"Droning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... alarm. There the emigrant road showed plainly before us. The wagons were in open single file, the loose stock drawn out in line at the rear. Men on horseback, hats over their eyes, some of them with one leg curled over the pommel of the saddle; lazily droning away the slow hours and the humdrum miles. The women and children were stowed away on bundles of baggage and camp stuff in the wagons, some of them asleep perhaps, rocked in their "schooner" cradles. A few of the men and boys perchance were strolling ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... This wine is liquid gold. I quaff to your good health and ease of mind. This is good wine. It warms my chilly blood With all the dreamy heat of Spain. I hear The clack of th' castinet and th' droning twang Of stringed instruments; while there before Mine eyes brown, yielding beauties dance in time To the pulsing music of a saraband! And yet there is a flavor of the sea, [Sipping wine. The ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... the table and began to read, but in spite of her determination to ignore it, her thoughts would wander to the pretty picture outside her window. The shouts and laughter, the gay babel of talk with the undertone of droning music rang in her ears. She slammed down her window, but still she ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... kept in a large stone crock in the cellar, and while she filled the glasses, Molly heard the voice of old Adam droning on above the chirping of the birds ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... glass hurriedly and moved slightly farther away. Still the insect grew; now it was the size of a small chicken, the multiple lens of its eyes presenting a most terrifying aspect, while its ferocious droning reverberated through the room. Then suddenly the Chemist threw it upon the table, covered it with a napkin, and beat it violently with the slipper. When all movement had ceased he tossed its quivering body into a ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... flapping harness settled into silence, the droning sing-song ceased, and from the stone flagging within came the shuffle of wooden shoes. An old woman, in the inevitable dark stuff dress of her class, and the blue apron gay-bordered with red and white, stood in the doorway. Her big hoop earrings ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... telling her the substance of his conversation with the rector, and now curled up on the low wooden seat, his small legs crossed underneath him, he was gazing dreamily out into the sweet-scented garden. The bees were droning, and the gnats humming amongst the tall hollyhocks and crimson and white roses close by; the birds were already twittering their last 'good-nights' to one another, and a soft, peaceful spell seemed to be falling ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... not see it?—the warm June sunlight streaming in through the narrow, dusty windows of the old meeting-house; the armed watcher at the door; the Puritan men and women in their sad-colored mantles seated sternly upright on the hard narrow benches; the black-gowned minister, the droning murmur of whose sleepy voice mingles with the out-door sounds of the rustle of leafy branches, the song of summer birds, the hum of buzzing insects, and the muffled stamping of horses' feet; the restless boys on the pulpit-stairs; the tired, sleeping Puritan with his head ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... for rustic architecture, as is proved by the summer-house which he and Thoreau built for Emerson, and the fences, seats and arbors with which he adorned his little place added a final charm to the rural picture. In summer nights the droning of the bittern could be heard across the meadows, and woodcock came down familiarly from the hills to look for worms in the vegetable-garden. The snow melted here in Spring and the grass grew green ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... alive with busy hum, Traders cross-legged, with their varied wares, The wordy war to cheapen or enhance, One rushing on to clear the streets for wains With huge stone wheels, by slow strong oxen drawn; Palanquin-bearers droning out "Hu, hu, ho, ho," While keeping step and praising him they bear; The housewives from the fountain water bring In balanced water-jars, their black-eyed babes Athwart their hips, their busy tongues meanwhile Engaged in gossip of the little things That make ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... upstairs, to put on her bonnet and shawl. When she came down she found that the walking party had increased. Jane and Reginald would both have been in despair to have missed such a frolic; Maurice hoped to fall in with the droning beetle, or to lay violent hands on a glow-worm; Emily did not like to be left behind, and even Mr. Mohun was going, being in the midst of an interesting conversation with Mr. Weston. Lily, with an absurd tragic gesture, told Alethea that amongst so many, such a crowd, all the grace and ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of song. There the peasant sings Arabic ditties in the field when he sows and reaps, in the desert when he tends his flock, at the oasis when the caravan rests for the night, and when camels are remounted next morning. The maiden's fresh voice keeps droning rhythm with her hands and feet as she carries water from the well or wood from the scanty forest, when she milks the goats, and when she ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... prayers see Grant restored!" Shouts Talmage, pious creature! Yes, God, by supplication bored From every droning preacher, Exclaimed: "So be it, tiresome crew— But I've a ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... paused for a moment, and the crisp rattle of musketry, the droning of myriads of bees, and the bursts of machine-gun fire were heard alone as they ran through whole belts of cartridges; then all minor sounds were again drowned out by the clashes of our shells as they burst all along the ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... regions. Some of these have their openings on the coast, and are supposed to extend very far inland; they receive the tide, and reject it with a bellowing noise, as the pent air struggles with it under their arched roofs. These were called by the Spaniards baxos roncadores, droning or snoring basses. The French had a name, le gouffre, the gulf, to describe these noises; but they also applied it to the subterranean rumbling, accompanied with explosions and violent vibrations of the ground, which is caused by the heavy rains soaking through the porous stone, after ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... read of their journey up the river to Srinagar, punted by native boatmen, and again, as she spoke of their sad, droning chant, she compared it all to a dream. "I wonder if I am really asleep, Tommy," she wrote, "if I shall wake up in the middle of a dark night and find that I have never left England after all. That is what I feel like sometimes—almost as if life had ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... seek the quiet hill Where towers the cotton tree, And leaps the laughing crystal rill, And works the droning bee. And we will build a lonely nest Beside an open glade, And there forever will we ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... that for making life seem a slow stepper instead of a racer. And take Valentine with you. I should like to sit with him in a church at twilight, when the rooks were going home, and the organ was droning. Ah, well, but I must not think ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the thousand changes years have brought in ships and men, And the knots on Time's old log-line that have reeled away since then, And I saw a fast full-rigger with her swelling canvas spread, And the steady trade-wind droning in her royals overhead, Fleecy trade-clouds on the sky-line—high above the Tropic blue— And the curved arch of her foresail and the ocean gleaming through; I recalled the Cape Stiff weather, when your soul-case seemed to freeze, And the trampling, cursing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... up and help the world!' passed like a flame across the heart of the sufferer who lay on her sleepless bed next door, listening to the sound of the droning voice that reached her through the wall, yet curiously ignorant that this very longing was already majestically effective in the world ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... At this hour London's droning voice has abated to a deep, hoarse snore; London has become a great, broody giant taking rest that is troubled by snatches of wakefulness; London's grimy, lined face shows new wrinkles of shadow; and new and unexpected clumping of colors in monotone and halftone appear. From ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... forgotten for a moment. Only a moment ago a whiff of more than usual redolence from the open window at which I am sitting reminded me that the flowers were even now in the heyday of their prime, and the loud droning music betokened that the bees were making the most ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... He began to quote again in a sort of droning chant as if he were a chorus recording ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... voices and instruments drew nearer, and now droning songs mingled with the sound of the tambourines and cymbals. The head of the procession soon appeared beneath the trees, a hundred paces away; and the strange figures who performed the religious ceremony ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... lighter patches of yellow sunlight, in which the iris leaves gleamed with a sheeny white, and a shimmering blue sea of ground-ivy spread all through the wood. It struck ten, and as the heat increased the birds sang less and the droning of the bees grew more distinct, and at last I got up, shook myself, smoothed my smock, and making a turn, came out on the road that led ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... entered, and from the other room now the voices of his friends sounded confused and muffled. Now and then an exclamation: "Double!" "Je ... tiens!" "Cinq- deux!" an oath, a laugh, the click of glasses and bottles came out more clearly; but the rest of the time these sounds were more like a droning accompaniment to the scraping of Heriot's pen upon the paper when he finally began to write ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... of an incipient Socinianism, forcing itself upon the eye, the ear, the nostrils of the worshipper; a smell of dust and damp, not of incense; a sound of ministers preaching Catholic prayers, and parish clerks droning out Catholic canticles; the royal arms for the crucifix; huge ugly boxes of wood, sacred to preachers, frowning on the congregation in the place of the mysterious altar; and long cathedral aisles unused, railed off, like the tombs (as they were) ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... made a net profit of L5 an acre from their first wheat crop. Labour-saving machinery from the United States came in to embolden the growers of cereals; the export of wheat rose to millions of bushels; and the droning hum of the steam threshing-machine and the whir of the reaper-and-binder began to be heard in a thousand fields from northern Canterbury to Southland. In the north McLean steadfastly kept the peace, and the ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... unexpected visit. He had just finished washing his dinner dishes and he and Babbie were in the outer shop together, when the visitor came. Jed was droning "Old Hundred" with improvisations of his own, the said improvising having the effect of slowing down the already extremely deliberate anthem until the result compared to the original was for speed, as an oyster scow compared to an electric launch. This musical crawl he used as an accompaniment ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... up at the preacher, But she thought of the honey bees Droning away at the blossoms That whitened the cherry trees. She thought of a broken basket, Where, curled in a dusky heap, Three sleek, round puppies, with fringy ears Lay ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... was utterly exhausted by his many hours' exertions, and his father's monotonous, droning voice, as he went on bemoaning his fate, after irritating him for a time, and making him ready to make retorts, gradually began to have a soothing effect, making him feel drowsy; then more drowsy, and at last, when James Brandon paused before ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... couples are going down a street which is gay with flower stands. There are two young men and two girls, the young men wear the aviation uniforms of the Americans. They walk along, chatting and laughing, and, as an aeroplane passes high overhead, its motors droning out a song of progress, they ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... the sultry stillness of the chamber, save only the droning of an imprisoned bee and the rustling of paper when the eager student turned a leaf. Deeper and deeper grew his absorption; his eyes seemed to devour the lines, and he clutched his hair with both hands, as if he would tear it out by the roots. At last, overpowered by a frenzied impulse, he leaped ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... to find myself lying on my back upon the rocky floor of a cavern more lofty than any cathedral. The air was warm and charged with a pungent, almost mephitic odor. Blue light filled the vast subterranean place. I heard the far-away, droning throb of machinery. Crackling sounds like static on a vast scale ripped back and ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... hay, and the scent of it lay like a spell upon the senses. The whirr of the mowing machine filled the air with a lazy droning. It was like a lullaby. And ever they sped on, through towns and villages and hamlets, through woods and lanes and open country, sure and swift and noiseless save for the cheery humming of the motor, which sang softly to itself like ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... calls. "Ha-ha!"[76] cried the warrior greeting from afar the cataract's roar; "Ha-ha!" rolled the answer beating down the rock-ribbed leagues of shore. Now, alas, the bow and quiver and the dusky braves have fled, And the sullen, shackled river drives the droning mills instead. ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... wind, a Border bullet's flight, A draught of water, or a horse's fright— The droning of the fat Sheristadar Ceases, the punkah stops, and falls ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... man up and toss him aside as she willed, without having to regard him as a possible factor in her plans, filled Lily Bart with envy. She had been bored all the afternoon by Percy Gryce—the mere thought seemed to waken an echo of his droning voice—but she could not ignore him on the morrow, she must follow up her success, must submit to more boredom, must be ready with fresh compliances and adaptabilities, and all on the bare chance that he ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... many eyes were anxiously turned toward the sacred emblem, but none dared approach. The little Moro boys, in whose care the branch had been left, squatted in silent patience. No butterfly was suffered to light on the delicate petals, no droning bee allowed to gather the honey of its cups. On dragged the sweltering afternoon. Piang and the dato were the only ones allowed to know that the branch was still fresh, but only Piang knew that its flowers had been dipped ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... and presently, the gates opening, I saw them no more. A sadness I could scarcely account for came over me. I shivered at the bare idea of being cooped up in such a place, and seeing no other living objects than scarecrow priests and friars; to hear every day the same dull service and droning organ; view the same cloisters; be led the same walks; watched, cribbed, confined, and filled with ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... it plain you did not agree and that things were not simple and settled... but you could not stop a sermon. It was so unfair. The service might be lovely, if you did not listen to the words; and then the man got up and went on and on from unsound premises until your brain was sick... droning on and on and getting more and more pleased with himself and emphatic... and nothing behind it. As often as not you could pick out the logical fallacy if you took the trouble.... Preachers knew no more than anyone else... you could see by their faces... ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... voice; it came from reality and not from dreams: it came loudly out of the silence of the dormitory and not from the chorus of conflicting sentences droning in my mind: it was a real voice, but I was too tired and too far lost in stupor to answer it: good-night, Ray—it's good-bye to him, I suppose—heaps of love—there was some comfort in that—heaps of love from your devoted and ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... shanties—the three pubs., the two stores, and the post-office. The town tailing off into weather-board boxes with tin tops, and old bark huts—relics of the digging days—propped up by many rotting poles. The men, when at home, mostly asleep or droning over their pipes or hanging about the verandah posts of the pubs., saying, ''Ullo, Bill!' or ''Ullo, Jim!'—or sometimes drunk. The women, mostly hags, who blackened each other's and girls' characters with their tongues, and criticised the aristocracy's washing hung out on the line: ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... on these dreary, dolent airs! Confound these funeral pomps and poses! Is Life Dyspepsia's and Despair's, And Love's complexion all chlorosis? A lie! There's Health, and Mirth, and Song, The World still laughs, and goes a-Maying— The dismal, droning, doleful Throng Are only smuts ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... thoughts of state-employments, Abhorrent to your function and your breedings? Poor droning truants of unpractised cells, Bred in the fellowship of bearded boys, What wonder is it if you know not men? Yet there you live demure, with down-cast eyes, And humble as your discipline requires; But, when let loose from thence to live at large, Your little tincture of devotion ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... movements down pat, and Sid and Martin would have been doing their big scenes every backstage minute they could spare with Sid yelling, "Witling! Think'st that's a wifely buss?" and Martin would have been droning his lines last time he ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... cleared his throat, nodded to Old Man Curry, fingered his programme, and began to speak in a dull, slurring monotone, droning out the formula as prescribed ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... Piankeshaw did not seem to notice who had relieved him of the burden. He settled himself again on the saddle as well as he could, and jogged onwards, prattling and weeping, according to the mood of the moment, now droning out an Indian song, and now nodding with drowsiness; until at last slumber or stupefaction settled so heavily upon his senses that he became incapable of guiding his horse; and the weary animal, checked by the unconscious rider, or stopping of his own accord to ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... Dictionary does not insert the word "droning" or "drony;" but among his Illustrations attached to the verb "to drone," there are two from Dryden, each, it may be seen, using the word "droning." There is no quotation containing the word "drony." Gray's ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 49, Saturday, Oct. 5, 1850 • Various
... dream of an afternoon Of a perfect day—though it was not June; The lilt of winds, and the droning tune That a busy ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a rajah preceded a princeling, and so on down. The wailing of reeds and the muttering of kettle drums; music, languorous, haunting, elusive, low minor chords seemingly struck at random, intermingling a droning chant; a thousand streams of incense, crossing and recrossing; and fireworks at night, fireworks which had come all the way across China by caravan—these things Kathlyn saw and heard ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... at the telephone longer than he thought to be. The operator buzzed into his ear as he took down the receiver; San Francisco was trying to get a message through. For Gloria Gaynor. Would he take the message? Then an operator in San Francisco, droning the words: "For Miss Gloria Gaynor. Your father is hurt in Coloma. Just sent me word. Says not dangerously, but I must go to him immediately. Meet me ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... in the morning was suave and ordered life; and the sun sets on howling savagery. In the morning black-coated men lifted their hats to women. Ere nightfall they are slashing them with sabres and burning the houses over their heads. And, the grave old professors who were droning platitudes of peace and progress and humanitarianism are screaming, ere today is done, shrill senile clamors for blood and ravage and rapine. (Not less shrill than others is the senile yawp of that good old man Ernst Haeckel, under whom I ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... in the silence, away from the other side of the island, they heard a sound like the droning of a ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... applause from a man's self." These remarks are better appraised and understood when we bear in mind Dr. Johnson's own estimate of his musical knowledge together with his having derived pleasure from listening to the sounds of the bagpipes. If a performance on those droning instruments was in the Doctor's mind when he said that the reflective powers need not be exercised in performing on a musical instrument, there might be some truth in the observation. The labour of thinking, however, cannot be dispensed with in ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... fifteen years he had known only as a busy hive. Roadways should have been clear. Traffic should have been speeding, every service, even in the depth of winter, should have been in full running. The mills—those wonderful mills—should have been droning out their chorus of human achievement in a world set out for Nature's fiercest ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... in the cable service. In five minutes the dull noise of the curbstone market in Broad Street had leaped to a high note of frantic interrogation. From within the hive of the Exchange itself could be heard a droning hubbub of fear and men rushed hatless in and out. Was it true? asked every man; and every man replied, with trembling lips, that it was a lie put out by some unscrupulous "short" interest seeking to cover itself. In another quarter of an hour news came of a sudden and ruinous collapse of "Yankees" ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... flush of life through my veins such as the quiet village existence had never been able to give. My more experienced companion felt the influence too, for he lifted up a cracked voice and broke into a droning chant, which he assured me was an Eastern ode which had been taught him by the second sister of the ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... former clergyman, had been a quiet, old-fashioned man, very kind-hearted, but not at all active, and things had gone on in a sleepy, droning, matter-of-fact way, which Markham being used to, thought exactly what ought to be. Now, Mr. Ashford was an energetic person, desirous to do his utmost for the parish, and whatever he did was an offence to Markham, from the daily service, to the objecting to ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the pulpit, was Mr. Eliot; no droning reader of last year's sermons, but a thunderer forth of speech that was now acrid, now fiery, but that always came from an impassioned nature, vehement for the damnation of those whom God so strangely spared. ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... and stand beside his father. Coiloo's hand was at Sax's neck. He unfastened the string of the luringa and stood up, still hidden from sight. Slowly he whirled the thin slab of wood round his head, hitting it on the ground once or twice to make it spin. The thing gave out a droning sound. The crowd of yelling fiends around the corpse became suddenly quiet. The droning increased to a loud humming. Every ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... had to fetch her mending-basket, and Mary her book of selections; the piece for to-day's lesson was the quarrel of Brutus and Cassius; and Mary's dull droning tone was a trial to her ears; she presently exclaimed, "Oh, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Lotus-Eaters," from which she passed directly, almost breathlessly, to "Edward Gray." Sherringham had by this time heard her make four different attempts, and the only generalisation very present to him was that she uttered these dissimilar compositions in exactly the same tone—a solemn, droning, dragging measure suggestive of an exhortation from the pulpit and adopted evidently with the "affecting" intention and from a crude idea of "style." It was all funereal, yet was artlessly rough. Sherringham thought her English performance less futile than her French, but he ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... touched—drunk! I could have struck the man for uttering the word, with her lying—poor suffering angel—so white, and still, and helpless before him. As it was, I gave him a look, but he was too stupid to understand it, and went droning on, saying the same thing over and over again in the same words. And yet the story of how they found her was, like all the sad stories I have ever heard told in real life, so very, very short. They had ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... does not himself sing, but only starts each song. The women never sing at these gatherings, although on other occasions, when they get together by themselves, they sing very sweetly. It is quite common to hear a primitive kind of part singing, some piping in a curious falsetto, others droning a deep bass. ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... blossom and humming with bees, their rich, amethystine rose flung up against the gay April sky in a challenge of beauty and joy. The air was full of the promises of spring, keen, bracing, yet with an undercurrent of languorous warmth. There was a ragged fleece of bloom, sweet and alive with droning insects, over a plum thicket near the woods,—half-wild, brambly things, cousin on the one hand to the cultivated farm, and on the other to the free forest,—while beyond, through the openings of the timber, dogwood flamed ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... and even those who were engaged in essential work behind the lines were far from being safe from death or wounds. On the morning of June 7th, 1917, before dawn had broken, I was out with a working party. Suddenly, overhead, sounded the ominous drumming and droning of an aeroplane. It proved to be a Hun plane; the aviator had spotted us, and was speedily in touch with the battery for which he was working. Fortunately for us, he had mistaken our exact position, and evidently thought we were on a road which ran towards the front line about thirty yards ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... John, with sly, winking eyes, who begged on the road, and offered the passers-by an orange on a green branch. He would hail the carriage-drivers, sitting huddled on their seats, who every now and then would, in a nasal, droning, throaty voice, intone the thousand and one couplets. He was amazed to find himself humming Cavalleria Rusticana. He had entirely forgotten the end of his journey. Forgotten, too, was his haste to ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... an ancient Eucharistic feast of real jollity and community of life under the acknowledged presence of the god; or the Roman Catholic service of the Mass, including its genuflexions and mock oblations and droning ritual sing-song, with the actual sacrifice in early days of an animal-god-victim on a blazing altar; and I think my meaning will be clear. We do not want, of course, to return to all the crudities and barbarities of the past; but ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... his hand in hers, as she read, while all around them the sounds of summer—the distant clack of a reaper, the crack of a whip, the locusts droning, the whir of a young partridge, the squeak of a chipmunk—were tuned to the harmony of the moment and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and hugging his wheel, possessed all earth and air for the fraction of a second, flung an enveloping cloud of dust that blinded and enwrapped them utterly, and then dwindled to a speck in the far distance, changed back into a droning bee ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... lay there thinking, wondering what might be my fate before another nightfall, seeing constantly in my half-dreams the fair face of a woman, which made me more of a coward than I had ever felt myself before, I was partially aroused by the droning tones of a voice close at hand. Lifting myself on one elbow I glanced curiously around to see where it originated, what was occurring. Clustered about a roaring fire of rails were a dozen troopers, and in the midst of them, occupying ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... other person was in the room, but I saw that on the far side of the chamber another gallery led on into the cliff to another chamber, and from this chamber came the sound of many voices talking (in a dull quiet way), and the slow droning of the song of a drunken man. I shut my eyes, and lay across the boxes as still as a dead man, trying to summon up enough courage to speak to the coastguard; and all the time the drunkard's song quavered and shook, and died down, and dragged on again, as though it would never ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... two or three times with a dismal expression, and made no answer. She had pushed back the droning wool-wheel which she had been using, and had taken her knitting from the shelf by the clock and seated herself contentedly, while Mrs. Jake and Mrs. Martin had each produced a blue yarn stocking from a capacious pocket, and the shining steel needles were presently all clicking together. ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... spoke, the agile Ernestine leapt lightly from the trembling leaf in hot pursuit. Green spears bent to open a way for her; dizzy gnats paused in their droning song, feeling in the ether the tremor of the chase; bees fell from the heart of honey-sweet flowers, and lay murmuring and booming ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... the tree frogs droning, disturbed the air, and Kensington basked in the midnight like some sleeping village of the plains, stretching out to the fields of cattle and ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... taught to sing in tune; that all be harmonious and properly balanced; in short, that the auditory nerves be spared any very severe shock—and what then will we ordinarily find? A few good old church melodies, almost lost amid a dreary maze of the most recent droning platitudes, or a multitude of worldly acquaintances, negro minstrelsy, ancient love ditties, bar room roundelays, passionate scenes from favorite operas, with snatches from instrumental symphonies, concertos, or what not! Music, as ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... house, making it an undivided part of the one great generous flooding atmosphere, and giving sensations of vast space and free activities as well as those produced by guarded comfort and motionless repose. The only sounds that reached him were the droning of bees in a border of spring flowers, the pawing of a horse in the stables, the pipe of young voices in the orchard; and all three sounds were pleasant to his ear. How could they be otherwise; since they spoke of three such pleasant things as awakening life, ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... necessarily was of most of the solemn formalism that characterises an interment ashore, and further marred in its effectiveness by the droning tones in which Purchas deemed it proper to read the beautiful and solemn words of the prescribed ritual, it was, nevertheless, profoundly impressive, the peculiar circumstances of the case, and the setting of the picture, so to speak—the small ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... himself to Mark; because he saw that Martin, who wished him to go, being already half-mad with feverish irritation, which the droning voice of this new horror rendered almost insupportable, had closed his eyes, and turned ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... voice, I observed, like his face, was susceptible of great change and infinite modulations. Deep chest tones were followed by finely attenuated sounds; droning nasal tones, by quick and clear ones. The quality of the voice was soft and musical; the enunciation slow, often emphatic. His manner was illustrative, egotistic, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... copse in the outskirts of the town, lying between Skvoreshniki and the Shpigulin factory. The rain of the previous night was over, but it was damp, grey, and windy. Low, ragged, dingy clouds moved rapidly across the cold sky. The tree-tops roared with a deep droning sound, and creaked on their roots; it ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... him I was weak and coarse, My soul went droning through the hours, His goodness stirred a latent force That drew from others kindred powers. Nor they nor I could think me base, When with their prince I ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... with rasping voices, and piping voices, and droning voices, to say nothing of voices that were more like growls than anything else, I felt nearly demented. Yes, Miss Mainwaring, this is a sore affliction that has befallen me, and I knew there was nothing before me but the services of a 'continual reader,' ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... is,' Frank Stebbing's metallic voice could plainly be heard, flavoured with an oath. 'This is your neglect, White, droning, stuck-up sneak as you always were and will be! I shall report this. Damage to property, and maybe life, all along of ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... white-uniformed cleaning squads worked amid clouds of dust; and all day long the flinty asphalt echoed the rattling slap of horses' feet; all day long the big, shining motor-cars sped up town and down town, droning their distant warnings. It was an open winter in New York, and, financially, a prosperous one; and that meant a brilliant social season. Like a set piece of fireworks, with its interdependent parts taking fire in turn, function after function, spectacle after spectacle, glittered, fizzed, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... conditions. Soft winds swayed the dead weeds and leafless shrubs, the water trickled down the creek from pool to pool, reminding one of a lazy, spring day, with droning bees and flights of birds afield. Sargent rode the morning patrol alone, meeting Joel at the halfway point, when the two dismounted, whiling away several hours in considering future plans ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... Alan into a numb, blank confusion. They stood transfixed, staring with cold terror. The fly was scurrying along the floor close against the wall Already it was as large as Alan's hand. It ran into the corner, hit the wall in its confused alarm, and turned back. Its wings were droning with an audible hum. It reared itself on its hairy legs, lifted and ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... behind us. The place was weird enough. Its pave was a greenish-blue stone resembling lapis lazuli. On each side were high pedestals holding carved figures of the same material. There were perhaps a score of these, but in the mistiness I could not make out their outlines. A droning, rushing roar beat upon our ears; filled ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... ponds, so marble columns, trees and statuary were reflected amid shadows of the swans in water tinted by the colors of the sinking sun. There was a murmur of wind in the tops of the trees and a stirring of linen-clad girls near the temple entrance—voices droning from the near-by booths behind the shrubbery— one flute, like the plaint of Orpheus summoning Eurydice—a blossom- scented air and an enfolding mystery ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... again," he said, listening to the droning chant that came indistinctly through the dark. "One would think they would long ago have been too drunk to stand. How some of these recruits the King sends over to us would ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... covered with slimy mud, and the traces of the banks, could one guess that it had been a pond. A farm-house had stood near it. It had long ago passed away. Two huge pine-trees preserved its memory; the wind was for ever droning and sullenly murmuring in their high gaunt green tops. There were mysterious tales among the people of a fearful crime supposed to have been committed under them; they used to tell, too, that not one of them would fall without bringing death to some one; that ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... on either side of his head and rocked himself to and fro, droning to himself like a child whose ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... and wide-open temple, the bonzes sit, immovable embodiments of doctrine, in the glittering sanctuary inhabited by divinities, chimeras and symbols. The crowd, monotonously droning its mingled prayers and laughter, presses around them, sowing its alms broadcast; with a continuous jingle, the money rolls on the ground into the precincts reserved to the priests, where the white mats entirely disappear under the mass of many-sized coins accumulated ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... dimensions of my thumb. Time is the tick of a clock. Good and evil are two peas in the one pod. My wife's face is the same for ever. I want to play with the children, and yet I do not want to. Your conversation with me, brother, is like the droning of a bee in a dark cell. The pine trees take root and grow and die.—It's ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... of a great hive of bewildered and affronted bees drowned her further remarks and wore down the droning of the musicians. The Baroness, who should have been greeted on her return to the stage with the pleasing invocation, "Oh, Clytemnestra, radiant as the dawn," heard instead the imperious voice of Lady Thistledale ordering her carriage, and something ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... dazed; the soft murmur of the fountain came near putting me to sleep again with its droning voice. Then I suddenly remembered something—a charming face with the flashing eye ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... yesterday, when the ravens were not to be seen; a fellow couldn't look at it without laughing. Half Leyden was there, and we went with the crowd. There was such an uproar on the grass-plot yonder. Dudeldum—Hubutt, Hubutt—Dudeldum—fiddles squeaking and bag-pipes droning as if they never would stop. The crazy throng shouted amidst the din; the noise still rings in my ears. There was no end to the games and dancing. The lads tossed their brown, blue and red-stockinged legs in the air, just as the fiddle played—the coat-tails flew and, holding a girl ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... she danced, the children danced. Triplet fiddled and danced, and flung his limbs in wild dislocation: the wineglasses danced; and last, Mrs. Triplet was observed to be bobbing about on her sofa, in a monstrous absurd way, droning out the tune, and playing her hands with mild enjoyment, all to herself. Woffington pointed out this pantomimic soliloquy to the two boys, with a glance full of fiery meaning. This was enough. With a fiendish yell, they fell upon her, and tore her, shrieking, off the sofa. ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... picture—"Pervyse" wriggling and sometimes weeping; Hilda "Shsh, Shysh, Shshing"; Rene nudging the Flemish girl, and giggling; the soldiers peeping from the straw; the children, attracted by the outcries of "Pervyse," drawing closer; aged worshippers continuing their droning. "Pervyse" was held directly over the bowl and the slightly warmed water descended on him in volume. At this he shouted with anger. His head was dried and his white hood clapped on. He was borne to another room where from a cupboard the Cure took down the sacred pictures, and put them ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... "woned". Vid Chaucer, "Canterbury Tales", v. 7745. In Scotland, a lazy indolent manner of doing anything is called "droning". ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... moved about their duties with gloomy brows. Even the gardener and his two stout boys struck sadly away with mattock and spade as if digging graves. No chirp of bird, no baying of a friendly dog, no burst of childish merriment broke the droning silence. And this was the home to which a father had doomed ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... and Mr. Muller had fallen into the habit of reading to her while she did so. But to-day the Reformatory rose before her a prison, the gates of which were about to close on her. The heap of stockings, the touch of the darning cotton, the sound of Mr. Muller's droning voice, were maddening to her: every moment she made a tangle in her thread, looking down at Maria under the Bourbon rose, and the attentive face bent over her. Where should she go? What should she do? Had the world nothing in it for her but this? Yesterday ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... The droning of the engines came distinctly to them all, a low, steady, powerful note, beautiful in its steady undertones of strength. Behind the little group, a few involuntary exclamations of astonishment and joy became audible, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... The droning of the Doxology from the church outside stirred Theron suddenly out of his revery. It had grown quite dark, and he rose and lit the gas. "Blest be the Tie that Binds," they were singing. He paused, with hand still in air, to listen. That well-worn phrase arrested his attention, ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... And then there came droning upon his ears a break in the stillness, and as he listened, the shores closed slowly in, narrowing the channel until he saw giant masses of gray rock replacing the thick verdure of balsam, spruce, and cedar. The moaning grew louder, and the rocks climbed ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... sounds of a rusty bell slowly agitated began to be heard, punctuating the droning ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... the arranged height, the Air Service Boys found that it was a very animated region, though fully a thousand feet from the earth's surface. Almost a dozen planes in all were moving in a great circle, their motors lazily droning, and the pilots ready to enter ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... The dazzling white flesh of the women's necks and shoulders stood out in magnificent contrast against the men's almost invariably sombre costumes. The murmur of voices, the hum of the crowd, could be heard even in the middle of the garden as a sort of droning bass, interspersed with fioriture of shrill laughter or clamor of some rare dispute. You saw gentlemen and celebrities cheek by jowl with gallows-birds. There was something indescribably piquant about the anomalous assemblage; the most insensible of men felt ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... matter of regret to poor "Captin" that he used to be the one to end the telling, since no story on earth could keep him, after a while, from nodding off to sleep. He would drag himself away to his blankets in the next room, hearing, as sleep fully descended upon him, the droning voice still entertaining Jim—whose powers of keeping ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... daylong-doings of the weather, as it had affected their individual experience and followed their prophecies. Both had anticipated and foretold a bit of rain before night, and therefore both welcomed the wet with satisfaction. A monotonous betweenwhiles kind of talk they kept droning, in harmony with the still hum of the air. From the weather theme they fell upon the blessings of tobacco; how it was the poor man's friend, his company, his consolation, his comfort, his refuge at night, his first ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... drawing-room, as he fired that shot at me. He threw away his cheroot, and took Mr. Franklin's arm, to go back to the ladies. I noticed that the sky was clouding over fast, as I followed them to the house. Mr. Murthwaite noticed it too. He looked round at me, in his dry, droning way, and said: ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins |
