"Illegible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their long-wished for hopes, That ministers in their public preaching must confine themselves to their nicknamed faith and repentance; without noticing any incroachments upon Christ's proper rights to his church in the glorious work of reformation, lest constructed fire-{illegible}ands and seditions, which in running the full career may gradually drop into superstition through neutrality, and thence plunge into an abyss of the shadow of popery. But to sum up shortly all my present thoughts of the time in this one, I cannot see an evasion of the ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... convenience in roasting him. A thing like a guide-board was elevated above this pen on a tall pole, and formerly there was an inscription upon it describing the memorable occurrence that had there taken place; but the sun and the wind have long ago so defaced it as to render it illegible. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... half-defaced monuments in the village church of Craymoor, bearing the figures and escutcheons of knights and dames of "the old family," as the villagers said; but the inscriptions were worn and almost illegible, and for some time we none of us took the pains ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... kiln-baked bricks cemented together by clay. On the summit, above a broad band with ornamentations and a much worn inscription can be seen the fragments of two smaller structures, also cylindrical, which may have been the supports of the dome of the minaret. There is said to be another illegible inscription about thirty feet from ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... asked me if I could write a good clear hand, a hand easily read. I showed her what I could do, and she was good enough to call it excellent. She said no more then, but the next day she came early. She brought me a MS. written by a friend of hers; very illegible it was. She would not tell me the name of her friend, but she said she was a lady very desirous of seeing herself in print. If I would copy this illegible writing in my own good clear hand, the lady would give me five pounds. ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... brother—perhaps had merely reverted to his original type. Another grave—a long, robust mound—had been made beside the first, which seemed to shrink from the comparison; and in the shadow of a new headstone the old one lay prostrate, with its marvelous inscription illegible by accumulation of leaves and soil. In point of literary merit the new was inferior to the old— was even repulsive in its ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... written Domr in the MS.—a common abbreviation—may be the name of the Oxford bookseller, and Henno Rusticus may be Homo rusticus, "the country gentleman." The hand-writing of this MS. is so small and illegible in some places, that it requires an Oedipus to decipher it; and the public will have much reason to thank those lynx-eyed antiquaries who have taken great pains to render it intelligible. "The Sige of the End," ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.01 • Various
... outline of a pencil caricature he had made there thirty years before. If the wall had been whitewashed in the meantime, the lime had scaled down to the original plaster. Only the name, which had been written underneath, was illegible, though he could reconstruct with his mind's eye and the aid of a few shadowy strokes—"Bill Fetters, Sneak"—in angular letters in ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... conscience!—nothing is so conciliating to young people as severity.—Well, Sir Anthony, I shall give Mr. Acres his discharge, and prepare Lydia to receive your son's invocations;—and I hope you will represent her to the captain as an object not altogether illegible. ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... citizen and I need the job. I've killed seven men,' says Bill; 'I've got nine children; I've been a good Republican ever since the first of May; I can't read nor write, and I see no reason why I ain't illegible for the office. And I think your partner, Mr. Tucker,' goes on Bill, 'is also a man of sufficient ingratiation and connected system of mental delinquency to assist you in securing the appointment. I will give you preliminary,' ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... bench and peeped over the back. She looked down sidewise upon the author, who was writing rapidly in an illegible hand upon ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... missing from this index. For completeness they have been added and marked with an asterisk. Some parts of the Table of Contents were illegible, and a few missing page numbers have been replaced ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... left Elba; but this could not have been done without some risk of betraying his secret designs. He dictated them on board the vessel, where every man who could write was employed in copying them. These copies soon became very scarce; many of them were illegible; and it was of till he arrived at Gap, on the 5th of March, that he found means to have them printed. They were from that time circulated and read everywhere with the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... a common observation that all words describing moral excellence tend to deteriorate and to contract their meaning, just as bright metal rusts by exposure, or coins become light and illegible by use. So it comes to pass that any decently respectable man, especially if he has an easy temper and a dash of frankness and good humour, is christened with this title 'good.' The Bible, which is the verdict of the Judge, is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... led him to think that all the true things had been said, and one could do no better than hunt them up again for new uses. Our business was, like Old Mortality, to clear out and cut afresh inscriptions that had been made illegible by time and storm. At least this delivered him from the senseless vanity of originality and personal appropriation. We feel sure that if he found that a thought which he had believed to be new had been expressed in literature before, he would ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... open, and found only a piece of paper besmeared with ink, quite illegible, except her own name, which had not ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... write at great length, quite ungrudgingly; but his constant writing told on his script. Ten years ago it was a very distinctive, artistic, finely formed hand, very much like my father's, but latterly it grew cramped and even illegible, though it always had a peculiar character, and, as is often the case with very marked hand-writings, it tended to be unconsciously imitated ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was, and at once detected another odor besides bad tobacco, and opened the window to air the room. Then he began to study the postmark to see where the letter came from. It was not very clear, and it took him some time to make out "Palatka, Fla." The latter baffled him, it was so illegible, but he was sure of "Palatka," and wondered where it was. Hunting up an atlas, he went patiently through State after State, till he found Palatka, on the ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... speeches pro Sex. Roscio and pro Murena are only known from an ancient and illegible MS. discovered by Poggio at Cluny, No. 496 in the old catalogue, and now lost. The most faithful transcript was made in France (Paris, Lat. 14,749) before the MS. passed into Poggio's hand by a writer who carefully reproduced the corruptions, sometimes in facsimile.[26] ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... value by the direction of the Master and Wardens of the Company of Stationers for the tyme being. Provided alwaye that Mr. Barker do reteyn some small number of these for diverse services in her Ma^{ties} Courtes or ... [MS. illegible] and lastlye that nothing that he yeildeth unto by meanes aforesaide be preiudiciall to her Ma^{ties} highe prerogative, or to any that shall succeed in the office of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... the house was frequented by priests and monks, also hypocritical; they ate and drank and coarsely flattered her father, whom they did not like. The boys had the good-fortune to go to school, while Nina was left practically uneducated. All her life she wrote an illegible scrawl, and had read nothing but historical novels. Seventeen years ago, when she was twenty-two, on a summer holiday at Himki, she made the acquaintance of her present husband, a landowner called Panaurov, had ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the footsteps came no further than the dining-room door; then died out for what seemed full two minutes—a pause as illegible to his understanding ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... his manuscript is correctly spelled according to his ideas, and clearly written or typed. He should also indicate on the manuscript the authority he wishes used in correcting the spelling in case of mistakes or illegible passages. Every care should be taken to make the manuscript copy as correct as possible and as legible as possible. Such care may be very troublesome at first, but it will result in ...
— Division of Words • Frederick W. Hamilton
... literature cannot begin too early to neglect his education, and to adopt every opportunity of not observing life and character. None of us is so young but that he may make himself perfect in writing an illegible hand. This method, I am bound to say, is too frequently overlooked. Most manuscripts by ardent literary volunteers are fairly legible. On the other hand there are novelists, especially ladies, who not only write a hand wholly declining to let itself be deciphered, but who fill up the margins with ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... the end was achieved. The truth was that Franklin's duty was to get from France just as much aid, direct and indirect, as could be either begged or filched from her. Such orders could not be written down in plain words in his instructions, but none the less they lurked there not illegible to him among the lines. He obeyed them diligently. France was willing to go fully as far as she could with safety; his function was to push, to pull, to entice, even to mislead, in order to make her go farther. Perhaps it was a fair game; France had her interest to see Great Britain dismembered ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... was so abominably defaced by blotting and blurring that it was entirely illegible. It must have come all the way by water. By the aid of chemicals and photography, however, I have made it out. But you forgot to inclose the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... one of the lieutenants. The colours of the ship and boats were struck half-mast, and three volleys of musketry fired over the graves. The journals—not a word of which was, as I have said, rendered illegible—were carefully forwarded to England, and, like voices from the grave, have undoubtedly instigated many to aid those who seek to spread the truth of the gospel among the savage inhabitants of ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... recoiled upon the head of its calumnious author. The seventeen learned societies unanimously voted the presumptuous Blotton an ignorant meddler, and forthwith set to work upon more treatises than ever. And to this day the stone remains, an illegible monument of Mr. Pickwick's greatness, and a lasting trophy to ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... been obliged to return to Croatia, and the Queen remained much alarmed at her plans being known to one so faint-hearted. However, a more courageous confidant was afterwards found in a Hungarian gentleman, whose name has become illegible in ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... last letter, owing to the use of a quill pen and the neglect of blotting-paper, was hopelessly illegible. Every one tried, and every one failed to decipher an important word on which the interest of one whole clause (and the letter consisted ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... place had given them cramps; or had dropped down into corners, as if they were no more. I had seen all this on my first visit, and I had remarked to Trottle, that the lower part of the black board about terms was split away; that the rest had become illegible, and that the very stone of the door-steps was broken across. Notwithstanding, I sat at my breakfast table on that Please to Remember the fifth of November morning, staring at the House through my glasses, as if I had never ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... for money, suggested that, through her hospital connections, she should help him to establish a New York practice. His tone was half-whining, half-peremptory, his once precise writing smeared and illegible; and these indications, combined with her former suspicions, convinced her that, for the moment, he was unfit for medical work. At any rate, she could not assume the responsibility of recommending him; and in answering she advised him to apply to some of the ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... abundance on this spot, and it lies high and airy, with a distant river stealing steadily away to the ocean, like a man's life. To gain the milestone here, which the moss, primroses, violets, bluebells and wild roses would soon render illegible but for peering travellers pushing them aside with their sticks, you must come up a steep hill, come which way you may. So, all the tramps with carts or caravans—the gipsy tramp, the show tramp, the Cheap Jack—find it impossible to resist the temptations of the place, and all turn ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... ale-house post, and represented the figure of a horseman, armed with sabre and pistols, and surmounted by a bear-skin cap, with a fiery animal that he bestrode rampant. All these particulars were easily to be seen by the aid of the moon, together with a row of somewhat illegible writing in black paint, but in which Elizabeth, to whom the whole was familiar, read with facility, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... public, is much valued by students of American history. With the exception of one word, to which he called my attention, Dr. Toner has given as exact a reproduction of the Rules, in their present damaged condition, as can be made in print. The illegible parts are precisely indicated, without any conjectural insertions, and young Washington's spelling and punctuation ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... in ink. Pencil marks blur badly and become illegible in a few months. Remember, you may be using the notebook twenty years hence, ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... supplanted by their descendants with the organ well developed. The mammary glands in Ornithorhynchus may, perhaps, be considered as nascent compared with the udders of a cow—Ovigerous frena, in certain cirripedes, are nascent branchiae—in [illegible] the swim bladder is almost rudimentary for this purpose, and is nascent as a lung. The small wing of penguin, used only as a fin, might be nascent as a wing; not that I think so; for the whole structure of the bird is adapted ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... Kennedy's having put it there. Men of his type usually carry everything they possess about their persons. Peter remembered the ragged wallet of the Bermudian. What if after all these years of hardship the paper had been worn so that it was entirely illegible, or indeed that in Kennedy's many wanderings it had been lost? Either of these theories was plausible, but none provoked a decision. So after awhile Peter went indoors and opening all the windows and doors to cleanse the air, ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... and looked at the collar. There was no name on it, except the maker's, scratched and illegible. I rose and followed the beast, which showed its eager delight by running ahead of me, turning round at times to bark, and then continuing on its way with a precision which showed me that it was certain ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... amazing epistle through once. Then, after rising and walking about the office to make sure that I was thoroughly awake, I sat down and read it again. There was no mistake. I had read it correctly. The writing was somewhat illegible in spots and the signature was blotted, but it was from Francis Strickland Morley. From "Little Frank!" I think my first and greatest sensation was of tremendous surprise that there really was a "Little Frank." Hephzy had been ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... darkness began to deepen towards evening, the track became quite illegible, and when I found myself at this romantically situated cabin, I was thankful to find that they could give me shelter. The scene was a solemn one, and reminded me of a description in Whittier's Snow-Bound. All the stock came round the cabin with mute appeals ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... it had been when I entered it—except the bit of paper torn from the pad. But what a difference to me, to the thousands, the hundreds of thousands directly and indirectly interested in the Coal combine and its strike and its products, was represented by those few, almost illegible scrawlings on that ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... that when I want it to be my countenance is illegible; assuredly, at this moment it was not my desire that she should glimpse the tumult of thought and emotion to which I was a prey; but I have reasons, numberless as the sands of the sea, for knowing that it never ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... is illegible, from the injury made by the clasp, before the last K. Both the clasps are torn away, perhaps from their having been of some precious metal. Has this K anything to do ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... clamp, consisting of the head, C, upon one arm of the body, [Transcribers note: illegible letter], the opposite arm, provided with a corresponding foot, and the said head having arranged therein levers, D, and combined with a screw, B, so as to operate to clamp between the screw and the foot, substantially as ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... a young man, large and strongly built, dressed in the uniform of an ensign of our navy. Surely a strange visitor to these shores! There was no mark of identification upon him except a cigarette case graven with an undecipherable monogram in Tiffany's most illegible style of arrow-headed inscription. This I buried with him, and staked the grave with a headboard. An officer and a gentleman, a youth of friendly ways and kindly living, if one may judge by the face of the dead; and he comes by the same end to the same goal as Handy Solomon. ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... 'cuts'—e.g. Emilia's long speech (k). The omission of (i) might be due to the state of the MS.: the words of the song may have been left out of the dialogue, as appearing on a separate page with the musical notes, or may have been inserted in such an illegible way as to ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... girdle of walls of the castle, with well-preserved battlemented towers, is the principal factor in the effect. The gateways are pointed: outside the walls, towards Castel Parentino, is the pedestal for the municipal standard; on the other side is an illegible inscription in which the date 1475 may be deciphered. The more important church, S. Sofia, still has its outside walls, the three apses, with traces of frescoes in the central one, and the walls of ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... snatched the book from the table and started to return to the counter. As I did so, a green slip of paper fluttered from between the pages. I glanced at it idly. There was an address on it, scrawled in almost illegible block letters. "432 West 28th Street." Being of a tidy nature, I slipped the bit of paper into my pocket and turned, only to find my way blocked by a rather large man wearing a trench coat with upturned collar. He tapped the book significantly and whispered, "Eight-thirty ...
— "To Invade New York...." • Irwin Lewis
... old Roman cursive. It becomes an established hand in the eighth century, and lasts until the twelfth. Examples occur in Ewald and Loewe, Exempla Scriptur Visigotic, Heidelberg, 1883. It was at first very rude and illegible, but afterwards became even handsome. A fine example exists in the British Museum (Palograph. Soc., pl. 48). Its characteristic letters ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... seldom wrote with his own hand. Words of many syllables were tedious to him; and, not having patience to write them at length, he mutilated them. This habit, added to the defective formation of his letters, rendered his writing altogether illegible. Frequently, too, from carelessness, or absence of mind, he infringed the laws of orthography; and people have not failed thence to infer, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... Notice of, which was a Complication of all the Diseases incident to humane Nature, and was in the Hand of a great many fine People: This was called the Spleen. But what most of all surprized me, was a Remark I made, that there was not a single [illegible] Folly thrown into the whole Heap: At which I was very much astonished, having concluded within my self, that every one would take this Opportunity of getting rid of his Passions, Prejudices, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... inches (1.70 m.); flattened, nanocephalous head, normal urine (phosphates 3.1), but anomalous reflex action and senses. Rigid, unequal pupils, tongue and lips inclined towards the right, shaky hand, astasia, aphasia, strong rotular reflex action, absence of cutaneous and cremasteric reflexes, illegible handwriting—a defect of long standing, since it was also found in writing dating back nine months before his arrest, uncertainty and errors of pronunciation (bradyphasia and dysarthria), complete insensibility ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... in which their comrade was buried, beneath the walls of the humble Methodist Church, a marble slab commemorating his valour and his heroic death. With the lapse of five-and-sixty years, however, its brief inscription has become well nigh illegible through the weathering of the elements, and the grave has become indistinguishable from the mouldering mounds on every side around it. But beneath the funeral hatchment of his father, on the chancel walls of Melton-Mowbray ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... the inky sheet were scrawled a few almost illegible lines, "My darlingest St. Elspeth, I have neerly squalled my heyes out because St. John says your Angle Baby has flewn back to Heaven and I wanted it to stay. But I am glad you have got another twin so the little crib St. John told us about won't be all empty and you will still have one reel ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... understand, but apparently the same sort of pre-arrangement that determined whether the stone from the cliff should fall on point A or point B—the same sort of process that guided the pen to make legible and effective writing instead of illegible and ineffective scrawls—the same kind of control that determines when and where a trigger shall be pulled so as to secure the anticipated slaughter of a bird. So far as energy is concerned, the explosion and the trigger-pulling are the same identical operations whether ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... appreciators are there, do you think, among my adorers? I do this to please you, Karen. It is against my principles to encourage the schwaermerei of schoolgirls. There," she signed quickly across each picture in a large, graceful and illegible hand, adding, with a smile up at Karen,—"To my kind ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... shake hands. He had not seen Cornish since the evening when he had offered to make malgamite before him, and the experiment had taken such a deadly turn. He looked at him now and found his glance returned by an illegible smile. The question flashed through his mind and showed itself on his face as to why Roden had made such a mistake as to introduce a man like this into the Malgamite scheme. Von Holzen invited the gentlemen ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... issued. Now here was a little tit-bit which the public would doubtless relish; for it was beginning to feel some interest in Otway's starvation, the poet having been dead half a century. It is true that the signature of the poor starving author, whoever he may have been, was so illegible that it required some imagination to see in it, the name of Otway, but Mr. Lumley had enough of the true antiquarian spirit, to settle the point to his own entire satisfaction. The note was accordingly introduced into ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... whether the ambulance was carrying a spy hidden under its brown wings, beneath the seat somewhere. It was all so perplexing and precarious, this business of sentry duty. The papers issued by the D.E.S. were so illegible. Sometimes they were blue, sometimes pink, and the remarks written on them were such that no one could understand or know what they were about. People had the right to circulate by this road or that—and when they were trying to circulate by a route not specified in the blue or pink paper, ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... desire was to learn to read, but it was not encouraged by the hermit, nor was there any book available save the portuary, crookedly and contractedly written on vellum, so as to be illegible to anyone unfamiliar with writing, with Latin, or the service. However, the anchoret yielded to his importunity so far as to let him learn the alphabet, traced on the door in charcoal, and identify the more sacred words in the book—which, indeed, were all ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... urns and count the votes, the secretary drawing up a proces-verbal the while. If there are more or fewer votes than there were voters registered during the day as voting, this fact is stated and affirmed. Blank or illegible votes, votes which do not accurately give the name of the candidate voted for, or on which the voters have put their own names, are not counted as valid, but they are annexed to the proces-verbal. Votes not written on white paper, or which bear ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... who crouched amongst us. Did he catch this expression of sorrow from one whose presence he as yet had given no token of recognizing? He did not seem to. His eye was on the captain, who was slowly reading, by the light of a lantern held in a detective's hand, the almost illegible words which Mr. Jeffrey had just said were his wife's ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... for the same thing to be and not to be," it knows that sweet is not bitter, and that black is not white. The ideas first known are not general axioms and abstract concepts, but particular impressions of the senses. Would nature write so illegible a hand that the mind must wait a long time before becoming able to read what had been inscribed upon it? It is often said, however, that innate ideas and principles may be obscured and, finally, completely extinguished by habit, education, and other extrinsic circumstances. ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... room to answer Mr. Casaubon's letter. Why should she defer the answer? She wrote it over three times, not because she wished to change the wording, but because her hand was unusually uncertain, and she could not bear that Mr. Casaubon should think her handwriting bad and illegible. She piqued herself on writing a hand in which each letter was distinguishable without any large range of conjecture, and she meant to make much use of this accomplishment, to save Mr. Casaubon's ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... happiest of lives. In the last letter of his which I have seen, written, indeed, when writing had become difficult for him, he says that he is 'as happy as any man can be,' and had nothing to complain of—except, indeed, his illegible handwriting. This is only a repetition of previous statements at every period of his life. When he speaks of the twenty-five years of long struggle, which had enabled him to rise from the bar to the bench, he adds that they were most happy years, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... until the year 1800, when he died, broken in health and spirit, in his sixtieth year. He was buried in Hampstead Churchyard, where a stone marking the date of his death is still to be seen. A few years since it was illegible, but it has recently been restored ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... of which they said, "if not absolutely, yet next to impossible to convict them," was acted upon, and some relaxation made in the rule before adopted; but a part of the record is so worn as to be illegible. ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... dirty, almost illegible scrawl through more carefully this time. It was a clumsy notification addressed to Mme. la Comtesse de Nole de St. Pris to the effect that her tou-tou was for the moment safe, and would be restored to the arms of his fond mistress provided the ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... his sick-bed a feverish and illegible note to Horace Jewdwine. "For God's sake, wire me what you mean to do," an effort which sent his temperature up considerably. He passed these days of convalescence in an anxious watching for the post. To the chambermaid, to the head waiter, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... one could not tell the time of day; and when it struck, it was with noticeably disproportionate deliberation, as if it wished to correct any mistake into which the family might have fallen by reason of its illegible dial. ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... was detained in his quarters by a letter which had arrived by the mid-day host, and which surprised him not a little. The postmark was London, and the writing, evidently a disguised hand, was almost illegible in its crudeness. The contents ran as follows, and it will be noticed that there is neither date nor address, and that it is ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... on hearing that these boards had fallen down from the tree, caused the inscription to be engraven on a plate of copper, which was put up in place of the boards; but rain, and the oozing of gum from the tree, soon rendered even that illegible. ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... stay. Always outside the Hotel de Ville at 2.30 of an afternoon was this queue of natives, each waiting his turn to be admitted to the joyless sanctum of the Commissaire, there to receive those illegible documents without which no French home is complete. Never before had a British soldier fallen in with them, and, when requested to dismiss, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various
... chaste and correct Corinthian style, with portions of ornamental entablature, are lying near. Perhaps belonging to this, but at some distance, lies a ponderous piece of architrave, on which, between lines of moulding, is an inscription in Greek—illegible except the three letters—[Greek text]. These letters ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... bearing my name on a silver tray by the hatstand and open it suspiciously as my wife is divested of her wraps. Inside is a card bearing in an almost illegible scrawl the words: Mrs. Jones. I hastily refresh my recollection as to all the Joneses of my acquaintance, whether in coal, oil or otherwise; but no likely candidate for the distinction of being the husband of my future dinner companion ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... in search of that of the Faliero family, and particularly of the Doge Marino's. "Oh," said he, "I will show it you;" and, conducting me to the outside, pointed out a sarcophagus in the wall with an illegible inscription[373]. He said that it had been in a convent adjoining, but was removed after the French came, and placed in its present situation; that he had seen the tomb opened at its removal; there were still some bones remaining, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... substance may be most usefully employed at this juncture; many of them have as much to lose as we have. Their property, at least, is at stake. Many of them have armed retainers—some few are good shots and have double-barrelled guns. For instance [name illegible], can hit a bottle at 100 yards. He is with the ordinary soldiers. I want a dozen such men, European or Native, to arm their own people and to make thannahs of their own houses, or some near position, and preserve tranquillity within a circuit ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... A square copper coin, inscription illegible. On the obverse is a woman holding a flower or a priest offering incense. It appears to be a ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... illegible, but Julian bent reverently over his father's corpse, and it seemed that the smile brightened on those dead lips as he bowed his young head ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... unpunctuated; it was almost illegible; it was fretful in tone, and selfish in sentiment. It was not, I fear, even original in the story of its woes. It was the harsh recital of poverty, of suspicion, of mean makeshifts and compromises, of low pains and lower longings, of sorrows that were degrading, of a grief that was pitiable. Yet ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... increased by looking nearly at it through a magnifying-glass. Thus, young people who can focus their vision through a wide range may be observed poring with their eyes close to their books when the light wanes. So again, at night-time, a placard, even in large type, is illegible at a short distance, but easily read on approaching it. It seems, in order that a faint image on the retina should be appreciated by the nerves of sight, that ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... higher order of home falling on the ever more inadequate shoulders of the Average Woman, both Motherhood and the home are imperilled. We are horribly frightened when we see our poor Average Woman shrink from maternity, and [illegible] at housework. We preach at her and scold her and flatter her and woo her, and, if we could, we would force her back into her old place, child-bearer and burden-hearer, the helpless ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... the following note of acknowledgment, scrawled in almost illegible pencil marks. Whether sent exactly as it stands or not, it is evidently the first outburst ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... inscriptions were quite illegible, and, in others, the plates that had borne them had fallen on to the floor of the vault, so that it was impossible to say to which ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... precipice, is still shown, together with his kitchen and the altar at which he once ministered. In the graveyard of one of the churches is a curious stone cross, of considerable size, evidently monumental, though the inscription has been so defaced as to be illegible. On the front of the cross there is a deep indentation much resembling that made by the hoof of a cow in soft earth, the bottom of the indentation being deepest at the sides and somewhat ridged in the middle. Concerning this cross and the depression ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... will admire the taste of your employee in the selection of a wife, and that you will continue to conduct yourself in a decorous manner after her arrival. Fair play, and don't take advantage—(the balance of the line was illegible.) ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... of the coffin diverted his thought. It came forward to within a foot of his face, growing visibly larger as it approached. The rusted metallic plate, with an inscription illegible in the moonlight, looked him steadily in the eye. Determined not to shrink, he tried to brace his shoulders more firmly against the end of the excavation, and nearly fell backward in the attempt. There was nothing to support him; he had unconsciously ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... called Palmecaster." Some difference of opinion exists among antiquaries respecting the site of vortigern's castle or city. Usher places it at Gwent, Monmouthshire, which name, he ways, was taken from Caer-Went, near Chepstow. This appears to agree with Geoffrey's account, {illegible} See Usher's Britan. Eccles. cap. v. p.23. According to others, supposed to be the city from the ruins of which arose the castle of Gurthrenion, in Radnorshire, Camden's Britannia, p.479. Whitaker, however, says that Cair Guorthegirn was the Maridunum of the Romans, and the present Caermarthen. ...
— History Of The Britons (Historia Brittonum) • Nennius
... writing the matter and style. Proverbs or utterances of wisdom were indited by him in a firm, bold hand with unadorned simplicity; love-songs with delicate, clear-cut lines, attractive capricious curves, enigmatical, almost illegible minuteness, designed to set forth the type of female character. The chirography of the songs to wine and earthly pleasure is full of fire and flourish—that of the songs of lamentation neat, legible and unadorned. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... in question, falling to pieces with age, and almost illegible in places, is headed, "An ABSTRACT of the Pay due the Officers and Privates of the Company of Riflemen belonging to Captain Abraham Shepherd, being part of a Battalion raised by Colonel Hugh Stevenson, ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... his tickets, with a vocabulary of strictly railroad English, had to help him find the pieces in the baggage-room, curiously estranged in a mountain of alien boxes. One official weighed them; another obliged him to pay as much in freight as for a third passenger, and gave him an illegible scrap of paper which recorded their number and destination. The interpreter and the porters took their fees with a professional effect of dissatisfaction, and he went to wait with his wife amidst the smoking and eating and drinking in the restaurant. They burst ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sake, what's this?" asked Hamilton, handing the letter across to his sister and indicating an illegible line. "It looks like 'a bad ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... is Telemachus being knighted by Minerva in some gardens, the name of which escapes me. In short, where the Roman ladies repaired on one single night. What shall I say to you? I have Romans, and Roman ladies [here occurs an illegible word], and the whole train. Madam Magloire has cleaned it all off; this summer she is going to have some small injuries repaired, and the whole revarnished, and my chamber will be a regular museum. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... impress a mark of ownership upon some bucket of the Argonauts, or the rudest scrawl of Polyphemus in forging a tarry brand upon some sheep which he had stolen, could be so bad, so staggering and illegible, as are these literary inscriptions. How much better to have had a thin tablet or veneering of marble or iron adjusted to the back of the book. A stone-cutter in a rural churchyard once told me that he charged a penny per letter. That may be cheap for a gravestone, but it seems ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... palace garden, authentic to the last detail of historical accuracy, were my La Valliere and my Louis, and that this rich and coloured music which I heard was the same that Diaz had sketched for me on the piano, from illegible scraps of ruled paper, on the edge of the forest. The full miracle of operatic art was revealed to me for the ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... For the anxiety I have . . . [word illegible] [? suffered] these two years about your eleven lives is but ill compensated by all these squalls between us two; which I declare I excuse myself of raising. If, in this last case, you really had not ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... writing, into print, would assume the folio shape as a matter of course, and take rank on the lowest shelf of libraries, with Benedictine editions of the Fathers, [Greek: k.t.l.]. I write this to you to show how I can have pleasure in letters, and never think them too long, nor too frequent, nor too illegible from being written in little 'pet hands.' I can read any MS. except the writing on the pyramids. And if you will only promise to treat me en bon camarade, without reference to the conventionalities of 'ladies and gentlemen,' taking no thought for your ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... steadiness of veterans conscious of their strength, deftly, almost delicately, in fact, silenced the minority. Only once, when the reader of the resolutions hesitated over an illegible word, did the dramatic happen. At that moment a thin voice in the gallery exclaimed, "Hurrah for Blaine!" Instantly the audience was on fire. The burst of applause brought out by Smith's opening reference to the "never ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... attempt this impossible theme? While reflecting on my debt to thee, my heart becomes too big for its mansion. My hand falters, and the characters it traces run into an illegible scrawl. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... nor does it appear to have attracted much attention outside Court circles even subsequently to that date, for the records show that, in the reign of the Emperor Bidatsu (A.D. 572-585), a memorial sent by Korea to the Yamato Court was illegible to all the officials except one man, by name Wang-sin-i, who seems to have been a descendant ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... him; and for the writer to imply that he furnishes arguments, but does not pretend to furnish brains to understand the arguments, is arrogance. What Goethe says about the most legible handwriting being illegible in the twilight, is doubtless true; and should be oftener borne in mind by frivolous objectors, who declare they do not understand this or do not admire that, as if their want of taste and understanding were rather creditable than otherwise, and were decisive proofs ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... the vellum.[22] As a matter of fact, the flesh side of the vellum showed faded writing long before modern time. To judge by the retouched characters on fol. 53r it would seem that the original writing had become illegible by the eighth or ninth century.[23] Still, a considerable period of time would, so far as we know, be necessary for this process. It is highly improbable that a forger could devise this method of giving his forgery ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... reigned as Bryda read the rather illegible writing of the old Squire. When she had finished she looked up, and, with a deep ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... dealing with many obscurities in the text, and he has also read the proofs. I am indebted also to Mr. E. Gwynn, who has collated at Trinity College, Dublin, a number of passages in the Yellow Book of Lecan, which are illegible or incorrect in the facsimile; and to Dr. Whitley Stokes for notes and suggestions on ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... in the bleak field exposed to the suns of summer and the storms of winter for more than one hundred and thirty years. The day of August on which she died and the number of years she had lived have become illegible by exposure,—impossible to be deciphered. The stone has lately been removed to Williams College, and with its companion relic, a stick of one of the timbers of Fort Shirley, and a few other memorials of the well and fort, are safe ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... continued reminiscently. "I say that it was valuable, for on the blade were engraved some curious Inca characters. I wasn't able to take the time to decipher them, down there, for the age of the metal made them almost illegible. But now that I have all my stuff unpacked and arranged after my trip, I was just about to try—when along comes a thief and robs me. We can't have the University Museum broken into ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... task, the mildewed remnants of what seemed to have been once a garment. On more minute inspection, enough remained of silken slashes and a coarse embroidery, to identify the relics as having once formed part of a pair of trunk hose; while a few papers which fell from them, altogether illegible from damp and age, were by the unlearned rustics conveyed to the then owner of ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... crumbling with age. The sheets were covered with runes of lingua antiqua arranged in regular rows, inscribed by hand with a carbon-based ink which has persisted remarkably well despite the degenerative processes of time. Although much of the manuscript is illegible, sufficient remains to settle for all time the Dannar-Marraket Controversy and lend important corroborating evidence to the Cassaheb ...
— The Issahar Artifacts • Jesse Franklin Bone
... papers were folded flat and neatly docketed; they were rather yellow and a little dog-eared, and with the outer sheet pencilled over with puzzling or illegible scribblings, Benham's memoranda for his reply. White took the earlier essay in his hand. At the head of the first page was written in large letters, "Go slowly, speak to the man at the back." It brought up ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... written worse scrawls than I do," said a boy at Rugby when his teacher remonstrated with him for his bad penmanship; "it is not worth while to worry about so trivial a fault." Ten years later, when he had become an officer in the Crimea, his illegible copy of an order caused the ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... advertisement prefixed to the errata states, that the devil, to ruin the fruit of his work, employed two very malicious frauds, by first drenching the manuscript in the kennel, reducing it to a most pitiable state, and rendering some parts altogether illegible, and then obliging the printers to commit such numerous blunders, never before equalled in so small a work. To combat this double machination of Satan, he was obliged carefully to reperuse the work, and to form this ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... letter is pleasant and cheerful. Careless, incorrect, slovenly, illegible. I dare not show a sentence of it even to Eustis. God ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... half aloud, mingled with commentary, as she proceeded, and once or twice came to a pause over an illegible word, on which occasions her visitor helped her to the word without looking at the letter. This circumstance struck her at last as somewhat singular, for she looked up suddenly, and said, "You appear, sir, to be familiar with the contents ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... sketches,—this would be as exciting, one might suppose, as to sit through a play one knows by heart at Drury Lane or the Theatre Francais, and might furnish occupation enough to the curious idler who was only in search of entertainment. The mechanical obstacles of half-illegible manuscript, of antiquated forms of speech, to say nothing of the intentional obscurities of diplomatic correspondence, stand, however, in the way of all but the resolute and unwearied scholar. These difficulties, ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 'is related to shew how extensive even at that time his reading was. A manuscript of the rare work of Icfahani happened to fall into his hands. Unfortunately, however, one half of each page, vertically downwards from top to bottom, was rendered illegible, or was altogether destroyed, by fire. Abulfazl, determined to restore so rare a book, cut away the burnt portions, pasted new paper to each page, and then commenced to restore the missing halves of each line, in which attempt, after many thoughtful perusals, he ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... same race as do the ordinary Neolithic graves, the maj[u]r being a cheap substitute for the wooden roof of the earlier time, or whether they belonged to some other element in the population, as the presence with them of the two illegible black cylinders would suggest. ...
— El Kab • J.E. Quibell
... almost illegible, but it could be seen that it was a United States postal. There was not a single word upon it that could be made out in its entirety, but up in the corner where the postmark had been they could see by straining their eyes the ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... them. You are not to stir from your place to look what they are, but to draw them simply as they appear, giving the perfect look of neat lettering; which, nevertheless, must be (as you find it on most of the books) absolutely illegible. Next try to draw a piece of patterned muslin or lace (of which you do not know the pattern), a little way off, and rather in the shade; and be sure you get all the grace and look of the pattern without going a step nearer to see what it is. Then try to draw a bank ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... at her but once. He seemed to be looking afar, beyond the Temple and its terraces, beyond the horizon itself. But the accusers were impatient. He bent forward and with a finger wrote on the ground. The letters were illegible, perhaps, yet the symbol of obliteration was in that dust which the morrow would disperse. Again he wrote, but the charge was repeated, louder, ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... years—as the governor, being the one in charge of all those matters, will fully inform your Majesty. With that relief a present was also sent to the king of Macazar in your Majesty's name, in recognition of the friendly reception and entertainment found in his country by your Majesty's [word illegible in MS.] vassals, and for the great importance of preserving his friendship, as I have stated in ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... out some illegible stuff and Colonel Cresswell signed it to get rid of her. We are not going to question the legality of the form—that's neither here nor there. The point is, Mr. Cresswell never intended—never dreamed of selling this wench land right ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Nominally high wages were offset by the various deceptions open to an ingenious management; prices were higher here than elsewhere; the coat-rooms were robbers' dens infested by Italian mafiosi; tips were extravagant and amounted in effect to ransom; and each meal-check was headed by an illegible scrawl which masked an item termed "service." The figure opposite would have covered the cost of a repast at Childs's. But New York dearly loves to be pillaged; it cherishes a reputation for princely ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... so confused, that he was quite helpless without Harold's explanations, and rather rough directions what he was to do. How like themselves their writing was! Eustace's neat and clerkly, but weak and illegible; and Harold's as distinct, and almost as large, as a schoolboy's copy, but with square-turned joints and strength of limb ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pulp-like paper. It had been cut up, macerated, perhaps chewed; perhaps it had been also soaked with water. There was a wash-basin with running water in this room. The ink had run, and of course was illegible. The thing was so unusual that I at once assumed that this was the remains of the note in question. Under ordinary circumstances it would be utterly valueless as a clue to anything. But to-day science is not ready to let anything pass ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... failure of his powers during this year is well exemplified by his handwriting in his Journal entries, which, with occasional rallies, becomes broken and in places almost illegible. He makes frequent reference to his decline in strength and brain-power, and to his failing memory, but he continued his ordinary occupations, made frequent drives around Blackheath, and amused himself with his family history researches, arrangement of papers, ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... expression, and the editor of the letters avails himself of Dntzer's explanation. Dntzer further explains the word theodokos, used in Goethe's Tagebuch with reference to the Duke, in connection with the term theodidaktos applied to Walter Shandy. The wordis, however, somewhat illegible in the manuscript. It was printed thus in the edition of the Tagebuch published by Robert Keil, but when Dntzer himself, nine years after the article in the Archiv, published an edition of the Tagebcher he accepted a reading theotatos,[65] meaning, as he says, "ein voller ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... two instances of illegible words in this text, both as a result of ink blots. They ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... From the last (almost illegible) letter written by Dr. Ryerson, two weeks before his death and dated 6th of February, 1882, I make the following extracts. It was addressed to Rev. Hugh Johnston, B.D., of ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... course of a few days Lawrence Croft received a note signed Candy & Co. "per" some illegible initials, which stated that Mr Junius Keswick had been traced to a boarding-house in the city, but as the establishment had been broken up for some time, endeavors were now being made to find the lady who had kept the house, and when this was done it would most likely be possible to ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... a hand wrote upon it in pencil these four lines, which have become gradually illegible beneath the rain and the dust, and which are, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... assumed the appearance of such a splendidly bound and gilt-edged volume as one often meets with, nowadays; but, on running his fingers through the leaves, behold! it was a bundle of thin golden plates, in which all the wisdom of the book had grown illegible. He hurriedly put on his clothes, and was enraptured to see himself in a magnificent suit of gold cloth, which retained its flexibility and softness, although it burdened him a little with its weight. He drew out his handkerchief, which ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... antiquary. Yet, no doubt many ballads did escape, and still remain scattered up and down the country side, existing probably in the recollection of many a sun-browned shepherd, or the weather-beaten brains of ancient hinds, or 'eldern' women: or in the well-thumbed and nearly illegible leaves of some old book or pamphlet of songs, snugly resting on the 'pot-head,' or sharing their rest with the 'Great Ha' Bible,' Scott's Worthies, or Blind Harry's lines. The parish dominie or pastor of some obscure village, amid ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... reply I did not hear, having been compelled by exhaustion to leave the House. Remained with Ryder and Pickering in the coffee-room or walking about until the division, and joined Wellesley and [illegible] as we walked home. Went to bed for an hour, breakfasted, and came off by the Alert. Arrived safely, thank God, in Oxford. Wrote to my brother and to Gaskell. Tea with Phillimore and spent the remainder of the ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... from rehearsal at the theatre, where I found a letter from Emily, containing a bad account of her mother, and a most affectionate, cordial, illegible scrawl from poor dear old ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... surprising form of this experiment is when we use a coin from which the inscription has been either wholly obliterated, or obliterated in such a degree as to be illegible. When such a coin is laid upon the red hot iron, the letters and figures become oxidated, and the film of oxide radiating more powerfully than the rest of the coin will be more luminous than the rest of the coin, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various
... anything to assay, as he was young and inexperienced in treating gold. Losses suffered at the beginning by those who tried to have gold assayed caused us to abandon the attempt. The Moros understand the laws of gold better than we do. I have given notice of [original illegible]. It may be of service to the royal estate. I have given information thereof which will accompany this, and I think that it is impossible to exercise more diligence. I have ordered that, when the gold enters into possession ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... lower share of the gross than he has heretofore received, or in exchange for something of a different, perhaps of a sentimental nature? ... Please pardon this typewritten note, but my own hand, unlike your copper-plate, is absolutely illegible. I have been raised in a ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... mountains I have named Sheba's Breasts, write this in the year 1590 with a cleft bone upon a remnant of my raiment, my blood being the ink. If my slave should find it when he comes, and should bring it to Delagoa, let my friend (name illegible) bring the matter to the knowledge of the king, that he may send an army which, if they live through the desert and the mountains, and can overcome the brave Kukuanes and their devilish arts, to which end many priests ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... The date is fictitious. The Atherington register has been vainly searched for the burial of Philippa Basset, and the Heanton register is marked in the return "illegible." ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... was one not only of theological perplexity, but of great literary difficulty. Pascal’s manuscripts were a mere mass of confused papers, sometimes written on both sides, and in a hand for the most part so obscure and imperfectly formed as to be illegible to all who had not made it a special study. The papers were pasted or bundled together without any natural connection, parts containing the same piece being sometimes intersected and sometimes widely separated from one another. ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... Nails Andersen was present, black cigar clamped firmly between his teeth; hamlike Norwegian hands maneuvering a pencil, he was making illegible notes on a scrap of paper—illegible to others because they were in his own form of shorthand that he had worked out over the years as he tried to make penciled notes as fast as his racing mind worked ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... above 13 packages and 4 cases of medicines are ship'd on Board the Sloop Called the Two Brothers Saml West Master. On Account and [illegible word] of Mr. Oliver Smith of Boston Apothecary and to him consigned. The cases are unmarked being ship'd at Night. Error ...
— Old English Patent Medicines in America • George B. Griffenhagen
... letter; it was all but a pulp, and in its present state illegible. Carefully smoothing it out, I slipped it inside the strap and turned to hide my prize; for such was my fear of the man who called himself Apollyon, that I could know no peace of mind whilst it remained about ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... primitive engraver is to make his scratch deep enough to be visible. Visibility is quite as essential to your fame as permanence; and if you have only your furrow to depend on, the engraved tablet, at certain times of day, will be illegible, ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... Canary Bombast Primrose Diamond Benedict Walnut Abominate Piazza Holiday Barbarous Disgust Heavy Kind Virtu Nightmare Devil Gospel Comfort Whist Mermaid Pearl Onion Enthusiasm Domino Book Fanatic Grotesque Cheat Auction Economy Illegible Quell Cheap Illegitimate Sheriff Excelsior Emasculate Danger Dunce Champion Shibboleth Calico Adieu Essay Pontiff Macadamize Wages Copy Stentorian Quarantine Puny Saturnine Buxom Caper Derrick Indifferent Boycott Mercurial Gaudy ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... of Nukhashi and another whose name is now illegible, apparently take a higher rank than their neighbours. Nukhashi is often named in these tablets as well as in Egyptian inscriptions, and it must have been situated on the north-east slope of the Lebanon range. We have also letters from ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... work like a man. She was entirely unfitted for her sex's sphere. She was neither uncertain, coy nor hard to please, and altogether too stimulating and aggressive for any gentleman's hours of ease. Her cookery would have been about as sketchy as her handwriting, which was generally quite illegible, and she would have made, I feel sure, a shocking bad nurse. Yet you mustn't imagine she was an inelegant or unbeautiful woman, and she is inconceivable to me in high collars or any sort of masculine garment. But her soul was bony, and at the base of her was a vanity gaunt and greedy! ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... opportunity of using some of this elaborately monogrammed paper which poor darling papa got for me, because I wanted to see how they could work my unpromising 'Z' into a respectable cipher. They have made it utterly illegible, and I believe that is the great point to ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... letters of this name are illegible (worn away?) in the original text; from the remaining bits I have guessed all but the first two, which are not visible under any ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... There she told all that was necessary, to an official at a desk,—a big, comfortable man with a plenitude of neck and mustache. This gentleman, after briefly questioning her and Larcher, and taking a few illegible notes, and setting a subordinate to looking through the latest entries in a large record, dismissed the subject by saying that whatever was proper to be done would be done. He had a blandly incredulous way with him, as if he doubted, not only that Murray Davenport was missing, but ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... or that other voters were led by like influence to refrain from voting, can such a function be valid under the Constitution of the United States? There is no question were of throwing out particular votes for vices inherent in themselves, such as that they were illegible, or were cast by disqualified persons, and the like; but the question is of rejecting the votes of a certain number—say a thousand voters—either because they were unduly influenced, or because another thousand, who might ...
— The Electoral Votes of 1876 - Who Should Count Them, What Should Be Counted, and the Remedy for a Wrong Count • David Dudley Field
... thought and conversation were quickly loosened. It is marvelous how far apart the two worlds are." She started on the ship Idaho for Portland, August 25. The sea was very rough, they were seven days making the trip and, judging from the almost illegible entries in the diary, it was not a ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... seen in taverns, it was over the teacups, even more than over the wine glasses, that Boswell made his notes. I have seen Boswell's signature after wine—on the minutes of a meeting of The Club—and he was in no condition then for the taking of notes. Even the signature is almost illegible.) But it is fitting that Gilbert, who loved all sorts of men so much, should be kept alive for the future by all sorts of men. From the focussing of many views from many angles this picture has been composed, but they are ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the writing-table as he went out, Henry saw the sheet of paper on which the Countess had traced her last lines of writing. The characters were almost illegible. Henry could just distinguish the words, 'First Act,' and 'Persons of the Drama.' The lost wretch had been thinking of her Play to the last, and had begun it all ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... the names of many other vessels; some of them I copied in my journal, others were illegible. Many of the crosses had decayed and fallen, and many a hand that put them there I had known, many a hand now still. The air of depression was about the place, and I hurried back to the sloop to forget myself ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... love to decipher illegible inscriptions, to contemplate a throttled centaur on a dilapidated frieze, or a carved acanthus on a fallen capital, grope over the Acropolis and invoke Athenian Pallas," said Mike; "but for me these painted seraglios and terraced, bower-canopied gardens, ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... work which he was at this very time executing for Harrison Ainsworth—can scarcely be conceived. They are so ashamed of themselves, that his signature—usually so distinct, so characteristic, and so clear on other occasions—is illegible, in many cases wholly wanting. At length, in vol. xiii. (1843) appeared a story called "The Exile of Louisiana," "with an illustration by George Cruikshank" (for Bentley, probably by way of retaliation, was determined the public should know ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt |
