"Illegible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ebony and pearl: it is wrought out of block silver in the Genoese method, and is designed in deep panels divided by wreathed columns: these panels are covered with inscriptions, seemingly of names and dates, most of them illegible—'Robillard Puyraveau du Guesclin, 1602,' being the earliest we could make out. We found several varieties, or, as Perry says, 'classes,' of porcelain—beautiful plates of Sevres, painted in the most charming designs by masters to us unknown—and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... be the last letter I shall need to write," she added, again lingering over it, to be certain that all was correct—the address being somewhat illegible for that free, firm hand of hers. "My ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... began to deepen towards evening, the track became quite illegible, and when I found myself at this romantically situated cabin, I was thankful to find that they could give me shelter. The scene was a solemn one, and reminded me of a description in Whittier's Snow-Bound. All the stock came round ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... meeting, Feb. 29, 1739-40, the subject of compelling persons to confess themselves guilty of an offense, of which they said, "if not absolutely, yet next to impossible to convict them," was acted upon, and some relaxation made in the rule before adopted; but a part of the record is so worn as to be illegible. ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... out, but in spite of this precaution Mr. Rodney managed to turn over two sheets instead of one, to choose the wrong sentence where two were written together, and to discover his own handwriting suddenly illegible. When he found himself possessed of a coherent passage, he shook it at his audience almost aggressively, and then fumbled for another. After a distressing search a fresh discovery would be made, and produced in the same way, until, by means of repeated attacks, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... the decrees of fate, and scribbled, I don't know what, in the corner, and subscribed my initials as illegible as those of Napoleon when in ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... home an elephant for a pet. The good folks, not without some motive, as the great Indian ruler conceived, other than mere love for him, had been sending him presents. Samuel Rogers, who wrote the neatest of hands, records that Clive wrote the worst and certainly the most illegible of scrawls. Instead of "elephant," as they read it, their liberal ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... a facsimile edition made from a single copy of the 1592 original. In some places, text is illegible or missing. ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... reasons it was found difficult to handle or file for preservation. Many of them had been written so long ago that the ink had almost faded from the paper; others were written with lead pencil, so that in handling them the characters soon became blurred and almost illegible; a great many were written on scraps of paper of all shapes and sizes; and others again were full of omissions and doublets, due to the carelessness of the writer, while many consisted simply of the prayer, with nothing in the nature ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... cultivation and intrigue. I'm a plain citizen and I need the job. I've killed seven men,' says Bill; 'I've got nine children; I've been a good Republican ever since the first of May; I can't read nor write, and I see no reason why I ain't illegible for the office. And I think your partner, Mr. Tucker,' goes on Bill, 'is also a man of sufficient ingratiation and connected system of mental delinquency to assist you in securing the appointment. I will give you preliminary,' says Bill, '$1,000 for drinks, bribes and carfare in Washington. ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... same hour, three softas awoke the Chief Mufti and Ispirizade, and laid before them a letter written on parchment which they had discovered lying in the middle of a mosque. The letter was apparently written with gunpowder and almost illegible. ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... impress a mark of ownership upon some bucket of the Argonauts, or the rudest scrawl of Polyphemus in forging a tarry brand upon some sheep which he had stolen, could be so bad, so staggering and illegible, as are these literary inscriptions. How much better to have had a thin tablet or veneering of marble or iron adjusted to the back of the book. A stone-cutter in a rural churchyard once told me that he charged a penny per letter. That may be cheap for a gravestone, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Botch-work and bungling are inexcusable, as well in writing as in the transaction of business. No person has a right to cause a tinge of shame to their correspondent, by sending a letter addressed in a stupid and awkward manner, nor to consume the time of another in deciphering the illegible hooks and scrawls of a message. Every one should have the ambition to write respectably as well as to appear respectable ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... friend he had seen on board, and asked to have his money back. It was given to him, at his request, in twenty-five bank notes of the thousand dollar denomination. He signed for them, writing your name, excusing an almost illegible signature by the need of haste and by a finger tied up as though it were badly hurt. So much for what the cashier of the Merchants' and Citizens' Bank of Reno knows ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... the Withers family had counted a martyr to their faith before they were known as Puritans. The record was obscure in some points; but the portrait, marked "Ann Holyoake, burned by ye bloudy Papists, ano 15.." (figures illegible), was still hanging against the panel over the fireplace in the west parlor at The Poplars. The following words were yet legible on the canvas: "Thou hast made a covenant O Lord with ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... formatted in the same way as the Executive and Legislative Tables above it. See notes above for details. In addition, places where the scanned text is illegible are ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... was almost illegible, but Julian bent reverently over his father's corpse, and it seemed that the smile brightened on those dead lips as he bowed his young head ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... the table; at his first touch, it assumed the appearance of such a splendidly bound and gilt-edged volume as one often meets with nowadays; but on running his fingers through the leaves, behold! it was a bundle of thin golden plates, in which all the wisdom of the book had grown illegible. ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... heretofore received, or in exchange for something of a different, perhaps of a sentimental nature? ... Please pardon this typewritten note, but my own hand, unlike your copper-plate, is absolutely illegible. I have been raised in a ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... letters are collected, the sorting for the place of destination follows, and Fig. 18 represents the sorting room in the Berlin Post Office. A feverish sort of life is led here day and night, as deficient addresses must be completed, and the illegible ones deciphered. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... people who can focus their vision through a wide range may be observed poring with their eyes close to their books when the light wanes. So again, at night-time, a placard, even in large type, is illegible at a short distance, but easily read on approaching it. It seems, in order that a faint image on the retina should be appreciated by the nerves of sight, that image must ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... of Nukhashi and another whose name is now illegible, apparently take a higher rank than their neighbours. Nukhashi is often named in these tablets as well as in Egyptian inscriptions, and it must have been situated on the north-east slope of the Lebanon ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... a map of the district as well, among my papers," Volpatte continues. He unfolds it to the light. Illegible and transparent at the creases, it looks like one of those window-blinds made ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... finer monuments than that." I told him that I was in search of that of the Faliero family, and particularly of the Doge Marino's. "Oh," said he, "I will show it you;" and, conducting me to the outside, pointed out a sarcophagus in the wall with an illegible inscription[373]. He said that it had been in a convent adjoining, but was removed after the French came, and placed in its present situation; that he had seen the tomb opened at its removal; there were ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... sensitive mouth. His allowance was more than liberal. He laid the foundations for a library by purchasing from a wandering bibliophile first editions of Swinburne, Meredith, and Hardy, and a yellowed illegible autograph letter of Keats's, finding later that he had been amazingly overcharged. He became an exquisite dandy, amassed a rather pathetic collection of silk pajamas, brocaded dressing-gowns, and neckties too flamboyant to wear; in this secret finery ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... What follows has been so carefully erased, possibly by Cellini's own hand, in the autograph, that it is illegible. Laura Battiferra, Ammanato's wife, was a woman of irreproachable character, whom Cellini himself praised ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... of strenuous labour to the great Parliamentarian who was now the occupant of the house. He had absorbed those traditions and far outvied his predecessors, working day and night, bringing down from his bedroom almost illegible memoranda to be deciphered by his secretary ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... contrived, however, to combine these into what I believe to be a substantially correct representation of the author's meaning. The Latin is of a monastic—sometimes almost canine—quality, with many words which are not Latin at all. For the rest, though here and there pages are illegible, and though some symbols, especially those representing numbers or chemical compounds, are absolutely undecipherable, it has been possible to effect what I hope will be found a clear and coherent ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... we as yet understand, but apparently the same sort of pre-arrangement that determined whether the stone from the cliff should fall on point A or point B—the same sort of process that guided the pen to make legible and effective writing instead of illegible and ineffective scrawls—the same kind of control that determines when and where a trigger shall be pulled so as to secure the anticipated slaughter of a bird. So far as energy is concerned, the explosion and the trigger-pulling are the same identical operations whether ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... curses, which have been found in their tombs, or in wells where a man had been drowned, or even in the sea, written on leaden tablets, often from right to left, or in queer characters, so as to be illegible, with another tablet fastened over them by means of a nail, symbolizing the binding effect it was hoped they would have—the "Defixiones," to give them their Latin name, which are very numerous among the inscriptions. So real was the ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... McTeague as he stood on the roadbed stretching his legs, and without a word presented to him a filthy, crumpled letter. The letter was to the effect that the buck Big Jim was a good Indian and deserving of charity; the signature was illegible. The dentist stared at the letter, returned it to the buck, and regained the train just as it started. Neither had spoken; the buck did not move from his position, and fully five minutes afterward, ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... slippers, and so the waiter helped him to bed. Next a tall Irish squire and a native of the land of Israel began to quarrel about their countries, and in the warmth of argument discharged their glasses each at his neighbour's throat, instead of his own. I recommended blisters, bleeding [here illegible], so I flung my tumbler on the floor, too, and swore I'd join old Ireland. A regular rumpus ensued, but we were tamed at last, and I found myself in bed next morning, with a bottle of porter, a glass, and corkscrew beside me. ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... give them a setting worthy of their beauty. The diary continues with moral reflections upon the servility of our taste before anything European, and the handwriting is clear and deliberate. It abruptly becomes hurried, and at length well-nigh illegible. It is best, I think, that you should have this portion as it comes, unpolished, unamended, unarranged—hot, so to speak, from my immediate pencil, instead of cold from my subsequent pen. I shall disguise certain names, but ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... normal urine (phosphates 3.1), but anomalous reflex action and senses. Rigid, unequal pupils, tongue and lips inclined towards the right, shaky hand, astasia, aphasia, strong rotular reflex action, absence of cutaneous and cremasteric reflexes, illegible handwriting—a defect of long standing, since it was also found in writing dating back nine months before his arrest, uncertainty and errors of pronunciation (bradyphasia and dysarthria), complete insensibility ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... professor. "That's the strangest part of it—to me. It was a peculiar dagger, too," he continued reminiscently. "I say that it was valuable, for on the blade were engraved some curious Inca characters. I wasn't able to take the time to decipher them, down there, for the age of the metal made them almost illegible. But now that I have all my stuff unpacked and arranged after my trip, I was just about to try—when along comes a thief and robs me. We can't have the University Museum broken into that way, ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... comprehension and was a ready debater," Coxe says, although without grace or style. "He wrote with uncommon facility and great variety of expression, and in his most confidential letters, written so quickly as to be almost illegible, there is scarcely a single alteration or erasure." But certainly Newcastle was not a man likely to keep to himself the knowledge of such a fact as the family compact, or even the knowledge that some people believed in the existence of ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... had the Bible to suffer these indignities of size and price, but the Prayer-book was once printed in an illegible and worn-out type; on which the printer being complained of, he stoutly replied, that "it was as good as the price afforded; and being a book which all persons ought to have by heart, it was no matter whether it ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... common ale-house post, and represented the figure of a horseman, armed with sabre and pistols, and surmounted by a bear-skin cap, with a fiery animal that he bestrode rampant. All these particulars were easily to be seen by the aid of the moon, together with a row of somewhat illegible writing in black paint, but in which Elizabeth, to whom the whole was familiar, read ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... with his own hand. Words of many syllables were tedious to him; and, not having patience to write them at length, he mutilated them. This habit, added to the defective formation of his letters, rendered his writing altogether illegible. Frequently, too, from carelessness, or absence of mind, he infringed the laws of orthography; and people have not failed thence to infer, that ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... supplies which they had on hand. For example, Jonathan Waldo, an apothecary at Salem, Massachusetts, recorded in his account book[112] on April 8, 1777, that "13 packages and 4 cases of medicines are ship'd on Board the Sloop called the Two Brothers Saml West Master. An Account and [illegible word] of Mr. Oliver Smith of Boston Apothecary and to him consigned." Evidence of the war appears in the footnote to the entry, however. It reads: "The cases are unmarked being ship'd at Night. Error ...
— Drug Supplies in the American Revolution • George B. Griffenhagen
... falling to pieces with age, and almost illegible in places, is headed, "An ABSTRACT of the Pay due the Officers and Privates of the Company of Riflemen belonging to Captain Abraham Shepherd, being part of a Battalion raised by Colonel Hugh Stevenson, deceased, and afterwards commanded by Lieut Colonel Moses ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... sign, absolving his subjects from their oath of allegiance to him. The degraded king writhed in helpless indignation, for he was a captive. With the foolish petulance of a spoiled child, as he affixed his signature in almost an illegible scrawl, he dashed blots of ink upon the paper, and then, tearing the pen to pieces, threw it upon the floor, and trampled it beneath ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... Roscio and pro Murena are only known from an ancient and illegible MS. discovered by Poggio at Cluny, No. 496 in the old catalogue, and now lost. The most faithful transcript was made in France (Paris, Lat. 14,749) before the MS. passed into Poggio's hand by a writer who carefully reproduced ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... enough to "count noses," as Mary phrased it, and the list of names Katharine had already prepared swelled considerably. She wrote as she walked, the cover of her book her desk, and with such haste that the writing was almost illegible. However, a trifle of that sort could ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... . . Incomprehensible "[6] [line-initial long space in the original, not explained in the footnote] with its seque Democritus Platonissans [l in "sequel" invisible at line-end] describes the genesis of [final s in "genesis" illegible at line-end] Footnote 9: Ibid., II. xi. 5 ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... this, I will admit, but there was also sound logic, for I was seeking the ablest editorial judgment and in this way I got it. My manuscripts were badly put together (I used cheap paper and could not afford a typist), hence I could not blame the readers who hurried my stories back at me. No doubt my illegible writing as well as the blunt, unrelenting truth of my pictures repelled them. One or two friendly souls wrote personal notes protesting against my ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... lines are an attempt to reduce to blank verse one of many minute descriptions of natural objects and scenic effects. The concluding lines are illegible. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... his mother in a dying condition, and was watching at her bedside. He did not intend to write again, but Emma's letters were so persistent that, despite his resolution, he did despatch two other notes, each more hasty and illegible and more distracted in tenor than the previous one. In fact the last had ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... you please, at your convenience, return me the suggestions I sent you, as I may have occasion to weave some parts of them into letters that I am frequently obliged to write; the rough draft was made with a pencil & is now illegible. Be assured that your not using them occasioned me no mortification, as I before told you it would not. You had a nearer & could take a safer view of things than myself. Don't trouble yourself to answer ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... a stilted and difficult hand, is a great waste of time and energy, mainly the would-be reader's. There is no excuse, in these days of the typewriter and of common knowledge of stenography, for an illegible letter or manuscript, and the carelessness which writes too hurriedly to form the letters is excusable only in the gravest emergency and between intimate friends, where the inconvenience caused by it will be, for personal reasons, gladly forgiven. Some handwritings ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... that all alike must learn but this amount will prove, when scrutinized, to be very small. I suppose we must all learn to read and write, and it is useful to be able to do a sum in simple addition; though very eminent people have often written very illegible hands, and Dean Stanley—one of the most accomplished men of his day—could never be persuaded that eighteen pence was not the equivalent of 1s. 8d. Zealots for various "knowledges" (to use the curious plural sanctioned by Matthew Arnold) will urge the indispensability ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... I saw nothing but a substance as jelly. Then the ladder was ascended again... [here the MS. is illegible] ...for one instance I saw a Form, shaped in dimness before me, which I will not farther describe. But the symbol of this form may be seen in ancient sculptures, and in paintings which survived beneath ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... have given it in any other house. On the fly leaf was written in pencil, in Ware's rough, uneven hand, an inscription which covered the page, with the last words cramped in the lower corner. These were almost illegible, but Sylvia felt her way through them slowly, and then turned to the middle of the book quickly with an uncomfortable sense of having read a private memorandum of the minister's. The margins of his books she knew were frequently ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... recovered. A great degree of weakness and languor still depressed him; the air of Paris weighed on him like lead. He sighed for his native breeze at Andelys, and still more for his mother's embrace—his good and tender mother, whose letters to him were so often rendered almost illegible by her tears, and whose memory had been his sweetest comfort during ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... great agitation and almost illegible, and at the bottom of the paper there was a dirty smudge that might have been a tear stain or a finger ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... passed by a stone cross, on the pedestal of which was an inscription commemorating a horrible murder of a native of Lisbon, which had occurred on that spot; it looked ancient, and was covered with moss, and the greater part of the inscription was illegible, at least it was to me, who could not bestow much time on its deciphering. Having arrived at Vendas Novas, and bespoken supper, my new friend and myself strolled forth to view the palace; it was built by the late king of Portugal, and presents little that is remarkable in its exterior; ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... message was on a torn piece of brown wrapping paper, and the words, in pencil, were scrawled in hurried, broken sentences. And standing there, fighting for a grip upon himself, Jimmie Dale read the message——almost illegible! in places—and then, as though a strange incredulity, a strange inability to grasp and understand its import fully, were prompting him, he read it again, ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... side. Fortitude. A long-bearded man [Samson?] tearing open a lion's jaw. The inscription is illegible, and the somewhat vulgar personification appears to belong rather to Courage than Fortitude. On the Renaissance copy it is inscribed "FORTITUDO SUM VIRILIS." The Latin word has, perhaps, been received by the sculptor as merely ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... him to think that all the true things had been said, and one could do no better than hunt them up again for new uses. Our business was, like Old Mortality, to clear out and cut afresh inscriptions that had been made illegible by time and storm. At least this delivered him from the senseless vanity of originality and personal appropriation. We feel sure that if he found that a thought which he had believed to be new had been expressed in literature before, he ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... bunch of roses in his hand. He explained that the reason he was so late was that his watch stopped and he didn't notice and kept thinking it an hour earlier than it really was. The roses he carried were some Col. Fred Grant sent to mamma. We went to the theatre and enjoyed "Adonis" [word illegible] acted very much. We reached home about 1/2 past eleven o'clock and went right to bed. Wednesday morning we got up rather late and had breakfast about 1/2 past nine o'clock. After breakfast mamma went out shopping and papa and I went to see papa's agent about some business ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... and the date were nearly illegible, but there the document was; and though it was not the original certificate, it was pretty clear that Peggy could never have invented it. Its production made a great impression. It certainly went far to ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... course of a few days Lawrence Croft received a note signed Candy & Co. "per" some illegible initials, which stated that Mr Junius Keswick had been traced to a boarding-house in the city, but as the establishment had been broken up for some time, endeavors were now being made to find the lady who had kept the house, and when this was done it would most likely be possible to ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... other voters were led by like influence to refrain from voting, can such a function be valid under the Constitution of the United States? There is no question were of throwing out particular votes for vices inherent in themselves, such as that they were illegible, or were cast by disqualified persons, and the like; but the question is of rejecting the votes of a certain number—say a thousand voters—either because they were unduly influenced, or because another thousand, who might have voted, were, by undue ...
— The Electoral Votes of 1876 - Who Should Count Them, What Should Be Counted, and the Remedy for a Wrong Count • David Dudley Field
... desire was to learn to read, but it was not encouraged by the hermit, nor was there any book available save the portuary, crookedly and contractedly written on vellum, so as to be illegible to anyone unfamiliar with writing, with Latin, or the service. However, the anchoret yielded to his importunity so far as to let him learn the alphabet, traced on the door in charcoal, and identify the more sacred words in the book—which, indeed, ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... expected to be a draft for ten thousand dollars in favor of the owners of the ship on his agent in New York. He handed to the captain the result of his efforts. It was a piece of paper covered with writing that was totally illegible. ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... recalled, and what pathos of human life these graves made real. Read the names of those buried a couple of centuries ago—captains, elders, ministers, governors, wives well beloved, children a span long, maidens in the blush of womanhood—half the tender inscriptions are illegible; the stones are broken, sunk, slanting to fall. What a pitiful attempt to keep the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... glanced at her but once. He seemed to be looking afar, beyond the Temple and its terraces, beyond the horizon itself. But the accusers were impatient. He bent forward and with a finger wrote on the ground. The letters were illegible, perhaps, yet the symbol of obliteration was in that dust which the morrow would disperse. Again he wrote, but the charge was repeated, louder, more ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... stacked woodpile. This was unexpected. We came to the bank, and on the stack of firewood found a flat piece of board with some faded pencil-writing on it. When deciphered it said: 'Wood for you. Hurry up. Approach cautiously.' There was a signature, but it was illegible—not Kurtz—a much longer word. 'Hurry up.' Where? Up the river? 'Approach cautiously.' We had not done so. But the warning could not have been meant for the place where it could be only found after approach. Something ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... glanced over it as quickly as Mrs. Vane's illegible writing allowed him, and drew in his lips in a peculiar manner when he came to the signature. Perhaps at the same ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... without meaning". The poem on the Cuckoo is "absurd". The Ode on Immortality is "the most illegible and unintelligible part of the whole publication". "We venture to hope that there is now an end of this folly." [Footnote: Edinburgh ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... power, and skill of the artist, and the quality of the work which he was at this very time executing for Harrison Ainsworth—can scarcely be conceived. They are so ashamed of themselves, that his signature—usually so distinct, so characteristic, and so clear on other occasions—is illegible, in many cases wholly wanting. At length, in vol. xiii. (1843) appeared a story called "The Exile of Louisiana," "with an illustration by George Cruikshank" (for Bentley, probably by way of retaliation, was determined the public should know that these performances were due to the hand which ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... the document had been so damaged by the beaks of the gulls that it was illegible. Servadac was wild with vexation. He felt more and more convinced that the writer was a Frenchman, and that the last line indicated that he was in distress from scarcity of food. The very thought ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... letter was almost illegible; and there were mistakes in spelling in well-nigh every line; still, its meaning was clear and exact, and could not fail to excite ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... one only excepted, there was a stone, and on each stone, illegible as it might be, there was an inscription. The undistinguished grave, it was presumed, by its size and its position, was that which contained the bones of those who fell in the night of the burning. There was another, which bore, in deep letters, the name of the Puritan. His ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... which in English is called Palmecaster." Some difference of opinion exists among antiquaries respecting the site of vortigern's castle or city. Usher places it at Gwent, Monmouthshire, which name, he ways, was taken from Caer-Went, near Chepstow. This appears to agree with Geoffrey's account, {illegible} See Usher's Britan. Eccles. cap. v. p.23. According to others, supposed to be the city from the ruins of which arose the castle of Gurthrenion, in Radnorshire, Camden's Britannia, p.479. Whitaker, however, says that Cair ...
— History Of The Britons (Historia Brittonum) • Nennius
... of hills that shut in Rome, and its wide surrounding Campagna,—no land of dreams, but the broadest page of history, crowded so full with memorable events that one obliterates another; as if Time had crossed and recrossed his own records till they grew illegible. ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was present, black cigar clamped firmly between his teeth; hamlike Norwegian hands maneuvering a pencil, he was making illegible notes on a scrap of paper—illegible to others because they were in his own form of shorthand that he had worked out over the years as he tried to make penciled notes as fast as his racing mind worked ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... which the public would doubtless relish; for it was beginning to feel some interest in Otway's starvation, the poet having been dead half a century. It is true that the signature of the poor starving author, whoever he may have been, was so illegible that it required some imagination to see in it, the name of Otway, but Mr. Lumley had enough of the true antiquarian spirit, to settle the point to his own entire satisfaction. The note was accordingly introduced into ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... he sat scribbling on his knees, at the foot of his bed, dipping stumps of pens worn to the feathers in ink, soot, coffee-grounds, covering with illegible writing candle-wrappers, packing-paper, newspapers, playing cards, even thinking of using his shirt for the same purpose after starching it. Leaf by leaf the pile grew; pointing to this mass of ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... inspection, enough remained of silken slashes and a coarse embroidery, to identify the relics as having once formed part of a pair of trunk hose; while a few papers which fell from them, altogether illegible from damp and age, were by the unlearned rustics conveyed to the then ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... la Vache! Confound it! He's illegible enough in French, but if he takes it into his head to go off in Italian, and that Corsican patois to boot! I thought I only ran the risk of going crazy, but then I should become stupid, too. Well, you've got it," and he ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... not build any hopes on the Prince Regent: "Le Silene de cette isle.... Je fonds donc mon espoir avant tout sur les navires marchands, Anglais comme autres, par l'apas du gain." The writer's name is illegible: so is the original postmark: the letter probably came from London: it missed Mme. Bertrand at Plymouth, followed her to St. Helena, and was opened by Sir G. Cockburn, who sent it back to our Government. I have published it in extenso in my volume, "Napoleonic Studies " (1904), as also ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... was so abominably defaced by blotting and blurring that it was entirely illegible. It must have come all the way by water. By the aid of chemicals and photography, however, I have made it out. But you forgot to inclose ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... "Mamma died this morning." In a moment it flashed upon her that Dan had read the letter, and was waiting now to see the effect of the shock upon her. She immediately, but involuntarily, set herself to baffle his cruel curiosity. With a calm, illegible face she read the letter from beginning to end, folded it, and put it back in its envelope deliberately, then took up another which had also ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... neither uncertain, coy nor hard to please, and altogether too stimulating and aggressive for any gentleman's hours of ease. Her cookery would have been about as sketchy as her handwriting, which was generally quite illegible, and she would have made, I feel sure, a shocking bad nurse. Yet you mustn't imagine she was an inelegant or unbeautiful woman, and she is inconceivable to me in high collars or any sort of masculine garment. But her soul was bony, and at the base of her was a vanity ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... indications of locality, it must be noted that they are usually at the end of the first line at the right-hand top corner of the tablet, and have suffered defacement more often than any other detail, so that they are often illegible. ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... fugitives quickly traversed, passing through a high-arched entrance to an olden bridge that spanned a moat. Long ago had the feudal gates been overthrown by Francis; yet above the keystone appeared, not the salamander, the king's heraldic emblem, but the almost illegible device of the old constable. Beyond the great ditch outstretched a rolling country on which the jester gazed with eager eyes, while his companion swiftly led the way to a clump of willow and aspen on the other side of the moat. Beneath the ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... at the collar. There was no name on it, except the maker's, scratched and illegible. I rose and followed the beast, which showed its eager delight by running ahead of me, turning round at times to bark, and then continuing on its way with a precision which showed me that it ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... page-boy, and having puzzled through some dozens of answers, more or less illegible and impossible to understand, had come to the last one of the packet, of which the above is an ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... ships, and to giue the master or Boatswaine, or him that will take vpon him to romage, a good reward for his labour to see the goods well romaged. If it be iii d. or iiii d. the tunne, it shall not be amisse. For if it be not substantially well looked into, it may bee a great deale of money [illegible] of our wayes. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... is very scarce, and one or two types are exceedingly rare. At a sale in London, in 1827, the penny of Stephen with the horseman's mace, brought thirteen pounds. His coins are generally very rude and illegible. This king coined ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... Ward," said he, "'tis written in a most illegible and wretched hand which I can scarce decipher; neither bears it any date or superscription. I pray thee take and read aloud, that all may hear and pass opinion upon ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... conciliating to young people as severity.—Well, Sir Anthony, I shall give Mr. Acres his discharge, and prepare Lydia to receive your son's invocations;—and I hope you will represent her to the captain as an object not altogether illegible. ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... treated, the variations in pose and dress show the hand of one who was accustomed to study composition, and the result is very different from the formal repetition of equal or lessening figures usual on mediaeval brasses and Elizabethan tombs. The Latin inscription is partly illegible, translated it runs: ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... wastebasket I found a mass of wet and pulp-like paper. It had been cut up, macerated, perhaps chewed; perhaps it had been also soaked with water. There was a washbasin with running water in this room. The ink had run, and of course was illegible. The thing was so unusual that I at once assumed that this was the remains of the note in question. Under ordinary circumstances it would be utterly valueless as a clue to anything. But to-day science is not ready to let ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... could write a good clear hand, a hand easily read. I showed her what I could do, and she was good enough to call it excellent. She said no more then, but the next day she came early. She brought me a MS. written by a friend of hers; very illegible it was. She would not tell me the name of her friend, but she said she was a lady very desirous of seeing herself in print. If I would copy this illegible writing in my own good clear hand, the lady would give me five ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... venerable site of the first colony in Virginia, Jamestown, without paying a tribute of a sigh, and perchance a tear, to that solitary tower which is still standing a mute watcher amid the few almost illegible tombs,—all that are left of a busy population long departed;—the germ, however, of a great nation, whose name is even now "a ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... is as good as could be expected, after six hundred years of wear and tear. Each leaf, here and there defective, is carefully mounted on sheets of stiff paper, and all together very few characters are really illegible, though sometimes the paper has slipped upon the printing-block, and has thus given, in several cases, ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... I mused, and then began to look at the postmarks as if a letter were something of very uncommon occurrence. I could make nothing of the illegible smear in the corner, however, and so opened it, and ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... as she penned these "Lamentations"; for in many places the manuscript was illegible, and her tears ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... Britisher that he should stay. Always outside the Hotel de Ville at 2.30 of an afternoon was this queue of natives, each waiting his turn to be admitted to the joyless sanctum of the Commissaire, there to receive those illegible documents without which no French home is complete. Never before had a British soldier fallen in with them, and, when requested to dismiss, showed signs ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various
... chain mail, with his six-foot lance and its fringed pennon, his long prick-spurs, and his great two-handed sword, it has lain in an English church for nearly six centuries and a-half. The Lombardic lettering which runs round the brass is half illegible, but the form of the old inscription, perfect in its simple dignity, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... sentiment, be it observed, readied Miss Martindale, rendered illegible by scrawls of ink ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... behind the sad procession to the top of the hill. No fairer scene could a man look upon for his last of earth. A long range of hills rose to the northward. On all sides near and far, was the [Transcriber's Note: 1-2 words are illegible] of the autumn-tinted woods, and to west the land swept downward past the headquarters to where the cliffs rose above the Hudson. I can see it all now—the loveliness of nature, the waiting thousands, mute and pitiful. I shut my eyes and prayed for this passing soul. A deathful stillness came upon ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... carefully, to make sure that the phraseology was clear. The speed at which the cab was traveling rendered his handwriting somewhat illegible, but he thought he saw a means ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... great C's, which stood for Charley, and her firmest feeling was that no earthly consideration should be allowed to interfere with those landmarks. And then there were all manner of hieroglyphics— sometimes, unfortunately, illegible to Katie herself—French names and English names mixed together in a manner most vexatious; and to make matters worse, she found that she had put down both Victoire Jaquetanape and Mr. Johnson of the Weights, by a great I, and she could not remember with whom she was ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... would carefully scan his face, and feeling both pulse and skin, as well as hearing his story, would go softly with it to Peter's room; and there think and ask herself how her father, whose system she had long quietly observed, would have treated the case. Then she would write an illegible scrawl with a cabalistic letter, and bring it down reverently, and show it the patient, and "Could he read that?" Then it would be either, "I am no reader," or, with admiration, "Nay, mistress, nought can ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... a copy of the Crozier record found by Lieutenant Hobson, of McClintock's expedition, and was in the handwriting of Sir Leopold McClintock. The document was written with a lead pencil on note-paper, and was partially illegible from exposure. ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... now thinking that he heard [Transcriber's note: Illegible]t at bay, now the far horn, A little vext at losing of the hunt, A little at the vile occasion, rode, By ups and downs, thro' many a grassy glade And valley, with fixt eye following the three. At last they issued from the world of wood, And climb'd upon a fair and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... which date from 1695, is the following note: "March 23, 1779, a marriage was attempted to be solemnized; but the intended bridegroom, to the great surprise of the congregation assembled, remaining away, the ceremony, &c. . . ." The rest is illegible. ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... must be at least four scrutineers. The Mayor and the assessors then empty the urns and count the votes, the secretary drawing up a proces-verbal the while. If there are more or fewer votes than there were voters registered during the day as voting, this fact is stated and affirmed. Blank or illegible votes, votes which do not accurately give the name of the candidate voted for, or on which the voters have put their own names, are not counted as valid, but they are annexed to the proces-verbal. Votes not written on white paper, or which bear any external ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... accepted chiefly on faith, for a ten differed from a one only as one Guatemalan soldier differs from his fellows, in that each was much more tattered and torn than the other. After all there is a delicate courtesy in a government's supplying an illiterate population with illegible money; no doubt experience knows other distinguishing marks, such as the particular breeds of microbes that is accustomed to inhabit each denomination; for even inexperience could easily recognize that each was so infested. I mistake in saying this was the only drawback. ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... of course, were always at the very bottom. At the fifth plunge into the depths her patience gave out, and with a vow to be a slave no longer to her treacherous memory, she tumbled every thing in, performed a solemn jig on the lid till it locked, then pasted large, but illegible placards in every available spot, and rested from her labours with every nerve in ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... lies before me a soiled and creased sheet of vellum. It bears some lines traced in a cramped, peculiar, and all but illegible hand. This fragment was found by Inspector Weymouth (to this day a man mentally sound) in a ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... certain horizontal monuments. The unseen seeds of mosses find their way into the lettered furrows, and are made to germinate by the watery sunshine of the English sky; and by-and-bye, behold, the complete inscription beautifully embossed in velvet moss on the marble slab! I found an almost illegible stone very close to the church, and made ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... St. Martin's Church, said to be the oldest church in England, and wandered around the churchyard, filled with glorious roses creeping everywhere over tombs so old that the lettering is illegible. When the sun set, we had the most beautiful view of Canterbury to be had anywhere, and one of the most beautiful in ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... document was doubtful; but there was no doubt at all as to the profligacy of the expenditure. (Laughter, and cries of "Hear, hear," and "No, no.") Mr. Knott said it was quite ridiculous to think for a moment, of voting 145 pounds for a few doubtful, illegible, almost obliterated scratches of a pen. (Laughter, and cries of "Hear, hear.") He defied any man on earth to say what those scratches represented. On a division there were, for the motion 41; ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... open to an ingenious management; prices were higher here than elsewhere; the coat-rooms were robbers' dens infested by Italian mafiosi; tips were extravagant and amounted in effect to ransom; and each meal-check was headed by an illegible scrawl which masked an item termed "service." The figure opposite would have covered the cost of a repast at Childs's. But New York dearly loves to be pillaged; it cherishes a reputation for princely carelessness of expenditure. It follows that ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... bearing my name on a silver tray by the hatstand and open it suspiciously as my wife is divested of her wraps. Inside is a card bearing in an almost illegible scrawl the words: Mrs. Jones. I hastily refresh my recollection as to all the Joneses of my acquaintance, whether in coal, oil or otherwise; but no likely candidate for the distinction of being the husband of my future dinner companion comes to my mind. Yet there is undoubtedly ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... was my daily dilemma: Speak out and protest, and be removed or imprisoned—hold silence and [Transcriber's note: illegible word] the coward, and remain in the work. And I ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... primitive engraver is to make his scratch deep enough to be visible. Visibility is quite as essential to your fame as permanence; and if you have only your furrow to depend on, the engraved tablet, at certain times of day, will be illegible, and ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... speech (k). The omission of (i) might be due to the state of the MS.: the words of the song may have been left out of the dialogue, as appearing on a separate page with the musical notes, or may have been inserted in such an illegible way as to baffle ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... with mental effort; then a flash of comprehension lightened her blue eyes. Immediately her brows mutely circumflexed a question. A look of profound but illegible significance passed between the two. Mr. Savage nodded. Mrs. Standish pursed speculatively her thin, well-made-up lips and visibly took thought, according to the habit of her sex, by means of a series of intuitive explosions. Then she nodded vigorously and turned upon Miss Manvers a ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... letter with the illegible postmark, was amused at the "Esq.," and stepped to the window that he might read ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... which were brown and crumbling with age. The sheets were covered with runes of lingua antiqua arranged in regular rows, inscribed by hand with a carbon-based ink which has persisted remarkably well despite the degenerative processes of time. Although much of the manuscript is illegible, sufficient remains to settle for all time the Dannar-Marraket Controversy and lend important corroborating evidence to the ...
— The Issahar Artifacts • Jesse Franklin Bone
... and a half from the land, and two or three cables length from a shoal to the southward, which became dry at low water. Our latitude here was 10 deg. 30' from bearings, and longitude by time-keeper 142(? illegible in book) 181/2' east; but I was altogether at a loss to know what islands these were, under which we had anchored. Supposing the flat-topped island to have been the easternmost York Isle, the land we had in sight to the southward should have been Cape York; but no such ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... For the anxiety I have . . . [word illegible] [? suffered] these two years about your eleven lives is but ill compensated by all these squalls between us two; which I declare I excuse myself of raising. If, in this last case, you really had not time ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... rebuilt (except its tower of 1377) in 1851-52 by Hardwick, and its interest has been totally destroyed, its monuments huddled away anywhere, for the most part close under the roof, where their inscriptions are of course wholly illegible!... ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... crocodile or two dangling from the square beams overhead, but saw nothing more formidable than a stray volume of "Kant's Critique of Pure Reason." Taking this up and glancing at its fly-leaf, he saw a name written in spidery German script, almost illegible from its shakiness—"Max Lebensfunke." ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... high, especially when aroused to polemic zeal against pantheism and dead formalism; at times fairly threatening to overturn the desk, and yet all the while pouring forth with the greatest earnestness and enthusiasm, without any other help than that of some illegible notes, an uninterrupted flow of learning and thought from the deep and pure fountain of the inner life; and thus with all the oddity of the outside, at once commanding the veneration and confidence of every hearer; imagine all this, and ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst |
