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More "Mumble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unassertive voice; in dark doorways worn-eyed women and men gossiped in voices scarce above a whisper; and brown children fondled each other, laughing noiselessly, or lay asleep on rugs which would be costly elsewhere. In the bazaars nothing was selling, and no man did anything but mumble or eat, save the few scholars who, cross-legged on their mats, read and laboured towards Nirvana. Priests in their yellow robes and with bare shoulders went ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... bite their nails. See yonder night garment laid out for the heir of a kingdom. It is of Canton flannel, a plain, homely thing, in one piece, buttoning ignominiously down the back, and having no apertures for the august hands and feet to come through. In vain the little king-to-be may mumble the Canton flannel with his mouth. He cannot bite his royal nails; and, hush! in the next crib a princess asleep. Why that cruel, tight cap down over her ears? It's because she will double them forward and lie on them, so ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... glowed in Sally's countenance abashed her. The shrill tones trailed off into a mumble. She ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... mental activity which is the cardinal element in human life. After all, in spite of the pretentious impostors who trade upon the claim, literature, contemporary literature, is the breath of civilized life, and those who sincerely think and write the salt of the social body. To mumble over the past, to live on the classics, however splendid, is senility. The New Republic, therefore, will sustain its authors. In the past the author lived within the limits of his patron's susceptibility, and ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... a low tone—for by this time the Reverend Jedediah was close at hand—he continued, "But may be daddy don't know, right down sure, what we've been doin'. Let's try him with a lie—'twon't hurt, noway: let's tell him we've been playin' mumble-peg." ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... heard him mumble this to himself in German: "Kepler perceived a little, he saw dimly; Newton comprehended the easy half; but Anderwelt, Anderwelt of Heidelberg, grasped the ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... the Devil should she do with me? Can't her Old Chopps mumble her Beads o're, but I Must keep count of her Pater Nosters: No, no, she's Gon on Pilgrimage to some Shrine, to beg Children For my Lady; 'tis ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... of ham at the eating-counter below-stairs was exhausted, the oysters were soon after minus, and those who had brought no lunch had to mumble ginger-cakes. It was remarked by good judges that as the morning advanced the coffee grew weaker, suggesting a possibility that the caterer could not distinguish between cocoa and cold water, and only replenished his boiler with the latter. There were more questions of order, more backing people ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... along the beach, and commenced the ascent to the castle. In a few minutes the little band of fishermen returned, carrying lanterns in their hands, and with a priest walking amongst them. They reached the spot, and paused, while the priest commenced to mumble a prayer. He was scarcely half-way through when ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had lost his savoir faire. His wonderful smile had turned into something sickly, his bland speech of thanks into a mumble. He turned away ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... help it," he said; "if you do, mumble any old jargon in any language you like, and ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... suddenly cornered, turned first red, then white, and tried to mumble out some evasion. But Mr Barnacle was not the man to be ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... up a whole crew of weedburners now—going to try and get this thing under control. The men all have tanks of oil or kerosene on their backs. Wait a minute, folks, I want to find out for sure whether it's oil or kerosene. Mumble. Mumble. Well, folks, I'm sorry, but this gentleman doesnt know exactly what's in the tanks. Anyway it's kerosene or oil and there are long hoses with wide nozzles at the end. Something like vacuumcleaners. Well, that's not quite right. Anyway theyre lighting the nozzles now. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... said it for her admonition, and observed, 'But she was good,' only, however, in a mumble, that the other two thought it inexpedient to notice, though it made both hearts ache for her, even Alice's—with an additional pang of self-reproach that she herself was not good enough to help her ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tak' his bone down first and hide it awa'. The Sabbath in a kirkyard is a dull day for a wee dog, so he aye gets a catechism of a bone to mumble over." ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... essence from the other orphans. This was not mere conceit, I think, because it emanated rather from pride in my father than from any exalted opinion of myself. But, whatever the rights of it, no suitable remark came to me. Indeed, beyond an incoherent mumble over the hand-shaking, I might have been a mute for all the part I had so far taken in this interview. And just then I caught a glimpse of Sister Agatha emerging from behind the wood-stack at the end of the vegetable garden, ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... knees, while he mumbled something which he pretended to read out of the book that he held in his hand. Then he gave him a good blow on the neck, and after that another sound thwack over the shoulders with his own sword, always as he did so continuing to mumble and murmur as though he were reading something out of his book. This being done, he commanded one of the damsels to gird on his sword, which she did with much grace and cleverness. And it was with ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... you speak like this?" exclaimed the youth, almost frightened, and hotly began to mumble to her some words about her beauty, about her kindness, telling her how sorry he was for her and how bashful in her presence. And she listened and kept on kissing his cheeks, his neck, his head and ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... who come faster than fate: we are they who ride early or late: We storm at your ivory gate: Pale Kings of the Sunset, beware! Not on silk nor in samet we lie, not in curtained solemnity die Among women who chatter and cry, and children who mumble a prayer. But we sleep by the ropes of the camp, and we rise with a shout, and we tramp With the sun or the moon for a lamp, and the spray of the ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... seizing the bottle and tumbler unceremoniously, Maitland poured out a small quantity and held the tumbler to the patient's lips. With difficulty the man contrived to swallow about a teaspoonful, which considerably revived him, and then, with a groan of anguish, strove to mumble a few words in spite of his broken jaw. Now, if ever, was the moment when Humphreys' doctrine of the efficacy of hypnotism might be effectively tested, and fixing the man's upturned gaze with his own, in the peculiar manner which Humphreys had described and ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... Having, I say, at the bottom of our English hearts a very strong belief in freedom, and a very weak belief in right reason, we are soon silenced when a man pleads the prime right to do as he likes, because this is the prime right for ourselves too; and even if we attempt now and then to mumble something about reason, yet we have ourselves thought so little about this and so much about liberty, that we are in conscience forced, when our brother Philistine with whom we are meddling turns boldly round upon us and asks: Have you any light?—to ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... through her machinations I had been lured to the deck and to my death! I could have gone on my knees to her and begged her forgiveness—or at least I could have, had I not been Anglo-Saxon. As it was, I could only remove my soggy cap and bow and mumble my appreciation. She made no reply—only turned and walked very rapidly toward her room. Could I have heard aright? Was it really a sob that came floating back to me through the narrow aisle of ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... nature. The remembrance of those childish reproaches haunts me yet oftentimes in my dreams. My school-days come again, and the horror I used to feel, when in some silent corner, retired from the notice of my unfeeling playfellows, I have sat to mumble the solitary slice of gingerbread allotted me by the bounty of considerate friends, and have ached at heart because I could not spare a portion of it, as I saw other boys do, to some favorite boy; for if I know my own heart, I was never selfish,—never possessed a luxury which I did ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... animated conversations with one and another in much the same way. Polly had initiated him in the mysteries of a discovery of mine, that it is not necessary to finish your sentences in a crowd, but by a sort of mumble, omitting sibilants and dentals. This, indeed, if your words fail you, answers even in public extempore speech,—but better where other talking is going on. Thus,—"We missed you at the Natural History ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... knave," roared Jones menacing him with the flagon. "Thou liest in thy throat. Or if thou didst mumble some nonsense in mine ears, I paid no heed, doubting not that thou hadst told it all before to thy gossips among these pious folk. But, Governor, if it is your pleasure to seek out this place, I will lend you ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... the surface be everlastingly damned!" said the other man in brown as Hoopdriver receded. Hoopdriver heard the mumble and did not distinguish the words, and he felt a pleasing sense of having duly asserted the wide sympathy that binds all cyclists together, of having behaved himself as becomes one of the brotherhood of the wheel. The ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... "All those of you having just cause for complaint draw near and ye shall be heard." However, you would have thought it was of no import here. Custom and indifference had allowed it to sink to a mumble. A third bailiff guarded the door of the jury-room; and in addition to these there were present a court clerk—small, pale, candle-waxy, with colorless milk-and-water eyes, and thin, pork-fat-colored hair and beard, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... "Alas! there is no one that knows me," and a disciple asked what was meant, he replied, "I do not murmur against God. I do not mumble against man. My studies lie low, and my penetration lies high. But there is ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... so filled with pride that this fair being could wear his shoes, and that she was wearing them, that he could only mumble some stupid words about being so glad to serve her. And she, wise girl, said nothing about the quantities of soft cotton-wool which Dame Charter had been obliged to stuff into the toes before they would stay upon ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... you are, Killeny Boy, high-strung but reasonable," he continued to mumble as Kwaque helped to ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... of their strength. I dare say I staggered drunkenly. A head rose over the arch, and the figure of a workman carrying a basket appeared. Beside him ran a little boy. He passed me, wishing me good night. I was minded to speak to him, but did not. I answered his greeting with a meaningless mumble and ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... reckless revelation of self. Yet the mystery of his being is still unpierced. He is traitor, schemer, spy; but is he an Abbe? Perhaps not. At any rate, he once attended the 'Messe des Morts,' and was heard to mumble a 'Credo,' which, as every good Catholic remembers, has no ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... was that, with many a queer thought in my head, I sat in the kitchen rocker, listening to the mumble of their voices and waiting up to see if they should want me for anything. And so it was, too, that at last I found myself nodding with sleep, and started to go upstairs ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... John for a moment, and then tried to mumble something, that the boys could not understand. After a few attempts he fairly shrieked ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... they were in camp. Then as cautiously he crawled up the bank. Through the scrub with his uninjured eye he could make out the figures around the yellow of the fire which had gone down considerably. Now what would they do? He could hear the mumble of the corporal's voice. Would they be sufficiently sobered to be ready for the chase in the morning? Birnier did not think so with that case of brandy there; the corporal would not, at all events. There was a scream of pain and the ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... MUMBLE A SPARROW. A cruel sport practised at wakes and fairs, in the following manner: A cock sparrow whose wings are clipped, is put into the crown of a hat; a man having his arms tied behind him, attempts to bite off ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... hurricane, she was drifting under it. De Spain realized that his helpless legs would not carry him farther. His hands, freezing to the pommel, no longer supported him. They finally slipped from it and he fell prostrate in the snow beside his horse. When he would cry out to her his frozen lips could mumble no words. It was the fight no longer of a man against nature, but only of an indomitable soul against a cruel, hateful death. He struggled to his feet only to fall again more heavily. He pulled himself up this time by the ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... the great, roaring fires, Roaring louder than they, With their strong wines, And their concubines, And never a bell, With its swagger and swell, Calling you up with a start of affright In the dead of night, To send you grumbling down dark stairs, To mumble your prayers; But the cheery crow Of cocks in the yard below, After daybreak, an hour or so, And the barking of deep-mouthed hounds, These are the sounds That, instead of bells, salute the ear. And then all day Up and away ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Mumble—mumble—"to the Pope," said Father Luke, pronouncing the last words distinctly, after the approved practice of a Dublin watchman, on being awoke from his dreams of row and riot by the last toll of the Post-office, and not ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... which they owe the people. Nor does their shorn crown in the least admonish them that a priest should be free from all worldly desires and think of nothing but heavenly things. Whereas on the contrary, these jolly fellows say they have sufficiently discharged their offices if they but anyhow mumble over a few odd prayers, which, so help me, Hercules! I wonder if any god either hear or understand, since they do neither themselves, especially when they thunder them out in that manner they are wont. But this they have in common with those ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... is not a moment to be lost. At any minute they may enter our room and find it empty! You are ready? Then, not too softly, or it may rouse suspicion! And mumble something ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... all through that 9th of November his lordship has had a racking rheumatism, or a toothache, let us say, during all dinner-time—through which he has been obliged to grin and mumble his poor old speeches. Is he enviable? Would you like to change with his lordship? Suppose that bumper which his golden footman brings him, instead i'fackins of ypocras or canary, contains some abomination of senna? ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... reader, whose back was toward the new-comer, did not see him. He was the only one left awake, and Bobby looked to see him drop over at any moment. But the little fat man read right along in a drawling, sleepy mumble, something about the Athenians until Bob cried out: "Hello, Ole Puddin'-bag, everybody'th gone to thleep; you'd jeth as well hole up ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... "It makes me yawn. John says I mumble." She looked at me sharply, distrustfully. "You are very kind, but—it's too ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a low mumble as the men passed on. Gregory emerged from his cover and looked after the two fishermen. Then he noticed the girl had finished her calculations ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... you and the surface be everlastingly damned!" said the other man in brown as Hoopdriver receded. Hoopdriver heard the mumble and did not distinguish the words, and he felt a pleasing sense of having duly asserted the wide sympathy that binds all cyclists together, of having behaved himself as becomes one of the brotherhood of the wheel. The other man in brown watched his receding aspect. ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... have planted finger and foot on the ledges of that solid precipice and climbed to the invisible summit. Hilderman was muttering to himself beneath his breath, but I was too dazed, my brain was too numbed to make any sense out of the confused mumble of words which came from him. Dennis held my arm in a vice-like grip that stopped the circulation, and almost made me cry ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... fly. You've got only to pass a remark on his sail-cloth coat to make him shut up. All the town knows it. But he's got you to listen to his crazy talk whenever he chooses. Don't I hear you two at it, jabber, jabber, mumble, mumble——— ...
— One Day More - A Play In One Act • Joseph Conrad
... mechanical motion. There were stacks of music-sheets on counters, and shelves, and dangling from overhead wires. The girl at the piano never ceased playing. She played mostly by request. A prospective purchaser would mumble something in the ear of one of the clerks. The fat man with the megaphone would bawl out, "'Hicky Bloo!' Miss Ryan." And Miss Ryan would oblige. She made a hideous rattle and crash and clatter of sound compared to which an Indian tom-tom would have seemed as dulcet as the strumming of a lute ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... into cart-tracks, and tufted with rosemary, box, lavender, and lentisk. On the way it passes the Abbaye de Mont Majeur, a ruin of gigantic size, embracing all periods of architecture; where nothing seems to flourish now but henbane and the wild cucumber, or to breathe but a mumble-toothed and terrible old hag. The ruin stands above a desolate marsh, its vast Italian buildings of Palladian splendour looking more forlorn in their decay than the older and austerer mediaeval towers, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... morn, and the rumble Of wheels is abroad in the streets, Still I tumble and mumble and grumble At the fleas in my ears and—the sheets; Mumble and grumble and tumble Till the buzz of the bees is no more; In a jumble I mumble and drumble And tumble off—into ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... he said it for her admonition, and observed, 'But she was good,' only, however, in a mumble, that the other two thought it inexpedient to notice, though it made both hearts ache for her, even Alice's—with an additional pang of self-reproach that she herself was not good enough to help her ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... doubt but that she puts this advice, in operation? O happy man, who art now every foot treated with some new sorts of kickshaws at your Table; and have free leave to frequent the Coffy-house, which other women grumble and mumble at. And besides all this, you find that your dearest embraceth you as if you were an Angel, and shews you a thousand other friendly entertainments that are beyond imagination to express: it is alwaies in the evening, my Dear come to bed: and in the morning, pray Love ly a little ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... with speed what spot you claim by birth. Or with this club fall stricken to the earth! This club hath ofttimes slaughtered haughty kings! Why mumble unintelligible things? What land, what tribe produced that shaking head? Declare it! On my journey when I sped Far to the Kingdom of the triple King, And from the Main Hesperian did bring The goodly cattle to the Argive town, There I beheld a mountain looking down Upon two rivers: this the Sun ...
— Apocolocyntosis • Lucius Seneca
... laid out for the heir of a kingdom. It is of Canton flannel, a plain, homely thing, in one piece, buttoning ignominiously down the back, and having no apertures for the august hands and feet to come through. In vain the little king-to-be may mumble the Canton flannel with his mouth. He cannot bite his royal nails; and, hush! in the next crib a princess asleep. Why that cruel, tight cap down over her ears? It's because she will double them forward and lie on them, so that if something isn't done about it they ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... lantern). All right, old mumble-peg. Don't you get carried away by the fire of old Rome. That's your motto. Here are the tools, a perfect picter of the sublime and beautiful; and all I hope is that our friend and pitcher, the Deakin, will make a better job of it than he did ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a tooth to that of a mistress there's no pang that is not bearable. The apprehension is much more cruel than the certainty; and we make up our mind to the misfortune when 'tis irremediable, part with the tormentor, and mumble our crust on t'other side of the jaws. I think Colonel Esmond was relieved when a ducal coach-and-six came and whisked his charmer away out of his reach, and placed her in a higher sphere. As you have seen the nymph in the opera-machine go up ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... used to grin, At breakfast, on the sly, And mock the wobble of his chin And eyebrows belt so high And kind: "How did you rest, last night?" We'd mumble and let on Our voices trimbled, and our sight Was ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... the Reverend Jedediah was close at hand—he continued, "But may be daddy don't know, right down sure, what we've been doin'. Let's try him with a lie—'twon't hurt, noway: let's tell him we've been playin' mumble-peg." ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... came so suddenly and in such contrasted tones to the mumble in which the miser had heretofore been speaking that for the moment Roy was too ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... "you have come to this—you dare not speak, you dare not utter the name of 'Bonaparte' aloud; you barely mumble a few words in a whisper here, in this street, in the Faubourg St. Antoine, where, from all the doors, from all the windows, from all the pavements, from all the very stones, ought to be heard the cry, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... superstitious. It is common to find crosses in the courtyards of country houses, placed there to keep evil spirits away. Frequently also, three crosses are seen in conspicuous places near the roadside or even in the middle of the road. They are supposed to propitiate the Almighty, and pious persons mumble prayers as they pass them. When the destruction wrought by the Martinique volcano became known here, the dismay of the countrymen was responsible for more than one "calvario" (calvary), as these collections of ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... 68 to mumble painful guilty the dormitory the tie the chin he got off with a good fright without appearing to do so, he was looking at them towards ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... course I am. Any woman will break her neck to see two people, for whom she does not care a hair-pin, stand up, one in white and the other in black, and mumble a few words that she knows by heart, and then take position at the end of a room and have "society" paraded up to them by solemn little corporals with white favors, and then file off to the rear for rations of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... his hands fall, and began to mumble again. Lingard turned his ear towards him instinctively, caught something that sounded like "Very well"—then some ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... make an object of invidious allusion stayed out. What it all really most comes to, you feel again, is that none of his impulses prospered in solitude, or, for that matter, were so much as permitted to mumble their least scrap there; he was predestined and condemned to sociability, which no league of neglect could have deprived him of even had it speculatively tried: whereby what was it but his own image ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... no more than mumble a: "Well, if you like to wait!" and point out the room. She followed Madeleine over the threshold, drying ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... himself. "Two hundred and three years!" he said to himself over and over again, laughing stupidly. "Then I am two hundred and thirty-three years old! The oldest inhabitant. Surely they haven't reversed the tendency of our time and gone back to the rule of the oldest. My claims are indisputable. Mumble, mumble. I remember the Bulgarian atrocities as though it was yesterday. 'Tis a great age! Ha ha!" He was surprised at first to hear himself laughing, and then laughed again deliberately and louder. Then he realised ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... back in her chair staring at him. Her mouth opened and a mumble came from it. Then there was silence a moment, and then she began to shake, and one hand beat upon the table with its rings. So they waited a while, watching the tremulous, shapeless mass of her, and the tap, tap, tap of her hand beat ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... helping of salad. "All right. I'll talk, but you'll have to excuse me if I mumble a little. I intend to go right on eating. I've been looking forward to this ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... ship, a whole Noah's ark of tree-living creatures was hastening along a single cable shorewards: tree-crickets; ants laden with eggs and larvae; mantids gesticulating as they walked, like old men who mumble to themselves; wood-roaches, some green and leaf-like, others, facsimiles of trilobites—but fleet of ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... Stout answer the bell in person. There was a low mumble of voices. Then the landlady appeared in the parlor doorway, the ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the 22nd of July. I tried to be cheerful, and said, "Hello, Galbreath, old fellow, I thought you were in heaven long before this." He laughed a sort of dry, cracking laugh, and asked me to hand him a drink of water. I handed it to him. He then began to mumble and tell me something in a rambling and incoherent way, but all I could catch was for me to write to his family, who were living near Mt. Pleasant. I asked him if he was badly wounded. He only pulled down the blanket, that was all. I get sick when I think of it. The ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... proper treatment. Well, we learned that she had a sister living in New Jersey. The detective went to see her, and you know the result—the old lady's removal. Recently we received word that she was so much improved that she could mumble in a way to be understood, and last week the detective and I went to see her. This was my apparently ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... off quite a number of these while I'm abroad like this. Send 'em in letters to relatives at home—gives them a notion of the place. They are—ar—kind enough to value them. (CULCHARD makes a complimentary mumble.) Yes, I'm a very rapid sketcher. Put me with regular artists, and give us half an hour, and I—ar—venture to say I should be on terms with them. Make it three hours, and—well, I daresay I shouldn't be ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various
... me 'e was past speaking, so I tried to make 'im understand, but 'e only mumbled in reply. W'en I was about to go 'e seemed to mumble very 'ard, so I put down my ear to listen, and 'e w'ispered quite distinct tho' very low—'All right, my 'eartie. I'm too cute for 'em by a long way; go aboard an' say nothin'.' So I came away, and I've scarce been five ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... do to revert to Roman numerals in, say, the arrangement of time-tables. How long would the commuter stand it if he had to mumble to himself for twenty minutes and use up the margins of his newspaper before he could figure out what was the next train after the 5:18? Or this, over the telephone ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... owe the people. Nor does their shorn crown in the least admonish them that a priest should be free from all worldly desires and think of nothing but heavenly things. Whereas on the contrary, these jolly fellows say they have sufficiently discharged their offices if they but anyhow mumble over a few odd prayers, which, so help me, Hercules! I wonder if any god either hear or understand, since they do neither themselves, especially when they thunder them out in that manner they are ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... wind and spray. He communed with his tiller, I believe, and marshalled his figures with its help. To hear him talk was to feel a current of clarifying air blustering into a close club-room, where men bandy ineffectual platitudes, and mumble old shibboleths, and go away ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... people having to make mistakes, but his mumble was pleasant, and then he crossed to her side, and kissed ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... and passed the sitting-room door without looking in; I sat down in a rocking chair that had been placed near the stair-way, sat there and listened to a girl's laugh and the low mumble of a man's voice. "Let us go out where it's cooler," I heard Guinea say, and I got up with my ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... his arrogant boasting nothing said the fog. Only he rose up slowly and trailed away from the sea and, crawling up long valleys, took refuge among the hills; and night came down and everything was still, and the fog began to mumble in the stillness. And I hear him telling infamously to himself the tale of his horrible spoils. "A hundred and fifteen galleons of old Spain, a certain argosy that went from Tyre, eight fisher-fleets and ninety ships of the ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... class, when he discusses socialism, is condemned an ignoramus out of his own mouth. He does not know the literature of socialism, its philosophy, nor its politics. He wags his head sagely and rattles the dry bones of dead and buried ideas. His lips mumble mouldy phrases, such as, "Men are not born equal and never can be;" "It is Utopian and impossible;" "Abstinence should be rewarded;" "Man will first have to be born again;" "Cooperative colonies have always failed;" and "What if we do divide up? in ten years there would ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... crept past. Still no noise from the town, no suspicious move on the other shore. Then from the tambo itself came a low mumble of voices. Knowlton stepped swiftly into it. As noiselessly as they had gone the ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... Afterwards the master said to me in a shy mumble, "She wouldn't luff up in time, somehow. What's the matter with her?" And I made ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... thumping it with his dangling, careless heels as if it were in nowise his conception of a remarkable feed-box. The sentry also stood facing it. His carbine he held in the hollow of his arm. His legs were spread apart, and he mused. From without came the low mumble of the three other troopers. The ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... not only hateful but impracticable. In order to seem to preach virtue we make vices attractive, and actually impart them by forbidding them. If we would have the children religious, we tire them out taking them to church. By making them mumble prayers incessantly we make them sigh for the happiness of never praying at all. To inspire charity in them, we make them give alms, as if we disdained doing it ourselves. It is not the child, but ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... Sitting round the great, roaring fires, Roaring louder than they, With their strong wines, And their concubines, And never a bell, With its swagger and swell, Calling you up with a start of affright In the dead of night, To send you grumbling down dark stairs, To mumble your prayers; But the cheery crow Of cocks in the yard below, After daybreak, an hour or so, And the barking of deep-mouthed hounds, These are the sounds That, instead of bells, salute the ear. And then all day Up and away Through the forest, hunting the deer! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... hearty-like about the atmosphere When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here. Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the trees, And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and the buzzin' of the bees; But the air's so appetizin', and the landscape through the haze Of a crisp and sunny morning of the early autumn days Is a picture that no painter has the colorin' to mock, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... of me the woman began to mumble out something about my delay, and how she could not be held responsible if anything happened; but caring nothing about responsibility, hers or mine, I took baby ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Roscius (I spit at them all) to beguile with Stage shows the gaping Woman, whose Sex hath still chiefly upheld these Mysteries, and are voiced to be the chief Stage-haunters, where, as I am told, the custom is commonly to mumble (between acts) apples, not ambiguously derived from that pernicious Pippin, (worse in effect than the Apples of Discord,) whereas sometimes the hissing sounds of displeasure, as I hear, do lively reintonate that snake-taking-leave, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... Muleteer mulisto. Mulish obstina. Multiple multoblo. Multiplicand multigato. Multiplication multigado. Multiplied multigita. Multiplier multiganto. Multiply (trans.) multigi. Multiply (intrans.) multigxi. Mumble murmuri. Mummy mumo. Munch macxi. Mundane monda. Municipal urba. Munificence malavareco. Munificent malavara. Murder mortigi. Murder mortigo. Murderer mortiganto. Murky malhela, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... The maid started to mumble an explanation, burst into tears and fled in alarm, never again to emerge from the back regions. My father commanded me to the bell again, but as I rose Thompson entered. He was even then a stately and dignified ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... 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, and began to act the bits that had impressed her—bits the force of which could only be understood ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... dog on the floor, and Peg put a piece of meat under his nose. In her excitement, Jinnie rushed away to Lafe. Peg's mumble followed her even through ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... paused, coughed, and completed what he had to say in a sort of mumble, but his meaning was wholly clear. He would not accept the offer of Pauline in marriage, even though she was the sister of ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... voice and manner as mechanical as that of the judge, would mumble his oft repeated story, giving the exact minute of his observations, the actions of the woman in accosting different pedestrians and in her ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... had to slow down until they reached the New North Road, when he ran ahead and had the door open for the doctor when he came. He heard the two meet outside the bed-room, and caught scraps of their conversation. "Sorry to knock you up—nasty case—decent people." Then it sank into a mumble and the door closed ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a little pebble; I wiped it clean on my coat sleeve and put it into my mouth so that I might have something to mumble. Otherwise I did not stir, and didn't even wink an eyelid. People came and went; the noise of cars, the tramp of hoofs, and chatter of tongues filled the air. I might try with the buttons. Of course there would be no use in trying; and ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... sweetmeats, and if ever so well-disposed, compliance with the request was impossible. None of the rest, however, not even his sister, could keep their countenances, for the eye of the speaker had pointed and sharpened his words; and William, very red in the face, was understood to mumble, as soon as mumbling was possible, that "he wouldn't laugh unless he had a mind to," and a threat to "do something" ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... drifting under it. De Spain realized that his helpless legs would not carry him farther. His hands, freezing to the pommel, no longer supported him. They finally slipped from it and he fell prostrate in the snow beside his horse. When he would cry out to her his frozen lips could mumble no words. It was the fight no longer of a man against nature, but only of an indomitable soul against a cruel, hateful death. He struggled to his feet only to fall again more heavily. He pulled himself up this time by the stirrup-strap, got his hands and arms up to the pommel, and ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... be tempted to put his threat into execution, Nick managed to swallow his pride, and mumble that he guessed he must be out of condition just then, a fact so evident that ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... her for one week, but if she wants to stop away longer she needn't come back at all. And this is on the condition that neither you nor she are to mention her sister Diana to me ever again, whether she is ill, or well, or anything about her. As to your reading to me, I've no doubt you either mumble or squeak, and I couldn't bear it, so pray don't imagine you'll be the least use while she's away, ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... were dumb in him for the moment from lack of co-ordination. The two or three things he might have said seemed to strangle each other in the attempt to get right of way. In response to Guion's confidences he could only mumble something incoherent and pass on to the drawing-room door. It was a wide opening, hung with portieres, through which he could see Olivia Guion standing by the crackling wood fire, a foot on the low fender. One ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... the jar and confusion of this great storm begins, that 'continues still,' and blasts our lives, in spite of all the spells that we mumble over it, and in spite of all the magic that all our magicians can bring to bear on it. 'Meagre success,' at least, is still the word here. No wonder that the storm continues, under such conditions. No wonder ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... of the rail, now with the judge, now with one another; and now it was the clerk of the court who was speaking; and I couldn't repress the absurd feeling of surprise that they should turn their backs and mumble so, since it appeared irresistibly to me that we were an audience, and the thing was ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... Vosges gipsies to me, "that there is no credit in taking them in. The other day a peasant woman called out to me in the street. I went into her house. Her stove smoked and she asked me to give her a charm to cure it. First of all I made her give me a good bit of bacon, and then I began to mumble a few words in Romany. 'You're a fool,' I said, 'you were born a fool, and you'll die a fool!' When I had got near the door I said to her, in good German, 'The most certain way of keeping your stove from smoking is not to light any ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... must have guessed Mark's intention, for raising her stick she forbade him to move, and before he had time to mumble an apology and flee she was introducing the newcomers ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... and the viper thrust his head between his lips; upon which the old man closes them and makes believe to mumble the horrid head, the body appearing violently convulsed, as if it really ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... ham at the eating-counter below-stairs was exhausted, the oysters were soon after minus, and those who had brought no lunch had to mumble ginger-cakes. It was remarked by good judges that as the morning advanced the coffee grew weaker, suggesting a possibility that the caterer could not distinguish between cocoa and cold water, and only replenished his boiler ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... might come into the grasp of the Maid, and did jest her very loving and gentle that she give me so great a work, because that she have her hands so little. And truly, she presently to stop me of my mocking; for she put her pretty hands upon my mouth, and I then to have to mumble and to laugh, and so she to go forward again with ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... something seemed to dawn upon him; but the unwonted light in his eyes died out instantly. As a Jacobus on his native heath, what a mere skipper chose to say could not touch him, outcast as he was. As a ship-chandler he could stand anything. All I caught of his mumble was a vague—"quite correct," than which nothing could have been more egregiously false at bottom—to my view, at least. But I remembered—I had never forgotten—that I must see the girl. I did ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... them also whose books and writings tell What certain path to heavenly bliss us leads; And hermits good, and ancresses that dwell Mewed up in walls, and mumble on their beads, And virgin nuns in close and private cell, Where, but shrift fathers, never mankind treads: On these they called, and on all the rout Of angels, martyrs, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... step in dead of night; In stillness the long rustle of my robe. So long as stand these walls I cannot leave them. Yet will I go: behold you, that stand by, A mother by her own son thrust away, Cast out—ha, ha!—in my old age, infirm, To totter and mumble in oblivion! ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... fashion now gone by, Mutter and mumble low, And hither and thither fly: Mere puppets they who come and go At the bidding of a huge formless Thing That shifts the scenery to and fro, Ruling the World from flat and wing— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... devour, swallow, take; gulp, bolt, snap; fall to; despatch, dispatch; discuss; take down, get down, gulp down; lay in, tuck in*; lick, pick, peck; gormandize &c. 957; bite, champ, munch, cranch[obs3], craunch[obs3], crunch, chew, masticate, nibble, gnaw, mumble. live on; feed upon, batten upon, fatten upon, feast upon; browse, graze, crop, regale; carouse &c. (make merry) 840; eat heartily, do justice to, play a good knife and fork, banquet. break bread, break one's fast; breakfast ,lunch, dine, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Missionary would not do twice; and the slaves were emancipated. A bold step must be taken. The parish must be astonished in some way or other; but no one was able to suggest what the step should be. At length, a very old lady was heard to mumble, in indistinct tones, 'Exeter Hall.' A sudden light broke in upon the meeting. It was unanimously resolved, that a deputation of old ladies should wait upon a celebrated orator, imploring his assistance, and the favour of a speech; and the deputation ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Barrington boy was past speech-making now. He managed to mumble a few words of thanks, got to the ground somehow and mingled with the crowd as quickly ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... Lucy to talk to!" Lucia was diseased-looking and unkempt-looking and she ironed very badly. Everyone tried to help her out. They instructed her with a flow of English. When Lucia would but shake her head they used the same flow, only much louder, several at once. Then Lucia would mumble to herself for several minutes over her ironing. At times, late in the afternoon, Miss ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... in the official reports of the Lords' debates a speech begins thus: "Lord —— (who was indistinctly heard)." The Commons' report might well adopt this salutary practice as a warning to Members who persistently mumble, or who address their remarks to the body of the House instead of to the SPEAKER. Ministers are the worst offenders. One of them was asked this afternoon, for example, whether the Judicial Adviser to the SULTAN had discouraged the use of the English language in the Egyptian Courts, but ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... months, with wilful circumstance and gratuitous detail that filled me at once with confusion, suspicion, and revolt. I felt myself blushing for us both, and I did not care. My address utterly deserted me, and I made no effort to recover it, to carry the thing off. All I would do was to mumble such words as Raffles actually put into my mouth, and that I doubt not ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... sung lots of songs and we played marbles, mumble peg, and town ball. In de winter we would set around de fire and listen to our Mammy and Pappy tell ghost tales and witch tales. I don't guess dey was sho' nuff so, but we all ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... drunkenly. A head rose over the arch, and the figure of a workman carrying a basket appeared. Beside him ran a little boy. He passed me, wishing me good night. I was minded to speak to him, but did not. I answered his greeting with a meaningless mumble and went on over ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... the dirt off his knees. "If there's anything that stirs my temper, it's this mumble-grumble, whiffle-and-hint business. Out and open, that's my style." He was reflecting testily on the peculiar ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... o'er th' style—as I had just got me o'er by one leg, after this fashion, ye mind; as though this chair here were th' style, and yonder chimney-place th' lane—Sweethearts' Way, ye mind—well, as I was half over, and Mumble, th' turnspit pup, half under, as 'twere, I heard voices—voices, comrade—one o' them th' voice o' that lass o' mine, and t'other th' voice o' ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... ferocity, sprang at the knight, screaming and clenching her hands. But he cried out, "Hold! or I will cleave thee in twain, even as thy cat." And in truth she stopped stone-still, but soon began to spit and murmur. Whereupon he cried out again, "Ay, spit and mumble; but know that my good friend, of whom I told thee, stands without, and if but a finger of mine aches, now or in future, he hath ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... recounting the beads, almost all worn smooth, of his rosary of pain—which had for the fingers of memory and the recurrences of wonder the same felt break of the smaller ones by the larger that would have aided a pious mumble in some dusky altar-chapel. ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... five thousand out of pocket—that's all. Now, Anna, don't let us have any mumble-pie between us. I'm not the dark man of the story-books who lures the beautiful heroine on to play, and you're not the wonderful Princess who breaks her old pa and marries because he's stony. You can't get overmuch out of the old ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... which she felt creeping over her, as the fog had crept over the country side. The village children had been called in by their mothers, and there was not the usual sound of boys and girls at play in the street. The rumble of a cart in the distance sounded like the mutter and mumble of a discontented spirit; and as Lucy passed through the square formed by the old timbered houses by the lych gate, ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... these stale moralities, Sir Preacher, from your desk you mumble? Why rail against the great and wise, And tire us with ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... over her body, sat by me and fanned me. The "Buli" was an aristocratic-looking old fellow with a large nose and a very haughty look. He is a very important chief, but knew no English, and we carried on our conversation through the medium of Masirewa. He spoke in a kind of mumble, with a very thick voice. Once when he had been mumbling worse than usual there was a kind of restrained titter from someone in the crowd at the back. The "Buli" heard it, and slowly turning his head he transfixed the crowd with his piercing gaze for many seconds amid ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... twinkle, there is implied a frequency, or iteration of small acts. And the same frequency of acts, but less subtile by reason of the clearer vowel a, is indicated in jangle, tangle, spangle, mangle, wrangle, brangle, dangle; as also in mumble, grumble, jumble. But at the same time the close u implies something obscure or obtunded; and a congeries of consonants mbl, denotes a confused kind of rolling or tumbling, as in ramble, scamble, scramble, wamble, amble; but in ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... uttered a half-articulate answer. In an instant the man was at his side, and had quickly gagged him. This had the further effect of awakening the unfortunate lad; and he struggled to loosen his bonds, but they were too strongly tied. He endeavored to answer Jack, but only a meaningless mumble resulted, ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... him he could hear Earle poking the fire. He could hear the low mumble of his voice, the soft treble of Marian's. They avoided him now as if he were a plague. He did not try to make it out. His master was providence. He could not question the decrees of providence, but he would circumvent them if he ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... bushes at the side of the road their pulses throbbed in great excitement as they observed that the peddler addressed some one inside the car. His tone was low so they did not catch the words, but they heard a mumble ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... head! Sa-ay, where's—" He trailed off into a mumble, speaking always from the viewpoint of a flyer. Johnny, listening while he led the way down a blind trail to the bottom, caught a word now and then and decided that Bland Halliday must surely be what he claimed to be, or he would choose different terms ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... There, with a thumb to keep her place She'd read, with stern and wrinkled face, Her mild eyes gliding very slow Across the letters to and fro, While wagged the guttering candle flame In the wind that through the window came. And sometimes in the silence she Would mumble a sentence audibly, Or shake her head as if to say, "You silly souls, to act this way!" And never a sound from night I'd hear, Unless some far-off cock crowed clear; Or her old shuffling thumb should turn Another page; and rapt and stern, Through her great ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... for months to pass any law for enforcing obedience, lest it should trench on the liberties of free white men. The service was to the last degree unpopular. "If we talk of obliging men to serve their country," wrote London Carter, "we are sure to hear a fellow mumble over the words 'liberty' and 'property' a thousand times."[335] The people, too, were in mortal fear of a slave insurrection, and therefore dared not go far from home.[336] Meanwhile a panic reigned along the border. Captain Waggoner, passing a gap in the Blue Ridge, could hardly make his way for ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... scarcely respire for a moment, but gradually recovered sufficiently to mumble, "Gents, this is one on yours ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... prayers) at their religious meetings in the mosque. I found that the profound taciturnity which I had adopted was the best help towards the establishment of a high reputation for wisdom; and that, by the help of my beads, which I kept constantly counting, a mumble of my lips, and occasional groans and pious exclamations, the road to the highest consideration was open ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... at home when mother was away, in the barn while milking—at every opportunity I went through my selection with most impassioned voice and lofty gestures, sustained by the legends of Webster and Demosthenes, resolved upon a blazing victory. I did everything but mumble a smooth pebble—realizing that most of the boys in my section were going through precisely the same struggle. Each of us knew exactly how the others felt, and yet I cannot say that we displayed acute sympathy one with another; on the contrary, those in the free section considered ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... went into another room and came back with a number of grey cards in his hand. He began to mumble over the descriptions, and ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... filled with pride that this fair being could wear his shoes, and that she was wearing them, that he could only mumble some stupid words about being so glad to serve her. And she, wise girl, said nothing about the quantities of soft cotton-wool which Dame Charter had been obliged to stuff into the toes before they would stay upon the small feet ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... tranquil, only a little puzzled, till something seemed to dawn upon him; but the unwonted light in his eyes died out instantly. As a Jacobus on his native heath, what a mere skipper chose to say could not touch him, outcast as he was. As a ship-chandler he could stand anything. All I caught of his mumble was a vague—"quite correct," than which nothing could have been more egregiously false at bottom—to my view, at least. But I remembered—I had never forgotten—that I must see the girl. I did not mean to go. I meant to stay in the house till I had ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... pious and holy things as they did in the world, but unable to do so. For in the spiritual world everyone is compelled to speak as he thinks. A hypocrite, however, wants to speak otherwise than he thinks, but there is impediment in the tongue as a result of which he can only mumble. Hypocrisies are lighter or more grave in the measure of the confirmation against God and of the outward ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... formless. The average member of the capitalist class, when he discusses socialism, is condemned an ignoramus out of his own mouth. He does not know the literature of socialism, its philosophy, nor its politics. He wags his head sagely and rattles the dry bones of dead and buried ideas. His lips mumble mouldy phrases, such as, "Men are not born equal and never can be;" "It is Utopian and impossible;" "Abstinence should be rewarded;" "Man will first have to be born again;" "Cooperative colonies have always failed;" and "What if we do divide up? in ten years ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... goes on to give a truly appreciative and affectionate sketch of young Arthur Mynors; and then he quotes the sentence about the Master of the Beagles, and on this he comments thus: "The aged Barbarian will, upon this, admiringly mumble to us his story how the battle of Waterloo was won in the playing-fields of Eton. Alas! disasters have been prepared in those playing-fields as well as victories; disasters due to inadequate mental training—to want of application, knowledge, intelligence, lucidity. The Eton playing-fields ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... different in essence from the other orphans. This was not mere conceit, I think, because it emanated rather from pride in my father than from any exalted opinion of myself. But, whatever the rights of it, no suitable remark came to me. Indeed, beyond an incoherent mumble over the hand-shaking, I might have been a mute for all the part I had so far taken in this interview. And just then I caught a glimpse of Sister Agatha emerging from behind the wood-stack at the end of the vegetable garden, and that gave me ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... the atmusfere When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here— Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the trees, And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of the bees; But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mock— When the frost is on the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... astonished that he did not know what to say, but managed at last to mumble his thanks ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... an hour passed and he did not return. Then another hour followed, and Anthony, who had now begun to feel the effect of his drubbing more keenly, renewed his clamor, with the result that a half-dozen policemen appeared, causing Allan to retreat to a corner and mumble prayers. From their demeanor it looked as though they were really bent upon mischief, but Kirk soon saw that an official had come in answer to his call. He felt less reassured when he perceived that the person in uniform who now stepped forward was the same upon ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... been positively brutal to say how very far from contented he felt, so Horace could only mumble that he had never been lodged like that before in ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... women and children; from far off were heard the rhythmic cries of the mother. The old man stood for a moment as if chilled from the roots of his hair to the tips of his fingers. Then the neighbors heard his sepulchral mumble: "I'll have to borrow somewheres, beg some one," as he retreated down the stairs. He brought a physician; and when the grandson asked for money to go for the medicine, Zelig snatched the prescription ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... blanked thing! (He fumbles with the tubes in trying to readjust them. At last he succeeds, and, after listening intently, is rewarded by hearing a muffled and ghostly voice, apparently from the bowels of the earth, say—"Ha, say you so? Then am I indeed the hooshiest hearsher in the whole of Mumble-land!") ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... upon children, become to them not only hateful but impracticable. In order to seem to preach virtue we make vices attractive, and actually impart them by forbidding them. If we would have the children religious, we tire them out taking them to church. By making them mumble prayers incessantly we make them sigh for the happiness of never praying at all. To inspire charity in them, we make them give alms, as if we disdained doing it ourselves. It is not the child, but his teacher, who ought to ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... beautiful Babe-bi-bobu had not so long languished for a husband. All this delay was produced by doubt, which the poets truly declare to be the father of delay. It was a doubt which arose in the mind of one of the Brahmins, who, when a doubt arose in his mind, would mumble it over and over, but never masticate, swallow, or digest it; and thus was the preservation of the royal line endangered. For years had the aspirants for regal dignity, and more than regal beauty, hovered round the court, each with his mandolin ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... scarce above a whisper; and brown children fondled each other, laughing noiselessly, or lay asleep on rugs which would be costly elsewhere. In the bazaars nothing was selling, and no man did anything but mumble or eat, save the few scholars who, cross-legged on their mats, read and laboured towards Nirvana. Priests in their yellow robes and with bare shoulders went by, oblivious ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... I am. Any woman will break her neck to see two people, for whom she does not care a hair-pin, stand up, one in white and the other in black, and mumble a few words that she knows by heart, and then take position at the end of a room and have "society" paraded up to them by solemn little corporals with white favors, and then file off to the rear for rations of Prigord ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... hear so many words from that rigid shadow. Its monotonous mumble was fascinating, its sudden loquacity was shocking. And in the profound stillness that reigned outside it was as if there had been no one left in the world with her but the phantom of that old adventurer. ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... away, in the barn while milking—at every opportunity I went through my selection with most impassioned voice and lofty gestures, sustained by the legends of Webster and Demosthenes, resolved upon a blazing victory. I did everything but mumble a smooth pebble—realizing that most of the boys in my section were going through precisely the same struggle. Each of us knew exactly how the others felt, and yet I cannot say that we displayed acute sympathy one with another; on the contrary, those in the free section considered ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... taking them in. The other day a peasant woman called out to me in the street. I went into her house. Her stove smoked and she asked me to give her a charm to cure it. First of all I made her give me a good bit of bacon, and then I began to mumble a few words in Romany. 'You're a fool,' I said, 'you were born a fool, and you'll die a fool!' When I had got near the door I said to her, in good German, 'The most certain way of keeping your stove from ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... hands the prayers seemed to be heard. On November 4 the storm abated, and land loomed up on the horizon, dim at first, but taking shape as the vessel approached it and showing a well-defined, rock-bound harbour. Was this the home harbour? The sick crawled on hands and knees above the hatchway to mumble out their thanks to God for escape from doom. A cask of brandy was opened, {25} and tears gave place to gruff, hilarious laughter. Every man was ready to swear that he recognized this headland, that he had known they were following the right ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... Grangousier, they pray to God for us. Nothing less, answered Gargantua. True it is, that with a tingle tangle jangling of bells they trouble and disquiet all their neighbours about them. Right, said the monk; a mass, a matin, a vesper well rung, are half said. They mumble out great store of legends and psalms, by them not at all understood; they say many paternosters interlarded with Ave-Maries, without thinking upon or apprehending the meaning of what it is they say, which truly I call mocking of God, and not prayers. But so help them God, as they pray for us, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... one of the scared-mouse kind. She looks you square in the eye when there's any call for it and she don't mumble her remarks when she has something to say. Not Miss Joyce. Her words come out clear and crisp, with a slight roll to the r's and all the final letters sounded, like she'd been ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... the day Wilson sat glaring at Clayton, in his eyes the gleam of insanity. Toward evening, as the sun was sinking into the sea, he commenced to chuckle and mumble to himself, but his eyes ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... mumble an explanation, burst into tears and fled in alarm, never again to emerge from the back regions. My father commanded me to the bell again, but as I rose Thompson entered. He was even then a stately and dignified person, and it was with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... eyes gleamed strangely as though the man were laboring under a strong, repressed excitement. Newman wore an air of triumph, as though he had just accomplished a difficult victory. My tongue had suddenly become very thick, but I managed to mumble a query. ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... some five thousand out of pocket—that's all. Now, Anna, don't let us have any mumble-pie between us. I'm not the dark man of the story-books who lures the beautiful heroine on to play, and you're not the wonderful Princess who breaks her old pa and marries because he's stony. You can't get overmuch out of the old man and you're going to make the rest at Tattersalls. If you listen ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... than good manners put on his glasses to look at Mr. Edwardes, and I, having to say something, thought that I might as well introduce them to each other, though I took care to mumble Bunny's name so that it could not be heard. Mr. Edwardes bowed and opened his paper again, but Bunny having arrived at the fact that I was face to face with a don of some kind, thought he would try to pass the time pleasantly. Considering ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... part, nor help saying to ourselves, as we turned to leave the scene, "This man is not sincere in this: he is a humbug." And when, some years later, we saw him present himself before a large audience in a state not far removed from intoxication, and mumble incoherence for ten minutes, and when, in the course of the evening, we saw him make a great show of approval whenever the clergy were complimented, the impression was renewed that the man had expended his sincerity, and that nothing was real to him any more except ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... said, "Hello, Galbreath, old fellow, I thought you were in heaven long before this." He laughed a sort of dry, cracking laugh, and asked me to hand him a drink of water. I handed it to him. He then began to mumble and tell me something in a rambling and incoherent way, but all I could catch was for me to write to his family, who were living near Mt. Pleasant. I asked him if he was badly wounded. He only pulled down the blanket, that was all. I get sick when I think of it. The ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... only, in the Kursaal the warning struck the ear, not the eye. They provided French clocks with a singularly clear metallic striking tick; their blows upon the life of Time rang sharp above the chant, the mumble, and the jingle. These clocks seemed to cry aloud, and say of the hours, whose waste they recorded, "Pereunt - et - impu-tantur, pere - unt - et ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... in her chair staring at him. Her mouth opened and a mumble came from it. Then there was silence a moment, and then she began to shake, and one hand beat upon the table with its rings. So they waited a while, watching the tremulous, shapeless mass of her, and the tap, tap, tap of her hand beat through ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... and drear, As we sit and mumble together, We have no good tidings to hear We had sooner have never (So we grumble together) been born, That are so sick and forlorn; Just shadows— But once bright fishers of shallows, Swift ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... been lured to the deck and to my death! I could have gone on my knees to her and begged her forgiveness—or at least I could have, had I not been Anglo-Saxon. As it was, I could only remove my soggy cap and bow and mumble my appreciation. She made no reply—only turned and walked very rapidly toward her room. Could I have heard aright? Was it really a sob that came floating back to me through the ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... iron rules of the House of Commons is that the Speaker cannot leave the chair until a motion for the adjournment of the House has been carried. This is always proposed by the senior Government Whip. The motion is usually carried in dumb show, and with that mumble in which business is carried through in the House when there is no opposition. But it is one of the ancient and time-honoured privileges of the House of Commons to raise almost any question on the motion for the adjournment of the House. The reason, I assume, is that ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... the children of these nobles may be clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day?" The multitude were bewildered by the glare of royalty. But here and there a sullen fish-woman, leading her ragged, half-starved children, would mumble and mutter, and curse the "Austrian," as the beautiful queen swept by in her gorgeous equipage. These discontents and portentous murmurs were spreading rapidly, when neither king, queen, nor courtiers dreamed ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... party's going out"— And yawning sentries mumble, "Wirers going out," Unravelling; twisting; hammering stakes with muffled thud, They toil with stealthy haste and ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... and I will not mumble it. You all know colonial law on homicide. In the case of any person killed while in commission of a felony, no prosecution may be brought in any degree, against anybody. I'm going to contend that Leonard Kellogg was murdering a ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... opened his month, and the viper thrust his head between his lips; upon which the old man closes them and makes believe to mumble the horrid head, the body appearing violently convulsed, as if it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... spirits away. Frequently also, three crosses are seen in conspicuous places near the roadside or even in the middle of the road. They are supposed to propitiate the Almighty, and pious persons mumble prayers as they pass them. When the destruction wrought by the Martinique volcano became known here, the dismay of the countrymen was responsible for more than one "calvario" (calvary), as these collections of crosses ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... years old, and some of your masses are younger, as that of St. Thomas a Becket, the traitor, wherein you pray, That you may be saved by the blood of St. Thomas. And as for your Latin service, what are we of the laity the better for it? I think if any one were to hear your priests mumble up their service, although he well understood Latin, yet he would understand very few words of it, the priests so champ them and chew them, and post so fast, that they neither understand what they say, nor they that hear them; and in the mean time the people, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... doubled or tripled. "To look for something in several files use 'grep string blurgle blurgle'." In each case, "blurgle blurgle" would be understood to be replaced by the file you wished to search. Compare {mumble}, sense 7. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... society to ask Lords, Generals, Aldermen, and other persons of fashion, but is niggardly of his hospitality towards his own equals, is a Dinner-giving Snob. My dear friend, Jack Tufthunt, for example, knows ONE Lord whom he met at a watering-place: old Lord Mumble, who is as toothless as a three-months-old baby, and as mum as an undertaker, and as dull as—well, we will not particularise. Tufthunt never has a dinner now but you see this solemn old toothless patrician at the right-hand of Mrs. Tufthunt—Tufthunt ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said dejectedly. "It makes me yawn. John says I mumble." She looked at me sharply, distrustfully. "You are very kind, but—it's too much! Why ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to chant a French love song in a voice that had long since lost its capacity for a sustained tone. The words were distinct, although the melody was broken, and the spectacle was gruesome enough. As he concluded he looked at the valet as if for approbation and began to mumble ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... had his madness. What is mine to be? Come! We'll decide! You see I am resigned. 'Tis time to choose—and I have choice enough: My thoughtful forebears left a catalogue! Shall I be melomaniac or astrologer? Catch birds, bend o'er alembics, mumble prayers? ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... chest Blackbeard hauled out a dog-eared chart of parchment and unrolled it upon the table. The boys foresaw his intention and feared the worst. Presently they heard him mumble to himself: ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... Erik didn't know, and the old man, turning from his chair, grew sad. What was that? What? His thought mumbled a question. Sitting motionless in a corner of the room he could smile at Erik and his smile under the white beard seemed to give an answer to the mumble—an answer that irritated his son. The answer said, "Wait, wait! it is too early for you to say you have lived." What a son, what a son! whose eyes made fun of his father's ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... great reason to doubt how far the second line could justly be applied to the parish! but there was no judging of the sermon, for only detached sentences reached us in a sort of mumble. Griff afterwards declared churchgoing to be as good as a comedy, and we all had to learn to avoid meeting each other's eyes, whatever we might hear. When the scuffle and tramp of the departing congregation had ceased, we came ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... along the street, that you could climb if you wanted to, or that you could lie down under when you had run yourself out of breath, or play mumble-the-peg. My boy distinctly remembered that under one of these trees his elder brother first broached to him that awful scheme of reform about fibbing, and applied to their own lives the moral of The Trippings ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... to grin, At breakfast, on the sly, And mock the wobble of his chin And eyebrows belt so high And kind: "How did you rest, last night?" We'd mumble and let on Our voices trimbled, and our sight Was ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... cusses, and damnin', and hell fire, and the like; and I canna stomach it. What for shall they go and say as all the poor old wimmin i' tha parish is gone to the deil 'cause they picks up a stick or tew i' hedge, or likes to mumble a charm or tew o'er their churnin'? Them old wimmin be rare an' good i' ither things. When I broke my ankle three years agone, old Dame Stuckley kem o'er, i' tha hail and the snaw, a matter of five mile and more, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... obligation to the constituent units, which begins, "Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye!" and ends, "All those of you having just cause for complaint draw near and ye shall be heard." However, you would have thought it was of no import here. Custom and indifference had allowed it to sink to a mumble. A third bailiff guarded the door of the jury-room; and in addition to these there were present a court clerk—small, pale, candle-waxy, with colorless milk-and-water eyes, and thin, pork-fat-colored hair and beard, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... every morning by six o'clock.' 'You wear vastly well, my old friend, pray what age may you be'? 'Only eighty-eight, sir; in fact, eighty-nine come next Christmas pudding; aye, and though I've lost my teeth I can mumble it with as good relish and hearty appetite as anybody.' 'I'm glad to hear it; Brighton would not look like itself without you, Martha,' said I. 'Oh, I don't know, it's like to do without me, some day,' answered she, 'but while I've ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... read up to himself, or finds he has read the wrong bit, then it is all over with the poor patient's chance of not suffering. Very few people know how to read to the sick; very few read aloud as pleasantly even as they speak. In reading they sing, they hesitate, they stammer, they hurry, they mumble; when in speaking they do none of these things. Reading aloud to the sick ought always to be rather slow, and exceedingly distinct, but not mouthing—rather monotonous, but not sing song—rather loud, but not noisy—and, above all, not too long. ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... while he mumbled something which he pretended to read out of the book that he held in his hand. Then he gave him a good blow on the neck, and after that another sound thwack over the shoulders with his own sword, always as he did so continuing to mumble and murmur as though he were reading something out of his book. This being done, he commanded one of the damsels to gird on his sword, which she did with much grace and cleverness. And it was with difficulty that they all kept from laughing during this ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... quiet fun for a rainy day is Jack-stones. Although not played much nowadays it is very interesting and is to indoors what "mumble-the-peg" is to outdoors. It is played usually with small pieces of iron with six little feet: but it can also be played with small pebbles all of a size. All kinds of exercises can be used, many of which you can invent yourself but a few of the commonest are given below. 1. The five stones are thrown ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... to speak to you in a loud voice and in a tongue which you do not understand. Appear to listen intently to what I say, and occasionally mumble something as though replying in the same language—our escape may hinge upon the success ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sharp-pointed grey and glistening nails, clawed the keys with a dreadful mechanical motion. There were stacks of music-sheets on counters, and shelves, and dangling from overhead wires. The girl at the piano never ceased playing. She played mostly by request. A prospective purchaser would mumble something in the ear of one of the clerks. The fat man with the megaphone would bawl out, "'Hicky Bloo!' Miss Ryan." And Miss Ryan would oblige. She made a hideous rattle and crash and clatter of sound compared to which ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... the next morning half the twelve-year-old kids in the country will be rushing wild-eyed into school to slip the teacher the real inside about the discovery of America. By the time he gets that done, he'll be able to mumble a couple of generalities about vast and incalculable effects, and then it'll be time to tell the public about Widgets, the really safe cigarettes, all filter and absolutely free ...
— Crossroads of Destiny • Henry Beam Piper
... furiously, other armed men lay patiently waiting—waiting some word from the bulky shadow which stood with folded arms close against a square of gray, while over their heads a wretched old man paced back and forth, wringing his hands, pausing at every turn to peer out into the night and to mumble the name of ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... on naval affairs." droned the clerk, mechanically. "House Bill No. 1,109 is amended to read as follows—" And his voice sank to an unintelligible mumble, for every Senator present he well knew was aware that the amendment named Altacoola as the naval ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... football doesn't fit you for something useful?" I hear "Butter Fingers" mumble to himself. Then he stoops down. "How are you, kid, all right? We took a nice, wet roll, ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... Martial law, with its Red Flag, its 'Drapeau Rouge:' in virtue of which Mayor Bailly, or any Mayor, has but henceforth to hang out that new Oriflamme of his; then to read or mumble something about the King's peace; and, after certain pauses, serve any undispersing Assemblage with musket-shot, or whatever shot will disperse it. A decisive Law; and most just on one proviso: that ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the form of God on high, Mutter and mumble low, And hither and thither fly; Mere puppets they, who come and go At bidding of vast formless things That shift the scenery to and fro, Flapping from out ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... from the snagged hole in his hat-crown where a wisp of graying hair fluttered through, to the toes of his ungainly, rubber-clad feet; loosely disreputable, but not commonplace and not incompetent. Though his speech might be a slovenly mumble, there was no purposeless fumbling of the fingers that chose a fly and knotted it fast upon the leader. There was no bungling movement of hand or foot when he laid his pipe upon the rock, tiptoed around the corner, sent a mechanical glance ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... laughing stupidly. "Then I am two hundred and thirty-three years old! The oldest inhabitant. Surely they haven't reversed the tendency of our time and gone back to the rule of the oldest. My claims are indisputable. Mumble, mumble. I remember the Bulgarian atrocities as though it was yesterday. 'Tis a great age! Ha ha!" He was surprised at first to hear himself laughing, and then laughed again deliberately and louder. Then he realised that he was behaving ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... official reports of the Lords' debates a speech begins thus: "Lord —— (who was indistinctly heard)." The Commons' report might well adopt this salutary practice as a warning to Members who persistently mumble, or who address their remarks to the body of the House instead of to the SPEAKER. Ministers are the worst offenders. One of them was asked this afternoon, for example, whether the Judicial Adviser to the SULTAN had discouraged the use of the ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... bigger than a cow, and waving both his legs in his hands. Poor old Maum Jinkey was so scared that she chattered her new false teeth out of her mouth, and she never found those teeth to the day of her death, but had to mumble along as best she could ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... the unwritten law of the solemn and formal introduction! A great happiness might lie in their intercourse, but conventionality solemnly and selfishly forbade it, unless they could find a common acquaintance to mumble a few unmeaning words over them. Mumbo-Jumbo! What a fantastic world of stupidly obedient puppets this world of London was! She said to herself that she hated it. Then she thought of her first widowhood and of her curious year ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... and finally managed it. As Raven remembered, it was something about pa'tridges and his gun. Whether he was shaken by fright, one could not have told, but he was, as Charlotte remarked upon it afterward, "all to pieces." Raven ignored the mumble, whatever it was, and Tenney, finally understanding that he might as well be as far off the earth as Dick, for all the attention anybody was going to pay him, turned, limping, and then Raven, with that mechanical sensitiveness to physical need always ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... a moment, but gradually recovered sufficiently to mumble, "Gents, this is one on yours ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... this time a thought struck Simon, and in a low tone—for by this time the Reverend Jedediah was close at hand—he continued, "But may be daddy don't know, right down sure, what we've been doin'. Let's try him with a lie—'twon't hurt, noway: let's tell him we've been playin' mumble-peg." ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... stood looking at the scene in silent horror; they heard not Chouteau's appeals for assistance; were powerless to raise a hand. And Pache, in a sudden outburst of piety and pity, dropped on his knees, joined his hands, and began to mumble the prayers that are repeated at the bedside ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... CULCHARD, who examines it with the deepest interest.) I knock off quite a number of these while I'm abroad like this. Send 'em in letters to relatives at home—gives them a notion of the place. They are—ar—kind enough to value them. (CULCHARD makes a complimentary mumble.) Yes, I'm a very rapid sketcher. Put me with regular artists, and give us half an hour, and I—ar—venture to say I should be on terms with them. Make it three hours, and—well, I daresay ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various
... tape-opening in a rapid mumble, like a priest involved in the formula of the Mass: "Any person or agent unauthorized for this tape please refrain from viewing further, under penalties as prescribed by law." Then he looked off, out past the screen to the left, and said: "Dr. ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the habitual languor of that long illness. That satirical mumble is the only trouble he will take to lift up his testimony, except when a thing is most decidedly his duty, and then he does it ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little boy just set free from school. Thus the time passed very quickly. At last Zourine glanced at the clock, put down his cue, and told me I had lost a hundred roubles.[13] This disconcerted me very much; my money was in the hands of Saveliitch. I was beginning to mumble excuses, when ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... matter?" exclaimed Grant anxiously, but all that John could do was to mumble incoherently and point towards the interior of ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... woman; What is the colour of your eyes and hair? 50 Why, if you were a lady, it were fair The world should know—but, as I am afraid, The Quarterly would bait you if betrayed; And if, as it will be sport to see them stumble Over all sorts of scandals. hear them mumble 55 Their litany of curses—some guess right, And others swear you're a Hermaphrodite; Like that sweet marble monster of both sexes, Which looks so sweet and gentle that it vexes The very soul that the soul is gone 60 Which lifted from her limbs ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Belford, it is impossible so far to hurt the morals of this lady, as thou and thy brother varlets have hurt others of the sex, who now are casting about the town firebrands and double death. Take ye that thistle to mumble upon. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... deeply interested in this conversation, gave a great leap from Trot's shoulder and landed on that of the Scarecrow. Blinkie saw him alight and at once began to make magic passes and to mumble magic incantations. She was in a desperate hurry, knowing that she had no time to waste, and the grasshopper was so suddenly transformed into the old sailor-man, Cap'n Bill, that he had no opportunity to jump off the Scarecrow's shoulder; so his great weight bore the stuffed Scarecrow to the ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... instantly—instantly!—know the difference between "Platoon right," for instance, and "Right by squads," even though the commands may not have been given for an hour. And one must know it whether corporal or not, for half the time the corporals do not yet know it themselves, and either mumble their commands or are silent, so that they are no help. And even if a fellow knows what to do, but lags in the doing of it, then he is likely to put the whole line out. Further, freight trains rumble by ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... if you can help it," he said; "if you do, mumble any old jargon in any language you like, and throw ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... "He tried to mumble and I stooped low but he relaxed suddenly and seemed to shrink. I felt his heart but it was still. I tried his eyes and they were sightless. Patsy sent up a heartrending wail and crawled over behind his master's gun and knapsack, so I knew ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... ground, saying to Zingis: "While we read in our holy books, it shall come to pass through the power of the idol, that these two pieces of reed shall fight together, and whose part shall get the better, to that king shall the victory be given." The astrologers began to mumble their prayers and incantations, while the multitude stood around to observe the result; and after some time, the two pieces of reed seemed spontaneously to fight together, and the portion inscribed with the name of Zingis got the mastery over that of Umcan; and the Tartars ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... line. Lieutenant Jarvis was shot through the arm, Captain Belknap of E Company was lying dead near his company, and scores of other brave men had gone to their last reckoning. Hanigan, Hogan's bunkie, was badly wounded, and out of his head. Every once in a while he would mumble, "Never you mind, fellers, we will be all right yet, just stand 'em off a little while longer and Denny will be here with the 11th Cavalry. He said he'd do it and ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... he calls you?" she said. "'Tis but a mumble, his little tongue is not nimble enough for clearness, but he says it his pretty best. 'Tis Mother Anne, he ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that 9th of November his lordship has had a racking rheumatism, or a toothache, let us say, during all dinner-time—through which he has been obliged to grin and mumble his poor old speeches. Is he enviable? Would you like to change with his lordship? Suppose that bumper which his golden footman brings him, instead i'fackins of ypocras or canary, contains some abomination of senna? Away! Remove the golden goblet, insidious cupbearer! You now begin to ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fretted her so, what was wearing her down to the point of fatigue, was the patent imbecility of her reluctance. There would have been some sense of it if Cutty had proposed a real marriage. All she had to do was mumble a few words, sign her name to a document, live out West for a few months, and be in comfortable circumstances all the rest of her life. And ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... break the stare he had bent upon the girl, who flushed under his scrutiny. As a matter of fact, the trader had been too taken aback at the thought of a woman—and a young and pretty woman—being related to the owner of Mystery Ranch to do more than mumble a greeting. Then the vividness of the girl's beauty had slowly worked upon him, rendering his ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... language, under any title whatsoever, until the publication of that of the French Academy, or until twenty years have expired since the proclamation of the present decree." This cut the ground from under the feet of all rivals, and the Academy could meet twice a week as before and mumble its definitions with serene assurance. From this false security it was roused by the incident which ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... shivering dog on the floor, and Peg put a piece of meat under his nose. In her excitement, Jinnie rushed away to Lafe. Peg's mumble followed her even through ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... chauffeur was the spy, as well as the spy-courier," MacLeod said. "The information he transmitted was picked up piecemeal from different indiscreet lab-workers and students attached to our team. Of course, we are investigating, mumble-mumble. Naturally, no one will admit, mumble-mumble. No stone will be left unturned, ...
— The Mercenaries • Henry Beam Piper
... along, the wiring party's going out"— And yawning sentries mumble, "Wirers going out," Unravelling; twisting; hammering stakes with muffled thud, They toil with stealthy haste and anger in ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... Jarvis was shot through the arm, Captain Belknap of E Company was lying dead near his company, and scores of other brave men had gone to their last reckoning. Hanigan, Hogan's bunkie, was badly wounded, and out of his head. Every once in a while he would mumble, "Never you mind, fellers, we will be all right yet, just stand 'em off a little while longer and Denny will be here with the 11th Cavalry. He said he'd do it and by God! he ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... grumbling at their lack of employment, and killing the time with drinking and foolish games and gross talk. There was an old chaplain in the house, a lazy and gluttonous priest, who knew enough of his trade to mumble his mass, and no more; women there were none, except an old waiting-woman, a silent faithful soul, who loved the boy and petted him, and mourned in secret over his miserable upbringing, but who, having no store of words to tell her thoughts, could only be dumbly kind to him, and careful ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... fall, and began to mumble again. Lingard turned his ear towards him instinctively, caught something that sounded like "Very well"—then some more mumbling—then ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... of either; I remit both twain. I see the trick on't: here was a consent, Knowing aforehand of our merriment, To dash it like a Christmas comedy. Some carry-tale, some please-man, some slight zany, Some mumble-news, some trencher-knight, some Dick, That smiles his cheek in years, and knows the trick To make my lady laugh when she's dispos'd, Told our intents before; which once disclos'd, The ladies did change favours, and then we, Following the signs, woo'd but the sign of she. Now, to our perjury to ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... good, quiet fun for a rainy day is Jack-stones. Although not played much nowadays it is very interesting and is to indoors what "mumble-the-peg" is to outdoors. It is played usually with small pieces of iron with six little feet: but it can also be played with small pebbles all of a size. All kinds of exercises can be used, many of which you can invent yourself ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... glanced at his master, who nodded, whereupon Manning lifted a finger to his forehead with a low mumble, and backed cautiously ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... he wept over me and called me his dear nephew, made it his special desire that he might not hear the name of Montfort; and the Prince, though overruling him in all that pertains to matters of state, is most dutiful in all lesser matters. I hoped at least to be called Fitz Simon, but some mumble of the King turned it into Fowen, and so it has continued. I believe no one at court is really ignorant of my lineage; but among the people, Montfort is still a trumpet-call, and the ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who was shivering with cold, and understood little of this dark talk, began to mumble his ritual, skipping those parts of it which he could not remember. So another grain was planted in the cornfields of death and immortality, though when and where it should grow and what it should bear he neither knew nor cared, who wished ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... and Arethusa was so utterly bewildered long before she had ever reached the end of it, by this way she was shoved, so to speak, from person to person, without ever really finding out who half of them were, for it would seem as if there had been a conspiracy to mumble the names spoken to Arethusa, that she could almost have fled the Party. "The Advice to Young Ladies" had said nothing of such a proceeding as being part of the Routine of Parties, nor had Elinor made any mention of it. Arethusa was totally unprepared. ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... so, what was wearing her down to the point of fatigue, was the patent imbecility of her reluctance. There would have been some sense of it if Cutty had proposed a real marriage. All she had to do was mumble a few words, sign her name to a document, live out West for a few months, and be in comfortable circumstances all the rest of her ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... do no more than mumble a: "Well, if you like to wait!" and point out the room. She followed Madeleine over the threshold, drying her ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... would mumble something in the ear of one of the clerks. The fat man with the megaphone would bawl out, "Hicky Boola, Miss Ryan!" And Miss Ryan would oblige. She made a hideous rattle and crash and ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... was gazing stupidly at Patches, returned the salutation with an unintelligible mumble, and ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... and fanned me. The "Buli" was an aristocratic-looking old fellow with a large nose and a very haughty look. He is a very important chief, but knew no English, and we carried on our conversation through the medium of Masirewa. He spoke in a kind of mumble, with a very thick voice. Once when he had been mumbling worse than usual there was a kind of restrained titter from someone in the crowd at the back. The "Buli" heard it, and slowly turning his head he transfixed the crowd with his piercing gaze ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... well Began to snarl and grumble, That he should be so taken in With nuts he scarce could mumble. "Dear me," he said, "how they are burnt," And at poor pussy looking, "I cannot think how I could bear Such ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... great, roaring fires, Roaring louder than they, With their strong wines, And their concubines, And never a bell, With its swagger and swell, Calling you up with a start of affright In the dead of night, To send you grumbling down dark stairs, To mumble your prayers; But the cheery crow Of cocks in the yard below, After daybreak, an hour or so, And the barking of deep-mouthed hounds, These are the sounds That, instead of bells, salute the ear. And then all day Up and away Through the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... never expected to hear so many words from that rigid shadow. Its monotonous mumble was fascinating, its sudden loquacity was shocking. And in the profound stillness that reigned outside it was as if there had been no one left in the world with her but the phantom of that old adventurer. He was heard again: "What I could ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... gipsies to me, "that there is no credit in taking them in. The other day a peasant woman called out to me in the street. I went into her house. Her stove smoked and she asked me to give her a charm to cure it. First of all I made her give me a good bit of bacon, and then I began to mumble a few words in Romany. 'You're a fool,' I said, 'you were born a fool, and you'll die a fool!' When I had got near the door I said to her, in good German, 'The most certain way of keeping your stove from smoking is not to light any ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... ends, "All those of you having just cause for complaint draw near and ye shall be heard." However, you would have thought it was of no import here. Custom and indifference had allowed it to sink to a mumble. A third bailiff guarded the door of the jury-room; and in addition to these there were present a court clerk—small, pale, candle-waxy, with colorless milk-and-water eyes, and thin, pork-fat-colored hair and beard, who looked ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... had his projection of the self that we are so apt to make an object of invidious allusion stayed out. What it all really most comes to, you feel again, is that none of his impulses prospered in solitude, or, for that matter, were so much as permitted to mumble their least scrap there; he was predestined and condemned to sociability, which no league of neglect could have deprived him of even had it speculatively tried: whereby what was it but his own image that he most saw reflected in other faces? It would still have been there, ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... his savoir faire. His wonderful smile had turned into something sickly, his bland speech of thanks into a mumble. He turned ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... rapidly grows worse; a few hours of agony in his solitude, and all is over. Tidings of the event are carried to the nearest factory, and then to another and another. Two or three of his former acquaintances ride over to his bungalow, knock up a rude coffin, mumble a few sentences about "the resurrection and the life," "our dear brother here departed," and "ashes to ashes, dust to dust," bury him out of sight, and set up a decent stone over his grave. His place is filled again in a few weeks or months, and his successor, regardless ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... scoutmasters and chaplains and services of thanksgiving for victory, a very large part of the clergy will find themselves so closely allied with militarism when the war is over, so confused in their appreciation of what it has done for us, that they will continue to mumble only general principles and halting counsels. In any case, in the cities and large towns of this kingdom, where are found the effective controllers of our destiny, the majority do not any longer sit at the feet of the clergy. Precise statistical ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... At breakfast, on the sly, And mock the wobble of his chin And eyebrows belt so high And kind: "How did you rest, last night?" We'd mumble and let on Our voices trimbled, and our sight Was dim, ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... enemies. You profaned the church, that Bulgarian church where I took my first communion. You have despoiled the archives and burned our libraries; you ordered closed our national school where I learned to mumble the alphabet ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... the ragged tenants of the house, mostly women and children; from far off were heard the rhythmic cries of the mother. The old man stood for a moment as if chilled from the roots of his hair to the tips of his fingers. Then the neighbors heard his sepulchral mumble: "I'll have to borrow somewheres, beg some one," as he retreated down the stairs. He brought a physician; and when the grandson asked for money to go for the medicine, Zelig snatched the prescription ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... with rosemary, box, lavender, and lentisk. On the way it passes the Abbaye de Mont Majeur, a ruin of gigantic size, embracing all periods of architecture; where nothing seems to flourish now but henbane and the wild cucumber, or to breathe but a mumble-toothed and terrible old hag. The ruin stands above a desolate marsh, its vast Italian buildings of Palladian splendour looking more forlorn in their decay than the older and austerer mediaeval towers, which rise up proud and patient and defiantly erect beneath the curse ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... ourselves, old Carty, won't we?" Rex heard his cousin's charge mumble cheerfully as they started off, with a visible lengthening of his gloom at the thought ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... side, and had quickly gagged him. This had the further effect of awakening the unfortunate lad; and he struggled to loosen his bonds, but they were too strongly tied. He endeavored to answer Jack, but only a meaningless mumble resulted, for the ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... he did, for I could hear the low mumble of his voice and occasionally catch a scriptural phrase, but neither my aunt nor myself participated in this mockery of family prayers. She said she had too much to do, and she could not spare me from the cheese tub and the churn. She scolded her husband for his contributions ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... our remarks grow rarer. Then Mame begins again to mumble; once again she yields to emotion under the harsh flame of the lamp, and once again her eyes grow dim in her complicated Japanese mask that is crowned with cotton-wool, and something ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... children toil like bond slaves through life, that the children of these nobles may be clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day?" The multitude were bewildered by the glare of royalty. But here and there a sullen fish-woman, leading her ragged, half-starved children, would mumble and mutter, and curse the "Austrian," as the beautiful queen swept by in her gorgeous equipage. These discontents and portentous murmurs were spreading rapidly, when neither king, queen, nor courtiers dreamed of ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... something about young people having to make mistakes, but his mumble was pleasant, and then he crossed to her ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... dread of the coming grave, purchasing a drug for our poltroonery at the expense of our sanity. We uphold our wayward steps with the promises and the commandments for crutches, but on either side of us trudge the shadow Death and the bacchanal Sex, and we mumble prayers against the one, while we scourge ourselves for leering at the other. On one only of these can Browning be said to have spoken with novel force—the relations of sex, which he has treated with a subtlety and freedom, and often with a beauty, unapproached ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... let it so dear that he shall be undone. And he seeks to get parsons' livings into his hand, And puts in some odd dunce that to his payment will stand: So, if the parsonage be worth forty or fifty pound a year, He will give one twenty nobles to mumble service once a ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... till something seemed to dawn upon him; but the unwonted light in his eyes died out instantly. As a Jacobus on his native heath, what a mere skipper chose to say could not touch him, outcast as he was. As a ship-chandler he could stand anything. All I caught of his mumble was a vague—"quite correct," than which nothing could have been more egregiously false at bottom—to my view, at least. But I remembered—I had never forgotten—that I must see the girl. I did not mean to go. I meant to stay in the house till I ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... discusses socialism, is condemned an ignoramus out of his own mouth. He does not know the literature of socialism, its philosophy, nor its politics. He wags his head sagely and rattles the dry bones of dead and buried ideas. His lips mumble mouldy phrases, such as, "Men are not born equal and never can be;" "It is Utopian and impossible;" "Abstinence should be rewarded;" "Man will first have to be born again;" "Cooperative colonies have always failed;" and "What if we do divide up? in ten years there would be rich ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... and in such contrasted tones to the mumble in which the miser had heretofore been speaking that for the moment Roy was too ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... images of saints and martyrs, and so would make their credulous proselytes believe, that if they pay their devotion to St. Christopher in the morning, they shall be guarded and secured the day following from all dangers and misfortunes: if soldiers, when they first take arms, shall come and mumble over such a set prayer before the picture of St. Barbara, they shall return safe from all engagements: or if any pray to Erasmus on such particular holidays, with the ceremony of wax candles, and other fopperies, he shall in a short time be rewarded with a plentiful increase ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... Captain Whalley, without relaxing the set severity of his features, moved his lips to ask in a quick mumble— ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... Euchre Club and everybody was criticizing you for having solid gold prizes when they were at your house. They said it was vulgar ostentation. I didn't say anything for the longest time, but finally when they all said your money had gone to your head, hadn't it, I admit I did mumble, 'It seems so.' But it is only what everybody else says all the time, and I assure you I didn't really mean it. Of course nobody can behave just the same after they are a millionaire as they did before. But I am ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... obdurate iron, and severed the bands that bruised and held her white wrists. Even then she could not speak, though she smiled a little, faintly and forlornly and gratefully. She struggled to say one word, but it resolved itself into a cacophonous and inarticulate mumble, half-infantile, half-imbecile. ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... "Romeo and Juliet" with all my heart. Oh, light, life, truth, and lovely poetry! I sat on the cold stage, that I might hear them even mumble over their parts as they do. My father seemed to me very weak, and not by any means fit for his work to-night. After dinner went over my part again, and went to the theater at half past five. My new dress was very handsome, though rather burly, in spite of which Dall said ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... English hearts a very strong belief in freedom, and a very weak belief in right reason, we are soon silenced when a man pleads the prime right to do as he likes, because this is the prime right for ourselves too; and even if we attempt now and then to mumble something about reason, yet we have ourselves thought so little about this and so much about liberty, that we are in conscience forced, when our brother Philistine with whom we are meddling turns boldly round upon us and asks: Have you any light?—to shake our heads ruefully, and to let ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... his contribution nicely written out on quarter sheets. Whilst ASHBOURNE declaiming, DERBY seized opportunity to read his speech over to himself. This all very well if he had strictly carried out intention, but, when he grew so interested in it as to mumble passages in an audible voice, situation grew embarrassing. At last KIMBERLEY, who sat near, gently nudged him. "One at a time, my dear DERBY," he whispered. "We know you're accustomed to dual action. DARBY and JOAN, you know; ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... no farm-houses, all the people being gathered in villages. Are they thus collected by that dogma of their religion, which makes them believe, that to keep the Creator in good humor with his own works, they must mumble a mass every day? Certain it is, that they are less happy and less virtuous in villages, than they would be insulated with their families on the grounds they cultivate. The people are illy clothed. Perhaps they have put on their worst clothes at this moment, as it is raining. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... you know," replied the gentleman with a forced laugh; but before he could mumble any thing more, the party turned round one of the corners of the passage, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... Jedediah was close at hand—he continued, "But may be daddy don't know, right down sure, what we've been doin'. Let's try him with a lie—'twon't hurt, noway: let's tell him we've been playin' mumble-peg." ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... but eat the man we sent ... out oars, let's away from here though it cost our lives ..." The frightened mumble was ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... to be cheerful, and said, "Hello, Galbreath, old fellow, I thought you were in heaven long before this." He laughed a sort of dry, cracking laugh, and asked me to hand him a drink of water. I handed it to him. He then began to mumble and tell me something in a rambling and incoherent way, but all I could catch was for me to write to his family, who were living near Mt. Pleasant. I asked him if he was badly wounded. He only pulled down the blanket, that was all. I get sick when I think of it. The lower part of his body was hanging ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... the same fearless simplicity into her love. Caponsacchi falters and recoils in his adorations of her, with the compunction of the voluptuary turned ascetic; he hardly dares to call his passion by a name which the vulgar will mumble and misinterpret: she, utterly unconscious of such peril, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... boy was past speech-making now. He managed to mumble a few words of thanks, got to the ground somehow and mingled with the crowd as quickly ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... too fly. You've got only to pass a remark on his sail-cloth coat to make him shut up. All the town knows it. But he's got you to listen to his crazy talk whenever he chooses. Don't I hear you two at it, jabber, jabber, mumble, mumble——— ...
— One Day More - A Play In One Act • Joseph Conrad
... a husband. All this delay was produced by doubt, which the poets truly declare to be the father of delay. It was a doubt which arose in the mind of one of the Brahmins, who, when a doubt arose in his mind, would mumble it over and over, but never masticate, swallow, or digest it; and thus was the preservation of the royal line endangered. For years had the aspirants for regal dignity, and more than regal beauty, hovered round the court, each with his mandolin ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... modelled themselves on Talleyrand. By their very candour and openness some British diplomatists have gained an advantage over rivals who confound timidity with reserve, and have won a peculiar position of trust at foreign courts. In dealing with de Giers, Morier at any rate found no need to mumble or swallow his words. He was sure of himself and of his honourable intentions. On one occasion, after reading to that minister the exact words of the dispatch which he was sending to London, he stated his policy to him categorically. 'I always went', he said, 'upon the principle, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... and manner of speaking, too, should likewise be attended to. Some will mumble over their words, so as not to be intelligible, and others will speak so fast as not to be understood, and in doing this, will sputter and spit in your face; some will bawl as if they were speaking to the deaf: others will speak so low as scarcely to ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... form of God on high, Mutter and mumble low, And hither and thither fly; Mere puppets they, who come and go At bidding of vast formless things That shift the scenery to and fro, Flapping from out ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... world outside is snow-covered and swept with bitter winds, and the earth is gripped solid in the frost, you are very warm and comfortable. Changes of temperature do not reach you, and you sit and croon to yourself and mumble your paws, and all sorts of thoughts and tangled scraps of dreams go swimming through your head until, before you know it, you have forgotten everything and ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... mother was away, in the barn while milking—at every opportunity I went through my selection with most impassioned voice and lofty gestures, sustained by the legends of Webster and Demosthenes, resolved upon a blazing victory. I did everything but mumble a smooth pebble—realizing that most of the boys in my section were going through precisely the same struggle. Each of us knew exactly how the others felt, and yet I cannot say that we displayed acute sympathy one with ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... out no words. Suddenly the low, even mumble was broken. Some one cried out "There's got to be a divvy soon. There's no use letting Morse hold that whole seventy-five thousand any longer. I'm going to get what's coming to ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton
... were a lady, it were fair The world should know—but, as I am afraid, The Quarterly would bait you if betrayed; And if, as it will be sport to see them stumble Over all sorts of scandals. hear them mumble 55 Their litany of curses—some guess right, And others swear you're a Hermaphrodite; Like that sweet marble monster of both sexes, Which looks so sweet and gentle that it vexes The very ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... to sit facing the engine because of the draught, not to look out of the window in case she got a cinder in her eye, not to read in case she strained her eyes, not to rub her fingers on the pane, not to cross her knees because it was unladylike, not to shout, not to mumble, not to say "What?" not to yawn without putting her finger over her mouth, etcetera, ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... anxiously, but all that John could do was to mumble incoherently and point towards the interior of ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... purgatory for them, he could bring him to heaven. And so we must conclude he died 1733, Dec. 23d, and went down to Tophet with a lie in his right hand, and so remains in spite of all the priest could mutter or mumble over him, as the author of his Elegy in his master's name ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... hire for a trifle the first impudent pedant whom they come across, and who only wants to be talked of, whether for good or ill. The dead, they say, is none the wiser if an ape stands in a black dress in the pulpit, and beginning with a hoarse, whimpering mumble, passes little by little into a loud howling. Even the sermons preached at great Papal ceremonies are no longer profitable, as they used to be. Monks of all orders have again got them into their hands, and preach as if they were speaking to the mob. Only a few years ago a sermon ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... the thoughts, of the white people better than of her own. Being quick to imitate, she spoke in the correcter language of those whom she knew best, rather than the soft, ungrammatical dialect of the plantation slave or the grunt and mumble of the isolated African. Realizing that service was to be her lot, she elected to render that service where and to whom she herself ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... game of mumble-te-peg that me and Mr. Martin played, he did not come to our house for two weeks. Mr. Travers said perhaps the earth he had to gnaw while he was drawing the peg had struck to his insides and made him sick, but I knew it couldn't be that. I've drawn pegs that were drove ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the first act the young girl Zoe appears by some great rocks in the desert, and sits down exhausted, to rest. Presently arrive a pauper couple stricken with age and infirmities; and they begin to mumble and pray to the Spirit of Life, who is said to inhabit that spot. The Spirit of Life appears; also Death—uninvited. They are (supposably) invisible. Death, tall, black-robed, corpse-faced, stands motionless and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that the pail fell to the ground and the berries were spilled, "you ain't gwine for ter sell me to nobody? Say you ain't, an' fo' de Lawd I'll never touch nothin', nor lie, nor sass ole Miss, nor make faces and mumble like she does. I'll be a fust cut nigger, an' say my prars ebery night. I'se done got a new one down ter ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... general attitude towards the forthcoming exhibition was merely one of politeness. As the first case was opened, however, his manner completely changed. Without taking the slightest further notice of his hostess, he adjusted a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and commenced to mumble eagerly to himself. Mrs. Rheinholdt, who did not understand a word, strolled around the apartment, yawned, and finally interrupted a little stream of eulogies, not a word of which she understood, concerning a green beetle ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... course it must be looked after right away. And then, Doctor, I'd like to talk to you, if you don't mind." She watched them retreat to the bunk-house together, Swan's big form towering above the doctor's slighter figure. Swan was talking earnestly, the mumble of his voice reaching Lorraine without the enunciation of any particular word to give a clue to what he was saying. But it struck her that his voice did not sound quite natural; not so Swedish, ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... dumb in him for the moment from lack of co-ordination. The two or three things he might have said seemed to strangle each other in the attempt to get right of way. In response to Guion's confidences he could only mumble something incoherent and pass on to the drawing-room door. It was a wide opening, hung with portieres, through which he could see Olivia Guion standing by the crackling wood fire, a foot on the low fender. One hand rested ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... folks" church on Sundays. They were seated in the rear of the church. The white minister would arise and exhort the slaves to 'mind your masters, you owe them your respect.' An old Christian slave who perceived things differently could sometimes be heard to mumble, "Yeah, wese jest as good as deys is only deys white and we's black, huh." She dare not let the whites hear this. At times meetin's were held in a slave cabin where some "inspired" slave ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... in a low mumble as the men passed on. Gregory emerged from his cover and looked after the two fishermen. Then he noticed the girl had finished her calculations and ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... years!" he said to himself over and over again, laughing stupidly. "Then I am two hundred and thirty-three years old! The oldest inhabitant. Surely they haven't reversed the tendency of our time and gone back to the rule of the oldest. My claims are indisputable. Mumble, mumble. I remember the Bulgarian atrocities as though it was yesterday. 'Tis a great age! Ha ha!" He was surprised at first to hear himself laughing, and then laughed again deliberately and louder. Then he realised that he was behaving foolishly. ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... conviction that I was different in essence from the other orphans. This was not mere conceit, I think, because it emanated rather from pride in my father than from any exalted opinion of myself. But, whatever the rights of it, no suitable remark came to me. Indeed, beyond an incoherent mumble over the hand-shaking, I might have been a mute for all the part I had so far taken in this interview. And just then I caught a glimpse of Sister Agatha emerging from behind the wood-stack at the end of the vegetable garden, and that gave me ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... asked Joseph Beaker. His face was lop-sided, like his figure, and his speech came in a hollow mumble which was difficult to follow. Joseph was content to pass as the harmless lunatic of the parish, but there was a shrewdly humorous twinkle in his eye which damaged his pretensions with the more discerning ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... dressed in fashion now gone by, Mutter and mumble low, And hither and thither fly: Mere puppets they who come and go At the bidding of a huge formless Thing That shifts the scenery to and fro, Ruling the World from flat and wing— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... number are here prisoners: My cousin Morton, whom I came to visit. But he (good man) is at his morrow mass; But I, that neither care to say nor sing, Come to seek that preaching hate and prayer, And while they mumble up their orisons, We'll play a game at bowls. What say'st ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... he paused, coughed, and completed what he had to say in a sort of mumble, but his meaning was wholly clear. He would not accept the offer of Pauline in marriage, even though she was the sister ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... closed and the light was cut off. Tom and Astro rose and quietly made their way toward the door. They stopped, leaned against the door, and tried to hear what was going on inside, but were unable to distinguish more than a vague mumble of voices, because of their masks and the thickness of the door. Suddenly, however, they were conscious of footsteps approaching ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... answer the bell in person. There was a low mumble of voices. Then the landlady appeared in the parlor doorway, the ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... right, old mumble-peg. Don't you get carried away by the fire of old Rome. That's your motto. Here are the tools; a perfect picter of the sublime and beautiful; and all I hope is, that our friend and pitcher, the ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... my robe. So long as stand these walls I cannot leave them. Yet will I go: behold you, that stand by, A mother by her own son thrust away, Cast out—ha, ha!—in my old age, infirm, To totter and mumble in oblivion! ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... kill all modulation, all tone-color, all delicate shades of thought and passion equally, and resolve that great gift, which I sometimes think the greatest difference between me and my dog, into a toneless, mumble-chopped grunting? ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... Wampus, without moving. "Him want to steal; Mumble he make bark noise; for me, I ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... speak to you in a loud voice and in a tongue which you do not understand. Appear to listen intently to what I say, and occasionally mumble something as though replying in the same language—our escape may hinge upon the success of ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to mumble an explanation, burst into tears and fled in alarm, never again to emerge from the back regions. My father commanded me to the bell again, but as I rose Thompson entered. He was even then a stately and dignified person, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... the committee on naval affairs." droned the clerk, mechanically. "House Bill No. 1,109 is amended to read as follows—" And his voice sank to an unintelligible mumble, for every Senator present he well knew was aware that the amendment named Altacoola as the naval ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... was past speaking, so I tried to make 'im understand, but 'e only mumbled in reply. W'en I was about to go 'e seemed to mumble very 'ard, so I put down my ear to listen, and 'e w'ispered quite distinct tho' very low—'All right, my 'eartie. I'm too cute for 'em by a long way; go aboard an' say nothin'.' So I came away, and I've scarce been five minutes aboard before you arrived. My own opinion is, that 'e's ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... life. After all, in spite of the pretentious impostors who trade upon the claim, literature, contemporary literature, is the breath of civilized life, and those who sincerely think and write the salt of the social body. To mumble over the past, to live on the classics, however splendid, is senility. The New Republic, therefore, will sustain its authors. In the past the author lived within the limits of his patron's susceptibility, and led the world, so far as he did lead it, from that ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... For a moment he waited. Was it for surrender? Once he started to speak, but was cut short by the other. For all of his weakness there was spirit to the young man. He even laughed. The Rhamda drew out a watch. He held up two fingers. I heard Hobart mumble. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... themselves extremely wise When any sense records its lies, They mumble what they feel or hear, Unmindful ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... her hand to her mouth to suppress an exclamation. Pinto was talking, but his voice was a mumble. ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... If several words are to be replaced, blurgle may well be doubled or tripled. "To look for something in several files use 'grep string blurgle blurgle'." In each case, "blurgle blurgle" would be understood to be replaced by the file you wished to search. Compare {mumble}, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... am. Any woman will break her neck to see two people, for whom she does not care a hair-pin, stand up, one in white and the other in black, and mumble a few words that she knows by heart, and then take position at the end of a room and have "society" paraded up to them by solemn little corporals with white favors, and then file off to the rear for rations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... month, and the viper thrust his head between his lips; upon which the old man closes them and makes believe to mumble the horrid head, the body appearing violently convulsed, as if it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... like this?" exclaimed the youth, almost frightened, and hotly began to mumble to her some words about her beauty, about her kindness, telling her how sorry he was for her and how bashful in her presence. And she listened and kept on kissing his cheeks, his neck, his head and ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... tell, easy. Pap says when they keep looking at you right stiddy, they're a-witching you. Specially if they mumble. Becuz when they mumble they're saying ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with stern and wrinkled face. Her mild eyes gliding very slow Across the letters to and fro, While wagged the guttering candle flame In the wind that through the window came. And sometimes in the silence she Would mumble a sentence audibly, Or shake her head as if to say, 'You silly souls, to act this way!' And never a sound from night I'd hear, Unless some far-off cock crowed clear; Or her old shuffling thumb should turn Another page; and rapt and stern, Through her great glasses ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... throwing it for him to retrieve. Lad made a tentative snap at the bag, his tail wagging harder than ever. But he missed it. And, in another moment the man stopped swinging the bag and tucked it under his arm again as he began to mumble with ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... could have planted finger and foot on the ledges of that solid precipice and climbed to the invisible summit. Hilderman was muttering to himself beneath his breath, but I was too dazed, my brain was too numbed to make any sense out of the confused mumble of words which came from him. Dennis held my arm in a vice-like grip that stopped the circulation, and almost made me ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... The blotched skin gradually lightened to its natural red. The pale eyes lost their fishy glaze. They stared dazedly up into the deeply concerned face of Carmena. She flung the last cupful of water from the bowl. Slade roused enough to mumble virulent curses. ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... another of his colleagues turned their heads, and smiled faintly. He slept through two acts and the intervals between them, in spite of the voices from the stage and the loud talking between the acts, and woke up in the middle of the third act, to mumble in my ear, "It is not much pleasure to see the piece ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... moved down to the doorway amidship that led below, he heard Galton mumble: "Yes, we'll be going, Hi think, down some sea sorpint's scaly throat, but th' tug an' th' ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... come faster than fate: we are they who ride early or late: We storm at your ivory gate: Pale Kings of the Sunset, beware! Not on silk nor in samet we lie, not in curtained solemnity die Among women who chatter and cry, and children who mumble a prayer. But we sleep by the ropes of the camp, and we rise with a shout, and we tramp With the sun or the moon for a lamp, and the spray of the wind ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... squat, outstretched head on the centre of the knee-cap. And so cunningly was the creature perched (as its owner gleefully pointed out) that the least movement of his crural muscles set the jagged backbone a-quivering, and the slobbering lips to mumble and mow. Cospatric said that dragon was a most finished piece of workmanship, and worth all ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... owing to the habitual languor of that long illness. That satirical mumble is the only trouble he will take to lift up his testimony, except when a thing is most decidedly his duty, and then he does it ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... men lay patiently waiting—waiting some word from the bulky shadow which stood with folded arms close against a square of gray, while over their heads a wretched old man paced back and forth, wringing his hands, pausing at every turn to peer out into the night and to mumble the name of his ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... good manners put on his glasses to look at Mr. Edwardes, and I, having to say something, thought that I might as well introduce them to each other, though I took care to mumble Bunny's name so that it could not be heard. Mr. Edwardes bowed and opened his paper again, but Bunny having arrived at the fact that I was face to face with a don of some kind, thought he would try to pass the time pleasantly. Considering what he had already said about race-horses ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... there to keep evil spirits away. Frequently also, three crosses are seen in conspicuous places near the roadside or even in the middle of the road. They are supposed to propitiate the Almighty, and pious persons mumble prayers as they pass them. When the destruction wrought by the Martinique volcano became known here, the dismay of the countrymen was responsible for more than one "calvario" (calvary), as these collections of crosses are called. It is especially ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... it for her admonition, and observed, 'But she was good,' only, however, in a mumble, that the other two thought it inexpedient to notice, though it made both hearts ache for her, even Alice's—with an additional pang of self-reproach that she herself was not good enough to ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of age; and we keep the secret even from her father. In this village you will mumble over the bans without one of your congregation ever taking heed of the name. I shall stay here a month for the purpose. She is in London, on a visit to a relation in the city. The bans on her side will ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the fair brow of that beautiful college; only, in the Kursaal the warning struck the ear, not the eye. They provided French clocks with a singularly clear metallic striking tick; their blows upon the life of Time rang sharp above the chant, the mumble, and the jingle. These clocks seemed to cry aloud, and say of the hours, whose waste they recorded, "Pereunt - et - impu-tantur, pere - unt - ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... dictates of nature. The remembrance of those childish reproaches haunts me yet oftentimes in my dreams. My school-days come again, and the horror I used to feel, when in some silent corner, retired from the notice of my unfeeling playfellows, I have sat to mumble the solitary slice of gingerbread allotted me by the bounty of considerate friends, and have ached at heart because I could not spare a portion of it, as I saw other boys do, to some favorite boy; for if I know my own heart, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... lots of songs and we played marbles, mumble peg, and town ball. In de winter we would set around de fire and listen to our Mammy and Pappy tell ghost tales and witch tales. I don't guess dey was sho' nuff so, but we ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... on his knees trying to mumble a prayer, while the minister sat with bowed head. The lantern cast flickering shadows in the corners of the room, and the firelight danced and fell. A water bug crawled over the floor; a spider dropped from the rude rafters; ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... sooner got Dad to his room than he began to mumble that you were to blame for his condition," cut in the lawyer. "He connected you in no favorable way with some woman in Australia. This man Phillips was involved, too, from what I could gather. I was questioning him when the doctor arrived, ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... insatiable thirst That whelmed their parched bodies, lo, would make A goodly shower seem like to scanty drops. Respite of torment was there none. Their frames Forspent lay prone. With silent lips of fear Would Medicine mumble low, the while she saw So many a time men roll their eyeballs round, Staring wide-open, unvisited of sleep, The heralds of old death. And in those months Was given many another sign of death: The intellect of mind by sorrow and dread Deranged, ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... of the word brought her feet to a halt. MacQueen padded across till he faced her. "Don't make any mistake, girl. You're mine. I don't care how. If it suits you to have a priest mumble words over us, good enough. But I'm the man you've got ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... very loving and gentle that she give me so great a work, because that she have her hands so little. And truly, she presently to stop me of my mocking; for she put her pretty hands upon my mouth, and I then to have to mumble and to laugh, and so she to go forward again ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... chargeable long bill of ana's: those of my family have the grace to die cheaper. In a word, Sir Dominick, we understand one another's business here: I am resolved to stand like the Swiss of my own family, to defend the entrance; you may mumble over your pater nosters, if you please, and try if you can make my doors fly open, and batter down my walls with bell, book, and candle; but I am not of opinion, that you are ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... cat—for I had got into the habit of talking to him quite as much as he talked to me—while we sat at supper together on the last evening that we were to pass on board of the Ville de Saint Remy; and while he did not make much of a reply to me he did mumble some sort of a purring answer that I took to mean he was willing, if I were, to ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... were mumble-the-peg, high-spy, snap- the-whip, a rather dangerous performance, in which a long row of boys, with the biggest boy at one end, and tapering down to the smallest at the other end, would run over a ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... meals, when they sat opposite each other, not looking at each other, never speaking, forcing themselves to eat a few mouthfuls, not so much for the sake of eating as for the sake of appearances. Christophe would contrive to mumble a few words, but Louisa would not reply; and when she tried to talk he would be silent. This state of things was intolerable to both of them, and the longer it went on the more difficult it became to break it. Were they going to part like ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
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