"Singsong" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at lecturing simply as part of the routine tend to fall into either the singsong rhythm which one frequently hears in college professors and certain radio announcers, or go all out for the sonorous intonations which are beloved by many of the clergy. Many young officers get into these same cadences whenever they talk to men, and before they know it, they are trying the same ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... replied the singsong voice of Perkins, in answer to Bradford's demand for Miss Latham, Potts and Parker having already gone to open the Newport house for the renter, as a staff of servants was let with it, and then he added, as ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... not reply, but began to mumble with a singsong irritated, mocking intonation: "Daughter of Egypt! daughter ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... the moment was a curly-headed lad of twenty, with a shrewd, good-humored face. He stood in a slouching attitude, one shoulder much higher than the other, and as he gave forth, in a singsong voice, his emphatic rhymed directions, his fingers played idly with the red-silk lacings of his brown flannel shirt. To an imaginative looker-on those idly toying fingers had an indefinable air of being very much at home with the trigger of the six-shooter at the lad's belt. So, at ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... He has nothing but your art in his mind. He would rather blow on a comb than comb his hair with it, he's always tooting on every leaf and pipe, makes triangles of broken sword-blades, and not even a kitchen pot is sate from his drumming; in short there's nothing but singsong in the good-for-nothing fellow's head; he wants to be a musician ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the sleepy usher's nod, a sleepy boy would rise and recite the perfunctory evening prayer in a dull singsong voice—beginning, "Notre Pere, qui etes aux cieux, vous dont le regard scrutateur penetre jusque dans les replis les plus profonds de nos coeurs," etc., etc., and ending, "au nom du Pere, du Fils, et du St. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... a miracle had saved him, but when he realized the ease with which the girl had, single-handed, beaten off twenty gorilla-like males, and an instant later, as he saw them again take up their dance about him while she addressed them in a singsong monotone, which bore every evidence of rote, he came to the conclusion that it was all but a part of the ceremony of which he ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... read in a singsong voice that the property of the duchy of Cornwall, called the Mohune Arms, an inn or tavern, with all its land, tenements, and appurtenances, situate in the Parish of St. Sebastian, Moonfleet, having been offered on lease for five years, would be let to Elzevir Block at a rent of 12 per annum, unless ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... There was an uncomfortable pressure in our ears, then the noise became more regular, followed by a buzzing and a shrill hum. All the high notes of the engines in the central station intermingled and made a bewildering noise. It was like a mad diabolical singsong. And yet it was almost like silence after the dull, heavy pounding of the oil-motors—only more insistent and irritating. The penetrating hum in the various vents announced the fact that the diving mechanism was in operation. ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... Dame Eliza, in a singsong heedless voice, which showed that such bickerings were nightly things among her guests. "No brawling or brabbling, gentles! Take heed to the good name ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... What pranks, what wit—yes, what brilliance! Some one, usually Parson Lamb, sometimes gaunt old Scotch John Cleave, the postmaster, rarely some noted visitor, who either from choice or ill-health lingered on into the winter, made a speech. There were declamations, debates, the interminable, singsong ballads of the frontier, usually accompanied by French harp or fiddle. Families were few, bachelors much in the majority; I remember that at one of the community affairs there were eighteen bachelors out of a total attendance of thirty ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... know who makes the inquiry?" returned the Sing-Sing skipper, in the singsong manner in which ordinary folk repeat ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... me a chance," cried McCuaig, in a wild, high, singsong voice. Lifting his bottle to his lips, he continued to drink slowly, keeping his eye upon the two privates, who were considering the best method of carrying ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... ecclesiastical, patriotic eloquence. Prince Vasili himself, famed for his elocution, was to read it. (He used to read at the Empress'.) The art of his reading was supposed to lie in rolling out the words, quite independently of their meaning, in a loud and singsong voice alternating between a despairing wail and a tender murmur, so that the wail fell quite at random on one word and the murmur on another. This reading, as was always the case at Anna Pavlovna's soirees, had a political ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... make sounds; and his own forest-trained senses soon perceived different meanings, and even shades of meaning in certain of these sounds. The larger animals were not, of course, constantly under observation, and from tigers, for instance, he learned only the main principles of tiger-talk—a kind of singsong snuffling purr that means 'get out of the way'; the cringing whine that means the tiger is very sorry for himself; and two or three of the full-throated roars: the one expressing rage, the one expressing fear, and the one expressing pained astonishment. ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... a singsong every which way when I knowed anything. My father's master, Isaac Farmer, had a big farm and a whole world of land. He told the slaves all of them were free. He told his brother's slaves, 'After you have made this crop, bring your wives ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... came very close to spelling heaven to her mind. Not that she would come to it vacant-minded, but rather as a trained woman, starved for companionship and wanting something of the beauty and ease of life. She sat dreaming of it here with rows of dark faces before her, and the singsong wail of a little black reader with his head aslant ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... observed the old man. "But, however," he went on in a singsong voice, "we will take our leave; we are thoroughly satisfied, it is time for bed, ..." ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... make answer it came in the singsong of chanted words. Ross felt Loketh shiver, felt the crawl of chill along his own spine. The words—if those were words and not just sounds intended to play upon the mind and emotions of a listener—cut into one. Ross wanted to close his ears, thrust his fingers into them to drown out ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... Mother and little cousins—Oh, no, that's what I say at night." Roger's voice now altered, assuming shrill singsong cadences. His pensive gravity would have appeared excessive if manifested by the Great Sphinx. "What I meant to say was that once upon a time when the Battle of Gettysburg was going on and houses were being robbed and burned, and my dear grandfather ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... singsong with the music, her odalisk lips lusciously smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater) Schorach ani wenowach, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce |
