"Illegible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mr. Astor went into the cabin and proceeded to write what was expected to be a draft for ten thousand dollars in favor of the owners of the ship on his agent in New York. He handed to the captain the result of his efforts. It was a piece of paper covered with writing that was totally illegible. ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... night he was alone with her in the still house, his great head lying deep in the pillow. In the pocket of his coat Winifred found the letter that he had written her the night before he left New York, water-soaked and illegible, but because of its length, she knew it ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... been 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 for flight, and a penguin so closely resembles other birds, that we ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... of bereavement, in memory of dear ones lost to her, had given it to him in her first joy. 'I will reclaim it,' she had said, smiling, 'the first time you make me weep!' It was all that was brought back to her—all except a scrawled paper found in his pocket, containing some hurried and almost illegible words, written ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 fallen in love with him, and ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... woman's arm was raised, except now and again to protect her breast from the lewd or wanton assaults of the crowd. Some held, tight clasped in their hands, crumpled bits of paper—the petition, presumably, over which all this trouble arose—stained, torn, almost illegible now, useless, yet still a symbol of the fight that was being waged. Now and then above the turmoil, in the dimness that lay between the lighted streets and the crowning darkness of night, went sudden flashes like sheet-lightning in storm; and at the stroke horses plunged, and youths screamed, facetiously ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... time to escape notice. No animals of the chase were seen; but our blacks picked up the dung of the ostrich, and a horn of the aoudad. Here and there we observed the broken columns of Roman milestones, some of them covered with illegible inscriptions. The sockets generally remain perfect. We saluted the memory of the ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... A balloon letter, dated November 30, giving, it is presumed, an account of the military operations on that day, suffered so much in transitu, that it is illegible.] ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... 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, blue-bells, 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 ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... dearest Miss Priscilla, for your great kindness. I return the ninth volume of [illegible], with the four succeeding ones, all that I have; probably all that are yet published. You shall have the rest when I get them. Tell dear Mr. George (I must not call him Vert-Vert) that I have recollected the ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... the drama was first formed. It is true indeed, there was a kind of entertainment of much greater antiquity, which by the antients is sometimes called satyric, out of which (as Aristotle assures us) tragedy itself arose, [Greek: *illegible] But then this was nothing but a chorus of satyrs [Athenaeus, 1. xiv.] celebrating the festivals of Bacchus, with rude songs and uncouth dances; and had little resemblance to that which was afterwards called satiric; which, ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... is said to be illegible, and the conclusion of the letter to be lost ('Memoir of the Rev. Francis Hodgson', vol. i. p. 196). Only the latter statement is correct. The word is perfectly legible. Talapoin (Yule's 'Glossary of Anglo-Indian Words, sub voce') is the name used by the Portuguese, and after them by the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... with the 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 vanquished hero of Appomattox" had been disappointing ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... 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 sacristy. At the beginning of the fourteenth century it appears to have belonged to the Castropola, ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... picked up and preserved—sketches of the children, in the oddest attitudes of children—of Dr Levitt, resting his book on the end of his nose, as he read in his study-chair—of Mrs Plumstead, exasperated by the arrival of an illegible letter—of almost every oddity in the place. Then out came the pencils, and the girls supplied omissions. They sketched Mr Hope himself; listening to an old woman's theory of her own case; they sketched each other. Mr ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... Box is now open for your contributions, which we trust will be neatly and correctly written, because an editor's eyes have a great deal of important work to do, and ought not to be employed in deciphering illegible writing. ...
— Harper's Young People, November 4, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of the "Rhinegold" is going on apace. At present I am with the orchestra down in "Nibelheim." In May the whole will be ready, but not the clean copy, only single sheets with illegible pencil sketches on them. It will be some time before you can see anything of it. In June I have to begin the "Valkyrie." When are you coming? You say nothing about it, and yet you talk of "verbal communications." Schindelmeisser wrote to me yesterday, asking me to come to Darmstadt on ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... to souvenirs from home, and Rosy Posy's illegible scrawls were side by side with neatly-written postcards from ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... do I again 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
... of one who was accustomed to study composition, and the result is very different from the formal repetition of equal or lessening figures usual on mediaeval brasses and Elizabethan tombs. The Latin inscription is partly illegible, translated ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... passed by a stone cross, on the pedestal of which was an inscription commemorating a horrible murder of a native of Lisbon, which had occurred on that spot; it looked ancient, and was covered with moss, and the greater part of the inscription was illegible, at least it was to me, who could not bestow much time on its deciphering. Having arrived at Vendas Novas, and bespoken supper, my new friend and myself strolled forth to view the palace; it was built by the late king of Portugal, and presents little that is remarkable in its exterior; ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... evidence which one could lay before a skeptical world that the transcriber had not expanded the work of the original memoirist. The manuscript passed into my possession, our Creole lady-correspondent reiterating to the end her inability to divine what could be wanted with "an almost illegible scrawl" (griffonage), full of bad spelling and of rather inelegant diction. But if old manuscript was the object of desire, why, here was something else; the very document alluded to by Francoise in her memoir of travel—the autobiography of ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... subject of compelling persons to confess themselves guilty of an offense, 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
... have found his MS. illegible: Michelant's text has 'Fremius [? read Fremins] ses voisins Dist qu'el ...
— Dialogues in French and English • William Caxton
... as he begins the pleasant task, is an old half-illegible map, or rather, fragment of a map. Near-by are three or four dull prints. They are of a hundred years ago, or thereabouts, and tell of a New York when President Monroe was in the White House, and Governor De Witt Clinton in the State Capitol, at Albany, and Mayor Colden in the City ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... dipped after date has been written on tag in pencil. A 60-watt lamp hung in the can may be used for heating the compound. In this way the tag is protected from the action of acid, and the writing on the tag cannot be rubbed off or made illegible. ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... 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 ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... up to St. Martin's Church, said to be the oldest church in England, and wandered around the churchyard, filled with glorious roses creeping everywhere over tombs so old that the lettering is illegible. When the sun set, we had the most beautiful view of Canterbury to be had anywhere, and one of the most beautiful in ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... were sensible what you did was through a Publick Spirit & n [torn] of interest; the reason the lots sold so high was River side ones being sett up first which were purchased at a very extravagant price by the prop [illegible] Your two, M^r Carlyles M^r Dortons M^r Ramseys [illegible] M^r Chapmans sold at different prices, as you may se by the Sale, but we agreed before the Sale to give any Price for them & to strike them upon an average so that by adding them up & dividing them by five you will se what your ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... names; Miss Anthony uniformly added some of our Pilgrim Fathers' heroic ejaculations in their struggle for liberty, which friends visiting the same places afterwards informed us were carefully crossed out so as to be quite illegible. But we may hope for their restoration in the near future and that they may yet do an effective work. Thus circumscribed with her pen and not being able to speak a foreign language, happily no rebellions were fomented by her rapid transit ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... time, my sweet Miss. Besides, mercy on us! I should have sunk like a lump of lead: and I happened to have a letter of consequence in my pocket, which would have been made totally illegible; a letter from Constantinople, written by Chevalier—What's his name? [Draws a letter from his pocket, and putting it up again directly, drops it. PETER takes it up, slily and unobserved.] It contains momentous matter, I assure ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... desperate haste, the desperate circumstances probably under which she had written it, the message was on a torn piece of brown wrapping paper, and the words, in pencil, were scrawled in hurried, broken sentences. And standing there, fighting for a grip upon himself, Jimmie Dale read the message——almost illegible! in places—and then, as though a strange incredulity, a strange inability to grasp and understand its import fully, were prompting him, he read it again, ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... 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 moved ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... in any ancient author for this name, and the best scholars speak of these vessels as the bottles usually called lachrymatories, &c. It would be curious to discover when the name was first used, and by whom first this absurd use was imagined. It [illegible] that their proper use was to contain perfumes, scents, and unguents, as sweet odours to rest with the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... to the sitting-room, upon a cry from Minette, she found Netta in a swoon. The letter was tightly clasped in her hand, the envelope was on the floor. She ventured to look at the address and postmark. The former was to Mrs Mills, the latter some illegible place in America. She wanted no more information, and asked for none. She brought poor Netta to herself with difficulty, and let her put the letter in its envelope, and both in her bosom, without a question. Netta lay on the sofa, with her eyes ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... the admiral put the writing materials before him, substituting a large quarto bible for a desk. Sir Wycherly, after several abortive attempts, finally got the pen in his hand, and with great difficulty traced six or seven nearly illegible words, running the line diagonally across the paper. By this time his powers failed him altogether, and he sunk back, dropping the pen, and closing his eyes in a partial insensibility. At this critical instant, the surgeon entered, and at once put an end to the interview, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... 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
... on:—"'It is the Man in High Park at the Turpentine Micky'—some illegible name—'knew and that is Michael in the corner larfing at the Spolice. The Man has got out of sprizzing and the Spolice will not cop him.' There was no room for Michael Somebody, and he hasn't worked out ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... head, contemplating William as he might some illegible sign-post set up at an unusually ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... date. No man would believe that the very earliest attempt to 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 rather high for ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... 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 for shelter. Sheep dogs got in, and would ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... letter with the illegible postmark, was amused at the "Esq.," and stepped to the window that he ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... housed in a tavern, where an unbounded supply of gratuitous Ferintosh deprived us of the benefit of their experience. We, however, allotted them twenty shares apiece. Sir Polloxfen Tremens sent a handsome, though rather illegible, letter of apology, dated from an island in Loch Lomond, where he was said to be detained ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... learned from the previous books of this series, consists in burning some other mark over the legitimate brand on cattle, so that the original one can not be made out. Then the animal may be claimed by whoever has it. Blurring a brand, that is, making it illegible, or changing one brand into another, are two of the methods used by ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... 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 of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... is more apt to inspire an apologetic than an enthusiastic tone of mind. It may be a mere fancy of mine; but I have often thought that the extreme badness of the printing may have been partly owing to this cause; that the Poet may have left the manuscript in a more unfinished and illegible state, from a sense of something ungenial and unattractive in the subject-matter and action ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... the lead box was closed and the cap-stone was lowered down upon it while yet the autographs remained outside! It was by the merest chance, I fancy, in that bustling confusion, that the mistake happened to be noticed; and I cannot but think—the autographs, with only a few exceptions, being quite illegible—that no great harm would have come had it passed unobserved. However, the omission being discovered, common courtesy to the autographists required that the cap-stone should be raised again and the much-signed paper ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... captivity Bainbridge had written letters to Commodore Preble, with postscripts written in lemon-juice, and illegible save when the sheet of paper was exposed to the heat. In these postscripts he urged the destruction of the "Philadelphia." Lieut. Stephen Decatur, in command of the "Enterprise," eagerly seconded these proposals, and proposed ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... except for the nervous hands which still twisted and worried the telegram, he saw a sign on the building opposite. The first line, bearing the name, doubtless, was illegible; the second, fully legible, lingered for a long time merely in his perceptions before it reached and ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... there, whenever possible, in some little sheet of advanced literary and anarchistic views, in which violent attacks on persons took the place of a reasoned-out campaign against the order of things. They were nearly illegible, defaced as they were by the censor. Besides, when an article was reprinted in another paper, he would let pass with a capricious forgetfulness what he had cut out the day before, and cut what he had ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... it was 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 ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... been chasing me for some time, and it is only a question of"—the word "time" seemed to have been written here and erased in favour of something illegible—"before they get me. They ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... be a copy of the Crozier record found by Lieutenant Hobson, of McClintock's expedition, and was in the handwriting of Sir Leopold McClintock. The document was written with a lead pencil on note-paper, and was partially illegible from exposure. It was literally ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... wishes. "It's not banking etiquette, Miss Fraser, but that doesn't matter in North Queensland. We do many things that we ought not to do, and if Smith draws a cheque you may be sure that I will refuse to pay it as 'signature illegible'—as it is sure to be. But I'll lend him a few pounds if he breaks out again, and is laid up in this abode of sin, so that he may get home again ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... deck, and lived to call a smile to the thin lips of Pius V by telling the story of his prowess. The green banner of Mecca, brought from the Prophet's tomb, and unfurled from the main-top of Ali, was riddled with shot, which rendered illegible many of the sacred words with which it was embroidered. But the azure standard of the League, blessed by the supreme Pontiff and emblazoned with the image of the crucified Redeemer, remained untouched by bolt or bullet, although masts, spars, and shrouds around were torn and shattered from ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... threw out a ball of paper rolled closely together, which the sharp-sighted Prieme instantly picked up and unfolded. It was a fragment of a written sheet, partly burned, and in several places quite illegible. ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... myself, I regret very much that your affairs are in such a bad state. Anne says that there are six of your children, all girls; but that can't be true—she always loved to exaggerate miseries; it must be that her writing is so illegible that—" ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... I got a note from Godfrey—written in pencil and almost illegible—in which he asked me to go down to see him at once. He said that he was in severe pain and for the time confined ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... of wax and printing and paper was as large as it could be made) which informed him that the "Comptroller-General of the Convict Department had decided that further inquiry concerning the death of the prisoner named in the margin was unnecessary", and that some gentleman with an utterly illegible signature "had the honour to be his ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... at the letters rather stupidly. That correspondence was one of the details he had forgotten. He also stared at Stanistreet, who looked horribly ill. Then he took up Molly's note and examined it without reading a word. It was crumpled, dirty, almost illegible, as if Louis had thrust it violently into his pocket, and carried it about with ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... printed at Constantinople in 1802 according to a defective copy. The editor Intercalated fragments of the Sefer ha-Orah, which he took from an often illegible manuscript. ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... had three other titles, three successive prefaces, and in its finished, or rather unfinished, form is the salvage of five folio volumes of MS., the rest being at best sketched and at worst illegible) contains, in what we have of it, the account of the tribulations of a young sub-lieutenant of Lancers (with a great deal of money, a cynical but rather agreeable banker-papa, an adoring mother, and the record of an expulsion from the Polytechnique for supposed Republicanism) suddenly pitchforked ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... remained in manuscript until the art of printing was invented, when many of them were printed; others remain in manuscript in the various museums of England, where visitors look at them as curiosities, all worn and corroded as they are, and almost illegible by time. These books, though they exerted great influence at the time when they were written, are of little interest or value now. They express ideas in morals and philosophy, some of which have become so universally diffused as to be commonplace at the present day, while others would now be discarded, ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... could Helena, fresh from Ceylon, know "the old tavern way of keeping scores? Illegible except to the scorer. The scorer not committed, the scored debited with what is against him," as Datchery observes. An Eurasian girl of twenty, new to England, would not argue thus with herself: she would ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... buck, blanketed to the ground, approached McTeague as he stood on the roadbed stretching his legs, and without a word presented to him a filthy, crumpled letter. The letter was to the effect that the buck Big Jim was a good Indian and deserving of charity; the signature was illegible. The dentist stared at the letter, returned it to the buck, and regained the train just as it started. Neither had spoken; the buck did not move from his position, and fully five minutes afterward, when the slow-moving freight was miles away, the dentist looked back and saw him still standing ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... abandon the German script as too illegible, and make use of the Latin letters. A word or two on this subject, as connected with general education. The German script, which any one may learn in a few hours, is a constant source of vexation to a foreigner. To write, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... rather abruptly, the writing becoming almost illegible towards the close, as if the writer's strength had gradually failed him. Mark came to the end with a feeling that was almost relief; his chief dread had been to hear that he was found out, and that his exposure might be made public ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... 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 eyes. Three times ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... 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
... With respect to other indications of locality, it must be noted that they are usually at the end of the first line at the right-hand top corner of the tablet, and have suffered defacement more often than any other detail, so that they are often illegible. ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... 1800: "One thing tho' I must beg of you—that is not to call me Atheist in your letters—for though it may be mere raillery in you, and not meant as a serious imputation on my Faith, yet, if the Catholic or any other intolerant religion should [illegible] and become established in England, (which [illegible] if the Bishop of R——r may be the case) and if the post-people should happen to open and read your letters, (which, considering the sometimes quaintness of their form, they may possibly be incited to do) such names might ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... in his chamber, Bonaparte threw off his coat and sword, and proceeded to scrawl a pencil note to Josephine—twenty illegible lines, in which his violent, yet calculating, spirit spoke loudly. Then, folding the letter, he abruptly drove the woman's image from his mind, as you push-to a drawer. He unrolled a plan of Mantua, and selected the point on which ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... different from the drawing. There is inside O'Barrdan's case another of silver plates some centuries older, and inside that the yew box, which originally contained the manuscripts, now so united by damp as to be apparently inseparable, and nearly illegible; for they have lost the color of vellum, and are quite black, and very much decayed. The old Irish version of the New Testament is well worthy of being edited; it is, I conceive, the oldest Latin version extant, and varies much from the Vulgate ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... approached them, emerging from the factory alone. He bowed politely, but did not offer to 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 into the office. "It is ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... a 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
... 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
... to "count noses," as Mary phrased it, and the list of names Katharine had already prepared swelled considerably. She wrote as she walked, the cover of her book her desk, and with such haste that the writing was almost illegible. However, a trifle of ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... were the cabalistic signs was headed with certain words, which were all but illegible, and this he managed ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... ignoble death. As I had promised, I fell in behind the sad procession to the top of the hill. No fairer scene could a man look upon for his last of earth. A long range of hills rose to the northward. On all sides near and far, was the [Transcriber's Note: 1-2 words are illegible] of the autumn-tinted woods, and to west the land swept downward past the headquarters to where the cliffs rose above the Hudson. I can see it all now—the loveliness of nature, the waiting thousands, ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... 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, in all their complex obstinacy, had been met and overcome by the ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 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
... (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
... conclusion of the letter, except four or five lines which (with his name) were so much blotted, apparently with tears, that they were illegible. ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... business to Govr. Dudley. I said my Son had all along insisted that Caution should be given, that the infant lately born should not be chargeable to his Estate. Govr. Dudley no ways came into it; but said 'twas best as 'twas no body knew whose 'twas [word illegible,] to ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... copper coin, inscription illegible. On the obverse is a woman holding a flower or a priest offering incense. It appears ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... 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 ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... offer, etc., for half a dozen almost illegible pages, dashed and crossed, and all on fire ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... well in writing as in the transaction of business. No person has a right to cause a tinge of shame to their correspondent, by sending a letter addressed in a stupid and awkward manner, nor to consume the time of another in deciphering the illegible hooks and scrawls of a message. Every one should have the ambition to write respectably as well as to appear ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... darted forward and picked off a small piece of paper from the dripping keel. It separated in his hand and a part of it escaped him, but the rest he managed to keep by secreting it in his palm, where it still clung, wet and possibly illegible, when he came upon Mr. Grey again in the ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... to see the Earl of Rochester, and made me promise I would ride to Whitehall to acquaint his lordship whither you were going. Here is her letter which I was about to deliver." And as he spoke, he handed her the note, which was tied with a piece of packthread, and directed in strange and almost illegible characters. ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of Tasso, still preserved, are illegible from the vast number of their corrections. I have given a fac-simile, as correct as it is possible to conceive, of one page of Pope's MS. Homer, as a specimen of his continual corrections and critical erasures. The celebrated Madame Dacier never could satisfy herself ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... was diligently suppressed. In one examination, the original words ran, "Being demanded what other persons were privy [to the plot] beside the Lord Mounteagle, Catesby," etcetera. The three words in italics have been rendered illegible, by a slip of paper being pasted over them, and a memorandum in red ink made on the back. Time, however, has faded the red ink, and the words are again visible. (Criminal Trials, page 67.) Garnet, too, confessed that "Catesby showed ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... remark that, apart from armorial or fanciful initials, the standing of a house may be gauged by the handwriting, the titles of the larger monasteries being given in bold letters, while those of the smaller form an almost illegible scrawl. The greater houses would have been in a position to support a competent scribe—not so the lesser; and this is believed to have been the ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... 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
... Italian (which language I learned, after a fashion, in order to read it) the other in French. The Italian letter was not only scorched badly, but so blistered—one did not need to ask how—that parts were quite illegible. The writer, a man, evidently, a young man, probably, conveyed in satire so keen, a contempt so bitter, a hatred so remorseless, that it was difficult to believe it a letter from a brother to his sister. Beneath the ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... ceased, and when the momentary effect of such a depressing environment had been resolutely driven off, she saw that a rusty iron gate was open. The place was very small. There were a few monuments, so choked with weeds and dank grass that their inscriptions were illegible. She had never seen a more desolate graveyard. Despite the vivid light and the joyous breeze rustling the pine branches, its air of abandonment was depressing. She fought against the sensation as unworthy of her intelligence; but she ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... with him. She often got hold of the wrong end of the stick. He could hardly refrain from a smile when he came across the sentence, "He was young enough to know better," as he substituted in a large illegible hand the word old for young. There were many obvious little mistakes of this kind that he corrected as he read, but now and then he ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... wide knowledge and experience in 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
... of the Indians of Guanahani wished to go with him, and afterwards to return to their homes. The Admiral calculated that he was forty-two degrees to the north of the equinoctial line (but the handwriting is here illegible).[134-3] He says that he must attempt to reach the Gran Can, who he thought was here or at the city of Cathay,[134-4] which belongs to him, and is very grand, as he was informed before leaving Spain. All this land, he adds, is low and ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... been told 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 was indecipherable to the ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk |
