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Dumbly   Listen
Dumbly

adverb
1.
In a stupid manner.  Synonyms: densely, obtusely.
2.
In an inarticulate manner.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Dumbly" Quotes from Famous Books



... Dumbly she stood and watched Biddy lay the inanimate figure back upon the pillows. Isabel had sunk into a state of exhaustion ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell

... dispersed, hidden, disorganised, undiscovered, unsuspected even by themselves, the samurai of Utopia are in this world, the motives that are developed and organised there stir dumbly here and stifle in ten thousand ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... a telephone waited: McGuire sensed this but dumbly, and the way to that room was long to his stumbling feet. He was blinded: his mind would not function: he saw only those fluttering things, and the moonlight on their wings, and the shadows that took them so ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... before, told him a story about a prisoner who escaped in exactly that way. Stoliker was suspicious of the good intentions of the man he had in charge; he was altogether too polite and good-natured; and, besides, the constable dumbly felt that the prisoner was a much ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... as an impecunious young man who could make a tweed suit last longer than one would have believed possible; they had called him "Fill" and helped him in more than usually lean times with small loans: but to-night they had eyed the waistcoat dumbly and shrank ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... memories, all. Ah! here, where yet a ray of glory lingers, Let a light shine unto all generous souls, And be Italia's hope! Unto these stones Oft came Vittorio[8] for inspiration, Wroth to his country's gods. Dumbly he roved Where Arno is most lonely, anxiously Brooding upon the heavens and the fields; Then when no living aspect could console, Here rested the Austere, upon his face Death's pallor and the deathless light of hope. Here with these great he dwells for ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... audible, had given her any intelligible warning of its appearance. Silently and suddenly, the head had taken its place above her. No supernatural change had passed over the room, or was perceptible in it now. The dumbly-tortured figure in the chair; the broad window opposite the foot of the bed, with the black night beyond it; the candle burning on the table—these, and all other objects in the room, remained unaltered. One object more, ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins

... are to be politically gagged and enslaved as well; that the able-bodied soldier in the trenches, who depends on the able-minded civilian at home to guard the liberties of his country and protect him from carelesness or abuse of power by the authorities whom he must blindly and dumbly obey, is to be betrayed the moment his back is turned to his fellow-citizens and his face to the foe, is not patriotism: it is the paralysis of mortal funk: it is the worst kind of cowardice in the face of the enemy. Let us hear no ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... light below but the pale glimmer of the lamp that showed the brother who had made him desolate. Like a blind man who believes there is a sun, yet cannot see it, he shook his head, let his arms drop nervelessly upon his knees, and sat there dumbly asking that question which many a soul whose faith is firmer fixed than his has asked in hours less dark than this,—"Where is God?" I saw the tide had turned, and strenuously tried to keep this rudderless life-boat from slipping back into the whirlpool wherein it had been ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... the squires, the king about, Hear him, and dumbly stare Into the wild sea's tumbling rout; But to win the beaker, they hardly care! The king, for the third time, round him glaring— "Not a soul of you has ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald

... Roland stared at him dumbly. It was like a line out of a melodrama. He feared, first for his own, then for the butler's sanity. The latter was smiling gently, as one who sees light ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill

... beside him, telling what he knew, Fenwick all the time dumbly vexed that this good-looking, prosperous fellow, this Academician in his new fur coat, breathing success and commissions, should know more of his best friend's ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... addressed, its coming close to such persons was invariably attended by some trepidation or disturbance on their part. It seemed to me as if it were prevented, by laws to which I was not amenable, from fully revealing itself to others, and yet as if it could invisibly, dumbly, and darkly overshadow their minds. When the leading counsel for the defence suggested that hypothesis of suicide, and the figure stood at the learned gentleman's elbow, frightfully sawing at its severed throat, it is undeniable that ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens

... die before he is liberated," he was saying dumbly to himself. "I wonder if I will. There's no sign of it now. I'm strong and well enough to live for years. Suppose he is freed inside of a month or two, what then? By Heaven, I'd be losing the dearest hope ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... Doon I'd not be pitying— I could forget him now— But for the childish look of trouble That fell across his brow, For the twisting hands he looked at dumbly As if they'd ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... him dumbly out of the infirmary and down a bare corridor whose metal floor rang coldly underfoot. An open port near the corridor's end relieved the blankness of wall and let in a flood of reddish Alphardian ...
— Control Group • Roger Dee

... shadow of grace and beauty over all this coarse hardness. The eyes were large, like the cow's under yonder tree, slow-moving, absorbing, a soft brown in color, and unreasoning; if pain came to this woman, she would not struggle, nor try to understand it: bear it dumbly, that was all. The nervous lips were not heavy, but delicately, even archly cut, with dimples waiting the slightest moving of the mouth; you would be sure that naturally the laughter and fun and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... not given long to debate this new question. Even as he sat staring dumbly at nothing in his perplexity, little Abe crawled out of the yard with the news that "mamma was most deaded;" and though it was not so bad as that, it was made clear to her husband when he found her in one of her bad fainting spells, that things had come ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... I going to do for him. Why, I couldn't have that young fellow think that I tricked him into this thing for you or all the rest of the women of your kind on earth. God! I might have known that you, and the others like you, couldn't be square. [The girl looks at him dumbly. He glances at his watch, walks up stage, looks out of the window, comes down again, goes to the table, and looks at her across it.] You've made a nice mess of ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter

... mission, but told it dumbly by pressing a bottle of hot coffee in each man's hand, waiting while it was consumed, and then returning to get the bottles refilled, their thanks being a warm, hearty pressure and a shouted warning from the ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn

... the families in our commune have relatives residing in the little hamlets between Cregy and Monthyon, and have been out to help them re-install themselves. Very little in the way of details of the battle seems to be known. Trees and houses dumbly tell their own tales. The roads are terribly cut up, but road builders are already at work. Huge trees have been broken off like twigs, but even there men are at work, uprooting them and cutting the wood into lengths and piling it neatly along ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich

... the end of Brit's matrimonial affairs, he heard from the children once in a year, perhaps, after they were old enough to write. He did not send them money, because he seemed never to have any money to send, and because they did not ask for any. Dumbly he sensed, as their handwriting and their spelling improved, that his children were growing up. But when he thought of them they seemed remote, prattling youngsters whom Minnie was for ever worrying over and who seemed to have been always under the heels of his horse, ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... it is!' the other drawled; and then, taking advantage of the moment when Julia's attention was engaged elsewhere—she dumbly refused to sit, 'Where is Dunborough?' my ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... merciless blow. She was a little consoled by Perigal's letter, but, in her heart of hearts, something told her that, despite his brave words, the marriage was indefinitely postponed; indeed, it was more than doubtful if it would ever take place at all. She suffered, dumbly, despairingly; her torments were the more poignant because she realised that the man she loved beyond anything in the world must be acutely distressed at this unexpected confounding of his hopes. Her head throbbed with dull ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... towards her. It was sunk and hollow, ravaged with pain, an evil-looking face. His right arm was in a sling under his tattered military cloak. He seemed to have made his final effort, and now stood staring dumbly at her. ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley

... saw the black men huddle, Fumed in fear, falling face downward; Vainly I clutched and clawed, Dumbly they cringed and ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... For seconds they became one of the speechless couples, standing dumbly in the great ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway

... hand sheepishly when he realized it was only a sneeze—though a gargantuan one. Brion came up, sniffling, huddling down into his coat. "I'm going out before I catch pneumonia," he said. The guard saluted dumbly, and after checking his proximity detector screens he slipped out and the heavy portal thudded shut behind him. The street was still warm from the heat of the day and he sighed happily and opened ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... of Carpy and shrank back. The doctor, McAlpin behind him dumbly staring, confronted Laramie at the door: "What are you doin' ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... Consciously, he did not know where he was going, nor care. If he thought at all, his numbed brain was simply trying to run away from its own bitter imaging—which, if he had thought at all, he would have known to be a hopeless task. But he did not think; he simply acted, dumbly, miserably. His eyes saw, optically; his body reacted, mechanically; his thinking brain was completely ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith

... Katherine nodded dumbly. "But, how am I going to 'pass on the light that has been given to me,' if I am to be away from people?" she said sadly ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey

... must take chances with through the long watches of the night, while the thirst grew in the beasts' parched throats, they foresaw what would in all probability happen; they thought of their women, of all that most strongly bound them to life, and they sat and waited dumbly. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... of immortality from the bible. I deny it. If Christ was in fact God, why didn't He plainly say there was another life? Why didn't He tell us something about it? Why didn't He turn the tear-stained hope of immortality into the glad knowledge of another life? Why did He go dumbly to his death, and leave the world in darkness and in doubt? Why? Because He was a man and didn't know. I would not destroy the smallest star of human hope, but I deny that we got our idea of immortality from the bible. It existed long before Moses existed. We find it symbolized through ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... majestic motion, With a stately, slow surprise, From their earthward-bound devotion Lifting up your languid eyes— Would you freeze my too loud boldness, Dumbly smiling as you go, One faint frown of distant coldness Flitting fast across each ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... through the fleecy thickness to aid in the search for the little girl. At a late hour it began to sprinkle again, and, though no sound of shot or blast had broken the silence of the prairie, one by one the anxious hunters came straggling home, dumbly ate, and ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... kisses off her throat with the back of her hand, dumbly, mechanically thinking: "What have I done to be treated like this? What HAVE I done?" No answer came. And such rage against men flared up that she just stood there, twisting her garden-gloves in her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... crashed on, rolling over the yellow grass and the dry bushes. Lizards and other creeping creatures scuttled across their wide tracks. The patient oxen toiled under the yoke, their dappled nostrils widespread, their great dewy eyes strained and dim with weariness. They dumbly wondered why they must labour in the daytime when all night long they had travelled without rest. The glorious sunrise had flamed in crimson and gold behind the eastern ranges full five hours before. They were weary to death, and no dorp or farm was yet in sight. The Cape ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... no-tongued tree That, spring by spring, doth nobler be, And dumbly and most wistfully His mighty prayerful arms outspreads, And his big blessing downward ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... to grapple or reason with the fact. What was the use? It was the end of all things. He merely sat and gazed dumbly at the monstrous thing that filled ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher

... speech?" continued this easy and agreeable young man, whom Laurence Varney, a great distance off, stood dumbly and watched from the swirling void with a certain remote admiration. "Of course not. I was never better in my life and the walk will be pleasant on so nice an afternoon. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... general union of disfavour that surrounded, watched, and waited on him in the house of Hermiston; but he had little comfort or society from that alliance, and the demure little maid (twelve on her last birthday) preserved her own counsel, and tripped on his service, brisk, dumbly responsive, but inexorably unconversational. For the others, they were beyond hope and beyond endurance. Never had a young Apollo been cast among such rustic barbarians. But perhaps the cause of his ill-success lay in one trait ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... "stepped in" and was lending Ann the money to study stenography. Katie had made a wry face over stenography, which did not have a dream-like or an Ann-like sound—but a very Wayne-like one!—but had entered no protest; at that time she had been too dumbly miserable to enter protest ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... they overtook us, or when we passed them, they would timidly and quietly ask us: "Is it much farther to the village?" And when we answered, they would sigh, and gaze dumbly at us. My travelling companion hated these irrepressible ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky

... Embankment. At the point where they left the Strand, the man without a parcel spoke to the sergeant and fell out of the ranks. He laid his clumsy hand on the woman's arm; she set down on the pavement the parcel she had been carrying. There they stood for a full minute gazing at each other dumbly, oblivious to the passing crowds. She wasn't pleasing to look at—just a slum woman with draggled skirts, a shawl gathered tightly round her and a mildewed kind of bonnet. He was no more attractive—a hulking Samson, perhaps a day-labourer, who whilst he had loved her, had probably beaten ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson

... he cried to Amy and Grace, who were still standing dumbly in the middle of the road. A moment later he had thrown himself with all his might against the machine, striving to push it out of the path of ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope

... surround the garden are slowly darkening. The shadows that intervene between the round masses of the sycamore-leaves deepen, deepen. A bat flitters dumbly by. Vick, to whose faith all things seem possible, runs sharply barking and racing after it. We both laugh at the fruitlessness of her undertaking, and the joint merriment restores suavity to me, and ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... one to have the thanks and the credit," Jerome repeated, pushing gently past her. His face was hot. He wondered, as he approached his house, if his own family had heard the news. As soon as he opened the door he saw that they had. Elmira did not lift a white, dumbly accusing face from her work; his father looked at him with curious, open-mouthed wonder; ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... and brightness came to her from Rollo's eyes. Mr. Falkirk lifted his dumbly, not knowing how to take the girl. He had not, so far in the talk, touched the subject of Mrs. Coles' communications, though no doubt they had not been out of his mind for one instant. But somehow, Mr. Falkirk had lacked inclination to call his younger coadjutor to account, and probably was ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... followed by a sickening moment of fear. How little he actually knew of her and of her way of thought. What assurance had he that she would not laugh, jump back upon the horse, and ride away? He was afraid as he had never been afraid before. Dumbly his mind groped about for a way to begin. Expressions he had caught and noted in her strong serious little face when he had achieved but a mild curiosity concerning her came back to visit his mind and he tried desperately to build an instant idea of her from these. ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... They sat dumbly a minute or two, no one knowing what to propose, and all looking toward the southern bank, where they believed the chief danger to lie. The dark green forest made a high black line there in the night, a solid black until it was ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler

... forward, fell on his face, looking towards the altar. He remained there long, dazed and weary, pulling his cowl close round him to keep out the bitter cold. The pain of his body almost relieved the pain of his mind; he wished dumbly that he could lie there and die, and be finished with it all. He did not know the time; he wondered whether any service would soon bring the monks to disturb him. He took sad pleasure in the solitude, ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham

... top of the hill I saw Dan climbing upwards from the old peat track, and I followed dumbly as he led me into an old quarry, long since disused except by the sheep on the warm summer days, and there we lay almost exhausted, content just to know that the storm rushed over our pitiful retreat, and it seems droll to me now that ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars

... alarmed now than when he saw the flames of the burning oil threatening the destruction of the building, and he dumbly wondered why Gladys did ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis

... walked along Mary was in a fever of discomfort. She wished dumbly that the man would go away, but for the wealth of the world she could not have brought herself to hurt the feelings of so big a man. To endanger the very natural dignity of a big man was a thing which no woman could do without a pang; the shame of it made her feel hot: he might have blushed ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... FDYA sits dumbly on the bed, bewildered. He puts his forehead against MASHA'S face and clings to her ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al

... gloomily, Spurred by contumely, Cold inhumanity, Burning insanity, Into her rest,— Cross her hands humbly, As if praying dumbly, Over her breast! Owning her weakness, Her evil behavior, And leaving, with meekness, Her sins ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... could hide the gladness of her heart from herself no longer. She was frightened that he had come, but she was glad, and she knew he knew that she was glad. She made no further protest. She held out her hand dumbly. And on the morrow she found him awaiting her even ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells

... ordinarily the most courteous of persons, and certainly one of the most talkative, did not return the salutation. Astonishment congealed his faculties, tied his tongue and paralyzed his biceps. He stared dumbly a moment, and then, having regained coherent powers, he jammed his brown-varnished straw hat firmly upon his ancient poll and went scrambling up his gravel walk as fast as two rheumatic underpinnings would take him, and on into his house like a man bearing ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... no memory of her at all? Or was she so different in that wet, muddied blouse, hair streaming, and face scratched—she looked down at her grimy little hands and wondered dumbly what her face ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley

... through our patience. We willed that this wracking tumult should cease; we willed it with all the force that was in us. Then, as this proved vain, we too humped our spiritual backs, cowled our souls with patience, and waited dumbly for the force of the storm to spend itself. Our faculties were quite as effectually drowned out by the unceasing roar and crash of the waters as our bodily comfort would have been had we lacked the protection ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... which was unlike any air that he had ever breathed. It was laden with a strange perfume, blend of logwood flower, pimento, and aromatic cedars. He lost himself in unprofitable speculations born of that singular fragrance. He was in no mood for conversation, nor was Pitt, who stood dumbly at his side, and who was afflicted mainly at the moment by the thought that he was at last about to be separated from this man with whom he had stood shoulder to shoulder throughout all these troublous months, and whom he had come to love and depend upon for guidance and ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... numbness passed over the man. He was dazed; and as wave after wave splashed over his head, he struggled dumbly to reach the ladder. Then under the reaction from the icy shock, an electric thrill of energy and vitality passed through ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... all right. Bertie Adams tries dumbly to express in his eyes his determination to see the firm and me through all our troubles and adventures. I wish I could convey a discreet hint to him not to be so blatantly discreet. If there were a Sherlock Holmes about the place he would spot at once that Adams and I shared ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... dumbly, looking at his splayed fingers with the vacant stare of an invalid just recovering consciousness. "I want only the coffee; make it strong, please. I really am not hungry. The thought of food, somehow, is sickening. I've worked hard ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... to look at it? Nor did the girl herself know how much or how little Richard Gordon's gay camaraderie meant. She was of that type of women who love all that are kind to them. No man had ever been so considerate as this handsome curly-headed American. So dumbly her heart went out to him and made the most of his friendliness. Had he not once put his arm around her shoulder and told her to "buck up" when he came upon her crying because of Pedro? Had he not told her she was the prettiest girl in the neighborhood? ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine

... or the follies of this earth. What strikes one with a sort of awe is just this something inhuman in its character. It is like a visitation, like a curse from Heaven falling in the darkness of ages upon the immense plains of forest and steppe lying dumbly on the confines of two continents: a true desert harbouring no Spirit either of the East ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... left the Halls at Lumley, rose the vision of a comely Maid last season worshipped dumbly, watched with fervor from afar; And I wondered idly, blindly, if the maid would greet ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... the two comrades moved dumbly into the lighted room, Penrod's mother rose, and, taking him by the shoulder, urged him ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various

... had this cursed coat off!" he dumbly sobbed. "If only I could get rid of these damned laced boots!" Bad words would have been forgivable even had ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... house. Trembling with excitement she hurries little Frank into his wagon and telling Hattie to bring me, sets off up the road as fast as she can draw the baby's cart. It all seems a dream to me and I move dumbly, almost stupidly like one in ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... there for a long time, staring dumbly out at the falling rain and dripping trees. She was thinking along the lines which St. John had laid down for her. "Don't make Roger pay for your own blunder." Was she doing that? Remembering all that had passed between ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... to the wharf, and the whole population of Killykinick turned out to greet her,—even to Brother Bart, who had been reading his well-worn "Imitation" on the beach; and Neb, who, with the bag of potatoes he had just dug up, stood staring dumbly in the distance. ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman

... soul grows thin and transparent, and that the glories and the truths of Heaven are visible with a special clearness and authority to the dying. It was for this moment, either in herself or in him, that Catherine's unconquerable faith had been patiently and dumbly waiting. Either she would go first, and death would wing her poor last words to him with a magic and power not their own; or, when he came to leave her, the veil of doubt would fall away perforce from a spirit ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... ill-luck upon her too. Sieglinde, however, implores him to remain and await the return of her husband. Almost as she speaks Hunding enters the house, and, allowing her to divest him of his weapons, seems dumbly to inquire the reason of the stranger's ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber

... immediately in front. It was wide and fretful, and in the half-light someway vague and ominous. It had reached up about the trunks of some of the young spruces on the river bank, and the little trees trembled and bent, stirred by the waters; and they seemed like drowning things dumbly signaling for help. Because the farther bank was almost lost in the dusk the breadth of the stream appeared interminable. In reality it was a full ninety yards at the shallower head of the rapids where the moose trail led ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... and walked completely around a cornfield. He counted the stalks in each hill of corn and computed the number of stalks in a whole field. "It should yield twelve hundred bushels of corn, that field," he said to himself dumbly, as though it mattered to him. He pulled a little handful of cornsilk out of the top of an ear of corn and played with it. He tried to fashion himself a yellow moustache. "I'd be quite a fellow with a trim yellow moustache," ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson

... fourteen was sitting. He had just done his afternoon's wash, and was resting himself by the fire, enjoying a thumbed football almanac. He had not risen when the visitors entered, and while his grandmother was speaking his lips still moved dumbly, as he went on adding up the football scores. He was a sickly, rather repulsive lad ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... perfect artiste, to show them how it really can be done; and suddenly the place is full of music, and a great hush falls on the audience, and the poor complacent amateurs realise that the noise they have been making was, after all, not music; and they go dumbly home. But they have forgotten all about it by the following year; or a fresh contingent of willing performers steps into the breach. The duchess's little joke always ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... justification presented itself, that to refuse to see him, would be to confess both to his sister and himself that there was danger in it. Diana never could confess that, whatever the fact. So, answering dumbly the doubt that was as wordless, without stopping a moment she caught up her sleeping baby out of its cradle, and drawing the cradle after her went into her husband's study. Basil was there, she knew, ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... down on the earth, full of graves, a vast necropolis of once radiant dreams, with the living for its phantoms,—and there is no comfort anywhere. Happy is he if some simple human duty be at hand, which he may go on doing blindly and dumbly—till, perhaps, the light come again. It is difficult to offer comfort to such a one. Comfort is cheap, and we know nothing. When life holds nothing for our love and delight, it is difficult to explain why we should go on living it—except ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne

... uttered that one cry only, as man and horse careened above the pit. She now sat dumbly staring where the two had disappeared. Nothing could she see of Van or his pony. A chill of horror attacked her, there in the blaze of the sun. It was not, even then, so much of herself and Elsa she was thinking—two helpless ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... little lace crib, covered with violets, and beside her, rigid and white and tearless, stood Rachel. I was almost afraid of the child as I looked at her. She turned her great eyes upon me dumbly, with so exactly Bronson's expression in them that all at once I understood her. I knelt down beside her, and gathering her little tense frame all up in my arms, I began whispering to her. The tears rolled down her cheeks, and ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell

... say anything. His sister was making a speech. She didn't stop when the car stopped, nor when Mr. Starkweather climbed down stiffly, and held open the door for her, nor even when they had reached the portico of the big brick house. He told himself, dumbly, that if the world would ever listen to Mirabelle, it would certainly reform. Not necessarily in contrition, ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall

... the window. Prince Ivan still dumbly played the piano. There were a few minutes of absolute silence. Then the Prince hastily got up, shut the piano, and ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... with anger and strife. All little boys and girls are precious gems to me and to you. What is a cold, lifeless medal compared to one of them? Though I would that all could get the prize! But they can't, you know." "No, m'm." Many mothers, with their children in their arms, were now dumbly watching Mrs. Brewton, who held them with a honeyed, convincing smile. "If I choose only one in this beautiful and encouraging harvest, it is because I have no other choice. Thank you so much for letting me see that little hero and that lovely angel," she ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister

... it from her on tick: who knows? perhaps the woman would feel for them and let them have it. The jeune premier went off, and half an hour later returned with a bottle of brandy and some castor-oil. Shtchiptsov was sitting motionless, as before, on the bed, gazing dumbly at the floor. He drank the castor-oil offered him by his friend like an automaton, with no consciousness of what he was doing. Like an automaton he sat afterwards at the table, and drank tea and ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... at last; and they looked from one to the other dumbly for a moment. Then the girl's sweet voice broke the dreary silence, and she prayed as one who has been long familiar with such words, and who, while praying, believes the answer will be given. The words of that ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... short tenure of office and plead the alternative of carrying out Mrs. Trevor's theory of education or of resigning his position in favour of some sycophant even more time-serving? But he had kept silent.... Doggie stopped short and looked at Phineas with eyes dumbly questioning and quivering lips. ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... valley, and the well-fed, well-paid men needed wives; and, as time went on, Honora Killelia was sought in marriage by tall Scots and Swedes, who sat dumbly passionate on the back veranda, where she mended Sanford's clothes. Even hawk-nosed Jim Varian, nearing sixty, made cautious proposals, using Bill as messenger, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... a week, and she still fascinates me. She is installed in the annex, and seems calmly satisfied with her surroundings. She brought everything she owns tied up in an oat-sack. I have given her a few of my things, for which she seems dumbly grateful. She seldom talks, and never laughs. But I am teaching her to say "yes" instead of "yaw." She studies me with her limpid blue eyes, and if she is silent she is never sullen. She hasn't the heavy forehead and ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer

... the existence of the electric battery because the dial is unsatisfactory! In like manner, when, by physical incapacity, or inherited disease, the brain can no longer receive the impressions or electric messages of the Spirit, it is practically useless. Yet the Spirit is there all the same, dumbly waiting for release and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... terror, incapable of movement, staring dumbly—but Godfrey swept me aside so sharply that ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson

... emotion that was more than vanity. His heart filled with gladness that Jessie should choose him as guide and companion to snowshoe with her out into the white forests where her traps were set. For the young Indian loved her dumbly, without any hope of reward, in much the same way that some of her rough soldiers must have loved Joan of Arc. Jessie was a mistress whose least whim he felt it a duty to obey. He had worshiped her ever since he had seen her, a little ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... back. She was sitting there in the sun, her head bowed, her hands clasped over her face, as if she wept or prayed. A little while he waited there, as if meditating a return, as if he had forgotten something—some solace, perhaps, for which her lips had appealed to his heart dumbly. ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... crops that grow, Love's aftermath. Ah, sweet,—sweet yesterday, the tears that start Can not put back the dial; this is, I trow, Our harvesting! Thy kisses chill my heart, Our lips are cold; averted eyes avow The twilight of poor love: we can but part, Dumbly and sadly, reaping as we sow, ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al

... first he thought the vision a dream, a delirium born from his long struggle; he could not conceive the possibility of such a presence in this lonely place, and staggering to his feet, gazed wildly, dumbly at the slender, gray clad figure, the almost girlish face under the shadowing dark hair, expecting the marvellous vision to vanish. Surely this could not be real! A woman, and such a woman as this here, and alone, of all places! He staggered from weakness, almost terror, ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... the ice; and then, himself utterly exhausted, he sank upon his knees helpless as a child, the ice glimmering in a peculiarly weird and ghastly way, the dark sky overhead—far from all aid—faint and famished from long fasting—and with two insensible men dumbly appealing ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn

... not write any more; a sense of weariness and futility comes over me. I will go back to my garden to see what I can see, only dumbly and mutely thankful that it is not required of me to perform any dull and monotonous task, which would ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... our shoutin For shoy, if ve had known Dat der Stossenheim im oaken wald, Lay dyin all alone. Vhile his oldt vhite horse mit droopin het Look dumbly on him doun, Ash if he dinked, "Vy lyest dou ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland

... cottage, the dreaded small-pox had once raged. 'It seemed,' says Jefferies, 'to quite spoil the violet bank. There is something in disease so destructive; as it were, to flowers.' And as the violets shared the scourge, so the creatures shared the curse. And as they stared dumbly into the eyes of the Son of God they seemed to half understand that their redemption was drawing nigh. 'In Nature herself,' as Longfellow says, 'there is a waiting and hoping, a looking and yearning, after ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... are men and women, if I understand it, who have sloughed off the conventions, that are conventions simply for convention's sake, and who are reaching out towards the realities. Most of them haven't an idea what those are, but dumbly they know. Tommy knows, for instance, who is a good chum and who isn't; that is, he knows that sincerity and unselfishness and pluck are realities. He doesn't care a damn if a chap drinks and swears and commits what the Statute-Book and the Prayer-Book call fornication. And he certainly doesn't ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... long, hanging ears. He developed unexpected endurance and an entire willingness, pulling strongly on the sledge, waiting in patience for his scanty meal, searching the faces of his masters with his wise brown eyes, dumbly sympathetic in a trouble whose entirety he ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... men as if for judgment, her face wet with unchecked tears. Dan patted her shoulder dumbly and touched a fresh, livid bruise that ran from the curling hair on her temple down across ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... horror and his mourning were? The outward signs were few, some minutes dumbly gazing at the place with downcast, draggled look, and then a change at the thought of their helpless brood. Back to the hiding-place he went, and called the well-known 'Kreet, kreet.' Did every grave give up its ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... could speak again. Power of comprehension seemed to have left them. They were looking dumbly into ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon

... arm, the arm scarred with the fresh pricks of the useless hypodermic needle, across his burning eyes, his throbbing temples, before he finished out his phrase. Oh, God have mercy! What had he, albeit dumbly, allowed himself to ask of Olive? What right had he, henceforward, to call himself a man, or honourable, or brave, or anything else but an insufferably selfish cad, that he had ever once allowed one such instant of supine appeal to scar ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... and furnished with the light foliage of untended creeping plants. Down the short broad walk leading to this sombre entrance, my eye constantly wandered; but no impatient rattle on the latch, no battering at the gate, indicated the presence of a visited, and the lazy bell hung dumbly among the honey-suckles. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... with an effort that was like a physical exercise. He stared at Billie dumbly. Then, recovering speech, he invited her to sit down, and ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse

... instant, the fishers gazed dumbly at one another. Then Allen released his hold on the big fish, letting it slide unheeded into the water, and led the ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope

... had swiftly frozen into an implacable sternness which struck fear to the childish heart of his wife, and she obeyed him dumbly. Dropping weakly upon a chair, she added her sobs to those of Fanny, which had begun to break plaintively ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... when she reached the ranchhouse, and very tired, physically. Agatha's questions irritated her, and she ate sparingly of the food set before her, eager to be alone. In the isolation of her room she lay dumbly on the bed, and there the absurdity of Levins' story assailed her. It must be as Corrigan had said—her father was too great a man to descend to such despicable methods. ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... distinct whistle brought Jimmy running to the side door. The swan's head was uplifted, its crimson beak pointing away from the sun. Presently it spread its regal wings and floated up, up, up. One more clear, lingering whistle, and it was away, while Jimmy watched it with eyes both dumbly sad and unspeakably glad, until it was but a radiant white speck sailing into the north, to search ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson

... Dumbly Keith followed through the dark corridor, into the big room mellow with candle-glow, back to the table with its mocking tea-urn and chinaware. He felt a thing like clammy sweat on his back. He sat down. And Kao ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood

... three times a day he cut greenstuff for him—which the cows ate. He humped water to him which he sullenly refused to drink; and did all in his power to persuade Farmer to get up and go on with the ploughing. I don't know if Dad knew anything of mesmerism, but he used to stand for long intervals dumbly staring the old horse full in the eyes till in a commanding voice he would bid him, "Get up!" But Farmer lacked the patriotism of the back-block poets. He was obdurate, and not once did he "awake," not ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd

... the door was on the side not visible from the spot where Captain Zeb and the rest were standing. Keziah, bewildered and amazed at the girl's presence, followed dumbly. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln

... Mary Hope down from her horse. All her life she had taken it for granted that lemonade was sacred to the Fourth of July picnics, just as oranges grew for Christmas trees only. She followed Belle dumbly into the house, and once inside she remained dumb with awe at what seemed to her to be the ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... to be unhappily scarce in the life of this age. Neither understandingly, like poets, nor unconsciously (or, at least, dumbly), like peasants, are we aware of the places in which we live. We make no pilgrimages to holy spots, nor have we wandering students who mark out and acutely set down the distinctions between this people and ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... dust that once was man, Battle-trenches ghastly piled, Ocean-floors with white bones tiled, Crowded tomb and mounded sod, Dumbly crave that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... in spirit to reply. She followed her master dumbly. He led her to one of his small private dining rooms, arranged a seat for her and turned on the lights. Then he went back to the kitchen ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks

... He stepped close to her and jerked her blouse down from her shoulder. She writhed away from him, silent in her rage and fear and fighting dumbly. She made no appeal. At that moment her heart was so full of hatred that it was hardened to pride. He lifted his brand and set it against the bare flesh of ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt

... for certain doctrines preached by her father. It seemed to the old man a long way to look back; and then a long way to come forward again, past the death of his girl-wife while their child was still tender, down to the amazing iniquity of that child's revolt, in her thirty-first year. Dumbly, dutifully, had she submitted to all his restrictions and severities, stonily watching her girlhood go, through a fading, lining and hardening of her prettiness. Then all at once, with no word of pleading or warning, she had done the monstrous thing. He awoke ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... were falling, steadily, rapidly: big limpid tears that trickled down her cheek, her great homely hairy cheek, and dropped on the grass: tears of helpless pain, uncomprehending endurance. "Why have they done this thing to me?" they seemed dumbly to cry. ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... by contumely, Cold inhumanity, Burning insanity, Into her rest.— Cross her hands humbly As if praying dumbly, Over ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west, the bride was a red girl, Her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly smoking, they had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets hanging from their shoulders, On a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest mostly in skins, his luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck, he held his bride by the hand, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... "No good. Better lie down. She says she's got it all reasoned out, don't I tell you?" He put a throttling hand over the anguished voice, and looked dumbly at Bean. He noted the evil sneer and traced it to the cuffs. Slowly he hung up the receiver and took one of ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... crowded to the rail of The Sarah and stared dumbly at the slim girl in a pink frock who had been waving ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley

... to learn the first easy tricks of the trade—the a, b, c's of it—and never succeeding. He still lugged the classical poets and the war into every story he tried to write, and day after day Devore maintained his policy of eloquent brutal silence, refusing dumbly to accept the major's clumsy placating attempts to get upon a better footing with him. After that once he had never attempted to scold the old man, but he would watch the major pottering round the city room, and he would chew on his under lip and viciously ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... Quite dumbly for an instant Rae Malgregor's natural timidity stood battling the almost fanatic professional fervor in Helene Churchill's frankly open face, the raw, scientific passion, of very different caliber, but no less intensity, hidden so ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... skin under each finger. Not one word came from the tightened white lips. The dumb agony was worse than a child's frantic scream of fear. Somehow, Ben's mind went back to the toad, when it also had borne its misery dumbly. ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... mantelpiece declared the hour of midnight in deliberate cathedral chime. Fitz looked up, but he did not move. He liked Cipriani de Lloseta. He had been prepared to do so, and now he had gone further than he had intended. He wanted him to go on talking about Eve, for he thirsted in his dumbly enduring way for more details of her life. But he would not revert to the subject. Rather than that he would go ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman



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