"Mumble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... climbing the slope. For almost half an hour he kept his position, and behind him Roger muttered on, staring up at the sky. Amid the mutterings from time to time the old man heard a curse. They sank at length to a mumble, senseless, rambling on ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it for her admonition, and observed, 'But she was good,' only, however, in a mumble, that the other two thought it inexpedient to notice, though it made both hearts ache for her, even Alice's—with an additional pang of self-reproach that she herself was not good enough ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... men, was on the forecastle, looking after them and busying himself upon some small job that needed attention. The stillness of the peaceful afternoon seemed to have fallen upon the vessel; the men conversed together intermittently in subdued tones, that barely reached aft in the form of a low mumble; and the only sounds heard were the occasional soft rustle and flap of the canvas aloft, with an accompanying patter of reef-points, the jar of the rudder upon its pintles, the jerk of the wheel chains, and the soft, scarcely audible ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... have guessed Mark's intention, for raising her stick she forbade him to move, and before he had time to mumble an apology and flee she was introducing the ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... with angry impotence. How would he fight this unseen, unknown foe? He could take his suspicions to Steiner—but what could that futile fellow do? He would fiddle around and scratch his head and mumble inanities! Varr gritted his teeth in helpless rage as he watched the men fighting their slow but certain battle ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... form of God on high, Mutter and mumble low, And hither and thither fly; Mere puppets they, who come and go At bidding of vast formless things That shift the scenery to and fro, Flapping from out their Condor ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... could not. Her words were turned into a mumble. A cloth was over her mouth and face, fastened tightly, strong arms lifted her and carried her forwards. She could not see, she could not struggle. The noise of the fighting grew rapidly less. She was being swiftly carried away from it, now along a passage, now ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... the river, and it was too hot to stand or sit in the sunshine and wait for fish to bite. They went in swimming, but the sun, beating on their heads, seemed hotter while they were in the water than it did when they were on the land. Jim and Joe tried a game of mumble-to-peg, but they gave it up long before they had reached "cars." It was probably the hottest day of the year; and as it was clearly impossible to row or to do anything else while the heat lasted, the boys brought their ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the shivering dog on the floor, and Peg put a piece of meat under his nose. In her excitement, Jinnie rushed away to Lafe. Peg's mumble followed her even through ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... in a voice and manner as mechanical as that of the judge, would mumble his oft repeated story, giving the exact minute of his observations, the actions of the woman in accosting different pedestrians and in her final ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... not know why my boy's associations with Delorac's Island were especially wild in their character, for nothing more like outlawry than the game of mumble-the-peg ever occurred there. Perhaps it was because the boys had to get to it by water that it seemed beyond the bounds of civilization. They might have reached it by the bridge, but the temper of the boys on the western shore was uncertain; they would have had to run the ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... has had a hard time, but then, lazy worms often do. Now let us sing a little song about these flowers we've been hopping about in; it's pleasanter. Chirp, don't sing too loud, Chirk, not too fast, and Chee, don't mumble your words:" ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... calls you?" she said. "'Tis but a mumble, his little tongue is not nimble enough for clearness, but he says it his pretty best. 'Tis Mother ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and hoot, where bats flit in the gloaming, where gypsies lodge of nights, and where toads squat under the desecrated altar. Thither the bad priest comes by night with his light o' love, and at the first stroke of eleven he begins to mumble the mass backwards, and ends just as the clocks are knelling the midnight hour. His leman acts as clerk. The host he blesses is black and has three points; he consecrates no wine, but instead he drinks the water of a well into ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Dory!" she exclaimed, clutching the girl's arm with such force that the pail fell to the ground and the berries were spilled, "you ain't gwine for ter sell me to nobody? Say you ain't, an' fo' de Lawd I'll never touch nothin', nor lie, nor sass ole Miss, nor make faces and mumble like she does. I'll be a fust cut nigger, an' say my prars ebery night. I'se done got a new one down ter Jacksonville. ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... to tell them the next line if any of them faltered. The prompter, surely he was destiny, fate, the irresistible course of events, with which no man can struggle, any more than the actor can struggle with or alter the lines that are set down for him. He may mumble them, he may act dispiritedly and tamely, but he has undertaken a certain part; he has to ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... was shivering with cold, and understood little of this dark talk, began to mumble his ritual, skipping those parts of it which he could not remember. So another grain was planted in the cornfields of death and immortality, though when and where it should grow and what it should bear he neither knew nor cared, ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... dog!" exclaimed Landor one day. "I was once walking with him in a garden," (I forget in what part of England,) "laughing and joking, when Moore remarked the approach of some dignitary of the Catholic Church. He immediately began to mumble something, ran forward, and on his knees implored a blessing from the priest, crossing himself with reverential air. Ah, what it is to have faith! Landor, Landor, you are incorrigible! Don't you think so, Giallo?" asked the master of his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... sung lots of songs and we played marbles, mumble peg, and town ball. In de winter we would set around de fire and listen to our Mammy and Pappy tell ghost tales and witch tales. I don't guess dey was sho' nuff so, but we all ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... railways, and survive out of the ancient world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark. The children will gather round and say to us patriarchs, "Tell us, grandpapa, about the old world." And we shall mumble our old stories; and we shall drop off one by one; and there will be fewer and fewer of us, and these very old and feeble. There will be but ten prae-railroadites left: then three — then two — then one — then 0! If the hippopotamus had the least sensibility (of which I cannot ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... quiet of a mossy graveyard, nor in a church where priests mumble unmeaning words at fixed times, nor yet alone on the mountain-side—for he chafed at solitude—but he should have been buried at sea. In the midst of storm and driving sleet, at midnight, the sails should have been lowered, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... right, old mumble-peg. Don't you get carried away by the fire of old Rome. That's your motto. Here are the tools; a perfect picter of the sublime and beautiful; and all I hope is, that our friend and pitcher, the Deakin, will make a better job of it than he did last night. If he ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... on animated conversations with one and another in much the same way. Polly had initiated him in the mysteries of a discovery of mine, that it is not necessary to finish your sentences in a crowd, but by a sort of mumble, omitting sibilants and dentals. This, indeed, if your words fail you, answers even in public extempore speech,—but better where other talking is going on. Thus,—"We missed you at the Natural History Society, Ingham." Ingham replies,—"I am very gligloglum, that is, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... he, he!" added the Savelli, "we had him before us, and drew his teeth, one by one;—I would you could have heard the fellow mumble out for mercy!" ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... aristocratic-looking old fellow with a large nose and a very haughty look. He is a very important chief, but knew no English, and we carried on our conversation through the medium of Masirewa. He spoke in a kind of mumble, with a very thick voice. Once when he had been mumbling worse than usual there was a kind of restrained titter from someone in the crowd at the back. The "Buli" heard it, and slowly turning his head he transfixed the crowd with his piercing ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... the second floor, and it was from the central of these that the sinister sounds were issuing, sinking sometimes into a dull mumble and rising again into a shrill whine. It was locked, but the key had been left on the outside. Holmes flung open the door and rushed in, but he was out again in an instant, with ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... am a free man. I will live what I am, and speak what I feel to be the truth. The truth shall be its own justification. I will wear no robes, mumble no ceremonies, call no man Rabbi, and permit no man to call me Rabbi. I proclaim the universal priesthood ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... started to speak, but was cut short by the other. For all of his weakness there was spirit to the young man. He even laughed. The Rhamda drew out a watch. He held up two fingers. I heard Hobart mumble. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... do otherwise, Grace, seeing that I was bound just as Mr. Long was, but with the added burden of a gag in my mouth. He came in after I did, and we managed to get acquainted despite my gag. I could mumble and he got the mumble. After you released him he freed my mouth of the gag and cut the rope that held ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... about. There was a new sound in the air, a low mumble, a vague murmur. Men's voices. Outside, coming nearer swiftly, were men. Her first thought was of King; then she knew that it was too soon for him to have gotten out of the mountains, found assistance, and returned. A deep, heavy bass voice drowned out the ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... foreign creeds and dress. The worship of the marvellous continues.... Exaggerated force is most impressive.... So the ancient gods, heroes, and wonders are worshipped still. The simple countryfolk clap their hands, bow their heads, mumble their prayers, and offer the fraction of a cent to the first European-built house they see."—Philosophy in Japan, Past and Present, by ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... because my money was all in the hands of Saveliitch. I began to mumble excuses, when Zourine exclaimed, "Oh! well! Good God! I can wait till morning; don't be distressed about it. Now let us go to supper." What could I do? I finished the day as foolishly as I ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... he flung out, with a grin, as the Tocsin wrinkled up her face menacingly and began to mumble to herself. "He's de guy dat handed her one when she was young, an' she's been layin' fer him ever since! Sure! I know! Ain't I worked him fer her till I wears me shoes out tryin' to get somet'ing on him! Sure, she's in on it! Go on, Slimmy, wot's ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... do no more than mumble a: "Well, if you like to wait!" and point out the room. She followed Madeleine over the threshold, drying her hands ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... with speed what spot you claim by birth. Or with this club fall stricken to the earth! This club hath ofttimes slaughtered haughty kings! Why mumble unintelligible things? What land, what tribe produced that shaking head? Declare it! On my journey when I sped Far to the Kingdom of the triple King, And from the Main Hesperian did bring The goodly cattle to the Argive town, There I beheld a mountain looking down Upon two rivers: this the Sun ...
— Apocolocyntosis • Lucius Seneca
... the slaves were emancipated. A bold step must be taken. The parish must be astonished in some way or other; but no one was able to suggest what the step should be. At length, a very old lady was heard to mumble, in indistinct tones, 'Exeter Hall.' A sudden light broke in upon the meeting. It was unanimously resolved, that a deputation of old ladies should wait upon a celebrated orator, imploring his assistance, and the favour of a speech; and the deputation should also wait on two or three other imbecile ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Maurice stood looking at the scene in silent horror; they heard not Chouteau's appeals for assistance; were powerless to raise a hand. And Pache, in a sudden outburst of piety and pity, dropped on his knees, joined his hands, and began to mumble the prayers that are repeated at the bedside ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... another hour followed, and Anthony, who had now begun to feel the effect of his drubbing more keenly, renewed his clamor, with the result that a half-dozen policemen appeared, causing Allan to retreat to a corner and mumble prayers. From their demeanor it looked as though they were really bent upon mischief, but Kirk soon saw that an official had come in answer to his call. He felt less reassured when he perceived that the person in uniform who now stepped forward was the same upon whom he had turned ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... Stout answer the bell in person. There was a low mumble of voices. Then the landlady appeared in the parlor doorway, the footman ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... "To die!" She reiterated the words until her voice died away in a mumble. Hamilton was insensible for the moment to the physical torments which were sending out their criers again, and watched her changed face with an apprehension, which, mercifully, his mind was too confused by pain and laudanum to formulate. Angelica ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... revelation of self. Yet the mystery of his being is still unpierced. He is traitor, schemer, spy; but is he an Abbe? Perhaps not. At any rate, he once attended the 'Messe des Morts,' and was heard to mumble a 'Credo,' which, as every good Catholic remembers, has no ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... credit in taking them in. The other day a peasant woman called out to me in the street. I went into her house. Her stove smoked and she asked me to give her a charm to cure it. First of all I made her give me a good bit of bacon, and then I began to mumble a few words in Romany. 'You're a fool,' I said, 'you were born a fool, and you'll die a fool!' When I had got near the door I said to her, in good German, 'The most certain way of keeping your stove from smoking is not to light any fire in it!' and then ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... some five thousand out of pocket—that's all. Now, Anna, don't let us have any mumble-pie between us. I'm not the dark man of the story-books who lures the beautiful heroine on to play, and you're not the wonderful Princess who breaks her old pa and marries because he's stony. You can't ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... about the little runt that throwed that guy's trombone away, well his name is Lahey but we call him Shorty on acct. of him being so short. Well I hadn't payed much attention to this here Sebastian because he has always got a grouch and don't say nothing only to mumble at the officers when they ask him some question but Shorty knows him and last night he told me all about him and he has been pinched 50 times for stabbing people but he has got some pull or something and they can't never ...
— Treat 'em Rough - Letters from Jack the Kaiser Killer • Ring W. Lardner
... mask like some roguish roistering Roscius (I spit at them all) to beguile with Stage shows the gaping Woman, whose Sex hath still chiefly upheld these Mysteries, and are voiced to be the chief Stage-haunters, where, as I am told, the custom is commonly to mumble (between acts) apples, not ambiguously derived from that pernicious Pippin, (worse in effect than the Apples of Discord,) whereas sometimes the hissing sounds of displeasure, as I hear, do lively reintonate that snake-taking-leave, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... children of these nobles may be clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day?" The multitude were bewildered by the glare of royalty. But here and there a sullen fish-woman, leading her ragged, half-starved children, would mumble and mutter, and curse the "Austrian," as the beautiful queen swept by in her gorgeous equipage. These discontents and portentous murmurs were spreading rapidly, when neither king, queen, nor courtiers dreamed of ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... I am. Any woman will break her neck to see two people, for whom she does not care a hair-pin, stand up, one in white and the other in black, and mumble a few words that she knows by heart, and then take position at the end of a room and have "society" paraded up to them by solemn little corporals with white favors, and then file off to the rear for rations of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... but he was sorry to see so little merriment among us; that all fellow-travellers were for the time upon the level, and that it was always his way to make himself one of the company. "I remember," says he, "it was on just such a morning as this, that I and my lord Mumble and the {73} duke of Tenterden were out upon a ramble: we called at a little house as it might be this; and my landlady, I warrant you, not suspecting to whom she was talking, was so jocular and facetious, and made so many merry answers to our questions, that we were all ready to burst ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... ham at the eating-counter below-stairs was exhausted, the oysters were soon after minus, and those who had brought no lunch had to mumble ginger-cakes. It was remarked by good judges that as the morning advanced the coffee grew weaker, suggesting a possibility that the caterer could not distinguish between cocoa and cold water, and only replenished his boiler with the latter. There were more questions ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... positively brutal to say how very far from contented he felt, so Horace could only mumble that he had never been lodged like that before ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... up and brushed the dirt off his knees. "If there's anything that stirs my temper, it's this mumble-grumble, whiffle-and-hint business. Out and open, that's my style." He was reflecting testily on the peculiar reticence of ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... "high finance"; Which no more it wasn't for that poor old dame to trudge it, Tick, tack, tick, tack, on such a devil's dance: Crumbs, it took me quite aback to see her stop so humble, Casting up into my face a sort of shiny glance, Bless you, bless you, that was what I thought I heard her mumble; Lord, a prayer for poor old Bill, a rummy sort of chance! Crumbs, that shiny glance Kinder made me king of all the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... mumble-the-peg, high-spy, snap- the-whip, a rather dangerous performance, in which a long row of boys, with the biggest boy at one end, and tapering down to the smallest at the other end, would run over a field ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... harty-like about the atmusfere When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here— Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the trees, And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of the bees; But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mock— When the frost is on the punkin and ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... namaz (a leader of the prayers) at their religious meetings in the mosque. I found that the profound taciturnity which I had adopted was the best help towards the establishment of a high reputation for wisdom; and that, by the help of my beads, which I kept constantly counting, a mumble of my lips, and occasional groans and pious exclamations, the road to the highest consideration was ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... Rose. "Ever'thing he wants, he wants right now. He's been res'less as a cat in a bulldog's den ever sence he come home fuh dinner. Dunno whut's come into he ole bones, runnin' th'ugh his dinner lak a razo'-back." She withdrew in a continued mumble of censure. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... A mumble of assent replied to him, and the townsmen craned their necks to look out. A procession slowly wended its way up the street, led by the marshal, astride a piebald horse bearing the crude brand of the CG. Three men followed ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... stairs rapidly; the door creaked. Then voices began again outside the house, an indistinct mumble, rising to one ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... no interest in Uncle Remus's story of the horses' tails, and yet, as soon as the little boy and Aunt Tempy were through laughing at a somewhat familiar climax, the old African began to twist and fidget in his chair, and mumble to himself in a lingo which might have been understood on the Guinea coast, but which sounded out of place in Uncle Remus's Middle Georgia cabin. Presently, however, his uneasiness took tangible shape. He ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... than good manners put on his glasses to look at Mr. Edwardes, and I, having to say something, thought that I might as well introduce them to each other, though I took care to mumble Bunny's name so that it could not be heard. Mr. Edwardes bowed and opened his paper again, but Bunny having arrived at the fact that I was face to face with a don of some kind, thought he would try to pass the time ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... who was gazing stupidly at Patches, returned the salutation with an unintelligible mumble, and proceeded to ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... his month, and the viper thrust his head between his lips; upon which the old man closes them and makes believe to mumble the horrid head, the body appearing violently convulsed, as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... number are here prisoners: My cousin Morton, whom I came to visit. But he (good man) is at his morrow mass; But I, that neither care to say nor sing, Come to seek that preaching hate and prayer, And while they mumble up their orisons, We'll play a game at bowls. What say'st ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... freedom, and a very weak belief in right reason, we are soon silenced when a man pleads the prime right to do as he likes, because this is the prime right for ourselves too; and even if we attempt now and then to mumble something about reason, yet we have ourselves thought so little about this and so much about liberty, that we are in conscience forced, when our brother Philistine with whom we are meddling turns boldly round upon us and asks: ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... nothing said the fog. Only he rose up slowly and trailed away from the sea and, crawling up long valleys, took refuge among the hills; and night came down and everything was still, and the fog began to mumble in the stillness. And I hear him telling infamously to himself the tale of his horrible spoils. "A hundred and fifteen galleons of old Spain, a certain argosy that went from Tyre, eight fisher-fleets and ninety ships of the line, twelve warships under sail, with their carronades, three ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... and men gossiped in voices scarce above a whisper; and brown children fondled each other, laughing noiselessly, or lay asleep on rugs which would be costly elsewhere. In the bazaars nothing was selling, and no man did anything but mumble or eat, save the few scholars who, cross-legged on their mats, read and laboured towards Nirvana. Priests in their yellow robes and with bare shoulders went ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... what the Devil should she do with me? Can't her Old Chopps mumble her Beads o're, but I Must keep count of her Pater Nosters: No, no, she's Gon on Pilgrimage to some Shrine, to beg Children For my Lady; 'tis a ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... to know Jack Ware?" asked Dorene of Cornie, her mouth so full of the delicious sweets that she could only mumble. "Any man who can inspire such adoration in his own sister must be nothing ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... aboot me shall be seen To mumble prayers baith morn and e'en, I'll swap them a' for Mary Quean! I'll bid nae mess for me be sung, Dies ille, dies irae, Nor clanking bells for me be rung, Sic semper solet fieri! I'll gang ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Euchre Club and everybody was criticizing you for having solid gold prizes when they were at your house. They said it was vulgar ostentation. I didn't say anything for the longest time, but finally when they all said your money had gone to your head, hadn't it, I admit I did mumble, 'It seems so.' But it is only what everybody else says all the time, and I assure you I didn't really mean it. Of course nobody can behave just the same after they are a millionaire as they did before. But I am awfully ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... sweet night air to enter in; There, with a thumb to keep her place She'd read, with stern and wrinkled face, Her mild eyes gliding very slow Across the letters to and fro, While wagged the guttering candle flame In the wind that through the window came. And sometimes in the silence she Would mumble a sentence audibly, Or shake her head as if to say, "You silly souls, to act this way!" And never a sound from night I'd hear, Unless some far-off cock crowed clear; Or her old shuffling thumb should turn Another page; and rapt and stern, Through her great glasses bent on ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... must instantly—instantly!—know the difference between "Platoon right," for instance, and "Right by squads," even though the commands may not have been given for an hour. And one must know it whether corporal or not, for half the time the corporals do not yet know it themselves, and either mumble their commands or are silent, so that they are no help. And even if a fellow knows what to do, but lags in the doing of it, then he is likely to put the whole line out. Further, freight trains rumble by at the bottom of the drill field, the wind whistles ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... without glasses, and to which they fix the rinds of scooped oranges . . . ! particularly while dangling the censers they keep shaking them in derision, and letting the ashes fly about their heads and faces, one against the other. In this equipage they neither sing hymns nor psalms nor masses, but mumble a certain gibberish as shrill and squeaking as a herd of pigs whipped on to market. The nonsense verses they ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... Confucius cried, "Alas! there is no one that knows me," and a disciple asked what was meant, he replied, "I do not murmur against God. I do not mumble against man. My studies lie low, and my penetration lies high. But there is ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... bushes at the side of the road their pulses throbbed in great excitement as they observed that the peddler addressed some one inside the car. His tone was low so they did not catch the words, but they heard a mumble and saw his ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... would have been a rare chance had his projection of the self that we are so apt to make an object of invidious allusion stayed out. What it all really most comes to, you feel again, is that none of his impulses prospered in solitude, or, for that matter, were so much as permitted to mumble their least scrap there; he was predestined and condemned to sociability, which no league of neglect could have deprived him of even had it speculatively tried: whereby what was it but his own image that he most saw reflected in other faces? ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... remit both twain. I see the trick on't: here was a consent, Knowing aforehand of our merriment, To dash it like a Christmas comedy. Some carry-tale, some please-man, some slight zany, Some mumble-news, some trencher-knight, some Dick, That smiles his cheek in years, and knows the trick To make my lady laugh when she's dispos'd, Told our intents before; which once disclos'd, The ladies did change favours, ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... turned first red, then white, and tried to mumble out some evasion. But Mr Barnacle was not the man to be ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... to give a truly appreciative and affectionate sketch of young Arthur Mynors; and then he quotes the sentence about the Master of the Beagles, and on this he comments thus: "The aged Barbarian will, upon this, admiringly mumble to us his story how the battle of Waterloo was won in the playing-fields of Eton. Alas! disasters have been prepared in those playing-fields as well as victories; disasters due to inadequate mental training—to want of application, knowledge, intelligence, lucidity. The Eton playing-fields have ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... a low mumble as the men passed on. Gregory emerged from his cover and looked after the two fishermen. Then he noticed the girl had finished her calculations ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... boats bobbing up and down as they trail their nets, or the men gather in the glittering fish, and munch their rude breakfasts, tediously heated by smoky stoves, while they gaze on the white-sailed stranger, and mumble among themselves as to what in the world he can be. The sun mounts and the breeze presses till we are at the bay of the Somme with its shifting sands, its incomprehensible currents, and its low and treacherous coast, buoyed and beaconed enough to puzzle you right into the shoals. The yacht, with ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... anxiously away towards the town and began to mumble. Trent was in despair. Presently ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the scared-mouse kind. She looks you square in the eye when there's any call for it and she don't mumble her remarks when she has something to say. Not Miss Joyce. Her words come out clear and crisp, with a slight roll to the r's and all the final letters sounded, like she'd been ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... naval affairs." droned the clerk, mechanically. "House Bill No. 1,109 is amended to read as follows—" And his voice sank to an unintelligible mumble, for every Senator present he well knew was aware that the amendment named Altacoola as the naval ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... we had,—very old and weak, and no use at all. He used to sit by the gate all day, and mumble to himself, and seem to look at things that weren't there. His head was quite white with age, which is not a common thing with Kafirs, as you know; and he was so foolish and helpless that his people ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... "you have come to this—you dare not speak, you dare not utter the name of 'Bonaparte' aloud; you barely mumble a few words in a whisper here, in this street, in the Faubourg St. Antoine, where, from all the doors, from all the windows, from all the pavements, from all the very stones, ought to be ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... first murmur at the telephone, through the thick mahogany door, there fell a silence more exciting to the listener than the indistinct sounds had been. Then suddenly there was a stirring, and the mumble of several heavy, hushed voices. After that, dead silence again, which remained unbroken. Evidently the police had been sent for; had come; had listened to the story of the attempted theft as told by the thief's captor. ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... too fly. You've got only to pass a remark on his sail-cloth coat to make him shut up. All the town knows it. But he's got you to listen to his crazy talk whenever he chooses. Don't I hear you two at it, jabber, jabber, mumble, mumble——— ...
— One Day More - A Play In One Act • Joseph Conrad
... months to pass any law for enforcing obedience, lest it should trench on the liberties of free white men. The service was to the last degree unpopular. "If we talk of obliging men to serve their country," wrote London Carter, "we are sure to hear a fellow mumble over the words 'liberty' and 'property' a thousand times."[335] The people, too, were in mortal fear of a slave insurrection, and therefore dared not go far from home.[336] Meanwhile a panic reigned along ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... you, Sydney?" he asked. "You are duller than ever. I am positively not going to sit here and mumble about the weather. How are the Carooms? Have you heard from ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... unutterable nonsense. Claremont, however, thought otherwise, and ran his form accordingly. In repetition this was especially noticeable. Kennedy, a small boy with glasses, who was always word-perfect, would nervously mumble through Henry V's speech (they always learnt Shakespeare) in an accurate but totally uninspired way. Mansell would stand at the back of the form and blunder out blank verse, much of which was his own, and little of which was Shakespeare, but ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... answers were wretched; he could only mumble weak assertions that he knew his own business best. They drove him from his half-eaten supper into the shop, to close it for the night, his ears aflame and tears of vexation behind his spectacles. "Why had he left the crystal in the window so long? The folly of it!" That was ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... recounting the beads, almost all worn smooth, of his rosary of pain—which had for the fingers of memory and the recurrences of wonder the same felt break of the smaller ones by the larger that would have aided a pious mumble in some dusky altar-chapel. ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... persuaded to lift her face and mumble an explanation. "I was asleep, and I heard my name called, and I looked up. There was a white shadow on the door. I seized my pillow and threw it with all my might, and there was a loud crash and a roar, and then began ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... the wiring party's going out"— And yawning sentries mumble, "Wirers going out," Unravelling; twisting; hammering stakes with muffled thud, They toil with stealthy haste and ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... mumble so. I hear my man, Adolph. I trained him.... You ought to have an ear-trumpet. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... tone—for by this time the Reverend Jedediah was close at hand—he continued, "But may be daddy don't know, right down sure, what we've been doin'. Let's try him with a lie—'twon't hurt, noway: let's tell him we've been playin' mumble-peg." ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... for the heir of a kingdom. It is of Canton flannel, a plain, homely thing, in one piece, buttoning ignominiously down the back, and having no apertures for the august hands and feet to come through. In vain the little king-to-be may mumble the Canton flannel with his mouth. He cannot bite his royal nails; and, hush! in the next crib a princess asleep. Why that cruel, tight cap down over her ears? It's because she will double them forward and lie on them, so that if something isn't ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... blameless dictates of nature. The remembrance of those childish reproaches haunts me yet oftentimes in my dreams. My school-days come again, and the horror I used to feel, when in some silent corner, retired from the notice of my unfeeling playfellows, I have sat to mumble the solitary slice of gingerbread allotted me by the bounty of considerate friends, and have ached at heart because I could not spare a portion of it, as I saw other boys do, to some favorite boy; for if I know my own heart, I was never selfish,—never ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... the dent of its claws in the flesh, and resting its squat, outstretched head on the centre of the knee-cap. And so cunningly was the creature perched (as its owner gleefully pointed out) that the least movement of his crural muscles set the jagged backbone a-quivering, and the slobbering lips to mumble and mow. Cospatric said that dragon was a most finished piece of workmanship, and worth ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... ago or more, and it might have been so much worse for him that the memory of the episode had in it hardly a trace of misfortune. Then, steam navigation expanding in these seas and men of his craft being scarce at first, he had 'got on' after a sort. He was eager to let strangers know in a dismal mumble that he was 'an old stager out here.' When he moved, a skeleton seemed to sway loose in his clothes; his walk was mere wandering, and he was given to wander thus around the engine-room skylight, smoking, without relish, doctored tobacco in a brass bowl at the end of a cherrywood stem four ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... ignoramus, Mumble was for learning famous. Mumble said one day to Dumble: "Ignorance should be more humble. Not a spark have you of knowledge That was got in any college." Dumble said to Mumble: "Truly You're self-satisfied unduly. Of things in college I'm denied A knowledge—you ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... himself," she was murmuring. "As like as two peas. I was afraid he might be—would be—" The words trailed off into a mumble, for she had lowered her hand and was staring in dull surprise ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... grin, At breakfast, on the sly, And mock the wobble of his chin And eyebrows belt so high And kind: "How did you rest, last night?" We'd mumble and let on Our voices trimbled, and our sight Was ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... in a monotonous, terrified insane mumble. To divert him Babbitt said, "Why, you got ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... Cyril" cried Mr. Palsey "you're a born idiot, the girl will soon recover, you'll marry her and we'll go halfs with the money, its simply ridiculous the way you mople and mumble over her, let her alone I say and tell me how the murd—the bussiness ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... instantly regarded as a malignant private enemy of the criticised. Yet something in this direction ought to be done, for even actors recruited from the 'Varsities will murder the language, debase the currency of manners, mumble unchecked of "libery," and "Febuery," and "seckertery," and in many other barbarous ways betray the vulgarising influence of culture. Only one or two courses seem open to mitigate this evil—to end the harmful conspiracy of silence which fosters it. The establishment of such an academy ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... speak to you in a loud voice and in a tongue which you do not understand. Appear to listen intently to what I say, and occasionally mumble something as though replying in the same language—our escape may hinge upon ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... this roundabout for a bit, and then had the fortune to fall off into a tete-a-tete with a lady whom my aunt introduced as Mrs. Mumble—but then she introduced everybody to me as Mumble that afternoon, either by way of ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... the surface be everlastingly damned!" said the other man in brown as Hoopdriver receded. Hoopdriver heard the mumble and did not distinguish the words, and he felt a pleasing sense of having duly asserted the wide sympathy that binds all cyclists together, of having behaved himself as becomes one of the brotherhood of the wheel. The other man ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... and finally managed it. As Raven remembered, it was something about pa'tridges and his gun. Whether he was shaken by fright, one could not have told, but he was, as Charlotte remarked upon it afterward, "all to pieces." Raven ignored the mumble, whatever it was, and Tenney, finally understanding that he might as well be as far off the earth as Dick, for all the attention anybody was going to pay him, turned, limping, and then Raven, with that mechanical sensitiveness to physical need always awake in him now, caught up a stick lying ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... you say," he cried in accents shrill with irritability; "you mouth and mumble like an Englishman. You ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... socialism, is condemned an ignoramus out of his own mouth. He does not know the literature of socialism, its philosophy, nor its politics. He wags his head sagely and rattles the dry bones of dead and buried ideas. His lips mumble mouldy phrases, such as, "Men are not born equal and never can be;" "It is Utopian and impossible;" "Abstinence should be rewarded;" "Man will first have to be born again;" "Cooperative colonies have always failed;" and "What if we do divide up? in ten years there would be rich ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... illusions, from our cradle upwards, in dread of the coming grave, purchasing a drug for our poltroonery at the expense of our sanity. We uphold our wayward steps with the promises and the commandments for crutches, but on either side of us trudge the shadow Death and the bacchanal Sex, and we mumble prayers against the one, while we scourge ourselves for leering at the other. On one only of these can Browning be said to have spoken with novel force—the relations of sex, which he has treated with a subtlety and freedom, and often with a beauty, unapproached since Goethe. On the problem ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... a sparrow, but she did not deign to answer them. They asked a robin, but she was hurrying home with a worm in her mouth and could only mumble something which sounded like "yeast." They asked a pussy-cat and she said if they would come home with her first she would look it up in a book she had there. But Hazel did not want to go. "For," she whispered to Bushy-Tail, "she has ...
— Hazel Squirrel and Other Stories • Howard B. Famous
... hails the morn, and the rumble Of wheels is abroad in the streets, Still I tumble and mumble and grumble At the fleas in my ears and—the sheets; Mumble and grumble and tumble Till the buzz of the bees is no more; In a jumble I mumble and drumble And ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... the wrong bit, then it is all over with the poor patient's chance of not suffering. Very few people know how to read to the sick; very few read aloud as pleasantly even as they speak. In reading they sing, they hesitate, they stammer, they hurry, they mumble; when in speaking they do none of these things. Reading aloud to the sick ought always to be rather slow, and exceedingly distinct, but not mouthing—rather monotonous, but not sing song—rather loud, but not noisy—and, above ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... head, and, gazing up at the starlit heavens, wandered off into dreams of the life he would like to lead but from which he seemed inexorably shut out. The seriousness of life was striking deeper than ever into Joe's heart, and he lay silent, thinking hard. A mumble of heavy voices came to them from the Reindeer; and from the land the solemn notes of a church bell floated across the water, while the summer night wrapped them slowly ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... process of sound adult mental activity which is the cardinal element in human life. After all, in spite of the pretentious impostors who trade upon the claim, literature, contemporary literature, is the breath of civilized life, and those who sincerely think and write the salt of the social body. To mumble over the past, to live on the classics, however splendid, is senility. The New Republic, therefore, will sustain its authors. In the past the author lived within the limits of his patron's susceptibility, and led the world, so ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... fool alarms, Hags meet to mumble o'er their charms, The night-mare rides the dreaming ass, And fairies trip it on ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... ran to the river bank, but the boat was floating in midstream and the Wizard was obliged to mumble some magic words to draw it to the bank, so the Scarecrow could get the oil-can. Then back they flew to the tin man, and while the Scarecrow carefully oiled each joint the little Wizard moved the joints gently back and forth until ...
— Little Wizard Stories of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... 68 to mumble painful guilty the dormitory the tie the chin he got off with a good fright without appearing to do so, he was looking at them towards ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... the portals and hesitate and then, stumbling across the threshold, you either dive on through to the barber shop—if there is a barber shop in connection—or else you mumble something about being in a hurry and coming back again, and retreat with all the grace and ease that would be shown by a hard shell crab that was trying to back into the mouth of a milk-bottle. You are likely to ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... have eaten, our remarks grow rarer. Then Mame begins again to mumble; once again she yields to emotion under the harsh flame of the lamp, and once again her eyes grow dim in her complicated Japanese mask that is crowned with cotton-wool, and something dimly ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... not? Only what makes you mumble like that? but they all do it now, I see. Bless my soul! our words used to come out like brandy-cherries; but now a sentence is like raspberry-jam, on ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... something about young people having to make mistakes, but his mumble was pleasant, and then he crossed to her ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... that, in the holy administration, all things should be pronounced with a clear, loud, and treatable voice, that the people might receive some fruit thereby. These men, lest the people should understand them, mumble up all their service, not only with a drowned and hollow voice, but also in ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... laboring under a strong, repressed excitement. Newman wore an air of triumph, as though he had just accomplished a difficult victory. My tongue had suddenly become very thick, but I managed to mumble a query. "Say, ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... and abhorred. Yea, but, said Grangousier, they pray to God for us. Nothing less, answered Gargantua. True it is, that with a tingle tangle jangling of bells they trouble and disquiet all their neighbours about them. Right, said the monk; a mass, a matin, a vesper well rung, are half said. They mumble out great store of legends and psalms, by them not at all understood; they say many paternosters interlarded with Ave-Maries, without thinking upon or apprehending the meaning of what it is they say, which truly I call mocking of God, and not prayers. But so help ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Larry. "You two were made for each other. She's waiting for you to step up and talk man's talk to her—and instead you sulk in your tent and mumble about something you think she might have thought or said a year ago! You're too sensitive; you're too proud; you've got too few brains. It's a million dollars to one that in your handsome, well-bred way you've fallen out with ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... Excellent paper in the AMA Journal last July: 'The Inadequacies of Modern Orthodiagramatic Techniques in Demonstrating Minimal Left Ventricular Hypertrophy.' A brilliant study, simply brilliant! Now this patient—" He glanced toward Wheatley, and his voice dropped to a mumble. ...
— An Ounce of Cure • Alan Edward Nourse
... the standard tape opening in a rapid mumble: "Any person or agent unauthorized for this tape please refrain from viewing further, under penalties as prescribed by law." Then he looked off, out past the screen to the left, and said: "Dr. Thomas O'Connor, of Westinghouse Laboratories. Will you come ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... on his knees trying to mumble a prayer, while the minister sat with bowed head. The lantern cast flickering shadows in the corners of the room, and the firelight danced and fell. A water bug crawled over the floor; a spider dropped from ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... Jones menacing him with the flagon. "Thou liest in thy throat. Or if thou didst mumble some nonsense in mine ears, I paid no heed, doubting not that thou hadst told it all before to thy gossips among these pious folk. But, Governor, if it is your pleasure to seek out this place, I will lend you some of my men and set you forward at ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... sharp-pointed grey and glistening nails, clawed the keys with a dreadful mechanical motion. There were stacks of music-sheets on counters, and shelves, and dangling from overhead wires. The girl at the piano never ceased playing. She played mostly by request. A prospective purchaser would mumble something in the ear of one of the clerks. The fat man with the megaphone would bawl out, "'Hicky Bloo!' Miss Ryan." And Miss Ryan would oblige. She made a hideous rattle and crash and clatter of sound compared to which an Indian tom-tom would have seemed as dulcet as the strumming of a lute ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... himself and, walking rapidly, would try through pure physical fatigue to force his mind to give up the remembrance of the persistent, complaining voice. At times he would give way to fits of anger and strew impotent oaths along the silent street, or, in another mood, would mumble and talk to himself, praying for strength and courage to keep his own head during the ordeal through which he thought they were passing together. And when he returned from such a walk and from such a struggle ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... puzzled, till something seemed to dawn upon him; but the unwonted light in his eyes died out instantly. As a Jacobus on his native heath, what a mere skipper chose to say could not touch him, outcast as he was. As a ship-chandler he could stand anything. All I caught of his mumble was a vague—"quite correct," than which nothing could have been more egregiously false at bottom—to my view, at least. But I remembered—I had never forgotten—that I must see the girl. I did not mean to go. I meant to stay in the house till I had ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... a little pebble; I wiped it clean on my coat sleeve and put it into my mouth so that I might have something to mumble. Otherwise I did not stir, and didn't even wink an eyelid. People came and went; the noise of cars, the tramp of hoofs, and chatter of tongues filled the air. I might try with the buttons. Of course there would be no use in trying; and besides, I was now in a rather ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... much owing to the habitual languor of that long illness. That satirical mumble is the only trouble he will take to lift up his testimony, except when a thing is most decidedly his duty, and then he ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and other persons of fashion, but is niggardly of his hospitality towards his own equals, is a Dinner-giving Snob. My dear friend, Jack Tufthunt, for example, knows ONE Lord whom he met at a watering-place: old Lord Mumble, who is as toothless as a three-months-old baby, and as mum as an undertaker, and as dull as—well, we will not particularise. Tufthunt never has a dinner now but you see this solemn old toothless patrician at the right-hand of Mrs. ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... chair staring at him. Her mouth opened and a mumble came from it. Then there was silence a moment, and then she began to shake, and one hand beat upon the table with its rings. So they waited a while, watching the tremulous, shapeless mass of her, and the tap, tap, tap of her hand beat ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... cheer! What jolly, fat friars, Sitting round the great, roaring fires, Roaring louder than they, With their strong wines, And their concubines, And never a bell, With its swagger and swell, Calling you up with a start of affright In the dead of night, To send you grumbling down dark stairs, To mumble your prayers, But the cheery crow Of cocks in the yard below, After daybreak, an hour or so, And the barking of deep-mouthed hounds, These are the sounds That, instead of bells, salute the ear. And then all day Up and away Through the forest, hunting the deer! Ah, my ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Isms, and Ologies, Science, and Cram, Quadratic Equations, and Butter, The Pons asinorum, and Strawberry Jam, And the Cane, did I mumble or mutter." ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... What fretted her so, what was wearing her down to the point of fatigue, was the patent imbecility of her reluctance. There would have been some sense of it if Cutty had proposed a real marriage. All she had to do was mumble a few words, sign her name to a document, live out West for a few months, and be in comfortable circumstances all the rest of ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... fall, and began to mumble again. Lingard turned his ear towards him instinctively, caught something that sounded like "Very well"—then some more mumbling—then ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... intended is not of age; and we keep the secret even from her father. In this village you will mumble over the bans without one of your congregation ever taking heed of the name. I shall stay here a month for the purpose. She is in London, on a visit to a relation in the city. The bans on her side will be published with equal privacy in a little church near ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Saint Giles bless Walkyn's long legs! 'Twas Walkyn I saw—Walkyn hath brought down the outlaws—the woods be full of them. Oho! Sir Pertolepe's slow fire shall not roast me yet awhile, nor his dogs mumble the ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... was playing a part, nor help saying to ourselves, as we turned to leave the scene, "This man is not sincere in this: he is a humbug." And when, some years later, we saw him present himself before a large audience in a state not far removed from intoxication, and mumble incoherence for ten minutes, and when, in the course of the evening, we saw him make a great show of approval whenever the clergy were complimented, the impression was renewed that the man had expended his sincerity, and that nothing was real to him any more ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... in him for the moment from lack of co-ordination. The two or three things he might have said seemed to strangle each other in the attempt to get right of way. In response to Guion's confidences he could only mumble something incoherent and pass on to the drawing-room door. It was a wide opening, hung with portieres, through which he could see Olivia Guion standing by the crackling wood fire, a foot on the low fender. ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... to talk to him, but I was suffering too much to do more than mumble. I don't know how long we'd been there. I suppose he'd only stopped to rest, for before long he hoisted me over his shoulder again and away we went. Quite a while after that we struck that little valley ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... that's what you are, Killeny Boy, high-strung but reasonable," he continued to mumble as Kwaque helped to roll ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... bewildered long before she had ever reached the end of it, by this way she was shoved, so to speak, from person to person, without ever really finding out who half of them were, for it would seem as if there had been a conspiracy to mumble the names spoken to Arethusa, that she could almost have fled the Party. "The Advice to Young Ladies" had said nothing of such a proceeding as being part of the Routine of Parties, nor had Elinor made any mention of it. ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... official reports of the Lords' debates a speech begins thus: "Lord —— (who was indistinctly heard)." The Commons' report might well adopt this salutary practice as a warning to Members who persistently mumble, or who address their remarks to the body of the House instead of to the SPEAKER. Ministers are the worst offenders. One of them was asked this afternoon, for example, whether the Judicial Adviser to the SULTAN had discouraged the use of the English language in the Egyptian Courts, but all ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various |
