FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • More 'Mumbling' Quotes from Famous Books

... He fell to mumbling her hand. An hour later Catherine told Jehan de Vaucelles she intended to marry Noel the Handsome when he should come back from Geneppe with the exiled Dauphin. The old man, having wisdom, lifted his brows, and returned to his reading in Le Pet ...

— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... grown boy in one of my classes who did not open his lips properly when he spoke. So I asked him to prop his mouth open with a piece of stick and then talk. I made him do it until he learned to speak much more clearly. A famous Greek orator, named Demosthenes, who had a habit of mumbling his words, trained himself to speak clearly by putting pebbles in his mouth and then reciting in ...

— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson

... stiff blue lips. She, too, collapsed in her corner, and lay stonily staring at the face staring back at her: a face with desperation in its hunted eyes, with black chin, and chalk-white cheek and brow, and a mouth restlessly mumbling with no sound. ...

— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... miscellaneous rags that could be imagined, and these were knotted together so intricately that her clothing, having once been attached to her body, could never again be detached from it. As she walked she was mumbling and grumbling to herself, so that her mouth moved round and round ...

— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens

... explained briefly, forestalling his questions; "been at Joan's tent. Torn it, by Gad! this time. It's time we did something." He went on mumbling confusedly to himself. ...

— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... all at once, mumbling to himself some inarticulate gibberish. Half an hour later, the servants came in and found him. He was seated in his chair, still doddering feebly. The house was roused. A doctor was summoned, and the Colonel put to bed. Lady Emily watched him with devoted care. But it was all in vain. The doctor ...

— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... whiskey, as though it had been a light wine and very soft to an appreciative palate. In some vague way the act was vastly insolent. Temple appeared uncertain, no uncommon thing with him; then, going to set his emptied glass down he put an elbow on the mantel, dropped his head, and spoke in a low, mumbling voice: ...

— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... were still further irritating her, the old Pacha kept mumbling and muttering to himself, nodding his head and smiling at each fresh mark of attention, for though he was so independent and fearless still he appreciated the trouble she took. The mumbling in his mouth was a sort of purring. Her dutiful spirit had ...

— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... up. Then a rousing cheer was given for the "next Marshal of Tinkletown," followed by the customary mumbling of "The Star ...

— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon

... place back of these. The priest raced through the service at the highest possible speed. His motions were like those of an automaton: he kept turning quickly to and fro as if on a pivot; clasping his hands before his breast as if by machinery; bowing his head as if it moved by a spring in his neck; mumbling and rattling like wind in a chimney; the choir-boy who served the mass with him jingling his bell as irreverently as if he were conducting a green-grocer's cart. My Anglican companion immediately began to be unhappy, and was soon deeply distressed. He groaned ...

— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... Close wrapt he bore some secret instrument Of Christian superstition in his hand: My servant followed fast, and through a chink Perceived the royal captives hand in hand; And heard the hooded father mumbling charms, That make those misbelievers man and wife; Which done, the spouses kissed with such a fervour, And gave such furious earnest of their flames, That their eyes sparkled, and their mantling blood Flew ...

— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... a ring at the front door, and Mr. Kent stopped to listen. They heard a male voice mumbling to the maid, who then came to her mistress ...

— Kathleen • Christopher Morley

... hanged, the person who touched the halter was the most fortunate, and much money was often paid for bits of the rope; and at night, when the wretched corpse was carried away to the church by the brethren, the crowd followed in long procession, mumbling prayers, to kneel on the church steps at last and implore the dead man's liberated spirit to suggest to them, by some accident, numbers to be played at the lottery—custom which recalls the incantations ...

— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... the young peasant so much, that he sprang out at the door, and overthrew his father in his flight. The old gentleman would not spend time in getting up, but crawled backwards like a crab, with great speed, till he had got over the threshold, mumbling exorcisms all the way. I was exceedingly mortified to find myself in danger of perishing through the ignorance and cowardice of these clowns; and felt my spirits decay apace, when an old woman entered the barn, followed by the two fugitives and with great intrepidity ...

— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... and must you still be mumbling that! Come now, forget you are a woman, and be reasonable! You exercise the fair and ancient privilege of kinship by calling me harsh names, but it is in the face of this plain fact: I got from you what never man has got before. I am a monstrous clever fellow, say ...

— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... of Argile back again," said an old halberdier, staunching a savage cut on his knee, and mumbling his words because he was chewing as he spoke an herb that's the poultice ...

— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... "Martin!" made Lingard wince, caused d'Alcacer to lift his head down there in the boat, and even Jorgenson, forward somewhere out of sight, ceased mumbling in his moustache. The only person who seemed not to have heard that exclamation was Mr. Travers himself, ...

— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... outcry, he kept mumbling to himself—his words were inaudible—lost his voice—don't wonder! Some rooter he'd make at a football game while he lasted! After muttering a minute, he stopped and listened intently, as though expecting an answer. Good heavens! He thinks he can be heard! He moved on, ...

— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... followed. I heard the solemn ticking of the clock on the mantel behind me; I heard Mary laughing softly in her retreat beyond the table; I heard Luther, now bending over his book, mumbling to himself a ...

— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd

... feeling that he ought not to discuss the question in a secular conversation and a feeling of reverence for his bantering friend who was an ecclesiastic of mature age and a professor in the Episcopal seminary of P—-, was twisting himself about and mumbling excuses. ...

— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various

... that he had his captain's papers, though how he had mastered the science of navigation sufficiently to obtain them was a problem. Though he held a British navigator's license, he did not appear to be an Englishman. None of us ever knew, I think, from what country he originally came. His rough, mumbling, unready speech might have been picked up in any of the seaports of the English-speaking world. His manners smacked of the forecastle, and he was altogether so difficult to classify that I used to toy with the theory that he had murdered the real Captain ...

— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... and the clean bare crag above it on which was Tong Tong Tarrup. All day he climbed and evening found him above the snow-line; and soon he came to the stairway cut in the rock and in sight of that grizzled man, the long porter of Tong Tong Tarrup, sitting mumbling amazing memories to himself and expecting in vain from the ...

— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany

... forest; For angels she sent him as men —in the forms of the tawny Dakotas, And they led his feet from the fen, —from the slough of despond and the desert. Half-dead in a dismal morass, as they followed the red-deer they found him, In the midst of the mire and the grass, and mumbling "Te Deum laudamus." "Unktmee [72]—Ho!" muttered the braves, for they deemed him the black Spider-Spirit That dwells in the drearisome caves, and walks on the marshes at midnight, With a flickering torch in his hand, to decoy to his den the unwary. ...

— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... Polly sitting in the kitchen so long that she fell into a comfortable drowse, from which she was recalled by Maria's reappearance with a bundle of discarded garments, but there was something stern and inhospitable in these last moments of the visit, and Polly soon shuffled off down the lane, mumbling and muttering and hugging the bundle with great delight. She always enjoyed her visits to the Haydon farm. But she had left Miss Durrant crying by the western window; the bitter tears were falling on Israel Haydon's old black coat. It ...

— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett

... an end to the interview by answering his master's call. The miser was gesticulating and mumbling, and frantically motioning his daughter ...

— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... bit sick of the game, I got up to go, when in came another ornament of Chesterton from a room at the back of the shop. He was quite a kid, not more than a hundred and fifty at the outside, so, as a last chance, I tackled him on the subject. He looked at the photographs for about half an hour, mumbling something about it not being 'thiccy 'un' or 'that 'un', or 'that 'ere tother 'un', until I began to feel I'd had enough of it. Then it came out that the real chap who had sent the letters was a 'la-ad' with light hair, ...

— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse

... the room, and he followed her; in the passage they disturbed an old hag who did the casual cooking of the household, though she was so decrepit as to be hardly able to understand human speech. She got up and hobbled behind them, mumbling toothlessly. On the verandah a hammock of sail-cloth, belonging to Cornelius, swayed lightly to the touch of Jim's ...

— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... came. He appeared to have been drinking; and, after some mumbling talk, laid down inside the fort, near the gate. I made the gate fast, driving the big wooden pins home with an axe; built up a great fire, and sent Edwards to bed in the tent. The Chinese prisoners were already asleep on the ground. Then I sat down on the opposite side of the ...

— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... would sometimes wake to find Zerkow gone from the bed, and would see him burrowing into some corner by the light of his dark-lantern and would hear him mumbling to himself: "There were more'n a hundred pieces, and every one of 'em gold—when the leather trunk was opened it fair dazzled your eyes—why, just that punchbowl was worth a fortune, I guess; solid, solid, heavy, rich, pure gold, nothun but gold, gold, ...

— McTeague • Frank Norris

... brought him to the grave. During his illness he was constantly and zealously tended by his wife, but he displayed great aversion to her, declaring himself bewitched, and that an old woman was ever in the corner of his room mumbling wicked enchantments against him. But as no such old woman could be seen, these assertions were treated as delirious ravings. They were not, however, forgotten after his death, and some people said that he had certainly been bewitched, and that a waxen image made in his likeness, and stuck ...

— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... sight of a policeman, and walked away with an air of extreme nonchalance. At the same moment the drunkard saw the dreaded uniform, and, obeying the laws of Cardigan Street, pulled herself together and walked away, mumbling to herself. The three women watched the performance without a word, critical as spectators at a play. When they saw there would be no scratching, they resumed ...

— Jonah • Louis Stone

... of spending his afternoons shut up with his books or of attending service in the cathedral, hearing the canons languidly playing rackets from side to side of the choir with the Psalms, of which they tossed the verses to and fro in a mumbling tone, he would go down after dinner and smoke cigarettes in the little Place. At Chartres, eight o'clock in the evening was as three in the morning in any other town; every light was out, ...

— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... if it were his own funeral. But he did not speak. He couldn't. The other forged on, his big, mumbling bass mingled with the buzz of the ...

— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... sooner detect the fallacy of magic? How could they continue to cherish expectations that were invariably doomed to disappointment? With what heart persist in playing venerable antics that led to nothing, and mumbling solemn balderdash that remained without effect? Why cling to beliefs which were so flatly contradicted by experience? How dare to repeat experiments that had failed so often? The answer seems to be that the fallacy was far from easy to detect, the failure by no means obvious, since in many, perhaps ...

— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... change of temperature. More than ninety per cent. of the water derived from the snow and ice of Mount Shasta is at once absorbed and drained away beneath the porous lava folds of the mountain, where mumbling and groping in the dark they at length find larger fissures and tunnel-like caves from which they emerge, filtered and cool, in the form of large springs, some of them so large they give birth to rivers that set out ...

— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... was mumbling tu himself—over and over again, "Yorkey!" an' "Reddy!" "'Tis so they name each other—now! Blarney me sowl! 'Tis come about! Fifty-fifty, tu—from th' mugs av thim. Peace, perfect peace, in th' fam'ly at last! Eyah! I ...

— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... this, Leslie heard some angry muttering and mumbling, but could distinguish no words. In a moment, however, ...

— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis

... was become very pale; then he hesitatingly rose, and glanced furtively at his hat, then at his wife—a sort of mute inquiry. Mrs. Cox swallowed once or twice, with her hand at her throat, then in place of speech she nodded her head. In a moment she was alone, and mumbling to herself. ...

— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain

... is old, mangy, toothless and deserving of nothing better, my dear father," replied the fair young man, and his glances at the white beard, scanty locks and mumbling mouth of the ancient gentleman had an unpleasantly personal quality. To the casual on-looker it would have seemed that an impudent boy deliberately insulted a harmless benevolent old gentleman. To the fair young man, however, it was well ...

— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... life. He mocks at her solicitude and invites her to sit with him at table. She leaves the room in despair, but sends back a piercing shriek from the corridor. Leporello is sent out to report on the cause of the cry, and returns trembling as with an ague and mumbling that he has seen a ghost—a ghost of stone, whose footsteps, "Ta, ta, ta," sounded like a mighty hammer on the floor. Don Giovanni himself goes to learn the cause of the disturbance, and Leporello hides under the table. The intrepid Don ...

— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... built a little office, with an entrance from a short brick walk leading to the street. The ground-glass door held the inscription, "Josiah L. Crimmins, M.D. Office." Wade's ring brought the Doctor's housekeeper, a bent, near-sighted, mumbling old woman, who informed Wade that the Doctor was out on a call, but would be back presently. She led the way into the study, turned up the lamp and left him. The study was office and library and living-room in one, a large, untidy room with books lining two sides of it, ...

— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour

... woman, and she was still mumbling the encouraging word when Owen left the kitchen ...

— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... did not. She merely said in her fretful mumbling way, "What foolishness are you young rips up to now?" and thought no more about it. Mr. Meredith had gone away early in the morning before any one was up. He went without his breakfast, too, but that was, of course, of common occurrence. Half ...

— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... field of labor. Her husband was watching her intently—and thought how beautiful she looked as the blood mantled to her white forehead, descending and rising as her thoughts took turn after turn. The unfortunate deacon was mumbling forth a few ill-connected sentences. At last with a groan he sank to his seat and placed a handkerchief to his fevered brow. Presently Augusta sat down and there was again an awful silence. No one advanced another petition and Dominie ...

— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... into the street basking in the golden rays of the setting sun. In the intoxication of freedom, he danced and leapt, seeing everything, men and horses, carriages and shops, in a charmed light, and out of sheer joy of life mumbling at his Aunt Servien's hand and arm, as she walked home with him carrying the satchel ...

— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France

... once, the habit of obedience being strong. Mrs. Murphy clung to his hand, mumbling over it with tears of delight, and could hardly be persuaded to let them go. It was only when he had promised to return on the next day, and the slatternly girl had peremptorily ordered her patient to lie down and stop acting like a buzz-headed fool, ...

— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... pinching his chin with thumb and index finger, and mumbling his tobacco. John, who had listened with more attention than interest—wondering the while as to what the narrative was leading up to—thought something might properly be expected of him to show that he had followed it, and said, "So Mrs. Cullom has kept ...

— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott

... close lane as I pursu'd my journey, I spy'd a wrinkled Hag, with age grown double, Picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself. Her eyes with scalding rheum were gall'd and red; Cold palsy shook her head; her hands seem'd wither'd; And on her crooked shoulders had she wrapp'd The tatter'd remnants of an old strip'd hanging, Which serv'd to keep her carcase from the cold: So there was nothing of a piece ...

— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others

... perceived by my rods and cones, and short-circuited to my duller brain. Where a moment before was an unbroken translucent surface, were now thirteen strange beings who had appeared from the depths, and were mumbling oxygen ...

— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... pretending at silence, like the forced quiet of a child told to keep still in a corner—the two people dining together could talk in whispers, if they wanted, and still be heard, but always at the back of the brain of either ran a thin pulsation of mumbling sound like the buzz of a kettle-drum softly struck in a passage of music where the orchestra talks full-voiced—the night sound of the city, breathing and moving ...

— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... sort of golden veil, and dream dreams of Paradise; and so Antonio could not recover himself from the stupefying rapture of that happy moment; he could hardly breathe for delirious sadness. He had been well scolded by the old woman for running such a great risk; and she never ceased mumbling and grumbling about exposure ...

— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... you owe me something now beyond your keeping, Captain Ireton," he quavered, at length, mumbling the ...

— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... door; but Antonio tore it back, to meet the villains boldly in the face. He had drawn his sword; but he remained like a statue, standing with uplifted arm, when he saw two sickly decrepit hermits lying on their knees before the cross, mumbling their prayers. ...

— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... he grumbled, "you come with me and do the talking. I protest in advance against any such outrageous invasion of my private life." Muttering and mumbling, he came rolling after me like an ...

— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle

... toast be dear woman!" "Hallo, old fellow, thought you were asleep. Had something of a nightmare, eh? Been mumbling away as if the supper didn't agree with you." "Well, your toast, with all the honors, and ...

— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... the wedding of Rodriguez and Serafina, of which gossips often spoke at their doors in summer evenings, old women mumbling of fair weddings that each had seen; and they had been children when they saw this wedding; they were those that threw small handfuls of anemones on the path before the porch. They told the tale of it till they could tell no more. It ...

— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany

... them; do not spare Yourself; let that be all your care. Whatever you have means to buy Be very sure I can supply." He slowly walked to the window, flung It open, and in the grey air rung The sound of distant matin bells. I took my parcels. Then, as tells An ancient mumbling monk his beads, I tried to thank for his courteous deeds My strange old friend. "Nay, do not talk," He urged me, "you have a long walk Before you. Good-by and Good-day!" And gently sped upon my way I stumbled out in the morning hush, As down the empty street a flush ...

— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell

... to be God's witnesses, Miriam. Our creed is naught but prayer-mumbling and pious mummeries. The Christian Apostles went through the world testifying. Better a brief heroism than this long ignominy." He burst into sudden tears and sank ...

— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... king, once again Fidei Defensor, bore the train in place of the old king of Spain, who, with the Austrian Emperor, alone of all European sovereigns, had preserved the unbroken continuity of faith. The old man leaned over his fald-stool, mumbling and weeping, even crying out now and again in love and devotion, as, like Simeon, he saw his Salvation. The Austrian Emperor twice administered the Lavabo; the German sovereign, who had lost his throne and all but his life upon his conversion four years before, ...

— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... up against him, and the consequence was, that he and the stout gentlemen came to the ice together, making a very considerable star, and a noise which was still more terrific. First there was the sudden crash and rending asunder of the thick ice, and then the noise went rolling and mumbling away to the ...

— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... resort to deception? Still, we doubted. And one evening we were detained by the sandomancer, or sand-diviner, who was sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk in front of the mosque. "I know your mind," said he, before we had made up our mind to consult him. And mumbling his "abracadabra" over the sand spread on a cloth before him, he took up his bamboo-stick and wrote therein—Khalid! This was amazing. "And I know more," said he. But after scouring the heaven, he shook his head ...

— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... spiritless, and his candences ridiculous. His soul was so overlaid with brawn and dignity that, though it heaved, panted, and struggled, it could never once get vent. Speaking through his apoplectic organs, I could not understand myself: it was a mumbling hubbub, the drone of a bagpipe, and the tantalizing strum strum of a hurdy-gurdy! Never was hearer more impatient to have it begin; never was hearer better pleased to have it over! Every sentence did but increase the fever of my mind. ...

— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... hectic flush flaming in his drawn cheeks. Professor Brierly looked at him sharply. He swiftly stepped to his side, laying his hand soothingly on his shoulder. The flush subsided, the man's tense body relaxed. He shook his head mumbling. ...

— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew

... woman," with wild eyes and vermilion-painted cheeks, is to be seen prophesying in some public place. And the "Holy man," too, who is incessantly walking like the wandering Jew, always in a hurry and all the while mumbling his prayers. ...

— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... looked at the monstrosity wonderingly. "'Tis a rare big bean," he said, in the trembling quaver of old age, and with a mumbling laugh like that of a pleased child. "I'll give you two shillin's for it. I suppose you want money badly, or else you wouldn't be wanderin' about at ten o'clock at night tryin' to sell it. I hope you come by ...

— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke

... Hob henceforth goes tottering, muttering, mumbling with a mindless docility, they are, like Browning's men of the Paris morgue, only "apparent failures"; there was in them that spark of divine illumination which can never be wholly extinguished. Positive misdeeds, the presence of a wild crew of evil passions, do not suffice to make Browning's ...

— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... was enough money to whip Hawkins out of the way, and that if he would "come up" with the needful we would look out for him. I left him a disgusting sight, sitting in a red plush armchair, with his face in his hands, his hair streaking down across his forehead, moaning and mumbling ...

— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... Witch, an old weather-beaten Croane, hauing her chinne, & her knees meeting for age, walking like a bow leaning on a shaft, hollow eyed, vntoothed, furrowed on her face, hauing her lips trembling with the palsie, going mumbling in the streetes, one that hath forgott[e] her pater noster, and hath yet a shrewd tongue in her head, to call a drab, a drab. If shee haue learned of an olde wife in a chimnies end: Pax, max, fax, for a spel: or can say Sir Iohn of Grantams ...

— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts

... two candles—one for herself and her husband, the other for Nancy Joe. Nancy had slyly filled three earthenware crocks with water from the well, and had set them on the table, mumbling something about the kettle and the morning. And Caesar himself, pretending not to see anything, and muttering dark words about waste, went from the clock to the hearth, and raked out the hot ashes to a flat surface, on which you might have laid ...

— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... slip of paper from a large pocket-book which lay at his elbow on the new green cloth-covered table, and handed it to his friend, who slowly opened and read it in a slovenly way, mumbling the most of it ...

— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne

... the patrolman's assistance. Between them they soon reduced the stranger to a squirming bundle and dragged him to the sidewalk; another officer was phoning for an ambulance. The stricken man was now mumbling, babbling insanely. Blood trickled from the corners of his lips. The sight of ...

— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks

... concerns sickness, wherein he so profited, that in two or three months he would give a very true discovery of any disease, only by his figures. He practised in Nottingham, but unfortunately died in 1635, at St. Winifred's Well in Wales; in which well he continued so long mumbling his Pater Nosters and Sancta Winifrida ora pro me, that the cold struck into his body; and, after his coming forth of that well, ...

— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly

... women, gazing with their lustreless eyes on one image, before which candles burned, pressed hard with the tips of their fingers on the 'kerchief of the forehead, the shoulders and the abdomen, and, mumbling something, bent forward standing, or fell on their knees. The children, imitating their elders, prayed fervently when they were looked at. The gold iconostasis was aflame with innumerable candles, ...

— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... that charms to destroy,—he plunged into it, and was swept on and on till, disappointed in his calculation of the ease with which Mexico might be subdued, he now finds himself he knows not where. How like the half insane mumbling of a fever dream is the whole war part of his late message! At one time telling us that Mexico has nothing whatever that we can get—but territory; at another showing us how we can support the war by levying contributions ...

— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... houses, closed the doors and windows, and prayed to the Virgin for deliverance from the impending evil. Never had there been seen in Castrillo such a counting of rosaries and beating of breasts, such genuflexions, and mumbling of aves and paters, as ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... and pondered whether he should read the service or not. Finally, he came to the conclusion that, this time, it was best to be obedient. He seated himself in the easy chair, and began to read. But when he had been rattling away in an undertone for a little while, this mumbling seemed to have a soothing effect upon him—and he ...

— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... if he did that he could prove nothing and that the story he had to tell was completely incredible, restrained him. The captain came forward slowly. With his eyes now close to his, Powell, spell-bound, numb all over, managed to lift one finger to the deck above mumbling the explanatory words, ...

— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... portion of fat, contributes to their nourishment. The story that they live by sucking their paws is, as may be supposed, a fable; when well-fed they always lick their paws, very often accompanying the action with a peculiar sort of mumbling noise. There are a few which will never eat flesh, and all are able to do without it. They are, generally speaking, large, clumsy and awkward, possessing large claws for digging; and often walk on their hind-feet, a facility afforded them by the peculiar formation of their thigh-bone. They ...

— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... the gold of the settings, held the pearls to the light, scrutinized the rubies, the diadems, clasps, bracelets, and chains, and said, in a mumbling tone:— ...

— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac

... at the other girls, but they shook their heads decidedly—the mumbling old crone was ...

— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope

... mumbling their prayers, and punctuating them with irate commands to the children; the many and various rules, the Mere Superieure, the food, the clothes, the eccentricities of Monsieur le Directeur. She had the rare and unwomanlike art of witty ...

— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward

... counting up from seven to fifteen, hundreds of times. Now how much better it would be, to spend a little time in fixing the fact in the mind once for all, and then when you come to the case, seven and eight are—say at once "Fifteen,"—instead of mumbling over and over again, hundreds of times, "Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, ...

— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... were cowards!" he cried fiercely. "Because the priests made us weak with their religion, made women of us, called us to their mumbling prayers instead of fighting our enemies! They and the English gave us their fire water to drink and stole away our senses! And now they are both going to be driven out by these pigs of Americans. ...

— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... Grandsire Templey, his father-in-law, sat always in the same low chair on the porch in summer and back of the stove in winter, with his palsied hands crossed on his staff-head and his toothless gums mumbling in ...

— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... disappeared. They had already prayed to God for food, but it did not come as promptly as their necessities seemed to demand. They searched for Thorhall for three half-days, and found him on a projecting crag. He was lying there, and looking up at the sky, with mouth and nostrils agape, and mumbling something. They asked him why he had gone thither; he replied, that this did not concern anyone. They asked him then to go home with them, and he did so. Soon after this a whale appeared there, and ...

— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... shelves was fumbling In a dim library, just behind the chair From which the ancient poet was mum-mumbling A song about some Lovers at a Fair, Pulling his long white beard and gently grumbling That rhymes were beastly ...

— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves

... Finds that her own important little errand is somehow or other, done;—and, in short, that 'Jenkins's Ear [as she named the thing] HAS been avenged,' and the Ocean Highways 'opened' and a good deal more, in a most signal way! For the Eternal Providences—little as poor Dryasdust now knows of it, mumbling and maundering that sad stuff of his—do rule; and the great soul of the world, I assure you once more, is JUST. And always for a Nation, as for a man, it is very behooveful to be honest, to ...

— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... his work, Naxa gave a low whistle. Jason was sure it couldn't have been heard outside of the barn. Yet within a minute one of the Pyrran dogs slipped quietly in. The talker rubbed the beast's head, mumbling to it, while the animal looked ...

— Deathworld • Harry Harrison

... old man entered. He was mumbling. He was saying, in that jumble of sound which it was difficult for even Alan to understand—and which Sokwenna had never given up for the missionaries' teachings—that he could hear feet and smell blood; and that the feet were many, and the blood was near, and that ...

— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... suffered terrible pains. Philippina had seen and heard it all. She had run back and forth, from the kitchen to the bedroom and from the bedroom to the kitchen, for hours; she was like an insane person; she kept mumbling something to herself. What she ...

— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... day," Uncle Felix was mumbling to himself in a dazed kind of happy way, "an entire day, I do declare!" He looked round solemnly, yet with growing excitement, into the children's faces. "Twenty-four hours! An entire day," he went on, ...

— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... hysterics of the stories of crime, graft, scandal, with their garbled sentences and wooden phrases; the delicious sagacities of the editorial pages like the mumbling of some adenoidal moron in a gulf of high winds; headlines saying a pompous "amen" to asininity and a hopeful "My God!" to confusion—these caressed him, and brought the thought to him, "if there ...

— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... a firm resolution not to yield to tears, cast herself upon the floor in anguish, and, as she kicked and howled, grasped one of Anna's hands and kissed it, mumbling it, as an anguished mother might a babe's—the hand of an exceedingly loved babe whom she expected, soon, to lose by having given it to someone ...

— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... surprise, half suspicious, half incredulous. But when Henry in low, rapid tones had expounded his plan, the young man's face underwent a change. Hope and life sprang into it. The blood flew to his cheeks. His whole aspect softened. In a moment he was on his knee, mumbling the prince's hand, his eyes moist with gratitude. Nor was that all; the two talked long, the murmur of their voices broken more than once by the ripple of laughter. When they at length separated, and Henry, his face ...

— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... one end of the counter, isolated from his fellows by reason of his utterly stupefied condition. He was in a state when he no longer had interest for his companions. He rolled about blear-eyed and hopelessly mumbling, with a half-emptied glass in his hand, which he waved about uncertainly. Suddenly an impotent spasm of rage seemed to take hold of him. With a hoarse curse he raised his glass and hurled it crashing against the ...

— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... You've had him once, and what has he done for you? Has he said much for you in the House of Commons? Why, he's so dumb a dog that he can't bark even for a bone. I'm told it's quite painful to hear him fumbling and mumbling and trying to get up a speech there over at the White Horse. He doesn't belong to the city; he hasn't done anything for the city; and he hasn't the power to do anything for the city. Then, why on earth does he come here? I'll tell you. The Earl de Courcy brings ...

— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... h'm!—" The Doctor adjusted his glasses and began to read in a low mumbling voice. By and by he paused, then slowly looked up ...

— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... topic of one's mumbling (see {mumble}). "All that mumblage" is used like "all that stuff" when it is not quite clear how the subject of discussion works, or like "all that crap" when 'mumble' is being used as an ...

— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... What are you mumbling there? Just blow your nose, and then speak sensibly! One can't make head or tail of what ...

— The First Distiller • Leo Tolstoy

... through the ring and up the steps to the platform of the judges' stand, and when Weaver saw what he carried in his hand he became a very sick man indeed—and looked it. Al Engle backed away into the crowd and Martin O'Connor followed him, mumbling incoherently. ...

— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... star-eyed science, give us anything in place of it! Blear-eyed bigotry in his cloistered den, mumbling unintelligible prayers, and believing that man is to be saved, not by what he does, but by a credo only, is far preferable to it. But oh, how unspeakably preferable the simple faith of ...

— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... counting the money (they've got some clean Ones down at our bank, by the way; we don't know whether the larger denominations are clean or not, we haven't seen any since Christmas), we find ourself mumbling, She is definitely ...

— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... could guess from the harshness of his voice what he was about to say. The group of women yielded before la Soberana's thrusts even as the waves of the sea under the belly of a whale. She stuck out her big hands and her threatening nails, mumbling insults and looking at the doctor with murder in her eyes. Bandit! Drunkard! Out of her house!...It was the people's fault, for supporting such an infidel. She'd eat him up! Let them make way for her!... And she struggled violently with ...

— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... this the other night, under the mattress in there." He jerked his head toward the stateroom. "Wait!" I heard him knocking things over in the dark and mumbling at them. After a moment he came out and threw on the table a long, cloth-covered ledger, of the common commercial sort. It lay open at about the middle, showing close script running indiscriminately across ...

— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... long after midnight, that wakeful Helen, passing stealthily by her son's door, saw a light streaming through the chink of the door into the dark passage, and heard Pen tossing and tumbling, and mumbling verses in his bed. She waited outside for a while, anxiously listening to him. In infantile fevers and early boyish illnesses, many a night before, the kind soul had so kept watch. She turned the ...

— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... home there in the cabin, and reading his Bible as if at his own fireside. Now while Peleg was vainly trying to mend a pen with his jack-knife, old Bildad, to my no small surprise, considering that he was such an interested party in these proceedings; Bildad never heeded us, but went on mumbling to himself out of his book, "LAY not up for yourselves treasures ...

— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... and try his fortune," Said young Werner, as if dreaming, Mumbling to himself—when grimly Said the Baron: "What's the matter? You have now as long a visage As a protestant old preacher On Good Friday. Is the fever Coming once again to plague you?" Gravely answered him young Werner: "I, my lord, can't write that letter, You must find another ...

— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel

... not permit even a darling like little Phil to speak at dinner-time; but he fidgeted, and the tears came into his eyes, and Anne hearing a little grunt behind Sir Philip's chair, looked up, and was aware that old Ralph was mumbling what to her ears sounded like: 'Knew too well.' But his master, being slightly deaf, did not hear, and went on to talk of his lambs and of how Sedley had joined them on the road, but had not come ...

— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... up, found himself actually shaking hands and mumbling something futile and idiotic. Then he was drawn to the horror of horrors, and the door shut ...

— The Varmint • Owen Johnson

... what stupids men were! She expected that Alf would feel very fine and noble as he walked old Em along to the theatre—and afterwards, when the evening was over and he had gone off in a cloud of glory. He would think it all over and come solemnly to the conclusion that the reason for his mumbling stupidity, his toeing and heeling, and all that idiotic speechlessness that set Emmy on her hind legs, was sheer love of the truth. He couldn't tell a lie—to a woman. That would be it. He would pretend that Jenny had chivvied him into taking Em, that he was too noble to refuse ...

— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... Mumbling their names after Victor, the man Sturm executed two more bows. At the same time he seemed to remind himself that his soldierly carriage was perhaps injudicious, and forthwith abandoned it for a studied slouch which, in ...

— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... hear—for I dared not look up—by the jingling of glasses and the outpouring of liquids that he was helping himself to his spirituous sleeping-draughts. He reseated himself, and drank in moody silence, except now and then mumbling drowsily to himself, but in so low a tone that I could make nothing out of it save an occasional curse or blasphemy. It was nearly eleven o'clock before the muttered self-communing ceased, and his heavy head sank upon the back ...

— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... was broad daylight, the low, stuffy room would have been pitch dark had it not been for the flickering candles on the table beside the bent, grey head of the mumbling fortune-teller, whose bony fingers twitched over and about the crystal globe like wiggling serpents' tails. The window gave little or no light and the door was closed, the grinning grandson leaning against it limply. The picture was ...

— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... have lent Hans the money to make his fine start, Aunt Hedwig at once bristled up and said with emphasis that rascals, neither great nor small, were in the habit of lending their money to deserving young men; and Herr Sohnstein, a little sheepishly perhaps, and mumbling a little in his gray mustache, ventured the statement that this was a free country already, and people living in it were at liberty to lend their money to whom they pleased; and Minna, looking up from her books—Gottlieb's ...

— A Romance Of Tompkins Square - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier

... don't forget; sorry I haven't a card left," I hailed back, and wondered in my mind whether in any of the world's turnings I should ever meet that good fellow again. But the steamer was once more under way, mumbling and complaining, and the store-keeper at that moment was beginning to open the case of dried fish—baccalhao, as they call it on the coast—to which we traced back the hideous plague which in the next few days swept ...

— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various

... fire: while thus she hotly did pursue her conquest, and I stood fixed on the defensive part, I heard a rustling among the thick-grown leaves, and through their mystic windings soon perceived the good old Count of Clarinau approaching, muttering and mumbling to old Dormina, the dragon appointed to guard this lovely treasure, and which she having left alone in the thicket, and had retired but at an awful distance, had most extremely disobliged her lord. I only had time enough in this little moment to look with eyes ...

— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... priest was mumbling some words in a low voice, two or three dirty choristers, in soiled surplices, were charting the prayers for the dead, with an absent and sullen air, round a plain deal coffin, followed only by a sobbing old man and a ...

— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... of a large portion of the field in the east, and they were now preparing by means of the same machinery to dispute the monopoly of the Spaniards in the west. To talk of excluding such a people as this from intercourse with any portion of the Old World or the New was the mumbling of dotage; yet nothing could be more certain than that such would be the pretensions ...

— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... let me be educated, and they wanted me to take to trade, too, and to know nothing but the Talmud. . . . But you will agree, it is not everyone who can spend his whole life struggling for a crust of bread, wallowing in filth, and mumbling the Talmud. At times officers and country gentlemen would put up at papa's inn, and they used to talk a great deal of things which in those days I had never dreamed of; and, of course, it was alluring and moved me to envy. I used to cry and entreat them to send me to school, but they ...

— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... her knees and said, in so low and dull a voice that they had to bend over her in order to catch the sense of what she was mumbling: ...

— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... the edge of a bunk, with a face so white and thin that he might have been taken for a corpse if it had not been for the dark glare in his sunken eyes. Billy smelled the odor of whisky; he smelled food. He saw no sign of welcome in the faces turned toward him, but he advanced upon them, mumbling incoherently. And then the spark, the fighting spark in him, gave out, and he crumpled down on the floor. He heard a voice which came to him from a great distance, and which said, "Who the hell is this?" and then, after what seemed to be a long time, he heard that same voice say, ...

— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... up, mumbling to his saints in one breath, cursing in his next. The other Mexican kept his stand, ...

— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... still something on Milburn's mind, though he was unable to explain it. Every attempt was made to interpret his want, but in vain, till Aunt Hominy broke the silence by mumbling: ...

— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... clear, distinct, and correct. Avoid carelessness, lifelessness, mumbling, weakness, ...

— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser

... on the edge of the town, within the wall, like the superfluous folds of a garment whose wearer has shrunken with old age. He reached his little grass-grown terrace, and found it as sunny and as private as before. The old mendicant was mumbling petitions, sacred and profane, at the church door; but save for this the stillness was unbroken. The yellow sunshine warmed the brown surface of the city-wall, and lighted the hollows of the Etruscan hills. Longueville settled himself on ...

— Confidence • Henry James

... the burning curiosity which devoured me, and that my ears were deaf to the somewhat rough music of his reasoning and his predictions, the worthy man at length closed the fountain of his eloquence, and, though growling and mumbling in an under tone at my juvenile obstinacy, which had deprived him of his bed and his supper, quietly took his seat in the tree; then drawing from the bottom of his pocket some tobacco and a short ...

— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... upon the door and it opened. And they went inside and all was quiet and black as night. And they groped their way till they heard a low mumbling sound, and, pulling aside a curtain, they saw an old man with a long white beard, sitting in a room with ...

— Kernel Cob And Little Miss Sweetclover • George Mitchel

... subsided, Mr. Evans appeared to have forgotten the cause of their late encounter. Whistling cheerily he bustled into his own office, mumbling of matters that had to be "gotten off." For some moments he busied himself at his desk, then emerged to dictate three business letters to his ...

— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.

... paid the locksmith his ten shillings, and suggested that he need not wait longer. The locksmith, having received the money, thought it incumbent upon him to apologize and explain still further, till Marcus took hold of the door, as if to close it, when he accepted the hint, and departed, mumbling an apology as ...

— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... pause at this place for the outcries of astonishment and marvel which were never lacking. Then Jed went on, mumbling his toothless gums in delight ...

— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... napoleons from a new bagful just brought him by an envoy with a scrolled mustache. The pile was in half a minute pushed over to an old bewigged woman with eye-glasses pinching her nose. There was a slight gleam, a faint mumbling smile about the lips of the old woman; but the statuesque Italian remained impassive, and—probably secure in an infallible system which placed his foot on the neck of chance—immediately prepared a new pile. ...

— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... to obey my sister's injunction to keep the woman's attention I began to talk to her, asking her how long she had lived in Sea-Strand Cottage. I had just gathered from her grudging, mumbling speech that she had lived there since the cottage was built, when my sister was ...

— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... serpent. In an instant the monitor turned and ran to his room and searched it. Seeing no one there, he sank into his chair, and groaned: 'Wicked, depraved children! Those gallows-birds, I'll mangle their flesh, and flay the skin from their bones!' and he kept on mumbling to himself in this strain, until sleep fell upon his eyelids shaded by long eyebrows white as snow, and his head dropped into his hands resting ...

— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... head, and with tears filling her eyes, as her mother prompted her continually, repeated the text in a low mumbling voice, half crying: "Whose adorning, let it not be the putting on of gold, or the plaiting of hair, or the putting on of apparel, but let it be the hidden man of the heart, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which ...

— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge

... dressed in a little, white, goat-skin apron, adorned by various charms, and, instead of a walking-stick to support his steps, he used a paddle. Though not an old man, he pretended to be so, walking slowly and deliberately, coughing and mumbling like one. Seating himself, he continued coughing for half an hour, when his wife came in, much in the some manner, without saying a word, and assuming the same ...

— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... it all, sat silent. A moment; then Argo appeared, driving a half-nude man before him. A native official of Venia, stripped of his uniform. Argo flung him down in the garden path, where he cowered, his face ashen, his eyes wild, lips mumbling with terror. ...

— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... on deck, Leslie saw the seamen spring with some alacrity into the main rigging, and then continue their ascent with exaggerated deliberateness, mumbling to each other meanwhile. And as they did so, he saw Miss Trevor step quickly to Potter's side and lay her hand upon his arm as she spoke to him—pleadingly, if he might judge by her whole attitude, and the low-toned accents of her voice. ...

— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... his grandfather drew back and stood glowering upon him in silence, the speech he had wished to utter withered upon his lips, blighted by a panic terror, and he stood mumbling incoherently beneath ...

— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... bayonet down through the loose papers, barely missing my shoulder. With teeth clinched I remained breathless, but the fellow seemed satisfied, and moved on, after searching the dark corner beyond. At last I heard them all go out, mumbling to each other, and ventured to sit up again, and draw a fresh breath. They had left the door ajar, and I had a glimpse through the crack. Farrell was leaning carelessly in the outer doorway, smoking, his short legs wide apart, his expression one of total indifference. A big fellow stepped past ...

— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish

... iron constitution helped him to rally from the powerful blow he had received, and by the time the jungle was still he was sitting up mumbling apologies. ...

— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various

... the old women, gazing with their lustreless eyes on one image, before which candles burned, pressed hard with the tips of their fingers on the 'kerchief of the forehead, the shoulders and the abdomen, and, mumbling something, bent forward standing, or fell on their knees. The children, imitating their elders, prayed fervently when they were looked at. The gold iconostasis was aflame with innumerable candles, ...

— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... appears to the modern transcendentalist, as well as to the ultra-puritanic type of mind, as if addressed to a deity of an almost absurdly childish character, taking delight in toy-shop furniture, tapers and tinsel, costume and mumbling and mummery, and finding his "glory" incomprehensibly enhanced thereby:—just as on the other hand the formless spaciousness of pantheism appears quite empty to ritualistic natures, and the gaunt theism of evangelical sects seems intolerably ...

— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... a piece of orthoepy in the preface to a comedy. It may have required great observation and ingenuity to have discovered the cause of old toothless men mumbling their words. But as a piece of comic humour, on which the author appears to have prided himself, the effect is far from fortunate. Humour arising from a personal defect is but a miserable substitute for that of a more genuine kind. I shall give a specimen of this strange ...

— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... ring at the front door, and Mr. Kent stopped to listen. They heard a male voice mumbling to the maid, who then came to ...

— Kathleen • Christopher Morley

... every second or third pamphlet in the booksellers' shops had "The Good Old Cause" on its title-page or running through its text; veterans rolled out the phrase sonorously in their nightly prayers, or went to sleep mumbling it. One notes constantly in the history of any country this phenomenon of the expression of a great wave of feeling in some single popular phrase, generally worn out in a few months; but the present is a peculiarly remarkable instance. The phrase, in itself, was ambiguous. ...

— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... his delirium suddenly lifted himself upon an elbow, and with the other hand fumbled in his breast as though he searched for something. "Yes, the things to be done," he repeated in a mumbling voice, and he sank to unintelligible whisperings, with his head ...

— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... side, in a little room at the back of the house called the "Boys' Room." Her mother was lying down upstairs with a bad nervous headache, and Iris had succeeded with great difficulty in keeping the house quiet for the last hour. The only other person in the room was her brother Max, mumbling over his lessons for the next day half aloud, and presently he threw his book across the ...

— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton

... with him before he gave in; but finding he could not damp the burning curiosity which devoured me, and that my ears were deaf to the somewhat rough music of his reasoning and his predictions, the worthy man at length closed the fountain of his eloquence, and, though growling and mumbling in an under tone at my juvenile obstinacy, which had deprived him of his bed and his supper, quietly took his seat in the tree; then drawing from the bottom of his pocket some tobacco and a short pipe—his consolation in his greatest misfortunes—he whiffed away, burying ...

— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... inquiringly at the other girls, but they shook their heads decidedly—the mumbling old crone was getting ...

— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope

... and contented where you are, and that there is all the spring and summer to get up in. You are no longer contented. It is nearly five months since you had your last meal, and you will not have another till you go out for yourself and get it. Mumbling your paws will not satisfy you. There is really nothing for ...

— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson

... half dragged up to the altar, and, before I knew where I was, I found myself mumbling responses which were whispered in my ear, and vouching for things of which I knew nothing, and generally assisting in the secure tying up of Irene Adler, spinster, to Godfrey Norton, bachelor. It was all done in an instant, and ...

— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... ceased. Leopold sat looking at the toe of his boot. Peter of Blentz, Maenck, and the Austrian watched him intently. The possibilities of the plan were sinking deep into the minds of all four. At last the king rose. He was mumbling to himself as though unconscious of ...

— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... pocketed the money, mumbling his thanks as he did so. The two men shook hands again at the outer door, and Craft trudged down the avenue, toward the railroad station, his mind filled with visions of enormous wealth, but his patience sorely tried by the long delay that he must suffer before his ...

— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene

... Then blockishly mumbling with a set on countenance a piece of scurvy grace, he washed his hands in fresh wine, picked his teeth with the foot of a hog, and talked jovially with his attendants. Then the carpet being spread, they brought plenty of cards, many dice, with great store ...

— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... upon her knees to the right of the steps, her hands hidden beneath her scapulary, her eyes bent in lowly reverence upon the sunlit flagstones, her lips mumbling ...

— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... deck, Leslie saw the seamen spring with some alacrity into the main rigging, and then continue their ascent with exaggerated deliberateness, mumbling to each other meanwhile. And as they did so, he saw Miss Trevor step quickly to Potter's side and lay her hand upon his arm as she spoke to him—pleadingly, if he might judge by her whole attitude, and the low-toned accents ...

— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... and came out directly, still absorbed in his idea, and tendered him a cigar, mumbling thoughtfully in his moustache, "Children growing up—and girls, too! Girls!" ...

— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... but she had already left him. Mumbling that she didn't know what sickness was, he stumbled obediently away in the ...

— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... with a haughty drawback motion, and a supercilious arching of her brows, was "happy to have the honour." Honour nasally prolonged, and some guttural sounds followed, but further words, if words they were, which she syllabled between snuffling and mumbling, were utterly unintelligible; and Helen, without being "very happy," or happy at all, only ...

— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... done. He had ceased to be able to imagine life without this new interest, but that which is not imagined sometimes exists, as Forsytes are perpetually finding to their cost. He sat in his old leather chair, doubling up the letter, and mumbling with his lips the end of an unlighted cigar. After to-morrow his Tuesday expeditions to town would have to be abandoned. He could still drive up, perhaps, once a week, on the pretext of seeing his man of business. ...

— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... or, by the living God, I'll—" Without completing his threat he leaned forward until Kenneth felt his hot, wine-laden breath upon his cheek. Cowed by his words, his gesture, and above all, his glance, the lad drew up a chair, mumbling in explanation—intended as an excuse to himself for his weakness—that he submitted since a man's life ...

— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... Bildad, eyeing me, and then went on spelling away at his book in a mumbling tone ...

— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... meaning, as they say. Then she stalked loftily out and got on her horse, brother and sister slinking after her. I guess I slunk, too, though it was none of my doings. Cousin Egbert kind of sidled along, mumbling about Kitty: ...

— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... overcome by my feelings that I stood still, unable to speak, not knowing what to say. Instead of giving sympathy, I myself was in need of it, therefore I departed, completely overcome by the sad sight, mumbling and speechless, as you noticed or might have noticed. Perhaps this happened to me because you had need of neither my sympathy nor my condolences; for, knowing my devotion and fidelity, you would also be aware of the ...

— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... personal happiness,—it is wicked. Does not even your old mumbling abbot on the hill tell you so much? And now, of all times, do not start the dreaming. You will be sacrificed to art," ...

— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa

... stood he in the dark, his sharp sword out, Mumbling of wicked charms, conjuring the moon, ...

— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... sir," said he, mumbling with his toothless mouth, "that we have been summoned here not to discuss whether it's best for the empire at the present moment to adopt conscription or to call out the militia. We have been summoned to reply ...

— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... Elect of the People!" is not that as glorious a title, think you, as queen of an hereditary sovereign mumbling of God's grace on his worm-eaten throne? I win that seat by service, by the dedication of this brain to the people's interests. They have been ground to the dust, and I lift them, as I did a persecuted lady in my boyhood. ...

— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... will get fatter, and the small, busy mouth will begin a mumbling language of its own. The old nurse will pretend to understand everything it says and will insist that it knows your ...

— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane

... scene like a grotesque dream, with the ever-moving coach, the lonely road, the dark woods, and—so near, she could almost place her hand upon him—this man, muttering and mumbling. He had offered her the key of the mystery, but she had failed to use it. His ambiguous, loose talk, only perplexed and alarmed her; the ...

— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... in the Bourne Close, palsied old Miss Luttrell, mumbling and grumbling inarticulately to herself, was slowly tottering down the steep High Street of Calcombe Pomeroy, on her way to the village grocer's. She shambled in tremulously to Mrs. Oswald's counter, and seating herself on a high stool, as was her wont, laid herself out distinctly for a list of ...

— Philistia • Grant Allen

... "Gilroy," he answered, mumbling with his swollen lips, "I have for some weeks been under the impression that you are a madman. Now I know it, and that you are a dangerous one as well. If it were not that I am unwilling to make a scandal in the college, you would ...

— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle

... of woody shells full of spongy hollows as an insulation against the fearsome cold of night. Some were so small that they could only be seen under a microscope. Frank's interest, here, however, palled quickly. And Lester, in his mumbling, studious preoccupation, was ...

— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... was in a bad humour, he had a strange fashion of catching at some word that either he himself, or those with whom he spoke, had uttered, and after often repeating it, or rather mumbling it over in his mouth, as if he were chewing it, off he started into a canter of ridiculous rhymes to the aforesaid word, and sometimes one of these rhymes would suggest a new idea, or some strange association which had the oddest effect possible; ...

— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover

... a time when thou wilt have a brave gentleman to pity," broke in a mumbling voice which made the two start ...

— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley

... through the double-wondered glory of the dust Hast thrust Habits of skies upon me, souls of days and nights, Where are the deeds that needs must be, The dreams, the high delights, That I once more may hear my voice From cloudy door to door rejoice— May stretch the boundaries of love Beyond the mumbling, mock horizons of my fears To the faint-remembered glory of those years— May lift my soul And reach this Heaven of thine ...

— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... the wrong stuff to deal with, and their eyes dilated and rings of white appeared round the irises in theft utter astonishment at seeing the two white men calmly awaiting their onslaught, Briscoe with the stump of a cigar in his teeth, mumbling out: ...

— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn

... half-mile lay behind me before I met the first man. He was riding an ass, but when I gave him "Buenos dias," he replied with a whining: "Una limosnita! A little alms, for the love of God." He wore a rosary about his neck and a huge cross on his chest. When I ignored his plea he rode on mumbling. The savage bellow of a bull not far off suggested a new possible danger on the road in this unfenced and almost treeless country. More men passed on asses, mules, and horses, but none afoot. Finally over the brown rise appeared Dolores Hidalgo; two enormous churches and ...

— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... been, Joseph? An inarticulate harmony— sweetly mumbling, with never a thread of ...

— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... Sparkle, "there was a rustic usually mounted on a white hobby, with a basket on one arm, who used to invade the northern purlieus of London, mumbling Holloway Cheesecakes, which from his mode of utterance, sounded like 'Ho all ...

— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... made his way through a labyrinth of empty streets, lying on the edge of the town, within the wall, like the superfluous folds of a garment whose wearer has shrunken with old age. He reached his little grass-grown terrace, and found it as sunny and as private as before. The old mendicant was mumbling petitions, sacred and profane, at the church door; but save for this the stillness was unbroken. The yellow sunshine warmed the brown surface of the city-wall, and lighted the hollows of the Etruscan hills. Longueville settled himself on the empty bench, and, arranging his little portable apparatus, ...

— Confidence • Henry James

... woodsman is afraid of nothing human. But this was a good-natured bit of foolery, a test of nerve, and there was no object in getting a broken head for that. The reptilian gentleman alone grumbled at the abandonment of the attack, mumbling something profane. ...

— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... again have one or both arms extended. Some hang by their feet from the limb of a tree by means of a cord, and remain head downward for days at a time, with their face uncongested and their voice clear, counting their beads and mumbling prayers. ...

— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various

... to the village. He staggered up and down, and tumbled against rocks, and finally he lay flat and held on tight. The others, most of them, were no better as soon as they tried to move. A rare fright they were in! They began praying and mumbling; praying, of all things, to the soul of the taboo pig! They thought they were being punished for the awful sin they had committed in eating him. The interpreter improved the occasion. He told them their faults pretty roundly. Hadn't he warned them? Didn't they know ...

— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... that discretion was the better part of valour, promptly subsided, although Bryce could see that he was mumbling threats to himself, though ...

— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... keep back that haunch of venison, the girls won't like it, but the old lady knows a good thing when she gets it—let there be lots of sweet things for the young ones too. I shall be giving some silver out this afternoon. I leave it to you to see that it is properly cleaned. What are you mumbling about to yourself? Write it down if you can't remember, and ...

— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... people to put an end to feudal rule. Instead I discover a soldier-boy who obeys and keeps silent, and who, in his inmost heart, is in the grip of terrors both of body and soul. Poor, pitiful soldier-boy, marking yourself with crosses, performing genuflexions, mumbling magic formulas in the trenches—how many billions of you have been led out to slaughter by the greeds and ambitions of your religious masters, since first this accursed Antichrist got its grip upon the ...

— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... the first words he articulated, and then, appearing to recollect himself, he added, "Oh, I forgot, I'm drowned—well drowned, too—can't be help'd, however—wasn't born to be hanged—and that seems clear." Thus he kept muttering and mumbling for an hour, until old Grace thinking him so far recovered as to remove all danger from sudden surprise, allowed me to take her seat at the bedside. He looked at me long and intensely, but the ...

— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... with hot lips and burning breath; I paced the walk with hurried tread, and raved; I threw myself beneath the willow-tree, And muttered like the muttering of a storm. My little lamb came bleating mournfully; Angered I struck him;—out among the trees I wandered mumbling 'beggar' as I went, And beating in through all my burning soul The bitter thoughts it conjured, till my brain Reeled and I sunk upon the dew-damp grass, And—utterly exhausted—slept ...

— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... stout brown legs, he went into his mother's room and plunged his head into a copper basin of water standing ready for his use. Shaking the drops from his black curls, he hastened on to the kitchen for his porridge. His grandfather was already there, sitting in his large chair, mumbling half-heard words to himself, while his daughter-in-law dipped out his breakfast from a pot hung over a small fire laid frugally in the middle of the wide, stone hearth. Marcus went up to him and kissed his forehead before he threw his arms around the neck of the ...

— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson

... hundred times more merit than their worthless and all but damnable prayers. So far do they go in their failure to observe that the commandment of God, in the service of one's neighbor, should be preferred to the commandment of men, in the thoughtless mumbling of the words of the Hours. To this class too belong those who think it a crime to speak or to call a boy during the Canon of the Mass even in case of the greatest necessity or danger. Finally, these men make the fasting of nature one thing, and the fasting of the Church another thing, and if one ...

— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... all the women were seated on the same side, the Countess having two sisters of Mercy for neighbors, wholly occupied in fingering their long rosaries and mumbling Paters and Aves. One of them was old and so deeply pitted with the small-pox that she looked as if she had received a charge of grape shot full in the face; the other was very shadowy and frail, with a ...

— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... employ in the governess' initiation. Her room was in perfect order, and in Nan's own chamber nothing was unusually amiss. She got no satisfaction from the girl herself, who kept her lips tightly closed, except when she was mumbling over her harangue. ...

— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann

... off the Mexican it was found that the ball had carried away the lower part of the ear, and with it, of course, the gold earring. The wound must have been extremely painful; it certainly took all the starch out of Greaser. He kept mumbling in his own language, and rolling his wicked black eyes and twisting his thin, ...

— The Young Forester • Zane Grey

... with repulsion. The place was large, whitewashed, and crowded with figures in glass cases and ex voto offerings. The lousy-looking, dressed-up dolls, life size and tinselly, that stood in the glass cases; the blood-streaked Jesus on the crucifix; the mouldering, mumbling, filthy peasant women on their knees; all the sense of trashy, repulsive, degraded fetish-worship was too much for her. She hurried out, shrinking from the contamination of ...

— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... did not find Zaidos until after dark. He was very cold, or else very hot, he did not know which, but tried to tell them all about it, and only succeeded in mumbling very fast before he dropped off into unconsciousness. He could not say farewell to Velo, lying there under the stars with a noble company about him. He was silent enough himself until he reached the big field hospital in the rear. He did not know Nurse Helen when she bent over him, ...

— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske

... ears caught a louder sound from somewhere along the corridor outside. It was a mumbling of men's voices and a repeated muffled rapping. Amory threw off the blankets and moved close to the ...

— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... were middle-aged, or the trail had made them look middle-aged. A few were very old. Susan saw a face carved with seventy years of wrinkles mumbling in the framing folds of a shawl. Nearby, sitting on the dropped tongue of a wagon, a girl of perhaps sixteen, sat ruminant, nursing a baby. Children were everywhere, helping, fighting, rolling on the grass. Babies lay on spread blankets with older babies ...

— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... discomposed the young peasant so much, that he sprang out at the door, and overthrew his father in his flight. The old gentleman would not spend time in getting up, but crawled backwards like a crab, with great speed, till he had got over the threshold, mumbling exorcisms all the way. I was exceedingly mortified to find myself in danger of perishing through the ignorance and cowardice of these clowns; and felt my spirits decay apace, when an old woman entered the barn, followed by the two fugitives and with great intrepidity advanced to the place where ...

— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... shuddering, frightened eh from the crowd.... A French soldier mumbling ... "'Cre nom de nom de nom de nom de ...

— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... speculation, seeing what had claimed their eyes. There was nothing new, the "mem" passed every day at this hour. She did no harm and no good. He, too, looked at her as she came closer, offering her paper to Alladiah Khan, a man impatient in his religion, who refused it, mumbling in his beard. With a gesture of appeal she pressed it on him, saying something. Then Alladiah's green turban shook, his beard, dyed red in Mecca, waggled; he raised his arm, and Laura in white astonishment darted from under it. They ...

— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... he loves the hunt, doth Ogyges! And therefore should we blow the horn for him: He, sitting mumbling in his surf-white cave With helpless feet and alienated eyes, Should hear the noises nathless dawn by dawn Which send him wandering swiftly through the days When like a springing cataract he leapt From crag to crag, the strongest ...

— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... were the bewildered cries the citizens raised. The firmness of manhood and of youth gave way at sight of the steel; and the steel paralyzed the wisdom of graybeards. That which I, poor tale-teller, mumbling and toothless, have attempted to depict in a long description, Ogger perceived at one rapid glance, and said to Didier, 'Here is what ye have so anxiously sought': and while uttering these words ...

— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... which was just as well, for what more had they to say to each other: hadn't he married Hender? And passing in front of a shop-window she caught sight of herself in a looking-glass. 'Not up to much,' she said, and passed on into the Strand mumbling her misfortunes and causing the passers-by to look after her. She had not pinned up her skirt safely, a foot of it dragged over the pavement, and hearing jeering voices behind her she went into a public-house to ask for a pin. The barmaid ...

— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... tired of spending his afternoons shut up with his books or of attending service in the cathedral, hearing the canons languidly playing rackets from side to side of the choir with the Psalms, of which they tossed the verses to and fro in a mumbling tone, he would go down after dinner and smoke cigarettes in the little Place. At Chartres, eight o'clock in the evening was as three in the morning in any other town; every light ...

— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... country. My Sultan would brand me with disgrace, and I should be fetched out of this country by the Turks, who were always the friends of the English." The Sheikh sighed, raised up his aged body, and departed, mumbling something, a blessing or a curse, upon my head. A younger son of Haj Ahmed came in and addressed me, "Why not say, 'There is one God', and 'Mahomet is the prophet of God?'" I told him a Christian ...

— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... talking about?" demanded Sammy Jay, coming up just in time to hear the last part of what Blacky the Crow was mumbling ...

— Blacky the Crow • Thornton W. Burgess

... herself at the window in a Voltaire armchair, and dismissed her maids. The candles were taken away, and once more the room was left with only one lamp burning in it. The Countess sat there looking quite yellow, mumbling with her flaccid lips and swaying to and fro. Her dull eyes expressed complete vacancy of mind, and, looking at her, one would have thought that the rocking of her body was not a voluntary action of her own, but was produced by the action of ...

— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... Run cross the marble square, who soon returned, And after him there lagged a puffing friar; Close wrapt he bore some secret instrument Of Christian superstition in his hand: My servant followed fast, and through a chink Perceived the royal captives hand in hand; And heard the hooded father mumbling charms, That make those misbelievers man and wife; Which done, the spouses kissed with such a fervour, And gave such furious earnest of their flames, That their eyes sparkled, and their mantling blood ...

— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... rackelty-chackle of the distant looms soothed Mac Tavish. The nearer rick-tack of Miss Delora Bunker's typewriter furnished obbligato for the chorus of the looms. It was all good music for a business man. But those muttering, mumbling mayor-chasers—it was a tin-can, cow-bell discord in a ...

— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... known skill," he said, mumbling his words and talking very rapidly, "since my lord's grace the late censor had made no use of her. Shall we say ten aurei for the girl? she might be made to ...

— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... locksmith his ten shillings, and suggested that he need not wait longer. The locksmith, having received the money, thought it incumbent upon him to apologize and explain still further, till Marcus took hold of the door, as if to close it, when he accepted the hint, and departed, mumbling an apology as ...

— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... that he might have been taken for a corpse if it had not been for the dark glare in his sunken eyes. Billy smelled the odor of whisky; he smelled food. He saw no sign of welcome in the faces turned toward him, but he advanced upon them, mumbling incoherently. And then the spark, the fighting spark in him, gave out, and he crumpled down on the floor. He heard a voice which came to him from a great distance, and which said, "Who the hell is this?" and then, after what seemed to be a long time, ...

— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... this discipline cleared poor Wamba's wits or cooled his humor, it is certain that he became the most melancholy fool in England, and if ever he ventured upon a pun to the shuddering poor servitors, who were mumbling their dry crusts below the salt, it was such a faint and stale joke that noboby dared to laugh at the innuendoes of the unfortunate wag, and a sickly smile was the best applause he could muster. Once, indeed, when Guffo, the goose-boy (a half-witted poor wretch), laughed outright at a lamentably ...

— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... went to a cupboard. I could hear—for I dared not look up—by the jingling of glasses and the outpouring of liquids that he was helping himself to his spirituous sleeping-draughts. He reseated himself, and drank in moody silence, except now and then mumbling drowsily to himself, but in so low a tone that I could make nothing out of it save an occasional curse or blasphemy. It was nearly eleven o'clock before the muttered self-communing ceased, and his heavy head sank upon the ...

— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... seized his Girdle, which vanished like smoke; Three Kids ate up half of his Pancaky Coat, And the tails were devour'd by an ancient He Goat; An army of Dogs in a twinkling tore up his Pork Waistcoat and Trowsers to give to their Puppies; And while they were growling, and mumbling the Chops, Ten Boys prigged the Jujubes and Chocolate Drops. He tried to run back to his house, but in vain, For scores of fat Pigs came again and again: They rushed out of stables and hovels and doors; They tore off his stockings, his shoes, and his drawers; ...

— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear

... cheered loudly. Eva took the place of honour, and behind them all was—Beckmesser, wildly struggling to learn his great song. He kept taking the manuscript from his pocket and putting it back, sweating and mumbling, standing first on one of his sore feet and then upon the other, ...

— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

... and my husband's health having suffered in consequence of the privation, we had the ambition of growing our own vegetables, and a great variety of them too. Dugald was set to dig and manure a large plot of ground, though he kept mumbling that it was utterly useless, as nothing could or would grow where oats did not ripen once in three years, and that Highlanders, who knew so much better than foreigners, "would not be fashed" to attempt it. However, as he was paid to do the work, he had to do it; and it was simple enough, ...

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... moment I was in and behind a curtain drawn before my father's open wardrobe, which stood just inside the room. Nearer and nearer and nearer came the echoing footsteps. There was a strange coughing and shuffling and mumbling outside. My heart beat with expectation and fear. A quick step now close, close beside the door, a noisy rattle of the handle, and the door flies open with a bang. Recovering my courage with an effort, ...

— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... the altar, and before I knew where I was I found myself mumbling responses which were whispered in my ear, and vouching for things of which I knew nothing, and generally assisting in the secure tying up of Irene Adler, spinster, to Godfrey Norton, bachelor. It was all done in an ...

— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... choristers arose from their knees and followed after, singing 'Ave Mary' as they went. In this order they made the circuit of the cathedral, passing twice before me where I leaned against a pillar. The priest who seemed of most consequence was a strange, down- looking old man. He kept mumbling prayers with his lips; but as he looked upon me darkling, it did not seem as if prayer were uppermost in his heart. Two others, who bore the burthen of the chaunt, were stout, brutal, military-looking men of forty, with bold, over-fed ...

— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson

... menacingly and moved away to put their boat into the stream. Simon Gosler was left mumbling and sniveling and fingering his coat pocket, in which he kept his glass. Chris, watching him, had a sudden inspiration and whispered to Amos. "Hide here behind those bushes and don't follow me. Don't move or show yourself. I'm going ...

— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson

... herself she went on mumbling titles as she struggled along, the sun beating fiercely on her bare head. Such a quaint head, with sleek black hair parted and plaited and hung with jewels, even down the long pigtail of brown wool that was added on to the back to make the ...

— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel

... you left, Senor, and put it away—so! The mad caballero soon came—he was not happy. We searched the floor, and all the time he was shaking his head and mumbling that Mademoiselle had confessed to writing it—and to a detective! He was quite crazy. Ah, with what care and sympathy did I help him, Senor, and how generously did he reward ...

— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... fifteen, hundreds of times. Now how much better it would be, to spend a little time in fixing the fact in the mind once for all, and then when you come to the case, seven and eight are—say at once "Fifteen,"—instead of mumbling over and over again, hundreds of times, "Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, ...

— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... seeking him, his purpose was to stand revealed. To combine these two attitudes until she should declare herself was by no means an easy task, but she looked neither near nor far in scrutiny until she stood, mumbling and infirm, beneath ...

— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... the edge of a window shade in the courthouse, saw several indistinct figures congregated at the side door, outside. He slipped behind a tool shed at the side of the track, and crouching there, watched and listened. A mumbling of voices reached him, but he could distinguish no word. But it was evident that the men outside were awaiting the reappearance of one of their number who had ...

— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... intelligent men did not sooner detect the fallacy of magic? How could they continue to cherish expectations that were invariably doomed to disappointment? With what heart persist in playing venerable antics that led to nothing, and mumbling solemn balderdash that remained without effect? Why cling to beliefs which were so flatly contradicted by experience? How dare to repeat experiments that had failed so often? The answer seems to be that the fallacy was far from easy to detect, the failure by no means obvious, since ...

— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... embers in her father's face glowing to dark-red heat. Everybody had been watching them except Harold who, though addressing his father, had been mumbling "what chaps had said" to ...

— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... heard in the Temple. She caught little of it clearly; she remembered practically nothing. She was not given anything to show that a ceremony had been performed, and she did not ask for anything. The elderly bridegroom kissed her when the mumbling ceased, led her out to the carriage, took her back to her mother's house, and ...

— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... be dear woman!" "Hallo, old fellow, thought you were asleep. Had something of a nightmare, eh? Been mumbling away as if the supper didn't agree with you." "Well, your toast, with all the honors, and then ...

— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... them three windows over there,' and he pointed to where the House of Commons overlooked the river, 'that'll turn pale when good Lord George gets up this afternoon, and with reason too! Ay, ay. Let his lordship alone. Let him alone. HE knows!' And so, with much mumbling and chuckling and shaking of his forefinger, he rose, with the assistance of his stick, ...

— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... and will often hear their low mumbling and give little growls before I dream that one is near. They have a disagreeable way of coming to the windows and staring in. Sometimes before you have heard a sound you will be conscious of an uncomfortable feeling, and looking around you will discover five or six Indians, large and ...

— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... matter what you do, miracles or fruitless deeds, You're a man, man, man, if you do them with a will; And no matter how you loaf, cursing wealth or mumbling creeds, You are nothing but a noise, ...

— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... upon the step, but did not dare to mount. Fuddled though she was, there was something that kept her in check. She stood there groping at the handrail and mumbling to herself, and every now and then lifting her fat face and ...

— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... philosopher of our party, interrupted in his feed but not put out, nor concerned in what was going on, picked up the fruit and cheese and pieces of butter scattered all over the place, mumbling that it was a shame to throw away good food ...

— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... and Sandy Macgill went and hearkened at the window, where they heard the gay gallant stumbling in the floor, churming sweet and amorous words as he went groping his way towards the bed where the auld toop was breathing thickly, mumbling and crunching the kail-blades in a state of as great sensual delight and satisfaction as any beast could well be. But no sooner had the cavalier placed his hand on the horned head of the creature than ...

— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... be a mistake to suppose that the only form which false prophecy can take is a dried-up orthodoxy, mumbling over the shibboleths of yesterday. If he who stands forward as a speaker for God is out of touch with God and has really no Divine message, he may make good the lack of a true Divine word in many ways. The easiest way is, no doubt, to fall back on some accepted word of ...

— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

... filled with smoke and felt like they had a million sharp needles sticking in them, but thanks to my lucky stars, I was not otherwise hurt. Everything appeared so quiet and still that I was dazed, but presently I heard a low mumbling of voices out to the westwards. I made my way thither and found the population (all that was left of it), assembled. When I staggered up to a group of the men, they turned on me like tigers, not knowing what kind of an animal I was. I recognized one of them who was ...

— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... enclosure the only living beings were three miserable-looking old women gathered together upon the stone of one of the vaults. They sat as if performing some incantation, mumbling their prayers and counting their beads; and one other of the same fraternity, who had been kneeling before a picture, left her position as we entered and knelt upon another of the vaults, where she remained all the time we were present, telling ...

— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... given him some account of the representation of the play at the Parthenon. Her father was delighted to find her in high spirits. So many people come back from the theater looking glum and worn out, yawning and mumbling when asked what they have seen and what it had all been about. Phyllis was not glum, nor did she mumble. She was able to describe scene after scene, and more than once she sprang from her seat, carried away by her own powers of description, ...

— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore

... lapsed again into nodding, mumbling, and abstraction. The company broke up, and left him so.... But they did not say what drove him crazy. In the momentary confusion, I forgot ...

— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... they were the last distinct words I heard at that meal. I remember mumbling something about the pleasure in store for me, and while my tongue pronounced this statement, my conscience denounced me as a liar. It would be no pleasure. An upstart of a boarding-school girl, with her airy ways, her college slang and her ear-piercing laughter, tearing around the house ...

— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey