"Indistinctly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fixed his thoughts successfully on outward and physical things, the world wherein he now walked grew dim: he missed the path, stumbled, saw trees and flowers indistinctly, failed to hear properly the call of birds and wind, to feel the touch of sun; and, most unwelcome of all,—was aware that his leader left him, dwindling in size, dropping away somehow among shadows far behind or ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... business to get in the way of an organized workman," Jacob said indistinctly, kicking the air to the great delight of the onlookers, who encouraged him to continue. "I'm a member of my organization, and don't owe anything; you can see for yourselves!" He pulled out of his breast-pocket ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... their bed, the skins they used for saddles their pillows, and the star-gemmed canopy above their only covering. At dawn they were again on their march, and as they proceeded the objects they had seen the night before faint and indistinctly, became more clearly defined, having the appearance of uneven bodies, scattered over a considerable extent of territory. In a few hours, they came to them and found, instead of a forest, a singular mass of rocks, sometimes rising in smooth perpendicular columns, some of them capped by a ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... We are here three artists benighted and without shelter, one a woman - a delicate woman - in evening dress - in an interesting situation. This will not fail to touch the woman's heart of Madame, whom I perceive indistinctly behind Monsieur her husband, and whose face speaks eloquently of a well-regulated mind. Ah! Monsieur, Madame - one generous movement, and you make three people happy! Two or three hours beside your fire - I ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... intonation of such sentences as Ecce Veneris hortator et armiger Liber advenit ultro. The tale went on through all its marvelous adventures, and Lucian left the amphitheatre and walked beside the river where he could hear indistinctly the noise of voices and the singing Latin, and note how the rumor of the stage mingled with the murmur of the shuddering reeds and the cool lapping of the tide. Then came the farewell of the cantor, the thunder of applause, the crash of cymbals, the calling of ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... fancy; besides, I suspect the story of sweating gold was only one of the many fables got up to make the Jews odious and afford a pretext for plundering them. As for the sound like a woman laughing and crying, I never said it was a woman's voice; for, in the first place, I could only hear indistinctly; and, secondly, he may have an organ, or some queer instrument or other, with what they call the voce umana stop. If he moves his bed round to get out of draughts, or for any such reason, there is nothing very frightful in that simple operation. Most of our foolish conceits explain themselves ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... Was it a playful charge on the part of my Ligeia? or was it a test of my strength of affection, that I should institute no inquiries upon this point? or was it rather a caprice of my own—a wildly romantic offering on the shrine of the most passionate devotion? I but indistinctly recall the fact itself—what wonder that I have utterly forgotten the circumstances which originated or attended it? And, indeed, if ever she, the wan and the misty-winged Ashtophet of idolatrous Egypt, presided, as they ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Smith couldn't answer a word; At length her reply indistinctly was heard; "I'm all of a mullock [1], it's no use denying—" And with that the poor woman ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... looked up and down the street. Close by, a carter stood at the head of an impatient horse that stamped and rattled its harness, and a hoist clanked as a bale of goods went up to a top story; but except for this the street was quiet Farther off, one or two moving figures showed indistinctly, for rain was falling and the light getting dim. Foster, who had arrived in Newcastle that morning, had waited, thinking it might suit him better to leave ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... simplest, though an imperfect form of Heliotropion, marking indistinctly the length of a shadow at different times of the year, especially the extremes of length and shortness at mid-winter and mid-summer. It is perhaps interesting to mention that travellers have recorded, ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... speak; she only knew that her head was throbbing, that she heard but indistinctly the words of the man who kept close to her as they went on up the steep trail. At the rock where she had been too quick for him, Sperry abruptly stepped in front of ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... "Yes, indistinctly; but none of them ever got in my bonnet or made much impression. I don't like bees, nor do they like me. They respect only the deliberation of profound gravity and wisdom. Father has these qualities by the right ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... that the development of the heddle is the most important step in the evolution of the loom (Horniman Museum Handbooks, No. 10, pp. 47-49). We may now return to the drawing. Wilkinson shows the rod D1 indistinctly and the left hand end only of D2. Lepsius' artist seems to have taken a liberty with D1 but in the right direction, by making it more definitely into an early form of heddle—the loop and rod—but he shows D2 the same as Cailliaud and Rosellini. Prof. Kennedy argues that these ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth
... following day we heard, at first indistinctly, toward the front of the column continued cheering. Following on, it grew louder and louder. We reached the foot of a long ascent, from the summit of which the shout went up, but were at a loss to know what called it forth. Arriving there, there loomed up before us the old Blue Ridge, and we, too, ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... man. When the question was raised, in 1846, he was in a blustering hurry to take ground for it. He sought to be in advance, and to avoid the uninteresting position of a mere follower. But soon he began to see glimpses of the great Democratic ox-gad waving in his face, and to hear indistinctly a voice saying, 'Back! Back, sir! Back a little!' He shakes his head and bats his eyes and blunders back to his position of March, 1847. But still the gad waves, and the voice grows more distinct and ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... of old carpet slippers, which to Sonny Sahib were the most remarkable features of his attire. So much occupied, indeed, was Sonny Sahib in looking at the Maharajah's slippers, that he quite forgot to make his salaam. As for Tooni, she was lying flat at their Highnesses' feet, talking indistinctly into the ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... his assailant groveling in the snow. He rose to his feet, dazed and staggering from the effect of the blow on his head and the murderous grip at his throat. Half a pistol shot down the trail he saw indistinctly the twisting of black objects in the snow, and as he stared one of ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... 3.—Carapace smooth, rather convex, and with three keels above; the beak, longly produced, ending in a spine, simple on the side and produced into a keel on each side behind; the central caudal lobe rather narrow, indistinctly divided in half, and like the other lobes flexile at the end, the lateral lobes with a central keel ending a slight spine; the hands elongated, compressed, smooth, with a thickened, toothed, inner margin, which ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... way. But I had no money to bet. That day as I went into the vault I saw under a lower shelf—the Devil drew my eyes that way—a bank note. I hardly knew it was a bank note, for I saw but a piece of paper indistinctly in the dim light. I picked it up. Oh, God! if I hadn't touched it! I looked at it. My heart jumped in my throat and choked me; my head swam. In my ears were strange voices, saying: 'Take it! Put it in your pocket!' ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... Flint was not sorry to have it interrupted by a call upon his attention in the appearance of two figures below, looming dim and ghostlike in the fog. Just beneath his window, they paused in their walk, and their voices came up to him first indistinctly, then with more and more clearness. The tones Flint recognized at once as belonging to Tilly Marsden and to Leonard Davitt, the young fisherman whose scarlet shirt was often to be seen on the clamming grounds, and whose rich baritone voice ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... seemed inclined to be very loving, but I did not appreciate her advances, being altogether unaccustomed to such things. The champagne was brought, and I was persuaded to drink freely of it. The consequence was that I soon became helplessly intoxicated. I can indistinctly remember the dancing lights, the popping of champagne corks—the noise, the confusion, the thrumming of a piano, and the boisterous laughter—and then I fell into ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... somehow, as grimy as a Costaguana lepero after a day's fighting in the streets, rumpled all over and dishevelled down to my very heels. And I am afraid I blinked stupidly. All this was bad for the honour of letters and the dignity of their service. Seen indistinctly through the dust of my collapsed universe, the good lady glanced about the room with a slightly amused serenity. And she was smiling. What on earth was she smiling ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... first solar rays, and as we journeyed on, the valley of Ghotfa widened, till we found ourselves traversing an immense plain, at the extreme north of which, and on the west, we saw the palms of Sockna. We had seen them yesterday indistinctly from the peaks of Gibel Asoud. We continued our route for four hours, when we arrived at Sockna. There is still a goodly number of palms, notwithstanding the thousands destroyed by Abd-El-Geleel when besieging ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... the oracle had said, he only half uttered the words, and then mumbled the rest indistinctly; and from his confusion, people must have imagined that this handsome young man ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... indistinctly in the depths of the cellar, and gave no sign of ascending, his master dived down to him, leaving me vis-a-vis with the ruffianly bitch and half a dozen four-footed fiends that suddenly broke into a fury, while I parried off ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... been known as the principal agents of sensation since the first ages of man-life on the earth; but their nature has not been well understood until within the memories of men still living. Electricity was also vaguely known—but very indistinctly—from ancient times. It has remained for the scientific investigators of our age to enter into the secret parts of nature and lay bare to the understanding many of the hitherto unknown facts relating to ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... on. It might have flamed violently, had his tenant made any further attempt to change his purpose. She had not. She had left the room meekly, with the same curt, awkward bow that marked her entrance. He recalled her manner very indistinctly; for a feeling, like a mist, began to gather in his mind, and make the occurrences ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... helplessly throughout May 7. On the morning of May 8 the weather cleared a little and the Western Mountains became indistinctly visible. Cape Bird could also be seen. The ship was moving northwards with the ice. The daylight was no more than a short twilight of about two hours' duration. The boiler was being filled with ice, which had to be lifted ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... they are "in truth, for the greatest part, such silly things, that very easiness doth make them hard to be disputed of in serious manner." Hooker's great work against the impugners of the order and discipline of the Church of England was written (and this is too indistinctly seized by many who read it), not because Episcopalianism is essential, but because its impugners maintained that Presbyterianism is essential, and that Episcopalianism is sinful. Neither the one nor the other is either essential or sinful, and much may ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... lips murmured a word or two indistinctly; she trembled, became giddy, her strength failed her; overcome by the purity of the air and the sublimity of the scene, she sank fainting into Harry's arms, who, watching her closely, was ready ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... be right to set down every painter for a great man, the moment we find he is clear; for there is a hard and vulgar intelligibility of nothingness, just as there is an ambiguity of nothingness. And as often, in conversation, a man who speaks but badly and indistinctly has, nevertheless, got much to say; and a man who speaks boldly and plainly may yet say what is little worth hearing; so, in painting, there are men who can express themselves but blunderingly, and yet have much in them to express; and there are ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... at her face, and staggered away. Then a fury seized him. Clutching the knife firmly, and holding the lamp aloft, he sprang toward the ungainly object in the corridor. It was then that the officers, still advancing cautiously, saw a little more clearly, though still indistinctly, the object of the surgeon's fury, and the cause of the look of unutterable anguish in his face. The hideous sight caused them to pause. They saw what appeared to be a man, yet evidently was not a man; huge, awkward, shapeless; ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... that from the beginning a man loves himself, although indistinctly; then comes the distinguishing of those things which to him are more or less; to be more or less loved or hated; and he follows after and flies from either more or less according as the right habit distinguishes, not only in the other things which he loves in a secondary manner, ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... put to him, either as to the time of Trevyllian's return, the place of the meeting, or any other part of the transaction. His attention seemed to wander far from all around and about him; and as he muttered indistinctly to himself, the few words I could catch bore not in the remotest degree upon the matter ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the effect of them in succession. One of the veils (of black lace) was too thick to be worn over the face at that summer season without exciting remark. The other, of plain net, allowed her features to be seen through it, just indistinctly enough to permit the safe introduction of certain lines (many fewer than she was accustomed to use in performing the character) on the forehead and at the sides of the mouth. But the obstacle thus set aside only ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... resolutely plunging into the wood, and keeping always slightly to the right, for I saw that my bias was to the left, I came at last to a place where I could see the sides of a mound through the trees rather indistinctly. ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the floor. Then he went back to the partly open door. It was quiet in the darkened room. He listened for a breath or a sob, and could hear neither. A curtain was drawn over the one window, and he could but indistinctly make out the darker shadow where Isobel lay on the bed. His heart beat faster as he softly called Isobel's name. There was no answer. He looked back. Little Isobel had found something on the floor and was amusing herself with it. Again he called ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... he led her down to his study, and seated her on a couch drawn near the window. The confused sound of many voices and the tread of dancing feet, keeping time to a band of music, came indistinctly from the parlors. Dr. Hartwell closed the door, to shut out the unwelcome sounds, and, seating himself before the melodeon, poured a flood of soothing, plaintive melody upon the air. Beulah sat entranced, while he played on and ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... done the deed, for no one had ever heard anything but friendly words between him and the prince. He remembered, too, having seen the dead body extended upon the great table of the study, and he recalled Donna Faustina's tone of voice indistinctly as in a dream. Then, before the prefect announced his decision, he was ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... Teufelsdroeckh, as a speculative Radical, has his own notions about human dignity; that the Zaehdarm palaces and courtesies have not made him forgetful of the Futteral cottages. On the blank cover of Heuschrecke's Tract we find the following indistinctly engrossed: ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... every point); and by and by, even made it a plea of Nullity, destructive to the Election altogether, when her Hungarian Majesty's affairs looked up again, and the world would listen to Austrian sophistries and obstinacies. This was an essential service from Kur-Sachsen. [Began, indistinctly, "in March" (1741); languid "for some months" (Adelung, ii. 292); "November 4th," was settled in the negative, "Kur-Bohmen not to have a vote" (Maria Theresiens Leben, p. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... well as in two of the young gentlemen who returned after dark, and of whom we were anxious to make inquiries respecting Pearson. When I sent for them into my cabin, they looked wild, spoke thick and indistinctly, and it was impossible to draw from them a rational answer to any of our questions. After being on board for a short time, the mental faculties appeared gradually to return with the returning circulation, and it was not till then that a looker-on could easily persuade himself that they had ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... sank indistinctly, and scarcely reached Olive. Perhaps it was well; such light falling on her ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... about there in Christiania," he says in a published letter to Bjoernson, "as a young student, undeveloped, dim, and unclear—a kind of poetic visionary, a Nordland twilight nature—which after a fashion espied what was abroad in the age, but indistinctly in the dusk, as through a water telescope—when I met a young, clear, full-born force, pregnant with the nation's new day, the blue steel-flash of determination in his eyes and the happily found national form—pugnacious to the very point of his pen. I ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... examination went on more staidly. Bertram said that he remembered very well the walk he had taken with the Dominie and somebody lifting him up on horseback—then, more indistinctly, a scuffle in which he and his guide had been pulled from the saddle. Vaguely and gradually the memory came back of how he had been lifted into the arms of a very tall woman who protected him from harm. Again he was a poor ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... after sunset, when near the equator, he was not a little alarmed and surprised (because quite unexpected) at the cry of "rocks on the starboard bow:" looking forward through the dubious light (if the expression may be admitted,) he indistinctly saw objects which he and all on board took to be the pinnacles of several rocks of a black and white colour: in a short time, however he discovered this formidable danger to be nothing more than a company of dancing grampuses with white bellies: as one disappeared, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... near her, and she could hear their voices indistinctly. She did not try to hear what they said, she was too tired to think. She snuggled closer in the soft pillows and sighed contentedly, but before long a voice near her separated itself from ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent
... but look as I might I could see no one else, nor anything that explained what we had witnessed and I accosted the man civilly, wishing him good evening. He made an answer, but indistinctly, and, this done, went on with his meal like one who viewed our arrival with little pleasure; while I, puzzled and astonished by the ordinary look of things and the stillness of the house, affected to warm my feet at the logs. At length, ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... Buade Street, and continued his stroll with an object, for at the point where the sharp descent towards the Lower Town began he brought up before a stately house of stone, of an antique architecture, on the face of which, over the door, something indistinctly glittered. It was the house of the Golden Dog; and as he surveyed it and tried vainly to read the letters of the inscription, his shadowy visitor at Troyes once more arose vividly before his imagination, ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... without which no dictionary shall ever be accurately compiled, or skilfully examined. Some senses however there are, which, though not the same, are yet so nearly allied, that they are often confounded. Most men think indistinctly, and therefore cannot speak with exactness; and consequently some examples might be indifferently put to either signification: this uncertainty is not to be imputed to me, who do not form, but register the language; who do not teach ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... the light pass slowly from the dim region that meant the Heads, until, as the pilot boat swung out through the Rip to where the Nauru lay, her other lights grew clear, and presently her whole outline loomed indistinctly, suddenly close to them. She lay to across a little heaving strip of sea, and presently the pilot was being pulled across to them by a couple of men and was coming nimbly up the Nauru's ladder, hand over ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... would do that, too, if you kill somebody," he began in a new tone,—the tone which Lorraine had heard indistinctly in the bunk-house when Swan was talking to the doctor. "Do you think I'm a damn fool, just because I'm a Swede? You are smart—you think out every little thing. But you make a big mistake if you don't think ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... should wish to set bounds to the almighty power of God; but that all-powerful Being having given us as a rule of our knowledge the clearness of the ideas which we form of everything, and not being permitted to affirm that which we know but indistinctly, it follows that we ought not to assert that thought can be attributed to matter. If the thing were known to us through revelation, and taught by the authority of the Scriptures, then we might impose silence on human reason, and make captive our ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... morning," cooed the Dove, and with a gentle flutter they disappeared through the window. Indistinctly Marjorie heard the Ark cast away from the windowsill. And the voice of Capt. Noah ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... cheer; the women plied their husbands with questions; even the horses took on new energy, and plunged desperately through the frozen snow which one moment supported their weight and the next splintered in broken ice-cakes beneath them. Slowly the mole grew until in the gathering shadows it took on indistinctly the shape of a building, and just as the rising moon crested the ridge of the Pembina hills the travellers swung up at the door. Arthurs had carried the key of the padlock in his hand for the last mile; everybody was out of the sleighs ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... pouring in a flood from the clouds, completely enveloped the party on the wharf; another second and a shout was indistinctly heard amid the tumult of the winds and waters; a lighter cloud passed over, the bay was partially seen again; but neither the white sails of the Petrel nor her buoyant form could be traced by the ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... He muttered something indistinctly, which sounded like, "Oh, all right;" then catching sight of Elsa's reproachful face, he seemed to put some constraint on himself, and, coming forward to his mother, kissed ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... She but indistinctly heard him, so great was the trembling within her. Her father would scarcely know his altered Sheila when she went back to Borva; and what would Mairi say—Mairi who had many a time helped her to arrange those long ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... bird in its nest, murmured indistinctly, her eyelids quivered a second, then the blue eyes opened wide, and ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... Lawley terrific to his imagination. Ever since he was quite little, he remembered hearing the howls which proceeded from the "Latin-school" as he passed by, whilst some luckless youngster was getting caned; and the reverend pedagogue was notoriously passionate. Then, again, he spoke so indistinctly with his deep gruff voice, that Eric never could and never did understand a word he said, and this kept him in ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... MAN, has been lodged in the common jail of this county, who says his name is JUPITER. He has lost all his front teeth above and below—speaks very indistinctly, is very lame, so that he can ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the light, the child rose softly, approached the window, and, resting her upturned face upon both hands, gazed long into the heavens, communing evidently with herself, for her lips moved and murmured indistinctly. Slowly she retired from the casement, and again seated herself at the foot of the bed, disconsolate. And then her thoughts ran somewhat thus, though she might not have shaped them exactly in the same words: "No, I cannot understand it. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... eye, are all calculated to awaken a train of sad and serious contemplation. The ripple of the water against the boat, as its keel cleaves through the stream—the darkling current hurrying by—the indistinctly-seen craft, of all forms and all sizes, hovering around, and making their way in ghost-like silence, or warning each other of their approach by cries, that, heard from afar, have something doleful in their note—the solemn shadows cast by the bridges—the ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... was overcome with modest confusion, and turning, found a refuge from this publicity in the arms of Mrs. Larkins. Then in a state of profuse moisture he was assaulted and kissed by Annie and Minnie, who were immediately kissed upon some indistinctly stated grounds by Mr. Voules, who then kissed the entirely impassive Mrs. Voules and smacked his lips and remarked: "Home again safe and sound!" Then with a strange harrowing cry Mrs. Larkins seized upon and bedewed Miriam with kisses, Annie and ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... that was the son) had lived much abroad, on purpose to avoid his parent; and when at length he returned to England, it was to find him married again to a young wife, who was supposed to suffer cruelly and to loathe her yoke. Because of this marriage (as the dreamer indistinctly understood) it was desirable for father and son to have a meeting; and yet both being proud and both angry, neither would condescend upon a visit. Meet they did accordingly, in a desolate, sandy country by the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... claims, and the wearied body finished by triumphing over the rebellious restlessness of the excited spirit. The graceful form of Strasolda, and the wild figures of the Uzcoques, swam more and more indistinctly before his closing eyes, until he sank at last into ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... a close. Still, although the alarm which the zebras had caused us when first indistinctly seen had subsided, we thought it possible that some of our savage foes might still be on the watch for us further down the stream, or, should we land and rest, that they might overtake us before we again got under weigh. "It's wisest, according to my notions, ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... the last of his words were twisted by a fresh blast of the storm. But the figure behind the sledge had heard, and Jolly Roger saw her indistinctly at his feet, shielding the man he had found with her arms and body, and crying out a name which he could not understand in that howling of the wind. But a thing like cold steel sank into his heart, and he knew it was not Nada he had found this night on the Barren. He placed the unconscious man on ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... complete eradication of the natural tendency to "baby-talk" which is too often encouraged and aided by the habit of parents in REPEATING THE BABY-TALK. In no case, should defective utterances be repeated, no matter how "cute" the utterance may seem at the time. Many speak indistinctly throughout their entire life simply because of the habit of their parents in repeating baby-talk, thus confirming incorrect images ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... he remembered his promise, "that if dead he would, if permitted, visit her as his father had visited his mother." But while he thus stood in suspense, Amine's eyes were turned upon him: she beheld him, but a thick cloud now obscured the moon's disc, and the dim light gave to his form, indistinctly seen, an unearthly and shadowy appearance. She recognised her husband; but having no reason to expect his return, she recognised him as an inhabitant of the world of spirits. She started, parted the hair away ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... noontide heat. And as the chime Of minstrel music, dulcimer, and harp With many strings, a pleasant dinning makes To him, who heareth not distinct the note; So from the lights, which there appeared to me, Gathered along the cross a melody, That, indistinctly heard, with ravishment Possessed me. Yet I marked it was a hymn Of lofty praises; for there came to me "Arise," and "Conquer," as to one who hears And comprehends not. Me such ecstasy O'ercame, that never, till that hour, was thing That held me ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... responded Master Cheese, speaking indistinctly, for he had just filled his mouth with Spanish liquorice. "Did you want him, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... among the branches to permit one to see indistinctly for a few feet. She was confident that she could give their enemy one quick glance and then drop back before he could ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... been observed that there is a peculiar charm in the songs introduced in Shakespeare, which, without conveying any distinct images, seem to recall all the feelings connected with them, like snatches of half-forgotten music heard indistinctly and at intervals. There is this effect produced by Ariel's songs, which (as we are told) seem to sound in the air, and as if the person playing them were invisible. We shall give one instance out of many of ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... the door of the cell now—the key was being turned in the lock, and when the door opened, Adam saw indistinctly that there were several faces there. He was too agitated to see more—even to see that Mr. Irwine's face was one of them. He felt that the last preparations were beginning, and he could stay no longer. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... never forgives you for telling it the truth, and my standard is truth, as near as possible, and yours is sacrifice complete. Which is right? We shall go on begging the question until the end of time. In human transactions the law of optics seems to be reversed—we always see indistinctly the things that are nearest to us. You have never ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... the train; these people were very indistinct. It is their motions rather than the people themselves which I see. I can feel myself getting on the train, finding a seat, and sitting down. I cannot hear the noise of the train, but can hear rather indistinctly the conductor calling the stations. I believe my mental imagery is more motile (of movement) than anything else. Although I can see some things quite plainly, I seem to ...
— Power of Mental Imagery • Warren Hilton
... tranquilly. It was matter of wonder to her now, as she looked back at her past life, that her guilt had sat so lightly on her shoulders. The black unwelcome guest, the spectre of coming evil, had ever been present to her; but she had seen it indistinctly, and now and then the power had been hers to close her eyes. Never again could she close them. Nearer to her, and still nearer, the spectre came; and now it sat upon her pillow, and put its claw upon her plate; it pressed upon ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... quiet figure by the window came no response; the girl could see the man's face only indistinctly in the dim, storm-washed light; receding thunder growled now and again and the noise of the rain came in soft, fierce waves; at times, lightning flashed a weird clearness over the details of the room and left ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... clamor of voices outside. Hedwig can be heard indistinctly speaking to the women. Finally her voice alone is heard, and in a moment she appears, backing into the doorway, still talking ...
— War Brides: A Play in One Act • Marion Craig Wentworth
... cell inclosing the stone steps. It was not easy to judge from Antonia's erect bearing what had so startled her. Her friend followed her to the door below, and the voices of the two women hummed indistinctly ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... smouldering embers, to raise her head with an awakened attention to the whistling and pattering outside, and gradually to let it fall again lower and lower and lower as she sunk into a brooding state of thought, in which the noises of the night were as indistinctly regarded as is the monotonous rolling of a sea by one who sits ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... intensely poetical than Nature itself. I did somewhat chide the tantalizing mist, that, like a capricious showman, now raised one corner of its curtain, and anon another, and showed me the place at once very indistinctly, and only by bits at a time; and yet I know not that I could in reality have seen it to greater advantage, or after a mode more in harmony with my previous conceptions. The water in the harbour was too low, during the first hour or ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... than the officers' glasses were focussed, and all waited anxiously for an explanation of the movements which the non-commissioned officers and privates could see somewhat indistinctly ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... diabolic agencies. On moonlight nights a shadowy ship was sometimes seen standing off and on, or when fogs encompassed sea and shore, the noise of oars rising and falling in their rowlocks could be heard muffled and indistinctly during the night. Whatever foundation there might have been for these stories, it was certain that a more weird and desolate-looking spot could not have been selected for their theatre. High hills, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... And very indistinctly, from far away, came the colonel's voice, barking: "Put him in the brig until he recovers. I repeat, let nobody see him. And another thing—I declare everything that's happened here today classified information. If ...
— Next Door, Next World • Robert Donald Locke
... That picture is indistinctly and obscurely beautiful to the imagination, and there is not a syllable about sex—though "ethereal mildness," which is an Impersonation, and hardly an Impersonation, must be, it is felt, a Virgin ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... weight was going. For a moment I thought it was to enable the beast to seize me, but the next instant I knew what it meant, for I could faintly hear voices, which I rightly judged to have scared the reptile away. Then something touched me as I heard indistinctly the voices close by, and with what little strength I had left I clutched at whatever it was; and you know ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... undercurrents that met and played below. Still, Sir Miles's attention once, however slightly, aroused to the recollection that Lucretia was at the age when woman naturally meditates upon love and marriage, had suggested, afresh and more vividly, a project which had before been indistinctly conceived,—namely, the union of the divided branches of his house, by the marriage of the last male of the Vernons with the heiress of the St. Johns. Sir Miles had seen much of Vernon himself at various intervals; he had been present at his christening, though ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was down when I first saw her. Her features and her expression were but indistinctly visible to me. I could just vaguely perceive that she was young and beautiful; but, beyond this, though I might imagine ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... who not only knows nothing about music, but has a hoarse and discordant voice, and who articulates so indistinctly that the prince royal could not understand her were she to say the wittiest things imaginable, why should such a woman have been given as a wife to a prince of such remarkable musical proclivities? One does not marry a woman merely ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the love which exists in the divine nature, tarnished and darkened by earthly—I may say by hellish—passions. Even then, and from that very night, she altered much: as one passed her, she muttered indistinctly; often she would lift up her hands in the air, clench them, and shake them as if at some figure that she saw in the clouds; and at times she slunk into corners, refused all comfort or society, and ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... indistinctly in his beard, which I interpreted as assent, but I watched his great form disappear in the direction of the fire, my own mind far from satisfied; the man was so lacking in brains as to be a poor ally, and so obstinate of nature as to make it doubtful if he ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... beginning to end,—reading wholly or in part, often so slowly that the hearer can write down every word, often only the heads and substance of paragraphs, definitions and the like,—and that so indistinctly, so carelessly of all but the very words themselves, that it is not only unpleasant, at first, but even repulsive to many. This dictating of every word, a relic of the times when printing was yet unknown, is fast dying ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... Pandavas and followed them (thus far), walked around them and bidding them farewell returned to his own abode. When the citizens and Bhishma and Vidura had all ceased following, Kunti approached Yudhishthira and said, 'The words that Kshattri said unto thee in the midst of many people so indistinctly as if he did not say anything, and thy reply also to him in similar words and voice, we have not understood. If it is not improper for us to know them I should then like to hear everything that had ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... the stable door. Then he walked a few paces along the little path stopping from time to time to gaze across the darkening landscape. A light mist was wreathed about the tops of the old lilac-bushes, where it glimmered so indistinctly that it seemed as if one might dispel it by a breath; and farther away the soft evening colours had settled over the great fields, beyond which a clear yellow line was just visible above the distant woods. The wind was sharp with an edge of frost, and as it blew into his face he raised ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... first nearly smothered by the descent of snow, but when the first surprise was over they recognized their prisoner. I am ashamed to say that their feeling was that of unbounded delight, and they burst into a roar of laughter. The sound, indistinctly heard, terrified the old lady beyond measure, and she struggled frantically to escape, nearly poking out Pomp's eye with the point of ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... through space only from north to south, and not in the opposite direction. Then a thing in space, as a house, would not exist for us until we approached it. When we were approaching it, it would first appear indistinctly, and more and more distinctly the nearer we approached it, just as an event in time does not exist until we reach the point of its beginning, but may appear in anticipation, in time perspective, when we approach it, the ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... devil sat upon a large gilded throne, sometimes in the form of a goat; sometimes as a gentleman, dressed all in black, with boots, spurs, and sword; and very often as a shapeless mass, resembling the trunk of a blasted tree, seen indistinctly amid the darkness. They generally proceeded to the Domdaniel, riding on spits, pitchforks, or broomsticks, and on their arrival indulged with the fiends in every species of debauchery. Upon one ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... over the plain were seen the glittering horsemen of the Christian reinforcements; and, at the remoter distance, the royal banner of Spain, indistinctly descried through volumes of dust, denoted that Ferdinand himself was advancing to the support ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... town, and the leader's words kept ringing in his ears, "Be a man and face the music!" Suddenly a new thought flashed through his brain. Why had he not followed them? It wasn't too late yet. He could still see their forms indistinctly moving across the desert, and by following their lead, would sooner or later reach Silver Bow himself. Stepping out from the clump of Spanish bayonets which had formed his retreat, he set out on a dog-trot in ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... deference to his wish, to divest the picture of every thing that would mark the geographical position of the place represented. The shape of its noble old trees we have been permitted to retain; but their foliage we have been obliged to render so indistinctly, that even Linnaeus himself would find it impossible to decide whether it belonged to the elm of the North when clothed in all its summer luxuriance, or to the gigantic live-oak of the South. Even of the house itself we have been permitted to give but a rear view, lest the more marked features of ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... for she was shown at once into the private office of the senior partner. The clerk who ushered her in pronounced her name indistinctly, and the elderly man who rose from his chair at her entrance looked at ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... panic, Israel fled up the dark stairs, and near the top, in his eagerness, stumbled and fell back to the last step with a rolling din, which, reverberated by the arch overhead, smote through and through the wall, dying away at last indistinctly, like low muffled thunder among the clefts of deep hills. When raising himself instantly, not seriously bruised by his fall, Israel instantly listened, the echoing sounds of his descent were mingled with added shrieks from within ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... that moment he thought of Marion. His only chance was to escape with the others, his only hope of wresting her from the kingdom lay in his own freedom. He had waited too long. A crushing blow fell upon him from behind and with a last cry to Neil he sank under the trampling feet. Indistinctly there came to him the surging shock of the fresh body of Mormons. The din about him became fainter and fainter as though he was being carried rapidly away from it; shouting voices came to him in whispers, ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... preferences. The whole paragraph abounds in obscurities, and the word "cross-voting" is used in such a context as to make it quite uncertain whether the Commission mean by it inter- or intra-party voting, or both. It is somewhat difficult to make a definite answer to a charge so indistinctly formulated. Cross-voting, in the ordinary sense, may certainly affect the result. If the supporters of a Radical candidate prefer to give their second preferences to a Labour candidate rather than to a moderate Liberal, ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... sound of a ringing house-bell came indistinctly to his ears. Dorothy looked up in his face with a startled light in her great brown eyes that awoke a new interest ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... hurried towards camp, under the tall trees, the silence and desolation of the forest weighed on him. His feet made no sound on the pine needles, and the slanting sun rays, striking through among the straight trunks, made a gray twilight in which objects at a distance glimmered indistinctly. There was nothing to break the ghostly stillness which, when there is no breeze, always broods over these ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... reasons which I allude to with pain. It is a fact, I fear, that in some parishes the Curate is in danger of being rather actively pursued, by here and there a parent, as a possibly desirable son-in-law. I have even heard of a certain Incumbent who was given not indistinctly to understand that the coming Curate would be less welcome if he was a man already married. Such a state of things is of course one of exceptional social risk and difficulty for a Curate, and for a young single Rector or Vicar still more so. Nothing will do but a very real "heed-taking," ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... indistinctly to himself, closed his eyes, and fell asleep. Pavel stretched him carefully on ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... final syllable in m, when not elided, is to be pronounced as lightly and rapidly as possible, the more lightly and indistinctly the better. ...
— The Roman Pronunciation of Latin • Frances E. Lord
... little sense. If you're thirsty, hit the sink." Glass still maintained his hold, mumbling indistinctly: "Water's the worst thing in the world. ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... the colonel's daughter—neither one. Nor does Dick Darke suppose it either. Though seen indistinctly under the shadow of the trees, he identifies the approaching form as that of Julia—a mulatto maiden, whose special duty it is to attend upon the young ladies of the Armstrong family, "Thank God for the devil's luck!" he mutters, on making ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... together indistinctly. It was not till Blackwell suggested that they go get a drink that Curly understood anything more of what ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... came, as it were, indistinctly, and through a sort of high singing in Abel Keeling's own ears. Then he fancied a short bewildered laugh, followed by a colloquy from somewhere ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... footsteps inside the little house; then the door opened and in the light that streamed from within he was indistinctly visible to Nan as she stood in ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... promenade and met together in the salons of the Club. Raphael remained alone by a window for a long time. His back was turned upon the gathering, and he himself was deep in those involuntary musings in which thoughts arise in succession and fade away, shaping themselves indistinctly, passing over us like thin, almost colorless clouds. Melancholy is sweet to us then, and delight is shadowy, for the soul is half asleep. Valentin gave himself up to this life of sensations; he was steeping himself in the warm, soft twilight, enjoying the pure air with the scent of the hills ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... notions, to-day understood even by young beginners, appear to have been for a long time indistinctly grasped. The distinction remained confused in many minds, because, for the most part, masses were comparatively estimated by the intermediary of weights. The estimations of weight made with the balance ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... number of lamps, as if in the air and unsupported. Looking more attentively, he saw standing closely together between the entrance and the lamps a forest of columns, the tops of which were lost in darkness. At a distance, perhaps two hundred yards from him, he saw indistinctly the gigantic legs of a sitting goddess with her hands resting on her knees, from which the ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... outskirts, was a shallow, stony river, but deep enough at one point for gingerly swimming. Stefan seemed never to have been cool through the summer except when he was squatting or paddling in this hole. He remembered only indistinctly the boys with whom he bathed; he had no friends among them. But there had been a little girl with starched white skirts, huge blue bows over blue eyes, and yellow hair, whom he had admired to adoration. She wanted desperately to bathe in the hole, and he demanded of her mother that ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... effort to struggle against the seizure which was fast coming over him, and continued to talk, but incoherently and very indistinctly. It being now evident that he was in a serious condition, my aunt begged him to go to his room before she sent for medical aid. "Come and lie down," she entreated. "Yes, on the ground," he answered indistinctly. These were the last words that he uttered. As he spoke, he fell to the floor. A couch ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... Virgin herself, to come between the soul and its Creator. It is face to face, "solus cum solo," in all matters between man and his God. He alone creates; He alone has redeemed; before His awful eyes we go in death; in the vision of Him is our eternal beatitude. "Solus cum solo:"—I recollect but indistinctly the effect produced upon me by this volume, but it must have been considerable. At all events I had got a key to a difficulty; in these sermons (or rather heads of sermons, as they seem to be, taken down by a hearer) there is much of what would be called legendary ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... souls astir aft below hatches. We were soon engaged in the agreeable discussion of grog and small talk. Nothing interrupted our conversation. The heavy lashing and rush of the weltering sea on the quarters—the groaning and straining of the vessel—the regular strokes of the engines which boomed indistinctly yet surely on the ear, were alike unattended to. Impelled by that mighty power, we almost bid defiance to wind and weather. As the glass circulated, the Lieutenant amused us in his own dry way with some early recollections of service; and knowing that the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... of the river from view. As Madam Blennerhassett urged her horse along the river road, her vigilant eye kept her aware of a small boat, which, soon after her starting back from Marietta, she had seen glide out of the mouth of the Muskingum and drift down the Ohio, hugging close to the north shore. Indistinctly, through the mist, she could make out the shape of a man rowing the boat. Whenever she quickened the pace of her horse, the man plied his oars rapidly; whenever she slackened reins, the man slowed up; he kept opposite her and was ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable |
