"Mumbling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dismounted. They shook hands again, and MacDonald drove on ahead of him the saddled horses and the pack. And as Aldous turned back toward the bungalow old Donald was mumbling low in his beard again, "God ha' mercy on me, but I'm doin' it for her an' ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... steps to the platform of the judges' stand, and when Weaver saw what he carried in his hand he became a very sick man indeed—and looked it. Al Engle backed away into the crowd and Martin O'Connor followed him, mumbling incoherently. ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... those awful words, and for the first time she saw the stake and the mass of red coals—redder and angrier than ever now under the constantly deepening storm-gloom. She gasped and staggered up out of her seat muttering and mumbling incoherently, and gazed vacantly upon the people and the scene about her like one who is dazed, or thinks he dreams, and does not know ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... windows the storm comes dashing, Through tattered foliage the hail tears crashing, The blue lightning flashes, The rapid hail clashes, The white waves are tumbling, And, in one baffled roar, 60 Like the toothless sea mumbling A rock-bristled shore, The thunder is rumbling And crashing and crumbling,— Will silence ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... his mumbling and I wanted my double to hear every word, I hit upon the notion of informing him that I regretted to say I ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... locksmith his ten shillings, and suggested that he need not wait longer. The locksmith, having received the money, thought it incumbent upon him to apologize and explain still further, till Marcus took hold of the door, as if to close it, when he accepted the hint, and departed, mumbling an apology as ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... mumbling the dainties that he can no longer enjoy, and glowering with bleared eyes at the indulgences which now mock him even while they tempt him. The goal of the path of covetousness may be discerned in ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... impulse she turned and bestowed her full confidence upon him, the paint-smeared face and mumbling ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... himself on his discretion, for he caught a glimmer of light at the edge of a window shade in the courthouse, saw several indistinct figures congregated at the side door, outside. He slipped behind a tool shed at the side of the track, and crouching there, watched and listened. A mumbling of voices reached him, but he could distinguish no word. But it was evident that the men outside were awaiting the reappearance of one of their number who had gone into ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... rested, and ate less because they rested. So small was the ration they permitted that it gave no appeasement to the hunger pang that was much of the stomach, but more of the brain. And Labiskwee, delirious, maddened by the taste of her tiny portion, sobbing and mumbling, yelping sharp little animal cries of joy, fell upon the next day's portion and ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... wrestling with beasts at Ephesus wasn't more heroic than Anna-Felicitas perceived that distant child to have been, silently Sunday after Sunday bearing her legs. Then one Sunday something snapped inside her, and she heard her own voice floating out into the void above the heads of the mumbling worshippers, and it said with a terrible distinctness in a sort of monotonous wail: "I only had a cold potato for breakfast,"—and a second time, in the breathless suspension of mumbling that followed upon this: "I only had a cold potato for breakfast,"—and a third time she ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... man got together his last remaining resources, without thought of those who were dependent upon him. He betrayed an incredible energy, walking, ferreting about, and mumbling strange, incomprehensible words. ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... fox, in life's extreme decay, Weak, sick and faint, expiring lay; All appetite had left his maw, And age disarm'd his mumbling jaw. His numerous race around him stand To learn their dying sire's command: He rais'd his head with whining moan, And thus was heard the feeble tone: 'Ah, sons, from evil ways depart; My crimes lie heavy on my heart. See, see, the murdered geese ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... oppressively hot and delivered over to the mosquitoes, the occasion seemed to favour that visit to Siena which I had more than once planned and missed. I arrived late in the evening, by the light of a magnificent moon, and while a couple of benignantly-mumbling old crones were making up my bed at the inn strolled forth in quest of a first impression. Five minutes brought me to where I might gather it unhindered as it bloomed in the white moonshine. The great Piazza of Siena is famous, and though in this day of multiplied photographs and blunted surprises ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... at one another in silence for a moment, and then both began to speak at once, their counsellors interrupting them and mumbling their guttural comments with anxious earnestness. It did not take them very long to see that they were all of one mind, and then they both turned to Gordon and dropped on one knee, and placed his hands on their foreheads, and Stedman ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... more than enough of lying and cheating also, both practised with subtle and half-conscious humour. Inside a booth for the sale of sugar in loaf and sack a man sat fingering a rosary and mumbling prayers for penance. "God forgive me," he muttered, "God forgive me, God forgive me," and at every repetition he passed a bead. A customer approached, touched a sugar loaf and asked, "How much?" The merchant continued ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... old criminal mumbling away to herself, though! (aloud) Ah! those eyes of yours, you old sinner! By heaven, I'll dig 'em out for you. I will, so that you can't keep watching me whatever I do. Get farther off still! still ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... preceding paragraphs I am ashamed to see how pale and mumbling a tribute they are to this fine spirit. Could I but put him before you as he was in those last days! I used to go up to Burkitt House to see him: in summer we would sit in the little arbour in the garden, or in winter by the ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... force of Helen's words, "You won't enjoy the performance at all." He began now to pay for the joy he had taken in her companionship. He knew the weakness of every actor, and suffered with them and for them. Royleston from the first tortured him by mumbling his lines, palpably "faking" at times. "The idiot, he'll fail to give his cues!" muttered Douglass. "He'll ruin the play." The children scared him also, they were so important to Helen at the close ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... monstrosity wonderingly. "'Tis a rare big bean," he said, in the trembling quaver of old age, and with a mumbling laugh like that of a pleased child. "I'll give you two shillin's for it. I suppose you want money badly, or else you wouldn't be wanderin' about at ten o'clock at night tryin' to sell it. I hope you come by ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... through those halls with so much spirit and such a noble carriage that the Emperor and every one were struck with wonder. Thereupon, Messer Durante advanced in so graceless a manner, and delivered his speech with so much of Brescian lingo, mumbling his words over in his mouth, that one never saw or heard anything worse; indeed the Emperor could not refrain from smiling at him. I meanwhile had already uncovered my piece; and observing that the Emperor had turned ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... obtained for me a post in the 'Refuge for the Aged;' about the dullest place in all Vienna. I was too young to be one of the members, so they gave me a birth, where I did nothing. But what was the use of that? I could not live among that company of mumbling, bible-backed old people; and if I could, it was all the same, for they kicked me out at the end of a ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... respectable— No dry-rot in her bones, while she's alive: Time and to spare for decency in the grave. So, you can do your duty by the sheep, While I go hunting with the jinneyhoolets— Birds of a feather—ay, and fleece with fleece: And when I'm a toothless, mumbling crone, you'll be So proper a gentleman, 'twill be hard to tell The shepherd from the sheep. Someone must rear The mutton and wool, to keep us warm and fed; But that's not my line: please to step this way For the fancy goods and fakish faldalals, Trinkets and toys and fairings. Son, you say, You're ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... Boussignol fell on her knees and said, in so low and dull a voice that they had to bend over her in order to catch the sense of what she was mumbling: ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... half-dragged up to the altar, and before I knew where I was I found myself mumbling responses which were whispered in my ear, and vouching for things of which I knew nothing, and generally assisting in the secure tying up of Irene Adler, spinster, to Godfrey Norton, bachelor. It was all done in an instant, and there was the gentleman thanking me on the one side and the ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... to their feet unaided, while others could not. These Denman helped; but, as he assisted them with one hand, holding his pistol in the other, there was no demonstration against him with doubled fists—which is possible and potential. Mumbling and muttering, they floundered down the small hatch and forward into the forecastle. The last in the line was Sampson, and Denman ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... was alone as usual; he entered with his jovial, self-satisfied, and stubborn air, without noticing Sam, who was standing at the left side of the door, his right hand hidden in his trowsers, and passed rapidly by the first frames, tossing his head, mumbling his words, and casting his glance, which was law, here and there, not perceiving that the eyes of all who surrounded him were fixed upon him as upon a fearful phantom. On a sudden he turned sharply round, surprised to hear a step ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... being witches. In almost any village might be seen poor old creatures, toothless, hollow cheeked, wrinkled, with nose and chin almost meeting. Bent almost double, they walked about with a crutch, shaking and mumbling as they went. If any one had an ache or a pain it was easily accounted for. For why, they were bewitched! The poor old crone was the witch who had "cast the evil eye" upon them. And sometimes these poor creatures were put to death for their ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... lack of a tanker, there being none at hand, he would be obliged to lift it to his head, and do his best. To show the creature did not want sense, he shoved, when he was done, the empty plate and the toom bottle through beneath the door, mumbling some trash or other which no living creature could comprehend, but which I dare say, from the way it was said, was the telling me how much he was obliged for his supper and poor lodging. From my kindness towards him, he grew more composed; but as he went back to the corner to lie down, I heard him ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... labor. Her husband was watching her intently—and thought how beautiful she looked as the blood mantled to her white forehead, descending and rising as her thoughts took turn after turn. The unfortunate deacon was mumbling forth a few ill-connected sentences. At last with a groan he sank to his seat and placed a handkerchief to his fevered brow. Presently Augusta sat down and there was again an awful silence. No one advanced another petition and Dominie Graves ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... finished; it tapered away with her own waning life, and she knit the toe-stitch on the day of her death. She made it her serious business and sole amusement to tell me stories at any time from morning till night, in a mumbling, toothless voice, as I sat on a log of wood, grasping her cheek-apron in both my hands. Her personal memory included the better part of a hundred years, and she had strangely jumbled her own experience and observation with those of many old people who died in her young days; so that she might have ...
— An Old Woman's Tale - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Mumbling a vague acceptance of the too-genial invitation, the exalted detective rose and ambled cheerfully down the room and out of ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... Something disastrous she was sure; something which he had feared and was partially prepared for, yet which in happening had crushed him. Was it a pitfall into which the poor little lady had fallen? If so—But he is speaking—mumbling low words to himself. Some of them she can hear. He is reproaching himself—repeating over and over that he should never have taken such a chance; that he should have remembered her youth—the weakness of a young girl's nerve. He had been mad, and ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... can, while the heart is like leaping out of him. Curled disdainful moustachio; careless glance,—which however surveys the Village-groups, and does not like them. With his eye he bespeaks the yellow Courier. Be quick, be quick! Thick-headed Yellow cannot understand the eye; comes up mumbling, to ask in words: seen of ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... was overrun, like other contiguous spaces. The object of the invaders was to secure a position near the revered building as possible; for immediately on attaining it they dropped to their knees, and began counting their rosaries and mumbling prayers. At length it befell that the terraces far and near were densely crowded by monks ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... people—and yes, all Rhaetians, I believe. I could not let you go back to your own land with the idea that we do not love the noblest Emperor country ever had. As for what I said about the portrait, I didn't know that I spoke aloud, I am so used to mumbling to myself, since I began to grow deaf and old. But of course, I wished it put away only because it is such a poor thing, it does Unser Leo no sort of justice. You—you would not recognize him from that picture, if you were to see ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... who, being human, sent back a grin, Jennings went to the power-house, mumbling to the last that ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... old furniture,—especially cabinets, chests and presses. I believe he had in that room every bit of the property he had spent a long life in gathering. And I knew he had lots of gold in those places; for one night, when his nurse was away, he crept out of bed, mumbling and shaking, and managed to open one of his chests, though he nearly fell down with the effort. I was peeping over his shoulder, and such a gleam of gold fell upon me, that it nearly killed me. But hearing his nurse coming, he slammed the lid down, ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... took the apples in their old shaking fingers and ate them, bent double, mumbling with their old lips. They had hardly finished their last mouthfuls when they sat up straight, smiled with sweet red lips, and looked at the little Prince with shining eyes. They had become young girls again, and their gray hair was ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... they were now preparing by means of the same machinery to dispute the monopoly of the Spaniards in the west. To talk of excluding such a people as this from intercourse with any portion of the Old World or the New was the mumbling of dotage; yet nothing could be more certain than that such would be ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... knees drawn up and head tucked in, trying to gain somehow the safety that an infant once knew. Janith's voice, soft and understanding, and the acid of panic that set his lips to mumbling meaningless jargon.... ...
— Second Sight • Basil Eugene Wells
... this brings Norwegian soil with it, and is alive. The satire is fierce, local, and fantastic. Out of the two comes a clashing thing which may itself suggest, as has been said, the immense contrast between Norwegian summer, which is day, and winter, which is night. Grieg's music, childish, mumbling, singing, leaping, and sombre, has aptly illustrated it. It was a thing done on a holiday, for a holiday. It was of this that Ibsen said he could not have written it any nearer home than Ischia and Sorrento. But is it, for all its splendid scraps and patches, a single masterpiece? is it, above all, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... overtook him again. Then he began mumbling enviously of pleasures and strange delights. "The luck of it, the luck of it! All my life I've been in London, hoping to ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... have told my uncle I was good for nothing to-day, when I heard old Johns mumbling something to him about Mr. More being unwell, and looking up, I saw that cold grey eye twinkling at me, as much as to say he was proud to see how soon an Irishman could be beaten. So what could I do but give him look for look, and go on with ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... beyond. The crackling of twigs was plainly recognized, and the mumbling sound of voices could be made out. They were human voices, but their intonations, as they came nearer, were sufficient to show that the language was not that of civilized people. They were more in the nature of successive grunts, not ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... streets of the city. 'What steel! alack, what steel!' Such were the bewildered cries the citizens raised. The firmness of manhood and of youth gave way at sight of the steel; and the steel paralyzed the wisdom of graybeards. That which I, poor tale-teller, mumbling and toothless, have attempted to depict in a long description, Ogger perceived at one rapid glance, and said to Didier, 'Here is what ye have so anxiously sought:' and whilst uttering these words ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... my lads?" demanded Anthony, running a hand over the sweating animal with the caressing touch of a true horseman. "Come, speak up and no mumbling!" ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... churches and cathedrals that men have reared around them throughout the world, have been built as homes for mere creeds—this one for Protestantism, that one for Romanism, another for Mahomedanism. But God's Silence dwells in all alike, only driven forth at times by the tinkling of bells and the mumbling of prayers; and, in them, it is good to sit awhile and ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... for food, but it did not come as promptly as their necessities seemed to demand. They searched for Thorhall for three half-days, and found him on a projecting crag. He was lying there, and looking up at the sky, with mouth and nostrils agape, and mumbling something. They asked him why he had gone thither; he replied, that this did not concern anyone. They asked him then to go home with them, and he did so. Soon after this a whale appeared there, and they captured it, and flensed it, and no one could tell what manner of whale it was; and ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... tightly-fitting hose and slashed shoes, every lady in her purple hat and stiff-starched ruff, her gold-brocaded stomacher, and her sweeping skirt, every soldier swaggering his rapier, every sailor rolling home from sea, every monk mumbling his prayers over a rosary—all alike are breathing an infected poisonous air. The young girls from the country feel it most and fly from it the quickest, coming in to sell their eggs and chickens, with their woollen petticoats and gaily coloured headdress, or meeting ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... and continued to the bottle, which he generously inverted skyward. But the second idea, petty as it was, persisted; and, after swaying and mumbling to himself for a time, after unseeingly making believe to study the crisp fresh breeze that filled the Arangi's sails and slanted her deck, and, after sillily attempting on the helmsman to portray eagle-like vigilance in his drink-swimming eyes, ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... The Doctor adjusted his glasses and began to read in a low mumbling voice. By and by he paused, then slowly looked up with ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... night I muttered with hot lips and burning breath; I paced the walk with hurried tread, and raved; I threw myself beneath the willow-tree, And muttered like the muttering of a storm. My little lamb came bleating mournfully; Angered I struck him;—out among the trees I wandered mumbling 'beggar' as I went, And beating in through all my burning soul The bitter thoughts it conjured, till my brain Reeled and I sunk upon the dew-damp grass, And—utterly ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... fortifications is being suffered to crumble away in order that the spirit of M. Viollet-le-Duc alone may pervade it and it may subsist simply as a magnificent shell. As the leases of the wretched little houses fall in, the ground is cleared of them; and a mumbling old woman approached me in the course of my circuit, inviting me to condole with her on the disappearance of so many of the hovels which in the last few hundred years (since the collapse of Carcassonne as a stronghold) had attached themselves to the base of the walls, in ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... scattered, as my shadow glided down upon them, like chickens when a hawk appears. I surprised an ancient fisherman seated on a spit of gravelly beach, with his back upstream, and leisurely angling in a deep, still eddy, and mumbling to himself. As I slid into the circle of his vision his grip on the pole relaxed, his jaw dropped, and he was too bewildered to reply to my salutation for some moments. As I turned a bend in the river I looked back, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... days, tired of spending his afternoons shut up with his books or of attending service in the cathedral, hearing the canons languidly playing rackets from side to side of the choir with the Psalms, of which they tossed the verses to and fro in a mumbling tone, he would go down after dinner and smoke cigarettes in the little Place. At Chartres, eight o'clock in the evening was as three in the morning in any other town; every light was ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... as a woman). Good Heavens! What a pretty creature! What a darling she looks! How now! What are you mumbling? Without offence, may I remove your mask ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... slightest regard for rhythm, and composed in stark defiance of those laws which should regulate the breaking of bad news. You, please remember, were carefully prepared by me against the shock of the Duke's death; and yet I hear you still mumbling that I didn't let the actual fact be told you by a Messenger. Come, do you really think your grievance against me is for a moment comparable with that of Mrs. and Miss Batch against Clarence? Did you feel faint at any moment ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... grave. During his illness he was constantly and zealously tended by his wife, but he displayed great aversion to her, declaring himself bewitched, and that an old woman was ever in the corner of his room mumbling wicked enchantments against him. But as no such old woman could be seen, these assertions were treated as delirious ravings. They were not, however, forgotten after his death, and some people said that he had certainly been bewitched, and that a waxen ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... he could see nothing, for the cell was darker than the room he was in, but presently he distinguished a huddled form lying on the bench, and even as he looked it was galvanized to life. It was an old man who had leaped from the bench mumbling and ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... slowly and thoughtfully, as a hasheesh-eater, heavy with the drug, might ponder some whim-flower that obtruded on his vision. In her ears was the voice of the stream—a hoarse-throated, sleepy old giant, muttering and mumbling his somnolent fancies. But her fancy was not in turn aroused, as was its wont; she knew the sound merely for water rushing over the rocks of the deep canyon-bottom, that ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... degree owed to the appointed means of instructing our youth. The vital knowledge—that by which we have grown as a nation to what we are, and which now underlies our whole existence—is a knowledge that has got itself taught in nooks and corners, while the ordained agencies for teaching have been mumbling little else but dead formulas." ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... full of unspeakable secrets. I felt an intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, the darkness of an impenetrable night.... The Russian tapped me on the shoulder. I heard him mumbling and stammering something about 'brother seaman—couldn't conceal—knowledge of matters that would affect Mr. Kurtz's reputation.' I waited. For him evidently Mr. Kurtz was not in his grave; I suspect ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... drowsily studying his watch. "The beggar puts one shot every five minutes through the same window.—I wonder what he's thinking about? Lying out there, firing at the Red-Bristled Ghosts. Odd! Wonder what they're all"—He put back his cigar, mumbling. "Handful of poor blackguards, all upset in their minds, and sweating round. And all the rest tranquil as ever, eh?—the whole country jogging on the same old way, or asleep and dreaming dreams, perhaps, same kind of dreams they ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... curse thee altogether:' and stretching out her shrivelled arm, dry and bare, she shook it, threatening me with vengeance. Suddenly, or ere I was aware, she seized my left hand, drew off my wedding-ring; breathing upon it and mumbling a spell, she held it as though for me to take back, but with such a fiendish look of delight that I hesitated. All on a sudden I remembered to have heard my grandmother say that should a witch or warlock ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... spite of a firm resolution not to yield to tears, cast herself upon the floor in anguish, and, as she kicked and howled, grasped one of Anna's hands and kissed it, mumbling it, as an anguished mother might a babe's—the hand of an exceedingly loved babe whom she expected, soon, to lose by having given it to someone ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... that 'Jenkins's Ear [as she named the thing] HAS been avenged,' and the Ocean Highways 'opened' and a good deal more, in a most signal way! For the Eternal Providences—little as poor Dryasdust now knows of it, mumbling and maundering that sad stuff of his—do rule; and the great soul of the world, I assure you once more, is JUST. And always for a Nation, as for a man, it is very behooveful to be honest, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... in with the luggage. Pepe rewarded him with a liberality to which the countryman was not accustomed, and the latter, after humbly thanking the engineer, raised his hand to his head with a hesitating movement, and in an embarrassed tone, and mumbling his ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... appointed time, Copernicus Droop might have been seen approaching the white cottage. Still nursing a faint hope, he walked with nervous rapidity, mumbling and gesticulating in his excitement. He attracted but little attention. His erratic movements were credited to his usual potations, and no one whom he passed even gave him a ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... foot upon the step, but did not dare to mount. Fuddled though she was, there was something that kept her in check. She stood there groping at the handrail and mumbling to herself, and every now and then lifting her ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... supplied—had joined them outside the town, and now walked by the side of the caleche. He assisted George's companion in bearing out the coffins. The huge door grated on its hinges, as they opened it. The coffins were borne in, and the whole party entered; the priest mumbling a short Latin prayer. In a short time, the priest alone returned; and looking cautiously around, and seeing no one, struck a light from a tinder box, and lighted his cigar. The other two men brought back the coffins, evidently ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... a dumb beast shu'! Rubbin' dirt right inter clean cabbage! Sich muxin'! mux, mux, mux! Dat a coon? Dat ain't no coon. Dat's a mux!" And she scuffed off to the house, mumbling, "De muxinest thing I done evah seen." ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... are the most perfect types of various states of dull, commonplace, mediocre routinist superstition; so many Camerlenghi on the one hand, so many Passionist or Propagandists on the other: the first aristocratic, bland and bored; the second, dull, listless, mumbling, chewing Latin Prayers which never meant much to their minds, and now mean nothing; both perfectly reverential and proper in behaviour, with no more possibility of individual fervour of belief than of individual ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... one, voters, mumbling their amazement, unhitched their horses and started along the highway in the direction the fugitives had taken. It seemed to all that this case required to be investigated. The procession whipped ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... other people's hilarity. An episode of humor or kindness touches and amuses him here and there,—-a pretty child looking at a gingerbread stall; a pretty girl blushing whilst her lover talks to her and chooses her fairing; poor Tom Fool, yonder behind the wagon mumbling his bone with the honest family which lives by his tumbling; but the general impression is one more melancholy than mirthful. When you come home, you sit down, in a sober, contemplative, not uncharitable frame of mind, and apply yourself to your ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... him. But there was neither tapestry nor ceiling visible, and the portrait had also disappeared. He saw at his right only a man with a white apron spotted with blood; at his left, a monk, who was raising his head; and before him, an old woman mumbling her prayers. His wondering eyes next rested on a mass of stone before him, in which he recognized the Temple, and above that, the cold white sky, slightly tinted by the rising sun. He ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... jargon to me. If I try to analyse it, I am knocked out right and left by countless questions; but leave that. It is when I try to take you practically at your word that I find you are mumbling a fetish. Forgive me, ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... which was just as well, for what more had they to say to each other: hadn't he married Hender? And passing in front of a shop-window she caught sight of herself in a looking-glass. 'Not up to much,' she said, and passed on into the Strand mumbling her misfortunes and causing the passers-by to look after her. She had not pinned up her skirt safely, a foot of it dragged over the pavement, and hearing jeering voices behind her she went into a public-house to ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... was no sinecure, and but few opportunities of observation through the crack of the door were afforded me. All that was clear to me was that the chief guest was a Mr. Teidelmann—or Tiedelmann, I cannot now remember which—a snuffy, mumbling old frump, with whose name then, however, I was familiar by reason of seeing it so often in huge letters, though with a Co. added, on dreary long blank walls, bordering the Limehouse reach. He sat at my mother's right hand; and I wondered, noticing him so ugly and so foolish seeming, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... able to tell in the courtroom in the city, in the presence of the judge. The whole story of mankind's loneliness, of the effort to reach out to unattainable beauty tried to get itself expressed from the lips of a mumbling old man, crazed with loneliness, who stood by the side of a country road on a foggy morning holding a little ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... deciding that discretion was the better part of valour, promptly subsided, although Bryce could see that he was mumbling threats to himself, though ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... demanded Sammy Jay, coming up just in time to hear the last part of what Blacky the Crow was mumbling to himself. ...
— Blacky the Crow • Thornton W. Burgess
... forward, and at the same moment Hans Sachs arrived and again all waved and cheered loudly. Eva took the place of honour, and behind them all was—Beckmesser, wildly struggling to learn his great song. He kept taking the manuscript from his pocket and putting it back, sweating and mumbling, standing first on one of his sore feet and then upon the other, a ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... Lord, I will put it with a convincing brevity, not indeed a dust-scattering brevity fit only for the mumbling recluse, who perchance in this grey London marching Eastward at break of naked morn, daintily protruding a pinkest foot out of compassing clouds, copiously takes inside of him doses of what is denied to his external bat-resembling vision, but with the sharp brevity ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... have meant to Colonel Arran, to this quiet, slow, respectable man of the world, to find his girl wife crying in the moonlight, and a hot-headed boy down on his knees, mumbling the lace edge of ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... at the door, and overthrew his father in his flight. The old gentleman would not spend time in getting up, but crawled backwards like a crab, with great speed, till he had got over the threshold, mumbling exorcisms all the way. I was exceedingly mortified to find myself in danger of perishing through the ignorance and cowardice of these clowns; and felt my spirits decay apace, when an old woman entered the barn, followed by the two fugitives and ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... street. He looked certainly old enough to have fought at Trafalgar—or, at any rate, to have played his little part there as a powder monkey. Shortly after we had been introduced he had informed me in a Franco-Provencal jargon, mumbling tremulously with his toothless jaws, that when he was a "shaver no higher than that" he had seen the Emperor Napoleon returning from Elba. It was at night, he narrated vaguely, without animation, at a spot between Frejus and Antibes, in the open country. ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... matches, while Frank went through the papers, with nervous and agile fingers, mumbling the inscriptions as she hurriedly read and cast ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... the register with her foot: "I don't hear any strange, hollow, rumbling, mumbling kind of noise. Do you hear ...
— The Register • William D. Howells
... embers in her father's face glowing to dark-red heat. Everybody had been watching them except Harold who, though addressing his father, had been mumbling "what chaps had said" ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... was the wife of the absent hunter, Tserin Dorchy. She rode up one day with a two-year-old baby on her arm. The little fellow was badly infected with eczema, and for three weeks one of the lamas in the tiny temple near their yurt had been mumbling prayers and incantations in his behalf, without avail. Fortunately, I had a supply of zinc ointment and before the month was ended the baby was almost well. Then came the lama with his bill "for services rendered," and Tserin ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... poet, "these ancient beautiful things, the downs and the old-time houses and the morning, and the grey sea in the sunlight going mumbling round the world. And this is the place they have chosen ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... that "marriage of convenience." She had fallen into a senile decrepitude that bordered on dotage. Her sole evidence of being alive was her habit of staying in church until the doors were closed and she could stay no longer. At home she did nothing but recite the rosary, mumbling away in some corner of the house, and taking no part in the noisy play of her grandchildren. Don Andres had died, leaving Rafael sole "boss" of "the Party." He had had three children. They had had their teeth, their measles, their whooping-cough. These episodes, with a few escapades ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... as I pursu'd my journey, I spy'd a wrinkled Hag, with age grown double, Picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself. Her eyes with scalding rheum were gall'd and red; Cold palsy shook her head; her hands seem'd wither'd; And on her crooked shoulders had she wrapp'd The tatter'd remnants of an old strip'd hanging, Which serv'd to keep her ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... was a rustic usually mounted on a white hobby, with a basket on one arm, who used to invade the northern purlieus of London, mumbling Holloway Cheesecakes, which from his mode of utterance, sounded like 'Ho all my ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the discomfiture of the opposite party, and had given him some account of the representation of the play at the Parthenon. Her father was delighted to find her in high spirits. So many people come back from the theater looking glum and worn out, yawning and mumbling when asked what they have seen and what it had all been about. Phyllis was not glum, nor did she mumble. She was able to describe scene after scene, and more than once she sprang from her seat, carried away ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... while Louis Laplante gulped down his rum, becoming drunker and more communicative, the tempter threw glass after glass over his shoulder and remained sober. The Nor'-Wester motioned me to keep behind the Frenchman and I heard his drunken lips mumbling ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... came another ornament of Chesterton from a room at the back of the shop. He was quite a kid, not more than a hundred and fifty at the outside, so, as a last chance, I tackled him on the subject. He looked at the photographs for about half an hour, mumbling something about it not being 'thiccy 'un' or 'that 'un', or 'that 'ere tother 'un', until I began to feel I'd had enough of it. Then it came out that the real chap who had sent the letters was a 'la-ad' with light hair, not so ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... he in the dark, his sharp sword out, Mumbling of wicked charms, conjuring the moon, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... straddha. He saw the women place balls of rice, milk, and leaves of the tulsi plant in earthenware platters, then sprinkle over this flowers and kusa-grass; they added threads, plucked from their garments, to typify the presenting of the white death-sheet to the dead one; a priest all the time mumbling a prayer, at the end of the simple ceremony receiving a fee of ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... curious a piece of orthoepy in the preface to a comedy. It may have required great observation and ingenuity to have discovered the cause of old toothless men mumbling their words. But as a piece of comic humour, on which the author appears to have prided himself, the effect is far from fortunate. Humour arising from a personal defect is but a miserable substitute for that of a more genuine kind. I shall give a specimen ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... to comply literally, both curtsying and smiling precisely as she had been desired to do, though I could see she was also slightly disposed to laugh. I was still making my bow, and mumbling some unintelligible compliment, when Katrinke gave a little exclamation, and using the freedom of an old and confidential servant, she eagerly pulled the sleeve of her young mistress, and hurriedly whispered something ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... mumbling some words in a low voice, two or three dirty choristers, in soiled surplices, were charting the prayers for the dead, with an absent and sullen air, round a plain deal coffin, followed only by a sobbing old man and a child, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... of the rest, however, not even his sister, could keep their countenances, for the eye of the speaker had pointed and sharpened his words; and William, very red in the face, was understood to mumble, as soon as mumbling was possible, that "he wouldn't laugh unless he had a mind to," and a threat to ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... cried again, and drew her close. "She hates me,—she will always hate me," he was mumbling. "Why should I care? Why should I refuse to take—" Her lips were on his again, warm, firm, voluptuous, drawing his heart's blood with the resistless power ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... beggar with an imposing wen or goitre. This creature crouches persistently by the carriages while the horses are reharnessed and we are taking our places. The form is misshapen, the face distorted and scarcely human; we can get no answer from the mumbling lips save a sputter of gratitude for our sous; it is cretinism, hideous, hopeless, a horror among these beautiful valleys, yet as ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... day! After I had heard mumbling talking for quite a while—the windows were all open, and the salon is under me—suddenly the piano began. Victorine plays really well generally—that is, she has brilliant execution—but you should have heard the jumble! hardly a note ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... close Lane as I pursued my Journey, I spy'd a wrinkled Hag, with Age grown double, Picking dry Sticks, and mumbling to her self. Her Eyes with scalding Rheum were gall'd and red, Cold Palsy shook her Head; her Hands seem'd wither'd; And on her crooked Shoulders had she wrap'd The tatter'd Remnants of an old striped Hanging, Which served to keep her Carcase from the Cold: So there was nothing ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... would sit for hours, mumbling dishes that disagreed with her; smiling at conversations carried on in villanous French, of which language she did not understand a word; and admiring the manners of addle-headed young men (who ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... an unpleasant feeling of momentary discomfort, but, not being able to locate his ideas clearly, he irritably gave up the attempt to arrive at a solution of this instinctive sensation, mumbling to himself: "This tropical hell is ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... should certainly have inflicted a summary and a just chastisement upon him upon the spot, by dashing back his lies, together with his teeth, down his throat. I was, however, restrained, and sentence was passed by old mumbling Grose, that I should pay ONE HUNDRED POUNDS to the King, and be committed to the custody of the Marshal of the court for SIX WEEKS. There sat, squatting upon the bench, KENYON, Chief Justice, GROSE, LAWRENCE, and LE BLANC; all four of them gone, long, long ago, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... circles through the brake. He was forgetting his old wretched folly, And freedom was his need; his throat was choking; Barbed brambles gripped and clawed him round his legs, And he floundered over snags and hidden stumps. Mumbling: 'I will get out! I must get out!' Butting and thrusting up the baffling gloom, Pausing to listen in a space 'twixt thorns, He peers around with boding, frantic eyes. An evil creature in the twilight looping Flapped blindly in his face. Beating it off, He screeched in terror, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... crying ever since,—you won't marry me after all I dare say, though I let you do it." "So help me God I will, I'll marry you." He swore quite loudly. "Hish!" "Mother won't let us, she hates you." The female whimpered, then was mumbling, kissing, soothing, quietness, then all of a sudden, "Oh! you're hurting me with your fingers." "Hish!—hish!—be quiet!" Then I could hear nothing;—then, "No, I'll be getting in a mess like Bess." Said the man half angrily, ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... understand such printed matter is headed for Bloomingdale. You must leave it alone absolutely or else accept it and read it with your mental eyes closed, mumbling it with your lips, and let your mind roam like a priest reading his breviary in the smoking-apartment of a Pullman car. The question then arises, "Was Mrs. Eddy sincere in putting forth ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... done with Robin Hood?" but Robin sat grumbling and mumbling at the wheel and answered never a ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... distant looms soothed Mac Tavish. The nearer rick-tack of Miss Delora Bunker's typewriter furnished obbligato for the chorus of the looms. It was all good music for a business man. But those muttering, mumbling mayor-chasers—it was a tin-can, cow-bell ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... widely, and the innkeeper appeared on the threshold beside his daughter. Behind him, Colwyn could see the old mad woman in her bed in the corner of the room, mumbling to herself and fondling her doll. The innkeeper fastened his bird-like eyes on ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees |
