"Mutter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... meals, to see if he carried a letter. Sometimes, when he used to stand chafing his stubbly chin in the evening at the slit cut in the stones for his window, looking at the red brick chimney-pot he could see over the penitentiary-wall, it seemed like something of outer life, and he would mutter, "She said the boys would never know." Once, too, a year or two after that, when the jailer came into "quiet Stevy's" cell, (for so he nicknamed him,) Yarrow came up, and took him by the coat-buttons, looking up and gabbling something about Martha ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... to grin, and to mutter with unconvincing defiance, "Good morning! Let me introduce my wife—Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt Eunice Littlefield ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... that I am mistress here and that I will not allow it. If we are to be made fools of in this fashion by the peepings and mutterings of Kaffir witch-doctors we had better give up and die at once to go and live among the dead, whose business it is to peep and mutter. Our business is to dwell in the world and to face its troubles and dangers until such time as it pleases God to call us out of the world, paying no heed to omens and magic and such like sin and folly. Let that come which will come, and let us meet it ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... bookshelves flutter; Scott, Shakespeare, Dickens, are caught; Blake's visions, that lighten and mutter; Moliere—and his smile has nought Left on it of sorrow, to utter The secret ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... wish to be a corn-chandler. When Tom married the daughter of a neighbouring baker, Mat was heard to mutter to one of his intimates that Tom might have looked higher for a wife. He grew a little discontented after that, and gave the young couple plenty of trouble until he got his way—a bad way, too—and went off to seek ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... stopp'd and said with inly-mutter'd voice, "It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold; This neither is its courage nor its choice, But its ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... that cannot hold his tongue. While I was bringing the troughs, one by one, for him to lay, where the meadow was dryest, he still kept muttering and muttering to himself. As often as I came within six yards of him, I heard him mutter, mutter; then, when I helped him to lay the troughs, he began to talk to me. I was not in the mind to make him many answers, but on he went, just the same as if I had asked him a ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... inaudible, about seeking a fortune and finding one, which was prettily put, and Frenchy as best man was heard to mutter something about "Beautiful ... loss to camp ... happiness ... wooden leg," and the ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... she felt creeping over her, as the fog had crept over the country side. The village children had been called in by their mothers, and there was not the usual sound of boys and girls at play in the street. The rumble of a cart in the distance sounded like the mutter and mumble of a discontented spirit; and as Lucy passed through the square formed by the old timbered houses by the lych ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... seat of the mighty. You could not have dropped a handkerchief between the men who wanted to be nearest the throne of influence. But Anazeh solved that riddle. He strode, stately and magnificent, up the middle of the carpet amid a mutter of imprecations. And when one more than ordinarily indignant sheikh demanded to know what he meant by it, he paused in front of him and laid his right hand on my shoulder. (There was a loaded rifle in ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... until I discovered that he had only one eye. At this time an Indian advanced toward us, bearing in his arms a quantity of small stakes; I was at loss to understand what was to transpire, when I heard my one-eyed companion mutter under his breath, "drat 'em, they be a goin' to stake us." Sure enough this was their intention; seizing us one by one, they stretched us on the turf in three files, the heads of one file resting between ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... said one evening to me, 'dat dis not go on much much longer. De crew getting desperate. Dey talk and mutter among demselves. Me thinks we ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... all of, or more behind—a Thankes freest, freshest, faire Ellinda. Thankes for my visit not disdaining, Or at the least thankes for your feigning; For if your mercy doore were lockt-well, I should be justly soundly knockt-well; Cause that in dogrell I did mutter Not one rhime ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... But the Judge, whose mind was on the argument, continued to mutter defiantly until ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... fellow less sensitive than Ditson to abandon all hope of going through Yale. Of course it cut Ditson, but he would grind his teeth and mutter: ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... could only get as red as the little box, and mutter, "Thanky, boys!" as he fumbled to open it. But when he saw what was inside, his face lighted up, and he seized the long desired treasure, saying so enthusiastically that every one was satisfied, though is ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... nodded and proceeded at once to take up her work-basket. "Lucky there's a window up there, so I can see," I heard her mutter. "I've no time to throw away even on ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... bugles, the mutter and roar of the artillery, came the Yell. Their shambling trot quickened. Men were running now, forming a great wave to lick up at the breastworks. Men in that line did not know—or care—that they were moving without the promised support on right and left; they did not hear the disturbed ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... there was partial shelter from the icy wind that swept past, laden with coming snow. There we tarried for a long half-hour (told on my watch by a fusee-light), and still no signs of our companions. Symonds (the cousin), who abode with us still, began to mutter doubts, and the Alabama man to grumble curses (he had ever a fatal facility in blasphemy), and I own to having entertained divers disagreeable misgivings, though I carefully avoided expressing them. At last our guide thought it best that we should make our ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... contributed to it. However, we thought there was no harm in having our joke, when he could not be hurt by it. I proposed that he should be brought on to speak a Prologue upon the occasion; and I began to mutter fragments of what it might be: as, that when now grown old, he was obliged to cry, 'Poor Tom's a-cold[705];'—that he owned he had been driven from the stage by a Churchill, but that this was no disgrace, for a Churchill[706] had beat the French;—that ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... meantime little Duffy had passed on to the next man, in a side mutter, the significant phrase: "He knows!" It went from lip to lip like a watchword passing along a line of sentinels. Each man heard it imperturbably, completed the sentence he was speaking before, or maintained his original silence through a pause, and then repeated it to his right-hand ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... XIVth's Insincerity, for though it only rid my Mind in the Nature of a Scruple or first Impression, yet I found it grow daily more and more upon me, and often in the height of my Diversions it lay upon my Stomach like an indigested Meal; yet at the same time I durst not mutter the least of this Matter to the greatest Confident I had in the World; for I was sensible what would be the Consequence of such a Liberty of Speech, and that nothing less than perpetual Imprisonment in the Bastile must have atton'd for the Crime, and that King ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... back, you scoundrel!" and then his heavy feet sounded upon the carpet. "The deuce!" he said, in an odd, low mutter, which sounded as though he was speaking half to her, half to himself. "My lady's protege, is it? The other Pamela! Rather an improvement on ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... heart and courage to carry on, just because a faithful little dog at the Glen station was still watching with unbroken faith for his master to come home. Common sense might scorn—incredulity might mutter "Mere superstition"—but in their hearts the folk of Ingleside stood by their belief that Dog ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... casting a hasty look to see that he was not observed, he too slipped out. The blackness and the heat were stifling he took great breaths of it as if it were the purest mountain air, and, treading softly on the grass, stole on towards the holm oak. His lips were dry, his heart beat painfully. The mutter of the distant thunder had quite ceased; waves of hot air came wheeling in his face, and in their midst a sudden rush of cold. He thought, "The storm is coming now!" and stole on towards the tree. She was lying in the hammock, her figure a white blur in, the heart of the tree's shadow, rocking ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... so thick and fast Upon his heart, that he at last Must needs express his love's excess With words of unmeant bitterness. Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm Perhaps 'tis tender too, and pretty, At each wild word to feel within A sweet recoil of love and pity. And what if in a world of sin (O sorrow and ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... of the way in time, damn them!" I heard Keston mutter. True, but not all the prolats had moved fast enough at the warning shout. Cowering under the saving key-boards, shrinking from the metallic arms not quite long enough to reach them, I could count only a score. The others—but what use to describe the slaughter out ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... smack of lips, a little laugh in a silvery voice with a merry lilt in it, and then a deep-toned mutter of affected protestation breaking down into silence and a ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... turned pale; Freddy and Teddy opened their eyes to their widest. Jeffreys, on hearing Freddy mutter "Father," looked round curiously, to get a view of the father of his ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... then mourn a year, And bear about the mockery of woe To midnight dances, and the public show? What tho' no weeping Loves thy ashes grace, Nor polish'd marble emulate thy face? What tho' no sacred earth allow thee room, Nor hallow'd dirge be mutter'd o'er thy tomb? Yet shall thy grave with rising flow'rs be drest, And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast: There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow, There the first roses of the year shall blow; While angels with their silver wings o'ershade ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... and stand motionless with a vague gaze fixed on the image of the brig in the calm water. He could also see down there his own head and shoulders leaning out over the rail and he would stand long, as if interested by his own features, and mutter vague curses on the calm which lay upon the ship like an immovable burden, immense ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... never taste; Plums, cherries, ditto, ditto, which these maurauders waste— Who never will catch worms and flies, as smaller "warblers" do, But want precisely those nice things which grow for me and you! I muse on all their robberies, and mutter this fierce strain: Confound these odious "Robins," that have now come ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... gray head and feel for the beads of her rosary, and mutter many an Ave for the repose of my soul. Much as I wished it, I could never get her to talk about her mistress—it was the one subject on which she was invariably silent. On one occasion when I spoke ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... gript And dinted the gilt dragons right and left, Until he groan'd for wrath—so many of those, That ware their ladies' colours on the casque, Drew from before Sir Tristram to the bounds, And there with gibes and flickering mockeries Stood, while he mutter'd, 'Craven crests! O shame! What faith have these in whom they sware to love? The glory of our ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... blasphemy—but of one great, yea, most high, Sackiema, by which name they—living without a king—call him who has the command over several hundred among them, and who by our people are called Sackemakers; and as the people listen, some will begin to mutter and shake their heads as if it were a silly fable; and others, in order to express regard and friendship for such a proposition, will say Orith (That is good). Now, by what means are we to lead this people to salvation, or to make a salutary breach ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... speech. Citizens looked at each other, and Situate M. Jones might have been heard to mutter something ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... The wiseacres of the village had, it seemed, made Mr. W. the subject of their serious conversation. One said that "He had seen him wander about by night, and look rather strangely at the moon! and then, he roamed over the hills, like a partridge." Another said, "He had heard him mutter, as he walked, in some outlandish brogue, that nobody could understand!" Another said, "It's useless to talk, Thomas, I think he is what people call a 'wise man.'" (a conjuror!) Another said, "You are every one of you wrong. I know what ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... Their chatter finally reaching her consciousness, Senta turns to them, annoyed. "Oh, keep still! Stop your silly laughing! Do you wish to make me really cross?" Further to tease her, they drown her voice with the refrain of their spinning-song: "Mutter and hum, good little wheel, cheerily, cheerily turn! Spin, spin a thousand threads, good little wheel, mutter and hum!"—"Do stop that foolish song," begs Senta, "my ears are dazed with your muttering ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... funereally, the faithful nurse watching it with an expression betokening intense anxiety. "Take care, that's a dear!" and then, as the object of her solicitude disappears among the trees, she draws a long sigh; a mutter is heard—"some accident" are the only words distinguishable; a bang of the door follows, and the affectionate nurse is—what?—probably wiping her ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... of time the faithful Chinaman established quite a thrifty business, while his face would light up and his small eyes gleam with satisfaction as he gathered in the dollars day by day, and he might have been heard from time to time to mutter, with a gleeful chuckle: ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... clack and mutter of innumerable voices, laughter, footsteps; hiss and rumble of passing trains taking gamblers back to Nice or Mentone; fevered wailing from the violins of four fiddlers with dark-white skins outside the cafe; and above, around, beyond, the dark sky, and the dark mountains, and the dark sea, like ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a low mutter, his once mighty voice sounding hollow and laboring, but fearless and firm—"ye come—not to conquer, vain rebels!—ye whose dark chief I struck down at my feet in the tomb where my spell had raised up the ghost of your first human master, the ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... such a sameness in politicians. Whatever their opinions, their language and feelings are all one. They are only directed at different people. While one man is gloating over a Conservative victory you hear a mutter from the Radical to the effect that "That brute has got in for ——" Poor man, why, because he thinks differently to you, should he be a brute? But just the same words are spoken if the positions be reversed. It is only the ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... to each other as they cried. A marvel all believed her—an angel clean from heaven; the kiss of peace, la bocca della Carita! A young Dominican became inspired; he showed the whites of his eyes, he spumed at the lips, began to mutter, with gurglings in the throat. At last his words broke strangling from him—"O mouth of singular favour! O lips of heavenly dew!" he stuttered, with a finger on high seesawing to the rhythm: "O starry eyes conversant ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... black velvet with a long train. It gave her a very imposing appearance, and the effect of her evening dress and her handsome face and imperious manners were so overpowering that the old postman, as he hobbled toward her, had to mutter under ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... infection of his high spirits. They walked back through little groups of low white houses, where the air was sweet with the smell of pine and cattle, and the men were splitting firewood and women gossiping at the doors, and then across the fields, where the peasants looked up to mutter a gruffly civil 'G'n Abend' as they turned the ox-plough at the end of the furrow. Now and then they came upon one of the large crucifixes common in the district, and stopped to examine the curious collection of painted ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... come, when the divine leaven which is in the world to-day shall have brought more of the carnal mind's iniquity to the surface, that the Sun of Truth may destroy the foul germs, there shall be old men and women, and they which, looking up from their work, peep and mutter of strange things long gone, who shall fall wonderingly silent when they have told again of the fair young girl who walked alone into the crowded court room that cold winter's morning. And their stories will vary with the telling, for no two might agree what manner of being it was that came into ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... but what we were very lucky in having such a boy as Clarence with us. I begin to understand him better." And Harry, who, for purposes of vague poetical retaliation, would also drop in at that moment, would mutter and say, "He is certainly the son of Colonel Brant; dear me!" and apologize. And his mother would come in also, in her coldest and most indifferent manner, in a white ball dress, and start and say, "Good gracious, ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... suddenly to turn itself inward and demand of him new destinations. On such days he had fallen into the habit of going upon swift walks through the less crowded streets of the city. During his walking he would mutter, "What can I do? What? Nothing. Not a thing." As if secret voices were debating ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... the Sheriff, he wanted no delay; but the people were beginning to mutter among themselves and move about uneasily. He said a few words to the Sheriff, and the latter nodded to ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... ones' hearts would flutter When your intelligent eye peeped out, Saying as plainly as words could utter, "Hurry up with that Brussels-sprout!" How we chortled with simple joy When you bit that impudent errand-boy; "That'll teach him," we heard you mutter, "Whether I've ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... Aethiopia. He taught that the Godhead was united or mingled with the body of a man; and that the Logos, the eternal wisdom, supplied in the flesh the place and office of a human soul. Yet as the profound doctor had been terrified at his own rashness, Apollinaris was heard to mutter some faint accents of excuse and explanation. He acquiesced in the old distinction of the Greek philosophers between the rational and sensitive soul of man; that he might reserve the Logos for intellectual functions, and employ the subordinate human principle ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... rising! If it floods, we are lost! Our beasts will drown; we, even we, shall drown! The River!" And women stood like things of stone, listening; and men shook their fists at the black sky and at that traveling mutter of the winds and waters; and the beasts ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of God on high, Mutter and mumble low, And hither and thither fly— Mere puppets they, who come and go At bidding of vast formless things That shift the scenery to and fro, Flapping from out their Condor ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... its success. What a powerful sensation, for instance, is that which we experience when, after studying the 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' Gibbon tells us how the thought of writing it came to him upon the Capitol, among the ruins of dead Rome, and within hearing of the mutter of the monks of Ara Coeli, and how he finished it one night by Lake Geneva, and laid his pen down and walked forth and saw the stars above his ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... answer; but recalling the evening when, wrecked at heart, with stinging feet, he had stumbled at last into the trail to Doc's camp, he could only mutter, "Dash it all!" ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... snare," they heard him mutter to himself. "Never yet has it failed me—no, nor ever shall, so long as I hold the secret of my evil ash, so long as I remember the words of my ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... that the goddess was resting in her sleep in such a way that no one could possibly unclasp the necklace without awaking her. Loki stood hesitatingly by the bedside for a few moments, and then began rapidly to mutter the runes which enabled the gods to change their form at will. As he did this, Heimdall saw him shrivel up until he was changed to the size and form of a flea, when he crept under the bed-clothes and bit ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... to sway and mutter, to push and surge. Jane felt herself lifted and swung to her feet on the seat where she had been sitting, and the Irishman's big body was spread like a shield before her. His hands were clamped upon the thin shoulders of the girl in the middy blouse, but he ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... knees. All five men hastened to ape the position of the prostrate Arrillians; they knew better to risk committing sacrilege on a strange planet. As Tyndall sank to the ground and covered his eyes, he heard that priest mutter another sentence, in which his own name was included. He thought it was "You, ...
— Grove of the Unborn • Lyn Venable
... day wore on, heavy clouds began to gather in the western sky. They rolled in darkness over the heavens. The distant thunder was heard to mutter. Nearer and louder it was heard. The lightning began to flash. Presently the storm burst in its fury. It came first in rain, and then in hail. The hail-stones came in lumps of ice as big as eggs. They lay ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... me think. Ach! Gott im Himmel! He's in the hall!" She sank wretchedly into a chair. "Can you do nothing but gape and mutter?" In her desperation her ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... besotted with the vices of slavery and slow corruption, had no ears for spirit-thrilling prophecy. The Church, terrified by the Reformation, when she chanced to hear those strange voices sounding through 'the blessed mutter of the mass,' burned the prophets. The State, represented by absolute Spain, if it listened to them at all, flung them into prison. To both Church and State there was peril in the new philosophy; for the new philosophy was the first birth-cry of the modern genius, with all the crudity and clearness, ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... as I sat beside the sea, A little rippling wave stole up to me, And whispered softly, yet impressively, The word Eternity: I smiled, that anything so small should utter, A word the ocean in its wrath might mutter; And with a mirthful fancy, vainly strove, To suit its cadence to some word of love— But all the little wave would say to me, Was, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... the time, their parents and guardians have the mastery of them sooner or later, and the farther it has gone, the worse it is. I saw you lying asleep here looking so innocent that it went to my heart, and I heard you mutter in your sleep 'Love is strong as death,' but that's only a bit of some play-book, and don't you trust to it, for I never saw love that was stronger ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bright face on pure Hamirikan principles. Sure an' warn't it the brave boys that halicted Gineral Pierce and his cumrades?' Here Mr. Patrick again paused, and with a wise look, shook his head. 'We put the broad staunch face on the democracy,' again he interjaculated with a mutter. Indeed, Mr. Patrick the reader will easily detect, had the crude idea of right in his head; but, unfortunately, he could only get it out in these simple and sideling insinuations. The negro, whom we have before described ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... daggers—cutting '5,' '6' and 'St. George,' and 'giving point'—they had come to the end of the play. Exeunt omnes: vos plaudite. Not a step further had they projected. And, staring wildly upon each other, they began to mutter, 'Well, what are you up to next?' We believe that no act so thoroughly womanish, that is, moving under a blind impulse without a thought of consequences, without a concerted succession of steps, and no arriere ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... for you,' he began. 'Forgive.' His voice failed him. Presently I heard a mutter and caught the ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... from Cheverley Chase, The day when first I saw your face Put me in such a fearful flutter I could do naught but moan and mutter. Whether I'm standing on my head, Or if I'm on my heels instead, I scarce can tell, for Cupid's arrows Have made my brain like any sparrow's. When you come near, my foolish heart Goes pit-a-pat with throb and start, And when ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... a little steel-hoop, opened a tiny chest, took out a four-anna piece, carried it to his master, and in exchange received some seed. Thereupon he waddled resentfully back to the iron-cage, opened the door, closed it behind him, and began to mutter belligerently. Warrington haggled for two straight hours. When he returned to his sordid evil-smelling lodgings that night, he possessed the parrot and four rupees, and sat up the greater part of the night trying to make the bird perform ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... your mind?" I heard Wolf Larsen mutter, half to himself, half to them as though they could hear. "You want to come aboard, eh? Well, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... purple velvet, with gilt clasps, out of which in her haste she let fall a shower of the little pictures, each in a lace fringe of yellowish paper, which she used to mark the places of the greater feasts of the church, my aunt, while she swallowed her drops, began at full speed to mutter the words of the sacred text, its meaning being slightly clouded in her brain by the uncertainty whether the pepsin, when taken so long after the Vichy, would still be able to overtake it and to 'send it down.' "Three o'clock! It's ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... him—the instinct that had flashed out during his lazy, fashionable calm in all moments of danger, in all days of keen sport; the instinct that had made him fling himself into the duello with the French boar, and made him mutter to Forest King, "Kill me if you like, but don't fail me!"—was the instinct of the born soldier. In peril, in battle, in reckless bravery, in the rush of the charge and the excitement of the surprise, in ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... came over him. He grew abstracted and solitary,—holding dark seances with himself,—which was odd, as everybody knew he never cared a rap for the Millikens girl. It was even said that he was off his head—which is rhyme. But his reason was undoubtedly affected, for he had been heard to mutter incoherently at the Club, and, strangest of all, to answer questions THAT WERE NEVER ASKED! This was so awkward in that Branch of the Civil Department of which he was a high official—where the rule was exactly the reverse—that he was presently invalided on full pay! Then he ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... trumpets again and call for her, and she comes. She is dressed all in white, and she looks so beautiful and pale and sad that nobody who was not wicked himself could ever suspect her of doing anything wicked, and all the men about mutter that the one who says that she killed her brother will have to prove it. They have just heard the King say something of the kind, so they feel very righteous and very bold about it. The King, then, asks ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... self to receive grace. And if one have taken grace, not to use it as one ought; not to keep it: to turn not to the inspiration of GOD: to conform not one's will to GOD'S will: to give not attention to one's prayers, but mutter on and never reck save that they be said; to do negligently what one was bound by vow to do, or by command, or else enjoined in penance: to draw out at length what should be done soon: having no joy at one's neighbour's profit as at one's own; ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... at any rate," I heard him mutter as she turned and opened her eyes and smiled faintly up in his face. "I swear ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... head, and the horses are driven by a girl,' she heard them mutter. 'We will kill the knight, and take his damsel and ...
— Stories of King Arthur's Knights - Told to the Children by Mary MacGregor • Mary MacGregor
... across the river, and rolled away toward the village, and into the distance. Nor did they stop there—those echoes: the Atlantic is wide, but they crossed it; they made Lord North, Thurlow, and Wedderburn start in their chairs, and mutter a curse: they penetrated to the king in his cabinet, and he flushed and bit his lip. More than a hundred years have passed; and yet the vibrations of that shot across Concord Bridge have not died away. Whenever tyranny and oppression raise ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... properly for the rest of the evening, and come and see me to-morrow at a quarter past five." She was severe, and in the manner in which she turned her back to him there was a degree of contempt which caused him to mutter a decent imprecation. ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... out of camp, you iss so bad?" she asked me by way of greeting. Then, more kindly, "Your boy iss all right, the mutter also. I am come, though, to find you. It iss time you are home with the kinder. Haf you any ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... not long before Macdonald began to toss and mutter in his sleep, breaking forth now and then into wild cries and curses. He was fighting once more his great fight in the Glengarry line, ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... small outfit with contempt and suspicion. He came under the head of a "nester," or "truck farmer," who was likely to fence in the river somewhere and homestead some land. He was another menace to the range, and was to be discouraged. The mutter ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... dialogue between the tavern-keeper and his newly-wedded spouse might have extended it is impossible with any degree of accuracy to set forth, inasmuch as another loud and desperate lunge, extenuated to an inaudible mutter the testy rejoinder of "Giles o' the Maypole;" this being the cognomen by which he was more ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... mutter such things, and that one of us was as great an innocent as the other,' said Hal, 'but I trust my ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of his voice. It was as though he had not spoken. She only continued to moan and mutter, moving her body about uneasily as a child does when its sleep is disturbed by nightmares. Then, to his inexpressible horror, Desmond saw that her feet were bound with straps to the legs of the chair. Her arms were similarly tethered to the arms of ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... command of him. He saw Helen like dawn and Miriam like night, and as one irritated him with her calm, the other roused him with her fire, and he came to watch for Helen that he might sneer inwardly at her, with almost as much eagerness as he watched for Miriam that he might mutter foul language, like ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... went out. The expression of his face was such as to cause the clerk to mutter, dazedly: "He didn't seem to be a whole lot interested. I guess I must have sized ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... he in his blind generosity assumed that she was alluding to her deplorable history and hastened to mutter: ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... mutter of distant thunder came as an echo, and a swifter breeze lifted the flowers again, and brought a whispered greeting from the ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... them was Alden. All night he had lain without slumber, Turning and tossing about in the heat and unrest of his fever. He had beheld Miles Standish, who came back late from the council, Stalking into the room, and heard him mutter and murmur, Sometimes it seemed a prayer, and sometimes it sounded like swearing. Once he had come to the bed, and stood there a moment in silence; Then he had turned away, and said: "I will not awake him; Let him sleep on, it is best; for what is the use of more talking!" Then he ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... wounded man; but he declared afterwards that they cured his wounded arm willynilly, for they forced him to keep it active under pain of being eaten alive.) By day he dozed, lulled by the eternal woods, the eternal dazzle on the water, the eternal mutter of the flood, the paddle-strokes, ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... found myself praying that the Heat-Ray might have suddenly and painlessly struck her out of being. Since the night of my return from Leatherhead I had not prayed. I had uttered prayers, fetish prayers, had prayed as heathens mutter charms when I was in extremity; but now I prayed indeed, pleading steadfastly and sanely, face to face with the darkness of God. Strange night! Strangest in this, that so soon as dawn had come, I, who had talked with God, crept out of the house like a rat leaving its ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... to the window, his face a deep scarlet. I heard him mutter, "Beelzebub, prince of devils," so I suppose the cabin boy had given ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... disputing with some sailors, at table, about some point of navigation; she did not understand it, but all were against Louis, and, waxing warm, all strove to show him he was in the wrong. As he rose and left the table she heard him mutter to himself with an oath, "I know I'm wrong, but I'll never give in!" During the winter preceding the one in which his hideous deed was committed he lived at Star Island and fished alone, in a wherry; but he made very little money, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... a roof near the gate with some children squatted around. He wasn't Sadler. He didn't look as if an inquiry for Sadler would start anything going in his mind. There was a faint tinkle of bells, and the far-off mutter of a gong. ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... silence, and sat with a frown on his face, and a puzzled expression. At times he would mutter such words as, "Deuced odd!" "Confounded queer!" "What a lot!" "By Jove!" while Dacres looked ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... There was a mutter and a stir among the crowd. A black bulk heaved itself up between Nicanor and the firelight, and ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... meaningly, and as she rose to leave the conservatory, for another dance, she heard him mutter: "for my sake." ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... clasped his hands together violently, as if under a strong impulse. In doing so, the clank of his chains echoed harshly through the cell. This seemed to change the current of his thoughts; for he again covered his face with both hands, and began to mutter to himself. ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... fish-house and drying-stages. He saw the spars of his little schooner etched black against the slate-gray of the eastern sky. He stood at the edge of the broken slope, looking and listening. Presently he heard a mutter of voices and saw two dark ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... ablution, so important for health and comfort in that hot climate. They are engaged in worship. You see them taking up the water of the Ganges in the palm of their hands, and offering it up to the sun as they mutter certain prescribed words. You observe them making a circular motion, and if sufficiently near you see them breathing heavily, which you are told is their way of driving away demons, who even in that ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... "Ah!" Jerry used to mutter sometimes over his pipe, "that was a narrow squeak. But what I say is, there's worse lives than a soldier's, so three cheers for ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... over watched the inexplicable happenings of a gaming table. Kendric made his second throw and lifted his eyebrows quizzically at the result. He had turned out the deuce, the lowest number possible. A little eagerly, while men began to mutter in their excitement, Rios snatched up cup and die and threw. Once already he had counted ten thousand as good as won; now he made the same mistake. For the incredible happened and he, too, showed a deuce, ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... gave a glance of surprise, but said nothing. Every day made him an older man in look and bearing. His head was turning white. He had begun to mutter to himself as he walked about the parish. Not a man in England who worried more about his own affairs and ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... opened the unresisting mouth and ladled in a couple of spoonfuls of coffee, which were immediately swallowed; whereupon I repeated the proceeding and continued at short intervals until the cup was empty. The effect of the new remedy soon became apparent. He began to mumble and mutter obscurely in response to the questions that I bellowed at him, and once or twice he opened his eyes and looked dreamily into my face. Then I sat him up and made him drink some coffee from the cup, and, all the time, kept up a running fire ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... in the hut was the Dutch boy, Hans Dunnerwust, who sat on the ground, his back against the wall, his jaw dropped and his eyes bulging. Occasionally, as he listened to the words of the dying man, he would mutter: ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... "laying bare the facts of some cases." The only real difference consists in the finer tact, the greater knowledge of history—in short, the superior equipment of the English iconoclast. Each of them—and all the troop of opponents who grumble and mutter between their extremes—each of them is roused by an intense desire to throw off the shackles of a dying age, in which they have taught themselves chiefly to see affectation, pomposity, a virtuosity more technical than emotional, and an ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... and a long sword, which rattled against the stairs. Next was seen a stout man dressed in rich and courtly attire, but not of courtly demeanor; his gait had the swinging motion of a seaman's walk, and, chancing to stumble on the staircase, he suddenly grew wrathful and was heard to mutter an oath. He was followed by a noble-looking personage in a curled wig such as are represented in the portraits of Queen Anne's time and earlier, and the breast of his coat was decorated with an embroidered star. While advancing to the door he bowed to the right hand and to the left in a very ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on the rude couch. Rose began to mutter and then broke into a pitiful whine. There were some herbs that every householder gathered, there were secrets extorted from the squaws much more efficacious than those of their medicine men. The little hand was burning hot; yes, it was fever. There had been ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... that he saw out of the innumerable host: Themistocles, Democrates, Simonides, Cimon. They beheld him raise his arm and lift his glorious head yet higher. Glaucon in turn saw Cimon sink into his seat. "He wakes!" was the appeased mutter passing from the son of Miltiades and running along every tier of Athenians. And silence deeper than ever held the stadium; for now, with Lycon victor twice, the literal turning of a finger in the next event might win or lose ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... stream is very wide but has no depth. Fight shallowness. Insist on reading thoughtfully. A very suggestive word in the Bible for this is "meditate." Run through and pick out this word with its variations. The word underneath that English word means to mutter, as though a man were repeating something over and over again, as he turned it over in his mind. We have another word, with the same meaning, not much used now—ruminate. We call the cow a ruminant because she chews the cud. She will spend hours ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... morose and absentminded; instead of giving sensible replies to John's questions about the avalanche, he would mutter and say ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... never possessed in all his life so much money at one time; and so vast was his joy that he could only mutter a few broken sentences ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... rather, the faculties of memory and consideration by which reality is apprehended—were once more coming back to the girl and beginning to stir in her mind. She began, gently now, and without perturbation, to recall what had passed, the long crescendo of the previous months, the gathering mutter of the spiritual storm that had burst last night—even the roar and flare of the storm itself, and the mad instinctive fight for the conscious life and identity of herself through which she had struggled. And it seemed to her as if the storm, like others in the material ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... words M. Paul felt a controlled rage and a violence of hatred that made him mutter to himself: "It's just as well this fellow is where he can't do any ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... nothing was heard but their gentle breathing. Suddenly Harry, who always talked in his sleep when any thing exciting was going on, turned over in bed with a jerk, and began to mutter some unintelligible words. All at once, raising himself to a sitting posture, he sang out, at the top of ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... welcome. Coming so close to the little group that Standish muttered, "Sure she is minded to salute us," the poor old crone peered into the face of one after another of the white men, then wofully shook her head and began to mutter in her own tongue with strange gesticulations, but as he heard them Squanto uttered a shrill cry of terror, and the sachem stepping forward spoke some words of stern command, before which the old woman humbly bowed and ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... as he told all he knew the Colonel groaned again and again and to Dick's horror he heard him mutter to himself:— ...
— Our Soldier Boy • George Manville Fenn
... crowded to-morrow morning," MacIlwaine, chief of detectives, paused long enough from storing away useful information to lean and mutter in Colonel Stilton's ear. ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... too disconcerted to do more than mutter confusedly: "I! . . . In a general way. . ." and then gave me up. But he retired in good order, under the cover of a heavily humorous remark that he, too, was getting soft, and that this was his time for taking his little ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... "What are the odds That we shall wake up here within the sun, When time is done, And pick up all the treasures one by one Our hands let fall in sleep?" "You have begun To mutter in your dreams," Said John-a-nods to Jock-a-dreams, And they both ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... enumerating the Universalists in neighboring towns who had turned from their errors on their death-beds, some one exclaimed, "John Hodges! why, he isn't dead,—he's alive and well." Whereat there was a roar of laughter. While holding an argument at table, I heard him mutter to himself at something that his adversary said; and though I could not distinguish what it was, the tone did more to convince me of some degree of earnestness than aught beside. This character might be wrought into ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... her side. Both hands clutched her throat, as though she strangled for air. Her eyes were round and rolling. It was as if some mighty pent force were struggling for release. Suddenly the release came. She began to weep, the tears streaming down her face. Shortly she commenced to mutter little short disjointed phrases in her own ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... and tradition, and the habit of thought it weaves about us, that I have heard ancient and grave farmers, when the fact was mentioned with horror, hum, and ah! and handle their beards, and mutter that 'they didn't know as 'twas altogether such a bad thing as they was hung for sheep-stealing.' There were parsons then, as now, in every rural parish preaching and teaching something they called the Gospel. Why did ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... suddenly on her shoulders, he stooped, looked keenly at her, and she heard him mutter an oath. When he spoke again it ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... to have dipped often in the massive folios of this heroic reformer, the simple, sinewy, idiomatic words of the original. "Denn man muss nicht die Buchstaben in der Lateinischen Sprache fragen wie man soll Deutsch reden: sondern man muss die Mutter in Hause, die Kinder auf den Gassen, den gemeinen Mann auf dem Markte, darum fragen: und denselbigen auf das Maul sehen wie sie reden, und darnach dolmetschen. So verstehen sie es denn, und merken dass man ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... man struggled to his feet. He was becoming delirious with terror. He stepped forward again. The ground seemed solid and he laughed a horrid, wild laugh. Another step and another. He paused, breathing hard. Then he started to mutter,— ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... you mutter? 'Tis a worthless race, For nothing fit but just to milk their cows, And saunter idly up ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... the slope in fragrant breaths that baffed on their eyelids. The little whisper of the sea by the cliffs joined with the whisper of the wind over the grass, the hum of insects in the thyme, the ruffle and rustle of the flock below, and a thickish mutter deep in the very chalk beneath them. Mr Dudeney stopped explaining, and went on with his knitting. They were roused by voices. The shadow had crept halfway down the steep side of Norton Pit, and on the edge of it, his back to them, Puck sat beside ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... for the better part of the half-mile to her home in a kind of stupor, opened her eyes again beneath her mother's frightened gaze and was heard to mutter something about some flowers. ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... voice.—"Why, a sailor like you, old man," he replied, in a tone that meant to be hearty but was impudent.—"Blamme if you don't look a blamed sight worse than a broken-down fireman," was the comment in a convinced mutter. Charley lifted his head and piped in a cheeky voice: "He is a man and a sailor"—then wiping his nose with the back of his hand bent down industriously over his bit of rope. A few laughed. Others stared doubtfully. ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... "Not I, sir. We Yorkshire folks don't grudge a cup o' tea and a bit of fatty cake to them as is like ourselves, exiles in a strange land. Besides, it's been a rare treat to see the young lady. To think that Roger Gibbs' lile lass should come drivin' up in one of they great mutter-cars, too!" ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... was well. It was of no use telling him that Simpson, his mother's maid, had superintended the preparation at every point. He offended her by detecting something offensive and to be avoided in her daintiest messes, and made Mrs Morgan mutter many a hasty speech, which, however, Mrs Bellingham thought it better not to hear until her son should ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... me see a clear landing," he would mutter to himself, "once let me see my way straight to get ashore in a safe place, and then I'll make the 'Westward Ho!' too hot to hold them. Too hot—ah, yes, a precious deal too hot to hold them, that ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... hardship, almost to privation for one of his rank; and witnessed the ruin or the downfall of all his friends; and yet he could laugh with the merry, while with the mourner it was his habit to purse up his lips beneath the grizzled mustache and mutter a few curt words, not of condolence, ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... disposed to take his time as was Pete himself, shied suddenly. Through habit, Pete jabbed him with the spur, to straighten him back in the road again. Pete had barely time to mutter an audible "I thought so!" when Blue Smoke humped himself. Pete slackened to the first wild lunge, grabbed off his hat and swung it as Blue Smoke struck at the air with his fore feet, as though trying to climb an invisible ladder. Pete swayed back as ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... see the reader raise his eyebrows and mutter, "Do the Chinese eat crows?" while at the same time he has been singing all his life about what a "dainty dish" "four and twenty blackbirds" would make for the "king," without ever raising the question as to whether blackbirds are good eating ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... gazed at me for some seconds in amazement, and his wife in terror; as though there was something alarmingly extraordinary in the fact that anyone could come to see them. But suddenly he fell upon me almost with fury; I had had no time to mutter more than a couple of words; but he had doubtless observed that I was decently dressed and, therefore, took deep offence because I had dared enter his den so unceremoniously, and spy out the squalor and ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in the scullery, and the cheerful little explosion when the gas-ring was ignited, and the low mutter of conversation that ensued between Helen and Georgiana—these phenomena were music to the artist in him. He extracted the concertina from its case and began to play "The Dead March in Saul." Not because his sentiments had ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... abusive language" the babu retorted mildly, stopping to speak, and then again to wipe his spectacles, and his forehead, and his hands, and to glance at the clock, and to mutter what may or may not have ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... to be seen at the river which has not its counterpart in the world. The pious Hindoos come here to perform their devotions; they step into the river, turn towards the sun, throw three handsful of water upon their heads, and mutter their prayers. Taking into account the large population which Benares contains, besides pilgrims, it will not be exaggeration to say that the daily number of devotees amounts, on the average, to 50,000 persons. Numbers of Brahmins sit in small kiosks, or upon blocks of stone on the steps, close ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer |
