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More "Stammer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and end by entangling themselves with one another. Whereas most people, just as we provide supports for flowers, bestow certainties and truths upon their words to which they cling, the sincere refuse to yield to any such illusions. They hesitate, stammer and contradict themselves ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... real and anxious earnestness in his assurance. "It's because I don't see you. If I were face to face with you, I'd stammer and get red and make a regular imbecile of myself. Another reason why I stick down here and decline to yield ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... after one of these absences that Jim Spalding, the old timber-jack, told Mrs. Gaynor in his abashed stammer that Mark King had showed up while they were gone. Gloria, on her way to her room, whirled and came back, and extracted the tale in its entirety, pumping it out of the brief, few-worded old Spalding in jerky details. King had appeared late ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... stops to 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 ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... consonants. They would be almost pure hexameters, if in lieu of the long a[a-macron]nd, we could put e[e-breve]t, or te [tau epsilon]. And there are only three Saxon words in the two lines. But hexameters consisting of purely English words, especially of Anglo-Saxon words, halt and stammer like a schoolboy's exercise. The attempt of Kingsley in Andromeda is most ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... orders Silvain to be shot. But Rose bravely defends her lover, threatening to reveal the dragoon's neglect of duty. {68} When therefore Belamy's superior appears to hear the important news of which the messenger told him, his corporal is only able to stammer out that nothing in particular has happened, and so after all, Georgette is saved from discovery and Rose becomes Silvain's ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... know all about it. You needn't stammer. You and Allen are getting a good deal out of the Haneys, and want to be decent in return. Well, I think well of you for it, and I'll do my mite. I'll have young Fordyce in, and Alice; being Quakers and 'plain people,' ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... very greatly, or at any rate matters enough to disturb our amusement, our good-temper, our toleration. Nothing matters so very greatly. And yet everything—each of us, as we try to make our difficult meanings clear, the meanings of our hidden souls, and each of these meanings themselves as we stammer them forth to one another—matters so "wonderfully," ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... husbands and brothers in cleverness and appreciation. Among small tradesmen, the wife always comes to the rescue of her slow spouse when she sees him befogged in a bargain. In the fields, you ask a peasant some question about your journey. He will hesitate, and stammer, and end with, "Quien sabe?" but his wife will answer with glib completeness all you want to know. I can imagine no cause for this, unless it be that the men cloud their brains all day with the fumes of tobacco, and the ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... a stifled cry, thrust his hand into his pocket and began to stammer inarticulate syllables, while Mme. Dugrival ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... saw that they took me for the assassin. I recovered force and energy enough to free myself from the hands of those who held me, while I managed to stammer forth—'I did not do it! Indeed, indeed I did not!' A couple of gendarmes held the muzzles of their carbines against my breast.—'Stir but a step,' said they, 'and you are a dead man.'—'Why should you threaten me with death,' cried I, 'when I have ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... set every nerve of me dancing. I suppose Paragot found his interest in me because I was such an impressionable youngster. When, at the abrupt finale, he asked me what I thought of it, I could scarce stammer a word. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... way, would you like to know why universities suffer from this curse of nervous disease? Why the great personages stammer or have St Vitus' dance, or jabber at the lips, or hop in their walk, or have their heads screwed round, or tremble in the fingers, or go through life with great goggles like a motor car? Eh? I will tell you. It is the punishment of their intellectual pride, than which no sin is more ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... insult him by saying, that when he so strangely rumbles, he talks through his nose. But then again, what has the whale to say? Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living. Oh! happy that the world is such ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... three buckets of a filthy black fluid that old Jimmy declared was water. We annoyed him fearfully by pretending we did not know what it was. Poor old chap, he couldn't explain how angry he was, but he managed to stammer out, "White fellow—fool; pony drink 'em." The day was excessively hot, the thermometer stood at 106 degrees in the shade. The horses or ponies, as universally called at Fowler's Bay, drank the dirty water with ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... the judge, "tell us—" He proceeded no further. Villefort tried to rise, and made strenuous efforts to stammer forth some words. The judge waited a short ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... heart, but with hesitating speech. When the little fair-haired officer dared to look him in the face and insult him, he, holding the sword of the people, he, General of the sovereign Assembly, he only knew how to stammer out such wretched phrases as these, "I have just declared to you that we are unable, 'unless compelled and constrained,' to obey the order which prohibits us from remaining assembled together." He spoke of obeying, he who ought to command. They had girded him with his scarf, and it seemed to ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... Hilary looked very uncomfortable. With an apologetic air he began to stammer something about Parish Councils. I was not to be diverted by any such maneuver. It was impossible that he could really wish to ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope
... confused, but he managed to stammer that it was a present for her. Femke said she would always take good care ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... at the lot of a mere commuter, You think that my life is hard, mayhap, But I'm sure than you I am far acuter: I ain't afraid of no cat nor trap." The city rat could but meekly stammer, "Don't use such grammar, My ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... in suspense, took in nothing of the president's speech beyond the acceptance of his offer, and, pale with relief, he tried to stammer his thanks and his devotion to his chosen cause. He made no attempt to contradict the president's confident prophecies; he only made the greatest possible haste to the tower-rooms which were to be his home. His eyes filled with thankfulness at his lot as he ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... persisted, with a certain awkward doggedness which was not going to allow so slight a hint that his further attendance was unnecessary, to baffle him. He did not speak until they had passed down the stone steps to the pavement, and then his utterance began with a half-embarrassed stammer, as if the shadow of displeasure demanded justification on ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... because we had things to talk over, and it seemed the only place where we could get away from prying eyes. Somehow I stayed on and on, not realizing it was so late . . . and then, and then . . ." She began to stammer; defiance left her . . . "then, that awful knocking . . . those faces staring in! . . . all those brutes of women!" She covered her eyes with her hands and broke down utterly. "My ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... forth for thee, Renewing so from either spring The songs which both thy countries sing: Or we shall fear lest, heavened thus long, Thou should'st forget thy native song, And mar thy mortal melodies With broken stammer ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... he said, with a slight stammer that somehow lent an additional kindliness to his tone, "what has the day's work been? You first, Herr Graf," he added, turning to the Count. "I suppose that you have made a ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... a swift pace recognised Gilbert and stopped. They shook hands. Grail was silent, Egremont began to stammer words. He had been to see Bunce, just now, for such and such reasons, with such and such results. But he could not stop, he had ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... McGee, you're the pick of gentility; Nothing can phase you, you've such a facility; Nobody ever yet found your utility— There is the charm of you, Barney McGee; Under conditions that others would stammer in, Still unperturbed as a cat or a Cameron, Polished as somebody in the Decameron, Putting the glamour on price or Pawnee. In your meanderin', Love and philanderin', Calm as a mandarin Sipping his tea! Under the art of you, Parcel and part of you, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... strive to be like unto the Lord, has made me overlook it till datum, and in return for my goodness she raises this outcry against me." And when I replied, "How does your lordship know that the witch raised such an outcry against you?" he first began to stammer, and then said, "Why, you yourself charged me thereon before the judge. But I bear you no anger therefor, and God knows that I pity you, who are a poor weak old man, and would gladly help you if I were able." Meanwhile he led me up four or ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... gratitude at each clause in this statement of his advantages, the poor Dominie was at last able to stammer out that Frank Kennedy had taken charge of Master Harry, in the face of his protest, and had carried him off to Warroch Head to see the taking of Dirk Hatteraick's ship by the King's sloop-of-war, which he had ridden all the way to ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... hadn't any chin, Her hands were rough, her feet she turned invariably in; Her general form was German, By which I mean that you Her waist could not determine To within a foot or two: And not only did she stammer, But she used the kind of grammar That is called, for sake of ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... from an entire stranger was unlooked for by Wilmot. He knew not what to make of it; it was so different from the cold, money-making men of the North. He tried to stammer out his thanks, when Mr. Edson interrupted him by nudging Mr. Woodburn and saying: "Don't you mind old Middleton. He's been tarin' round after a Yankee teacher these six weeks. I reckon ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... I tried to, tried to utter a prompt denial, but the words would not come. Her "guess" was so close to the truth that I could only stammer and hesitate. ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... find priests and monks who are horrified, as at some prodigy, if they stammer, or repeat even a syllable in the Canon of the Mass,[16] though this may be a natural defect of the tongue, or an accident, and is not a sin. Again, there is no priest who does not confess that he was distracted, or ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... little later, his eyes reddened with tears, his hair rumpled, his face flushed. He seemed like a man awed by an entirely new experience. He could not speak, he could only stammer brokenly:— ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... question came leaping upon the tortured girl in the stand, Cynthe rose to her feet. She expected to hear the girl stammer and blurt out something that would give them a chance to ask her further questions. But when she saw the girl reel and quiver in pain, when she saw her gasp for breath and self-control, when she saw the hunted agony ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... explain that he already had a family—with stepchildren, so to speak, who adored him. And what could he say to his mother's obsession, to which she came back again and again—her longing to see her grandchildren before she died? Madame Dupont waited only long enough for George to stammer out a few protestations, and then in the next breath to take them back; after which she proceeded to go ahead with the match. The family lawyers conferred together, and the terms of the settlement were worked out and agreed upon. It happened that immediately afterwards ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... stammer, a hesitation, a slight attempt to explain, and then the truth came out. He had stolen the extra tickets from two fellow-laborers only a few minutes before, and had not reflected upon the difficulties of the situation. I gave him some good advice, required him to restore the stolen tickets, and promise ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... what I am. Ignorant, rough man I was, with the merest flicker of spiritual life; but she cared for my soul, and was so patiently loving that she led me to know God.' Bailey was afflicted with a stammer when he was converted. Of this, he says, 'She talked to me so calm and quiet. "Go slow, now," she'd say, "Count." She would insist upon my giving my testimony, and if she saw I was going to be fairly stuck, ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... sitting at their doors put down their work and call to a child of two or three playing in the street for him to come and take the breast. Did Augustin remember these things? At least he recalled his nurses' games, and the efforts they made to appease him, and the childish words they taught him to stammer. The first Latin words he repeated, he picked up from his mother and the servants, who must also have spoken Punic, the ordinary tongue of the populace and small trader class. He learned Punic without ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... had ebbed surged slowly back again. It surged back under the transparent white skin, as red wine fills a glass. Her lips parted to stammer the confession that she had no clothes except those she wore; but she ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... lady, and she said a great many very pretty things to him, which made the gallant little hero blush like a rose in June, and stammer so that he could ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... whirled, and caught a brief glimpse of a crumpled little figure behind him, evidently too scared to cry, and yet not quite at the fainting point of terror. He backed, and began to stammer an apology; but she did not wait to hear a word of it. For an instant she stared into his face, and then, like a rabbit released from its paralysis of dread, she darted past him and deaf up the stone steps into the house. He heard the kitchen-door shut, and the click of the lock. He heard other ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... well," said General Sigel, "I think I shall want this place to-morrow for a hospital. Madam, your kindness will be reciprocated." He spoke very emphatically, whereat the pretty daughter began to cry, and the mother to stammer apologies, and said she would do the best she could for them, but she really had nothing to cook. The general retired very indignant. Whether or not his threat was carried out I do not know, for the next morning we were off without trying to get breakfast. On asking ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... keeping quiet in the corner. Oh, but they are stupid, these royal people, all except my own Princess and the dear old Queen at Windsor. Neither York nor Lyonesse knew in the least what to say, and the Princess let them stammer on without helping them. I could ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... Before Rob could stammer a word in answer, Captain Cuttle turned out, all in a heap, and covered the boy's mouth with ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... of the early victims. Every member of the family I boarded with died within a week, and I was left in the house alone. This man, this peculiar fellow, Nat Parker, found me, took charge of me and did not leave me until I was out of danger. Of course, there was no way to reward him—you can merely stammer your gratitude to the man who has saved your life. He told me that the time might come when I could do him a good turn. Well, I met him the other day in New Orleans, and I incidentally spoke of my intention to sell my paper. He said that he would buy it. I told him ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... in your chair like a queen and wait on you," he said with a soft boyish stammer; "but I am too dazed with happiness to ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... got his grammar badly tangled, but my heart burned as I listened. And I have heard a man talk with smooth speech, and it rolled off me as easily as it rolled out of him. Do your best, and leave the rest. If we are in touch with God His fire burns whether the tongue stammer or has good control of ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... stutter; it wasn't a laugh, for I haven't laughed in years. All my laughing since 1889 has been a strictly intellectual process; but I did have an awful pain because I could not digest his statement with a bouncing laugh. All I could do was to stammer and splutter like a bass viol tuning up, while I sozzled around in my chair trying to break in with something that would count. Why should a man of my temperament take a hand in love, war or diplomacy? As a theoretical manipulator of fathers-in-law, ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... yes. There's nothing to be done there. The professors—I don't think they like him much; he is too clever. When he came into the class-room and talked Latin to Johnson, the Professor of Latin, and Johnson could only stammer out a word or two, I guess he didn't make a friend;" and the girl laughed at ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... and was about to stammer out some awkward reply, when the marshal of the household threw open the doors of the banquet-hall, and approaching the king, cried out, "Le roi ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... racked him: Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead: Tussis attacked him.... So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled Hoti's business—let it be!— Properly based Oun— Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, Dead from the waist down. Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: Hail to your purlieus, All ye highfliers ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... I admitted; and contrived to stammer out, "and I am very sorry that Doctor Mittendorf thinks you will ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... is going you manage, though almost bursting with the effort, to stammer out—"What do you mean by telling tales of me to all the fellows?" He looks perplexed, as if at a loss for your meaning. "Tell tales of you?" says he. "I don't know what you mean, ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... thou origin? Is he not sailing Lost like thyself on an ocean unknown, and is he not guided By the same stars that guide thee? Why shouldst thou hate then thy brother? Hateth he thee, forgive! For 't is sweet to stammer one letter Of the Eternal's language;—on earth it is called Forgiveness! Knowest thou Him, who forgave, with the crown of thorns on his temples? Earnestly prayed for his foes, for his murderers? Say, dost thou know him? Ah! thou confessest his name, so follow likewise his example, Think ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... that she could calmly look upon Wilford Cameron's wife; but the sight of Katy, together with the errand on which she came, had unnerved her, and she wept bitterly in her desolation, until Katy's reappearance startled her from her position on the floor, making her stammer out some excuse about "homesickness and the seeing Katy ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... related the history of the paymaster's recent experiences and bravery so effectively that the poor little man became rosy with confusion, and when at the conclusion of the narrative his health was pledged with a round of cheers, he could only stammer in reply:— ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... placed it unnoticed in her hand. The banker's wife flushed and then turned pale. She understood. Annie would spare her. Her lips parted to protest. Even she was taken back by such an exhibition of unselfishness as this. She began to stammer thanks. ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... increased with each day. Occasionally the fever would go down sufficiently to allow him to get something to eat. Then it would be worse than before. In his dire need he wanted to pray, but he was so weak that he could only stammer, "Dear God, help me, or I ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... not the case," broke in Lateral Stability, and affecting the fashionable Flying Corps stammer, "it would be a h-h-h-o-r-rible affair! If there were too much Keel-Surface in front, then that gust would blow the Aeroplane round the other way a very considerable distance. And the right-hand Surface being on the outside of the turn would have more speed, ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... had already been set up in type that afternoon from his manuscript, and consequently they did not go over it to see whether it had been changed or not. He had read three pages and had gone on to the fourth when he lost his place and then he began to tremble and stammer. He then turned it over two or three times, threw the manuscript upon the table, and, as they say in the west, "let himself go." Now the stammering man who had created only silent derision up to that point, suddenly flashed out into ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... infinite goodness has given me a clear insight into the deep mysteries of Charity. If I could but express what I know, you would hear a heavenly music; but alas! I can only stammer like a child, and if God's own words were not my support, I should be tempted to beg leave to hold my peace. When the Divine Master tells me to give to whosoever asks of me, and to let what is mine be taken without asking it again, it seems ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... not matter in the least," Drusie said eagerly, when Hal began to stammer out his shamefaced apologies. "I don't want a present from you one bit. I know quite well that boys must have a great deal to do with their ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... solitary walk to give Span a run, she saw, with annoyance, James Tapster following her, and to her acute discomfiture he managed to stammer out what was tantamount to an offer of marriage. Though, in a sense, she had certainly tried to attract him, she felt, all at once, miserably ashamed of her success. So much so, indeed, that she pretended at first not to understand what he meant. But at ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... who lost it. To Napoleon it is a panic; Bluecher sees nothing in it but fire; Wellington does not understand it at all. Look at the reports; the bulletins are confused; the commentaries are entangled; the latter stammer, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... justifiable he personally would have contended before archangels. This miserly uncle was keeping from him money that was as incontestably his own as the being which also his mother had given him. Before all the angelic host he would thus have protested- without stammer, without blush; with the inspiration of righteousness, with the integrity of innocence. But to protest his cause before his Mary was another matter. There might be no occasion to protest; his Mary might see eye to eye with him in the matter. She might; but it was an eventuality ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... last night. If I did not, let me say now that I think you have made good in every particular—and that I trust you in every particular. What I wished especially to say now," she went on briskly, giving Larry no chance to stammer out his appreciation, "is that I wish to go ahead without any delay with your proposition for developing the Sherwood properties in New York City which we discussed some time ago. A former objection ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... derived from the Latin sto; for example, stand, stay, that is, to remain, or to prop; staff, stay, that is, to oppose; stop, to stuff, stifle, to stay, that is, to stop; a stay, that is, an obstacle; stick, stut, stutter, stammer, stagger, stickle, stick, stake, a sharp, pale, and any thing deposited at play; stock, stem, sting, to sting, stink, stitch, stud, stuncheon, stub, stubble, to stub up, stump, whence stumble, stalk, to ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... occasionally, from a certain ill-defined sense of what may be due to their position, yet are obviously aware that what they say is entitled to no weight, and are greatly relieved when the unwelcome and disagreeable duty has been discharged. They are the men who hesitate and stammer, whose hats and canes are always in their way, and who have no very clear notions about what should be done with their hands. A visitor who chances to spend an evening in the House of Lords for the first and last time, while noblemen of this stamp are quieting their tender ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... stare. "I leave it to you, Gov'ner," he continued to stammer at length. "S'y you was me and I was ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... could only stammer over the First Reader at her mother's knee, was obliged to confess that she had never made ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May
... ran on smilingly: "He promised to shackle you to a table until I could stammer out my halting apologies, and now that I've done so in the presence of press and public won't you forgive me and help me to bury the hatchet in a Welsh rarebit?" He was speaking directly to her with a genuine appeal in his handsome eyes. Now that ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... thus: "It somewhat hurts the feelings to see a minister stand up in his place, and after a very pretty exordium to the budget, take up a bundle of papers from the table, gaze at the incomprehensible calculations before him, stammer out a few confused numbers, and then, with a rueful face, look over his shoulder to V—ns—rt for assistance. How often have I grieved to see unhappy A—d—g—n in this lamentable predicament!" Again, on Thellusson being ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... But at length she began to speak more clearly as she proceeded with her story, and became excited in its narration. Then she would stop and seem to forget it all. Then she went on, as if she was telling a dream. Then there would be another long pause, and confusion, and she would stammer on in the most wild and incoherent fashion, till the old miner became quite impatient, and thought her as big an imposter as the Indian woman whom she called her mother. He finally gave them each ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... her by her name, very quietly, and it is as though I made a loud avowal! She turns, and it seems that this is the first time I have seen her naked face. "Kiss me," she says; and without speaking we stammer, ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... the Legion, Bonaparte covered, as did the ancient kings of France when they held a bed of justice. A profound silence, a sort of religious awe, then reigned throughout the assembly, and Napoleon, who did not now stammer as in the Council of the Five Hundred, said in ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... inadvertently fallen asleep, that I was usually a wide-awake citizen of the land that Lafayette went to save, that I wanted my dinner, and would like to get out. I walked down near enough to the gate to see the policeman, but my courage failed. Before I could stammer out half that explanation to him in his trifling language (which foreigners are mockingly told is the best in the world for conversation), he would either have slipped his hateful rapier through my body, or have raised an alarm and called out ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Rome replace me? Yesterday I had to order a slave beaten to death for breaking a vase of Greek glass. I can buy a hundred slaves for half what that glass cost Hadrian. And I could have a thousand better senators tomorrow than the fools who belch and stammer in the curia, the senate house. But where would you find another Commodus if some lurking miscreant should stab me from behind? It was the geese that saved the capitol. You cacklers ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... and bow to her. She comes closer, and bursts out into a loud, almost childlike laughter. I stammer, as only a little dilettante or great big donkey can do ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... begun to stammer in the last sentence, suddenly self-conscious again. She told him where her chair was on deck, and next minute, without another word, he was half-way along the alley-way, leaving the tea-things where they were. Then he turned back and spoke from ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... complexion! dost thou think, though I am caparisoned like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my disposition? One inch of delay more is a South-sea of discovery. I pr'ythee tell me who is it? quickly, and speak apace. I would thou couldst stammer, that thou mightst pour this concealed man out of thy mouth, as wine comes out of narrow-mouth'd bottle; either too much at once or none at all. I pr'ythee take the cork out of thy mouth that ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... and Mr. Harbison were rather strained. Bella had left the roof and Jim and the Harbison man came face to face in the door of the tent. According to Dal, little had been said, but Jim, bound by his promise to me, could not explain, and could only stammer something about being an old friend of Miss Knowles. And Tom had replied shortly that it was none of his business, but that there were some things friendship hardly justified, and tried to pass Jim. Jim was instantly ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Klopstock and Wieland, leaves Boie behind in the exuberance of his impressions. "This Goethe," he wrote to Fritz Jacobi, "of whom from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof and from the going down thereof to its rising I should like to speak and stammer and rhapsodise with you ... this Goethe has, as it were, transcended all the ideals I had ever conceived of the direct feeling and observation of a great genius. Never could I have so well explained and sympathised with the feelings of the disciples on the ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... for opinions, of which you understand nothing yourselves; cease to defame each other for dreams and conjectures, which every thing seems to contradict. Talk to us of things intelligible and really useful to men; and no longer talk to us of the impenetrable ways of God, about which you only stammer and contradict yourselves. ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... calculated. She had pulled the string and the marionette moved with precision. A daze, a flash, a stammer—all the embarrassment of a man who believes that in a day-dream he has given ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... was well received by the audience. Tom was beaten. A potato, vast and nobbly, fell from his palsied hand. He was speechless. Then he began to stammer. ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... these words, but I was not prepared to answer him, and in the rush of his indignant accusation my defence was swept down, and I could only stammer out— ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... mean?" Captain Snaggs managed to stammer out after a bit, his long face perceptibly longer and his rubicund complexion turned to an ashy grey. He was conscience-stricken and thoroughly frightened at the second-mate thus bringing up again, as he thought, his cruel murder of ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... over to the scorn of stripling orators. Our minds and bodies being ravaged with age, Posidon should protect us, yet we have no other support than a staff. When standing before the judge, we can scarcely stammer forth the fewest words, and of justice we see but its barest shadow, whereas the accuser, desirous of conciliating the younger men, overwhelms us with his ready rhetoric; he drags us before the judge, presses us with questions, lays traps for us; the ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... fear of the insurgents had given him jaundice. At the second course they all scrambled like hounds at the quarry. The oil-dealers and almond-dealers were the men who saved France. They clinked glasses to the glory of the Rougons. Granoux, who was very red, began to stammer, while Vuillet, very pale, was quite drunk. Nevertheless Sicardot continued filling his glass. For her part Angele, who had already eaten too much, prepared herself some sugar and water. The gentlemen were so delighted at being freed ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... walie hammer; About the knottit buttress clam'er; Alang the steep roof stoyt an' stammer, A gate mis-chancy; On the aul' spire, the bells' hie cha'mer, Dance your ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to talk? Boy, open your mouth! Don't you know I do not hear well with my right ear?" The child raised his voice and began to stammer so that Margaret failed to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... West is San Francisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State. They are the Southerners of the West. Now, Chicagoans are no less loyal to their city; but when you ask them why, they stammer and speak of lake fish and the new Odd Fellows Building. But ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... face, began to stammer a few disconnected and unintelligible words; but old Wardlaw silenced him and said, with much feeling, "Let none but a father tell him. My poor, poor friend—the Proserpine! How can ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... days—which elissited from a bright-eyed little girl of about twelve summers the remark that she tho't it was rich to talk about the crooilty of the Spaniards usin thumbscrews, when he was in a Tower where so many poor peple's heads had been cut off. This made the Warder stammer and turn red. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... started when he saw him, and he began to stammer out, "Oh, dear me! is it you? Pray how did you sleep last night? Did you hear or see anything in the ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... 'I have got you at last, as I wished.' I tried to speak as steadily as he had done; but, as the moment for action came near, my d——d cowardice made me stammer. ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... directed to thank him, in the name of the people, for his great services as an officer. This the Speaker did in glowing terms, quite unexpectedly to Washington. Washington rose to reply. His face flushed; he struggled to speak; but could only stammer, and stood speechless and trembling. "Sit down, Mr. Washington," said the Speaker, with a smile. "Your modesty equals your valor, and that surpasses the power of any language ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... from the office to Ruth and asked her to marry me. She didn't hang her head nor stammer but she looked me straight in the eyes a moment longer than usual ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... command in a husky, throaty stammer, weaker than a whisper, from an undersized tin-hatted youngster planted in the centre of the trench not ten feet in front of us. His left foot was forward and his bayoneted rifle was held ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... wished my curls would fall down and hide my cheeks, I tried to stammer out some apology. But he drove it back with a ...
— The Hermit Of ——— Street - 1898 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... such a surprise to Garnett that for the moment he could only stammer out—"You consent then? I may go ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... The key will stammer, and the door reply, The hall wake, yawn, and smile; the torpid stair Will grumble at our feet, the table cry: 'Fetch my belongings for me; I am bare.' A clatter! Something in the attic falls. A ghost has lifted up his robes and fled. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... went forward without any delay, asking our interlocutors roughly what they meant and what they were doing here, and telling them, too, that we were going on. I knew that they were sexless eunuchs, who would stammer as I had heard them stammer in the old days when I had seen them trafficking things they had been donated by officials desirous of cultivating their friendship, in the mysterious curio shops beyond the great Ch'ien Men ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... would look every now and then as if he were going to make a remark, and then evidently restrain himself, and remain silent. It was very curious to see this big, handsome, manly young fellow, who ought to have had any amount of success with women, suddenly stammer and grow crimson in the presence of his own wife. Nor was it the consciousness of stupidity; for when you got him alone, Oke, although always slow and timid, had a certain amount of ideas, and very defined political and social ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... accompanied by one of her swift, half-frightened smiles; but she didn't wait for an answer. Before Chip could begin to stammer out an explanation that would give his point of view she was passing rapidly up the pathway, bordered with irises and peonies and bleeding-hearts, ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... had an awkward way of doing in his tell-tale face, but before he could stammer a reply, Harry came ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... change him to the chamber above the chapel. If that ye can swear your innocency with a good solid oath and an assured countenance, it is well; the lad will be at peace a little, and I will spare him. If that ye stammer or blench, or anyways boggle at the swearing, he will not believe you; and, by the mass, he shall die. There ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was on the floor at her feet in tears. She was shaking with sobs, and could scarcely manage to stammer out that Lizzie was all right. Mrs. Brady settled back with a relieved sigh. Lizzie was the first grandchild, and therefore the idol of her heart. If Lizzie was all right, she could afford to be patient and find ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... six of the draughtsmen grouped about Kampfer's desk, gargling away at each other in pectoral German, and gazing at something thereupon. At the Commissioner's approach they scattered to their several places. Kampfer, a wizened little German, with long, frizzled ringlets and a watery eye, began to stammer forth some sort of an apology, the Commissioner thought, for the congregation of ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... to his friend. "Why do they build hotels that go round and round like catherine wheels? They'll take away my shield and break me. I can think and talk con-con-consec-sec-secutively, but I s-s-stammer with my feet. I've got to go on duty in three hours. The jig is up, Remsen. The jig ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... but stammer piteously, I fear. I heard myself make a wretched failure of words that crowded to ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... her little fight that morning. She had yielded and she could not renew it. She had spent three miserable hours framing reasonable arguments why last night should be forgotten. But the sight of her lover coming across the meadow had set her heart so leaping that she could only stammer out a ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... he was admitted a Scholar in July, 1802, and a Fellow in July, 1805. In 1803 he was awarded by the Provost of Eton the Belham Scholarship, given to those Scholars of King's who had behaved well at Eton, and held it till 1816. A witty companion, with "a dry caustic manner, and an irresistible stammer" ('Life of Rev, F. Hodgson', vol. i. p. 204), Davies was, during the Regency and afterwards, a popular member of fashionable society. A daring gambler and shrewd calculator, he at one time won heavily at ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... quite a calm, grand manner. Miss Lucy and I will have to look about us, and polish up all our best airs and graces lest we should be thrown into the shade. Still, Polly, there is a little flutter, a little tendency to stammer now and then, and even, to lisp as you lisped when ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... stood still, then began to beat furiously. The sound of her name always affected him incomprehensibly. He began to stammer, then took his pipe out of his mouth ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... yellow in childhood, black in manhood, and snowy white in age. His brow was broad, and his features regular, save that his left eyelid drooped somewhat, like that of his father, and hid part of the pupil. He spoke with a stammer, which did not, however, detract from the persuasiveness of his eloquence. His sinewy, muscular arms were those of the consummate swordsman, and his long legs gave him a firm hold in the saddle when riding the most spirited of steeds. His chief delight was in war and tournaments, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... I managed to stammer. "It is the only way. You will die of exposure if you are not warmed, and Nobs and I are the only means we can command for furnishing warmth." And I held her tightly while I called Nobs and bade him lie down at her back. The girl didn't struggle any more when she learned my purpose; but she gave ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... had been to see her every night For thirteen days, and had a sneaking notion To pop the question, thinking all was right, And once or twice had make an awkward motion To take her hand, and stammer'd, cough'd, and stutter'd, But, somehow, nothing ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... intoxicated, could only stammer out that he had more guineas than one about him, and that he really did not know which it was. He pulled his money out, and spread it upon the table with trembling hands. The marked guinea appeared. ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... converts him into a piece of furniture in a recess, a poor, wandering and wretched being, incapable of manifesting his existence save by an occasional change of place, dying of thirst rather than approach the buffet, and going away without having uttered a word, unless perhaps to stammer out one of those incoherent pieces of foolishness which he remembers for months, and which make him, at night, as he thinks of them, heave an "Ah!" of raging shame, with head ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... impulse had been to slip away in the darkness, and so escape from his awkward predicament; but George Alford's prompt address prevented this and brought him to bay. He was painfully embarrassed, but managed to stammer: "I was taken for you, I think. I never had the pleasure— honor ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... looked very uncomfortable. With an apologetic air he began to stammer something about Parish Councils. I was not to be diverted by any such maneuver. It was impossible that he could really wish ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope
... expected these words, but I was not prepared to answer him, and in the rush of his indignant accusation my defence was swept down, and I could only stammer out— ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... bewilderment; then, as the captain's meaning dawned upon him, he stepped forward impulsively and, seizing his hand, began to stammer ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... knew what to say. He could not guess what was in it, and all he could do was to stammer a few confused words of thanks. The envelope had a very important look, and he was both impressed and mystified. Ted could not repress his eager curiosity, and came around to Will's side. Even Mrs. Carter was intensely interested, and forgot to refrain ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... not a word to say. He had been meditating upon a thousand possible explanations, excuses, apologies, and his tongue would not utter one of them. He accepted his orders meekly, but as he turned to go he managed to stammer out, "Of course—to ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... Miss Pottinger, to linger under green leaves in unfrequented woods, and at last seemed about to desert him as he stood in a little hollow with her hand in his—their only listener an inquisitive squirrel. Yet this was all the disappointed animal heard him stammer,— ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... man did not answer. Something in his throat tightened, and held the words. Then, in a low voice he managed to stammer:— ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... Ruth; so I excused myself under pretence of a headache from appearing at dinner, and hurried back to the castle as soon as I could do so unobserved. I got in by a window which I had purposely left open, and made my way to the library. The words that Lord Ashiel, as he lay dying, had managed to stammer out to his daughter, were only five. 'Gimblet—the clock—eleven—steps.' I had decided to take the clock in the library as the starting-point of investigation. He might, of course, have referred to any other clock, but only one could be dealt with at a time, and a beginning must be made somewhere. ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... one, a broad leaf of which concealed his rosy childish face It was never known what poverty-stricken mother had laid him there. When he was found he was already a fine little fellow of two or three years of age, very plump and merry, but so backward and dense that he could scarcely stammer a few words, and only seemed able to smile. When one of the vegetable saleswomen found him lying under the big white cabbage she raised such a loud cry of surprise that her neighbours rushed up to see what was the matter, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... utterance and enunciation often suffered in point of clearness and steadiness, from the agitation of her excessive organic sensibility. At times the self-counteraction and self-baffling of her feelings caused her even to stammer. But the greatest deductions from Miss Wordsworth's attractions, and from the exceeding interest which surrounded her, in right of her character, of her history, and of the relation which she fulfilled towards her brother, were the glancing ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... slight as was this interruption, it served to agitate his mind and bring him down from the realms of imagination to the world of reality. His thoughts began to flow less easily and his tongue occasionally to stammer; the strangeness of his experience came back upon him with redoubled force; the chill influence of vacancy and emptiness oppressed him; his enthusiasm waned; what he was doing began to seem foolish ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... later they left her at the mine and Betty mounted Nigger, leading the brown colt by the reins. Meggy had tried to stammer some words of thanks, but the girls would have none of it. They waved to her gayly ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... and caught a brief glimpse of a crumpled little figure behind him, evidently too scared to cry, and yet not quite at the fainting point of terror. He backed, and began to stammer an apology; but she did not wait to hear a word of it. For an instant she stared into his face, and then, like a rabbit released from its paralysis of dread, she darted past him and deaf up the stone steps into the house. ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... him in before the indignant delegation, headed by old Reamur himself, and demanded of poor Webb what he meant by sending out such a letter. The youngster was so flustered that he could only stammer a confused denial. He started sniveling. Then Gordon collared him and booted him into the corridor. That should have closed the incident, but a few moments later back comes Webb, blubbering like a whipped schoolboy, and perfectly wild with rage. He was armed with ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... Blandford, who had been married two years, and was transacting a steady and fairly profitable manufacturing business in the adjacent town, actually believed he was more fitted for adventurous speculation than the grimly erratic man of energetic impulses and pleasures beside him. He managed to stammer hesitatingly: ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... Mr. Lovel might have put up a brazen defence, but now he seemed to have lost assurance. "I do no ill," was all he could stammer, "for I have no bias. I am ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... me?" Mr. Darley now appealed to Sydney, who managed to stammer out: "I certainly see a strong ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... do you hesitate?" retorted the Moor. "Do Englishmen blush and stammer when they tell the truth? Tell me the truth now. Do you know where the English ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... her I am what I am. Ignorant, rough man I was, with the merest flicker of spiritual life; but she cared for my soul, and was so patiently loving that she led me to know God.' Bailey was afflicted with a stammer when he was converted. Of this, he says, 'She talked to me so calm and quiet. "Go slow, now," she'd say, "Count." She would insist upon my giving my testimony, and if she saw I was going to be fairly stuck, she'd shout. "Glory! Hallelujah!" and beam on me with that lovely smile of ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... children. From uniform sounds. 2. Intoxication from common food after fatigue and inanition. 3. From wine or of opium. Chilness after meals. Vertigo. Why pleasure is produced by intoxication, and by swinging and rocking children. And why pain is relieved by it. 4. Why drunkards stagger and stammer, and are liable to weep. 5. And become delirious, sleepy, and stupid. 6. Or make pale urine and vomit. 7. Objects are seen double. 8. Attention of the mind diminishes drunkenness. 9. Disordered irritative motions of all the senses. 10. Diseases ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... talker on a thousand and one subjects, a thinker and psychologist. Psychology is his strong point. He argues brilliantly on the subject, yet I need only look at him to upset his thesis, to make him stammer and redden. ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... know I dazzled as if I entered in And walked upon a windy sunset and drank it, Yet must I stammer with such strange uncouthness And tear it from me, tangling my arms in it. Why should I so befool myself and seem A laughable bundle in each woman's eyes, Wearing such things as no one ever wore, Useless ... no head-cloth ... ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... English, were in favor of examinations. They were signed La Carriere ouverte, and were written before the days of the Civil Service Commission! I well remember, too, that the first time I ventured to speak, or rather to stammer, in public, was in favor of examinations. That was in 1857, at Exeter, when the first experiment was made, under the auspices of Sir T. Acland, in the direction of what has since developed into the Oxford and Cambridge Local Examinations. I have been an examiner myself for many years, I ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... That would make five pounds per family, and seven hundred for the church.' He dipped his pen in the ink, and, as I am a living man, Robert, he wrote me a cheque then and there for two thousand two hundred pounds. I don't know what I said; I felt like a fool; I could not stammer out words with which to thank him. All my troubles have been taken from my shoulders in an instant, and indeed, Robert, I ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a shake of the head which gave Philammon courage to stammer out a courteous refusal. The Amal swore an oath at him which made the cloister ring again, and with a quiet shove of his heavy hand, sent him staggering half across the court: but ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... a fact that the very gravel for his paths had been imported by the Sofala. Exasperated out of his quiet superciliousness, without looking at anyone right or left, he accosted Massy straightway in so determined a manner that the engineer, taken aback, began to stammer unintelligibly. Nothing could be heard but the words: "Mr. Van Wyk . . . Indeed, Mr. Van Wyk . . . For the future, Mr. Van Wyk"—and by the suffusion of blood Massy's vast bilious face acquired an unnatural orange tint, out of which the disconcerted coal-black eyes ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... appreciation and encouragement. Of course I knew that I had done well, but I regarded my success as due fully as much to good fortune as to my own efforts, and I was almost overwhelmed with joy at so full and complete a recognition of my efforts. So astonished indeed was I, that I could only stammer something to the effect that our success was due quite as much to the loyalty with which Christie and Lindsay had seconded me, and the gallantry with which the men had stood by me, as it was to my own ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... first time in his life. He had been struck below the belt by a good-natured giant. The best he could do, as Bacon shuffled calmly out, was to stammer: "Will some one please sing?" And while they sang, he stood in deep thought. Just as the last verse was quivering into silence, the full, deep tones of Radbourn's voice rose above the bustle of feet and clatter ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... anything like it in my life. It set every nerve of me dancing. I suppose Paragot found his interest in me because I was such an impressionable youngster. When, at the abrupt finale, he asked me what I thought of it, I could scarce stammer a word. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... who treats other people so as to make them uncomfortable is manifestly unfit for society. Now an optional courtesy should be the unfailing custom of such a woman, we will say, one who has the power of giving pain by a slight, who can wound amour propre in the shy, can make a d,butante stammer and blush, can annoy a shy youth by a sneer. How many a girl has had her society life ruined by the cruelty of a society leader! how many a young man has had his blood frozen by a contemptuous smile at his awkwardness! How much of the native good-will of an impulsive person ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... She has lost you; she cannot explain to—to Mademoiselle's father. Mon dieu, when he met her unexpectedly in the hall, he shouts, 'where is my daughter?' And poor Madame she has but to shiver and stammer and—run away! Oui! She dash out into the rain! ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the swamp, bell birds tolling molten notes, in a minor strain a swelling chorus of sparrows, titmice, warblers, vireos, went two strong, healthy young people newly promised for "better or worse." They could only look, stammer, flush, and utter broken exclamations, all about "better." They could not remotely conceive that life might serve them ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the queen, passionately, "why do you stammer, why do you tremble? He has been discharged; I know it already, for we are already at the names of ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... the Christian revelation. From the natural point of view the whole region of the dead is 'a land of darkness, without any order, where the light is as darkness.' The usual sources of human certainty fail us here. Reason is only able to stammer a peradventure. Experience and consciousness are silent. 'The simple senses' can only say that it looks as if Death were an end, the final Omega. Testimony there is none from any pale lips that have come back to unfold the secrets of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... weaker in point of health, and am now confirmed I have had a paralytic touch. I speak and read with embarrassment, and even my handwriting seems to stammer. This ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Wharton ran on smilingly: "He promised to shackle you to a table until I could stammer out my halting apologies, and now that I've done so in the presence of press and public won't you forgive me and help me to bury the hatchet in a Welsh rarebit?" He was speaking directly to her with a genuine appeal in ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... ideas fly from you when you attempt to express them, that you stammer and flounder about for words which you are unable to find, you may be sure that every honest effort you make, even if you fail in your attempt, will make it all the easier for you to speak well the next time. It is remarkable, if one keeps on trying, how quickly he will conquer his awkwardness ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... mind.—Most persons, whilst blushing intensely, have their mental powers confused. This is recognized in such common expressions as "she was covered with confusion." Persons in this condition lose their presence of mind, and utter singularly inappropriate remarks. They are often much distressed, stammer, and make awkward movements or strange grimaces. In certain cases involuntary twitchings of some of the facial muscles may be observed. I have been informed by a young lady, who blushes excessively, that at such times she does not even know what she is saying. When it was ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... like her race, but sweeter and more thoughtful than their wont. Her voice heightened this mistaken impression. She was never heard to speak either loud or fast. There was at times even a curious hesitancy in her speech, which came near being a stammer, or suggested the measured care with which people speak who have been cured of stammering. It made her often appear as if she did not known her own mind; at which people sometimes took heart; when, if they had only known the truth, they would have known that the speech ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... advance-guard of humanity, the herald of all progress; how often hast thou betrayed this high commission! Fain would the tongue in clear, triumphant accents draw example from thy story, to encourage the hearts of those who almost faint and die beneath the old oppressions. But we must stammer and blush when we speak of many things. I take pride here, that I can really say the liberty of the press works well, and that checks and balances are found naturally which suffice to its government. ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the people, for his great services as an officer. This the Speaker did in glowing terms, quite unexpectedly to Washington. Washington rose to reply. His face flushed; he struggled to speak; but could only stammer, and stood speechless and trembling. "Sit down, Mr. Washington," said the Speaker, with a smile. "Your modesty equals your valor, and that surpasses the power of any ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... astonished that for the moment I could not think what to say, but at last I managed to stammer, as I made a low bow to ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... said Ethel. "What a mess every one will make! Oh, if I could but stay away, like Harry! There will be Dr. Hoxton being sonorous and prosy, and Mr. Lake will stammer, and that will be nothing to the misery of our own people's work. George will flounder, and look at Flora, and she will sit with her eyes on the ground, and Dr. Spencer will come out of his proper self, and be complimentary to people who deserve it no ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... guest was naturally very downcast, and ill at ease, and could not dissemble his anguish. He tried to stammer out excuses and get away ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... looking at the blue pin any longer, because it belongs to you," he said; and she felt a little box being pressed into her hand. Her heart gave a leap of joy, but it reached her lips only in a shy stammer. She remembered other girls whom she had heard planning to extract presents from their fellows, and was seized with a sudden dread lest Harney should have imagined that she had leaned over the pretty things in the glass case in the hope of having one ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... supper. Our lady was very polite, assured him that it was impossible. "Very well," said General Sigel, "I think I shall want this place to-morrow for a hospital. Madam, your kindness will be reciprocated." He spoke very emphatically, whereat the pretty daughter began to cry, and the mother to stammer apologies, and said she would do the best she could for them, but she really had nothing to cook. The general retired very indignant. Whether or not his threat was carried out I do not know, for the next morning we were off ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... embarrassed by the question. "It—it was n-not a r-regular meeting," he said with a nervous little stammer. "A student had come from Genoa, and he made a speech to ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... there are women of whom no man can ever deserve that!" There his manner was all at once so personal that she dared not be silent, but fell to generalizing, with many a stammer, that a woman ought to be very slow to give her trust if, once giving it, she would not ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... to this important personage, without lifting up my eyes or observing any of the people round me, who were attending there on the same errand as myself, and dropping her curtsies nine deep, just made a shift to stammer ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... suggesting twin slices of underdone steak, parting into a pleasant smile when his question had concluded. The other two members of the committee seemed about to inquire further when the chief managed to stammer, he was awfully sorry, gentlemen, but he had been out of town and hadnt even heard of ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find him. So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled HOTI's business—let it be!— Properly based OUN— {130} Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic 'De', Dead from the waist down. Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: Hail to your purlieus, All ye highfliers of the ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... Lord—there's none can do Or say un-English things like you: And, if the schemes that fill thy breast Could but a vent congenial seek, And use the tongue that suits them best, What charming Turkish wouldst thou speak! But as for me, a Frenchless grub, At Congress never born to stammer, Nor learn like thee, my Lord, to snub Fallen Monarchs, out of CHAMBAUD'S grammar— Bless you, you do not, can not, know How far a little French will go; For all one's stock, one need but draw On some half-dozen words like toese— Comme ca—par-la—la-bas—ah ha! They'll take you all thro' ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... described. They speak occasionally, from a certain ill-defined sense of what may be due to their position, yet are obviously aware that what they say is entitled to no weight, and are greatly relieved when the unwelcome and disagreeable duty has been discharged. They are the men who hesitate and stammer, whose hats and canes are always in their way, and who have no very clear notions about what should be done with their hands. A visitor who chances to spend an evening in the House of Lords for the first and last time, while noblemen of this stamp are quieting their tender consciences ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... unexpectedly finding himself in the midst of such a galaxy of beauties (and, as a matter of course, the conscious cynosure of all eyes) that, blushing to suffusion, and forgetting to lift his hat, he could only manage to stammer out, "Aw, aw—I beg pardon; but—aw—aw—I fancy there's another wicket down, and I must put on my guards, you know;" whereupon he beat a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... but no more than his part, and expressed himself with freedom and decision. His conversation, in fact, astonished the literati even more than his poems had done. Perhaps they had expected some uncouth individual who would stammer crop-and-weather commonplaces in a rugged vernacular, or, worse still, in ungrammatical English; but here was one who held his own with them in speculative discussion, speaking not only with the eloquence of a poet, but with the readiness, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... hat was still sitting under the shadow of the rock smoking, but he rose and threw away his cigar as the deputation of three advanced to address him. Peachy, in her very best Italian, began to stammer out an explanation and excuses. He listened for a moment or two, then shook his ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... the policeman on duty there that I had inadvertently fallen asleep, that I was usually a wide-awake citizen of the land that Lafayette went to save, that I wanted my dinner, and would like to get out. I walked down near enough to the gate to see the policeman, but my courage failed. Before I could stammer out half that explanation to him in his trifling language (which foreigners are mockingly told is the best in the world for conversation), he would either have slipped his hateful rapier through my body, or have raised an alarm and called out the guards of the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... de Noailles, all the more beside himself because he saw the Regent smile, and M. le Duc, who looked at me do the same, but more openly, began to speak, or rather to stammer. He did not dare, however, to decide against the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... profoundly significant. They know it is nothing in the world but foolishness; and if there is one thing above another that a child hates, it is to be made a fool in public. That's what makes them work their fingers so, and gulp, and stammer, and tremble at the knees. That is what sends them to their seats, after all is over, mad as hornets. This is something that I know about. It happened that, instead of getting funny pieces to recite as I wanted to, discerning ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... had all this news been digested than somebody discovered a diamond ring on Clara Tuttle's left hand. So Clara was surrounded and an explanation demanded. But before she could conquer her blushes and stammer out her news Max Longman came in from another room and, putting his arms about her, said, "Don't be afraid, girl of mine, I'm here." And so everybody knew then that it was Max, after all, ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... children think of nothing but the forbidden thing, which then becomes irresistibly attractive to them. I was often whipped for my star. Unable to confide in my kind, I told it all my troubles in that delicious inward prattle with which we stammer our first ideas, just as once we stammered our first words. At twelve years of age, long after I was at school, I still watched that star with indescribable delight,—so deep and lasting are the impressions we receive ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... air of old-fashioned punctilium, would sit near, fixing the speaker with his pale-blue eyes,—a little threateningly; always ready to shatter an exuberance, to check an oratorical flow by some quick double-edged word that would make Manisty trip and stammer; showing, too, all the time, by his evident shrinking, by certain impregnable reserves, or by the banter that hid a feeling too keen to show itself, how great is the gulf between a literary ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... playing in the street for him to come and take the breast. Did Augustin remember these things? At least he recalled his nurses' games, and the efforts they made to appease him, and the childish words they taught him to stammer. The first Latin words he repeated, he picked up from his mother and the servants, who must also have spoken Punic, the ordinary tongue of the populace and small trader class. He learned Punic without thinking about it, in playing with other children of Thagaste, just ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... he spoke, the sound of distant firing fell upon the ears of the party and the unmistakable stammer-hammer racket ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... astonishment, Mrs. Peckover managed to stammer a faint answer in the affirmative, and to add that the initials, "M. G.," would be found somewhere on the broken board lying at their feet. She then tried to ask a question or two in her turn; but the words died ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... paper from between the leaves. I hastened to lift it, but she prevented me.—"It is verse," she said, on glancing at the paper; and then unfolding it, but as if to wait my answer before proceeding—"May I take the liberty?—Nay, nay, if you blush and stammer, I must do violence to your modesty, and suppose that ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... She had pulled the string and the marionette moved with precision. A daze, a flash, a stammer—all the embarrassment of a man who believes that in a day-dream he has ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... large eyes so overpowered the simple soldier as to render him speechless for a while. But Caesar had threatened his mistress's life—he must collect himself, and thus he managed to stammer: ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... There was a stammer, a hesitation, a slight attempt to explain, and then the truth came out. He had stolen the extra tickets from two fellow-laborers only a few minutes before, and had not reflected upon the difficulties of the situation. I ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... be a prood doggie, yer Leddyship," Mistress Jeanie managed to stammer, but Mr. Brown ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... afterwards learned, in the next room.—My presence of mind was all gone again when I came to be introduced to the emperor, and he must certainly have perceived by my looks that I was not a little confused. I was just going to begin the harangue which I had studied with such pains, and to stammer out something or other about the high and unexpected felicity of being presented to the most powerful, the most celebrated, and the most sincerely beloved monarch in the world, when he relieved me at once from my dilemma. He addressed me in French, speaking very quick, ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... for him who lost it. To Napoleon it is a panic; Blucher sees nothing in it but fire; Wellington does not understand it at all. Look at the reports: the bulletins are confused; the commentaries are entangled; the latter stammer, the former stutter. Jomini divides the battle of Waterloo into four moments; Muffling cuts it into three acts; Charras, altho we do not entirely agree with him in all his appreciations, has alone caught with his haughty ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... papers, and though the names had mostly escaped him, he remembered every single face. There was Barlow—big, bony chap who stammered, bringing his words out with a kind of whistling sneeze. Barlow had given him his first thrashing for copying his stammer. There was young Watson, who funked at football and sneaked to a master about a midnight supper. He stole pocket-money, too, and was expelled. Then he caught a glimpse of another fellow with sly ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... corrected herself with a stammer and a blush—"Colonel Boyce? Oh no. Indeed, he is old enough to be ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... many of these hot, hasty, and often clever pictures, it must be sadly stated that of genuine originality there are few traces. To the very masters they pretend to revile they owe everything. In vain one looks for a tradition older than Courbet; a few have attempted to stammer in the suave speech of Corot and the men of Fontainebleau; but 1863, the year of the Salon des Refuses, is really the year of their artistic ancestor's birth. The classicism of Lebrun, David, Ingres, Prudhon; the romanticism ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... morning Jack put a bold face upon the matter and walked into the Giant's room to thank him for his lodging. The Giant started when he saw him, and began to stammer out: "Oh! dear me; is it you? Pray, how did you sleep last night? Did you hear or see anything in the dead of ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... flattery, and menaces having been tried in vain) I could not but wonder what would be their next expedient. My eyes besides were still troubled, and my knees loose under me, with the distress of the late ordeal; and I could do no more than stammer the same form of words: "I put my life ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... received by the audience. Tom was beaten. A potato, vast and nobbly, fell from his palsied hand. He was speechless. Then he began to stammer. ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... to his labours, and deprived the world of further benefit from his talents, when he had only attained an age at which most other men are but beginning to be useful. "We see him in his cradle (said Fuseli); we hear him stammer; but propriety rocked the cradle, and character formed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... interval less harsh. Yet, he was great: and though he turned language into ignoble clay, he made from it men and women that live. He is the most Shakespearian creature since Shakespeare. If Shakespeare could sing with myriad lips, Browning could stammer through a thousand mouths. Even now, as I am speaking, and speaking not against him but for him, there glides through the room the pageant of his persons. There, creeps Fra Lippo Lippi with his cheeks still burning from some girl's hot kiss. There, ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... a little later, his eyes reddened with tears, his hair rumpled, his face flushed. He seemed like a man awed by an entirely new experience. He could not speak, he could only stammer brokenly:— ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... thinking. The child has no natural love of truth, as is experienced by all who have the least acquaintance with early youth. If they are charged with a fault while they can hardly speak, the first words they stammer forth are a falsehood to excuse it. Nor is this all: the temptation of attracting attention, the pleasure of enjoying importance, the desire to escape from an unpleasing task, or accomplish a holiday, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... night. See, I have a pass for all such assemblies, signed by some dolt who cannot even spell the name he assumes—'Pom-de-Tair.' A commissary of police sat yawning at the end of the orchestra, his secretary by his side, while the orators stammer out fragments of would-be thunderbolts. Commissary of police yawns more wearily than before, secretary disdains to use his pen, seizes his penknife and pares his nails. Up rises a wild-haired, weak-limbed silhouette of a man, and affecting a solemnity of mien which might have become ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... about it. You needn't stammer. You and Allen are getting a good deal out of the Haneys, and want to be decent in return. Well, I think well of you for it, and I'll do my mite. I'll have young Fordyce in, and Alice; being Quakers and 'plain people,' they won't ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... who cure stammer and squint, R was a Raw from a burn, wrapp'd in lint. S was a Scalpel, to eat bread and cheese; And T was a Tourniquet, vessels to squeeze. Fol ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the love of such a woman was enough to pull any broken man together—to drag a man out of his grave. And he thought this with inward despair, which kept him silent as much almost as his astonishment. At last he managed to stammer out a ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... the stranger full before her in the doorway, gazing at her with an enormous pair of sloe-black eyes, under heavy inky brows, set in a hard, red-complexioned face. She burst into a loud, hoydenish laugh as Loveday tried to stammer something about a friend ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... yielded and she could not renew it. She had spent three miserable hours framing reasonable arguments why last night should be forgotten. But the sight of her lover coming across the meadow had set her heart so leaping that she could only stammer out a few tags ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... one another. Whereas most people, just as we provide supports for flowers, bestow certainties and truths upon their words to which they cling, the sincere refuse to yield to any such illusions. They hesitate, stammer and contradict ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... it were derived from the Latin sto; for example, stand, stay, that is, to remain, or to prop; staff, stay, that is, to oppose; stop, to stuff, stifle, to stay, that is, to stop; a stay, that is, an obstacle; stick, stut, stutter, stammer, stagger, stickle, stick, stake, a sharp, pale, and any thing deposited at play; stock, stem, sting, to sting, stink, stitch, stud, stuncheon, stub, stubble, to stub up, stump, whence stumble, stalk, to stalk, step, to stamp with the feet, whence to stamp, that is, to make an impression ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... frankly hadn't any chin, Her hands were rough, her feet she turned invariably in; Her general form was German, By which I mean that you Her waist could not determine To within a foot or two: And not only did she stammer, But she used the kind of grammar That is called, for sake ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... in love. He did not turn red or white, or yellow or green, nor did he tremble or stammer, or cry or laugh, or become fierce or passionate, or tender or anything but just himself, as I had always known him. He displayed no more emotion than had he been inviting me to a picnic. This was not as I had pictured ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... felt as if "a truly angel" was embracing her, and could only stammer out her thanks, while the other children ran to see the pretty spirit, and touch her soft dress, until she stood in a crowd of blue gowns laughing as they held up their gifts for her to ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... part of a rich man, to squander money, to give myself airs. When one puts on the semblance of anything for a time, it will soon become a portion of our nature. Imitate a stutterer for a while, and you will have to keep diligent watch over yourself not to stammer in earnest. I fell in love, and was on the point of changing into a totally different person; for my passion was sincere and ardent. But new distress. The noble being who soon became my wife, could never give me her ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... knelt down before the window, covered his face with his hands, and began to stammer and cry to God: "O ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... believes, as in all other unbelief. He and I are to dine alone (I have not seen him these two years)—and I shall never be able to keep from driving the great wedge right through his breast and descending lower, from riveting his two foolish legs to the wintry chasm; for I that stammer and answer hap-hazard with you, get proportionately valiant and voluble with a mere cupful of Diderot's rinsings, and a ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... of the uncertainty of human life. The thought steals over us that we, too, are liable at any moment to be cut down in the midst of our labors. This liability is increased by the amount of labor which necessarily devolves upon us. Now we are only two in number. As for myself I am only beginning to stammer in this difficult language. This, too, in a field where there is labor enough to be done to employ all the men you can send us. You will not think it strange ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... gazed stupidly each on each. Incredulous amazement and perplexity tied their tongues. Finally Halloway found his voice to stammer, "What's done happened? How did ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... fingers down on her open palm, and closed her hand. Opening it, she found five new crisp one hundred dollar notes. A crimson glow of pleasure spread over her face and neck. For a moment she was unable to stammer ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... sight Pinocchio was filled with such great and unexpected joy that he became almost delirious. He wanted to laugh, he wanted to cry, he wanted to say a thousand things, and instead he could only stammer out a few confused and broken words. At last he succeeded in uttering a cry of joy, and, opening his arms, he threw them around the little old man's ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... pleasant to contemplate when terror has driven out all self-command; so we will not draw Mr. Fullarton's picture: he could scarcely stammer out words enough to suggest an immediate retreat. It was painful—not ludicrous—to see how justly his own child appreciated the position: the little thing left her father's side instinctively, and clung for protection to Cecil Tresilyan. ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... the most singular of musicians. This person (since deceased, and by profession a clerk) suffered from nervousness so excessive that, despite a fair knowledge of music, the fact of putting his hands upon the keys produced a maddening sort of stammer, let alone a notable tendency to strike wrong notes and miss his octaves; peculiarities of which he was so morbidly conscious that it was only an accident which revealed to me, after years of acquaintance, that he ever played ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... was the Duc de Mora, he had so faithfully copied his way of speaking. There were the same unfinished sentences, ending in a ps—ps—ps—uttered between the teeth. "What's-his-names" and "What-d'ye-call-'ems" at every turn, a sort of lazy, bored, aristocratic stammer, in which one divined profound contempt for the vulgar art of speech. In the duke's circle everybody strove to copy that accent, those disdainful intonations, in which there was an affectation ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Tommy was caught by a "brass hat" in the very act of strangling a chicken. Tommy looked up. Was he abashed? Not a bit of it! He did what Mr. Thomas Atkins generally does in a tight corner. He kept his head: he rose magnificently to the occasion. He did not loose the chicken and endeavour to stammer an apology. On the contrary, he continued to strangle it. He took no notice of the "brass hat." As he gave a final twist to the bird's throat he said menacingly, "So you'd try to bite me, ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... behind the carriage, my face muffled up in my cloak. I desired the servants to make no mention of my sudden appearance. They soon made a sign to me that she was recovering consciousness, and I heard her voice stammer forth these words, as if in a dream: "Oh, if Raphael were here! I thought it was Raphael!" I hastily returned to my own carriage; the horses started afresh, and a wide distance soon lay between us. In the evening I went to inquire after ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... points which, if they do not create merriment, may yield some slight amusement. The pedant's endeavours to make a philosopher of his child are sufficiently ludicrous. He is delighted to find that the infant has the wart of Cicero and the very neck of Alexander, and hopes that he may come to stammer like Demosthenes, 'and in time arrive at many other defects of famous men.' As the boy grows up his father invents for him a geographical suit of clothes, and stamps his gingerbread with the letters of the Greek alphabet, which proved so successful ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... not to weep, whereat she wept the more; and then I touched her shoulder with my hand, as one would caress a child; but she shook me off, turning a face that seemed scared with terror to me, and I could only stammer out an apology, and remain silent. At last the violence of her grief abated, and I ventured to ask who the dead ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... drawn-out command in a husky, throaty stammer, weaker than a whisper, from an undersized tin-hatted youngster planted in the centre of the trench not ten feet in front of us. His left foot was forward and his bayoneted rifle was held ready for ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... words in such a way that their power becomes evident after the waking of the sleeper. Much more is this true of children. A suggestion to give up vicious habits, perhaps in the sexual sphere, or to speak fluently and no longer stammer may thus be beneficial. Yet the danger of this method is not small and extensive use of it is certainly not advisable. The more easily it can be carried into every bedchamber and can thus give to every mother ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... earth, or planetary sway Of Saturn; and the geomancer sees His Greater Fortune up the east ascend, Where gray dawn checkers first the shadowy cone; When 'fore me in my dream a woman's shape There came, with lips that stammer'd, eyes aslant, Distorted feet, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... which indeed I find is hundreds of years old, that a stammering man is never a worthless one. Physiology can tell you why. It is an excess of delicacy, excess of sensibility to the presence of his fellow-creature, that makes him stammer. Hammond l'Estrange says, "Who ever heard of a stammering man that was a fool?" Really there is something in that.—James is now off to the Isle of Wight; will see Sterling at Ventnor there; see whether such an Isle or France will suit ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... listened. And I have heard a man talk with smooth speech, and it rolled off me as easily as it rolled out of him. Do your best, and leave the rest. If we are in touch with God His fire burns whether the tongue stammer or has ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... hardly vouchsafed an inclination of the head in reply to the graceful and courtly welcome with which the princesses, nieces to the great Cardinal, were received. Eleanor, usually in the background, was left in surprise and confusion to stammer out thanks in broad Scotch, seconded by Lady Drummond, who could make herself far more ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... insignificant weight of close upon fourteen hundred tons. The sight of such incredible quantities of the precious metals had so paralysing an effect upon the young Englishman that he could scarcely stammer an enquiry as to where it all came from. The custodian of this fabulous wealth replied, with a smile, that the mountains which hemmed the valley about were enormously rich in both gold and silver, and ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... any medicine. I have been as well as the average person, and have been able to do work as hard as God has required of me. I recommend God as a physician. At the time I was healed of my other bodily afflictions, I was also relieved of stammering. It is true I stammer some yet, at times, but not nearly so much as I did formerly; and not enough to prevent ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find Him. So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled Hoti's deg. business—let it be!— deg.129 Properly based Oun deg.— deg.130 Gave as the doctrine of the enclitic De deg. deg.131 Dead from the waist down. Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... a deep bow, but before he had time to stammer out some apologetic self-introduction, ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... self-conscious, Maurice could only stammer that Mrs. Wilson flattered him if she supposed that Miss Morison would tolerate any love-making ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... glowed the dull illumination from lamplit canvas walls. When they paused before the Countess' tent Pierce once more enfolded her in his arms and sheltered her from the boisterous breath of the night. His emotions were in a similar tumult, but as yet he could not voice them, he could merely stammer: ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... more transcendent sense, Hearing unchecked, and unimpeded sight. If we who walk now, then should wing the air, Who stammer now, then should discard the voice, Who grope now, then should see with other sight, And send ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... three women fairly cowered beneath Eugene Hautville's eyes, and Margaret Bean began to stammer as if her old tongue were palsied. Then Eugene collected himself, made them one of his courtly bows, turned to Dorothy with another, offered her his arm, and walked away with her out of the lane, before the eyes ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sprang dynamically to her feet, clinching her hands, then swiftly and noiseless crossed over to her bed and from underneath it dragged out her suitcase. Into it she tossed toilet articles and a change of clothing, Then she turned to her trunk and quickly dumped in two drawerfulls of lingerie and stammer dresses. She moved quietly. but deadly efficiency, and in three-quarters of an hour her trunk was locked and strapped and she was fully dressed in a becoming new travelling suit that Marjorie ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... to the boy. I rather think they ran to each other because, in another moment, perfectly regardless of us, they were clinging to each other, and my mother was walking around them and crying heartily and shamelessly, and enjoying herself immensely. Mary Virginia began to stammer: ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... made no gesture with his hands, did not frown or clench his fists, but remained impassively calm. His words, however, cut Rrisa like knives. The orderly remained trembling and sweating, with a piteous expression. Finally he managed to stammer: ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... name, very quietly, and it is as though I made a loud avowal! She turns, and it seems that this is the first time I have seen her naked face. "Kiss me," she says; and without speaking we stammer, and murmur, and laugh. ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... a nervous trembling shake him from head to foot and he dared not turn his eyes on Clarisse, realizing what a terrible blow this was to her. He heard her stammer: ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... wand of office, which for some obscure reason was a bulrush painted white, and Thornton and Webb, who had been sitting behind the table, were put up for election and called upon to speak. Webb developed a stammer, and although he had his speech written on his shirt-cuff, no one could hear what he said. He was, however, received with a lot of applause, so that Thornton might think the election was genuine; Dennison had certainly packed the meeting ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... like—in the language they had to learn. Not short pieces, or 'elegant extracts;' but, good, long tales of thrilling adventure and well worked-up plots, whose interest, and the desire to know what was coming next, would make them read on and stammer out the sense, until they reached the denouement. And, if it should be objected that German and French novels are not exactly what you would place before young children for study, I would retort, that, the majority of the works of our ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... other moment of her life, Mrs. Lee would have liked nothing better than to talk with him from the beginning to the end of her dinner. Tall, slender, bald-headed, awkward, and stammering with his elaborate British stammer whenever it suited his convenience to do so; a sharp observer who had wit which he commonly concealed; a humourist who was satisfied to laugh silently at his own humour; a diplomatist who used the mask of frankness with great effect; Lord Skye ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... both with the play on words and my uncle's compliment, and turned quickly to the next group before I had time to stammer out how flattered I ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... alert. Color was surging into his face; his features, large, irregular, took on for the instant a look of speechless, almost demoniac power; he seemed to be swimming some mental tide before his foot touched the sands of language and he could helplessly stammer: ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... expression it became clear that the limit of the kitchen-maid's endurance had been reached. The obligation of going to the front door to "show in" a visitor was in itself so subversive of the fundamental order of things that it had thrown her faculties into hopeless disarray, and she could only stammer out, after various panting efforts at evocation, "His hat, mum, was different-like, as ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... Vargrave suffered Mr. Douce to stammer out sentence upon sentence, till at length, as he rang for coffee, his lordship stretched himself with the air of a man stretching himself into self-complacency or a ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of perspective were known. None knew how to draw anything correctly. No color-harmonies had been thought of. These men must needs stammer when they tried to express themselves; but as much greater as thought is than the mere expression of it so much greater are many of their works, in the true sense, than the mass of pictures that make up our exhibitions of ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... by a slight stammer, which, in my opinion, but added piquancy to her epigrammatic sayings. She once remarked to me, "I shall never be c-c-cold until I'm dead." An impulse took possession of me which somehow, in spite of the great difference in our ages, I seemed unable ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... to be sympathetic. Miss Phipps' evident distress and mental agitation moved him extraordinarily. He wanted to say many things, reassuring things, but he could not at the moment think of any. The best he could do was to stammer a hope that she would not be obliged to sell ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... confuses the tongues of its evangelical alliances; makes a farce of its Fourth of July celebrations; and, as in the case of the grand Washington procession of 1830, sadly mars the effect of its rejoicings in view of the progress of liberty abroad. There is a stammer in all our exhortations; our moral and political homilies are sure to run into confusions and contradictions; and the response which comes to us from the nations is not unlike that of Father Kyle to the planter's attempt at sermonizing: "It's no use, brother Jonathan; ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Perkins was about to stammer out a speech, when his uncle, cutting it short, pushed him gently out ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to Lizzie. You better attend strictly to your own business or there'll be a new man here next week." It was as if he had blazed away with a shotgun. The young man reeled upon his perch. At last he in a measure regained his composure and managed to stammer: "A—all right, sir." He knew that denials would be futile with the terrible Stimson. He agitatedly began to rattle the rings in the basket, and pretend that he was obliged to count them or inspect them in some way. He, too, was unable to ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... seizes the guilty to confess and relieve the mind came over him. If only he dared rush in there, throw himself at her feet, and stammer forth his wretched tale! She was of his flesh, of his blood; when she knew she would not wholly condemn him . . . No, no! He could not. She honored and trusted him now; she had placed him on so high a pedestal that it was utterly impossible for him to disillusion her young mind, to see ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... will be lost in the dark!" laments Melisande. Golaud enters by the winding stair, and surprises them. Melisande is entrapped by her hair, which is caught in the branches of a tree. "What are you doing here?" asks Golaud. They are confused, and stammer inarticulately. "Melisande, do not lean so far out of the window," cautions her husband. "Do you not know how late it is? It is almost midnight. Do not play so in the darkness. You are a pair of children!" He laughs ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... been delightful," Lucy contrived to stammer, and then fell to scanning the road, which stretched away for a long half mile ahead of ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... his grammar badly tangled, but my heart burned as I listened. And I have heard a man talk with smooth speech, and it rolled off me as easily as it rolled out of him. Do your best, and leave the rest. If we are in touch with God His fire burns whether the tongue stammer or has good control ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... his chair hastily back, his face fairly crimson, and began to stammer an explanation; but ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... not yet over; hardly had Caroline left when the door was opened and Miss Avies was shown in. Maggie started up with dismay and began to stammer excuses. Miss ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... would show you the double parlours. You would not dare to interrupt her description of their advantages and of the merits of the gentleman who had occupied them for eight years. Then you would manage to stammer forth the confession that you were neither a doctor nor a dentist. Mrs. Parker's manner of receiving the admission was such that you could never afterward entertain the same feeling toward your parents, who had neglected to train you up in one of ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife; While he could stammer He settled Hoti's business—let it be— Properly based Oun Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, Dead from ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... fell abashed within me. I could scarce stammer forth a reply. Had he but known my latest thoughts, he might have been able to read the flush of shame that so ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... diurnal heat No reliques chafe the cold beams of the moon, O'erpower'd by earth, or planetary sway Of Saturn; and the geomancer sees His Greater Fortune up the east ascend, Where gray dawn checkers first the shadowy cone; When 'fore me in my dream a woman's shape There came, with lips that stammer'd, eyes aslant, Distorted feet, hands ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... man can [Page 237] answer. We trace it up through the worlds, till its increasing fineness, its growing power, and possible identity of substance, seem as if the next step would reveal its spirit origin. What we but hesitatingly stammer, the Word ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... much taken aback to do better than stammer out helplessly, hopelessly, almost unintelligibly, a few words striving to remind her of her own admission. Nothing, indeed, could take the sting out of this, and yet it was all but impossible to accuse her, to blame her even for ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... peculiar kind. His arms and legs had grown feeble, but he had not lost the use of them, and his brain indeed worked perfectly; but his speech was muddled and instead of one word he would pronounce another: one had to guess what it was he wanted to say.... "Tchoo—tchoo—tchoo," he would stammer with an effort—he began every sentence with "Tchoo—tchoo—tchoo, some scissors, some scissors," ... and the word scissors meant bread.... My father, he hated with all the strength left him—he attributed all his misfortunes to my father's curse and called him alternately the butcher ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... he contrived to stammer. "I should be glad of a ride. I don't often get one. Besides, I ought to have been at home ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... mention of Ella, Algernon crimsoned to the eyes, and became so exceedingly confused, that he could with difficulty stammer forth, by way of reply, the query as to the time when the important event was ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... to me afterwards to remember that my father had thanked these good people 'properly,' as I considered. As for myself, I had only been able to blush and stammer out something that was far from expressing my delight with the lovely nosegay I received. Then the slender lady went back to her gardening. Her sister took up the knitting which she had laid down, the old gentleman nodded his lamp-shade in the direction where he supposed us to be ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... young Burnham-Seaforth. "A great, handsome fool—all beauty and no brains, like a doll of wax!" Then she bent over and murmured smilingly to Zuilika: "I shall make a bigger nincompoop of this big, fair sap-head than Heaven already has done before he leaves here, just for the sake of seeing him stammer ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... people, for his great services as an officer. This the Speaker did in glowing terms, quite unexpectedly to Washington. Washington rose to reply. His face flushed; he struggled to speak; but could only stammer, and stood speechless and trembling. "Sit down, Mr. Washington," said the Speaker, with a smile. "Your modesty equals your valor, and that surpasses the power of ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... she really did amuse herself by telling him the names of the things he touched. He could only stammer, reiterating the syllables, and failing to utter a single word plainly. However, she began to walk him about the room, holding him up and leading him from the bed to the window—quite a long journey. Two or three times ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... put a bold face upon the matter and walked into the Giant's room to thank him for his lodging. The Giant started when he saw him, and began to stammer out: "Oh! dear me; is it you? Pray, how did you sleep last night? Did you hear or see anything in the ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... with a slight stammer that somehow lent an additional kindliness to his tone, "what has the day's work been? You first, Herr Graf," he added, turning to the Count. "I suppose that you have made ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... emerged, safe and unscratched from the confused heap of men and furniture, it was to cut off instantly the stutter and stammer of poor Shafto's apologies, to bid him go instantly for the ship's doctor, and, with face the color of death, to turn quickly to Armstrong. The blow had burst open the half-healed wound, and the blood was ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... with each day. Occasionally the fever would go down sufficiently to allow him to get something to eat. Then it would be worse than before. In his dire need he wanted to pray, but he was so weak that he could only stammer, "Dear God, help ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... has practised himself in love-making till his own glibness has rendered him sceptical, may at last be overtaken by the lover's awe—may tremble, stammer, and show other signs of recovered sensibility no more in the range of his acquired talents than pins and needles after numbness: how much more may that energetic timidity possess a man whose inward ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... ladies who used to talk like mechanical dolls. They could say 'papa' and 'mamma,' and when they went to a dance they never lost sight of their parents. The little childlike young lady who was always so timid and bashful and who used to blush and stammer, brought up to be ignorant of everything, neither knowing how to stand up on her legs nor how to sit down on a chair—all that sort of thing's done with, old-fashioned, worn out. That was the marriageable young lady of the days of the Gymnase ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... about twelve summers the remark that she tho't it was rich to talk about the crooilty of the Spaniards usin thumbscrews, when he was in a Tower where so many poor peple's heads had been cut off. This made the Warder stammer and turn red. ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... remark, and then evidently restrain himself, and remain silent. It was very curious to see this big, handsome, manly young fellow, who ought to have had any amount of success with women, suddenly stammer and grow crimson in the presence of his own wife. Nor was it the consciousness of stupidity; for when you got him alone, Oke, although always slow and timid, had a certain amount of ideas, and very defined political ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... crossed over to her bed and from underneath it dragged out her suitcase. Into it she tossed toilet articles and a change of clothing, Then she turned to her trunk and quickly dumped in two drawerfulls of lingerie and stammer dresses. She moved quietly. but deadly efficiency, and in three-quarters of an hour her trunk was locked and strapped and she was fully dressed in a becoming new travelling suit that Marjorie had helped ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... introducing artfully his rugged lines, and to serve a particular purpose, had probably seldom, and never but by accident, composed a smooth one. Such has been the versification of the earliest poets in every country. Children lisp, at first, and stammer; but, in time, their speech becomes fluent, and, if they are well ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... which rose from that cellar-like place below the level of the street, repelled the country-bred lad. Were it not for the desperate urgency of his errand he never would have dared to enter. As it was, the fumes of alcohol and steaming, dirty clothes nearly choked him, and he could scarce stammer the name of "citizen Rateau" when a gruff ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... appeared to be alive; but they were alive, still glittering brightly with a stubborn flame of energy. The attack had this time fallen on his right side, almost entirely depriving him of the power of speech. He could only stammer a few words, by which he succeeded in making them understand that he wished to die there, without being moved or worried any further. He had no relative at Lourdes, where nobody knew anything either of his former life or his ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... silence, seeing that I would not get him to respond in that way, I began to stammer something about my calling, my love of art, my desire to learn and so forth. . . . He continued to peel his potatoes. Finally, I asked him to give me lessons. He glanced at me and grumbled: 'How old are you, my boy?' ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... now in the wrong, was a little frightened at the set speech, and began to bluster and stammer, but the swift descent of Malcolm's heavy riding whip on his shoulders and back made him voluble in curses. Then began a battle that could not last long with such odds on the side of justice. It was gazed ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... stared dumbly at the weak faced one, who looked at a complete loss, but managed to stammer simperingly that it was a ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... of her feelings, blushed and hesitated. Just as she was about to stammer out some disconnected words, however, voices were heard behind the shrubbery, which separated the arbor from a neighboring walk, and this created ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... he replied, in a kind of stammer; "an' as to Sally, the nerra one o' me knows any thing about her, since ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... to the scorn of stripling orators. Our minds and bodies being ravaged with age, Posidon should protect us, yet we have no other support than a staff. When standing before the judge, we can scarcely stammer forth the fewest words, and of justice we see but its barest shadow, whereas the accuser, desirous of conciliating the younger men, overwhelms us with his ready rhetoric; he drags us before the judge, presses us with questions, lays traps for us; the onslaught ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... When they grow up and have ideas which are beyond their powers of expression, especially in writing, tautology begins to appear. In like manner when language is 'contaminated' by philosophy it is apt to become awkward, to stammer and repeat itself, to lose its flow and freedom. No philosophical writer with the exception of Plato, who is himself not free from tautology, and perhaps Bacon, has attained to any ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... he was flushing to the peak of his forage-cap. He knew he was trying to stammer something. He saw that she was perfectly placid and at her ease. He saw, worse luck, that she wore a little knot of roses on the breast of her natty jacket, but that they were not his. He faltered something to the effect that he had ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... low summons, When the silver winds return; Rills that run and streams that stammer, Goldenwing with his loud hammer, Icy brooks that brawl and clamor, Where the Indian willows burn; Let me hearken to the calling, When ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... downcast eye, and cold perspiration on his pallid brow, did not understand him; for he continued to stammer incessantly,— ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... would under no circumstances and for no considerations ever consent to go into a room in the dark by himself, being extremely imaginative and nervous; and that on one occasion when he was asked what he expected to befall him, he said with a shudder and a stammer: "To fall over a mangled corpse, squish! into a ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the other half being a constable who does duty in the daytime. Waggoner suffers from an affection which in a large community might prevent him from holding such a job as the one he does hold. He has an impediment of the speech which at all times causes him to stammer badly. When he is excited it is only by a tremendous mental and physical effort and after repeated endeavours that he can form the words at all. In other regards he is a first-rate ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... Pinocchio was filled with such great and unexpected joy that he became almost delirious. He wanted to laugh, he wanted to cry, he wanted to say a thousand things, and instead he could only stammer out a few confused and broken words. At last he succeeded in uttering a cry of joy, and, opening his arms, he threw them around the little old man's ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... environment. Thus the anecdote of the servant who had been instructed to summon the visiting English nobleman by tapping on his bedroom door and inquiring, "My lord, have you yet risen?" and who could only stammer, "My God! ain't you up yet?" Or the anecdote of the minister who in a sermon on the Parable of the Prodigal Son told how a young man living dissolutely in a city had been compelled to send to the pawnbroker first his overcoat, next his suit, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... doubtless with a firm heart, but with hesitating speech. When the little fair-haired officer dared to look him in the face and insult him, he, holding the sword of the people, he, General of the sovereign Assembly, he only knew how to stammer out such wretched phrases as these, "I have just declared to you that we are unable, 'unless compelled and constrained,' to obey the order which prohibits us from remaining assembled together." He spoke of obeying, he who ought to ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... the phrenologist entered. He carried a bag with a pumpkin in the bottom of it, and, sitting down on a stool, he let the bag down with a bump on the floor between his feet. Malachi was badly scared, but he managed to stammer out— ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... she inquired, with the blandest accents imaginable. I can't tell a lie, pa,—you know I can't tell a lie; besides, I had not time to make up one, and I said, "Yes," and then, of all stupid devices that could filter into my brain, I must needs stammer out that I should like a few matches! A pretty thing to bring a dowager duchess up nine pairs ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... about his spare frame and smoke from his cigarette rose in a quivering blue-white stream. Ward spied him at the same moment and stepped forward with quick outstretched hands. I remember the flame of adoring zeal in the youngster's eyes as he tried to speak. At length he managed to stammer some congratulatory phrases while Drayle clapped ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... for this decisive step; but he could only stammer out, 'Really, sir, you are too good;' and Mr Glowry departed to bring Mr Hilary to ratify ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... a triumphant eye. When he began to stammer out what was in effect an apology, she improved the opportunity, threw off her suave manners, and let him understand with a certain plain brutality that she had taken Louie's measure. She would do her best to keep the girl in order—it was lucky for ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... imagination; the expression is that of the sure and serene master. There are here no echoes of Raff, or Wagner, or Brahms, men that have each influenced mightily the musical thought of to-day. There is the voice of one composer: a virile, tender voice that does not stammer, does not break, does not wax hysterical: the voice of a composer that not only must pour out that which has accumulated within him, but knows all the resources of musical oratory—in a ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... plunged him into the depths of depression and bashfulness. She had come to him several times for a light, or to apologise for the imaginary depredations of her poodle; but his mouth was closed in the presence of so superior a being, his French promptly left him, and he could only stare and stammer until she was gone. The slenderness of their intercourse did not prevent him from throwing out insinuations of a very glorious order when he was safely alone with a ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said; he was so bewildered by this unexpected mildness that he could not think what to say next. "I very much appreciate your overlooking my not telling you about it before I did it. The—the fact was," he began to stammer; her face was not reassuring; "the fact was, it was all so hurried, ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... wood-cut of an old fellow with a wooden leg, and a letter in his right hand, is intended to grace this title-page. "Do you believe (said I to the young woman, who sold me the book, and who could luckily stammer forth a few words of French) what the author of this work says?" "Yes, Sir, I believe even more than what he says—" was the instant reply of the credulous vender of the tome. Every body around seemed to be in good health and good spirits; and a more cheerful opening of a market-day ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... your ideas fly from you when you attempt to express them, that you stammer and flounder about for words which you are unable to find, you may be sure that every honest effort you make, even if you fail in your attempt, will make it all the easier for you to speak well the next time. It is remarkable, if one keeps on trying, how quickly he will conquer his awkwardness and ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... only German gutturals held the table, and we who had no facility with them muttered meek French or sullen English to our neighbors. The next day French would be the rule, and Teuton must mumble in it and Anglo-Saxon stammer or hold its peace. Curiously enough, although we were in Italy, Italian was rarely, almost never, spoken among us, our only use of it being in orders to the servants. Our landlady was English, with an Italian husband, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... joined by two or three good-looking, well-dressed young women. My friend talked to them in French and bought drinks for the whole party. I tried to recall my high-school French, but the effort availed me little. I could stammer out a few phrases, but, very naturally, could not understand a word that was said to me. We stayed at the cafe a couple of hours, then went back to the hotel. The next day we spent several hours in the shops and at the tailor's. I had no clothes ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... foolish and feel that they are contemptible. This was such a moment to Lord Spoonbill. He was moved, and he was mortified that he was moved; and there was a general feeling of confusion and perplexity in his mind. What could he say? or how could he act? He began to stammer out something like gentleness, and something like reproof. But she who stood before him was as an accusing spirit, to whom apology was mockery, and repentance ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... Every member of the family I boarded with died within a week, and I was left in the house alone. This man, this peculiar fellow, Nat Parker, found me, took charge of me and did not leave me until I was out of danger. Of course, there was no way to reward him—you can merely stammer your gratitude to the man who has saved your life. He told me that the time might come when I could do him a good turn. Well, I met him the other day in New Orleans, and I incidentally spoke of my intention to sell my paper. He said that he ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... man made the astounding proposition as calmly as though he were asking the Kentuckian to a lunch of bacon and hardtack, and Crittenden flushed with gratitude and his heart leaped—his going was sure now. Before he could stammer out his thanks, the general was gone. Just then Rivers, who, to his great joy, had got at least that far, sat down by him. He was much depressed. His regiment was going, but two companies would be left behind. ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... studying they get into the way of gabbling and pronouncing carelessly and ill; it is still worse when they repeat their lessons; they cannot find the right words, they drag out their syllables. This is only possible when the memory hesitates, the tongue does not stammer of itself. Thus they acquire or continue habits of bad pronunciation. Later on you will see that Emile does not acquire such habits or at least not ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... became unendurable. I felt that I must overcome my languor so far as to address him. I am not a nervous man, and I never knew before what Virgil meant when he wrote "adhoesit faucibus ora." At last I managed to stammer out a few words, asking the intruder who he was and what ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and Lisping (Literal Dysarthria).—Children just beginning to form sentences stammer, not uttering the sounds correctly. They also, as a rule, lisp for a considerable time, so that the words spoken by them are still indistinct and are intelligible only to the persons ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... had inadvertently fallen asleep, that I was usually a wide-awake citizen of the land that Lafayette went to save, that I wanted my dinner, and would like to get out. I walked down near enough to the gate to see the policeman, but my courage failed. Before I could stammer out half that explanation to him in his trifling language (which foreigners are mockingly told is the best in the world for conversation), he would either have slipped his hateful rapier through my body, or have raised an alarm ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... beside herself. She is like a maniac. She has lost you; she cannot explain to—to Mademoiselle's father. Mon dieu, when he met her unexpectedly in the hall, he shouts, 'where is my daughter?' And poor Madame she has but to shiver and stammer and—run away! Oui! She dash out into the ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... have done better had he not been haunted by the Englishman's fear of being over-demonstrative. He was easily capable of turning a nice little speech. Apart from the fear of transgressing the canons of negative good form he would have enjoyed turning one. As it was, he assumed a stammer and a drawl, jerking out a few inarticulate phrases of which the lady could distinguish only "so awfully good of you" and "never forget your jolly kindness." This being masculine, soldier-like, and British, he was hurt to notice an amused smile on the Marquise's lips. He could have sworn ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... soldier, was Peal, and undeniably there was music in the name. But nature had also given him a strong will, which stiffened his back like an iron bar, and that is a splendid gift, quite invaluable in the struggle for an existence. When he was still a baby, only just able to stammer a few words, he would never refer to his own little person as "he," as other babies do, but from the very first he spoke of himself as "I." You have no "I," said his parents. When he grew older, he expressed every little want or desire by "I will." But then his ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... and enunciation often suffered in point of clearness and steadiness, from the agitation of her excessive organic sensibility. At times the self-counteraction and self-baffling of her feelings caused her even to stammer. But the greatest deductions from Miss Wordsworth's attractions, and from the exceeding interest which surrounded her, in right of her character, of her history, and of the relation which she fulfilled towards her brother, were the glancing quickness ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... wanted to get cool," answered Kat with a stammer, and her eyes going hurriedly from ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... very kind of you to make it again," Christopher managed to stammer out, adding with a bluntness worthy of Masters himself, "I never could understand why you ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... this to do with poor Dick? Why do people turn away from me and stammer at the mention of his name, as though they were ashamed? He, poor boy, knew ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... how I cried on first entering the cars, and now—would you believe it?—I got terribly embarrassed. It seemed as if everything I did or said made matters worse. I was scarcely able to stammer, 'My aunt—' ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... little girl—tears of joy over her first success—she could hardly see what the coin was, but when she picked it up she managed to stammer ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... Connecticut was abundantly strong enough to secure Impartial Suffrage. But it chose, instead, to insult its black-faced brethren, and refused their alliance." Mr. Raymond, in the New York Times, speaks without a stammer on the suffrage question. It declares, "In New York suffrage is now absolutely universal for all citizens except the colored people; and upon them it is only restricted ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... like her, nibble a morsel and drink a mouthful; they tell one another the history of their martyrs; their sorrow becomes vehement; their libations increase; their eyes, swimming with tears, are fixed on one another; they stammer with inebriety and desolation. Gradually their hands touch; their lips meet; their veils are torn away, and they embrace one another upon the tombs in the midst of the cups ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... are consonants. They would be almost pure hexameters, if in lieu of the long a[a-macron]nd, we could put e[e-breve]t, or te [tau epsilon]. And there are only three Saxon words in the two lines. But hexameters consisting of purely English words, especially of Anglo-Saxon words, halt and stammer like a schoolboy's exercise. The attempt of Kingsley in Andromeda is ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... not gasp or stammer or question. She did none of the dismayedly enlightening things into which a lesser poise might have tottered. After an inconsiderable moment of silence she merely uttered her familiar, "Oh!" and uttered it in a voice in which so many things were blended ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... case," broke in Lateral Stability, and affecting the fashionable Flying Corps stammer, "it would be a h-h-h-o-r-rible affair! If there were too much Keel-Surface in front, then that gust would blow the Aeroplane round the other way a very considerable distance. And the right-hand Surface being on the outside of the turn would have more ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... curious, kindly little man—lame, with a brown wig, a wrinkled face, and a long mouth, of which he only made use of the half on the right side to stammer out humorous and often witty sayings—at least so they appeared to those who had grace enough to respect his position and his age. As often as reference is made in my hearing to Charles Lamb and his stutter, up comes the face of dear old Professor Fraser, and I hear ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... impossible. "Very well," said General Sigel, "I think I shall want this place to-morrow for a hospital. Madam, your kindness will be reciprocated." He spoke very emphatically, whereat the pretty daughter began to cry, and the mother to stammer apologies, and said she would do the best she could for them, but she really had nothing to cook. The general retired very indignant. Whether or not his threat was carried out I do not know, for the next morning we were off without ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... touch on his temples, she was alert. Color was surging into his face; his features, large, irregular, took on for the instant a look of speechless, almost demoniac power; he seemed to be swimming some mental tide before his foot touched the sands of language and he could helplessly stammer: ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... You have talents and art to captivate any woman. I'm doom'd to adore the sex, and yet to converse with the only part of it I despise. This stammer in my address, and this awkward prepossessing visage of mine, can never permit me to soar above the reach of a milliner's 'prentice, or one of the duchesses of Drury-lane. Pshaw! this fellow here ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... to see you even drink a cup of coffee ungracefully, and slop yourself with it, by your awkward manner of holding it; nor should I like to see your coat buttoned, or your shoes buckled awry. But I should be outrageous, if I heard you mutter your words unintelligibly, stammer, in your speech, or hesitate, misplace, and mistake in your narrations; and I should run away from you with greater rapidity, if possible, than I should now run to embrace you, if I found you destitute of all those graces which I have set my heart upon their making you ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... monks who are horrified, as at some prodigy, if they stammer, or repeat even a syllable in the Canon of the Mass,[16] though this may be a natural defect of the tongue, or an accident, and is not a sin. Again, there is no priest who does not confess that he was distracted, or failed to read his Preparatoria, ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... and Dugazon. Several foreigners were present at a breakfast given by Eugene, the parts having been assigned, and learned in advance, and the two victims selected. When each had taken his place at table, Dugazon, pretending to stammer, addressed a remark to Thiemet, who, playing the same role, replied to him, stammering likewise; then each of them pretended to believe that the other was making fun of him, and there followed a stuttering quarrel between the two ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... hurt, he had not even fallen, but excitement as usual had robbed him of the power of connected speech. He could do no more than stammer at the window. "Too heavy. Too heavy." Winnie put out her ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... articulation was affected by a slight stammer, which, in my opinion, but added piquancy to her epigrammatic sayings. She once remarked to me, "I shall never be c-c-cold until I'm dead." An impulse took possession of me which somehow, in spite of the great difference in our ages, I seemed unable to resist, and I retorted, "We are not all assured ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... his hand in dismissal and settled himself to sleep. When Culver began to stammer thanks for ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... a surprise to Garnett that for the moment he could only stammer out—"You consent then? I may go and ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find him. So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled HOTI's business—let it be!— Properly based OUN— {130} Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic 'De', Dead from the waist down. Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: Hail to your purlieus, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... sometimes for a few facts; correcting still his old records,—must relinquish display and immediate fame. In the long period of his preparation he must betray often an ignorance and shiftlessness in popular arts, incurring the disdain of the able who shoulder him aside. Long he must stammer in his speech; often forego the living for the dead. Worse yet, he must accept—how often!—poverty and solitude. For the ease and pleasure of treading the old road, accepting the fashions, the education, the religion of society, he takes the cross of making his own, and, of course, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... seems but the symbol of pride, and incompleteness of technical resource the image of an imagination too limitless to find within the limits of form its complete expression, or of a love too simple not to stammer in its tale. But to us the rule of art is not the rule of morals. In an ethical system, indeed, of any gentle mercy good intentions will, one is fain to fancy, have their recognition; but of those that would enter the serene House ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... street, did not seem to know why they stopped him, who, lacking West's verbal felicity, could do nothing but take his hand, hot with the fear that they might be betrayed into expressing any feeling, and stammer out: "Doc, if you want anything—why dammit, Doc—you call ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... getting confused again, and he began to stammer. Mr. Cavendish wondered that, in some way, Mr. Balfour did not come to the relief of his witness, but he sat perfectly quiet, and apparently unconcerned. Mr. Cavendish rummaged among his papers, and withdrew two letters. These he handed to the witness. "Now," ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... separate so quickly. It is not, however, possible that they will fight.... Can we see them from here?" He approached the window, which indeed looked upon the enclosure. The sight which met his eyes caused the excellent man to stammer.... "The miserable men!.... It is monstrous.... They are mad.... They have found seconds.... Whom have they taken?.... Those two huntsmen!.... Ali, my God! My God!".... He could say no more. The doctor had hastened to the window to see ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... harsh. Yet, he was great: and though he turned language into ignoble clay, he made from it men and women that live. He is the most Shakespearian creature since Shakespeare. If Shakespeare could sing with myriad lips, Browning could stammer through a thousand mouths. Even now, as I am speaking, and speaking not against him but for him, there glides through the room the pageant of his persons. There, creeps Fra Lippo Lippi with his cheeks still burning ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... hands with the lady, and she said a great many very pretty things to him, which made the gallant little hero blush like a rose in June, and stammer so that he could hardly make ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... Captain Snaggs managed to stammer out after a bit, his long face perceptibly longer and his rubicund complexion turned to an ashy grey. He was conscience-stricken and thoroughly frightened at the second-mate thus bringing up again, as he thought, his cruel murder of the negro cook; for, Jan Steenbock spoke ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... for grammar, Nor did we care to teach, But soon he learned to stammer Some words of ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this new light; Peter loving a woman, and denied. The knowledge seemed to fling a strange glamour about him; she saw new charm in him, or perhaps, as she told herself, she saw for the first time how charming he really was. His speech seemed actually the pleasanter for the stammer at which they had all laughed years ago; the slight limp lent its own touch of individuality, and the man's blunt criticisms of books and music, politics and people, were softened by his humour, his genuine humility, and his ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... "Boris Godounow," and out of the dust of ages an halting, inarticulate voice calls to us. He is the poor, the aging, the half-witted; the drunken sot mumbling in his stupor; the captives of life to whom death sings his insistent, luring songs; the half-idiotic peasant boy who tries to stammer out his declaration of love to the superb village belle; the wretched fool who weeps in the falling snowy night. He is those who have never before spoken in musical art, and now arise, and are about us and make us ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... tortured man could not speak. But while his rescuer slashed loose the rawhide ropes that bound him, he began to stammer ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... with his hands, did not frown or clench his fists, but remained impassively calm. His words, however, cut Rrisa like knives. The orderly remained trembling and sweating, with a piteous expression. Finally he managed to stammer: ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... flatter and caress them; they allow some part of their body to be uncovered as if by accident; their breasts appear to swell; they show unusual alacrity; they blush; their eyes are bright; and if they experience unusual ardor they stammer, talk beside the mark, and are scarcely mistress of themselves. At the same time their private parts become hot and swell. All these signs should convince a husband, however inattentive he may be, that his wife craves for satisfaction" (Zacchiae Quaestionum Medico-legalium ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... with his emotion and desire to be polite, half rose to acknowledge the pretty speech, and to stammer some sort of reply, but as he did so his hand by chance touched her own that was resting upon the table, and a shock that was for all the world like a shock of electricity, passed from her skin into his body. His soul wavered and shook deep within ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... do, Mr. Crowninshield?" he at last managed to stammer after the master had ceased his pacing of the veranda and at length became ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... like me?" Mr. Darley now appealed to Sydney, who managed to stammer out: "I certainly ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... reached out to something that she felt must be beyond the pleasant sound of falling water, so small and transitory; beyond the drip and patter of human destinies—something vast, solitary, and silent. How should she find that which none has ever named or known? Men only stammer of it in such words as Eternity, Fate, God. All the outcries of all creatures, living and dying, sink in its depth as in an unsounded ocean. Whether this listening silence, incurious, yet hearing all, is benignant or malevolent, who can say? The wistful dreams of men haunt ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... so. The poor fellow wanted to learn to stammer in his Testament, and Letty, like any true-hearted wife, had given him the little assistance she could render. The whipping failed of its intended effect, however. Going one evening, at a late hour, into Letty's cabin, I found ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... hesitation &c v.; impediment in one's speech; titubancy^, traulism^; whisper &c (faint sound) 405; lisp, drawl, tardiloquence^; nasal tone, nasal accent; twang; falsetto &c (want of voice) 581; broken voice, broken accents, broken sentences. brogue &c 563; slip of the tongue, lapsus linouae [Lat.]. V. stammer, stutter, hesitate, falter, hammer; balbutiate^, balbucinate^, haw, hum and haw, be unable to put two words together. mumble, mutter; maud^, mauder^; whisper &c 405; mince, lisp; jabber, gibber; sputter, splutter; muffle, mump^; drawl, mouth; croak; speak thick, speak through the nose; snuffle, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Maud Mackenzie frankly hadn't any chin, Her hands were rough, her feet she turned invariably in; Her general form was German, By which I mean that you Her waist could not determine To within a foot or two: And not only did she stammer, But she used the kind of grammar That is called, for sake of ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... discomfited, and was about to stammer out some awkward reply, when the marshal of the household threw open the doors of the banquet-hall, and approaching the king, cried out, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... have their mental powers confused. This is recognized in such common expressions as "she was covered with confusion." Persons in this condition lose their presence of mind, and utter singularly inappropriate remarks. They are often much distressed, stammer, and make awkward movements or strange grimaces. In certain cases involuntary twitchings of some of the facial muscles may be observed. I have been informed by a young lady, who blushes excessively, that at such times she does not even know what ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... gained it as for him who lost it. To Napoleon it is a panic; Blucher sees nothing in it but fire; Wellington does not understand it at all. Look at the reports: the bulletins are confused; the commentaries are entangled; the latter stammer, the former stutter. Jomini divides the battle of Waterloo into four moments; Muffling cuts it into three acts; Charras, altho we do not entirely agree with him in all his appreciations, has alone caught with his haughty eye the characteristic lineaments of this catastrophe ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... Wilford Cameron's wife; but the sight of Katy, together with the errand on which she came, had unnerved her, and she wept bitterly in her desolation, until Katy's reappearance startled her from her position on the floor, making her stammer out some excuse about "homesickness and the seeing Katy bringing back ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... sometimes, To move compassion: Sir, there is a table, That doth command all these things, and enjoyns 'em, Be perfect in their crutches, their feign'd plaisters, And their torn pass-ports, with the ways to stammer, And to be dumb, and deaf, and blind, and lame, There, all the halting paces are set ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... replied, very energetically for him, and reining his horse up under a wide spreading butternut tree, which grew upon the river bank, he sprang out and pretended to be busy with some part of the harness, while he astonished Jerrie by bursting out, without the least stammer, he was so earnest and so excited: 'I've something to say to you, Jerrie, and I may as well say it now as any time, and know the worst, or the best. I can't bear the suspense any longer, and I got out of the cart ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... us to wriggle, and strain, and stammer, and we do not recognize the root of the trouble and shun it, and learn to yield and quietly relax our nerves and muscles, of course the strain becomes worse. Then, rather than suffer from it any ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... The visitor came in, leaving the door ajar, and after a minute during which, to help her, he charged her with the purpose of telling him that he ought to be ashamed to send her down such rubbish, she recovered herself sufficiently to stammer out that his song was exactly what she had been looking for and that after reading it she had been seized with an extraordinary, irresistible impulse—that of thanking him for it in person ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... gazing out on the dull leaden sky, watching the snowflakes falling through the dreary air. There followed then a long, long pause, in which I had time to recover from the effect her words had produced, and to frame and stammer forth such congratulations as seemed required by the occasion. These she did not answer, or even seem to comprehend, but roused from her revery by the sound of my voice, she crossed the room and seated herself beside me, and took my hand within ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... law, at the completion of his legal studies he was admitted an advocate of the parlement of Paris in 1785. His professional success was not great; his manner was violent, his appearance unattractive, and his speech impaired by a painful stammer. He indulged, however, his love for literature, was closely observant of public affairs, and thus gradually prepared himself for the main duties of his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... born in Athens; had many impediments to overcome to succeed in the profession, but by ingenious methods and indomitable perseverance he subdued them all, and became the first orator not of Greece only, but of all antiquity; a stammer in his speech he overcame by practising with pebbles in his mouth, and a natural diffidence by declaiming on the sea-beach amid the noise of the waves; while he acquired a perfect mastery of the Greek language by binding himself down to copy five times over in succession Thucydides' "History ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to see what was the matter. When he got near, the lights went into the house: he went up quietly and as he looked in found the house full of women who extinguished the light directly they saw him and rushed out of the house. Then he asked my sister what the light was; but she could only stammer out "What light? I saw no light," so he struck her a blow and went back to the threshing-floor and told the others what he had seen. That night he would not tell them the names of the women he had seen; and before morning his right arm swelled ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... see her receiving my guests with quite a calm, grand manner. Miss Lucy and I will have to look about us, and polish up all our best airs and graces lest we should be thrown into the shade. Still, Polly, there is a little flutter, a little tendency to stammer now and then, and even, to lisp as you lisped when you were six ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... the next, Let the world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find Him. So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled Hoti's deg. business—let it be!— deg.129 Properly based Oun deg.— deg.130 Gave as the doctrine of the enclitic De deg. deg.131 Dead from the waist down. Well, here's the platform, here's ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... the terms of the will; but he explained that he was a bachelor with hardly any living relation, that he had known my parents in his youth, and that he had always heard of me as a very deserving young man, and was assured that his money would be in worthy hands. Of course, I could only stammer out my thanks. The will was duly finished, signed, and witnessed by my clerk. This is it on the blue paper, and these slips, as I have explained, are the rough draft. Mr. Jonas Oldacre then informed me that there were a number of documents—building leases, title-deeds, mortgages, scrip, and ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of some formelesse conceptions, which they cannot distinguish or resolve within, and by consequence are not able to produce them in as-much as they understand not themselves: And if you but marke their earnestnesse, and how they stammer and labour at the point of their deliverle, you would deeme that what they go withall, is but a conceiving, and therefore nothing neere downelying; and that they doe but licke that imperfect and shapelesse lump of matter. As for me, I am of opinion, and Socrates would have it so, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... Morton's nephew from Indiana," the young man managed to stammer, feeling some explanation might bridge the gulf of ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... "She had a little stammer that—that Laurie thought very pretty, and she had a restless little way of playing with her fingers as if on a piano. Oh, my dear, it would have been too dreadful; ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... to give myself airs. When one puts on the semblance of anything for a time, it will soon become a portion of our nature. Imitate a stutterer for a while, and you will have to keep diligent watch over yourself not to stammer in earnest. I fell in love, and was on the point of changing into a totally different person; for my passion was sincere and ardent. But new distress. The noble being who soon became my wife, could never give me her heart. The strongest passion must die away when it finds no return; and in such ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... Jarrott himself, who had unexpectedly invited his intelligent employee to lunch with him at a club, in order to talk over a commission with which Strange was to be intrusted. On this occasion he was able to stammer his way out of the invitation; but when later, Mr. Skinner, the second partner, made a like proposal, he was caught without an excuse, being obliged, with some confusion, to eat his meal in a fashionable ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... their husbands and brothers in cleverness and appreciation. Among small tradesmen, the wife always comes to the rescue of her slow spouse when she sees him befogged in a bargain. In the fields, you ask a peasant some question about your journey. He will hesitate, and stammer, and end with, "Quien sabe?" but his wife will answer with glib completeness all you want to know. I can imagine no cause for this, unless it be that the men cloud their brains all day with the fumes of tobacco, ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... Dysarthria).—Children just beginning to form sentences stammer, not uttering the sounds correctly. They also, as a rule, lisp for a considerable time, so that the words spoken by them are still indistinct and are intelligible only to the persons most intimately ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... There were the same unfinished sentences, ending in a ps—ps—ps—uttered between the teeth. "What's-his-names" and "What-d'ye-call-'ems" at every turn, a sort of lazy, bored, aristocratic stammer, in which one divined profound contempt for the vulgar art of speech. In the duke's circle everybody strove to copy that accent, those disdainful intonations, in which there was an affectation ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... they repeated frequently afterwards, sent advice of this to the king, who ordered the children to be brought before him, in order that he himself might be a witness to the truth of what was told him; and accordingly both of them began, in his presence, to stammer out the sounds above mentioned. Nothing now was wanting but to ascertain what nation it was that used this word; and it was found that the Phrygians called bread by this name. From this time they were allowed ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... drawl, tardiloquence[obs3]; nasal tone, nasal accent; twang; falsetto &c. (want of voice) 581; broken voice, broken accents, broken sentences. brogue &c. 563; slip of the tongue, lapsus linouae [Lat]. V. stammer, stutter, hesitate, falter, hammer; balbutiate|, balbucinate|, haw, hum and haw, be unable to put two words together. mumble, mutter; maud|, mauder[obs3]; whisper &c. 405; mince, lisp; jabber, gibber; sputter, splutter; muffle, mump[obs3]; drawl, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find Him. So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled Hoti's deg. business—let it be!— deg.129 Properly based Oun deg.— deg.130 Gave as the doctrine of the enclitic De deg. deg.131 Dead from the waist down. Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: Hail to your purlieus, All ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... perspective were known. None knew how to draw anything correctly. No color-harmonies had been thought of. These men must needs stammer when they tried to express themselves; but as much greater as thought is than the mere expression of it so much greater are many of their works, in the true sense, than the mass of pictures that make up our exhibitions of the ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... English streak in you; but in a way you're right. Fact is Walthew and I have hustled the rest of the crowd most off their feet, and we mean to keep them on the jump. Last meeting old Macalan's eyes were bulging with horror, he could hardly stammer out his indignation—said our extravagance was sinful. ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... was endeavoring to stammer through a few lines of some Greek play, and at last paused, ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... are the points of the compass, to know them at sight and tell them quickly; for you see it's of great importance to a pilot to know exactly how a ship's head is; and the men at the helm, although good seamen and steering well, are not so ready at answering as a pilot wishes, and very often stammer at it—sometimes make mistakes. Now, you see, when I'm piloting a vessel, if you stand at the binnacle, watch the compass, and answer me quickly how the ship's head is, you'll be of use to me in a very short time. Go up into my room, ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... if "a truly angel" was embracing her, and could only stammer out her thanks, while the other children ran to see the pretty spirit, and touch her soft dress, until she stood in a crowd of blue gowns laughing as they held up their gifts for ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... pass you by again, as usual? Or do you want to try—I shall not say to read, but to stammer through a line?" ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... but my voice shook, and finally I managed to stammer that when we got back I was sure it would be ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... the French and ... But it's a complicated narrative. I haven't it straight in my own mind yet. Do you know, I wake up at night sometimes with the rather naive idea that I, von Stinnes, who prefer Turkish cigarettes to women, even brunettes ... But I stammer. It is difficult to be amusing, always. I think sometimes at night that I was personally responsible for at least half the casualties ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... freshly cut young bulls, known as Seggs, or Staggs. So also it was called St. James's wort, either because that great warrior and saint was the patron of horses, or because it blossoms on his day, July 25th: sometimes also the plant has been styled Stammer wort. Furthermore it possesses a distinct reputation for the cure of cancer, and is known as Cankerwort, being applied when bruised, either by itself, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... he wrote. I think the one he wrote had already been set up in type that afternoon from his manuscript, and consequently they did not go over it to see whether it had been changed or not. He had read three pages and had gone on to the fourth when he lost his place and then he began to tremble and stammer. He then turned it over two or three times, threw the manuscript upon the table, and, as they say in the west, "let himself go." Now the stammering man who had created only silent derision up to that point, suddenly flashed ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... appeal, Wharton ran on smilingly: "He promised to shackle you to a table until I could stammer out my halting apologies, and now that I've done so in the presence of press and public won't you forgive me and help me to bury the hatchet in a Welsh rarebit?" He was speaking directly to her with a genuine appeal in his handsome eyes. Now that she saw him in his right mind, it was unexpectedly ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... and remained still long enough for the astonished Powell to stammer out an indistinct: "What do you mean? I don't understand." Then, with a low 'Good-night' glided a few steps, and sank through the shadow of the companion into the lamplight below which did not reach higher than the turn ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... brutally direct to shatter information about silk at one shilling the yard with a prayer for matrimonial freedom. The girl would be shocked—he could see her—she would stare at him, and suddenly grow red in the face and stammer; and he would be forced to trail through a lengthy, precise explanation of this matter which was not at all precise to himself. Furthermore, certain obscure emotions rendered him unwilling to be sundered from this girl.—There was the touch of her hand; more, the touch of her lips ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... been able to do work as hard as God has required of me. I recommend God as a physician. At the time I was healed of my other bodily afflictions, I was also relieved of stammering. It is true I stammer some yet, at times, but not nearly so much as I did formerly; and not enough to prevent my preaching ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... throw myself down on my knees before Mm, and say that I didn't deserve new skates, or anything like that this year, because I was a wretched, careless boy, who had done something wicked. But somehow I managed to stammer out that I guessed my old ones were going to be good enough for one more season, though, Jack, they are in bad shape; but then it would have made me feel worse than ever if I'd accepted his offer, after failing ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... even the loss of a good-for-nothing chorus-girl. It was a loss far more subtle. The recognition of it lamed Robert Stonehouse, knocked the power out of him, as though someone had struck and paralysed a vital nerve centre. He could only stammer futilely: ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... next, Let the world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find him. So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled HOTI's business—let it be!— Properly based OUN— {130} Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic 'De', Dead from the waist down. Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: Hail to your purlieus, All ye highfliers of the feathered race, Swallows and ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... his old records,—must relinquish display and immediate fame. In the long period of his preparation he must betray often an ignorance and shiftlessness in popular arts, incurring the disdain of the able who shoulder him aside. Long he must stammer in his speech; often forego the living for the dead. Worse yet, he must accept—how often!—poverty and solitude. For the ease and pleasure of treading the old road, accepting the fashions, the education, the religion of society, he takes the cross ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... spiritual consolation, his intellectual delight, and indeed his daily bread; for out of that tremendous horn-book he taught me to stammer the divine Italian language, and illustrated every lesson, from the simplest rule of its syntax to its exceedingly complex and artificially constructed prosody, out of the pages of that sublime, grotesque, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... gave a stifled cry, thrust his hand into his pocket and began to stammer inarticulate syllables, while Mme. Dugrival gasped, ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... when she opened her eyes, and remained there, behind the carriage, my face muffled up in my cloak. I desired the servants to make no mention of my sudden appearance. They soon made a sign to me that she was recovering consciousness, and I heard her voice stammer forth these words, as if in a dream: "Oh, if Raphael were here! I thought it was Raphael!" I hastily returned to my own carriage; the horses started afresh, and a wide distance soon lay between us. In ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... hiss and a stutter; it wasn't a laugh, for I haven't laughed in years. All my laughing since 1889 has been a strictly intellectual process; but I did have an awful pain because I could not digest his statement with a bouncing laugh. All I could do was to stammer and splutter like a bass viol tuning up, while I sozzled around in my chair trying to break in with something that would count. Why should a man of my temperament take a hand in love, war or diplomacy? As a theoretical manipulator ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... for the woodland altar. O kindly muse! let not my weak tongue faulter In telling of this goodly company, Of their old piety, and of their glee: 130 But let a portion of ethereal dew Fall on my head, and presently unmew My soul; that I may dare, in wayfaring, To stammer where old ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... childhood, black in manhood, and snowy white in age. His brow was broad, and his features regular, save that his left eyelid drooped somewhat, like that of his father, and hid part of the pupil. He spoke with a stammer, which did not, however, detract from the persuasiveness of his eloquence. His sinewy, muscular arms were those of the consummate swordsman, and his long legs gave him a firm hold in the saddle when riding the most ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... the history of the paymaster's recent experiences and bravery so effectively that the poor little man became rosy with confusion, and when at the conclusion of the narrative his health was pledged with a round of cheers, he could only stammer in reply:— ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... which burst forth again in these words: "It seems they do not decide to separate so quickly. It is not, however, possible that they will fight.... Can we see them from here?" He approached the window, which indeed looked upon the enclosure. The sight which met his eyes caused the excellent man to stammer.... "The miserable men!... It is monstrous.... They are mad.... They have found seconds.... Whom have they taken?... Those two huntsmen!... Ali, my God! My God!".... He could say no more. The doctor had hastened to the window to see what ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... little fight that morning. She had yielded and she could not renew it. She had spent three miserable hours framing reasonable arguments why last night should be forgotten. But the sight of her lover coming across the meadow had set her heart so leaping that she could only stammer out a few ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... his figures informed him that the gold in this vault amounted to the not altogether insignificant weight of close upon fourteen hundred tons. The sight of such incredible quantities of the precious metals had so paralysing an effect upon the young Englishman that he could scarcely stammer an enquiry as to where it all came from. The custodian of this fabulous wealth replied, with a smile, that the mountains which hemmed the valley about were enormously rich in both gold and silver, and that ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... in a kind of stammer; "an' as to Sally, the nerra one o' me knows any thing about ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... leaping upon the tortured girl in the stand, Cynthe rose to her feet. She expected to hear the girl stammer and blurt out something that would give them a chance to ask her further questions. But when she saw the girl reel and quiver in pain, when she saw her gasp for breath and self-control, when she saw the hunted agony in ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... street to a drawing-room had a startling effect on him: it caused him to whip off his hat as though his hat had been red hot. Except for two tall elegant creatures who stood together at the other end of the boudoir, the chairs and tables had the place to themselves. He was about to stammer an excuse and fly, when one of the gentlewomen turned her eye on him for a moment, and so he sat down. The gentlewomen then resumed their conversation. He glanced cautiously about him. Elm-trees, firmly rooted in a border of Indian matting, grew round all the walls ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... and when I returned to my room I thoughtlessly opened the door of her apartment instead of that of my own. The beautiful woman was reading by the light of the lamp and started when she saw me. I was so embarrassed by my mistake that for a moment I could only stammer unintelligible words. My confusion was so evident that she could not doubt for a moment that I had made a mistake. I turned to the door, intent upon relieving her of my presence as quickly as possible, when she said with the most exquisite courtesy: "In order to show you that I do not doubt ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... was filled with such great and unexpected joy that he became almost delirious. He wanted to laugh, he wanted to cry, he wanted to say a thousand things, and instead he could only stammer out a few confused and broken words. At last he succeeded in uttering a cry of joy, and, opening his arms, he threw them around the little old man's neck, ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... who was afflicted with a stammer when he was excited, "I didn't c-c-ut off my eyelashes, anyway! Norah went up to her room one day and p-played barber's shop. She cut lumps off her hair wherever she could get at it, till she looked like an Indian squaw, and then she s-s-snipped off her eyelashes till there wasn't a hair ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... never seed un with my own eyes, an' I'm sort o' wantin' t' know how they shapes up alongside o' Twist Tickle. I 'low," says he, "you don't find many harbors in the world like Twist Tickle. Since I been travellin' t' Jimmie Tick's Cove with the mail," he continued, with a stammer and flush, like a man misled from an austere path by the flesh-pots of earth, "I've cotched a sinful hankerin' ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... as it had an awkward way of doing in his tell-tale face, but before he could stammer a reply, Harry came ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... thence than was one of the frail nuns built into the wall in the old times likely to come stepping out again. Bobby has at length ceased to offer me every object which it devolves upon him to hand me, with a quavering voice and a prolonged stammer, since, though I was at first excellently vulnerable by this weapon of offense, I am now becoming hornily hard and indifferent to it. We have stepped over the boundaries of ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife; While he could stammer He settled Hoti's business—let it be— Properly based Oun Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, Dead from ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... thrown into confusion at this, for he did not know whether she was serious or not. He could do nothing but stammer and get red, and think what a ridiculous ass he was making of himself. He might have considered the help he was getting ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... 'Put a point, put a point, you drown me in phrases; your explanations explain nothing. One more word. What in the devil's name is she doing in there?' He had a short way. John began to stammer. ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... this news been digested than somebody discovered a diamond ring on Clara Tuttle's left hand. So Clara was surrounded and an explanation demanded. But before she could conquer her blushes and stammer out her news Max Longman came in from another room and, putting his arms about her, said, "Don't be afraid, girl of mine, I'm here." And so everybody knew then that it was Max, after all, and ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... haunted by the Englishman's fear of being over-demonstrative. He was easily capable of turning a nice little speech. Apart from the fear of transgressing the canons of negative good form he would have enjoyed turning one. As it was, he assumed a stammer and a drawl, jerking out a few inarticulate phrases of which the lady could distinguish only "so awfully good of you" and "never forget your jolly kindness." This being masculine, soldier-like, and British, he was hurt to notice an amused smile on the Marquise's lips. He could ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... Forever.' Back to his book then; deeper drooped his head: Calculus racked him: Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead: Tussis attacked him.... So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled Hoti's business—let it be!— Properly based Oun— Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, Dead from the waist down. Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: Hail to your purlieus, All ye highfliers ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... in that self-same moment Hardy realized how the low-down strategy which he had perpetrated upon his employer had fallen upon his own head a thousandfold. But before he could stammer his apologies, Kitty Bonnair stood before him—the same Kitty, and smiling as he had often ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... "The Republican party in Connecticut was abundantly strong enough to secure Impartial Suffrage. But it chose, instead, to insult its black-faced brethren, and refused their alliance." Mr. Raymond, in the New York Times, speaks without a stammer on the suffrage question. It declares, "In New York suffrage is now absolutely universal for all citizens except the colored people; and upon them it is only restricted by a slight ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... merriment, may yield some slight amusement. The pedant's endeavours to make a philosopher of his child are sufficiently ludicrous. He is delighted to find that the infant has the wart of Cicero and the very neck of Alexander, and hopes that he may come to stammer like Demosthenes, 'and in time arrive at many other defects of famous men.' As the boy grows up his father invents for him a geographical suit of clothes, and stamps his gingerbread with the letters of the Greek alphabet, which proved so successful a ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... even so. The poor fellow wanted to learn to stammer in his Testament, and Letty, like any true-hearted wife, had given him the little assistance she could render. The whipping failed of its intended effect, however. Going one evening, at a late hour, into Letty's cabin, I found George seated by her on the floor, ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... before it had time to spread, and restore M. de Morcerf to the position he had long held in public opinion. Morcerf was so completely overwhelmed by this great and unexpected calamity that he could scarcely stammer a few words as he looked around on the assembly. This timidity, which might proceed from the astonishment of innocence as well as the shame of guilt, conciliated some in his favor; for men who are truly generous are always ready to compassionate ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... rektangulilo; placo. squint : strabi. squirrel : sciuro. staff : (officers), stabo. stage : estrado, scenejo. stain : makul'o, -i. stair : sxtupo. stake : paliso, fosto; veto. stalk : trunketo. stall : budo, stalo. stammer : balbuti. stamp : stampi; posxtmarko; piedfrapi. starch : amelo. starling : sturno. state : stato; Sxtato; esprimi, diri, aserti. station : stacio, stacidomo. steak : bifsteko. steel : sxtalo. steep : kruta; trempi. steer : direkti, piloti. step : sxtupo; ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... in a husky, throaty stammer, weaker than a whisper, from an undersized tin-hatted youngster planted in the centre of the trench not ten feet in front of us. His left foot was forward and his bayoneted rifle was held ready for ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... see nothing of them. We could not stand up to look about us, because of the pitching of the boat. The two other men who had escaped so far with me were a man named Helmar, a passenger like myself, and a seaman whose name I don't know,—a short sturdy man, with a stammer. ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... therefore the whale has no voice; unless you insult him by saying, that when he so strangely rumbles, he talks through his nose. But then again, what has the whale to say? Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to this .. world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living. Oh! happy that the world is such an excellent listener! Now, the spouting canal of the Sperm Whale, chiefly intended as it is for the conveyance of air, and for ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... enigma as obscure for those who gained it as for him who lost it. To Napoleon it is a panic; Blucher sees nothing in it but fire; Wellington does not understand it at all. Look at the reports: the bulletins are confused; the commentaries are entangled; the latter stammer, the former stutter. Jomini divides the battle of Waterloo into four moments; Muffling cuts it into three acts; Charras, altho we do not entirely agree with him in all his appreciations, has alone caught with his haughty eye the characteristic lineaments of this catastrophe of human genius contending ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... from his cigarette rose in a quivering blue-white stream. Ward spied him at the same moment and stepped forward with quick outstretched hands. I remember the flame of adoring zeal in the youngster's eyes as he tried to speak. At length he managed to stammer some congratulatory phrases while Drayle clapped him ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... day. Occasionally the fever would go down sufficiently to allow him to get something to eat. Then it would be worse than before. In his dire need he wanted to pray, but he was so weak that he could only stammer, "Dear God, help me, or ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison
... horn to make the movement perfect, or the interval less harsh. Yet, he was great: and though he turned language into ignoble clay, he made from it men and women that live. He is the most Shakespearian creature since Shakespeare. If Shakespeare could sing with myriad lips, Browning could stammer through a thousand mouths. Even now, as I am speaking, and speaking not against him but for him, there glides through the room the pageant of his persons. There, creeps Fra Lippo Lippi with his cheeks still burning from some ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... grateful when spared the conclusion of a sentence born to stammer. If for that only, the doctor pressed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... an idiot, and, besides, subject to that terrible nervous affection which at times shakes the whole body and disfigures the face by the violence of uncontrollable convulsions. He was not a deaf-mute; but he could only stammer out with intense difficulty a few disjointed syllables. Sometimes the country ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... was usually a wide-awake citizen of the land that Lafayette went to save, that I wanted my dinner, and would like to get out. I walked down near enough to the gate to see the policeman, but my courage failed. Before I could stammer out half that explanation to him in his trifling language (which foreigners are mockingly told is the best in the world for conversation), he would either have slipped his hateful rapier through my body, or have raised an alarm and called out the guards of the palace ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... man approached her—he tried to speak—but all he could do was to stammer a few unintelligible words, just like a very young man—his embarrassment was so great that he completely disconcerted the young girl. At last he ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... these absences that Jim Spalding, the old timber-jack, told Mrs. Gaynor in his abashed stammer that Mark King had showed up while they were gone. Gloria, on her way to her room, whirled and came back, and extracted the tale in its entirety, pumping it out of the brief, few-worded old Spalding in jerky details. King had appeared late yesterday afternoon, coming ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... dine alone (I have not seen him these two years)—and I shall never be able to keep from driving the great wedge right through his breast and descending lower, from riveting his two foolish legs to the wintry chasm; for I that stammer and answer hap-hazard with you, get proportionately valiant and voluble with a mere cupful of Diderot's rinsings, and a ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... walls. When they paused before the Countess' tent Pierce once more enfolded her in his arms and sheltered her from the boisterous breath of the night. His emotions were in a similar tumult, but as yet he could not voice them, he could merely stammer: ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... Steele. "Called him in before the indignant delegation, headed by old Reamur himself, and demanded of poor Webb what he meant by sending out such a letter. The youngster was so flustered that he could only stammer a confused denial. He started sniveling. Then Gordon collared him and booted him into the corridor. That should have closed the incident, but a few moments later back comes Webb, blubbering like a whipped schoolboy, and perfectly wild with rage. He was armed with a mop that ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... of about twelve summers the remark that she tho't it was rich to talk about the crooilty of the Spaniards usin thumbscrews, when he was in a Tower where so many poor peple's heads had been cut off. This made the Warder stammer and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... approached him without his seeing her. He turned quickly to accost her and immediately lost so much of his breath that he could only stammer his thanks, and the hope that Juno still enjoyed the best of health. But the deep-brown eyes did not waver after acknowledging his reply, nor did the smile ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... knowing himself now in the wrong, was a little frightened at the set speech, and began to bluster and stammer, but the swift descent of Malcolm's heavy riding whip on his shoulders and back made him voluble in curses. Then began a battle that could not last long with such odds on the side of justice. It was gazed at from the mouth of the close by many spectators, but none dared enter because of the ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... children," he said, with a slight stammer that somehow lent an additional kindliness to his tone, "what has the day's work been? You first, Herr Graf," he added, turning to the Count. "I suppose that you have ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... was too small for two of us. It was not I, but Fate, which had doomed Geta to die. I am certain of this, and so must you be. Yes, it was Fate. Fate prompted the child's little hand to attempt its brother's life. And that was long before my brain could form a thought or my baby-lips could stammer his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... were scarcely out of his mouth when, much to his dismay, Death stood before him and professed his readiness to serve him. He was almost frightened out of his wits, but he had enough presence of mind to stammer out, "Good sir, if you'd be so kind, pray help me up with ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... alone, the doctor's courage forsook him, and he could only stammer out some commonplace remarks about the party, asking how Maddy Lad enjoyed it, and if she was sure she had entirely recovered from the effects of her fainting fit. He was not getting on at all, and it was impossible for him to say anything as he had meant to say it. Why couldn't she help him, ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... black coat and a white cravat with a golden-headed cane and a tall hat and a frown; a thing which will stop breathing some fine day and the worms will eat! Shall I tremble when an ecclesiastical Leo utters a roar? Shall I halt and stammer because a top-heavy lad from a theological seminary, hopelessly in love with himself, scowls ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... had a dry goods store. A woman, a stranger, came in and asked the price of a shawl. She was told it was $15.00. It was done up for her. She had been hunting through her reticule and now put down the money in gold. The Captain looked at it as if hypnotized, but managed to stammer, "My God woman, I thought you had an order. It ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... at Jud, searching his face for some trace of doubt on which to hang a little hoping, but it was all bronze and very greatly troubled. Then he saw what I wanted, and began to stammer. "May be the horse was tender, an' that was the reason." But Ump piped in, scattering the little cloud, "That horse ain't lame. He trots ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... an entire stranger was unlooked for by Wilmot. He knew not what to make of it; it was so different from the cold, money-making men of the North. He tried to stammer out his thanks, when Mr. Edson interrupted him by nudging Mr. Woodburn and saying: "Don't you mind old Middleton. He's been tarin' round after a Yankee teacher these six weeks. I reckon ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... depths of depression and bashfulness. She had come to him several times for a light, or to apologise for imaginary depredations of her poodle; but his mouth was closed in the presence of so superior a being, his French promptly left him, and he could only stare and stammer until she was gone. The slenderness of their intercourse did not prevent him from throwing out insinuations of a very glorious order when he was safely ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... very curious," said the lady, "so interesting to hear all these details first hand! Young man," and she fixed Eric with her lorgnettes, "have you been wounded—I see no stripe on your arm?" and she eyed him severely. Now E. has always had a bit of a stammer, but at times it becomes markedly worse. We were both enjoying ourselves tremendously: ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... opened again just as this introduction was over, and a new nervousness attacked Alma. Another tinge of yellowness crept into her skin, her eyes grew wistful, and she began to stammer. ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... a mess every one will make! Oh, if I could but stay away, like Harry! There will be Dr. Hoxton being sonorous and prosy, and Mr. Lake will stammer, and that will be nothing to the misery of our own people's work. George will flounder, and look at Flora, and she will sit with her eyes on the ground, and Dr. Spencer will come out of his proper self, and be complimentary to people ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... sailor was so abashed and confounded at this novel salutation, that he could only stammer out an incoherent reply; and he was evidently much disposed to give the tactless zealot a piece of his mind expressed in the language of the quarter-deck. When the solemn man took his leave, the disgusted captain said, "If ever ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... This voice so strangely recalled those sounds that had been haunting him for days. He could only stammer out, ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... had not a word to say. He had been meditating upon a thousand possible explanations, excuses, apologies, and his tongue would not utter one of them. He accepted his orders meekly, but as he turned to go he managed to stammer out, "Of ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... rise and place stools near the stove, but whether he was quite drunk or whether some narcotic had been mixed with the brandy, he fell back on his seat, trying to stammer ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... sick, and to show it. He turned his hat round and round in his hand, his uncle glowering blacker and blacker upon him as the heavy seconds drifted by; then at last he began to stammer, and said piteously: ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he not sailing Lost like thyself on an ocean unknown, and is he not guided By the same stars that guide thee? Why shouldst thou hate then thy brother? Hateth he thee, forgive! For 'tis sweet to stammer one letter Of the Eternal's language;—on earth it is called Forgiveness! Knowest thou Him, who forgave, with the crown of thorns round his temples? Earnestly prayed for his foes, for his murderers? Say, dost thou know him? Ah! thou confessest his name, so ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... to hope one is better company than Maria! But come, before we fall under the dominion of the Queen of the West Wing, I have a secret for you.' Then, after a longer stammer than usual, 'How should you like a ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... steps of the club a little later. Bob's head was whirling. He tried to stammer out more thanks and was cut short, ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... When Gwynne lifted his head after "grace," he looked directly between them at his vis-a-vis. For a few seconds he stared as if spell-bound. Then, realizing his rudeness and conscious of an unmistakable resentment in her eyes, he felt the blood rush to his face, and quickly turned to stammer something to his host,—he knew not what ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... no dark centres. Through them, all that she was feeling struggled to find an outlet; but, too deep for words, those feelings would not pass her lips, utterly unused to express emotion. She could only stammer: ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... felicity. To have her husband seated beside her, with his son upon his knee, had been the dream and prayer of her life for six years, and now that it was gratified the very intensity of her hopes and fears choked her, made her stammer and answer at random, when a woman without her depth of affection might have put out all kinds of arts ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a hint that his further attendance was unnecessary, to baffle him. He did not speak until they had passed down the stone steps to the pavement, and then his utterance began with a half-embarrassed stammer, as if the shadow of displeasure ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... prospects, I arose early the next morning and walked briskly to Captain Tappken's office. Punctually at ten o'clock I announced myself at the Admiralty and after the usual procedure with the door man, I was received by Herr von Stammer, private secretary of Captain Tappken. A very astute and calculating gentleman is Herr von Stammer. Suave, genial, talkative, he has the plausible and unstudied art of extracting information without committing himself in turn. ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... this high commission! Fain would the tongue in clear, triumphant accents draw example from thy story, to encourage the hearts of those who almost faint and die beneath the old oppressions. But we must stammer and blush when we speak of many things. I take pride here, that I can really say the liberty of the press works well, and that checks and balances are found naturally which suffice to its government. I can say that the minds of our people are ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the tone from a common sailor were, of course, enough to astonish the young man. But there must be more than this, as Adrian surmised, to cause him to blush, wax angry, and stammer like a very school-boy found at fault. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... asserted itself especially when I heard any one else stutter, or when the weather was going to change; the men who knew me well said they could always foretell a storm by my inability to talk. From my own experience, however, I knew that when a stammerer heard another man stammer, he imagined that he was being made fun of, and all the fight in him came at once to the surface; and as this young man was about twice my size, I did my best to keep away from him. But in a few moments he came over to where I was and said to me, "A-a-a-sk 'DS' t-t-t-t-o s-s-s-end ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... these first tears passed, "I have no more words. I had, however, thought well as to what you would say. Now I tremble and shiver and break down at the decisive moment, I feel conscious of something supreme enveloping us, and I stammer. Oh! I shall fall upon the pavement if you do not take pity on me, pity on yourself. Do not condemn us both. If you only knew how much I love you! What a heart is mine! Oh! what desertion of all virtue! What desperate abandonment of myself! ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... sure grown," he said, in a loud, cheerful voice, "but you're not too grown-up to give your old Dad a good hug, are you?" He pulled Bart roughly into his arms. Bart started to pull away and stammer that the fat man had made a mistake, but the pudgy hand gripped ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... radiant as the sun, The Ape was a most unsightly one, The Ape was a most unsightly one— So it would not do— His scheme fell through, For the Maid, when his love took formal shape, Express'd such terror At his monstrous error, That he stammer'd an apology and made his 'scape, The picture of ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... a walie hammer; About the knottit buttress clam'er; Alang the steep roof stoyt an' stammer, A gate mischancy; On the aul' spire, the bells' hie ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... scholastic magnates of Bruges, More gravely inquired, "An averia carucae capta in vetitonamio sint irreplegibilia?" Not versed in the principles and terminology of the common law of England, the challenger could only stammer and blush—whilst More's eye twinkled maliciously, and his auditors were convulsed ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... at the sight of the young lady in gray hat and ostrich plumes, fashionable driving costume edged with fur, for the spring air was yet cool, and bright silk parasol, for the spring sun was beginning to be warm. With almost a stammer, ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... vanquishment, come, O Desire, Desire! Breathe in this harp of my soul the audible angel of love! Make of my heart an Israfel burning above, A lute for the music of God, that lips, which are mortal, but stammer! Smite every rapturous wire With golden delirium, rebellion and silvery clamor, Crying—"Awake! awake! Too long hast thou slumbered! too far from the regions of glamour, With its mountains of magic, its fountains of Faery, the spar-sprung, Hast thou wandered away, O Heart! Come, oh, come and partake ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... with a sash, and Jen tied two big white fly-away bows on my hair that kept rasping my neck and tickling my ears in a most exasperating way. Then an old lady whom I detest tried to make me talk before everybody, and all I could do was to turn as red as a beet and stammer: "Yes, ma'am," "no, ma'am." It made Mother furious, because it is so old-fashioned to say "ma'am." Our old nurse taught me to say it when I was small, and though it has been pretty well governessed out of me since then, it's sure to pop up when I ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... me to recognize him. I was very anxious to do so in view of the trouble the officer had taken to come away out on the picket line, in the middle of the night, to see me, but I just couldn't, and began to stammer a sort of apology about the darkness of the night hindering a prompt recognition, when the "unknown" gave his head a slant to one side, and, in his never forgettable voice, spoke thus to Keeley: "I told you he wouldn't know me." "I know you now," ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... to see Miss Greggory," he murmured. Then, as the unconscious rudeness of his reply dawned on him, he made matters infinitely worse by an attempted apology. "That is, I mean—I didn't mean—" he began to stammer miserably. ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... had thought, it did not surprise me, and yet I felt sick and giddy. It was some time before I could speak, and then I could only stammer out: ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... himself up into a deep bow, but before he had time to stammer out some apologetic ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... Missourian. When I confessed I liked his drawl he told me I ought to hear his brother, a lawyer, who stutters. Mr. Glover says he wins all his cases through sympathy. He stumbles along until everyone is absolutely convinced that the poor fellow would have a perfectly splendid case if he could only stammer through it; then, of course, ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... to say of my own." Then suddenly Wulf became very earnest—so earnest that his great frame shook, and when he strove to speak he could but stammer. At length it all came forth in ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... those cowardly girls huddles away behind you, Esmeralda, and leaves you to stammer, "Y-yes, sir, but you do s-scold ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... teeth, which she seemed always ready to show in a friendly, generous smile, were strong and white and sparkling. Altogether she was such a vision of healthy, unaffected, and smartly gotten-up young womanhood that O'Reilly could only stammer his acknowledgment of the introduction, inwardly berating himself for his awkwardness. He was aware of Alvarado's amusement, and this added ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... the far, low summons, When the silver winds return; Rills that run and streams that stammer, Goldenwing with his loud hammer, Icy brooks that brawl and clamor, Where the Indian willows burn; Let me hearken to the calling, ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... names had mostly escaped him, he remembered every single face. There was Barlow—big, bony chap who stammered, bringing his words out with a kind of whistling sneeze. Barlow had given him his first thrashing for copying his stammer. There was young Watson, who funked at football and sneaked to a master about a midnight supper. He stole pocket-money, too, and was expelled. Then he caught a glimpse of another fellow with sly face and ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... caught her fibbing. Mendacity is a thing so perfectly understood that no one is abashed by detection. In England most men equivocate and nearly all women, but they are ashamed to be discovered; they blush and stammer and hesitate, or fly into a passion; the wiser Spaniard laughs, shrugging his shoulders, and utters a dozen rapid falsehoods to make up for the first. It is always said that a good liar needs an excellent memory, but he wants more qualities than that—unblushing countenance, the readiest wit, ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... acquire, as well, a priggish mien, If you can feel the touch of silk and satin Without despising calico and jean; If you can ply a saw and use a hammer, Can do a man's work when the need occurs, Can sing when asked, without excuse or stammer, Can rise above ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... to see her every night For thirteen days, and had a sneaking notion To pop the question, thinking all was right, And once or twice had make an awkward motion To take her hand, and stammer'd, cough'd, and stutter'd, But, somehow, nothing to the point ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... painful with unexpressed fulfilment. A flicker of awful yearning took her paling eyes. Life seemed to stammer, pause, then flush as with this last deep impulse to yield a secret she discerned for the first time fully, in the very act of passing out. The face, with its soft loveliness, turned grey in death. Upon the edge of a ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... exclamation, and, looking across, saw him take from his lips his wine-glass of claret and set it down with a shaking hand. The Laird, too, had heard, and bent a darkly questioning glance on him. At once the little man—whose face had turned to a sickly white—began to stammer ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... herself at the hospital, and there spending this last morning, in order, in some measure, to justify her journey to Lourdes. When she perceived Pierre, she began to tremble, and, at first, could only stammer: ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... 'Tutt-tutt yourself, you stammer-an'-spit blighter,' said the disconsolate mouth-organ loser, and 'D'you think we can chance a smoke yet?' as the platoon moved out on the road and behind the shelter of ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... roar, but suddenly, in the midst of a spiral movement, I noticed a change in the sound. A gurgle—a choking stammer. A spray of petrol ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... my needlework like the good child keeping quiet in the corner. Oh, but they are stupid, these royal people, all except my own Princess and the dear old Queen at Windsor. Neither York nor Lyonesse knew in the least what to say, and the Princess let them stammer on without helping them. ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... have gone forward." He apologized and left. On another occasion, in the darkness of middle night, an Imperial soldier who had lost his way came down the steps and put his head into my door and began to stammer and hiss in such an extraordinary way that Alberta was roused and barked (p. 175) furiously. I woke up with a start and asked what the matter was, but all I could get from the poor man was a series of noises and hisses. I turned ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... House, the Speaker was directed to thank him, in the name of the people, for his great services as an officer. This the Speaker did in glowing terms, quite unexpectedly to Washington. Washington rose to reply. His face flushed; he struggled to speak; but could only stammer, and stood speechless and trembling. "Sit down, Mr. Washington," said the Speaker, with a smile. "Your modesty equals your valor, and that surpasses the power of any language that ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... irresistibly suggesting twin slices of underdone steak, parting into a pleasant smile when his question had concluded. The other two members of the committee seemed about to inquire further when the chief managed to stammer, he was awfully sorry, gentlemen, but he had been out of town and hadnt even heard of the oil ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... her very utterance and enunciation often suffered in point of clearness and steadiness, from the agitation of her excessive organic sensibility. At times the self-counteraction and self-baffling of her feelings caused her even to stammer. But the greatest deductions from Miss Wordsworth's attractions, and from the exceeding interest which surrounded her, in right of her character, of her history, and of the relation which she fulfilled towards her brother, were the glancing quickness ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... stuttered and blushed and got his grammar badly tangled, but my heart burned as I listened. And I have heard a man talk with smooth speech, and it rolled off me as easily as it rolled out of him. Do your best, and leave the rest. If we are in touch with God His fire burns whether the tongue stammer or has good control of ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... mortification, was about to stammer an apology, when the doctor came to his rescue by inviting him to come in. This invitation he accepted without speaking, and followed his host into the house. Marietta took the principal part in the conversation. She gave a very amusing ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... Thus the anecdote of the servant who had been instructed to summon the visiting English nobleman by tapping on his bedroom door and inquiring, "My lord, have you yet risen?" and who could only stammer, "My God! ain't you up yet?" Or the anecdote of the minister who in a sermon on the Parable of the Prodigal Son told how a young man living dissolutely in a city had been compelled to send to the pawnbroker first his ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... mother-in-law, sons, daughters, old footman or parlor-maid, confidential clerk, curate, or what not? I smirk and go through the history, giving my admirable imitations of the characters introduced: I mimic Jones's grin, Hobbs's squint, Brown's stammer, Grady's brogue, Sandy's Scotch accent, to the best of my power: and, the family part of my audience laughs good-humoredly. Perhaps the stranger, for whose amusement the performance is given, is amused by it and laughs too. But this ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... but together they were unromantic. How could he adjure her to tell him for God's sake whether or not she was in love with any one when he saw she was afraid that something was burning on the stove? He could only stammer out excuses for having come. Inventing on the spot new and incoherent directions for the treatment of Mrs. Fay, he took himself ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... I must stay here a day or two, until I can—arrange things," I managed to stammer. "Have you a small single ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... intolerable that he could not overcome that stammer, so entirely alien to a new young ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... lair of our boat, but in that wild moment I could discover nothing more appropriate than "I wish immediately some medicine for seasickness," and (hastily turning over the pages) "I have lost my pet cat." I began mechanically to stammer French and the few words of German which for years have lain peacefully buried in the dustiest folds of ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... of his position there. Sometimes there was a paternal explosion because Bruce liked to murmur vaguely of "dandy chances in Manila," or because Julie, pretty, excitable, and sixteen, had an occasional dose of stage fever, and would stammer desperately between convulsive sobs that she wasn't half as much afraid of "the terrible temptations of the life" as she was afraid of dying a poky old maid in Weston. In short, the home was crowded, the Pagets were poor, and every one of the seven possessed a spirited and ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... to the theater that night, and when I returned to my room I thoughtlessly opened the door of her apartment instead of that of my own. The beautiful woman was reading by the light of the lamp and started when she saw me. I was so embarrassed by my mistake that for a moment I could only stammer unintelligible words. My confusion was so evident that she could not doubt for a moment that I had made a mistake. I turned to the door, intent upon relieving her of my presence as quickly as possible, when she said with the most exquisite courtesy: "In order to show you ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... (particularly the young medium) may become panic-stricken by the thought that "perhaps this is merely the result of my own imagination or fancy, instead of spirit power," and the result will be that he will begin to halt and stumble, stammer and stutter, instead of allowing the message to flow through him uninterrupted. This is particularly true when the message is of the nature of a test of identity, and where the vocal organs of the medium are ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... what you want!" He threw down his hat and stick upon the green-baize-covered table, took one of the Windsor chairs, and crashed it down beside the sofa, and planted his hulking big body on it, and reached out and captured the thin wrist of his victim, who mustered breath to stammer: ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... one of those cowardly girls huddles away behind you, Esmeralda, and leaves you to stammer, "Y-yes, sir, but you do s-scold a ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... an inclination of the head in reply to the graceful and courtly welcome with which the princesses, nieces to the great Cardinal, were received. Eleanor, usually in the background, was left in surprise and confusion to stammer out thanks in broad Scotch, seconded by Lady Drummond, who could make herself far more intelligible to these ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... should not be here now. Do you suppose it amuses me to investigate the unsavoury details of every society lady's nervous affliction? Do you suppose I'm flattered by such and such a Guardsman's encomiums when I have cured his stammer, or his inability to proceed beyond the letter 'P' when writing ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... known what poverty-stricken mother had laid him there. When he was found he was already a fine little fellow of two or three years of age, very plump and merry, but so backward and dense that he could scarcely stammer a few words, and only seemed able to smile. When one of the vegetable saleswomen found him lying under the big white cabbage she raised such a loud cry of surprise that her neighbours rushed up to see what was the matter, while ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... all this news been digested than somebody discovered a diamond ring on Clara Tuttle's left hand. So Clara was surrounded and an explanation demanded. But before she could conquer her blushes and stammer out her news Max Longman came in from another room and, putting his arms about her, said, "Don't be afraid, girl of mine, I'm here." And so everybody knew then that it was Max, after all, and not ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... invest with Messrs. Lure, commission agents (not bookmakers, no, not for a moment), whose telegraphic address is "Pactolus, London," a sum of ten pounds (carburetter) on a horse called St. Vitus to win (stammer), and twenty pounds (tyre) for a place (scream). I had done this for various reasons, none really good, but chiefly because every paper that I had opened had urged me to do so, some even going so far as to dangle a double before me with St. Vitus as one of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... Stammer was the jade's name) and my wife's moody despondency, made my house and home not over-pleasant: hence I was driven a good deal abroad, where, as play was the fashion at every club, tavern, and assembly, I, of course, was obliged to resume my old habit, and ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he was the Duc de Mora, he had so faithfully copied his way of speaking. There were the same unfinished sentences, ending in a ps—ps—ps—uttered between the teeth. "What's-his-names" and "What-d'ye-call-'ems" at every turn, a sort of lazy, bored, aristocratic stammer, in which one divined profound contempt for the vulgar art of speech. In the duke's circle everybody strove to copy that accent, those disdainful intonations, in which there was an affectation ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... declining life; yet far from this, we are ill-used, harassed with law-suits, delivered over to the scorn of stripling orators. Our minds and bodies being ravaged with age, Posidon should protect us, yet we have no other support than a staff. When standing before the judge, we can scarcely stammer forth the fewest words, and of justice we see but its barest shadow, whereas the accuser, desirous of conciliating the younger men, overwhelms us with his ready rhetoric; he drags us before the judge, presses us with questions, lays traps for us; the onslaught troubles, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... fate without his being able to guess why, and that the man's unintelligible confession was closing round him like the clasp of an iron collar. He fancied himself side by side with him in the posts of the same pillory. Gwynplaine lost his footing in his terror, and protested. He began to stammer incoherent words in the deep distress of an innocent man, and quivering, terrified, lost, uttered the first random outcries that rose to his mind, and words of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... saw him, and he began to stammer out, "Oh, dear me! is it you? Pray how did you sleep last night? Did you hear or see anything in the dead of ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... how often hast thou betrayed this high commission! Fain would the tongue in clear, triumphant accents draw example from thy story, to encourage the hearts of those who almost faint and die beneath the old oppressions. But we must stammer and blush when we speak of many things. I take pride here, that I can really say the liberty of the press works well, and that checks and balances are found naturally which suffice to its government. I can say that the minds of our people are alert, and that talent has a free chance ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... doggedness which was not going to allow so slight a hint that his further attendance was unnecessary, to baffle him. He did not speak until they had passed down the stone steps to the pavement, and then his utterance began with a half-embarrassed stammer, as if the shadow of displeasure demanded justification ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... "What a mess every one will make! Oh, if I could but stay away, like Harry! There will be Dr. Hoxton being sonorous and prosy, and Mr. Lake will stammer, and that will be nothing to the misery of our own people's work. George will flounder, and look at Flora, and she will sit with her eyes on the ground, and Dr. Spencer will come out of his proper self, and be complimentary ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... though it had not shaken his fidelity to his new faith. But often a dumb, inarticulate longing possessed him to make known to his old neighbours the reason of the change in him, but speech failed him. He could only stammer out his confession, "I am no longer a Catholic, I am a Protestant, I cannot pray to the saints, not even to the archangel St. Michel or the Blessed Virgin. I pray only to God." For anything else, for explanation, and for all argument, he had no more language than ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... temples, she was alert. Color was surging into his face; his features, large, irregular, took on for the instant a look of speechless, almost demoniac power; he seemed to be swimming some mental tide before his foot touched the sands of language and he could helplessly stammer: ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... complection, dost thou think though I am caparison'd like a man, I haue a doublet and hose in my disposition? One inch of delay more, is a South-sea of discouerie. I pre'thee tell me, who is it quickely, and speake apace: I would thou couldst stammer, that thou might'st powre this conceal'd man out of thy mouth, as Wine comes out of a narrow-mouth'd bottle: either too much at once, or none at all. I pre'thee take the Corke out of thy mouth, that I ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... were this same Thiemet, of whom I have just spoken, and Dugazon. Several foreigners were present at a breakfast given by Eugene, the parts having been assigned, and learned in advance, and the two victims selected. When each had taken his place at table, Dugazon, pretending to stammer, addressed a remark to Thiemet, who, playing the same role, replied to him, stammering likewise; then each of them pretended to believe that the other was making fun of him, and there followed a stuttering quarrel between the two parties, each one finding it more and ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... particulars, but it seems that relations between Jim and Mr. Harbison were rather strained. Bella had left the roof and Jim and the Harbison man came face to face in the door of the tent. According to Dal, little had been said, but Jim, bound by his promise to me, could not explain, and could only stammer something about being an old friend of Miss Knowles. And Tom had replied shortly that it was none of his business, but that there were some things friendship hardly justified, and tried to pass Jim. Jim was instantly enraged; he blocked the door to ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... again just as this introduction was over, and a new nervousness attacked Alma. Another tinge of yellowness crept into her skin, her eyes grew wistful, and she began to stammer. ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... would at least preserve something of the stiff and peremptory dignity of age. These gentlemen deal in regeneration: but at any price I should hardly yield my rigid fibres to be regenerated by them,—nor begin, in my grand climacteric, to squall in their new accents, or to stammer, in my second cradle, the elemental sounds of their barbarous metaphysics.[128] Si isti mihi largiantur ut repuerascam, et in eorum cunis ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... word to say. He had been meditating upon a thousand possible explanations, excuses, apologies, and his tongue would not utter one of them. He accepted his orders meekly, but as he turned to go he managed to stammer out, ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... in "Boris Godounow," and out of the dust of ages an halting, inarticulate voice calls to us. He is the poor, the aging, the half-witted; the drunken sot mumbling in his stupor; the captives of life to whom death sings his insistent, luring songs; the half-idiotic peasant boy who tries to stammer out his declaration of love to the superb village belle; the wretched fool who weeps in the falling snowy night. He is those who have never before spoken in musical art, and now arise, and are about us and make us ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... chair hastily back, his face fairly crimson, and began to stammer an explanation; ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... testily. 'Put a point, put a point, you drown me in phrases; your explanations explain nothing. One more word. What in the devil's name is she doing in there?' He had a short way. John began to stammer. ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... the envelope, sat like one paralysed now. Her tongue refused to move. For an instant, the catastrophe seemed to her of supernatural agency—it was as if a miracle had happened, as she saw her fiance produce her lover's keepsake. All she could stammer at last was: ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... priest knelt down before the window, covered his face with his hands, and began to stammer and cry to God: "O God! God! God!" ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... later she emerged, safe and unscratched from the confused heap of men and furniture, it was to cut off instantly the stutter and stammer of poor Shafto's apologies, to bid him go instantly for the ship's doctor, and, with face the color of death, to turn quickly to Armstrong. The blow had burst open the half-healed wound, and the blood was streaming ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... new picture, Mr. Bopp inspected every feature of the countenance so near his own; and, as his admiration "grew by what it fed on," he fell into a chronic state of stammer and blush; for the frank eyes were very kind, the smooth cheeks reflected a pretty shade of his own crimson, and the smiling lips seemed constantly suggesting, with mute eloquence, that they were made for kissing, while the ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... each human figure the godlike stamp on his forehead Readest thou not in his face thou origin? Is he not sailing Lost like thyself on an ocean unknown, and is he not guided By the same stars that guide thee? Why shouldst thou hate then thy brother? Hateth he thee, forgive! For 't is sweet to stammer one letter Of the Eternal's language;—on earth it is called Forgiveness! Knowest thou Him, who forgave, with the crown of thorns on his temples? Earnestly prayed for his foes, for his murderers? Say, dost thou ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... blue-white stream. Ward spied him at the same moment and stepped forward with quick outstretched hands. I remember the flame of adoring zeal in the youngster's eyes as he tried to speak. At length he managed to stammer some congratulatory phrases while Drayle clapped him ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... Martyn began to stammer with indignation, and I thought it time to interfere; so I called the little maid, and gravely explained the facts, adding that poor Clarence's punishment had been terrible, but that he was doing his best to make up for what was past; and that, as to anything he might have ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... my curls would fall down and hide my cheeks, I tried to stammer out some apology. But he drove it back with a ...
— The Hermit Of ——— Street - 1898 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... House of Burgesses, of which he attended every meeting and was careful to know all about the affairs of the colony. When he first took his seat in the Legislature, he was thanked for his military service to the colony. He rose to reply, but could only blush and stammer. The speaker said, "Sit down, Mr. Washington, your modesty equals ...
— George Washington • Calista McCabe Courtenay
... the living-room, Barbara's cheeks were burning with excitement and her eyes shone like stars. When she took the check, which Eloise wrote with an accustomed air, she could scarcely speak, but managed to stammer ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... guests beside them, who wished to hear them talk familiarly, so as to dispel all restraint, made them stammer and colour. They could never make up their minds to treat one another as sweethearts in ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... very extraordinary," I managed at last to stammer out; "for I can honestly say I never heard even a suggestion of Mr. Elmsdale's design; indeed, I did not know he had ever thought of building upon ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... done to Lamb by accusing him of excess in drinking. The truth is, that a small quantity of any strong liquid (wine, &c.) disturbed his speech, which at best was but an eloquent stammer. The distresses of his early life made him ready to resort to any remedy which brought forgetfulness; and he himself, frail in body and excitable, was very speedily affected. During all my intimacy with him, I never knew him drink immoderately; ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... that poor, bewildered Hector could stammer: his slowly-moving brain was torn between the duties of his position and his respect for M. le Marquis, and in the struggle the worthy man was enduring ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... the Mercury, raw, embarrassed, genuine young men, who, stopping him on the street, did not seem to know why they stopped him, who, lacking West's verbal felicity, could do nothing but take his hand, hot with the fear that they might be betrayed into expressing any feeling, and stammer out: "Doc, if you want anything—why dammit, Doc—you call on ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... prepare a stammering obvious lie. He confronted a tall, thin man about whom—even if his clothes had been totally different—there could be no mistake. He stood awaiting an apology so evidently that Carson—or Bayle—began to stammer himself even before he had time to dismiss from his voice the suggestion of bluster. It would have irritated Coombe immensely if he had known that he—and a certain overcoat—had been once pointed out to the man at Sandown and that—in consequence ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... The shock of the collision was great, but not so great as the shock to poor Matty at so suddenly coming upon Mr. Learning when she only expected to find Miss Folly. She dropped her burden with an exclamation of surprise, and then tried to stammer forth an apology, but knew not how to begin. Mr. Learning stood straight before her, more erect and stately than ever, sternly looking down through his steel spectacles at the confused and blushing girl. Miss Folly, however, was quite at her ease, and hastily pushing aside her basin and ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... to a party of ladies, became so abashed by unexpectedly finding himself in the midst of such a galaxy of beauties (and, as a matter of course, the conscious cynosure of all eyes) that, blushing to suffusion, and forgetting to lift his hat, he could only manage to stammer out, "Aw, aw—I beg pardon; but—aw—aw—I fancy there's another wicket down, and I must put on my guards, you know;" whereupon he beat ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... why the mere mention of his friend, Chester Newcomb's name should cause such a convulsion in the household, and when that gentleman finally arrived, and the family met him for the first time, it certainly seemed strange that they should all redden and stammer as if they had been "awkward ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... Land undertaking such a Hangman's Office! The poor Wretch made no other complaint than to murmur that the King had directed that he was not to be ill-treated; and when they further questioned him, could only stammer out some Incoherent Balderdash about the Archbishop, the Parliament, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... avoiding all restraint, he was happy to be at least enabled to offer him the use of his residence. The Prince, taken by surprise, and utterly disconcerted at the failure of so well organized a plot, could only stammer out his acknowledgments; and the Cardinal had no sooner heard them to an end than he requested admission to the King, where, having briefly expatiated upon his escape, he requested permission with ably-acted earnestness to retire from ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... of Haw-Haw. He managed to stammer: "Ain't you going to get Barry? Ain't you goin' to ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... chicory flowers that have no dark centres. Through them, all that she was feeling struggled to find an outlet; but, too deep for words, those feelings would not pass her lips, utterly unused to express emotion. She could only stammer: ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... told George he was living more cheaply as a married man than ever he had done as a bachelor; and in the matter of happiness there was no comparison. George rose early to go home; but early as it was Mrs. Mac was up too, and arrayed in a killing morning neglige that fairly made poor George stammer, gave him his chota hazri and stroked his horse's head as he mounted. About half-way home George suddenly shouted, "D——d if I don't do it too!" and brought his hand down on his thigh with a smack that set his ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... were too terrified to speak for some moments, as they saw such a tumultuous assemblage seeking their master, while so singular a name was applied to him. At length, one more bold than the rest contrived to stammer out,— ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... I felt that I must overcome my languor so far as to address him. I am not a nervous man, and I never knew before what Virgil meant when he wrote "adhoesit faucibus ora." At last I managed to stammer out a few words, asking the intruder who he was ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... all been delightful," Lucy contrived to stammer, and then fell to scanning the road, which stretched away for a long half mile ahead of ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... don't you?" snarled the man, little beads of perspiration gathered on his forehead. "Or blush and stammer any of the idiotic things which a woman says to the man at the moment of his supreme idiocy. Or flatter yourself with the vanity of it. Are you a good woman or a bad? I don't know. Are you generous or mean? I don't know. Are you loyal and stanch ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... in the wrong, was a little frightened at the set speech, and began to bluster and stammer, but the swift descent of Malcolm's heavy riding whip on his shoulders and back made him voluble in curses. Then began a battle that could not last long with such odds on the side of justice. It was gazed at from the mouth of the close by many spectators, ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... whisper &c. (faint sound) 405; lisp, drawl, tardiloquence[obs3]; nasal tone, nasal accent; twang; falsetto &c. (want of voice) 581; broken voice, broken accents, broken sentences. brogue &c. 563; slip of the tongue, lapsus linouae [Lat]. V. stammer, stutter, hesitate, falter, hammer; balbutiate|, balbucinate|, haw, hum and haw, be unable to put two words together. mumble, mutter; maud|, mauder[obs3]; whisper &c. 405; mince, lisp; jabber, gibber; sputter, splutter; muffle, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... him from his life of toil. The words were scarcely out of his mouth when, much to his dismay, Death stood before him and professed his readiness to serve him. He was almost frightened out of his wits, but he had enough presence of mind to stammer out, "Good sir, if you'd be so kind, pray help me ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... observation of mine, which indeed I find is hundreds of years old, that a stammering man is never a worthless one. Physiology can tell you why. It is an excess of delicacy, excess of sensibility to the presence of his fellow-creature, that makes him stammer. Hammond l'Estrange says, "Who ever heard of a stammering man that was a fool?" Really there is something in that.—James is now off to the Isle of Wight; will see Sterling at Ventnor there; see whether such an Isle or France will suit better for ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... was but a trembling stammer. The prospect of facing the girl the thread of whose sinister personality had so marred the fabric of my marital happiness terrified me. Her message to me, posted in San Francisco, where Dicky was, flaunted its insolent triumph ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... to speak, but my voice shook, and finally I managed to stammer that when we got back I was sure it would ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... street for him to come and take the breast. Did Augustin remember these things? At least he recalled his nurses' games, and the efforts they made to appease him, and the childish words they taught him to stammer. The first Latin words he repeated, he picked up from his mother and the servants, who must also have spoken Punic, the ordinary tongue of the populace and small trader class. He learned Punic without thinking about it, in playing with other children of Thagaste, just ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... took in nothing of the president's speech beyond the acceptance of his offer, and, pale with relief, he tried to stammer his thanks and his devotion to his chosen cause. He made no attempt to contradict the president's confident prophecies; he only made the greatest possible haste to the tower-rooms which were to be his home. His eyes filled with thankfulness at his lot as he paced about them, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... "Very well," said General Sigel, "I think I shall want this place to-morrow for a hospital. Madam, your kindness will be reciprocated." He spoke very emphatically, whereat the pretty daughter began to cry, and the mother to stammer apologies, and said she would do the best she could for them, but she really had nothing to cook. The general retired very indignant. Whether or not his threat was carried out I do not know, for the next morning we were off without trying to get breakfast. On asking ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... the very gravel for his paths had been imported by the Sofala. Exasperated out of his quiet superciliousness, without looking at anyone right or left, he accosted Massy straightway in so determined a manner that the engineer, taken aback, began to stammer unintelligibly. Nothing could be heard but the words: "Mr. Van Wyk . . . Indeed, Mr. Van Wyk . . . For the future, Mr. Van Wyk"—and by the suffusion of blood Massy's vast bilious face acquired an unnatural orange ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... intention of showing herself at the hospital, and there spending this last morning, in order, in some measure, to justify her journey to Lourdes. When she perceived Pierre, she began to tremble, and, at first, could only stammer: "Oh, Monsieur l'Abbe, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... there were people whose fortune had come; but he managed to stammer: "Are you following ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... like it in my life. It set every nerve of me dancing. I suppose Paragot found his interest in me because I was such an impressionable youngster. When, at the abrupt finale, he asked me what I thought of it, I could scarce stammer a word. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... than he was just then. The truth to be told, he was perfectly well aware why Helen had wished to marry him, and had been all along, without seeing anything in that for which to dislike her; he was quite without an answer to her present question, and could only cough and stammer, and reach for his handkerchief. The girl went on quickly, without waiting very long for ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... orator, born in Athens; had many impediments to overcome to succeed in the profession, but by ingenious methods and indomitable perseverance he subdued them all, and became the first orator not of Greece only, but of all antiquity; a stammer in his speech he overcame by practising with pebbles in his mouth, and a natural diffidence by declaiming on the sea-beach amid the noise of the waves; while he acquired a perfect mastery of the Greek language by binding himself down to copy five times ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... I answer him? The fog caught my breath as I tried to stammer a reply, and Tom, misinterpreting my want ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of a headache from appearing at dinner, and hurried back to the castle as soon as I could do so unobserved. I got in by a window which I had purposely left open, and made my way to the library. The words that Lord Ashiel, as he lay dying, had managed to stammer out to his daughter, were only five. 'Gimblet—the clock—eleven—steps.' I had decided to take the clock in the library as the starting-point of investigation. He might, of course, have referred to any other clock, but only one could be dealt with at a time, and ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... Head—not the fine handsome fellow they have stuck on Snow Hill, but one of the griffins of 1809—and you have Tom's phiz, only it wants touching with all the colours of a painter's palette. I was quite frightened, and could only stammer out, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the morning Jack put a bold face upon the matter, and walked into the giant's room to thank him for his lodging. The giant started when he saw him, and began to stammer out: "Oh! dear me; is it you? Pray how did you sleep last night? Did you hear or see anything in the dead ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... should therefore be put to death." The plates, as proposed by the soothsayer, were placed before the child Moses, who immediately seized upon the fire, and put it into his mouth, which caused him henceforward to stammer in his speech. ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... passion, and demanding to know, in furious tones, what we wanted and meant by creating a disturbance in the neighbourhood at that hour in the morning, hammering at her gate in that manner. We were almost struck dumb, at least I was, but Mr. Parsons, I believe, managed to stammer out something or other, in the midst of which the gate was slammed to violently in our faces and we had to beat an ignominious retreat. It is, of course, needless to say we never repeated our visit nor tried to induce the lady ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... cried mischievously, before I could stammer anything in reply. "They are building a delightful romance around us. And why not? Why begrudge them the pleasure? No harm can come of ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... afternoon was not yet over; hardly had Caroline left when the door was opened and Miss Avies was shown in. Maggie started up with dismay and began to stammer excuses. Miss Avies ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... worse of her when he caught her fibbing. Mendacity is a thing so perfectly understood that no one is abashed by detection. In England most men equivocate and nearly all women, but they are ashamed to be discovered; they blush and stammer and hesitate, or fly into a passion; the wiser Spaniard laughs, shrugging his shoulders, and utters a dozen rapid falsehoods to make up for the first. It is always said that a good liar needs an excellent memory, but he wants more qualities than that—unblushing countenance, ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... significant. They know it is nothing in the world but foolishness; and if there is one thing above another that a child hates, it is to be made a fool in public. That's what makes them work their fingers so, and gulp, and stammer, and tremble at the knees. That is what sends them to their seats, after all is over, mad as hornets. This is something that I know about. It happened that, instead of getting funny pieces to recite as I wanted to, discerning ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... leaden sky, watching the snowflakes falling through the dreary air. There followed then a long, long pause, in which I had time to recover from the effect her words had produced, and to frame and stammer forth such congratulations as seemed required by the occasion. These she did not answer, or even seem to comprehend, but roused from her revery by the sound of my voice, she crossed the room and seated herself beside me, and took ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... O'Roon to his friend. "Why do they build hotels that go round and round like catherine wheels? They'll take away my shield and break me. I can think and talk con-con-consec-sec-secutively, but I s-s-stammer with my feet. I've got to go on duty in three hours. The jig is up, Remsen. The jig ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... he were going to make a remark, and then evidently restrain himself, and remain silent. It was very curious to see this big, handsome, manly young fellow, who ought to have had any amount of success with women, suddenly stammer and grow crimson in the presence of his own wife. Nor was it the consciousness of stupidity; for when you got him alone, Oke, although always slow and timid, had a certain amount of ideas, and very defined political and social views, and a certain childlike earnestness and desire to ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... in the house alone. This man, this peculiar fellow, Nat Parker, found me, took charge of me and did not leave me until I was out of danger. Of course, there was no way to reward him—you can merely stammer your gratitude to the man who has saved your life. He told me that the time might come when I could do him a good turn. Well, I met him the other day in New Orleans, and I incidentally spoke of my intention to sell my paper. He said that he would buy ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... got you at last, as I wished.' I tried to speak as steadily as he had done; but, as the moment for action came near, my d——d cowardice made me stammer. ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... letters which I ventured to address to the Times, in very imperfect English, were in favor of examinations. They were signed La Carriere ouverte, and were written before the days of the Civil Service Commission! I well remember, too, that the first time I ventured to speak, or rather to stammer, in public, was in favor of examinations. That was in 1857, at Exeter, when the first experiment was made, under the auspices of Sir T. Acland, in the direction of what has since developed into the Oxford and Cambridge Local Examinations. I have been an examiner myself for many years, I have watched ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... this was real! was it true that an ex-ruffian, weighed down with convictions, could rise erect and end by being in the right? Was this credible? were there cases in which the law should retire before transfigured crime, and stammer its excuses?—Yes, that was the state of the case! and Javert saw it! and Javert had touched it! and not only could he not deny it, but he had taken part in it. These were realities. It was abominable that actual facts could reach such deformity. If facts did their duty, they would confine ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... gesture with his hands, did not frown or clench his fists, but remained impassively calm. His words, however, cut Rrisa like knives. The orderly remained trembling and sweating, with a piteous expression. Finally he managed to stammer: ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... of a man who feels and sees the hidden things. Suddenly the bow rested motionless. A look of fear came into his face. He sprang up. The cowboys were all stealing from the other side of the wagon. They had arrived and dismounted without his hearing them. He sprang to his feet and began to stammer apologies. Long Jim's hand was ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... store. A woman, a stranger, came in and asked the price of a shawl. She was told it was $15.00. It was done up for her. She had been hunting through her reticule and now put down the money in gold. The Captain looked at it as if hypnotized, but managed to stammer, "My God woman, I thought you had an order. It ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... decide to separate so quickly. It is not, however, possible that they will fight.... Can we see them from here?" He approached the window, which indeed looked upon the enclosure. The sight which met his eyes caused the excellent man to stammer.... "The miserable men!.... It is monstrous.... They are mad.... They have found seconds.... Whom have they taken?.... Those two huntsmen!.... Ali, my God! My God!".... He could say no more. The doctor had hastened to the window to see what was passing, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and shy. It awed me, as an angel's might In raiment of reproachful light. Her gay looks told my sombre mood That what's not happy is not good; And, just because 'twas life to please, Death to repel her, truth and ease Deserted me; I strove to talk, And stammer'd foolishness; my walk Was like a drunkard's; if she took My arm, it stiffen'd, ached, and shook: A likely wooer! Blame her not; Nor ever say, dear Mother, aught Against that perfectness which is My strength, as once it was my bliss. And do not chafe at social rules. Leave ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
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