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More "Monotone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... They crossed the valley together, and the girl, who had seen little of industrial activity, became interested when at her father's desire they followed Alton into the mill. A cloud of pungent smoke hung about it, and the steady pounding of an engine jarred through the monotone of the river, which was low just then, while there was a pleasant fragrance in the open-sided building where brawny men moved amidst the whirling dust with the precision of the machines they handled. Alice Deringham could see with untrained eyes that there was no waste of effort here. The great ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... these same coryphees, two figures standing together in the flies resting their weary, pink, fishworm legs as they balanced themselves with their hands against the wabbling scenery. It was a wholly gray picture, and almost in a monotone, and yet the flashes of their diamond earrings, no larger than the point of a pin, were distinctly visible, holding their place in, if not ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... shadows of the mountains deepen; and saw the outlines of the tawny foothills grow vague and dim, until they were lost in the dusky monotone of the evening. The last faint tint of sunset color went from the sky back of the San Gabriels; while, close to the mountain peaks and ridges, the stars came out. The rows and the contour of the orange groves ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... entertainments being almost unknown at Atticus's dinners. The host turned smiling to his guests. "My friends," he said, "I know you share my pride in the rare event of Apuleius's presence. He is not as accustomed as we are to the grey monotone of our own thoughts. Shall he go back to Carthage or Rome to laugh at our village banquets? Ptolemy, you know Menander ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... gray and have other and most pleasingly visible advantages over unplanted, pallid vacancy, others besides the mere lace-work of their twigs and the occasional tenderness of a last summer's bird's nest. Here and there, breaking the cold monotone, a bush of moose maple shows the white-streaked green of its bare stems and sprays, or cornus or willow gives a soft glow of red, purple or yellow. Only here and there, insists my dream, lest when winter at length gives way to the "rosy time of the year" their large and rustic gentleness mar ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... felt a bit pensive. He sat in his bedroom frowning at his typewriter. About eight years ago he had decided to write a novel. Not that he had anything particular in his mind to write about. But the city was such a razzle-dazzle of dreams, tragedies, fantasies; such a crazy monotone of streets and windows that it filled the newspaper man's thought from day to day with an ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... written upon her handsome features. I dreamed that I was hurrying by the spot where she was standing, eager to reach the other side unobserved by her. As I stole with noiseless tread behind her, I heard her talking to the waters in a slow and humdrum monotone: ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... too slow. However, he was true to himself at least in this, that through the whole piece he dragged along just half a beat behind the rest. The others showed a most decided penchant for the ancient Greek music, which, as is well known, having nothing to do with harmony, ran on in unison or monotone. They all sang treble, with slight variations, caused by accidental rising and falling of the voice, say ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... steadily, in a low monotone, broken by stifled sobs. The dreary rhythm of the repetition may possibly have assisted. As she mentioned fearfully that nine times eleven were ninety-nine, Miss Greene pointed stealthily toward the table. Mrs. Korner, glancing up fearfully, saw that the eyes of her lord and ...
— Mrs. Korner Sins Her Mercies • Jerome K. Jerome
... the studio, the smell of paint and turpentine, and the monotone wisdom of Kami, who was a leaden artist, but a golden teacher if the pupil were only in sympathy with him. Maisie was not in sympathy that day, and she waited impatiently for the end ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... With a nameless burden upon her heart, And the light of youth forever fled. And she sits a swaying to and fro, Like the billowy pine with plume and cone, While a minor strain subdued and slow, She sings in a plaintive monotone: ...
— The American Missionary, October, 1890, Vol. XLIV., No. 10 • Various
... time a noise more like the continuous, steady monotone of falling water than a chant had been approaching from the valley, making its darkness vocal. It threatened the gates awhile; now it was at the gates. The Prince's wonder was great, and to ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... back in his chair, crossed his legs, brought the tips of his fingers together, and began in a low monotone: ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... Hermit rambled on In one long listless monotone, We heard a wild and mournful groan Come rumbling down the tunnelled way; A voice, an awful mournful bray, Singing some old funereal lay; Then solemn footsteps, muffled, dull, Approached as if they trod on wool, And as they nearer, nearer drew, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... picked up the mouthpiece of the dictaphone again, paying no further attention to me. He enunciated clearly and precisely, speaking in an even monotone, pausing not at all, as if reading from some prepared script, though his eyes were fixed upon a vacant spot ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... flowing forward in steady streams. Sandy River awoke, restlessly listening; lights glimmered behind darkened windows; a heavier, vaguer rumor grew, hanging along the hills. It increased to a shaking, throbbing monotone, like the far ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... ceremony of some description was taking place, lesser priests and other acolytes performing their various parts, the incantations rising now loudly, now sinking to a hollow monotone, the whole affair being none the less absorbing when Bruno remembered that, perhaps, it might have some connection with the vile plots against the Sun Children, ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... black robe. Black hood. Chains around waist, with toy money banks on chains. Take a skeleton false face and with gray and black and white grease paint make up your own face like a false face. Or if desired, wear the false face. Speak in low monotone. ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... rumbling monotone preceding each of these vehement interruptions. The Abbe Bardin was pointing out to her that, unmarried, her son would return to Tonquin, that Lizerolles would be left deserted, her house would be ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats is a groan. And the people—ah, the people— They that dwell up in the steeple, all alone! And who tolling, tolling, tolling, in that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling on the human heart a stone— They are neither man nor woman— They are neither brute nor human—they are Ghouls: And their king it is who tolls; And he rolls, rolls, rolls, rolls a paean ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... the shops, banks, and offices, illustrating the difference between a state of society in which apparel is regarded as an incident in life, and one rising to the height of realizing its true significance as a religion. Mr. Barr-Smith bowed not the knee to the Baal of western clothes-monotone, but daily sent out his sartorial orisons, keeping his windows open toward the Jerusalem of his London tailor, in a manner which would ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... and maybe would take us on a long way, which he surely did. The afternoon slipped on, hour by hour, and the fire snapped and cast its red light in our faces, and the kettle sung and the storm outside kept up its mad business, and the surf its monotone. ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... Kate placed herself beside him. Without giving her a chance to speak and in the same monotone, he added: "Who told ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... course for a more exciting life, and for richer dresses than he could afford to give them. His sermons, it must be confessed, were not very instructive, suggestive, or eloquent,—were, in fact, without point, delivered in a drawling monotone; but then his hearers were not used to oratorical displays or learned treatises in the pulpit, and were quite satisfied with the glorious liturgy, if well intoned, and pious chants from surpliced boys, if it happened to be a church rich and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... this were not sufficiently terrifying, the air is throbbing with sound. Each Indian pops away for general results as he comes jumping along, and yells shrilly to show what a big warrior he is, while underneath it all is the hurried monotone of hoof-beats becoming ever louder, as the roar of an increasing rainstorm on the roof. It does not seem possible that anything ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... examined the stones I had shown far more intently than any of them, he made no effort to leave the camp. Day after day he attended to my simple wants, spending all his spare time in polishing my weapons, a work he absolutely loved, and crooning interminable songs in a low monotone. ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... lounged among the eddies, and the silver grayling dimpled and wandered upon the shallows, and the may-flies flickered and rustled round him like water fairies, with their green gauzy wings; the coot clanked musically among the reeds; the frogs hummed their ceaseless vesper-monotone; the kingfisher darted from his hole in the bank like a blue spark of electric light; the swallows' bills snapped as they twined and hawked above the pool; the swift's wings whirred like musket-balls, as they ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... she still remembered so well at the Mill. And this modern piano—heard through open windows in the warm summer air, and mixing with the indistinguishable sounds of distant traffic—had something of the effect of that instrument of seventy years ago, breaking the steady monotone of rushing waters under the wheel that scarcely ever paused, except on Sunday. What had become of the old square piano she and Phoebe learned to play scales on? What becomes of all the old furnishings of the rooms of our childhood? Did any man ever identify the bed he slept ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... keeping the proper vocal conditions, so as to prevent "forcing." The passages are simple in spirit and form. They carry on one dominant feeling, needing little variation of voice. The idea is to render them in a way near to the monotone, that the student may learn to control one tone, so to speak, or to speak nearly in one key, before doing the more varied tones of familiar speech or of complex feeling. We might say the passages are to be ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... great circle by Chihuahua and Aldama to Laredo, to Torreon, and Albuquerque. From there across the Uncompahgre plateau into the Uintah country; then at last due west through Nevada to California and to the valley of the San Joaquin." His voice lapsed to a monotone, his eyes becoming fixed; he continued to speak as though half awake, his thoughts elsewhere, seeing again in the eye of his mind the reach of desert and red hill, the purple mountain, the level stretch ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... work. Trina and Marcus watched her curiously. There was a silence. The corundum burr in McTeague's engine hummed in a prolonged monotone. The canary bird chittered occasionally. The room was warm, and the breathing of the five people in the narrow space made the air close and thick. At long intervals an acrid odor of ink floated up from the branch ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... river gleamed with changing lights—here it ran the colour of an olive, there rose pink, and here again a brilliant green; above their heads the stars were coming out, in the east it was already dusk; and behind them in the town, drums were beginning to beat with their barbaric monotone. Both men walked with their chins sunk upon their breasts, their eyes upon the ground. They had come to the end of hope, they were possessed with a lethargy of despair. Feversham thought not at all of the ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... big mistake for Goethe to have married her," pursued Potts, in his deliberate monotone, "but he was n't justified on that account in breaking her heart. It was his business, having got her in love with him, to get her out again and ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... will only follow your conscience," continued Mrs. Haldane, in her low monotone, "all will be well. It is your being carried away by gusts of impulse and violent passions that makes all the trouble. If you had followed your conscience you would at once have left Hillaton at my request, and hidden ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... away,—a hundred as the crow flies, and not by the tortuous route the cavalry had to follow, through a region that, all in an hour's march, shifted its scene from the dull monotone of barren waves of prairie to bold, beautiful heights and deep sheltered ravines and canons, the winding thread of the Mina Ska went foaming and leaping over its stony bed, taking occasional cat-naps in wide, shadowy shallows, only to wake up again to wilder riot under ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... reproaches. In stentorian tones he rehearsed the judge's kindness in befriending him, he pointed out his generosity, and laid stress on Sandy's heinous ingratitude. Mr. Moseley had arrived with arguments and reasons and platitudes, all expressed in a polysyllabic monotone. Mr. Meech had come many times with prayers and petitions and ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... eucalyptus across the street. In the music-room of the white house the young lady of the family had opened the piano and was practising finger-exercises. The scales and arpeggios following one another without interruption, came to his ears in a pleasant monotone. A Chinese "boy" in a stiff blouse of white linen, made a great splashing as he washed down the front steps with a bucket of water and the garden hose. Grocery and delivery wagons came and went, rattling over the cobbles and car-tracks, while occasionally a whistle ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... remarkable baritone, and he had no mind to make a reputation on that sort of capital. He could not afford to be known as a troubadour. But he sang now, a passionate love-song, of which, of course, he felt not a word: the air was full of fervor, with an occasional gay jibing monotone. The words in themselves meant nothing: the music meant that whatever of love or earnestness was in the world was a sham. The men nodded over their pipes, keeping time: Jane held her father's hand quiet in her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... hot. The white dust rose in clouds. The plague of flies increased. The rattle and creak of wheel, the monotone of the drivers, the cough of dust-afflicted kine made the only sounds ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... Samuel Clemens was engaged in his rotary denunciation of the criminals, oblivious of every other circumstance. Mr. Rising stood spellbound by this, to him, new phase of genius, and at last his friend became dimly aware of him. He did not halt in his scathing treadmill and continued in the slow monotone ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... in silence through the window at the blinking lights in Washington, turned and looked moodily at his calm host. He spoke in a slow, dreamy monotone, his eyes ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... troubled meditation rendered somewhat vague and inconsequential by his rapid changes of financial condition, moods, environment—the brief ecstasy of his triumphant flight that had so ridiculous a climax. Small wonder that Bland's whining voice failed to register anything but a dreary monotone of meaningless words in Johnny's ears. Small wonder that Johnny's thoughts dwelt upon little worries that could have no possible bearing upon the big things he ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... I mostly sleeps very little." And to my no small astonishment she now shut up like an umbrella, and at once recommenced her mesmeric monotone. ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... time later a vibratory monotone commenced far up under the stars, gathering strength and volume until it rolled in long pulsations ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... nevertheless it took place. We ceased to find clear spaces where we could gallop; a trot became impossible. We were hemmed in. A rank animal odor mingled with the taint of smoke. Gradually the muffled beat of hoofs grew more pronounced, a shuffling monotone that filled the night. We were mere atoms in a vast wave of horn and bone and flesh that bore us onward as ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... she said, in the same calm monotone. "This very hour I have come from the White Tower, in which they are confined. But he whom I serve swears by an oath that if you or other rescuers are heard of again in this country, ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... great blazing fragments of roofs, and boards from lumber yards, sailed over his head, with the ill-omened glare of meteors. The rush and roar of the wind and flames were like the thunder of Niagara, and to this awful monotone accompaniment was added a Babel of sounds—shrieks, and shouts of human voices, the sharp crash of falling buildings, and ever and anon heavy detonations, as the fire reached explosive material. As he looked ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... the stillness the whistle of the wind and the deep drone of the seas shattering themselves on the granite lifted a dreary monotone. And presently a quick step sounded on the porch. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... to be conscious of what he was doing, took the bow of the violin, and placing the instrument upon his shoulder, leaned his ear down to it, and drew the hair over the strings. A long, sad monotone floated through the room. ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... freedom as I would talk to that wife whom I had hoped to possess. She maintained an obstinate silence when I urged her to give me at least some tangible reason as to why she would not marry me. She contented herself and maddened me by reflecting in a kind of monotone: "I love you, Karl! and am yours, but I ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... listen and assent by such expressions as correspond to our "yes indeed," "true," etc., whether they are in accord with the speaker's opinions or not. These lengthy talks are, at least to an outsider, most wearisome, given, as they are, in a dreary monotone, but they explain the inordinate length of arbitrations that may last ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... had the deck to themselves and Manhattan had become a shadowy and ragged monotone, she turned and smiled. It was a smile of accepting the inevitable. He went with her to the forward deck where her staterooms were situated, and left her ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... emotional states is the art of the actor. Not only would it be impossible for an actor to make an audience believe in the genuineness of his supposed emotion if he stood glassy-eyed and wooden-limbed declaiming his lines in a monotone, without gestures or play of expression of any sort, but it would also be impossible for him to feel even the counterfeit sensation which he is supposed to represent. So definite and so well recognized is this connection, that many actors take some little ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... a sing-song monotone. "Tante is sad at heart. But her child is welcome. It is a heavy blow. But her child ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... of her hand Mrs. Gibbons caught the little girl, who, behind her back, was making ready to slip off the bed and on the floor, but as she swung her again in place she kept up her talking, and by neither rise nor fall was the monotone of ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... have composed, and then sending the hat around. After they have visited the whole of their own country, they cross into the neighboring state, where they are also assured of a profitable tour. Thus for more than a year Honduras and Nicaragua were visited by bands of homeless victims, chanting in monotone the eruption of Lake Criba and the ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... French, the defection of the Saxons in the midst of the fight, the final driving of Napoleon across the Elster, the death of Poniatowski and the retreat to France. His voice was a deep, sonorous monotone and every syllable was caught eagerly by his auditors. They and the speaker were thoroughly at one in their intense German feeling. It was a celebration of triumph of the Fatherland. The significance of it all was ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... sentimental conversation as to whether Anthony did not consider Gloria change enough. Though he assured her that he did, she insisted upon doubting him.... Eventually the conversation assumed its eternal monotone: "What then? Oh, what'll ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... gathering. There was the deepest interest as to what the two visitors would do in this way. Brother Soulsby spoke first, very briefly and in well rounded and well-chosen, if conventional, phrases. His wife, following him, delivered in a melodious monotone some equally hackneyed remarks. The assemblage, listening in rapt attention, felt the suggestion of reserved power in every sentence she uttered, and burst forth, as she dropped into her seat, in a loud chorus of approving ejaculations. The Soulsbys ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... on my right, and across the dark expanse, and across the street which cut the other side of it I looked to the long roofs and walls of the convent, all a dull monotone scarcely distinguishable from the night. Only on the corner a solitary street lamp illuminated a little space of the wall and made a pool of ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... him. He could feel her and hear her movement. Water was trickling over his face. Then he heard a voice, close over him, saying something in a sobbing monotone ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... silence of the night, How we shiver with affright At the melancholy menace of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. And the people—ah, the people— They that dwell up in the steeple. All alone, And who toiling, toiling, toiling, In that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone— They are neither man nor woman— They are neither brute nor human— They are Ghouls: And their king it is who tolls; And he rolls, rolls, rolls, Rolls A paean from the bells! And his merry ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... and expectant. She had been sewing in her room, but she found that she could no longer keep her attention on the stitches. She paced nervously up and down the little apartment. In the room beneath she could hear the dull muffled sound of men's voices in a long continuous monotone, broken only by the interposition now and again of one voice which was so deep and loud that it reminded her of the growl of a beast of prey. This must belong to the red-bearded stranger. Kate wondered what it could be that they were talking over so earnestly. City affairs, no ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... four o'clock on a September day, so that the atmosphere was well-brewed to a visible haze. There was deep stillness, broken only by a light rattle, a light chink, a small sweeping sound, and an occasional monotone in French, such as might be expected to issue from an ingeniously constructed automaton. Round two long tables were gathered two serried crowds of human beings, all save one having their faces and attention bent ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... caused it by kicking her in the stomach," she said in a monotone. "He must have damaged her insides. Mon Dieu! She was in agony for three days with her stomach all swelled up. Plenty of scoundrels have been sent to the galleys for less than that, but the courts ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... village outside the meeting-house used to appear to me, how loudly the clock ticked and the flies buzzed down the window-pane, and how I listened in the breathless stillness to the distant psalm-singing, the solemn tones of the long prayer, and then to the monotone of the sermon, and then again to the closing echoes of the last hymn, and thought sadly, what if some day I should be left out, when all my relations and friends had gone to meeting in the New Jerusalem, and hear afar the ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... here's a little incident I found this evening that interests me immensely. It proves to my mind one of two points I hold in regard to Marshal Ney. Listen," and he read at length from his book, a dry, sepulchral monotone that grated on the ear until it became ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... Edith, in a dull monotone, while her breast heaved with irrepressible emotion. Her heart within her. This indeed looked like a desertion of her on the part of her only friend. But after a moment's despondency she rallied once more, as the thought came ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... to read as rapidly as possible, so as to be done with the task, and he began in a high-pitched monotone, reading with a blind mind and no sense of ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... read," said Mr. Carden, and took the journal from her. He read in a loud business-like monotone, that, like some blessed balm, dried every tear. "'Manly fellows who never shed a tear before: this disposed of one alternative, and narrowed the inquiry. It was not a personal feud; therefore it was a Trade outrage, or it was nothing. We now took evidence bearing on the inquiry thus narrowed; ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... shallow one like this, you are more isolated, farther removed from the soil and its attractions, and an easier prey to the unsocial demons. The long, unpeopled vistas ahead; the still, dark eddies; the endless monotone and soliloquy of the stream; the unheeding rocks basking like monsters along the shore, half out of the water, half in; a solitary heron starting up here and there, as you rounded some point, and flapping disconsolately ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... Lumley repeated in a dreary monotone which seemed strangely out of keeping with the half-concealed kindliness which was revealed in her homely countenance. She was a working matron, a sort of upper servant, and had been three years in the place, which, I gradually gleaned from ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... The colleges in America that are not supported by direct mendicancy depend upon the dole of the legislator, and woe betide the pedagogic principal who offends the orthodox vote. His supplies are cut short, and purse-strings pucker until his voice moderates to a monotone and he dilutes his views to a dull neutral tint. I do not know a University in the United States that would not place Ernst Haeckel on half-rations, and make him fight for his life, or else he would be discharged and be reduced to the sad necessity ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... has ever scored. The sixth part is the "Lux aeterna," a trio for alto, tenor, and bass which is very dramatic in setting; and this leads to the "Libera," the final division and the climax of the work. It is in its general effect a soprano obligato with chorus. After a monotone recitative and solo, the "Dies Irae" is repeated, likewise the "Requiem aeternam" (which forms the introduction of the mass), and closes with a fugue of majestic proportions that finally ends in the same pianissimo effect ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... and wild embrace, And pour your baptism on my face; Sound in mine ears the airy moan That sweeps in desperate monotone, Where on the unsheltered hill-top beat The ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... your families, forcing you to live little better than wild beasts. Your food is poor, your clothing is in rags, your children are without shoes, your homes are desolate, there are no schools and no social life. Year follows year in dreary monotone, and you finally die, and your neighbors thrust you underground and have an end of you. Misery and wretchedness fill the measure of your days, and you ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... victim had recovered. The sun had sunk beneath the horizon, and all was grey, save a red feather in the cap of Pennigent. Secure in the failing light, I approached near and strained my ears to catch what was passing. I could hear the high, querulous voice of the elder man and the deep, rough monotone of his assailant, mixed with a strange metallic jangling and clanking. Presently the surgeon came out, locked the door behind him and stamped up and down in the twilight, pulling at his hair and brandishing his arms, like a man demented. ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... even the stooped old man in the small back room—in the face of the overwhelming fear that reason could not fight down. Only the peculiarly absolute silence that came with the sudden cessation of his droning monotone checked the panic haste of her first rush. With one hand clutching the knob of the outer ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... priest was chanting the service and requiem for the dead in the little chapel or chantry of St Michael, which was built within the walls of Clyderhow or Clitheroe Castle. The Dies irae from the surrounding worshippers rose in a simple monotone, like the sound of some distant river, now caught on the wing of the tempest, and flung far away into the dim and distant void, now rushing on the ear in one deep gush of harmony—the voice of Nature, as if her thousand tongues were blended in one universal peal of praise ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... a bluebird, straining its little throat in exultant melody, flew from branch to branch of the big chestnut-tree, and the hum of insects made soft monotone to the shrill cry of the locust, which promised greater heat next day. In the distance the Calverton road stretched white and dusty south to town, north to the unknown land, the land of dreams to Peggy and to Peggy's mother, who had never been beyond it, and as she looked toward ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... as she shook hands, and then perceived that she had not been intended to show amusement. Cartoner had merely made a rather naive statement in his low monotone. She thought him a little odd, and glanced at him again. She changed color slightly as she turned towards a chair. He was quite grave ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... manner of reciting prayers, charms, and formulas was anciently deemed to be of more moment than the meaning of their constituent words. In Assyria, for example, healing-spells were repeated in a "low, gurgling monotone"; and in Egypt the magical force of incantations was largely due, in the popular mind, to their frequent repetition in a pleasing tone of voice.[44:3] The temper of mind which prompts words of good cheer, is in itself a healing charm of no mean value. For we read in the Book of Proverbs: ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... settle wi' Jake," he said. "I guess it'll be all"—he broke off, and glanced out prairieward, but went on almost immediately,—"a settlin'. I've seen you kind o' riled. And I've seen Jake." He stood up and peered into the darkness while he talked in his even monotone. "Yup," he went on, "ther's ways o' dealin' wi' men—an' ways. Guess, now, ef you wus dealin' wi' an honest citizen you'd jest talk him fair. Mind, I figger to know you a heap." His eyes suddenly turned on ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... talked on in the monotone in which Romany is generally spoken, like an Indian song, while, like an Indian drum, the rain pattered an accompaniment on the tightly drawn tent. Those who live in cities, and who are always realizing self, and thinking how they think, and are while awake given up to introverting vanity, never ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... imagery of ruin; with this, an analytic power, a scientific exactness, and a mechanical ingenuity more usual in a chemist or a mathematician than in a poet. He studied carefully the mechanism of his verse and experimented endlessly with verbal and musical effects, such as repetition, and monotone, and the selection of words in which the consonants alliterated and the vowels varied. In his Philosophy of Composition he described how his best known poem, the Raven, was systematically built up on a preconceived plan in which the ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... channel? We watched Xavier with bated breath. Not once did he take his eyes from the swirling water ahead, but gave the tiller a touch from time to time, now right, now left, and called in a monotone for the port or starboard oars. Nearer and nearer we sped, dodging the snags, until the water boiled around us, and suddenly the boat shot forward as in a mill-race, and we clutched the cabin's roof. A triumphant gleam was in Xavier's eyes, for he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Colville, who seemed elated. "There may well be. For that man has been saying things in that placid monotone which would have taken your breath away had you been able to understand them. A hundred times I rejoiced that you understood no English, for your impatience, Marquis, might have silenced him as some rare-voiced bird is silenced ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... hospitable, I know," her monotone apologized; "a first visit, too—but I'm going to ask you to excuse me a minute right at the set-off. When you knocked, I was buying some berries of the Collamer twins, and just a-measuring of them. I don't allow no one to measure in my house but myself, if they are my grand-nephews, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... into relief, like a fountain springing among dark rocks, by the slow thunders of the organ, comes to assure the heart that it can rest, if but for a moment, upon a deep and inner peace, can be gently rocked, as it were, in a moving boat, between the sky and translucent sea. Then falls the rich monotone of prayer; and the organ wakes again for one last message, pouring a flood of melody from its golden throats, and dying away by soft gradations into the melodious ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... length and at one point there is a bright spot—a pretty, white hotel with a treble deck of verandahs. That is my home for many days to come and there I am to be at rest. The call of the bugle sounds on the night air; it is the "taps" at the Soldiers' Home; the salt water is beating with lazy monotone against the shore; the fisherman have tied up their boats; the last omnibus has crossed the bridge; the young moon is getting to her bed and I turn my face toward the long street and the bright hotel. A man of high-toned and poetic mind would here insert something about his thoughts turning ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... the virtues of the Royal Martyr, his courage, his patience, his devotion to the Church. As was but natural in the circumstances, there followed an application to local politics. They were there, he informed his hearers (as the old lattices, shaken by the gale, rattled their accompaniment to his monotone) in the character of Englishmen; but he had to notice that to the existing rulers of England they owed no obedience. The so-called Parliament which had judged and murdered the late lamented Monarch, and which now claimed the right of ruling in his stead, was no divinely appointed head ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... frightful was the scene! In the two great ships were more than seven hundred men, their eyes lighted with the fire of hatred, their faces blackened with powder or made ghastly by streaks of blood. Cries of pain, yells of rage, prayers, and curses rose shrill above the thunderous monotone of the cannonade. Both ships were on fire; and the black smoke of the conflagration, mingled with the gray gunpowder smoke, and lighted up by the red flashes of the cannonade, added to the terrible picturesqueness of ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... the great church was in progress, to pray for a remission of the scourge. Over the line of roofs there was a dull glow of the watch-fires in the streets; where they sat, Scott and the girl could smell the pitch that fed them. And, over all, an unseen sick man gabbled his prayers in a halting monotone. A quick heat of wrath lit in Scott as his thoughts traveled around the situation; for Incarnacion sat with her head bowed, playing with her toes, and the ever-ready terror lest the plague should reach her moved in his heart. He had been ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... (1) Monotone, monotonous, monoplane, monopoly, monocle, monarchy, monogram, monomania; (2) monosyllable, monochrome, monogamy, monorail, monograph, monolith, monody, monologue, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... dined—for we were simple country folk. The figurative suggestions of that "phase" are irresistible—the lunar quality. May I say that Mr. Sandsome was at his full? We now stood up, thirty odd of us altogether, to read, reading out of books in a soothing monotone, and he sat with his reading-book before him, ruddy as the setting sun, and slowly, slowly settling down. But now and then he would jerk back suddenly into staring wakefulness as though he were fishing—with himself ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... tents in the little hollow among the trees. And into this empty basin poured a vertical sun, as if through some giant lens which had burnt a hole in the heart of the scrub. Lulled by the faint perpetual murmur of leaf and branch, without a sound from bird or beast to break its soothing monotone, the two men lay down within a few yards, though out of sight, of each other. And for a time all was ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... did not answer, but he began to mutter in a sleepy monotone, "Don't hit me, sir. It was snow. I'll not come home late again. Ninepence, sir, ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... thin and chill, And all was hushed and calm and very still, Save, from abysmal gorges, where the sound Of tumbling waters rose, and all around The pines, by those keen upper currents blown, Muttered in multitudinous monotone. Here, with the wind in lovely locks laid bare, With arms oft raised in dedicative prayer, Lost in mute rapture and adoring wonder, He stood, till the far noise of noontide thunder, Rolled down upon the muffled ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... throat, nodded to Old Man Curry, fingered his programme, and began to speak in a dull, slurring monotone, droning out the formula ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... not tell, if you would only give them time enough. We have only one chime, for musical purposes, in the town. But, without attempting tunes, only give the bells the Morse alphabet, and every bell in Boston might chant in monotone the words of "Hail Columbia" at length, every Fourth of July. Indeed, if Mr. Barnard should report any day that a discouraged 'prentice-boy had left town for his country home, all the bells could instantly be set to work to speak articulately, ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... an expedition with six ladies was apparently the opportunity of a lifetime, and she was determined to make the most of it. She volunteered to recite, and wound out a long poem in such a rapid, breathless monotone that it was hardly possible to distinguish a word. The party politely expressed gratitude, whereupon she announced: "I'll say it for you again!" and plunged at once ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... slopes and dewy hills. Ready for the harvest death's grim reapers stood Waiting the signal with impatient steel; And morning passed, and mid-day. Here and there The crack of rifles on the picket-line, Or boom of solitary cannon broke The myriad-voiced and dreadful monotone. So fled the anxious hours until the hills Sent forth their silent shadows to the east— And then their batteries opened on our left Advanced into the valley. All along The rolling crest of Seminary Ridge Rolled up the smoke of cannon. Answered then The grim artillery on our chain of hills' ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... wall of the high terrace are rich meadows, vocal with frogs rejoicing in the rain, and expressing their joy, not in the sober monotone of our English frogs, but each according to his kind; one bellowing, the next barking, the next cawing, and the next (probably the little green Hylas, who has come down out of the trees to breed) quacking in treble like a tiny drake. The bark (I suspect) ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... she commenced, in that measured monotone so peculiar to intense emotion, "with the bird you can do as you please. You can set it free, or, if you like, you can wring its neck. But as for him, I'll never look in his face again, from me he shall not have a word of welcome. He broke our mother's heart ... our good, good mother; he has dishonored ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... retired that night the monotone of the soldiers' talk merged into confused and indistinct recollections of his first Sunday at Fort Benton. Eva Thornhill's scornful yet inviting face seemed drawing him through deep waters, to be replaced by the face of the child Winifred, terror-stricken ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... not now the question whether our Northern cathedrals are better with color or without. Perhaps the great monotone grey of Nature and of Time is a better color than any that the human hand can give; but that is nothing to our present business. The simple fact is, that the builders of those cathedrals laid upon them the brightest colors they could obtain, and that ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... went into a trance as usual, and after a short interval, announced in her low monotone that the spirit of ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... replied, in as dry a monotone as I could assume, "I was kidnapped by the connivance of some unscrupulous persons in my colony, who had designs upon my grandfather's fortune. I was taken abroad in a slaver and carried down to the Caribbean seas, when I soon discovered that the captain and his crew were ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the silence. I will always remember how, for some inexplicable reason, that remark annoyed me immensely—made me nervous and angry. Perhaps it was that after weeks of rifle-fire and cannon booming, the colourless monotone of complete silence was nerve-destroying. Yes, it must have been that; a perpetual, aggravating, insolent silence is worse than noise.... But this will mean nothing ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... not be told in a lifeless monotone. Some parts should be told slowly, and others rapidly. In some parts the voice should be low and soft, while in other parts it should be loud and gruff or harsh. The words of the princess should not sound like those of the old witch or the soldier. The daintiness and grace of elves ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... ambled over to the conservatory, where a particular variety of orchid seemed to interest the girl. And there we were, I explaining and she listening, the others off somewhere near the entrance to the gymnasium, where I heard Lloyd's voice in bored monotone. I was quite sure in a moment that she hadn't managed to get me there to talk orchids, and I felt a vague sense of discomfort at her nearness. I have given the impression that her eyes were cold. As I looked into them I saw that I had been mistaken. In the dim light ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... of campus police carries a personal wire recorder," Handrosan said, in his flat monotone. "He has a recording of the order, in Chancellor Khane's own voice. I heard it myself. The police," he continued, "first tried to use gas, but the wind was against them. They then tried to use sono-stunners, ...
— Ministry of Disturbance • Henry Beam Piper
... become repellent; it was a sepulchral place entombing all she had lost. In the midst of the dusk and gloom her mind groped about—after its habit—for something cheerful, something that would break the colorless monotone of the room and change the atmosphere. In a flash she remembered the primroses; and the remembrance brought ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... reader, let us walk toward the simple stone seat, which some shepherd boy has erected under yon silvery-stemmed birch tree, where the sound of the waterfall comes only in a pleasant monotone, and where the most romantic part of old Scotland is spread beneath our feet. There you see the eternal foam of the torrent, without being distracted with its roar; and you can trace the course of the stream till it terminates in yon clear and pellucid pool at the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... sounds of the human voice may be comprehended under the general appellation of tones. The principal modifications of these tones are the MONOTONE, the RISING INFLECTION, the ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... she replied, in the same even monotone. "The Countess Nina is, by her own desire, following a strict regime, but to-day being a universal feast-day all rules are somewhat relaxed. The reverend mother desires me to inform you that it is now the hour for mass—she has herself already ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... to be room for just fourteen. Nature meets our whims with such little fitnesses. The words which build these delicate structures of Petrarch's are as soft and fine and close-textured as the sands upon this tiny beach, and their monotone, if such it be, is the monotone of the neighboring ocean. Is it not possible, by bringing such a book into the open air, to separate it from the grimness of commentators, and bring it back to life and ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the burden of the Night, The saying of the sea, But lo! the hours have brought the light, The laughter of the waves, the flight Of dipping sea-birds, foamy white, That are so glad to be! "Forget!" the happy creatures cry, "Forget Night's monotone, With us be glad in sea and sky, The days are thine, the days that fly, The days God gives to know him by, And not ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... prairies, rolling like the billows of the ocean. Melancholy broods in the mind when these limitless and unexplored stretches sweep before the eye bounded only by the horizon. The spirit of a great awe stilled the souls of these men, every one, because added to the monotone of the landscape they must heed the demands for endurance, for it was again "a land where no water is." Memory is at times the birth-hour of prophecy, but here memory clothes the present with pain and loss, and for them prophecy died yesterday and the despair ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... billows that years before tossed her ashore, and had woven their monotone of sadness into her life, still tolled their requiem, but she heard them not. She had entered ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... bluebird, straining its little throat in exultant melody, flew from branch to branch of the big chestnut-tree, and the hum of insects made soft monotone to the shrill cry of the locust, which promised greater heat next day. In the distance the Calverton road stretched white and dusty south to town, north to the unknown land, the land of dreams to Peggy and to Peggy's mother, who had never been ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... in her expressionless monotone again, "Then you ought to have known better than to get sunburnt. Here, put this in your pocket," she handed me the tube of sunburn cream, "maybe I'd better check up on some of the others and make sure they haven't forgotten." She went off without another word, leaving ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... directed to another woman, who, likewise, should have known better than to listen. The silent vault of the church roof echoed to the vigorous whispering up to the instant that the clergyman began, in low monotone, "The Lord is in His holy temple"—a fact which the whisperer had obviously forgotten—"let all the earth keep silence before Him"—an injunction which she never seemed to be able to remember ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... leurs lits, l'ombre qui les couronne, M'enchainent tout le jour sur les bords des ruisseaux; Comme un enfant berce par un chant monotone, Mon ame s'assoupit ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... no confidence that it will ever be expelled. Which is the gloomy system—that which paints in undisguised blackness the facts of life, and over against their blackest darkness, the radiant light of a great hope shining bright and glorious, or one that paints humanity in a uniform monotone of indistinguishable grey involving the past, the present, and the future—which, believing in no disease, hopes for no cure? My text, taken in conjunction with the grand words which follow, about 'The new man, which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness,' brings before ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... meditation rendered somewhat vague and inconsequential by his rapid changes of financial condition, moods, environment—the brief ecstasy of his triumphant flight that had so ridiculous a climax. Small wonder that Bland's whining voice failed to register anything but a dreary monotone of meaningless words in Johnny's ears. Small wonder that Johnny's thoughts dwelt upon little worries that could have no possible bearing upon the big ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... the restless movement of city life and the inevitable disquiet of sin, something of her own calmness and peace. The only sounds he heard seemed a part of nature's silence,—the tinkle of cowbells, the slumberous monotone of water as it fell over the dam, the grating notes of a katydid, rendered hoarse by recent cool nights, in a shady ravine near by, and a black cricket chirping at the edge of the rock on which he sat— these were all. And yet the sounds, though not heard for years, seemed ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... dreary exercise they were dismissed to prepare for church where there followed a service which Avery regarded as downright revolting. It consisted mainly of prayers—as many prayers as the Vicar could get in, rendered in an emotionless monotone with small regard for sense and none whatever for feeling. The whole thing was drab and unattractive to the utmost limit, and Avery rose at length from her knees with a feeling of having been deliberately cheated of a thing she valued. She left the church in an unwonted spirit ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... the oak is grown Which all winds visit on the lea, While that which lists the monotone Of the long blast that sweeps the sea, And ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... fire of cattle chips; Coffee made of green-scummed water, Nectar to his thirsty lips. On the ground he spread his blanket And reclining there alone, Heard the swiftly sweeping breezes Sing in dreary monotone Strange wild anthems, weird and lonesome, Like lost spirits floating by, While afar in broken measure ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... husky monotone in a querulous entreaty. "I need a little whiskey to keep me going. Tell her, won't you?—to let me have a little drink. My regular allowance was a pint a day, and I haven't had a drop for four weeks. Your ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... who seemed elated. "There may well be. For that man has been saying things in that placid monotone which would have taken your breath away had you been able to understand them. A hundred times I rejoiced that you understood no English, for your impatience, Marquis, might have silenced him as some rare-voiced bird is silenced by a sudden movement. Yes, Marquis, there ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... blast of horns and trumpets sounds the fatal doom in grim monotone (in descending harmony ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... themselves perceptibly in their first attempts to speak, answer indolently or not at all, or frequently with embarrassment, always slowly, often with drawl and monotone, very frequently coming to a stop. They also sometimes begin to speak, and then lose at once the ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... will make the other man "perk up his ears" if his attention wanders; so plan to introduce variety into your manner of speaking. Don't just open the spigot of your mind and let your ideas run out in a monotone. Variety of voice is pleasing, as ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... low monotone, that nevertheless penetrated to every part of the room. He had a voice of peculiar quality, as sweet as the tones of a tenor, and as pleasant to hear as music; now and then there was a manly ring in it which thrilled his listeners. "A week ago to-night," ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... brain. He tried to keep step with their monotone. The storm could not drown them. They were meaningless words to him now, but they kept him company. Also, his rifle was meaningless, but he clung to it. The pack on his back held no significance and no weight for him. He might have ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... quick" that summoned the laggards to scurry into the silently forming ranks, and finally, with one emphatic rataplan, the morning concert abruptly closed and the gruff voices of the first sergeants, in swift-running monotone, were heard calling the roll of their shadowy companies, and, thoroughly roused, the garrison "broke ranks" for the long routine of ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... of his officers and said something, and then, after giving another curious glance at Gordon, raised his book and continued reading, in a deep, unruffled monotone. The officer whispered an order, and two of the marines stepped out of line, and dropping the muzzles of their muskets, pushed Gordon back out of the enclosure, and left him there with his lips white, and trembling all over ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... of the convent, her chatter had died away into silence. Perhaps she was tired, for she sat quite still now, and showed no wish to resume the conversation. The sound of the city chimes died away; the little bell in the belfry close by kept up its sharp monotone for a minute longer, and then it too was hushed; the trees whispered and rustled, the grasshoppers chirped shrilly all around, but a great stillness seemed to fall upon the darkling earth as the ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... his throat, nodded to Old Man Curry, fingered his programme, and began to speak in a dull, slurring monotone, droning out the formula as ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... seemed to be treated with indifference alike, though there were some who, for reasons best known to themselves, evidently felt that they stood more securely than the rest. She moved through game and dance with a slow yet free grace; she spoke seldom, and in a low, bell-like monotone, containing no hint of any possible emotional development, and for the rest, her shadow of a disdainful smile seemed to stand her in good stead. Clearly as she stood out from among her companions from the first, at the ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Tlacopa, a ceremony of some description was taking place, lesser priests and other acolytes performing their various parts, the incantations rising now loudly, now sinking to a hollow monotone, the whole affair being none the less absorbing when Bruno remembered that, perhaps, it might have some connection with the vile plots against the Sun Children, if not endangering ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... took up the petty duties of a life apart and lone, Till the slow years wrought a music in its dreary monotone. ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... as when, alone, The heart and soul grow intimate; And on the hills the twilight sate With shadows, whose wild robes were sown With dreams and whispers;—dreams, that led The heart once with love's monotone, ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... she hears the pastor cry on a rising wave of monotone, and starts the fan again. Is she in church or in Rosemont? She sees Johanna beckoning in her old, cajoling way, asking, as in fact, not fancy, she had done the evening before, for the latest news of Cornelius, ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... fifteen per cent, to the central committee, and what they feel like on the outside, then politics, instead of a burden and a reproach, becomes a pleasing duty, a joyous occasion and a picnic to those whose lives might otherwise be a dreary monotone. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... sun, as if through some giant lens which had burnt a hole in the heart of the scrub. Lulled by the faint perpetual murmur of leaf and branch, without a sound from bird or beast to break its soothing monotone, the two men lay down within a few yards, though out of sight, of each other. And for a time ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... with six ladies was apparently the opportunity of a lifetime, and she was determined to make the most of it. She volunteered to recite, and wound out a long poem in such a rapid, breathless monotone that it was hardly possible to distinguish a word. The party politely expressed gratitude, whereupon she announced: "I'll say it for you again!" and plunged at ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... madness—what is the first appalling sign of mental aberration? The mind becomes stationary; the brain stagnates; the even current of reflection is interrupted; the thinking power of the brain resolves itself into a monotone. As the waters of a tideless pool putrefy by reason of their stagnation, the mind becomes turbid and corrupt through lack of action; and the perpetual reflection upon one subject resolves itself into monomania. Robert Audley ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... which, on the wall, you may find two bits of fresco by Giotto, the Meeting of S. Joachim and S. Anna at the Golden Gate, and the Birth of the Virgin. On your left you pass into the Chiostro Verde, where Paolo Uccello has painted scenes from the Old Testament in a sort of green monotone, for once without enthusiasm. Above you and around you rises the old convent and the great tower; there, in the far corner, perhaps a friar plays with a little cat, here a pigeon flutters under the arches about the little ruined space of grass, the meagre grass of the south, where now and ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... most of the Mormon families keep no servants, mothers must take their children wherever they go—to churches, theatres, concerts, and military reviews—everywhere and anywhere. Hence the low, pensive wail of the individual baby, combining in large numbers, becomes a deep monotone, like the waves of the sea, a sort of violoncello accompaniment to all their holiday performances. It was rather trying to me at first to have my glowing periods punctuated with a rhythmic wail from all sides of the hall; but as soon ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... home near McPherson we were five miles "in the country." Nature in primitive wildness encompassed us, but life's song never ran into a monotone. The prairie is never dull when one watches it from day to day for signs of Indians. Yet we were not especially concerned, as we were near enough to the fort to reach it on short notice, and besides our home there was another ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... continued, in a low monotone; "how narrow and limited is all that you know compared to what there is surely up there. Yes, if I did not answer you it was because I was thinking of you, and I was filled with grief. You must not think ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... whispered, still standing very straight in the middle of the doorway. She was not looking at the inert thing on the walk below, but into her father's eyes. He did not, could not answer. He seemed frozen stiff. She went on in the same dull, whispered monotone. "I begged him to let me come alone. I begged him to let me see you first. But he would come. He brought me all the way from the West and he—he was not afraid of you. You have done what you said you would do. You did not give ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... in a low monotone relating how he had returned to La Robe Noire with the additional ransom demanded by Le Grand Diable. The "pig Sioux, more gluttonous than the wolverine, more treacherous than the mountain cat," had come out to receive them with hootings. The plunder was taken, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... the lee rigging, handing their eyes to shield the wind and spray. Faint as yet against the sombre monotone of sea and sky, a long line of breaking water leapt to their gaze, then vanished, as the staggering barque drove to the trough; again—again; there could be no doubt. Breakers! ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... a peremptory demand, sung in a chanting kind of monotone, and very seldom refused. A boy is chosen to knock at the farm door and rouse the inmates, it being considered unlucky for the household if a girl first ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... grinding work. "Glad I didn't go down a couple of miles," he thought. And as he backed slowly away, the dry, hot wind came in rattling gusts and swept the dust in yellow eddies after him, bearing the voice of the grasshoppers, the monotone of futility. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... a droning tone, giving theories of his own as to the nature of the Magrepha, and I, with my arms around Sigmund, half listened to the sleepy monotone of the good old visionary. But what spoke to me with a more potent voice was the soughing and wuthering of the sorrowful wind without, which verily moaned around the old walls, and sought out the old corners, and wailed, and plained, and sobbed ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... confine himself to this wordless expression of annoyance. It was pretty hard work for her to keep the tears out of her eyes; and she endeavoured to think of something else, rather than dwell on regrets and annoyances. She heard Mrs. Gibson talking on in a sweet monotone, and wished to attend to what she was saying, but the squire's visible annoyance struck sharper on her mind. At length, after a pause of silence, he ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of the high terrace are rich meadows, vocal with frogs rejoicing in the rain, and expressing their joy, not in the sober monotone of our English frogs, but each according to his kind; one bellowing, the next barking, the next cawing, and the next (probably the little green Hylas, who has come down out of the trees to breed) quacking in treble like a tiny drake. The bark (I suspect) is that of the gorgeous ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... what he said in a low, metallic monotone: "Good morning, Sir. I am very pleased to meet you. Can you tell me what o'clock it is? I am much obliged. I wish to descend at Manchester. At what hour do we arrive there? There are few passengers to-day. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... clouds, and the moon tossed hopelessly amongst them, a lunar wreck, sometimes on her beam ends, sometimes half submerged, once more gallantly struggling to the surface, and again sunk. The bare boughs of the trees beat together in a dirgelike monotone. Now and again a leaf went sibilantly whistling past. The wild commotion of the heavens and earth was visible, for the night was not dark. The ranger, standing within the rude stable of unhewn ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... sanguine of the ultimate righting of all wrongs, and to inspire additional enthusiasm for a cause to which she has clung with a perseverance deserving admiration. She is very choice in the selection of words and phrases, speaks in an earnest, attractive monotone, and really made one of the most eloquent and sensible speeches for female suffrage to which ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... tottering table. She had forgotten everything—the thick white square of cardboard, even the stooped old man in the small back room—in the face of the overwhelming fear that reason could not fight down. Only the peculiarly absolute silence that came with the sudden cessation of his droning monotone checked the panic haste of her first rush. With one hand clutching the knob of the outer ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... had silently disappeared from the streets. The doorsteps were deserted—save where across the way a young man and maiden sat in the gloaming, conversing in low monotone. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... thoughtfully at the thick lenses of the spectacles. The popeyes remained expressionless, utterly, Teutonically inscrutable. A big heather bee came buzzing among the alpenrosen. Its droning hum resembled the monotone ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... house was just as dark and gloomy as it was without, and as the two visitors entered, a voice came from out the shadows, and said, in a curious monotone and ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... also a rumbling monotone preceding each of these vehement interruptions. The Abbe Bardin was pointing out to her that, unmarried, her son would return to Tonquin, that Lizerolles would be left deserted, her house would be desolate without daughter-in-law ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... during the next twenty months is mostly a blank to us. He would seem to have exerted himself to escape from the monotone in which he had been living so long, but of his efforts, disappointments, and struggles against the giant coils of Fate, there is no report. He wrote the four Province House tales as a send-off to his second volume, as well as "The Toll-Gatherer's ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... o'clock on a September day, so that the atmosphere was well-brewed to a visible haze. There was deep stillness, broken only by a light rattle, a light chink, a small sweeping sound, and an occasional monotone in French, such as might be expected to issue from an ingeniously constructed automaton. Round two long tables were gathered two serried crowds of human beings, all save one having their faces and attention bent on the tables. The one exception was a melancholy little boy, with his knees ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... hearing you read," she said, at last. "You do read abominably. First you go along in staccato jerks, then you drone in a monotone. Philip is a fine reader. I love to hear Philip read. I wish he'd come in to-day. I wonder why he doesn't? Probably because you're here. He must have taken a violent ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... small, puny wavelets dashed in impotent fury, and the shingle sang unceasingly its dreary, syncopated monotone. High and dry, a few dingy boats lay canted wearily upon their broad, swelling sides,—a couple of dories, apparently in daily use; a small sloop yacht, dismantled and plainly beyond repair; and an ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... for his vocation, he could have extracted its marrow as faithfully as that of his more customary themes. Yet the grand ocean-pictures which this book contains remind us that it was the domain of external Nature which was his peculiar province; and this sublime monotone of the surges seems his fitting dirge, now that—to use the fine symbol of one who was his comrade on this very excursion—his bark ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... by four mules tandem led by a very minute donkey with three strings of blue beads round his neck was jingling past along the road. As the canvas curtains of the cover were closed the only evidence of the driver was a sleepy song in monotone that trailed with the dust cloud after the cart. While they stood by the roadside watching the joggle of it away from them down the road, a flushed face was poked out from between the curtains and ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... the indistinct voices of water, commingling in a monotone—and the road ceases to be, as the cool silver of a mountain stream cuts through it, with seemingly inconsequential meanderings, but with the soft arrogance of a power too great to be denied. And ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... and civic bloodshed, had won a peaceful haven. The harbour might be treacherous; the prince might turn to the tyrant; far away on the wide Roman marches might be heard, as it were, the endless, ceaseless monotone of beating horses' hoofs and marching feet of men. They were coming, they were nearing, like footsteps heard on wool; there was a sound of multitudes and millions of barbarians, all the North, officina gentium, ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... into which an occasional sibilance crept, but which never rose above a cool monotone, gradually was lashing me into fury, and I could see the muscles moving in Smith's jaws as he convulsively clenched his teeth; whereby I knew that, impotent, he burned with a rage at least as great as mine. But I did not speak, and ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... of sweet And solemn sound, I heard alone The sleepless ocean's ceaseless beat, The surge's monotone. ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... toward the stable, speaking no word. As we neared the door we heard the sound of a voice in the monotone of one reading. I stepped forward and looked through a chink between the logs. Graeme was about to open the door, but I held up my hand and beckoned him to me. In a vacant stall, where was a pile of straw, a number of men were ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... I have known, None I remember more serene and sweet, More rounded in itself and more complete, Than his, who lies beneath this funeral stone. These pines, that murmur in low monotone, These walks frequented by scholastic feet, Were all his world; but in this calm retreat For him the Teacher's chair became a throne. With fond affection memory loves to dwell On the old days, when his example made A pastime of the toil of tongue and pen; And now, amid the groves he loved ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... this terrace, and there old Babette sat in the cool shelling peas, shredding beans, and issuing orders to Margot in the sultry atmosphere of the kitchen stove. Bessie, alone in the salon one August morning, heard the shrill monotone of her voice in the pauses of a day-dream. She had dropped her book because, try as she would to hold her attention to the story, her thoughts lost themselves continually, and were found again at every turning of the page astray somewhere about the ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... out this section in a sonorous monotone, without stops, like a clerk of the court. It was his pride to know by heart all the acts relating to his department, and to bring them down upon any obstinate head that he wished to crush. Ginx's head, however, was impervious ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... bells could not tell, if you would only give them time enough. We have only one chime, for musical purposes, in the town. But, without attempting tunes, only give the bells the Morse alphabet, and every bell in Boston might chant in monotone the words of "Hail Columbia" at length, every Fourth of July. Indeed, if Mr. Barnard should report any day that a discouraged 'prentice-boy had left town for his country home, all the bells could instantly be set to work to speak articulately, in language regarding which the dullest imagination ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... completed when my companion began to speak, in a broken monotone. She addressed no one in particular. If was as though conscience spoke through ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... an officer entered with one or two subordinates and a squad of soldiers. Certain formalities had to be gone through in which I played a prominent part. These completed the officer stood before me with all the pomposity he could command and delivered a harangue at high speed in a worrying monotone. To me it was gibberish, but one of the men who could speak English informed me that the gist of his wail was the intimation that "if I moved a pace to the right, or a pace to the left, or fell back a pace, or hurried a pace during the march ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... he was always at liberty to twiddle his thumbs, twirl his pencil, yawn, blink, and look out of the window at the City Park across the way, where excited citizens maintained a steady yelling monotone before the neighbouring newspaper offices ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... outskirts of the village, where, in acknowledgment of the honor of our visit-and a few kreuzers by way of supplement - the "flower of the camp," a blooming damsel, about the shade of a total eclipse, kisses the backs of our hands, and the men play a strumming monotone with sticks and an inverted wooden trough, while the women dance in a most lively and not ungraceful manner. These gypsy bands are a happy crowd of vagabonds, looking as though they had never a single care in all the world; the men wear long, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... was a certain ease. She rested in the given reassurance. Yet the sing-song monotone ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... foliage in their hands and dared the winds snatch a leaf from that grip. The hills were swelling and sinking, folding and soaring on every view. Now the silence was startled by the falling tinkle of a stream. Far away a cow lowed, a long, deep monotone, or a goat's call trembled from nowhere to nowhere. But mostly there was a silence which buzzed with a multitude of small winged life. Going up the hills the Philosopher bent forward to the gradient, stamping vigorously as he trod, almost snorting ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... voice, gabbling in a monotone. A phrase would be spoken, the voice would hesitate for just an instant, and then another, totally disconnected phrase would come. The enunciation and pronunciation would vary from phrase to phrase, but the tone remained essentially the same, drained of all ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... correctly. Here, listen to this. Now here's a little incident I found this evening that interests me immensely. It proves to my mind one of two points I hold in regard to Marshal Ney. Listen," and he read at length from his book, a dry, sepulchral monotone that grated on the ear until ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... been a big mistake for Goethe to have married her," pursued Potts, in his deliberate monotone, "but he was n't justified on that account in breaking her heart. It was his business, having got her in love with him, to get her out again and leave her where ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... least in this, that through the whole piece he dragged along just half a beat behind the rest. The others showed a most decided penchant for the ancient Greek music, which, as is well known, having nothing to do with harmony, ran on in unison or monotone. They all sang treble, with slight variations, caused by accidental rising and falling of the voice, say ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... through low bushes, laving one's face and hands so gently, this balmy-bright noon, the coolest for a long time, (Sept. 2)—I will not call it sighing, for to me it is always a firm, sane, cheery expression, through a monotone, giving many varieties, or swift or slow, or dense or delicate. The wind in the patch of pine woods off there—how sibilant. Or at sea, I can imagine it this moment, tossing the waves, with spirits of foam flying far, and the free whistle, and the scent of the salt—and that vast ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the little group of his friends. The sheriff stood near by, chatting with the jailer and as Brotherton came up to bid Grant good-night, Brotherton felt a piece of paper slip into his hands, when he shook hands with Grant. "Don't let it leave your pocket until you see me again," said Grant in a monotone, that no one noticed. ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... copper saucepans shone resplendently. The black and white pavement looked like an ivory chessboard. Two Sisters were sitting peeling vegetables which they threw into a bowl of water. An enormous pot, on the well-polished stove, was humming its inviting monotone. It was this pot which exhaled the delicious smell that had greeted us when we entered the house. The whole picture recalled one of Bail's appetising canvases. The two Sisters raised their eyes, looked at us and—yes, they smiled too. B., feeling eloquent, wanted to make a speech; but Sister ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... dense over the plateau. The girl crouched beside the sleeper, her eyes peering out into the blackness, the drawn pistol ready in her hand. She could see only a few feet in the dim starlight. But her ears, accustomed to the dull monotone of the booming canyon, heard every sound—the click of the horses' hoofs, even the munching of the nearest one, the hoot of the owls that flitted overhead, the distant yelps and ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... a response, but stood up. Her voice which had been shot through with emotion these last few minutes was now that flat, mechanical monotone to which the habitants of ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... enough of a desultory and unorganized sort, but every struggle, apparently every aspiration, for a free political and religious life ended in a more solid confirmation of the leaden misrule which weighed down the hearts of the people. To such an apathy the pensive monotone of this sick poet's song might well seem the only truth; and one who beheld the universe with the invalid's loath eyes, and reasoned from his own irremediable ills to a malign mystery presiding over all human ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... in a strange absent monotone, as if repeating words he was actually hearing. 'You have broken my laws. Go now to your doom, you and all your brothers. Such priests Kali will not have. Thuggee is no more. I will ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... in hard wrinkles, eyes stonily forlornly closed, psalms in outlandish monotone) That the cows with their those distended udders that they have been the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Jack kept saying in a monotone, and suddenly it flashed on Marjorie that he meant for her to ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... down, a mere redness in the curdling fleecy haze; the weltering seas rose and fell in broad sheets of burnished silver, the monotone of their music followed them, a cool salt wind blew over them and freshened them for storm. Flor rose on her arm and looked back,—the breeze roused her; pain and fear and hope rose with her and looked back ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... refused to be comforted. He wished himself back, a participator in the conflicts of civilisation, and was fain to cover his face—there was no wall to which to turn—and fancy that the most dismal sound in the universe was the surly monotone the north-easter harped on the beach. We reposed that night among the camp equipment, the sick man caring for naught in his ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... he returned to his house, gave the money to his wife, and went to his neighbour's. The thrashing machine was humming, and the driver was shouting. The lean horses were going slowly round him, straining at their traces. The driver was shouting to them in a monotone, "Now, there, my dears." Some women were unbinding sheaves, others were raking up the scattered straw and ears, and others again were gathering great armfuls of corn and handing them to the men to feed the machine. The work was ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... and forgotten nothing, like the old regime in France. He only knew how to butt and blunder resonantly at the glass; but he could do it as well as ever, and he seemed to have made up his mind to persevere. Sally listened to his monotone, and watched ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... waiting, Payne," continued Garman in his monotone. "Big hungry one, up there in the cypress. But the Mexican Buzzards, the little brown fellows, will come down from the trees first—fierce little Mexican buzzards—not afraid to tackle a thing still living ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... was John's turn to read, and when the extracts were not too funny he progressed fairly well, toiling along in a quiet monotone. When the story became very laughable, however, he proved a great trial to his listeners. Before he could utter the joke, his voice would fail and he would collapse into helpless laughter. When importuned by his audience to speak out and let them know what the fun was, he would ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... its power, but indifferent in the already drenched condition of their clothing, to the rain. The saw-dust street was saturated like a sponge. They could feel the quick water rise about the pressure at their feet. From the invisible houses they heard a steady monotone of flowing from the roofs. Far ahead, dim in the mist, sprayed ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... some seven hundred feet above their heads, while here its perpendicular side went down for fully another thousand to where, in the solemn dark depths of the vast canyon or crack in the rocky crust of the earth, a great rushing river ran, its roar rising to where they stood in a strangely weird monotone, like ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... grow older," he said, "One grows less difficult to please." His tone was that of a man excusing himself to himself. "The old standards, the old models, pass away and—and failures, failures come and dull the energy." His voice dropped into a monotone; he seemed to ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... a very remarkable baritone, and he had no mind to make a reputation on that sort of capital. He could not afford to be known as a troubadour. But he sang now, a passionate love-song, of which, of course, he felt not a word: the air was full of fervor, with an occasional gay jibing monotone. The words in themselves meant nothing: the music meant that whatever of love or earnestness was in the world was a sham. The men nodded over their pipes, keeping time: Jane held her father's hand quiet in her own, looking ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... changing lights—here it ran the colour of an olive, there rose pink, and here again a brilliant green; above their heads the stars were coming out, in the east it was already dusk; and behind them in the town, drums were beginning to beat with their barbaric monotone. Both men walked with their chins sunk upon their breasts, their eyes upon the ground. They had come to the end of hope, they were possessed with a lethargy of despair. Feversham thought not at all of the pine trees on the Surrey hills, nor did Trench have any dread that something in his ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... to get, sir, as the soldier said ven they ordered him three hundred and fifty lashes." Thereupon—glowering angrily at Sam, and blinking his eyes more than ever—Mr. Justice Stareleigh remarked, with a heavier cold in the head than hitherto, in a severe monotone, and with the greatest deliberation, "You must not tell us what the soldier says unless the soldier is in court, unless that soldier comes here in uniform, and is examined in the usual way—it's not ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... became doyen, and of him the following story is told: The great Van Dyck visited him unexpectedly one day, and demanded that he make a sketch of him (Van Dyck) at once, in his presence. Berincx accordingly painted in monotone the sketch in full length, adding the details in carnation, and so charmed was Van Dyck, that he assured him that he would adopt the system in his own work, "if he would permit." He died full of honors the ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... lines of ripple within yonder projecting wall, there proves to be room for just fourteen. Nature meets our whims with such little fitnesses. The words which build these delicate structures of Petrarch's are as soft and fine and close-textured as the sands upon this tiny beach, and their monotone, if such it be, is the monotone of the neighboring ocean. Is it not possible, by bringing such a book into the open air, to separate it from the grimness of commentators, and bring it back to ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... looked out upon the consummation of what he dreamt of when he drew lightning from the summer cloud. For two hours the "White City" blossomed in new beauty. The great basin was bathed in a flood of fairy moonlight. Outside the peristyle the lake beat its monotone against the walls. On the plaza the great orchestra of more than 100 men played patriotic music, and the people were filled and lifted with the spirit of ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... the Bororos were singular. On the death of a man, a chorus of moans began and tears were shed in profusion, while some one sang for several days the praises of the defunct in a melancholy monotone. The body was covered for two entire days, during which all articles that belonged to the deceased, such as bow and arrows, pots, and musical instruments, were smashed or destroyed. The debris was stored behind a screen in the hut, where subsequently was also kept the hearse ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... a rule, special cautions and guidance for keeping the proper vocal conditions, so as to prevent "forcing." The passages are simple in spirit and form. They carry on one dominant feeling, needing little variation of voice. The idea is to render them in a way near to the monotone, that the student may learn to control one tone, so to speak, or to speak nearly in one key, before doing the more varied tones of familiar speech or of complex feeling. We might say the passages are to be read in some degree like the chant; but the chant ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... without was eager and sharp, 225 Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp, And rattles and wrings The icy strings, Singing, in dreary monotone, A Christmas carol of its own, 230 Whose burden[25] still, as he might guess, Was—"Shelterless, ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... traversing the roadway. A pandemonium of sound was robbing the night of peace through music, of assorted character, which boiled forth from open doors in discordant business rivalry, but underneath it all was the steady, dull monotone of the stamp-mill, remorselessly beating the ore ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... of the night, How we shiver with affright At the melancholy menace of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. And the people—ah, the people— They that dwell up in the steeple. All alone, And who toiling, toiling, toiling, In that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone— They are neither man nor woman— They are neither brute nor human— They are Ghouls: And their king it is who tolls; And he rolls, rolls, ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... he tarried but a moment, yet he explained his paralysis. In the dreary monotone of a chronic sour temper he related that some Confederates, about a year before, had come here impressing horses, and their officer, on being called by him "no gentleman," had struck him behind the ear with the butt of a carbine. I asked what punishment ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... without was eager and sharp; Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp, And rattles and wrings The icy strings, Singing in dreary monotone A Christmas carol of its own, Whose burden still, as he might guess, Was ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... Tallant did with quite enchanting courtesy, making an apt apology for having kept them waiting, which almost mollified the irate Premier. Bridget came with a swift gliding movement to the side of her friend, squeezed her hand and held it, while she talked in a soft rapid monotone. ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... the throng, and up to the hostess— Mrs. Burke, stout, honest, with sympathy in her eyes and humor in the lines round her sweet mouth. "Well, Josh," she said in a slow, pleasant monotone, "you HAVE done a lot of growing since I saw you. I always knew you'd come to some bad end. And here you are— in politics and ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... awoke to the realization of certain words spoken insistently close beside him. He turned his eyes and saw that the girl, her eyes staring straight before her, her slim, brown hands uplifted, was yet commanding him imperiously, her voice holding to that murmuring monotone ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... me to think him unconcerned, but beneath the flippancy I saw the nerves jerking. Then quite simply he began to tell me. He spoke in a low, even monotone, dispassionately, as though for him the incident ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... There was a heavy blow yesterday, which had not yet subsided; and the waves had been lashed into a magnificent fury. Trot, trot, trot, trot, we trundled over the hard sand. The sound of the horse's hoofs rang out sharp against the monotone of the thunderous surf, as we drew nearer and nearer to the long line of the cliffs. At our left, almost from the lofty zenith of the pale evening sky to the high western horizon of the tumultuous dark-green sea, was suspended, so to speak, one of those gorgeous vertical sunsets ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... monotone, pausing slightly at each sentence end, that his evidence may be inscribed.] About ten o'clock this morning, your Worship, I found these two little girls in Blue Street, Fulham, crying outside a public-house. Asked where their home was, they said they had no home. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... listened, listened, with no thought of love or prayer, For the swelling notes of triumph from his organ standing there. All was silent. Nothing heard he save the priest's low monotone, And the bride's robe trailing softly o'er the floor ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... bluer than the sky itself their shadows fall about them; every thorn, every stem, is set, a spike of crusted lustre in its icy mail; the tingling air takes the breath in silvery wreaths; and wherever the gay garment of a skater breaks the monotone with a gleam of crimson or purple, the shining feet beneath chisel their fantastic curves upon a floor that is nothing but one glare of crystal sheen. And here, hero of the scene, glides Beltran, master of the Northern art as school-days made him, skates as of old some young Viking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... a low monotone, that nevertheless penetrated to every part of the room. He had a voice of peculiar quality, as sweet as the tones of a tenor, and as pleasant to hear as music; now and then there was a manly ring ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... lifeless words of Jasper, the factor over at Fond du Lac, as he described the day when he and his young wife first came up through the wonderland of the North. "No country is God's Country without a woman!" He found the words running in an unpleasant monotone through his brain. He had made up his mind that he would strike Fond du Lac on his way down, for Jasper's words and the hopeless picture he had made that day beside the little cross under the spruce had made them brothers in ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... lits, l'ombre qui les couronne, M'enchainent tout le jour sur les bords des ruisseaux; Comme un enfant berce par un chant monotone, Mon ame ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... the air came thin and chill, And all was hushed and calm and very still, Save, from abysmal gorges, where the sound Of tumbling waters rose, and all around The pines, by those keen upper currents blown, Muttered in multitudinous monotone. Here, with the wind in lovely locks laid bare, With arms oft raised in dedicative prayer, Lost in mute rapture and adoring wonder, He stood, till the far noise of noontide thunder, Rolled down upon the muffled harmonies Of wind and waterfall and whispering trees, Made loneliness more ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... the question whether our Northern cathedrals are better with color or without. Perhaps the great monotone gray of Nature and of Time is a better color than any that the human hand can give; but that is nothing to our present business. The simple fact is, that the builders of those cathedrals laid upon them the brightest colors they could obtain, and that there is ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... caused startled clerks in all directions to look up from their work he shattered the decorous monotone of the great store by slamming his sales book viciously upon the counter, and without a word of explanation to his fellow clerks marched out of the ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... garden and dipped into the green meadow. Stafford talked of battles and marches, but he spoke in a monotone, distrait and careless, as of a day-dreaming scholar reciting his lesson. Such as it was, the recital lasted across the meadow, into the wood, yet lit by yellow light, a place itself for day dreams. "No. I did not see him fall. He ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... spirit, full of the restless movement of city life and the inevitable disquiet of sin, something of her own calmness and peace. The only sounds he heard seemed a part of nature's silence,—the tinkle of cowbells, the slumberous monotone of water as it fell over the dam, the grating notes of a katydid, rendered hoarse by recent cool nights, in a shady ravine near by, and a black cricket chirping at the edge of the rock on which he sat— these were all. And yet the sounds, though not heard for years, ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... answered Merrihew. He stuffed his pockets with cigars, slammed the boxes into the case, and locked them up. He collected his belongings and repacked the other case, keeping up a rumbling monotone as he did so. "Oh, yes; I ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... a monotone, Heard through breathless hush, Swollen torrents hissing far in lavish moan, Foamed with headlong rush, Sob on protesting, toward ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... Hagar shook the tangle of unkempt, black hair away from her moonlike face, and began talking in a soft monotone, her voice now and then rising to ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... stream, but capable, as we at Norton Bury sometimes knew to our cost, of being roused into fierceness and foam. Now it slipped on quietly enough, contenting itself with turning a flour-mill hard by, the lazy whirr of which made a sleepy, incessant monotone which I was fond ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... her, her voice was heard chanting in the crooning monotone of Indian death dirge: "Jesu—have pity on us! Jesu—have pity on us!" The next moment the child was thrown into the flames, ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... so hoarse, and the pitch alternates so unexpectedly between an "unearthly treble and a preternatural bass" that a boy can usually sing only in monotone, if, with courage proof against the ridicule occasioned by his uncontrollable vocal antics, he tries to join in. In those cases, where the larynx undergoes a slow change in growth, it is often possible for the boy to sing all through the ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... turbaned head, With a nameless burden upon her heart, And the light of youth forever fled. And she sits a swaying to and fro, Like the billowy pine with plume and cone, While a minor strain subdued and slow, She sings in a plaintive monotone: ...
— The American Missionary, October, 1890, Vol. XLIV., No. 10 • Various
... sound came the confused murmur of wild fowl feeding. Except for that, and the ceaseless monotone of the outer sea, there was no sound, not even the lap of water against ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... in early June, when the dew sparkled on the poison ivy and the air was vibrant with the soft monotone of mosquitoes and the public road exhaled a delicate aroma of crude oil, Drusilla and Flavilla, laden with sketching-blocks, color-boxes, camp-stools, white umbrellas and bonbons, descended to the great hall, on ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... something; of that he was certain. So he kept perfectly still, listening with the utmost intentness; then he started slightly, for there was repeated the noise that had roused him from his sleep. It was a low, terrible croon, like "o-o-h—o-o-h," repeated and repeated, and every once in a while its monotone was broken by a ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... conscious of what he was doing, took the bow of the violin, and placing the instrument upon his shoulder, leaned his ear down to it, and drew the hair over the strings. A long, sad monotone floated through ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... olive, there rose pink, and here again a brilliant green; above their heads the stars were coming out, in the east it was already dusk; and behind them in the town, drums were beginning to beat with their barbaric monotone. Both men walked with their chins sunk upon their breasts, their eyes upon the ground. They had come to the end of hope, they were possessed with a lethargy of despair. Feversham thought not at all of the pine trees on the Surrey hills, nor did Trench have any dread that something in ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... addition all of the Society's regular publications, including the present one, consisting of —— volumes [here he produced the customary specimen sheets]. You see this one work alone is worth the full amount you pay for life membership [here occurred a "special offer" of some sort, given in a low monotone which the stenographer was unable to hear; and I must confess that I was so stupefied by this astounding fabrication that I myself have not the faintest recollection of what this "special offer" consisted]. We are very anxious to have your ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... exquisite Trichomanes radicans, or drooped over the rustic path and hung into the river, and overhead the finely incised and almost feathery foliage of several varieties of maple admitted the light only as a green mist. The spring tints have not yet darkened into the monotone of summer, rose azaleas still light the hillsides, and masses of cryptomeria give depth and shadow. Still, beautiful as it all is, one sighs for something which shall satisfy one's craving for startling individuality and grace of form, as in the coco-palm and banana of the tropics. The featheriness ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... once," said he, in a dreary monotone, "when he was four years old. He saw a woolly lamb in a shop window and wanted it. I'd lost ninety dollars that day at the races and I was sore. He begged me to buy him the lamb. It cost only a quarter. I wouldn't. ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... Betty. She was waiting for what—she did not know! The candle burnt lower and lower and finally went out and she was left in darkness, but again she was conscious of sounds from the room below. At first it was only a word or a sentence, then the guarded speech became a steady monotone that ran deep into the night; eventually this ceased and Betty fancied ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. And the people—ah, the people— They that dwell up in the steeple, All alone, And who, tolling, tolling, tolling, In that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone— They are neither man nor woman— They are neither brute nor human— They are Ghouls: And their king it is who tolls; And he rolls, rolls, rolls, ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... was neither silence nor weeping. Someone in a nearby kitchen rattled her pans and then cursed a dog away from her back-door. Not that any of the sounds were loud. The sounds of living are rarely loud, but they run in an endless river—a monotone broken by ugly ripples of noise to testify that men still sleep or waken, hunger or feed. Another ripple had gone down to the sea of darkness, yet all the ripples behind it chased on their way heedlessly and ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... stove. After supper the Cat's master took his pipe, and sought a small store of tobacco which he had left in his hut over winter. He had thought often of it; that and the Cat seemed something to come home to in the spring. But the tobacco was gone; not a dust left. The man swore a little in a grim monotone, which made the profanity lose its customary effect. He had been, and was, a hard drinker; he had knocked about the world until the marks of its sharp corners were on his very soul, which was thereby calloused, until his very sensibility to ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... stone sill with the imminent gloom covering him, he felt the old sanctity envelop him with a reproach in its forgotten familiarity. Old incense, old litanies, old rites rushed back to him with the smell of the stagnant fragrance. He heard again from the farther depths of the dark interior the musical monotone of a rabbi reciting a ritual. The voice was young and low. Presently he heard the responses spoken in a woman's voice, so tender, so soft and so sad that he sensed instantly the meaning of the sympathy in the young priest's voice. Out of the incense-laden dusk he found old custom ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... by kicking her in the stomach," she said in a monotone. "He must have damaged her insides. Mon Dieu! She was in agony for three days with her stomach all swelled up. Plenty of scoundrels have been sent to the galleys for less than that, but the courts won't concern themselves ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... and let the others have his place before the screen. His sense of uneasiness increased as he contemplated the approach of that huge black ship. And he was convinced its color was black, that it was not just the monotone of the view screen that made ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones
... such object, in his hand, and putting both hands behind his back, the friend began to bob his head and shoulders up and down in an idiotic fashion, at the same time chanting in a sing-song monotone, "Ho yo, yo ho, hi ya yoho!" for a considerable length of time, while Mozwa staked his blanket, a fine thick green one, purchased at Great Bear Lake. We forget the friend's stake, but it was probably supposed ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... organ, comes to assure the heart that it can rest, if but for a moment, upon a deep and inner peace, can be gently rocked, as it were, in a moving boat, between the sky and translucent sea. Then falls the rich monotone of prayer; and the organ wakes again for one last message, pouring a flood of melody from its golden throats, and dying away by soft gradations into the ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... routine of the studio, the smell of paint and turpentine, and the monotone wisdom of Kami, who was a leaden artist, but a golden teacher if the pupil were only in sympathy with him. Maisie was not in sympathy that day, and she waited impatiently for the end ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... a trace of surprise now in the general monotone Then she added, as if to leave no doubt ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... listlessness settled down heavier hour by hour, I began to look back regretfully, if not remorsefully. There were moments, not few or far between, when I would have given much to hear the wire-drawn monotone that lately had been an offense to me; ay, even though each slow sentence should be punctuated ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... in a husky monotone, as if to himself. "They's nobody else jes' like her," he declared; "that's a cinch! She's shore the kind that comes one in a box! Whenever I'd look at her, I'd allus think o' a angel, 'r a bird, 'r a little, bobbin' rose." He sighed, uncrossed ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... answer, but he began to mutter in a sleepy monotone, "Don't hit me, sir. It was snow. I'll not come home late again. Ninepence, sir, and Jinny is ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... had altered to a certain degree. The quiet, dreary monotone in which he habitually spoke quickened a little under his present excitement. As for Isabel, she was too deeply interested in Tommie's welfare to suspect that she was being made the victim of a stratagem. She left the door and returned to Hardyman with ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... smiled as she shook hands, and then perceived that she had not been intended to show amusement. Cartoner had merely made a rather naive statement in his low monotone. She thought him a little odd, and glanced at him again. She changed color slightly as she turned towards a chair. He ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... Hampshire fronts the Wight, A little church, where "after strife" Reposes Guy de Blanquely, Knight, By Alison his wife: I know their features' graven lines In time-stained marble monotone, While crouched before their feet reclines Their little ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... to it. The tousled, tumbling hair, the slipshod feet, the soiled blouse gaping at the back, were, he reflected bitterly, in perfect harmony with Granville, and of a piece with everything. He had ceased to censure them; they belonged so inalienably to the drab monotone; they were so indissolubly a part of all his life. And somehow she bloomed in spite of them. Ranny's unconquerable soul still cried "Stick it!" as he ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... surprised to see that everything seemed to be in its place as usual. Summer is over, the fields have been reaped; there is a comfortable row of stacks in the rickyard; the pleasant humming of an engine came up the valley, as it sang its homely monotone, now low, now loud. After tea—the evenings have begun to close in—I went off to my study, took out my notebook and looked over my subjects, but I could make nothing of any of them. I could see that there ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... This provoked an involved and extremely sentimental conversation as to whether Anthony did not consider Gloria change enough. Though he assured her that he did, she insisted upon doubting him.... Eventually the conversation assumed its eternal monotone: "What then? ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... toward the brick house. The white-ruffed fennel reached up its dusty yellow heads to touch her skirts as she passed, and then drooped, satisfied, against the purple iron-weed at the roadside. In the noonday silence no cricket chirped nor locust raised its lorn monotone; the tree shadows mottled the road with blue, and the level fields seemed to pant out a dazzling breath, the transparent "heat-waves" that danced above the low corn and ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... Nodding on gentle slopes and dewy hills. Ready for the harvest death's grim reapers stood Waiting the signal with impatient steel; And morning passed, and mid-day. Here and there The crack of rifles on the picket-line, Or boom of solitary cannon broke The myriad-voiced and dreadful monotone. So fled the anxious hours until the hills Sent forth their silent shadows to the east— And then their batteries opened on our left Advanced into the valley. All along The rolling crest of Seminary Ridge Rolled ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... beautifully clean, containing a very small bed, one chair, a gas-jet, a prie-Dieu, a real human skull, and nothing else whatever. We went to dinner in a great arched refectory, where a monk, perched up in a high pulpit, read us Thomas a Kempis in a droning monotone. Complete silence was observed. At La Trappe no meat or butter is ever used, but we were given a most excellent dinner of vegetable soup, fish, omelets, and artichokes dressed with oil, accompanied by the monks' admirable home-grown wine. There were quite a number of visitors making ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... behind her back and leant against the piano. "There was a man in Paris, a friend of the manager. He heard me sing once. He knew I wanted to take up a profession, and he offered to train me for nothing, and bring me out on the stage. I was to sing those queer, dramatic, half-monotone songs in which one almost speaks the words. He meant to write them specially for me, and I was to wear an oriental costume. He said that every other voice would ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... are those of a bereaved lover." These last expressions are quoted from Poe's whimsical analysis of this very poem, but they indicate precisely the general range of his verse. The climax of "The Bells" is the muffled monotone of ghouls, who glory in weighing down the human heart. "Lenore," The Raven, "The Sleeper," "To One in Paradise," and "Ulalume" form a tenebrose symphony,—and "Annabel Lee," written last of all, shows that one theme possessed him to the end. Again, ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe
... brass tray. Yet the semblance of the thing is there and this often deceives the very elect. Around every art studio are found the young men in velveteen who smoke infinite cigarettes, and throw off opinions about this great man and that, and prate prosaically in blase monotone of the Beautiful. Sometimes these young persons give lectures on "Art as I Have Found It"; but do not be deceived by this—the art that lives is probably being produced by small, shy, red-headed men who work on a top floor, and whom you can only find with the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... in emotional states is the art of the actor. Not only would it be impossible for an actor to make an audience believe in the genuineness of his supposed emotion if he stood glassy-eyed and wooden-limbed declaiming his lines in a monotone, without gestures or play of expression of any sort, but it would also be impossible for him to feel even the counterfeit sensation which he is supposed to represent. So definite and so well recognized is this connection, that many actors take some little time, as they express ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... where the surf was seen only as a white glow waxing and waning, a constant drone was borne in to them—a thunder of the white horses' hoofs trampling on Pull-an'-be-Damned; the vindictive sound of seas falling down one after another on wasted rocks, on shifting sand bars—a powerful monotone seeming to increase in the ear with fuller attention. The contrast was marked between the heavy-lying peace of the inner harbor and that hungry reverberation from without of waters seeking fresh holds along a mutilated coast. On damp nights when the wind hauled ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... find two bits of fresco by Giotto, the Meeting of S. Joachim and S. Anna at the Golden Gate, and the Birth of the Virgin. On your left you pass into the Chiostro Verde, where Paolo Uccello has painted scenes from the Old Testament in a sort of green monotone, for once without enthusiasm. Above you and around you rises the old convent and the great tower; there, in the far corner, perhaps a friar plays with a little cat, here a pigeon flutters under the arches about the little ruined space of grass, the meagre ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... Martyr, his courage, his patience, his devotion to the Church. As was but natural in the circumstances, there followed an application to local politics. They were there, he informed his hearers (as the old lattices, shaken by the gale, rattled their accompaniment to his monotone) in the character of Englishmen; but he had to notice that to the existing rulers of England they owed no obedience. The so-called Parliament which had judged and murdered the late lamented Monarch, and which now ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... naked," went on Cissie in the monotone that succeeds a fit of weeping, "and ashamed—and afraid." She blinked her eyes to press out the undue moisture, and looked at Peter as if asking what else she could do about it than to go away from ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... in flame, and their low mellow roaring mingled to a monotone with the droning of the cat on ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... they began to dance, first decorating themselves with tall branches stuck in the back of their belts. They jumped from one foot to the other, sometimes turning round, and singing in a rough, deep monotone. We withdrew to the boats, and they dispersed on the shore, lighted fires and roasted ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... cast it into Beauvais's lap. "Do you recognize that face? Is it not a mute accusation to your warped conscience?" The voice, changing from the monotone of narrative, grew strong and contemptuous. "I know you. I recognized you the moment I laid eyes on you, only I could not place you. Perhaps it was because it did not seem possible that you would dare show your face to civilized people. That photograph has done its work. By the Lord, but ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... murmured in the passive monotone of a despairing Indian girl: "Just like I have to stop and think before I do it. If I drown the blue dress and the black shoes and stockings and the red dress and the brown shoes and stockings, I can write to Hannah Straight Tree, for she will not let me speak to her: 'Now you ...
— Big and Little Sisters • Theodora R. Jenness
... Hudson far surpass those of the Columbia,—trap, sandstone, granite, limestone, and slate succeeding each other with a rapidity which presents ever new outlines to the eye of the tourist. The scenery of the Columbia, between Fort Vancouver and the Dalles, is a sublime monotone. Its banks are basaltic crags or mist-wrapt domes, averaging below the cataract from twelve to fifteen hundred feet in height, and thence decreasing to the Dalles, where the escarpments, washed by the river, are low trap bluffs on a level with the steamer's walking-beam, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... silence, to me an awkward one; I didn't know what to do or say. Then I perceived the best thing was to let him ease his hurt by just talking on ... and he talked ... on and on ... in his slow, drawling monotone ... and ever so often came the refrain, "Christ, but she was a good woman, Johnnie ... I wish ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... a sublime inspiration that Dubufe painted the accessory panels in monotone. In that on the right, a dismal sky, filled with rolling clouds and sad presaging ravens flying, over-shadows the outcast, seated on a rock in an attitude of listless dejection, with the swine feeding at his feet. In the ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... river, with its purple heights beyond, and a few moments' walk brings me to the lovely shore, where sails are gliding continually by, and the huge steamers sweep past with echoing tread, and a train of waves, whose rush relieves the monotone of the ripples. In the country behind us are mountain-paths, and lonely glens, with gurgling streams, and many-voiced water-falls. And over all are spread ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... on the hills should I behold, Sitting upon an old gray stone That humps its back up through the mold, And piping in a monotone, Pan, as he sat in days of old, My joy ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... none of the high drama he had authored and he gave his own familiar role everything he had. Frowning and running his finger along each line, as though he were seeing the will for the first time, he read aloud in a deep portentous monotone, like a bass note on ...
— The Big Trip Up Yonder • Kurt Vonnegut
... history lectures, talked in a bass monotone and never seemed to pause for breath. His words came in a slow steady stream that never rose nor fell nor paused—until the bell rang. The men in the back of the room slept. Hugh was seated near the front; so he drew pictures in his note-book. The English instructor talked about punctuation ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... skyward, so clean cut, so definite, that I seemed to hear them, crystal-shrill, like the sharp notes in music, as they leaped darkly out from a silver monotone of olives and a delicate ripple of pearly plum or pear blossom. Mimosas poured floods of gold over the spring landscape, blazing violently against the cloudless blue. Bloom of peach and apple tree garlanded ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... displeasure, and only hoped he would confine himself to this wordless expression of annoyance. It was pretty hard work for her to keep the tears out of her eyes; and she endeavoured to think of something else, rather than dwell on regrets and annoyances. She heard Mrs. Gibson talking on in a sweet monotone, and wished to attend to what she was saying, but the squire's visible annoyance struck sharper on her mind. At length, after a pause of silence, he ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... hours, perhaps, there was a semblance of haste about it, but in the long quiet of the afternoon, as Jeff leaned forward towards the customer, and talked to him in a soft confidential monotone, like a portrait painter, the razor would go slower and slower, and pause and stop, move and pause again, till the shave died away into the mere drowse ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... more potent sway over people than on others. To-night he has certainly entered into the boys. He often does a little, but this evening he is holding a great and mighty carnival among them. While father's strong, hard voice vibrates in a loud, dull monotone through the silent room, they are engaged in a hundred dumb yet ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... him. He garbled his sentences so to speak with excessive and useless wording. "The Octoroon" shows a fine feeling for romance as do all of the other pictures of Fuller that have been publicly visible, but it is romance obsessed with monotone. There is the evidence of extreme reticence and moodiness in Fuller always. I know little of him save that I believe he experienced a severity of domestic problems. Farmer I think he was, and painted ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... trance as usual, and after a short interval, announced in her low monotone that the spirit of Peter ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... than any other, save perhaps the final Pieta, the ideal of tone-harmony towards which the master in his late time had been steadily tending. Richness and brilliancy of local colour are subordinated, and this time up to the point of effacement, to this luminous monotone, so mysteriously effective in the hands of a master such as Titian. In the solemn twilight which descends from the heavens, just faintly flushed with rose, an amorous shepherd, flower-crowned, pipes to a nude nymph, who, half-won by the ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... As the hum of insects high in the atmosphere of midsummer suits and fits to the roses and the full green meads, so the hum of the threshing suits to the yellowing leaf and drowsy air of autumn. The iteration of hum and monotone soothes, and means so much more in its inarticulation than the adjusted chords and tune of written music. Laughing, the children romped round the ricks; they love the threshing and flock to it, they watch the fly-wheel rotating, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... forcing you to live little better than wild beasts. Your food is poor, your clothing is in rags, your children are without shoes, your homes are desolate, there are no schools and no social life. Year follows year in dreary monotone, and you finally die, and your neighbors thrust you underground and have an end of you. Misery and wretchedness fill the measure of your days, and ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... evil of perfume, I repeat, was one against which the venerable Fathers of the Church warned the faithful." The preacher's voice had sagged to a monotone. Baldur lifted his eyes in dismay. Near him sat the same woman, and she still stared at him as if to rebuke him for his abstraction. About her hovered the odour of iris. Had it been only a disturbing dream? Intoxicated by his escape from damnation, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... in the same even monotone. "The Countess Nina is, by her own desire, following a strict regime, but to-day being a universal feast-day all rules are somewhat relaxed. The reverend mother desires me to inform you that it is now the hour for mass—she has herself already entered ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... save a red feather in the cap of Pennigent. Secure in the failing light, I approached near and strained my ears to catch what was passing. I could hear the high, querulous voice of the elder man and the deep, rough monotone of his assailant, mixed with a strange metallic jangling and clanking. Presently the surgeon came out, locked the door behind him and stamped up and down in the twilight, pulling at his hair and brandishing his arms, like a man demented. Then he set off, walking ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... night, How we shiver with affright At the melancholy menace of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats is a groan. And the people—ah, the people— They that dwell up in the steeple, all alone! And who tolling, tolling, tolling, in that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling on the human heart a stone— They are neither man nor woman— They are neither brute nor human—they are Ghouls: And their king it is who tolls; And he rolls, rolls, rolls, rolls ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... congregation have to repeat the same words together, it is absolutely necessary that they should do it on some given note, or the result would be Babel. Children in school, of their own accord, say their lessons together in a monotone. The practice of doing so in the Church dates from the very ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... there is one sin which seems to be everywhere, and by everybody is underestimated and quite too much overlooked in valuations of character. It is the sin of fretting. It is as common as air, as speech; so common that unless it rises above its usual monotone we do not even observe it. Watch any ordinary coming together of people, and we see how many minutes it will be before somebody frets—that is, makes more or less complaint of something or other, ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... The terrible, droning monotone ceased, and for a moment there was silence in the squalid little room. The woman's face was as impassive as Morrow's, as she waited. Only the tightening of her hands upon her husband's shoulders, until her bony knuckles showed white through the drawn skin, betrayed the storm of emotion ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... a sweet, sweet song To my dear little boy at play— Merrily singeth all day long, As it spinneth and spinneth away. And my dear little boy He laugheth with joy When he heareth the monotone Of that busy thing That loveth to sing The song that ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... canoe poked out for the open bay these minor sounds fell behind and were replaced by the steady purl of water under the bow. It filled with pleasing monotone the interludes between the fussing of the yard-engine back on the railway trackage and the blatancy of the foghorn at the Eastern Gap, every half minute bawling its warning into the ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... their faces with brief gift of perfume. On the other side was a wood of slim trunks, all depths of shadow and delicacies of borrowed light in little pools. Everywhere, everywhere was a chorus of slight voices, from bark and air and secret moss, singing no forced notes of monotone, but piping a true song of the gladness of earth, plaintive, sweet, indescribably harmonious. It came to St. George that this was the way the woods at night would always sound if, somehow, one were able to ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... landing-place; now lost to sight as a piece of broken, overhanging ground intervened, now emerging suddenly nearer; and overhead the great church bell, with its mediaeval inscription, familiar to the vicar, if to no one else who heard it, I to the grave do summon all, kept on its heavy booming monotone, with which no other sound from land or sea, near or distant, intermingled, except the cackle of the geese on some far-away farm on the moors, as they were coming home to roost; and that one noise from so great a distance seemed only to deepen the stillness. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... The best known of these is the coppersmith, or crimson-breasted barbet (Xantholaema haematocephala), the little green fiend, gaudily painted about the head, which makes the hot weather in India seem worse than it really is by filling the welkin with the eternal monotone that resembles the sound of a hammer on a brazen vessel. Nearly as widely distributed are the various species of green barbet (Thereiceryx), whose call is scarcely less exasperating than that of the coppersmith, and may be described ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... "Glad I didn't go down a couple of miles," he thought. And as he backed slowly away, the dry, hot wind came in rattling gusts and swept the dust in yellow eddies after him, bearing the voice of the grasshoppers, the monotone of futility. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... not less wise in a sick room than Mrs. Bundle herself. He contrived to quieten instead of exciting me, and to the sound of his melodious voice reading in soothing monotone from my favourite book of the Bible—the Revelation of St. John the Divine—I finally ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... and yet how love-imbuing and tender! You stand before us with your gently mournful Memory-haunted eyes and flower-like mouth, Where clinging thoughts—as bees a-cluster Murmur through the leafy gloom, Musical in monotone— Whisper sadly. Yet a lustre As of glowing gold-gray light Shines upon the orient bloom, Sweet with orange-blossoms, thrown Round the jasmine-starred, deep night Crowning with dark hair your brow. Ruthless, once, we came to slay, And you met us then with hate. Rough was the wooing of ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... resplendently. The black and white pavement looked like an ivory chessboard. Two Sisters were sitting peeling vegetables which they threw into a bowl of water. An enormous pot, on the well-polished stove, was humming its inviting monotone. It was this pot which exhaled the delicious smell that had greeted us when we entered the house. The whole picture recalled one of Bail's appetising canvases. The two Sisters raised their eyes, looked at us and—yes, they smiled too. B., ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... that sort of capital. He could not afford to be known as a troubadour. But he sang now, a passionate love-song, of which, of course, he felt not a word: the air was full of fervor, with an occasional gay jibing monotone. The words in themselves meant nothing: the music meant that whatever of love or earnestness was in the world was a sham. The men nodded over their pipes, keeping time: Jane held her father's hand quiet in her own, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... the Melancholy.—Children exert themselves perceptibly in their first attempts to speak, answer indolently or not at all, or frequently with embarrassment, always slowly, often with drawl and monotone, very frequently coming to a stop. They also sometimes begin to speak, and then lose at once the inclination ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... seem to affect the course of things at all. The voice, completely unconscious of the aversion it aroused in the invisible listener, continued its dreary, expressionless monotone. ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... sailor terminated his speech with this terrible emphasis, he started into an upright attitude, and listened with all his ears for another utterance of that harsh monotone that, borne upon the breeze and rising above the "sough" of the disturbed water, could easily be distinguished as the voice of ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... fair thing, say, blow in fifteen per cent, to the central committee, and what they feel like on the outside, then politics, instead of a burden and a reproach, becomes a pleasing duty, a joyous occasion and a picnic to those whose lives might otherwise be a dreary monotone. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... attribute, the will, the idea. Genius manifest in the greatest and best of humanity, shown indeed, as the Word of God, or as he who holds the mirror up to nature, or by the great power which in colour or monotone can display the love and agony of a dying Christ; by the loving poet, who can soar beyond his age to uphold an unselfish aim of perfection to the world; by all those who, throwing off their mortal attributes at times, can live the true life free from the too absorbing pleasures of the flesh, ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... rising and falling in weird octaves, whining pityingly, diabolically, sobbing in a fascinating monotone and slobbering in ragged chords, calling as they swept over the plain, always calling and exhorting, they mingled in barbaric discord with the defiant barks of the six-shooters and the inquiring cracks of the Winchesters. High up in the air several specks sailed and drifted, more ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... into troubled meditation rendered somewhat vague and inconsequential by his rapid changes of financial condition, moods, environment—the brief ecstasy of his triumphant flight that had so ridiculous a climax. Small wonder that Bland's whining voice failed to register anything but a dreary monotone of meaningless words in Johnny's ears. Small wonder that Johnny's thoughts dwelt upon little worries that could have no possible bearing upon the big things he ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... not say anything about the quarrel; she feared to reopen it. She talked mainly of old times in a gentle monotone of reminiscence, while he listened, looking up ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... check for seven thousand dollars. It is the sum required by you to make good the discrepancy in my father's account with your bank. He is an old man in his dotage; and, as he repudiates his checks, you must not be the loser." She spoke in a dull voice—a monotone—as though repeating a lesson ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... house, gave the money to his wife, and went to his neighbour's. The thrashing machine was humming, and the driver was shouting. The lean horses were going slowly round him, straining at their traces. The driver was shouting to them in a monotone, "Now, there, my dears." Some women were unbinding sheaves, others were raking up the scattered straw and ears, and others again were gathering great armfuls of corn and handing them to the men to feed the machine. The work was in full swing. In the kitchen garden, which Mitri had to pass, ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... your conscience," continued Mrs. Haldane, in her low monotone, "all will be well. It is your being carried away by gusts of impulse and violent passions that makes all the trouble. If you had followed your conscience you would at once have left Hillaton at my request, and hidden yourself in the seclusion that I ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... a rumbling monotone preceding each of these vehement interruptions. The Abbe Bardin was pointing out to her that, unmarried, her son would return to Tonquin, that Lizerolles would be left deserted, her house would be desolate without ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... Brotherton came up to bid Grant good-night, Brotherton felt a piece of paper slip into his hands, when he shook hands with Grant. "Don't let it leave your pocket until you see me again," said Grant in a monotone, that no one noticed. ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... decided that there must be "some pivot upon which the whole structure might turn." He found that "no one had been so universally employed as the refrain." The burden of the poem should be given by the refrain, and it should be a monotone, and should have brevity. Then his task was to select a single word that would be in keeping with the melancholy at which he was aiming, and this he found in the word nevermore. He next invented a pretext for the frequent but varying use of nevermore. This word ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... the sky. There was a broken tumult of billowy clouds, and the moon tossed hopelessly amongst them, a lunar wreck, sometimes on her beam ends, sometimes half submerged, once more gallantly struggling to the surface, and again sunk. The bare boughs of the trees beat together in a dirgelike monotone. Now and again a leaf went sibilantly whistling past. The wild commotion of the heavens and earth was visible, for the night was not dark. The ranger, standing within the rude stable of unhewn logs, all undaubed, noted how pale were the horizontal bars ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... dared the winds snatch a leaf from that grip. The hills were swelling and sinking, folding and soaring on every view. Now the silence was startled by the falling tinkle of a stream. Far away a cow lowed, a long, deep monotone, or a goat's call trembled from nowhere to nowhere. But mostly there was a silence which buzzed with a multitude of small winged life. Going up the hills the Philosopher bent forward to the gradient, stamping ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... exhibition in New York, a picture by this master of these same coryphees, two figures standing together in the flies resting their weary, pink, fishworm legs as they balanced themselves with their hands against the wabbling scenery. It was a wholly gray picture, and almost in a monotone, and yet the flashes of their diamond earrings, no larger than the point of a pin, were distinctly visible, holding their place in, if not dominating, the ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... sentiment to them, secretive, shaggy, what I call weather-beaten, and let-alone—a rich underlay of ferns, yew sprouts and mosses, beginning to be spotted with the early summer wild flowers. Enveloping all, the monotone and liquid gurgle from the hoarse, impetuous, copious fall—the greenish-tawny, darkly transparent waters plunging with velocity down the rocks, with patches of milk-white foam—a stream of hurrying amber, thirty feet wide, risen far back in the hills and woods, now ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... seed, and blackberry-vines covered with knots of fruit dried in their own juices. A wall of gigantic Southern cane hid the boundary fence, and above it the night-black pines of the forest towered, their breezy monotone answering the roar of the ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... with this, an analytic power, a scientific exactness, and a mechanical ingenuity more usual in a chemist or a mathematician than in a poet. He studied carefully the mechanism of his verse and experimented endlessly with verbal and musical effects, such as repetition and monotone and the selection of words in which the consonants alliterated and the vowels varied. In his Philosophy of Composition he described how his best-known poem, the Raven, was systematically built up ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... loneliness, the paralyzed tongue of the Atlantic Cable, to catch the utterances that never came for all his patient coaxing; and ever and anon he iterated, feebly and more feebly, as if all his sinking soul he did outpour into the words, that melancholy monotone which was his only stock and store,—"All ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... city, negro carriers may be heard at all hours, in couples, engaged in the transportation of clove-bags, boxes of merchandise, &c., from store to "godown" and from "go-down" to the beach, singing a kind of monotone chant for the encouragement of each other, and for the guiding of their pace as they shuffle through the streets with bare feet. You may recognise these men readily, before long, as old acquaintances, by the consistency with which they sing the tunes ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... on, blissfully unconscious. He talked in a quiet monotone; only now and then his voice rose; only now and then there were accompanying gestures. Jim had a straight mile down the broad village street to walk before he reached the church and the parsonage ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... never knew!" went on the Toad in a dreamy monotone. "All those wasted years that lie behind me, I never knew, never even dreamt! But now—but now that I know, now that I fully realise! O what a flowery track lies spread before me, henceforth! What dust-clouds ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... men, most of them scorning the narrow board walks and traversing the roadway. A pandemonium of sound was robbing the night of peace through music, of assorted character, which boiled forth from open doors in discordant business rivalry, but underneath it all was the steady, dull monotone of the stamp-mill, remorselessly beating the ore ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... clumps of cottonwood and willow, a languid stream flows silently eastward and is lost, with the valley, in the dim distance. Out to the west in long, gradual curve the southward range veers around and spans the horizon. Midway across this monotone of landscape, cutting the stream at right angles, a hard prairie road comes twisting and turning out of one of the southern ravines and, after long, gradual dip to the ford among the cottonwoods, emerges from their leafy shade and goes winding away until lost among the ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... not wordy, and he tarried but a moment, yet he explained his paralysis. In the dreary monotone of a chronic sour temper he related that some Confederates, about a year before, had come here impressing horses, and their officer, on being called by him "no gentleman," had struck him behind the ear with the butt of a carbine. I asked what punishment the officer ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... shore!" (Thus runs the sad refrain,) "Here dwelt thine Emperor, here he bore With fortitude his pain; Hear'st thou the lone, low monotone Of billows tempest-tossed? In that long roll the German soul Still mourns for him ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... The tales of animals, cosmogonic myths, and the folk-lore of Buso, are all told in prose, with many inflections of the voice, and often accompanied by an animated play of dramatic gesture. In marked contrast is the style of the mythical romance, or ulit, which is recited in a rapid monotone, without change of pitch, with no gestures, and with a regard to accent and quantity that gives a rhythmic swing ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... 2. Monotone time tests, which should be quite short, as the constant repetition of the same note in pitch is irritating to the more sensitive ears in a class. This point is sometimes overlooked, with the result that only the less musical children get any real ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home
... musculature was distorted, and he mumbled to himself in a low, indifferent tone of voice, over and over again, "Give me something to eat. I can't do it. Give me something to eat," etc., in a rapid monotone. He appeared to be in a deep stupor. He did not seem to realize his whereabouts, and attention could not be gained. He was totally inaccessible. When put to bed he became quite restless, rolled out on the floor, and was unable to assist himself back into bed. Musculature of legs was ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... This monotone in which all the personages of his dramas share is nearly related with some special distinctions of his genius. He is so fastidious in his desire for perfection, that he can scarcely permit his actors to speak loosely or ungrammatically: though ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... peacock backs, lounged among the eddies, and the silver grayling dimpled and wandered upon the shallows, and the may-flies flickered and rustled round him like water fairies, with their green gauzy wings; the coot clanked musically among the reeds; the frogs hummed their ceaseless vesper-monotone; the kingfisher darted from his hole in the bank like a blue spark of electric light; the swallows' bills snapped as they twined and hawked above the pool; the swift's wings whirred like musket-balls, as they rushed screaming past his head; and ever the river fleeted by, bearing his eyes away ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... action on the current crisis, has declared martial law throughout the nation," a voice said in an important-sounded monotone. "Exempt from this proclamation are members of the Armed Services, Special Agents and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The proclamation, issued this morning, was made public in a ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... of them, cropped out from hour to hour; new decisions had to be taken each minute. At dinner time he left the office, and his horses carried him home again, while again their hoofs upon the asphalt beat out unceasingly the monotone of the one refrain, "Wheat—wheat—wheat, wheat—wheat—wheat." At dinner table he could not eat. Between each course he found himself going over the day's work, testing it, questioning himself, "Was this ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... nearly half past seven. The child lay supine; heavy-lidded eyes half opened upon this tormentress who had somehow succeeded in calling him back into the dimly lighted room from the shadows of Lethe's alluring banks. Miss Beaver, kneeling beside young Frank's bed, talked tenderly to him in a soft monotone. She made all manner of gratuitous promises, if only Frank would try like a good boy to get well. She told him firmly that he could, if he wanted to. She made her suggestions with gently persuasive voice, ...
— Old Mr. Wiley • Fanny Greye La Spina
... loose to graze, Baked his varicolored dough-bread, On a fire of cattle chips; Coffee made of green-scummed water, Nectar to his thirsty lips. On the ground he spread his blanket And reclining there alone, Heard the swiftly sweeping breezes Sing in dreary monotone Strange wild anthems, weird and lonesome, Like lost spirits floating by, While afar in broken measure Swelled the ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... power, but indifferent in the already drenched condition of their clothing, to the rain. The saw-dust street was saturated like a sponge. They could feel the quick water rise about the pressure at their feet. From the invisible houses they heard a steady monotone of flowing from the roofs. Far ahead, dim in the mist, sprayed ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... toward the fire, whose glow passed over his shoulders and fell upon the printed page. This gave him all the light he needed, and, after rustling the leaves for a moment, he began, in his low, sweet monotone. ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... her work. Trina and Marcus watched her curiously. There was a silence. The corundum burr in McTeague's engine hummed in a prolonged monotone. The canary bird chittered occasionally. The room was warm, and the breathing of the five people in the narrow space made the air close and thick. At long intervals an acrid odor of ink floated up from ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... an occasional sibilance crept, but which never rose above a cool monotone, gradually was lashing me into fury, and I could see the muscles moving in Smith's jaws as he convulsively clenched his teeth; whereby I knew that, impotent, he burned with a rage at least as great as mine. But I did not ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... right," she replied, once more in her passionless monotone. "Everybody can call themselves whatever they please. It's no affair of mine. You and your sister spell your father's name in a way to suit yourselves: I never interfered, did I? You have your own ideas and your own tastes. They are quite beyond me—but they're all right for you. I don't criticize ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... subject there was apparently no verbal preparation. Yet his diction was peculiarly apt and pointed. He never looked at a note; used no gesture; scarcely raised or lowered his voice. But in a clear and penetrating monotone he uttered the workings of a profound and reflective mind, and the treasures of a vast experience. Though massive, his style was never ponderous: and it was constantly lightened by the sallies of a pungent humour. In the debate ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... physical luxury in relaxation of rule and precept, permitting us a simplicity which sometimes, I think, becomes something less harmless. There is luxury in letting go of that live wire which keeps us all keyed to one conventional monotone in the North. I let go—for a moment—to-night. You let go when you said 'Calypso.' You couldn't have said it in New York; I couldn't have heard you, there.... Alas, Ulysses, I should not have heard you anywhere. But I did; and I answered.... Say good night to me, now; won't you? We have ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... changed; we seemed rather to skirt the embankment of a railway, and the eye began to look instinctively for the telegraph-posts, and the ear to expect the coming of a train. Here and there, but rarely, faint tree-tops broke the level. And the sound of the surf accompanied us, now in a drowsy monotone, now ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... men looked at him, sardonic-eyed; and both of them seemed to understand fully what he meant. They seemed to catch more from the slow tones, so full of lust and frenzy that they seemed to drop from his lips in an ugly monotone, than they did from the words themselves. They took a certain grim amusement in these quirks of abnormal depravity that had begun to manifest themselves in Ray. The man's fingers were wide spread as he spoke, and his lip twitched twice, ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... know whether there really was a hesitation in her voice, or whether I read that into it. She stood there, playing with the knots of the window-cords and speaking in a low monotone. The whole thing, the sad twilight of the place, her tone of voice, seemed tinged with unavailing regret. I had almost forgotten the Dimensionist story, and I had never believed in it. But now, for the first ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... demand, sung in a chanting kind of monotone, and very seldom refused. A boy is chosen to knock at the farm door and rouse the inmates, it being considered unlucky for the household if a girl ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... alphabet. Indeed, there is nothing the bells could not tell, if you would only give them time enough. We have only one chime, for musical purposes, in the town. But, without attempting tunes, only give the bells the Morse alphabet, and every bell in Boston might chant in monotone the words of "Hail Columbia" at length, every Fourth of July. Indeed, if Mr. Barnard should report any day that a discouraged 'prentice-boy had left town for his country home, all the bells could instantly be set to work to speak articulately, in language regarding ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... silence through the window at the blinking lights in Washington, turned and looked moodily at his calm host. He spoke in a slow, dreamy monotone, his eyes on ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... groups around the grave, the dark faces, the red garments, the scattered lights, the misty boughs, were weird and strange. The men sang one of their own wild chants. Two crickets sang also, one on either side, and did not cease their little monotone, even when the three volleys were fired above the graves. Just before the coffins were lowered, an old man whispered to me that I must have their position altered,—the heads must be towards the west; so it was done,—though they are in a place ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... there are no words," said Fairley, in that curious monotone which the recital of verse may give, or which constant singing may leave in a minstrel's ordinary speech. "I cannot tell, but my fiddle might play her to you in a rhapsody that should set the music in your soul vibrating. There ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... sun was drinking it delightedly, the swift blue water showed underneath it, and the top of Whitefaced Mountain peaked the mist by a hand-length. The river brushed the banks like rustling silk, and the only other sound, very sharp and clear in the liquid monotone, was the crack of a woodpecker's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and the chickens caw-cawed feebly. The colts whinnied, and a couple of dogs rolled and tumbled in wild frolic, while the voice of the preacher sounded dolefully or in humming monotone. ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... all parts of the furious cast-iron machine seemed to him tired of howling the deafening rhythmical gallop, and the vigorously rocked traveller could distinguish in the diminished uproar a strain of music, at first confused like a groan, then more distinct, but always the same cruel, haunting monotone—the fragment of a song that Maria once sang when they were both children. Suddenly a mournful and prolonged whistle would resound through the night. The express rushed madly into a tunnel. Under the sonorous roof, the frightful concert redoubled, exasperating him among all these ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
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