"Indistinct" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... faint ghost-like harmony. Several spider-legged, inlaid tables stood about the room, but most of the chairs were of a sturdier make, one or two of rich carved work of India, no doubt a great rarity when first brought to Glenwarlock. The walls had once had colour, but it was so retiring and indistinct in the little light that came through the one small deep-set window whose shutter had been opened, that you could not have said what it was. There were three or four cabinets—one of them old Japanese; and on a table a case of gorgeous ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Mr. Barnes," she said. Her voice trailed off into an indistinct murmur. He heard the receiver click on the hook, and, after calling "hello" twice, hung up his own with a sigh. Evidently O'Dowd had warned her of the approach of a less considerate person ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... hippo, so I decided to enter and explore what lay beyond. I had not gone very far when I came upon a big bay scooped out of the bank by the stream when in flood and carpeted with a deposit of fine, soft sand, in which were the indistinct tracks of numberless animals. In one corner of this bay, close under an overhanging tree, stood a little sandy hillock, and on looking over the top of this I saw on the other side a fearsome-looking cave which seemed to run back for a considerable ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... the last, is perfectly satisfied. We see the thing ourselves, and show it to others as we feel it to exist, and as, in spite of ourselves, we are compelled to think of it. The imagination, by thus embodying and turning them to shape, gives an obvious relief to the indistinct and importunate cravings of the will. We do not wish the thing to be so; but we wish it to appear such as it is. For knowledge is conscious power; and the mind is no longer in this case the dupe, though it may be the victim, of vice ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... in speechless wonder, Vasa gazed: New feelings, by uncertain memory raised, Rose indistinct: now rage, he knew not why, Fired all his spirit; now the half-felt sigh Of ancient friendship in his breast renew'd, Urged its slow course, whilst ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... in or penetrate the parchment. The work of effacing this ink was accomplished by moistening the parchment with a weak alkaline solution and by rubbing it with pumice stone. This treatment did not entirely obliterate the writing, but made it so indistinct that the parchment could be written over the second time. Manuscripts so treated are now known as palimpsests. All the large European public libraries have copies of palimpsests, which are melancholy ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... That all these old, worn, trodden roads suffice Only those who will return again Seeking shelter in their homes from Paradise. Oh! let us find some solitary, green Forgotten garden, where the sunrays fall All blind and blurred and indistinct between Cypresses lofty as earth's boundary wall; Beneath whose shade shall glimmer forth half seen Your face through the soft ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... the float, the bottom should be closed, and about four lin diameter holes should be cleanly formed in the sides near to the bottom for the ingress and egress of the water. With a larger number of holes the wave action will cause the diagram to be very indistinct, and probably lead to incorrectness in determining the actual levels of the tides; and if the tube is considerably larger than the float, the latter will swing laterally ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... men were undistinguished on both sides, and they fought at random, the men being intermixed one with another and confounded, by reason of the narrowness of the place; while the noise that was made fell on the ear after an indistinct manner, because it was so very loud. Great slaughter was now made on both sides, and the combatants trod upon the bodies and the armor of those that were dead, and dashed them to pieces. Accordingly, to which side soever the battle inclined, those that had the advantage ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... was sitting and crouched behind it, his rifle gleaming faintly as he leveled it down the chasm. There came the warning click of Wabigoon's gun, and the young Indian hunched himself forward until he was no more than an indistinct shadow in the fast-deepening gloom of night. Only Rod still sat erect. For a moment his heart seemed to stand still. Then something leaped into his brain and spread like fire through his veins, calling him ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... so indistinct that no one but Cynthia could make it out; and Jeff, listening with a face as nearly discharged as might be of its laughing irony, had to turn to Cynthia for the word which no one else could catch, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... cautiously through the bushes, and that somebody appeared as a shadowy, indistinct figure, not twenty yards away. Only the keenest eyesight could have detected it, and still Stafford waited. Presently he heard the soft crunch of gravel under its feet, and at that moment leapt towards it. The figure stood as though paralysed for a second, and then, turning quickly, ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... in London, I ran across Neave at Christie's. He was the same little man we'd known, effaced, bleached, indistinct, like a poor "impression"—as unnoticeable as one of his own early finds, yet, like them, with a quality, if one had an eye for it. He told me he still lived in Rome, and had contrived, by fierce self-denial, ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... effort to thank the Hakim, but his heart was too full, and the indistinct sounds which accompanied his abortive attempts to reply induced the kind physician to desist from his premature endeavours at consolation. He left his new domestic, or guest, in quiet, to indulge his sorrows, and having ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... to start long before daylight, when the heavy gloom of early morning swept mountain, sea and sand in an indistinct haze; when the cobwebs hung thick from thorn to thorn like fairy cats'-cradles all dripping and beaded with those heavy dews. The guard would wake us up about 3.30 A.M. We were asleep anywhere, lying about under rocks and in sandy dells, sleeping on our haversacks and water-bottles, ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... long unseen by him, stirred emotion at once pleasant, sweet and almost painful in his heart, and he felt weighed down by a kind of pleasant oppression. Slowly his thoughts wandered; their outlines were as vague and indistinct as the outlines of the clouds which seemed to be wandering at random overhead. He remembered his childhood, his mother; he remembered her death, how they had carried him in to her, and how, clasping his head to her bosom, she had begun ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... away all branches that show a tendency to straggle across the boundary line of the various colors. Run your pruning shears along this line and ruthlessly cut away everything that is not where it belongs. If this is not done, your "pattern" will soon become blurred and indistinct. If any intermingling of colors "from across the line" is allowed, all sharpness of outline will ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... already forgotten the outer world; around them the music swelled; laughter and voice grew indistinct, receding, blending in the vague tumult of violins. They gazed upon each other ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... confused and indistinct. She pressed her hand to her forehead; the white handkerchief was still there. A bird looked up to her from the meadow, and when her glance rested upon it it flew away ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... like the scraping of the leg of an overall against a sage-brush, and yet it was so trifling, so indistinct, that a field mouse might have made it. But somehow Smith knew, he was sure, that something human had caused it; and as he listened for a recurrence of the sound, the conviction grew upon him that there was movement ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... is admirably sketched. There is nothing vague and indistinct, but all the traits are so lively, that he stands before us like the image of some absurd being whom we have ourselves seen. It has been justly remarked by critics, that the poet displays great skill in representing the opponents of Agamemnon in the character of so base a personage, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... content and love. Could love be the savage passion which lately subjugated his soul? He rose from his seat; he walked about the room; each minute his heart was lighter, his brow more smooth. A thousand thoughts, beautiful and quivering like the twilight, glanced o'er his mind in indistinct but exquisite tumult, and hope, like the voice of an angel in a storm, was heard above all. He lifted a chair gently from the ground, and, stealing to the enchantress, seated himself at her side. So softly he reached her, that for a moment he was unperceived. ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... dream, were regarding him. Then the bells distilled metallic crashes that were like physical pain, the smoke-stacks volleyed in slow acceleration at the sky, and in a moment of noise and gray gaseous turbulence the line of faces ran by, moved off, became indistinct—until suddenly there was only the sun slanting east across the tracks and a volume of sound decreasing far off like a train made out of tin thunder. He dropped her arms. He ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Mexico and of the ancient Phoenicia." "Then," it is continued, "look at the observations of the wisest intellects apart from revelation! How little they knew with certainty! Their views of the Deity varied from pantheism to idolatry; their views of immortality were wholly vague and indistinct; their ideas of duty confused ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... back to a rock, his knees drawn up and clasped within fingers nervously interlocked. His eyes were fixed upon the great stretch of landscape below, shadowy now, and indistinct, like a rolling plain of patchwork woven by mysterious fingers. Gray mists were floating over the meadows and low-lying lands. Away in the distance they marked the circuitous course of the river, which only an hour ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... conversion. My friend, I am sorry to say, made no announcement, but went on preaching as if he had always been the same, and consequently never came out to be of any use or help in the work. His testimony was indistinct also, and without any power. He became a very popular preacher afterwards, which was his great ambition, for he cared more for a large ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... spirit, he sauntered listlessly up Post street from Kearny. The mid-day rain had not yet dried from the pavements, and the air was clear and fresh. Against the last of a January sunset, the tops of the city were growing indistinct. The personnel of the crowd on the streets had changed; the promenaders and the cocktail-route procession had dwindled to a few stragglers. There was less of a press now, and most of the people were of the class that work until six, belated bookkeepers and girls from shops and sewing ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... steady clank, clank of neighbouring windlasses showed that other craft were just getting under weigh. A barge, its red light turning the water to blood, with a huge wall of dark sail, passed noiselessly by, the indistinct figure of a man ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... point of light. But a nebula glows with a faint mistiness; they are so far away that they never have any bright glow, such as stars have, but they are so vast, their dimensions so great, that even across millions of light years of space they appear as tiny glowing discs with faint, indistinct edges. As the men looked out of the clear lux metal windows, they saw the tiny blur of light on the soft black curtain ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... The broad, nearly interminable, and seemingly trackless forest lay about them, bounding the view to the narrow limits of the valley, as though it were some straitened oasis amidst an ocean of wilderness. Within the boundaries of the cleared land, objects were less indistinct; though even those nearest and most known were now seen only in the confused and gloomy ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... around it in a tearful circle, and Will, who always called me "the little preacher," told me to say the Lord's Prayer. The sun was setting, and the brilliant western clouds were shining round about us. There was a sighing in the treetops far below us, and the sounds in the valley were muffled and indistinct. ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... other class, which is usually represented in a monarch. Second are those which are not the exclusive stronghold of one class or set of classes, but are instead the channel for the functioning of all groupings of the population. The borders between the two types are of course indistinct, but they approximate closely to the borders between a society with class organization and one with classes broken down into freer and more changeable ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... heavy smoke was gathering over us and the junks,—two were indistinct, though they were close aboard of us. Then, as the Teaser glided astern, I saw that the third was smoking, while crash, crash, the others struck our sides, and their crews grappled, hurled their stinkpots on board, and began to swarm ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... I heard the sound of hoofs in rear of the house, and the clatter of a sabre as a cavalier dismounted. A few indistinct words, apparently addressed to a servant or orderly, followed. Then the door of the apartment opposite the front window was thrown open, ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... for the purpose of giving this, a matter importunately insisted on being made out, I endeavoured to make it out as well as I could; otherwise—that is to say, if it did not insist on being looked into, in spite of a good deal of snubbing, I held that, as it was blurred and indistinct in nature, I had better so render ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... little more animation in the conversation, and much speculation as to when and where those who had stopped at the chateau had been wounded. No one really knew. To tell the truth, though later Madame Guix and I had asked them, the soldiers themselves had but a very indistinct idea of time and date ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... moment my father opened his eyes, and, looking upward with a pleasant smile, expired without a struggle. I could never clearly remember how I passed the intervening days between my father's death and burial. I have an indistinct recollection of the hushed voices and soft footsteps of friends and neighbors, who kindly came to aid in performing the last offices of love and friendship to the remains of my departed father. I also remember being led by my almost heart-broken mother into the darkened ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... relative situation of the bones, and that he had some notion of the shape of the bones in general and of their mutual connexions. Of the muscles, of the soft parts in general, and of the internal organs, his ideas are confused, indistinct and erroneous. The term fleps he seems, in imitation of the colloquial Greek, to have used generally to signify a blood-vessel, without being aware of the distinction of vein and artery; and the term arteria, or air-holder, is restricted ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... diminishing the former. It is impossible not to see that in this way morality also would be preserved from a degeneracy the real cause of which this sort of reformers certainly did not understand, but which hovered before their mind's eye as an indistinct presentiment. And now, having noticed seriatim the three conceivable forms of evolution—namely, (1) the adaptation of social rights to the new and higher forms of labour and the corresponding evolution of a new and higher morality; (2) the permanent ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... lane A window pane Gleams 'mid the trees through night and rain. The weeds are dense Through which a fence Of pickets rambles, none sees whence, Before a porch, all indistinct of line, ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... the sky to the eastward began to grow paler with the promise of the morning and in the indistinct light the picquets could be seen creeping gradually in; while behind them along the line of the trees faint white figures, barely distinguishable, began to accumulate. Sir Reginald Wingate, fearing lest a sudden rush should ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... is forever stretching out its arms—was as the fluid mystery of the mirage, and seemed to blend at that moment with the mystery she knew lay in herself. The mirage was within them as it was far off before them in the desert, still, grey, full surely of indistinct movement, and even perhaps of sound they could ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... flame—and yet, instead of going homeward, they took the Wentworth road that plunges into the Forshaw woods. Behind them the moon, almost full, hung in the blue sky above the tree-tops, ghostly and indistinct, and slowly gathered to itself such light as the setting sun left ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... man of great powers. He was a renowned professor at Oxford, celebrated for his attainments in theology and in physical science. But the peace-loving man of letters died ere his boys had grown to youth, and, alas, the memory of him is blurred and indistinct in their minds. They remember a quiet, soft-voiced, tender-hearted man who was tall and of goodly frame, yet had the scholar's air, about whose knees they would cluster and hear enchanting tales, the plots of which have long since got tangled ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... upwards, spouting his blood over his destroyer, and then fell gasping across the body of his master. A low growl, intermingled with faint attempts to bark, which the rapidly oozing life rendered more and more indistinct, succeeded; and at length nothing but a gurgling sound ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... more, her heart throbbed, her nerves were excited, she could not sleep. But at last she grew calmer, her thought wandered from her actual situation—became indistinct—and slumber held ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the lake in the depths of the valley and its curved and sloping banks made a framework of foliage and flowers about its silver waves. It lay there clear and tranquil, and one could see the swaying of the indistinct green of its banks. ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... Less imposing than Waterloo Bridge, but a massive pile of masonry, which looks as if its rounded piers would defy the Thames as long as those of the Bridge of Sant' Angelo have stemmed the Tiber. Figures indistinct or invisible, as usual, in the foreground, but farther on a mingled procession of coaches, cabs, carts, and people. See the groups in the recesses over the piers. The parapet is breast-high;—a woman can climb over it, and drop or leap into the dark stream lying in deep shadow ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... quarter-deck. He saw objects flitting across the waist of the ship, and heard distinctly the coils flung down with a clang upon the wet decks. There was something weird and ghostly in those half-seen figures, in the indistinct maze of cordage and canvas above, and the phosphorescent streaks of spray streaming away ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... lilies, and grapes and pomegranates, and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all twined together into an endless network of buds and plumes; and, in the midst of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to the feet, and leaning to each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them, interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded back among the branches of Eden, when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago. And round the walls of the porches there are set ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... principles, be explained, each hemisphere of the brain thinking for itself, and the mind deluded as respects the lapse of time, mistaking these simultaneous actions for successive ones, and referring one of the two impressions to an indistinct and misty past. To Plato such facts as these afforded copious proofs of the prior existence of the soul, and strong foundations for a faith ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... conceal from themselves and others that they really have nothing at all to say. They wish to appear to know what they do not know, to think what they do not think, to say what they do not say. If a man has some real communication to make, which will he choose—an indistinct or a clear way of expressing himself? Even Quintilian remarks that things which are said by a highly educated man are often easier to understand and much clearer; and that the less educated a man is, the more obscurely he will write—plerumque accidit ut faciliora sint ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... there exists some queer-folk beliefs about photographs,—ideas of mysterious relation between the sun-picture and the person imaged. For example: if, in the photograph of a group, one figure appear indistinct or blurred, that is thought to be an omen of sickness or death. But this superstition has its industrial value: it has compelled photographers to be careful about their work,—especially in these days of war, when everybody wants to have a good clear portrait, because the portrait ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... a trifle indistinct, owing to the thick pipe-stem between his teeth, and rising deliberately, he passed out of the smoking-room into the wistaria-shadowed verandah, where the turbulent voice of the river seemed to echo his own mood. It was well for himself, ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... breathless, afraid to give utterance to the dread that until then was vague and indistinct ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... I'm waiting—" she murmured softly, encircling his neck completely with her arm and drawing his face gently down to her own. Just then the rhythmic silvery whir of wings caused them to look upward. Through the boughs of the tree they saw the indistinct form of a white dove that fluttered overhead for an instant and then was gone. At the same moment Captain Forest distinctly recognized the scent of Castilian roses, as though their fragrance had been wafted full in his face by a breeze, ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... house of a country gentleman of the neighborhood. When the stately junket was concluded, it was the pleasure of M. de Chateaurien to form one of the escort of Lady Mary's carriage for the return. As they took the road, Sir Hugh Guilford and Mr. Bantison, engaging in indistinct but vigorous remonstrance with Mr. Molyneux over some matter, fell fifty or more paces behind, where they continued to ride, keeping up their argument. Half a dozen other gallants rode in advance, muttering among ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... as white as the chalk in his hand. At the next turn of the path, a few yards before him, in the gray gloom cast by an ivy-mantled tree, stood a tall dark figure, with the right arm raised. The face was indistinct, but (as Dan's conscience told him) hostile and unforgiving; there was nothing to reflect a ray of light, and there seemed to be a rustle of some departure, like the ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... and fainter. Young Petter Nord sat in a kind of trance and saw endless vistas of gold before him. On the dining table rose great piles of ducats; the floor heaved white with silver, and the indistinct patterns on the dirty wall-paper changed into banknotes, big as handkerchiefs. But directly before his eyes fluttered the fifty-crown note, surrounded by wide rings, luring him like the most beautiful eyes. "Who can know," smiled the eyes, "perhaps the fifty crowns up on the shelf ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... their robes drawn close about them; but when over the unmeasured plain the wind blew, they bowed their heads: as if saluting the stranger who came to found a colony in the wilderness of which they were sentinels. Here too, in the hush, for the first time, the planter's ear heard a far-off, nigh indistinct, sound of galloping thunder. He knew not what it meant, and his followers surmised that it might be the tumult of some distant waterfall, borne hither now because a storm was at hand, and the denser ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... with a guilty flush. "I sit in the big chair yonder and my Jap boy waits on her. She is very kind." Austin's voice grew husky. "I'm sorry to lose sight of the Park out yonder, and the trees and the children—they're growing indistinct. I—I like children. I've always wanted some for myself. I've dreamed about—that." His thin, haggard face broke into a wistful smile. "I guess that is ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... which only grand-souled, uncalculating women, created for fine impulses of the heart, are capable of, threw herself upon his neck, encircling it with her wondrous snowy arms, and wept. At that moment indistinct shouts rang through the street, accompanied by the sound of trumpets and kettledrums; but he heard them not. He was only conscious of the beauteous mouth bathing him with its warm, sweet breath, of ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... all medicines, except those of the cordial kind are wanted, during the space of three, four, or five days. By this time the nausea abates, and the appetite becomes better than it was before. Sometimes the brain is considerably affected by the medicine, and indistinct vision ensues; but I have never yet found any permanent ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... Hiram behind her did the same. They both listened with such tension that the veins in their foreheads swelled; but from the tablinum, which was hardly thirty paces from them, came only very faint and intermittent sounds, indistinct in character and drowned by ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... beautiful panthers of America, are sometimes so pale as to be scarcely distinguishable on a very white ground. In the black jaguars, on the contrary, it is the colour of the ground which renders the spots indistinct. It requires to reside long in those countries, and to accompany the Indians of Esmeralda in the perilous chase of the tiger, to decide with certainty upon the varieties and the species. In all the mammiferae, and particularly in ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... one piece that told about a little boy alone upon a country road at night. The black trees groaned and waved their skinny arms at him. The wind-torn clouds fitfully let a pale and watery moonlight stream a little through. It was very lonely. Over his shoulder the boy saw indistinct shapes that followed after, and hid themselves whenever he looked squarely at them. Then, suddenly, he saw before him in the gloom, a gaunt white specter waiting for him—waiting to get him, its arms spread wide out in menace. He was of our breed, though, this boy. He did not turn and run. ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... from one to three went fairly well, but by 3:30 I was tired out, my fingers had grown wooden with fatigue, glue-pot and folding-line, board, hammer and awl had grown indistinct. It was hard-to continue. The air stifled. Odours conspired together. Oil, leather, glue (oh, that to-heaven-smelling ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... schooner would come to take us away, we headed in the only direction in which the wind was favorable. We left camp about three o'clock in the afternoon, following the shore with the wind quartering in our faces. We had gone but a mile from camp when I caught an indistinct outline of a bear feeding on the grass at the edge of the timber, about 125 yards away. I quickly fired, missing through ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... century, by Thomas Ingelend, who is described in the early printed copy as "late student in Cambridge," and his fame seems to rest entirely on that production, for he is not to be traced in any other early literary record.[292] It has been supposed by some writers, from a few indistinct allusions in the play to Catholic customs, that it was composed in the reign of Henry VIII.; but if this be the case, the notice of Queen Elizabeth, introduced towards the close of the drama, must be an interpolation, a supposition not unlikely ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... higher than theirs, there was no sharing. In spite of a heavy rain that was now pouring, my warm place was intolerable, and the perspiration streamed from my face so as to be disagreeable, to say the least. It drove me to walk in my sleep, I am afraid, for I have an indistinct recollection of finding myself standing at the window trying to breathe. It was a very, very little piece of sleep I got after all, and that ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... yes. If it is a memory, it is so indistinct that it seems like a dream; and yet, how often at this hour does a vision come to my mind of a dark-eyed, soft-voiced woman, holding kneeling child against her bosom, to whom she taught a whispered prayer to the madonna! And the child seems me—and the lady, my mother; but it ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... his way to the discovery of those Islands afterwards denominated the Philippines. This group was named by him Islas de las Velas. [18] Legaspi called them the Ladrones. [19] Subsequently several navigators sighted or touched at these Islands, and the indistinct demarcation which comprised them acquired the name ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... with comedy the case was different, for its changes were progressive. Most writers divide Greek comedy into the Old, the Middle, and the New; and although the boundary lines between the three orders are very indistinct, each has certain well-defined characteristics. It is asserted, as we have elsewhere noted, that the chief subjects of the first were the politics of the day and the characters and deeds of leading persons; that the chief peculiarity ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... in sight, some four miles astern, but the night had grown so dark and the atmosphere so thick that the land merely loomed like a vast undefined blot of darkness against the black horizon, being so indistinct indeed that only the practised eye of a seamen could have detected its presence at all; it was therefore useless as an object to steer by, even to so keen-eyed an old sea-dog as ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... raged so turbulently that the men who carried the litter stopped, and told their lord it would be impossible to proceed in the approaching darkness; they conjured him to look at the perpendicular rocks, rendered indistinct by the gathering mist; to observe the overwhelming gusts of the tempest; and then judge whether they dare venture with the litter on so dangerous a pathway, made slippery ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... the Conservatives of both grades. Soon Richter was back, though without his supporters. Fumbling a moment at his desk for pencil and paper, he stepped forward in the aisle, so as not to lose the sentences of Bismarck (occasionally somewhat indistinct), and refusing to be diverted for more than an instant by the communications of friends and officials. Cries of Ja wohl! Ja wohl! and Bravo! were heard from the right during the speech of Bismarck, with now and again a general ripple of laughter at some pleasantry accessible ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... formed a line in front of him, and watched him quietly but firmly for the space of ten minutes or so. "Go away," said he, and they only seemed quietly interested. He asked them all their names then, and they answered indistinct murmurs. He gave it up at last and became passive on his gate, and so at ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... the fleeing Mexican and his comrade, with all the speed of his pent-up energy, and was overtaking him rapidly, when what looked like a high dark rampart showed indistinct through the fog a few rods ahead. Then the Mexican bent low and darted out of sight, and his sturdy companion bounding ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... shadow, seem a part of the darkness in which they are lost—when the stars are seen through their chasms and breaks, and sparkle along the broken line of the battlements—the scene becomes another, tho the same; more indistinct, yet not so mournful; contracting the sphere of sight, but enlarging that of thought; less ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... years ago as the renter of this farm, of which soon afterward I became the owner. The time before that I like to forget. The chief impression it left, upon my memory, now happily growing indistinct, is of being hurried faster than I could well travel. From the moment, as a boy of seventeen, I first began to pay my own way, my days were ordered by an inscrutable power which drove me hourly to my task. I was rarely allowed to look up or down, but always forward, toward that ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... the swamp they climbed a hill, and at the summit found only the moon and the stars and a long plateau of sighing grass. Behind them were the great mountains; before them, lesser heights, wooded hills, narrow valleys, each like its fellow, each indistinct and shadowy, with ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... Uncertain People. They recite in a timid and indistinct tone the prescribed fustian. They are followed ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... in this part of the country, but—there might have been. Her dad could remember when Sid Cummings and his bunch hung out in the Bad Lands fifty miles to the east of there. Neither had she ever had a brother, for that matter; and of her mother she had no more than the indistinct memory of a time when there had been a long, black box in the middle of the living-room, and a lot of people, and tears which fell upon her face and tickled her nose when her father held her ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... represents, so far as can be made out, for it is much worn by time and dirt, a figure lying on the ground with another figure bending over it, while at a little distance stands a third object. But this last is so indistinct that it might be almost anything, from an ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... the time of which we are writing, with the class to which belonged the politician, and a description of his personal appearance, like that of any other man, will convey no indistinct impression of his ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... to have an indistinct recollection of having read either in one of the ponderous tomes of George of Venice, or in some other compilation from the uninspired Hebrew writers, an apologue or Rabbinical tradition to the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... meet more people. For the most part these were staring before them, murmuring indistinct questions, jaded, haggard, unclean. One man in evening dress passed them on foot, his eyes on the ground. They heard his voice, and, looking back at him, saw one hand clutched in his hair and the other beating invisible things. His paroxysm of rage ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... upon the floor in mellow radiance. At the farthermost verge of the western horizon, just where the gray outlines of the mountains stood forth like shadows against the deep blue of the sky, huge masses of clouds piled themselves up into strange and fantastic forms, indistinct and dark, from whose bright centre, ever and anon, leaped the fierce lightning, like the tongues of a thousand adders forked in flame, and boomed the loud thunder as the din of a far-off battle. While he gazed, old memories thronged from ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... allowed of an onward move. We are told that for once The Kid, perhaps stimulated by her recent narrow escape from total extinction, really did do some work here. It is true we only have her word, an indistinct murmur from The Chaperon, and some clean plates to vouch for the statement, as all the other members of the party remaining were lying in more or less graceful slumberous attitudes in carts, under trees, or anywhere else, enjoying forty winks. Some excellent photos ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... fulfilled; and it may have been a consolation to the gloomy heart of Hedrick, sorely injured by Laura's offensive care of her treasure, to find the grouping upon the porch as he had foretold: Cora and Mr. Corliss sitting a little aloof from the others, far enough to permit their holding an indistinct and murmurous conversation of their own. Their sequestration, even by so short a distance, gave them an appearance of intimacy which probably accounted for the rather absent greeting bestowed by Mr. Lindley upon the son of the house, who met him ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... In the stump-dotted clearing, indistinct in the sullen dimness of the overcast dawn, rotted the buildings of the abandoned log-camp. From one of these smoke rose. Wabishke decided to investigate, for in the Northland no smallest detail ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... of this foolish World-Drama of the Double-Marriage opens,—on the 11th May, 1726, towards sunset, in the TABAGIE of the Berlin Palace, as we gather from laborious comparison of windy Pollnitz with other indistinct witnesses of a dreary nature,—in ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... family, goes with drunkards and bad women, makes indecent proposals to respectable women of his acquaintance without realizing that it is improper. He cannot keep his mind on one thing. Speech is a little thick, indistinct and hesitating. Syllables are dropped or repeated, speech finally becomes undistinguishable. He is very excited; he thinks he is persecuted. He is a big fellow generally. He is a king, he is rich ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... take place simultaneously and according to the same laws for all, but in most cases happen apparently capriciously, or at least according to laws not sufficiently simple for us to be able to unravel. Often one or more become indistinct, or even wholly invisible, whilst others in their vicinity increase to the point of becoming conspicuous even in telescopes of moderate power. The first of our maps shows all those that have been seen in a long series of observations. This does not at all correspond to the ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... they being Gentlefolks, and I a poor humble Serving Man that was to be, I was bidden to wait, which I did very patiently in the embrasure of a window, admiring the great dark tapestried curtains as they loomed in indistinct gorgeousness among the shadows. The hand of piquet was over at last, and Mr. Pinchin found that he had lost three shillings ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... turn head on to watch, sometimes remaining in the same position, with gently moving fins and tails, for five minutes; sometimes sinking down to the blue depths beyond, their outlines looming grey and indistinct as they descend, to reappear again in a few minutes, almost on the surface, waiting for the dead mullet or gar-fish which you may perhaps ...
— The Colonial Mortuary Bard; "'Reo," The Fisherman; and The Black Bream Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... to the hospital every day with the English papers, and looked in to leave me the Mirror, for which he would never accept any payment. He had very few teeth and talked in an indistinct sort of patois and insisted on holding long conversations in consequence! He told me he would be enchante to bring me some novels bien choisis par ma femme (well chosen by my wife) one day, and in due course they arrived—the 1 ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... glanced at her smart little French shoes, and thought otherwise. He said nothing, but hastily bundled his two guests downstairs and into the street. The whirlwind dance of the snow made the sleigh an indistinct bulk in the glittering darkness, and as the young girl for an instant stood dazedly still, Bob incontinently lifted her from her feet, deposited her in the vehicle, dropped Jimmy in her lap, and wrapped them both tightly in the ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... the others" (Phys. i, 1). The reason of this is clear: because he who knows a thing indistinctly is in a state of potentiality as regards its principle of distinction; as he who knows genus is in a state of potentiality as regards "difference." Thus it is evident that indistinct knowledge is midway between ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... Ashmead-Bartlett. But when he is rational he is often dull—when he is unreasonable he is often very entertaining. The speech of April 18th was a rational speech—it was, therefore, a dull one. Lord Randolph is not what he was. The voice which was formerly so resonant has become muffled and sometimes almost indistinct, and the manner has lost all the sprightliness which used to relieve it in the olden days. The House of Commons is like the Revolution—it ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... all the town knows that Audley Egerton and Richard Avenel are the members for Lausmere. And flags stream, and drums beat, and men shake each other by the hand heartily; and there is talk of the chairing to-morrow; and the public-houses are crowded; and there is an indistinct hubbub in street and alley, with sudden bursts of uproarious shouting; and the clouds to the west look red and lurid round the sun, which has gone down behind the church tower,—behind the yew-trees that overshadow the quiet grave ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... novelty of my strange position in this desolate region, it was some time before I could compose myself and sleep. It was a night of dreams. Sounds indistinct but numerous troubled my brain, until I was fully roused to wakefulness by horrible visions and doleful cries. The chuck-will's-widow, which in the south supplies the place of our whippoorwill, repeated his oft-told tale of ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... which is now a horse, even with a thought The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... ashore, but he restrained himself. On one of these occasions, just as a heavy cloud approached the moon, and while his raft was a dozen yards or so from shore, he was alarmed at sight of something approaching him through the water. What it was he could not conjecture, as it was low down, and very indistinct on account of ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... celebrated picture of the Assumption of the Virgin, which we have seen circulated in print shops in America, but which appears of a widely different character in the painting. The Virgin is rising in a flood of amber light, surrounded by clouds and indistinct angel figures. She is looking upward with clasped hands, as in an ecstasy: the crescent moon is beneath her feet. The whole tone of the picture— the clouds, the drapery, her flowing hair—are pervaded with this amber tint, sublimated ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "organ loft." If he secured the precious "emblems of the broken body and shed blood" of his Divine Master, it was after the "white folks" were through. If the cause of the Negro were mentioned in the prayer or sermon, it was in the indistinct whisper of the moral coward who occupied the sacred desk. And when the fight was on at fever heat, when it was popular to plead the cause of the slave and demand the rights of the free Negro, the Church was the last organization in the country to take a position on ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... make the most of it. I shall not touch it again till the policeman comes. Don't put your hand on it, Chiltern. Leave it there." And the instrument was left lying on the table, untouched. Mr. Low went on with his story. He had heard nothing of Yosef Mealyus as connected with the murder, but some indistinct reference to Lord Fawn and the top-coat had been made to him. "There is the coat, too," said Phineas, taking it from the sofa on which he had flung it when he came home the previous night. It was a very light coat,—fitted for May use,—lined with silk, and by no means suited for enveloping ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... recall the scenes of this period, there are some that seem like the fragments of a half-forgotten dream, distinct in themselves, but without any definite connection as to time or place. They are but pictures, some of them becoming faded and indistinct; others bright and fresh, as if they had come from the painter's hand but yesterday. I see a long column of weary soldiers, winding along over hill and valley, in the night, gliding past a stately mansion, with beautiful grounds and shaded walks, and everywhere the freshness and fragrance of ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... ceased to blow; not a leaf stirred; silence reigned over the strewn boulders. Downward, where the ground fell away to a deep chasm, everything was indistinct; to the west, beneath banked masses of cloud, the last glow of the sunset showed in blood-red bands, and on this side all the intervening trees were black as ink; all about him the shadows filled every hollow, ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... mark on the sill. "It is clearly the tread of a shoe. It is remarkably broad; a splay-foot, one would say. Curious, because, so far as one can trace any footmark in this mud-stained corner, one would say it was a more shapely sole. However, they are certainly very indistinct. What's this under the ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... surrounded him were also of the people. Thus the communication between him and them had been prompt, electric, and, so to speak, on a level. The haughty air of the Flemish hosier, by humiliating the courtiers, had touched in all these plebeian souls that latent sentiment of dignity still vague and indistinct in the ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... persuade me were quite adapted to the occasion. Winking Charley has been repeatedly tried in a worse condition. Her Majesty is no stranger to a vault or firmament, of a sort of floorcloth, with an indistinct pattern distantly resembling eyes, which occasionally obtrudes itself on her repose. Neither am I. Neither is Winking Charley. It is quite common to all three of us to skim along with airy strides a little above the ground; also to hold, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... like our own. We have passed the age of the demagogue, the man who has little to say and says it loud. We have come to the age of the mystagogue or don, the man who has nothing to say, but says it softly and impressively in an indistinct whisper. After all, short words must mean something, even if they mean filth or lies; but long words may sometimes mean literally nothing, especially if they are used (as they mostly are in modern books and magazine articles) to balance and modify each other. A plain figure 4, scrawled ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... that at the Swan—otherwise the Blue Lion—the Pickwick fellowship shared the conviviality of the rival teams, until Mr. Snodgrass's notes of the evening's transactions faded away into a blur in which there was an indistinct reference to "broiled bones" and "cold without". The stately ruins of a Benedictine Abbey, founded by Bishop Gundulf, give to the town an attraction of a ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... in a closed vehicle of some sort, a dizzy panorama of moving buildings, bleak, wind-swept trees, frosty meadows, and land-locked lakes backed by what were either distant mountain ranges or apartment houses. This last, however, was all very blurred and indistinct. ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... you to have a drink with me, Heise," said the dentist, who had an indistinct idea of the amenities of the barroom, "only," he added shamefacedly, "only—you see, I don't believe I got any change." His anger against Trina, heated by the whiskey he had drank, flamed up afresh. What a humiliating position for Trina to place him in, not to leave him the price of ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... I was half surprised to see that she had moved as far as the next pillar, following the sunshine. This time, however, she addressed me with some trivial salutation, civilly enough conceived, and uttered in the same deep-chested, and yet indistinct and lisping tones, that had already baffled the utmost niceness of my hearing from her son. I answered rather at a venture; for not only did I fail to take her meaning with precision, but the sudden disclosure of her eyes disturbed me. They were unusually large, the ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... regard to petrifaction are so vague and indistinct, that no proper answer can be given to them. They in general suppose water to be the solvent of bodies, and the vehicle of petrifying substances; but they neither say whether water be an universal menstruum, nor do they show in what manner a solid body has been formed in the bowels of the ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... he kept on. It was the time when the cornstacks would once have begun to grow indistinct, and slowly turn grey in the greyness, and homesteads one by one would have lit their innumerable lights. But evening now came down on a dreary desolation: and a cold wind arose; and the traveller heard the mournful sound of iron flapping on broken things, ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany
... his father's and mother's voices. Words were spoken in a high, shrill tone, loud and harsh, but indistinct. There were short periods of silence, followed by explosive sentences that sounded like threats. If he could only understand what it was all about! But he couldn't, until, finally all was silent in the ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... that Miriam should occupy the one room of the suite while Grace and Anne were to share the other, which had two beds. The long journey by rail had tired the travelers far more than they would admit. For a few moments, after retiring, conversation flourished between the two rooms, then died away in indistinct murmurs, and the prospective Overton freshmen slept peacefully as though safe in their ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... their work would never have been needed. Then we might leave to a class the regulation, whether of our spirituals or temporals, with the like advantage, that we leave the making of our watches or our shoes to their respective trades. But the indistinct apprehension, why the advantages of the division of labor fail in the matter of government, accords well with the observation, that republican principles make slow progress in the world, are held in gross inconsistencies; ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... McGuire, as his trained eyes made plain to him what was still indistinct to the scientist. "An ocean—and a shore-line—" More clouds obscured the view; they parted suddenly to show a portion only of a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... fortunate young lady. Then her lips, her eyebrows, her neck, her hands, her feet, her disposition and her future husband were each in turn enthusiastically toasted by other guests in bumpers of French wine. He adds that these compliments were "so moist and numerous that they became more and more indistinct, noisy and irrational" and that before they ended "Nearly every one stood up singing his own favorite song. There is a stage of emotion which can only be expressed in noises. That stage had been reached. They put me in mind of David Culver's bird ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... those who experience sudden prostration, Julia remembered, but in a very indistinct manner, the circumstance that had brought ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... difficult object to observe on account of its proximity to the sun. It is never visible at night; it must be examined in the twilight just before sunrise or just after sunset, or in the full daylight. In either case the glare of the sun renders the planet indistinct, and the heat of the sun disturbs our atmosphere so as to make accurate visibility almost impossible. The surface of Mercury is probably rough and irregular and much like the moon. Like the moon, too, it has practically no atmosphere. Mercury rotates ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... he urged on the horse still more, peering into the snowy darkness in which he saw only flitting and fitful points of light. Once he thought he heard the barking of dogs or the howling of wolves, but the sounds were so faint and indistinct that he did not know whether he heard them or merely imagined them, and he stopped and ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... minute, a gray, wet veil had been drawn across the farther side of the valley, hiding it from the professor's sight. Even the outer limits of the garden grew indistinct. The leaves of the trees bobbed ceaselessly up and down, and glistened and dripped; the shrubs and flowers seemed to lift themselves higher from the earth, and stretch out their green fingers to the plenteous shower. The tinkle of the fountain was quite obliterated, and the ordinarily ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... still there was enough to be thankful for. Yet now that his duty was accomplished, he was conscious of a sudden lassitude. Mechanically he looked at Gertrude, and almost mechanically he came towards her. She, on her side, looking at him as he walked slowly down the long room, his face indistinct against the deadened light of the white-draped windows behind him, marked the expression of his figure with another pang. "He has rescued me," she said to herself; "but his passion has perished in the tumult. Richard," she said aloud, uttering the first words of vague kindness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... though a sea, breaking against a stone wall, had found some breach through which to pour its waters. The contagion of battle spread. Caution was forgotten; and those at the back, seeing Jemmy Vetch raised upon the crest of that human billow which reared its black outline against an indistinct perspective of struggling figures, responded to his grin of encouragement ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... exists. We can rouse ourselves, and the eye has not yet lost all its power. Non omnibus dormio, said Mecenes, and in this state more than one husband has acquired a sad certainty. Some ideas yet originate but are incoherent. There are doubtful lights, and see indistinct forms flit around. This condition does not last long, for ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... glasses of punch (dear simple Germany! 'tis with rum-punch and egg-flip thy children strengthen themselves for the dance!) I went into the ball-room and looked—the couples bounded before me, the music clashed and rung in my ears—all was fiery, feverish, indistinct. The gleaming white columns, the polished oaken floors in which the innumerable tapers were reflected—all together swam before my eyes, and I was in a pitch of madness almost when the fourth waltz at length came. "WILL ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... were soon going at a rate unknown to those accustomed to travel on one of our American railways. At a little past two o'clock in the afternoon, we saw in the distance the out-skirts of London. We could get but an indistinct view, which had the appearance of one architectural mass, extending all round to the horizon, and enveloped in a combination of fog and smoke; and towering above every other object to be seen, was the ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... therefrom, like the smell of frankincense. With this fumigation he used many uncouth and horrible words, hard names, and so forth, which probably had no existence save in the teeming issue of his own brain. During this operation groans were heard, at first low and indistinct, then loud and vehement; soon they broke into a yell, so shrill and piercing that several of the hearers absolutely tried, through horror and desperation, to burst the door; but this was secure, and their ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... down in the midst, with mountains of foliage about it. The great plain stretched away to the northward, variegated near at hand with the quaint pattern of the fields, but growing ever more and more indistinct, until it became a mere hurly-burly of trees and bright crescents of river, and snatches of slanting road, and finally melted into the ambiguous cloud-land over the horizon. The sky was an opal-grey, touched here and there with blue, and with certain faint ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the ocean tempers the hottest day. At the feet of the town the ocean beats restlessly on the narrow strip of beach that fringes the shore. On the distant horizon one may often see the black smoke, sometimes the hull, shadowy and indistinct, of some passing steamer. But only the smaller steamers or ships can enter the bay, for there are reefs and sand-spits, to touch which would mean destruction. Beside the town, the River Grey enters the ocean. When ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... that, as he lay back in the padded seat between the sheltering partitions, watching the sickly yellow dregs of oil surging dismally to and fro with the motion in the lamp overhead, or the black indistinct forms flitting past through the misty blue outside, the pathos of his situation became all at once ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... in dense herds quit the screening jungle and also seek the plain. The short, shrill barks of answering bucks sound clearly across the surface of the lake, and indistinct specks begin to appear on the edge of the more distant forests. Now black patches are clotted about the plain; now larger objects, some single and some in herds, make toward the water. The telescope distinguishes the vast herds of hogs busy in upturning the soil ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... covered both the British and the Hibernian Isles for generations and generations before the discovery of the art of writing, or the existence of a historical record, may be as well understood as their invaders; since ethnology infers where history is silent, and history, even when speaking, may be indistinct. At any rate, the previous notice of the ethnology of the British Isles during the Historical period, prepares us with a little light for the dark walk in the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... greatly terrified in their stable by the tempest; and coming out into the dreary interval between night and morning, when the glare of the lightning was yet unsubdued by day, and the various objects in their view were presented in indistinct and exaggerated shapes which they would not have worn by night, they gradually became less and less capable of control; until, taking a sudden fright at something by the roadside, they dashed off wildly down a steep hill, flung the driver from his saddle, drew the carriage to the ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... fell, and all the little camp-fires under the trees twinkled bravely forth. Some of the men sang. One had an accordion. Figures, indistinct and formless, wandered here and there in the shadows, suddenly emerging from mystery into the clarity of firelight, there to disclose themselves as visitors. Out on the plain the cattle lowed, the ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... follows: "A term of endearment, I suppose, used by Salwagers for a nasty shoal off the Corton coast." In the same publication (I) he defines "saltwagin." "So pronounced (if not solwagin') from, perhaps, an indistinct implication of salt (water) and ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... the boy was right in thinking this incident a misfortune. Although he had nothing particular for which to blame himself, yet the affair had increased his pride, while it lowered his self-respect; and he had an indistinct consciousness that the popularity in his form would do him as much harm as the change of feeling in his master. He grew careless and dispirited, nor was it till in the very heat of the final competition, that he felt his ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... had managed to reach a place amid the foliage, where, if he could be seen at all by those below, the view was indistinct, while, by pushing the branches carefully aside in front of his face, he was plainly ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... and the distant river had become a dark ribbon and the outlines of the poor houses below them blurred and indistinct in the gathering darkness before Tom could bring himself to re-enter the ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... within the range of his reflection so far and to which, amidst his heavy duties, he could not spare much cogitation, he would not always show acute perception, and, which is far worse, he would often show weakness of will. The present instance may be ever so trifling, yet it does relate to the indistinct and dangerous borderland of political corruption. It need arouse no very serious suspicions. Mr. Herndon, whose pertinacious researches unearthed that Kansas gentleman's correspondence, and who is keenly censorious of Lincoln's ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... as I had pitched into space, with equal suddenness did I emerge from the fog, out of which I shot like a projectile from a cannon into clear daylight. My speed was so great that I could see nothing about me but a blurred and indistinct sheet of smooth and frozen snow, that rushed past me ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... few moments there was a busy and earnest but indistinct hum of the two children's voices, as Violet and Peony wrought together with one happy consent. Violet still seemed to be the guiding spirit; while Peony acted rather as a laborer and brought her the snow from far and near. And yet the little urchin ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... his hand to read the address. The envelope was soiled like the coat of a traveler, and the letter was crumpled as though a hand had closed over it roughly. The writing was distinct and clerkly. "Berkeley Mason, Esq., Wintergreen, —— Co., Virginia." Mr. Mason examined the blurred, indistinct postmark. "Point"—something, it seemed to be; and on the other side, Washington, plain enough, and the date, May, 1865. What letter had been forwarded him from the seat of government in the spring of '65? Then memory unfolded itself like a ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... English exiles who were standing round the couch fell on their knees. Some burst into tears. Some poured forth praises and blessings with clamour such as, was scarcely becoming in such a place and at such a time. Some indistinct murmurs which James uttered, and which were drowned by the noisy gratitude of his attendants, were interpreted to mean thanks. But from the most trustworthy accounts it appears that he was insensible to all that was passing ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... not wish to join them, and nothing better occurred to her than to arrange her flowers over again; so, throwing them all down before her on a marble slab, she began to pick them up one by one, and put them together, with, it must be confessed, a very indistinct realization of the difference between myrtle and lemon blossoms; and as she seemed to be laying acacia to rose, and disposing some sprigs of beautiful heath behind them, in reality she was laying kindness alongside of kindness, and looking at the years beyond years where their place had been. ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... I can. To begin with, I have a very indistinct remembrance of either the form or the colouring. Even at the time my impression of both was very vague; what so overwhelmed and transfixed my attention, to the exclusion of everything besides itself, was the ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... was Protector. He had been nominated, in some indistinct way, by his father on his death-bed; and, though there was missing a certain sealed nomination paper, of much earlier date, in which it was believed that Fleetwood was the man, it was the interest of all parties about Whitehall at the moment, Fleetwood himself included, to accept the death-bed ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... confession was soon over. The dying man probably understood little; he could only utter indistinct broken sounds. Katerina Ivanovna took little Lida, lifted the boy from the chair, knelt down in the corner by the stove and made the children kneel in front of her. The little girl was still trembling; ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the graveyard the shades of evening had fallen, and the objects around me grown dim and indistinct. As I passed the gateway, I turned to take a parting look. I could distinguish only the chapel on the summit of the hill, and here and there a lofty obelisk of snow-white marble, rising from the black and heavy mass of foliage around, and pointing upward to the gleam of the departed ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... upon them. Still, Krall seems to know, by certain imperceptible signs, that this is not going to be a bad day. Muhamed quivered with excitement, snorts loudly through his nostrils, utters a series of indistinct little whinnyings: excellent symptoms, it appears. I take my seat on the corn-bin. The master, standing beside the black-board, chalk in hand, introduces me to Muhamed in due form, as ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... run out since then, many recollections of the past have faded from my memory or become blurred in indistinct visions, and poor Grisha himself has long since reached the end of his pilgrimage; but the impression which he produced upon me, and the feelings which he aroused in my breast, will never leave my mind. O truly Christian Grisha, your faith was ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... many other races, they regarded their strange-speaking neighbours as 'barbarian,' that is 'stammering,' or even as 'dumb.' So the Russians call their neighbours the Germans njemets, connected with njemo, indistinct. The old name Slovene, Slavonians, is probably a derivative from the substantive which appears in Church Slavonic in the form slovo, a word; see Thomsen's Russia and Scandinavia, p. 8. Slovo is closely connected with the old Slavonic word for 'fame'— ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... sheet of undulating glass. A breeze had been expected, but, in defiance of expectation, it had not come, so the boatmen were obliged to use their oars. They used them well, however, insomuch that the land ere long appeared like a blue line on the horizon, then became tremulous and indistinct, and finally vanished in the ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... presented itself by which I could arrive at justice. Was there no other way?—at that question conjecture paused: I formed no scheme, or rather, I formed a hundred and rejected them all; my mind settled, at last, into an indistinct, unquestioned, but prophetic resolution, that, whenever my path crossed Montreuil's, it should be to his destruction. I asked not how, nor when, the blow was to be dealt; I felt only a solemn and exultant ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... heavens he be; For I have serv'd him, and the man commands Like a full soldier. Let's to the sea-side, ho! As well to see the vessel that's come in As to throw out our eyes for brave Othello, Even till we make the main and the aerial blue An indistinct regard. ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... aside with his foot, Mr. Hooker opened the door hesitatingly and peered into the room, muttered a few indistinct words, which were followed by a rapid rustling of skirts, and then, with his hand still on the door-knob, turning to Clarence, who had discreetly halted on the threshold, flung the door open theatrically and bade ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... nerves five, the lateral two stout and anastomosing halfway, finely scaberulous especially on the nerves and more so on the central one. The second glume is slightly longer than the third, green or purple, ovate, acuminate, generally 7-nerved and sometimes also with two more indistinct marginal nerves, i.e., 9-nerved, scaberulous on the nerves. The third glume is pale green or yellow, ovate-oblong, acute or subacute, obscurely scaberulous, 9-nerved (two of the nerves in the middle sometimes ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... aproned cook, with a long-handled spoon, and fried in olive oil placed in a caldron at the booth's door, to be served to passers in the twinkling of an eye. I watched this process until I grew to regard Lent as a tiresome custom. Having tested the cakes, I found them to be indistinct in taste, for all their pretty buff tint, and the dexterous twist of the cook's wrist as he dumped them and picked them up. If they had been appetizing I should have been sharply interested in the idea of becoming a Catholic, but their entire absence of relish convinced me that ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... fleeting vision, afterwards, of an apostolic figure flying back across the fields. It was so indistinct as to remain only among ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene |
