"Monotone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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, flowing ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... quite enough 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 evidence." Another evening, again, we recall quite as clearly to mind, when the Reader was revelling ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... brule et la mer qui moutonne, Au somnolent soleil d'un midi monotone, Tu songes, O guerriere, aux vieux conquistadors; Et dans l'enervement des nuits chaudes et calmes, Bercant ta gloire eteinte, O cite, tu t'endors Sous les palmiers, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... our half-dozen "gentlemen adventurers" to rise to a sitting posture and lay his hand upon a weapon—an act signifying, in that time and place, a policy of expectation. The stranger gave the matter no attention and began again to speak in the same deliberate, uninflected monotone in which he ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... 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 coyotes' ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... dead—treading on air, between three worlds. The few feet of bank above the sea, dignified by the name of cliff, fall back to a gaping chasm, a sheer horror of depths, misty and unfathomable. Onward slides the thick cloud, and soon the deep-mouthed monotone of the fog-horns in the distance tells it is in the bay. There is nothing commonplace about the Newport cliff in a fog; it is wild enough and dreary enough then, for the scene of a bad deed. You might meet the souls ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... on which the animal is placed and skinned. This done, the bead man of the party, or the most important man present, takes a small part of the entrails or heart, cuts it into fine bits and scatters the pieces in all directions, at the same time chanting in a monotone a few words which mean "Spirits, we thank you for this successful hunt. Here is your share of the spoils." This is done to feed and appease the spirits which the Negritos believe inhabit all places, and the ceremony is never neglected. ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... 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 as characterizes the ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... 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 ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... you— Without these friendships—life, what cauchemar!" Among the windings of the violins And the ariettes Of cracked cornets Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own, Capricious monotone That is at least one definite "false note." —Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance, Admire the monuments Discuss the late events, Correct our watches by the public clocks. Then sit for half an hour and drink ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... 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 a paean from the ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... photograph and 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 ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... influence of the spell which good music had laid upon the 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 had captured ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... train, at this hour?" murmured Mr. Welles. His voice was sunk to a somnolent monotone, his hands folded over his waistcoat moved slowly and rhythmically with his breathing. It was evident that he did not in the least care whether it was ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... least visible excitement, and in the same deliberate monotone, Deerfoot still looking him straight in ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... 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 with a wife-beater. Especially ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... of sound from the gas-burners seemed to be changed to low, mournful cries, as of a woman over the dead. He turned the gas down a little; then the shadows of the cannel-coal fire danced like spectres on the ceiling. He jumped up and raised the lights again; again the low, dismal monotone sang in his ears. He stopped them with his fingers; again the persistent voice asked, "Why didn't you come down?" Flakes fell off the coal in the grate in shapes like coffins; the flames seemed to dart at him with their fiery tongues. He rang once more, and when the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... our ears made acquaintance with a new and ominous sound. From an infinite distance the morning breeze from the north carried with it a deadened thumping sound, now regular as the muffled rolling of drums, now softly irregular with intervals of stillness. It was the dominating monotone of cannonading. No need to tell ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... 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 ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... were other women there, sunk into the big leather chairs, watching the doors, and glancing at the clock. The high windows gave directly upon Powell Street, where cable-cars were grating to and fro, and where motor-horns honked, but all noises were filtered here to a sort of monotone, and the effect of the room was of silence. When a man came hastily in the door one woman rose, there was a significant smile, a murmured greeting, ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... 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
... hair into a scalp lock, and the two slipped from the cabin, closing the door behind them and deftly retying the thongs, in order that the discovery of the escape might occur as late as possible. Then they stood a few moments in the shadow of the hut and listened to the sounds of revelry, the monotone of the story-tellers, and the chant of ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the first lesson in a brisk and business-like monotone, and when he had finished his grandsons applauded noiselessly ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... monotone, You hear the murmur of the mart, The low, deep, unremitting moan, That ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones
... raining, a fine, soft, blurring Alpine rain, and a blue-grey monotone prevailed upon the face of the waters and defied all save the keenest scrutiny to discern where the mountain tops ended and the sky began. It was a day for indoors, for dreams, ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... twice 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 some ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... in rhythmic motion, What thunder of innumerable feet, What mighty diapasons like the ocean, Reverberating turbulently sweet Through far dissolving silences, are blown Worldward upon the winds' low monotone? ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... tortured, he began again his aimless tour of the place, ranging the four walls like a wild creature dulled to insanity by long imprisonment—passing backward, forward, to and fro, across, around his footsteps timing the dreadful monotone of his heart, his pulse ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... had 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
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... entrance, he was startled by the sudden heavy clang of a bell, which, striking through the still air, created such harsh clamour that he instinctively shivered at the sound. He paused,—and again the dismal boom crashed on his ears,— then as its echo died away another deep monotone, steadily persistent, began to stir the silence with words,—words, which to Florian Varillo in his nervous excitation of ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... 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. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... we sat and 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 ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... sharply, and fearlessly approached him. She began talking in a monotone. His ears went flat against his head, but he submitted to her touch because invariably it soothed him, and because he sensed some undefinable power whenever his gaze met hers. She snapped the leash on his collar just as her father ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... Gull Lightship east-south-east, and having the South Foreland west by north, you should find six fathoms of water at a neap tide," muttered Captain Dixon, in a low monotone. His eyes were fixed and far away. He was unconscious of his companion's presence, and spoke like one talking in ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... 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 into her ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... shop Mrs Rhodes and Mrs Muir came up in their turn, and opened wide eyes of surprise as the strange girl again repeated their names in her high monotone. Evidently this was an American custom. Strange people, the Americans! The ladies simpered, and put the inevitable query: "How do you ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... 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
... Fenwick was first brought into this room, he had learned nothing 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 her ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... by her visitor's rapid monotone, the stir and clatter of young shoes, remarked petulantly, "Gordon paid two hundred dollars for that single dog; there ought to ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... inflections than the ordinary voice has: there was a note in it that might have belonged to a child's voice; another, more primitive, that betrayed feeling with as little reserve as the cry of an animal. Then it sank, and went on in a monotone, like a Hebrew prayer, as if reiterating things worn threadbare by repetition, and already said too often. Gradually, it died away in the surrounding silence. There was no response but a gentle rustling ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... 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 ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... 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 head would ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... man more fearful and hateful," went on MacIan, in his low monotone voice, "and they have buried him even deeper. God knows how they did it, for he was let in by neither door nor window, nor lowered through any opening above. I expect these iron handles that we both hate have been part of ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... seeking to impart to his perturbed 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 ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... 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 was ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... 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 from the bells! ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... 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
... and went outside into the sunlight, the cat at her heels, the thrill of that one command filling the gray monotone of the hills with wonderful possibilities of adventure. Her father had made no objection before when she went for a ride. He had merely instructed her to keep to the trails, and if she didn't know the way home, to ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... 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. Then there was a little ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... 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 ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... a low voice, sharp in contradistinction to the monotone of the preacher's, was heard to repeat these words: 'I say I am not sure I shall survive it.' Considerable muttering in the same ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... building was already half gutted; out of its windows roared long, fiery tongues; the structure snapped and volleyed a chorus to the sullen monotone of destruction. The street was littered with the household belongings of the neighborhood, and from the galleries and windows near by came such a flight of miscellaneous articles as to menace the safety of ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... 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 ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... picturesque, was always ready to resort to the most extreme measures; he sometimes even went so far as to tell the truth. The noblest and ablest English minds lent their aids. Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser were both rather circumambulatory on paper; the work of each is 'a long monotone broken by two or three exquisite immortalities. But they were both as concise in action as an Elizabethan headsman. Sir Walter helped Lord Grey, the recognised pattern in those days of the Christian gentleman, to put to death seven hundred prisoners-of-war at Smerwick. Spenser, being no ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... 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 ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... 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 him a chance. And always,—always ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... 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
... similarly endured, chiefly fire imagination. Seen grey at gloaming time, golden through sunny dawns, partaking in those spectral transformations cast upon the moor by the movement of clouds, by the curtains of the rain, by the silver of breaking day, the monotone of night and the magic of the moon, these relics reveal themselves and stand as a link between the present and the far past. Mystery broods over them and the jealous wings of the ages hide a measure of their secret. Thus far these lonely rings of horrent stones and the alignments between them have ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... they sang in a soft monotone, while they pulled hard for the mouth of the bay. The priest and I were fairly comfortable in the stern, the steersman perched behind us on the very edge of the combing, balancing himself to the rise and fall of the boat as an acrobat on a rope. I laid my head on my bag ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... 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? Oh, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... and not your garments," so the Vicar adjured the congregation in his agreeable monotone, ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... to give you a bird's-eye view of Germany; rocks, and woods, and clouds, and brooks, and the pebbles in their beds, and mills, and cottages, and fences, and what not; but it is all a feverish dream, ghastly and strange, a monotone ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... side. Midway between the two ridges and fringed with 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 ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... top it hummeth 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 ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... fruit-trees, with branches intermingling, blended the white and pink of blossoms. There was the soft laughter of children in the garden. Strange birds darted among the trees. Their notes were new, but their song was the old delicious monotone—the joy of living and love of spring. A green-bowered irrigation ditch led by the porch and unseen water flowed gently, with gurgle and tinkle, with music in its hurry. Innumerable ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... 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
... Mrs. 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 ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... could see the running lights of the Shelton ships swaying in a freshening breeze, three together in port for the first time in ten years. The sky had become so overcast that every shape outside had merged into an inky monotone. I could hear the low murmur of the wind twisting through the branches of our elms, and the whistle of it as it passed our gables. Once below I heard my father's step, quick and decisive, his voice raised to give an order, and the ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... in hard wrinkles, eyes stonily forlornly closed, psalms in outlandish monotone) That the cows with their those distended udders that they have ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... 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 ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... was raising both hands, palm upwards, to the ceiling, and presently she began to chant in a thrilling monotone: "Hear, O Zeus, that sittest on high, delighting in the thunder, hear the prayer of thy daughter, Aphrodite the peerless, as she calleth upon thee, nor suffer her to be set at nought with impunity! Rise now, ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... satisfied," 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, ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... particularites qu'il savait par tradition (sur ce meme Robert le magnifique, sur l'expedition de Guillaume, &c.) et qui donnent a son oeuvre un reel interet historique. Sa langue est excellente; son style clair, serre, simple, d'ordinaire assez monotone, vous plait par sa saveur archaique et quelquefois par une certaine grace ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... 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
... or some 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
... passages in it, the most beautiful beginning, I think, 'Desolate is the dwelling of Moina,' and the next place being filled by that address to the sun you magnify so with praise. But the charm of these things is the only charm of all the poems. There is a sound of wild vague music in a monotone—nothing is articulate, nothing individual, nothing various. Take away a few poetical phrases from these poems, and they are colourless and bare. Compare them with the old burning ballads, with a wild ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... 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 the gorgeous ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... rose and, taking the Testament in his hand, stood regarding the usher while that official sang out in a solemn monotone— ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... 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 the chapel. If ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... so sure of that," she said slowly, looking straight into his eyes and speaking almost in a monotone. He started. For a moment he ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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 ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... 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 ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... 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 sound fade ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... turned away from the log fire at the sound of Bambi's footsteps running down the stairs. The soft gray gown clung to her, and floated behind her, its ashen monotone making her face more vivid than ever. Her cheeks were pink, and her eyes looked gray-green in the shadowy room, with the deep, shining fire of opals. Both hands went out to ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... army," repeated Decius, in a murmurous monotone, when, for a moment, there were silence and space around him. "We marched by the Lake Trasimenus, and the fog lay thick upon us. Then came a noise of shouts and clash of arms and shrieks, but we saw nothing—only ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... you 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
... 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 ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... themselves. From the thin line came irregularly spurts of smoke, and the spattering of rifle shots. It reminded me of an old picture of the field of Antietam, spiritless in itself, but here made alive by the movement, the noise, the drifting smoke, and the gray monotone. I watched it while the captain explained tomorrow's work; then, glad that today had not fallen to our lot, we marched on, taking up our route step in the soft sand of an ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... 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 cannot ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... face had suddenly grown strange and fixed, began to detail to us what was passing in this scene, in a curious monotone such as a person might use who was repeating something learned by heart. This was the substance of what ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... write in the summer time at our house in Surrey, for Desmond likes to be here at this season, and I write in my old chamber. Before its windows rolls the blue summer sea. Its beauty wears a relentless aspect to me now; its eternal monotone expresses no pity, ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... Sir Francis Vesey was sitting in his private office, a musty den encased within the heart of the city, listening, or trying to listen, to the dull clerical monotone of a clerk's dry voice detailing the wearisome items of certain legal formulae preliminary to an impending case. Sir Francis had yawned capaciously once or twice, and had played absently with a large ink-stained paperknife,—signs ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... 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 grey evening came ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... by Confucius belong to the surface of life; they are the work of those who easily plough light furrows, knowing nothing of hidden gold. Only at rare moments of exaltation or despair do we hear the lyrical cry rising above the monotone of dreamlike content. Even the magnificent outburst at the beginning of this book, in which the unhappy woman compares her heart to a dying moon, is prefaced by vague complaint: My brothers, although ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... finer or more copious hemlocks, many of them large, some old and hoary. Such a 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, ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... Platt were with difficulty dissuaded from attempting acrobatic feats on the parapet; and the city faded from deep purple into a vast grayness. Strange was the little party ensconced in the stone balcony high above the monotone ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... to the ear, And long-indulged makes mad the hearts that hear. The dancers, drunken with the monotone Of oft repeated notes, now shriek and groan And pierce their ruddy flesh with sharpened spears; Still more excited when the blood appears, With warlike yells, high in the air they bound, Then in a deathlike trance ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... 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 into ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... 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 man he was addressing, but ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... on the floor, swearing in a steady monotone. He had been efficiently bound with his own blouse and trousers, which revealed his predilection for maroon shorts with zebra stripes. There was a lump on the back of his head, and a hammer lay close by. Ellen must have stolen the tool and come ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... shone blinding 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 ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... 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
... against a diaphanous sky, and the air was full of delicate spider-webs which the breeze shook and tore asunder. The pines and cypresses—all the evergreen trees—took on something of this colourless pallor, seemed to fade and melt into the all-prevailing monotone. ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... Jack kept saying in a monotone, and suddenly it flashed on Marjorie that he meant for her to ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... various 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 FALLING ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... 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 which ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... was turned 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
... lits, l'ombre qui les couronne, M'enchanent tout le jour sur les bords des ruisseaux; Comme un enfant berc par un chant monotone, Mon me s'assoupit ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... 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 in ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... time with a sympathetic glow; the countenance sensitive, spiritual, with 'mind and music breathing' from it; the general demeanor composed and gracious; her utterance fluent and finished, but somewhat measured; her voice clear and melodious, moving evenly, as it were in a monotone, though now and then rising, with a sort of quiet eagerness, into a higher note." The same writer speaks of the close-fitting flow of her robe, and the luxuriant mass of light-brown hair hanging low on both sides of her head, as marked characteristics of her costume. Her features ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... pleasant life, when wearied Italy, after all her wars 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, mustering and marshalling her peoples. But their coming was not ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... 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 it which thrilled his listeners. "A week ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... half angry protest, seemed wrung from their owner out of sheer anguish. A low monotone made reply, but it was interrupted by a ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... the whole, he 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 ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... 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
... he murmured, 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
... 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 number of lines was first ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... wrapped in flame, and their low mellow roaring mingled to a monotone with the droning of the cat ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... his voice and was speaking in a fierce earnest monotone, as though he was reciting some lesson he had ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... 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 ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... 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"
... to 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
... effect in her. Her pale blue eyes, made paler by tears, cleared and brightened under their swollen lids like wiped steel; the lines of her depressed mouth straightened and became firm. Her voice had lost its hopeless monotone. ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... 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
... should be largely "conversational in style," to cultivate flexibility of voice and to break up the dreary monotone so ...
— New National First Reader • Charles J. Barnes, et al.
... of the appointment of a special prosecuting attorney, David," he said in a harsh monotone. "Who will ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... 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
... 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 ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... 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 ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... 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 ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... in his 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 travelled ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... 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
... 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 ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... 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 ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... church every man, woman, and child—joined in the swinging rhythm of verse after verse, as if they could never tire, of "The Old-Time Religion." It is a simple melody—barely more than a single line of almost monotone music: ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... The voice of his mother raised for a moment above its monotone caused him to turn ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... 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
... a decision, with a sense of certainty, raising them above all doubt. In the rendering of distant mountains, Mr. Dillon evinces new knowledge of what such forms necessarily imply,—their tendency to monotone and to flatness, yet preserving all their essential surface markings, and their inevitable cutting outline against the sky,—which sharpness Mr. Tilton as yet has only hinted at, not represented. Positive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... our drowsy powers!" 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, and hearing with pious thankfulness ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... spirits—an angel of strength and consolation. Always more eager, however, that souls should grow than that pain should cease. Volumes could be made of her letters to friends in sorrow. One tender monotone steals through them all,— ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... 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 the ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... he opens his arms, and stoops as to take up the body. Just then the hound, for some time silent, again gives out its mournful monotone—continuing the dirge the runaway ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... strains that agonised your home. In the brimmed bath you revelled; all the floor Was swamped with spindrift; underneath the door The maddened water gushed, while strong and high Your piercing top-note staggered passers-by. But now I hear the running taps alone, A faint and melancholy monotone; Or just a gentle swirl when sober hope Searches the bath's profound to salve the soap. Sadly I kick the unresponsive door; Youth, with its ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... aloud, and to be quite unconscious of his audience. Though he was saturated with his 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 on the Second Reading of the Home Rule Bill of 1893, Lord Ribblesdale, ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... reflection underlies the whole narrative, often rising naturally to the surface, and revealing the strength of the foundation on which the subtle, aerial inventions of the author are erected. His frequent dashes of humor gracefully blend with the monotone of the story, and soften the harsher colors in which he delights to clothe his portentous conceptions. In no former production of his pen, are his unrivalled powers of description displayed to better advantage. The rusty wooden house in Pyncheon-street, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... the eye could reach, hemmed by low, dun-colored ridges or sharply outlined crests of remote mountain range, in lifeless desolation the landscape lay outspread to the view. Southward, streaked with white fringe of alkali, the flat monotone of sand and ashes blended with the flatter, flawless surface of a wide-spreading, ash-colored inland lake, its shores dotted at intervals with the bleaching bones of cattle and ridged with ancient wagon-tracks unwashed by not so much as a single drop from the cloudless heavens since their first ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... 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 of a to-morrow writes ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... the room," said the priest, leading the way to the cot of a peasant, whose cheeks had the angry red spot of fever. He was Frans Meulebroeck, of Number 62 Drie Sleutelstraat, Alost. Sometimes in loud bursts of terror and suffering, and then falling back into a hopeless pain-laden monotone, ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... these, Mr. Powers informs us, "have been known to shut themselves up in the assembly-hall for the space of a month, with brief intermissions, living the life of a hermit, and spending the whole time in rehearsing the tribal-history in a sing-song monotone to all who chose ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... regulator-clock, with its mercury pendulum, ticked upon the wall; the noise of the heavy rumbling in the streets was softened into a low monotone, and now and then a bit of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... 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
... yes, the store—mine! Mine—the store!" said Prather, in a slow, passionate monotone, his fingers trembling with the very triumph of possession as he thrust the letter into his pocket. "The store, yes, the store!" he repeated, amazement mixed with exultation. "But—" his keen, practical mind was recovering its balance; he was on guard again. Between him and the realization ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... 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 ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... 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 Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... listened, and looked at Constans indifferently. Then he spoke in the inflectionless monotone of extreme old age: ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen |
