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adjective
Legible  adj.  
1.
Capable of being read or deciphered; distinct to the eye; plain; used of writing or printing; as, a fair, legible manuscript. "The stone with moss and lichens so overspread, Nothing is legible but the name alone."
2.
Capable of being discovered or understood by apparent marks or indications; as, the thoughts of men are often legible in their countenances.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Legible" Quotes from Famous Books



... for a few minutes only, when a very bright but thin coat of nickel will be deposited; it then only remains to wash and dry the work, and this must be done at once. If the nickel is deposited before the scale or circle is engraved, very fine and legible divisions are obtained, but there is a risk that flakes of nickel may become detached here and there in the ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... probably make himself at home anywhere. He was a hale hearty man, of perhaps sixty years of age, who had certainly been handsome, and was even now not the reverse. Or rather, one may say, that he would have been so were it not that there was a low, restless, cunning legible in his mouth and eyes, which robbed his countenance of all manliness. He was a hale man, and well preserved for his time of life; but nevertheless, the extra rubicundity of his face, and certain incipient pimply excrescences about his nose, gave tokens that he lived too freely. He ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... some question touching her business on board the Saint Andrew: and in answer she drew a paper from the top of her packet. It was spotted with sea-water, but (as I could see) yet legible. The Commissioner studied it, showed it to Master Porson (who nodded), and handing it back politely, begged her for some ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... apparently a hurried scrawl, but the letters were large and quite legible. They appeared to have been written on an uneven surface, for there were several jogs and breaks in the writing, as if ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin

... performances of well-instructed young ladies of that period. Miss Emily had performed it under the tuition of a celebrated teacher of female accomplishments. It represented a white marble obelisk, which an inscription, in legible India ink letters, stated to be "Sacred to the memory of Theophilus Sewell," etc. This obelisk stood in the midst of a ground made very green by an embroidery of different shades of chenille and silk, and was overshadowed by an embroidered weeping-willow. Leaning on it, with her face concealed ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... as if unwilling to take my last half-dollar; but self soon got the better of him. He pocketed the shin-plaster, and said nothing; but "Poor gentleman! I's sorry for you! Libin' at do Spotswood, and no money about you!" was legible all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... into squares, in which the child was taught to write the letters of the English alphabet. Mademoiselle Mulot's claim for award was that with the machine generally in use it was necessary to teach the child a language of dots and dashes which was not legible by people in general. Although ingenious, Mademoiselle Mulot's machine was not considered striking or new enough ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... grassy bank that brings one out upon the Place Huet. In one corner, surrounded by chains and supported by low iron posts, is the historic stone. It is generally thickly coated with dust, but the brass plate affixed to a pillar of the doorway is quite legible. These, and a few fragments of carved stone that lie half-smothered in long grass and weeds at a short distance from the railed-in stone, are all that remain of the cathedral that existed in the time of ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home

... left in the possession of his family a manuscript work, consisting of memoirs of his own time, written in his own autograph, which was clean and legible. This work, which has furnished many of the anecdotes connected with his court life in the foregoing pages, was long guarded from the eye of any but the Hervey family, owing to an injunction given in his will by Augustus, third Earl of Bristol, Lord Hervey's son, that it should not see the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... Hugh became aware, with a growing astonishment, that though mankind attributed, in an easy and perfunctory way, all these phenomena to the creative hand of God, yet instead of trying to form a conception of Him and His dark thoughts from this legible and gigantic handwriting, which revealed so impenetrable, so imperturbable a will, they sought to trace His influence only in some bewildered region of the human spirit, the struggles of inherited conscience, the patient charity of men, that would seek to knot up the loose ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... in this perplexity, a messenger arrived from Histiaeus at Susa, who brought with him an express command to revolt, the particulars of which were impressed in legible characters upon his skull. Histiaeus was desirous to communicate his intentions to Aristagoras; but as the ways were strictly guarded, he could devise no other method. He therefore took one of the most faithful of his slaves, and inscribed what we have mentioned upon his skull, being first ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... grave to which he led his companion. A cracked wooden head-board, already tilting rakishly, marked Henry's devotion. It had been white-washed and the inscription done in black letters, now partly washed away by the rain, but still legible: ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington

... Twentieth Massachusetts; near them are buried the dead of the One Hundred and Thirty-seventh New York, and close at hand an equal number from the Twelfth New Jersey. Care has been taken to place a head-board at each grave, with a legible inscription thereon, showing whose remains are resting beneath. On one board the comrades of the dead soldier had nailed the back of his knapsack, which bore his name. On another was a brass plate, bearing the soldier's name ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox

... combination which has enabled him to both invent and test several new devices, including the common gyroscopic attachment which is known by his name. The main body of the manuscript is written neatly in ink, but the last few lines are in pencil and are so ragged as to be hardly legible—exactly, in fact, as they might be expected to appear if they were scribbled off hurriedly from the seat of a moving aeroplane. There are, it may be added, several stains, both on the last page and on the outside ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... will. You only think you won't. Yours gratefully, Marcia Gaylord. That's right. The Gaylord is not very legible, on account of a slight tremor in the writer's arm, resulting from a constrained posture, perhaps. Thanks, Miss Gaylord. I will be here ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... words were scarcely legible. I returned the letter to Armand, who had, no doubt, read it over again in his mind while I was reading it on paper, for he said to me ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils

... She knew the handwriting of the address. It was as if an adder had lain on them. Her heart gave a leap which seemed to have spent all her strength; and as she opened the bit of thin paper, it shook with the trembling of her hands. But it was legible as print, and ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... with some interruptions of a notable sort, continued during their mutual Life; and is a conspicuous feature in the Biographies of both. The world talked much of it, and still talks; and has now at last got it all collected, and elucidated into a dimly legible form for studious readers. [Preuss, OEuvres de Frederic, (xxi. xxii. xxiii., Berlin, 1853); who supersedes the lazy French Editors in this matter.] It is by no means the diabolically wicked Correspondence it was thought to be; the reverse, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle

... always preserved, and it was his honest opinion, even at the height of his success in authorship, that he would have been much greater as a caricaturist than as a writer. Until he was thirty years of age he wrote a fair-sized legible hand, but about that time he adopted the microscopic penmanship which has been so widely reproduced, using for the purpose very fine-pointed pens. With his manuscript he took the greatest pains, often going to infinite trouble to illuminate his letters. Among his friends these letters ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field

... variations in style which are especially noteworthy in connection with our present subject. Some of this pencil-writing is as clear as if it were freshly written; but the greater part is much rubbed, apparently by the mere service that the volume has seen; and some of it is so faint as to be legible only in a high, reflected light, in which, however, to sharp eyes it becomes distinctly visible.[dd] That ordinary black pencil-marks will endure on paper for two centuries may very likely be doubted by many readers, but without reason. Plumbago-marks, if not removed by rubbing, are even ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... the window, then pulling out the gilt chair which stood in front of the desk, he sat down, selected some monogrammed paper and penned a few lines in his characteristic though legible writing. Picking up some red sealing wax, he lighted the small candle in its brass holder which matched the rest of the desk ornaments, but before heating the wax he looked for his signet ring, and frowned when he recalled leaving ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... nature are legible, it is true; but they are not plain enough to enable those who run, to read them. We must make use of a cautious, I had almost said, a timorous method of proceeding. We must not attempt to fly, when we can scarcely pretend to creep. In considering ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... world, concentrated upon, or as it were at focus in, it. By a kind of short-hand now, and as if in a single moment of vision, all that, which only a long experience, moving patiently from part to part, could exhaust, its manifold alliance with the entire world of nature, is legible upon it, as it ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... months, our steps were naturally first directed to the spot where our boat had been built; the remains of our encampment were still visible, and the carpenter's bench was exactly in the same state as it had been left: the Mermaid's name, which had been carved on a tree, was also legible; but in a short time would have been defaced by the young bark which had already nearly covered it. Upon visiting our former watering place we were mortified to find that it was quite dried up; and this may probably ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... procure enough for the purpose. Anxious, however, to preserve a diary of each day's proceedings, he persevered to the best of his power, and the result was this scroll, now discoloured by age, and some of the leaves a good deal torn, but the hand is clear and legible throughout. I think you will like to have me read you a short extract, giving an account of a very dangerous part of his expedition. But, in the first place, I should mention that, when travelling into the interior, ...
— Georgie's Present • Miss Brightwell

... upon a sheet of paper yellow with age, and written upon in ink now much faded. The document proved to be a promissory note, but the signature was so heavily scored through and through as to be hardly legible. Benjamin Vajdar started violently as he took up the faded sheet and saw that the man whom he had so feared and hated had, by his own voluntary act, disarmed himself and put it out of his power to punish the ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai

... the book of nature as a script of the spirit we find ourselves drawn repeatedly towards two realms of natural phenomena. They are widely different in character, but studied together they render legible much that refuses to be deciphered in either realm alone. These realms are, on the one hand, the inner being of man, and, on the other, the phenomena of macrotelluric and cosmic character. The fruitfulness of linking together these two will become ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... in public life at the time! Happy candidates! whose political capital was all sugar and plums; and who, haunted by no dread of that old scarecrow of a printed address with a long string of opinions bound to come home to roost, looking out in judgment upon you in faded but still terribly legible printer's ink from every dead wall—at least, had only to get past that rough batch of compliments, "the tempest of rotten eggs, cabbages, onions, and occasional dead cats," at the hustings, and you were a legislator pledged simply to ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston

... instances, the increased circulation in the brain attendant on high mental excitement reveals itself by its effects when least expected, and leaves traces after death which are but too legible. Many are the instances in which public men have been suddenly arrested in their career by the inordinate action of the brain induced by incessant toil, and more numerous still are those whose mental power has been forever impaired by ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... writes Mrs. Piozzi, 'many letters in the last week, I am told, and those written by his mother drew from him a flood of tears. Mr. Sastres saw him cast a melancholy look upon their ashes, which he took up and examined to see if a word was still legible.'—Piozzi ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... until it has obtruded itself upon him in the form of an inhibition. The books that are imperative for the tired eyes of middle age, are equally necessary for those of youth—did youth but know it. Curiously enough, we are accustomed to begin, in teaching the young to read, with very legible type. When the eyes grow stronger, we begin to maltreat them. So it is, also, with the digestive organs, which we first coddle with pap, then treat awhile with pork and cocktails, and then, perforce, entertain with pap of the second and final period. What correspond, in the field of ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... the prophet's widow, partly completed and occupied Nauvoo House after the departure of the Mormons for Utah, and some years later he took out the cornerstone and opened it, but found the manuscript so ruined by moisture that only a little was legible. ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... comparison could be devised either for economizing time or labor. Another feature is the foot-notes, and there is also given in an appendix the various words and expressions preferred by the American members of the Revising Commission. The work is handsomely printed on excellent paper with clear, legible type. It ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... pulled out his pocket-book, and produced a torn and blotted scrap, whereon was written, in characters scarcely legible, the name "Harold." ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... seated at his table, finished the sentence he was adding in his neat, legible hand to his log, put it aside, put the pen in the case which hung at his belt, closed his ink-horn. His quiet eyes rested fearlessly ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... also be fixed, with an opening accessible from the road or street, the words "Letter Box" being painted over the same in plain legible characters. ...
— Canadian Postal Guide • Various

... and a line of trees beyond it, very much resembling those of a river, and towards this I hastened, and found the river we had followed so far, unchanged in character. The scattered ponds, and nearly northerly course, were legible proofs of its identity. We watered our horses and took some breakfast, after which, while engaged laying down our route, one of the men observed some natives looking at us from a point of the opposite bank. I held up a green bough to one ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... page he had just written, crossing a t, dotting an i, adding or scratching out a word of the writing which was in no way more legible than that of any other surgeon; and when he had read he ran his hand through the mass of snow-white hair, sighed, and pushed the book further back on ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... Pentateuch. Nevertheless, it can be shown that that was also there, for among the Canonici MSS. in the Bodleian is one of the thirteenth century containing Genesis to Ruth in Greek, which has on a margin the inscription, legible though erased: "liber ecclesie Christi Cantuarie." How it left England at the Dissolution one may guess easily enough, but what its fortunes were before it came to light again at Venice I believe there ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James

... critical value is the Codex Dublinensis rescriptus, Dublin palimpsest manuscript, in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, designated by the letter Z. It contains with other writings thirty-two leaves of the gospel by Matthew. They were edited, as far as legible, in 1801, by Dr. John Barrett, Fellow of Trinity College. In 1853 Dr. Tregelles made a new and thorough examination of the manuscript, and, by the aid of a chemical process, brought all that exists of the gospel ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... opened the letter from Amelia. "Dearest John," it began; and as he read the words, he crumpled the paper up between his fingers. It was written in a fair female hand, with sharp points instead of curves to the letters, but still very legible, and looking as though there were a decided purport in every ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... my mother's honour has been read By me, and by the world, in all her acts, In characters more plain and legible Than this dumb evidence, this blotted lie.— Oh that I were a man, as my soul's one, To prove thee traitor, and assassinate Of her fame! thus moved, I'd tear thee thus,— [Tearing the Paper. And scatter o'er the field thy coward limbs, Like this foul offspring of ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... and every twig of broom and beech was sharply defined as in a black-and-white drawing. Overhead each star was hard and bright, as though a lapidary had been at work in the heavens, and never had the Great Bear seemed so brilliant. But none so bright and legible—or so it seemed to me—as Mars ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... escape, and again hid himself in his Alpine retreat, never again to emerge. English travellers are still taken to see his house close to the lake, and his tomb in a church among the vineyards which overlook the little town of Vevay. On the house was formerly legible an inscription purporting that to him to whom God is a father every land is a fatherland; [537] and the epitaph on the tomb still attests the feelings with which the stern old Puritan to the last regarded the people of Ireland and the House ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the celestial cross of Constantine among the solar halos. Bibliothec. Graec. tom. iv. p. 8-29. * Note: The great difficulty in resolving it into a natural phenomenon, arises from the inscription; even the most heated or awe-struck imagination would hardly discover distinct and legible letters in a solar halo. But the inscription may have been a later embellishment, or an interpretation of the meaning which the sign was construed to convey. Compare Heirichen, Excur in locum Eusebii, and the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... thoroughly revised Editions; each Treasury complete * in One compact Volume, fcp. 8vo. of about 900 pages, comprising about 1,800 columns of small but very legible type. ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... in case of imprisonment or death, the oath is not held to be binding; yet I fear it is too late for the reward. The father will scarcely thank you for finding his son!—-Know, Dummie, that Paul is in jail, and that he is one and the same person as Captain Lovett!" Astonishment never wrote in more legible characters than she now displayed on the rough features of Dummie Dunnaker. So strong are the sympathies of a profession compared with all others, that Dummie's first confused thought was that of pride. "The great ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... surface, now gliding off with fierce inconstancy and soaring high into the sky, anon returning to fold it in its burning grasp and lure it to its ruin—when it shone and gleamed so brightly that the church clock of St Sepulchre's so often pointing to the hour of death, was legible as in broad day, and the vane upon its steeple-top glittered in the unwonted light like something richly jewelled—when blackened stone and sombre brick grew ruddy in the deep reflection, and windows shone like burnished gold, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... durability of ink; and while, for many purposes, school and the like, an ink that will stand undefaced a year or so, is all that is necessary, yet there is hardly a bottle of ink sold, some of which may not be used in the signature or execution of papers that may be important to be legible fifty or one hundred ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... in rather a small, concentrated hand, not overwhelmingly legible perhaps, but, as we say, "full of character," on paper lightly blueish, in the prescribed corner of which a tiny ducal coronet is embossed, above the initials "B. S." curiously ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... satisfactorily, 'Here are Lee and Jackson together.' The artist would have made it tell that this is Lee and Jackson's last interview if he could have done it. But he couldn't, for there wasn't any way to do it. A good legible label is usually worth, for information, a ton of significant attitude and expression in a historical picture. In Rome, people with fine sympathetic natures stand up and weep in front of the celebrated 'Beatrice Cenci the Day before her Execution.' ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... selected, and artistically, as well as accurately, set up; with their different ages, their nests, their young, their eggs, and their skeletons side by side; and in accordance with the admirable plan which is pursued in this museum, a tablet, telling the spectator in legible characters what they are and what they mean. For the instruction and recreation of the public such a typical collection would be of far greater value than any many-acred ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley

... and, taking a pen and leaning on the front of the bureau, wrote in the visitor's book, in a careful, legible hand: 'Lionel Belmont, New York.' Having thus written, and still resting on the right elbow, he raised his right hand a little and waved the pen like a delicious menace ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... Vandort, and a speech of Barnavelt's, twenty-four lines long. These were cancelled on revision. I have succeeded in reading some of the lines; and perhaps after a keener scrutiny the whole passage might become legible. But I have no doubt that the lines were cancelled by the author himself (Massinger?) in ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... These, I found upon examination, were the papers before us. Several of them had suffered so much by time that I could only pick out a few words; as my soul! lilies! roses! dearest angel! and the like. One of them, which was legible throughout, ran thus: ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... island on the first of August, I described the need that we were in, and the investigations on account of the failure of the arms to arrive. Although he was wrecked on the way, I have understood that the papers reached there, having been wet, but in such shape as to be legible. Thus far I have seen no answer, either to this despatch, or to those sent on the thirteenth of May and the first of July, from the lord governor, or from your Grace. It leaves me quite undecided and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair

... woman's face struck Roger as a thousand times sweeter than ever, and he gazed tenderly at the rosy, pouting lips from which no harsh word had ever been heard. The very same thought was legible in Caroline's eyes as she gave a sidelong look at Roger, either to enjoy the effect she was producing on him, or to see what the end of the evening was to be. He, understanding the meaning of this cunning ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac

... The device contains a profile bust of the deceased WASHINGTON in an obelisk, with the trophies of war, and the arms of the U.S.; round the monument are nymphs in the posture of mourning; and on the base are inscribed in legible characters the initials of his name, and the date of his ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks

... humours, ambitions, what practical way of thinking, acting, looking at the world, men then had. As in Homer we may still construe Old Greece; so in Shakespeare and Dante, after thousands of years, what our Modern Europe was, in Faith and in Practice, will still be legible. Dante has given us the Faith or soul; Shakespeare, in a not less noble way, has given us the Practice or body. This latter also we were to have; a man was sent for it, the man Shakespeare. Just when that chivalry way of life had reached its last finish, and was on the point ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... The initials of my name, still legible, appeared rudely carved on the posts—a boyish propensity which most of us have indulged; and I well remember ministering to its gratification wherever I durst hazard the experiment, when first initiated into the mystery of hewing out these important ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... understanding about with him in his pocket, or to leave it at home on his library shelves. He is afraid of venturing on any train of reasoning, or of striking out any observation that is not mechanically suggested to him by parsing his eyes over certain legible characters; shrinks from the fatigue of thought, which, for want of practice, becomes insupportable to him; and sits down contented with an endless, wearisome succession of words and half-formed images, which fill the void of the mind, and continually ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... soil has since been dug away from its base, which is now lower than that of the road which passes through the neighboring gate of San Paolo. Midway up the pyramid, cut in the marble, is an inscription in large Roman letters, still almost as legible ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... night, after hearing some slight noises, she saw the room all in a blaze, and a great number of luminous crosses, with scraps of writing here and there very legible, among which the precept to be ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... disappears. Nor is the gentle hand content even then; but it begins, very faintly at first, to trace letters which bear a very different meaning. Then it deepens and darkens them day by day, week by week, till at a month's or a year's end the tablet of memory bears, in great, sharp, legible letters, just the opposite thing to that which you had originally written down there. These are my Things Slowly Learnt: things you learn at first in the face of a strong bias against them; things, when once ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... as he read it thought that it was very unfair. It was a most disagreeable thunderbolt. Then he opened the second letter, of which he well knew the handwriting. It was from the Major. Tifto's letters were very legible, but the writing was cramped, showing that the operation had been performed with difficulty. Silverbridge had hoped that he might never receive another epistle from his late partner. The letter, as follows, had been drawn out for ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... captain. Some of the leaves were covered with writing, almost entirely effaced by the damp. He found, however, some words on the last page which were still legible, and my emotion may be imagined when I heard him read aloud in a trembling voice: "The Jane . . . Tsalal island . . . by eighty-three . . . There . . . eleven years . . . Captain . . . five sailors surviving . . . Hasten ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne

... the Prioress examined the copies, fairly legible, but sadly unlike her own beautiful work. She sighed and, putting them away, rose and paced the room, questioning how best to deal with the pretty but ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... no windows in the room. The light entered from above through two simple round apertures covered with white glass. Book cases stood about the room filled with large folios, which, as I observed from a few spread upon the table, were not printed books, but filled with writing in a round, clear hand, legible at some distance. ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... not recommend publishers to our correspondents. All three specimens of writing are legible, but No. 2 is careless and unfinished. Why write a small "b" for a "v"? The latter has no ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various

... ship is destined to go down "full many a fathom deep," is every soul on board to perish? Ho! a sail! a sail! The weather-beaten, but staunch ship Abolition, commanded by the Genius of Liberty, is bearing toward the wreck, with the cheering motto, inscribed in legible capitals, "WE WILL NOT FORSAKE YOU!" Let us hope, even against hope, that ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison

... (suddenly clutching her husband's arm, and hissing in his ear). See! [She points to the white lettering on the bag, where the name "Willis Campbell, San Francisco," is distinctly legible.] But it can't be; it must be some other Campbell. I ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the pleasure, I implore you. I can't blame you for being gruff and unsociable; were you otherwise you wouldn't reside at—at—" he turned his head to read the half legible sign on the station house, "at Chazy Junction. I'm familiar with most parts of the United States, but Chazy Junction gets my flutters. Why, oh, why in the world ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne

... all the pains that I had patience to endure in the improvement of my handwriting (which, by the way, has a constant tendency to resume feral characteristics) and also with my MS. generally to keep it clean and legible. I am having a great tidying just now, in the course of which the MS. of Erewhon turned up, and I was struck with the great difference between it and the MS. of The Authoress of the Odyssey. I have also ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... not an image that it is in the power of men to cast away, and in the worst of his corruptions and the widest of his departures he still bears upon him the signs of likeness 'to Him that created him.' The coin is rusty, battered, defaced; but still legible are the head and the writing. 'Whose image and superscription hath it?' Render unto God the things that are declared to be God's, because they bear His likeness and are stamped with ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... recognized as an Edgar Poe manuscript. It was a long, narrow strip, formed by pasting pages together endwise, and had been submitted in a tight roll which Mr. Graham unrolled as he read. The title at the top of the strip, in The Dreamer's neat, legible handwriting was, ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... not borrowed from the schools, [93] and his style was scarcely legible; but he excelled in the powers of native genius, to suggest the wisest counsels, and to find expedients in the most desperate situations. The corruption of his heart was equal to the vigor of his understanding. Although he was suspected of magic and Pagan superstition, he appeared insensible ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... around them barriers over which they can never pass. From the height of his eternal throne, his eye pervades all his works; from the tall archangel, that "adores and burns," down to the very hairs of our heads, which are all numbered, his wise, benevolent, and powerful supervision may be traced in legible lines, which may be seen and read of all men. And from effects, the most diminutive in character, may be traced back, from cause to cause, upward in the ascending scale of being, to the same unrivalled Source of all power, splendor, and perfection, the ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... 1696, in the midst of his controversy with his people, his wife died. She was an excellent woman; and was respected and lamented by all. He caused a stone slab to be placed at the head of her grave, with a suitable inscription, still plainly legible, concluding with four lines, to which his initials are appended, composed by him, of which this is one: "Farewell, best wife, choice mother, neighbor, friend." Her ashes rest in what is called the Wadsworth ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... the churchyard of Dalgarno—now a section of the parish of Closeburn—there is a small, but neat headstone, with two figures joining hands, as if in the attitude of marrying. Beneath is written, and still legible—"John Porter and Augnas Milligan. They were lovely in their lives, and in their deaths they were not divided." There is neither date nor narrative; but, as this part of the churchyard has not been used as a burial-ground since the union of the parishes, in the reign of Charles ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... such cases, during the years of advancing manhood, the law is gradually and vividly written upon the heart. Its dictates are generally, no doubt, dimmed and defaced by the natural depravity and recklessness of the sinner; but even then, they are sufficiently legible to leave him without excuse for ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall

... demonstration of public sentiment inscribes on the list of Executive duties, in characters too legible to be overlooked, the task of reform, which will require particularly the correction of those abuses that have brought the patronage of the Federal Government into conflict with the freedom of elections, and the counteraction of those causes which have disturbed the ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... extreme difficulty I find in writing; my manuscripts, blotted, scratched, and scarcely legible, attest the trouble they cost me; nor is there one of them but I have been obliged to transcribe four or five times before it went to press. Never could I do anything when placed at a table, pen in hand; it must ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various

... whom he presented it at Hampton Court, all of it written within the circle of a single penny, inchased in a ring and borders of gold, and covered with a crystal, so accurately wrought as to be very plainly legible; to the great admiration of her majesty, the whole privy council, and several ambassadors then at court?" Bales was likewise very dexterous in imitating handwritings, and between 1576 and 1590 was employed by Secretary Walsingham in certain political manoeuvres. We find ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... close to their bosom, fondled and cherished. Truly we may say we are miserable sinners, and that there is no health in us, for the black plague spot is often hidden under the white vesture, undetected by human insight, but clearly legible to the "Eye that seeth ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... shirt and a pair of trousers, and never button my shirt. When I land for a meal, I pass my coat and feel dressed. This life is to last till Friday, Saturday, or Sunday next. It is a strange affair to be an emigrant, as I hope you shall see in a future work. I wonder if this will be legible; my present station on the waggon roof, though airy compared to the cars, is both dirty and insecure. I can see the track straight before and straight behind me to either horizon. Peace of mind I enjoy with extreme serenity; I am doing right; I know ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... indulgence by bringing forward the most glorious examples and achievements of patriotism. In this strain he had doubtless commenced his exordium, and in this strain we find him continuing it at the point in which the palimpsest becomes legible. He then proceeds to introduce his illustrious interlocutors, and leads them at first to discourse on the astronomical laws that regulate the revolutions of our planet. From this, by a very graceful and beautiful transition, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... me, to ask what they should do with him. Unluckily for him, a French officer of rank happened to be in the store, who, on hearing our tale, packed him off to his regiment. I gathered from the expression of the officer's face, and the dread legible upon the culprit's, that it might be some considerable time before his itch for breaking the eighth commandment could be ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole

... regularity. At Raynham, in a parish of 1,400 acres, there were three small manors. The courts of one of them were held three times in the year 1348. Upon the same parchment, and immediately following the records of the previous year, come some scarcely legible notes of a court held in 1349, the precise day of the month omitted, the entries scrawled informally by a scribe who not only did not know the forms of the court, but who was evidently not a professional writer. He bungled so that he seems actually to have given up his task. The next court ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... followed him quickly, leaving a son to carry on the name. The gravestone of these first d'Arthenays was still to be seen in the old burying-ground: they had been the first to be buried there. The old stone was sunk half-way in the earth, and was gray with moss and lichens; but the inscription was still legible, if one looked close, and had patience to decipher ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards

... one corner, six chairs and two boxes of sawdust to serve as cuspidors, the building might easily have been mistaken for a private residence. But it stood on the corner opposite the store and had a worn and scarcely legible sign over the front door, calling it a hotel in ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)

... the requisite selection must be made with care. Moreover, the ideal bedside book should be not only small, and light, and agreeable to the touch, but distinguished by special internal characteristics. Not only must the print be legible; the matter it furnishes must be in brief instalments. What is wanted is a series of short somethings which the mind can readily grasp and as easily retain. Sustained reading is for the library or the study; the last thing at night and the first thing in the ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... unreservedly communicate to each other our feelings and apprehensions. Speech should be to man in the nature of a fair complexion, the transparent medium through which the workings of the mind should be made legible. ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... had completed his "Siege of Corinth" and "Parisina," and sent the packet containing them to Mr. Murray. They had been copied in the legible hand of Lady Byron. On receiving the poems Mr. Murray wrote to ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... Texte, II. pp. 224-238, are from the same manuscripts as the two versions of the Raid of the Cattle of Dartaid; namely the Yellow Book of Lecan, and the Egerton MS. 1782. In the case of this tale, the Yellow Book version is more legible, and, being not only the older, but a little more full than the other version, Windisch has translated this text alone: the prose version, as given here, follows this manuscript, nearly as given by Windisch, with only one addition from the Egerton ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy

... but even the voice of the people was overcome by troops of rockets rising from every quarter of the lake, and by the thunder of artillery. When the noise and the smoke had both subsided, the name of Lothair still legible on the temple but the letters quite white, it was perceived that on every height for fifty miles round ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... heart and sat down at the writing-table. What had become of that beautiful handwriting of hers which had resembled copper plate? Scarcely legible letters now issued from her trembling hand, dumb witnesses of the terror of her heart, and yet write she must for it was her petition to her husband. Ah! that she should be ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... a fine old script that in spite of her eighty years was clear and legible. She told about the beauty of the weather, and how Amelia and Hortense were almost done with the house cleaning, and how Marcia had been going to their house every day putting it in order. Then she added a paragraph which David, knowing the ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... wonderful mountain became the habitation of a religious community, may be pretty nearly ascertained by the following singular epitaph, on a beautiful monument, still legible in ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse

... Ill-nature, that I have Lampoons sent me by People [who [3]] cannot spell, and Satyrs compos'd by those who scarce know how to write. By the last Post in particular I receiv'd a Packet of Scandal that is not legible; and have a whole Bundle of Letters in Womens Hands that are full of Blots and Calumnies, insomuch that when I see the Name Caelia, Phillis, Pastora, or the like, at the Bottom of a Scrawl, I conclude on course ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... his pen from the paper. Line after line of neat, small writing, quite different from what his friends knew in letters or on envelopes, flowed from his pen. It was his "press" handwriting, plain, rapid, and as legible as print. The punctuation was attended to with singular care: the commas broad and heavy, the colons like the kisses in a child's letter, round and black. Once or twice he smiled as he wrote, and occasionally jerked ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... whatever. When the governor of Panama asked for their commission, Captain Sawkins replied that "we would ... bring our Commissions on the muzzles of our Guns, at which time he should read them as plain as the flame of Gunpowder could make them." Ringrose, p. 38. Legible, no ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... obvious and well-marked external character, the disease for which it is a remedy or the object for which it should be employed." Southey says,[80] "The signatures [were] the books out of which the ancients first learned the virtues of herbs—Nature having stamped on divers of them legible characters to discover their uses." Some opined that the external marks were impressed by planetary influences, hence their connection with talismans; others simply reasoned it out that the Almighty must have placed a sign on the ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... to be a man, he wore no beard, not even the slightest apology for a whisker, and this perhaps added to the apparent heaviness of his face; but he probably best understood his own appearance, for in those days no face bore on it more legible marks of ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... Scriptures. It lies at the foundation of natural religion. It is involved in our religious consciousness. It enters essentially into our sense of moral obligation. It is inscribed ineffaceably, in letters more or less legible, on the heart of every human being. The man who is trying to be an atheist is trying to free himself from the laws of his being. He might as well try to free himself from ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge

... Polish days. It bore the painted semblance of a boot. For in Poland—a frontier country, as in frontier cities where many tongues are heard—it is the custom to paint a picture rather than write a word. So that every house bears the sign of its inmate's craft, legible alike to Lithuanian or Ruthenian, Swede or Cossack ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman

... copy the rest of the orthography, which was very peculiar, but translate it into legible English. It ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... quite legible, writ by God's finger; Why did I fail ere now to heed that sign? A smell of death pervades all human life, And poisons spring's sweet breath and summer's splendor. Out of the grave that odor is exhaling. The grave is sealed and marble guards its freight, But still ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... my miserable hole in Laura's house. Half an hour afterwards she came to me, crying bitterly, and she placed in my hands this letter, which was scarcely legible: ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... like a citizen of the world at the sight of the palm-leaf which will cover so many flaxen New England heads the next summer, the Manilla hemp and cocoanut husks, the old junk, gunny bags, scrap iron, and rusty nails. This carload of torn sails is more legible and interesting now than if they should be wrought into paper and printed books. Who can write so graphically the history of the storms they have weathered as these rents have done? They are proof-sheets which need no correction. Here goes lumber from the Maine woods, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... kind of pride, the morbid fear of vulgarity, lent secret strength to the intellectual prejudice, which realised duty as the renunciation of all finite objects, the fastidious refusal to be or do any limited thing. But besides this it was legible in his own admissions from time to time, that the body, following, as it does with powerful temperaments, the lead of mind and the will, the intellectual consumption (so to term it) had been concurrent with, had strengthened ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater

... treasure. The play, I believe, had something to do with racing, but I hardly looked at the stage. My eyes and attention were magnetized by the green object on my knee. I occasionally peeped at its pages; but the light, while the play was in progress, was too dim to render the print legible. Between the acts, however, I began to decipher stanzas such as the following, and notes new to the world invaded ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... to 1784 Padre Junipero Serra entered upon the parish record all baptisms, marriages, and deaths. These ancient volumes are carefully preserved, and are substantially bound in leather; the writing is bold and legible, and each entry is signed "Fray Junipero Serra," with an odd little flourish of the pen beneath. The last entry is dated July 30, 1784; then Fray Francesco Palou, an old schoolmate of Junipero Serra, ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... address of the merchant from whom it had been bought. But that was not all. Running in diagonal lines across this label, he saw some faded lines in fine handwriting, which proved to be a couplet signed with five initials. The latter were not quite legible, but the couplet he could read without the least difficulty. It was highly sentimental, and might mean much and might mean nothing. If the handwriting should prove to be Mr. Roberts', the probabilities were in favor of the former supposition—or so he said to himself, as ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... creation of the fancy suggested by the surroundings and by the popular traditions; and each story forms an episode in the history of the hero or spirit. The stones and rocks thus come to constitute a book chronicling the history of the tribe and the deeds of its great men—a book quite legible to the man who has been taught the stories. These grow with every generation, receiving such additions as fancy and reflection dictate, and gradually taking on literary form. In the territory of the Australian Arunta every stone ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... her into instant resistance. She had gone to her own room and read there the full legend—almost obliterated by wear—almost, but not quite. Some letters and numbers were gone, but enough were left legible. ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... in their prospectus that only descendants through the male line from one (or more) of the forty noblemen who forced King John to sign the Magna Charta are what our Washington Mrs. Malaprop would call “legible,” the action attests a diseased condition of the community. Any one taking the trouble to remember that eight of the original barons died childless, and that the Wars of the Roses swept away nine tenths of what families ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... Viscount Molesworth at his house at Brackdenstown near Swords;" but I would have it sent printed for the convenience of his Lordship's reading, because this counterfeit hand of my 'prentice is not very legible. And if you think fit to publish it, I would have you first get it read over carefully by some notable lawyer: I am assured you will find enough of them who are friends to the Drapier, and will do it without a fee, which I am afraid you can ill afford after all your ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift

... one of the weapons and patted the other with grisly affection. In the excess of my admiration I made bold to reach for it. He relinquished it to me with a mother's yearning. And all too legible in the polished butt of the thing were notches! Nine sinister notches I counted—not fresh notches, but emphatic, eloquent, chilling. I thrust the bloody record ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... musical instruments and books. The two latter are opened to display their text conspicuously. Near the man at our left, and kept open by a T-square, is the Arithmetic which Peter Apian, astronomer and globe-maker, published in 1527. It is opened at a page in Division, with its German text plainly legible and identical with the actual page, as seen in the British ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue

... to reflect, as the beautiful fabric grows beneath her forming hand, that her work, and the power and skill to plan and execute it, is an emanation of the Immortal Mind; of that Mind, whose creative powers are a faint, but legible transcript of the Omnipotent Wisdom of the Deity. This thought gives a permanency to what would, in any other light be only transitory as the summer cloud. It is Omnipotent Wisdom and Power, which has contrived and executed all the beautiful wonders of creation; and that Wisdom and ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous

... requisitioned by the editorial department to copy in form legible for the printer the rough items sent in by outsiders for publication in the Gazette. Una, like most people of Panama, had believed that there was something artistic about the office of any publication. One would see ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... methodically, sorting out the letters and putting them in neat packets and snapping rubber bands around them. She examined the seemingly worthless accumulation of advertisements and circulars, saving the envelopes wherever the date and postoffice stamp were legible. Every scrap of paper in the heaped fireplace was carefully scrutinized. What she deemed worthless was finally put back, care being taken to pull the mass apart so that the grate seemed to be ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson

... 557) tell the same story. They are so closely allied that the translation which appears in this volume has been made from a collation of both texts, that of Hauk's Book (544) having been more closely followed.[5-1] The Hauk's Book text is clearly legible; No. 557 is not in ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... issued, within the next five years, the famous Bible with 42 lines to a page, and a Donatus (Latin grammar) of 32 lines. The printer of the Bible with 36 lines to a page, that is the next oldest surviving monument, was apparently a helper of Gutenberg, who set up an independent press in 1454. Legible, clean-cut, comparatively cheap, these books demonstrated once for all the success of the new art, even though, for illuminated initials, they were still dependent on ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... of a truant school-boy; as soon, therefore, as you have done with Abbe Nolet, pray get an excellent writing-master (since you think that you cannot teach yourself to write what hand you please), and let him teach you to write a genteel, legible, liberal hand, and quick; not the hand of a procureur or a writing-master, but that sort of hand in which the first 'Commis' in foreign bureaus commonly write; for I tell you truly, that were I Lord Albemarle, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... middle-class Corsican on his travels. Miss Nevil's attention was first attracted by the woman's remarkable beauty. She seemed about twenty years of age; she was tall and pale, with dark blue eyes, red lips, and teeth like enamel. In her expression pride, anxiety, and sadness were all legible. On her head she wore a black silk veil called a mezzaro, which the Genoese introduced into Corsica, and which is so becoming to women. Long braids of chestnut hair formed a sort of turban round her head. Her dress was neat, but simple ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee

... and scanty pulpit, with the paltry painted pillars on either side—the women's gallery with its great heavy curtain—the men's with its unpainted benches and dingy front—the tottering little table at the altar, with the commandments on the wall above it, scarcely legible through lack of paint, and dust and damp—so unlike the velvet and gilding, the marble and wood, of a modern church—are strange and striking. There is one object, too, which rivets the attention and fascinates the gaze, and from which we may turn ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... which he possessed. His two chief companions were the Bible and Fox's Book of Martyrs. His knowledge of the Bible was such that he might have been called a living concordance; and on the margin of his copy of the Book of Martyrs are still legible the ill-spelt lines of doggerel in which he expressed his reverence for the brave sufferers, and his implacable enmity to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... information as to the means of crossing was the East Gate guarding one of the entrances to Riddell, a very ancient place where Sir Walter Scott had recorded the unearthing of two graves of special interest, one containing an earthen pot filled with ashes and arms, and bearing the legible date of 729, and the other dated 936, filled with the bones of ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... and sat (Comfortably by the fire. The Duchess looked in, said nothing, and sent a smith to take the hinges of the door off We understood the hint, and left the room, and so did the smith the door. This was pretty legible. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... as could be looked for: but lifted astonished eyes, not without a gleam of insolence in them, when Mrs. Warrender made the unexpected demand if Lady Markland would see her. See you! If it had been the duchess, perhaps! was the commentary legible in his face. He went in, however, with the card in his hand, while she waited, half indignant, half amused, with little doubt what the reply would be. But the reply was not at all what she expected. After a minute or two of delay, another figure, quite different from that of the butler, ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... not be inappropriate to mention here, in reference to the minuteness attainable by paper negatives, that a railway notice of six lines is perfectly legible, and even the erasure for a new secretary's name is discernible in the accompanying specimen, which was obtained with one of Ross's landscape lenses, without any stop whatever being used, and after an exposure of five minutes during a heavy ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various

... half an inch from it on either side, were two narrow fancy lines—or at least that is what Hervey called them. Examining these carefully, he saw that they were made up of tiny, diagonal lines. In the place where this ran between the rocks, in the deep shadow, these singular marks were surprisingly legible, and bore not a little the appearance of a border design. The big stones formed a sort of shadow box, causing the markings to appear in ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... of steady attendance fifteen young men and women could read the second reader, and write a legible hand, and draft a negotiable note. I took a specimen of a number of my scholars' hand- writing to an anti-slavery convention in Cincinnati, Ohio, and left a few with the Rev. John G. Fee, whose life had been threatened if he did ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... surrounded the spot where he was, and then he pointed to the lid of a coffin, which he had been rubbing with his handkerchief, in order to make the inscription more legible, and said,— ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... as she remembered this: her destruction found her when she had forgotten this; and it found her irrevocably, because she forgot it without excuse. Never had city a more glorious Bible. Among the nations of the North, a rude and shadowy sculpture filled their temples with confused and hardly legible imagery; but, for her, the skill and the treasures of the East had gilded every letter, and illumined every page, till the Book-Temple shone from afar off like the star of the Magi. In other cities, the meetings of the people were often in places withdrawn from religious ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... vaulted ceiling, which gave it the look of a cavern. About this were ranged the monks, seated on stools, and chanting from immense books placed on music-stands, and having the notes scored in such gigantic characters as to be legible from every part of the choir. A few lights on these music-stands dimly illumined the choir, gleamed on the shaven heads of the monks and threw their shadows on the walls. They were gross, blue-bearded, bullet-headed men, with bass voices, ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... result had not been very cheerful, for beneath this form of calendar stood a confession of faith, thus expressed, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!" This melancholy declaration was signed, and the signature was perfectly legible. Mlle. Moriaz spelled it out readily, although at that moment her sight was dim, and she was convinced that the trinket, which Count Larinski had presented to her as a family relic, had belonged ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... address—"Messrs. Davison, Paternoster Row"; in the fireplace was a huge charred mass. Derrick caught his breath; he stooped down and snatched from the fender a fragment of paper slightly burned, but still not charred beyond recognition like the rest. The writing was quite legible—it was his own writing—the description of the Royalists' attack and Paul Wharncliffe's defence of the bridge. I looked from the half-burnt scrap of paper to the side table where, only the previous night, ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall

... judged by handwriting. Write a good, clear, legible hand, without any flourishes, and always use the best and the blackest of ink. The typewriter is employed ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain

... date from the early time of the Lower Empire, and the cross has not yet been effaced from some which serve as head-stones for the True Believers. I was particularly struck with the abundance of altars, some of which contained entire and legible inscriptions. In the town there is the same abundance of ruins. The lid of a sarcophagus, formed of a single block of marble, now serves as a water-trough, and the fountain is constructed of ancient tablets. ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... be used. The writing should be neat and legible. Attention should be paid to margin, paragraphs, and indentation. In fact, all the rules of theme writing apply to letter writing, and to ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... letter. One Francis Almonus wrote the Creed, and the first fourteen verses of the Gospel of St. John, on a piece of parchment no larger than a penny. In the library of St. John's College, Oxford, is a picture of Charles I. done with a pen, the lines of which contain all the psalms, written in a legible hand. ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... anything that we as yet understand, but apparently the same sort of pre-arrangement that determined whether the stone from the cliff should fall on point A or point B—the same sort of process that guided the pen to make legible and effective writing instead of illegible and ineffective scrawls—the same kind of control that determines when and where a trigger shall be pulled so as to secure the anticipated slaughter of a bird. So ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge

... the same process accompanied and explained the pictures. The characters were white on a blue ground. M. Oppert brought together some fifteen of these monumental texts, but he did not find a single fragment upon which there was more than one letter. The inscriptions were meant to be legible at a considerable distance, for the letters were from two to three inches high. In later days Arab architects followed the example thus set and pressed the elegant forms of the cufic alphabet into their service with ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... preserve it in a bottle closely corked. This ink is to be used with a clean pen, and the writing when dry will become invisible. But if at any time it be washed over with the following mixture, it will instantly become black and legible. Put some quicklime and red orpiment in water, place some warm ashes under it for a whole day, filter the liquor, and cork it down. Whenever applied in the slightest degree, it will render the ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... little terror, was seized with a convulsion of fear when he thought of any active exertion to avoid it, and shivered in all his long, thin limbs. Then he pulled out his Baedeker and began to write his will upon the fly-leaf, but his hand twitched so that he was hardly legible. By some strange gymnastic of the legal mind, a death, even by violence, if accepted quietly, had a place in the established order of things, while a death which overtook one galloping frantically over a desert was wholly ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle

... pick up the fallen papers the letter Bernal had left lay open before her, a letter written in long, slanting but vividly legible characters. And then, quite before she recognised what letter it was, or could feel curious concerning it, the first illuminating line of it had flashed irrevocably to her ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... an undefined misgiving as she tore open the envelope. Though she had never seen Giovanni's handwriting, she had no doubt that it was his. It looked as though it might not be very legible at best; but on the sheet before her the shaking, uneven letters trailed off into such filiform indistinctness that she had to go through it several times before she could decipher the ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post

... copy, and it had only too obviously been employed by its late possessor to wrap up a couple of kippered herrings; but it was still entire, so far as regarded the leaders at least, and it was perfectly legible in spite of its ancient and fish-like smell. To ensure accuracy, Ernest and Edie took a leader apiece, and carefully counted up the number of words that went to the column. They came on an average to fifteen hundred. ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... but were not able to make anything of the two following Characters. In a small place within also, may be seen a Writing carved in Stone between two old Pillars, but so impair'd and worn out by the weather that it is not legible.' At Groree, too, similar remains ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... suddenly galvanized into action. He dived into a small pocket and produced a note, crumpled and soiled, but still legible. ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist



Words linked to "Legible" :   decipherable, clean, illegible



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