"Intonation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... father and Algy, in either of which I can at once detect each fine inflection of anger, contest, or pain; but, comparatively unversed as I am in it, there sounds to me a slight, carefully smothered, yet still perceptible, intonation of disappointment—mortification. I wish that the air would give me back my words; but that it never yet was ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... unfinished intonation, like a rocket that had never dropped its stick, and started up ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... Carl, marking the European intonation. "Badly shaken up, poor devil!—and not sure of his English. That accounts for his peculiar silence. Monsieur," said he civilly in French. "I am not prepared to deliver a homily upon wild driving, but it's well to drive with lights when ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... day gaining strength. As an intimate friend of her brother, I was already, with Dora, on the footing of an old acquaintance; she seemed well enough pleased with my society, and chatted with me willingly and familiarly; but in vain did I watch for some slight indication, a glance or an intonation, whence to derive hope. None such were perceptible; nor could the most egregious coxcomb have fancied that they were. We once or twice fell in with other acquaintances of her's and her brother's, and with them she had just the same frank friendly manner, as with me. I had not sufficient ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... Dean, M. Klein, and three or four more Benedictins, made slight prostrations on one knee, before the altar; and, just as they rose, to our astonishment and admiration, the organ burst forth with a power of intonation (every stop being opened) such as I had never heard exceeded. As there were only a few present, the sounds were necessarily increased, by being reverberated from every part of the building: and for a moment it seemed as if the very dome would have been unroofed, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... G.J.," she agreed, with an intonation of astonishment that he should be guilty of an utterance so obvious and banal. "Did you ever know anything that wasn't? Did you ever even conceive anything that wasn't? If you can show me how to conceive spirit except in terms of matter, I'd like ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... expression of my countenance betrayed me. Several held me tight while the others spoke. Though I did not understand a word of their language, I could not fail to comprehend the tenor of their speeches. Their action, the intonation of their voices, their angry glances, showed it. "Our friends came here, and this man killed them. We came to look for them, and by the same arts with which he destroyed them he had endeavoured to destroy us. There are the proofs of his guilt. How else did he ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... powerful and pathetic by turns, and he possessed great sweetness of intonation,—combined with sympathetic feeling and special felicity of emphasis. And feeling is the vitalising principle of poetry. Jasmin occasionally varied his readings by singing or chaunting the songs which occurred in certain parts of his poems. ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... waiting for?" The question came with a certain weariness of intonation, as though the speaker were somewhat bored; but Hugh Palliser was ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... thoughts from dwelling forever on our unhappy state. In the past six months I have so far mastered the Spanish tongue that now I can converse in it with more ease than in the French. The Governor declares that I have the true intonation; and even Dona Orosia admits that I have shown some aptitude. I care nothing for it as a mere accomplishment; but I hope that the knowledge may be of use if ever we attempt escape. (Though what chance of escape ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... at the table gave her an excuse for silence. She had only to attend to her cups and saucers, and to listen to Miss Wendover and her nephew, who had plenty to talk about. To hear that deep full voice, with its perfect intonation, was in itself a pleasure—pleasant, also, to discover that Brian Wendover, albeit a famous Balliol man and a Greek scholar after the Porsonian ideal, could still be warmly interested in simple things and lowly folk. She began to feel at ease in his presence; she began to perceive ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... and said it all over again with more impassioned gestures than before, and then he edged in touch and softly stroked her wing with his beak. She appeared startled, but did not fly. So again the fountain of half-whistled, half-trilled notes bubbled with the acme of pleading intonation and that time he leaned and softly kissed her as she reached her bill for the caress. Then she fled in headlong flight, while the streak of flame darted after her. The Girl caught her breath in a swift spasm of surprise and wonder. She turned to ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... Excursion trains will be run from distant shires to see this Postage Department. American visitors to London will do it before going on to the Tower. And now,' he broke off, with a crisp, businesslike intonation, 'I must ask you to excuse me. Much as I have enjoyed this little chat, I fear it must now cease. The time has come to work. Our trade rivals are getting ahead of us. The whisper goes round, "Rossiter and Psmith are talking, not working," and other ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... horsemen swept down upon them. The leader might have been either Turk or Frank. He was as dark as a Saracen and wore the chain-mail, scimitar and light helmet of the heathen, but he spoke Levantine rather too well for a Moor, and with a different intonation. ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... His reading, it might have been added, had much hurt the effect of the piece: a dreary pulpit or even conventicle manner; that flattest moaning hoo-hoo of predetermined pathos, with a kind of rocking canter introduced by way of intonation, each stanza the exact fellow Of the other, and the dull swing of the rocking-horse duly in each;—no reading could be more unfavorable to Sterling's poetry than his own. Such a mode of reading, and indeed generally in a man of such vivacity the total ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... Moncton at home?" Her voice was harsh and unpleasant; it had a hissing, grating intonation, which ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... burst upon our ears immediately after that shot was fired. I can compare it to nothing, for nothing I ever heard was like it. If the reader can conceive a human fiend endued with a voice far louder than that of the lion, yet retaining a little of the intonation both of the man's voice and of what we should suppose a fiend's voice to be, he may form some slight idea of what that roar was. It is impossible to describe it. Perhaps Mak's expression in regard to it is the most emphatic and truthful: it was absolutely "horriboble!" Every one has heard a ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... breathlessly, Milburgh told the story of his meeting with Sam Stay. In his distress and mental anguish he reproduced faithfully not only every word, but every intonation, and the Chinaman listened with half-closed eyes. Then, when Milburgh had finished, he put down his bottle and ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... and a little of the whole mystery seemed from that time to attach to the second mate, who before had been no more to me than a long, sallow Nova Scotian, with a disagreeable intonation and rather offensive manners. I began to watch him, desultorily, and was rather startled by something more than a suspicion that he himself was watching me. On one occasion in particular I seemed to observe this. The second mate was lankily stalking the deck, his hands in his pockets. As he paused ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... for consultation—a youth of the round-headed, flaxen, Teutonic type, rather rare here, who came from a village still more remote from the world than this one. Not one word of his fluent and frequent speeches could I understand. It was largely a question of intonation I believe—but ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... he died in the 'reeking keg'?" There was a sharp intonation in the question. The matter seemed to be of importance ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... passion?" repeated grandmother with a parrot-like intonation. "Not one of the Lord's ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... a fine intelligence which brought all the details into harmony and kept the attention fixed on the conception of the character. Thus in Macbeth, which was perhaps, on the whole, his most perfect impersonation, every look and gesture, every intonation, conveyed the idea of one who lived on the border-line of an invisible world, to whom all shapes and actions were half phantasmal, for whom clear vision and sober contemplation were impossible. All his utterances were abrupt, all his movements hurried; a certain wildness, not of mere mental ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... and then, like a coach-horse pricked by the spur, started off at once into the full career of his address, and by dint of active prompting on the part of Dickie Sludge, delivered, in sounds of gigantic intonation, a speech which may be thus abridged—the reader being to suppose that the first lines were addressed to the throng who approached the gateway; the conclusion, at the approach of the Queen, upon sight ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... little vexed at the interruption, and did not feel inclined to stay there with them. Kenneth was at present almost a stranger to me. He had a mischievous, quizzical intonation in his voice when he spoke to me, and Violet, his youngest sister, a bright, merry schoolgirl of fourteen, had confided in me the previous night that 'Kenneth was never so happy as when he was teasing people, and that he ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... gripped her shoulder cruelly. "You will do as I wish?" The words were a question, but the intonation was a command. ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... Porhoet stood in perfect silence. Then he began to recite strange words in Latin. Susie heard him but vaguely. She did not know the sense, and his voice was so low that she could not have distinguished the words. But his intonation had lost that gentle irony which was habitual to him, and he spoke with a trembling gravity that was extraordinarily impressive. Arthur stood immobile as a rock. The flames died away, and they saw one another only by the glow of the ashes, dimly, like persons in a vision of death. There ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... in The Whirlpool (1897) with a very significant change of intonation:—'And that History which he loved to read—what was it but the lurid record of woes unutterable! How could he find pleasure in keeping his eyes fixed on century after century of ever-repeated torment—war, pestilence, tyranny; the stake, the dungeon; tortures ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... he spread carefully out in front of this unexpected client. She spoke then for the first time since he had entered the room. Her voice was low and marvelously sweet. There was very little of the American accent about it, but something in the intonation, especially toward the end of her sentences, was just a ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... although the resemblance was otherwise very near. The manner and personal address of the thirty-five pairs of twins are usually described as very similar, but accompanied by a slight difference of expression, familiar to near relatives, though unperceived by strangers. The intonation of the voice when speaking is commonly the same, but it frequently happens that the twins sing in different keys. Most singularly, the one point in which similarity is rare is the handwriting. I cannot account for this, considering how strongly handwriting runs in families, but I am sure of ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... Intonation.—The first two or three notes of a Gregorian chant introducing the recitative note; usually sung without the organ, by one of the Clergy or choir who is ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... glanced around with that quiet, well-bred air of his which seemed to take everything for granted. Having satisfied himself that all were assembled, he cleared his throat and began to read. His manner and intonation suggested family prayers; and Myra, not doubting that this must be some kind of postscript to the burial service for the private consolation of the family, let her mind wander. The word 'testament' in the first sentence ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... they were, during the few weeks preceding the day upon which she had promised to tell Prince Andras if she would consent to become his wife or not. It was a yes, almost as curt as another refusal, which fell at last from the lips of the Tzigana. But the Prince was not cool enough to analyze an intonation. ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... is away at sea or in service. There is a beautiful seemliness in the extreme youth of the priest who serves these aged children of God. He bends to communicate them with the reverent tenderness of a son, and reads with the careful intonation of far-seeing love. To the old people he is the son of their old age, God-sent to guide their tottering footsteps along the highway of foolish wayfarers; and he, with his youth and strength, wishes no better task. Service ended, we greet each other friendly—for men should not be strange in the acre ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... she—has—gone—home!" It was the thin mysterious voice of little Mary Alice Smith herself that so often queried and responded as above— every word accented with a sweet and eery intonation, and a very gaiety of solemn earnestness that baffled the cunning skill of all childish imitators. A slender wisp of a girl she was, not more than ten years in appearance, though her age had been given ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... Lady Arabella, repeating her words with even a stronger de Courcy intonation; "and your duty ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... Wise, and only Phoebe, that afternoon, enjoying to the full the privilege which chance had thrown in her way. And now, the morning after, she went over it all again in memory. She rehearsed mentally every gesture and intonation of the poet-actor, upon whom alone she had riveted her attention throughout the play, following him in thought, even when he was not on ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... would chant them. To be sure, they will not scan according to the elephantine grace of the pedant's iambics; but then, neither will the Indian songs scan, though I know of nothing more subtly rhythmical. Rhythm is so much a part of the Indian that it is in his walk, in the intonation of his words, in the gesture of his hands. I think most Westerners will bear me out in saying that it is the exquisitely musical intonation of words that betrays Indian blood to the third ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... man could speak of people, he interjected ambiguously) and his mother, with an insatiable curiosity for anything that was rare (filially humorous accent here and a softer flash of teeth), was very anxious to have me presented to her (courteous intonation, but no teeth). He hoped I wouldn't mind if she treated me a little as an "interesting young man." His mother had never got over her seventeenth year, and the manner of the spoilt beauty of at least three counties at the back of the Carolinas. That again got overlaid by the sans-facon of ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... practice of just Intonation, with a view to the abolition of temperament.... By General Perronet Thompson.[320] Sixth Edition. London, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... "There must be some hour in the day when you can be spared. I shall speak to Farmer Hartley about it. Don't look at your clothes, you foolish boy," she continued, with a touch of Queen Hildegardis' quality, yet with a kindly intonation which was new to that potentate. "I am not going to teach your clothes. You are not your clothes!" cried Her Majesty, wondering at herself, and a little flushed with her recent victory over the "minx." The boy's face ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... spoken with something of the old teasing intonation that had once deluded Lydia Sessions into the faith that she held a relation of some intimacy to this man. She glanced at him fleetingly; then, though she felt utterly at sea, ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... get her turned out of any respectable house, and is chased off the stage by the old gentleman in a manner that no gentleman ever chases his servants. Something is the matter with the men's legs: they all move by two steps and a hitch. They all speak with an intonation as unlike the English of real life as if they talked Greek. The young people make fools of the old people in a way they would never dream of in life,—and the old people are preternaturally stupid in submitting to be made fools of. After seeing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... The door closed softly behind him, and slowly he went through gloom to the rail of the ship, and stood there, with the whispered moaning of the sea coming to him out of a pit of darkness. A vast distance away he heard a low intonation of thunder. ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... sound, noise, strain; accent, twang, intonation, tone; cadence; sonorousness &c adj.; audibility; resonance &c 408; voice &c 580; aspirate; ideophone^; rough breathing. [Science, of sound] acoustics; phonics, phonetics, phonology, phonography^; diacoustics^, diaphonics^; phonetism^. V. produce sound; sound, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a long time ago," Mr. Morgan Griffiths repeated, in short, clipping intonation of the English language I will not attempt to reproduce, "but I've often talked it over with Mrs. Morgan Griffiths, and I can see it all now. Times was sore bad, and there was a deal of poverty about. Bread was dear, and iron was cheap—at ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... fingers and uttering most unearthly sounds. Finally, incense was brought, of charcoal with juniper-sprigs; it was swung about, and concluded the morning service to our great relief, for the noises were quite intolerable. Fervid as the devotions appeared, to judge by their intonation, I fear the Lama felt more curious about us than was proper under the circumstances; and when I tried to sketch him, his excitement knew no bounds; he fairly turned round on the settee, and, continuing his prayers and bell-accompaniment, appeared to be exorcising ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... wondered how she got it! For it was unlike that of the people she lived among of her own class. No word-clipping and slurring, no "naughty English" as old Nordin called it, and sing- song intonation with her! She spoke with an almost startling distinctness, giving every syllable its proper value, and her words were as if they had been read out of a ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... to understand in what sense, or on what plane, any particular letter should be taken. I think it probably that in the Sacred Language before mentioned, this could at once have been recognized by a difference in the intonation of the voice. This may have been a survival to some extent of the chanting which was the distinguishing characteristic of the speech of the Second Race. (Secret Doctrine, vol. II, p. 198) In the written language it is not easily possible to discover this ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... to explain I had no chance to do so. I said a few discrepant things that she answered rather by her intonation than ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... communicated by sonorous depth and melodious cadence of the human voice to sentiments the most trivial; [2] nor, on the other hand, how the grandest are emasculated by a style of reading which fails in distributing the lights and shadows of a musical intonation. However, this defect chiefly concerned the immediate impression; the most afflicting to a friend of Coleridge's was the entire absence of his own peculiar and majestic intellect; no heart, no soul, was in anything he said; no strength of feeling in recalling ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... Strindberg did not see at least one class of women clearly and truly. The accuracy with which he portrays woman the parasite, the man-eater, the siren, is quite terrible. No writer of his day was so shudderingly conscious of every gesture, movement, and intonation with which the spider-woman sets out to lure the mate she is going to devour. It may be that he prophesies against the sins of women rather than subtly analyses and describes them as a better artist would have done. The Confessions of a Fool is less a revelation of the soul of his first wife ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... forehead, and a small mouth. I should call him of medium height, about five feet eight and a half to nine inches, and inclined to be a trifle stout. There was no peculiarity about his voice; but it was pleasant and had a good intonation. His smile was exceedingly genial, lighting up his whole face and rendering it very attractive; while, if he were about to say anything humorous, it would beam forth from his eyes even before the words were spoken. As a young man his face was exceedingly ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... called up to the living-room for prayers. Grandfather put on silver-rimmed spectacles and read several Psalms. His voice was so sympathetic and he read so interestingly that I wished he had chosen one of my favorite chapters in the Book of Kings. I was awed by his intonation of the word "Selah." "He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom He loved. Selah." I had no idea what the word meant; perhaps he had not. But, as he uttered it, it became oracular, the ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... to be expected that an extremely English intonation should ever be agreeable to Americans, or an extremely American intonation to Englishmen. We ourselves laugh at a "haw-haw" intonation in English; why, then, should we forbid Americans to do so? If "an accent like a banjo" is recognised as undesirable in America ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... this adaptation to the genius of the people has tended to perpetuate the influence, not only of the Roman Catholic, but also of the Greek church. Even in the pulpit, not merely does the earnest preacher, by vehement gesticulation, by the utmost variety of pause and intonation, act, as far as possible, the scenes which he describes; but the crucifix, if the expression may be permitted, plays the principal part; the Saviour is held forth to the multitude in the living and visible emblem of his sufferings. The ceremonies of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... on his Majesty's business," with an intonation which implied that the same was none of mine. "Gretchen, we shall return to-night, so you may lay two plates at a separate table," with an eye on me. He couldn't have hated me any more than I hated him. "Then, there is no way ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... far superior to that we ascribe to it to-day. It had an operative strength of its own that was independent of the intentions of the officiating priest. The efficacy of prayer depended not on the inner disposition of the believer, but on the correctness of the words, gestures and intonation. Religion was not clearly differentiated from magic. If a divinity was invoked according to the correct forms, especially if one knew how to pronounce its real name, it was compelled to act in conformity to the will of its priest. The sacred words were an incantation that compelled ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... without any looking at the notes or words. There was nothing of this with Thackeray. But the thing read was in itself of great interest to educated people. The words were given clearly, with sufficient intonation for easy understanding, so that they who were willing to hear something from him felt on hearing that they had received full value for their money. At any rate, the lectures were successful. The money was ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... entering a land of eternal dew and roses, and as our car filled with the delicious scent of pine branches and green grasses, the miner, with a solemn look on his face, took off his hat and, turning to me, said, with deep intonation: ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... completely vanished. He remembered his dreary ramble about the lanes as if it had taken place last week. Miss Derwent was still speaking to him; his mind echoed again and again every word she had said, perfectly reproducing her voice, her intonation; he saw her bright, beautiful face, its changing lights, its infinite subtleties of expression. The arch of her eyebrows and the lovely hazel eyes beneath; the small and exquisitely shaped mouth; the little chin, so delicately ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... round the corner at us briskly, a little out of breath. He had an air of having been running after us since the first toot of our horn had warned the village of our presence. He was an Oxford man, clean-shaven, with a cadaverous complexion and a guardedly respectful manner, a cultivated intonation, and a general air of accommodation to the new order of things. These Oxford men are the Greeks of our plutocratic empire. He was a Tory in spirit, and what one may call an adapted Tory by stress of circumstances; that is to ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... and I have been. Thanks to Mr. Selincourt, things are easier with me now; but there is a streak of modesty in me somewhere, and I have been afraid to ask for what I wanted," he said, with a certain wistfulness of intonation which ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... in all its fullness and clarity like a rock in the sea. And without a fundamental control of pitch such a master work will always be beyond the violinist's reach. Many a player has the facility; but without perfect intonation he can never attain the highest perfection. On the other hand, any one who can play a single phrase in absolute pitch has the first and great essential. Few artists, not barring some of the greatest, play with perfect ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... enough in proportion to its length to make possible the playing of the fundamental tones in the first two series, but these notes are never used, and the harmonics above the sixth are also avoided, being of doubtful intonation. In the ophicleide, the bass of the key-bugle, the bore is sufficiently wide to produce the fundamentals ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... pronounced the J-sound as though it were Zh; he gave all his syllables an equally-accented intonation. "Say, somebody gave ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... and blustering heights of sound. He was a strong type of the Southerner, inasmuch as all this amazing vehemence and gesticulation was quite uncalled for. It is remarkable, however, how much may be done by mere action and intonation to impress the listener with the idea that the speaker must be a person of uncommon intelligence. But when half a dozen such talkers are engaged in discussion upon some trivial topic, and each employs the same means to enforce his views upon the rest (this occurs nightly in ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... event. Then suddenly a boche voice called out, a little to our front: "Bist du Deutsch?" That much German I understood. We flattened. As it happened, we were at the foot of a tree at the base of which grew brush. We lay motionless. Again the voice, with its demand in intonation. ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... he could see her. He would lie for hours contentedly watching her as she worked or read to him. Sometimes the thin hand would touch a fold of her dress caressingly, as though even that were sacred to him, and not a change of the speaking face or an intonation of her voice would be ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... horses could not drag her away from it, if an invitation came to her. But, as I say, this side of the wedding seemed to have nothing to do with it, when I thought of all that lay beneath; my one interest to-day was to see John Mayrant, to get from him, if not by some word, then by some look or intonation, a knowledge of what he meant to do. Therefore, disappointment and some anxiety met me when I stepped from the Hermana's gangway upon her deck, and Charley asked me if he was coming. But the launch, sent back to wait, finally brought ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... happens that a very slight thing will recall a very long chain of circumstances; a look, the intonation of a word, the attitude of a moment, will call up other looks and words and attitudes in quick succession, until the chain is complete. So it happened to me, when I saw the learned professor standing ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... in hers. "You say you can sing; let me hear you." Anielka seated herself on an ottoman. She clasped her hands over her knees, and tears fell into her lap. With plaintive pathos, and perfect truth of intonation, she prayed in song. The Hymn to the Virgin seemed to Teresina to ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... twisting it about. It seemed as though she were not only well and blooming, but in the happiest frame of mind. She was talking rapidly, musically, and with exceptionally correct articulation and expressive intonation. ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... gestures were those which rose spontaneously and unconsciously with the thought, and were wholly unstudied; thus presenting an obvious contrast to the manner and action of his friend Randolph, whose every attitude, the slightest motion of whose finger, the faintest intonation of whose voice, whose every smile and frown, natural as they seemed, were the deliberate reflection of ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... step; and the last step with which they turn in place, facing the line after they have passed through the gates, should have a similar accent. The questions and answers should be given with varied intonation ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... fallen, he was determined to persevere. Since his reformation two years ago he had been giving temperance lectures. He is a young man, a powerful, swinging sort of speaker, with a good command of language, original, with peculiar intonation, pronunciation and idioms, sometimes rough, but eminently popular with his audiences. He spoke for an hour and a half steadily, wiping the perspiration from his face at intervals, taking up the greater part of his address ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... it honour?"—his host took him up with an intonation that often comes back to him. "That's what I want you to go in for. I mean the real thing. ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... Allport, with the full power of his down-east nasal intonation. "Yer couldn't hit nearer the mark ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... of the adults played a yodel on his trombone sounding like this: "Ka-ka-ka, k-wilt, k-wilt, k-wilt", the first three short syllables enunciated rapidly, and the "k-wilts" in a more measured way, with a peculiar guttural intonation, giving the full sound to the k and w. The birds became very shy when they thought themselves shadowed, not understanding what my pursuit might imply, and they gave utterance to harsh cries of warning that ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... not, for the life of me, comprehend the drift of this question, but there was no mistaking the insolent intonation of it. I ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... "Principles of Singing," p. 142, says: "If children are allowed to sing their higher notes forte, before the voice is properly equalized, it will become hard, harsh and hoarse, and they will fail in correct intonation. A mistake in this direction not only ruins the middle register but destroys the voice altogether. The consequence of encouraging forte singing is to change a soprano rapidly to an alto; and they will generally sing alto equally forte because their vocal cords have lost their elasticity ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... a throbbing pathos in the intonation, and the verse floated over the weeping throng; when, after a pause, the strain was taken ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... said Raoul, arresting the giddy girl, and giving to his voice an intonation, the gravity of which contrasted with that of Montalais; "forgive me, but may I inquire the name of the protector you speak of; for if protection be extended towards you, Mademoiselle Montalais,—for which, indeed, so many reasons exist," added Raoul, bowing, "I do not see that the ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... she said, with a peculiar intonation. "Oh! if you only knew how I longed to meet the right men. Uncle is a convert—no, hardly a backslider; but he swears by the regenerating process instead of violence. Formerly the cleverest living chemist, he now—oh! I shame to ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... when in the Senate, he used to take his position by leaning against the pillar behind his seat, twirling in one hand his spectacles, while with the other he enforced, by slight gestures, the more striking passages of his speech. His delivery was far from animated, and his intonation was rather conversational than declamatory. He has a quiet dignity at all times, which is yet consistent with a polite and amiable demeanor; and while the former inspires the respect, the latter elicits the esteem ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... fly across the geographical comma that divides the two islands. I was next told by another native of Trapani that the quails rest on all the three islands indiscriminately and not merely on Levanzo and Favognana, thus destroying any attempt at purity of intonation and introducing equal temperament along with Marettimo, which had not hitherto been touched upon. He also said that if in any year it was found that the quails avoided any one of the islands, the reason would be that there were too many people on it. Finally, I ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... Antonina on the previous night, was doubled in intensity as he thought on her now. Again he recalled her eloquent words, and remembered the charm of her gentle and innocent manner; again he dwelt on the beauties of her outward form. Each warm expression; each varying intonation of voice that had accompanied her petition to him for safety and companionship; every persuasion that she had used to melt him, now revived in his memory and moved in his heart with steady influence and increasing power. All the hurried and imperfect ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... than knowledge are a physician's passepartout among the ladies who bring their ailments to our provincial spas. The face which the lad lifted towards my bedroom window was a remarkably handsome one, though pallid, and the voice in which he answered my challenge had a foreign intonation, but musical and in no way resembling the brogue for which I had ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and very much frightened for fear he should talk Greek; on the other side he was relieved by Sir John Merton,—very civil, very pompous, and talking, at strictured intervals, about county matters, in a measured intonation, savouring of the House-of-Commons jerk at the end ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book V • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... lord!" cries the Master, with a mounting intonation, and his forefinger very conspicuously lifted up. "Be at rest: it will not fail you. It now remains that I should salute these gentlemen whom we have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dislike, that I contemplated the first Scotchman I chanced to meet in society. There was much about him that coincided with my previous conceptions. He had the hard features and athletic form said to be peculiar to his country, together with the national intonation and slow pedantic mode of expression, arising from a desire to avoid peculiarities of idiom or dialect. I could also observe the caution and shrewdness of his country in many of the observations which he made, and ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... he replied, with a peculiar intonation of voice, that might have been construed in many ways. He then proceeded to give me many details of the school at Islington, which convinced me, if there he had never been, he had conversed with some one who had. Still, he evaded all my attempts at cross-examination, with a skill which gave ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Nina, and she looked up at him with pride. "I am glad you are here to-night; I seem to be especially glad——" She broke off, but her intonation conveyed unspoken thoughts. ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... interesting to unlearned Lovers of Verse, how alive soever they may be to poetic beauty.—A literal translation in the plainest prose, will always shew the precise quantity of real poetic matter, contained in any Production, independent of the music of its intonation, and numbers, and the elegance of its style.—The prose translations of Horace' Odes evince that their merit does not consist in the plenitude of poetic matter, or essence, constituted by circumstances of startling interest, by exalted ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... Her intonation demanded a negative, but Artois did not hasten to give it. Instead he turned the conversation ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the two of them were upon Larry and pulling him toward the doorway of the cage. Inside, he was jerked; he shouted wildly; but the girl slammed the door. Then in a soft, girlish voice, in English with a curiously indescribable accent and intonation, ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... but calm with the still, iron-bound calmness of death—the only calm one there—Katherine stood; and her words smote on the ear in tones whose appallingly slow and separate intonation rung on the heart like a chill, isolated tolling of some ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... out her hand with a smile—this girl was certainly a picture. Miss Daphne Wing smiled, too, and said, with the intonation of those who have been ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... intimidate. He had quite an extensive vocabulary of sounds, varying from a gruff bark to a shrill whistle; and we could tell by them, without seeing him, when it was he was hungry, eating, frightened, or menacing; doubtless, one of his own species would have understood various minor shades of intonation and expression that we, not entering so fully into his feelings and wants, passed over as unintelligible.* There is a third species of monkey (Mycetes palliatus), called by the natives the congo, which occasionally is heard ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... you. I will be quite plain with you, sir; perhaps the truth's best, though it's hard enough. I've seen him; that's why I couldn't tell you any more. And it's all over and done, and God help us! We must make the best of it. You see, sir, he is married," said the girl, with a sharp intonation in her voice like ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... and crying that he had been robbed; that they had stolen his boat. Daniel had been unable the night before to distinguish the form or the dress of the man whose services he had accepted; but he had heard his voice, and he recalled the peculiar intonation so perfectly, that he would have recognized it among thousands. Besides, this poor devil did not know a word of French (more than ten persons bore witness to it); and born on the river, and having always lived there, he was an excellent sailor. Finally, it ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... was tall, slender, elegantly formed, and extremely graceful; her features were regular and finely chiseled, and her hair beautiful; her eyes were too light, and her eyebrows and eyelashes too pale for expression; her voice wanted variety and brilliancy for comic intonation, but was deep and sonorous, and of a fine pathetic ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... somewhere in early days the conviction that the South was the land of romance, of cavaliers and gallants and black eyes flashing behind mantillas and outspread fans, and somehow when Sister Soulsby used this intonation ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... had uttered that word, with deep but low intonation. Presently Mr. Wood said, "I cannot proceed without some investigation into what has been asserted, and evidence ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... his pious intonation, "if the Osages are loyal, that clears Jean here. He's an Osage, ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Parkinson; and envied him and internally noted, and with an unholy fervor cursed, the adroitness of intonation and the discreetly modulated gesture with which the colonel gave to every point of his merry-Andrewing its ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... those variations of intonation which mean an effort to be delicate, "is—is there any likelihood that the factory will open up ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... as if a voice from heaven had spoken with this perfect society intonation, and by the puzzled profundity of his blue eyes fluttered the wax-flower of refined womanhood. She continued. "For—I can speak to you openly on this tiresome subject—only think what a terrible strain this hope deferred must be for Felicia's heart—for ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... beautiful to see and touching to hear as Elizabeth. In the duet with Tannhauser she had some splendid moments of representation, and her great scene in the finale she sang and realised in an incomparable manner. Formes's intonation was firm, pure, and correct, and there was no sign of fatigue in the narration, where his sonorous, powerful voice told admirably. Altogether Formes is not only adequate but highly satisfactory, in spite of his small stature, which, especially ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... punishment for their daring to thwart the will of Venice, if betrayed, caused a deeper feeling than that which usually pervades a marriage ceremony, to preside at nuptials thus celebrated. The youthful Violetta trembled at every intonation of the solemn voice of the monk, and towards the close she leaned in helplessness on the arm of the man to whom she had just plighted her vows. The eye of the Carmelite kindled as he proceeded with the office, however; ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... thought so," said Mr. Pope, with a peculiar intonation; and after that he proceeded with great suavity to cross-examine her into a state of utter bewilderment. As to what had happened after the accident she contradicted herself six or seven times over, eagerly accepting any suggestion which he held out to her; and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... the reporters would not try to improve on what I say. They seem to miss the fact that the very art of saying a thing effectively is in its delicacy, and as they can't reproduce the manner and intonation in type they make it emphatic and clumsy in trying to convey it ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... unconsciously and instinctively dropping into the fashion that to him was so sacred. Love always delights in imitation; and the disciples of a great teacher will unconsciously catch the trick of his intonation, even the awkwardness of his attitudes or the peculiarities of his way of looking at things—only, unfortunately, outsides are a good deal more easily imitated than insides. And many a disciple copies such external trifles, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... thing, because the voice and the intonation were perfect. John opened his jacket and brought out a miniature American flag, which was unrolled, and the moment the strange being caught sight of it he seized it and pressing it to ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... made of me in fluent Canadian French by a soldier of Quebec. I came on a man who must have been a full-blooded Indian standing by himself, staring straight in front of him with wholly emotionless eyes. On every side of me I heard the curious Canadian intonation of English speech. ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... to her side, and with a touch of triumphant pride, said to him, "It is Bertram, the friend of my youth. He has risked his life to save me from dishonor." Feodor felt the reproof which lay in the intonation of these words, and his brow grew dark. But he overcame this momentary irritation, and turning to Bertram, who was approaching him with a firm and determined step, asked him, "Well, sir, whom ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... coarse and largely sensual, but each movement of his fat hands was protective, every word he uttered was kind, the very intonation of his voice was comforting. He was, in a word, human, and this attracted all that ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... would not interest the reader as they did me, and not because I have forgotten them. No; I remember them well; for I thought them over and over again in the course of that day and many succeeding ones, I know not how often; and recalled every intonation of his deep, clear voice, every flash of his quick, brown eye, and every gleam of his pleasant, but too transient smile. Such a confession will look very absurd, I fear: but no matter: I have written it: and they that read it ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... conscious yet?" It was the voice of a foreigner, with a queer, indescribable intonation. A foot prodded ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... a tall and imposing figure with a tremendous voice. The voice of Cothurnus is one of the most important things in the acting play. He should have a voice deeper than the voice used by any of the other persons, should speak weightily and with great dignity, but almost without intonation, and quite without feeling, as if he had said the same words many times before. Only in his last speech may he be permitted a comment on the situation. This speech should be spoken quite as impressively as the others and fully ...
— Aria da Capo • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... brilliant as her complexion, and jewels as sparkling as her eyes, recounted in her silvery treble the latest flowers of fashionable gossip. I am always glad to be one of any audience which Mrs. Molyneux addresses, not so much out of admiration for the discourse itself, as for the charm of gesture and intonation with which it is delivered. But the main question—the subject of Atherley's conversion—she did not approach till we were in the drawing-room, luxuriously established in deep and softly-cushioned ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... with just the faintest trace of kindly reproach in their intonation. Simple as they were, they managed to deprive John of all power to frame a suitable reply. He bowed over the little white hand extended to him, and murmured something which was inaudible even to himself, while he despised what he considered his ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... have seen somewhere," he quietly finished, but with a meaning smile and intonation. "How you do snap a fellow up, Aunt Margie! Here, give me the money, and I will clear out before ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... was looked upon with surprise and bewilderment until people realised that it was poetry. But his importance in the history of the Russian Novel is of another kind. It is firstly in his deliberate effort to "deliteralize" Russian prose, to give it the accent, the intonation, and the syntax of the spoken language. He has fully achieved his ends; he has created a prose which is entirely devoid of all bookishness and even on the printed page gives the illusion of being heard, ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... necklace, "to deter the French brothers from unkind thoughts," I felt that the worst of the day was over, and welcomed the Ottawa speakers with a relaxation of the tension that had held me, for I had been upon the rack. Mind and ear had been taxed to miss no word or intonation, for a slighted syllable might lose our cause. The speeches had droned like flies at midday, but all the verbiage had been heavy with significance. I spoke French, Huron, and Ottawa in turn, and through it all I listened, listened for the opening of ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... trebled the Columbiad's charge; they could have quadrupled or quintupled it!" exclaimed Michel, with whom the verb took a higher intonation each time. ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... Stolidly with unheedful, drooping ears the little fox-terrier resumed his seat on the rug. "Ichabod—Jabez—Joab," Stanton's voice persisted, experimentally. By nine o'clock, in all possible variations of accent and intonation, he had quite completely exhausted the alphabetical list as far as "K." and the little dog was blinking himself to sleep on the far side of the room. Something about the dog's nodding contentment started Stanton's mouth to yawning and for almost ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... so strong a German accent, and pronounced the barbarous words with so foreign an intonation, that no trace or impression whatever was left by them on Mr. ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... heard the hoarse murmur of their voices and knew by their very intonation (since I could hear no words as yet) that they were speaking English. Reaching the summit, and mighty cautious, I came where I might look down ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... this vast Aeolian intonation, when my eye filled with the golden fulness of life, the pomps of the heavens above, or the glory of the flowers below, and turning when it settled upon the frost which overspread my sister's face, instantly a trance fell upon me. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... addressed, signed to the unoccupied waiting-women to withdraw, seated herself on a low cushion opposite the queen, and began to read with an intelligent and practised intonation; the reading went on for some time uninterrupted by any sound but the clink of metal ornaments, the rustle of rich stuffs, the trickle of oils or perfumes as they were dropped into the crystal bowls, the short and whispered questions of the women who were attiring the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... they were primarily. They had no fixed values, to be altered by adjectives and adverbs. These latter were tools of speech not yet invented. Instead of qualifying nouns or verbs by the use of adjectives and adverbs, we qualified sounds by intonation, by changes in quantity and pitch, by retarding and by accelerating. The length of time employed in the utterance of a particular sound ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... is contemptible," Dorothy's intonation indicated strong disapproval of the cowardly attempt to ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... the Cherokee's comprehension of the language of which, however, the Indians generally spoke only a few disconnected phrases. So practiced were the savages in all the arts of pantomime, in the interpretation of facial expression and the intonation of the voice, that L'Epine had known in his varied wanderings of instances of tribes in conference, each ignorant of the other's language, who nevertheless reached a definite and intricate mutual understanding without the services of an interpreter. L'Epine felt ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... for duty," I heard him say. "You will report to the N.C.O. at the end of the quay." His intonation was a model ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... days—three eternities—I have taxed my memory to an alarming extent. I have recalled everything that I have said for the last two weeks, word by word, syllable for syllable, endeavoring to give to each expression its intonation, its inflection, its sharps and flats. Every different signification that the music of the voice could give to a thought, I have analyzed, debated, commented upon twenty times a day. Not a word, accent nor gesture has enlightened me. I defy the most embittered and envious ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... he had a tuneful tongue, Such happy intonation, Wherever he sat down and sung He left a small plantation; Whenever in a lonely grove He set up his forlorn pipes, The gouty oak began to move And ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... with the intonation of people who are dreaming aloud; "yes, the last, indeed. But also," he continued with great ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... continued the collector without the slightest change of intonation, "she used to imitate it to puzzle Willy Woolly. A merry heart! ... All was so still after it stopped beating. The clocks forgot ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... emerged from the paths and avenues of the Bois, he had almost reached his own house, and still, for he had not yet thrown off the intoxication of grief, or his whim of insincerity, but was ever more and more exhilarated by the false intonation, the artificial sonority of his own voice, he continued to perorate aloud in the silence of the night: "People 'in society' have their failings, as no one knows better than I; but, after all, they are people to whom some things, at least, are impossible. So-and-so" ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... a pleasant, high-bred looking gentleman, brown-complexioned, and dark-eyed, with a brisk and resolute cast of countenance, that, Ethel thought, might have suited the Norman of Glenbracken, who died on the ruddy Lion of Scotland, and speaking with the very same slight degree of Scottish intonation as she remembered in her mother, making a most ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... being listened to. To speak is to give articulate utterance even to a single word; the officer speaks the word of command, but does not talk it. To speak is also to utter words with the ordinary intonation, as distinguished from singing. To chat is ordinarily to utter in a familiar, conversational way; to chatter is to talk in an empty, ceaseless ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... the end. After retiring alarmed into the burrows, he repeats at intervals a deep internal moan. All these, and many other indescribable guttural, sighing, shrill, and deep tones, are varied a thousand ways in strength and intonation, according to the age, sex, or emotions of the individual; and I doubt if there is in the world any other four-footed thing so loquacious, or with a dialect so extensive. I take great pleasure in going to some spot where they are abundant, and sitting quietly to ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... special apples the king loved to receive from him, mille-fleurs pippins, painted with a thousand tiny streaks of red, yellow, and green. A dish of them came to table now, with a bottle, at the right moment, from the darkest corner of the cellar. And then, in nasal voice, well-trained to Latin intonation, giving a quite medieval amplitude to the poet's sonorities of rhythm and vocabulary, the Sub-prior was bidden to sing, after the notation of Goudimel, the "Elegy of the Rose"; the author girding cheerily at the clerkly man's assumed ignorance ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... hollow tree with apertures. If I were to close them all but one, and keep that for the door? No: trees have betrayed me; I'll never trust another tree with you. Stay; I know, I know—a cavern." He uttered the verb rather loudly, but the substantive with a sudden feebleness of intonation that was amusing. His timidity was superfluous; if he had said he knew "a bank whereon the wild thyme grows," the suggestion would have been well received ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... it to them; and so beautifully that they were all but melted to tears—especially the monsieur, who was evidently very sentimental and very much in love. Besides, there was that ineffable charm of the pure French intonation, so caressing to the Belgian ear, so dear to the Belgian soul, so unattainable by Flemish lips. It was one of Barty's most successful ditties—and if I were a middle-aged burgher of Mechelen, I shouldn't much like to have a young French Barty singing "Cours, mon aiguille" ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... forest, at a point admirably suited to deeds of violence, we met a couple of Torpindas, who stopped us to inquire the way to the nearest town; at least I conclude that this was their object, from the peculiar gestures which they used, and the intonation which they gave to their voices; for as to their words, of these I could make nothing. Having just been stuffed with a tale of their lawless habits, the sight of these persons threw me, of course, on the alert. I grasped the butt of my gaff-stick,—an excellent weapon, ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... number was given, consisting of an orchestral selection by four players belonging to St. Ignace and to the choir of Father Rielle's big church, St. Jean-Baptiste-on-the-Hill. A cornet, two fiddles and a flute rendered the music with good time and fair intonation, and as it was lighthearted, even gay in character, melodious and tripping, Ringfield thought it must be of operatic origin, but found later on to his intense surprise that it was a transcription of Mozart's Twelfth Mass, interpreted ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... like this, an' they won't be wheat enough in this whole county to make a cake," said Anson, with a calm intonation, which after all betrayed the anxiety he felt. They sat down in the wagon-shed near the horses' mangers. They listened to the roar of the wind and the pleasant sound of the horses eating their hay, a good while before either of them spoke ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... nibbling of Passover bread, while four cups of red wine are drunk. Mournfully merry, seriously gay, and mysteriously secret as some old dark legend, is the character of this nocturnal festival, and the traditional singing intonation with which the Agade is read by the father, and now and then reechoed in chorus by the hearers, first thrills the inmost soul as with a shudder, then calms it as mother's lullaby, and again startles it so suddenly ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... laughed, and twirled up the ends of his mustaches till they presented a particularly desperate appearance. Yet there was a faint intonation of anxiety in his ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... replied the boy in the slouchy speech and intonation of the hills. "I jest came in with dad this mornin', bringin' a ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of the store half-rose from his chair, then threw himself back with an exclamation of disgust. He again ejaculated the words with which he had greeted his son's unexpected kisses, but now there was a vast difference in the intonation. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... intonation, and throwing himself backwards in his large easy chair, repeated: "An orphan girl," at the same time putting a half angry, half comical expression into his countenance, and perpetrating a pun in what followed: "Yes, many of your Canadian noblesse would bless ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... learn the mechanism of my art; that is, to choose the salient points and to bring them out, to calculate the effects and keep them in proportion with the unfolding of the plot, to avoid monotony in intonation and repetition in accentuation, to insure precision and distinctness in pronunciation, the proper distribution of respiration, and incisiveness of delivery. I must study; study again; study always. It was not an easy thing to put these precepts into practice. Very often ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... veritable negro minstrelsy—how they all sing in unison, having never, it appears, attempted or heard anything like part-singing. Their voices seem oftener tenor than any other quality, and the tune and time they keep something quite wonderful; such truth of intonation and accent would make almost any music agreeable. That which I have heard these people sing is often plaintive and pretty, but almost always has some resemblance to tunes with which they must have become acquainted through the instrumentality of white men; their overseers or ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... night, before," observed he, looking around him, and then at Cornelia; "on the same road, too; but it never made me feel as now. It is beautiful." He used the word with a doubtful intonation, as if unaccustomed to it, and not quite sure whether ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... breeze, an inspiring song of liberty burst from the joyous company—one of those soul-stirring songs of Belman, which find a response in the breast of every Swede—wild, impassioned, and patriotic, breathing in every word and intonation the chivalrous spirit of men whose ancestry had fought under the glorious banners ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... to influence its hearers, to carry you indeed a little out of yourself by its variety of intonation, its fire and fervour, its languishing modulations, broken pauses, yearning melancholy of effect. The part of the neurotic hero of the—then—Laureate's poem, that somewhat pinch-beck Victorian Hamlet, suited our young friend, moreover, down to the ground. It ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... worse than want of depth and fineness of intonation in a period, is all gross excess of colour, because excess of colour is connected with graver faults in the region of the intellectual conscience. Macaulay is a constant sinner in this respect. The wine of truth is in his cup a brandied draught, a ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... intonation of voice and the wordy spirit of the poem convinced me that poetry with them was an artificial taste. I turned away. The dark earth and the rolling sky were better. ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... pew, for his words were obviously intended to hurry up a brother officer with whom he was to take the morning ride to the firing line. Sticking his curly, sunburnt head around the corner he drawled in inimitable British intonation:- ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... he told me afterwards that, in spite of being deeply moved, he felt at one moment as if he could have sworn at me for not having asked him to prompt me. It happened in this way: I began my speech in a clear and full voice, but suddenly the sound of my own words, and their particular intonation, affected me to such an extent that, carried away as I was by my own thoughts, I imagined I SAW as well as HEARD myself before the breathless multitude. While I thus appeared objectively to myself I remained in a sort of trance, during which I seemed to be ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... every intonation of her voice under her control. There was no hint of irony or triumph. She was a respectful lady's maid, frankly answering questions about her dead mistress. But she did not so successfully keep sentinel over her looks. She could not but glance from time ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... difficult combinations of sounds. Sixteen keys were sufficient to produce all the sounds. In enunciating the simple sounds, the movements of the mouth could be seen. The parts were made of gum elastic. The figure was made to say, with a peculiar intonation, but surprising distinctness, 'Mr. Patterson, I am glad to see you.' It sang, 'God save Victoria,' and 'Hail Columbia,'—the words and air combined. Dr. Patterson had determined to visit the maker of the machine, Mr. Faber, in private, in order to obtain further ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... had seen her even smile other than bitterly. Characteristically unconscious of any humor in her error, he remained unembarrassed. But he could not help noticing a change in the expression of her face, her voice, and even her intonation. It seemed as if that fit of laughter had loosed the last ties that bound her to a self-imposed character, had swept away the last barrier between her and her healthier nature, had dispossessed a painful unreality, and relieved the morbid tension of a purely nervous attitude. ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... have been great friends, and it seems as though Polly really understands things she says to her. She bought her in New Orleans, where she boarded next door to the Cathedral. So Polly soon learned to intone the service, not the words, but exactly the intonation. ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden |
