|
|
|
More "Stammer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stammer, and the door reply, The hall wake, yawn, and smile; the torpid stair Will grumble at our feet, the table cry: 'Fetch my belongings for me; I am bare.' A clatter! Something in the attic falls. A ghost has lifted up his robes and fled. The loitering shadows move along the walls; Then silence very ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... need the next, Let the world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find Him. So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled Hoti's deg. business—let it be!— deg.129 Properly based Oun deg.— deg.130 Gave as the doctrine of the enclitic De deg. deg.131 Dead from the waist down. Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: Hail to your purlieus, All ye highfliers ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... prospects, I arose early the next morning and walked briskly to Captain Tappken's office. Punctually at ten o'clock I announced myself at the Admiralty and after the usual procedure with the door man, I was received by Herr von Stammer, private secretary of Captain Tappken. A very astute and calculating gentleman is Herr von Stammer. Suave, genial, talkative, he has the plausible and unstudied art of extracting information without committing himself ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... first took his seat in the House, the Speaker was directed to thank him, in the name of the people, for his great services as an officer. This the Speaker did in glowing terms, quite unexpectedly to Washington. Washington rose to reply. His face flushed; he struggled to speak; but could only stammer, and stood speechless and trembling. "Sit down, Mr. Washington," said the Speaker, with a smile. "Your modesty equals your valor, and that surpasses the power of ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... bewildered by his mother's serious manner wished to reply, but he could only stammer out some ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... up into a deep bow, but before he had time to stammer out some apologetic self-introduction, ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... Burnham-Seaforth. "A great, handsome fool—all beauty and no brains, like a doll of wax!" Then she bent over and murmured smilingly to Zuilika: "I shall make a bigger nincompoop of this big, fair sap-head than Heaven already has done before he leaves here, just for the sake of seeing him stammer ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... (stairs) sxtuparo. Stake paliso, fosto. Stake (wager) veto. Stalactite stalaktito. Stalagmite stalagmito. Stale malfresxa. Stalk (plant) trunketo. Stall (at market, etc.) budo. Stall (for beast) stalo. Stallion cxevalviro. Stamen (bot.) paliseto. Stamin stamino. Stammer balbuti. Stamp (to mark) stampi. Stamp (brand) stampajxo. Stamp, postage posxtmarko. Stamp with foot piedfrapadi. Stamper (marker) stampilo. Stanch (firm) firma, fortika. Stanch (trusty) fidela, fervora. Stanchion subteno. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... orator, born in Athens; had many impediments to overcome to succeed in the profession, but by ingenious methods and indomitable perseverance he subdued them all, and became the first orator not of Greece only, but of all antiquity; a stammer in his speech he overcame by practising with pebbles in his mouth, and a natural diffidence by declaiming on the sea-beach amid the noise of the waves; while he acquired a perfect mastery of the Greek language by binding himself down to copy five times over ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to foot; and all he could do was to stretch out his lips, and to stammer in an almost ecstatic ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... but I was not prepared to answer him, and in the rush of his indignant accusation my defence was swept down, and I could only stammer out— ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... was with astonishment, Mrs. Peckover managed to stammer a faint answer in the affirmative, and to add that the initials, "M. G.," would be found somewhere on the broken board lying at their feet. She then tried to ask a question or two in her turn; but the words died away in faint exclamations of surprise. "To think of me and ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... the lady, 'the Senorita Teresa Valdevia. The evening air grows chill. Adios, Senorito.' And before Harry could stammer out a word, she had disappeared ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... in bewilderment; then, as the captain's meaning dawned upon him, he stepped forward impulsively and, seizing his hand, began to stammer ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... farther to my house,' he added; 'it's a long way to walk; let us first go to Hor's.' (The reader must excuse my omitting his stammer.) ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... wert to be the advance-guard of humanity, the herald of all progress; how often hast thou betrayed this high commission! Fain would the tongue in clear, triumphant accents draw example from thy story, to encourage the hearts of those who almost faint and die beneath the old oppressions. But we must stammer and blush when we speak of many things. I take pride here, that I can really say the liberty of the press works well, and that checks and balances are found naturally which suffice to its government. I can say that the minds of our people are alert, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... nothing to be done there. The professors—I don't think they like him much; he is too clever. When he came into the class-room and talked Latin to Johnson, the Professor of Latin, and Johnson could only stammer out a word or two, I guess he didn't make a friend;" and the girl laughed ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... herself. She is like a maniac. She has lost you; she cannot explain to—to Mademoiselle's father. Mon dieu, when he met her unexpectedly in the hall, he shouts, 'where is my daughter?' And poor Madame she has but to shiver and stammer and—run away! Oui! She dash out into the rain! It ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... with more transcendent sense, Hearing unchecked, and unimpeded sight. If we who walk now, then should wing the air, Who stammer now, then should discard the voice, Who grope now, then should see with other sight, And send new ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... shoes, while Alice had one hand up her clothes arranging her underclothing. The mother stopped dead and shot me one glance I shall never forget. 'Why, Alice, you frighten me!' she said. I feigned surprise and asked 'What is the matter?' Alice, although she was frightened out of her wits, managed to stammer: 'He couldn't see me—you couldn't see me, could you?' appealing to me. But I had managed to collect my senses a bit and although still under that maternal eye I asked,—at last turning slowly around to Alice: 'See? What do you mean? See what?' And I looked so mystified that the mother ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... same gentle, appeasing voice that he had first used on me, "My dear Bernibus, do not be rash, do not act in anger. Let's talk this over, and see ... and see if we can't find a peaceful solution," his fear of death evidently caused him to stammer. ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... but my heart burned as I listened. And I have heard a man talk with smooth speech, and it rolled off me as easily as it rolled out of him. Do your best, and leave the rest. If we are in touch with God His fire burns whether the tongue stammer or has good control ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... astounding proposition as calmly as though he were asking the Kentuckian to a lunch of bacon and hardtack, and Crittenden flushed with gratitude and his heart leaped—his going was sure now. Before he could stammer out his thanks, the general was gone. Just then Rivers, who, to his great joy, had got at least that far, sat down by him. He was much depressed. His regiment was going, but two companies would be left behind. ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... beauty, they say, in her youth, There was much fierce fire in her bold black eye. "Am I deceived in you both?" quoth she. "If one spark of her father's spirit lives In this girl here—so, this Leigh, Ralph Leigh, Let us hear what counsel the springald gives." Then I stammer'd, somewhat taken aback— (Simon, you ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... themselves writhe on the ground like a worm trodden on by an invisible foot. And before the dawn broke he would be stiff and cold. Parties so visited have been known to rise like one man, abandon the fire and run off into the night in mute panic. Or a comrade talking to you on the march would stammer suddenly in the middle of a sentence, roll affrighted eyes, and fall down with distorted face and blue lips, breaking the ranks with the convulsions of his agony. Men were struck in the saddle, on sentry duty, in the firing line, carrying orders, serving the guns. I have been ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... not matter in the least," Drusie said eagerly, when Hal began to stammer out his shamefaced apologies. "I don't want a present from you one bit. I know quite well that boys must have a great deal to do with their ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... and brothers in cleverness and appreciation. Among small tradesmen, the wife always comes to the rescue of her slow spouse when she sees him befogged in a bargain. In the fields, you ask a peasant some question about your journey. He will hesitate, and stammer, and end with, "Quien sabe?" but his wife will answer with glib completeness all you want to know. I can imagine no cause for this, unless it be that the men cloud their brains all day with the fumes of tobacco, and the women ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... and place stools near the stove, but whether he was quite drunk or whether some narcotic had been mixed with the brandy, he fell back on his seat, trying to stammer out an excuse. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... afterwards, her husband came up to Andrea and taking his arm with much effusion, began asking particulars about the duel. He was a youngish man, slim, with very thin fair hair and colourless eyes and projecting teeth. He had a slight stammer. ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... got," he replied, in a kind of stammer; "an' as to Sally, the nerra one o' me knows any thing about ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... underwent an interruption through the fact that Yakov Boev, a man who possessed both a stammer and a squint, became similarly filled with a desire to tell us something about a fish. Yet from the moment that he began his narrative everyone declined to believe it, and laughed at his broken verbiage as, frequently ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... with his emotion and desire to be polite, half rose to acknowledge the pretty speech, and to stammer some sort of reply, but as he did so his hand by chance touched her own that was resting upon the table, and a shock that was for all the world like a shock of electricity, passed from her skin into his body. His soul wavered and ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... a family—with stepchildren, so to speak, who adored him. And what could he say to his mother's obsession, to which she came back again and again—her longing to see her grandchildren before she died? Madame Dupont waited only long enough for George to stammer out a few protestations, and then in the next breath to take them back; after which she proceeded to go ahead with the match. The family lawyers conferred together, and the terms of the settlement were worked out and agreed upon. It happened that immediately ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... Poor Lily tried to stammer her apologies, while Carrie sought to soothe the enraged Frenchman by saying, that "Miss Gordon was merely complimenting his ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... now, Visus, is your heaven at a stay, Or is it his motus trepidationis that makes him stammer? I pray you, Memory, set ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... deceitful like vipers: but in the hell into which I was permitted to look, they appeared to me as if they were ghastly pale, with faces of chalk: and as they are mere concupiscences, they do not like to speak: and if they do speak, they only mutter and stammer various things, which are understood by none but their companions who are near them; but presently, as they sit or stand, they make themselves unseen, and fly about in the cavern like phantoms; for on this occasion they are in phantasy, and phantasy appears ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... opened again just as this introduction was over, and a new nervousness attacked Alma. Another tinge of yellowness crept into her skin, her eyes grew wistful, and she began to stammer. ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... said Colonel Churchill slowly, "you don't by any chance love some one else? What does that colour mean, Jacqueline? Don't stammer! ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... pick of gentility; Nothing can phase you, you've such a facility; Nobody ever yet found your utility— There is the charm of you, Barney McGee; Under conditions that others would stammer in, Still unperturbed as a cat or a Cameron, Polished as somebody in the Decameron, Putting the glamour on price or Pawnee. In your meanderin', Love and philanderin', Calm as a mandarin Sipping his tea! Under the art of you, Parcel and part of you, Here's to the heart ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... by her name, very quietly, and it is as though I made a loud avowal! She turns, and it seems that this is the first time I have seen her naked face. "Kiss me," she says; and without speaking we stammer, and ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... her so pale and wasted to a skeleton. He was still as tender-hearted as ever, despite his conquering airs. He could not even think of one of those fine phrases which nowadays he usually concocted so easily. The maid behind him gave him a pinch to make him laugh. But he could only stammer out: ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... suffered Mr. Douce to stammer out sentence upon sentence, till at length, as he rang for coffee, his lordship stretched himself with the air of a man stretching himself into self-complacency or ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... you?" snarled the man, little beads of perspiration gathered on his forehead. "Or blush and stammer any of the idiotic things which a woman says to the man at the moment of his supreme idiocy. Or flatter yourself with the vanity of it. Are you a good woman or a bad? I don't know. Are you generous or mean? I don't know. Are you loyal and stanch and true—or treacherous and contemptible? I don't ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... unintelligible confession was closing round him like the clasp of an iron collar. He fancied himself side by side with him in the posts of the same pillory. Gwynplaine lost his footing in his terror, and protested. He began to stammer incoherent words in the deep distress of an innocent man, and quivering, terrified, lost, uttered the first random outcries that rose to his mind, and words of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... if she were dreaming. How often had she wished she might learn to ride—more often than ever since Blanche's coming! She could hardly find words to stammer out her thanks, but her kind friends could see that she was ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... she watched her work go to pieces. The settings seemed flimsy, the lighting commonplace. She watched Guy Pollock stammer and twist his mustache when he should have been a bullying magnate; Vida Sherwin, as Grimm's timid wife, chatter at the audience as though they were her class in high-school English; Juanita, in the leading role, defy Mr. Grimm as though she were repeating a list of things ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... that night, and when I returned to my room I thoughtlessly opened the door of her apartment instead of that of my own. The beautiful woman was reading by the light of the lamp and started when she saw me. I was so embarrassed by my mistake that for a moment I could only stammer unintelligible words. My confusion was so evident that she could not doubt for a moment that I had made a mistake. I turned to the door, intent upon relieving her of my presence as quickly as possible, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... told George he was living more cheaply as a married man than ever he had done as a bachelor; and in the matter of happiness there was no comparison. George rose early to go home; but early as it was Mrs. Mac was up too, and arrayed in a killing morning neglige that fairly made poor George stammer, gave him his chota hazri and stroked his horse's head as he mounted. About half-way home George suddenly shouted, "D——d if I don't do it too!" and brought his hand down on his thigh with a smack that set his ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... has no voice; unless you insult him by saying, that when he so strangely rumbles, he talks through his nose. But then again, what has the whale to say? Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living. Oh! happy that the world is such an ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... and didn't do anything but stammer. There were two men in the reception-room, and of course I picked out the wrong one and begged his pardon and asked if he were Mr. Stanthrope. He said no; his name was Wiggins. So then the only thing left for me to do was to beg ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... the intention of showing herself at the hospital, and there spending this last morning, in order, in some measure, to justify her journey to Lourdes. When she perceived Pierre, she began to tremble, and, at first, could only stammer: ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... acquire, as well, a priggish mien, If you can feel the touch of silk and satin Without despising calico and jean; If you can ply a saw and use a hammer, Can do a man's work when the need occurs, Can sing when asked, without excuse or stammer, Can rise ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... embarrassed, bewildered. This voice so strangely recalled those sounds that had been haunting him for days. He could only stammer out, ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... now in the wrong, was a little frightened at the set speech, and began to bluster and stammer, but the swift descent of Malcolm's heavy riding whip on his shoulders and back made him voluble in curses. Then began a battle that could not last long with such odds on the side of justice. It was gazed at from the mouth ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... most childish tone of anger, his tendency to stammer betraying him, "they k-kid me for liking Frazer. He's—he's the only t-teacher here that ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... to swell to bursting, and the blood rushed through my veins so that I could hear it and nothing else for a while. I managed at last to stammer forth some words of awkward congratulation, and he left me, singing merrily, after asking permission to bring his bride to see me on the morrow as ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... placed it unnoticed in her hand. The banker's wife flushed and then turned pale. She understood. Annie would spare her. Her lips parted to protest. Even she was taken back by such an exhibition of unselfishness as this. She began to stammer thanks. ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... There was a stammer, a hesitation, a slight attempt to explain, and then the truth came out. He had stolen the extra tickets from two fellow-laborers only a few minutes before, and had not reflected upon the difficulties of the situation. I gave him some good advice, required him to restore the stolen tickets, ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... to Geoffrey's cabin because we had things to talk over, and it seemed the only place where we could get away from prying eyes. Somehow I stayed on and on, not realizing it was so late . . . and then, and then . . ." She began to stammer; defiance left her . . . "then, that awful knocking . . . those faces staring in! . . . all those brutes of women!" She covered her eyes with her hands and broke down utterly. "My ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... up then to this important personage, without lifting up my eyes or observing any of the people round me, who were attending there on the same errand as myself, and dropping her curtsies nine deep, just made a shift to stammer out my business ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... the sight of twenty people all standing round staring at me, quite upset me, and I could only stammer out a few unintelligible words, feeling that my face was blushing scarlet to the very roots ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... remained still long enough for the astonished Powell to stammer out an indistinct: "What do you mean? I don't understand." Then, with a low 'Good-night' glided a few steps, and sank through the shadow of the companion into the lamplight below which did not reach higher than the ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Souci, Astronome et Hist. stands in the title-page as the author. A wood-cut of an old fellow with a wooden leg, and a letter in his right hand, is intended to grace this title-page. "Do you believe (said I to the young woman, who sold me the book, and who could luckily stammer forth a few words of French) what the author of this work says?" "Yes, Sir, I believe even more than what he says—" was the instant reply of the credulous vender of the tome. Every body around seemed to be in good health and good ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... (Mrs. Stammer was the jade's name) and my wife's moody despondency, made my house and home not over-pleasant: hence I was driven a good deal abroad, where, as play was the fashion at every club, tavern, and assembly, I, of course, was obliged to resume my old habit, and to commence as an amateur ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ago, he remembered, he had raved out his passion for Virginia, and to-day he could barely stammer Betty's name. A great silence; seemed to ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... one proposal; he was a senior with a funny stammer. He went away with his diploma last June, and said he'd never forget. I got his cards to-day. She's a Lafayette girl he had down for the 'Pan' in his senior year. She has golden hair," Phil ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... children, especially boys, loathe to speak a piece is a fact profoundly significant. They know it is nothing in the world but foolishness; and if there is one thing above another that a child hates, it is to be made a fool in public. That's what makes them work their fingers so, and gulp, and stammer, and tremble at the knees. That is what sends them to their seats, after all is over, mad as hornets. This is something that I know about. It happened that, instead of getting funny pieces to recite as I wanted to, discerning that one silly turn deserves ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... Remsen," said O'Roon to his friend. "Why do they build hotels that go round and round like catherine wheels? They'll take away my shield and break me. I can think and talk con-con-consec-sec-secutively, but I s-s-stammer with my feet. I've got to go on duty in three hours. The jig is up, Remsen. The jig is ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... comedy, or tragedy—I hardly know which love may be. Oh, you are doubly welcome, Captain Ellerey, for the sport you shall give us, and we will ask for a repetition of that confession constantly. The first time you look down before our questioning eyes, and stammer in your answer, we shall know that love has laid siege to the citadel of indifference, and captured it." Ellerey smiled, as he moved aside to make room for others. He would have approached Baron Petrescu had he been able to do so, but he was prevented; first, because someone ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... the carriage, my face muffled up in my cloak. I desired the servants to make no mention of my sudden appearance. They soon made a sign to me that she was recovering consciousness, and I heard her voice stammer forth these words, as if in a dream: "Oh, if Raphael were here! I thought it was Raphael!" I hastily returned to my own carriage; the horses started afresh, and a wide distance soon lay between us. In the evening I went to inquire ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... acknowledgment of kindness. There was a something, but he could not understand it, for his poor shapeless soul might not read the cosmic mystery embodied in their depths. He stammered—who had never known himself stammer before, broke the joints of an ill-fitted answer, swept the tiles with the long feather in his hat, and found himself parted from her, with the feeling that he had not of himself left her, but had been borne away by some subtle force ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... were present at a breakfast given by Eugene, the parts having been assigned, and learned in advance, and the two victims selected. When each had taken his place at table, Dugazon, pretending to stammer, addressed a remark to Thiemet, who, playing the same role, replied to him, stammering likewise; then each of them pretended to believe that the other was making fun of him, and there followed ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... hampered by an occasional stammer and his gestures being also clumsy as it was still he did ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... now of La Crosse, had a dry goods store. A woman, a stranger, came in and asked the price of a shawl. She was told it was $15.00. It was done up for her. She had been hunting through her reticule and now put down the money in gold. The Captain looked at it as if hypnotized, but managed to stammer, "My God woman, I thought you had an order. It is only $5.00 ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... and tell her of his struggle! Anthony felt far more like kneeling in the dust at her feet. Yet being a boy he could only blush and stammer without ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World • Margaret Vandercook
... his few books, is helped, consoled, exalted by the reflection: Hic mecum habitant ... Homerus, Plato, Aristoteles. And were one in a moment of inadvertence to inquire of him why he occupied himself with Greek, he might perchance stammer (like Dominie Sampson) an almost inarticulate reply; but more probably he would be stricken speechless by the enormous outrage of the request, and the reason of his devotion would be hidden from the ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... point-blank question came leaping upon the tortured girl in the stand, Cynthe rose to her feet. She expected to hear the girl stammer and blurt out something that would give them a chance to ask her further questions. But when she saw the girl reel and quiver in pain, when she saw her gasp for breath and self-control, when she saw the hunted agony in her eyes, a great light broke in upon the heart of Cynthe Cardinal. ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... shone on the wriggling chief like a klieglight; his lips, irresistibly suggesting twin slices of underdone steak, parting into a pleasant smile when his question had concluded. The other two members of the committee seemed about to inquire further when the chief managed to stammer, he was awfully sorry, gentlemen, but he had been out of town and hadnt even heard of the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... in the highest spirits, told me that we were going to hear an Italian singer whose voice was exquisite, and noticing my confusion she asked what was the matter. I did not know what to say, and began to stammer out something, but at last succeeded in saying that she was a treasure of whom I was not worthy to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to her; but thoughtfully, as she sat gazing out on the dull leaden sky, watching the snowflakes falling through the dreary air. There followed then a long, long pause, in which I had time to recover from the effect her words had produced, and to frame and stammer forth such congratulations as seemed required by the occasion. These she did not answer, or even seem to comprehend, but roused from her revery by the sound of my voice, she crossed the room and seated herself beside me, and took my hand within ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... I began to stammer my contrition for having offended him: but he cut me short with a wave of the hand. "The fact is," he explained, "I was worried ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... you stammer so, Miss Rathmore?" asked the principal. "Is it a fact that that which seemed so desirable to say just now appears to you in another light when you have taken ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... but the sight of Katy, together with the errand on which she came, had unnerved her, and she wept bitterly in her desolation, until Katy's reappearance startled her from her position on the floor, making her stammer out some excuse about "homesickness and the seeing Katy bringing back ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... is San Francisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State. They are the Southerners of the West. Now, Chicagoans are no less loyal to their city; but when you ask them why, they stammer and speak of lake fish and the new Odd Fellows Building. But Californians ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... sprang up bewildered, and stood bolt upright, trying to look at us, evidently uncertain whether we were rebels, but too confused to utter a single word. I ordered him to call the corporal of the guard, and asked him if that was the way he guarded the camp. He began to stammer out denials of being asleep with a foreign accent and in broken English, which made his stupidity seem more stupid. I reported him to the officer of the guard, but finding he was a raw recruit, I refrained from ordering him before a general court-martial, and directed a lighter ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... of movement. I had not heard anything like it in my life. It set every nerve of me dancing. I suppose Paragot found his interest in me because I was such an impressionable youngster. When, at the abrupt finale, he asked me what I thought of it, I could scarce stammer a word. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... his intellectual delight, and indeed his daily bread; for out of that tremendous horn-book he taught me to stammer the divine Italian language, and illustrated every lesson, from the simplest rule of its syntax to its exceedingly complex and artificially constructed prosody, out of the pages of that sublime, grotesque, and altogether wonderful poem. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... so. The poor fellow wanted to learn to stammer in his Testament, and Letty, like any true-hearted wife, had given him the little assistance she could render. The whipping failed of its intended effect, however. Going one evening, at a late hour, into Letty's ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... did not know a crotchet from a semiquaver, grew frightened at this talk of trying over accompaniments, and tried to stammer out some ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... man approached her—he tried to speak—but all he could do was to stammer a few unintelligible words, just like a very young man—his embarrassment was so great that he completely disconcerted the young girl. At last he managed ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... not a word to say. He had been meditating upon a thousand possible explanations, excuses, apologies, and his tongue would not utter one of them. He accepted his orders meekly, but as he turned to go he managed to stammer ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... into the town g-get some fish for dinner," said the Brigade Major; "everlasting ration beef makes my s-stammer worse." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 28, 1917 • Various
... till datum, and in return for my goodness she raises this outcry against me." And when I replied, "How does your lordship know that the witch raised such an outcry against you?" he first began to stammer, and then said, "Why, you yourself charged me thereon before the judge. But I bear you no anger therefor, and God knows that I pity you, who are a poor weak old man, and would gladly help you if I were able." Meanwhile he led me up four or five flights of stairs, so that I, old ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... which burst forth again in these words: "It seems they do not decide to separate so quickly. It is not, however, possible that they will fight.... Can we see them from here?" He approached the window, which indeed looked upon the enclosure. The sight which met his eyes caused the excellent man to stammer.... "The miserable men!.... It is monstrous.... They are mad.... They have found seconds.... Whom have they taken?.... Those two huntsmen!.... Ali, my God! My God!".... He could say no more. The doctor had hastened to the window to see what was passing, regardless of the fact ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... him, one would have believed he was the Duc de Mora, he had so faithfully copied his way of speaking. There were the same unfinished sentences, ending in a ps—ps—ps—uttered between the teeth. "What's-his-names" and "What-d'ye-call-'ems" at every turn, a sort of lazy, bored, aristocratic stammer, in which one divined profound contempt for the vulgar art of speech. In the duke's circle everybody strove to copy that accent, those disdainful intonations, in which there was ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... of blankets for two pounds. That would make five pounds per family, and seven hundred for the church.' He dipped his pen in the ink, and, as I am a living man, Robert, he wrote me a cheque then and there for two thousand two hundred pounds. I don't know what I said; I felt like a fool; I could not stammer out words with which to thank him. All my troubles have been taken from my shoulders in an instant, and indeed, Robert, I can hardly ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... be too brutally direct to shatter information about silk at one shilling the yard with a prayer for matrimonial freedom. The girl would be shocked—he could see her—she would stare at him, and suddenly grow red in the face and stammer; and he would be forced to trail through a lengthy, precise explanation of this matter which was not at all precise to himself. Furthermore, certain obscure emotions rendered him unwilling to be sundered from this girl.—There was the touch of her hand; more, the touch of her lips given bravely ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... great self-conceit to hope one is better company than Maria! But come, before we fall under the dominion of the Queen of the West Wing, I have a secret for you.' Then, after a longer stammer than usual, 'How should you like ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the astonished courier could stammer out. Then, as the real facts dawned upon him, he knelt at the feet of the young queen and presented ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... of you to make it again," Christopher managed to stammer out, adding with a bluntness worthy of Masters himself, "I never could understand why you made ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... contrived to stammer. "I should be glad of a ride. I don't often get one. Besides, I ought to have been at ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... hands with the lady, and she said a great many very pretty things to him, which made the gallant little hero blush like a rose in June, and stammer so that he could hardly make them ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... that the love of such a woman was enough to pull any broken man together—to drag a man out of his grave. And he thought this with inward despair, which kept him silent as much almost as his astonishment. At last he managed to stammer out ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... here, by those who have not gone through the steps that prepared the way for him in Europe. He is felt because he expressed in full tones the thoughts that lie at the heart of our own existence, though we have not found means to stammer them ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... by it! It's a piece of hopeless legal gibberish to me. I stammer out some attempt at an answer, and see Baboo looking at me with a pitying, almost reproachful, glance. "Didn't I," he seems to say, "explain it all to you once at dinner? Do you really mean to say that you've forgotten ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... of air and babble of excited voices gave her an excuse to gasp, and stammer out a conventional "Where ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... peremptory dignity of age. These gentlemen deal in regeneration: but at any price I should hardly yield my rigid fibres to be regenerated by them,—nor begin, in my grand climacteric, to squall in their new accents, or to stammer, in my second cradle, the elemental sounds of their barbarous metaphysics.[128] Si isti mihi largiantur ut repuerascam, et in eorum cunis ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... how confounded I look'd—so well knowing The Colonel's opinions—my cheeks were quite glowing; I stammer'd out something—nay, even half named The LEGITIMATE semptress, when, loud, he exclaimed, "Yes, yes, by the stiching 'tis plain to be seen It was made by that B*rb*n**t b—h, VIOTORINE!" What a word for a hero, but heroes WILL err, And I thought, dear, I'd tell ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... and provoked, at a behavior so childish and absurd, Douglas could only stammer out something about Lady Juliana having been frightened and fatigued; and, requesting to be shown to their apartment, he supported her almost lifeless to it, while his aunts followed, all three prescribing different ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Poet's art, Daily I learn by the heart. First, all the leather smooth I hammer, Consonants then, and vowels I stammer. Next must the thread be stiff with wax, Then I must learn it rhymes ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... right to come here and terrify a man who has been drinking, and who is not quite himself. You have no right to do it, Mr. Audley. Even the—the officer, sir, who—who—." He did not stammer, but his lips trembled so violently that his words seemed to be shaken into pieces by their motion. "The officer, I repeat, sir, who arrests a—thief, or a—." He stopped to wipe his lips, and to still them if he could by doing so, which ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... for him who lost it. To Napoleon it is a panic; Bluecher sees nothing in it but fire; Wellington does not understand it at all. Look at the reports; the bulletins are confused; the commentaries are entangled; the latter stammer, the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... took in nothing of the president's speech beyond the acceptance of his offer, and, pale with relief, he tried to stammer his thanks and his devotion to his chosen cause. He made no attempt to contradict the president's confident prophecies; he only made the greatest possible haste to the tower-rooms which were to be his home. ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... that steely stare. "I leave it to you, Gov'ner," he continued to stammer at length. "S'y you was me and I was Number One—w'at ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... effort, painful with unexpressed fulfilment. A flicker of awful yearning took her paling eyes. Life seemed to stammer, pause, then flush as with this last deep impulse to yield a secret she discerned for the first time fully, in the very act of passing out. The face, with its soft loveliness, turned grey in death. Upon the edge of ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... a[a-macron]nd, we could put e[e-breve]t, or te [tau epsilon]. And there are only three Saxon words in the two lines. But hexameters consisting of purely English words, especially of Anglo-Saxon words, halt and stammer like a schoolboy's exercise. The attempt of Kingsley in Andromeda is most ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... haltingly count the stars in the heavens at night, and the rain-drops on the shanty window. She could read the names upon the store signs and had often seated herself on the railroad tracks with a bit of newspaper to stammer ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... the morning Jack put a bold face upon the matter and walked into the Giant's room to thank him for his lodging. The Giant started when he saw him, and began to stammer out: "Oh! dear me; is it you? Pray, how did you sleep last night? Did you hear or see anything in the dead ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... Yet, he was great: and though he turned language into ignoble clay, he made from it men and women that live. He is the most Shakespearian creature since Shakespeare. If Shakespeare could sing with myriad lips, Browning could stammer through a thousand mouths. Even now, as I am speaking, and speaking not against him but for him, there glides through the room the pageant of his persons. There, creeps Fra Lippo Lippi with his cheeks still burning from some girl's hot kiss. There, stands ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... father, that I have ventured to seek you here. But my lively gratitude would not be longer restrained. It impelled me toward you with the wings of the wind. I must be the first to fall at your feet to stammer out ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... said. 'I have got you at last, as I wished.' I tried to speak as steadily as he had done; but, as the moment for action came near, my d——d cowardice made me stammer. ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... the young lady in gray hat and ostrich plumes, fashionable driving costume edged with fur, for the spring air was yet cool, and bright silk parasol, for the spring sun was beginning to be warm. With almost a stammer, ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... come, O Desire, Desire! Breathe in this harp of my soul the audible angel of love! Make of my heart an Israfel burning above, A lute for the music of God, that lips, which are mortal, but stammer! Smite every rapturous wire With golden delirium, rebellion and silvery clamor, Crying—"Awake! awake! Too long hast thou slumbered! too far from the regions of glamour, With its mountains of magic, its fountains of Faery, the spar-sprung, Hast thou wandered away, O Heart! Come, oh, come and partake ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... which always seizes the guilty to confess and relieve the mind came over him. If only he dared rush in there, throw himself at her feet, and stammer forth his wretched tale! She was of his flesh, of his blood; when she knew she would not wholly condemn him . . . No, no! He could not. She honored and trusted him now; she had placed him on so high a pedestal that it ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... hesitation &c v.; impediment in one's speech; titubancy^, traulism^; whisper &c (faint sound) 405; lisp, drawl, tardiloquence^; nasal tone, nasal accent; twang; falsetto &c (want of voice) 581; broken voice, broken accents, broken sentences. brogue &c 563; slip of the tongue, lapsus linouae [Lat.]. V. stammer, stutter, hesitate, falter, hammer; balbutiate^, balbucinate^, haw, hum and haw, be unable to put two words together. mumble, mutter; maud^, mauder^; whisper &c 405; mince, lisp; jabber, gibber; sputter, splutter; muffle, mump^; drawl, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... if it were derived from the Latin sto; for example, stand, stay, that is, to remain, or to prop; staff, stay, that is, to oppose; stop, to stuff, stifle, to stay, that is, to stop; a stay, that is, an obstacle; stick, stut, stutter, stammer, stagger, stickle, stick, stake, a sharp, pale, and any thing deposited at play; stock, stem, sting, to sting, stink, stitch, stud, stuncheon, stub, stubble, to stub up, stump, whence stumble, stalk, to stalk, step, to ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... Noailles, all the more beside himself because he saw the Regent smile, and M. le Duc, who looked at me do the same, but more openly, began to speak, or rather to stammer. He did not dare, however, to decide against ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... accordingly repaired to Marseilles, where he worked at his trade. It should be mentioned that he had not asked for one sou of dowry. When Pierre, somewhat surprised by this disinterestedness, commenced to stammer out some explanations, Mouret closed his mouth by saying that he preferred to earn his wife's bread. Nevertheless the worthy son of the peasant remained uneasy; Mouret's indifference seemed to ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... ebbed surged slowly back again. It surged back under the transparent white skin, as red wine fills a glass. Her lips parted to stammer the confession that she had no clothes except those she wore; but she couldn't ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... you hesitate?" retorted the Moor. "Do Englishmen blush and stammer when they tell the truth? Tell me the truth now. Do you know where the ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... It was not long before we were joined by two or three good-looking, well-dressed young women. My friend talked to them in French and bought drinks for the whole party. I tried to recall my high-school French, but the effort availed me little. I could stammer out a few phrases, but, very naturally, could not understand a word that was said to me. We stayed at the cafe a couple of hours, then went back to the hotel. The next day we spent several hours in the shops and at the tailor's. I had no clothes ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... in this vault amounted to the not altogether insignificant weight of close upon fourteen hundred tons. The sight of such incredible quantities of the precious metals had so paralysing an effect upon the young Englishman that he could scarcely stammer an enquiry as to where it all came from. The custodian of this fabulous wealth replied, with a smile, that the mountains which hemmed the valley about were enormously rich in both gold and silver, and that some hundreds of men had been kept industriously employed in working the mines ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... to say. He could not guess what was in it, and all he could do was to stammer a few confused words of thanks. The envelope had a very important look, and he was both impressed and mystified. Ted could not repress his eager curiosity, and came around to Will's side. Even Mrs. Carter was intensely interested, and forgot to refrain from showing ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... later she emerged, safe and unscratched from the confused heap of men and furniture, it was to cut off instantly the stutter and stammer of poor Shafto's apologies, to bid him go instantly for the ship's doctor, and, with face the color of death, to turn quickly to Armstrong. The blow had burst open the half-healed wound, and the blood was streaming ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... main hatch, and at 2000 yards (have I said it was a still day?) addressed the tramp. Even at that distance she gathered it was a Naval officer with a grievance, and by the time he ran alongside she was in a state of coma, but managed to stammer: "Well, sir, at least you'll admit that our ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... southern counties at which I have not dropped on some Saturday or other a Caine or a Barclay; to have it restored to me a moment later by a courteous fellow-passenger—courteous, but with a smile of gentle pity in his eye as he glimpsed the author's name. "Thanks very much," I would stammer, blushing guiltily, and perhaps I would babble about a sick friend to whom I was taking them, or that I was running out of paper-weights. But he never believed me. He knew that he would have said ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... belonged to me, shook a piece of writing paper from between the leaves. I hastened to lift it, but she prevented me.—"It is verse," she said, on glancing at the paper; and then unfolding it, but as if to wait my answer before proceeding—"May I take the liberty?—Nay, nay, if you blush and stammer, I must do violence to your modesty, and ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... was poor Jem come back alive, Temple did not know- -he never knew. All he did for him was done for kindness' sake. I—I— " It was inevitable that she should stammer before going to this length of violence, and that the words should burst from her: "I would ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... wholly justifiable he personally would have contended before archangels. This miserly uncle was keeping from him money that was as incontestably his own as the being which also his mother had given him. Before all the angelic host he would thus have protested- without stammer, without blush; with the inspiration of righteousness, with the integrity of innocence. But to protest his cause before his Mary was another matter. There might be no occasion to protest; his Mary might see eye to eye ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... Delaford began to stammer out thanks, and promises of explaining the whole of Robson's peculations (little he ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... back to his own room, thinking he had broken all his bones. Early in the morning, Jack put a bold face upon the matter, and walked into the giant's room to thank him for his lodgings. The giant started when he saw him, and he began to stammer out, "Oh, dear me! Is it you? Pray, how did you sleep last night? Did you hear or see any thing in the dead of the night?" "Nothing worth speaking of," said Jack carelessly; "a rat, I believe, gave me three or four slaps with his tail, ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... as though they had been inspired expressions of actual feelings; and the intellect must indeed have been gigantic that could so beautifully pretend. Ordinary blunderers have to feel a vast amount before they can painfully stammer out a sentence that will describe it; and when they have got it out, how it seems to have just missed the core of the sensation that gave it birth, and what a poor, weak child it is of what was perhaps a mighty feeling! I read Goethe on ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Ella, Algernon crimsoned to the eyes, and became so exceedingly confused, that he could with difficulty stammer forth, by way of reply, the query as to the time when the important event was expected ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... been delightful," Lucy contrived to stammer, and then fell to scanning the road, which stretched away for a long half mile ahead ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... like the good child keeping quiet in the corner. Oh, but they are stupid, these royal people, all except my own Princess and the dear old Queen at Windsor. Neither York nor Lyonesse knew in the least what to say, and the Princess let them stammer on without helping them. I could ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... thou not in his face thine origin? Is he not sailing Lost like thyself on an ocean unknown, and is he not guided By the same stars that guide thee? Why shouldst thou hate then thy brother? Hateth he thee, forgive! For 'tis sweet to stammer one letter Of the Eternal's language;—on earth it is called Forgiveness! Knowest thou Him, who forgave, with the crown of thorns round his temples? Earnestly prayed for his foes, for his murderers? Say, dost thou know him? Ah! thou confessest his name, so follow likewise his example, Think ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... at Bristol had told George fearful stories of his brother's doings. Gumbo, whom he met at his aunt's door, as soon as the lad recovered from his terror at the sudden reappearance of the master whom he supposed dead, had leisure to stammer out a word or two respecting his young master's whereabouts, and present pitiable condition; and hence Mr. George's sternness of demeanour when he presented himself to the old lady. It seemed to him a matter of course that his ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... long black coat and a white cravat with a golden-headed cane and a tall hat and a frown; a thing which will stop breathing some fine day and the worms will eat! Shall I tremble when an ecclesiastical Leo utters a roar? Shall I halt and stammer because a top-heavy lad from a theological seminary, hopelessly in love with himself, scowls at the ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... all this news been digested than somebody discovered a diamond ring on Clara Tuttle's left hand. So Clara was surrounded and an explanation demanded. But before she could conquer her blushes and stammer out her news Max Longman came in from another room and, putting his arms about her, said, "Don't be afraid, girl of mine, I'm here." And so everybody knew then that it was Max, after all, and not ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... one else stutter, or when the weather was going to change; the men who knew me well said they could always foretell a storm by my inability to talk. From my own experience, however, I knew that when a stammerer heard another man stammer, he imagined that he was being made fun of, and all the fight in him came at once to the surface; and as this young man was about twice my size, I did my best to keep away from him. But in a few moments he came over to where I was and said to me, "A-a-a-sk 'DS' t-t-t-t-o s-s-s-end out ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... must have seen my start: on the same night I had myself dreamed the same thing; but not a word said I about it now. There was a stammer in my tongue when ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... business, Mr. Brainard. I hope I made my attitude toward you clear enough last night. If I did not, let me say now that I think you have made good in every particular—and that I trust you in every particular. What I wished especially to say now," she went on briskly, giving Larry no chance to stammer out his appreciation, "is that I wish to go ahead without any delay with your proposition for developing the Sherwood properties in New York City which we discussed some time ago. A former objection ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... he replied, in a kind of stammer; "an' as to Sally, the nerra one o' me knows any thing about her, since she ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Mr. Lovel might have put up a brazen defence, but now he seemed to have lost assurance. "I do no ill," was all he could stammer, "for I have no bias. I am for no side ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... embroidery; She had been a beauty, they say, in her youth, There was much fierce fire in her bold black eye. "Am I deceived in you both?" quoth she. "If one spark of her father's spirit lives In this girl here—so, this Leigh, Ralph Leigh, Let us hear what counsel the springald gives." Then I stammer'd, somewhat taken aback— (Simon, you ale-swiller, ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... thrice-requited kid, That such a goddess should address him, Could only blush and paw his lid, And stammer, "Yes'm!" ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... Lizzie. You better attend strictly to your own business or there'll be a new man here next week." It was as if he had blazed away with a shotgun. The young man reeled upon his perch. At last he in a measure regained his composure and managed to stammer: "A—all right, sir." He knew that denials would be futile with the terrible Stimson. He agitatedly began to rattle the rings in the basket, and pretend that he was obliged to count them or inspect them in some way. He, too, was unable ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... recommend you to come often," the old lady said, "for Grandjean is an excellent cook, and to be with Laura and me will do your manners good. It is easy to see that you are always thinking about yourself. Don't blush and stammer—almost all young men are always thinking about themselves. My sons and grandsons always were until I cured them. Come here, and let us teach you to behave properly; you will not have to carve, that is done at the ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... noiseless crossed over to her bed and from underneath it dragged out her suitcase. Into it she tossed toilet articles and a change of clothing, Then she turned to her trunk and quickly dumped in two drawerfulls of lingerie and stammer dresses. She moved quietly. but deadly efficiency, and in three-quarters of an hour her trunk was locked and strapped and she was fully dressed in a becoming new travelling suit that Marjorie had helped her ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... his blank, unrecognizing gaze brought him back to the consciousness of the utter change in himself. He looked down at his coarse hands and mechanic's dress, and remembered that he was no longer Roland Sefton. His tongue was parched; it was difficult to stammer out ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... horses' heads. Wherever she was going, I had an idea he was as surprised about it as I was, and that he had been expostulating with her about her expedition. But, if he had, he shut up as I appeared. I could only stammer as I stared at Paulette, ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... speech; titubancy^, traulism^; whisper &c (faint sound) 405; lisp, drawl, tardiloquence^; nasal tone, nasal accent; twang; falsetto &c (want of voice) 581; broken voice, broken accents, broken sentences. brogue &c 563; slip of the tongue, lapsus linouae [Lat.]. V. stammer, stutter, hesitate, falter, hammer; balbutiate^, balbucinate^, haw, hum and haw, be unable to put two words together. mumble, mutter; maud^, mauder^; whisper &c 405; mince, lisp; jabber, gibber; sputter, splutter; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... direct to shatter information about silk at one shilling the yard with a prayer for matrimonial freedom. The girl would be shocked—he could see her—she would stare at him, and suddenly grow red in the face and stammer; and he would be forced to trail through a lengthy, precise explanation of this matter which was not at all precise to himself. Furthermore, certain obscure emotions rendered him unwilling to be ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... days—which elissited from a bright-eyed little girl of about twelve summers the remark that she tho't it was rich to talk about the crooilty of the Spaniards usin thumbscrews, when he was in a Tower where so many poor peple's heads had been cut off. This made the Warder stammer and turn red. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... foolish. Whether Rose saw it in his walk, or had a loving feminine intuition of it, and was aware of the golden rule I have just laid down, we need not inquire. She hit the fact, and he could only stammer, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... craft and Poet's art, Daily I learn by the heart. First, all the leather smooth I hammer, Consonants then, and vowels I stammer. Next must the thread be stiff with wax, Then I must learn it ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... to stammer in the last sentence, suddenly self-conscious again. She told him where her chair was on deck, and next minute, without another word, he was half-way along the alley-way, leaving the tea-things where they were. Then he turned ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... come to him several times for a light, or to apologise for imaginary depredations of her poodle; but his mouth was closed in the presence of so superior a being, his French promptly left him, and he could only stare and stammer until she was gone. The slenderness of their intercourse did not prevent him from throwing out insinuations of a very glorious order when he was safely alone ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the horrified student. His first impulse was to rush out of the house and to keep running. He managed to stammer: ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... her; but thoughtfully, as she sat gazing out on the dull leaden sky, watching the snowflakes falling through the dreary air. There followed then a long, long pause, in which I had time to recover from the effect her words had produced, and to frame and stammer forth such congratulations as seemed required by the occasion. These she did not answer, or even seem to comprehend, but roused from her revery by the sound of my voice, she crossed the room and seated herself beside me, and took my hand within ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... hardly any living relation, that he had known my parents in his youth, and that he had always heard of me as a very deserving young man, and was assured that his money would be in worthy hands. Of course, I could only stammer out my thanks. The will was duly finished, signed, and witnessed by my clerk. This is it on the blue paper, and these slips, as I have explained, are the rough draft. Mr. Jonas Oldacre then informed me that there were a number of documents—building leases, title-deeds, mortgages, scrip, and so ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for coherent thought, could only stammer in what was half a shout: "But you're speaking my language. You're talking the way we talk on earth. Am I crazy? ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... one of her swift, half-frightened smiles; but she didn't wait for an answer. Before Chip could begin to stammer out an explanation that would give his point of view she was passing rapidly up the pathway, bordered with irises and peonies ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... to this important personage, without lifting up my eyes or observing any of the people round me, who were attending there on the same errand as myself, and dropping her curtsies nine deep, just made a shift to stammer out my ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... in the very act of strangling a chicken. Tommy looked up. Was he abashed? Not a bit of it! He did what Mr. Thomas Atkins generally does in a tight corner. He kept his head: he rose magnificently to the occasion. He did not loose the chicken and endeavour to stammer an apology. On the contrary, he continued to strangle it. He took no notice of the "brass hat." As he gave a final twist to the bird's throat he said menacingly, "So you'd try to bite me, would you, you ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... people, for his great services as an officer. This the Speaker did in glowing terms, quite unexpectedly to Washington. Washington rose to reply. His face flushed; he struggled to speak; but could only stammer, and stood speechless and trembling. "Sit down, Mr. Washington," said the Speaker, with a smile. "Your modesty equals your valor, and that surpasses the power of any ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... people, with the pretty little young ladies who used to talk like mechanical dolls. They could say 'papa' and 'mamma,' and when they went to a dance they never lost sight of their parents. The little childlike young lady who was always so timid and bashful and who used to blush and stammer, brought up to be ignorant of everything, neither knowing how to stand up on her legs nor how to sit down on a chair—all that sort of thing's done with, old-fashioned, worn out. That was the marriageable young lady of the ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... are consonants. They would be almost pure hexameters, if in lieu of the long a[a-macron]nd, we could put e[e-breve]t, or te [tau epsilon]. And there are only three Saxon words in the two lines. But hexameters consisting of purely English words, especially of Anglo-Saxon words, halt and stammer like a schoolboy's exercise. The attempt of Kingsley in Andromeda is most ingenious ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... direct attack placed the prince de Soubise. Neither his political instinct, nor the tone of pleasantry which he essayed to assume, nor the more dangerous resource of offended dignity, could extricate him from the embarrassment in which he was thrown by my words. He could do nothing but stammer out a few unintelligible phrases; and his confusion was so great and so visible, that the marquis de Chauvelin, his not over sincere friend, came to his assistance. The king, equally surprised at what I had just said, hastily turned and spoke to Chon, who told me afterwards, that the ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... home and tell her of his struggle! Anthony felt far more like kneeling in the dust at her feet. Yet being a boy he could only blush and stammer without words ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World • Margaret Vandercook
... past, of this Lady's Husband, who was his Cousin-german. Dreadfully poor before that, the present Margraf of Baireuth, as we once explained; but now things are looking up with him again, some jingle of money heard in the coffers of the man; and his eldest Prince, a fine young fellow, only apt to stammer a little when agitated, is at present doing the return part of the Grand Tour,—coming home ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... of comforts; in his studio, almost as splendid as a palace, the facade of which was reproduced in the illustrated magazines, he had a wife who was convinced of his genius and a daughter who was almost a woman and who made the troop of his intimate pupils stammer with embarrassment. The only evidences of his Bohemian past that remained were his soft felt hats, his long beard, his tangled hair and a certain carelessness in his dress; but when his position as a "national celebrity" demanded it, he took out of his wardrobe a dress ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... should have made a Bow; that's very well, remember to do so; when you speak, don't speak fast, stammer, or speak in your Throat, but use yourself to pronounce your Words distinctly and clearly. If you pass by any ancient Person, a Magistrate, a Minister, or Doctor, or any Person of Figure, be sure to pull off your Hat, and make your Reverence: Do the same when you pass by any sacred Place, ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... well received by the audience. Tom was beaten. A potato, vast and nobbly, fell from his palsied hand. He was speechless. Then he began to stammer. ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... The key will stammer, and the door reply, The hall wake, yawn, and smile; the torpid stair Will grumble at our feet, the table cry: 'Fetch my belongings for me; I am bare.' A clatter! Something in the attic falls. A ghost has lifted up his robes and fled. The loitering shadows move along the walls; Then ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... of thundering stammer, Iron heart, by sin's dread hammer Ground to better dust than golden, May thy prophecy be true. Melt the stern, the weak embolden; Teach ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... conceptions, which they cannot distinguish or resolve within, and by consequence are not able to produce them in as-much as they understand not themselves: And if you but marke their earnestnesse, and how they stammer and labour at the point of their deliverle, you would deeme that what they go withall, is but a conceiving, and therefore nothing neere downelying; and that they doe but licke that imperfect and shapelesse lump of matter. As for ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... harsh. Yet, he was great: and though he turned language into ignoble clay, he made from it men and women that live. He is the most Shakespearian creature since Shakespeare. If Shakespeare could sing with myriad lips, Browning could stammer through a thousand mouths. Even now, as I am speaking, and speaking not against him but for him, there glides through the room the pageant of his persons. There, creeps Fra Lippo Lippi with his cheeks still burning from some girl's hot kiss. There, stands dread Saul with the lordly male-sapphires ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... inclination of the head in reply to the graceful and courtly welcome with which the princesses, nieces to the great Cardinal, were received. Eleanor, usually in the background, was left in surprise and confusion to stammer out thanks in broad Scotch, seconded by Lady Drummond, who could make herself far more ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ye out a walie hammer; About the knottit buttress clam'er; Alang the steep roof stoyt an' stammer, A gate mischancy; On the aul' spire, the bells' hie cha'mer, Dance ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... store. A woman, a stranger, came in and asked the price of a shawl. She was told it was $15.00. It was done up for her. She had been hunting through her reticule and now put down the money in gold. The Captain looked at it as if hypnotized, but managed to stammer, "My God woman, I thought you had an order. It is only ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... a good talker on a thousand and one subjects, a thinker and psychologist. Psychology is his strong point. He argues brilliantly on the subject, yet I need only look at him to upset his thesis, to make him stammer and redden. ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... handsome girl; but her hair was thin, her cheeks haggard, the colour hardened, and her forty years apparent, above all, in an uncomfortable furrow on the brow and round the mouth; her voice had a sharp distressed tone that grated even in her lowest key, and though she did not stammer, she could never finish a sentence, but made half-a-dozen disjointed commencements whenever she spoke. Albinia pitied her, and thought her nervous, for she was painfully assiduous in waiting on every one, scarcely sitting down for a ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he, his teeth chatterin'. I set it down the man had a stammer, but 'twas only the shock an' the ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... his hand to him with a frank manner and kind smile. At this Robinson tried to speak but could only stammer; something seemed to rise in his throat and block up the exit ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... prudently kept aloof from the contact of his master's hand; and, as if anticipating an explosion, began to stammer forth his excuses. Theodora's countenance was suddenly overspread with a deadly paleness, and the timid girl wrung her hands in an attitude of despair. Her critical situation, and the duenna's alarm, at first staggered Gomez Arias, but with the start of resolution which ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... himself now in the wrong, was a little frightened at the set speech, and began to bluster and stammer, but the swift descent of Malcolm's heavy riding whip on his shoulders and back made him voluble in curses. Then began a battle that could not last long with such odds on the side of justice. It was gazed at from the mouth of the close by many spectators, ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... not know how to deceive, and although he was shaking with terror at seeing the gray hairs bristle up on the nose of the angry woman, he tried to stammer out some account ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... Among small tradesmen, the wife always comes to the rescue of her slow spouse when she sees him befogged in a bargain. In the fields, you ask a peasant some question about your journey. He will hesitate, and stammer, and end with, "Quien sabe?" but his wife will answer with glib completeness all you want to know. I can imagine no cause for this, unless it be that the men cloud their brains all day with the fumes of tobacco, and ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... hand in dismissal and settled himself to sleep. When Culver began to stammer thanks for the promised ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... but together they were unromantic. How could he adjure her to tell him for God's sake whether or not she was in love with any one when he saw she was afraid that something was burning on the stove? He could only stammer out excuses for having come. Inventing on the spot new and incoherent directions for the treatment of Mrs. Fay, he took himself away ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... was beginning to stammer that he was not aware—when the visitor slipped past him into the chambers. There, in a goblin way which froze Mr. Testator to the marrow, he examined, first, the writing-table, and said, "Mine"; then, the easy-chair, and said, "Mine"; then, the bookcase, and said, "Mine"; then, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... request. He had humiliated himself to no purpose. Mortified pride, mingled with rejected passion, formed a compound of deadly hate, which raged with fury against the late object of his desire. He commanded himself sufficiently to stammer out his regrets, and promised not again to introduce the subject; and lifting up the offered hand respectfully to his lips, he quitted her presence ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... my prospects, I arose early the next morning and walked briskly to Captain Tappken's office. Punctually at ten o'clock I announced myself at the Admiralty and after the usual procedure with the door man, I was received by Herr von Stammer, private secretary of Captain Tappken. A very astute and calculating gentleman is Herr von Stammer. Suave, genial, talkative, he has the plausible and unstudied art of extracting information without committing himself in turn. A marvelous encyclopædia of devious ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... de Noailles, all the more beside himself because he saw the Regent smile, and M. le Duc, who looked at me do the same, but more openly, began to speak, or rather to stammer. He did not dare, however, to decide against the release of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... to speak, or rather stammer, But sage Antonia cut him short before The anvil of his speech received the hammer, With 'Pray, sir, leave the room, and say no more, Or madam dies.'—Alfonso mutter'd, 'D—n her,' But nothing else, the time of words was o'er; He cast a ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... citizen of the land that Lafayette went to save, that I wanted my dinner, and would like to get out. I walked down near enough to the gate to see the policeman, but my courage failed. Before I could stammer out half that explanation to him in his trifling language (which foreigners are mockingly told is the best in the world for conversation), he would either have slipped his hateful rapier through my body, or have raised an ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to see her every night For thirteen days, and had a sneaking notion To pop the question, thinking all was right, And once or twice had make an awkward motion To take her hand, and stammer'd, cough'd, and stutter'd, But, somehow, nothing ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... debating what to say. I—well since I had nothing to lose, and it did not really matter, I went forward without any delay, asking our interlocutors roughly what they meant and what they were doing here, and telling them, too, that we were going on. I knew that they were sexless eunuchs, who would stammer as I had heard them stammer in the old days when I had seen them trafficking things they had been donated by officials desirous of cultivating their friendship, in the mysterious curio shops beyond the great Ch'ien Men Gate. Nor was I wrong. Stammering, they ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... first time in his life. He had been struck below the belt by a good-natured giant. The best he could do, as Bacon shuffled calmly out, was to stammer: "Will some one please sing?" And while they sang, he stood in deep thought. Just as the last verse was quivering into silence, the full, deep tones of Radbourn's voice rose above the bustle of feet and clatter ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... energetically for him, and reining his horse up under a wide spreading butternut tree, which grew upon the river bank, he sprang out and pretended to be busy with some part of the harness, while he astonished Jerrie by bursting out, without the least stammer, he was so earnest and so excited: 'I've something to say to you, Jerrie, and I may as well say it now as any time, and know the worst, or the best. I can't bear the suspense any longer, and I got out of the cart ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... awkward plain plump questions of this kind are. The Vicar would have liked to answer "No," but he could not tell a lie. He was also a very bad hand at prevaricating; so with a stammer, he ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... up her clothes arranging her underclothing. The mother stopped dead and shot me one glance I shall never forget. 'Why, Alice, you frighten me!' she said. I feigned surprise and asked 'What is the matter?' Alice, although she was frightened out of her wits, managed to stammer: 'He couldn't see me—you couldn't see me, could you?' appealing to me. But I had managed to collect my senses a bit and although still under that maternal eye I asked,—at last turning slowly around ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... few hours Tommy was as well as ever—indeed, better; not only was his hearing fully restored, but he had ceased to stammer, and the thin, almost imperceptible cloud upon his intellect was dissipated. The doctor expressed but little surprise at these phenomena, and, in fact, stated that similar things had occurred often before, and were duly written down in the books of medicine. But Eli Machin's firm, ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... her words. There was no lurking sparkle of humour, no acknowledgment of kindness. There was a something, but he could not understand it, for his poor shapeless soul might not read the cosmic mystery embodied in their depths. He stammered—who had never known himself stammer before, broke the joints of an ill-fitted answer, swept the tiles with the long feather in his hat, and found himself parted from her, with the feeling that he had not of himself left her, but had been borne away by some subtle force emanating ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... I managed to stammer out a few words, and then my comrades crowded around, cheering me with generous enthusiasm. And, when the prince had gone, I had the further happiness of conducting the Admiral to our tent, and of hearing the words of praise he spoke to ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... nibble a morsel and drink a mouthful; they tell one another the history of their martyrs; their sorrow becomes vehement; their libations increase; their eyes, swimming with tears, are fixed on one another; they stammer with inebriety and desolation. Gradually their hands touch; their lips meet; their veils are torn away, and they embrace one another upon the tombs in the midst of the cups and ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... he not sailing Lost like thyself on an ocean unknown, and is he not guided By the same stars that guide thee? Why shouldst thou hate then thy brother? Hateth he thee, forgive! For 't is sweet to stammer one letter Of the Eternal's language;—on earth it is called Forgiveness! Knowest thou Him, who forgave, with the crown of thorns on his temples? Earnestly prayed for his foes, for his murderers? Say, dost thou know him? Ah! thou confessest his name, so follow ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... figure the godlike stamp on his forehead? Readest thou not in his face thine origin? Is he not sailing Lost like thyself on an ocean unknown, and is he not guided By the same stars that guide thee? Why shouldst thou hate then thy brother? Hateth he thee, forgive! For 'tis sweet to stammer one letter Of the Eternal's language;—on earth it is called Forgiveness! Knowest thou Him, who forgave, with the crown of thorns round his temples? Earnestly prayed for his foes, for his murderers? Say, dost thou know him? Ah! thou confessest his name, so follow likewise his example, Think ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... guess why, and that the man's unintelligible confession was closing round him like the clasp of an iron collar. He fancied himself side by side with him in the posts of the same pillory. Gwynplaine lost his footing in his terror, and protested. He began to stammer incoherent words in the deep distress of an innocent man, and quivering, terrified, lost, uttered the first random outcries that rose to his mind, and words of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... look like me?" Mr. Darley now appealed to Sydney, who managed to stammer out: "I certainly see a ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... asked, "who on a memorable class day gave the pleasure of her company to a diffident student who in ecstasy at playing escort to the lovely girl and her dignified Aunt Marcia, nearly forgot all which he ever knew, managing only to stammer through an effort at conversation which must ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... hast thou betrayed this high commission! Fain would the tongue in clear, triumphant accents draw example from thy story, to encourage the hearts of those who almost faint and die beneath the old oppressions. But we must stammer and blush when we speak of many things. I take pride here, that I can really say the liberty of the press works well, and that checks and balances are found naturally which suffice to its government. I can say that the minds of our people are alert, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... him by saying, that when he so strangely rumbles, he talks through his nose. But then again, what has the whale to say? Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living. Oh! happy that the world is such ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... I could but stammer piteously, I fear. I heard myself make a wretched failure of words that crowded to ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... not tell." But, as every man does not recollect the proper reply at the moment it is wanted, and most men feel abashed, when a direct question is put to them to which they know they are not to return a direct answer, many will stammer and feel confused, will perhaps insinuate a falshood, while at the same time their manner to a discerning eye will, in spite of all their precautions, disclose ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... the tone from a common sailor were, of course, enough to astonish the young man. But there must be more than this, as Adrian surmised, to cause him to blush, wax angry, and stammer like a very school-boy found at fault. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... in a private dining room at the "Clarry" (the Clarendon Hotel) in February, Forbes was called upon to respond to the toast "The Real Kathleen." His voice, tremulous with emotion and absinthe frappe, nearly failed him; but he managed to stammer a few phrases which, thought at the time to be extemporaneous, called forth loud applause; but it was found later that he had jotted them down on the tablecloth during the soup and fish courses. "Fellow Scorpers," he said, "I mean you chaps, look here, I'm not much at this dispatch-box business, ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... rose from that cellar-like place below the level of the street, repelled the country-bred lad. Were it not for the desperate urgency of his errand he never would have dared to enter. As it was, the fumes of alcohol and steaming, dirty clothes nearly choked him, and he could scarce stammer the name of "citizen Rateau" when a gruff voice presently demanded ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... a gurgle seemed to give consent, and, boldly advancing, Van said, with blush and a stammer, ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... did amuse herself by telling him the names of the things he touched. He could only stammer, reiterating the syllables, and failing to utter a single word plainly. However, she began to walk him about the room, holding him up and leading him from the bed to the window—quite a long journey. Two or three times he almost fell on the way, at which she laughed. One day he fairly ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... have believed he was the Duc de Mora, he had so faithfully copied his way of speaking. There were the same unfinished sentences, ending in a ps—ps—ps—uttered between the teeth. "What's-his-names" and "What-d'ye-call-'ems" at every turn, a sort of lazy, bored, aristocratic stammer, in which one divined profound contempt for the vulgar art of speech. In the duke's circle everybody strove to copy that accent, those disdainful intonations, in which there was an affectation ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... out with a hiss and a stutter; it wasn't a laugh, for I haven't laughed in years. All my laughing since 1889 has been a strictly intellectual process; but I did have an awful pain because I could not digest his statement with a bouncing laugh. All I could do was to stammer and splutter like a bass viol tuning up, while I sozzled around in my chair trying to break in with something that would count. Why should a man of my temperament take a hand in love, war or diplomacy? As a theoretical manipulator of fathers-in-law, as a text-book ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... Mr. Douce to stammer out sentence upon sentence, till at length, as he rang for coffee, his lordship stretched himself with the air of a man stretching himself into self-complacency or a good ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... life. The thought steals over us that we, too, are liable at any moment to be cut down in the midst of our labors. This liability is increased by the amount of labor which necessarily devolves upon us. Now we are only two in number. As for myself I am only beginning to stammer in this difficult language. This, too, in a field where there is labor enough to be done to employ all the men you can send us. You will not think it strange then that we ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... with a certain awkward doggedness which was not going to allow so slight a hint that his further attendance was unnecessary, to baffle him. He did not speak until they had passed down the stone steps to the pavement, and then his utterance began with a half-embarrassed stammer, as if the shadow of displeasure ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... because of the pitching of the boat. The two other men who had escaped so far with me were a man named Helmar, a passenger like myself, and a seaman whose name I don't know,—a short sturdy man, with a stammer. ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... diggers checked for a time the flow of people to the west; but in the month of July an aboriginal shepherd on a station near Bathurst burst in upon his master while seated at dinner, his eyes glistening with excitement. He was only able to stammer out: "Oh, massa, white man find little fellow, me find big fellow". When his master drove him in a buggy through the forest, the shepherd pointed to where a hundredweight of gold was sticking out from a rock. It was so heavy that they had to chop it ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... thus condemned to Flattery's trebles, He toils through all, still trembling to be wrong: For fear some noble thoughts, like heavenly rebels, Should rise up in high treason to his brain, He sings, as the Athenian spoke, with pebbles In's mouth, lest Truth should stammer through his strain. But out of the long file of sonneteers There shall be some who will not sing in vain, And he, their Prince, shall rank among my peers,[307] And Love shall be his torment; but his grief ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... she were dreaming. How often had she wished she might learn to ride—more often than ever since Blanche's coming! She could hardly find words to stammer out her thanks, but her kind friends could see that she was surprised and ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... amusement. The pedant's endeavours to make a philosopher of his child are sufficiently ludicrous. He is delighted to find that the infant has the wart of Cicero and the very neck of Alexander, and hopes that he may come to stammer like Demosthenes, 'and in time arrive at many other defects of famous men.' As the boy grows up his father invents for him a geographical suit of clothes, and stamps his gingerbread with the letters of the Greek alphabet, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... these absences that Jim Spalding, the old timber-jack, told Mrs. Gaynor in his abashed stammer that Mark King had showed up while they were gone. Gloria, on her way to her room, whirled and came back, and extracted the tale in its entirety, pumping it out of the brief, few-worded old Spalding in jerky details. King had ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... punishing him instantly. "I reckon it does take a decent girl to shock you." And while she stood laughing at him with robust irony, poor Lin began to stammer that he meant no offence. "Why, to be sure you didn't!" said she. "But I do ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... or three playing in the street for him to come and take the breast. Did Augustin remember these things? At least he recalled his nurses' games, and the efforts they made to appease him, and the childish words they taught him to stammer. The first Latin words he repeated, he picked up from his mother and the servants, who must also have spoken Punic, the ordinary tongue of the populace and small trader class. He learned Punic without thinking about it, in playing with other children of Thagaste, just as the sons ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... a moment, her shoulder brushing the shoulder of Velasco; then she lifted her blue eyes to the official, and her heart seemed to leap and bound like a wild thing caged. She began to stammer, shrinking back against her companion. A bell sounded suddenly in the office behind them and ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... understanding, and should therefore be put to death." The plates, as proposed by the soothsayer, were placed before the child Moses, who immediately seized upon the fire, and put it into his mouth, which caused him henceforward to stammer ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... world, Mr. Strand, did you come here?" she managed at last to stammer. "We all thought that you ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... perspective were known. None knew how to draw anything correctly. No color-harmonies had been thought of. These men must needs stammer when they tried to express themselves; but as much greater as thought is than the mere expression of it so much greater are many of their works, in the true sense, than the mass of pictures that make up our ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... ran on smilingly: "He promised to shackle you to a table until I could stammer out my halting apologies, and now that I've done so in the presence of press and public won't you forgive me and help me to bury the hatchet in a Welsh rarebit?" He was speaking directly to her with a genuine appeal in his handsome eyes. Now that she saw him in his right mind, ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... his hair was cut close to his head. Impetuous always, his first thought was to go and thank Constantine Jopp for having saved his life. As soon as he was able he went forth to find his rescuer, and met him suddenly on turning a corner of the street. Before he could stammer out the gratitude that was in his heart, Jopp, eyeing him with a sneering ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... needlework like the good child keeping quiet in the corner. Oh, but they are stupid, these royal people, all except my own Princess and the dear old Queen at Windsor. Neither York nor Lyonesse knew in the least what to say, and the Princess let them stammer on without helping them. I ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... yourselves; cease to defame each other for dreams and conjectures, which every thing seems to contradict. Talk to us of things intelligible and really useful to men; and no longer talk to us of the impenetrable ways of God, about which you only stammer ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... man could not speak. But while his rescuer slashed loose the rawhide ropes that bound him, he began to stammer ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... sight of the young lady in gray hat and ostrich plumes, fashionable driving costume edged with fur, for the spring air was yet cool, and bright silk parasol, for the spring sun was beginning to be warm. With almost a stammer, he said:— ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... the whole convent seemed in a state of uproar. Madame de Mortemart, with flaming visage, sought to stammer out her reproaches. But as there was no law to prevent my action, she had to hide her vexation, and behave as if nothing ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... a little language in all times; finding the nobler language insufficient, do they ensconce themselves in the smaller? discard noble and literary speech as not noble enough, and in despair thus prattle and gibber and stammer? Rather perhaps this departure from English is but an excursion after gaiety. The ideal lovers, no doubt, would be so simple as to be grave. That is a tenable opinion. Nevertheless, age by age they have been gay; and age by age they have exchanged language imitated from ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... don't stammer and blush like a great gyurl, and don't call me madam. I am a very old friend now of your dear mother, and I've come to take you back with me over the salt say—I mean sea, doctor, but I always called it say when I was a gyurl. I was in England ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... virtue be too high for the familiarity of names, and if thou must speak of it, be not ashamed to stammer ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... phrenologist entered. He carried a bag with a pumpkin in the bottom of it, and, sitting down on a stool, he let the bag down with a bump on the floor between his feet. Malachi was badly scared, but he managed to stammer out— ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... gossiping, smoking, and absorbing refreshments. It was the first warm evening; the sky was a deep blue, and at the end of the street the darkness was flooded with purple. There was something extravagant about them all; joy urged their movements to exceed the narrow every-day limits, and made them stammer and stagger as ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... hair, a thin face restless with vitality, bloodless lips tightly shut and eyes that were out of keeping with the assurance of the face—eyes unexpectedly big and soft, deep in colour and timid in expression, reminding her of the stammer and quick eagerness ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... or two afterwards, her husband came up to Andrea and taking his arm with much effusion, began asking particulars about the duel. He was a youngish man, slim, with very thin fair hair and colourless eyes and projecting teeth. He had a slight stammer. ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... some strange peculiarity, a stammer or a lisp, a Northumbrian burr or an Irish brogue, a stoop or a shuffle. "If a man," said Johnson, "hops on one leg, Foote can hop on one leg." Garrick, on the other hand, could seize those differences of manner and pronunciation, which, though highly characteristic, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... am ashamed of myself," he began with a stammer, holding out the plate. "But Archelaus has gone to bed, and—and this is all I ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... came leaping upon the tortured girl in the stand, Cynthe rose to her feet. She expected to hear the girl stammer and blurt out something that would give them a chance to ask her further questions. But when she saw the girl reel and quiver in pain, when she saw her gasp for breath and self-control, when she saw the hunted ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... Before Lord Erpingham could stammer forth his apology they heard a slight noise behind: they turned; Godolphin had risen. His countenance, always inclined to a calm severity—for thought is usually severe in its outward aspect—bent now on both ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Stammer was the jade's name) and my wife's moody despondency, made my house and home not over-pleasant: hence I was driven a good deal abroad, where, as play was the fashion at every club, tavern, and assembly, I, of course, was obliged to resume ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... made the astounding proposition as calmly as though he were asking the Kentuckian to a lunch of bacon and hardtack, and Crittenden flushed with gratitude and his heart leaped—his going was sure now. Before he could stammer out his thanks, the general was gone. Just then Rivers, who, to his great joy, had got at least that far, sat down by him. He was much depressed. His regiment was going, but two companies would be left behind. His colonel talked about sending him back to Kentucky to bring ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... pronouncing carelessly and ill; it is still worse when they repeat their lessons; they cannot find the right words, they drag out their syllables. This is only possible when the memory hesitates, the tongue does not stammer of itself. Thus they acquire or continue habits of bad pronunciation. Later on you will see that Emile does not acquire such habits or at least not ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... to know what he's at; I could pity him, if it were madness: I never yet knew him to play a tune through, And it gives me more anger than sadness To hear his horn stutter and stammer to utter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... interrupted the lady, 'the Senorita Teresa Valdevia. The evening air grows chill. Adios, Senorito.' And before Harry could stammer out a word, she had disappeared into ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... you like to know why universities suffer from this curse of nervous disease? Why the great personages stammer or have St Vitus' dance, or jabber at the lips, or hop in their walk, or have their heads screwed round, or tremble in the fingers, or go through life with great goggles like a motor car? Eh? I will tell you. It is the punishment of their intellectual ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... the week, Henry encountered Mr. Mix, and repeated his congratulations with such honeyed emphasis that Mr. Mix began to stammer. "I appreciate all you say, Henry—but—come here a minute." He drew Henry into a convenient doorway. "I'm sort of afraid, from the way you act, there's something in the back of your mind. I've thought, sometimes, you must have lost sight of the big, broad principles behind the work I'm doing. I've ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... about to stammer an explanation, but Bluteisen cut me short with a warning look, saluted and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... almost blinded the little girl—tears of joy over her first success—she could hardly see what the coin was, but when she picked it up she managed to stammer that ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... soft thick hair she could feel the throbbing of his temples. As for Daniel, he seemed in a walking dream, from which he waked to see Miss Pilgrim looking into his eyes with utter though not incensed stupefaction—to stammer: ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... part of a rich man, to squander money, to give myself airs. When one puts on the semblance of anything for a time, it will soon become a portion of our nature. Imitate a stutterer for a while, and you will have to keep diligent watch over yourself not to stammer in earnest. I fell in love, and was on the point of changing into a totally different person; for my passion was sincere and ardent. But new distress. The noble being who soon became my wife, could never give me her heart. The strongest ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... end of his Gifford Lectures, after an argument which induced one of his listeners to say that he had a stammer in his thoughts, Mr. Balfour announced his faith in God. One may recall Pascal's exclamation, "How far it is from believing in God ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... even the symptom of a smile on Cunningham's face. He looked straight into Mahommed Gunga's eyes, and spoke as one man talking calm common sense to another. He raised his hand as the Rajput began to stammer an apology. ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... not get the maid for mate, But thou shalt die, thou knight enamour'd; So make thy shrift 'neath the linden straight, The little birds shall hear it stammer'd. ...
— Proud Signild - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... the persecution he encountered filled him with dismay, though it had not shaken his fidelity to his new faith. But often a dumb, inarticulate longing possessed him to make known to his old neighbours the reason of the change in him, but speech failed him. He could only stammer out his confession, "I am no longer a Catholic, I am a Protestant, I cannot pray to the saints, not even to the archangel St. Michel or the Blessed Virgin. I pray only to God." For anything else, for explanation, and for all argument, he had no more language than the mute, wistful language one sees ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... me?' she asked, and threw a look round the room, as if searching for someone. I felt I should die if her husband came out—but he didn't. I managed to stammer that the pearls weren't in their case, and so on; and it seemed as if my words turned her to a block of marble! She just stared at me. 'Maybe you think I stole the pearls!' I said right out. She assured me quite nicely that she believed nothing so foolish, and that even if I'd ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... must tell her. To do this he found it necessary to sit on the sofa close to her. What he told her made her blush very rosy again, and stammer a little as she declared her disbelief in all he said, and was sure there were the prettiest girls in the world in New York, and that he had never thought of her a moment. And no, she would not listen to him—she did not believe a word he said; ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... embarrassment and mortification, was about to stammer an apology, when the doctor came to his rescue by inviting him to come in. This invitation he accepted without speaking, and followed his host into the house. Marietta took the principal part in the conversation. She gave a very amusing account of her meeting with Willibald. Now ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... your ideas fly from you when you attempt to express them, that you stammer and flounder about for words which you are unable to find, you may be sure that every honest effort you make, even if you fail in your attempt, will make it all the easier for you to speak well the next time. It is ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... much to have answered something clever or interesting, as no doubt other girls did, but she could only stammer: ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... her I am what I am. Ignorant, rough man I was, with the merest flicker of spiritual life; but she cared for my soul, and was so patiently loving that she led me to know God.' Bailey was afflicted with a stammer when he was converted. Of this, he says, 'She talked to me so calm and quiet. "Go slow, now," she'd say, "Count." She would insist upon my giving my testimony, and if she saw I was going to be fairly stuck, she'd shout. "Glory! Hallelujah!" and beam on ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... man did not answer. Something in his throat tightened, and held the words. Then, in a low voice he managed to stammer:— ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... guest was naturally very downcast, and ill at ease, and could not dissemble his anguish. He tried to stammer out excuses and get away ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 7 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... Ironsides,—clothing spiritual faith in physical force, and backing dogmas and prayers with pikes and cannon,—anxious at once that his troops should trust in God and keep their powder dry,—with a mind deep indeed, but distracted by internal conflicts, and prolific only in enormous, half-shaped ideas, which stammer into expression at once obscure and ominous, the language a strange compound of the slang of the camp and the mystic phrases of inspired prophets and apostles,—we still feel throughout, that, whatever may be the contradictions of his character, they are not such as to impair the ruthless energy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... pretence of a headache from appearing at dinner, and hurried back to the castle as soon as I could do so unobserved. I got in by a window which I had purposely left open, and made my way to the library. The words that Lord Ashiel, as he lay dying, had managed to stammer out to his daughter, were only five. 'Gimblet—the clock—eleven—steps.' I had decided to take the clock in the library as the starting-point of investigation. He might, of course, have referred to any other clock, but only one could be dealt ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... moment to Lord Spoonbill. He was moved, and he was mortified that he was moved; and there was a general feeling of confusion and perplexity in his mind. What could he say? or how could he act? He began to stammer out something like gentleness, and something like reproof. But she who stood before him was as an accusing spirit, to whom apology was mockery, and repentance ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... OXONIAN (stammer, as on a former occasion, respectfully omitted).—"With this defect, ma'am!—But to the point. Some days ago I happened to fall in with an elderly person, such as is described, with a very pretty female child and a French dog. The man—gentleman, perhaps I may call him, judging ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... glassy ocean— Stammer strange songs amid an alien host? Or shall I not, refusing such promotion, Bequeath to ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson
... a pause and stammer the old lawyer made it clear: the house and its contents and appurtenances, and seven thousand a year to the widow for life; two thousand a year to Adelaide; five thousand in cash to Arthur and the chance to earn the mill and factory; the rest, practically ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... their position, yet are obviously aware that what they say is entitled to no weight, and are greatly relieved when the unwelcome and disagreeable duty has been discharged. They are the men who hesitate and stammer, whose hats and canes are always in their way, and who have no very clear notions about what should be done with their hands. A visitor who chances to spend an evening in the House of Lords for the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... but in a way you're right. Fact is Walthew and I have hustled the rest of the crowd most off their feet, and we mean to keep them on the jump. Last meeting old Macalan's eyes were bulging with horror, he could hardly stammer out his indignation—said our extravagance was sinful. Anyway, ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... speak a piece is a fact profoundly significant. They know it is nothing in the world but foolishness; and if there is one thing above another that a child hates, it is to be made a fool in public. That's what makes them work their fingers so, and gulp, and stammer, and tremble at the knees. That is what sends them to their seats, after all is over, mad as hornets. This is something that I know about. It happened that, instead of getting funny pieces to recite as I wanted to, discerning that one silly turn deserves ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... because we had things to talk over, and it seemed the only place where we could get away from prying eyes. Somehow I stayed on and on, not realizing it was so late . . . and then, and then . . ." She began to stammer; defiance left her . . . "then, that awful knocking . . . those faces staring in! . . . all those brutes of women!" She covered her eyes with her hands and broke down utterly. "My ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... and the tone from a common sailor were, of course, enough to astonish the young man. But there must be more than this, as Adrian surmised, to cause him to blush, wax angry, and stammer like a very school-boy found at ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Yes, there were people whose fortune had come; but he managed to stammer: "Are you following ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... will vary, And wise and wary The patient fairy Of water waits; All shrunk and wizen, In iron prison, Till spring re-risen Unbar the gates; Till, as with clamour Of axe and hammer, Chained streams that stammer And struggle in straits Burst bonds that shiver, And thaws deliver The roaring ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... He had begun to stammer in the last sentence, suddenly self-conscious again. She told him where her chair was on deck, and next minute, without another word, he was half-way along the alley-way, leaving the tea-things where they were. Then he turned back and spoke from ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... discourse, finished the call of the Grand Officers of the Legion, Bonaparte covered, as did the ancient kings of France when they held a bed of justice. A profound silence, a sort of religious awe, then reigned throughout the assembly, and Napoleon, who did not now stammer as in the Council of the Five Hundred, said ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... in black dresses, she hardly vouchsafed an inclination of the head in reply to the graceful and courtly welcome with which the princesses, nieces to the great Cardinal, were received. Eleanor, usually in the background, was left in surprise and confusion to stammer out thanks in broad Scotch, seconded by Lady Drummond, who could make herself far more intelligible to these ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... looked rather frightened, and didn't do anything but stammer. There were two men in the reception-room, and of course I picked out the wrong one and begged his pardon and asked if he were Mr. Stanthrope. He said no; his name was Wiggins. So then the only thing left for me to do was to beg the other ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... language that was quite new to him, but which they repeated frequently afterwards, sent advice of this to the king, who ordered the children to be brought before him, in order that he himself might be a witness to the truth of what was told him; and accordingly both of them began, in his presence, to stammer out the sounds above mentioned. Nothing now was wanting but to ascertain what nation it was that used this word; and it was found that the Phrygians called bread by this name. From this time they were allowed the ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... approaching Alicia, placed it unnoticed in her hand. The banker's wife flushed and then turned pale. She understood. Annie would spare her. Her lips parted to protest. Even she was taken back by such an exhibition of unselfishness as this. She began to stammer thanks. ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... self-conceit to hope one is better company than Maria! But come, before we fall under the dominion of the Queen of the West Wing, I have a secret for you.' Then, after a longer stammer than usual, 'How should you ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... polite, assured him that it was impossible. "Very well," said General Sigel, "I think I shall want this place to-morrow for a hospital. Madam, your kindness will be reciprocated." He spoke very emphatically, whereat the pretty daughter began to cry, and the mother to stammer apologies, and said she would do the best she could for them, but she really had nothing to cook. The general retired very indignant. Whether or not his threat was carried out I do not know, for the next morning ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... pass for all such assemblies, signed by some dolt who cannot even spell the name he assumes—'Pom-de-Tair.' A commissary of police sat yawning at the end of the orchestra, his secretary by his side, while the orators stammer out fragments of would-be thunderbolts. Commissary of police yawns more wearily than before, secretary disdains to use his pen, seizes his penknife and pares his nails. Up rises a wild-haired, weak-limbed silhouette of a man, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "Why do you stammer so, Miss Rathmore?" asked the principal. "Is it a fact that that which seemed so desirable to say just now appears to you in another light when you have taken time to ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... these words, but I was not prepared to answer him, and in the rush of his indignant accusation my defence was swept down, and I could only stammer out— ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... heaven-sent attribute of every young woman when circumstances compel her to speak to a strange young man—though her tone to the more favored cook was kindly, and even sprightly—though Philip himself was red and inclined to stammer—despite all these hindrances to clear judgment, he felt that she was troubled in spirit. His acquaintance with women was of the slightest, since a youth who is taught his business on the Conway, and means to attach himself to one of the great Trans-Atlantic shipping lines, ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... scramble amid piles of unbound music; the right cahier found, snatched up, and opened at the well-thumbed solo with which she has already contended for many a long hour, and now hopes to execute for our applause. Alas! the piano sounds as if it had the pip; the paralytic keys halt, and stammer, and tremble, or else run into each other like ink upon blotting paper, and the pedals are the only part of the instrument which do the work for which they were intended. We should be sorry that our favourite dog had his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... growing in his face. And I heard Witred stammer, for the fear of the great king was on him; and I knew not what Sighard might not say in his wrath, for already Selred had his hand on him to stay him. So I spoke for the rest, being a stranger, and of no account if the anger of the king ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... "Clarry" (the Clarendon Hotel) in February, Forbes was called upon to respond to the toast "The Real Kathleen." His voice, tremulous with emotion and absinthe frappe, nearly failed him; but he managed to stammer a few phrases which, thought at the time to be extemporaneous, called forth loud applause; but it was found later that he had jotted them down on the tablecloth during the soup and fish courses. "Fellow Scorpers," he ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... with the land of the Innis Fail, O and O! there is friendship here, there is song." But they smile to your face, when you turn they stammer and rail And the song of the singer has tears and ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... averted face, began to stammer a few disconnected and unintelligible words; but old Wardlaw silenced him and said, with much feeling, "Let none but a father tell him. My poor, poor friend—the Proserpine! How can ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... no laws of perspective were known. None knew how to draw anything correctly. No color-harmonies had been thought of. These men must needs stammer when they tried to express themselves; but as much greater as thought is than the mere expression of it so much greater are many of their works, in the true sense, than the mass of pictures that make up our exhibitions ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... closely pressed to hers that, through her soft, thick hair she could feel the throbbing of his temples. As for Daniel, he seemed in a walking dream, from which he waked to see Miss Pilgrim looking into his eyes with utter, though not incensed stupefaction,—to stammer, "Forgive me! do forgive me! I thought you ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow
... where his best box of spermacetis had gone to. I knew I could do the poetry, and I firmly resolved that I would read it through, from beginning to end, in a clear, well-modulated voice, that could be heard by all, including the minister and Belle Marigold. I would not blush, or stammer, or get a frog in my throat. I swore solemnly to myself that I would not. Some folks should see that my bashfulness was wearing off faster than the gold from an oroide watch. Oh, I would show 'em! Some things could be done as well as others. I would no ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... ordeal of carelessly carrying off an alias is said by those who have undergone it (and the report is confirmed by an experienced class of public officials) to require a species of hardihood which, fortunately for society, is somewhat rare. The most daring Smith will sometimes stammer when it comes to merely answering "Yes" to a cry of "Brown!" and Count Bunker, whose knowledge of human nature was profound and remarkably accurate, was careful to fortify his friend by example and praise, till by the time they went to bed the Baron could scarcely be withheld ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... Art that oft the Learn'd hath stammer'd, In one Iron Head-piece (yet no Hammer-Lead) May (joyn'd with Nature) hit Fame on the Cocks-comb, Then 'tis that Head-piece that is crown'd with Odcomb For he, hard Head (and hard, sith like a Whet-stone) It ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... making you a little shame-faced of the bustling madness of our heaven-touching Babel. Of course, your secret adoration of Manhattan, the greatest wild poem ever begotten by the heart of man, is not readily transmissible. You will stammer something of what it means to climb upward from the subway on a spring morning and see that golden figure over Fulton Street spreading its shining wings above the new day. And they will smile gently, that knowing, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... Fellow in July, 1805. In 1803 he was awarded by the Provost of Eton the Belham Scholarship, given to those Scholars of King's who had behaved well at Eton, and held it till 1816. A witty companion, with "a dry caustic manner, and an irresistible stammer" ('Life of Rev, F. Hodgson', vol. i. p. 204), Davies was, during the Regency and afterwards, a popular member of fashionable society. A daring gambler and shrewd calculator, he at one time won heavily at the gaming-tables. On June 10, 1814, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... directed to thank him, in the name of the people, for his great services as an officer. This the Speaker did in glowing terms, quite unexpectedly to Washington. Washington rose to reply. His face flushed; he struggled to speak; but could only stammer, and stood speechless and trembling. "Sit down, Mr. Washington," said the Speaker, with a smile. "Your modesty equals your valor, and that surpasses the power of any language ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... especially when I heard any one else stutter, or when the weather was going to change; the men who knew me well said they could always foretell a storm by my inability to talk. From my own experience, however, I knew that when a stammerer heard another man stammer, he imagined that he was being made fun of, and all the fight in him came at once to the surface; and as this young man was about twice my size, I did my best to keep away from him. But in a few moments he came over to where I was and said to me, "A-a-a-sk ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... must stay here a day or two, until I can—arrange things," I managed to stammer. "Have you a small single ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... very red, and was about to stammer some incoherent reply, when suddenly the young lady called down from ...
— Good Stories from The Ladies Home Journal • Various
... wrathful he rose personally through his main hatch, and at 2000 yards (have I said it was a still day?) addressed the tramp. Even at that distance she gathered it was a Naval officer with a grievance, and by the time he ran alongside she was in a state of coma, but managed to stammer: "Well, sir, at least you'll admit that ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... lesson was a confused jumble. She heard but dimly the rise and fall of Professor Fontaine's voice as he conducted the lesson, and when he called upon her to recite she stared at him dazedly and finally managed to stammer ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... moment later she emerged, safe and unscratched from the confused heap of men and furniture, it was to cut off instantly the stutter and stammer of poor Shafto's apologies, to bid him go instantly for the ship's doctor, and, with face the color of death, to turn quickly to Armstrong. The blow had burst open the half-healed wound, and the blood ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... faithfully copied his way of speaking. There were the same unfinished sentences, ending in a ps—ps—ps—uttered between the teeth. "What's-his-names" and "What-d'ye-call-'ems" at every turn, a sort of lazy, bored, aristocratic stammer, in which one divined profound contempt for the vulgar art of speech. In the duke's circle everybody strove to copy that accent, those disdainful intonations, in which there was an ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the priest knelt down before the window, covered his face with his hands, and began to stammer and cry to God: "O God! ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... of about twelve summers the remark that she tho't it was rich to talk about the crooilty of the Spaniards usin thumbscrews, when he was in a Tower where so many poor peple's heads had been cut off. This made the Warder stammer and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... guests with quite a calm, grand manner. Miss Lucy and I will have to look about us, and polish up all our best airs and graces lest we should be thrown into the shade. Still, Polly, there is a little flutter, a little tendency to stammer now and then, and even, to lisp as you lisped when you were ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... fallen asleep, that I was usually a wide-awake citizen of the land that Lafayette went to save, that I wanted my dinner, and would like to get out. I walked down near enough to the gate to see the policeman, but my courage failed. Before I could stammer out half that explanation to him in his trifling language (which foreigners are mockingly told is the best in the world for conversation), he would either have slipped his hateful rapier through my body, or have raised an alarm and called out the guards of the palace ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... nothing that was easy to say; honestly he didn't know whether, when the door should open and that tall, elegant, fastidious figure should walk in, he would find himself able to say anything at all. He feared he might only grow hot, and stammer, and slink out. But he pulled himself together; he must do his best; it was quite necessary. He would try to say, "Lord Evelyn, I know it is abominably impertinent of me to come into your house like this. Will you forgive me this once? I have come to ask you, is there any consideration ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... environment. Thus the anecdote of the servant who had been instructed to summon the visiting English nobleman by tapping on his bedroom door and inquiring, "My lord, have you yet risen?" and who could only stammer, "My God! ain't you up yet?" Or the anecdote of the minister who in a sermon on the Parable of the Prodigal Son told how a young man living dissolutely in a city had been compelled to send to the pawnbroker first ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... words Allecto's wrath blazed out. But amid his utterance a quick shudder overruns his limbs; his eyes are fixed in horror; so thickly hiss the snakes of the Fury, so vast her form expands. Then rolling her fiery eyes, she thrust him back as he would stammer out more, raised two serpents in her hair, and, sounding her whip, resumed with ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... recognized in such common expressions as "she was covered with confusion." Persons in this condition lose their presence of mind, and utter singularly inappropriate remarks. They are often much distressed, stammer, and make awkward movements or strange grimaces. In certain cases involuntary twitchings of some of the facial muscles may be observed. I have been informed by a young lady, who blushes excessively, that at such times she does not even know what she is saying. ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... through all the imitative arts. Foote's mimicry was exquisitely ludicrous, but it was all caricature. He could take off only some strange peculiarity, a stammer or a lisp, a Northumbrian burr or an Irish brogue, a stoop or a shuffle. "If a man," said Johnson, "hops on one leg, Foote can hop on one leg." Garrick, on the other hand, could seize those differences of manner and pronunciation, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... at this, for he did not know whether she was serious or not. He could do nothing but stammer and get red, and think what a ridiculous ass he was making of himself. He might have considered the help he was ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... medicine. I have been as well as the average person, and have been able to do work as hard as God has required of me. I recommend God as a physician. At the time I was healed of my other bodily afflictions, I was also relieved of stammering. It is true I stammer some yet, at times, but not nearly so much as I did formerly; and not enough to prevent my preaching ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... words were scarcely out of his mouth when, much to his dismay, Death stood before him and professed his readiness to serve him. He was almost frightened out of his wits, but he had enough presence of mind to stammer out, "Good sir, if you'd be so kind, pray help me ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... Margaret I call sweet names: Helen is too, too dear For me to stammer little words ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... assistance from the unscientific—the meddling of the immodest—the intrusion of the garrulous. Art, that for ages has hewn its own history in marble, and written its own comments on canvas, shall it suddenly stand still, and stammer, and wait for wisdom from the passer-by?—for guidance from the hand that holds neither brush nor chisel? Out upon the shallow conceit! What greater sarcasm can Mr. Ruskin pass upon himself than that he preaches to young men what he cannot ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... "a truly angel" was embracing her, and could only stammer out her thanks, while the other children ran to see the pretty spirit, and touch her soft dress, until she stood in a crowd of blue gowns laughing as they held up their gifts for her ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... my Lord—there's none can do Or say un-English things like you: And, if the schemes that fill thy breast Could but a vent congenial seek, And use the tongue that suits them best, What charming Turkish wouldst thou speak! But as for me, a Frenchless grub, At Congress never born to stammer, Nor learn like thee, my Lord, to snub Fallen Monarchs, out of CHAMBAUD'S grammar— Bless you, you do not, can not, know How far a little French will go; For all one's stock, one need but draw On some half-dozen words like toese— Comme ca—par-la—la-bas—ah ha! They'll ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... again. Poor Hilary looked very uncomfortable. With an apologetic air he began to stammer something about Parish Councils. I was not to be diverted by any such maneuver. It was impossible that he could really wish ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope
... She had pulled the string and the marionette moved with precision. A daze, a flash, a stammer—all the embarrassment of a man who believes that in a day-dream he has ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... how I cried on first entering the cars, and now—would you believe it?—I got terribly embarrassed. It seemed as if everything I did or said made matters worse. I was scarcely able to stammer, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... in your chair like a queen and wait on you," he said with a soft boyish stammer; "but I am too dazed with happiness to be ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... statement carefully, expecting to see Henshaw turn pale and stammer in terror. Instead, the captain regarded ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... of gabbling and pronouncing carelessly and ill; it is still worse when they repeat their lessons; they cannot find the right words, they drag out their syllables. This is only possible when the memory hesitates, the tongue does not stammer of itself. Thus they acquire or continue habits of bad pronunciation. Later on you will see that Emile does not acquire such habits or at least not ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... have heard a man talk with smooth speech, and it rolled off me as easily as it rolled out of him. Do your best, and leave the rest. If we are in touch with God His fire burns whether the tongue stammer or has ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... of trumpets, and all the people shouted louder than ever. Fanfaronade was not generally at a loss for something to say, but when he saw the Princess, she was so much more beautiful and majestic than he had expected that he could only stammer out a few words, and entirely forgot the harangue which he had been learning for months, and knew well enough to have repeated it in his sleep. To gain time to remember at least part of it, he made several low bows to the Princess, who on her side dropped half-a-dozen curtseys ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... to make your cheeks burn—I ken that; And when the question is a woman's virtue, It rattles like a reaper round a wheatfield, And as little cares if it's cutting grain or poppies. So, it's too late to blush and stammer now, And let your teeth trip ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... considered, from her position, as a sort of animated encyclopedia, to be consulted at will. And all this, to be able to instruct a half-civilized brood of children, of both sexes, in the rudiments of reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic and geography, with enough of grammar to enable them to stammer and stumble through a simple sentence, and arrive safely at the end without any material injury ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... one glance, and ran down the steps into the yard. The doctor, who was the family physician, saluted him, but he scarcely took any notice. He could only stammer out: "My brother is dead. What does it mean? What is this horrible mystery?" There was an unhappy silence; and then the cobbler, the most outspoken man present, answered: "Plenty of horror, sir," he ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... beginning to stammer out some excuse about its having been so long ago, when Mrs. Damer came to his aid, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... started when he saw him, and he began to stammer out, "Oh, dear me! is it you? Pray how did you sleep last night? Did you hear or see anything in the ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... a deep bow, but before he had time to stammer out some apologetic self-introduction, ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... as well he might. Nature had not endowed him with any great amount of natural courage, and the sight of his old neighbour's rifle-barrel made him feel positively sick. He hesitated and began to stammer excuses. ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... out a walie hammer; About the knottit buttress clam'er; Alang the steep roof stoyt an' stammer, A gate mischancy; On the aul' spire, the bells' hie cha'mer, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... great coarseness and vulgarity of manner, raised her eyes, and looked him in the face. There was something so odious, so insolent, so repulsive in the look which met her, that, without the power to stammer forth a syllable, she rose and hurried from the room. She restrained her tears by a great effort until she was alone upstairs, and then ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... Forever.' Back to his book then; deeper drooped his head: Calculus racked him: Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead: Tussis attacked him.... So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled Hoti's business—let it be!— Properly based Oun— Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, Dead from the waist down. Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: Hail to your purlieus, All ye highfliers of the feathered race, Swallows and curlews! Here's the top-peak; the multitude ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the other end of the table, a harsh voice issued from the lips of a burly, red-faced man. "Mr. President, if you are a Christian, you'll perhaps be good enough to say grace, and let us get to our dinner, which we want very badly." I managed to stammer forth the formula of my childhood, and thought the worst was over. Not a bit of it. No sooner had the soup been audibly consumed than the hated voice from the foot of the table again assailed me. "Mr. President, I really don't ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... lips before, that in his mind were associated only with the printed page. When he suddenly realized that he was using a word for the first time, and probably mispronouncing it, he would become as much confused as if he were trying to pass a lead dollar, would blush and stammer and let some one finish his sentence ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... could see nothing of them. We could not stand up to look about us, because of the pitching of the boat. The two other men who had escaped so far with me were a man named Helmar, a passenger like myself, and a seaman whose name I don't know,—a short sturdy man, with a stammer. ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... silence, seeing that I would not get him to respond in that way, I began to stammer something about my calling, my love of art, my desire to learn and so forth. . . . He continued to peel his potatoes. Finally, I asked him to give me lessons. He glanced at me and grumbled: 'How old are you, my boy?' I stood there dumbfounded ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... up a lot of English ways. What's taken you?" She stared up in wonder at his laughter, until it broke on her that she had unwittingly given him, an Englishman, food for the silly English taunt that the Scotch are mean. "Och, you don't understand," she began to stammer hastily. ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... proceeding of some formelesse conceptions, which they cannot distinguish or resolve within, and by consequence are not able to produce them in as-much as they understand not themselves: And if you but marke their earnestnesse, and how they stammer and labour at the point of their deliverle, you would deeme that what they go withall, is but a conceiving, and therefore nothing neere downelying; and that they doe but licke that imperfect and shapelesse ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... which must ever be denied realization, that beginning doomed to be thwarted. As we were talking once of all who were to come on the great day, I saw suddenly a little flush on Elsa's cheek. She did not look away or stammer, or make any other obvious concession to her embarrassment, but the blush could not be denied access to her face and came ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... learning the piano for three years or more, and still can do nothing. You are doubtless right; and, further, they never will learn any thing. You ask, Of what use is it to man or boy to be able to stammer through this or that waltz, or polonaise or mazurka, with stiff arms, weak fingers, a stupid face, and lounging figure? What gain is it to art? You say, Is not time worth gold, and yet we are offered lead? And the poor ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... orders Silvain to be shot. But Rose bravely defends her lover, threatening to reveal the dragoon's neglect of duty. {68} When therefore Belamy's superior appears to hear the important news of which the messenger told him, his corporal is only able to stammer out that nothing in particular has happened, and so after all, Georgette is saved from discovery and Rose becomes Silvain's ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... really did amuse herself by telling him the names of the things he touched. He could only stammer, reiterating the syllables, and failing to utter a single word plainly. However, she began to walk him about the room, holding him up and leading him from the bed to the window—quite a long journey. Two or three times ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... quickly; for you see it's of great importance to a pilot to know exactly how a ship's head is; and the men at the helm, although good seamen and steering well, are not so ready at answering as a pilot wishes, and very often stammer at it—sometimes make mistakes. Now, you see, when I'm piloting a vessel, if you stand at the binnacle, watch the compass, and answer me quickly how the ship's head is, you'll be of use to me in a very short time. Go up into my room, and under the bed you will ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... guests beside them, who wished to hear them talk familiarly, so as to dispel all restraint, made them stammer and colour. They could never make up their minds to treat one another as sweethearts in the ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... heart seemed to swell to bursting, and the blood rushed through my veins so that I could hear it and nothing else for a while. I managed at last to stammer forth some words of awkward congratulation, and he left me, singing merrily, after asking permission to bring his bride to see me on the morrow as they returned ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... taken completely out of Daniel's sails. He could only sit there, guilt written plainly upon his face, and stammer frantic protestations. ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... endeavours to make a philosopher of his child are sufficiently ludicrous. He is delighted to find that the infant has the wart of Cicero and the very neck of Alexander, and hopes that he may come to stammer like Demosthenes, 'and in time arrive at many other defects of famous men.' As the boy grows up his father invents for him a geographical suit of clothes, and stamps his gingerbread with the letters ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... what was the matter. When he got near, the lights went into the house: he went up quietly and as he looked in found the house full of women who extinguished the light directly they saw him and rushed out of the house. Then he asked my sister what the light was; but she could only stammer out "What light? I saw no light," so he struck her a blow and went back to the threshing-floor and told the others what he had seen. That night he would not tell them the names of the women he had seen; and before morning his right arm swelled and became very painful; ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... much astonished to reply; Miss Rodney's tones and bearing had so impressed her that she was at a loss for her usual loquacity, and could only stammer respectfully broken answers to whatever was asked. Assuredly no one had ever dared to tell her that her lodgings were 'filthy'—any ordinary person who had ventured upon such an insult would have been overwhelmed with clamorous retort. ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... feet, clinching her hands, then swiftly and noiseless crossed over to her bed and from underneath it dragged out her suitcase. Into it she tossed toilet articles and a change of clothing, Then she turned to her trunk and quickly dumped in two drawerfulls of lingerie and stammer dresses. She moved quietly. but deadly efficiency, and in three-quarters of an hour her trunk was locked and strapped and she was fully dressed in a becoming new travelling suit that Marjorie had helped ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... and O'Keefe gazed stupidly each on each. Incredulous amazement and perplexity tied their tongues. Finally Halloway found his voice to stammer, "What's done happened? How did Sellers ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... miles farther to my house,' he added; 'it's a long way to walk; let us first go to Hor's.' (The reader must excuse my omitting his stammer.) ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... like her, nibble a morsel and drink a mouthful; they tell one another the history of their martyrs; their sorrow becomes vehement; their libations increase; their eyes, swimming with tears, are fixed on one another; they stammer with inebriety and desolation. Gradually their hands touch; their lips meet; their veils are torn away, and they embrace one another upon the tombs in the midst of the cups and ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... Europe would fain encourage the hearts of these long-oppressed nations, now daring to hope for a new era, by reciting triumphant testimony from the experience of his own country. But we must stammer and blush when we speak of many things. I take pride here, that I may really say the liberty of the press works well, and that checks and balances naturally evolve from it, which suffice to its government. I may say, that the minds of our ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... which filled the room with a wild tumult of movement. I had not heard anything like it in my life. It set every nerve of me dancing. I suppose Paragot found his interest in me because I was such an impressionable youngster. When, at the abrupt finale, he asked me what I thought of it, I could scarce stammer a word. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... a behavior so childish and absurd, Douglas could only stammer out something about Lady Juliana having been frightened and fatigued; and, requesting to be shown to their apartment, he supported her almost lifeless to it, while his aunts followed, all three prescribing different remedies ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... in suspense, took in nothing of the president's speech beyond the acceptance of his offer, and, pale with relief, he tried to stammer his thanks and his devotion to his chosen cause. He made no attempt to contradict the president's confident prophecies; he only made the greatest possible haste to the tower-rooms which were to be his home. His ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... impossible for me to recognize him. I was very anxious to do so in view of the trouble the officer had taken to come away out on the picket line, in the middle of the night, to see me, but I just couldn't, and began to stammer a sort of apology about the darkness of the night hindering a prompt recognition, when the "unknown" gave his head a slant to one side, and, in his never forgettable voice, spoke thus to Keeley: "I told you he wouldn't know me." "I know you now," said I; "I'd recognize ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... Uliana tried to stammer out a few words, but I was already outside the door on the street. I dropped the watch into the bottom of my pocket, held it tight with my ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... the pretty little young ladies who used to talk like mechanical dolls. They could say 'papa' and 'mamma,' and when they went to a dance they never lost sight of their parents. The little childlike young lady who was always so timid and bashful and who used to blush and stammer, brought up to be ignorant of everything, neither knowing how to stand up on her legs nor how to sit down on a chair—all that sort of thing's done with, old-fashioned, worn out. That was the marriageable ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... offended. My great friend is the Maohn (police magistrate) here—a very kind, good man, much liked, I hear, by all except the Kadee, who was displeased at his giving the stick to a Mussulman for some wrong to a Copt. I am beginning to stammer out a little Arabic, but find it horribly difficult. The plurals are bewildering and the verbs quite heart-breaking. I have no books, which makes learning very slow work. I have written to Hekekian Bey ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... who stutters. Mr. Glover says he wins all his cases through sympathy. He stumbles along until everyone is absolutely convinced that the poor fellow would have a perfectly splendid case if he could only stammer through it; then, of course, ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... When at last Burt was permitted to see her, she gave him her hand with such a look of gratitude, and something more, which she could not then disguise, that his heart began to beat strangely fast. He was so confused that he could only stammer some incoherent words of congratulation; but he half-consciously gave her hand a pressure that left the most delicious pain the young girl had ever known. He was deeply excited, for he had taken a tremendous risk in springing upon a creature that can ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... sit down. I said nothing, but bent over my needlework like the good child keeping quiet in the corner. Oh, but they are stupid, these royal people, all except my own Princess and the dear old Queen at Windsor. Neither York nor Lyonesse knew in the least what to say, and the Princess let them stammer on without helping ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... was so surprised that he could not speak. His face plainly showed how taken aback he was. Then, after a moment, he managed to stammer: ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... bow to her. She comes closer, and bursts out into a loud, almost childlike laughter. I stammer, as only a little dilettante or great big donkey can do on ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... cards fell so suddenly to the ground that under the compelling eyes of Mayence he could do no more than stammer his acquiescence. ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... moment's pause, and then Kate said, with a cough and a stammer and her head aside, "Is ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... for Scientific Truth, And pedagogues with books and birches Guided the faltering steps of Youth In biological researches: The infant in his nurse's care In Science' terms was taught to stammer: They practised vivisection where They used to ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... Which you should resist? Recall too, Can you not? the aid heaven granted When you helped yourself, and prayed for Its assistance: were you not guarded By it when a sweet voice sung, When a keen wit glowed and argued, When the instrument was silenced, When the tongue was forced to stammer, Until now, when with free will You succumb to the enchantment Of one fair and fatal face, Which hath done to you such damage That 't will work your final ruin, If ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... or a Barclay; to have it restored to me a moment later by a courteous fellow-passenger—courteous, but with a smile of gentle pity in his eye as he glimpsed the author's name. "Thanks very much," I would stammer, blushing guiltily, and perhaps I would babble about a sick friend to whom I was taking them, or that I was running out of paper-weights. But he never believed me. He knew that he would have said something ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... though he turned language into ignoble clay, he made from it men and women that live. He is the most Shakespearian creature since Shakespeare. If Shakespeare could sing with myriad lips, Browning could stammer through a thousand mouths. Even now, as I am speaking, and speaking not against him but for him, there glides through the room the pageant of his persons. There, creeps Fra Lippo Lippi with his cheeks still burning from some girl's hot kiss. There, stands dread Saul ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... astonished that for the moment I could not think what to say, but at last I managed to stammer, as I made a low ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... struggling, and deformed into the day—to give words and intelligible symbols to that which was never imagined or expressed before! It is as if the dumb should speak for the first time, as if things should stammer out their own meaning through the imperfect organs of mere sense. I wish that some of our fluent, plausible declaimers, who have such store of words to cover the want of ideas, could lend their art to ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... and was transacting a steady and fairly profitable manufacturing business in the adjacent town, actually believed he was more fitted for adventurous speculation than the grimly erratic man of energetic impulses and pleasures beside him. He managed to stammer hesitatingly: ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... wife, mother, mother-in-law, sons, daughters, old footman or parlor-maid, confidential clerk, curate, or what not? I smirk and go through the history, giving my admirable imitations of the characters introduced: I mimic Jones's grin, Hobbs's squint, Brown's stammer, Grady's brogue, Sandy's Scotch accent, to the best of my power: and, the family part of my audience laughs good-humoredly. Perhaps the stranger, for whose amusement the performance is given, is amused by it and laughs ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... You better attend strictly to your own business or there'll be a new man here next week." It was as if he had blazed away with a shotgun. The young man reeled upon his perch. At last he in a measure regained his composure and managed to stammer: "A—all right, sir." He knew that denials would be futile with the terrible Stimson. He agitatedly began to rattle the rings in the basket, and pretend that he was obliged to count them or inspect them in some way. He, too, was unable to face the ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... doesn't stammer either. I'll try presently. Positively, if he wore spectacles and a wig of your hair, I shouldn't know ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... She is beside herself. She is like a maniac. She has lost you; she cannot explain to—to Mademoiselle's father. Mon dieu, when he met her unexpectedly in the hall, he shouts, 'where is my daughter?' And poor Madame she has but to shiver and stammer and—run away! Oui! She dash out into the rain! It is ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... obscure for those who gained it as for him who lost it. To Napoleon it is a panic; Blucher sees nothing in it but fire; Wellington does not understand it at all. Look at the reports: the bulletins are confused; the commentaries are entangled; the latter stammer, the former stutter. Jomini divides the battle of Waterloo into four moments; Muffling cuts it into three acts; Charras, altho we do not entirely agree with him in all his appreciations, has alone caught with his haughty eye the characteristic lineaments of this ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... sprono. spy : spioni; esplori. squadron : skadro, eskadro. square : kvadrato; rektangulilo; placo. squint : strabi. squirrel : sciuro. staff : (officers), stabo. stage : estrado, scenejo. stain : makul'o, -i. stair : sxtupo. stake : paliso, fosto; veto. stalk : trunketo. stall : budo, stalo. stammer : balbuti. stamp : stampi; posxtmarko; piedfrapi. starch : amelo. starling : sturno. state : stato; Sxtato; esprimi, diri, aserti. station : stacio, stacidomo. steak : bifsteko. steel : sxtalo. steep ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... broke he would be stiff and cold. Parties so visited have been known to rise like one man, abandon the fire and run off into the night in mute panic. Or a comrade talking to you on the march would stammer suddenly in the middle of a sentence, roll affrighted eyes, and fall down with distorted face and blue lips, breaking the ranks with the convulsions of his agony. Men were struck in the saddle, on sentry duty, in the firing line, carrying orders, serving the guns. I have been ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... too terrified to speak for some moments, as they saw such a tumultuous assemblage seeking their master, while so singular a name was applied to him. At length, one more bold than the rest contrived to stammer out,— ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... remembered, he had raved out his passion for Virginia, and to-day he could barely stammer Betty's name. A great silence; seemed to surround the thought ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... yes. There's nothing to be done there. The professors—I don't think they like him much; he is too clever. When he came into the class-room and talked Latin to Johnson, the Professor of Latin, and Johnson could only stammer out a word or two, I guess he didn't make a friend;" and the girl laughed ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... two or three good-looking, well-dressed young women. My friend talked to them in French and bought drinks for the whole party. I tried to recall my high-school French, but the effort availed me little. I could stammer out a few phrases, but, very naturally, could not understand a word that was said to me. We stayed at the cafe a couple of hours, then went back to the hotel. The next day we spent several hours in the shops and at the tailor's. ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... nature is what you want!" He threw down his hat and stick upon the green-baize-covered table, took one of the Windsor chairs, and crashed it down beside the sofa, and planted his hulking big body on it, and reached out and captured the thin wrist of his victim, who mustered breath to stammer: ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... could only stammer over the First Reader at her mother's knee, was obliged to confess that she had ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May
... a heroic effort. He began to stammer, checked himself, and at last succeeded in imposing ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... trying to prepare a stammering obvious lie. He confronted a tall, thin man about whom—even if his clothes had been totally different—there could be no mistake. He stood awaiting an apology so evidently that Carson—or Bayle—began to stammer himself even before he had time to dismiss from his voice the suggestion of bluster. It would have irritated Coombe immensely if he had known that he—and a certain overcoat—had been once pointed out to ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... have fancies more luminous occurred. The Persians so polished their dreams that they entranced the world that was. Poets can do no more. The Hindus too were poets. They were children as well. Their first lisp, the first recorded stammer of Indo-European speech, is audible still in the Rig-Veda, a bundle of hymns tied together, four thousand years ago, for the greater glory of Fire. The worship of the latter led to that of the Sun and ignited the antique altars. It flamed ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... the next. Let the world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find him. So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled Hoti's business—let it be!— Properly based Oun— Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... of examinations. They were signed La Carriere ouverte, and were written before the days of the Civil Service Commission! I well remember, too, that the first time I ventured to speak, or rather to stammer, in public, was in favor of examinations. That was in 1857, at Exeter, when the first experiment was made, under the auspices of Sir T. Acland, in the direction of what has since developed into the Oxford and Cambridge Local Examinations. I have ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... had broken all his bones. Early in the morning, Jack put a bold face upon the matter, and walked into the giant's room to thank him for his lodgings. The giant started when he saw him, and he began to stammer out, "Oh, dear me! Is it you? Pray, how did you sleep last night? Did you hear or see any thing in the dead of the night?" "Nothing worth speaking of," said Jack carelessly; "a rat, I believe, gave me three or four slaps with his tail, and disturbed ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... words: "It seems they do not decide to separate so quickly. It is not, however, possible that they will fight.... Can we see them from here?" He approached the window, which indeed looked upon the enclosure. The sight which met his eyes caused the excellent man to stammer.... "The miserable men!... It is monstrous.... They are mad.... They have found seconds.... Whom have they taken?... Those two huntsmen!... Ali, my God! My God!".... He could say no more. The doctor had hastened to the window ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... was staring at Calhoun with open mouth and bulging eyes. "Bless my soul," he at length managed to stammer, "if it ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... gesture with his hands, did not frown or clench his fists, but remained impassively calm. His words, however, cut Rrisa like knives. The orderly remained trembling and sweating, with a piteous expression. Finally he managed to stammer: ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... Tommy was as well as ever—indeed, better; not only was his hearing fully restored, but he had ceased to stammer, and the thin, almost imperceptible cloud upon his intellect was dissipated. The doctor expressed but little surprise at these phenomena, and, in fact, stated that similar things had occurred often before, and were duly written down in the books of medicine. But Eli Machin's ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... Making directly for the woodland altar. O kindly muse! let not my weak tongue faulter In telling of this goodly company, Of their old piety, and of their glee: 130 But let a portion of ethereal dew Fall on my head, and presently unmew My soul; that I may dare, in wayfaring, To stammer where old Chaucer ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... a memorable class day gave the pleasure of her company to a diffident student who in ecstasy at playing escort to the lovely girl and her dignified Aunt Marcia, nearly forgot all which he ever knew, managing only to stammer through an effort at conversation which must have completely ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... him, but which they repeated frequently afterwards, sent advice of this to the king, who ordered the children to be brought before him, in order that he himself might be a witness to the truth of what was told him; and accordingly both of them began, in his presence, to stammer out the sounds above mentioned. Nothing now was wanting but to ascertain what nation it was that used this word; and it was found that the Phrygians called bread by this name. From this time they were allowed the honour of antiquity, or rather of priority, which the Egyptians themselves, notwithstanding ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... deep blue, and at the end of the street the darkness was flooded with purple. There was something extravagant about them all; joy urged their movements to exceed the narrow every-day limits, and made them stammer and stagger ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... sooner had all this news been digested than somebody discovered a diamond ring on Clara Tuttle's left hand. So Clara was surrounded and an explanation demanded. But before she could conquer her blushes and stammer out her news Max Longman came in from another room and, putting his arms about her, said, "Don't be afraid, girl of mine, I'm here." And so everybody knew then that it was Max, after all, and ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... have got you at last, as I wished.' I tried to speak as steadily as he had done; but, as the moment for action came near, my d——d cowardice made me stammer. ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... words, but I was not prepared to answer him, and in the rush of his indignant accusation my defence was swept down, and I could only stammer out— ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... such a genius (Beethoven) is so easily and so much appreciated here, by those who have not gone through the steps that prepared the way for him in Europe. He is felt because he expressed in full tones the thoughts that lie at the heart of our own existence, though we have not found means to stammer them as yet." ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... We could not stand up to look about us, because of the pitching of the boat. The two other men who had escaped so far with me were a man named Helmar, a passenger like myself, and a seaman whose name I don't know,—a short sturdy man, with a stammer. ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... Arthur began to stammer, and at last managed to finish with, "There is NOT such a vast difference in your ages. Twenty-one years is nothing when weighed against the debt of gratitude ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... act to speak, or rather stammer, But sage Antonia cut him short before The anvil of his speech received the hammer, With 'Pray, sir, leave the room, and say no more, Or madam dies.'—Alfonso mutter'd, 'D—n her,' But nothing else, the time of words was o'er; He cast a rueful look or two, and ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... uncouth, compared with the immaculate, dandyish pair, Dodge and Bayliss. The latter, with so many amused glances turned their way, could only flush deeply, stammer, ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... in gray hat and ostrich plumes, fashionable driving costume edged with fur, for the spring air was yet cool, and bright silk parasol, for the spring sun was beginning to be warm. With almost a stammer, he said:— ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... filled with such great and unexpected joy that he became almost delirious. He wanted to laugh, he wanted to cry, he wanted to say a thousand things, and instead he could only stammer out a few confused and broken words. At last he succeeded in uttering a cry of joy, and, opening his arms, he threw them around the little old man's neck, ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... "honesty is the best policy." But these are acquired habits of thinking. The child has no natural love of truth, as is experienced by all who have the least acquaintance with early youth. If they are charged with a fault while they can hardly speak, the first words they stammer forth are a falsehood to excuse it. Nor is this all: the temptation of attracting attention, the pleasure of enjoying importance, the desire to escape from an unpleasing task, or accomplish a holiday, will ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... rise and place stools near the stove, but whether he was quite drunk or whether some narcotic had been mixed with the brandy, he fell back on his seat, trying to stammer out ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Yesterday I had to order a slave beaten to death for breaking a vase of Greek glass. I can buy a hundred slaves for half what that glass cost Hadrian. And I could have a thousand better senators tomorrow than the fools who belch and stammer in the curia, the senate house. But where would you find another Commodus if some lurking miscreant should stab me from behind? It was the geese that saved the capitol. You cacklers can preserve ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... stand as opponents. This disputation, whatever may have been its merits in former days, has degenerated in the present into a mere piece of acted mummery, where the partakers not only stutter and stammer over bad Latin, but even help themselves, when their memory fails utterly, with the previously written notes of their extempore objections and answers. The principal requisite for the attainment of the Doctor's degree, when the necessary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... summers the remark that she tho't it WAS rich to talk about the crooilty of the Spaniards usin thumbscrews, when we was in a Tower where so many poor pepl's heads had been cut off. This made the Warder stammer and turn red. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 5 • Charles Farrar Browne
... man who has practised himself in love-making till his own glibness has rendered him sceptical, may at last be overtaken by the lover's awe—may tremble, stammer, and show other signs of recovered sensibility no more in the range of his acquired talents than pins and needles after numbness: how much more may that energetic timidity possess a man whose inward history has cherished his susceptibilities instead ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... baggage. bahia bay. bailar to dance. baile m. dance. bajar to lower, descend. bajo low; prep. under. bala ball, bullet. balancear to balance. balbucear to stammer. balcon m. balcony. balde; de —— gratis, for nothing. ballena whale. ballenero whaler. bambolear vr. to totter. banco bank. banda band. bandera banner. bandido highwayman. bando faction, party, proclamation. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... rather frightened, and didn't do anything but stammer. There were two men in the reception-room, and of course I picked out the wrong one and begged his pardon and asked if he were Mr. Stanthrope. He said no; his name was Wiggins. So then the only thing left for me to do was to ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... announcement. So the poor scholar, looking on the ragged regiment of his few books, is helped, consoled, exalted by the reflection: Hic mecum habitant ... Homerus, Plato, Aristoteles. And were one in a moment of inadvertence to inquire of him why he occupied himself with Greek, he might perchance stammer (like Dominie Sampson) an almost inarticulate reply; but more probably he would be stricken speechless by the enormous outrage of the request, and the reason of his devotion would be hidden from the ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... then he began to falter and stammer, and say that for certain reasons he could not marry at all. But if she could be content with anything short of that, he would retire with her into a distant country, and there, where nobody could contradict him, would call her his wife, and treat ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... Burgesses, of which he attended every meeting and was careful to know all about the affairs of the colony. When he first took his seat in the Legislature, he was thanked for his military service to the colony. He rose to reply, but could only blush and stammer. The speaker said, "Sit down, Mr. Washington, your modesty ...
— George Washington • Calista McCabe Courtenay
... maid for mate, But thou shalt die, thou knight enamour'd; So make thy shrift 'neath the linden straight, The little birds shall hear it stammer'd. ...
— Proud Signild - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... little group of men and women, rough-handed, bent and worn with toil, silent and shadowed with the sorrow of parting, I realized as never before the high place my parents had won in the estimation of their neighbors. It affected me still more deeply to see my father stammer and flush with uncontrollable emotion. I had thought the event deeply important before, but I now perceived that our going was all of a piece with the West's elemental restlessness. I could not express what I felt then, and I can recover but ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... straits shores, but I've never seed un with my own eyes, an' I'm sort o' wantin' t' know how they shapes up alongside o' Twist Tickle. I 'low," says he, "you don't find many harbors in the world like Twist Tickle. Since I been travellin' t' Jimmie Tick's Cove with the mail," he continued, with a stammer and flush, like a man misled from an austere path by the flesh-pots of earth, "I've cotched a sinful hankerin' t' see ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... first tears passed, "I have no more words. I had, however, thought well as to what you would say. Now I tremble and shiver and break down at the decisive moment, I feel conscious of something supreme enveloping us, and I stammer. Oh! I shall fall upon the pavement if you do not take pity on me, pity on yourself. Do not condemn us both. If you only knew how much I love you! What a heart is mine! Oh! what desertion of all virtue! What desperate abandonment of myself! A doctor, I mock at science; a gentleman, I ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... had come from Mr. Jarrott himself, who had unexpectedly invited his intelligent employee to lunch with him at a club, in order to talk over a commission with which Strange was to be intrusted. On this occasion he was able to stammer his way out of the invitation; but when later, Mr. Skinner, the second partner, made a like proposal, he was caught without an excuse, being obliged, with some confusion, to eat his meal in a fashionable restaurant in the Calle Florida. Oddly enough, both his refusal on the one occasion and ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... "Called him in before the indignant delegation, headed by old Reamur himself, and demanded of poor Webb what he meant by sending out such a letter. The youngster was so flustered that he could only stammer a confused denial. He started sniveling. Then Gordon collared him and booted him into the corridor. That should have closed the incident, but a few moments later back comes Webb, blubbering like a whipped ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... alone except for Macartney, who stood at the horses' heads. Wherever she was going, I had an idea he was as surprised about it as I was, and that he had been expostulating with her about her expedition. But, if he had, he shut up as I appeared. I could only stammer as I stared at Paulette, "You—you're ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... said, with a slight stammer that somehow lent an additional kindliness to his tone, "what has the day's work been? You first, Herr Graf," he added, turning to the Count. "I suppose that you have made a ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... nevertheless persisted, with a certain awkward doggedness which was not going to allow so slight a hint that his further attendance was unnecessary, to baffle him. He did not speak until they had passed down the stone steps to the pavement, and then his utterance began with a half-embarrassed stammer, as if the shadow of displeasure demanded justification ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... therefore the whale has no voice; unless you insult him by saying, that when he so strangely rumbles, he talks through his nose. But then again, what has the whale to say? Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living. Oh! happy that the world ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Speaker was directed to thank him, in the name of the people, for his great services as an officer. This the Speaker did in glowing terms, quite unexpectedly to Washington. Washington rose to reply. His face flushed; he struggled to speak; but could only stammer, and stood speechless and trembling. "Sit down, Mr. Washington," said the Speaker, with a smile. "Your modesty equals your valor, and that surpasses the power of any language that ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... elsewhere was a profane expressman, and had become quite imbecile under Mr. Wynn's active heartiness and brotherly horse-play before spectators) managed, however, to feebly stammer with a blush something about ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... this important personage, without lifting up my eyes or observing any of the people round me, who were attending there on the same errand as myself, and dropping her curtsies nine deep, just made a shift to stammer out my ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... what I had thought, it did not surprise me, and yet I felt sick and giddy. It was some time before I could speak, and then I could only stammer out: ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... tender little Babes, as well as strong men, ... let not anything straiten you, when God moves: And thou, faithful Babe, though thou stutter and stammer forth a few words in the dread of the Lord, they are accepted, and all that are strong, serve the weak in strengthening them and wait in wisdom to give place to the motion of the Spirit in them, that it may have time to bring forth what God hath given ... that ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... by entangling themselves with one another. Whereas most people, just as we provide supports for flowers, bestow certainties and truths upon their words to which they cling, the sincere refuse to yield to any such illusions. They hesitate, stammer and ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... handkerchiefs counted as spectators, and ladies faint away. "It is customary, especially for young women, to be excited, to turn pale, to melt into tears and, generally, to be seriously affected on encountering M. de Voltaire; they rush into his arms, stammer and weep, their agitation resembling that of the most passionate love."[2312]—When a society-author reads his work in a drawing-room, fashion requires that the company should utter exclamations and sob, and that ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... her little fight that morning. She had yielded and she could not renew it. She had spent three miserable hours framing reasonable arguments why last night should be forgotten. But the sight of her lover coming across the meadow had set her heart so leaping that she could only stammer out ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... and himself of a nature fancifully, almost fastidiously, delicate, he could only in reply stammer forth an acknowledgement of his companion's goodness, and his own gratitude. She answered in a tone partly sorrowful and partly impatient, repeating, with displeased emphasis, the only distinct words he had ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... a good-for-nothing chorus-girl. It was a loss far more subtle. The recognition of it lamed Robert Stonehouse, knocked the power out of him, as though someone had struck and paralysed a vital nerve centre. He could only stammer futilely: ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... was to find a garage. The special one was to hear what people said when I stopped to ask them the way. The fourth one I asked was a chauffeur. Under his direction, one first of all reduced the blinding stammer of the exhaust to an impressive but respectable roar, and then proceeded in his company to a dairy, a garage, another dairy and a hotel—in that order. I gave that chap a ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... lady, and she said a great many very pretty things to him, which made the gallant little hero blush like a rose in June, and stammer so that he could hardly make them ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... this most characteristic of its manifestations. Surely the copy is not to surpass the original, nor the mirror to flash more brightly than the sun which, at the brightest, it but reflects. In such a matter we can but stammer when we try to find words. As our text warns us, we are trying to utter the unutterable when we seek to speak of God's giving up for us; but however such a thought may seem to be forbidden by other aspects of the divine nature, it seems to be involved in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and not to understand, and could only stammer out: "Hold your tongue, you know I have forbidden you ..." But she interrupted him with irresistible resolution. "No, Monsieur, I must tell you everything, now. For a long time Madame has been doing wrong with Monsieur Limousin, I have seen them kiss ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... eyes, and remained there, behind the carriage, my face muffled up in my cloak. I desired the servants to make no mention of my sudden appearance. They soon made a sign to me that she was recovering consciousness, and I heard her voice stammer forth these words, as if in a dream: "Oh, if Raphael were here! I thought it was Raphael!" I hastily returned to my own carriage; the horses started afresh, and a wide distance soon lay between us. In the evening I went to inquire after her at ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... heal freshly cut young bulls, known as Seggs, or Staggs. So also it was called St. James's wort, either because that great warrior and saint was the patron of horses, or because it blossoms on his day, July 25th: sometimes also the plant has been styled Stammer wort. Furthermore it possesses a distinct reputation for the cure of cancer, and is known as Cankerwort, being applied when bruised, either by itself, or ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... a wound in patience, the death of hope and the entrance into despair. It is children's awe and fools' amazement, a worm in conscience and a curse to wickedness. In brief, it makes the coward stagger, the liar stammer, the thief stumble, and the traitor start. It is a blot in arms, a blur in honour, the shame of a soldier, and the ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... delivered over to the scorn of stripling orators. Our minds and bodies being ravaged with age, Posidon should protect us, yet we have no other support than a staff. When standing before the judge, we can scarcely stammer forth the fewest words, and of justice we see but its barest shadow, whereas the accuser, desirous of conciliating the younger men, overwhelms us with his ready rhetoric; he drags us before the judge, presses us with questions, lays ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... will. And all this, to be able to instruct a half-civilized brood of children, of both sexes, in the rudiments of reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic and geography, with enough of grammar to enable them to stammer and stumble through a simple sentence, and arrive safely at the end without any material injury to ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... at a thing dressed in a long black coat and a white cravat with a golden-headed cane and a tall hat and a frown; a thing which will stop breathing some fine day and the worms will eat! Shall I tremble when an ecclesiastical Leo utters a roar? Shall I halt and stammer because a top-heavy lad from a theological seminary, hopelessly in love with himself, scowls at the ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... "She had a little stammer that—that Laurie thought very pretty, and she had a restless little way of playing with her fingers as if on a piano. Oh, my dear, it would have been too dreadful; and now, my ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... Bristol had told George fearful stories of his brother's doings. Gumbo, whom he met at his aunt's door, as soon as the lad recovered from his terror at the sudden reappearance of the master whom he supposed dead, had leisure to stammer out a word or two respecting his young master's whereabouts, and present pitiable condition; and hence Mr. George's sternness of demeanour when he presented himself to the old lady. It seemed to him a matter of course that ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... turn sick, and to show it. He turned his hat round and round in his hand, his uncle glowering blacker and blacker upon him as the heavy seconds drifted by; then at last he began to stammer, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with each day. Occasionally the fever would go down sufficiently to allow him to get something to eat. Then it would be worse than before. In his dire need he wanted to pray, but he was so weak that he could only stammer, "Dear God, help me, ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... and bow to her. She comes closer, and bursts out into a loud, almost childlike laughter. I stammer, as only a little dilettante or great big donkey can do on ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... of the vocal organs is wanting, with those individuals that stammer, or who have an impediment in their speech. Some parts may be more developed than others, but they generally are but imperfectly under the control of the will, and assume an irregular and rapid movement, while other parts, the motions of which are essential, remain comparatively ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... mention of Ella, Algernon crimsoned to the eyes, and became so exceedingly confused, that he could with difficulty stammer forth, by way of reply, the query as to the time when the important event was expected ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... all that poor, bewildered Hector could stammer: his slowly-moving brain was torn between the duties of his position and his respect for M. le Marquis, and in the struggle the worthy man ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... and explanation is very simple. The medium (particularly the young medium) may become panic-stricken by the thought that "perhaps this is merely the result of my own imagination or fancy, instead of spirit power," and the result will be that he will begin to halt and stumble, stammer and stutter, instead of allowing the message to flow through him uninterrupted. This is particularly true when the message is of the nature of a test of identity, and where the vocal organs of the medium are being employed in the manifestation. It occurs far more frequently than the public suppose, ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... was a free-lance of love, or whether honour bade me forget it. Esther, in the highest spirits, told me that we were going to hear an Italian singer whose voice was exquisite, and noticing my confusion she asked what was the matter. I did not know what to say, and began to stammer out something, but at last succeeded in saying that she was a treasure of whom I was not worthy to be ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... a quivering blue-white stream. Ward spied him at the same moment and stepped forward with quick outstretched hands. I remember the flame of adoring zeal in the youngster's eyes as he tried to speak. At length he managed to stammer some congratulatory phrases while Drayle clapped ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... informed him that the gold in this vault amounted to the not altogether insignificant weight of close upon fourteen hundred tons. The sight of such incredible quantities of the precious metals had so paralysing an effect upon the young Englishman that he could scarcely stammer an enquiry as to where it all came from. The custodian of this fabulous wealth replied, with a smile, that the mountains which hemmed the valley about were enormously rich in both gold and silver, and that some hundreds of men had been kept industriously employed ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... the next room.—My presence of mind was all gone again when I came to be introduced to the emperor, and he must certainly have perceived by my looks that I was not a little confused. I was just going to begin the harangue which I had studied with such pains, and to stammer out something or other about the high and unexpected felicity of being presented to the most powerful, the most celebrated, and the most sincerely beloved monarch in the world, when he relieved me at once from my dilemma. He addressed me in French, speaking very quick, ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... impossible. "Very well," said General Sigel, "I think I shall want this place to-morrow for a hospital. Madam, your kindness will be reciprocated." He spoke very emphatically, whereat the pretty daughter began to cry, and the mother to stammer apologies, and said she would do the best she could for them, but she really had nothing to cook. The general retired very indignant. Whether or not his threat was carried out I do not know, for the next morning we were off without trying to get breakfast. On asking ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... though they had been inspired expressions of actual feelings; and the intellect must indeed have been gigantic that could so beautifully pretend. Ordinary blunderers have to feel a vast amount before they can painfully stammer out a sentence that will describe it; and when they have got it out, how it seems to have just missed the core of the sensation that gave it birth, and what a poor, weak child it is of what was perhaps a mighty feeling! I read Goethe on a special seat, never departed from when he ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... to have answered something clever or interesting, as no doubt other girls did, but she could only stammer: ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... Poor Hilary looked very uncomfortable. With an apologetic air he began to stammer something about Parish Councils. I was not to be diverted by any such maneuver. It was impossible that he could really wish ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope
... and performs all four operations at the same time, a task clearly impossible, but more so when we remember the usual embarrassments that beset a young preacher—the nervous agitation, the want of self-control, the desire to succeed. It ends generally in a stammer and then a break, greeted by the congregation with a sigh of relief or perhaps a ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... the little girl—tears of joy over her first success—she could hardly see what the coin was, but when she picked it up she managed to stammer that ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... by the French and ... But it's a complicated narrative. I haven't it straight in my own mind yet. Do you know, I wake up at night sometimes with the rather naive idea that I, von Stinnes, who prefer Turkish cigarettes to women, even brunettes ... But I stammer. It is difficult to be amusing, always. I think sometimes at night that I was personally responsible for at least half the casualties of ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... getting confused again, and he began to stammer. Mr. Cavendish wondered that, in some way, Mr. Balfour did not come to the relief of his witness, but he sat perfectly quiet, and apparently unconcerned. Mr. Cavendish rummaged among his papers, and withdrew two letters. These he handed to the witness. ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... you've sure grown," he said, in a loud, cheerful voice, "but you're not too grown-up to give your old Dad a good hug, are you?" He pulled Bart roughly into his arms. Bart started to pull away and stammer that the fat man had made a mistake, but the pudgy hand gripped his ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... exuberance of his impressions. "This Goethe," he wrote to Fritz Jacobi, "of whom from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof and from the going down thereof to its rising I should like to speak and stammer and rhapsodise with you ... this Goethe has, as it were, transcended all the ideals I had ever conceived of the direct feeling and observation of a great genius. Never could I have so well explained and ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... draughtsmen grouped about Kampfer's desk, gargling away at each other in pectoral German, and gazing at something thereupon. At the Commissioner's approach they scattered to their several places. Kampfer, a wizened little German, with long, frizzled ringlets and a watery eye, began to stammer forth some sort of an apology, the Commissioner thought, for the congregation of his fellows ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... caused him to whip off his hat as though his hat had been red hot. Except for two tall elegant creatures who stood together at the other end of the boudoir, the chairs and tables had the place to themselves. He was about to stammer an excuse and fly, when one of the gentlewomen turned her eye on him for a moment, and so he sat down. The gentlewomen then resumed their conversation. He glanced cautiously about him. Elm-trees, firmly rooted in a border ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... seeing that I would not get him to respond in that way, I began to stammer something about my calling, my love of art, my desire to learn and so forth. . . . He continued to peel his potatoes. Finally, I asked him to give me lessons. He glanced at me and grumbled: 'How old are you, my boy?' I stood there dumbfounded like a mummy and he continued ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... usually a wide-awake citizen of the land that Lafayette went to save, that I wanted my dinner, and would like to get out. I walked down near enough to the gate to see the policeman, but my courage failed. Before I could stammer out half that explanation to him in his trifling language (which foreigners are mockingly told is the best in the world for conversation), he would either have slipped his hateful rapier through my body, or have raised an alarm and called ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... serve a particular purpose, had probably seldom, and never but by accident, composed a smooth one. Such has been the versification of the earliest poets in every country. Children lisp, at first, and stammer; but, in time, their speech becomes fluent, and, if they are well ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... fierce fire in her bold black eye. "Am I deceived in you both?" quoth she. "If one spark of her father's spirit lives In this girl here—so, this Leigh, Ralph Leigh, Let us hear what counsel the springald gives." Then I stammer'd, somewhat taken aback— (Simon, you ale-swiller, pass ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... arranging her underclothing. The mother stopped dead and shot me one glance I shall never forget. 'Why, Alice, you frighten me!' she said. I feigned surprise and asked 'What is the matter?' Alice, although she was frightened out of her wits, managed to stammer: 'He couldn't see me—you couldn't see me, could you?' appealing to me. But I had managed to collect my senses a bit and although still under that maternal eye I asked,—at last turning slowly around to Alice: 'See? What do you mean? See ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the best known of them must needs either speak thickly, or lisp, or stammer," added ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... went into the living-room, Barbara's cheeks were burning with excitement and her eyes shone like stars. When she took the check, which Eloise wrote with an accustomed air, she could scarcely speak, but managed to stammer out, "Thank you." ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... Her infernal temper (Mrs. Stammer was the jade's name) and my wife's moody despondency, made my house and home not over-pleasant: hence I was driven a good deal abroad, where, as play was the fashion at every club, tavern, and assembly, I, of course, was obliged to resume my old habit, and ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Creede stared, and in that self-same moment Hardy realized how the low-down strategy which he had perpetrated upon his employer had fallen upon his own head a thousandfold. But before he could stammer his apologies, Kitty Bonnair stood before him—the same Kitty, and smiling as he had often seen her ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... face to face with plain-spoken, straightforward, strong-minded men, felt the dreary absurdity of the position. He could only stammer a ridiculous excuse about the clause, having been accidentally left out by a copying secretary. To represent so important an omission as a clerical error was almost as great an absurdity as the original device; but it was necessary for Verreyken to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... quiet, serene, contented way those happy Philadelphians will be making you a little shame-faced of the bustling madness of our heaven-touching Babel. Of course, your secret adoration of Manhattan, the greatest wild poem ever begotten by the heart of man, is not readily transmissible. You will stammer something of what it means to climb upward from the subway on a spring morning and see that golden figure over Fulton Street spreading its shining wings above the new day. And they will smile gently, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... testily. 'Put a point, put a point, you drown me in phrases; your explanations explain nothing. One more word. What in the devil's name is she doing in there?' He had a short way. John began to stammer. ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... name, very quietly, and it is as though I made a loud avowal! She turns, and it seems that this is the first time I have seen her naked face. "Kiss me," she says; and without speaking we stammer, and murmur, and laugh. ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... rather wait till some other time, papa," she managed to stammer, while her little face ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... might be revealed by a single electric discharge, so to speak. Yet every word and all that partook of the nature of communication by intelligible sounds seemed to be colourless, cold, and dead. Then you try and try again, and stutter and stammer, whilst your friends' prosy questions strike like icy winds upon your heart's hot fire until they extinguish it. But if, like a bold painter, you had first sketched in a few audacious strokes the outline of the picture you had in your soul, you would then easily ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... been as well as the average person, and have been able to do work as hard as God has required of me. I recommend God as a physician. At the time I was healed of my other bodily afflictions, I was also relieved of stammering. It is true I stammer some yet, at times, but not nearly so much as I did formerly; and not enough to prevent my preaching ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... Staircase (stairs) sxtuparo. Stake paliso, fosto. Stake (wager) veto. Stalactite stalaktito. Stalagmite stalagmito. Stale malfresxa. Stalk (plant) trunketo. Stall (at market, etc.) budo. Stall (for beast) stalo. Stallion cxevalviro. Stamen (bot.) paliseto. Stamin stamino. Stammer balbuti. Stamp (to mark) stampi. Stamp (brand) stampajxo. Stamp, postage posxtmarko. Stamp with foot piedfrapadi. Stamper (marker) stampilo. Stanch (firm) firma, fortika. Stanch (trusty) fidela, fervora. Stanchion subteno. Stand stari. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... by an occasional stammer and his gestures being also clumsy as it was still he did ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... stood still, then began to beat furiously. The sound of her name always affected him incomprehensibly. He began to stammer, then took his pipe out of his mouth and ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... is like a maniac. She has lost you; she cannot explain to—to Mademoiselle's father. Mon dieu, when he met her unexpectedly in the hall, he shouts, 'where is my daughter?' And poor Madame she has but to shiver and stammer and—run away! Oui! She dash out into the rain! ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... prepared for this decisive step; but he could only stammer out, 'Really, sir, you are too good;' and Mr Glowry departed to bring Mr Hilary ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... the letters, never guess at a word on sight, lest you get a habit of reading falsely. Pronounce every word distinctly. Let the tone of your voice be the same in reading as in speaking. Never read in a hurry, lest you learn to stammer. Read no louder than to be heard by those about you. Observe to make your pauses regular, and make not any where the sense will admit of none. Suit your voice to the subject. Be attentive to those who read well, and remember to imitate ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... slowly, "you don't by any chance love some one else? What does that colour mean, Jacqueline? Don't stammer! Speak out!" ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... to the pitchers?" In secret the children they smile, as they wait; At last, though, they stammer, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... the lot of a mere commuter, You think that my life is hard, mayhap, But I'm sure than you I am far acuter: I ain't afraid of no cat nor trap." The city rat could but meekly stammer, "Don't use ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... will stammer, and the door reply, The hall wake, yawn, and smile; the torpid stair Will grumble at our feet, the table cry: 'Fetch my belongings for me; I am bare.' A clatter! Something in the attic falls. A ghost ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... as have not the purest light. The souls which walk in the other path are often very little known, for a length of time, as it was with Jesus Christ Himself, till the last years of His life. Oh, if I could but express what I conceive of this state! But I can only stammer about it. ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... cheeks haggard, the colour hardened, and her forty years apparent, above all, in an uncomfortable furrow on the brow and round the mouth; her voice had a sharp distressed tone that grated even in her lowest key, and though she did not stammer, she could never finish a sentence, but made half-a-dozen disjointed commencements whenever she spoke. Albinia pitied her, and thought her nervous, for she was painfully assiduous in waiting on ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... very much at present, but there will be, I expect, before it's over; divorce suits are beastly, you know. I wanted to tell you, because—because—you ought to know—if—" and he began to stammer, gazing at her troubled eyes, "if—if you're going to be a darling and love me, Holly. I love you—ever so; and I want to be engaged." He had done it in a manner so inadequate that he could have punched his own head; and dropping on his knees, he tried to get nearer to that soft, troubled ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... blankets for two pounds. That would make five pounds per family, and seven hundred for the church.' He dipped his pen in the ink, and, as I am a living man, Robert, he wrote me a cheque then and there for two thousand two hundred pounds. I don't know what I said; I felt like a fool; I could not stammer out words with which to thank him. All my troubles have been taken from my shoulders in an instant, and indeed, Robert, ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... whose jaw by gentle pressure he had brought back, till the lips were only half parted. She could hardly speak, as she laid a timid hand on her late principal's shoulder, directing his attention to the breakfast tray. "Look away, please, for Cecile's sake if not for mine," she managed to stammer, and, as he turned his head aside, she flung herself upon her knees beside the bed, and took the apparently dead man's hand in her own, covered it with tears and kisses, and transferred the ring she ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... crossed his face at this announcement was lost upon the constable. But his consternation was evident from the way he thrust out either hand to steady himself against the walls of the narrow passageway, and Mr. Fenton was not at all surprised to hear him stammer out: ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... then swiftly and noiseless crossed over to her bed and from underneath it dragged out her suitcase. Into it she tossed toilet articles and a change of clothing, Then she turned to her trunk and quickly dumped in two drawerfulls of lingerie and stammer dresses. She moved quietly. but deadly efficiency, and in three-quarters of an hour her trunk was locked and strapped and she was fully dressed in a becoming new travelling suit that Marjorie had helped her ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... thing neither of them could do: she could coolly and sensibly describe a man. I am not sure that the old great lady who could only smatter Italian was not more vigorous than the new great lady who can only stammer American; nor am I certain that the bygone duchesses who were scarcely successful when they painted Melrose Abbey, were so much more weak-minded than the modern duchesses who paint only their own faces, and are bad at that. But that is not the point. ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... Death to come and release him from his life of toil. The words were scarcely out of his mouth when, much to his dismay, Death stood before him and professed his readiness to serve him. He was almost frightened out of his wits, but he had enough presence of mind to stammer out, "Good sir, if you'd be so kind, pray help me ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... yet over; hardly had Caroline left when the door was opened and Miss Avies was shown in. Maggie started up with dismay and began to stammer excuses. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... himself in the midst of such a galaxy of beauties (and, as a matter of course, the conscious cynosure of all eyes) that, blushing to suffusion, and forgetting to lift his hat, he could only manage to stammer out, "Aw, aw—I beg pardon; but—aw—aw—I fancy there's another wicket down, and I must put on my guards, you know;" whereupon he beat a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... to put you in your chair like a queen and wait on you," he said with a soft boyish stammer; "but I am too dazed with happiness to be ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... downcast and averted face, began to stammer a few disconnected and unintelligible words; but old Wardlaw silenced him and said, with much feeling, "Let none but a father tell him. My poor, poor friend—the Proserpine! ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... supplement the indifference of her words. There was no lurking sparkle of humour, no acknowledgment of kindness. There was a something, but he could not understand it, for his poor shapeless soul might not read the cosmic mystery embodied in their depths. He stammered—who had never known himself stammer before, broke the joints of an ill-fitted answer, swept the tiles with the long feather in his hat, and found himself parted from her, with the feeling that he had not of himself left her, but had been borne away by some ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... all the more beside himself because he saw the Regent smile, and M. le Duc, who looked at me do the same, but more openly, began to speak, or rather to stammer. He did not dare, however, to decide against ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... I felt that I must overcome my languor so far as to address him. I am not a nervous man, and I never knew before what Virgil meant when he wrote "adhoesit faucibus ora." At last I managed to stammer out a few words, asking the intruder who he was ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not easily read writing; she applied to him to interpret his letter. This was a hard task for the poor boy, who, with a tremulous and hesitating voice, saw himself forced to stammer through all that burning phraseology which seemed to congeal under the breath ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... ghastly, remained motionless, her eyes, only seeming to have life, her eyes shining clear as spring water in her thin withered face. But on this morning, again a sudden rush of tears had streamed down her cheeks, and she had begun to stammer words without any connection; which seemed to prove that in the midst of her senile exhaustion and the incurable torpor of madness, the slow induration of the brain and the limbs was not yet complete; there still ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... quite discomfited, and was about to stammer out some awkward reply, when the marshal of the household threw open the doors of the banquet-hall, and approaching the king, cried ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... ... a confusion of memory ..." Faxon heard himself stammer. Mr. Lavington pushed back his chair, and as he did so Mr. Grisben suddenly leaned forward. "Lavington! What have we been thinking of? ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... O'Keefe gazed stupidly each on each. Incredulous amazement and perplexity tied their tongues. Finally Halloway found his voice to stammer, "What's done happened? ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... all this what could I say? I could only stammer out that I did not think I loved him enough; and my poor old father saw in this reluctance only the fancy of a silly girl who did not know her own mind, but who had now gone ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... began to speak more clearly as she proceeded with her story, and became excited in its narration. Then she would stop and seem to forget it all. Then she went on, as if she was telling a dream. Then there would be another long pause, and confusion, and she would stammer on in the most wild and incoherent fashion, till the old miner became quite impatient, and thought her as big an imposter as the Indian woman whom she called her mother. He finally gave them each a loaf of bread, and told them they could go back to their lodge. This ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... hospitality. Another cabin, higher up the creek, will be likely to claim them for its tenants?" Marian blushed; while the young backwoodsman, although turning equally red at the allusion, had the courage to stammer out, that he always "thort his cabin war ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... little language in all times; finding the nobler language insufficient, do they ensconce themselves in the smaller? discard noble and literary speech as not noble enough, and in despair thus prattle and gibber and stammer? Rather perhaps this departure from English is but an excursion after gaiety. The ideal lovers, no doubt, would be so simple as to be grave. That is a tenable opinion. Nevertheless, age by age they have been gay; and age by age they have exchanged language imitated from the children they ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... Bob managed to stammer out something about being glad to have pleased the lieutenant, and the latter, after ordering them to sheathe their sabres, went on to tell how he had followed the Indians in his front until his men and horses ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... went, and went, And even while 'twas sleeping, talked to it. For when one's very old, one is a child! Then took it up and placed it on my knees, And with both hands stroked down its soft, light hair— Thou wert not born then—and he would stammer Those pretty little sounds that make one smile! And though not twelve months old, he had a mind. He recognized me—nay, knew me right well, And in my face would laugh—and that child-laugh, Oh, poor ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... father seemed in thought; and so, with my arm over my mother's chair, and my hand in hers, I answered my mother's questions, sometimes by a stammer, sometimes by a violent effort at volubility; when at some interrogatory that went tingling right to my heart I turned uneasily, and there were my father's eyes fixed on mine, fixed as they had been when, and none knew why, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "What is matter?" No man can [Page 237] answer. We trace it up through the worlds, till its increasing fineness, its growing power, and possible identity of substance, seem as if the next step would reveal its spirit origin. What we but hesitatingly stammer, ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... I'd ought to have sailed right in, but I sot there, shiverin', an' said:' Oh! because ...' jest like a school-girl. And I could see that the answer made her squirm. She must ha' thought I was the awflest fool. But to save me that's all I could stammer ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... He began to stammer, checked himself, and at last succeeded in imposing coherence ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... what I am. Ignorant, rough man I was, with the merest flicker of spiritual life; but she cared for my soul, and was so patiently loving that she led me to know God.' Bailey was afflicted with a stammer when he was converted. Of this, he says, 'She talked to me so calm and quiet. "Go slow, now," she'd say, "Count." She would insist upon my giving my testimony, and if she saw I was going to be fairly stuck, she'd shout. "Glory! Hallelujah!" and beam on me with that lovely ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... bowed still lower, and rounded off his shoulders again; but the young lady looked at him from head to foot with such a freezing glance, that his tongue remained as if paralyzed in his mouth, and he could only stammer out: ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... which had ebbed surged slowly back again. It surged back under the transparent white skin, as red wine fills a glass. Her lips parted to stammer the confession that she had no clothes except those she wore; but she couldn't utter ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... air and babble of excited voices gave her an excuse to gasp, and stammer out a conventional ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... mere mention of his friend, Chester Newcomb's name should cause such a convulsion in the household, and when that gentleman finally arrived, and the family met him for the first time, it certainly seemed strange that they should all redden and stammer as if they had been "awkward nursery ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... party of ladies, became so abashed by unexpectedly finding himself in the midst of such a galaxy of beauties (and, as a matter of course, the conscious cynosure of all eyes) that, blushing to suffusion, and forgetting to lift his hat, he could only manage to stammer out, "Aw, aw—I beg pardon; but—aw—aw—I fancy there's another wicket down, and I must put on my guards, you know;" whereupon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... startled and confounded. 'But your Majesty,' I ventured to stammer, 'forgets that ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... said the young man, with a brevity the girl herself could not have surpassed. His shyness had left him, and with it his tendency to stammer. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... would fain encourage the hearts of these long-oppressed nations, now daring to hope for a new era, by reciting triumphant testimony from the experience of his own country. But we must stammer and blush when we speak of many things. I take pride here, that I may really say the liberty of the press works well, and that checks and balances naturally evolve from it, which suffice to its government. I may say, that the minds of our people are alert, and that talent has a ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... my curls would fall down and hide my cheeks, I tried to stammer out some apology. But he drove it back ...
— The Hermit Of ——— Street - 1898 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... in the Forest that I do not love," cried Rorie, fired with his theme, and forgetting to stammer; "and I believe there is not a tree, from the Twelve Apostles to the Knightwood Oak, or a patch of gorse from Picket Post to Stony Cross, that I do not know as well as I know the friends round me to-night. ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... animal and where we got her. They insisted that we had stolen her and that she was running back to her owner. They declared that we ought to go to prison until the truth could be discovered. At the very mention of the word "prison" I turned pale and began to stammer. I was breathless from my race and could not utter a word. At this moment a policeman arrived, and, in a few words, the whole affair was explained to him. As it did not seem at all clear, he decided to ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... priest knelt down before the window, covered his face with his hands, and began to stammer and cry to God: "O God! ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... after one of these absences that Jim Spalding, the old timber-jack, told Mrs. Gaynor in his abashed stammer that Mark King had showed up while they were gone. Gloria, on her way to her room, whirled and came back, and extracted the tale in its entirety, pumping it out of the brief, few-worded old Spalding in jerky details. King had appeared ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... opened her eyes, and remained there, behind the carriage, my face muffled up in my cloak. I desired the servants to make no mention of my sudden appearance. They soon made a sign to me that she was recovering consciousness, and I heard her voice stammer forth these words, as if in a dream: "Oh, if Raphael were here! I thought it was Raphael!" I hastily returned to my own carriage; the horses started afresh, and a wide distance soon lay between us. In the evening I went to ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... by saying, that when he so strangely rumbles, he talks through his nose. But then again, what has the whale to say? Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living. Oh! happy that the world is ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... offspring, no uplifted thought of justice. The thirst for revenge, personal, violent, utter, was all that prompted this man; but Burrell had no inkling yet of the father's well-shaped plans, nor how far-reaching they were, and could barely stammer: ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... persisted, with a certain awkward doggedness which was not going to allow so slight a hint that his further attendance was unnecessary, to baffle him. He did not speak until they had passed down the stone steps to the pavement, and then his utterance began with a half-embarrassed stammer, as if the shadow of displeasure demanded justification on ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... like—in the language they had to learn. Not short pieces, or 'elegant extracts;' but, good, long tales of thrilling adventure and well worked-up plots, whose interest, and the desire to know what was coming next, would make them read on and stammer out the sense, until they reached the denouement. And, if it should be objected that German and French novels are not exactly what you would place before young children for study, I would retort, that, the majority of the works of our best authors are now translated into both those languages ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... them days—which elissited from a bright eyed little girl of about twelve summers the remark that she tho't it WAS rich to talk about the crooilty of the Spaniards usin thumbscrews, when we was in a Tower where so many poor pepl's heads had been cut off. This made the Warder stammer and turn red. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 5 • Charles Farrar Browne
... we were joined by two or three good-looking, well-dressed young women. My friend talked to them in French and bought drinks for the whole party. I tried to recall my high-school French, but the effort availed me little. I could stammer out a few phrases, but, very naturally, could not understand a word that was said to me. We stayed at the cafe a couple of hours, then went back to the hotel. The next day we spent several hours in the shops and at the tailor's. I had no clothes except what I ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... loathe to speak a piece is a fact profoundly significant. They know it is nothing in the world but foolishness; and if there is one thing above another that a child hates, it is to be made a fool in public. That's what makes them work their fingers so, and gulp, and stammer, and tremble at the knees. That is what sends them to their seats, after all is over, mad as hornets. This is something that I know about. It happened that, instead of getting funny pieces to recite as I wanted to, discerning that one silly turn ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... condition, a lower nature is what you want!" He threw down his hat and stick upon the green-baize-covered table, took one of the Windsor chairs, and crashed it down beside the sofa, and planted his hulking big body on it, and reached out and captured the thin wrist of his victim, who mustered breath to stammer: ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... it passed rapidly. There were coasting parties of young and old, but it was not often that the snow was favorable. There were literary societies, and we admired "the General" when he recited the part of the lean and hungry Cassius. He didn't stammer then, and he received the additional title of "Shakespeare's hero." These things, with reading, dancing and singing classes, an occasional "social" at the Hive, with private gatherings and chats around the kitchen fire by "Hiveites" (i.e., those living at the Hive), found us with spring ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... with plain-spoken, straightforward, strong-minded men, felt the dreary absurdity of the position. He could only stammer a ridiculous excuse about the clause, having been accidentally left out by a copying secretary. To represent so important an omission as a clerical error was almost as great an absurdity as the original device; but it was necessary for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Churchill slowly, "you don't by any chance love some one else? What does that colour mean, Jacqueline? Don't stammer! ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... ragged regiment of his few books, is helped, consoled, exalted by the reflection: Hic mecum habitant ... Homerus, Plato, Aristoteles. And were one in a moment of inadvertence to inquire of him why he occupied himself with Greek, he might perchance stammer (like Dominie Sampson) an almost inarticulate reply; but more probably he would be stricken speechless by the enormous outrage of the request, and the reason of his devotion would be hidden from the questioner ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... ago. She is beside herself. She is like a maniac. She has lost you; she cannot explain to—to Mademoiselle's father. Mon dieu, when he met her unexpectedly in the hall, he shouts, 'where is my daughter?' And poor Madame she has but to shiver and stammer and—run away! Oui! She dash out into the ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... yield some slight amusement. The pedant's endeavours to make a philosopher of his child are sufficiently ludicrous. He is delighted to find that the infant has the wart of Cicero and the very neck of Alexander, and hopes that he may come to stammer like Demosthenes, 'and in time arrive at many other defects of famous men.' As the boy grows up his father invents for him a geographical suit of clothes, and stamps his gingerbread with the letters of the Greek alphabet, which proved so successful ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... in her own words to my eldest sister, who declared in her hearing that she would never marry a minister. "Hush, hush, my dear!" said Aunt Polly, "I remember saying, when I was a girl, that whatever faults my husband might have, he should never be younger than myself—have red hair, or stammer in his speech: all these objections were united ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... forward without any delay, asking our interlocutors roughly what they meant and what they were doing here, and telling them, too, that we were going on. I knew that they were sexless eunuchs, who would stammer as I had heard them stammer in the old days when I had seen them trafficking things they had been donated by officials desirous of cultivating their friendship, in the mysterious curio shops beyond the great Ch'ien Men Gate. Nor was I wrong. Stammering, they replied by asking how it was that orders ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... know all about it. You needn't stammer. You and Allen are getting a good deal out of the Haneys, and want to be decent in return. Well, I think well of you for it, and I'll do my mite. I'll have young Fordyce in, and Alice; being Quakers and 'plain people,' they won't mind. ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... drooped his head: Calculus racked him: Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead: Tussis attacked him.... So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled Hoti's business—let it be!— Properly based Oun— Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, Dead from the waist down. Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: Hail to your purlieus, All ye highfliers of the feathered race, Swallows and curlews! Here's ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... who felt much confused, only managed to stammer out as an excuse that her father had ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... chatter, Wave thy smooth caduceus here— Now that, pulpit-propp'd, I flatter; Hermes, god of cheats and chatter, Smile, oh smile on Mr. Smatter, Aid an humble Auctioneer! Wave thy smooth caduceus here, O'er an humble Auctioneer! With its virtues tip my hammer, Model my Grammar, Nor let me stammer. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... fiery, combative nature, and sharp pen, there is much truth, and truth that needed telling, in his contention. "Art," he continues, "that for ages has hewn its own history in marble, and written its own comments on canvas, shall it suddenly stand still, and stammer, and wait for wisdom from the passer-by? For guidance from the hand that holds neither brush nor chisel? Out ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... Steele. "Called him in before the indignant delegation, headed by old Reamur himself, and demanded of poor Webb what he meant by sending out such a letter. The youngster was so flustered that he could only stammer a confused denial. He started sniveling. Then Gordon collared him and booted him into the corridor. That should have closed the incident, but a few moments later back comes Webb, blubbering like a whipped schoolboy, and perfectly wild with rage. He was armed ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... orders which he had conned until he supposed he had them "dead-letter perfect." he felt his usually-unfailing assurance shrivel up under the gaze of hundreds of mercilessly critical eyes. He managed to stammer out: ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... the natural point of view the whole region of the dead is 'a land of darkness, without any order, where the light is as darkness.' The usual sources of human certainty fail us here. Reason is only able to stammer a peradventure. Experience and consciousness are silent. 'The simple senses' can only say that it looks as if Death were an end, the final Omega. Testimony there is none from any pale lips that have come back to unfold the secrets of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... that Georgina had ever been called Miss Huntingdon, and knowing he said it to tease her, it embarrassed her to the point of making her stammer, when he asked her most unexpectedly while picking out twenty shining new nickels to stuff into ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... hair, his tall spare form, and his air of old-fashioned punctilium, would sit near, fixing the speaker with his pale-blue eyes,—a little threateningly; always ready to shatter an exuberance, to check an oratorical flow by some quick double-edged word that would make Manisty trip and stammer; showing, too, all the time, by his evident shrinking, by certain impregnable reserves, or by the banter that hid a feeling too keen to show itself, how great is the gulf between a literary and ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was as well as ever—indeed, better; not only was his hearing fully restored, but he had ceased to stammer, and the thin, almost imperceptible cloud upon his intellect was dissipated. The doctor expressed but little surprise at these phenomena, and, in fact, stated that similar things had occurred often before, and were duly written ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... done to Lamb by accusing him of excess in drinking. The truth is, that a small quantity of any strong liquid (wine, &c.) disturbed his speech, which at best was but an eloquent stammer. The distresses of his early life made him ready to resort to any remedy which brought forgetfulness; and he himself, frail in body and excitable, was very speedily affected. During all my intimacy with him, I never ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... by the hand, and was so dumbfounded that I could find nothing to say. At length I managed to stammer out: ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... their doors put down their work and call to a child of two or three playing in the street for him to come and take the breast. Did Augustin remember these things? At least he recalled his nurses' games, and the efforts they made to appease him, and the childish words they taught him to stammer. The first Latin words he repeated, he picked up from his mother and the servants, who must also have spoken Punic, the ordinary tongue of the populace and small trader class. He learned Punic without thinking about it, in playing with other children of Thagaste, just as the sons of our colonists ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... discomfited, and was about to stammer out some awkward reply, when the marshal of the household threw open the doors of the banquet-hall, and approaching the king, cried out, "Le ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... turn about, I heard the jingle of a tray of glasses and a cool shower of spray flew about my ears. Then the dazed and bewildered eyes of a timid girl looked full into mine; she courageously paused and essayed to stammer out an apology. Her gaze, though, wandered past me, and one sight of the drawn features of those who had seen it all and now sought in vain to restrain their laughter, was too much for this startled fawn. She turned and fled as the wind, ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... know what Tony was thinking of, all these years. That is what they all wanted to know; but he didn't seem to tell. When the subject was mentioned he would always try to get away; and if he could not avoid a direct question, he would blush and stammer in so distressing a confusion that the doctor forbade all allusion to the matter, lest the young man should have a convulsion. It was clear enough, however, that the subject of Tony's meditation was "more than average interestin'," as his father phrased it; for sometimes ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... as this introduction was over, and a new nervousness attacked Alma. Another tinge of yellowness crept into her skin, her eyes grew wistful, and she began to stammer. ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... both with the play on words and my uncle's compliment, and turned quickly to the next group before I had time to stammer out how flattered I felt ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... the document reverently to my breast. Then [I rose up] and walked to and fro in my abode, rejoicing and saying, "How can these things possibly be done to thy servant who is now speaking, whose heart made him to fly into foreign lands [where dwell] peoples who stammer in their speech? Assuredly it is a good and gracious thought [of the King] to deliver me from death [here], for thy Ka (i.e. double) will make my body to end [its existence] in my ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... general idea was to find a garage. The special one was to hear what people said when I stopped to ask them the way. The fourth one I asked was a chauffeur. Under his direction, one first of all reduced the blinding stammer of the exhaust to an impressive but respectable roar, and then proceeded in his company to a dairy, a garage, another dairy and a hotel—in that order. I gave that chap a ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... about us, because of the pitching of the boat. The two other men who had escaped so far with me were a man named Helmar, a passenger like myself, and a seaman whose name I don't know,—a short sturdy man, with a stammer. ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... gazing out on the dull leaden sky, watching the snowflakes falling through the dreary air. There followed then a long, long pause, in which I had time to recover from the effect her words had produced, and to frame and stammer forth such congratulations as seemed required by the occasion. These she did not answer, or even seem to comprehend, but roused from her revery by the sound of my voice, she crossed the room and seated herself beside me, and took my hand ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and though he may occasionally use a Greek word picked up from his mother, he neither will nor can speak Latin. You heard, Maximus, a little while ago, you heard my step-son—oh! the shame of it!—the brother of that eloquent young fellow Pontianus, hardly able to stammer out single syllables, when you asked him whether his mother had given himself and his brother the gifts which, as I told you just now, she actually gave them with my ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... felicity, and whose sons, great and small, bright and dull, have been learning the piano for three years or more, and still can do nothing. You are doubtless right; and, further, they never will learn any thing. You ask, Of what use is it to man or boy to be able to stammer through this or that waltz, or polonaise or mazurka, with stiff arms, weak fingers, a stupid face, and lounging figure? What gain is it to art? You say, Is not time worth gold, and yet we are offered lead? And ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... haggard, the colour hardened, and her forty years apparent, above all, in an uncomfortable furrow on the brow and round the mouth; her voice had a sharp distressed tone that grated even in her lowest key, and though she did not stammer, she could never finish a sentence, but made half-a-dozen disjointed commencements whenever she spoke. Albinia pitied her, and thought her nervous, for she was painfully assiduous in waiting on every one, scarcely sitting ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with quite a calm, grand manner. Miss Lucy and I will have to look about us, and polish up all our best airs and graces lest we should be thrown into the shade. Still, Polly, there is a little flutter, a little tendency to stammer now and then, and even, to lisp as you lisped when you ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... to speak for some moments, as they saw such a tumultuous assemblage seeking their master, while so singular a name was applied to him. At length, one more bold than the rest contrived to stammer out,— ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... countenance—no, it was mild and placid; but it was changed towards him, and its very serenity was alarming. Whilst she welcomed him to his native country and to his friends, and while she expressed hopes for his future happiness, all hope forsook him, and, in broken sentences, he attempted to stammer out some answer; then, throwing himself into a chair, he exclaimed, "I see all future happiness is lost for me—and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... work to do this watch—as you know," interrupted the parson. He said the words so solemnly and sternly they sounded like a judgment; aye, and they nipped the rising courage of the mate. He could only mumble, and stammer out, ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... submit it to amputation and become a mute. When the ordeal with the Principal was over and the two guests were strolling back across the quadrangle to their rooms, Emmett talked normally and without a single paroxysm about the effect his stammer must have had upon the Principal. Mark did his ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... little boy who could be overcome by the slightest threat, and for a moment they were at a loss what to say. Of course, Ralph was merely repeating some of his teacher's words, but they were not aware of that fact, and consequently wondered at his remarks. Finally John managed to stammer, "Do—do you want to ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... why don't you?" snarled the man, little beads of perspiration gathered on his forehead. "Or blush and stammer any of the idiotic things which a woman says to the man at the moment of his supreme idiocy. Or flatter yourself with the vanity of it. Are you a good woman or a bad? I don't know. Are you generous or mean? ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... in the soft hat was still sitting under the shadow of the rock smoking, but he rose and threw away his cigar as the deputation of three advanced to address him. Peachy, in her very best Italian, began to stammer out an explanation and excuses. He listened for a moment or two, then shook ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... had not heard anything like it in my life. It set every nerve of me dancing. I suppose Paragot found his interest in me because I was such an impressionable youngster. When, at the abrupt finale, he asked me what I thought of it, I could scarce stammer a word. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... but my voice shook, and finally I managed to stammer that when we got back I was sure ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... and legs had grown feeble, but he had not lost the use of them, and his brain indeed worked perfectly; but his speech was muddled and instead of one word he would pronounce another: one had to guess what it was he wanted to say.... "Tchoo—tchoo—tchoo," he would stammer with an effort—he began every sentence with "Tchoo—tchoo—tchoo, some scissors, some scissors," ... and the word scissors meant bread.... My father, he hated with all the strength left him—he attributed all his misfortunes to my father's curse and called him alternately ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... appearance is common; his countenance, stern; his voice, hoarse; and his delivery, embarrassed; so much so that he speaks only by splitting his syllables. A stammering lover! MOLE, it is true, sometimes indulged in a sort of stammer, but it was suited to the moment, and not when he had to express the ardour of love. A lover, such as is represented to us in all French comedies, is a being highly favoured by Nature, and FLEURY shews him only as much neglected by her. A great deal of assurance and ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... the daytime. Waggoner suffers from an affection which in a large community might prevent him from holding such a job as the one he does hold. He has an impediment of the speech which at all times causes him to stammer badly. When he is excited it is only by a tremendous mental and physical effort and after repeated endeavours that he can form the words at all. In other regards he is a first-rate ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... Lisping (Literal Dysarthria).—Children just beginning to form sentences stammer, not uttering the sounds correctly. They also, as a rule, lisp for a considerable time, so that the words spoken by them are still indistinct and are intelligible only to the persons ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... hadn't any chin, Her hands were rough, her feet she turned invariably in; Her general form was German, By which I mean that you Her waist could not determine To within a foot or two: And not only did she stammer, But she used the kind of grammar That is called, for ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... kvadrato; rektangulilo; placo. squint : strabi. squirrel : sciuro. staff : (officers), stabo. stage : estrado, scenejo. stain : makul'o, -i. stair : sxtupo. stake : paliso, fosto; veto. stalk : trunketo. stall : budo, stalo. stammer : balbuti. stamp : stampi; posxtmarko; piedfrapi. starch : amelo. starling : sturno. state : stato; Sxtato; esprimi, diri, aserti. station : stacio, stacidomo. steak : bifsteko. steel : sxtalo. steep : kruta; ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... often hast thou betrayed this high commission! Fain would the tongue in clear, triumphant accents draw example from thy story, to encourage the hearts of those who almost faint and die beneath the old oppressions. But we must stammer and blush when we speak of many things. I take pride here, that I can really say the liberty of the press works well, and that checks and balances are found naturally which suffice to its government. I can say that the minds of our people ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... by again, as usual? Or do you want to try—I shall not say to read, but to stammer through ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... me to blush and stammer like a booby, wouldn't you! That would be an excellent way ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... The poor fellow wanted to learn to stammer in his Testament, and Letty, like any true-hearted wife, had given him the little assistance she could render. The whipping failed of its intended effect, however. Going one evening, at a late hour, into Letty's cabin, I found George seated by her on ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... of respectable antecedents. The first menace of danger had come from Mr. Jarrott himself, who had unexpectedly invited his intelligent employee to lunch with him at a club, in order to talk over a commission with which Strange was to be intrusted. On this occasion he was able to stammer his way out of the invitation; but when later, Mr. Skinner, the second partner, made a like proposal, he was caught without an excuse, being obliged, with some confusion, to eat his meal in a fashionable restaurant in the Calle Florida. Oddly enough, ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... comprehensively worshipped both Klopstock and Wieland, leaves Boie behind in the exuberance of his impressions. "This Goethe," he wrote to Fritz Jacobi, "of whom from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof and from the going down thereof to its rising I should like to speak and stammer and rhapsodise with you ... this Goethe has, as it were, transcended all the ideals I had ever conceived of the direct feeling and observation of a great genius. Never could I have so well explained and sympathised with the feelings of the disciples on the way to Emmaus when they ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... drew back. "Ah, if I dared—if I dared!" she heard him stammer, and faced him swiftly, with a movement he might have misread for anger, but for the soul shining in ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... for breath, they could hardly stammer out the cause of their alarm, but managed to explain that a "terrible man" had suddenly come upon them and chased them. Yet neither Blanka nor Anna went on to say of whom this ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... a little later, his eyes reddened with tears, his hair rumpled, his face flushed. He seemed like a man awed by an entirely new experience. He could not speak, he could only stammer brokenly:— ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... she was stronger, sharper and shrewder than George Eliot. She could do one thing neither of them could do: she could coolly and sensibly describe a man. I am not sure that the old great lady who could only smatter Italian was not more vigorous than the new great lady who can only stammer American; nor am I certain that the bygone duchesses who were scarcely successful when they painted Melrose Abbey, were so much more weak-minded than the modern duchesses who paint only their own faces, and are bad at that. But that is not the point. What was the theory, what was the idea, in their ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... time later they left her at the mine and Betty mounted Nigger, leading the brown colt by the reins. Meggy had tried to stammer some words of thanks, but the girls would have none of it. They waved to her gayly ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... poverty-stricken mother had laid him there. When he was found he was already a fine little fellow of two or three years of age, very plump and merry, but so backward and dense that he could scarcely stammer a few words, and only seemed able to smile. When one of the vegetable saleswomen found him lying under the big white cabbage she raised such a loud cry of surprise that her neighbours rushed up to see ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... explained that he was a bachelor with hardly any living relation, that he had known my parents in his youth, and that he had always heard of me as a very deserving young man, and was assured that his money would be in worthy hands. Of course, I could only stammer out my thanks. The will was duly finished, signed, and witnessed by my clerk. This is it on the blue paper, and these slips, as I have explained, are the rough draft. Mr. Jonas Oldacre then informed me that there were a number of documents—building leases, title-deeds, mortgages, scrip, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I boarded with died within a week, and I was left in the house alone. This man, this peculiar fellow, Nat Parker, found me, took charge of me and did not leave me until I was out of danger. Of course, there was no way to reward him—you can merely stammer your gratitude to the man who has saved your life. He told me that the time might come when I could do him a good turn. Well, I met him the other day in New Orleans, and I incidentally spoke of my intention to sell my paper. He said that ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... next, Let the world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find Him. So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled Hoti's deg. business—let it be!— deg.129 Properly based Oun deg.— deg.130 Gave as the doctrine of the enclitic De deg. deg.131 Dead from the waist down. Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: Hail to your purlieus, All ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... I have stuttered for pleasure and profit ever since I discovered the efficacy of it at school. When I didn't know my lesson one day I put on a stammer, and my bub—bub—bubbing, as the farmer calls it, made the master so uncomfortable that, ever afterwards, at the first sign of it he passed me over. That's why I'm such a ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... French and Greek and Latin, And not acquire, as well, a priggish mien, If you can feel the touch of silk and satin Without despising calico and jean; If you can ply a saw and use a hammer, Can do a man's work when the need occurs, Can sing when asked, without excuse or stammer, Can rise above unfriendly snubs ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com
|
|
|
