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More "Monotony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with that of any contemporary beauty, we arrive at the conclusion, strange as this may be, that the greater part of his love-poetry is a scholastic exercise upon emotions transmuted into metaphysical and mystical conceptions. Only two pieces in the long series break this monotony by a touch of realism. They are divided by a period of more than thirty years. The first seems to date from an early epoch of ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... direction, their eyes met. They were both above the average height, so they looked at one another over the heads of many people, and in both their faces was something of the same expression—the faint interest born of a relieved monotony. The girl deliberately turned towards him. He was an unknown guest and alone. There were times when her duties ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... is becoming tired of this small pleasant stream running along a mere declivity of the table-land of Ben Muich Dhui. But he will not be long distressed by its peaceful monotony. Presently, as he comes in sight of the valley below, and Loch Avon lying in a small pool at the base of the dizzy height, the stream leaps at once from the edge of the hill, and disappears for a time, reappearing again far down in a narrow thread, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... had their sea legs on. All had become acquainted, and settled down to a regular routine. But the time dragged, and as there were no morning or evening papers, something seemed necessary to break the monotony. ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... soldiers of the Lower Empire, which almost reproduces the high-flown rhetoric in which Corneille's and Racine's characters address each other. Such phrases as the "majesty of the throne," "the dignity of the purple," the "wisdom of the senate," recur with a rather jarring monotony, especially when the rest of the narrative is designed to show that there was no majesty nor dignity nor wisdom involved in the matter. We feel that the writer was thinking more of his sonorous sentence than of the real fact. On the other hand, nothing but a want of candour or taste can lead any ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... wheels affected his thought, kept it on the one subject, shaped it to a monotony of verbal suggestion. Not a novel suggestion, by any means; something that his fancy had often played with; very much, perhaps, as that ingenious criminal spoken of by Serena amused himself with the picture of a wrecked train long before he resolved ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... a tired child, And weep away this life of care, Which I have borne, and still must bear, Till death like sleep might seize on me, And I might feel in the warm air, My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony! ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... river than the stretch which immediately precedes that crowded fairway. It is bounded on each side by a low sea wall, behind which a dreary expanse of marsh and salting spreads away into the far distance. Here and there the level monotony is broken by a solitary hut or a disused fishing hulk, but except for the passing traffic and the cloud of gulls perpetually wheeling and screaming overhead there is little sign of life ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... does not lie in reaching the destination, but in the companions met with on the journey, the changing scenery through which the traveler passes, and even the inconveniences that break up the monotony of the ordinary routine life. It is so with our life- work. The cradle and the grave mark the beginning and the end of the journey, but the joy of living lies in the varied incident and effort to be ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... day; the shadows of reed and island seemed fixed for ever as in a magic mirror—a mirror that somebody had breathed upon, and, listening to the little gurgle of the water about the limestone shingle, one seemed to hear eternity murmuring its sad monotony. ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... of loss; for, henceforth, the Vier Marchi would lack a familiar interest; but mostly the people of Mattingley's world were wakeful through curiosity. Morbid expectation of the hanging had for them a gruesome diversion. The thing itself would break the daily monotony of life and provide hushed gossip for vraic gatherings and veilles for a long time to come. Thus Elie Mattingley would not die ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was left alone at the cottage; and it happened by no means seldom that she was altogether alone, for the negro whom they called the gardener would go to her father's place at Hamilton, and the two black girls would crawl away up to the road, tired with the monotony of the sea at the cottage. Caleb had more than once told her that she was too much alone, but she had laughed at him, saying that solitude in Bermuda was not dangerous. Nor, indeed, was it; for the people are quiet and well-mannered, ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... the loves of Father Zeus, and mother of no less a lady than the goddess Venus. The child was very near being called Maria, although there are already twenty-three other Marias, Mariettas, Mariuccias, and so forth at the convent. But the sister-bookkeeper, who apparently detests monotony, bethought her to look out Dionea first in the Calendar, which proved useless; and then in a big vellum-bound book, printed at Venice in 1625, called "Flos Sanctorum, or Lives of the Saints, by Father Ribadeneira, S.J., with the addition of such Saints as have no assigned place in the Almanack, ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... outsiders—which is called for want of a better term "sympathy between officers and men." It is a bond of mutual generosity and loyalty, strong as steel, more formidable to an enemy than armaments; strengthened by monotony and a common vigil, it thrives on hardships shared, and endures triumphant, as countless tales shall tell, down to the gates ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... western wall of the 'Arabah valley, whose name they assume (Jibl el-'Arabah). The scene abruptly shifts. A mottle of clouds sheds moving shadows over the hill-crests, and relieves them from the appalling monotony of yesterday. Brilliant rainbow hues, red, green, mauve, purple, yellow and white clays, gleam in the lowlands, and form dwarf bluffs; while inland, peering above the granites, the syenites, and the porphyries ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... something, but the battles had not begun, and his soldiers hardly knew what it promised. One or two observers claimed that he was ambitious, but these were chiefly laughed at. To the brigade at large he seemed prosaic, tedious, and strict enough, performing all duties with the exactitude, monotony, and expression of a clock, keeping all plans with the secrecy of the sepulchre, rarely sleeping, rising at dawn, and requiring his staff to do likewise, praying at all seasons, and demanding an implicity ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... ordered to report to Gen. W.T. Sherman, then in command of the Department of the Cumberland, and they at once received orders to proceed to Lebanon Junction, about thirty miles south of Louisville. The regiment remained at this camp about six weeks before anything occurred to relieve the monotony of camp life, although there were numerous rumors of night attacks by large bodies of Confederates. On the 15th of November, 1861, Gen. Buell assumed command of all the volunteers in the vicinity of ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... would compel her to eschew. As for the rising light in the legal profession, he began to find the weight she leant upon him oppressive, and his occupation, delightful at first, palling and growing monotonous. The monotony he somewhat relieved by frequently kissing her, now on one velvet cheek, now on the other, and again her lips; slowly, one two, three, in waltz measure; and rapidly, one, two three, four, in two-step measure, when all at once in the midst of a sustained half note there came ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... long a chap remains On sentry-go, to chase monotony He exercises of his brains, That is, assuming that he's got any. Though never nurtured in the lap Of luxury, yet I admonish you, I am an intellectual chap, And think of things that would astonish you. I often think it's comical—Fal, lal, la! ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... in the country; the eldest was womanly and refined, the second, with her Roman type of beauty and bronze-coloured head, lovely in a manner peculiarly her own; the youngest, as yet, was merely an amiable young girl. The girls would have liked to get away from the monotony of provincial life, and their release came when their father was appointed to a professorship at Copenhagen University. There was an ease of manner and a tone of mental distinction pervading the whole family. ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... different State societies were listened to the next morning. After the report from Massachusetts had been given by Mr. Blackwell, Miss LELIA PATRIDGE, of Pennsylvania, spoke as follows: To one advocating this matter of equal suffrage, one of the noticeable things is the monotony of the objections brought against it, although each one is brought forward as if just evolved from the inner consciousness of the objector and never thought of before. One of these most commonly heard is that women do ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... was the rueful answer. "We commence our toil at daybreak, and too often continue until midnight. There are times when the monotony jars upon a sensitive mind, as the camp cooking does upon a sensitive palate. But our chief never expects more from us than he will do himself, and is ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... the greatest joy among the Pioneers, when they received instructions to prepare for an advance to Khusalghar. Officers and men alike were in the highest spirits, and not the least pleased was Lisle, who had begun to tire of the monotony of camp life. The mention of the place at which they were to assemble put an end to the discussion, that had long taken place, as to route to be followed. Six days' easy march along a good road would take them to Shinawari ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... familiar with all that is umbrageous should receive their first impressions of our Scottish trees at Duneira and Dunkeld. Nor will those impressions be weakened as they proceed towards Blair Atholl. In that famous Pass, they will feel the power possessed by the sweet wild monotony of the universal birch woods—broken but by grey crags in every shape—grotesque, fantastical, majestic, magnificent, and sublime—on the many-ridged mountains, that are loth to lose the green light of their beloved forests, retain it as long as they can, and on the masses of ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... so that it was quite three weeks after the departure of the brothers Elgood before she was strong enough to face the journey home. In the meantime Edith remained in charge as nurse, while Mr Vane and Ron varied the monotony of life in the Glen by making short excursions of two or three days' duration to places ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... regularity of life. As if to make up for the dispersed and agitated years, with their "stand-up" lunches and dinners rattled down to the joltings of the dining-car, he cultivated the last refinements of punctuality and monotony, discouraging his wife's fancy for the unexpected; and declaring that to a delicate taste there were infinite gradations of pleasure in ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... all my delight and occupation; now he is even dearer to me than ever; but he no longer engrosses all my thoughts. I turn over the leaves of this journal; once it noted down the little occurrences of the day; it marks nothing now but the monotony of sadness. He is not here—he cannot come. What event then could ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to breakfast and to water the horses. Half-past eight found us in the saddle again, and we commenced to traverse a dreary plain of yellowish white pumice-stone, interspersed with huge blocks of obsidian, thrown from the mouth of the volcano. At first the monotony of the scene was relieved by large bushes of yellow broom in full flower, and still larger bushes of the beautiful Retama blanca, quite covered with lovely white bloom, scenting the air with its delicious fragrance, and resembling huge tufts of feathers, eight or nine feet high. As we proceeded, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... in the monotony of sunshine and shade, of glade and dell, of crystal streams and tiny valleys, each the counterpart of the other, in dense woods and grassy savannahs; in the yesterday so like to-day, and the to-day so like to-morrow, there was no hint of the future. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... seen going home in groups of three and four. And then the road again emptied, and the solitude became more and more complete, without a wayfarer or an animal appearing for miles and miles, whilst yonder, at the far end of the lifeless sea, so grandiose and mournful in its monotony, the sun continued to descend from the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... my power to give a narrative of the daily occurrences on the plantation. The history of one day was that of all. The gloomy monotony of our slavery, was only broken by the overseer's periodical fits of drunkenness, at which times neither life nor limb on the estate were secure from his caprice ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... a peaceful and most united family life goes on without monotony. But I cannot speak of the things which touch me most, except clumsily. So it is better to keep from doing so. The Princess writes to me from Rome that she shall be delighted to obtain possession of the two water-colors of Gleichen for the splendid portfolios of drawings ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... went about her household business, or sat in the chamber upstairs with Mistress Alice; and it was of these things that she talked with the few priests that came and went from time to time in their circuits about Derbyshire. It was a life of quietness and monotony inconceivable by those who live in towns. Its sole incident lay in that life ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... him, life's whole of happiness. And was Louise altogether content with the man of her choice? No, or she had not gathered Wimbledon about her to make merry the midnight hour. People do not give fetes to display their happiness. They give them too often to relieve a tedious monotony, to silence a gnawing discontent, and forget for the moment in hilarious excitement some uneasy foreboding of evil to come, or disquieting conviction that all, even now, is ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... so. Often the ground was uneven; sometimes we had hills to ascend, and precipitous elopes to slide down, not knowing what might be at the bottom; and then a wide plain to traverse, without a tree or a shrub to break its monotony or to assist us in directing our course. Soon after we set out in the morning our eyebrows became covered with frost, our caps froze to our brows, surrounded by a rim of icicles. The fronts of our coats were fringed with similar ornaments; even our eyelashes were ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... rubbish that the year has produced. I regret that I have not space to criticise the proceedings into which, however, Dr. Montgomery of Texas has injected some bright thoughts, and the displays of learning relieve the general monotony, while considerable intellectual energy is displayed in the discussions; but to see a conclave of learned professors devoting their time to the examination and discussion of Aristotle's writings is about as edifying as to see a geographical society devoting its time to discussing the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... their richness, which in a picture looks exaggerated, yet is after all within the truth. He would not tell, how that same delicate and brilliant atmosphere freshened up the pale olive, till the olive forgot its monotony, and its cheek glowed like the arbutus or beech of the Umbrian hills. He would say nothing of the thyme and thousand fragrant herbs which carpeted Hymettus; he would hear nothing of the hum of its bees; nor take much account of the rare ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... day and night, but stopped at many kampongs to take on more cargo, and an additional tonkang was attached, which relieved some of the congestion on ours. One afternoon the monotony was relieved by a fight in the kitchen of the little steamer, when a sudden thumping sound of nude feet against the floor was heard and boiled rice flew about. But it was very soon over, evidently only an outburst of dissatisfaction with the cook; somebody called for the Malay captain and ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... about the appearance of Methodist preachers, Phyllis; they all look alike. If you see a dozen of them together, the monotony is tiresome. The best of them are only larger specimens of the same type—are related to the others as a crown piece is related to a shilling. You know a Methodist minister as ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... have now had a long "spell'' of fine weather, without any incident to break the monotony of our lives, I may have no better place for a description of the duties, regulations, and customs of an American merchantman, of which ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... allowed to show. Then, according to the general plan of all these books, in which fierce wars and faithful loves alternate, there is more fighting, and though Artamene is victorious (as how should he not be, save now and then to prevent monotony?) he disappears and is thought dead. Of course Mandane cries, and confesses to the confidante, being entirely "finished" by a very exquisite letter which Artamene has written before going into the doubtful battle. However, he is (yet once more, of course) not dead at all. What (as that most ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... conspirators did not despair. The term before Christmas was in some ways rather a dull one, and they were glad of any excitement to break the monotony. As difficulties increased their ardor also deepened, and they were resolved not to leave a stone unturned to effect their object. Where there is a will there is a way. This is true as regards evil ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... weariness, defatigation|; lassitude &c. (fatigue) 688; drowsiness &c. 683. disgust, nausea, loathing, sickness; satiety &c. 869; taedium vitae &c. (dejection) 837; boredom, ennui. wearisomeness, tediousness &c. adj.; dull work, tedium, monotony, twice-told tale. bore, buttonholer, proser[obs3], wet blanket; pill*, stiff*; heavy hours, "the enemy" [time]. V. weary; tire &c. (fatigue) 688; bore; bore to death, weary to death, tire to death, bore out ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... just to trot back again in a few minutes. But Bondsman's unwavering loyalty to his master's every mood and every movement had become such a matter of course that the fine example was lost in the monotony of repetition. ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... of the mind induced by too much of one thing. Just as the body fed too long upon meat becomes a prey to that horrid disease called scurvy, so the mind fed too long upon monotony succumbs to the insidious mental ailment which the West calls "cabin fever." True, it parades under different names, according to circumstances and caste. You may be afflicted in a palace and call it ennui, and it may drive you to commit peccadillos and indiscretions ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... shop and that the curtains at the upper window had been pushed back again while the dim face of Mrs. Green looked down into the street. Was she watching for some one? Or was she merely relieving the monotony of life indoors by gazing down into Franklin Street at an hour when it was ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... repeat these lovely aerial effects in such widely different zones and seasons. I thought to find in the winter landscapes of the far North a sublimity of death and desolation—a wild, dark, dreary, monotony of expression—but I had, in reality, the constant enjoyment of the rarest, the tenderest, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... been separated from the main column for about three hours, two incidents happened which served to relieve the monotony of the march, and caused them, for the time being, to forget how uncomfortably hot and dusty and thirsty they were. As they were riding silently along behind George Ackerman, whose fast-walking nag had carried him some distance in advance of the squad, they saw him draw rein all of ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... the moor was a personality with moods flecking the solid substance of its character, and even Miriam, who avowed her hatred of its monotony, had to admit an occasional difference. There were days when she thought it was full of secrets and capable of harbouring her own, and there were other days when she forgot its little hills and dales and hiding-places and saw it as a large plain, ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... paint the Madonna and Child a score of times, and Veronese his Marriages of Cana, and all of them Magdalenes and St. Sebastians by the dozen, without thinking of finding fresh subjects to excite fresh interest. Nor does this restricted range of subjects imply, under the hand of a master, monotony. There is more unlikeness in Raphael's Madonnas than in the figures of any modern artist, whatever their variety of name and action. Even a century later than Raphael, among the Flemings and Hollanders, the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... rash envy would allow No strain that shamed his country's creaking lyre, That whetstone of the teeth, monotony in wire." ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... he broke through the solitary monotony of his life was during the continuance of the racing season, and immediately subsequent to it; at which time he was to be seen among the busiest upon the course, betting deeply and unhesitatingly, and invariably with success. Sir Robert was, however, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Mongolia, elevated about five thousand feet above the sea. The country opens into a series of plains and gentle swells, not unlike the rolling prairies of Kansas and Nebraska, with here and there a stretch of hills. Very often not a single tree is visible, and the only stationary objects that break the monotony of the scene are occasional yourts, or tents of the natives. All the way along the road there are numerous trains of ox-carts, and sometimes they form a continuous line of a mile or more. Those going southward are principally laden with logs of wood from the valley of the Tolla, about two ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... procured better water than they were able to get at first, and small pines were brought and set among the tents, by which some degree of protection was afforded against the burning sun. On the morning of the 8th of July, the monotony was broken by the arrival of President Lincoln. The booming of artillery announced his coming, and the heartfelt cheers of the soldiers assured him of ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... Conductor, all the instruments of the orchestra broke into the familiar chorus. The whole Press of France and England rang again with calumny and fairy-tale. Out they came again in regular sequence and with unvarying monotony: plots and secret letters, weird stories of German intrigue, constant repetition of names compromised or compromising; all ready, cut and dried, for burking any attempt at accommodation that did not include the return and domination of ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... ignorant of the intricacies of science (and lacked interest in same prior to my reading your first issue) same is described so plainly that I have no trouble in fully understanding exactly what the author conveys. I must thank you for this other interest in the monotony of life. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... after mile, were like teeth of gigantic rakes, black and bare. A wilderness of mountain-tops, desolate as eternity, arid, parched, baked by the awful heat, the silence never broken by the cry of a bird, a hut rarely breaking the barren monotony, only an infrequent spring to save from death. It was almost impossible to get food or fresh horses. Many a night De la Vega and his stoical guide slept beneath a cactus, or in the mocking bed of a creek. The mustangs ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... a difficult thing to describe without monotony, for it varies so little. It is like describing the course of the Thames from Oxford to Reading, or of the Severn from Deerhurst to Lydney, or of the Hudson from New York to Tarrytown. Whatever country the rivers pass they remain water, bordered by shore. So our front-line ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... Russia. She turned her attention to decorative painting, and her success in this may be seen in the facades of the Schmitz villa, the Schemboche establishment, and her own home. When we consider the usual monotony of this art, the charming effects which Mme. Fries has produced make ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... failings was an inability to estimate the true value of things. He possessed something of the spirit of adventure and a desire to escape from the drab monotony of his early life, but these found expression in betting on the exploits of others on the football field and the turf, a haunting of the music-halls, and the cultivation of acquaintances on the lowest rung of the dramatic profession. All this offered him some glimpses of ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... loved the young and cheerful prisoner; by his fresh and hopeful spirit, his gay laugh and merry jest, he had broken up the everlasting monotony of their garrison-life; by his powerful intellect and rich fancy he had, in some degree, dissipated their weariness and stupidity. They felt pity for his youth, his beauty, his geniality, his energetic self-confidence; his bold courage imposed upon them, and they were watching curiously and anxiously ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... part watered by the river Gila and its tributaries. This river, which takes its rise in the distant mountains of the Mimbres, passes under various names through an immense extent of sandy barren country, the arid monotony of which is interrupted only by the ravines hollowed by the waters, which in their erratic course, ravage ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... they laid in their weekly supply of hair ribbons and soda water and kodak films. Even had one acquired so many demerits that her weekly stipend was entirely eaten up by fines, still she marched to the village and watched the lucky ones disburse. It made a break in the monotony of six ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... eyes had for so many weary days gazed upon naught but sea and sky. It is true that Stukely had never tired of gazing upon that same sea and sky; with the spirit of the artist that dwelt within him he had been able to see ever-changing beauty where others had beheld only monotony; but to the crew at large that wedge of land, growing in bulk and importance as the ship rushed toward it, was more beautiful than the most glorious sunset that had ever presented itself ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... Hall the Oregon Trail and the trail for California divided. And at this point there began the terrible part of the journey—the arid, alkaline, thirsty desert, short of game, horrible in its monotony, deadly with its thirst. It is no wonder that, weakened by their sufferings in this inferno, so many of the immigrants looked upon the towering walls of the Sierras with a ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... the wanderers scrambled over the side it was very evident that they had a grievance, and not until they had been warmed by hot cocoa could they talk with ease of their experiences. They [Page 49] had been obliged to keep constantly on the move, and when they thought of smoking to relieve the monotony they found that they had pipes and tobacco, but no matches. While, however, they were dismally bemoaning this unfortunate state of affairs Wilson, who did not smoke, came to the rescue and succeeded in producing fire with a small pocket magnifying glass—a performance which testified not only to ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... some one in this talk at last to deny that there was this tiresome monotony in American life. And this put a new face on the discussion. Why should there be, with every race under the heavens represented here, and each one struggling to assert itself, and no homogeneity as yet ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and everything went on in regular routine on board, without any incident of note occurring to break the monotony of the voyage, the English sailors keeping to themselves, and the Malays apart, without either mixing or speaking with the others save when the duties of the ship called ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... In that monotony of landscape, one mile exactly like the other, no landmarks to guide him, no trail to follow, however faintly worn, it was strange to see the cowpuncher strike out through the vast distances of the mountain-desert with as much confidence as if he were travelling on ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... features in the kind of life which was introduced by the queen and the consort into the habits of the court. Among these none were more marked than the breaking up of that monotony which the restrictions that hitherto prevailed as to the residence of the royal family in one or two state palaces entailed. We can well understand how the Empress Eugenie should have found the Tuileries, in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... felt the monotony to be as maddening as ever. There were times when she rebelled passionately against the solitude of the place. There were moments to her when it seemed that her mind couldn't stand the strain ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... could never have been more eagerly scanned than was that of this island, for every man of the crew was longing for a run ashore in search of some little adventure to break the monotony of the life on board; and again and again, as a seal was seen to slip off the rocks after staring at them for a while with its peculiar, half human countenance, or a flock of sea-birds was passed, the men looked disappointed that no efforts were made to harpoon the one or shoot the other. But ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... for the leading fences of a great salmon wheel whose plunging buckets dived into the black currents and lifted with their gamble of fifty-pound salmon. Now and then a heavier fish would punctuate the monotony ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... over. Now no command, no power was left to them. The years went by, dragging their slow length of days, and bringing no change or brightness to the lives of these two men who lived in secret and alone. It was a melancholy life, the monotony only broken by visits from the minister, or a few other friends, who brought them all the gossip and news of the town. These were but small matters. But to the two men shut off from all other human beings ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... you land, and even after you have got your sea-legs on, there is a certain monotony in yachting, unless the weather is very bad, and unless there are women aboard. A party of lively women make even the sea fresh and entertaining. Otherwise, the game of poker is much what it is on land, and the constant consulting of charts and reckoning of speed evince the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... ever paint the sea only, without the addition of a ship, boat, wreck, or some such adjunct? Is the sea itself a more attractive, a more moral, a more poetical object, with or without a vessel, breaking its vast but fatiguing monotony? Is a storm more poetical without a ship? or, in the poem of the Shipwreck, is it the storm or the ship which most interests? both much undoubtedly; but without the vessel, what should we care for the tempest? It would sink into mere descriptive poetry, which in itself was never esteemed a high ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the distance from the country of the Mascoutins to the portage to be three leagues, and from the portage to the mouth of the Miscousing forty leagues. This distance they covered in a week. Drawing their canoes to the shore at night, they pitched camp, varying the monotony of their stores with fish and game. Perhaps they had learned that wild grapes then budding were not really fit to eat until touched by frost. Pierre Porteret said in Marquette's hearing, "the Indians could make good wine of grapes and plums ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of his life centers in his play and games. Wise educators are using the play instinct as a medium for his education. Manual training is increasing, the formal work of the class-room is taking on the nature of competition and music, even music with its old-time monotony and routine of running scales in the practice period under parental persuasion, has ceased to be a thing of dread, and has become a delightful thing of play—a building of houses, a ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... over, and the imperial city disgorging its thousands along all the roads. Far over to the left lay the little hill of Kranoye Selo, the parade-ground of the Imperial Guards' summer camp, and the Imperial Dairy. In the middle distance nothing broke the flat monotony but a few walled monasteries and convents, some isolated factories, and several large buildings with unkempt grounds ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... said it, and add to it another wrong thing, and so on. With the decease of her husband the family tenacity, the family matter-of-factness, had gone sterile within her. A great talker, when allowed, she would converse without the faintest animation for hours together, relating, with epic monotony, the innumerable occasions on which Fortune had misused her; nor did she ever perceive that her hearers sympathized with Fortune, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of the stranger's appearance, nothing had happened to break the monotony of her long return journey towards Cloudy Mountain Camp. Far back in the distance now lay the Mission where the passengers of the stage had been hospitably entertained the night before; still further back the red-tiled roofs and whitewashed walls ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... shift her lights and shades to fall now upon the one and now upon the other, according as Scott's interest in one or other of them appeared to her to wane. Her quick-sighted mother love was prompt to warn her of that waning, prompt to make her understand that, to a boy like Scott, a hard and fast monotony would be ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... little. One of life's compensations is that there is always something ahead, some trifling event of interest or pleasure upon which one may fix one's eye and endeavour to forget the dreary tissue of monotony and commonplace between. Betty found herself acquiring the habit of casting her eye over the day as soon as she awoke in the morning, and if nothing distracting presented itself, she planned for something ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... took all the banter so good-temperedly, and returned it so smartly. There was always a delightful uncertainty also as to what she would do next, and the prospect of an exciting interlude by "Yankee Doodle", as she was nicknamed, was felt decidedly to relieve the monotony of the ordinary Briarcroft atmosphere. Not that Gipsy really ever meant to behave badly; but, accustomed as she was to the free-and-easy conduct of her up-country Colonial schools, she found it almost impossible to realize that what would have been tolerated there ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... unknown, and apparently an ordinary country doctor. The prince, however, soon perceived that he was far superior to his circumstances and position, and placed himself upon a very confidential footing with him. One day he complained of the desolation and monotony of his life and asked, in a tone between jest and earnest, what he should do ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... much of a good thing for us. There must have been a real love of the drama in those times. Fancy a fine gentleman, able to pay his shilling and sit with the wits upon the rush-strewn stage, listening for such a length of time to "Hamlet," with no change of scenes to help the illusion or break the monotony, beyond a curtain or two hung across the stage, a wooden gallery at the back whence the court of Denmark might view "The Mouse-Trap," and, perhaps, a wooden tomb pushed on or "discovered" in the graveyard-scene by pulling aside one of these curtains or "traverses." No pretty women, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... a late dinner in a room behind the show that evening. Amiable Madame Marve had prepared an excellent meal, in which the regulation beer and boiled leg of mutton course was relieved of monotony with vegetables and dumplings. There was soup before and pudding after, and in a burst of gratitude the Missing Link proposed the health of the Egyptian Mystic which was being drunk with enthusiasm in Chinese brandy, when suddenly a great racket arose in the ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... lighter divisions of poetry has been denied, and there are poets, such as Bowles and Charles Tennyson-Turner, who live by their sonnets alone. The practice of the sonnet has been so extended that all sense of monotony has been lost. A sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning differs from one by D. G. Rossetti or by Matthew Arnold to such excess as to make it difficult for us to realize that the form in each case is ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... lads that a whole day passed without a single thing to break the monotony, but Frank's watch insisted that it was only eleven o'clock. It was dark most of the time in the chamber, for the boys were ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the unpleasant episodes of river travel, the worst by far is to be grounded in the daytime. The dreary monotony of bank and stream as you glide by increases ten-fold when lying, hour after hour, with nothing to do but gaze at it. Under this trial the jolliest faces grow long and dismal; quiet men become dreadfully blue and the saturnine look actually ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... was in most places over four miles an hour, and the navigation smooth and easy—so that our travellers rarely made less than fifty miles a-day. There was considerable monotony in the landscape, on account of the absence of mountains, as the Amazon, through most of its course, runs through a level plain. The numerous bends and sudden windings of the stream, however, continually opening out into new and charming vistas, and the ever-changing variety of vegetation, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... embroidery, speechless and motionless as wax figures, until they shall have attracted the attention of some of the passers-by, who begin to throng the place. At Yokohama indeed, and at the other open ports, the women of the Yoshiwara are loud in their invitations to visitors, frequently relieving the monotony of their own language by some blasphemous term of endearment picked up from British and American seamen; but in the Flower District at Yedo, and wherever Japanese customs are untainted, the utmost decorum prevails. Although the shape which vice takes is ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... and as unsophisticated as a schoolgirl, and it made the little man's heart ache to hear the plaintive monotony of tone and see the ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... recommended sea air, and we had a yacht and cruised every summer. I owed his life to the Radiator. And when he began to grow stronger the habit was formed—the habit of luxury. He could not get on without the things he had always been used to. He pined in bad air; he drooped under monotony and discomfort; he throve on variety, amusement, travel, every kind of novelty and excitement. And all I wanted for him his inexhaustible foster-mother was ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... monkey-trick, grimace. monasterio monastery. moneda coin; monedilla (dim.). mono,-a monkey; mono, -a neat, pretty, charming. monolito monolith, column of stone. monologo monologue, soliloquy. monotonia monotony. monotono monotonous. monstruo monster. monta amount; de poca monta insignificant. montana mountain. montar to mount. monte m. mountain; wood. monton m. heap, mass. morabito hermitage. morador m. inhabitant. morder ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... Days of gloom and monotony came and went. We dug the snow away from our windows and tunneled a hole to the top which gave us ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... should like to have old land-owners married, in a certain sense, to the state through their family or profession, attached by some tie to the commonwealth. Such men would come to Paris annually, converse with the emperor in his own circle, and be contented with this little bit of vanity relieving the monotony of their existence." (Same date.)—Cf. Thibaudeau, "Memoires sur le Consulat," ch. XIII., and M. de Metternich, "Memoires," I., 120 (Words of Napoleon at Dresden, in the spring of 1812): "I shall give the senate and the council ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the table to go on deck, for a steamer was a welcome break in the monotony of the sea on which we floated, while the conviction that it was Death Larsen and the Macedonia added to the excitement. The stiff breeze and heavy sea which had sprung up the previous afternoon had been moderating all morning, so that it was now possible to lower the boats for ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... But the monotony of repetition brought rest, and soon Yuki Chan, forgetting to count, made a bed of the fallen petals and turned her face toward the little straw-roofed house from which ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little
... ideas, soon grows weary of re-hashing the beliefs of its parents, and it sets out in quest of new sensations, no matter how inferior and shallow the new experience may be, the human mind cannot endure sameness and monotony. So it happens that that boy or girl, over-fed on Thomas Paine, will land in the arms of the Church, or they will vote for imperialism only to escape the drag of economic determinism and scientific socialism, or that they open a shirt-waist factory and cling to their right of accumulating property, ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... circled and soared above him, and the ape-man, notwithstanding his boasts, felt a shudder of apprehension. Through his brain ran a persistent and doleful chant to which he involuntarily set two words, repeated over and over again in horrible monotony: "Ska knows! Ska knows!" until, shaking himself in anger, he picked up a rock and hurled ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... which followed sheepishly, borne down by trembling hope. No matter what adventure came to him, the thought of neglected duty returned ever afresh. Once, when he lay sick for weeks in an Indian wigwam, the idea so grew with each day of the monotony, that when he was able to crawl out by himself into the sunshine he had almost made up his mind to start back ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... impatience found no echo in his thought. What was the hurry? There was plenty of time. It was sufficient to have come to his own land; the actual walls of home could wait. The delay was pleasant, with its opportunity for drowsy sunning, its relief from the grimy monotony of travel. He glanced at the orange-colored "Jim Crow" with distaste, and inspiration, dawning slowly upon him, swept all other thought before it in its great ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... hard that there was no other place to go. But, then, the old machine shop was the best place in the world for the boys, rain or shine, so that didn't make much difference. What really did matter was the monotony of it all. For five days now the region round about Woodbridge had been literally deluged with a spring downpour. Otter Creek had swollen to twice its normal size, springs were gushing from most unheard-of places and rivulets were racing down hillsides that usually were, ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... round the Cape was a long voyage before there was a steamer in the Navy. It is impossible to describe the charm of one's first acquaintance with tropical vegetation after the tedious monotony unbroken by any event but an occasional flogging or a man overboard. The islands seemed afloat in an atmosphere of blue; their jungles rooting in the water's edge. The strange birds in the daytime, the flocks of parrots, the din of every ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... the unnoticed swiftness that is the child of monotony. The Southern Cross shone above the ship. When the great heat set in the men were allowed to sleep on deck, and Dion lay all night long under the wheeling stars, and often thought of the stars above Drouva, and heard Rosamund's voice saying, "I can ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... celebrity!—weariness, vacuity, and utter deadness of spirit. The cup has been so highly flavored that life is absolutely without savor or sweetness to her now, nothing but tasteless insipidity. She has stood on a pinnacle till all things have come to look flat and dreary; mere shapeless, colorless, level monotony to her. Poor woman! what a fate to be condemned to, and yet how she has been envied, as well ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... cannot be accomplished here by the means which effect them elsewhere. He who wishes to attract the attention of a people must act publicly and with reference to practical matters; but the ear of a monarch may be reached in private. Therefore there is a certain monotony in the lives of most of our public men; they may be read in the life of one. It is, generally, a simple story of a poor youth, who was born in humble station, and who, by painful effort in some useful occupation, rose slowly to distinguished place,—who displayed high talents, and made an ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... companions now in amazement. How can they keep on so steadily, so swiftly? Cases are emptied and refilled; bottles are labeled, stamped and rolled away; jars are washed, wiped and loaded, and still there are more cases, more jars, more bottles. Oh! the monotony of it, the never-ending supply of work to be begun and finished, begun and finished, begun and finished! Now and then some one cuts a finger or runs a splinter under the flesh; once the mustard machine broke—and still the work goes on, on, on! New girls like myself, ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... What monotony there is in the ministry of many! Duty presses on the heels of duty in an endless circle. But it is not so when the Spirit is quickening both the pastor and his flock. Then there is all the variety of life. It was so here. ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... cannot see the advance-guard in the march. There is a slight undergrowth of scrub. We saw some of the choicest of the ERICA tribe in full bloom, like a beautiful crimson waxen bell-blossom, and once whilst walking (which I frequently did to relieve the monotony of being perched on the dray by myself) I saw a fine specimen of the ORELUDIAE at the foot of a tree growing from the wood; it was something like a yellow sweet-pea, but really too beautiful to describe. ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... these stories, because they are human, has come the humanity of the players: the thing which makes it possible for them to feel this music, and to play it, not as a machine would play, grinding it out with dead monotony, but with all the colour and ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... to do it in any common way. But the idea of being actually married to another man while he was absent at a short distance from the city, would be something striking and new, which would vary, she thought, the dull monotony of the common course ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... belonged, she had few equals, and scarcely any superior. The variety of humours which is to be found in her novels is immense; and though the talk of each person separately is monotonous, the general effect is not monotony, but a very lively and agreeable diversity. Her plots are rudely constructed and improbable, if we consider them in themselves. But they are admirably framed for the purpose of exhibiting striking ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... when all the loveliness of that island seemed but a hideous place of exile, an abhorrent monotony which surrounded her—grasped her—clung to her—hemmed her in, as if it were an evil spirit, having life and the power to torture her. She thought of those whom she loved, she pondered upon all the grand schemes of her existence, and she felt herself cut off from a world to which there were so many ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... enthusiastic and rebellious young lady, as Ruth very soon found. In spite of all her brave efforts, her frequent correspondence, and her determined animation, her books and her music, she found herself settling into the clutches of the old monotony, and as she realized the hopelessness of her endeavors, the medical scheme took new hold of her, and seemed to her the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... River region intermarried, and spread out over middle Georgia. Those who were not akin were bound to each other by ties of long acquaintanceship; but the homogeneousness of the people, complete and thorough as it was, was not marked by any monotony. On the contrary, character and individuality ran riot, appearing in such strange and attractive shapes as to puzzle and bewilder even those who were familiar with the queer manifestations. Every settlement had its ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... The monotony of their life was, however, rudely broken up at this encampment by the blacks. During their stay several natives had made their appearance, and had been kindly received and treated. No suspicions of treachery were aroused, and the explorers ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... Christmas week at the 'Flower of the Wavy Field;' and, in the society of old and new friends, found nothing of that sameness and monotony against which so many, myself included, have whilom declaimed. The truth is that most places breed ennui for an idle man. Nor is the climate of Madeira well made for sedentary purposes: it is apter for one who loves to flaner, or, as Victor ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... isolated mescal plants with long, yellow-plumed spears broke the bare monotony of the plateau. And Slone passed from red sand and gravel to a red, soft shale, and from that to hard, red rock. Here Wildfire's tracks were lost, the first time in seven weeks. But Slone had his direction down that plateau with the ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... envy would allow No strain that shamed his country's creaking lyre, That whetstone of the teeth, monotony in wire." ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... devoured the doctor with their eyes. He was a stranger. It was something to see, and it was a break in the horrible monotony of their existence. Had they known the object of the visit, a tremendous yell would have arisen, and it would have been formed of ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... of whom I have been writing invited a friend to breakfast with him, and there being, I suppose, a slight monotony in the conversation, he asked his guest whether he would like, by way of diversion, to see a man flogged. The amusement was accepted, and a ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... resolved upon the earliest fitting occasion to rebel against the selfish tyranny which consigned her to solitude and monotony. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... traveller is becoming tired of this small pleasant stream running along a mere declivity of the table-land of Ben Muich Dhui. But he will not be long distressed by its peaceful monotony. Presently, as he comes in sight of the valley below, and Loch Avon lying in a small pool at the base of the dizzy height, the stream leaps at once from the edge of the hill, and disappears for a time, reappearing again far down in a narrow thread, as white as the snow from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... right. I had an uncontrollable distaste for the monotony of daily work, repeated in the same environment, surrounded by the same scenery ... but I was also quite weak and sick, and I am persuaded, that, if I had stayed on there, I ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... much in regret of the old days when there were plantations and overseers and masters and slaves, that it was good to come upon such a household as Berry Hamilton's, if for no other reason than that it afforded a relief from the monotony of tiresome iteration. ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... I have already spoken, and would add, in proof of the pains taken by the former superintendent, Dr. Browne, to break the monotony of asylum life, that he introduced private theatricals, in which vaudevilles and farces were performed by and for the lunatics, and even before the public. A practice still beneficially preserved is that of making excursions to places noted ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... skies are overcast this is a dead black-and-white country in winter, for spruce, the prevailing wood, is black in the mass at a little distance. Gaze where one will, there is naught but black and white. The eye becomes tired of the monotony and longs for some warmer tone. That is surely the reason why all those who live in the country cherish some gay article of attire, why the natives love brilliant handkerchiefs, why the white man also will choose a crimson scarf. Trudging at the handle-bars, I have found pleasure in the ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... either ladies or clergymen, and most of them residing in the south of England. Very few of them appeared to reside in any large town, but to prefer rural retreats "far from the madding crowd," where doubtless a letter, even on the business of the Corporation, would be a welcome diversion to the monotony of existence. As to the clergy, doubtless their names had been suggested by the good Bishop of S—, who would be in a position to introduce a considerable connection to his fellow- directors. Reginald also noticed that only one ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... running from Early Harvest to Roxbury Russet, he should be accorded the privilege. Some place should be provided where he may obtain trees or cions. There is merit in variety itself. It provides more points of contact with life, and leads away from uniformity and monotony. ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... a monotony of unchangeable fighting that was an abomination. This confused mingling was eternal to his sense, which was concentrated in a longing for the end, the priceless end. Once the fighters lurched near him, and as he scrambled hastily backward he heard them breathe ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... takes hold of the least sore teat, yanks it suddenly, and dodges the cow's hock. When he gets enough milk to dip his dirty hands in, he moistens the teats, and things go on more smoothly. Now and then he relieves the monotony of his occupation by squirting at the eye of a calf which is dozing in the adjacent pen. Other times he milks into his mouth. Every time the cow kicks, a burr or a grass-seed or a bit of something else falls into the milk, and the boy drowns these things with a well-directed ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... is matched by its practical advantages. The compact grouping of the Exposition palaces not only meant a saving of ground and labor, but it makes it easier to handle the crowds, and lessens the walking required of the visitor. There is no monotony. In developing the general idea, each architect and artist was left free to express his own personality and imagination. The result is that varied forms and colors in the different courts and buildings ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... the monotony of Storm. During her illness the neighborhood had been assiduous with broths and jellies, but now that she was well again the old awe of the Madam returned, and it did not occur to the modest country folk that she would have been glad of their company. ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... sail, raising the first feeling of novelty to a character of wonder and delight. The following outlines of the rolling prairies are broken only by the small lakes and patches of timber which relieve them of monotony and enhance their beauty; and though marshes and sloughs occur, they are of too small extent and too infrequent to affect the generally attractive character of the country. The elevation of the ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... arrival at the ladies' parlor dinner was served, and after dinner a Persian merchant was ushered in, closely followed by his servants bearing bales of rare Eastern fabrics. A visit and a dinner at the inn were little events that made a break in the monotony of life at the Hall, and the ladies preferred to visit the merchant, who was stopping at The Peacock for a time, rather than to have him take ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... laughing, cannot help joining me. The music, very fine although in the ancient style, at first amused me on account of its novelty, but it soon wearied me. The melopaeia fatigued me by its constant and tedious monotony, and by the shrieks given out of season. That melopaeia, of the French replaces—at least they think so—the Greek melapaeia and our recitative which they dislike, but which they would admire if they ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... bashfulness which ties up the tongues of those who feel that their consequence is overlooked among their superiors. According as the punch circulated, however, their diffidence began to wear off; and occasionally an odd laugh or so might be heard to break the monotony of their silence. The youngsters, too, though at first almost in a state of terror, soon commenced plucking each other; and a titter, or a suppressed burst of laughter, would break forth from one of the more waggish, who was put to a severe task in afterwards composing ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... at night, she went back to Fillmore Street—when she thought of the monotony, yes, and the sordidness of home, when she let herself in at the door and climbed the dark and narrow stairway, that her feet grew leaden. In spite of the fact that Hannah was a good housekeeper and prided herself ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... years "the children of Israel did eat manna." But more than once their gorge rose against it. Manna for breakfast, manna for lunch, manna for dinner, manna for tea, and manna for supper, was a little more than they could stand, The monotony of their diet became intolerable. Accordingly, we read in the twenty-first chapter of Numbers, that they complained of it and asked for a slight change in the bill of fare. "There is no bread," said they, "neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light food." This small ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... again (for his passion was usually short-lived, and his nature kind), he looked about him on his Sundays and holidays, and he saw how much monotony and weariness there was, and thence how drunkenness arose with all its train of ruin. Then he appealed to the Bigwig family, and said, "We are a labouring people, and I have a glimmering suspicion in me that labouring ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... considered this a very interesting experience—quite a jolly break in the dull monotony of the day. Hunting up the stick, he laid it in the lawyer's hands, and then turned his ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... months slipped quietly by, one placid week succeeding another in a serene and cloudless monotony. Sally had few friends, there were no women of her own social position in the place; yet she was never lonely, never bored, never in ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... wonder, then, that the farmers' sons, to get rid of the terrible monotony of farm-labor as now organized, find peddling tin kettles an acceptable substitute, or turning somersets in a third-class circus a fortunate escape. The reason why our country youths are so impatient of farm-labor is not that they are less virtuous than formerly, but that they are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... and not to the Guillotine alone. With blackened face, hirsute, horned, a shaggy Satan snatches him not unshrieking; shews him, with outstretched arm and voice, the fire that is not quenched, the worm that dies not; the monotony of Hell-pain, and the What hour? answered by, It is Eternity! (Montgaillard, iv. 218; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... dripping into the patch of black garden in front of the house, surrounded by a low stone wall. The villas opposite suggested a desolation which found a parallel in her heart; the sloppy road and the pale brown sky frightened her, so menacing seemed their monotony. She knew all this suburb; it was all graven on her mind, and all that ornamental park where she must go, if it cleared a little, for her afternoon walk. She must tramp round that park once more. She strove to keep ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... in Johnnie the white flame of purpose burned out every consciousness of weariness, of bodily or mental distaste. The preposterously long hours, the ill-ventilated rooms, the savage monotony of her toil, none of these reached the girl through the glow of hope and ambition. Physically, the finger of the factory was already laid upon her vigorous young frame; but when Sunday morning came, though there was no bellowing ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... tormented him. It became intolerable. Day after day he went down to the ocean, but the surf only leaped in derision. For the thousandth time he cursed it, the isle to which he was bound. Weeks passed, until, almost mad through the monotony of the long hours, one day he inadvertently picked up a book. The brute convict could just read. Where, how he ever learned, I forget. He began to pick out ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... regularly sown with a succession of annuals, all for the time being of one sort and colour. For several weeks, innumerable quantities of double crimson stocks flaunted before your eyes, so densely packed, that scarcely a shade of green relieved the brilliant monotony. These were succeeded by larkspurs, and lastly by poppies, that reared their tall, gorgeous heads above the low, white railing, and ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... different life, was disquieting. There is no getting away from an old basic truth that a man's life is so strongly influenced as almost to be moulded by his environment; there was uneasiness in the thought that here one's existence might grow to resemble his habitat, taking on the gray tone and monotony and bleak ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... imaginative life. They are, unfortunately, all destroyed, and we have only scattered reminiscences of what they had to tell; but we know how strangely he was impressed by some of the circumstances of the journey: above all, by the endless monotony of snow-covered pine-forest, through which he and his companion rushed for days and nights at the speed of six post-horses, without seeming to move from one spot. He enjoyed the society of St. Petersburg, and was fortunate enough, before his return, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... the Hajj-road, and forming the western wall of the 'Arabah valley, whose name they assume (Jibl el-'Arabah). The scene abruptly shifts. A mottle of clouds sheds moving shadows over the hill-crests, and relieves them from the appalling monotony of yesterday. Brilliant rainbow hues, red, green, mauve, purple, yellow and white clays, gleam in the lowlands, and form dwarf bluffs; while inland, peering above the granites, the syenites, and the porphyries of the coast, pale quoins ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... African trees, of wearing the trunk white with here and there upon it splashes of pale pink lichen, and vermilion-red fungus, which alone is sufficient to prevent the great mass of vegetation from being a monotony in green. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... hardly spoke above a whisper; and then we sat in the soft moonlight and looked on the sleeping scene before us. The summer sounds of rural life had long died away, and nothing but the untiring chirp of the tree-toad was to be heard. The melancholy monotony of the scene hushed Mary's spirit to a quiet she had not for a long time known, and at last she became conscious of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... heath-clad hills whose gradual descents form the spacious glen, and the broad and brawling stream careering through its centre, give the place an air of solitude and of quiet repose that, notwithstanding its monotony, is exceedingly impressive. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... expanse of open shore had been fished over a few times, the trout there seemed to grow more shy, and there was a certain monotony in walking this tiny quarter-deck of space. So I went round to the west side, where the water-lilies are. Fish were rising about three yards beyond the weedy beds, and I foolishly thought I would try for them. Now, you cannot overestimate the difficulty ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... way of outward incident to relieve the monotony of the journey. Now and then a short, thick rattlesnake, with horns on its ugly head, wriggled out of his path. Now and then his horse's hoof almost trod upon a hideous, flat lizard, also horned. Here and there the uncouth projections ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... growing plant for a centrepiece. Three or four of the larger pupils, either boys or girls, may set the table in ten minutes, while the others are washing their hands and faces and tidying their hair. Some such plan as this will add palatability and cheer to the monotony of the everyday cold and often unattractive lunch and will create a spirit of true and ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... entering a long avenue, came upon a party of walnut-gatherers, to whom the tragedy of the fox was again detailed, while groups came round us to hear and comment on the event, which appeared to be formed to enliven the monotony of a country existence as much as a piece of scandal in ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... of monotony, had become too strong. The elephant, though free, stands still, sadly swaying its heavy head, ignorant of the freedom that has ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... in sight after one week, it becomes tiresome. I am quick tempered, and get at it with all zeal when my interest is aroused, and would sit up all night to work it out, but I have never shone in endurance. However loyal a member of the heavenly-chastisement league I may be, I cannot escape monotony. On the sixth night I was a little tired, and on the seventh thought I would quit. Porcupine, however, stuck to it with bull-dog tenacity. From early in the evening up to past twelve, he would glue his eye to the shoji and keep steadily watching under the gas globe ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... conclusion, strange as this may be, that the greater part of his love-poetry is a scholastic exercise upon emotions transmuted into metaphysical and mystical conceptions. Only two pieces in the long series break this monotony by a touch of realism. They are divided by a period of more than thirty years. The first seems to date from an early epoch ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... think that it will do you and the work, or works, any good, you may put my name to it; but first consult the knowing ones. It will, at any rate, show them that I can write cheerfully, and repel the charge of monotony and mannerism. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... to be executed. Another brass rod was made to pass under the wrist in order to maintain it also in its proper position, and thus incarcerated, the miserable little hands performed their daily, dreary monotony of musical exercise, with, I imagine, really no benefit at all from the irksome constraint of this horrid machine, that could not have been imparted quite as well, if not better, by a careful teacher. I had, however, no teacher at this time but ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... being so much the number of traps set, as the quantity of game in a given locality which regulates the amount of success for a trapper. Yet his efforts in this new business succeeded to a gratifying degree, and the fact of having exchanged the dull monotony of farm drudgery for the exhilarating excitement of a hunter's life, was in itself a sufficient reward for any amount of exertion. Indeed what mode of life could be happier or more free, for a healthy, strong-limbed youth of fifteen, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... her sails when the tug let go the tow-line, soon died away altogether, and left her riding over a heavy swell, in full view of Table Mountain and the high peaks of the Cape of Good Hope. For a while the grand scenery served to relieve the monotony. One of the old circumnavigators (Sir Francis Drake, I think), when he first saw this magnificent pile, sang, "'T is the fairest thing and the grandest cape I've seen in the whole ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... had been preparing the whole spring, and the sight of the costly furniture, sent from London, had excited my mother's envy, and roused my father's pride. My sensations were very different, and all of a pleasurable kind. I longed to see new characters, to break the tedious monotony of my life; and to find a friend, such as fancy had pourtrayed. I cannot then describe the emotion I felt, the Sunday they made their appearance at church. My eyes were rivetted on the pillar round which I expected first to catch a glimpse ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... another people have taken such a peculiar interest in him. He talks of his early struggles, the economy of bacon, and the bigotries of Old Testamentarians in the same concise language set to the same unvaried monotony of voice. If you should fail to follow him, he would almost chide you ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... little, but I could see that he was at times a prey to nervous anxiety. This showed itself in the harassed look which his pale face often wore, and in his marked dislike to being left alone. He derived, I think, a certain pleasure from the quietude and monotony of his life at Worth, and perhaps also from the consciousness that he had about him loving and devoted hearts. I say hearts, for every servant at Worth was attached to him, remembering the great consideration and courtesy of his earlier years, and grieving ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... record of the first twenty-three years of my life is the enumeration of them. A simple bead-roll is enough; it represents their family likeness and family monotony. ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... delighted to have a chat. In fact I think the Italian people are very sociable. Nearly all the boys can begin to make themselves understood." These tributes are obviously sincere. They occur in the midst of good-natured grumbles about the heat, and the monotony of macaroni and rice and stew, and of requests for "more fags" and of hopes that "this ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... excavations; there were more all-but-unbroken walls and columns; some mosaic floors were almost as perfect as when their dwellers fled over them out of the stifling city. But upon the whole the result was a greater monotony; the revelation of house after house, nearly the same in design, did not gain impressiveness from their repetition; just as the case would be if the dwellings of an old-fashioned cross-town street in New York were dug out two thousand years after their submergence by an eruption of Orange ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... a chap remains On sentry-go, to chase monotony He exercises of his brains, That is, assuming that he's got any. Though never nurtured in the lap Of luxury, yet I admonish you, I am an intellectual chap, And think of things that would astonish you. I often think it's comical How Nature always does contrive That every boy and every ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... aspect still more rude and primitive a hundred years ago—on an August day in the year 1793, when a man issued from the low doorway, and, shading his eyes from the noonday sun, gazed long and fixedly in the direction of a narrow rift which a few score paces away breaks the monotony of the upland level. The man was tall and thin and unkempt, and his features, which expressed a mixture of cunning and simplicity, matched his figure. He gazed a while in silence, but at length he uttered a grunt of satisfaction as the figure of a woman rose gradually ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... noble? There, the men have their occupations; and the women (unless, like poor Fanny, work-bags and parrots can employ them) none. They are idle. They employ the imagination and the heart. They fall in love and are wretched; or they remain virtuous, and are either wearied by an eternal monotony or they fritter away intellect, mind, character, in the minutest frivolities—frivolities being their only refuge from stagnation. Yes! there is one very curious curse for the sex which men don't consider! Once married, the more aspiring of them have no real scope ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... o'clock the first break in the drowsy monotony occurs; for on the stroke of this hour the first peeress enters the transept, clothed like Solomon for splendour, and is conducted to her appointed place by an official clad in satins and velvets, whilst a duplicate of him gathers up the lady's long train, follows ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... father died. He left me very badly off. I had to go and live with some old aunts in Yorkshire." She shuddered. "You will understand me when I say that it was a deadly life for a girl brought up as I had been. The narrowness, the deadly monotony of it, almost drove me mad." She paused a minute, and added in a different tone: "And then I met ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... susceptible and highly-strung human soul would break down like a bridge under the measured tread of soldiers, if it were allowed to let the burden of the heaviest thoughts and strongest feelings work upon it in undisturbed monotony; but just as in music every key-note has its harmonies, so when we cause one chord of our heart to vibrate for long, all sorts of strange notes respond and clang, often those ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... although we had no company: the little party at Government House, as it was then called, were very agreeable and uniformly kind. It is, however, a common mistake to imagine that the life of a missionary is an exciting one. On the contrary, its trial lies in its monotony. The uneventful day, mapped out into hours of teaching and study, sleep, exercise, and religious duties; the constant society of natives whose minds are like those of children, and who do not sympathize with your English ideas; the sameness of the climate, which even precludes ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... that day, a great change began to operate in the spirits and the habits of Caleb Price. Have you ever, my gentle reader, buried yourself for some time quietly in the lazy ease of a dull country-life? Have you ever become gradually accustomed to its monotony, and inured to its solitude; and, just at the time when you have half-forgotten the great world—that mare magnum that frets and roars in the distance—have you ever received in your calm retreat some visitor, full of the busy and excited life which you imagined yourself contented ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pitching, and the final lie, will reveal the entire character of the hole you are making, and tell you plainly how it must be bunkered. In a nine-hole course I think there should be seven medium or long holes, and two short ones to break the monotony and test the golfer at all points. The situation of these short holes in the round will naturally be decided to a large extent by the land and other circumstances, but when the power of selection is left ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... formal hotel rooms, and smirking landladies—and so on till they came to Lancaster, after which the country became more interesting—hills arose in the background. Even the smoky manufacturing towns through which they passed without stopping, were less abominable than the level monotony of the Midland counties. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... With a monotony which is wearying, but which does not diminish the unfortunate Uitlanders' interest in the subject, the burden of every measure falls on the alien. One more instance will suffice. It illustrates the Hollander-Boer ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... shadows of reed and island seemed fixed for ever as in a magic mirror—a mirror that somebody had breathed upon, and, listening to the little gurgle of the water about the limestone shingle, one seemed to hear eternity murmuring its sad monotony. ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... of three and four. And then the road again emptied, and the solitude became more and more complete, without a wayfarer or an animal appearing for miles and miles, whilst yonder, at the far end of the lifeless sea, so grandiose and mournful in its monotony, the sun continued to descend from the infinite ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... river Gila and its tributaries. This river, which takes its rise in the distant mountains of the Mimbres, passes under various names through an immense extent of sandy barren country, the arid monotony of which is interrupted only by the ravines hollowed by the waters, which in their erratic course, ravage ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... through Madame de Berny a correspondence with "his beautiful angel," as he called the Princess, whom he chose to consider a prisoner and a victim; while she, wearied to death with the frigid monotony and sepulchral gaieties of the archiducal court, which she openly called her "dungeon" diverted herself with the freaks and fantasies of her royal adorer, called him in very ill-spelled letters "her chevalier, her heart, her all the world," and frequently wrote to beg him, at the suggestion ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... it occurs most often in females, though in a milder degree. It is a disease of youth, being rarely seen beyond thirty years of age. It seems to depend often upon exhausting influences operating at a period of rapid growth. Monotony of thought and feeling or want of mental food can also induce it. Children who are sent at an early age into factories often pass into the condition of acute dementia. Prison life also tends to produce such a condition. Acute diseases such as typhoid and other fevers are sometimes followed ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... solidly. His suffering was short, and crossed with many gleams of respite and even joy. His disappointment made him really unhappy, but not wholly so; it was a genuine sorrow, but a sorrow to which he began to resign himself even in the monotony of Ponkwasset Falls, and which admitted the thought of Mrs. Frobisher's sister by the time ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... rain, storms. Altogether one was reminded of one of Heine's witty, drastic criticisms in reference to a well-known German university town. "Dogs on the street," Heine writes, "implore strangers to kick them, so that they may have some change from the awful monotony and dulness." ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... impossible for people to herd together as is the case in many other industries. This has its good side, but also its bad. There are no rural slums for the breeding of poverty and crime; but on the other hand, there is an isolation and monotony that tend to become deadening in their effects on the individual. Stress and over-strain does not all come from excitement and the rush of competition; it may equally well originate in lack of variety and unrelieved routine. How true this is is seen ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... seven we stopped to breakfast and to water the horses. Half-past eight found us in the saddle again, and we commenced to traverse a dreary plain of yellowish white pumice-stone, interspersed with huge blocks of obsidian, thrown from the mouth of the volcano. At first the monotony of the scene was relieved by large bushes of yellow broom in full flower, and still larger bushes of the beautiful Retama blanca, quite covered with lovely white bloom, scenting the air with its delicious fragrance, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... in Washington, Commodore Dewey found his close confinement to work had affected his health. Naturally strong and rugged, accustomed to the ozone of the ocean and toned up by the variety of the service, even in times of peace, the monotony of a continual round of the same duties told upon him, and his physician advised him to apply for sea service. He knew the counsel was wise and he ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... occasionally varies his formula, as when on the 6th of April he bids us: "Do not quarrel. Be quiet," and when, on the 23rd of June, he advises: "Ask favours of females, and travel." On the whole however, his recommendations leave us with a sense of the desperate monotony of human existence. It is no wonder the novelists find it so difficult to invent an original plot. Nothing seems to happen—even in the future—except the same old thing. It is all as monotonous as North, South, East and West. ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... swept through the doorway, hoping to surprise him, the eunuch jumped to his feet as lightly as a man of half his weight, and smiling with pleasure in the excitement of an event to break monotony, he blocked with his great bulk the aperture between ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... rhetoric once more under Molo, to whom he ascribes a decisive influence upon the development of his literary style. He had previously affected the florid, or Asiatic, style of oratory then current in Rome. The chief faults of this were excess of ornament, antithesis, alliteration and assonance, monotony of rhythm, and the insertion of words purely for rhythmical effect. Molo, he says, rebuked his youthful extravagance and he came back ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... him when abundance and leisure have been acquired for all? Is it not to be feared that, like Tannhaueser in the Venusberg, our descendants will pine for, and finally bring upon themselves, fresh bitternesses merely in order to escape the unchangeable monotony of the sweets of their existence? We are not made to bear unbroken good fortune; and an order of things that would procure such for us could therefore not last long. That the world if once emancipated ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... infested the coasts of Hispaniola. Between the hunter and the pirate at first no impassable line was drawn. The same person combined in himself the occupations of cow-killing and cruising, varying the monotony of the one by occasionally trying his hand at the other. In either case he lived at constant enmity with the Spaniards. With the passing of time the sea attracted more and more away from their former pursuits. Even the planters who were beginning to filter ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... tragedy of the Chilkoot and the Chilkat trails. Under ordinary, normal circumstances men of opposite temperaments may live with each other in harmony and die in mutual accord, but circumstances here were extraordinary, abnormal. Hardship, monotony, fatigue score the very soul; constant close association renders men absurdly petulant and childishly quarrelsome. Many are the heartaches charged against those early days and ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... kind rather than forsake their converts, and a number "of whom the world was not worthy'' have laid down their lives for conscience' sake. There are few places in all the world that are more depressing to a white man than a Chinese city. The dreary monotony and squalor of its life are simply indescribable. Chefoo is usually considered one of the most attractive cities in China, and the missionaries who reside there are regarded as fortunate above their brethren. But even a brief stay will ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... Metropolitan Opera House he claims he'd like grand opera if they wouldn't sing and when does the acrobats come out, yet the next week he's able to take a apartment on Riverside Drive. This here is just a few of the things Alex done to break up the dull monotony of life in a burg where that ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... illumination does not mean illumination that reveals every hidden corner of a room. We need shadows to betray form, relieve monotony and give depth to the ensemble. If in an illuminated area light is of a uniform intensity, we have a bad effect. The variation of tone in a fabric is due to the light reaching it from a given point. Differences in intensity make shadows ...
— Color Value • C. R. Clifford
... filled a cab with drawings, again he went back to the Metropole and to maddening columns of new figures—back to the monotony of tasteless meals ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... we followed, and soon found ourselves on the summit of the ridge. There we were again gratified at finding spread out before us a perfectly level prairie, extending as far as the eye could reach, without a tree to break the monotony of ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... went to see Ovando, the governor of the island, whom he had known in Spain, and presently was persuaded by him to accept a grant of land and settle down to cultivate it, though at first he said, 'I came to get gold, not to till the ground like a peasant.' So six years passed, during which the monotony of Cortes's life was only broken by occasional expeditions against the natives, in which he learned to endure toil and danger, and became familiar with the tactics of Indian warfare. At length, in 1511, ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... monotony reels into a very frenzy of sensation: it is no more the same world, the same men. Lo, in the Palace of ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... longed for something to come and relieve the monotony of this deathlike stillness. If only someone would speak to him! If only someone would sing to him. Music would carry his thoughts away, and would break the spell lying on him. The moon was streaming in at the open window; but that, too, was ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... the reader's brain from the all-important sense underlying the sound-symbols. But in works of imagination mar. wants a treatment totally different, a style which, by all or any means, little mattering what they be, can avoid the imminent deadly risk of languor and monotony and which adds to fluency the allurement of variety, of surprise and even of disappointment, when ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... speaking to Jean that very day, for he had offered to give her some lessons in photography, and she was going to have her first one in the afternoon. The boy was quite delighted with the thought of having something "to break the monotony of existence," and declared that it was an honour to share in any plan for the ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... preachers connected with many different denominations, the preaching was, after all, rather monotonous, because they all preached Channing. Phillips Brooks spoke after me and said: "The President is right in thinking our present preaching monotonous, and the reason he gives for this monotony is correct; we all ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... pathos. Did we still possess the whole of the comic literature of the Greeks, we should, without doubt, find in it the models of all these species, with this difference, however, that the clear head of the Greeks assuredly never allowed them to fall into a chilling monotony, but that they arrayed and tempered all in due proportion. Have not we, even among the few pieces that remain to us, the Captives of Plautus, which may be called a pathetic drama, the Step-Mother of Terence, a true ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... that the year has produced. I regret that I have not space to criticise the proceedings into which, however, Dr. Montgomery of Texas has injected some bright thoughts, and the displays of learning relieve the general monotony, while considerable intellectual energy is displayed in the discussions; but to see a conclave of learned professors devoting their time to the examination and discussion of Aristotle's writings is about as edifying as ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... couchant lion, bony, huge, and tawny, looking seaward, and guarding the harbor of Honolulu which lies just behind it. Into this harbor, in the soft morning air, our ship soon found its way, and the monotony of the vast, unpeopled sea was quickly succeeded by human scenes of the most varied and animated character, not the least novel of which were the swarms of half-amphibious native boys who surrounded the vessel as she lay at the wharf, ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... had let her lover go without any great reluctance. No sooner had he gone than she began to miss him. Life seemed dull without him. Mother and daughter were united at least in their common regret at the absence of the young bookseller. To vary the monotony of existence, to find if possible a husband for her daughter, Madame Boyer decided to leave Montpellier for Marseilles, and there start some kind of business. The daughter, who foresaw greater amusement and pleasure in the life of a large city, assented ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... workers at Ravenna and Rome, than in Venice. Architectural schemes were introduced to break up the surface: clouds and backgrounds, fields of flowers, and trees, and such devices, were used to prevent the monotony of the unbroken glint. But in Venice the decorators were brave; their faith in their material was unbounded, and they not only frankly laid gold in enormous masses on flat wall and cupola, but they even moulded the edges and archivolts without separate ribs or strips to relieve them; the gold ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... to Stornham, and that one having, with such extraordinary unexpectedness arrived, should want to look over the desolation of these, was curious enough to rouse anyone to a sense of a break in accustomed monotony. The young lady herself mystified him by her difference from such others as he had seen. What the man in the shabby livery had felt, he felt also, and added to this was a sense of the practicalness of the questions she asked and the interest she showed and a way she had ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and see nothing to vary its dreary sameness; the dangers were always alike, the excitements always the same, and the rest was a dead blank. The whole twenty years might be comprised in four words,—we fought, we hunted, we eat, we slept. No, there is no monotony like that,—no life so stupid as that of the savage, with his low wants and his narrow hopes and fears. My life here among my books, which seems to you so tame, is excitement itself compared with that. Your stupidest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... the Apocalypse, I had long before felt a doubt whether we ought not rather to assign that book to John the apostle in preference to the Gospel and Epistles: but this remained only as a doubt. The monotony also of the Gospel had often excited my wonder. But I was for the first time offended, on considering with a fresh mind an old fact,—the great similarity of the style and phraseology in the third chapter, in the testimony of the Baptist, as well as in Christ's ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... word to Clara might fasten shame on him—such was her gratitude! And if he did not marry Laetitia, laughter would be devilish all around him—such was the world's! Probably Vernon would not long be thankful for the chance which varied the monotony of his days. What of Horace? Willoughby stripped to enter the ring with Horace: he cast away disguise. That man had been the first to divide him in the all but equal slices of his egoistic from his amatory self: murder of his individuality was the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which did not require much mental endowment or physical exertion. It was, in fact, more of a pastime than otherwise, and as she always accompanied Edith when visiting the neighboring families, there was but little monotony to ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... the best hated man in New York tonight." Then he asked abruptly: "If you wish to avoid fashionable society why not see something of this? It would be quite a new experience and vary the monotony of books and plays." ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... is highest worth and dignity in precisely those kinds of labor that seem the lowliest and count for the least. Kinds of work differ, not so much in worth as in the use they make of our faculties to do to our utmost what lies before us. The monotony of housekeeping, or the daily repetition of work immediately to be undone, is, after all, the most essential labor. Without it, especially in America, the home would be destroyed. "If a woman is not fit to manage the internal matters of a house, she is fit for nothing, ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... of unwontedness entered the minds of the servants at her early ride. The monotony of life we associate with people of small incomes in districts out of the sound of the railway whistle, has one exception, which puts into shade the experience of dwellers about the great centres of population—that ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... incessantly on the appointed evening; the iron would then be hot, and she knew that she must strike, or lose a golden opportunity for exchanging the desolate monotony of a heavy single life for the sparkling, honorable, enviable title ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... situation. I no longer attempted to hold free converse with my fellow men. I suffered the gloom of their hearts to overshadow mine. My step crept slowly and stealthily into their dwellings; my voice lowered itself to sadness and monotony; I pressed no hand in token of companionship; no hand pressed mine, except when wrung with agony, some wretch, whose burden was more than he could bear restrained me for a few moments of maddened and convulsive grief, from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... the will is constant and uniform, because the instinct which guides it is invariable, and constitutes the animal's whole life and nature. In man, talent varies, and the mind wavers; consequently, his will is multiform and vague. He seeks society, but dislikes constraint and monotony; he is an imitator, but fond of his own ideas, and passionately ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... regard for such home influences, I put it to you, if there will not grow up in the boy's mind, when he begins to draw near to man's estate, a very weariness of all this, from its very sameness; a surfeiting, as it were, of all these delicacies, and a longing for something to break the monotony of what will gradually become to him a humdrum horse-in-the-mill kind of country life? And it is just at this critical time that college life steps in to his aid. With his new life a new light bursts upon his mind; he finds that ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... Mussulman emirs, some of them Turks and others Persians or Arabs, and at one time foes, at another dependants, of the Khalifs of Bagdad or of Egypt. Anarchy and civil war harassed both races and both religions with almost equal impartiality. But, beneath this surface of simultaneous agitation and monotony, great changes were being accomplished or preparing for accomplishment in the West. The principal sovereigns of the preceding generation, Louis VII., King of France, Conrad III., Emperor of Germany, and Henry II., King of England, were dying; and princes more juvenile ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... on; "I'd as soon die as go on living as I do. And now I've lost my self-respect. Often wondered how long a starving man could go without losing his self-respect. Not so very long. You take my word for that." And without the slightest change in the monotony of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... pictures those crocodiles fainting in the heat, and notes, too, whence the author of the "Sphinx" drew his hard, glittering, mineralogical flavour. The verse is not so much easy as facile. And not all the grace of internals can atone for external monotony. That trick—that full stop at the end of nearly every fourth line—it impairs the charm of the music and renders its flow jerky; coming, as it does, like an ever-repeated blow, it grows wearisome to the ear, and ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... passions,—the generation of thy parents (not so many years, perchance, remote from thine own),—how immovably far off, in its still repose, it seems from thy turbulent youth! It has in it a stillness as of a classic age, antique as the statues of the Greeks. That tranquil monotony of routine into which those lives that preceded thee have merged; the occupations that they have found sufficing for their happiness, by the fireside, in the arm-chair and corner appropriated to each,—how strangely they contrast thine own feverish ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pleased. He had reached that stage in the progress of exile where one is inordinately happy to see any old friend. In fact, he was beginning to be "fed up" with Japan, with its very limited distractions, and with the monotony ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... bore his imprisonment with cheerfulness, but the absolute silence, the absence of anything to break the dreary monotony, the probability that he might remain a prisoner all his life, was crushing even to the most active ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... trapping trail, and after that was only home for a couple of days each fortnight. There was no pleasant evening hour now for Emily and her mother to look forward to. The men of the bay were all away at their hunting trails, and no callers ever came to break the monotony of their life, save once in a while Douglas Campbell would tramp over the ice the eight miles from Kenemish to spend an afternoon and cheer ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... evident, from the amount of snow in the mountains, that stories had not been exaggerated. The packers looked dubious. Even if we could make the climb to Doubtful Lake, it seemed impossible that we could get farther. But the monotony of the long ride was broken that afternoon by our first sight, as a party, ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... another for the first time for years that afternoon on the Italian Boulevart. Paul had landed a couple of weeks previously at Marseilles from a long yacht-cruise in southern waters, the monotony of which we heard had been agreeably diversified by a little pirate-hunting and slaver-chasing—the evil tongues called it piracy and slave-running; and certainly Devereux was quite equal to either metier; and he was about starting on a promising little ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... they would have found it salutary and agreeable. The plague of factory life is the extreme monotony of the employment, and this is aggravated in some mills by high temperature and imperfect ventilation. At that time the laws of health were so little understood that few persons saw any hardship in young girls standing on their feet thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and even sixteen hours a ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... and all the time, successful or otherwise, he was developing himself. He developed into an emperor. Young men will please notice that fact, and the fact that Napoleon worked and tried under adversity and monotony instead ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... the German Ocean was heard far inland; but just when the tempest had lulled, it sounded as if hundreds of heavy wagons were driving over a hard tunnelled road. Joergen heard it even in his dungeon, and it was a change in the monotony of his existence. No old melody could have gone more deeply to his heart than these sounds—the rolling ocean—the free ocean—on which one can be borne throughout the world, fly with the wind, and wherever one went have one's own house with one, as the snail has his—to ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... the monastery where Erasmus lived was a printing-outfit. Our versatile young monk learned the case, worked the ink-balls, manipulated the lever, and evidently dispelled, in degree, the monotony of the place by his ready pen and eloquent tongue. When he wrote, he wrote for his ear. All was tested by reading the matter aloud. At that time great authors were not so wise or so clever as printers, and it fell to ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... an excess of the repetition of the same or similar ideas, which ceases to please, and must therefore be excluded from compositions of Taste in painted landscapes, or in ornamented gardens; which is then called formality, monotony, or insipidity. Why the excitation of ideas should give additional pleasure by the facility and distinctness of their production for a certain time, and then cease to give additional pleasure; and ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... portrait of even such a man as I, after all a prisoner, was out of place in such a solemn official room as the office of our prison. And now the portrait hangs on the wall of my cell, pleasantly breaking the cold monotony of the pure ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... some pebbles and hurled them into the underbrush in anger at those pesky little birds with their mournful monotony of note. He knew she could not be far away and started down the track slowly, scrutinizing the ground on each side. He found her at last, lying very still among ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... show. But are they testimony in favour of Animal Magnetism? - do they prove the existence of the magnetic fluid? Every unprejudiced person must answer in the negative. It needs neither magnetism, nor ghost from the grave, to tell us that silence, monotony, and long recumbency in one position must produce sleep, or that excitement, imitation, and a strong imagination, acting upon a weak body, will bring on convulsions. It will be seen hereafter that magnetism ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Dictionary, which finished Sa- in the year 1912, just missed it. Hooligan is not recorded by the New English Dictionary. The original Hooligans were a spirited Irish family of that name whose proceedings enlivened the drab monotony of life in Southwark towards the end of the 19th century. The word is younger than the Australian larrikin, of doubtful origin (see p. 190), but older than Fr. apache. The adoption of the Red Indian ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... were the best substitute she had; they were dearly prized by her, and, to say truth, by him. He had no family, he lived alone; and the visits of his docile and intelligent little pupil became very pleasant breaks in the monotony of his home life. Truly kind-hearted and benevolent, and a true lover of knowledge, he delighted to impart it. Ellen soon found she might ask him as many questions as she pleased, that were at all proper to ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... 'Gorboduc,' gave it an immediate and lasting vogue for tragedy and high comedy. Marlowe, virtually a beginner, could not be expected to carry blank verse to that perfection which his success made possible for Shakspere; he did not altogether escape monotony and commonplaceness; but he gained a high degree of flexibility and beauty by avoiding a regularly end-stopped arrangement, by taking pains to secure variety of pause and accent, and by giving his language ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... Before pronouncing judgment, however, be it remembered, how objectless was my life, and how little there was to engage my attention. My health forbade me from venturing out unless the weather was exceptionally genial, and I had no friends who would call upon me and break the monotony of my daily existence. Under these circumstances, I eagerly hailed the little mystery which hung around my companion, and spent much of my time in endeavouring ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... how he could be afraid of boring the public with any opera after they had been accustomed to find pleasure in Rossini's Semiramis, which was often produced. Upon this he paused to reflect, and agreed with me so far as the monotony of action and of music in that work was concerned. He told me not to forget, however, that the public neither cared for action nor music, but that their whole attention was directed to the brilliancy of the singers. Tannhauser gave little scope for brilliancy, and, as a matter of fact, I had none ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... anything amiss with an odd sheep or a cattle-beast; sometimes working with the sheep in the yards, dipping, crutching and such like, or going off on jaunts to neighbouring stations or distant townships. It was a life where there was opportunity for the whole of a man's skill and wit, and where monotony and loneliness were not. After the day's work he and Charley took turns in cooking the dinner, while the other went for the mail. The several-day-old paper lost nothing by its age. The meal finished, they smoked and read ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... of such men, outspoken by nature, recorded his mind in some two thousand printed pages, and Roger Williams even to-day looms up with all the more power because we have become "rather fatigued by the monotony of so vast a throng of sages and saints, all quite immaculate, all equally prim and stiff in their Puritan starch and uniform, all equally automatic and freezing." It is most comfortable to find ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... citizens it was drama; it broke the tedious monotony of everyday life; it was more productive of interesting conversation than a case of embezzlement or the burning of the county courthouse. There were those who smiled while they said: "Too bad, too bad! ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... laid out on a square plan with the angles directed as far as possible toward the four cardinal points, and the predominance of a single architectural type imparts a certain monotony to the streets. The enclosing walls are flanked with towers and their gates are surmounted by lofty structures which include an arsenal and a guard-room. Besides the temples and commemorative monuments erected on the same plan as the temples, at the entrance to certain streets and before certain ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... culture. Irish hadn't changed, but Sadler was looking older and more melancholy, though I judged that some of the lines on his face, that simulated care, came from the kind of life folks led in Saleratus to avoid monotony. We spoke of Craney among others, but Sadler knew no more of Craney than I did. Likely he was still ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... not been long in W——, but he had made rapid headway among that class who, having little or nothing to love or to fear, are not slow to relieve the monotony of very bare existence by appropriating to themselves the friendship of every hail fellow whom ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... share of the responsibility of this incident, he was not much disconcerted. This unexpected drunkenness broke the monotony of the journey. Many foolish things had been said while under its ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... flowers which adorn it; thus she is incompetent to direct her servant, upon whose inferior judgment and taste she is obliged to depend. She is continually subjected to impositions from her ignorance of what is required for the dishes she selects, while a lavish extravagance, or parsimonious monotony betrays her utter inexperience in all the minute yet ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... performance. The Leopard Woman, watching, at last had to close her eyes in order to escape the hypnotic quality of it. In spite of herself her senses swam in the rhythmic monotony. All outside the focus of the dancers turned gray—goom, zup! goom, zup!—was it never to end? And then it seemed to her that it never would end, that thus it would go on forever, and that so it was just and right. The men were ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
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