"Mute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of that advantage, he did triple execution; for, in the first place, the distressing sympathy of the hearers with his distress of utterance won for him unavoidably the silence of deep attention; and then, whilst he had us all hoaxed into this attitude of mute suspense by an appearance of distress that he perhaps did not really feel, down came a plunging shot into the very thick of us, with ten times the effect it would else have had. If his stammering, however, often did him true "yeoman's service," ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... tore open the letter to Mrs. Hildesmuller. The others stood about, lighting twisted up letters one from another. Hondo gazed with mute disapproval at the single sheet of paper covered with the ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... must be some measure of humiliation. Under this conviction the man is bowed down, and made mute before God; no more boasting of his goodness and of his happy condition; no high or great thoughts of his righteousness; for all are looked on now as "filthy rags," Isa. lxv. 6. "What things were as gain before to the soul, must now be counted loss, yea, and ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... of all classical poets. In language Donne is not (as far as his Satires are concerned) a very great sinner; but his versification, whether by his own intention or not, leaves much to desire. At one moment the ten syllables are only to be made out by a Chaucerian lengthening of the mute e; at another the writer seems to be emulating Wyatt in altering the accent of syllables, and coolly making the final iambus of a line out of such a word as "answer." It is no wonder that poets of the "correct" age thought him in need of rewriting; ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... the Psalms, or from the Gospel of John, which mother dearly loved; and though she did not take much notice, but lay in a stupor most of the time, the holy words were comfort and company to me. At other times I sat in mute grief, watching her painful breathing, and the gradual pinching and sharpening of her features as the relentless disease worked upon them. O, it was hard! I don't think many lives know so much and such utter misery. In my anxiety and grief, and the mental bewilderment resulting from loss ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... sat down, bowing his handsome dark head quietly, and remaining mute in the dismal silence that followed. Suddenly an elderly woman with a meek face struggled to her feet, glancing toward Augusta Hall for an encouraging smile. Several trimmed hats however loomed up between her and the deacon's wife, ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... busy forenoon for all on board the steamer. The revenue cutters took off the passengers. Representatives of the underwriters came out from Wood's Hole on a tug. The huge Montana, set solidly into its bed of sand, loomed against the sky, mute witness of somebody's ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... chamber, while I, quite beside myself, called with a loud voice on him who had been my friend, my brother, my father, and who answered me nothing, and yet seemed to gaze upon me.... His death was inconceivable to me; the others were dismayed and mute; there arose between the good friar and myself the most cruel and painful dispute, ... I madly contending that my friend was still alive, and beseeching him with tears to accompany with the offices of religion the passing of that great soul. But he, touching again and ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... She stood mute and wide-eyed before him, the color in her cheeks coming and going like a flickering candle. Constans naturally concluded that his appearance had frightened her. He retreated a step or two; he tried ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... Egypt, necessarily imply that the donor thereof is a son of the desert; the maitre d'hotel has been known to do it out of deference to your rank or purse; and only once had Jane Coop had the mixed pleasure of meeting the deaf-mute Nubian who daily left the posies ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... only be mute— And array their thick heads against reason and right, Like the Roman of old, of historic repute,[3] Who with droves of ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... mute and motionless, his gray nose between his forepaws, his eyes half closed. A rock could have appeared scarcely less lifeless than he; not a muscle twitched; not a hair moved; not an eyelid quivered. Yet every drop of the wild blood in his splendid body was racing in a ferment of excitement that Kazan ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... keeping the end of the halter in my hand, went up to the mounted Bedouin without speaking, took hold of his water-flask, opened it, and drank long and deep from its leathern lips. Both of the Bedouins stood fast in amazement and mute horror; and really, if they had never happened to see an European before, the apparition was enough to startle them. To see for the first time a coat and a waistcoat, with the semblance of a white human head at the top, ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... facing her, and meanwhile wearing on his face that air of pained resignation which is common to the faces of conductors on transportation lines that are heavily patronized by women travelers. In mute demand he extends toward her a soiled palm. With hands encased in oversight gloves she fumbles at the catch of a hand bag. Having wrested the hand bag open, she paws about among its myriad and mysterious contents. A card of buttons, a sheaf of samples, a handkerchief, ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... languages, by the communication he had with the three Japonian Christians; but he knew not enough to express him with ease and readiness, as himself acknowledges in his epistles, where he says, "that he and his companions, at their first arrival, stood like statues, mute and motionless." He therefore applied himself, with all diligence, to the study of the tongue, which he relates in these following words: "We are returned to our infancy," says he, "and all our business at present is to learn the first elements of the Japonian grammar. God give us the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... the ladies, not comprehending what had occurred, had sat as mute as stones; but now having so far recovered themselves as to find a voice, the younger of the two fell to screaming, at which the Sieur Simon called out to her to be still, for these were friends who had come to help them, and ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... an alibi—to assure my old friends that I was, during the whole of the campaign, in England—that I was never in America, or any other sea but between Dover and Calais, and that all my acts of piracy were committed on the mute creation? All this may be true, says a minister or a minister's understrapper, but you are for the present suspected, and that is sufficient. I know that you are fond of Scotland:—this is not the time for proofs; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the British lyre be mute, Nor thrill through all its trembling strings, With oaten reed and pastoral flute While ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... hand now abandoned the reins, and the dear girl turned half round on the cushion of the seat, gazing at me in mute astonishment! I had been cursing in my heart the lank locks of the miserable wig I was compelled to wear, ever since I had met with Mary Warren, as unnecessarily deforming and ugly, for one might have as well a becoming as a horridly ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... the greatest sorrow to me that ever I knew in this world, for my wife, coming up suddenly, did find me embracing the girl.... I was at a wonderful loss upon it, and the girle also, and I endeavoured to put it off, but my wife was struck mute and grew angry, and so her voice come to her, grew quite out of order, and I to say little, but to bed, and my wife said little also, but could not sleep all night, but about two in the morning waked me and cried, and fell to tell me as a great secret that she was a Roman Catholique ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the length two of them leauing their weapons, came downe to our Generall and Master, who did the like to them, commanding the company to stay, and went vnto them: who after certaine dumbe signes, and mute congratulations, began to lay handes vpon them, but they deliuerly escaped, and ranne to their bowes and arrowes, and came fiercely vpon them, (not respecting the rest of our companie which were readie for their defence,) but with their arrowes hurt diuers of them: [Sidenote: One taken.] ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... defies. He stopp'd, and weeping said: "O friend! ev'n here The monuments of Trojan woes appear! Our known disasters fill ev'n foreign lands: See there, where old unhappy Priam stands! Ev'n the mute walls relate the warrior's fame, And Trojan griefs the Tyrians' pity claim." He said (his tears a ready passage find), Devouring what he saw so well design'd, And with an empty picture fed his mind: For there he saw the fainting Grecians yield, And here the trembling Trojans ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... machinery of unlearned social customs, and lawless social forces, could speak; there was but one tongue in which it could tell its story. For this is the place where science becomes inevitably poetical. That same science which fills our cabinets and herbariums, and chambers of natural history, with mute stones and shells and plants and dead birds and insects—that same science that fills our scientific volumes with coloured pictures true as life itself, and letter-press of prose description—that same science that anatomises the physical frame with microscopic nicety,—in the hand ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... The beauty he has perceived must in accordance with our human needs find expression concretely, because it is only as he manifests himself in forms which we can understand that we are able to recognize him. Though a mute, inglorious Milton were Milton still, yet our human limitations demand his utterance that we may know him. So the artist accomplishes his mission when he communicates himself. The human spirit is able to bring the supreme life into unity with itself according to the measure of its own growth ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... bard strikes his harp, the wild woods among, And echo repeats to the breezes his strain; Enraptured, the small birds around his seat throng, And the lambkins, delighted, stand mute on the plain. He sings of the pleasures his young bosom knew, When beauty inspired him, and love was the theme; While his harp, ever faithful, awakes them anew, And a tear dims his eye as he breathes the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... oh, not yet!" I cried aloud in an agony that could not be repressed, clinging to Dr. Harlowe's arm as if every earthly stay and friend were sliding from my grasp. I knew the meaning of that mute, expressive glance. She was measuring her own grave by the side of Peggy's clay cold bed,—she was commending her desolate orphan to the Father of the fatherless, the God of the widow. She knew she would soon be there, and I knew it too. And after the first sharp pang,—after the arrow of ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... it!" he murmured, as his sister tucked her arm in his in mute understanding. "Think of the architect that could ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... in an easy, rhythmical, impersonal, and irresponsible way the sympathies of the meeting. This was interrupted by a young man who rose suddenly, with that spontaneity of impulse which characterized the speakers, but unlike his predecessors, he remained for a moment mute, trembling and irresolute. The fatal hesitation seemed to check the unreasoning, monotonous flow of emotion, and to recall to some extent the reason and even the criticism of the worshipers. He stammered a prayer whose earnestness ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... hers. She hugged it, close. The L trains roared by, not thirty feet from her kitchen door. Alley and yard and street sent up their noises to her. The life of Chicago's millions yelped at her heels. On Rose's face was the vague, mute look of the woman whose days are ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... bereaved wives and mothers. The reader will find many of them in the good Chaplain's book, and they will bring the war closer than anything else. Sometimes they stand mute under the blow, looking on the dead face without a sound, and then dropping unconscious to the floor. Sometimes they cry wild things to heaven. The Chaplain's work in either case is not easy, and some of his most touching pages depict ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... motion again ceases. The dynamo rotates under the still more subtile influence of an electric current which may also cause the click of a telegraph instrument or the ring of an electric bell, but the dynamo ceases its swift whirl and the persistent ring of the electric bell becomes mute when the invisible electricity is switched off. The form of the bird, the animal and the human being also cease their motion when the inner force which we call life ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... the rough hands of two piratical officers into the brig's cabin, where she was locked up in a small state room, whilst Arthur Huntington, was heavily ironed and confined in the steerage. As the fair Ellen sat in her narrow prison, brooding in mute despair over the horrid scenes she had just passed through, she covered her face with her ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... mute surprise. "'Tis hard," they gently said; "He gave us a sheaf of grain for food, When he had but three for bread. We will pray to God, He will surely help This good man in distress;" And they lifted their voices on high, to crave His mercy and tenderness. Then again to the Christmas sheaf they flew, ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... lady said to a small wit, "Come, Mr. ——, tell us a lively anecdote," and the poor fellow was mute during the remainder of the evening. "Favor me with your company on Wednesday evening, you are such a lion," said a weak party-giver to a young author. "I thank you," replied the wit; "but on that evening I ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... which the children even became mute, the Sachem arose with dignity and commenced his brief story in a solemn, serious manner, ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... ready to do anything reasonable and now that I have had a good reason given me, I'll be as mute as any mole." ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... out his hands towards the throne in mute appeal. Thereupon one of the Seraphim flew to the Altar and, with a pair of tongs, took from it a live coal. From the Altar the Seraph flew directly to Isaiah and, touching his mouth with the live ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... every turn, as if seeking his approval, she glanced at him inquiringly. When she finished she stood for a moment in the centre of the rug panting, her beautiful bosom, beneath its filmy covering of lace, gently rising and falling. Then, asking her father's consent with a mute glance, she ran forward impulsively, and, kneeling at Thorndyke's feet, she took his hand and pressed it to her lips. And rising, suffused with blushes, she tripped from the dais and disappeared behind ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... her, mute for a time, yet looking full into her face. It was sadness, not boldness, not any gay challenge, that marked ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... under his straight, fierce brows with a sudden touch of imperiousness, and his commanding presence became magnetic, almost over-powering. Tormented with a dozen cross- currents of feeling, young Denzil Murray was mute;—only his breath came and went quickly, and there was a certain silently- declared antagonism in his very attitude. Gervase saw it and smiled; then turning away with his peculiarly noiseless step and grace of ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... bored and mute on the platform beside him, while he evacuated the forty-year-old wheeze of "your great-great-great-grandfather might have been a monkey, but, thank God, mine was not!" he won the usual great response of ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... the different styles of dress that suit different styles of face; and while "she worked and wondered at the work she made," she threw out from time to time her ideas on the subject to form the taste of Helen's little maid. Rose, who, in mute attention, held the light and assiduously presented pins. "Not your pin so fast one after de other Miss Rose—Tenez! tenez!" cried mademoiselle. "You tink in England alway too much of your pin in your dress, too little of our taste—too little of our elegance, too much of your what ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... the thought "By what shall this dog profit me?" into the large state of simple gladness to be with dog, he shall never know the very essence of that companion ship which depends not on the points of dog, but on some strange and subtle mingling of mute spirits. For it is by muteness that a dog becomes for one so utterly beyond value; with him one is at peace, where words play no torturing tricks. When he just sits, loving, and knows that he is being loved, those are ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... question of "luck." The real fact of the matter was simply that Tessie, while in possession of the little badge, was continually reminded of its purpose, and the ideals it stood for, so that in her rather reckless career the emblem confronted her with constant mute appeal. ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... anxious friends, that shed the parting tear, The deck was throng'd—how swift the moments fly! The vessel heaves, the farewel signs appear; Mute is each tongue, and ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... now Darius bids the herald call Judaea's Bard to grace the thronging hall. Hush'd is each sound—the attending crowd are mute, The Hebrew lightly strikes ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... thoughtful. Though a celibite in his own person, Myndert had not now to learn that the infant god as often does his mischief through this quiet agency, as in any other manner. He became, therefore, mute in his turn, watching the slow movement of the periagua with as much assiduity as if he saw his own ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... Grimshaw! Don't you see she is getting worse and worse. How can you have the heart to stand there and not go for a physician?" said Mrs. Waugh, while Mary L'Oiseau looked on, mute with terror, and the commodore stood with his fat ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of her shoulders—a dainty gesture which I congratulated myself I could see unmoved—she held out her hand in a mute appeal for the key, but seeing that I was not to be shaken in my purpose, reached for the wrap she had tossed on a chair and tied ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... and his pleasures wait on thee, And, thou away, the very birds are mute; Or if they sing, 't is with so dull a cheer, That leaves look pale, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... his legs are still; so it is evident that the friction or rubbing of the legs against the wings causes the sound. I rub the thigh of this specimen I hold in my hands against the wing. You distinctly hear the shrill sound. It is the males only who make the noise; the females are mute. Some people have described another organ which seems to increase the sound. I have sometimes placed both field-crickets and grasshoppers under a tumbler, and supplied them with moist blades of grass; it is curious to see how fast they eat them. You should remember ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... ponies, awaiting their entrance to the ring. The shrieks of the hyenas in the distant animal tent, the roaring of the lions and the trumpeting of the elephants mingled with the incessant clamour of the band. And back of all this, pointing upward in mute protest, rose a solemn church spire, white and majestic against a vast panorama of blue, moonlit hills, that encircled the whole lurid picture. Jim's eyes turned absently toward the church as he sat fumbling with the lock of the ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... midnight hour the Christmas hymn, and at last (in some out-of-the-way towns) the priests, in gaudiest robes, bring out from under the altar and expose aloft to the crowds, in swaddling-clothes of gold and white, the Babe new-born, and all fall down and cross themselves in mute adoration. This service is universal, and is called the "Misa del Gallo," or Cock-crow Mass, and even in Madrid it is customary to attend it. There are three masses also on Christmas Day, and the ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... play, that father, bent and heavy-eyed with unceasing toil, flung back the charge with the bitter reproach that we gave him no other choice, that it was either the street or the shop for his boy, and that perjury for him was cheaper than the ruin of the child, we were mute. What, indeed, was there to say? The crime was ours, not his. That was seven years ago. Once since then have we been where we could count the months to the time when every child that knocked should find a seat in our schools; but ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... somebody coming down the street. It was Emory Ford, and she flushed and dimpled and smiled as she bowed to him, forgetting everything else, including the departing Mary Louise, who, after one mute look at Mrs. Kendrick's flushed, disturbed face, turned and walked with hanging head toward the house on ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... wide-spreading lawns and flowering shrubs, leading up the gentle slope of a hill. Where it led to, David did not know, but he proceeded unhesitatingly to try to find out. For some time he climbed the slope in silence, his violin, mute, under his arm; but the white road still lay in tantalizing mystery before him when a by-path offered the greater temptation, and lured him to explore its cool ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... this sudden Desertion of ones self shews a Diffidence, which is not displeasing, it implies at the same time the greatest Respect to an Audience that can be. It is a sort of mute Eloquence, which pleads for their Favour much better than Words could do; and we find their Generosity naturally moved to support those who are in so much Perplexity to entertain them. I was extremely pleased with a ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... opened her mouth to reply, but could not. She raised her hands in mute despair, then quietly covered her face with them, and soon the tears trickled ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Mute as Neddy's inquiry was, Mike seemed somehow aware of it. He raised his hand, as though to enjoin silence, and then pointed it in front of him, raised to the level of his head. Neddy turned round to look in the direction indicated. He saw ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... began juggling, and taking his lance by the hilt, he threw it into the air and caught it by the point as it fell; then, drawing his sword, he spun it several times over his head, and caught it in a similar way as it fell. After these skilful exercises, during which the enemy were gaping in mute astonishment, he forced his charger through the English ranks, and caused great havoc before he ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... punish me, she keeps afar her jocund band, With the merry, merry pipe, and the tabor, and the lute; If I creep near yonder oak she will wave her fairy wand, And to me the dance will cease, and the music all be mute. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... o'clock the last box was done. Machines became mute, wheels were stilled, and the long black belts sagged into limp folds. Every girl seized a broom or a scrub-pail, and hilarity reigned supreme while we swept and scrubbed for the next half-hour, Angelina and her chorus singing all the while endless ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... Highest Essence there, as the call always comes to it from there: "We have not made ourselves" (Augustine in the sublime description of Christian, that is, Neoplatonic exercises), it must, as it were, lose sight of itself in a state of intense concentration, in mute contemplation and complete forgetfulness of all things. It can then see God, the source of life, the principle of being, the first cause of all good, the root of the soul. In that moment it enjoys the highest and indescribable blessedness; it is itself, as it ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... twain who first were sent in this pursuit Of their wise friend well knew the aged face: But when the wizard sage their first salute Received and quitted had with kind embrace, To the young prince, that silent stood and mute, He turned his speech, "In this unused place For you alone I wait, my lord," quoth he, "My chiefest care your state ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... Mary. "It was one night when there was a division in the House, and it divided his soul from his body,—for they found him sitting mute as marble, and looking at their follies and strifes with eyes whose vision reached over and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... no revenge, No torments of foes, appease them in the land of spirits; No shoutings of brother warriors Gladden their shades; The camp of their nation is mute; They are forgotten by their women; The bright eyes of their maidens Have no tears in them: They ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... clouded over, and his eyes filled with tears, but I did not venture to force myself into his confidence. My looks, however, were no doubt not so discreet as my silence, and begged him to speak, and so he responded to their mute appeal. "After all," he said: "why should I not tell you about it? You will understand me." And he added, with a look of sudden ferocity: "She understood it at any rate!" "Who?" I asked. "My unfaithful wife," he replied. "Ah! Monsieur, what an abominable creature she was, if you only ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... our bird of light Lie mute with plumage dim; In heaven I see her glancing bright, I hear her ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... above all things, if he could once behold the famous Helen of Greece, whose beauty was so great as to have roused all the princes of her country to arms, and to have occasioned a ten years' war. Faustus consented to indulge his curiosity, provided all the company would engage to be merely mute spectators of the scene. This being promised, he left the room, and presently brought in Helen. She was precisely as Homer has described her, when she stood by the side of Priam on the walls of Troy, looking on the Grecian chiefs. Her features were irresistibly ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... in upon the intimate silence, continued the talk, but it was with another note. The mute interval, filled with wind and darkness and the light of stars, had swung them up to a higher plane. She spoke with an artless sureness of comprehension—a certainty—they were close in spirit at that moment, and she ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... occupy her more important than a child's passing ailment. As she slowly unrobed herself by the fire, combed out her warm, fragrant, many-rippled tresses, or held mute dialogue with her eyes in the glass, from a ravel of uneasy thoughts there detached itself, first and foremost, the discovery that Redgrave had not been in Paris when Mrs. Strangeways said he was. What was the meaning of this contradiction? Thereto hung the singular coincidence of Redgrave's ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... far distant times of simplicity a "mute inglorious" newspaper man. Newspapers in those days were as rare and unheard of as steam cars or the telegraph, but Biah had within him all the making of a thriving modern reporter, and no paper to use it on. He was a walking biographical and statistical ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... we; but when the tea-things were removed and I began to look restlessly at my watch and talk of an errand I must go, a shadow of anxiety came into my father's eyes. Mother looked at me with mute appeal. They were still as far from the truth as ever. A wild notion that I had come for some other man's daughter had entered their minds, or else, God help me, that I had lost mine. I kissed mother ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... contest with Stenio Salvatori, who, having obtained possession of it, placed it in the hands of his Excellency the Duke of Palma, as a positive and incontestable evidence of the criminality of the Count. This mute witness is here," said the Grand Judge, who as he spoke exhibited a sparkling brilliant ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... serpent on fire now flashed like lightning on to the body of one of the other two, piercing him in the navel, and then falling on the ground, and lying stretched before him. The wounded man, fascinated and mute, stood looking at the adder's eyes, and endeavouring to stand steady on his legs, yawning the while as if smitten with lethargy or fever; the adder, on his part, looked up at the eyes of the man, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... the enjoyments of human life, from the haunts where he had been so happy. He wished to have his tomb on the public thoroughfare, that he might "feel, as it were, the tide of life as it flowed past his monument, and that his mute existence might be prolonged in the remembrance of his friends." I may observe that the Roman custom of bordering the public roads with tombs gives a significance to the inscriptions which some of them bore,—such as, Siste, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... taught to throw his hand and fingers so far "out of joint" that a real crippled-for-life paralytic could not have improved upon the deceptive deformity. Both of these lads used duckets, pencils, shoestrings and thimbles as an addition to their mute appeals, although it is a well-known fact that no genuinely afflicted paralytics or mutes, least of all boys, ever resort to ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... trail with instructions to send back an Indian courier to report each night, I hunted up an old habitant guide, named Paul Larocque, who had often helped me to thread the woods of Quebec after big game. Now Paul was habitually as silent as a dumb animal, and sportsmen had nicknamed him The Mute; but what he lacked in speech he made up like other wild creatures in a wonderful acuteness of eye and ear. Indeed, it was commonly believed among trappers that Paul possessed some nameless sense by which ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... turmoil in the outer world had passed unheeded by all. No sooner, however, had Vetranio departed than it caught the attention of Ulpius, and he advanced to the window. What he there saw and heard was of no ordinary importance, for it at once fixed him to the spot where he stood in mute ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... fallen, it seems, into a mournful condition: oblivion, mute hebetation, loss of all faculty. He suffered greatly, nursing his former wife in her insanity, for years till her relief by death; suffered, worked, and made no moan; the brunt of the task over, he sank into collapse in the hands of a new wife he had just wedded. What a lot for him; for her especially! ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the statements of the witnesses:" (they related to Peytel's demeanor and behavior, which the judge wishes to show were very unusual;—and what if they were?) "Here, however, are some mute witnesses, whose testimony, you will not perhaps refuse. Near Louis Rey's body was found a horse-cloth, a pistol, and a whip..... Your domestic must have had this cloth upon him when he went to assassinate ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Conservative party in the two Houses heard the paragraph read without surprise and without a murmur. Some said that the gentlemen on the Treasury Bench in the House of Commons did not look to be comfortable. Mr. Daubeny sat with his hat over his brow, mute, apparently impassive and unapproachable, during the reading of the Speech and the moving and seconding of the Address. The House was very full, and there was much murmuring on the side of the Opposition;—but from the Government benches hardly a sound ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... the image of his Creator? If He stoops to give to the rose-bush, whose withered blossoms float upon the autumn breeze, the sweet assurance of another springtime, will He refuse the words of hope to the sons of men when the frosts of winter come? If matter, mute and inanimate, though changed by the forces of nature into a multitude of forms, can never die, will the imperial spirit of man suffer annihilation when it has paid a brief visit like a royal guest to this tenement of clay? No, He who, notwithstanding His apparent prodigality, created ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... Robert himself burst into the room, and seizing one of her hands, while both of them were uplifted in mute amazement, he pressed it to his lips, poured forth a volley of such compliments as he had never before prevailed with himself to utter, and confidently entreated her to complete his long-attended happiness without ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... and the way he sidled up to me, with half-closed eyes and drooping head, was one of the most pathetic things I ever experienced. He so plainly said, "I'm very sorry—hope you'll forgive me; won't do it again"; and certainly his mute appeal was not in vain, for down went my fruit and flowers, and with loving words I took up my lost darling, and cooed over him all sorts of affectionate rubbish until we reached home and he was restored to his cage. There his one desire was water. Poor fellow! he was nearly famished. I think ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... them so—my green things growing! And I think that they love me, without false showing; For by many a tender touch, they comfort me so much, With the soft mute comfort of ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... no stars, no earth, no time, No check, no change, no good, no crime— But silence, and a stirless breath Which neither was of life nor death; A sea of stagnant idleness, Blind, boundless, mute, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... in, her ivory-white face went scarlet all over at the sight of Roger. She sat down in a shadowy corner. Mrs. Barr got up and went out. Roger was mute; he could find nothing to say. He could have talked glibly enough to Isabel Temple's ghost in some unearthly tryst by her grave, but he could not find a word to say to this slip of flesh and blood. He felt very foolish and absurd, and ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead women of her race flowed through her into the softness of the spring evening. Things were there which she could know only through her blood—all the mute patience, all the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with the merely physical end of love—these were in that voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them, there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... of those representations in which the affliction of Mary is a prominent part of the tragic interest of the scene. She is sometimes sinking to the earth, sustained by the women or by St. John; sometimes she stands with clasped hands, mute and motionless with excess of anguish; sometimes she stretches out her arms to her Son, as Jesus, sinking under the weight of his cross, turns his benign eyes upon her, and the others who follow him: "Daughters of Jerusalem, ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... Renfrew coming in at the gate sent Peter to his room. The hour was near twelve, and it had become a little point of household etiquette for the mulatto and the white man not to be together when old Rose jangled the triangle. By this means they forestalled the mute discourtesy of the old Captain's walking away from his secretary to eat. The subject of their separate meals had never been mentioned since their first acrimonious morning. The matter had dropped into the abeyance of custom, just ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... mute; not a breath was drawn; they scarcely dared move their eyes lest he should be disturbed. Cochrane touched the lock lightly and then rubbed his fingertips vigorously back and forth on the carpet— anything to stimulate those fine nerves ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... Erroneous there to wander, and forlorn. Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound Within the visible diurnal sphere. Standing on Earth, not rapt above the pole, More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days, On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues, In darkness, and with dangers compassed round, And solitude; yet not alone, while thou Visit'st my slumbers nightly, or when morn Purples the east. ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... she continued quickly, in answer to this mute dissent. 'I know all about it, du Bruel, my dear, I that have been like a queen in my house all my life till I married you. My wishes were guessed, fulfilled, and more than fulfilled. After all, I am thirty-five, and at five-and-thirty a woman cannot expect to be loved. Ah, if I were a ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... God derived, to God by nature join'd. We act the dictates of His mighty mind: And though the priests are mute and temples still, God never wants a voice to ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... trespasses and sins a reasonable service. When I am set down in the valley of vision, and view the bones, very many and very dry, and am desired to try the effects of my own ability in recalling them to life, I will fold my hands and stand mute in astonishment and despair. But when the Lord God commands me to speak in His name, my closed lips shall be opened; when He calls upon the breath from the four winds to breathe upon the slain that they may live, I will prophesy without fear, "Oh, ye dry bones, hear the words of the Lord"; ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... the next two or three weeks, I felt so utterly broken-hearted that I could do nothing but cry." The child put her arms tenderly around the neck of her beloved aunt, and gave her message of sympathy in mute kisses. ...
— Grandfather's Love Pie • Miriam Gaines
... to my Chamber, that is the second thing that I haue commanded thee. The third is, that thou wilt be a voluntarie Mute to my designe. Be but dutious, and true preferment shall tender it selfe to thee. My Reuenge is now at Milford, would I had wings to follow it. Come, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... and flat, that is to fall away speedily, and as it were inaudible, or when he is made of such letters as be by nature slipper & voluble and smoothly passe from the mouth. And the vowell is alwayes more easily deliuered then the consonant: and of consonants, the liquide more than the mute, & a single consonant more then a double, and one more then twayne coupled together: all which points were obserued by the Greekes and Latines, and allowed for maximes in versifying. Now if ye will examine these foure bissillables [re-mna-nt] [re'ma-ine] [re-nde'r] [re'ne't] for an ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... tell them to come in?" When I released her, there appeared to my surprise at her call, no human intruder, but one of the ambau, bearing on a tray a goblet, which, as he placed it on a table beside us, I perceived to contain a liquid rather different from any yet offered me. The presence of these mute servants is generally no more heeded than that of our cats and dogs; but I now learnt that Martial ideas of delicacy forbid them, even as human servants would be forbidden, to intrude unannounced on conjugal privacy. When the little creature had departed, I tasted the ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... reverse of unwelcome, but sometimes the envy is not placed where the beneficiary is expecting it to be placed. Once, when Susy was seven, she sat breathlessly absorbed in watching a guest of ours adorn herself for a ball. The lady was charmed by this homage; this mute and gentle admiration; and was happy in it. And when her pretty labors were finished, and she stood at last perfect, unimprovable, clothed like Solomon in all his glory, she paused, confident and ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... are grimy, and hairy, and dun With the wear of the wind, the scorch of the sun; But their picks fall slack, their foul tongues are mute— As the maiden goes by these ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... an instant longer, then mute for lack of a sufficiently scornful retort, turned and ran back up the steps, slamming the ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... shed he heard the sound of movement inside the armory, yet the bolt was not withdrawn. He stood a moment in mute wonder for he could not understand how a Trojan could get in when there was no window, and but one door, and it bolted on the outside. He called several times, but there was no answer, and he was more than glad when ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... not thwart my meditative communion with God and with God alone. Though instruments or mediums were multiplied around me, dancing in imitation of the spirits of all nations, singing and conversing in unknown tongues, some evincing a truly barbarian attitude and manners, I stood in mute thanksgiving and prayer. At times I was asked by the elders if I could not unite and take upon me an Indian, a Norwegian, or an Arabian spirit? I would then strive to be impressed with their feelings, ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... of November, they danced before each other, mute and charming, with intervals of promenade in which they hardly talked—intoxicated in silence by the delicious thought with ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... feeding grounds. Hurrying to the nearest opening, we saw the immense flight of pigeons blackening the sky overhead. Stiffened by their night's rest, they flew low; but the beauty and immensity of the flight overawed us, and we stood in mute admiration, no one firing a shot. For fully a half-hour the flight continued, ending in a few ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... watch, with a whole bunch of charms against the evil eye. She cast before her, by a movement full of mute grace, a shagreen bag, which she carried in her belt. The brigand opened it with the eagerness of a custom-house officer. He drew from it a little English dressing-case, a vial of English salts, a ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... or the contrary, as long as his wife, children, and so on are sound and entire or not. Attributes of the body are superimposed on the Self, if a man thinks of himself (his Self) as stout, lean, fair, as standing, walking, or jumping. Attributes of the sense-organs, if he thinks 'I am mute, or deaf, or one-eyed, or blind.' Attributes of the internal organ when he considers himself subject to desire, intention, doubt, determination, and so on. Thus the producer of the notion of the Ego (i.e. the internal organ) is superimposed on the interior Self, which, in reality, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... vowing that he would remain beside his wife until she was ready to leave Hel's dismal realm. The sight of her woe oppressed him so sorely that he had no heart for his usual merry songs, and the strings of his harp were mute while he remained in ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... the original “Chat Noir,” the first cabaret of this kind, was largely owing to the sympathetic and attractive nature of its founder, young Salis, who drew around him, by his sunny disposition, shy personalities who, but for him, would still be “mute, inglorious Miltons.” Under his kindly and discriminating rule many a successful literary career has started. Salis’s gifted nature combined a delicate taste and critical acumen with a rare business ability. His first venture, an obscure little café on the Boulevard Rochechouart, in the outlying ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... himself without uttering a word, and followed the slave to the door of Vaninka's room. Having arrived there, with a motion of his hand he dismissed the informer, who, instead of retiring in obedience to this mute command, hid himself in ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the Progress of Poetry, and the Bard, two compositions at which the readers of poetry were at first content to gaze in mute amazement. Some that tried them confessed their inability to understand them, though Warburton said that they were understood as well as the works of Milton and Shakespeare, which it is the fashion to admire. Garrick wrote a few lines ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... meantime Ethel had reached her friend's residence a new building of unusual size and very ornate architecture. Liveried footmen and waiting women bowed her with mute attention to Miss Denning's suite, an absolutely private arrangement of five rooms, marvelously furnished for the young lady's comfort and delight. The windows of her parlor overlooked the park, and she was standing ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... such thing as ceremony, ushering, or waiting upon people down to the coach, and such other troublesome ceremonies as our courtesy enjoins (O servile and importunate custom!) Every one there governs himself according to his own method; let who will speak his thoughts, I sit mute, meditating and shut up in my closet, without any ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... Mrs. Lander's company, much as she wished it. There were hours which he gave to going about in a gondola with Clementina, whom he forbade to be always at the invalid's side. He tried to reassure her as to Mrs. Lander's health, when be found her rather mute and absent, while they drifted in the silvery sun of the late April weather, just beginning to be warm, but not warm enough yet for the tent of the open gondola. He asked her about Mrs. Lander's family, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... had left him. He was powerless to move or to say a word that might have recalled her. Her own grief, quivering in that one piteous sob, overwhelmed him. It held him mute and listening, with the hope that each instant the tent-flap might open and Jeanne reappear. And yet if she came he had no words to say. Unwittingly he had probed deep into one of those wounds that never heal, and he realized that to ask forgiveness would be but another blunder. ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... but looked forward to another victory of equal magnitude as a matter of certainty. The intelligence of this great disaster had not yet reached the Romans; but there prevailed a kind of melancholy silence and mute foreboding, such as is usually found in minds which have a presentiment of impending calamity. The general himself, besides feeling that he was deserted by his allies, and that the forces of the enemy were ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... not answer. He gazed mute and terror-struck, overcome by his own weakness. He knew he could not answer. He had an unreasonable fear, lest the other man should suddenly destroy him. Whereas Maurice was actually filled with hot, poignant love, the passion of friendship. Perhaps it was this very passion of friendship ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... meet that man, it's a scandal!" thought Madeleine wrathfully, and could hardly bring herself to be civil when the girl returned—pale, wearied, and quite uncommunicative. But she was very touching in a mute, dignified way, all the evening, and Madeleine relented fast. And, as they sat in the fire-lit drawing-room, when the curtains were drawn, Delia suddenly brought a stool close to Lady Tonbridge's side, and, sitting at her feet, held up appealing arms. Madeleine, ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... time, there sprung up in the old man's mind, a solicitude about the child which never slept or left him. There are chords in the human heart—strange, varying strings—which are only struck by accident; which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most passionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual touch. In the most insensible or childish minds, there is some train of reflection which art can seldom lead, or skill assist, but which will reveal itself, as great truths ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... is mine!" he said, with a motion of his hand toward Varia. Livinius, alone understanding all that his words and tone implied, gave him a glance of mute reproach. He took Varia's hand, as she stood near ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... the logic of his phonetic writing: contrary to his habit, he strikes the mute E after the W, because it is indispensable; but, finding it included in the D, he considers it superfluous and suppresses it with ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... world, but men and brutes Own his reviving influence, and joy At his approach. Fountain of light! if chance[4] Some envious cloud veil thy refulgent brow, In vain the Muses aid; untouched, unstrung, 140 Lies my mute harp, and thy desponding bard Sits darkly musing o'er the unfinished lay. Let no Corinthian pillars prop the dome, A vain expense, on charitable deeds Better disposed, to clothe the tattered wretch, Who shrinks ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... such precautions? You blind—you deceive me; what have you done?—what is your employment now? You are, mute. Hark you, Gawtrey. I have pinned my fate to you—I am fallen from hope itself! At times it almost makes me mad to look back—and yet you do not trust me. Since your return to Paris you are absent whole nights—often days; you ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... name. He stared at it, bewildered. He couldn't understand what a plan of this sort was doing outside the War Department. Instantly he became a soldier; he forgot that he was masquerading as a groom; he forgot everything but this mute thing staring up into his face. Underneath, on a little shelf, he saw a stack of worn envelopes. He looked at them. Rough drafts of plans. Governor's Island! Fortress Monroe! What did it mean? What could it mean? He searched and found plans, plans, plans of harbors, plans ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... steady, stony glance— Like some bold seer in a trance, Beholding all his own mischance, Mute, with a glassy countenance— She looked down to Camelot. It was the closing of the day, She loosed the chain, and down she lay, The broad stream bore her far away, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... of the Sphinx—the Sphinx that for some thousands of years has held mute companionship ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... standing before him, white with the emotions that swayed her.... Here was the man she loved in his bitterest, darkest moment—and she was barred away from him by unwelcome barriers. She could not soothe him, she could not lighten his suffering with the tale of her love for him, but she must remain mute, holding out no hand to ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... apostle's lists of officers in the church the "helps" are mentioned before the "governments." By the ministry of prayer, by the ministry of giving, by the ministry of encouragement, by the shining face and mute pressure of the hand, and a little word of cheer, and by the countless ways in which we can help, or at least can keep from hindering, we can all find still the footprints of Aquila and Priscilla, if we want to follow them. It is a great grace ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... my crown piece, which in the violence of my movements, I suppose, had sprung out of my tattered garment. I felt my cheeks flush hotly, and was stricken dumb in the face of this mute evidence giving me the lie. The girl gazed at me for a moment; then, her lip curling with disdain, she turned her back and walked up the ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... stream, the breathing fragrance of spring, the soft voluptuousness of summer, the golden pomp of autumn; earth with its mantle of refreshing green, and heaven with its deep delicious blue and its cloudy magnificence—all fill us with mute but exquisite delight, and we revel in the luxury of mere sensation. But in the depth of winter, when Nature lies despoiled of every charm, and wrapped in her shroud of sheeted snow, we turn our gratifications to moral sources. The dreariness and desolation of ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... the Mute and Blind Asylums, which were then combined in one, where we were received with great kindness, every possible attention being lavished upon us to heighten our interest and render our visit enjoyable. Going to Buffalo we had a social, cozy visit with an aunt of Hattie's, after which ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... Conde "Marsh technique,'' arsenic Maybrick, Mrs, poisoner Mayerne, Sir Theodore Meilhan, Joseph Mercury—see Poisons Messalina Moinet, Paul Molas, Dr, arsenic theory Monson, Sir Thomas Montagu, Violette Murdo, Janet 'Mute of malice,' ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... Conde should restrain his ardor, and let himself be vaguely regarded as the possible leader of the enterprise if it were to take place, but without giving it, until further notice, his name and co-operation. He was called the mute captain. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... different sexes; only it is purely intellectual and spiritual. Its law is the desire of the spirit to realize a whole, which makes it seek in another being what it finds not in itself. Thus the beautiful seek the strong, and the strong the beautiful; the mute seeks the eloquent, &c.; the butterfly settles always on the dark flower. Why did Socrates love Alcibiades? Why did Koerner love Schneider? How natural is the love of Wallenstein for Max; that of De Stael ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... gentler symptoms, tried softly to win the spear from her lady's grasp. "Let me be sentinel for a while." she said, "my sweet lady—I will at least scream louder than you, if any danger should approach." She ventured to kiss her cheek, and throw her arms around Eveline's neck while she spoke; but a mute caress, which expressed her sense of the faithful girl's kind intentions to minister if possible to her repose, was the only answer returned. They remained for many minutes silent in the same posture,—Eveline, like ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... danger might be used. The stranger could not be anxious on my account; and Wallace's dejection and weakness may apologize for his not soliciting my company, or expressing his fears for my safety. He was no sooner seated, than the traveller hurried away. I gazed after them, motionless and mute, till the carriage, turning a corner, ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... serenade the flowers, Upon their silver lute— And, nestled in their leafy bowers, The forest-birds are mute: The bright and glittering hosts above Unbar their golden gates, While Nature holds her court of love, And for her client waits. Then, lady, wake—in beauty rise! 'Tis now the promised hour, When torches kindle in the skies ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... snatches of her story and once she mentioned The Oskaloosa Kid as the murderer of the unnamed victim. The two men who had come last pricked up their ears at this and Bridge felt the boy's hand just touch his arm as though in mute appeal for belief and protection. ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... things she did not know. It was music the like of which she had never heard, barbaric, with a plaintive weirdness that brought to her fancy the moonlit nights of desert places, with palm trees mute in the windless air, and tawny distances. She seemed to know tortuous narrow streets, white houses of silence with strange moon-shadows, and the glow of yellow light within, and the tinkling of uncouth instruments, and the acrid ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham |
