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More "Indistinct" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to meet more people. For the most part these were staring before them, murmuring indistinct questions, jaded, haggard, unclean. One man in evening dress passed them on foot, his eyes on the ground. They heard his voice, and, looking back at him, saw one hand clutched in his hair and the other beating invisible things. His paroxysm of rage over, he went on his way ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... the discovery of those Islands afterwards denominated the Philippines. This group was named by him Islas de las Velas. [18] Legaspi called them the Ladrones. [19] Subsequently several navigators sighted or touched at these Islands, and the indistinct demarcation which comprised them acquired the name of ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... grew thick, his words were indistinct, and he said no more. Fortunately for us the conversation took another turn. At the end of half an hour we had forgotten the surgeon of the king's pages, who was fast asleep. Rain was falling in torrents as ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... light pierced her long dark side and the gangways behind the rails and rows of stanchions looked like shadowy caves. In the open spaces, forward and aft, however, bodies of men were gathered, their clothes showing faintly white, but they stood still in a compact mass until a whistle blew and the indistinct figures scattered ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... in a low voice, which was too indistinct for Neeland to catch, "I'll tell you something now that you don't know. I saw Quint alone; I talked with him. Do you know who is handling the big ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... now shortened day dipped below the far-off western horizon. A chilly breeze drifted up with the tide. Gradually the trees along the shore became indistinct. The stars tumbled out one by one. Silence reigned on water and land. But still the canoe sped noiselessly onward. Not once had Dane spoken to the Indian; his mind was too much occupied with other things. The picture of a white head bowed with ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... the pencil and turned abruptly towards the bed with the shadowy figure extended full length on it—so much more indistinct than the one over whose breast he had walked without faltering. Was this, ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... the image of the goddess, the head and an arm wanting. She is represented, as usual, sitting. The chair has a lion carved on each side, and on the back. The area is bounded by a low rim, or seat, and about five yards over. The whole is hewn out of the mountain, is rude, indistinct, and probably of ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... heavy darkness of the sleep from which I could not rouse myself. I had vague perceptions of space traversed, of the rolling of a carriage, of a horrible dream in which my strength had become exhausted; but all this was so dark and so indistinct in my mind that these events seemed to belong to another life than mine, and yet mixed with mine ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... tide of battle surged. For nearly three minutes all Scraggs saw was an indistinct tangle of legs and arms; then suddenly the combatants disengaged themselves and Scraggs beheld Mr. Gibney lying prone upon the deck with a gory face upturned to the foggy skies. When he essayed to rise and continue the contest, ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... There was a violent singing in my ears. I heard—or I thought I heard, I will assert nothing—groans from the world of dead among whom I was lying. Some nights I still think I hear those stifled moans; though the remembrance of that time is very obscure, and my memory very indistinct, in spite of my impressions of far more acute suffering I was fated to go through, and ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... was fearful that some of them might stray from the ranks, and stumble upon his place of refuge; but a kind Providence put it into their heads to mind their own business, and Tom gathered hope as the yells of the mountaineers grew indistinct in the distance. ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... the door of her niece's room, endeavouring to ascertain what might be going on within. At two o'clock, while she was on the landing-place, the candle was extinguished, and she could hear that Lucinda put herself to bed. At any rate, so far, things were safe. An indistinct, incompleted idea of some possible tragedy had flitted across the mind of the poor woman, causing her to shake and tremble, forbidding her, weary as she was, to lie down;—but now she told herself at last that this was an idle phantasy, and ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... an hour Gilbert followed this trail with a feeling of elation, of triumph. Soon he must overtake the wanderer. After a little, the trail became indistinct where it passed through a low, marshy area. The drenching of the woods by the late storm was apparent still in ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... not hold it as he might have held it once, nor did its touch awaken those old day-dreams of his boyhood that had floated past him sometimes even lately, and confused him with their indistinct and broken shapes. The purity and innocence of her endearing manner, and its perfect trustfulness, and the undisguised regard for him that lay so deeply seated in her constant eyes, and glowed upon her fair face through the smile that shaded—for alas! it was ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... of the danger gave him back some of his strength. Still motionless, he inspected his surroundings with an attention so keen that it seemed as if no detail could escape him. He would have sighted the most indistinct shape among the stones of the ruined pile, or in the bushes, or behind the tall ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... the fleeing Mexican and his comrade, with all the speed of his pent-up energy, and was overtaking him rapidly, when what looked like a high dark rampart showed indistinct through the fog a few rods ahead. Then the Mexican bent low and darted out of sight, and his sturdy companion bounding high ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... verandah in the stillness of an autumn evening, watching the shadows on the lawn become vague and indistinct, and finally merge into one haze of dusk. Mr. Linton had been silent for a long time. Norah always knew when her father wanted to talk. This evening she was content to be silent, too, leaning against his knee in her own friendly fashion as she ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... bitter in their mouths with the clinging clouds of powdered alkali, their heads bowed under the glaring ball of the sun. All day the circling rim of sky line had weaved up and down, undulating in the uncertainty of the mirage, the sage had blotted into indistinct seas that swam before their strained vision. When the river cleft showed in black tracings across the distance, they stiffened and took heart, coolness and water were ahead. It was all they had hope or desire ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... possession by the grasping outer barbarian— for such Champlain must have appeared to the descendants of king Donnacona. In the stream, the ripple of the majestic St. Lawrence caresses the dark, indistinct hull of an armed bark: in Indian parlance, a "big canoe [6] with wings"; on an adjoining height waves languidly with the last breath of the breeze the lily standard of old France; on the shore, a cross recently raised: emblems for us ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... and the low, the beautiful and the grotesque, the world of fancy and of fact, all the strange diversities that enter into "such stuff as dreams are made of," running and frisking together, and interchanging their functions and properties; so that the whole seems confused, flitting, shadowy, and indistinct, as fading away in the remoteness and fascination of moonlight. The very scene is laid in a veritable dream-land, called Athens indeed, but only because Athens was the greatest beehive of beautiful visions ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... that all candidates for Medical Degrees should be required to give proof of good handwriting, in order to put an end to indistinct prescriptions.] ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... error of convexity exists in the plate, the focal plane is disturbed, and the eyepiece must be moved out. If the plate is concave, it must be moved in to obtain a sharp image. Irregular errors in the plate or surface will produce a blurred or indistinct image, and, as in the first instance, no amount of focusing will help matters. These methods are both good, but are not satisfactory in the highest degree, and two or three important factors bar the way to the very best results. One is that the aberrations ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... turmoil and activity. Sometimes, now, one sees on a levee a great deal of hurrying and noise. But the busiest scenes of to-day sink into insignificance compared with those which are rapidly becoming little more than an indistinct memory. The immense cargoes of freight of every description would be ranged along the river front, and little flags could be seen ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... time what belief meant. The truth which had long slumbered in my soul belonged to me, but it was the word of the unknown teacher which filled me with light, illuminated my inner vision, and brought out my indistinct presentiments in fuller clearness before my soul. When I had thus experienced for the first time how the human soul can believe, I read the Gospels as if they, too, had been written by an Unknown man, and banished the thought as well as I could that ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... distract the attention and diminish the strength of the impression produced, then do surplus articulations do so. A certain effort, though commonly an inappreciable one, must be required to recognize every vowel and consonant. If, as all know, it is tiresome to listen to an indistinct speaker, or read a badly-written manuscript; and if, as we cannot doubt, the fatigue is a cumulative result of the attention needed to catch successive syllables; it follows that attention is in such cases absorbed by each syllable. And if this be true ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... semaphore arms, sighted, passed and left behind in a whirling sand-cloud in one and the same heart-beat. And for the central figure in the picture, the one constant quantity when all else was mutable and shifting and indistinct, the big, calm-eyed Norwegian on the opposite box, hurling his huge ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... alone, but some one, a big boy, he thought, had said he would show him the way, took hold of his hand, dragged him, he knew not where, into dreadful dirt and stench, and apparently had silenced him with a blow before stripping him. But it was all very indistinct, he could not tell how Mother Bet got hold of him, and the being dressed in the rags of a girl had somehow loosed his hold of his own identity. He did not seem at all certain that the poor little dirty petticoated thing who had wakened in a horrible cellar, or in a dark jolting ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... listening to the holy tropical night, for there is secret life everywhere. In the quiet air the trees shiver, the moonlight trembles in the bushes and stirs imperceptibly in the lawn; and from the indistinct sounds of which the mind is hardly conscious the fancy weaves strange stories. We see all those creatures that frighten the natives under the roof of the forest, giants with crabs' claws, men with fiery eyes, women that turn into deadly serpents, vague, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... sarcode goes on protruding, in irregular ways, now this and now that part of its periphery, and again withdrawing into its interior first one and then another of these temporary processes, perhaps with some small portion of food attached, there is but an indistinct differentiation of outer from inner (a fact shown by the frequent coalescence of the pseudopodia in Rhizopods); but that when it eventually becomes quiescent, the surface becomes differentiated from the contents: the passing into an ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... black eyes looked recognition. "Madge," Tania said clearly, "he took me away—the Wicked Genii." Her voice trailed off into indistinct muttering. ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... Master in His Astral Form was Mary of Magdala, a woman admirer and follower of her Lord. She was weeping beside the empty tomb, when looking up she saw a form approaching. The Astral Form was indistinct and unfamiliar, and at first she did not recognize it. Then a voice called her name, and looking up she saw the form growing more distinct and familiar, and she recognized the ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... of moonlit seas, mountains, moors, and waterfalls darken by contrast the view of the tiles and chimneys from her own window. Ideas do not animate or interest her, for she never has a chance of expressing them and, lacking expression, they are indistinct. Her eyes wander down page after page of her book, but she is only half-conscious. Religion, such as it is now, gives no help. It is based on the necessity of forgiveness for some wrong done and on the notion of future salvation. She needs no forgiveness ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... can be remembered perfectly, and a thousand circumstances connected with it, but they furnish no clue to the name: the circumstances might all remain the same and the name be any other as well. The only association the name has is with an indistinct memory of how it sounded. It was of two words: the second was something like Hollow, or Cross roads, or Crossing; the first began with an S. But it is vain to seek for it: no clue leads to it. Were it the ride you sought to remember, many ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... intently for a few minutes, until I thought I saw the monkey, but it was very indistinct. Gradually, however, it became more defined; then to my surprise it turned out to be the head of an elephant! I was not only ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... another general form, but one that is completely opposed to the foregoing. It consists of vaguely-outlined, indistinct images that are evoked and joined according to the least rigorous modes of association. It presents, then, two things for our consideration—the nature of the images ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... her, indeed, but he said nothing, stood trembling all over and handed her a telegram that contained these words: "Come back at once Wedding immediate Expect you day after to-morrow. Cicely." The words grew indistinct even as she read them, and the boy's face all blurred. Then, making an effort, she ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... indistinct that no one but Cynthia could make it out; and Jeff, listening with a face as nearly discharged as might be of its laughing irony, had to turn to Cynthia for the word which no one else could catch, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of the second ternary is commended, I think, beyond its merit. The personification is indistinct. Thirst and hunger are not alike; and their features, to make the imagery perfect, should have been discriminated. We are told, in the same stanza, how towers are fed. But I will no longer look for particular faults; yet let it ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... were in some cases stratified, the strata in others and perhaps in most were indistinct: most were rounded, but the outlines at a distance were very diversified. The novelties today were a fine vesicular calyxed Astragalus, an Isatidea, tulip of red, orange, and yellow, indiscriminately mixed, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... oral reading. In these days when so many books are hastily read in school, there is a tendency to sacrifice expression to the mechanics and interpretation of reading. Those acquainted with school work know too well the resulting monotonous, indistinct speech and the self-conscious, listless attitude which characterize so much of the reading of pupils in grades above the third. It is believed that this little book will aid in overcoming these serious faults in reading, which all teachers and parents deplore. The dramatic appeal of ...
— Children's Classics In Dramatic Form • Augusta Stevenson
... the air is warm, and in summer a cool breeze from the ocean tempers the hottest day. At the feet of the town the ocean beats restlessly on the narrow strip of beach that fringes the shore. On the distant horizon one may often see the black smoke, sometimes the hull, shadowy and indistinct, of some passing steamer. But only the smaller steamers or ships can enter the bay, for there are reefs and sand-spits, to touch which would mean destruction. Beside the town, the River Grey enters the ocean. When the tide is high, and the river swollen by heavy rains, there is a turmoil ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... in love affairs, and he had no idea how different young ladies are at different times. He had expected a far different scene from the one which was being enacted. All day long he had buoyed himself up with an indistinct idea that she would certainly say, "Don't go," or "Don't leave us," or "Why do you go?" or "Why do you leave us?" or would give him some little encouragement of that sort. He had even entertained the possibility of her bursting into tears, of her ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... the last reflection of the declining orb. Leonard watched the rosy gleam till it disappeared, and then steadfastly regarded the reverend pile as its hue changed from grey to black, until at length each pinnacle and buttress, each battlement and tower, was lost in one vast indistinct mass. Night had fallen upon the city—a night destined to be more fatal than any that had preceded it; and yet it was so calm, so beautiful, so clear, that it was scarcely possible to imagine that it was unhealthy. The destroying angel was, however, fearfully at work. Hundreds were ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... eighteen months before. She longed to know his opinion of her book, for many passages had been written with special reference to his perusal; but she would not ask; and it was a sore trial to sit in one room, hearing the low, indistinct murmur of his voice in the next, and yet never ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... startled by deafening shouts for the head of Madame Veto, the name they gave the poor unfortunate Queen. An immense crowd of cannibals and hired ruffians were already in the Tuileries, brandishing all sorts of murderous weapons, and howling for blood! My recollections from this moment are very indistinct. I know that in an instant the apartment was filled; that the Queen, the Princesse Elizabeth, all the attendants, even the King, I believe, appeared there. I myself received a wound upon my hand in warding a ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... couple of miles in the rear. But she kept on till she judged that fifteen minutes more must bring her to the encampment at Hickory Bush. Then through the hush of the night came to her ear a far off, indistinct sound, which resembled galloping thunder. She knew not what it could mean, unless indeed it was the tumult of some distant waterfall, borne hither now because, mayhap, a storm was brewing, and the dense air was a better carrier of the sound. The moon was now ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... moved along the level way between pollard willows growing indistinct in the twilight, and soon confronted the outmost lamps of the town—some of those lamps which had sent into the sky the gleam and glory that caught his strained gaze in his days of dreaming, so many years ago. They winked their yellow eyes at him dubiously, ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... head to sail up the Nile to Coptus, and thence pay a visit to the statue of Memnon, and hear the curious sound that proceeds from it at sunrise. In this respect, I was more fortunate than most people, who hear nothing but an indistinct voice: Memnon actually opened his lips, and delivered me an oracle in seven hexameters; it is foreign to my present purpose, or I would quote you the very lines. Well now, one of my fellow passengers on the way up was a scribe of Memphis, an ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... whom she had called re-crossed the courtyard with eager steps. There was something strange in his gait and carriage, but the strong sunlight behind him made his image indistinct, and besides, Phoebe was accustomed to eccentricities on the part of this somewhat ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... meadows faded out Of mind, or with sea-images were linked; And yet she had her childish thoughts about The country she had left—though indistinct And faint as mist the mountain-head that shrouds, Or dim through distance as ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... without removing the whole garment, which task required considerable time, patience, and careful maneuvering to perform. This I finally accomplished, however, with the aid of Arletta, who revived occasionally from her comatose state long enough to give a few indistinct directions, and then as my eyes rested upon her lovely arms, neck and shoulders, I was plunged into ecstatic emotion such as words have not the power to express. At last I succeeded in loosening the stays and different cords and ribbons ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... 'forty-foot cave' was reached; and the boy grasping the hand of his follower, conducted him thro' a long and circuitous passage. Intense darkness and profound silence reigned; but after traversing this passage for a considerable distance, lights began to illumine the dreary path, and that indistinct hum which proceeds from numerous inhabitants, became audible. Soon the two explorers emerged into a large open space, having the appearance of a vast vault, arched overhead with rough black masonry, which was supported by huge pillars of ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... his return, Dexie tried to ascertain if there was not a pleasanter outlook than could be obtained from the door, but the one dust-encrusted window gave a dim and indistinct view from ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... sister of Henry the fourth of England. Don Henry, having attended his father to the conquest of Ceuta, obtained, by conversation with the inhabitants of the continent, some accounts of the interiour kingdoms and southern coast of Africa; which, though rude and indistinct, were sufficient to raise his curiosity, and convince him, that there were countries yet ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... side-board, flanked by a tea-urn on one side, and a lamp on the other. In some remote apartment, there was exercise upon the piano going on. Some one was practising up a morceau de salon, playing it very rapidly; every third note, on an average, being either indistinct, or wholly missed out, and the loud chords at the end being half of them false, but not the less satisfactory to the performer. Mrs. Thornton heard a step, like her own in its decisive character, pass ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... handle. He gave me one and said, "This will help you to find a footing in the trenches." We started out the front door of the shattered house, turned to the right past the driving shed where a sentry sharply challenged us. It was one of those moonlight nights with a bit of a haze making objects indistinct and exaggerating them. We started out across the fields towards the trenches. There was plenty of light to see our way across several ditches. The ground was perfectly flat and the outlines of several pollard willow stubs, with a bundle of small branches growing out ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... of the Castle Rock, he paused and looked about him. Yes, he was somewhat too high. He began to descend. The rock's head sheltered him from the wind now, and in the silence he could hear the thud of a pick or hammer, and then the indistinct murmur of a man's voice singing. It was Sim's voice; and here was Sim's cave. It was a cleft in the side of the mountain, high enough and broad enough for a man to pass in. Great bowlders ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... story has since been taking form and color in my mind. What has become of the beautiful but discordant face I saw at the concert garden I do not know, but I trust that that the countenance it suggested, and its changes may not prove so vague and unsatisfactory as to be indistinct to the reader. It has looked upon the writer during the past year almost like the face of a living maiden, and I have felt, in a way that would be hard to explain, that I have had but little to do with its expressions, ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... which his mental images glided as into a brilliantly lighted chamber. Into this brightness a troop of hallucinations darted suddenly like a motley and ill-assorted company of players. He saw first a grotesque and indistinct figure, which he discerned presently to be the goblin his nurse had used to frighten him in his infancy; then the face of his uncle, the elder Jonathan Gay, with his restless and suffering look; and after this the face of Kesiah, wearing her deprecation expression, which said, "It isn't ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... part of their journey they fell into an indistinct trail, much overgrown, running through an area of comparatively wild country. This, indeed, had been a beaten path between the camp and the villages to the west. It had known the tread of many an A. W. O. L.[1] ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... sure and tell me just when to let him have it, Thad," replied the other, beginning to cover the indistinct moving figure with ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... was very bad, but rallied on the Friday, and was quite confident of getting well. On the Sunday he was very ill again, and on the Monday forenoon died; 'at peace with all the world' he said, and asking to be remembered to friends. He had become indistinct and insensible, until for but a few minutes at the end. I knew nothing about it, except that he had been ill and was better, until, going up by railway yesterday morning, I heard a man in the carriage, unfolding his newspaper, say to another ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... ABD. Few words, and indistinct; repentant sobs Filled the whole space, the taper in his hand, Lighting two small dim lamps before the altar, He gave to Opas; at the idol's feet He laid his crown, and wiped his tears away: The crown reverts not, ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... outlines of the picture were filled up. The drawing of his costume, which he seemed to prize, as peculiarly appropriate, and the falls of Niagara, scenery at no great distance from his residence at the reservation, forced him to an indistinct utterance of satisfaction. When his medal appeared complete in the picture, he addressed his interpreter, accompanied by striking gestures; and when his noble front was finished, he sprang upon his feet with great alacrity, and seizing the artist by the hand, ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... from top to bottom there exists not a loose stone or a dangerous spot, you give the ever-ready steel-horse the rein; faster and faster whirl the glistening wheels until objects "by the road-side become indistinct phantoms as they glide instantaneously by, and to strike a hole or obstruction is to be transformed into a human sky-rocket, and, later on, into a new arrival in another world. A wild yell of warning at a blue- bloused peasant in the road ahead, shrill screams of dismay from several ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... on, as you've taken it into your head," said Grandet, pushing her by the shoulders; "but don't set things on fire." So saying, the miser went down-stairs, grumbling indistinct sentences. ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... blue, vividly brightened by the sun; but, in the east, where the tempest was yet trailing its ragged skirts, lay a dusky region of cloud and sullen mist, in which some of the hills appeared of a dark purple hue. Others became so indistinct, that the spectator could not tell rocky height from impalpable cloud. Far into this misty cloud region, however,—within the domain of chaos, as it were,—hilltops were seen brightening in the sunshine; they looked like fragments of ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... The tug slowly pulled the prow of the vessel round, and at last the engines of the steamship began their pulsating throbs—throbs that would vibrate night and day until the steamer reached an older civilization. The crowd on the pier became more and more indistinct to those on board, and many of the passengers went below, for the air was bitterly cold, and the boat was forcing its way down the bay among huge blocks ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... mandate," he says, "was imperfectly executed, and the loss of half this member deprived him of speech. Being afterwards persuaded that its being cut close to the root would enable him to speak so as to be understood, he submitted to the operation; and the effect has been, that his voice, though indistinct and thick, is yet intelligible to persons accustomed to converse with him.... I am not an anatomist, and I cannot therefore give a reason, why a man, who could not articulate with half a tongue, should speak when he had none at all; but the ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... for the writings of these mystics acted in no slight degree to prevent my mind from being imprisoned within the outline of any dogmatic system. They contributed to keep alive the heart in the head; gave me an indistinct, yet stirring and working presentiment that all the products of the mere reflective faculty partook of DEATH, and were as the rattling of twigs and sprays in winter, into which a sap was yet to be propelled from some root to which I had not penetrated, if they were to afford my soul either food ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... in a low, rather indistinct voice, very deliberately, pausing before almost every word. It was easy work for the ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... hers; with the other she slowly lifted the trifling memorial she had assigned especially for him, aloft in the air. Her arm shook—her eyes, now becoming glassy with the death-damps, were cast toward her brother's face. She smiled pleasantly, and as an indistinct gurgle came from her throat, the uplifted hand fell suddenly into the open palm of her brother's, depositing the tiny volume there. Little Jane ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... to fix an end is to choose, the theory that the content of art must be selected is another form of the same error. A selection from among impressions and sensations implies that these are already expressions, otherwise, how can a selection be made among what is continuous and indistinct? To choose is to will: to will this and not to will that: and this and that must be before us, they must be expressed. Practice follows, it does not precede theory; expression is ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... widest below the middle; vein-islets not prominently raised; free ends of veins slender, terminating in indistinct branches J. major ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... giving it the appearance of a tent, open, and yet, to a certain degree, secluded, for a fall of lace swept from the cornice, hanging like a veil of woven frost-work before the glass, rendering every thing beyond indistinct, but dreamily beautiful. ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... marked by clearly defined spiral stripes. The mouth is circular and the oesophagus is supported by a considerable armature, which usually extends dorsally and to the left, rarely to the right. In some cases the structure of this armature is indistinct; again it can be clearly seen to consist of definite rods (Staebchen). The anus is probably always terminal. Contractile vacuoles are variable in different species. In some cases there is but one, which is placed at the posterior end or centrally on the ventral side; in others there may be four—two ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins
... breach through which to pour its waters. The contagion of battle spread. Caution was forgotten; and those at the back, seeing Jemmy Vetch raised upon the crest of that human billow which reared its black outline against an indistinct perspective of struggling figures, responded to his grin of encouragement by ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... the sill. "It is clearly the tread of a shoe. It is remarkably broad; a splay-foot, one would say. Curious, because, so far as one can trace any footmark in this mud-stained corner, one would say it was a more shapely sole. However, they are certainly very indistinct. What's this ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... paused beside the parapet and looked down at the indistinct little fields below, and the blurred masses of white wild roses waving midway ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... blaze of our head-lamp ran along the ground. The engine rocked beneath us; there was a heavy lurch as the fore-wheels struck the points; then Robertson laughed exultantly and wiped his greasy face. In front lay only the open prairie and flying snow, while the black shape of the freight-train grew indistinct behind. ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... sight That morn of Spring, When on the lonely height, The spirit paused to sing, Then through the air took flight Still lilting on the wing. And the shy bird, Who all had heard, Straightway began To practice o'er the lovely strain; Again, again; Though indistinct and blurred, He tried each word, Until he caught the last far sounds that fell Like the faint tinkles ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... table at his Host, and feeling a sense of absolute conviction that this was the one man of all others whom he would have selected as a confidant. How kindly, though somewhat misty, his face was! How soothing, if a little indistinct, his voice! ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... before daylight, when the heavy gloom of early morning swept mountain, sea and sand in an indistinct haze; when the cobwebs hung thick from thorn to thorn like fairy cats'-cradles all dripping and beaded with those heavy dews. The guard would wake us up about 3.30 A.M. We were asleep anywhere, lying about under rocks and in sandy ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... later, the Lane policeman sauntered by, glanced into the dim interior, and saw the group of indistinct forms huddled together in dreamless slumber on their bed of bare boards. Then he softly closed the door upon them, murmuring in pity, "Poor little chummies! Life's goin' to be as hard for 'em as the floor they lie on. But the Lane'd seem ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... them as it is unsettled and uncertain for us. No problems confront them; the everlasting query, "What shall we do to-morrow?" is never asked; plans for the coming summer do not disturb them; the seashore is far off; Paris and Monte Carlo are but places, vague and indistinct, the fairy tales of travellers; their city is the four walls of their home; their world the one long, silent, street of the village; their end the little graveyard beyond; it is all planned out, foreseen, ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... farm in a very disconsolate and sickly state. Willie had far more pity on him than Susan. Before evening, Willie and he were fast, and, on his side, ostentatious friends. Willie rode the horses down to water; Willie helped him to chop wood. Susan sat gloomily at her work, hearing an indistinct but cheerful conversation going on in the shippon, while the cows were being milked. She almost felt irritated with her little brother, as if he were a traitor, and had gone over to the enemy in the very battle that she was fighting in his cause. She was alone with no one ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of them to the door. Yet how is this? To her astonishment, but with the astonishment came creeping over her an icy horror, no stir nor murmur was heard ascending from the kitchen. At this moment came back upon her, with shuddering anguish, the indistinct image of the stranger in the loose dark coat, whom she had seen stealing along under the shadowy lamp-light, and too certainly watching her master's motions: keenly she now reproached herself that, under whatever stress of hurry, she had not acquainted ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... separate from the side of the boat and glide silently as spectres across the strip of sandy beach, their forms gradually growing indistinct in the fog, at length altogether disappearing beneath the sombre shadow ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... had not observed the movement of the chair. He employed himself now in stilling the dog. I continued to gaze on the chair, and fancied I saw on it a pale blue misty outline of a human figure, but an outline so indistinct that I could only distrust my own vision. The dog now ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... the lazar-house in the eleventh book of the Paradise Lost with the last ward of Malebolge in Dante. Milton avoids the loathsome details, and takes refuge in indistinct but solemn and tremendous imagery—Despair hurrying from couch to couch to mock the wretches with his attendance, Death shaking his dart over them, but, in spite of supplications, delaying to strike. What says Dante? "There was such a moan there ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... milky way with their iron rods and feathered arrows; from the top of the chapel steeple a great cross of stone, seeming to stretch out its arms; here and there the whitish zinc, cutting the dark blue of the slates; in spots an indistinct glittering and flashes of pale light enveloped in opaque shadows, and then the tops of three or four large trees which extended beyond the eaves, as if prying into the secrets of the attic. By the glittering light of the stars, the slightest peculiarity ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... voice speaking—a husky voice, the words indistinct, yet withal forceful—nor do I know what it was he said. But when the other answered, tapping on the desk with some instrument, I knew the second speaker to be La Barre, and leaned back just far enough to gain glimpse through the opening in the drapery. He sat ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... packing up the butter, and her head filled with these pictures of the morrow, Arthur Donnithorne, riding by Mr. Irwine's side towards the valley of the Willow Brook, had also certain indistinct anticipations, running as an undercurrent in his mind while he was listening to Mr. Irwine's account of Dinah—indistinct, yet strong enough to make him feel rather conscious when Mr. Irwine suddenly said, "What fascinated you so in Mrs. Poyser's dairy, Arthur? Have you become an amateur of ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... filled with smoke through which the figures of the besieged loomed large and indistinct, and the noise—the crack of the muskets, the loud commands and oaths, the scream of a frightened woman or child, the groans of the wounded, of whom there were now many—became deafening. The attack was now general, and the men on each face had their hands full. Without was horrible clamor, ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... sprays of any tree at twenty or thirty yards' distance, you will see them defined against the sky in masses, which, at first, look quite definite; but if you examine them, you will see, mingled with the real shapes of leaves, many indistinct lines, which are, some of them, stalks of leaves, and some, leaves seen with the edge turned towards you, and coming into sight in a broken way; for, supposing the real leaf shape to be as at a, Fig. 7., this, when removed some yards from the eye, will appear ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... met the old man whose family has so many and such strange ramifications. For a time he walked beside me holding the little dog in his arms. It was cold and the dog whined and shivered. In the fog the old man's face was indistinct. It moved slowly back and forth with the fog banks of the upper air and with the tops of trees. He spoke of the man who has killed his wife and whose name is being shouted in the pages of the city newspapers that ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... his parlor, which was lit by a pleasant wood-fire. There were no candles in the room, and the flickering blaze played fantastic tricks on the pale gray walls. It seemed the festival of shadows. Processions of shapes, obscure and indistinct, passed across the leaden-hued panels and vanished in the dusk corners. Every fresh blaze flung up by the wayward logs created new images. Now it was a funeral throng, with the bowed figures of mourners, the shrouded coffin, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the northern sky, followed by thunder like the indistinct noise of a battle. Havill and Dare retired to the trees. When the dance ended Somerset and his partner emerged from the tent, and slowly moved towards the tea-house. Divining their goal Dare seized Havill's arm; and the two worthies entered the building unseen, by first passing round behind ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... background of snow, he could make out an indistinct, irregular, undulating line of moving dark objects. He recognised this appearance as the night aspect of a distant band of horsemen. They were travelling in a line parallel to his own. Presently, he knew, they would turn toward him, and change their linear appearance ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... secured the precious "emblems of the broken body and shed blood" of his Divine Master, it was after the "white folks" were through. If the cause of the Negro were mentioned in the prayer or sermon, it was in the indistinct whisper of the moral coward who occupied the sacred desk. And when the fight was on at fever heat, when it was popular to plead the cause of the slave and demand the rights of the free Negro, the Church was the last organization ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... near them; and he was so close that if he had stretched out his hand he could have touched her dress. Malcolm's heart began beating dangerously, and there was a curious throbbing at his temples; when he tried to speak his voice was thick and indistinct; then with a great effort he steadied himself, for his time had come and ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... five. Crossed the mountains to Montbovon on horseback, and on mules, and, by dint of scrambling, on foot also; the whole route beautiful as a dream, and now to me almost as indistinct. I am so tired;—for, though healthy, I have not the strength I possessed but a few years ago. At Montbovon we breakfasted; afterwards, on a steep ascent, dismounted; tumbled down; cut a finger open; the baggage also got loose and fell down a ravine, till stopped by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... the man with the snake to go on down into the canon bed. The other Indians were already unsaddling the dead burro. Slade muttered a command to them in the thick indistinct intonations of their language. They at once started to flay ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... place:—the first, when a definite individual out of the multitude is meant,—when accordingly, not the number, but the general idea only is concerned;—the second, when a noun in the plural gradually loses its plural signification, because the etymology and original signification have become indistinct;—the third, when the plural stands for the abstract. Not one of these cases, however, is applicable here. Those interpreters have most plausibly removed the difficulty who understand [Hebrew: mvcativ] to be really a repeated act of going forth, and refer it to the Old Testament doctrine of the ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... his eyes, raised himself, leaned on his elbow.... The voice grew fainter, but kept up its plaintive, hurried talk, indistinct as before.... ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... to a calm, and while he was weighing the circumstances he saw coming along the road through the increasing mist a figure which, indistinct as it was, he knew well. It was Grace Melbury, on her way out from the house, probably for a short evening walk before dark. He arranged himself for a greeting from her, since she could hardly avoid passing immediately beneath ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... flock of sheep or a drove of cattle, and there sweep apparently almost over a shadowy town which nestles between two of the emerald waves. Far, far beyond the steeples which rise dimly from the distant town a range of hills; beyond it still, a faint film of blue, the indistinct and misty semblance ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... as she looks at the white woman, with her fair hair and sandy eyelashes, that something in the face brings an indistinct memory to ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... your side? What if he should stand at your bed's foot, in the likeness of a corpse, with a bloody stain upon the shroud? Sufficient without such guilt is this nightmare of the soul; this heavy, heavy sinking of the spirits; this wintry gloom about the heart; this indistinct horror of the mind, blending itself with the darkness of the chamber. . . . Now comes the peal of the distant clock, with fainter and fainter strokes as you plunge farther into the wilderness of sleep. ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... wonderfully clear presentation of one of the most interesting of astronomical phenomena so absorbed my attention that I watched the satellite and shadow during their whole course, though the former, passing after a time on to a light band, became comparatively indistinct. The moment, however, that the outer edge passed off the disc of Jupiter, its outline became perfectly visible against the black background of sky. What was still more novel was the occultation for ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... the kneeling figure in the foreground. Duty wears a smile as she beckons his approach with tokens of deep appreciation. There still lingers another form. Whose can it be? Can we not recognize that face, though indistinct, in the dim outline? Duty steps between and intercepts our view. This is the picture from which Lady Rosamond vainly tried to withdraw her thoughts, repeating the consoling words with saddened emphasis: "Everything ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... and, I think, best; but you know better than best. "Lurid" is also a less indistinct epithet than "livid wave," and, if you think so, a dash of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... some of the Cartoons and other pictures of Raffaelle, where the critics have described their own imaginations; or indeed where the excellent master himself may have attempted this expression of passions above the powers of the art, and has, therefore, by an indistinct and imperfect marking, left room for every imagination with equal probability to find a passion of his own. What has been, and what can be done in the art, is sufficiently difficult: we need not be mortified ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... cartoons, the relics of a great artist who had founded the Bomb, and the effigies of divers comrades to whom a pathway to a better world had been opened through the hangman's drop. But what most riveted my attention was an indistinct animate something enveloped in a red flag, rolled up in a heap on the frouziest and most forbidding old sofa it had ever been my lot to behold. That this something was animate could be gathered from the occasional ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... often in Greek development, we are brought up against the immense formative power of fiction or romance. The simple Kore or Kouros was a figure of indistinct outline with no history or personality. Like the Roman functional gods, such beings were hardly persons; they melted easily one into another. But when the Greek imagination had once done its work upon them, a figure like Athena or Aphrodite ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... sciences our position is becoming untenable. The ground is slipping away from beneath our feet. We are on the brink of a great revolution. Go where you will, among intelligent physicians you will find a deep, though it may be an indistinct perception, that a ...
— Allopathy and Homoeopathy Before the Judgement of Common Sense! • Frederick Hiller
... was no longer able to sit upright, but at very short intervals, and was obliged to lie at length in the diagonal of a coach. The hectic paroxysms were not interrupted during the journey, but they were irregular and indistinct, and the salutary effects of exercise, or rather of gestation, were ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... the former. It is impossible not to see that in this way morality also would be preserved from a degeneracy the real cause of which this sort of reformers certainly did not understand, but which hovered before their mind's eye as an indistinct presentiment. And now, having noticed seriatim the three conceivable forms of evolution—namely, (1) the adaptation of social rights to the new and higher forms of labour and the corresponding evolution of a new and higher morality; ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... an indistinct remembrance of a dark night, and of being led over ground seamed with deep furrows, and made hideous with dead bodies. I had a fancy, too, that the sky was lit up with star shells, and that there was a continuous booming ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... passed. Gradually the memory of his love for the sea-maid had grown indistinct; and, more or less unconscious that this love had been the door to the more wealthy gardens of his mind, he inclined to despise it now as he despised the elegy he had written for the child who was drowned. It was his own passion he was inclined ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... how much better he felt since he had eaten. He was comfortable and drowsy. The minister and his family, who had been bustling around attending to the wants of their guests, began to grow dim in his weary eyes. Watson, who was sitting opposite to him, looked blurred, indistinct. He was vaguely conscious that the old gentleman was saying: "These are times that try our souls." Then the boy sank back in his chair, sound asleep. He began to dream. He was on the cowcatcher of an engine. Andrews was tearing along in ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... fell, and all the little camp-fires under the trees twinkled bravely forth. Some of the men sang. One had an accordion. Figures, indistinct and formless, wandered here and there in the shadows, suddenly emerging from mystery into the clarity of firelight, there to disclose themselves as visitors. Out on the plain the cattle lowed, the horses nickered. The red firelight ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... immediately afterward he returned to his task, and till late into the night his glance travelled down the closely-written sheets one after the other, until the light from the candles grew blurred and indistinct, and his eyes ached. But still he read on. The power and gloom of Andrew's narrative held him in a vice, and then he was searching for a clue in the labyrinth of words. At last he came to the final paragraph, and ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... we heard a strange, thumping sound, right in front of us. We stopped short. There was a dark, indistinct mass of something moving slowly toward us. It seemed to be humped up, like a man crawling forward on his hands and knees. Almost as soon as we stopped, it—whatever it was—stopped too. It was a very unpleasant thing to find in a lonely field, ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... to imagine what the tenderly-nurtured Catharine Somoff had to undergo in this perilous journey. The hills and forests around presented only some white, indistinct masses, scarcely visible through the thick fog. At a short distance before them lay the fatal river the Beresina, the scene of untold horrors, which, now half-frozen, forced its way through the ...
— Catharine's Peril, or The Little Russian Girl Lost in a Forest - And Other Stories • M. E. Bewsher
... from a wife, a man engages a woman in her stead as a bed-fellow; also that these two kinds of concubinage differ as much from each other as dirty linen from clean, may be seen by those who take a clear and distinct view of things, but not by those whose view of things is confused and indistinct: yea, it may be seen by those who are in conjugial love, but not by those who are in the love of adultery. The latter are in obscurity respecting all the derivations of the love of the sex, whereas the former are enlightened respecting them: nevertheless, those who are in adultery, can ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... to breathe were for the first time manifest; in a few minutes he sighed, and became sensible to the impression of the hartshorn or the fresh air of the water. He breathed; his eyes, hardly opened, wandered, without fixing upon any object; to our great joy, he at length spoke. "My vision is indistinct," were his first words. His pulse became more perceptible, his respiration more regular, his sight returned. I then examined the wound to know if there was any dangerous discharge of blood; upon slightly pressing his side it gave him pain, on which I desisted. Soon after recovering his sight, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... difficulties at home, the moment she perceived that there was no one present? Yet, whenever I went on to ask her a few questions about their usual way of living, her very eyes grew red, while she made some indistinct reply; but as for speaking out, she wouldn't. But when I consider the circumstances in which she is placed, for she has certainly had the misfortune of being left, from her very infancy, without father and mother, the very sight of her is too much for ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... glass told him very little more than his eye, though he could discern a mountainous form through it, and saw that it was an island of no great size. Beyond this mountain, again, the young man fancied that he could detect the haze of more land; but, if he did, it was too low, too distant, and too indistinct, to be certain of it. It is not easy to give a clear idea of the tumult of feeling with which Mark Woolston beheld these unknown regions, though it might best be compared with the emotions of the astronomer who discovers a new planet. It would scarce exceed the truth to say that ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... stepped out into the airlock, from which they saw that the great sphere had halted only a few yards from them, and that an indistinct figure stood in an open door, waving to them an unmistakable invitation to enter the ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... telescope and mine were of equal power, and that of Dr. Solander still stronger. We noted a luminous atmosphere or fog surrounding the planet, which rendered the actual moment of contact and especially of interior contacts somewhat indistinct. To this fact it is owing that our observations varied somewhat one from ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... convert of him in favour of legitimate governments. But I forget: he does not call them legitimate! He is a thick man, of middle height, with strong features, sallow, with weak eyes, rapid and rather indistinct in his articulation, with a character of great generosity and kindness; but not very tolerant to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... morning of the 18th, the Supply, then ahead of the fleet, made the signal for seeing land. The weather being very hazy, we had but an indistinct view of the Isle of Sal, one of the Cape de Verd islands, bearing NW by W 1/4 W distant eight leagues; and at one the same day, we came in sight of the Island of Bonavista, bearing S.W. distant ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... away towards the outer hall, and she heard no more, except the indistinct murmur of a sudden brief dialogue between the visitor and the two girls, who must have come in from the garden. Then the front door banged heavily. He was gone. The vast and arid tedium of her life closed in upon ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... the boughs overhead, and pouring out their morning song. Out from the camp the bugles were calling the soldiers for the march; the baggage trains were rumbling over the bridge. But still below on the marge lingered the solitary figure; now walking, now motionless, now silent, now speaking in indistinct monologue. Drusus overheard only an occasional word, "Pompeius, poor tool of knaves! I pity him! I must show mercy to Cato if I can! Sulla is not to be imitated! The Republic is fallen; what I put in its place must not fall." Then, after a long pause, "So this was to be ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... was drawing to a close, and darkness was creeping through the forest. The camp-fire had burned so low that it gave out no light, and the figures of the warriors began to grow indistinct. ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... rose up black against the sky; now the valley broke into view below, gray, indistinct in the shadows, crossed by ghostly lines of poplars that dwindled away ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... His voice became indistinct, so that they never knew who it was that he had been seeking when he intruded upon their privacy. The door had closed again and the reflection had vanished from the mirror. But there were beads of perspiration ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... monotonous and weird, seemed to strike him with horror, for his wan cheeks assumed a yet paler hue and his lips murmured words which, however, she could not understand. Then suddenly the cry was followed by another—indistinct at first, yet gaining in clearness as it rose on the waves of the ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... he moved along the level way between pollard willows growing indistinct in the twilight, and soon confronted the outmost lamps of the town—some of those lamps which had sent into the sky the gleam and glory that caught his strained gaze in his days of dreaming, so many years ago. They winked their yellow eyes at him dubiously, and as ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... indicating an abortive fruit. On closer examination the cuticle was found to consist of thick-walled cells, exactly like those of the tomato, while the spongy mass consisted of a similar tissue to the fleshy portion of the fruit, but with far less wrinkled walls, and more indistinct intercellular spaces. The most striking point, however, was the immense quantity of very irregular and unequal starch-grains with which they were gorged, which gave a peculiar sparkling appearance to them when seen en masse. I am inclined to regard ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... three went fairly well, but by 3:30 I was tired out, my fingers had grown wooden with fatigue, glue-pot and folding-line, board, hammer and awl had grown indistinct. It was hard-to continue. The air stifled. Odours conspired together. Oil, leather, glue (oh, that to-heaven-smelling glue!), tobacco ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... heard Miss Thorne ask if there wasn't something she could do. Lynch's reply was indistinct, but the tone of his voice, deferential, yet with a faint undercurrent of honey-sweetness, irritated him inexplicably. With a scowl, he spurred forward, exchanged a brief greeting with Bud Jessup as he passed, and finally joined Kreeger, who was having considerable difficulty ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... envelope was soiled like the coat of a traveler, and the letter was crumpled as though a hand had closed over it roughly. The writing was distinct and clerkly. "Berkeley Mason, Esq., Wintergreen, —— Co., Virginia." Mr. Mason examined the blurred, indistinct postmark. "Point"—something, it seemed to be; and on the other side, Washington, plain enough, and the date, May, 1865. What letter had been forwarded him from the seat of government in the spring of '65? Then memory unfolded itself like a map ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... select committees betrays a desire to abridge the frequent and somewhat irksome duty of attendance in Parliament rather than to share the central legislative and deliberative power with the whole body of the people. It must, however, be remembered that the scheme makes a very indistinct claim to the ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... duty it is. Upon grounds which we have often stated, we believe that the anomaly of one bank keeping the sole banking reserve is so fixed in our system that we cannot change it if we would. The great evil to be feared was an indistinct conception of the fact, and that is ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... not wish to see him again. In the abyss down yonder before her she now heard a slight sound, the indistinct ripple of the waves over the rocks. She rose to her feet with the idea of throwing herself over the cliff and bidding life farewell. Like one in despair, she uttered the last word of the dying, the last word of the young soldier slain in ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... visitor arriving. If the arm is held out, he brings a present. If figure is very clear, he is dark; if indistinct, ...
— Tea-Cup Reading, and the Art of Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves • 'A Highland Seer'
... and confusion which this intimation produced at Berlin may be easily conceived: horror the more aggravated, as it seized them in the midst of their rejoicings occasioned by the first despatch; and this was still more dreadfully augmented, by a subsequent indistinct relation, importing that the army was totally routed, the king missing, and the enemy in full march to Berlin. The battle of Cunersdorf was by far the most bloody action which happened since the commencement of hostilities. The carnage was truly horrible: above ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... hand; she bent her head, and uttered: 'Andrei Nikolaevitch....' I noticed at once, by the twitching of her lips, that she was getting ready to cry, and began consoling her, assuring her hotly of Andrei's devotion.... She heard me, nodded her head mournfully, articulated some indistinct words, and then was silent but did not cry. The first moments I had dreaded most of all had gone off fairly well. She began little by little to talk about Andrei. 'I know that he does not love me now,' she repeated: 'God be with him! I can't imagine how I am to live without him.... I don't sleep ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Hetty's voice grew indistinct, and Flora Schuyler drew the furs closer about them, and slipped an arm round her waist. She began to feel the cold again, and the loneliness more, while, even when she closed her eyes, she could not shut out the menacing ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... of the day he revolved from time to time indistinct ideas of somehow giving this girl a chance. He wished Josephine would and could help, or perhaps his sister Ursula. It was not a matter that could be settled, or even taken up, in haste. No man of his mentality and experience fails to ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... lane A window pane Gleams 'mid the trees through night and rain. The weeds are dense Through which a fence Of pickets rambles, none sees whence, Before a porch, all indistinct of line, ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... Clouds were gathering overhead, and soon, Roosevelt knew, even the light that the stars gave would be withdrawn. The night was very cold and the silence was profound. A light snow rendered even the hoof-beats of his horse muffled and indistinct, and the only sound that came out of the black world about him was the long-drawn, ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... reluctance, and there a loud laughing minx was finding a way with her own elbows. It was a strange light that was spread over the piazza. There were the pale stars breaking out above, and the dim waving lanterns below, leaving all objects indistinct except when they were seen close under the fitfully moving lights; but in this recess there was a stronger light, against which the heads of the encircling spectators stood in dark relief as Tito was gradually ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... up. Gradually the islands, the crags, and even objects at the schooner's length, grew indistinct, and dimmed out entirely by half-past ten. We heard the "honk, honk," of numerous wild-geese from the islands; and, high overhead, the melancholy screams of "boatswains." Otherwise all was quiet. The ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... there, at the end of the hall (opposite the front door), was the full-length portrait of Mrs. Wanning, maturely blooming forth in an evening gown, signed with the name of a French painter who seemed purposely to have made his signature indistinct. Though the signature was largely what one paid for, one couldn't ask ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... Jenny and Hargrave, who were assisting in our preparations, each in their own way expressed their feelings. The former declaring she would be glad of a quiet day to get through a lot of washing, the latter grumbling that the young ladies would spoil their clothes and get them torn, while both had indistinct visions of snakes and dragons snapping us up, lions and tigers leaving only our bones as sad memorials, savages or monsters running away with us! Fortified by these ideas, we emerged from the tent, properly equipped, and ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... the rain had ceased for a time to give place to a fearful gale which tossed the maddened waters higher and higher, there appeared upon the horizon a dim, portentous shape. At first it was only a form, indistinct and uncertain. As we watched longer, it gradually assumed the semblance of a ship. Keen eyes soon discerned a huge, black hulk, of monstrous size when riding the crest of the breakers, smaller and partially lost to sight when buried at intervals in ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... He was also indistinct. How he raged at us, this wrath-snorter, because we understood him badly! But why did he not speak ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Several times, waking in the night, I had listened pityingly to the same half-smothered lament. On this night I had fallen asleep as usual, when suddenly a shriek rang out, and I wakened to hear the angry accents of the beldam protesting against "hysterics," and the indistinct muttering of the girlish sleepers whose rest the stranger had so inconsiderately disturbed. In a few moments everything was quiet again, our old woman had renewed her snoring, and then the new-comer, repressing her anguish as best she could, slid kneeling ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... was early dawn. The outlines of the room and the different objects in it were indistinct. At the foot of his bed he noticed something which resembled a heap of clothing on a chair. He looked at it steadily, wondering if it could be part of the strange dreams which had beset him in sleep. As the room gradually became lighter, he saw that it was a woman. Mrs. Floyd, ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... he paused, and looked confused, and did not know what to say. He had an indistinct recollection of having read something about it in some book; but he ...
— Rollo's Philosophy. [Air] • Jacob Abbott
... sorrow, for example, or a hovering angel, imbued with immortal light, or a saint with the glow of heaven in his dying face,—and these would be rendered with her whole soul. If a picture had darkened into an indistinct shadow through time and neglect, or had been injured by cleaning, or retouched by some profane hand, she seemed to possess the faculty of seeing it in its pristine glory. The copy would come from her hands with what the ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lines of sunset cloud, a long ray of golden light, that fell full on the uplifted face of the little old man. He did not turn his head, or shrink from its intense brightness, but his lips moved, though the utterance of the words he spoke was so broken and indistinct, that I stooped to hear them. "'Adelais,—O my lost darling,—my Adelais,—let me come to thee and be beloved at last!' " Then I looked again at the western sky, and saw that the ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... then turned over on his hands and knees and crawled to the opening of the tent and peered around outside. The campfire had burned rather low, so that objects a short distance away were indistinct. He saw that the horses were huddled together and had their heads turned toward a clump of bushes at one ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... with his back to a rock, his knees drawn up and clasped within fingers nervously interlocked. His eyes were fixed upon the great stretch of landscape below, shadowy now, and indistinct, like a rolling plain of patchwork woven by mysterious fingers. Gray mists were floating over the meadows and low-lying lands. Away in the distance they marked the circuitous course of the river, which only ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sound like the grating noise of a file seemed to issue from the old edifice; but it was so indistinct and so often interrupted that it was not sufficient to destroy the solitude ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... we are confronted at once with what was in early days an extremely vexed question; not perhaps entirely set at rest even now, but allowed to remain in suspense amid the universal acceptance of Confucian teachings. Confucius himself taught in no indistinct terms that man is born good, and that he becomes evil only by contact with evil surroundings. He does not enlarge upon this dogma, but states it baldly as a natural law, little anticipating that within a couple of centuries it was to be called seriously ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... lawyers were rather confused and indistinct. He knew they had a great deal to do in the court-house, when men were sent to the penitentiary and the house of correction for various crimes. He watched the squire and Mr. Grant, and he was fully satisfied in his own mind what they were talking about when the latter pointed to the window ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... of the gangway opened, and the big Jutlander came out with a tiny coffin under his arm. He was singing a hymn in an indistinct voice, as he stood there waiting. In the side passage, behind the partition-wall, a boy's voice was mocking him. The Jutlander's face was red and swollen with crying, and the debauch of the night before was still heavy in his legs. Behind him came the mother, and now they went down the gangway ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... gloom which had succeeded to the pale light, had the effect of rendering every object still more indistinct to the astonished crew of the Ter Schilling. For a moment or more not a word was uttered by a soul on board. Some remained with their eyes still strained towards the point where the apparition had been seen, others turned away full of gloomy and foreboding thoughts. Hillebrant was the ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... know about. The lad tried in vain with the crucibles to turn copper and lead into gold and silver—he looked long and vainly into the mirror; smoke and clouds passed over it, but he saw nothing plain, and the shell to his ear produced only indistinct murmurings, like the breaking of distant seas on an unknown shore. "I can do nothing," he said; "as I don't know the right words to utter, and they are locked up ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... values, two centuries ago a bold generation of Americans risked their property, their position, and life itself. We are their heirs, and they are sending us a message across the centuries. The words they made so vivid are now growing faintly indistinct, because they are not heard often enough. They are words like "justice," "equality," "unity," "truth," "sacrifice," "liberty," ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... forms merged, grotesquely intermingled and became indistinct. From behind the gray curtain came the sound of heavy blows, ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... followed her, but waited outside in obedience to her gesture. As she opened the door he smelt the sickly sweet smell which makes the neighbourhood of the leper nauseous. He heard her speak, and then he heard Strickland's answer, but he did not recognise the voice. It had become hoarse and indistinct. Dr. Coutras raised his eyebrows. He judged that the disease had already attacked the vocal chords. Then Ata came ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... voices and the shuffling of feet continued, indistinct but laden with tragedy. The curious hush of catastrophe seemed to top the confusion that infected the place, inside and out. Barnes found his electric pocket torch and dressed hurriedly, though not fully, by its constricted light. As he was pulling on his heavy walking shoes, a head ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... the things left by his father, the boy made a tracing from the plan he had been studying. He followed all the lines of the original carefully, except in one place where the plan was so indistinct that he could not tell exactly where they were intended to go. Being in a hurry, and feeling confident that they should be continued in a certain direction, he drew them so without ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... together into an endless network of buds and plumes; and, in the midst of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to the feet, and leaning to each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them, interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded back among the branches of Eden, when first its gates were angel-guarded long ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... yet still and mild as June. Haze lay lingering about the horizon, softened the shore of Long Island, hid with a thick curtain the place of the busy city, the roar of which Diana could plainly enough hear in the stillness, a strange, indistinct, mysterious, significant murmur of distant unrest. All before and around her was rest; the flowing waters were too quiet to-day to suggest anything disquieting; only life, without which rest is nought. ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... was not as generous as Worth might have supposed. There lurked in the former's mind an indistinct suspicion. Nay, it was more than a suspicion, and he reasoned that if this man was what he feared he was, he could parry the danger better by having him under his eye, for even now he was concocting a scheme of escape. On the other hand, Worth had no doubt in his mind that this was the man ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... signifies the Divine Nature, which is predicated even in the abstract of the Father and Son. But when it is said: "Christ is something that is not the Father"; "something" signifies, not the human nature as it is in the abstract, but as it is in the concrete; not, indeed, in a distinct, but in an indistinct suppositum, i.e. inasmuch as it underlies the nature and not the individuating properties. Hence it does not follow that Christ is one thing and another, or that He is two, since the suppositum of the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... so," she declared. "I see quite clearly the first letters of the word—Thom ... written in a large hand,... then the rest is indistinct ... but I have the impression that the end of the word is longer than ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... off there was another indistinct figure; this one black, with a sustained hiss that spoke of strength very much in reserve. The long chimney running up beside an ash-tree, and the warmth which radiated from the spot, explained without the necessity of ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... them, against the bright background, a group of persons riding on horseback came in sight, at first vague and indistinct, then appearing as a man and a woman, handsomely mounted, and entered the mysterious path among the bars of gold, the leafy shadows, the thousand dots of light with which the ground was strewn, and which, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... banana, thinking lazily that he wished he owned this car. For the first time in many a day his mind was not filled and boiling over with his trouble. Marie and all the bitterness she had come to mean to him receded into the misty background of his mind and hovered there, an indistinct memory of something ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... ... shadowy, indistinct in the gray, with a few withered apples still clinging to its boughs, a few shriveled leaves reluctant ...
— The Street That Wasn't There • Clifford Donald Simak
... silent a moment, and then, faint and indistinct, apparently from somewhere several feet ahead of them, they both heard repeated that which had made Slim stop. As the letters were tapped off upon the pipe the lad repeated them for ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... gods darkness alone was, and a breathing stirred dull and indistinct as the conscience of a man in a dream. It contracted, creating Desire and Cloud, and from Desire and Cloud there issued primitive Matter. This was a water, muddy, black, icy and deep. It contained senseless monsters, incoherent portions of the forms to be born, which are painted on the walls ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... of stairs. Next came the general:—on hearing his step, Helen's anxiety became so intense, that she could not, at the moment he came near, catch the sound or distinguish which way he went. Strained beyond its power, the faculty of hearing seemed suddenly to fail—all was confusion, an indistinct buzz of sounds. The next moment, however, recovering, she plainly heard his step in the front drawing-room, and she knew that he twice walked up and down the whole length of the room, as if in ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... Dominie, that your handwriting is not as good as your health. Your letter in reply to my invitation to be here was so indistinct that I could not tell whether it was an acceptance ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... of the Assumption of the Virgin, which we have seen circulated in print shops in America, but which appears of a widely different character in the painting. The Virgin is rising in a flood of amber light, surrounded by clouds and indistinct angel figures. She is looking upward with clasped hands, as in an ecstasy: the crescent moon is beneath her feet. The whole tone of the picture— the clouds, the drapery, her flowing hair—are pervaded with this amber ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... surrounded by dark, savage figures that showed indistinct in the half-light. The girl's eyes rested for a moment upon Lapierre, whose thin, handsome features, richly tanned by long exposure to the Northern winds and sun, presented a pleasing contrast to the swart flat faces of ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... near the limes. The bucks were bellowing in the forest: as the leaves turned colour their loves began and the battles for the fair. Again a few days and the snow came, and rendered visible the slope of the ground in the copse between the trunks of the trees: the ground there was at other times indistinct under brambles and withered fern. The squire left the window for his arm-chair by the fire; but if presently, as often happens when frost quickly follows a snow-storm, the sun shone out and a beam fell on the wall, he would get up and look out. Every footstep in the snow contained a shadow ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... A muffled, indistinct roar, a confusion of sounds, aroused the half-conscious sleeper. Brock sprang from his ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... to all His followers the certainty of heavenly bliss. He declared the cherubim to be dismissed and the flaming sword to be sheathed, which had been appointed at the fall, to keep from man "the way of the tree of life." Faint, before this period, had been the hope, indistinct the prospect, which even good men enjoyed of the heavenly kingdom. Life and immortality were now brought to light. From the hill of Calvary the first clear and certain view was given to the world of the everlasting ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... more minutes the savage held a conversation with Kent; but in the course of a half-hour the answers of the latter began to grow brief and indistinct, and finally ceased altogether; then he began to breathe more slowly and heavily, and the savage at last believed that both guard ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... storms of the mountain come; when the north lifts the waves on high; I sit by the sounding shore, and look on the fatal rock. Often by the setting moon I see the ghosts of my children. Indistinct, they walk in mournful conference together. Will none of you speak to me?—But they do not ...
— Fragments Of Ancient Poetry • James MacPherson
... accustomed; they did not fit in with the life he lived. He felt dimly that, in a way, they were like the heaven his mother had taught him—altogether perfect and altogether unattainable and not to be thought of with any degree of familiarity. So his memory of the woman was indistinct, as of something which did not properly belong to the picture. He clung instead to the memory of the warm stove, and the strip of carpet, and the table with the red cloth, and to the puffy, white pillows ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... torn by the bear's big claws in his eagerness to get the grubs that no doubt were living among the rotting wood. They followed the bear's tracks. Jean in his eagerness went ahead and the father watched his boy with pride as he followed the indistinct tracks with swiftness and sureness. Finally the bear led them up one of the numerous mountains that are a feature of this country, as you know. Soon the tracks could be followed only with the greatest difficulty. Pierre was soon in the van and about noon ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... survive, the voice has a peculiar nasal twang, as in phonation the air is expelled through the nose instead of through the mouth, and the articulation, especially of certain consonants, is very indistinct. Taste and smell are deficient. The constant exposure of the nasal and pharyngeal mucous membrane renders it liable to catarrhal ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... views—nothing extreme, but something between the excesses of the past and the excesses of the present. This modern type of the general reader may be known in conversation by the cordiality with which he assents to indistinct, blurred statements: say that black is black, he will shake his head and hardly think it; say that black is not so very black, he will reply, "Exactly." He has no hesitation, if you wish it, even to get up at a public meeting and express his conviction that at times, and within ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... from the door, he peered over the banisters into the space below. It was like a deep vault that might conceal in its shadows anything that was not good. It was not difficult to fancy he saw an indistinct moving to-and-fro below him. Was that a figure sitting on the stairs peering up obliquely at him out of hideous eyes? Was that a sound of whispering and shuffling down there in the dark halls and forsaken landings? Was it something more than the inarticulate ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... fire-light in the room, and it threw about great shadows, so that at first entering all was indistinct; but I heard a foot behind father's, and then a form appeared, and something, I never could tell what, made a great shiver rush down my back, just as when a creature is frightened in the dark at what ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... just passed through have given emotions to my heart, which will not be quieted one while. My heart, I see, (on re-perusing what I have written,) has communicated its tremors to my fingers; and in some places the characters are so indistinct and unformed, that thou'lt hardly be able to make them out. But if one half of them is only intelligible, that will be enough to expose me to thy contempt, for the wretched hand I have made of my plots and contrivances. —But surely, Jack, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... stacks and the columns of smoke that twisted upward to form that overshadowing cloud. The voices of the children, as they started down the stairway to the dusty road and to their wretched home in the Flats, came to him muffled and indistinct from ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... journey was not difficult for an athletic man, and Walker was quickly an indistinct figure in the fog. He gained the truck all right, and instantly yelled something. Courtenay fancied ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... continued with conscientious deliberation to the bitter end,—the lullaby generally had the desired effect. At such times the men would lie at full length under the trees in the soft summer twilight, smoking their pipes and drinking in the melodious utterances. An indistinct idea that this was pastoral happiness pervaded the camp. "This 'ere kind o' think," said the Cockney Simmons, meditatively reclining on his elbow, "is 'evingly." ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... fancy, the picture grew indistinct and was blotted out. He no longer saw the figures, but the loving cry continued to sound in his ears, ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... red lamp burned over the principal door, while over the surgery door the three last letters were more indistinct than ever, and "Surg" somehow looked like a portion of "Resurgam" on ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... between Jus Gentium, or Law common to all Nations, and international law is entirely modern. The classical expression for international law is Jus Feciale or the law of negotiation and diplomacy. It is, however, unquestionable that indistinct impressions as to the meaning of Jus Gentium had considerable share in producing the modern theory that the relations of independent states are governed by the ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... head soothingly, and he sank back a few seconds in quiet, then sprang up with a loud bark. This time she heard an indistinct sound of steps in the hall, and thought: "Nellie sees my light through the window, and is coming to coax me upstairs." Something stumbled near the threshold, a hand struck the knob as if in hunting ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Fancy, the form of Ellinor—his bright-eyed and gentle cousin, was not the least conspicuous. Since his altercation with Madeline, the love he had once thought so ineffaceable, had faded into a dim and sullen hue; and, in proportion as the image of Madeline grew indistinct, that of her sister became more brilliant. Often, now, as he rode slowly onward, in the quiet of the deepening night, and the mellow stars softening all on which they shone, he pressed the little token of Ellinor's affection to his heart, and wondered ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... following morning, the vessel, under a heavy press of sail, was fast leaving the shores of his native country. He remained on the poop of the vessel with his eyes fixed upon the land, which every moment became more indistinct. His thoughts may easily be imagined. Shall I ever see that land again? Shall I ever return, or shall my bones remain in Africa, perhaps not even buried, but bleaching in the desert? And if I do return, shall I find my old relation still alive, ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... first experience in love affairs, and he had no idea how different young ladies are at different times. He had expected a far different scene from the one which was being enacted. All day long he had buoyed himself up with an indistinct idea that she would certainly say, "Don't go," or "Don't leave us," or "Why do you go?" or "Why do you leave us?" or would give him some little encouragement of that sort. He had even entertained the possibility of her bursting ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... his offices had in part created, and lingered a moment ere giving it up to the eager night. She sent her forerunners,—twilight, which paled the wondrous blues, and dusk, that left the mountains shadowy and indistinct, when the lady of darkness herself rubbed them right out of the great canvas, and left it no coloured beauty but the gleam of the far stars overhead and the tiny man-made lights below, which, showing from the windows of the little homesteads ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... the last of the Visigoths, and had floating in his brain some indistinct idea of the last of the Mohicans, but to have the last of the Neros thus brought before him for a blessing was very staggering. Still he liked the lady: she had a proper way of thinking and talked with more propriety than her brother. But ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... with a swift glance around for his hat. He found it, and strode to the door, following the girl. The two hurried out into the street, followed by indistinct strictures from the kitchen. Cissie breathed fast, with open lips. They moved rapidly along the semicircular street almost with a sense of flight. The heat of the early autumn sun stung them through their clothes. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... advance, in order to be enabled to obtain a better view of the prisoners; but the latter, turning away his head at the moment, although apparently without design, baffled his penetration. Still he had a confused and indistinct idea that the person was not wholly ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... stress of the last hour, turned in on itself and began to create. The cameo profile, the mist-like body, the marble hands remained; but now Galen Albret saw other things as well. A dim, rare perfume was wafted from some unseen space; indistinct flashes of light spotted the darknesses; faint swells of music lifted the silence intermittently. These things were small and still, and under the external consciousness—like the voices one may hear beneath the roar of a tumbling rapid—but gradually they defined themselves. The perfume ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... and groaning down the narrow stairs, and the skipper, closing the door, went and crouched down by the open casement. A few indistinct words were borne in on the still air, and voices came gradually closer, until footsteps, which had been deadened by the grass, became suddenly audible on the stones ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... in this sport appreciates the loyal support of the thousands on the stands, every man realizes that his checks on the Bank of Cheers can never be cashed unless there is a deposit of hard work and practice. Perhaps all this in an indistinct and indefinite way explains why football players, the country over, understand each other and that when the game is attacked for any reason they stand shoulder to shoulder in defence of what they know down in the bottom of their hearts has such an influence on character building. And there ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... panorama, in the contemplation of which he forgot, for the moment, even his beloved fields and woods. Of the life of the majority of human beings, particularly the dwellers in large towns, Clare had as yet but very vague and indistinct notions, and was surprised, therefore, at many of the scenes before him. What struck him most was the feverish anxiety manifested in the countenances of the hurrying crowds, and the restless tumult of the never-ending wave ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... his father came in, Charles wiled him into deferring the letter till the next day, by giving him an indistinct hope that some notion when the marriage would be, might be arrived at by that time. He consented the more readily, because he was in haste to investigate a complaint that had just been made of the union doctor; ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... added to and qualified and brought into relationship with new ones; they fused inseparably with others that were purely personal and accidental. I find myself with a certain comprehensive perception of London, complete indeed, incurably indistinct in places and yet in some way a whole that began with my first visit and is still ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... shadow falls upon their line of vision, they "go about" and turn head on to watch, sometimes remaining in the same position, with gently moving fins and tails, for five minutes; sometimes sinking down to the blue depths beyond, their outlines looming grey and indistinct as they descend, to reappear again in a few minutes, almost on the surface, waiting for the dead mullet or gar-fish which you ...
— The Colonial Mortuary Bard; "'Reo," The Fisherman; and The Black Bream Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... not properly separated from the rest of the sentence; or words are aggregated in a manner which fails to show their relation to one another; or the connecting particles are omitted at the beginning of sentences; the uses of the relative and antecedent are more indistinct, the changes of person and number more frequent, examples of pleonasm, tautology, and periphrasis, antitheses of positive and negative, false emphasis, and other affectations, are more numerous than in the other writings of Plato; there is also a more common and sometimes unmeaning ...
— Laws • Plato
... delight of being a pulsing reality. I no longer know whether I see scents, breathe sounds, or smell colours. Do I love? Do I think? The question has no longer a meaning for me. I am, in my complete self, each of my attitudes, each of my changes. It is not my sight which is indistinct or my attention which is idle. It is I who have resumed contact with pure reality, whose essential movement admits no form of number. He who thus makes the really "deep" and "inner" effort necessary to becoming—were ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... thinking of nothing in particular, when there came a loud rat, tat, tat of knuckles on the window-pane. I immediately turned in the direction of the noise and encountered, to my alarm, a dark face looking in at me. At first dim and indistinct, it became more and more complete, until it developed into a very perfectly defined head of a wolf terminating in the neck of a human being. Though greatly shocked, my first act was to look in every direction for a possible reflection—but in vain. There was no light ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... Lum, for we all think Julie is a mighty fine—" Hippy's voice trailed off into an indistinct murmur as he gazed up into the face of Julie's stalwart escort. He heard Grace give utterance to a scarcely audible laugh, but at that moment Hippy Wingate did not feel like laughter, for in Lum Bangs he recognized the "constable" whom he had knocked ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... here in misery, and perished in darkness. Here Jugurtha starved; here Catiline's adherents were strangled; and, methinks, there cannot be in the world another such an evil den, so haunted with black memories and indistinct surmises of guilt and suffering. In old Rome, I suppose, the citizens never spoke of this dungeon above their breath. It looks just as bad as it is; round, only seven paces across, yet so obscure that our tapers could not illuminate it from side to side,— the stones of which it is constructed ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... deafening,—they could not hear each other speak unless by shouting at the top of their voices, and even then the sounds were rendered almost indistinct by the riotous uproar. Sigurd, however, who knew all the ins and outs of the place, sprang lightly on a jutting crag, and, putting both hands to his mouth, uttered a peculiar, shrill, and far-reaching cry. Clear above the turmoil of the restless waters, that cry was echoed back eight distinct times ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... of the imagination we can see an indistinct form stealthily remove the floorboard of one of the stairs and creep beneath it. This particular step of a short flight running from the landing into a garret is, upon closer inspection, indeed movable, and ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... good-humored smile, tempered with a sort of Saint Vincent de Paul expression that uncouth ugliness, that original countenance, so original that it forgot to be commonplace. But his inferior extraction betrayed itself in another direction by his voice, the voice of a Rhone boatman, hoarse and indistinct, in which the southern accent became rather coarse than harsh, and by two broad, short hands, with hairy fingers, square at the ends and with almost no nails, which, as they rested on the white table cloth, spoke of their past with embarrassing ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... God! What damnable evenings I've spent there—feeling as if you were slipping further and further out of my life—as if you were gone, and I had only the clothes you had worn, an odor about me somewhere to convince me that I had not dreamed you! Sometimes that faint, indistinct, evasive scent of you in the room has almost driven me out of my head. I wonder I haven't killed you before now—to be sure of you! I'm afraid of Hell, I suppose, or ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... from our luncheon," whispered Cora, as the men resumed their talk. The wind sprang up, for a moment, and carried their tones away from the girls, so that only an indistinct murmur could be heard. Then ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... being Gentlefolks, and I a poor humble Serving Man that was to be, I was bidden to wait, which I did very patiently in the embrasure of a window, admiring the great dark tapestried curtains as they loomed in indistinct gorgeousness among the shadows. The hand of piquet was over at last, and Mr. Pinchin found that he had lost three ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Marescotti, but it was evident he was chagrined by what he saw. Marescotti neither heard him, nor even affected to do so. Trenta's voice in the great church was weak and piping—indistinct even to those beside him. Finding the count unavailable either for instruction or reproof, the cavaliere shook his head, and his countenance fell. Then he turned his mild blue eyes upon Enrica, leaned upon his ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... his associates, the speaker turned his glance down the long table, where sat figures, indistinct in the gathering gloom. At his right hand, half in shadow, there showed the bold outlines of a leonine head set upon broad shoulders. Under cavernous brows, dark eyes looked out with seriousness. Half revealed as ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... her a letter from the Emperor. The lady's sight was dim and indistinct. Taking it, therefore, to the lamp, she said, "Perhaps the light will help me to decipher," and then read as follows, much in unison with the oral message: "I thought that time only would assuage my grief; but time only brings before ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... pushed on with a single companion on the previous night to see if he could obtain canoes; the packers were breaking a trail, and the others were resting in camp. Millicent was glad of this, for she wanted to be alone. Suddenly, as she looked down the hollow, two indistinct figures appeared out of the mist. The packers had gone up the valley, but there was no doubt that it was two men she saw, and they were apparently making for the camp. As the party had met nobody since entering ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... were formally indicted before their peers on a charge of murder. It is now that the mystery of the story begins. It has never appeared clearly what motive they could have had for murdering Sir Thomas Overbury, and the evidence against them is very indistinct and incoherent; yet the countess confessed, and her husband was found guilty. It was attempted to be shewn, that Overbury had opposed the divorce of the Earl and Countess of Essex, and so had done his best to prevent the union of the favourite with ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... many things, sat the two friends under the linden-trees on the Rent Tower, till gradually the crowd disappeared from the garden, and the objects around them grew indistinct, in the fading twilight. Between them and the amber-colored western sky, the dense foliage of the trees looked heavy and hard, as if cast in bronze; and already the evening stars hung like silver ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... dark by the time the little party from "the Moorings" reached the wreck, and things were beginning to get indistinct a little distance off; but, soon after their arrival on the spot, the silvery moon rising at the full, passing through occasional strata of dark cloud that veiled her light at intervals, illumined the sky with her weird beams, making it bright as day, but with a ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... hopes are very vague and indistinct, and my efforts in any direction, save the beaten track in which I have been used to earn my bread, are, when perceptible, jerky, irregular, and without intelligent, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... rock, and stream, and by the old home itself with which these were once inseparably associated! The history of days and years now glow with the vividness of first impressions, where, until now, all was so indistinct and illegible. Old familiar voices ring in our ears, beloved faces of the old dead gaze upon us as of yore, and their forms flit before our moist eyes. But were not these things all the while in our memory, although unnoticed ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... every Sunday when he was in London; or, if he did not do so, Mrs. Avory wrote him long letters in very indistinct handwriting, and told him that it was all right, and that she really hoped he would marry and be as happy as he deserved to be. And the letters were generally blotted and ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... overjoyed Dorothy, "thither he comes!" and she pointed to a cloud of dust in the far distance, in the midst of which might be seen every now and again the indistinct form of a horse ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... the form of the eyes, and exists in childhood. The axis of the eyeball is too short, and the focus falls beyond the retina, which is too near the cornea. In childhood this strain may pass unnoticed, but, sooner or later it manifests itself by a sense of fatigue, dizziness, and a blurred and indistinct vision. The remedy is in the use of convex glasses to converge parallel rays of light before they enter the eye. The muscles of accommodation are thus relieved of ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... save for the wild beat of the storm, there was silence. Then, clapping the receivers to his ears, Curlie uttered an exclamation. He was getting something, or at least thought he was. Yes, now he did get it, a whisper. Faint, indistinct, mingled with static, yet audible enough, there came ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... effect, and, while every feature of his countenance manifested the extreme of animal stupidity, his apprehension wandered and his voice became almost inarticulate. Without the power to acquaint his son with the purpose he had in view, and of which he himself now entertained but a very indistinct recollection, he yet strove, impelled as he was by his confusedness of intention to retain his seat, but was eventually unhorsed and handed over to the care of his pretty daughter in law, whose office it was to ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... your blindness and obstinacy. It is now from three to five years since I began to speak—though in a kind of indistinct undertone at first—against this bloody traffic. I have reasoned, I have remonstrated, and latterly I have threatened and implored with increasing earnestness. At times you have listened, and been convinced that the course which you are pursuing, in this day ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... my complex machinery of blocks and pulleys. A steady breeze was blowing off shore when we set sail, at a little before sunset. It swept us quickly past the reef and out to sea. The shore grew rapidly more indistinct as the shades of evening fell, while our clipper bark bounded lightly over the waves. Slowly the mountain top sank on the horizon, until it became a mere speck. In another moment the sun and the Coral Island sank together into the broad ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... philosophical analysis points to a principle in art illustration which accounts in a great measure for the unsatisfactory results where it is attempted to illustrate familiar works—such as those of Tennyson, Shakespeare, etc. The reader has a fixed idea before him, which he has formed for himself—an indistinct, shapeless one it might be, but still of sufficient outline to be disturbed. Among the innumerable presentments of Shakespeare's heroines no one has ever seen any that satisfied or that even corresponded. They are usually not generalized enough. ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... rapidly, non-passengers flew down to shore-boats; round go the wheels, waving go the kerchiefs, and down fall the tears. The "Isabel" bounds o'er the ripp'less waters; forts and dungeons, as we gaze astern, fade from the view; an indistinct shade is all by which the eye can recal the lovely isle of Cuba; and, lest memory should fail, the piles of oranges, about four feet square, all round the upper-deck, are ready to refresh it. How different the "Isabel" from the "Cherokee!" Mr. Law might do well to take ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... coming on; in the dim twilight distant objects became confused and indistinct. It was the end of autumn, that melancholy season which suggests so many gloomy thoughts and recalls so many blighted hopes. The child had gone into the house. Bertrande, still sitting at the door, resting her forehead on her hand, thought sadly of her uncle's ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... outline of the HEROIC AGE. The careful and skeptical Thucydides has left us, in the commencement of his immortal history, a masterly portraiture of the manners of those times in which individual prowess elevates the possessor to the rank of a demigod; times of unsettled law and indistinct control;—of adventure—of excitement;—of daring qualities and lofty crime. We recognise in the picture features familiar to the North: the roving warriors and the pirate kings who scoured the seas, descended upon unguarded ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pervades the book from beginning to end. The prose facts of life had but a remote and indistinct existence to the poet, and he blundered along miserably in his youth, supported and upheld by a dim but unquenchable aspiration. He commiserated himself, and yet felt that there was something great in store for him because of his exceptional endowment. ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... All Muggleton against the Dingley Dellers, and that at the Swan—otherwise the Blue Lion—the Pickwick fellowship shared the conviviality of the rival teams, until Mr. Snodgrass's notes of the evening's transactions faded away into a blur in which there was an indistinct reference to "broiled bones" and "cold without". The stately ruins of a Benedictine Abbey, founded by Bishop Gundulf, give to the town an attraction of ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
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