"Monotone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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 ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... 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
... 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 ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... 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
... 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 ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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
... his fiddle along, and those were wonderful tunes he drew from the strings. Sometimes he explained what they meant, his words running along in monotone that yet kept ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... "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
... 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 ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... 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
... 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 of ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 the tide ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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 seek some ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... 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
... took up the petty duties of a life apart and lone, Till the slow years wrought a music in its dreary monotone. ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis
... 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 |
