DICTIONARY ONE.COM • More 'Indistinct' Quotes from Famous Books

... feudalism has been left far behind, and many of the changes introduced by Liberalism have become part of the social structure, they fall under the protection of Conservatives who are fighting against new Liberal innovations. Thus the lines of delimitation tend to become indistinct. ...

— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... it wiser to be less frank. Therefore, covering the action with a negligent motion of my hand, I screwed the glasses close together, so that in looking through them there was to be seen only a mass of indistinct objects looming up in a blurred cloud of light, and so handed them to him. Naturally, neither he nor Tizoc arrived at any very satisfactory conclusion in regard to the real use of them; and from their talk it ...

— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... this chaos of stories more indistinct than the clouds in a stormy sky, Jeanne appeared a wondrous marvel. She prophesied and many of her prophecies had already been fulfilled. She had foretold the deliverance of Orleans and Orleans had been delivered. She had prophesied that she would be wounded, ...

— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... all the lights had been extinguished, except a single lantern, and a multitude of shadows had come thronging from the deeper recesses of the cave. In the faint glimmer the figures of the men loomed up, indistinct, gigantic, distorted. They hardly seemed men at all to Rick; rather some evil underground creatures, neither beast ...

— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... spiritually unsubstantial; the mirrors reflected all things in a sepulchral sea-green; even a huge picture of Mr. Fielding himself, placed over the chimney-piece, seemed like the apparition of a portrait, so dim, watery, and indistinct had it been rendered by neglect and damp. On a huge tomb-like table in the middle of the room, lay two pencilled profiles of Mr. Fielding, a pawnbroker's ticket, a pair of ruffles, a very little muff, an immense broadsword, a Wycherley comb, a ...

— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... because land does not look in the least what you expect when you see it first from the sea. You would naturally search for a long dark line low down on the horizon, but it isn't like that at all. There is a hazy bluish cloud, very indistinct, and seemingly transparent, but as we draw nearer it grows clearer, and then houses and ships can be discerned, and after a good deal of manoeuvring and shouting and throwing of ropes and churning up the water ...

— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... attenuated form on the sofa, and stood with folded arms looking down at the colorless face. His high white brow clouded, and a fierce light kindled in his piercing dark eyes, as through closed teeth came the rather indistinct words: ...

— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... corner of the room next to the chimney and permitted my fire to die out. So strong became my sense of the presence of something malign and menacing in the place, that I found myself almost unable to withdraw my eyes from the opening, as in the deepening darkness it became more and more indistinct. And when the last little flame flickered and went out I grasped the shotgun which I had laid at my side and actually turned the muzzle in the direction of the now invisible entrance, my thumb on one of the hammers, ready to cock the piece, my breath suspended, my muscles ...

— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... drama out of materials partly published by Mrs. Shelley in 1824, partly recovered from manuscript by himself. The bracketed words are, presumably, supplied by Mr. Rossetti to fill actual lacunae in the manuscript; those queried represent indistinct writing. Mr. Rossetti's additions to the text are indicated in the footnotes. In one or two instances Mr. Forman and Dr. Garnett have restored the true reading. The list of Dramatis ...

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

... light. But how much better he felt since he had eaten. He was comfortable and drowsy. The minister and his family, who had been bustling around attending to the wants of their guests, began to grow dim in his weary eyes. Watson, who was sitting opposite to him, looked blurred, indistinct. He was vaguely conscious that the old gentleman was saying: "These are times that try our souls." Then the boy sank back in his chair, sound asleep. He began to dream. He was on the cowcatcher of an engine. Andrews was tearing along in front on a horse, ...

— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins

... restlessly. A sound in the distance broke the stillness, then he started, surely it was the trotting of a horse. He rubbed his eyes. Their own three horses were there close beside them, he could see them vague and indistinct in the gloom. They were there right enough. What could this be? Who could be riding about at this time of night? They were still a good forty miles from the head-station, and this horse was coming from ...

— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt

... dance like an angel, no matter how badly he might have danced before hearing this particular tune. It was a strain of melody with a haunting tinge of delicious melancholy. It aroused all sorts of queer, indistinct little longings, and aching memories of other happy times irretrievably past. Its sound seemed meant to dream by, or to make love by; ordinary speech seemed a real sacrilege while it quivered in ...

— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox

... and fled in all haste at his return. What he had to contend with, what plots he frustrated, what malice he counteracted, what superstition and stupidity he rendered harmless, will never be known in detail. We perceive the indefinite and indistinct forms of these things floating through the mists of history, but cannot grasp and fix them for the instruction of posterity."[L] This portraiture may be somewhat too highly colored, but it is better painting than we get from Norman writers, who were no more capable of ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... me; or rather, I was revealed to myself, and I felt for the first time what belief meant. The truth which had long slumbered in my soul belonged to me, but it was the word of the unknown teacher which filled me with light, illuminated my inner vision, and brought out my indistinct presentiments in fuller clearness before my soul. When I had thus experienced for the first time how the human soul can believe, I read the Gospels as if they, too, had been written by an Unknown man, and banished the thought ...

— Memories • Max Muller

... lips, her eyebrows, her neck, her hands, her feet, her disposition and her future husband were each in turn enthusiastically toasted by other guests in bumpers of French wine. He adds that these compliments were "so moist and numerous that they became more and more indistinct, noisy and irrational" and that before they ended "Nearly every one stood up singing his own favorite song. There is a stage of emotion which can only be expressed in noises. That stage had been reached. They put me in mind of ...

— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... the ancient Cephissus, the vineyards, the grain-fields and the sunny hillside pastures—are made to produce their full impression. The mountains are not near enough to be obtrusive, much less oppressive; neither are they so distant as to be indistinct or to seem insignificant. Seen through the clear air, their naked summits are so sharply defined and so individual in appearance as to seem almost like sculptured forms chiseled out of ...

— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... grass, which it twists together in a huge heap on the ground, usually among tall reeds. The eggs, usually three in number, are a little over three inches long, and in color of a dull greenish ochre, with indistinct spots of dark umber, most numerous toward the broad end. During the winter this bird lives near the sea-shore, especially in the salt-marshes on the Long Island coast, and along the shores of the Chesapeake; ...

— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... is another general form, but one that is completely opposed to the foregoing. It consists of vaguely-outlined, indistinct images that are evoked and joined according to the least rigorous modes of association. It presents, then, two things for our consideration—the nature of the images and ...

— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... this flattery put Bella upon proving that she actually did please in spite of herself. She had a misgiving that she was doing wrong—though she had an indistinct foreshadowing that some harm might come of it thereafter, she little thought what consequences it would really bring about—but she went ...

— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... would like to have joined her in the woodland ramble, but even his good nature was not proof against her indifference. At a turn in the road they lost sight of her, and, as the driver and mail agent were deep in a discussion about the indistinct track, Boyle lapsed into his silent study of the country. Suddenly he uttered a slight exclamation, and quietly slipped from the back of the toiling coach to the ground. The action was, however, quickly noted by the driver, ...

— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... telegraphic communication between the brain and every part of the body, the power and action of the will. Every familiar step is more than a story in a land of enchantment. The power of movement is as mysterious as the power of thought. Memory, and dreams that are the indistinct echoes of dead memories are alike inexplicable. Universal harmony springs from infinite complication. The momentum of every step we take in our dwelling contributes in part to the order of the Universe. We are connected by ties of thought, and even of matter and ...

— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... could hear nothing but the loud clashing of branches, the pattering of rain, and the muttered growl of thunder. I was about to tell Belle that she must have been mistaken, when I heard a shout, indistinct, it is true, owing to the noises aforesaid, from some part of the field above the dingle. "I will soon see what's the matter," said I to Belle, starting up. "I will go, too," said the girl. "Stay where you are," said I; "if I need you I will ...

— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... and Neptune by one. The planets themselves are about equal in size; their diameters, roughly speaking, being about one-half that of Saturn. Some markings have, indeed, been seen upon the disc of Uranus, but they are very indistinct and fleeting. From observation of them, it is assumed that the planet rotates on its axis in a period of some ten to twelve hours. No definite markings have as yet been seen upon Neptune, which body is described by several observers as ...

— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... the service-door and paused behind the bronze gate. There was no light behind him, and the gloom and intervening strips of metal rendered his figure indistinct. Lanyard's high-keyed perceptions had none the less been instant to remark that slight movement and the accompanying change in the texture of the darkness ...

— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... were sleeping around me, wrapped in their hooded cloaks; they speckled the grey ground with black, and the obscure plain panted; I fancied I heard the heavy breathing of a slumbering multitude. Indistinct sounds, the neighing of horses, the clash of arms rang ...

— International Short Stories: French • Various

... by the extermination of more impulsive passions, when their place is possessed by the two devils that neither age nor sickness can exorcise—Avarice and Envy? It is with this last, perhaps, that we have most to do; and the shadow of it, however indistinct and distant, makes the landscape near the horizon look somewhat dreary. The nature of many of us is so faulty and ill regulated, that it may be doubted if even advancing years will make us much better or wiser; but, when winter shall have closed in, and our hot blood is more than ...

— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... the events of history, the lives of those who made history, exist just as much outside of the span of time of their physiological life—that is, are immortal in historical time. They may fade and become more indistinct with the distance in time, just as things in space become more indistinct with the distance in space, but they can be brought back to full clearness and distinction by again approaching the things and events, the ...

— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent

... opinion immediately on turning in at Kay's gate. He had hardly got half-way down the drive when the front door opened and two indistinct figures came down the steps. As they did so his foot slipped off the grass border on which he was running to deaden the noise of his steps, and grated sharply ...

— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse

... efforts to be the chosen companions of nobles and princes, obtaining all that heart could desire of riches and honor,—we turn away and say, Poor Walter Scott! How desolately touching is the account in Lockhart, of his dim and indistinct agony the day his wife was brought here to be buried! and the last part of that biography is the saddest history that I know; it really makes us breathe a long sigh of relief when we read of the lowering of the coffin ...

— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... in the metamorphic schists (I do not here refer to the so-called beds) are not of great length, but thin out, and are succeeded by others; and the notion I have of the molecular movements is shown in the indistinct sketch herewith sent [Figure 6]. The quartz of the strata might here move into the position of the folia without much more movement of molecules than in the formation of concretions. I further suspect in ...

— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... that if he had stretched out his hand he could have touched her dress. Malcolm's heart began beating dangerously, and there was a curious throbbing at his temples; when he tried to speak his voice was thick and indistinct; then with a great effort he steadied himself, for his time had come ...

— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... and to the embarrassment of his mind was added the obscurity of light and distance, which halted him after a few hurried steps, in utter perplexity. Indistinct figures were here and there approaching him out of nothingness and melting away again into the greenish gray chaos. He was in a busy thoroughfare; he could hear the slow trample of hoofs, the dull crawling of vehicles, and the warning outcries of a traffic ...

— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... hour after he spoke, Bright Sun, who was at the head of the column, stopped his pony and pointed to indistinct tiny shadows ...

— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... moments in thrusting his fingers through his hair. In finishing this occupation, the peculiar state of his rules forced itself upon the observation of our gentleman, who, after gazing for some moments on an envious rent in the right ruffle, muttered some indistinct words, like "the cock of that confounded pistol," and then tucked up the mutilated ornament with a peculiarly nimble motion of the fingers of his left hand; the next moment, diverted by a new care, the stranger applied his digital members ...

— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... never have been needed. Then we might leave to a class the regulation, whether of our spirituals or temporals, with the like advantage, that we leave the making of our watches or our shoes to their respective trades. But the indistinct apprehension, why the advantages of the division of labor fail in the matter of government, accords well with the observation, that republican principles make slow progress in the world, are held in gross inconsistencies; and the most zealous assertors thereof ...

— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington

... He could hear the murmur of voices beyond one of the doors. His heart leaped, for there were probably the plotters. He crept to the door, and listened, but could make out nothing of what was being said. Only an indistinct murmur reached ...

— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle

... girl made a move to go. Their eyes were fixed in a gaze of burning fascination upon the scene before them. Dark, almost black, the surrounding woods threw up in relief the clearing lit by the stars. But even so the scene was indistinct and uncertain. A low broken fence surrounded a small patch of ground, in the middle of which stood a ruined log-hut. Round the centre were scattered half-a-dozen or more tumbled wooden crosses, planted each in the centre of ...

— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... protruding head of the Castle Rock, he paused and looked about him. Yes, he was somewhat too high. He began to descend. The rock's head sheltered him from the wind now, and in the silence he could hear the thud of a pick or hammer, and then the indistinct murmur of a man's voice singing. It was Sim's voice; and here was Sim's cave. It was a cleft in the side of the mountain, high enough and broad enough for a man to pass in. Great bowlders ...

— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... tall, grim stacks and the columns of smoke that twisted upward to form that overshadowing cloud. The voices of the children, as they started down the stairway to the dusty road and to their wretched home in the Flats, came to him muffled and indistinct ...

— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright

... noon on the following day he pointed out the indications of a storm at the north and north-west, consisting of a dark, hazy belt in that direction, extending up a few degrees above the horizon, although so indistinct as to have escaped my observation. At five o'clock a violent storm visited us, which lasted half an hour, although a clear sky was visible at the south the whole time. On Monday morning I learned, from the telegraph ...

— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... to modulate my voice, so that it should be just heard and no more, preferring to be indistinct rather than speak too loudly; and confined all my person to express as much as possible, gravity, modesty, and simple gratitude. M. le Duc maliciously made signs to me in smiling, that I had spoken well. But I kept my seriousness, and turned round to examine ...

— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... silver haze, and as the blue sea unrolled to view, far down to the southeast, flashed a pearly sliver of sail lazily drawing in to the coast. It was the merest streak of white against the sky, and none but Milo's sharp eyes could have seen it. Even at that distance, and indistinct though it was in the mist, the giant detected the three masts crossed with yards that proclaimed the vessel a full-rigged ship. He gazed long and earnestly, to assure himself of the ship's progress, then hurried along ...

— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... a sight that I have never seen before nor expect to see again. I was surprised to see a light, apparently on the shore, in the direction of the marsh. It looked exactly like a lantern carried by a man. It was very indistinct, but wavered about, always floating about a foot or two from the surface, sometimes standing still as though he was looking for something on the ground, and sometimes moving very quickly. It was ...

— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson

... lazar-house in the eleventh book of the Paradise Lost with the last ward of Malebolge in Dante. Milton avoids the loathsome details, and takes refuge in indistinct but solemn and tremendous imagery. Despair hurrying from couch to couch to mock the wretches with his attendance, Death shaking his dart over them, but, in spite of supplications, delaying to strike. What says Dante? "There was such a moan there as there would be if all the sick who, between ...

— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the writer folding up the blurred page and addressing the letter. Then for the first time since the days of her happy, sunny childhood Evelyn Arnold took up a neatly bound Testament. She had an indistinct remembrance of something concerning the prodigal son and now ...

— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... minute the company stared dumbly at the indistinct little window, paralysis attacking every sense but that of sight. At the expiration of another minute the place was deserted, and Anderson Crow was the first to reach the bicycles far up the river bank. Every face was as white as chalk, ...

— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon

... a perfectly fluid substance, which he could pour at will into the subtle mould of his feeling and his thought. The result justified the means. Verlaine's poetry exhales an exquisite perfume—strange, indistinct, and yet, after the manner of perfume, unforgettable. Listening to his enchanting, poignant music, we hear the trembling voice of a soul. This last sad singer carries us back across the ages, and, mingling ...

— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... Hetty's voice grew indistinct, and Flora Schuyler drew the furs closer about them, and slipped an arm round her waist. She began to feel the cold again, and the loneliness more, while, even when she closed her eyes, she could not shut out the menacing darkness in front of her. Miss Schuyler was from the cities, ...

— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... my waist like a girdle of pain; and had laid awake nearly all that night under the infliction, when I fell asleep and dreamed this dream. Observe that throughout I was as real, animated, and full of passion as Macready (God bless him!) in the last scene of Macbeth. In an indistinct place, which was quite sublime in its indistinctness, I was visited by a Spirit. I could not make out the face, nor do I recollect that I desired to do so. It wore a blue drapery, as the Madonna might in a picture ...

— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... blue Norfolk, silk hose, flat-heeled shoes, correctly mounted walrus bag, and next-week's style in fall hats. As the train glided out of the great shed Emma McChesney had waved her handkerchief, smiling like fury and seeing nothing but an indistinct blur as the observation platform slipped around the curve. She had not felt that same clutching, desolate sense of loss since the time, thirteen years before, when she had cut off his curls and watched him march sturdily ...

— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... and reflux on the sand, although the shadow of the moon danced in it. The picture of the town perfect in the water,—towers of churches, houses, with here and there a light gleaming near the shore above, and more faintly glimmering under water,—all perfect, but somewhat more hazy and indistinct than the reality. There were many clouds flitting about the sky; and the picture of each could be traced in the water,—the ghost of what was itself unsubstantial. The rattling of wheels heard long and far through the town. Voices of people talking ...

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

... am not for one moment denying that achievement is harder to enjoy than the hope of achievement. Undoubtedly the former lacks the glamour of the indistinct, "that sweet bloom of all that is far away." But our celebrated writer-friends overlook the fact that glamour and "sweet bloom" are so much pepsin to help weak stomachs digest strong joy. If you would have the best possible time of it in the world, ...

— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... compressed keeled scales; nape with a crest of compressed elevated distant scales; sides of the neck with scattered single elongated conical spines; tail tapering, with uniform keeled scales, keeled above, rather dilated at the base, with indistinct cross series of rather ...

— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... the pony halted, when a couple of figures loomed to view in the darkness on the left, and one of them called to him in Comanche. This told the youth that his identity was unsuspected by the red men, whose view was too indistinct to distinguish him from one of their own number. But they were coming toward him, and his broad sombrero must reveal ...

— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis

... in the dim twilight distant objects became confused and indistinct. It was the end of autumn, that melancholy season which suggests so many gloomy thoughts and recalls so many blighted hopes. The child had gone into the house. Bertrande, still sitting at the door, resting her forehead on her hand, thought sadly of her uncle's ...

— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... raining. Madame Martin-Belleme saw confusedly through the glass of her coupe the multitude of passing umbrellas, like black turtles under the watery skies. She was thinking. Her thoughts were gray and indistinct, like the aspect of the streets ...

— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... these preliminaries being adjusted, the trio sallied forth arm-in-arm, Mr. Jorrocks occupying the centre. It was a fine, balmy summer evening, the beetles and moths still buzzed and flickered in the air, and the sea rippled against the shingly shore, with a low indistinct murmur that scarcely sounded among the busy hum of men. The shades of night were drawing on—a slight mist hung about the hills, and a silvery moon shed a broad brilliant ray upon the quivering waters ...

— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... which this intimation produced at Berlin may be easily conceived: horror the more aggravated, as it seized them in the midst of their rejoicings occasioned by the first despatch; and this was still more dreadfully augmented, by a subsequent indistinct relation, importing that the army was totally routed, the king missing, and the enemy in full march to Berlin. The battle of Cunersdorf was by far the most bloody action which happened since the commencement ...

— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... were silent, and the sharp, sweet song of a mocking bird throbbed from a hedge. It was dark in the valley, but, high above, the air was already brightening with the sun; a symmetrical cloud caught the solar rays and flushed rosy against silver space. The valley turned from indistinct blue to grey, to sparkling green. The sun gilded the peaks of the western range, and slipped slowly down, spilling into the depth. It was almost cold, the pump handle, the rough sward, the foliage beyond, were drenched ...

— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... the Sierra de los Alamitos rather than only to the northwestern part of Coahuila as reported by Aldrich and Duvall (1955:17). In northeastern Coahuila pallida seems to intergrade with castanogastris; No. 29414 has an indistinct rusty chestnut patch on its abdomen, ...

— Birds from Coahuila, Mexico • Emil K. Urban

... sport appreciates the loyal support of the thousands on the stands, every man realizes that his checks on the Bank of Cheers can never be cashed unless there is a deposit of hard work and practice. Perhaps all this in an indistinct and indefinite way explains why football players, the country over, understand each other and that when the game is attacked for any reason they stand shoulder to shoulder in defence of what they know down in the bottom of their hearts has such an influence on character building. ...

— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... he paused, and looked confused, and did not know what to say. He had an indistinct recollection of having read something about it in some book; but ...

— Rollo's Philosophy. [Air] • Jacob Abbott

... what she knew and felt there had been something else that she had not got at, and that disturbed Lord Bulchester. The rest of the day she was more or less abstracted, and went to bed with her mind full of indistinct images brooded over by that vague trouble, the very stuff of which dreams are made. And more than this, out of which the brain in the unconscious cerebration of sleep, sometimes, drawing all the tangled threads into order, weaves from them a web on ...

— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various

... Oh!" Suddenly she grew intensely white. The little freckles that had been so indistinct stood out markedly, and it was as if she had never had any tan. One brown hand went to her breast, the other fluttered to his arm again. "You mean ...

— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... often sailed in the Greyhound with Ben and others, and she knew precisely what was to be done in order to get the boat under way. She understood how to move the tiller in order to make the craft go in a given direction, and had an indistinct idea of beating and tacking; but she was very far from being ...

— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic

... had queer, half-wild eyes. She looked down and began to mutter something indistinct. The next instant she went on her knees, caught Catherine's white dress and ...

— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade

... Muggleton against the Dingley Dellers, and that at the Swan—otherwise the Blue Lion—the Pickwick fellowship shared the conviviality of the rival teams, until Mr. Snodgrass's notes of the evening's transactions faded away into a blur in which there was an indistinct reference to "broiled bones" and "cold without". The stately ruins of a Benedictine Abbey, founded by Bishop Gundulf, give to the town an attraction of a ...

— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin

... and she shrank back into her corner; but the steps died away and left a profounder quiet. Her eyes were still on Harney's tormented face: she felt she could not move till he moved. But she was beginning to grow numb from her constrained position, and at times her thoughts were so indistinct that she seemed to be held there only by ...

— Summer • Edith Wharton

... follow still Her own inviolable laws, and droop With silent shades over one half the globe; And slowly moving on her dewy feet, She blends the varied colors infinite, And with the border of her mighty garments Blots everything; the sister she of Death Leaves but one aspect indistinct, one guise To fields and trees, to flowers, to birds and beasts, And to the great and to the lowly born, Confounding with the painted cheek of beauty The haggard face of want, and gold with tatters. Nor me will the blind air permit to see Which carriages ...

— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... interior was all darkness, except that on four sides there were arched openings like doorways, through which the sky, lighted with stars, was visible. In one of the openings, reclining against a cushion from a divan, he saw the figure of a woman, indistinct even in white floating drapery. At the sound of his steps upon the floor, the fan in her hand stopped, glistening where the starlight struck the jewels with which it was sprinkled, and she sat up, ...

— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... It is not every man who can recollect the name of the governor of his own State; very few can tell that of the chief of the neighboring Commonwealth. The old boundaries have grown more and more indistinct; and when we look at the present map of the Union, we see only that broad black line known as Mason and Dixon's, on one side of which are neatness, thrift, enterprise, and education,—and on the other, whatever the natives ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... Fielden ascended to her room. He knocked twice,—no sweet voice bade him enter; he opened the door gently,—Susan was in prayer. At the opposite corner of the room, by the side of her bed, she knelt, her face buried in her hands, and he heard, low and indistinct, the murmur broken by the sob. But gradually, as he stood unperceived, sob and murmur ceased,—prayer had its customary and blessed effect with the pure and earnest. And when Susan rose, though the tears yet rolled down her cheeks, the face ...

— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... him to what he knew must be the second floor. To him there floated a murmur of sounds. They came vague and indistinct through a closed door. The room of the voices was on the left-hand ...

— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine

... Heauens he be: For I haue seru'd him, and the man commands Like a full Soldier. Let's to the Sea-side (hoa) As well to see the Vessell that's come in, As to throw-out our eyes for braue Othello, Euen till we make the Maine, and th' Eriall blew, An indistinct regard ...

— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... the low, dark sky. White, ghostly sea birds wheeled low, a fretful wind grieved about the house, and a New England northeast storm was in progress. She was standing at the window, looking out with eyes farther away than ever over the haze-draped sea. Some fine, heavy material, the same indistinct hue as the day outside, fell about her in large, sweeping folds. A breath of sudden, penetrating perfume struck across his senses as he approached her. 'And gray heliotrope!' he said; but the heliotrope ...

— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... civilities, shaking him by the hand, hanging up his hat and stick for him, and then introducing him to the sitting-room. The ladies received him with the most profound courtesies, which Titmouse returned with a quick embarrassed bow, and an indistinct—"Hope you're ...

— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... She was not fond of specially indicating her exact age, but her juvenile recollections stretched backwards till before the eventful year 1745, and she remembered the Highland clans being in possession of the Scottish capital, though probably only as an indistinct vision. Her fortune, independent by her father's bequest, was rendered opulent by the death of more than one brave brother, who fell successively in the service of their country, so that the family ...

— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... hiding all objects, except in the immediate vicinity, from our view. I judged, however, that the falling cliff had sent us some distance from the shore into the more rapid part of the current. Providentially it was so, for we could still see the indistinct forms of the trees come sliding down, while the constant loud crashes told us that the destruction of the banks had not yet ceased. Thus we floated on till darkness came down upon us, adding to the horror of our position. ...

— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... being slowly withdrawn as by some mysterious hand. Gradually this adornment, growing shorter and shorter, was wound up while the shadows of the out-houses became deeper and the meadow lands appeared to recede in the distance. As he scanned the surrounding garden, the land baron's eye fell upon an indistinct figure stealing slowly across the sward in the partial darkness. This object was immediately followed by another and yet another. To the observer's surprise they wore the headgear ...

— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... the rectangle lay an indistinct, crumpled, oblong figure. Puzzled, Maya studied it. It looked like a body ...

— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay

... made way by degrees for a drizzling rain, which resolved itself into a steady downpour as the afternoon wore on. It was so heavy that Mr Sharnall could hear the indistinct murmur of millions of raindrops on the long lead roofs, and their more noisy splash and spatter as they struck the windows in the lantern and north transept. He was in a bad humour as he came down from the loft. The boys had sung ...

— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... impure, going along by the wharves, seems to suck and plash all day in my ears, as we see and hear it now. At my desk I seem to see those low shores and woods and marshes, on the other side, and the chatter of children, going all day, laps and eddies up like dirty waves between me and that indistinct boundary. I am floating on the river current, drowning as I feel, reaching out for nothing, for nothing is there. All day long it is so. I was the best teacher in my rank, with certainty of promotion. I feel that I am losing confidence. It is the river, the river, and has been so since ...

— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... see the moonlight fading into dawn, over the canal, and the gentle, indistinct landscape, and I wished that Mr. van Buren could have been with us, as I am sure it was the kind of thing which would have appealed to his heart—especially if Freule Menela were not with him, to hold him down ...

— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... bilious fever then? No bad bilious fever either?—Why, then, you are a most unfortunate creature; for you have never known what it was to be in Heaven, nor eke the other place. Oh the delight, the blessedness of the languor of recovery, when one finds himself in a large airy room, with a dreamy indistinct recollection of great past suffering, endured in a small miserable vessel within the tropics, where you have been roasted one moment by the vertical rays of the sun, and the next annealed hissing hot by the salt sea spray;—in ...

— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... black, indistinct figures, leaping out of the smoke, converging on the coach, their naked arms uplifted, their voices mingling in savage yells. Like lightning he worked his rifle, heart throbbing to the excitement, oblivious to all else; almost without realization he heard the deeper bellow of Moylan's Winchester, ...

— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish

... therefore, enough for us that we exercise our thoughts upon Christ in an indistinct and general way, but we must learn to know him in all his offices, and to know the nature of his offices also; our condition requires this, it requireth it, I say, as we are guilty of sin, as we have to do with God, and with our enemy the ...

— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... hour went by, and poor Dick was wondering what the end of the adventure would be when he heard a footstep overhead and then came the indistinct ...

— The Rover Boys on the Ocean • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)

... on a mighty wave he saw the boats together astern of the vessel, but not coming his way; and the gloom was thickening, the ship becoming indistinct, and all was doubt ...

— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... not like a person intending to journey onward, but with the slow, irregular, flitting movement of a being who hovers around some spot of melancholy recollection, uttering also, from time to time, a sort of indistinct muttering sound. This so much resembled his idea of the motions of an apparition, that Hobbie Elliot, making a dead pause, while his hair erected itself upon his scalp, whispered to his companion, ...

— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... offered, because he had nothing, to pay for it. Santa Cruz, as usual, was disappointing, as, Mr. Atkin says, the only word in their mouths, the only thought in their heads, was 'iron;' they clamoured for this, and would not listen; moreover, their own pronunciation of their language was very indistinct, owing to their teeth being destroyed by the use of the betel-nut, so that they all spoke like a man with a hot potato ...

— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of "an indistinct living something, black, possibly curly," which she feared would enter the room in the darkness from somewhere under the bed. Another could see dark objects with eyes and teeth slowly and noiselessly descending from the ceiling toward her. One little ...

— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... their bed of dry reeds and grass, the two hunters now concentrated their attention upon these indistinct and stealthily moving objects, with the result that, as their eyes gradually adapted themselves to the new conditions of light—or darkness, rather— it became possible for them to form some sort of opinion as to the species of the different animals there ...

— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... stationary, instead of ascending, as in due course I ought to have been. The boulder of rock projecting a few feet over my head prevented any view of the ledge, and my shouts inquiring the cause of the delay received indistinct answers, the words "patience" and "wait" being the only intelligible ones. These might have had a consoling influence but for the fact that a thunderstorm—an occurrence of great frequency in the beginning of summer in the High Alps—was fast approaching, ...

— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... Endymion again, and even with a new sense of the treasures of poetry it contains—though treasures poured forth with indistinct profusion. This people in general will not endure; and that is the cause of the comparatively few copies which have been sold. I feel persuaded that you are capable of the greatest things, so you but will. ...

— Adonais • Shelley

... as a false one. He was a stranger there, wafted thither by what is called the course of circumstances; concerning whose parentage, birthplace, prospects, or pursuits, curiosity had indeed made inquiries, but satisfied herself with the most indistinct replies. For himself, he was a man so still and altogether unparticipating, that to question him even afar off on such particulars was a thing of more than usual delicacy: besides, in his sly way, he had ever some quaint turn, not without its satirical edge, wherewith to divert ...

— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... our traps as best we could and again started. To my surprise, as I was marching ahead of my men, I noticed, some two hundred yards from my former camp, a double line of recent footmarks in the snow. Those coming toward us were somewhat indistinct and nearly covered with grit; those going in the opposite direction seemed quite recent. After carefully examining these footprints, I became certain that they had been left by a Tibetan. Where the footprints were nearest our camp, marks ...

— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor

... centuries ago a bold generation of Americans risked their property, their position, and life itself. We are their heirs, and they are sending us a message across the centuries. The words they made so vivid are now growing faintly indistinct, because they are not heard often enough. They are words like "justice," "equality," "unity," "truth," "sacrifice," ...

— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... very possibly again fall in with him. Still, he might after all be a friend. I would banish the subject from my mind. I did so. In the next week we had fine weather and a fair breeze, till the land, stretching away in the north, blue and indistinct, was seen on our larboard bow. We hauled up for it till we got near enough to distinguish objects on shore. I cannot say that the appearance of that part of the new country which was to be our future home ...

— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston

... The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers ...

— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... Mrs. Nicholson, obviously with an indistinct recollection of the advertisement and of the ...

— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... always describing themselves as Darwinians, do not believe, and often cannot even understand, the distinctive Darwinian addition to the evolutionary doctrine—namely, the principle of natural selection. Such hazy and indistinct thinkers as these are still really at the prior stage of Lamarckian evolution" ...

— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... but he restrained himself. On one of these occasions, just as a heavy cloud approached the moon, and while his raft was a dozen yards or so from shore, he was alarmed at sight of something approaching him through the water. What it was he could not conjecture, as it was low down, and very indistinct on account of the ...

— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... daughter, and old Martin recognised him instantly, and held out the only arm he could use, while the knight, softened, touched, and really feeling more natural affection than Stephen had given him credit for, dropped on his knee, breaking into indistinct mutterings with rough but hearty greetings, regretting that he had not found his father sooner, when his pouch was full, lamenting the change in him, declaring that he must hurry away now, but promising to come back with sacks of Italian ducats to ...

— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... Frederick Hambright, who departed this life, March (figures indistinct) 1817, in the ...

— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... free of the crowd, and then at a sharp gallop. Godfrey was conscious of but little as he went along; he had a vague idea of a warm moist feeling down the back, and wondered whether it was his own blood. Gradually his impressions became more and more indistinct, and he knew nothing more until he was conscious of a sensation of cold at the back of the head, and of a murmur of voices round him. Soon he was lifted up into a sitting position, and he felt that bandages were being wrapped round his head. Then he was laid ...

— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... rare moments did she catch these glimpses, and so brief, so indistinct, were they that she half believed her own lively fancy created them. She longed to know more; but "David's trouble" made him sacred in her eyes from any prying curiosity, and always after one of these twilight betrayals Christie found him so like his unromantic self next day, ...

— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... to rain. They rose and went home again. The little assembly house up by the station loomed more indistinct but more inviting through the rain. And the landscape took on a greater harmony of tints and greater friendliness; the scent from ...

— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson

... that floated up on the notes of the pealing organ was clearly distinguished that of Mere St. Borgia, the aunt of Angelique, who led the choir of nuns. In trills and cadences of divine melody the voice of Mere St. Borgia rose higher and higher, like a spirit mounting the skies. The words were indistinct, but Angelique knew them by heart. She had visited her aunt in the Convent, and had learned the new hymn composed by her for ...

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

... it was two inches higher than theirs, there was no sharing. In spite of a heavy rain that was now pouring, my warm place was intolerable, and the perspiration streamed from my face so as to be disagreeable, to say the least. It drove me to walk in my sleep, I am afraid, for I have an indistinct recollection of finding myself standing at the window trying to breathe. It was a very, very little piece of sleep I got after all, and that ...

— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... that he saw something—an indistinct shadow that came in the snow gloom, then disappeared, and came again. He brushed the water and snow from his eyes with one of his mittened hands and stared hard and steadily. Once more the shadow disappeared, then came again, larger and more distinct ...

— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... matter with you, you dirty hound?" and he walked a few steps forward, gazing at the indistinct outlines, the ...

— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... theory that the content of art must be selected is another form of the same error. A selection from among impressions and sensations implies that these are already expressions, otherwise, how can a selection be made among what is continuous and indistinct? To choose is to will: to will this and not to will that: and this and that must be before us, they must be expressed. Practice follows, it does not precede ...

— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... then, who has something real to impart endeavour to say it in a clear or an indistinct way? Quintilian has already said, plerumque accidit ut faciliora sint ad intelligendum et lucidiora multo, quae a doctissimo quoque dicuntur.... Erit ergo etiam obscurior, ...

— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... it, his back turned toward me. I made out little of this fellow's characteristics, as I saw only a pair of broad shoulders, encased in a rough shooting coat, and a fringe of black whiskers. He was smoking a short-stemmed pipe, and contented himself with a growling, indistinct utterance when addressed. Opposite, however, was a man of a different type, slender and active, his hair very dark and inclined to curl, a rather long face, slightly olive-hued, with a small mustache waxed at the ends. His black, sparkling eyes attracted me first, and then his ...

— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish

... of Thorne was not as generous as Worth might have supposed. There lurked in the former's mind an indistinct suspicion. Nay, it was more than a suspicion, and he reasoned that if this man was what he feared he was, he could parry the danger better by having him under his eye, for even now he was concocting a scheme of escape. On the other hand, Worth had no doubt in his ...

— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor

... clay of tablets and bricks. In course of time simplifications took place. The less important wedges were omitted. One stroke took the place of two, or sometimes of three. In this way the old form of objects became, in all but a few cases, very indistinct; while generally it was ...

— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson

... around it in a tearful circle, and Will, who always called me "the little preacher," told me to say the Lord's Prayer. The sun was setting, and the brilliant western clouds were shining round about us. There was a sighing in the treetops far below us, and the sounds in the valley were muffled and indistinct. ...

— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore

... party of friends at her shooting-box in Argyle. One evening, as Diana was going into her bedroom to prepare for dinner, she saw the door suddenly swing open, and something, she could not tell what—it was so blurred and indistinct—come out with a bound. Tearing past her on to the landing, it rushed up the stairs with so much clatter that Diana imagined, though she could see nothing, that it must have on its feet, heavy lumbering boots. Filled with an irresistible curiosity, ...

— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell

... Raffaelle, where the critics have described their own imaginations; or indeed where the excellent master himself may have attempted this expression of passions above the powers of the art, and has, therefore, by an indistinct and imperfect marking, left room for every imagination with equal probability to find a passion of his own. What has been, and what can be done in the art, is sufficiently difficult: we need not be mortified or discouraged ...

— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... was not the slumber that refreshes—the restless and unquiet spirit within was disturbing the rest of the fevered and fatigued body. His flushed cheek lay upon one arm, while his other was every now and then convulsively raised above his head, and his lips moved with indistinct mutterings. ...

— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... the last, is perfectly satisfied. We see the thing ourselves, and shew it to others as we feel it to exist, and as, in spite of ourselves, we are compelled to think of it. The imagination, by thus embodying and turning them to shape, gives an obvious relief to the indistinct and importunate cravings of the will.—We do not wish the thing to be so; but we wish it to appear such as it is. For knowledge is conscious power; and the mind is no longer, in this case, the dupe, though it may be the ...

— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... who had led a very uneventful life, seemed to puzzle them much more. There was apparently nothing to lay hold of, and only a very shadowy, indistinct picture ...

— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates

... town, appeared to float on and were reflected in the calm, glasslike expanse of the Pacific, like emeralds chased in silver, while the ocean itself, towards the horizon, seemed to rise up like a scene in a theatre, or a burnished bright silver wall, growing more and more blue, and hazy and indistinct, as it ascended, until it melted into the cloudless heaven, so that no one could tell where ...

— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... Sumph, an ex-beau, still about town, and related in some indistinct manner to Literature and the Peerage. He was said to have written a book once, to have been a friend of Lord Byron, to be related to Lord Sumphington.... This gentleman was listened to with great attention ...

— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... examination showed that the ball had penetrated the right side. Burr, sheltered by Van Ness under an umbrella, hurried from the scene, while Hamilton, conveyed in his boat to the city, gradually recovered consciousness. "My vision is indistinct," he murmured; but soon after, catching sight of a pistol near him, cautioned them to take care of it. "It is undischarged and still cocked," he said; "it may go off and do harm. Pendleton knows I did not intend to fire at him." As the boat neared the wharf, he asked that Mrs. Hamilton ...

— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... Graces, in the train on Sunday, traveling from town to town, while Ma was knitting things for her tomboy. He talked to Mr. Fuchs as between equals, as between man and man, as between the manager of a star and the owner of a troupe; and the train rushed on, rushed on, with an indistinct sound of the engine-bell, now and again, when they crossed a street. Mr. Fuchs, heavy-jawed, slow of speech, said that he had had enough of traveling, at his age, if it were not for his dear nieces. He would like to retire to the country, to his little home, and grow his roses, as soon as ...

— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... below which is a confusion of small cuts, in a variety of angles, none quite vertical, some quite horizontal. On the reverse is a single—almost perpendicular—cut, and a bold X, and near the point, two shallow, indistinct diverging cuts. So far no one to whom the letter has been submitted has given a satisfactory reading. Blacks frankly admit that they do not understand it. They examine it curiously, and almost invariably remark—"Some fella mak' em." No attempt to decipher ...

— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... heavy crashed against the little door. She was on her feet in an instant, cowering in the far corner of the room, her face among the cobwebs. Panic seized her, and she screamed aloud in her terror. Outside the door there were sounds of a savage struggle, but they rapidly became indistinct, and finally passed beyond hearing altogether. She ran to the door and pounded on it with hands that knew not the bruises they were acquiring, and she moaned in the fear that the rescuers, for such they surely must be, were leaving ...

— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon

... the hospital every day with the English papers, and looked in to leave me the Mirror, for which he would never accept any payment. He had very few teeth and talked in an indistinct sort of patois and insisted on holding long conversations in consequence! He told me he would be enchante to bring me some novels bien choisis par ma femme (well chosen by my wife) one day, and in due course they ...

— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp

... their snowy, arrow-like minarets; the Seven Towers, with their fancy-pictured terrors, fade gradually from my sight, as the steam-boat rapidly ploughs the glassy wave. The eye, straining itself for a last glimpse of the beautiful city, beholds it resting, like a phantom, on the indistinct verge where heaven and the waters meet, until it sinks into the bosom of ...

— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo

... strikingly expressive of the build of his mind, as sketched above. It is the colouring of a realist in so far as it is always caught from life, and never fantastic or mythical. But it is chosen with an instinctive and peremptory bias of eye and imagination—the index of a mind impatient of indistinct confusions and placid harmony, avid of ...

— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... overcome with emotion and uttered some indistinct words. Iakov lowered his head, dissimulating a smile. Serejka was impassible, and he even yawned a little, at the same time gazing at ...

— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky

... were soon going at a rate unknown to those accustomed to travel on one of our American railways. At a little past two o'clock in the afternoon, we saw in the distance the out-skirts of London. We could get but an indistinct view, which had the appearance of one architectural mass, extending all round to the horizon, and enveloped in a combination of fog and smoke; and towering above every other object to be seen, was the dome of St. ...

— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown

... looked landwards, where the indistinct grey blur was beginning to take the pattern of fields and ...

— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine

... that my very natural and proper repugnance for him and his past desperate crimes was greatly modified by pity for his present deplorable situation, the which it seemed he was quick to notice, for with his keen gaze yet holding mine, he spoke, albeit mumbling and somewhat indistinct by reason of his ...

— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... the pale hand reassuringly, inclined himself affectionately, but Mr. Carteret was not easily soothed. He had practised lucidity all his life, had expected it of others and had never given his assent to an indistinct proposition. He was weak, yet not too weak to recognise that he had formed a calculation now vitiated by a wrong factor—put his name to a contract of which the other side had not been carried out. More than fifty years of conscious ...

— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... from a vague and indistinct idea of a new presentation to a clear and defined idea of it. The process is always analytic-synthetic. In a literature lesson the order of procedure must be: (1) Let the pupil get that somewhat indistinct grasp of the thought and feeling which ...

— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education

... is plane polarised light, and that the light from the snows and from the mountains, being sensibly unpolarised, is not directly affected by the Nicol. It will also be understood that it is not the interposition of the haze as an opaque body that renders the mountains indistinct, but that it is the light of the haze which dims and bewilders the eye, and thus weakens the definition of objects ...

— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... That pedestal—that curtain—then a voice That called on Galatea! At that word, Which seemed to shake my marble to the core, That which was dim before, came evident. Sounds, that had hummed around me, indistinct, Vague, meaningless—seemed to resolve themselves Into a language I could understand; I felt my frame pervaded with a glow That seemed to thaw my marble into flesh; Its cold hard substance throbbed with active life, My limbs grew supple, ...

— Standard Selections • Various

... another banana, thinking lazily that he wished he owned this car. For the first time in many a day his mind was not filled and boiling over with his trouble. Marie and all the bitterness she had come to mean to him receded into the misty background of his mind and hovered there, an indistinct memory of ...

— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower

... moments, and Kinnaird gazed down into the valley with consternation in his eyes. The sun had dipped behind the peaks by this time, and the great hollow was growing dim and hazy. The river was blotted out, and even the climbing forest seemed indistinct. ...

— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... indeed, their desire is to conceal from themselves and others that they really have nothing at all to say. They wish to appear to know what they do not know, to think what they do not think, to say what they do not say. If a man has some real communication to make, which will he choose—an indistinct or a clear way of expressing himself? Even Quintilian remarks that things which are said by a highly educated man are often easier to understand and much clearer; and that the less educated a man is, the more obscurely ...

— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer

... criticisms which apply to this last experiment apply to that with the dumb-bell and have already been answered. There is one however which, while applying to that other, more particularly applies here. It would be, that these after-images are too brief and indistinct to be carefully observed, so that judgments as to their shape, size, and color are not valid evidence. This is a perfectly sensible criticism, and a person thoroughly convinced of its force should repeat the experiments and decide for himself ...

— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... of this name fell on Olive's wandering thoughts like balm, turning her mind from the horror she had passed through. Besides, from her state of exhaustion, everything was growing dim and indistinct to her mind. ...

— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... coach or of a gun-carriage (as in the pictures by Wouwerman) are represented by artists, not with the twelve or fourteen spokes which we know to be there—and would be photographed as separate things in an exposure of the fortieth of a second—but as a blurred haze of some fifty or more indistinct "spokes." In this case it undoubtedly results that the observer of the picture is satisfied and receives the mental impression or illusion of a rapid rotation of the wheel. I have tried the experiment ...

— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... room, but most of the chairs were of a sturdier make, one or two of rich carved work of India, no doubt a great rarity when first brought to Glenwarlock. The walls had once had colour, but it was so retiring and indistinct in the little light that came through the one small deep-set window whose shutter had been opened, that you could not have said what it was. There were three or four cabinets—one of them old Japanese; and on a ...

— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... present experience. It is the yearning for full redemption. It is the last which is answered. But there lies in it a not indistinct prophecy of that great and blessed time when we shall be like Him, and delivered from ...

— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... introduced; and they being Gentlefolks, and I a poor humble Serving Man that was to be, I was bidden to wait, which I did very patiently in the embrasure of a window, admiring the great dark tapestried curtains as they loomed in indistinct gorgeousness among the shadows. The hand of piquet was over at last, and Mr. Pinchin found that he had lost three ...

— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... and eternal seem, to the carnal man, distant and indistinct, while what is seen and temporal is vivid and real. Practically, any object in nature that can be seen or felt is thus more real and actual to most men than the Living God. Every man who walks with God, and finds Him a present Help in every time of ...

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

... the lake, however, there was an opening in the forest of considerable extent; and one that had been so thoroughly made as to leave few or no trees. From this point we were distant several miles, and that distance necessarily rendered objects indistinct; though we had little difficulty in perceiving the ruins of extensive fortifications. A thousand white specks, we now ascertained to be tents, for the works were all that remained of Fort William Henry, and there lay ...

— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... certainly is not worshipped by this people, who ascribe the creation to very inefficient causes. They state that some things called themselves into existence, and had the property of creating others. But upon all subjects of this nature their ideas are indistinct and indefinite, as they are not naturally a reasoning people, and by no means given to the investigation of causes or their effects; hence, if you inquire why they use such and such ceremonies, they reply, our fathers did so, and ...

— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... of the surrounding hills. It densified to a ruddy fog as it caught the glow of the evening sun, and finally settled upon the valley. And with each passing moment the hills seemed to recede, their outlines to grow more indistinct and ghostly. And gradually the whole prospect took on the depressing aspect of a day ...

— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... The indistinct memory of his loves, wars, and adventures is growing rapidly fainter, until even the story-teller himself is confused as to the relation between event and locality. It has therefore seemed wise to link indissolubly scene and incident, ...

— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... something like nothing they had ever beheld. Far in the distance was a line of moving objects, gliding through the waves in stately fashion, approaching one behind the other at equal distances. Just what was approaching the two scouts could not at first determine, so indistinct in outline were the moving bulks. But presently, as the oncoming objects drew nearer, the watchers saw that they were great ships. But they looked unlike any ships they had ever seen or heard of. They seemed to be of no color and of every color. They ...

— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... those deep, burning eyes, though the face had changed. The thin red lips still remained its one touch of colour; but the unhealthy whiteness of the skin had given place to a delicate pallor; and the features that had been indistinct had shaped themselves in fine, firm lines. It was a beautiful, arresting face, marred only by the sullen callousness of ...

— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... confuse. At first, memory seemed all a blank beyond the period of his schoolboy days; but gradually one image after another rose out of the void, and one called up another as they came. Still they were clouded and indistinct, like the vague phantoms of a dream. It was with great difficulty that he recollected any names, and could not at all tell in what land it was, that some of the brightest of his memories lay. It was all unconnected, too, with the present, and from it Wilton could derive no clue in regard to the ...

— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... but the fire-light in the room, and it threw about great shadows, so that at first entering all was indistinct; but I heard a foot behind father's, and then a form appeared, and something, I never could tell what, made a great shiver rush down my back, just as when a creature is frightened in the dark at what you don't see, and so, though my soul was unconscious, my body felt that there was danger ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... air, and drowsy, dark clouds followed the moonlike heavy wisps of black cotton-wool, drowning the light from time to time and then clearing off again; and all over the grass, glimmering groups of men in white clothes and women in trailing skirts filled the air with an indistinct murmur of sound. ...

— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie

... melted by thunderbolts, among other images one of Jupiter, set upon a pillar, and a likeness of the she-wolf with Romulus and Remus, mounted on a pedestal, fell down; also the letters of the tablets on which the laws were inscribed ran together and became indistinct. Accordingly, on the advice of the soothsayers, they offered many expiatory sacrifices and voted that a larger statue of Jupiter should be set up, looking toward the east and the Forum, in order that the conspiracies by which they were ...

— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio

... still Her own inviolable laws, and droop With silent shades over one half the globe; And slowly moving on her dewy feet, She blends the varied colors infinite, And with the border of her mighty garments Blots everything; the sister she of Death Leaves but one aspect indistinct, one guise To fields and trees, to flowers, to birds and beasts, And to the great and to the lowly born, Confounding with the painted cheek of beauty The haggard face of want, and gold with tatters. Nor me will the blind air permit to see Which carriages ...

— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... island they could perceive that everything known as festal pleasure was rife in Alexandria, and bore along in its mad revelry the court and the citizens. When the wind blew from the south, it brought single notes of inspiring music or indistinct sounds of the ...

— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... wood lice, ants, of which it is very fond, and of other insects which it finds upon the ground or upon trees. The female differs from the male in appearance, the black strips upon the sides of the throat being very indistinct or ...

— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock

... case of many other races, they regarded their strange-speaking neighbours as 'barbarian,' that is 'stammering,' or even as 'dumb.' So the Russians call their neighbours the Germans njemets, connected with njemo, indistinct. The old name Slovene, Slavonians, is probably a derivative from the substantive which appears in Church Slavonic in the form slovo, a word; see Thomsen's Russia and Scandinavia, p. 8. Slovo is closely connected with ...

— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... rope was wound anew and for the last time, the aspect of the group on the cliff had changed. It had grown eerie, indistinct. The pines and firs showed no longer their sempervirent green, but were black amid the white tufted lines on their branches, that still served to accentuate their symmetry. The vale had disappeared in a sinister abyss ...

— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... which is now a horse, even with a thought The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct, As ...

— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... they had always kept up the memory of the ancient Saxon liberty; and if they were the conquerors of Britain, they did not think that their own servitude was the just fruit of their victory. They had, however, but an indistinct view of the object at which they aimed; they rather felt their wrongs than understood the cause of them; and having no head nor council, they were more in a condition of distressing their king and disgracing their country by their disobedience than of applying any effectual remedy to their ...

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

... 4-6 meters high, with drooping limbs; leaves long, very narrow, abruptly pinnate; many caducous leaflets, linear, elliptical. Flowers large, white, fragrant, in axillary racemes. Calyx bell-shaped with two indistinct lips. Corolla papilionaceous, white. Standard oval, a slight notch at the apex. Wings almost as large as the keel which is strongly arched. Stamens 10, diadelphous. Anthers uniform. Style and stamens equally long. Stigma a small head. Pod 1-2 long, linear, 4-sided, containing ...

— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... indistinct on the top of the eminence was now visible. It was something like a great arm thrust straight out of the ground; at the upper extremity of the arm a sort of forefinger, supported from beneath, by the thumb, pointed ...

— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... Rossetti we owe the reconstruction of this fragmentary drama out of materials partly published by Mrs. Shelley in 1824, partly recovered from manuscript by himself. The bracketed words are, presumably, supplied by Mr. Rossetti to fill actual lacunae in the manuscript; those queried represent indistinct writing. Mr. Rossetti's additions to the text are indicated in the footnotes. In one or two instances Mr. Forman and Dr. Garnett have restored the true reading. The list of Dramatis Personae ...

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

... the past twenty-four hours that for many miles after they left Fort O' God his senses were in an unsettled state of anticipation. His brain was filled with a jumble of strange and thrilling pictures. Very far away, and almost indistinct, were the pictures of things that had happened before he was made a prisoner by Jacques Le Beau. Even the memory of Neewa was fading under the thrill of events at Nanette's cabin and at Fort O' God. The pictures ...

— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... it is described as one of three great enemies of our souls, and in the ordinary writings and conversation of Christians, I need hardly say, mention is made of it continually. Yet most of us, it would appear, have very indistinct notions what the world means. We know that the world is a something dangerous to our spiritual interests, and that it is in some way connected with human society—with men as a mixed multitude, contrasted with men one by one, in private and ...

— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... was gathering over us and the junks,—two were indistinct, though they were close aboard of us. Then, as the Teaser glided astern, I saw that the third was smoking, while crash, crash, the others struck our sides, and their crews grappled, hurled their stinkpots on board, and began ...

— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... tumultuous and convulsive motion. For many miles on either side of the river's oozy bed is a pale desert of gigantic water-lilies. They sigh one unto the other in that solitude, and stretch towards the heaven their long and ghastly necks, and nod to and fro their everlasting heads. And there is an indistinct murmur which cometh out from among them like the rushing of subterrene water. And they sigh one ...

— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... for a human face. It may be caused be some odd arrangement of the leaves. Besides, it is very indistinct." ...

— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson

... their being in great difficulties at home, the moment she perceived that there was no one present? Yet, whenever I went on to ask her a few questions about their usual way of living, her very eyes grew red, while she made some indistinct reply; but as for speaking out, she wouldn't. But when I consider the circumstances in which she is placed, for she has certainly had the misfortune of being left, from her very infancy, without father and mother, the very sight of her is too much for me, and my heart ...

— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... her in his arms until he frightened himself for fear he had hurt her, and murmured an ecstasy of indistinct love words to her. Presently her feet touched the ground and ...

— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... were gratified by an indistinct sight of some body of water, gleaming dimly through the trees from some point in front; and the walk of a few hundred yards more brought them out, as it luckily happened, directly to the camp of which they were in search. It was, however, tenantless; their companions had already departed; ...

— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... abashed when she is looked at by him; under some pretext or other she shows her limbs to him; she looks secretly at him though he has gone away from her side; hangs down her head when she is asked some question by him, and answers in indistinct words and unfinished sentences, delights to be in his company for a long time, speaks to her attendants in a peculiar tone with the hope of attracting his attention towards her when she is at a ...

— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana

... and feathered arrows; from the top of the chapel steeple a great cross of stone, seeming to stretch out its arms; here and there the whitish zinc, cutting the dark blue of the slates; in spots an indistinct glittering and flashes of pale light enveloped in opaque shadows, and then the tops of three or four large trees which extended beyond the eaves, as if prying into the secrets of the attic. By the glittering light of the stars, ...

— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... summit of the hill and remained seated, contemplating the river that washed the precipice under his feet, long after dusk had hid distant objects from his view. His thoughts were, perhaps, far distant from the surrounding scenery, when he was roused by an indistinct noise behind him, and on looking round, perceived that nine white wolves had ranged themselves in form of a crescent, and were advancing, apparently with the intention of driving him into the river. On his rising up they halted, and when he advanced they made ...

— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin

... all Welsh singers, the critic condemns his habit of resorting to an emotional tremolo which frequently degenerates into a mere "wobble." The PREMIER, he continues, shows agility and spirit in florid passages, but his declamation lacks dignity and his articulation is often indistinct. As a pianist he is equally unsatisfactory; his repertory is extremely limited and he is quite unable to interpret the complex harmonies of ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various

... possesses some advantages which must not be overlooked. It speaks directly to the eye, and is more full of meaning than the Phonetic method, though the meaning is necessarily more vague and indistinct, in some respects, while it is less so in others. For example, in an advertising newspaper, the simple figure of a house, or of a ship, or of a locomotive engine, at the head of an advertisement, is a sort of hieroglyphic, ...

— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... and fall of voices, although punctuated by oaths, and indistinct in expression, seemed generally to signify assent. The faces of the men, as they pushed and crowded about us, remained angry and resentful. Clearly enough prompt action alone would carry ...

— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... the Mountain. "Yes," replied a voice, "but laws may be revoked; you cannot restore the life of a man." Malesherbes wished to speak, but could not. Sobs prevented his utterance; he could only articulate a few indistinct words of entreaty. His grief moved the assembly. The request for a reprieve was received by the Girondists as a last resource; but this also failed them, and ...

— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... vapor streaked with pungent bitterness, seemed to make the distant hillside of Hanley quiver. The moon was riding out now from among a drift of clouds, halfway up the sky above the undulating wooded outlines of Newcastle. The steaming canal ran away from below them under an indistinct bridge, and vanished into the dim haze of the ...

— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... He must either have called out his adversary, or have gone out himself. He preferred the latter, and took to the road; and in his new line he was eminently successful. Fortunately, he had no scruples to get over. Tom had what Sir Walter Scott happily denominates "an indistinct notion of meum and tuum," and became confirmed in the opinion that everything he could lay hands upon constituted lawful spoil. And then, even those he robbed, admitted that he was the most gentlemanlike highwayman ...

— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... them may be a rare and a difficult attainment."(86) And he explains that the inconceivableness which, according to his theory, is the test of axioms, "depends entirely upon the clearness of the Ideas which the axioms involve. So long as those ideas are vague and indistinct, the contrary of an axiom may be assented to, though it can not be distinctly conceived. It may be assented to, not because it is possible, but because we do not see clearly what is possible. To a person who is only beginning to think geometrically, there may appear nothing absurd ...

— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... it is a memory, it is so indistinct that it seems like a dream; and yet, how often at this hour does a vision come to my mind of a dark-eyed, soft-voiced woman, holding kneeling child against her bosom, to whom she taught a whispered prayer to the madonna! And the child seems me—and the lady, my mother; ...

— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey

... Molly, firmly. "I have always had indistinct recollections of a very different home from that wretched cellar in the Five Points, and of other parents than you and Mrs. Magee. I believe you stole me when I ...

— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood

... over me, which was perhaps natural on starting suddenly from one's sleep in that wild lone place; I half imagined that someone was nigh the tent; the idea made me rather uncomfortable, and, to dissipate it, I lifted up the canvas of the door and peeped out, and, lo! I had an indistinct view of a tall figure standing by the tent. 'Who is that?' said I, whilst I felt my blood rush to my heart. 'It is I,' said the voice of Isopel Berners; 'you little expected me, I dare say; well, sleep on, I do not wish to disturb you.' 'But I was expecting you,' ...

— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... waiting for him to speak. He tried, with his eyes on her, to say something, but found no words. He knew it was awkward, it was offensive, to stand gazing at her; but he couldn't say what was suitable and mightn't say what he wished. Her face was indistinct in the dim light, but he felt her eyes fixed on him and wondered what they expressed. Did they warn him, did they plead, or did they confess to a sense of provocation? For an instant his head swam; he was sure it would ...

— Madame de Mauves • Henry James

... the whole extent of the crucifix. The movement was like that of motes in a sunbeam. And as a sweet dinning arises from the multitudinous touching of harps and viols, before the ear distinguishes the notes, there issued in like manner from the whole glittering ferment a harmony indistinct but exquisite, which entranced the poet beyond all he had ever felt. He heard even the words, "Arise and conquer," as one who hears and ...

— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... can rouse ourselves, and the eye has not yet lost all its power. Non omnibus dormio, said Mecenes, and in this state more than one husband has acquired a sad certainty. Some ideas yet originate but are incoherent. There are doubtful lights, and see indistinct forms flit around. This condition does not last long, for ...

— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin

... instinct turned together into a narrow trail, scarce wide enough for two, that diverged from the straight practical path before them. It was indeed a roundabout way home, so roundabout, in fact, that as they wandered on it seemed even to double on its track, occasionally lingering long and becoming indistinct under the shadow of madrono and willow; at one time stopping blindly before a fallen tree in the hollow, where they had quite lost it, and had to sit down to recall it; a rough way, often requiring the mutual help of each other's hands and eyes to tread together ...

— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... necessary. When the sporidia are very delicate and hyaline, the septa cannot readily be seen if present; to aid in the examination, a drop of tincture of iodine will be of considerable advantage. In many cases sporidia, which are very indistinct in glycerine, are much more distinct ...

— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... waves; but when they saw her reappear from each overwhelming billow, their hearts rose with a rebound, and loud prolonged huzzas cheered the lifeboat on her course. They became silent again, however, when distance and the intervening haze of spray and rain rendered her motions indistinct, and their feelings of anxiety became more and more intense as they saw her draw nearer and nearer to ...

— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... must have got my common-sense, and the capacity of keeping the money which I make; also a certain natural coldness of disposition, which those who only know me as a public character do not dream of. All my earliest memories are very vague and indistinct. I remember tramping over France and Italy with a man and woman—they were Italian, I believe—who beat me, and a fiddle, which I loved passionately, and which I cannot remember having ever been without. They are very shadowy presences ...

— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al

... talk. These two men—father and son—were friends and intimates, and had been so from Westholt's first memory of the time when his childish individuality began to detach itself from the background of misty and indistinct things. They had liked each other, and their liking and intimacy had increased with the onward moving and change of years. After sixty sane and decently spent active years of life, Lord Dunholm, in either country tweed or evening dress, was a well-built and handsome ...

— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... slow, paralyzing horror. The Mormon's changing face grew huge and indistinct and awful in his sight. He was clutched and shaken in Joe's rude hands, yet scarcely felt them. Joe seemed to be bellowing at him, but the voice was far off. Then Shefford began to see, to hear through some cold and terrible deadness that had ...

— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey

... had gone, Isbel and his men sat their horses and looked about them and spoke low. Their advent had been expected, and the little town awoke to the imminence of the impending battle. Inside Meeker's house there was the sound of indistinct voices of women and the bustle incident to a ...

— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... service-door and paused behind the bronze gate. There was no light behind him, and the gloom and intervening strips of metal rendered his figure indistinct. Lanyard's high-keyed perceptions had none the less been instant to remark that slight movement and the accompanying change in the texture of the darkness barred ...

— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... appearance, as the figures just presented indicate, the force, definition and persistency of the rhythmical impression do not continue uniform. At the lowest rates at which rhythm appears the integration of the successive groups is weak and their segregation indistinct. As the rate increases the definition of the rhythmic form grows more precise, group is separated from group by greater apparent intervals, and the accentuation of the groups becomes more pronounced. In subjective rhythmization of an undifferentiated series, likewise, the ...

— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... growing shorter and shorter, was wound up while the shadows of the out-houses became deeper and the meadow lands appeared to recede in the distance. As he scanned the surrounding garden, the land baron's eye fell upon an indistinct figure stealing slowly across the sward in the partial darkness. This object was immediately followed by another and yet another. To the observer's surprise they wore ...

— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... got herself out of the room as soon as she found an opening which allowed her to go. In making her farewell speech, she muttered some indistinct apology for the visit which she had been bold enough to make. "Not at all," said Lady Ongar. "You have been quite right; you are fighting your battle for the friend you love bravely; and were it not that the cause of the battle ...

— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... in the eleventh book of the Paradise Lost with the last ward of Malebolge in Dante. Milton avoids the loathsome details, and takes refuge in indistinct but solemn and tremendous imagery. Despair hurrying from couch to couch to mock the wretches with his attendance, Death shaking his dart over them, but, in spite of supplications, delaying to strike. What says Dante? "There was such a moan there as there would be if ...

— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... I have an indistinct remembrance of a dark night, and of being led over ground seamed with deep furrows, and made hideous with dead bodies. I had a fancy, too, that the sky was lit up with star shells, and that there was a continuous ...

— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking

... fire began to tell, the accuracy and rapidity of that of the enemy depreciating considerably. At 4.18 p.m. the third enemy ship was seen to be on fire. The visibility to the north-eastward had become considerably reduced, and the outline of the ships very indistinct. ...

— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various

... it were.—But how, we ask, are we to conceive the distinctness or indistinctness of that whose nature is pure light? When an object of light which has parts and distinguishing attributes appears in its totality, we say that it appears distinctly; while we say that its appearance is indistinct when some of its attributes do not appear. Now in those aspects of the thing which do not appear, light (illumination) is absent altogether, and hence we cannot there speak of indistinctness of light; in ...

— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... we were both in a cab, and rattling through the silent streets on our way to Charing Cross Station. The first faint winter's dawn was beginning to appear, and we could dimly see the occasional figure of an early workman as he passed us, blurred and indistinct in the opalescent London reek. Holmes nestled in silence into his heavy coat, and I was glad to do the same, for the air was most bitter, and neither of us had broken ...

— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the man with the snake to go on down into the canon bed. The other Indians were already unsaddling the dead burro. Slade muttered a command to them in the thick indistinct intonations of their language. They at once started ...

— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... was a fairly good hunter, and if she would but have left her alone would have carried the girl safely over such obstacles as they had to encounter. But Jim noticed with dismay that Sylla had some indistinct idea of assisting her at her fences, the result of which could only be inevitable grief. The exhilaration of the trio in front, as attested by the wild shout sent back by Lionel Beauchamp as they ...

— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart

... reply that was indistinct, but which to the startled Figgins, sounded like the rumbling ...

— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng

... to see the moonlight fading into dawn, over the canal, and the gentle, indistinct landscape, and I wished that Mr. van Buren could have been with us, as I am sure it was the kind of thing which would have appealed to his heart—especially if Freule Menela were not with him, to ...

— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... trodden roads suffice Only those who will return again Seeking shelter in their homes from Paradise. Oh! let us find some solitary, green Forgotten garden, where the sunrays fall All blind and blurred and indistinct between Cypresses lofty as earth's boundary wall; Beneath whose shade shall glimmer forth half seen Your face through the soft ...

— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... force. We doubt the man who doubts himself. On the other hand, if, in conversation, the ordinary look of awakened interest be prolonged, and the eyes are kept fixed for a longer period than usual, an embarrassed and somewhat painful feeling is the result; an indistinct impulse makes it difficult to avert the eye, and at the same time a consciousness of that impulse is an inducement to avert it. We lay no undue stress upon these phenomena; but they are phenomena, and fair subjects for scientific investigation. An explanation of mesmerism ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... moment, and it was time they should hasten back to the rocks, which were even now indistinct in the grey haze. Mr Bradshaw held a hand of each of his daughters, and Ruth walked alongside, the two strange gentlemen being on the outskirts ...

— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... papa," she answered, in hasty apology for being found there. And Lord Hartledon, casting his eyes some considerable distance ahead, discerned the indistinct forms of two persons talking together. He understood the situation at once. Dr. Ashton and his daughter had been to the cottages; and the doctor had halted on their return to speak to a day-labourer going home from his ...

— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... imagination is another general form, but one that is completely opposed to the foregoing. It consists of vaguely-outlined, indistinct images that are evoked and joined according to the least rigorous modes of association. It presents, then, two things for our consideration—the nature of the ...

— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... the "Negro pew" in the "organ loft." If he secured the precious "emblems of the broken body and shed blood" of his Divine Master, it was after the "white folks" were through. If the cause of the Negro were mentioned in the prayer or sermon, it was in the indistinct whisper of the moral coward who occupied the sacred desk. And when the fight was on at fever heat, when it was popular to plead the cause of the slave and demand the rights of the free Negro, the Church was the last ...

— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... Everett was so taken aback by the sight of her and the hissing, cross-eyed cat perched on her shoulder that he could not speak. A newly born superstition rose in his heart that the woman was a wraith. Yet an indistinct memory made her black eyes familiar. He did not move from the window, and Screech Owl ...

— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White

... reading, sliding it down as you proceed, you will find that you can read almost as rapidly, and with much less injury to your eyes. A newspaper is the worst reading you can have, as the print is usually indistinct, and it is impossible to ...

— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... the disclosed facts and moral outlook with the rough initiations of my West-Indian experience. And all these things were dominated by a feminine figure which to my imagination had only a floating outline, now invested with the grace of girlhood, now with the prestige of a woman; and indistinct in both these characters. For these two men had seen her, while to me she was only being "presented," elusively, in vanishing words, in the shifting tones ...

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

... was the gladness of a person who has known sorrow. Suddenly she started up, and said: "No, then! I do not dream. He is come back—he is here—all will be well again! Ha! it is his voice. Oh, bless him, it is his voice!" She paused, her finger on her lip, her face bent down. A low and indistinct sound of voices reached her straining ear through the thin door that divided her from Maltravers. She listened intently, but she could not overhear the import. Her heart beat violently. "He is not alone!" she murmured, ...

— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... set into movement by some quick, sharp action, an indistinct crash, but sudden, as of the impact of soft, heavy bodies, a strange wild sound preceded in rapid succession violent brushings and thumpings in the ...

— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... reader of taste, feeling, and judgment, does he, by a few artless words, render most impressive and sublime, what more elaborate description could only have made confused and unsatisfactory. Nothing can be more admirable than this brief and indistinct report of the perspective glass, it cannot offend the most fastidious taste, yet leaves scope for the exercise of the most ardent and aspiring imagination-(Bernard Barton). [234] Such mountains round about this house do stand. As one from thence may see the Holy ...

— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the outer hall, and she heard no more, except the indistinct murmur of a sudden brief dialogue between the visitor and the two girls, who must have come in from the garden. Then the front door banged heavily. He was gone. The vast and arid tedium of her life closed in upon her again; ...

— Leonora • Arnold Bennett

... one or of both of the united Coats, as I have just shown, being commonly rendered indistinct and uncertain by Dimidiation, that form of marshalling was generally superseded by IMPALEMENT in the course of the third quarter of the fourteenth century. This process, at once simple and effectual, marshals the whole of the husband's arms on the dexter half of a Shield divided per pale, as ...

— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell

... more of late years I keep asking those questions at death-beds. I seem to myself constantly as if trying to hold back the curtain and look through. But the look through is all blurred and indistinct. ...

— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth

... Sandy. The march had been distressful, bitter in their mouths with the clinging clouds of powdered alkali, their heads bowed under the glaring ball of the sun. All day the circling rim of sky line had weaved up and down, undulating in the uncertainty of the mirage, the sage had blotted into indistinct seas that swam before their strained vision. When the river cleft showed in black tracings across the distance, they stiffened and took heart, coolness and water were ahead. It was all they had hope or desire for just then. At the edge of the clay bluff, they dipped and poured down a corrugated ...

— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... the lake were almost lost in the vapors, only spots of forest green appearing now and then, a veil of silver being over the eastern waters. The island on which St. Luc lay encamped was growing indistinct, and the fires there shone through a ...

— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler

... exists in the plate, the focal plane is disturbed, and the eyepiece must be moved out. If the plate is concave, it must be moved in to obtain a sharp image. Irregular errors in the plate or surface will produce a blurred or indistinct image, and, as in the first instance, no amount of focusing will help matters. These methods are both good, but are not satisfactory in the highest degree, and two or three important factors bar the way to the very best results. ...

— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various

... time the firelight had disappeared, and only the stars afforded a relief to the darkness, the wall of forest on either hand grew vague and indistinct. ...

— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown

... in the depths of the valley and its curved and sloping banks made a framework of foliage and flowers about its silver waves. It lay there clear and tranquil, and one could see the swaying of the indistinct green of its banks. ...

— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France

... surface assumed a new and singular appearance. It no longer simply reflected the objects placed before it, but, as if it had self-contained scenery of its own, objects began to appear within it, at first in a disorderly, indistinct, and miscellaneous manner, like form arranging itself out of chaos; at length, in distinct and defined shape and symmetry. It was thus that, after some shifting of light and darkness over the face of the wonderful glass, a long perspective of arches and columns began to arrange itself ...

— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... still maintained its ground, perhaps from not having the means of escaping, I saw a small gun glitter for a moment, then there was a sharp report, and a bullet had nearly sent Quesada to his long account, passing so near to the countenance of the general as to graze his hat. I had an indistinct view for a moment of a well- known foraging cap just about the spot from whence the gun had been discharged, then there was a rush of the crowd, and the shooter, whoever he was, escaped discovery amidst the ...

— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... said impotently—"Hannah—" His vision blurred so that he couldn't see her clearly; it was as if, indistinct before him, she were already fading from his life. "I never went to hurt you," he continued in a curious detachment from his suffering. "You ...

— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... upturned and the depression deeper, so that eventually it is more or less broadly funnel-form. The color varies from white to flesh color, tinged with yellow sometimes in spots, and marked usually with faint zones of brighter yellow. The zones are sometimes very indistinct or entirely wanting. The gills are crowded, white then yellow, where bruised becoming yellowish, then dull reddish. The stem is equal or tapering below, hollow or stuffed, paler than the pileus, smooth (sometimes pitted as shown in the ...

— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

... a few moments, there was a busy and earnest, but indistinct hum of the two children's voices, as Violet and Peony wrought together with one happy consent. Violet still seemed to be the guiding spirit, while Peony acted rather as a laborer, and brought her the snow from far and near. And yet the little urchin evidently ...

— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Africa, laden with the children of her fruitful soil torn cruelly from their homes, struck on a coral-reef. A heavy sea dashed over the devoted vessel. Land was in sight, but yet far-off, blue and indistinct. The white crew had many boats. They launched them and pulled away with heartless indifference, leaving three hundred human beings, men, women, and helpless children, to almost certain destruction. Night came on. Oh, what a night of horrors! Many died, some from terror; many were ...

— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... interminable ride in a closed vehicle of some sort, a dizzy panorama of moving buildings, bleak, wind-swept trees, frosty meadows, and land-locked lakes backed by what were either distant mountain ranges or apartment houses. This last, however, was all very blurred and indistinct. ...

— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... of the town perfect in the water,—towers of churches, houses, with here and there a light gleaming near the shore above, and more faintly glimmering under water,—all perfect, but somewhat more hazy and indistinct than the reality. There were many clouds flitting about the sky; and the picture of each could be traced in the water,—the ghost of what was itself unsubstantial. The rattling of wheels heard long and far ...

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

... lowest terrace, he turned round and looked up, and there in the loggia, in the full blaze of the sun, he could just make out the indistinct outline of a woman's form. Had she followed him with her eyes and her thoughts down the long flights of steps? A childish impulse made him suddenly pronounce her name aloud on the deserted terrace. 'Maria! Maria!' he repeated, listening to his own voice. No word, no ...

— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... himself, but stopped on the front platform and looked back as the train jolted across a rattling bridge. A wide, yellow river ran beneath it, and the tall factories and rows of dingy houses were fading in the rain and smoke on the other side. Dick watched them until they grew indistinct, and then his heart felt lighter. He had endured much in the grimy town; but all that was over. After confronting, with instinctive shrinking, industry's grimmest aspect, he was traveling toward the light and glamour ...

— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss

... object that was quickly growing more and more indistinct in the dim moonlight, gazing with a strange heaviness in the region of his heart. He had to shut his teeth firmly together to conquer the momentary weakness that threatened to overpower him. But his resolution remained master ...

— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach

... there was a heavy lurch as the fore-wheels struck the points; then Robertson laughed exultantly and wiped his greasy face. In front lay only the open prairie and flying snow, while the black shape of the freight-train grew indistinct behind. ...

— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... irksome duty of attendance in Parliament rather than to share the central legislative and deliberative power with the whole body of the people. It must, however, be remembered that the scheme makes a very indistinct claim to the character of a ...

— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... more stood towards her, so as to rake her as we passed under her stern. For a minute there was an entire cessation of firing; none of her guns could be brought to bear on us, and the pirates were reserving their fire to pour it into her with more deadly effect. Dim and indistinct, we could just make out her hull and shattered rigging amid the gloom; and the pirates, believing that she would quickly be in their power, were calculating on the rich booty which would soon be theirs, when bright flames darted ...

— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... path, indistinct now in the rank growth of gooseberry bushes, until he reached his destination. A tree, broken off a couple of feet from the ground, had left a high stump with some ragged splinters, serving as the back of ...

— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... side the bay window, giving it the appearance of a tent, open, and yet, to a certain degree, secluded, for a fall of lace swept from the cornice, hanging like a veil of woven frost-work before the glass, rendering every thing beyond indistinct, ...

— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... estimation were ranked perhaps above their real value—his tastes, which coincided so well with her own, his quiet yet manly bearing, his useful pursuits, his gait, appearance, and demeanour. All these were of a nature to win the heart of such a girl as Clara Desmond; and then, probably, in some indistinct way, she remembered the broad acres to which he was the heir, and comforted herself by reflecting that this at least was a match which none would think disgraceful for a daughter even ...

— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... disturbed. Through it she listened to a vague undertone of sorrow; and she became aware that some one was suffering as she had suffered, some one whom she had loved—some one whom she would always love. Out of the darkness a voice was calling her to come back. Indistinct and far away at first, it became clear, ...

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

... from which I could not rouse myself. I had vague perceptions of space traversed, of the rolling of a carriage, of a horrible dream in which my strength had become exhausted; but all this was so dark and so indistinct in my mind that these events seemed to belong to another life than mine, and yet mixed with mine in ...

— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... you to offer," he said, speaking in a slow but indistinct tone, "that she is guilty of this, and that it isn't a plot you have ...

— The Unclassed • George Gissing

... a vague and indistinct remembrance of hurried and anxious faces around my bed, of whispered words and sorrowful looks; but my own thoughts careered over the bold hills of the far west as I trod them in my boyhood, free and high of ...

— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... could see and copy them, if they wished. It was intended to have a few of the more important letters photographed for the James Lemen history; though it was said that some years before some one had a few of them photographed and they were so indistinct as to be worthless; but we hoped for better results. But it {p.57} finally developed that the reputed agent would expect us to pay him (contrary to our first impressions) quite a round sum of money for the restoration and use of the papers before he ...

— The Jefferson-Lemen Compact • Willard C. MacNaul

... many years there came a spring when the colors of the flowers seemed paler to the hermit than they used to be; and as summer drew on their shapes became indistinct, and he mistook one plant for another; and when autumn came, he told them by their various scents, and by their form, rather than by sight; and when the flowers were gone, and winter had come, the hermit was ...

— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing

... family, hoping to astonish my inexperience, constructed a simple microscope for me, by drilling in a disk of copper a small hole, in which a drop of pure water was sustained by capillary attraction. This very primitive apparatus, magnifying some fifty diameters, presented, it is true, only indistinct and imperfect forms, but still sufficiently wonderful to work up my imagination to a preternatural state ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... Steaming through the Golden Gate we were soon on the open Pacific commencing a voyage of nearly four thousand miles. We felt the motion of the waves and became fully aware that we were at sea. The shore grew indistinct and then disappeared; the last visible objects being the lights at the entrance of the bay. Gradually their rays grew dim, and when daylight came, there were only ...

— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... a formula. If they are, then it is necessary to determine whether the radar targets were real or caused by the weather. This is the difficult job. In most cases the only answer is the appearance of the target on the radar-scope. Many times a weather target will be a fuzzy and indistinct spot on the scope while a real target, an airplane for example, will be bright and sharp. This question of whether a target looked real is the cause of the majority of the arguments about radar-detected UFO's because it is up to the judgment of the radar operator as to ...

— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt

... she had called re-crossed the courtyard with eager steps. There was something strange in his gait and carriage, but the strong sunlight behind him made his image indistinct, and besides, Phoebe was accustomed to eccentricities on the part of this ...

— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... bliss. He declared the cherubim to be dismissed and the flaming sword to be sheathed, which had been appointed at the fall, to keep from man "the way of the tree of life." Faint, before this period, had been the hope, indistinct the prospect, which even good men enjoyed of the heavenly kingdom. Life and immortality were now brought to light. From the hill of Calvary the first clear and certain view was given to the world of the everlasting mansions. Since that hour they have been the perpetual consolation ...

— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser

... I do not regret the experience. The night humours of the town descended from the street to the waterside in the still watches of the night: larrikins rushing down in bands to settle some quarrel by a stand-up fight, away from the police, in an indistinct ring half hidden by piles of cargo, with the sounds of blows, a groan now and then, the stamping of feet, and the cry of "Time!" rising suddenly above the sinister and excited murmurs; night-prowlers, pursued or pursuing, with a stifled ...

— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... from the shadow of the distillery, an indistinct form stole behind them, and keeping just within sight, followed the two men as they wended their lonely way to ...

— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... the boy neither saw nor heard the strife of the elements. He heard only the exquisite melody that came floating out to him from the warm, luxurious mansion, and which grew sweeter and richer every moment. The cold, hard street became more and more indistinct to him, and he sat very still with his hands clasped, ...

— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... fire with his pistols ready at hand in case any wild beasts should come near. The next morning he started in what he believed to be the right direction, keeping near the edge of the inundation. His memory of what happened afterwards was vague and indistinct. He remembered that for several days he kept on, sometimes plucking fruit as he went, and occasionally firing a gun three times. Rapidly his strength failed as he went on, he often stumbled and fell from exhaustion and hunger, and the power of ...

— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty

... In the evening, indistinct sounds of a far off battle could be heard as the struggle moved on to another quarter. Nearer, we heard the trailing of heavy artillery down the mountain and against our will the thought formulated itself, "Will that wave of terror roll back to us?" Our ears ...

— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow

... The monotonous forest of trees became indistinct; for half an hour the rain fell in sheets—ghostly white in the dusk. It became difficult now to evade the roots and holes. It grew colder, yet there was no breeze. Still the gaunt figure of the trapper ahead of them led on without pity. They followed him blindly—now ...

— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith

... listened to him in a dreamy way, and, when he drew out the letter, it was only with a strong effort that I was able to conjecture what it might be. So much had passed since I had seen him, that our last conversation had become very dim and indistinct in ...

— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... became blurred and indistinct, prismatic colours began to come and go upon the curtain of vapour, and suddenly out flashed the image of a wide-stretching sun-lit plain, upon which were drawn up on parade, in illimitable perspective, a countless host of ...

— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... and Ned stood anxiously watching the light of the lanthorn, which was made to run along the rope and the ground till it played only upon the two kegs, which looked dull and indistinct by the shadowy ...

— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... the figures to the prepared paper, on quite the same principle on which in vision the crystalline lens conveys them to the retina. In the centre of the field in both cases there is much distinctness, while all around its circumference the images are indistinct and dim. We have but to fix the eye on some object directly in front of us, and then attempt, without removing it, to ascertain the forms of objects at some distance on both sides, in order to convince ourselves that the field of distinct vision is a very limited ...

— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... placentae or anything indicating an abortive fruit. On closer examination the cuticle was found to consist of thick-walled cells, exactly like those of the tomato, while the spongy mass consisted of a similar tissue to the fleshy portion of the fruit, but with far less wrinkled walls, and more indistinct intercellular spaces. The most striking point, however, was the immense quantity of very irregular and unequal starch-grains with which they were gorged, which gave a peculiar sparkling appearance to them when seen en masse. I am inclined to regard the body rather as ...

— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters

... partly derived from the necessity of punishing the greater sort of criminals, whom no avenging power of this world could reach. The voice of conscience, too, was heard reminding the good man that he was not altogether innocent. (Republic.) To these indistinct longings and fears an expression was given in the mysteries and Orphic poets: a 'heap of books' (Republic), passing under the names of Musaeus and Orpheus in Plato's time, were filled with notions of ...

— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato

... houses in the rear; the dome of the Louvre in front, the long gallery of wood at the right, and the waste plot of ground that ran unevenly as far as the sheds of the stall-keepers were, so to speak, steeped in the grey hues of the atmosphere, where indistinct murmurs seemed to mingle with the fog; while, at the opposite side of the square, a stiff light, falling through the parting of the clouds on the facade of the Tuileries, cut out all its windows into white patches. Near the Arc de Triomphe a dead horse lay on the ground. ...

— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight." ...

— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... public read from time to time of the lovely prisoner, languishing in the city prison, the tortured victim of the law's delay; and as the months went by it was natural that the horror of her crime should become a little indistinct in memory, while the heroine of it should be invested with a sort of sentimental interest. Perhaps her counsel had calculated on this. Perhaps it was by their advice that Laura had interested herself ...

— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... intermeddle in your affairs. They mean you no ill whatever; and they are too ignorant of the state of your affairs to be able to do you any good. Whatever opinion they have on your subject is very faint and indistinct; and if there is anything like a formed notion, even that amounts to no more than a sort of humming that remains on their ears of the burden of the old song about Popery. Poor souls, they are to be pitied, who think of nothing ...

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

... of June the common began to attract me more and more. It was so extensive that, standing on its border, just beyond the last straggling cottages and orchards, the further side was seen only as a line of blue trees, indistinct in the distance. As I grew to know it better, adding each day to my list from its varied bird life, the woods and waterside were visited less and less frequently, and after the bird-scaring noises began in the village, its wildness ...

— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... of the Assumption of the Virgin, which we have seen circulated in print shops in America, but which appears of a widely different character in the painting. The Virgin is rising in a flood of amber light, surrounded by clouds and indistinct angel figures. She is looking upward with clasped hands, as in an ecstasy: the crescent moon is beneath her feet. The whole tone of the picture— the clouds, the drapery, her flowing hair—are pervaded with this amber tint, sublimated and ...

— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... morning song. Out from the camp the bugles were calling the soldiers for the march; the baggage trains were rumbling over the bridge. But still below on the marge lingered the solitary figure; now walking, now motionless, now silent, now speaking in indistinct monologue. Drusus overheard only an occasional word, "Pompeius, poor tool of knaves! I pity him! I must show mercy to Cato if I can! Sulla is not to be imitated! The Republic is fallen; what I put in its place must not fall." Then, after a long pause, "So this was to be my end in life—to destroy ...

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

... Among the indistinct, but most pleasing recollections of the home of her early childhood, was one of a boy with curly black hair and smiling face, who brought her beautiful flowers, and made for her rabbits out of his handkerchief, and pretty little boats out of nut-shells. She remembered eagerly leaning over the ...

— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins