"Monotone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... another man more fearful and hateful," went on MacIan, in his low monotone voice, "and they have buried him even deeper. God knows how they did it, for he was let in by neither door nor window, nor lowered through any opening above. I expect these iron handles that we both hate have been part ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... also a rumbling monotone preceding each of these vehement interruptions. The Abbe Bardin was pointing out to her that, unmarried, her son would return to Tonquin, that Lizerolles would be left deserted, her house would be desolate without daughter-in-law or grandchildren; and, as he drew these pictures, ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... to assemble in each parish church and proceed to shout carols or 'Carvals.' There was no unison or concert about the chanting, but a single person would stand up with a lighted candle in his or her hand, and chant in a dismal monotone verse after verse of some old Manx 'Carval,' until the candle was burnt out. Then another person would start up and go through a similar performance. No fresh candles might be lighted after ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... is music in the poetry of Byron and of Poe, and there is the psychic effect of color. The rhythm in certain of their poems, with the arrangement of word-sound, produces the saddest music possible, I think, to the soul of man—a prevailing monotone so measured as to result in an effect decidedly strange and quite indescribable. But the real peculiarity of their poetry—and in this Poe excels Byron—is a psychic effect the same as that which remains after viewing certain pictures in black and white, the shade gradations ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... long unceasing monotone of the little shallow river that sings yonder over the rocks in its bosom as a mother crooning over her children; it is but one word the stream utters: but as when we speak a well-known word over and over again until it comes to have a frightful mystery in it, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... the thermometer means mounting in earnest. But, as the dreary time dragged on, and as the leaden listlessness settled down heavier hour by hour, I began to look back regretfully, if not remorsefully. There were moments, not few or far between, when I would have given much to hear the wire-drawn monotone that lately had been an offense to me; ay, even though each slow sentence should be ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... no protest, and they entered the forest. The moon shone down through the lofty redwoods that seemed to scrape its crystal; the monotone of the distant sea blended with the faint roar of the tree-tops. The vast gloomy aisles were unbroken by ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... him sharply, and fearlessly approached him. She began talking in a monotone. His ears went flat against his head, but he submitted to her touch because invariably it soothed him, and because he sensed some undefinable power whenever his gaze met hers. She snapped the leash on his collar just as her father came running up, ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... demand, sung in a chanting kind of monotone, and very seldom refused. A boy is chosen to knock at the farm door and rouse the inmates, it being considered unlucky for the household if a girl ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... really was a hesitation in her voice, or whether I read that into it. She stood there, playing with the knots of the window-cords and speaking in a low monotone. The whole thing, the sad twilight of the place, her tone of voice, seemed tinged with unavailing regret. I had almost forgotten the Dimensionist story, and I had never believed in it. But now, for the first time ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... on my right, and across the dark expanse, and across the street which cut the other side of it I looked to the long roofs and walls of the convent, all a dull monotone scarcely distinguishable from the night. Only on the corner a solitary street lamp illuminated a little space of the wall and made a pool of ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... night the monotone of the soldiers' talk merged into confused and indistinct recollections of his first Sunday at Fort Benton. Eva Thornhill's scornful yet inviting face seemed drawing him through deep waters, to be replaced by ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... are the creeds, but stale the schools, Revamped as the mode may veer, But Orm from the schools to the beaches strays And, finding a Conch hoar with time, he delays And reverent lifts it to ear. That Voice, pitched in far monotone, Shall it swerve? shall it deviate ever? The Seas have inspired it, and Truth— Truth, ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... hedges and bushes,—little, stiff trees which held their foliage in their hands and dared the winds snatch a leaf from that grip. The hills were swelling and sinking, folding and soaring on every view. Now the silence was startled by the falling tinkle of a stream. Far away a cow lowed, a long, deep monotone, or a goat's call trembled from nowhere to nowhere. But mostly there was a silence which buzzed with a multitude of small winged life. Going up the hills the Philosopher bent forward to the gradient, stamping vigorously as he trod, almost snorting like a bull in the pride of successful ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... is made on which the animal is placed and skinned. This done, the bead man of the party, or the most important man present, takes a small part of the entrails or heart, cuts it into fine bits and scatters the pieces in all directions, at the same time chanting in a monotone a few words which mean "Spirits, we thank you for this successful hunt. Here is your share of the spoils." This is done to feed and appease the spirits which the Negritos believe inhabit all places, and the ceremony ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... brain. He tried to keep step with their monotone. The storm could not drown them. They were meaningless words to him now, but they kept him company. Also, his rifle was meaningless, but he clung to it. The pack on his back held no significance and no weight for him. He might ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... roofs there was a dull glow of the watch-fires in the streets; where they sat, Scott and the girl could smell the pitch that fed them. And, over all, an unseen sick man gabbled his prayers in a halting monotone. A quick heat of wrath lit in Scott as his thoughts traveled around the situation; for Incarnacion sat with her head bowed, playing with her toes, and the ever-ready terror lest the plague should ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... in surprise; but he never raised his eyes, or gave the least sign that these words of his were unexpected. He knew that Fred was watching him from the first, and so, before the words were more than fairly out of his mouth, Deerfoot began reading in a low, impressive monotone, as though he had merely resumed, ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... sigh (from the first phrase) rises again and again in gusts. In a violent paroxysm we hear the doom of the monotone in lowest horns. The fateful phrases are ringing about, while pervading all is the hope-destroying blast of the brass. But the storm-centre is the sighing motive which now enters on a quicker spur of passionate stride (Allegro frenetico, quasi ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... now except leave." Her voice was a dull monotone. "There is only so much that a person can do, and I've done it. Please have the ship come; I want to ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... voice, sharp in contradistinction to the monotone of the preacher's, was heard to repeat these words: 'I say I am not sure I shall survive it.' Considerable muttering in the same quarter was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and cast it into Beauvais's lap. "Do you recognize that face? Is it not a mute accusation to your warped conscience?" The voice, changing from the monotone of narrative, grew strong and contemptuous. "I know you. I recognized you the moment I laid eyes on you, only I could not place you. Perhaps it was because it did not seem possible that you would dare show your face to civilized people. That photograph has done its work. By ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... was divided into upper and lower, and a little later the entering tone finally disappeared from Pekingese. The following monosyllabic dialogue gives a very fair idea of the quality of the four Pekingese tones—1st tone: Dead (spoken in a raised monotone, with slightly plaintive inflection); 2nd tone: Dead? (simple query); 3rd tone: Dead? (an incredulous query long drawn out); 4th tone: Dead! (a sharp and decisive answer). The native learns the tones unconsciously and by ear alone. For centuries ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... will only follow your conscience," continued Mrs. Haldane, in her low monotone, "all will be well. It is your being carried away by gusts of impulse and violent passions that makes all the trouble. If you had followed your conscience you would at once have left Hillaton at my request, and hidden yourself in the ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... while the seas Break in their open arms, And the slow-moving breeze Draws languid fingers down their placid brows. Even the surly ocean knows their charms, And under the shrill laughter of the surf, He booms and sings his heavy monotone. ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... our young knight of the tuning-fork was not to be vanquished. With a dash he brought the fork down upon the desk, and gave the key again. But alas! for all human expectations! The choir dropped down to a dead monotone, as they went on ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... here," she spoke in an odd, weary monotone, as if she were thinking aloud. "This morning ... I think, if Norah had left anything in the bottle ... I'd have ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... checking her voice to a low, even monotone. "You are the child of disaster if ever woman was. Your father was a poor, weak fool, a big, handsome, good-hearted fool whom Nature had endowed with nothing more than a perfect exterior. He was a Wall Street ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... swamped with spindrift; underneath the door The maddened water gushed, while strong and high Your piercing top-note staggered passers-by. But now I hear the running taps alone, A faint and melancholy monotone; Or just a gentle swirl when sober hope Searches the bath's profound to salve the soap. Sadly I kick the unresponsive door; Youth, with its blithe ablutions, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... sunshine and clear skies could not give us." As usual, Rosalind had spoken my thought before I had made it quite clear to myself; I began to feel the peculiar delight of our comfort in the heart of that great forest when the storm was abroad. The monotone of the rain became rhythmic with some ancient, primeval melody, which the woods sang before their solitude had been invaded by the eager feet of men always searching for something which they do not possess. I felt ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... the noise of waters Making moan, Sad as the sea-bird is when, going Forth alone, He hears the winds cry to the water's Monotone. The grey winds, the cold winds are blowing Where I go. I hear the noise of many waters Far below. All day, all night, I hear ...
— Chamber Music • James Joyce
... if I remember correctly. Here, listen to this. Now here's a little incident I found this evening that interests me immensely. It proves to my mind one of two points I hold in regard to Marshal Ney. Listen," and he read at length from his book, a dry, sepulchral monotone that grated on the ear until it ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... seemed like the breath of a sleeping child, and then, as they lisped from the soft, tender leaves of beeches and maples, like the half-articulate whisper of the mother hushing all the intrusive sounds that might awaken it. Then came the pulsating monotone of the frogs from a far-off pool, the harsh cry of an owl from an old tree that overhung it, the splash of a mink or musquash, and nearer by, the light step of a woodchuck, as he cantered off in his quiet way to his hole in the nearest ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... rapid changes of financial condition, moods, environment—the brief ecstasy of his triumphant flight that had so ridiculous a climax. Small wonder that Bland's whining voice failed to register anything but a dreary monotone of meaningless words in Johnny's ears. Small wonder that Johnny's thoughts dwelt upon little worries that could have no possible bearing upon the big things he ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... alphabet. Indeed, there is nothing the bells could not tell, if you would only give them time enough. We have only one chime, for musical purposes, in the town. But, without attempting tunes, only give the bells the Morse alphabet, and every bell in Boston might chant in monotone the words of "Hail Columbia" at length, every Fourth of July. Indeed, if Mr. Barnard should report any day that a discouraged 'prentice-boy had left town for his country home, all the bells could instantly be set to work to speak articulately, in language regarding which ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... later, Sir Francis Vesey was sitting in his private office, a musty den encased within the heart of the city, listening, or trying to listen, to the dull clerical monotone of a clerk's dry voice detailing the wearisome items of certain legal formulae preliminary to an impending case. Sir Francis had yawned capaciously once or twice, and had played absently with a large ink-stained ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... the Southwest, then back again in a great circle by Chihuahua and Aldama to Laredo, to Torreon, and Albuquerque. From there across the Uncompahgre plateau into the Uintah country; then at last due west through Nevada to California and to the valley of the San Joaquin." His voice lapsed to a monotone, his eyes becoming fixed; he continued to speak as though half awake, his thoughts elsewhere, seeing again in the eye of his mind the reach of desert and red hill, the purple mountain, the level stretch of alkali, leper white, all the savage, gorgeous desolation ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... in a low monotone, holding the book close to his eyes in the uncertain light. And as he read I fell to wondering who our brother in the white coffin might be. Some merry tramp who knew the pain and the joy of the road? Some detached soul who had ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... of the noble music, contained in the Bible and the Liturgy, by its recital in a dead monotone, with no more ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... no longer keep her attention on the stitches. She paced nervously up and down the little apartment. In the room beneath she could hear the dull muffled sound of men's voices in a long continuous monotone, broken only by the interposition now and again of one voice which was so deep and loud that it reminded her of the growl of a beast of prey. This must belong to the red-bearded stranger. Kate wondered what it could ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... appeared now, with only the dreary monotone of the wintry rain on the roof, and the occasional sob that fell from the black-robed figure ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... be conscious of what he was doing, took the bow of the violin, and placing the instrument upon his shoulder, leaned his ear down to it, and drew the hair over the strings. A long, sad monotone ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... she shook hands, and then perceived that she had not been intended to show amusement. Cartoner had merely made a rather naive statement in his low monotone. She thought him a little odd, and glanced at him again. She changed color slightly as she turned towards a chair. He was ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... read in a calm even monotone, without inflection, but with many pauses, whilst I watched ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... whispered, still standing very straight in the middle of the doorway. She was not looking at the inert thing on the walk below, but into her father's eyes. He did not, could not answer. He seemed frozen stiff. She went on in the same dull, whispered monotone. "I begged him to let me come alone. I begged him to let me see you first. But he would come. He brought me all the way from the West and he—he was not afraid of you. You have done what you said you would do. You did not give him a chance. And always,—always I have loved you ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... leurs lits, l'ombre qui les couronne, M'enchainent tout le jour sur les bords des ruisseaux; Comme un enfant berce par un chant monotone, Mon ame s'assoupit au ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... out another atom from the atmosphere and held it up for Mr. Wayne's inspection; and while that young man's eyes protruded the poet rambled on and on until the melody of his voice became a ceaseless sound, a vague, sustained monotone, which seemed to bore into Wayne's brain until his legs twitched with a furious desire ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... Senior Surgeon turned sharply round to make sure, the Little Crippled Girl, in apparently complete absorption, sat amiably extracting tuft after tuft of fur from the thumb of one big sable glove, to the rumbling, sing-song monotone of "He loves me—Loves me ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... troubled round of sea and air, No glimpse of brightness lends the vivid zest Of life and light to the harsh monotone Of gray tumultuous flood and spectral sky; Far off the black basaltic crags are heaved Against the desolate emptiness of space; But no sweet beam of sunset ever falls Athwart old Skidloe's cloudy crest—no soft And wistful ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... circling round like the buzz of an immense bee. As the hum of insects high in the atmosphere of midsummer suits and fits to the roses and the full green meads, so the hum of the threshing suits to the yellowing leaf and drowsy air of autumn. The iteration of hum and monotone soothes, and means so much more in its inarticulation than the adjusted chords and tune of written music. Laughing, the children romped round the ricks; they love the threshing and flock to it, they watch the fly-wheel rotating, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... meager outfit, Turned the horses loose to graze, Baked his varicolored dough-bread, On a fire of cattle chips; Coffee made of green-scummed water, Nectar to his thirsty lips. On the ground he spread his blanket And reclining there alone, Heard the swiftly sweeping breezes Sing in dreary monotone Strange wild anthems, weird and lonesome, Like lost spirits floating by, While afar in broken measure Swelled the ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... it hummeth a sweet, sweet song To my dear little boy at play— Merrily singeth all day long, As it spinneth and spinneth away. And my dear little boy He laugheth with joy When he heareth the monotone Of that busy thing That loveth to sing The song ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... perturbed spirit, full of the restless movement of city life and the inevitable disquiet of sin, something of her own calmness and peace. The only sounds he heard seemed a part of nature's silence,—the tinkle of cowbells, the slumberous monotone of water as it fell over the dam, the grating notes of a katydid, rendered hoarse by recent cool nights, in a shady ravine near by, and a black cricket chirping at the edge of the rock on which he sat— these were all. And yet the sounds, though not heard for years, seemed as familiar ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... most beautiful beginning, I think, 'Desolate is the dwelling of Moina,' and the next place being filled by that address to the sun you magnify so with praise. But the charm of these things is the only charm of all the poems. There is a sound of wild vague music in a monotone—nothing is articulate, nothing individual, nothing various. Take away a few poetical phrases from these poems, and they are colourless and bare. Compare them with the old burning ballads, with a wild heart beating in each. How cold they grow in the comparison! Compare them with Homer's ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... to her work. Trina and Marcus watched her curiously. There was a silence. The corundum burr in McTeague's engine hummed in a prolonged monotone. The canary bird chittered occasionally. The room was warm, and the breathing of the five people in the narrow space made the air close and thick. At long intervals an acrid odor of ink floated up from ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... herself told it then to me. The story was so dark and sad—or at least to myself it so appeared—that even the little breaks and turns of lighter thought or livelier manner, which could scarcely fail to vary now and then the speaker's voice, seemed almost to grate and jar upon its sombre monotone. On the other hand, by omitting these, and departing from her homely style, I might do more of harm than good through failing to convey impressions, or even facts, so accurately. Whereas the gist and core and pivot of my father's life and fate are ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... to one of his officers and said something, and then, after giving another curious glance at Gordon, raised his book and continued reading, in a deep, unruffled monotone. The officer whispered an order, and two of the marines stepped out of line, and dropping the muzzles of their muskets, pushed Gordon back out of the enclosure, and left him there with his lips white, and trembling all over with ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... you how you helped us to pass many a weary, restless hour. After the Bible had been read to me in a low monotone—when I was seeking sleep and could not find it—a volume of my published sermons was tried, and sometimes very successfully, as a soporific. I was familiar with them, and yet they presented as much novelty as to divert my mind from my troubles. ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... at him, sardonic-eyed; and both of them seemed to understand fully what he meant. They seemed to catch more from the slow tones, so full of lust and frenzy that they seemed to drop from his lips in an ugly monotone, than they did from the words themselves. They took a certain grim amusement in these quirks of abnormal depravity that had begun to manifest themselves in Ray. The man's fingers were wide spread as he spoke, ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... caused it by kicking her in the stomach," she said in a monotone. "He must have damaged her insides. Mon Dieu! She was in agony for three days with her stomach all swelled up. Plenty of scoundrels have been sent to the galleys for less than that, but the courts ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... outskirts of the town; he had to take a long walk through desolate districts (brick-yard, sordid pasture, degenerate village) before he could refresh his eyes with the rural scenery which was so great a joy to him as almost to be a necessity. The immediate vicinage offered nothing but monotone of grimy, lower middle-class dwellings, occasionally relieved by a public-house. He occupied two rooms, not unreasonably clean, and was seldom disturbed by ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... and mystery murmur through the leaves,— Passion and mystery touched by deathless pain, Whose monotone of long, low anguish grieves For something lost that ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... give you a bird's-eye view of Germany; rocks, and woods, and clouds, and brooks, and the pebbles in their beds, and mills, and cottages, and fences, and what not; but it is all a feverish dream, ghastly and strange, a monotone of diseased imagination. ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... "Mother" is a good picture of life among the working-people in a Russian factory, that is, life as seen through Gorki's eyes; all cheerfulness and laughter are, of course, absent, and we have presented a dull monotone of misery. The factory itself is the villain of the story, and resembles some grotesque wild beast, that daily devours the blood, bone, and marrow of the throng of victims that enter its black jaws. The men, women, and ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... she continued, in a low monotone; "how narrow and limited is all that you know compared to what there is surely up there. Yes, if I did not answer you it was because I was thinking of you, and I was filled with grief. You ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... that used to environ them. In the feverish, pulsating life of the young metropolis they often stopped oppressed, giddy, and choking; the roar of the streets and thoroughfares was meaningless to them, except to revive strange memories of the deep, unvarying monotone of the evening wind over their humbler roof on the Sierran hillside. Civic bred and nurtured as they were, the recurrence of these sensations perplexed and ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... tale, a monotone: She climbed one sunny hill, gazed once abroad, Then wandered down, to pace a dreary plain; Alas! how many such are told by night, In fisher-cottages along ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... melancholy menace of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats is a groan. And the people—ah, the people— They that dwell up in the steeple, all alone! And who tolling, tolling, tolling, in that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling on the human heart a stone— They are neither man nor woman— They are neither brute nor human—they are Ghouls: And their king it is who tolls; And he rolls, rolls, rolls, ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... He stuffed his pockets with cigars, slammed the boxes into the case, and locked them up. He collected his belongings and repacked the other case, keeping up a rumbling monotone as he did so. "Oh, yes; I am ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... the pike toward the brick house. The white-ruffed fennel reached up its dusty yellow heads to touch her skirts as she passed, and then drooped, satisfied, against the purple iron-weed at the roadside. In the noonday silence no cricket chirped nor locust raised its lorn monotone; the tree shadows mottled the road with blue, and the level fields seemed to pant out a dazzling breath, the transparent "heat-waves" that danced above the low corn ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... my father," Zenobia continued in a monotone, "and my brothers killed your brother; and so it will go on now for nobody ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... emotional states is the art of the actor. Not only would it be impossible for an actor to make an audience believe in the genuineness of his supposed emotion if he stood glassy-eyed and wooden-limbed declaiming his lines in a monotone, without gestures or play of expression of any sort, but it would also be impossible for him to feel even the counterfeit sensation which he is supposed to represent. So definite and so well recognized is this connection, that many actors take some little time, ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... out the light. From where I lay I could see the running lights of the Shelton ships swaying in a freshening breeze, three together in port for the first time in ten years. The sky had become so overcast that every shape outside had merged into an inky monotone. I could hear the low murmur of the wind twisting through the branches of our elms, and the whistle of it as it passed our gables. Once below I heard my father's step, quick and decisive, his voice raised to give an order, and the ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... hid his face behind massed, spitting clouds. Morning, noon, and night the eaves of the shacks dripped steadily, the gaunt limbs of the hardwoods were a line of coursing drops, and through all the vast reaches of fir and cedar the patter of rain kept up a dreary monotone. Whenever the mist that blew like rolling smoke along the mountains lifted for a brief hour, there, creeping steadily downward, lay ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... being almost unknown at Atticus's dinners. The host turned smiling to his guests. "My friends," he said, "I know you share my pride in the rare event of Apuleius's presence. He is not as accustomed as we are to the grey monotone of our own thoughts. Shall he go back to Carthage or Rome to laugh at our village banquets? Ptolemy, you know Menander shared ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... tinkle of a mandolin and an occasional low laugh from the group of young people that nightly frequented the front steps. Tree toads chirped in unison or fell abruptly silent as though by signal. All up and down the rows of houses whirred the low monotone of the lawn sprinklers, and the aroma of their wetness was borne cool and refreshing ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... the rest apart, With folded hands and turbaned head, With a nameless burden upon her heart, And the light of youth forever fled. And she sits a swaying to and fro, Like the billowy pine with plume and cone, While a minor strain subdued and slow, She sings in a plaintive monotone: ...
— The American Missionary, October, 1890, Vol. XLIV., No. 10 • Various
... not answer, but he began to mutter in a sleepy monotone, "Don't hit me, sir. It was snow. I'll not come home late again. Ninepence, sir, and ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... young preacher just forming his habits, a hard and unnatural manner of speaking. More than one young preacher have I known, who began with good natural tones, in the course of a [77] year or two, to fall into a loud, pulpit monotone, or to bring out all his cadences with a jerk, or with a disagreeable stress of voice, to be heard. One must be heard, that is the first requisite, and to have one and another come out of church Sunday after Sunday, and touch your elbow, and say, "Sir, I could n't ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... expedition with six ladies was apparently the opportunity of a lifetime, and she was determined to make the most of it. She volunteered to recite, and wound out a long poem in such a rapid, breathless monotone that it was hardly possible to distinguish a word. The party politely expressed gratitude, whereupon she announced: "I'll say it for you again!" and plunged at once ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... before they were out of sight over the ridge, Malcom Porter had turned on his heel and started back toward the cluster of buildings. He was swearing vilely in a rumbling monotone, and had apparently ...
— By Proxy • Gordon Randall Garrett
... in a capacious armchair in Mrs. Peters' door-way. Across her knees lay a small white bundle, and she was swaying softly back and forth, while she crooned in a low, loving monotone her favorite nursery lullaby: ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... going down, a mere redness in the curdling fleecy haze; the weltering seas rose and fell in broad sheets of burnished silver, the monotone of their music followed them, a cool salt wind blew over them and freshened them for storm. Flor rose on her arm and looked back,—the breeze roused her; pain and fear and hope rose with her and looked back too. Eager, feverish, fierce, recollecting and desiring and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... as the Hermit rambled on In one long listless monotone, We heard a wild and mournful groan Come rumbling down the tunnelled way; A voice, an awful mournful bray, Singing some old funereal lay; Then solemn footsteps, muffled, dull, Approached as if they trod on wool, And ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... low monotone, that nevertheless penetrated to every part of the room. He had a voice of peculiar quality, as sweet as the tones of a tenor, and as pleasant to hear as music; now and then there was a manly ring in it which thrilled his listeners. "A week ago ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... at the human nature just as Thoreau used to get at bird-nature and fish-nature and turtle-nature, by sitting perfectly still in one place and waiting patiently till it comes out. You see more of the reality of people in a single day's tramp than in twenty days of guarded monotone. Now I cannot conceive of any reason why people should go to Saratoga, except to see people. True, as a general thing, they are the last objects you desire to see, when you are summering. But if one has been cooped up in the house or blocked up in the country during the nine ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... dial, although at our right a big moon was leaving the tree tops and flooding the sky with its light. Toward this she turned, and lifting an arm with the reverence of a priestess said, in impassioned monotone: ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... Altara, fool?" he thundered in a dreadful, shaken monotone. "Have those foul swine of ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... glow waxing and waning, a constant drone was borne in to them—a thunder of the white horses' hoofs trampling on Pull-an'-be-Damned; the vindictive sound of seas falling down one after another on wasted rocks, on shifting sand bars—a powerful monotone seeming to increase in the ear with fuller attention. The contrast was marked between the heavy-lying peace of the inner harbor and that hungry reverberation from without of waters seeking fresh holds along a mutilated coast. On damp nights when the wind ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... mothers must take their children wherever they go—to churches, theatres, concerts, and military reviews—everywhere and anywhere. Hence the low, pensive wail of the individual baby, combining in large numbers, becomes a deep monotone, like the waves of the sea, a sort of violoncello accompaniment to all their holiday performances. It was rather trying to me at first to have my glowing periods punctuated with a rhythmic wail from all sides of the hall; but as soon as I saw that it did not distract ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... astonishing revelation as at the change it seemed to effect in her. Her pale blue eyes, made paler by tears, cleared and brightened under their swollen lids like wiped steel; the lines of her depressed mouth straightened and became firm. Her voice had lost its hopeless monotone. ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... bitter weeping by such soothing words as she could muster in the midst of her own distress at the possibility of any serious accident having happened to her favourite scholar. But poor little Jean's sad monotone still rang mournfully through the soft evening air as she trotted along by Grace's side—"Geordie's dyin'; Blackie's got ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... sufficiently terrifying, the air is throbbing with sound. Each Indian pops away for general results as he comes jumping along, and yells shrilly to show what a big warrior he is, while underneath it all is the hurried monotone of hoof-beats becoming ever louder, as the roar of an increasing rainstorm on the roof. It does not seem possible that anything can ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... terminated his speech with this terrible emphasis, he started into an upright attitude, and listened with all his ears for another utterance of that harsh monotone that, borne upon the breeze and rising above the "sough" of the disturbed water, could easily be distinguished as ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... ceremony of some description was taking place, lesser priests and other acolytes performing their various parts, the incantations rising now loudly, now sinking to a hollow monotone, the whole affair being none the less absorbing when Bruno remembered that, perhaps, it might have some connection with the vile plots against the Sun Children, if not endangering ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... away—and the ending is full of a sad charm. Op. 30, No. 4, the next in order, is bigger in conception, bigger in workmanship. It is not so cheerful, perhaps, as its predecessor in the same key; the heavy basses twanging in tenths like a contrabasso are intentionally monotone in effect. There is defiance and despair in the mood. And look at the line before the last—those consecutive fifths and sevenths were not placed there as a whim; they mean something. Here is a mazurka that will be heard later than 1955! By the way, while ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... in a dreary monotone which seemed strangely out of keeping with the half-concealed kindliness which was revealed in her homely countenance. She was a working matron, a sort of upper servant, and had been three years in the place, which, I gradually gleaned from ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... hurried novitiate of a single year she had taken the veil. She submitted where to have striven would have been to have spent herself in vain; but her resignation was only of the body, and this dejected body moved mechanically through the tasks and recreations that go to make up the grey monotone of conventual existence; in which one day is as another day, one hour as another hour; in which the seasons of the year lose their significance; in which time has no purpose save for its subdivision into periods devoted to sleeping and waking, to eating and fasting, ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... in silence through the window at the blinking lights in Washington, turned and looked moodily at his calm host. He spoke in a slow, dreamy monotone, his eyes on ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... half of it was taken up with windy rhetoric in which the Almighty was invoked at every turn. It degenerated at one time into a sermon upon the text of "render unto Caesar," inveighing against the Presbyterian religion. And the dull length of his lordship's periods, combined with the monotone in which he spoke, lulled the wearied lady at the bar into slumber. She awakened with a start when suddenly his fist crashed down and his voice rose in fierce denunciation of the late rebellion. But she was dozing again—so calm and so little moved was she—before he had ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... keep yoursel' cool a bit," he said, holding up his hand as Rundell made to speak. "We did gey well," he resumed in his even monotone, like a man who was repeating something he had learned by heart. "But gey soon I found that I was expected to spend a good share o' my pay in drink, while Walker took a', an' never spent a penny. So it was, ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... words I write in the summer time at our house in Surrey, for Desmond likes to be here at this season, and I write in my old chamber. Before its windows rolls the blue summer sea. Its beauty wears a relentless aspect to me now; its eternal monotone expresses ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... everywhere; fruit-trees, with branches intermingling, blended the white and pink of blossoms. There was the soft laughter of children in the garden. Strange birds darted among the trees. Their notes were new, but their song was the old delicious monotone—the joy of living and love of spring. A green-bowered irrigation ditch led by the porch and unseen water flowed gently, with gurgle and tinkle, with music in its hurry. Innumerable ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... make the other man "perk up his ears" if his attention wanders; so plan to introduce variety into your manner of speaking. Don't just open the spigot of your mind and let your ideas run out in a monotone. Variety of voice is ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... involved and extremely sentimental conversation as to whether Anthony did not consider Gloria change enough. Though he assured her that he did, she insisted upon doubting him.... Eventually the conversation assumed its eternal monotone: "What then? Oh, what'll we ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... closing the door behind them and deftly retying the thongs, in order that the discovery of the escape might occur as late as possible. Then they stood a few moments in the shadow of the hut and listened to the sounds of revelry, the monotone of the story-tellers, and the chant of ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... went to his neighbour's. The thrashing machine was humming, and the driver was shouting. The lean horses were going slowly round him, straining at their traces. The driver was shouting to them in a monotone, "Now, there, my dears." Some women were unbinding sheaves, others were raking up the scattered straw and ears, and others again were gathering great armfuls of corn and handing them to the men to feed the machine. The work was in full swing. In the kitchen ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... and how you love this beauty, And walking up the long beach all alone I heard the waves breaking in measured thunder As you and I once heard their monotone. ...
— Flame and Shadow • Sara Teasdale
... voice of his mother raised for a moment above its monotone caused him to turn and look ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... seventeen matches, lays them at my feet on the tent-floor and asks The-Lean-Man to name them. He starts in all right. We hear, "Long Lodge, Little Pine, Blue Fish, Birdtail, Little Bone, Sweet Grass, Ermine Skin," and then in a monotone he begins over again, "Long Lodge, Little Pine, Blue Fish," and finally gives it up, eagerly asking the interpreter to wait "a-little-sun." The drama of paying and recording has gone on for half an hour and we have quite forgotten The-Lean-Man, when back he comes with Mrs. Lean-Man, Sr., ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... own. From my windows I see over the tops of variegated trees the river, with its purple heights beyond, and a few moments' walk brings me to the lovely shore, where sails are gliding continually by, and the huge steamers sweep past with echoing tread, and a train of waves, whose rush relieves the monotone of the ripples. In the country behind us are mountain-paths, and lonely glens, with gurgling streams, and many-voiced water-falls. And over all are spread the ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... tenor, and bass which is very dramatic in setting; and this leads to the "Libera," the final division and the climax of the work. It is in its general effect a soprano obligato with chorus. After a monotone recitative and solo, the "Dies Irae" is repeated, likewise the "Requiem aeternam" (which forms the introduction of the mass), and closes with a fugue of majestic proportions that finally ends in the same pianissimo effect as ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... this excitement under the gallery, but had gone steadily on in an even monotone very unusual to ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... sounds of the human voice may be comprehended under the general appellation of tones. The principal modifications of these tones are the MONOTONE, the RISING INFLECTION, the FALLING ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders |
