"Muffled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was sent off in frantic haste in search of Dr. Lancaster, and later in the day two white-capped nurses appeared on the scene. Then followed hours of hushed uncertainty, when people went to and fro with hurried, muffled footsteps and spoke together in whispers, while Virginie's face grew yellow and drawn-looking, and the tears trickled down her wrinkled-apple cheeks ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... ringing of bicycle bells, nor loud genial shouts outraging the decorous calm of Riseholme, but certainly he had heard something. Next moment, the repeated noise sent his heart leaping into his throat, for quite distinctly he heard a muffled sound in the room below, which he instantly diagnosed with fatal certainty as burglars. The first emotion that mingled itself with the sheer terror, was a passionate regret that Hermy and Ursy had not come. They would have ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... ointments, these scars or pits may be prevented: it is impossible to prevent them; and any local application, except a little cold cream or oil of almonds applied to the scabs when they harden, will prove more injurious than useful. The child's hands, however, should always be muffled to prevent its scratching or breaking the sores, for otherwise he will not be kept from thus attempting to allay the ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... clicking their heels unromantically together as they roosted upon the porch, and threw cigarette stubs at the water lilies while they wrangled amiably over the merits of their mounts; saw them drag their blankets out into the broody dusk of the grove when the nights were hot, and heard their muffled swearing under their "tarps" because of the mosquitoes which kept the night air twanging like a stricken harp ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... an order came, and the first troop moved with muffled tumult across the bridge. Coleman and his dragoman followed the last troop. The horses scrambled up the muddy bank much as if they were merely breaking out of a pasture, but probably all the men felt a sudden ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... Barbara, hearing a muffled sob behind her, turned to see the tears running down Georgina's face. The next instant she was up, and with her arms around the child, was gently pushing her ahead of her out of the room, into the hall. With the door shut behind her ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... evidently near, though muffled. The earth shook; a tremor ran through the Jasper B.; the glasses leaped and rang upon the table. Cleggett, followed by Lady Agatha, ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... the yard a few minutes later in his dog-cart, muffled in a great coat with the collar ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... searching for food, or laying siege to some hidden grub, the sound of his hammer is dead or muffled, and is heard but a few yards. It is only upon dry, seasoned timber, freed of its bark, that he beats his reveille to ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... half filled it with snow. Some one ahead of us, with a lantern, guided our course for a mile or so through the dense obscurity, and then he turned off on another road. At first I hailed one and another in the black cavern of the rockaway behind me, and their muffled voices would answer, "All right." But one after another they ceased to answer me until all were fast asleep except my wife. She insisted that she was only very drowsy, but I knew that she was also very, very tired. Indeed, I felt myself, in a way that frightened ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... directly, with all the other apartments. At one extremity, this spacious room was lighted by the windows of the two towers, which formed a small recess on either side of the portal. At the other end, though partly muffled by a curtain, it was more powerfully illuminated by one of those embowed hall-windows which we read of in old books, and which was provided with a deep and cushioned seat. Here, on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the Chronicles ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... long rough tear and wear, is breaking down. The world is all so changed; so much that seemed vigorous has sunk decrepit, so much that was not is beginning to be!—Borne over the Atlantic, to the closing ear of Louis, King by the Grace of God, what sounds are these; muffled ominous, new in our centuries? Boston Harbour is black with unexpected Tea: behold a Pennsylvanian Congress gather; and ere long, on Bunker Hill, DEMOCRACY announcing, in rifle-volleys death-winged, under her Star ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... remove his armor, for he intended to go down again. His laugh, muffled and sounding strangely from within the visor, was heard as he joined in the ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... the thoughts that all unbidden coursed through the mind of the culprit lying bound and muffled in the rear seat? So intently were the eyes of his spirit bent inward on the dark and whirling horrors they found there that the eyes of his body were blind to the wonders of the young day. He lay where they had placed him, staring blindly through ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... a voice muffled because at the moment he was sucking loose a fragment of ice from its ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... fragrance that filled the air, the pleasure-loving women—these people, so free and unconstrained, all strangers to one another, hidden in the elegant, half-dark salon, each following his most secret thoughts—thoughts born of the mysterious, muffled music; whilst the firelight rose and fell, and made everything that was golden glimmer ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... to the stone Leonard heard a sound behind him, a sound of footsteps muffled by the snow, and glancing round he saw Soa rushing towards them, almost naked, a spear-wound in her side, and the light of madness shining in ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... Ruth both exerted themselves to the utmost, they could barely stir the stump. Suddenly they heard a struggle going on inside the hollow shell; as well, a thumping on the thin partition of wood and a muffled ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... him—not a word! I never saw the pianofortes in the United States with the frilled muslin trousers on their legs; but, depend on it, the muslin covered some of the notes as well as the mahogany, muffled the music, and stopped ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sharply. When no one came to answer the bell he rang again and angrily flung the bell on the floor; it fell on the carpet with a muffled sound, and uttered a plaintive note as though at the point of death. ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... unexpectedly upon a herd during the night, when the alarm of the elephants was apparently too great to be satisfied with the stealthy note of warning just described. On these occasions the sound produced resembled the hollow booming of an empty tun when struck with a wooden mallet or a muffled sledge. Major MACREADY, Military Secretary in Ceylon in 1836, who heard it by night amongst the wild elephants in the great forest of Bintenne, describes it as "a sort of banging noise like a cooper hammering a cask;" and Major SKINNER is of opinion that it must be produced by the elephant striking ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... near to the back of the head of the unsuspecting victim—that kind man who had "never willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom," who could not bear to witness suffering even in an animal. The report of the pistol was somewhat muffled and was unnoticed by the majority of the audience. The ball penetrated the President's brain, and without word or sound his head dropped upon his breast. Major Rathbone took in the situation and sprang ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... sitting erect, rigidly attentive, listening to the muffled sound of a woman's voice in the entry. A few moments later came a knock at the library door, and Sam entered. The ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... answer to his soliloquy, there rose above the crackling of the fire, the muffled distant thud of galloping hoofs. A few moments later a well-built, sturdy lad astride a mettlesome pony dashed into the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... one, in the rather muffled voice of a man troubled by deafness, the impression he makes is by no means an impression of melancholy or despair; on the contrary it is the impression of strength, power, courage, and unassailable allegiance to truth. He is careless of appearance ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... still bound in frost—we found was able to bear our army and save us the toilsome bend round Stronmealchan. We put out on its surface fearlessly. The horses pranced between the isles; our cannon trundled on over the deeps; our feet made a muffled thunder, and that was the only sound in all the void. For Cruachan had looked down on the devastation of the enemy. And at the falling of the night we camped at ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... the lamp past the edge of the flap. He set his teeth and decided that he would not interfere. When he heard sounds which, muffled in the towel, were like the whines and grunts of a tortured animal, he stiffened his determination ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... scrambling for our bags, and we were stumbling after them, up a long platform, between a crowd of men in hotel caps yelling: "Danieli!" "Britannia!" and I hardly heard what, out into a fog as impenetrable as night or London. The muffled, ghostly cries of "gundola! gundola!" from invisible gondoliers on invisible waters would have sent me back into the station even had there been a chance to find so modest a hotel as the Casa Kirsch ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... to that from the Schwarzsee, but much finer, the Theodule Glacier being seen to great advantage. Above the Hoernli towers the Matterhorn, huge, fierce, frowning, threatening. Every few moments comes a heavy, muffled sound, as new showers of falling stones come down. This is one of the main dangers in climbing the peak itself, for from base to summit, the Matterhorn is really a decaying mountain, the stones rolling away through the action of the storms, the frosts, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... universally go in them, but wear them; that is, every thing is to be en cabriolet; the men paint them on their waistcoats, and have them embroidered for clocks to their stockings; and the women, who have gone all the winter without any thing on their heads, are now muffled up in great caps with round sides, in the form of, and scarce less than the wheels of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... with its Midas touch turning the water and sky to molten gold. The last rays gilded the cliffs on either side of the entrance to the bay, and burnished the heads of the nodding poppies at our feet. From the Presidio came the muffled ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... Graystone," she said, holding out a small package. "It was left here a moment ago, by a tall gentleman so completely muffled in furs that I could only get a glimpse of a pair of handsome eyes. If you will not think me too curious, I should like to ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... wrinkled with an infinite disdain as he turned the sketches over, and he said, with a delightful air of patronage, 'I see, I see. A brother of the brush.' He brought with him on his journey from Gee's Court to the north of London an incredible ghoul of a man, a creature whose face was muffled in a huge beard alive with vermin. He, it seemed, was another neglected man of genius; but I declined to be introduced to him. I looked up the artist's address, however, and got to know his neighbourhood pretty well. Boulter's Rents, in my first novel, ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... great, dark entrance hall, late in the morning, on some errand to the telephone, or to the service department of the house, her heart burdened by the sombre shadow of death that already lay upon them all, when the muffled street- door bell had rung, and the butler, red eyed, had admitted two women. Rachael, caught and reluctantly glancing toward them, had been surprised to recognize Charlotte Haviland and ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... climbing wildly, first saw the break in the trees ahead. He gave a muffled cry of delight, and in a few minutes they were all rushing, like men possessed, up a bare slope of ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... divine as to the first Aryans. They come and go like muffled and veiled figures, sent from a distant friendly party; but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... music of the hunting-horn filled the courtyard, the hounds sprang through the gateway and galloping hoof-beats plunged out of the paved court; loud on the drawbridge, suddenly muffled, then lost in the heather and bracken of the moors. Distant and more distant sounded the horn, until it became so faint that the sudden carol of a soaring lark drowned it in my ears. I heard the voice below responding to some call from within ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... a policeman stationed outside turned and stood passively regarding him; his muffled appearance seemed sufficiently in keeping with the uses to which this particular exit was put by others to awaken neither suspicion nor surprise. With a half-waggish air of respect the man touched his helmet. "Good-evening, sir," said he, as though there ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... have a respite from the sickness; and yet others, if I might have a respite from the clang of the bell. In the intervals of the sickness, with such strength as remained to me, I tore strips from my soaking shirt and tried to bind up the clappers; it muffled the noise a little, but not much. I wept ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... stream began to cross; and as the morning wore on, and the troops near Hazel Run moved forward from their bivouacs, the rumbling of artillery on the frozen roads, the loud words of command, and the sound of martial music came, muffled by the fog, to the ears of the Confederates lying expectant on the ridge. Now and again the curtain lifted for a moment, and the Southern guns assailed the long dark columns of the foe. Very early had the Confederates taken up their position. The ravine ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... tell, and the master what you might call a confirmed invalid. Goes about in a bath chair which he hires from a regular keeper of this class of thing. Not a very old gent, but you can't quite tell, seeing that he is muffled up to his eyes. Very pale and feeble ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... the inequality of his footsteps. A minute more and they would be upstairs, swallowed and dispersed in the publicity of the meeting. Floor and ceiling above them brought down the sounds of a company near at hand, the scraping of a chair-leg, the muffled echo of voices. Carlisle's foot trod upon the bottom ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... of falling rocks below, a fierce shaking of the suspended rope, and then a muffled voice sang out an order, "H'ist away, and be dommed ter yer." Brown devoted himself assiduously to the creaking windlass, although never able entirely to remove his attention from that bright-robed, slender figure standing so closely at his side. For one brief second he vaguely wondered ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... his howling grew muffled. He must have crawled into a hollow in the trunk. But his wife did not win this shelter. An arrow brought her to the ground. She was severely hurt, for she made no effort to get away. She crouched in a sheltering way over her baby (which clung tightly to her), ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... terror mingled with sensuous delight, as if peering downward from some giddy—height. While shameful, secret dissipation ruins the noblest of men, in the frank and open defiance of conventionality there is something that compels respect even in the most depraved. He who goes at nightfall, muffled in his cloak, to sully his life in secret, and clandestinely to shake off the hypocrisy of the day, resembles an Italian who strikes his enemy from behind, not daring to provoke him to open quarrel. There are assassinations in the dark corners of the city under shelter of the night. He who ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... screamed, "Leo!" and I heard a muffled voice saying, as I thought, "Come." What it really said was—"Don't come." But indeed—and may it go to my credit—I did not pause to think, but face outwards, just as I was sitting, began to slide and scramble down ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... striking his flanks with his sabre-flat. When dashing through the court, his companion, or, it should rather be said, his captive, had been seen to struggle, although the thick black veil in which her head was muffled prevented her cries, if any she uttered, from being audible. She now lay, as if insensible, on the left arm of the Carlist colonel. Behind came Herrera bareheaded, with clenched teeth, his drawn sword in his hand, in readiness to strike the very instant he should ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... creature," interrupted a deep voice, muffled, almost as if by intent disguised, "if it be a liberty to call me dear, I find myself craving ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... what we had planned he was very angry, and ordered that I die. They bound me hand and foot and placed me in a cave until all the warriors should return to witness my death; but while they were away I heard someone calling me in a muffled voice which seemed to come from the wall of the cave. When I replied the voice, which was a woman's, told me that she had overheard all that had passed between me and those who had brought me thither, and that she was Dacor's sister and would find ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... ran to the door, sniffing eagerly. A muffled sound of voices became audible, and Irvin, following a moment of hesitation, crossed and opened the door. The dog ran out, yapping in his irritating staccato fashion, and an expression of hope faded from Irvin's face as he saw a tall fair girl standing in the hallway talking ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... or twelve, were concealed in the hold; to invite attack, the vessel advanced boldly up-stream, and at nightfall cast anchor in the narrow channel in front of Turkey Island. About midnight the Indians stealthily boarded their canoes and cautiously, but confidently, swept towards her with muffled paddles. The Gladwyn was ready for them. Not a sound broke the silence of the night as the Indians approached the schooner; when suddenly the clang of a hammer against the mast echoed over the calm waters, the ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... is duelling; but there are more suicides than duels, so that at any rate men do not hate others more than themselves. After a half-satirical apology for duelling, he concludes with one insurmountable objection; duelling is wholly repugnant to religion, adding with the muffled scepticism characteristic of the 18th century, 'how to reconcile them must be left to ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... Schloss Platz rejoiced for days beforehand in open draperies and freshly cleaned plate glass, giving an unwonted look of cheer and human habitableness to the majestic and venerable pile through which we had walked, a few weeks before, with hushed voices and muffled footsteps, gazing on the rich decorations of the public rooms, the glittering candelabra, the silver balustrades, the ancient plate, the historic paintings and monuments which recall ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... said Jack, in what sounded like a whisper, but which was loud, only the noise of the water muffled it. ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... echo, muffled and hollow, pealed from the cliffs, then rumbled down the canyon to merge at length in the sullen, dull, continuous sound of ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... weather often aggravate the symptoms. By blowing the nostril the tumor sometimes may be forced forward, so that it may be seen a short distance from the anterior opening of the nostril. The voice is often affected, being muffled or harsh in tone, similar to that which accompanies a cold in the head. Respiration may be considerably embarrassed, due to the obstruction in the nasal passages, and the patient necessarily resorts to mouth breathing. In advanced cases the Larnyx is usually much congested, being ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... leaned over the rail, watching the reflection of the stars twist and shiver on the smooth water. Suddenly she listened. She might have imagined it, for at night the ears deceive. "Jah, jah!" Somewhere from below came the muffled plaint of Rajah. ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... maze of shredded cloud-wreaths; the sombre river just perceptibly brightened under the veiled light; a deep silence pervaded the air and was emphasized, at intervals, rather than broken, by the hooting of an owl, the baying of a dog, or the muffled crash of a raving ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... as her friend Mrs. F——l is beloved here." "Who the deuce is that strange looking character yonder, enveloped in a boat-cloak, and muffled up to the eyes with a black handkerchief?" "That is a very important personage in a watering place, I assure you," replied Crony; "being no other than the celebrated Peter Paragraph, the London correspondent to the Morning Post, who involves, to use his own phrase, the whole hemisphere ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... refined gray. The shores were silvery, a silvery light came out of the east, streamed through the entrance of the harbor, and lay molten and glowing on the water. The steamer's deck and chairs and benches were wet with dew, the noises in transferring the baggage and getting the boat under way were all muffled and echoed in the surrounding silence. The sail-boats that lay at anchor on the still silver surface sent down long shadows, and the slim masts seemed driven down into the water to hold the boats in place. The ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... delivered, Alison Williams, the nearest to the door, had emerged. She lifted out the little muffled figure of Lovedy, set her on her feet, and then looking neither to the right nor left, as if she saw and thought of no one else, made but one bound towards Colonel Keith, clasped both hands round his arm, turned him away from the rest, and with her black brows drawn close together, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the young people was of the Highland kind, but the night being damp and cold, the young gentleman wore over his kilt a man's pea jacket reaching to his ankles, and a glazed hat; the young lady too was muffled in an old cloth pelisse and had a handkerchief tied about her head. Their Scotch bonnets, ornamented with plumes of jet black feathers, Mr Grinder carried on ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... already full of people waiting for their carriages. Langham, hurrying down, saw Rose coming out of the cloak-room, muffled up in brown furs, a pale child-like fatigue in her looks which set his ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... before the portal to a long avenue excavated in a deeper-seated bed of coal. In some of the dark and dusty chambers which open here the miner's pick is heard, and now and then the muffled report of the miner's blast comes echoing ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 31, June 10, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... indoctrinating, drawing after him his students in his lecture-room; sitting among other public men, the most unconscious, the most king-like of them all, with that broad leonine countenance, that beaming, liberal smile; or on the way out to his home, in his old-fashioned great-coat, with his throat muffled up, his big walking-stick moved outwards in an arc, its point fixed, its head circumferential, a sort of companion, and playmate, with which doubtless, he demolished legions of imaginary foes, errors, and stupidities ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... little red coat as the mother held the sleeve to her lips and then turned it to readjust the cuff creased in folding. "He used to look so pretty in it. My beauty! My baby! My own!" she cried out in a voice muffled, half-smothered, by her choking throat. "And he thought it so fine! He valued it beyond all his other possessions," she continued presently with a melancholy smile, even while the tears, so bitter that they stung her cheeks, coursed down her face; for she had begun ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... so far as it is intelligible. To a clear cry an answer comes, but not to a muffled call. The reader who comes within speaking distance of his author can hear him, and to bring the living within speaking distance of the dead, the living must know the facts, and understand the ideas which informed and inspired the dead. Thought and attention ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... pippins, and yellow William pears had gone their rounds—all home produce—and had been admired and praised, and the Squire's full voice was mellowing after his second glass of port, when the butler came in with a letter on a salver, and carried it, with muffled footfall and solemn visage, as of one who entrusted with the delivery of a ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... long soft-lighted room, the muffled beat On carpets soft of watchful waiters' feet In deft attendance gliding; A table spread with toothsome morsels, fit For the night-feast of genius, wealth and wit, Of a skilled ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... great dinner, without even so much as thinking of sitting down to the banquet. If any guest failed at the eleventh hour, Todd was asked to dine. Mrs. Todd and Maria came across in the evening, slipped in with a muffled knock, and were in the drawing-room by the time Miss Osborne and the ladies under her convoy reached that apartment—and ready to fire off duets and sing until the gentlemen came up. Poor Maria Todd; poor young lady! How she had to work and thrum at these duets ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... penny whistle for the fellow, all muffled up to the chin in his little wadded velvet sack, with a rich cashmere scarf of his mother's wound about his neck, and a velvet cap crushed down ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... "Mr. and Mrs. A. Thompson, of Jersey City," a quiet couple who went closely muffled up, considering that it was August, and carrying heavy valises, took quarters at a dingy furnished room house on a miscalled avenue of Brooklyn not far from the Wall Street ferries and overlooking the East River waterfront from ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... woman who does it is below rather than above her task. "Let the great soul incarnated in some woman's form, poor and sad and single, in some Dolly or Joan, go out to service, and sweep chambers and scour floors, and its effulgent day beams cannot be muffled or hid, but to sweep and scour will instantly appear supreme and beautiful actions, the top and radiance of human life, and all people will get mops and brooms; until lo, suddenly the great soul has enshrined itself in some other form and done some other deed, and that is now the ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... past the designated floor. Blount swore impatiently, and instead of waiting to be carried back, darted out and ran to the stairway. When he reached the lower corridor and was hurrying toward his suite in the corner of the building, there was a dull crash, as of a muffled explosion, and two or three of the glass doors in the street-fronting suite were shattered. Blount quickened his pace to a run, let himself in by means of his latch-key, and, cautiously opening his desk, groped in an ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... to sounds from outside. The menacing footsteps reached the landing, and then continued to descend. Jack turned the key in the lock. He was none too soon. A moment later the padding of the bare feet of the sentries sounded muffled outside, then grew fainter as the men separated, one ascending the stairway of the tower, the other ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... stepping up to Chan Hung, and, without any hesitation, pressing the gilt button which adorned the official's body garment, accompanying the action by a continuous muffled noise which suggested the repeated striking of a hidden bell, 'you wonder that this person stands erect on your approach, neither rolling his lowered head repeatedly from side to side, nor tracing circles in the dust of Fow Hou with his submissive stomach? Know then, the meaning ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... he (who?) gazed in the coffin (coffin?) at the oblique triple (piano!) wires. He pressed (the same who pressed indulgently her hand), soft pedalling, a triple of keys to see the thicknesses of felt advancing, to hear the muffled hammerfall in action. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... highly modern "social study." It is perhaps in particular through the memory of our dismal approach to the theatre, the squalid slum of Wych Street, then incredibly brutal and barbarous as an avenue to joy, an avenue even sometimes for the muffled coach of Royalty, that the episode affects me as antedating some of the conditions of the mid-Victorian age; the general credit of which, I should add, was highly re-established for us by the consummately quiet and natural ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... spoke there rose from the depths of the house the sound of muffled voices, children's voices singing faintly together; it rose and fell exactly like the wind, and with as little tune; it was weird and magical, but so utterly mournful that the boy felt the tears start to ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... Jan. From the garden came the cheerful chirruping of birds and constant, eager questioning of Earley by the children. Earley's slow Gloucestershire speech rumbled on in muffled obbligato to ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... entirely unedifying to note why this man was martyred. So long as he pursued the profligate course on which he had embarked in early youth, Rome had not a word to say to him. Sin does not come under her cognisance, except to be muffled up in absolution, and hidden from the eyes of the sinner—but not from the eyes of God. But the moment that Holland's course was altered, and he began to try so to walk as to please God, that moment he came under the ban of her who dares to stand up in the face of the world, and with unblushing ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... But a woman's muffled scream was the answer. With a spring like a cat Loring threw himself on the intruder and bore him down. In an instant Folsom had barred the gate, and the woman, ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... his feet, walked over to the window, and muffled a few remarks about Aubrey Treherne, in the curtains. ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... was to be married in April! Cara was conscious of a muffled stab of pain. But she felt no active rebellion. With a wistful sense of resignation she recognised that his life and hers were separate and apart. She herself had sundered them more than ten years ago. But now, at last, Eliot had ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... rest midway between two lamps. The man reached back and threw the door open. Teddy gave his address, and got in. At the same moment the opposite door was torn open; the parcel was snatched from his possession; the door banged. The cab started. Teddy had a mere glimpse of some one muffled to the mouth, hat brim drawn low. He turned and sprang out, staggered badly, almost fell, recovered his balance, and beheld a figure leaving the step for the interior of the retreating cab. He ran after it with a shout,—and remembered the dangers in publicity. ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... evident in nasal expression and muffled words, spoken through half-closed teeth. We were not meant to speak in that unbeautiful manner, nor were we meant to gesticulate wildly as some of our drawing-room orators persist in doing-to the amusement of everyone else concerned. When you enter the world of good society, ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... our ascent of the Big Mountain,—a chief that carries the range up several hundred feet higher than the part we have thus far traversed. We are occasionally to our hips in the snow, but for the most part the older stratum, a foot or so down, bears us; up and up we go into the dim, muffled solitudes, our hats and coats powdered like millers'. A half-hour's heavy tramping brings us to the broad, level summit, and to where the fox and hound have crossed and recrossed many times. As we are walking along discussing the matter, we suddenly hear the ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... light coming from behind him attracted his attention and he turned to see her standing in a corner of the great room, holding a lamp in her hand and looking towards him. Her gold breastplate and crown were gone, with every other ornament, and she was clad, or rather muffled in robes of pure white fitted with a kind of nun's hood which lay back upon her shoulders. Also on her arm she carried a shawl or veil. Standing thus, all undecked, with her long hair fastened in a simple ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... her removal. The boys dragged her along the passageway, and, nearing the stairs, noticed a peculiar sound, something like a muffled explosion, followed by a sudden lurch of the ship, which destroyed their balance so that they were compelled to ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... House was darkened, and every one spoke in subdued tones, and moved about with muffled tread. The very atmosphere breathed of the great sorrow which weighed heavily upon each heart. Mrs. Lincoln never left her room, and while the body of her husband was being borne in solemn state from the Atlantic to ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... air, but this was not to be doubted! Evenly forward she came, without a footfall, without a rustle or the crackling of a twig, without so much as kneeing her skirt—stood before them so nearly that they saw the pale oval of her face, and said in a voice like a muffled bell, "I am hungry, my friends; have you any meat?" She had a face like the moon, and great round eyes; within her cloak, on the bosom of her white dress, she held a man-child. He, they passed their sacred word, lifted in his mother's arms and turned open-handed ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... between them - silence so intense, so poignant, it was like a live thing present in the room. Through the double windows came a far-off, muffled sound of the traffic in the Strand, but it seemed to have nothing whatever to do with the life of that quiet room. It dit not disturb the silence, in which one could almost hear pulse-beats. ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... The muffled, helmeted figure of a pilot climbed down the spider ladder, nestled into the foremost scout's cockpit and pressed the starting button. The motor spat out a wisp of smoke, then burst into its full-throated roar: the automatic clamp above ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... was followed by the muffled sound of scurrying feet, of a table pulled hastily away, of whispers intended to be soft, but in the hurry having a strangely sibilant tone, that made them almost words spoken aloud, to ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... on these benches. Row upon row, range upon range, they sit, closely jammed together, as thick as Milton's spirits in Pandemonium, and not unlike them, with their dark and concealed countenances, so mysteriously muffled up with the dread litham, having before them ranges of spears, parallel to themselves, a bright forest hedge of pines, awaiting their orders for war or warlike pomp. I have frequently passed this forest range of ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... wound in and out among the trees, and so it happened that Rosemary heard muffled footsteps before she saw him coming. A wayfaring squirrel, the first of his family to venture out, scampered madly up a tree and looked down upon the girl with questioning, fearful eyes. She rose from the log and looked up, with her ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... dark, and Bilh Ahati{COMBINING BREVE}ni became greatly frightened, but he stayed to listen and watch. Muffled strains of songs came from the deep recesses in each canon wall,—the gods were singing—and just within the openings, discernible in the glow of a fire, could be seen many dancers performing in unison as they kept time with rattles. Throughout the night ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... moral doctrine. (Enfield, B. 4. chap. 3.) It was the reformation of this wretched depravity of morals which Jesus undertook. In extracting the pure principles which he taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves. We must dismiss the Platonists and Plotinists, the Stagyrites and Gamalielites, the Eclectics, the Gnostics and ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... became darker and darker. All at once in the distance a small light flickered. A queer sound could be heard, soft as a little bell, and faint and muffled like the buzz of ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... did whisper peace unto my soul, But now, before the fearful shadow came That since my boyhood often visits me, And with dark musings fills my brain perturb'd; Making the current of my life-blood stagnate, My heart the semblance of a muffled bell, Within my ribs, its tomb; my flesh creep like The prickly writhings of a new-slough'd snake; Each several moment as the awaken'd glare Of the doom'd felon starting from his sleep, While the slow, hideous meaning of ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... dozen miles a halt was made for a rest, the chief said, and then Celeste Seldon observed that the hoofs of every horse were muffled, to prevent their ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... the sounds of life. Half-muffled music, raucous singing, blows of a hammer, yelpings of a dog, hissing of steam escaping somewhere from a boiler—all these and many other disturbances of the night furnished a microcosmic medley of the toiling, playing, ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... where the veil before the face of God is very thin and fine, and men's hearts glow within them, where there was no oasis save the unguessed deposit of a great human dream that his soul could feel, the face of a girl had haunted him. Her voice—so sweet a voice that it rang like muffled silver in his ears, till, in the everlasting theatre of the pole, the stars seemed to repeat it through millions of echoing hills, growing softer and softer as the frost hushed it to his ears—had said to him late and early, "You must come back with the swallows." Then she had ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... carriage paid little attention to it, each being buried in her own thoughts. The night was dark, and the carriage-lamps threw an uncertain gleam on the three figures leaning back in their corners, muffled and silent. The avenue was long,—interminably long, it seemed to one of the three travellers; and finally the silence so oppressed her that she determined to conquer her shyness and ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... prevailed. In Hartford and neighboring towns all ornaments, mirrors, and pictures were muffled with napkins and cloths at the time of the funerals, and sometimes the window-shutters were kept closed in the front of the house and tied together with black for a year, as ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... the tableau existed only in the unfocussed minds of the two living beings to whom the consequence of this moment was not measurable in time. Then from the woman's parted lips came a long, strangling moan that mounted to something like a muffled shriek. She remained a moment rocking on her feet, then wheeled and stumbled toward the quilt-covered four-poster bed in one dark corner of the cabin. Into its feather billows she flung herself and lay with her fingernails digging into her temples ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... lamps unlit. The horses stirred uneasily, but the oxen waited in dull, indifferent patience. Presently the door opened, and two men came out and awkwardly bore a plain coffin to the cart. Then they mounted to the front of the cart, hiding between them a muffled lantern. They wore cloths over the lower part of their faces, and felt hats drawn low over their eyes. Something in their gait showed them to be ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... and was stepping out into the yard, adjusting her hat, when she heard one of those muffled ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... empty room, of a critical intelligence that was giving out a subtle effluence of disapproval. The fancy was so vivid that, to shake it off, she rose and began to move about again. In the middle of the room stood a monumental divan surmounted by a massif of palms and azaleas. As Claudia's muffled wanderings carried her around the angle of this seat, she saw that its farther side was occupied by the figure of a man, who sat with his hands resting on his stick and his head bowed upon them. She gave a little cry and her husband ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... and opened the door stealthily. She crept along the hall in her bare feet, terrified by the muffled sound, and stopped before the velvet curtains that were drawn closely across the dining-room doorway. Someone was tampering with the ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... she looked hard at me,] that I am muffled up in this warm weather. I am but too sensible that I have left my chamber sooner that I ought, and perhaps shall have a return of my gout for it. I came out thus muffled up with a dreadful pain in my ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Assailed by the most formidable apprehensions, he did not undress. Toward morning only, he threw himself all dressed upon the bed. It was about five o'clock, and scarcely daylight as yet, when he fancied he heard muffled steps on the carpet, in the hall and on the stairs. He rose again at once. The windows of his room opened upon the court. He saw Julia cross it, dressed in riding costume. She went into the stable and came out again after a few moments. A groom brought her her horse, and assisted her in ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... moaning gently under the towel which had been placed over her face. She tried to raise her arms and to draw up her knees, but two dressers restrained her. The heavy air was full of the penetrating smells of carbolic acid and of chloroform. A muffled cry came from under the towel, and then a snatch of a song, sung in a high, quavering, ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of scraping over the floor, and muffled giggles came to the waiting ones in the hall, then the door was thrown wide, and Kit caught her first glimpse of Charity Parks, the best loved girl at Hope. She was about seventeen, but a short, roly-poly type, with curly rumpled hair and gray eyes that never seemed ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... people were astonisht to see Antonio Cavalcanti stepping into the church by the side of the altar, leading a thickly veiled figure in his hand. He placed the figure on the raised pavement just in face of Pietro, and then threw himself down before the altar praying. The muffled form remained standing stiff and high, and beneath the covering one saw the firy black eyes. Pietro lifted himself from his seat, and sank back into it pale and trembling. The music of the mass now gusht ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... work of evacuation was begun. A small fleet of row-boats carried the troops to the entrance of the great, sullen fort, standing alone in the middle of the harbor, and made frequent trips bringing supplies and ammunition from the deserted fortress. All was done silently: the oars were muffled, and the commands of the officers were whispered, that no tidings should be told of the movement under way. Before sunrise all was completed; and when the rays of the rising sun fell upon the stars and stripes floating ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... a stern professional voice. "Keep your arms still, and you'll come down all right." A muffled screaming and a dangerously increased agitation of the chute was the only reply. Cook had quite lost her head and was having violent hysterics. Three or four of us raced upstairs to aid Sister in keeping the top end of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... Silverdale and had no notion of doing so, though he had distant relatives there, while, so far as he knew, nobody had left him a farm of any kind. He had promised the whisky runners a guide on the night of Trooper Shannon's death, and as it was dark when, muffled in Winston's furs, he met the men—who were, as it happened, for the most part new adherents, it seemed probable that they had not recognized him or had any reason to believe it was not Winston himself who was responsible for ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... we're not dancing again quite yet," said Rose, glancing at her mother's exposed shoulders, but speaking as if they were muffled ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... can sleep there! Sleep!—It's the only way to be quiet in New York, and I have to sleep late if I sleep at all. I've fixed the skylight so that I'm drenched with air—and not drenched with rain!—and there I am. Johnny is gagged and muffled as it were, and carried downstairs as early as possible. He gets his breakfast, and the unfortunate Miss Merton has to go out and play with him—in all weathers—except kindergarten time. Then Alice sits on the stairs and keeps everybody away ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... quiet and the stars were serenely brilliant. The dusty, rutted road past the hotel, dim gray in the starlight, muffled the tread of an occasional Navajo pony passing in the faint glow of light from the doorway. Bartley was content with things as he found them, just then. But he knew that he would eventually go away from there—from the untidy town, the railroad, the string of box-cars on the siding, ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... beneath me into a hollow and I fell a considerable distance. I alighted on the box-seat of a four-horse coach, which happened to be running at that time immediately underneath. The coachman took no notice whatever of my sudden arrival by his side. He was so completely muffled up, that I could observe only the skillful way in which he manipulated reins and whip. The horses were yellow. I had seen no more than this, when the guard's horn blew, and presently we pulled up at an inn. A waiter came out, and appeared to collect ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... heard a muffled conversation. Madame was bent upon peeping in; Monsieur objected, but he ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland |
