said we could have rooms in the annex, fronting on the adjoining plaza and siding on an inoffensive avenue where there were absolutely no cars. The interior, climbing to a lofty roof by a succession of galleries, was hushed by four ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... to Lord GLADSTONE members of the Labour Unions surrounded the hotel and booed loudly with a view to making the speeches inaudible. As the first serious attempt to protect diners from an orgy of oratory this incident ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... collapsed, and an old successful melodrama was revived to carry the Imperium over the early summer months. In this production, as a protegee of Miss Wainwright's, Clara played a small part in which she had ten words to say.... She was quite inaudible though she seemed to herself to be using every atom of voice in her slim young body, but always her voice seemed to fill her own head until it must ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... every repetition of these scenes, each one of which promised to be the last. And the fire and the stake and the executioner had come very near to her; no doubt a whole murmuring world of rumour, of strange information about herself, never long inaudible, never heard outside of the Castle of Rouen, rose half-comprehended from the echoing courtyard outside and the babble of her guards within. She would hear even as she was conveyed along the echoing stone passages something here and there of the popular expectation:—a burning! the wonderful ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... miraculous means, keep this tone prolonged. The tempo is abnormally slow, and the tone is not in a position where the sustaining pedal can sensibly help it. Yet under Rubinstein's fingers it swelled and diminished, and went singing into D, as if the instrument were an organ. I suspected the inaudible changing of fingers on the note or a sustaining pedal. It ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... I have not gone mad," he said. "Many a time I have prayed that I might or that I might find courage to end this miserable life and go to join my brother. But I am a coward, a coward——" His voice lowered till it was almost inaudible and tears trickled through the long white fingers. "I have not the courage even to die. There is a tribunal above that I should have to face, more just, more awful, than any man-made law. There you have ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... choked cry; and Linda's voice, that new, deep, terrible voice, answered him, "Never mind, my dearest—just a minute, that's all! Mother is taking care of you!" And Harriet heard her sister say, in a breath almost inaudible: "Thy will be done—Thy ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... words he warned Alice, as he left him, of the wild and sudden manner in which their conversation had been broken off, and strongly urged her to send for instant medical advice. She did so; and after taking leave of him, and murmuring in an almost inaudible voice the words, "Pray for us!" she returned to her post with that sinking of heart, and strength of spirit, which those only know who feel acutely, and never give way. She did not inform Mrs. Middleton of the alarming symptoms which ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... of heaven are suddenly abloom with light? On such a night immortality is written on earth and sky; in the silence and darkness there is no hint of death; a sweet and fragrant life seems to breathe its subtle, inaudible music through all things. In the depths of the woods one feels no loneliness; no liquid note of hermit thrush is needed to make that silence music. The harmony of universal movement, rounded by one thought, carried forward by one power, guided to one end, is there for ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... could only follow them in part, and enter into them still less, as none of them (except Dr. D.) seemed to speak any tongue but their own with any freedom, but you would have been amused to see and hear them, and me in the midst. I never saw men who spoke together in a way to make one another inaudible as they did, always excepting Dr. Doellinger, who sat like Rogers, being as he is a much more refined man than the rest. But of the others I assure you always two, sometimes three, and once all four, were ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... good hands and legs. He could see, hear, smell, taste and feel, and he had a soul with five more senses still turned upward toward the infinite and eternal by which he could see the invisible and hear the inaudible. He felt almost happy by contrast with the fools he had left shuffling over the floor of ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... on the backs of the sheep, keeps incessant watch upon it. Their chief deity, the father Zeus of the Northern pantheon, was Odin, the god of war, who wakened the spirit of battle by flinging his spear over the heads of the people, its inaudible hiss from heaven being as the song of Ate let loose on earth. Next in rank was Thor, the personification of the exploding tempest. The crashing echoes of the thunder are his chariot wheels rattling through ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... suggestion, hardly novel, that the first few minutes of each act should be confined to immaterial affairs; blame the unpunctual—even if you blame unfairly, since, as a rule, the entr'acte warning bell is inaudible in most parts of the theatre—but do not make the guiltless suffer by presenting important matters during the time when the stage is half hidden by the people struggling (through a passage as a rule shamefully narrow) to get to their seats. Sardou's precepts ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... M. le Baron?" he enquired in a voice which was naturally loud and strong, but had been reduced by careful training to a tone inaudible at the distance ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... in the ghostly light of morning at Monet's face, white and immobile, the thin and shapely lips parted ever so slightly, and marvel at the bland and childlike faith that was the basis of this almost breathless and inaudible sleep. Fred had made friendships in his life, warm, hand-clasping, shoulder-thumping friendships, but they had been of gradual unfolding. Never before had anyone ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... permit Croisenois to descend the stairs first, when he felt his coat gently pulled, and, turning round, saw that the Duchess, too weak to rise to her feet, had crawled to him on her knees. The unhappy woman had heard everything, and in an almost inaudible voice ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... studying something on the misty outskirts of the Fleet. The Quartermaster at the wheel was watching the compass card with a silent intensity that made his face look as if it had been carved in bronze. The telegraph-men maintained a conversation that was pitched in a low, deep note inaudible two yards away. It concerned the photograph of a mutual lady acquaintance, and has no place ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... peasants, citizens, soldiers, nobles, women with bare heads, ladies in their silks, entering the churches individually, kneeling for moments or for hours, and directing their inaudible devotions to the shrine of some saint of their own choice. In his hallowed person, they felt themselves possessed of an own friend in heaven. They were too humble to approach the Deity directly. Conscious of their ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... us by experience; yet he is being, for he alone is supremely real, for the universe subsists by him. We ourselves are but he, and yet we know not what he is. Whatever we can experience, whatever we can express, is limited, but he is the unlimited, the basis of all. "That which is inaudible, intangible, invisible, indestructible, which cannot be tasted, nor smelt, eternal, without beginning or end, greater than the great (mahat), the fixed. He who knows it is released from the jaws of death [Footnote ref 2]." Space, time and causality do not ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... to be ashamed of himself for talking as he did to Edward," said Mrs. Brigham abruptly, but in an almost inaudible voice. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... Brun were waving their hats wildly, and even the Doctor's enemies roared applause at this unexpected defiance. Once more a few sentences were inaudible, but they could hear him say: "To my friends—I myself should always prefer weapons purely intellectual, and to these an evolved humanity will certainly confine itself. But our own most precious truth is the fundamental force of matter and heredity. My books are successful; ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... while MRS. ROBERTS shrinks back under the curtain of her berth in dismay, and stammers some inaudible excuse, slowly emerges full ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... well as to all of his friends, that before the hour should expire the spirit of the dying would pass to the tribunal of that God in whose presence both prince and peasant are alike. The memory of all past sins, in such an hour, often crowds the soul with its tumultuous array. In whispering tones, inaudible to others, a few words were interchanged between the dying man and his wife. Then two illegitimate children, who were born to the duke when he was an exile in London, were brought in. It seems that he had ever recognized them as his own, and that they had been protected and fostered by ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... ridden into the lists in answer to the challenge; and now all clamor was hushed. The Sheriff's daughter, a pale, hard-faced girl, with straw-colored hair and mincing ways, announced in inaudible voice the terms of the contest. The heralds repeated them afterwards in stentorian tones; and the rivals wheeled about, the white knights couching their lances from under the Sheriff's box. The others prepared themselves at the wicket-gate and ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... see what is hidden from ordinary physical sight. It will be as well to premise that it is very frequently (though by no means always) accompanied by what is called clairaudience, or the power to hear what would be inaudible to the ordinary physical ear; and we will for the nonce take our title as covering this faculty also, in order to avoid the clumsiness of perpetually using two long words where one ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... dragged him forward, and introduced him to her guests. Signor Cesarini returned their salutations with a mixture of bashfulness and hauteur, half-awkward and half-graceful, and muttering some inaudible greeting, sank into a seat and appeared instantly lost in reverie. Maltravers gazed upon him, and was pleased with his aspect—which, if not handsome, was strange and peculiar. He was extremely slight and thin—his cheeks hollow and colourless, with a profusion of ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... seemed to regard me as a source of information about all the latest 'movements,' and I had to shout banalities while he munched his mutton—banalities whose one saving grace for me was that they were inaudible to Swinburne. Had I met Swinburne's gaze, I should have faltered. Now and again his shining light-grey eyes roved from the table, darting this way and that—across the room, up at the ceiling, out of the window; ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... of awakened consciousness, lest your pearls be trampled upon. Words may belie desire, and pour forth a hypocrite's prayer; but thoughts are our honest conviction. I have no objection to audible prayer of the right kind; but the inaudible ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... pain, but he was visibly sinking. His noble features, paled by the approach of death, were perfectly calm. Inaudible words escaped at intervals from his lips, bearing upon various incidents of his chequered career. Life was evidently ebbing slowly, and his extremities ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... There are three principal obstacles to the successful use of such a device: when the submersible is submerged, she employs rotary and not reciprocating prime-movers, being in consequence relatively quiet when running under water, and inaudible at any considerable distance; the noises of the vessel carrying the listening devices are difficult to exclude, as are also the noises of the sea, which are multitudinous; finally, the sound-receiving instruments are ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... harmony that men, seeking to interpret it by what was most harmonious in themselves or in their human experience, supposed an actual Music of the Spheres inaudible to mortals: Plato as we see (who learned of Pythagoras) inventing his Octave of Sirens, perched on the whorls of the great spindle and intoning as ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... that Shelley all this time was in brilliant spirits. Not long before, talking of presentiment, he had said the only one that he ever found infallible was the certain advent of some evil fortune when he felt peculiarly joyous. Yet, if ever fate whispered of coming disaster, such inaudible but not unfelt prognostics hovered around us. The beauty of the place seemed unearthly in its excess: the distance we were at from all signs of civilization, the sea at our feet, its murmurs or its roaring for ever in our ears,—all these things led the mind to brood over strange ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... disappeared, and as soon as he turned up the soft path to the cottage, his steps became inaudible through the wind. ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... lost some time, and the roan mare was put to her fastest speed to make up for it. Our pace became, accordingly, a sharp one; and as the road was bad, and the tax-cart no "patent inaudible," neither of us spoke. To me this was a great relief. The events of the last few days had given them the semblance of years, and all the reflection I could muster was little enough to make anything out of the chaotic mass,—love, mischief, and misfortune,—in ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... nature, and all life. To assure us, therefore, that such mysteries exist, is slightly superfluous. But, on the other hand, no human being ever believed, or could believe, a mystery, any more than he could see anything invisible or hear anything inaudible. To believe a doctrine, the first condition is, that all its terms shall ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... inaudible, but Gregory shrank as from a mortal blow; its sinister meaning was unmistakable. Swiftly he turned to stare ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... whispered, and, whenever a door opened, all started and turned anxiously toward it, as if expecting a bearer of sad tidings. The face of the empress was pale and agitated; her form trembled; at times she turned toward her ladies, who stood behind her, and addressed to them some almost inaudible question, not waiting for a reply, but looking again toward the door, or inclining her ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... Colonel Farrell had hitched his chair up alongside O'Day; had asked him several questions in a tone inaudible to those about them; had listened to the whispered answers of O'Day; and then had nodded his huge curly white dome of a head, as though amply satisfied ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... And soon after that event I left Edinboro' for the south coast of England, and at Brighton"—here the voice of the countess sank almost to an inaudible whisper—"at Brighton I met and married another. And now let us talk of something else, Ishmael," she concluded, turning an affectionate glance upon the sympathetic face of the young man. For there was a wonderful depth of sympathy between this queenly woman of forty-five and this princely ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... straightforward manner, though he occasionally seemed perplexed, pondered, and hesitated. He had a loud, hard, and rather grating voice, and delivered his answers with a quick, jerky, nervous utterance, which often jumbled his words so as to render them partially inaudible. Colonel Pelton's tone in reply to the questions propounded to him during the examination-in-chief was loud and emphatic, as though he wanted all the world to understand that he was perfectly ready to answer every question put by the Committee. He sat easily, either throwing ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... the lantern would not burn in such a rarefied atmosphere. We descended gently across a thick layer of whitish clouds, and when we had got below them, Andreoli heard a sound, muffled and almost inaudible, which he immediately recognised as the breaking of waves in the distance. Instantly he announced to me this new and fearful danger. I listened, and had not long to wait before I was convinced that he was speaking the truth. It was necessary to have light to examine the state of the barometer, ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... he had been asked an inaudible question, and tried again. Nothing happened. "Skipper," he said over his shoulder, "Have a quick look at the meters behind you there. Are we ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... terrible than the lion. His "fearful cemetery" appeared to be full, judging by its burgeoned bulge and the shocking state of depletion exhibited by the buffalo on which he fed with barely inaudible snarls and grunts of satisfaction. Blood dripped from his ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... men and women been so uneasy as they were in the opening days of 1914. The woman's movement battered and banged through all our minds. It broke out into that tumult in Great Britain perhaps ten years ago. When Queen Victoria died it was inaudible; search Punch, search the newspapers of that tranquil age. In 1914 it kicked up so great a dust that the Germans counted on the Suffragettes as one of the great forces that were to paralyse ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... conversation ensued, after which William Dulan arose to take his leave, which he did in a choking, inaudible voice. As he turned to leave the room, his ghastly face and unsteady step attested, in language not to be misunderstood, the acuteness and intensity of his suffering. Alice did not misunderstand it. She uttered one word, in a ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... went down the great steps alone, and I felt as if I wanted the steps swept and cleaned. I followed later, and as I went to find my hat in the low, dark passage where it hung, I suddenly heard his voice again, but the words were inaudible. I stopped, startled; but then I heard the voice of one of the vilest of his associates saying, "Nobody can possibly know." And then I heard those two or three words which I remember in every syllable and cannot forget. I heard the Diabolist say, "I tell you I have done everything else. If ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... passed again the Cradle, and was bold enough to listen again. Alas! the wail was weaker, the bright lamp of these eyes was fast losing its oil. So he thought; for he could hear only now and then a very inaudible sob, and occasionally a very weak wail, shrill and yet low. He could not stay, for Janet would be coming stealthily with her cruse,—yes, her cruse; for, so far as he could see by the narrow slips, all was darkness around the dying stranger, in a proud ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... dead level of treeless plain. Kneeling down he applied his ear to the ground. Could it be? There was a sound thus carried to his ears—the very sound which above all others he dreaded to hear. It was a faint, almost inaudible, tapping upon the earth. Far away it was, ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... return to the Romance, in whose clear though shadowy atmosphere the thunders and throes of the preparatory struggle are inaudible and invisible, save as they are implied in the fineness of substance and beauty of form of the artistic structure. The story is divided into two parts, the scene of the first being laid in America; that of the second, in England. ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... but oft forget The loving Face that very smile conceals. The Changeable is but the broidered robe Enwrapped about the great Unchangeable; The Audible is but an echo, faint, Low whispered from the far Inaudible; This earth is but an humble acolyte A-kneeling on the lowest altar-step Of this creation's temple, at the Mass Of Supernature, just to ring the bell At Sanctus! Sanctus! Sanctus! while the world Prepares its heart for consecration's hour. Nature is but the ever-rustling veil Which God is ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... that the enterprising and worthy Goose was entitled to the full confidence of the chamber. Crowdy magnanimously seconded the motion, and the resolution, when carried, was communicated to Robinson by the worthy Grand. Having thanked them in a few words, which were almost inaudible from his emotion, he left the chamber, and immediately afterwards the meeting ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... the dreadful accompaniment of the storm, had brought home a truth to him that for days on the trail he had tried to deny. "I love you, Virginia," cried the inaudible voice of his soul. "Oh, Virginia—I ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... an enormous fraud, dropped his cap, in his confusion, twice, murmured something inaudible, rose to his feet, and backed out of the room, making one comprehensive bow to everybody, and saying "Good-night" ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... You remember the affected air, the downcast eyes, the demeanor intended to imply a modest shrinking from notice, but through which there shines the real desire, "Oh, for any sake, look at me!" There are people whose voice is utterly inaudible in church six feet off, who will tell you that a whole congregation of a thousand or fifteen hundred people was listening to their singing. Such folk will tell you that they went to a church where the singing was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... nigh, he would try which was the hardest, a Spaniard's scull or that "ground nut," as he designated the stone which he held in his hand. The soldiers, however, passed on without seeing them, and in a few seconds their footsteps became inaudible. ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... unbolted door,—and Hero, the huge mastiff that always slept "on guard" just within the hall entrance, had surely no cause to sit up suddenly on his great haunches and listen with uplifted ears to sounds which were to any other creature inaudible. Yet listen he did—sharply and intently. Raising his massive head he snuffed the air—then suddenly began to tremble as with cold, and gave vent to a long, low, dismal moan. It was a weird noise—worse than positive howling, ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... apartment. The most elegant furniture was spread through the chamber, consisting of canopies, sofas and chairs of the most costly description. On the floor was spread a carpet so soft that the sound of footsteps was inaudible. The walls were a mass of mirrors extending from the ceiling to the floor, relieved here and there by magnificent paintings, representing woman's form in every attitude and every variety of costume. ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... adhered to, and the result was a reward of physical perfection and enjoyment of life. He began to feel that a man, or even a woman—it was the subtle presence of the woman at his side that made him involuntarily interject this clause into his inaudible thoughts—yes, even a woman of high moral attributes might find the most healthy form of interested amusement in watching the superb development of horses that were destined for no other purpose than to race and beget sons and daughters of the same wondrous stamina and courage and ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... priest stopped, and stood rooted. A faint sound, inaudible to a townsman's ear, made him turn sharply to the right, and face the broken ground. A stone no bigger than a hazel nut had been dislodged somewhere above him, and now rolled down to his feet. The dead silence of the ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... order!" For a moment the boy glanced back irresolute across the flat, now ankle deep in water. The electric light had been extinguished, and in the greenish gloom between decks he looked a small and very forlorn figure. He pointed towards the wreckage of the after-cabin, called something inaudible, and, turning, was lost ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... leaves, the sunlight and all the graciousness of her surroundings, and the wind gently tossed her hair and the gay ribbons of her gypsy hat. Suddenly she started. Some remote sound in the trail below, inaudible to any ear less fine than hers, arrested her breathing. She rose ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... bow, nor relax the rigor of his watch. Only, when she was seated in the carriage, he bent respectfully and mutely before Mabel, who followed her hostess, and paying as little attention to the two gentlemen as they did to him walked up to Mrs. Sutton, and said something inaudible to the bystanders. As they drove out of the yard, the Ridgeley quartette saw the pair saunter, side by side, to the extreme end of the portico, apparently to be out of hearing of the rest, but no one remarked aloud upon the renewed intimacy and then ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... their guard by his costume, and the severity of his countenance, those of the lower rank were silent as he moved along, or lowered their voices into whispers and inaudible murmurs. Amongst the students, however, whenever they happened to muster strongly, were many fiery young men, who disdained to temper the expression of their feelings, or to moderate their tone. A large group of these at one corner of the square drew ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... and I am not saved." There he lay in agony, every few minutes this lamentation breaking from him. Just as the sun was going down behind those Western prairies, his wife leaned over him, and in an almost inaudible voice, he whispered, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and I am not saved," and he died. He had lived a Christless life, he died a Christless death, he was wrapped in a Christless shroud, and he was buried in a Christless grave. Oh, how dark and sad! Dear friends, the harvest is passing; ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... wheels go round without a sound Or [inaudible again] horse's tread, My lady's breath is foul as death, Her ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... he found a large, square letter in it, and looking at it saw that it was from Flaxen directed to Anson. "Her picture, probably," he said as he held it up. As he was pushing rapidly out he heard a half-drunken fellow say, in what he thought was an inaudible tone: ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... long before she reached the door. Not that it was loud like the voices of this dreadful household; but the tone was sufficiently peculiar to be recognised anywhere. With a most penetrating clearness, it came through the long passages, words inaudible, only the sound of a voice, rapid, breathless, decided—with the distant sound of Fred's long, shambling, uncertain footsteps coming in as the strange accompaniment. Then they entered the room—the one tiny, bright, dauntless, an intrepid, undiscourageable little soul; the other with his heavy ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Claude walked up the bank, crackling through the bushes. From this spot the voices were inaudible, and for a few moments there was no sound. Then Menard could hear some one moving heavily through the undergrowth, going farther and farther into the stillness, and he knew that it was Danton. He sat on the bank with his back against a tree, and waited for ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... St. James, worming his way cautiously through the underbrush until he could look out into the opening. A single glance and he drew back in astonishment. He looked again, and his face turned suddenly white, and an almost inaudible cry fell from his lips. There was no longer a cabin in the clearing! Where it had been there was gathered a crowd of men and boys. Above their heads he saw a thin film of smoke and he knew what had happened. Marion's home had burned! But ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... however, suggest any intention of concealment, among the trees; the girl apparently saw him at the same moment and slightly slackened her pace. Not more than a dozen feet separated them. He said something that was inaudible to my ears,—but whether from his hesitation or the distance I could not determine. There was no such uncertainty in her reply, however, which was given in her usual curt fashion: "All right. You can trapse along home now ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Again their voices became inaudible. Julien drew back into the room. His heart was beating faster, his brain was full of new thoughts. From a place where he was absolutely secure he sat and gazed at Foster and his companion. Presently ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Bastille Clock ticks (inaudible) in its Inner Court there, at its ease, hour after hour; as if nothing special, for it or the world, were passing! It tolled One when the firing began; and is now pointing towards Five, and still the firing slakes not.—Far down, in their vaults, the seven Prisoners hear muffled ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... place immediately after Mr. Richard Lee of Virginia, grandson of the Signer, had read the Declaration of Independence. He read it from the original document, and it was an impressive moment when that time-honored parchment was exposed to the view of the wildly cheering crowd.... Mr. Lee's voice was inaudible, but at last I caught the words, 'our sacred honors,' and ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... and interpret sound waves at frequencies from 32 to about 32,000 vibrations per second. Below the lesser-number, the tendency is to appreciate the separate vibrations as separate sounds. Above the higher number, the vibrations are inaudible to the human ear. The most acute perception of sound differences lies at about 3,000 vibrations per second. It may be that the range of hearing of organisms other than man lies far above the range with which human beings are familiar. Some trained musicians are able to ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... muttered something inaudible, and gathered up the reins. His horse, which had apparently gone to sleep, preferred to remain where he was. After a certain amount of manoeuvring, however, he was induced to crawl around, and in a few minutes came to stop again before a tall brightly-painted ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... standing near the gate. The porch was deserted. He wondered if Amos Vick was down there waiting for him. Then he remembered what Alix had said to him: "These people trust you,—they still trust you." What had he to fear? He laughed,—a short, jerky, almost inaudible laugh,—and went confidently down the walk. As he passed the little group he uttered a brief "good night" to the men, and was rewarded by a friendly response ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... tongue &c. (not speak) 585. render silent &c. adj.; silence, still, hush; stifle, muffle, stop; muzzle, put to silence &c. (render mute) 581. Adj. silent; still, stilly; noiseless, soundless; hushed &c. v.; mute &c. 581. soft, solemn, awful, deathlike, silent as the grave; inaudible &c. (faint) 405. Adv. silently &c. adj.; sub silentio[Lat]. Int. hush! silence! soft! whist! tush! chut[obs3]! tut! pax[Lat]! be quiet! be silent! be still! shut up![rude]; chup[obs3]! chup rao[obs3]! tace[It]! Phr. one might hear a feather drop, one might hear a pin drop, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... short, almost inaudible growls, approached him slowly, moving only one foot at a time and pausing before she lifted another foot. She sniffed at the cub on the ground, sniffed at Hedulio's legs, and looked up at the cub in his arms. She made a sound more like a whine than a growl. Hedulio lowered ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... prophetic quality in the books of power which silently moves them forward with the inaudible advance of the successive files in the ranks of the generations, and which makes them contemporary with each generation. For while the mediaeval frame-work upon which Dante constructed the "Divine Comedy" ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... vanished as soon as he had stepped through it; Costigan kicked a valve open; and from various innocent tubes there belched forth into the water of the central lagoon and into the air over it a flood of deadly vapor. As the Nevian turned toward the prisoner there was an almost inaudible hiss and a tiny jet of the frightful, outlawed stuff struck his open gills, just below his huge, conical head. He tensed momentarily, twitched convulsively just once, and fell motionless to the floor. And outside, the streams of avidly soluble liquefied gas ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... to maintain a short interval between his horse and the mules of Rita and her attendant, kept shifting his restless glances from one side of the road to the other, as though he would fain have penetrated the surrounding gloom. He was passing a thicket that skirted the road, when a cautious "Hist!" inaudible to his companions, arrested his attention. He immediately pulled up his horse, and, dismounting, unstrapped the surcingle of his saddle. On perceiving this, Rita stopped to enquire the cause of the delay, but the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... of the air, once set in motion by the human voice, cease not to exist with the sounds to which they gave rise. Their quickly-attenuated force soon becomes inaudible to human ears. But the waves of air thus raised perambulate the surface of earth and ocean, and in less than twenty hours, every atom of the atmosphere takes up the altered movement due to that infinitesimal portion ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... ensued. Just as the modern "talkies" become inaudible motion pictures when the sound apparatus goes out of order, so the Divine Hand, by some strange miracle, stifled the earthly bustle. The pedestrians as well as the passing trolley cars, automobiles, bullock carts, and iron-wheeled hackney carriages were ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... something inaudible and withdrew his hand. The man with the gun signaled to his companion. This man came up and felt ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... words, though vehement, were inaudible; being formed in the mind of Mr. Bullitt, but, for diplomatic reasons, not projected upon the air ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... stood against the summer sky; if there should be anybody in the creek-bed, lurking among the rushes and scrub round the waterhole, they would be plainly visible to him. Their attitudes were significant, and their speech was inaudible. If Jim should be there, thought Nellie, and then dismissed the thought. Rash as he was, he would never be so foolhardy as that. And yet she might have noticed a slight movement among the reeds—might have remembered that Gentleman Jim found no companionship in her brothers, ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... pulled up, and another man on the platform at the rear attempted to address the crowd, but his voice was inaudible in the din of howls, catcalls, hooting and obscene curses. After about an hour of this, as the crowd began pushing against the van and trying to overturn it, the terrified horses commenced to get restive and uncontrollable, ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Augustine Birrell said of Professor Freeman and the Bishop of Chester, that they are horny-handed sons of toil and worthy of their wage. But one would like to say a little more. Granting that this is praise, it is so faint as to be almost inaudible. If Hardy only wrote good stories he would be merely doing his duty, and therefore accounted an unprofitable servant. But ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... but he was visibly sinking. His noble features, paled by the approach of death, were perfectly calm. Inaudible words escaped at intervals from his lips, bearing upon various incidents of his chequered career. Life was evidently ebbing slowly, and ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... of inaudible talk, dissension seemed again to rise between the couple underneath the chestnut, and again the General raised his voice angrily so as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wild and sudden manner in which their conversation had been broken off, and strongly urged her to send for instant medical advice. She did so; and after taking leave of him, and murmuring in an almost inaudible voice the words, "Pray for us!" she returned to her post with that sinking of heart, and strength of spirit, which those only know who feel acutely, and never give way. She did not inform Mrs. Middleton of the alarming symptoms which indicated the return ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... ground, then flapping back to the branches, and anon darting to the ground again—as though they were under some spell from those fiery eyes, and were unable to take themselves away. Their motions appeared to grow less energetic, their chirping became almost inaudible, and their wings seemed hardly to expand as they flew, or rather fluttered, around the head of the serpent. One of them at length dropped down upon the ground within reach of the snake, and stood with open bill, as if exhausted, and unable to move farther. We were expecting ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... by and the bells were still pealing, when he heard a sound which would have been inaudible in the midst of the metallic clamor to ears less accustomed than his own. He had lived there all his life, and scarcely noticed the noise which would almost have deafened a stranger. The sound he had heard was the clicking of the gate, and after a pause it was followed by the appearance of his ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... and like an echo, all but inaudible, Nose Star sighed behind her. "Of what avail is your beauty?" cried Don Isaac. "Oh, Dona Schnapper-Elle, do not sin against the goodness of creative Nature! Do not scorn her most charming gifts, or she will reap most terrible revenge. Those blessed, blessing ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... most pitiable abortion of a voice I had ever heard. While having all the defects in articulation of a child's who is just beginning to talk, it was not even a child's in strength of tone, being in fact a mere alternation of squeaks and whispers inaudible a rod away. With some difficulty I was, however, able to follow him ...
— To Whom This May Come - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... light, without complaint, without sound. Her eyes were closed, she leaned her head against the sharp edge of the aperture and her arms hung down lifelessly. Soelver bent over her; her breath was almost inaudible, but irregular and did not suggest sleep. Like a thirsty plant she stretched herself out of the single airhole of the dungeon that she might seize the last drop of light before the darkness extinguished everything. Soelver divined that ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... ancestor to me,—never put any forefather in comparison with the dubious and mythical Sir William. I now remembered once that, in going over the pedigree, I had been struck by the name of Herbert,—the only Herbert in the scroll,—and had asked, "What of him, uncle?" and Roland had muttered something inaudible, and turned away. And I remembered also that in Roland's room there was the mark on the wall where a picture of that size had once hung. The picture had been removed thence before we first came, but must have hung there for years to have left ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the long drawing-room at Chesney Wold this dismal night when the step on the Ghost's Walk (inaudible here, however) might be the step of a deceased cousin shut out in the cold. It is near bed-time. Bedroom fires blaze brightly all over the house, raising ghosts of grim furniture on wall and ceiling. Bedroom candlesticks bristle on the distant table by the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... When he comes to a declivity, he will put his forefeet together, and slide swiftly down it, shoving the snow before him. He treads so softly that you would hardly hear it from any nearness, and yet with such expression that it would not be quite inaudible at any distance. ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... window, and her answer was inaudible. Ladywell and Neigh looked up, and their eyes met. Both had been reluctant to remain where they stood, but they were too fascinated to instantly retire. Neigh moved now, and Ladywell did the same. Each saw that the face of his companion ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... grinding and squealing under their windows. The manager (if that was the quality of the patient and amiable old official who received us) seemed surprised to see the cars there, perhaps because they were so inaudible; but he said we could have rooms in the annex, fronting on the adjoining plaza and siding on an inoffensive avenue where there were absolutely no cars. The interior, climbing to a lofty roof by a succession of galleries, was hushed by four silent senoras, all in black, and seated in mute ceremony ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... are old, and on our quick'st decrees The inaudible and noiseless foot of Time Steals ere we can effect them. All's Well that Ends Well, Act v. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... resounding on the waxed floor of the next room, traversing the anteroom lined with bookshelves, where he paused to put his chibouk in the pipe-stand before passing into the drawing-room (these were all en suite), where he became inaudible on the thick carpet. But I heard the door of his study-bedroom close. He was then sixty-two years old and had been for a quarter of a century the wisest, the firmest, the most indulgent of guardians, extending over me a paternal care and affection, a moral support which I seemed to feel ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... sweet Mother. My fingers thou hast taught to con Thy flame-chorded psalterion, Till I can translate into mortal wire— Till I can translate passing well— The heavenly harping harmony, Melodious, sealed, inaudible, Which makes the dulcet psalter of the world's desire. Thou whisperest in the Moon's white ear, And she does whisper into mine,— By night together, I and she— With her virgin voice divine, The things I cannot half so sweetly tell As she can ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... know that by exercising a certain organ we are building up a certain part of the brain. For example, the man who has cultivated his hearing until he can hear sounds inaudible to ordinary men, has made for himself more brain-cells in the hearing area. If he has cultivated his sight assiduously, he has created more visual cells. If his touch has been cultivated, his brain has received new touch sensation-cells. And Professor ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... struck a truer and deeper note; while both together did not hinder me from hearing the faint songs of grasshopper sparrows rising from the ground on either side of the lane. It was a fine contrast: the mocker flooding the air from the topmost bough, and the sparrows whispering their few almost inaudible notes out of the grass. Yes, and at the self-same moment the eye also had its contrast; for a marsh hawk was skimming over the field, while up in the sky ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... of them brass twelve-pounder "Napoleons," and the other rifled Parrotts. To the rear of the infantry were the recumbent troopers and picketed horses of a regiment of cavalry. All around, in the far, black distance, invisible and inaudible, paced or watched stealthily the sentinels of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... him. He always did this. It was a relic of his pulpit habits. He glanced briefly from one to the other of us, his face grave and earnest, his hands lifted to the stars and his eyes all closed and puckered up beneath a momentary frown. Then he offered up a short, almost inaudible prayer, thanking Heaven for our safe arrival, begging for good weather, no illness or accidents, plenty of fish, ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... audience, should happen much on one side or very far back; to this may be added the suggestion, hardly novel, that the first few minutes of each act should be confined to immaterial affairs; blame the unpunctual—even if you blame unfairly, since, as a rule, the entr'acte warning bell is inaudible in most parts of the theatre—but do not make the guiltless suffer by presenting important matters during the time when the stage is half hidden by the people struggling (through a passage as a rule shamefully narrow) to get to their seats. Sardou's precepts may ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... was perfectly still, the sea seemed to slumber, and, if a wave lapped the shore, it was with a low, almost inaudible murmur. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... situated, when she was startled by a low, half-suppressed cry of "Murd—," which was quickly stopped, and immediately followed by a muffled fall and a low scuffling, and the voice of Lord Vincent muttering vehemently: "Faustina!" and other words inaudible ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... voice had become almost inaudible. She pulled at Rhoda Gray's wrist again, urging ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... have been written amid the vexatious interruptions incidental to one mingling much in the scenes of busy life; for the voices of the sages of old with whom, beneath his own vines, Landor loves to commune, would have been inaudible in the turmoil of a populous town, and their secrets would not have been revealed to him. The friction of society may animate the man of talent into its exercise, but I am persuaded that solitude is essential to the perfect ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... perhaps you can cure my folly if I tell it, and yet I am ashamed," murmured the girl. Then yielding to an irresistible impulse to ask help and sympathy, she added, in an almost inaudible tone, "I came away to escape ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... struggling young actress who would some day be famous—and then he might see her on a night of triumph and recognize her as the girl he had passed on the street, that day, so long ago! But by this time, the episode was concluded; the footsteps of him for whom she was performing had become inaudible behind her, and she began to forget him; which was as well, since he went out of her life then, and the two never met again. The struggling young actress disappeared, and the previous superiority was resumed. It became elaborately emphasized as a boy of her own age emerged from the "side yard" ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... has rioted unceasingly above unceasing decay. It was dry with the fine dust of waste places, and wet with the warm mists of slumbering swamps; it seemed to Gideon to tremble with the songs of birds, the dry murmur of palm leaves, and the almost inaudible whisper of the gray moss that ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... turns and waits; his glance again resting upon her whose side he has so suddenly quitted. She has followed him with her eyes until he stops; then with heightened color resumes a low-toned chat with her father. Uncle Jack is a keen observer, and his next words are inaudible except ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... continued the Ober-Amtmann, in a tone that rendered their conversation inaudible beyond their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... pinching her glasses into place with one hand and pulling her skirt modestly close with the other, activities leaving her very little to grasp the ladder with. The firemen seemed quite accustomed to this sort of irrationality, and paying no heed to the rush of words—inaudible to us on the street—bursting from her, they coaxed her expertly up onto the roof. Here she stood, statuesquely outlined against the bright sky, berating her succorers, until Mr Dinkman, rounded, bald, and calm, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... voice, and suddenly I was being forced towards the grave. I struggled, shouted, appealed to the mourners, but they continued stonily following the service; the old clergyman, too, never faltered droning and sniffing through the ritual. I realised I was invisible and inaudible, that overwhelming forces had their grip on me. I struggled in vain, I was forced over the brink, the coffin rang hollow as I fell upon it, and the gravel came flying after me in spadefuls. Nobody heeded me, nobody was aware of me. I made ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... shack to find her vanished to the inner room. He divided up the food in two equal portions, placed half his small financial funds inside a flour-sack, where he knew she would find it, and piled the things onto the sled. Then he called her in a low, almost inaudible, voice. She came from the inner room, closely swathed in furs and with her ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... adj.; silence, still, hush; stifle, muffle, stop; muzzle, put to silence &c. (render mute) 581. Adj. silent; still, stilly; noiseless, soundless; hushed &c. v.; mute &c. 581. soft, solemn, awful, deathlike, silent as the grave; inaudible &c. (faint) 405. Adv. silently &c. adj.; sub silentio[Lat]. Int. hush! silence! soft! whist! tush! chut[obs3]! tut! pax[Lat]! be quiet! be silent! be still! shut up![rude]; chup[obs3]! chup rao[obs3]! tace[It]! Phr. one might hear a feather drop, one might hear a pin drop, so quiet you could ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... as his fine gifts warranted. Not, indeed, that he monopolised the talk. He seemed to regard me as a source of information about all the latest 'movements,' and I had to shout banalities while he munched his mutton—banalities whose one saving grace for me was that they were inaudible to Swinburne. Had I met Swinburne's gaze, I should have faltered. Now and again his shining light-grey eyes roved from the table, darting this way and that—across the room, up at the ceiling, out of the window; only never at us. Somehow this aloofness gave no hint of indifference. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... the deck planking. Mr. Timmins looked round towards the captain, who was clinging to the wheel. The latter waved his hand, and the mate again began to make his way forward. He passed the boys without a word, for the loudest shout would have been inaudible in the howling of the wind. He stopped at the main-shrouds again, the axe descended and the mainmast went over the side. The relief from the weight of the mast and the pressure of the wind upon it was immediate; the Wild ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... preferably elderly, and "steeped in respectability" up to his port-wine nose; one who would hover around the table, adjusting this dish affectionately and straightening that, and who, whenever he left the room, left it with a velvet step and an almost inaudible sigh of satisfaction... ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... University. The ceremony itself was almost identical with that at one of our Universities, and it was similarly interrupted by noisy Undergraduates, whose humour consisted in rendering the proceedings inaudible without contributing anything amusing of their own. One lady who took a degree was much cheered. The Bishop of Melbourne (Dr. Moorhouse) is the Chancellor, and delivered an address to the "fractious children," and he then called on the Governor of the colony, who with Lady Loch was present, for ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... The man muttered something inaudible, and gathered up the reins. His horse, which had apparently gone to sleep, preferred to remain where he was. After a certain amount of manoeuvring, however, he was induced to crawl around, and in a few minutes came to stop again before a tall brightly-painted house, which seemed like an oasis ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... appalling but at least he thanked God he was not mad. He yet had two good hands and legs. He could see, hear, smell, taste and feel, and he had a soul with five more senses still turned upward toward the infinite and eternal by which he could see the invisible and hear the inaudible. He felt almost happy by contrast with the fools he had left shuffling over the floor of ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... she murmured softly to herself, "it will be by—" She did not finish. Something—she could not call it sound—set her heart beating tumultuously, and listening—listening—watching—watching—she followed in her imagination the approach down the balcony of an almost inaudible step, not daring to move herself, it seemed so near, but waiting with eyes fixed, for the shadow which must fall across the shade she had failed to raise over that half of the swinging window she had so carefully ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... that his companion seemed annoyed by the presence of the other party already referred to. He scowled and shrugged his shoulders when he looked at them, and in a low voice, inaudible to those of whom he spoke, he said to Herbert: "Are they going ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... occasion. If he had said all that he was fully resolved to say, it is hardly credible that any woman, however well disposed towards him, would have accepted so tedious a suitor. But what he really said, in a hoarse, inaudible voice, was, "Rachel, will you marry me?" He was looking so intently into a little grove of Roman hyacinths, that perhaps the hyacinths heard what he said; at any rate, she did not. But she supposed, from long experience, that he was proposing, and ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... pinholes in the face masks. They lay in wait for days in the trenches for the soldiers' return as a cat watches at the hole of a mouse. The cannon ball could be seen and heard. The poison gas was invisible and inaudible, and sometimes even the chemical sense which nature has given man for his protection, the sense of smell, failed to give warning of the approach of ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... along precipitous paths he led the way buoyantly and now and then he broke into low almost inaudible crooning of an ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... gnats, and mosquitoes as ever, his vocal powers have now won for him recognition among the singing birds. Some one has likened his voice to the squeak of a mouse, and Nuttall says it is "scarcely louder," which is all too true, for at a little distance it is quite inaudible. But in addition to the mouse-like call-note, the tiny bird has a rather feeble but exquisitely finished song, so faint it seems almost as it the bird were singing ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... irresolute across the flat, now ankle deep in water. The electric light had been extinguished, and in the greenish gloom between decks he looked a small and very forlorn figure. He pointed towards the wreckage of the after-cabin, called something inaudible, and, turning, was ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... was only a dream," said he to himself; "yet how distinct the voice was! O, if we had spiritual organs, to see and hear things now invisible and inaudible to us, we should behold the whole air filled with the departing souls of that vast multitude which every moment dies,—should behold them streaming up like thin vapors heaven-ward, and hear the startling blast of the archangel's trump sounding incessant through the universe and proclaiming the ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... plays a game well, he does not like to find that he has any equal. Heaven forbid that I should say that there is rivalry here. You, sir, are so pre-eminently the first that no one can touch you." Then he laughed long,—a low, bitter, inaudible laugh,—during ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... visitors there in the cool of the afternoon. He listened half-sleepily, and heard the horse depart, led away by a servant. There followed the murmur of a conversation, between two persons only, below his window. So far as he could gather from the tones, for the words were inaudible, they were spoken in English. And thus ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... in the gusts of the gale. In the throat of a feculent pit is the beard of a bloody-red sedge; And a foam like the foam of a fit sweats out of the lips of the ledge. But down in the water of death, in the livid, dead pool at the base— Bow low, with inaudible breath, beseech with ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... suddenly jerked up to the high tone. This was called breaking the tone; it was very much used, and gave fine effects when it was well done. I use it to-day, especially in Italian music, where it belongs. It is an exception to the rule for imperceptible or inaudible change of position of the organs,—that it should not ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... to a contest of more vital principles, which may better embalm the men. Of all gifts, eloquence is the most short-lived. The most accomplished orator fades forgotten, and his laurels pass to some hoarse, inaudible Burke, accounted rather a bore during his lifetime, and possessed of a faculty of scattering, not convincing, the members of the House. "After all," said the brilliant Choate, with melancholy foreboding, "a book is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... The first words she spoke were inaudible, but, gathering courage, she trailed her white satin, with its large brocaded pattern, in true queenly fashion, and questioned the Minister as to his opinion of the looks of the new Princess. But she gave no point to ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... altogether allusive and mysterious to the Frenchman's hoof-shaped shoes—delicate flattery of royal superfluity in toes; and there was no care that certain snarlings at "Mediceans" should be strictly inaudible. But Lorenzo Tornabuoni possessed that power of dissembling annoyance which is demanded in a man who courts popularity, and Tito, besides his natural disposition to overcome ill-will by good-humour, had the unimpassioned feeling of the alien towards ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... hand in his, and now, as then, the touch sent the warm blood bounding through her veins. She had passed through much since that wintry morning, had grown partially indifferent to coldness and neglect, but the extreme kindness of Mr. and Mrs. Hastings touched her heart; and stammering out an almost inaudible reply, she turned away to hide her tears, while Mr. Hastings, advancing towards the fire, exclaimed, "My double gown! And it's so long since I saw it! To whose thoughtfulness am ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... performing the same manoeuvres, always to the tune of 'Kendall's March.' After a time, the recess closed, and order was again restored. In about half an hour, I approached a class, which was reciting behind the railing. 'Miss A.,' said a teacher, 'how many kinds of magnitude are there?' Miss A. ('Answer inaudible.') Several voices. 'We can't hear.' Teacher. 'Will you try to speak a ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... know what to say,' said she, in a low, almost inaudible tone. Then hardening herself, and resolving to speak as if she did not understand his only half-expressed meaning, she lifted up her head, and all but looking at him—while she wrenched her hand out of his—she said: 'Mother's gone to Middleham for a visit, and feyther's out i' t' plough-field ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... what he says to shreds. They show or say that he is wrong about his facts. Then he rises in a fuss and must explain: but in his hurry he mistakes, and cannot find the right paper, and becomes first hot, then confused, next inaudible, and so sits down. Probably he leaves the House with the notion that the defence of the department has broken down, and so the Times announces to all the world as ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... mighty stream of Tendency Uttering, for elevation of our thought, A clear sonorous voice, inaudible To the vast multitude whose doom it is To run the giddy ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... of Skarbolov's little store. She felt out with her hands and found the padlock, and her fingers pressed on the link in the chain that Gypsy Nan had described. It gave readily. She slipped it free, and opened the door. There was faint, almost inaudible, protesting creak from the hinges. She caught her breath quickly. Had anybody heard it? It—it had seemed like a cannon shot. And then her lips curled in sudden self-contempt. Who was ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... with a thrill, striking the innermost depths of her heart, she threw herself back and imprinted her burning lips upon the cold paper. With one letter pressed to her heart, and another pressed to her lips, she gave herself up completely, exclaiming in an inaudible voice: "I love thee! ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... commonplace word by answer, and an inaudible something died drily in his throat. When his companion began to speak again, the bankrupt merchant wondered that he made no comment on his ghastly face—he knew his face was ghastly—or his shaking hands. There was an intuition in his mind so strong ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... Lord GLADSTONE members of the Labour Unions surrounded the hotel and booed loudly with a view to making the speeches inaudible. As the first serious attempt to protect diners from an orgy of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... yet we know Sound as we know most other things, merely on the dense physical plane. The next great discoveries in higher phenomena will be made in the realm of Sound. The most marvellous powers are to be disenchanted from vibrations as yet inaudible. The present enthusiasm over telepathy is merely the start of far greater phenomena ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... hiss and throb of the devices were audible. I stared, trying to understand. Images, and sounds, invisible and inaudible were being received from across the millions of miles of space, and they were being transmuted within the brains themselves. I saw that discs were fastened upon the bulging foreheads of the brains, upon which the tiny ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... that," chimed in the fellow ex-minister, a worthy man, perfect red-tapist, but inaudible in the reporters' gallery. "And your election is quite safe, eh? All depends on that. You must not be thrown out at such a time, even for a month or two. I hear that you will have a contest—some townsmen of the borough, I think. But the Lansmere interest must ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... chattering mulatto seems as if suddenly struck dumb; the smart repartee of the lively Tapada is cut short in its delivery; the shopkeeper lays down his measure; the artizan drops his tool; and the monk suspends his move on the draught-board: all, with one accord, join in the inaudible prayer. Here and there the sight of a foreigner walking along indifferently, and without raising his hat, makes a painful impression on the minds of ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... inspiration, not unlike the kink in hooping-cough—a crowing noise, not so shrill, but similar to the sound emitted by a chicken in the pip (which in some parts of Scotland is called the roup, hence probably the word croup); the breathing, hitherto inaudible and natural, now becomes audible, and a little slower than common, as if the breath were forced through a narrow tube; and this is more remarkable as the ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... upward in their sockets, and for a space met the archduke's kindly gaze. Then the steady repellant hate in them seemed disconcerted, and the withered form cowered under the touch of the pale white hand. Inaudible words rattled in the old man's throat, and he trembled, as though to turn and run. Maximilian regarded him benevolently, thinking it a crisis ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... from the chin to the brow. It was so difficult for her to keep from speaking her mind with her lips that she felt as if her whole face must be telling the truth to him. But he continued to shake his plump sides as if he were uttering inaudible, 'Ho—ho—ho's.' ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... clenched his teeth and forced back the deadly faintness, then turned to the woman who stood beside him, her hands clasped before her, her eyes following the declining sun, her lips sometimes set in mournful curves, sometimes murmuring broken and inaudible words of prayer. He called her twice before she answered, turning to him with eyes of feverish splendor which saw and yet saw not. "What is it?" ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... will say it," said Brooke, "for I cannot keep it. Oh, Talbot! it is this—it is part of my Puritan education, perhaps. Oh, Talbot"—and his eyes rested on hers with a devouring gaze, and his voice trembled and died out into almost inaudible tones—"oh, Talbot, my younger brother Talbot! Very pleasant hast thou been unto me. Thy love to me is wonderful—passing the ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... into an awkward and seemingly impossible shape, while metal surfaces sliding on each other produced screams that cut through the din of the motor and dynamo. The writhing tube strained and wriggled. Then there was a queer, inaudible snap and something gave. A part of the tube quivered into nothingness. Another part hurt the eyes ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... a certain peculiarity of constitution, which I have some reason to believe I inherit. It seems to have its root in an unusual delicacy of hearing, which often conveys to me sounds inaudible to those about me. This I have had many opportunities of proving. It has likewise, however, brought me sounds which I could never trace back to their origin; though they may have arisen from some natural operation which I had not perseverance or mental acuteness ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... evident that his dying hour was near at hand. There are many indications that the haughty cardinal was tortured by the pangs of remorse. He was generally silent, though extremely dejected. His body was subjected to the most extraordinary convulsions, while inaudible ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... no response, when the Medium made an observation which was partly inaudible at the Reporter's seat, the purport of which was that the Spirit communications are sometimes retarded or facilitated by a compliance by the listeners with certain conditions. Another interval of probably two minutes elapsed, when the Medium suggested to Dr. Leidy to place his hands upon the ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... features, that he was pale and ghastly, while his eyes were riveted upon the fire; his lips moved rapidly, as if in prayer, and his locked hands were pressed firmly upon his bosom; his voice, at first inaudible, I could gradually distinguish, and at length heard ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... He was tall and robust in stature, but all his life suffered from "scald-head"; for a definition of which ailment we may refer the curious to the dictionary. He possessed, for a chieftain and a fighting man, the disadvantage of a voice so hoarse as to be inaudible at a few paces distant. In default of offspring he maintained at his charges five hundred corsairs, whom he called his children. He died in the year 1580, and with him what has been called the "Grand Period of the Moslem Corsairs" ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... best, had become inaudible before she found courage to approach the platform. With infinite pains to avoid a sound, she peered over the edge of ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... narrow, human lane to the little square and mounted the scaffold with a firm tread. A great hush fell, broken only by the sounds of sobbing. This man a coward! Every look, every action, gave the lie to such an accusation. Two Bishops stood by him and spoke to him, but their words were inaudible to the greater part of the crowd; and Ketch, the headsman, stood silently by the block, a man hated and execrated from the corridors of Whitehall to the filthiest purlieus ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... a rough, swashing, popular air; and long after the words became inaudible the swing of the music, rising and falling, echoed insult in the Prince's brain. He fled the sounds. Hard by him on his right a road struck towards the palace, and he followed it through the thick shadows and branching alleys of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tremor of uncertainty. Was it Cardo? Yes, she could not be mistaken in the voice; but how would he take her sudden appearance? Would he be glad? Would he be sorry? And the result of her mental conflict was a very meek, almost inaudible knock. ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... of her stride soon began to tell; Punch, too, showed signs of having nearly had enough of it. I therefore shouted to Coleman as we were leaving them: "Keep his head up hill, and you'll be able to pull him in directly". His answer was inaudible, but when 1 turned my head two or three minutes afterwards I was glad to see that he had followed my advice with complete success—Punch was standing still, about half a mile off, while his rider was apparently watching my course with looks of horror. ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... of it, but she insisted and we followed the music, inaudible to me, up the slopes of the garden that is the foot-hill of the mighty mountain of Mahadeo, and still I could hear nothing. And Vanna told me strange stories of the Apollo of India whom all hearts must adore, even as the herd-girls adored him ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... valuable to the city. "Yes, Mr. Burgess," Sir Peter said to old Barty of the bank, "our friend will get over it this time, and without any serious damage to her constitution, if she will only take care of herself." Barty made some inaudible grunt, intended to indicate his own indifference on the subject, and expressed his opinion to the chief clerk that old Jemima Wideawake,—as he was pleased to call her,—was one of those tough customers who would never die. "It would be nothing to us, Mr. Barty, one way or the other," said the ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... telltale pallor, was leaning forward with an elbow on the table and shielding her face with widespread fingers propped against cheek and forehead. In the noise and flurry of the train it was easy to tune the voice to such a note that it must be inaudible to those at the adjacent tables; but Poluski seemed to be careless whether or not he was overheard, and the girl fancied that Princess Delgrado had caught the words "Alexis," "Michael," "Delgratz." Certainly the Princess turned again and looked at her, while she ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... very white, and what he said to his father's question was so inaudible that Paul could ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... which no mind should diverge.[1262] Especially as no two minds could think of diverging at the same time, and on the same side, their concurrence, even when passive, their common understanding, even if kept to themselves, their whispers, almost inaudible, constitute a league, a faction, and, if they are functionaries, "a conspiracy." On his return from Spain he declares, with a terrible explosion of wrath and threats,[1263] "that the ministers and high dignitaries whom he has created must stop expressing their opinions and thoughts freely, that ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Green saw her, he crossed over, and said in a low but not inaudible voice, "Not a word, till all this business is over! They will ruin the cause and themselves, and all that are engaged with them, by committing all sorts of crimes. It will plunge him into the greatest dangers, if ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... matter-of-fact Nature as in Turner's "Swiss Valley." The eye untrained by study of Turner's works finds nothing but a blaze of color with no intelligible object, just as we have, in opera, music of which the words are inaudible;—both are there for practised ear and eye, but in neither case as of primary importance. Turner has even gone farther, and given us pictures of pure color, as in the illustration of Goethe's theory of colors,—a fantasie of the palette. And why shall Turner not orchestrate color ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... in the same language, and resumed his seat as the car glided smoothly away from the kerb into the traffic of the busy square. Robin settled himself back in the seat with an inaudible sigh of satisfaction. He did not like the look of Jeekes's companion, he told himself, and Mr. Victor, whoever he was, had certainly manifested no great desire for Robin's company. But he was going to see Mary. That was all that counted ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... was the one redeeming thing of her appearance. Half way down the stairs she stopped involuntarily and looked with an expression of wondering inquiry into the many staring eyes focused upon herself. Then a titter, nearly inaudible at first, grew into a ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... says she, in a voice so low as to be almost inaudible. For a short, short minute the plan held out to her had tempted her, but something stronger than her love prevailed. She could wait—she would; and she is so sure of him. He is her own, her special property. Yes! she can afford to wait. Something ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... pearls, against his own rude and sordid surroundings; always silent with parted lips, until the night wind smote some chord of recollection, and then mingled a remembered voice with his own. For at those times he seemed to speak also, albeit with closed lips, and an utterance inaudible to all ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... the Gray Man of the inn, who now, with bent head and most deferential manner, addressed a few whispered words to the elderly noble. After a brief, inaudible conference the two descended from the step to advance through the menacing throng toward ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... to and fro in her aimless fashion, as she would do for hours at a time, Rachel accompanied by Noie passed and repassed her, till at length the old woman lifted her head and listened to something which was quite inaudible to their ears. Then she beckoned to Noie, who led Rachel ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... showed me an almost microscopic wire, which was visible to his, and invisible to my own eye: even in the beautiful experiments he made relative to sounds inaudible to certain ears, he never produced a tone which was unheard by mine, although sensible to his ear; and I believe this will be found to have been the case by most of those whose minds had been much accustomed to experimental inquiries, and who possessed their faculties unimpaired ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... well-appointed opium resort. Here the roar of the bazaar and pulsing of tom-toms were blurred and almost inaudible. A reek of bhang and betel hung in the air; there were rows of neat bunks, lacquered pillows, and small trays containing the opium pipe, lamp and other necessaries. Everything was apparently carried out decently and in order; the clients were of a respectable, ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... began to sob aloud. She sunk on her knees before Timea, and covered her hands, her dress, even her feet with unceasing kisses, while she murmured broken and inaudible words. ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... emerged from a wave, glistened and seemed to frown; but the wind howled through her rigging, whistling the thousand notes of a ship; and the hails and cries that escape a Frenchman with so much readiness were inaudible. ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... moment, as the ringing of the Angelus bell in a Catholic country-side. For one moment everybody stood motionless and mute, the women with arms akimbo on aching hips, the black washers with drooping, relaxed shoulders. Each tortured frame seemed to heave with an inaudible "Thank God!" and then we slowly scattered in all directions—some to the cloak-room, where the lunches were stored along with the wraps, some down the ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... took her hands in his; his face was pale and drawn, as the face of a man who has passed through the white heat of suffering. His hands were cold, and trembled a little as they closed on hers; he tried to speak, but his lips were dry and his voice inaudible. ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... wafts waves of music to each listening ear. The guitar is in all South America what the bag-pipes are to Scotland-the national musical instrument of the people. The Criollo plays mostly plaintive, broken airs—now so low as to be almost inaudible, then high and shrill. Here and there he accompanies the music with snatches of song, telling of an exploit or describing the dark eyes of some lovely maiden. The airs strike one as being very strange, and decidedly unlike the rolling songs ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... never be fully given—the search of the living and uninjured for those dead, dying or imprisoned ones who lay beneath the great masses of stone and mortar. Sometimes, in answer to the desperate cries of those outside or already rescued, smothered, almost inaudible cries for help might be heard, so faint as to seem scarcely human, and yet growing fainter and fainter still, until those who were working for the release of the captive became aware that their labor was in vain, and that only a corpse lay beneath their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... have grown deaf to any save the most commonplace oracles. But there is ever a warning voice for who will listen. One may object that its language is unknown, or its whisper inaudible; but to the question, "Whence your ignorance and deafness?" ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... with the evidences of his guilt, back to the scuttle, and descended on tiptoe to the floor beneath. Providence favored us: I met no one on the stairs; and his own cushioned tread was inaudible. I think he was conscious of the dangers of detection; for he even forebore to breathe, or much less chew the last mouthful he had taken; and he skulked at my side with the sirup dropping from his motionless jaws. I think he would have silently choked to death just then, for my sake; and it was ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... drew farther away from them, until with a final twinkle they disappeared into the darkness behind. The churning of the tug's propeller dinned continually in Flea's ears; but was not loud enough to make inaudible the sound of a footstep. Lon came to the top of the stairs; but did not speak. He shuffled to the boat's bow, and with a mighty voice bawled ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... the fiercest conflicts of the Civil War, with a hundred guns in play, spectators a mile and a half away on the opposite side of the Chickahominy valley heard nothing of what they clearly saw. The bombardment of Port Royal, heard and felt at St. Augustine, a hundred and fifty miles to the south, was inaudible two miles to the north in a still atmosphere. A few days before the surrender at Appomattox a thunderous engagement between the commands of Sheridan and Pickett was unknown to the latter commander, a mile in the ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... without a sound Or [inaudible again] horse's tread, My lady's breath is foul as death, Her driver has ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... them like the brassy and lacquered life in hotels. The common school was well enough, but to the common nursery they had grave objections. Eggs might be hatched in ovens, but the hen on her own account much preferred the old way. A hen without her chickens was but half a hen." Is not the inaudible, inward laughter of Emerson more refreshing than the explosions of our ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... pocket.—"O dust, learn of Me to obey! Learn of Me, O earth and clay, to humble thyself, and to cast thyself under the feet of all men for the love of Me."—As he murmured the words, which soon became inaudible, his aspect cleared, his eyes raised themselves again to the landscape, and became once more conscious ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 'When we are paying a dollar a look at eggs, what do you mean by sending me two cracked ones out of twelve? To be sure somebody has been sitting on these eggs, but I'll swear it wasn't a hen.' His reply was inaudible, but he was just going out to his wagon, and he was opening up his heart to the butcher boy as I passed. 'I'd give five dollars, poor as I am,' he said, 'for one look at that old woman's face, for she talks for all the world just like my own mother.' And with that he exchanged the two cracked ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... At any rate, we know that when a phenomenon becomes persistent it tends to escape observation; thus, continuous motion can only be appreciated with reference to a stationary body, and a noise, continually repeated, becomes at last inaudible. The tendency of often-repeated actions to become habitual, and at last automatic, that is to say, carried out without consciousness, is a closely related phenomenon. We can understand, therefore, why a knowledge of the existence of the atmosphere, as distinct from the wind, ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... the stove, trying to figure up some accounts. Rivers sat beside Blanche. With watchful care he kept her shawl upon her shoulders and her feet wrapped in a blanket. He spoke to her now and then in a voice inaudible to Bailey, who studied them ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... murmuring moan that one moment swelled to a pitch almost softly shrill and the next lulled to a low, almost inaudible sigh. ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... finally became inaudible as Hiram rose and walked up and down the room, stopping occasionally, and then starting ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the boy, "or butter and honey?" He, too, waited for the inaudible reply, then asked his Uncle to pass the pot of honey and the butter-dish. The Stranger, apparently, liked sweet things best—at ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... mother!"—exclaimed he, drawing them hastily on one side and whispering something in a low, and almost inaudible voice. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... pleading eyes to hers, and as they met, her beautiful head drooped lower and lower, until it almost touched his own. He felt the soft touch of her hands upon his shoulders, and heard the thrilling accents of her trembling voice, as, in tones so inaudible that none but a lover's ear could have guessed their sweet import, she ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... teamster raised it; slowly drained it to the bottom; dropped a coin into the landlord's hand; cracked his whip in a lively manner and moved on. The steam from his horses mingled with the mist and he was soon swallowed up, although the cheerful snap of his whip could yet be heard. Then that became inaudible and the boniface who had stood for a brief space in the doorway, empty tankard in hand, re-entered the house satisfied that no more transient patronage would be ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
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