"Intonation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an earnest intonation of voice in these words, and such a simple innocence of manner, that Wilkins couldn't repress ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... in his Magio Medica treats of Fascination as twofold: De Fascinatione per Visunt et Vocem. I have found among Italian witches as with Red Indian wizards, every magical operation depended on an incantation, and every incantation on the feeling, intonation, or manner in which it is sung. Thus near Rome any peasant overhearing a scongiurasione would recognize it from ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... expression of my countenance betrayed me. Several held me tight while the others spoke. Though I did not understand a word of their language, I could not fail to comprehend the tenor of their speeches. Their action, the intonation of their voices, their angry glances, showed it. "Our friends came here, and this man killed them. We came to look for them, and by the same arts with which he destroyed them he had endeavoured to destroy us. There are the proofs of his guilt. How else did he become possessed ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... by inflection the reciprocal dependence of words and sentences. Degrees of motion corresponding with vocal intonation are only used rhetorically or for degrees of comparison. The relations of ideas and objects are therefore expressed by placement, and their connection is established when necessary by the abstraction of ideas. The sign talker is an artist, grouping persons and things so as to show the relations ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... Accent, intonation—both were perfect, of the true Island speech, that delicate incommunicable sing-song. The Commandant's eyes grew rounder yet with amazement, and Vashti—afraid, perhaps, of meeting them—flung a glance of mock terror behind her, as though she had caught the footfall ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... time, she said, smiling on me, but driving wedges between every fibre of my body as she spoke. "Be it so," I said, proudly. "At any rate, I am not so much of a boy that I shall forget you." "And, John, you still have the trade to learn," she added, with her deliciously foreign intonation—speaking very slowly, but with perfect pronunciation. The trade to learn! However, I said not a word, but stalked out of the room, meaning to see her no more before she went. But I could not resist attending ...
— John Bull on the Guadalquivir from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... is exceedingly good and kind of you to think so much for me, and so little for yourself," answered my companion. She spoke with her face turned away from me, so that I was unable to read its expression, and her voice had an intonation that I would have given much to have been able to translate. Was it merely my imagination—I asked myself—or was there really a recurrent shade of her former hauteur of manner, mingled with just the faintest suggestion of irony and impatience? The fact is that ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... more ladylike than half the flappers one meets in Society nowadays, with their cigarette-cases, their bridge purses and their slangy talk. One of those loud young women would be the death of me in a week—and you know Toni's voice is delightfully soft, with quite a Southern intonation—caught in Italy, ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... love will not move you, then, I will tell you more,' she said, with a strong and rising intonation. 'I tell you that you have not dishonoured me, because I will not be dishonoured. You and I have done right before God, and before man until this day, and if there be wrong now it shall be right and I will make it right. I, Hilda ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... fact proudly, though her soft r in "American," and slightly nasal intonation, would have established her ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... enough in proportion to its length to make possible the playing of the fundamental tones in the first two series, but these notes are never used, and the harmonics above the sixth are also avoided, being of doubtful intonation. In the ophicleide, the bass of the key-bugle, the bore is sufficiently wide to produce the fundamentals of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... had been most conventional, intellectual where Lady Alice had been only intelligent, were not perceptible at first sight even to a practised observer of men and women like Caspar Brooke. But the flash of her brown eyes, so like his own, and an occasional intonation in her voice, had told him something. She was in arms against him, so much he felt; and she had more individuality than her mother, in spite of her ignorance. It was a pity that her education had been ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... felt at one moment as if he could have sworn at me for not having asked him to prompt me. It happened in this way: I began my speech in a clear and full voice, but suddenly the sound of my own words, and their particular intonation, affected me to such an extent that, carried away as I was by my own thoughts, I imagined I SAW as well as HEARD myself before the breathless multitude. While I thus appeared objectively to myself I remained in a sort of trance, during which I seemed to be waiting ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... was the first child born on the island. Bronzed warriors smiled on her fair infancy; sometimes they called her, with affectionate intonation, "The Daughter of the Regiment." She deserved the notice they bestowed,—as infancy in general deserves all it receives,—but Elizabeth for other reasons than that she had come whence none could tell, and was going whither ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... magical echo, its accent and intonation eerily reproducing those of the gamekeeper. Then: "Whose wife stole the key of the poor-box?" inquired the spirit voice, and finally: "When are ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... mean to say," he asked, with an ineffable intonation, "that Susan and that there young farmer have gone gadding off to Canada and left you all ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... of an eyelid, an intonation, a gesture, might precipitate trouble. He also knew that diplomacy was out of the question. He glanced round the room, pushed back his chair, and, rising, stepped to the bar. With his back against ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... sincere and honest at heart; and he held sacred things and places in such reverence, and so separated them from worldly matters, that unconsciously to himself his Sunday-school voice had acquired a peculiar intonation which was wholly absent on week-days. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... anything the least ridiculous, and of a type with which the preaching of passion somehow so ill consorted—he was so much all these things that he had absolutely to take account of them himself. And he did so, in a single intonation, beautifully. Milly liked him again, liked him for such shades as that, liked him so that it was woeful to see him spoiling it, and still more woeful to have to rank him among those minor charms of existence that she gasped at moments ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... call it honour?"—his host took him up with an intonation that often comes back to him. "That's what I want you to go in for. I mean the real ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... largely sensual, but each movement of his fat hands was protective, every word he uttered was kind, the very intonation of his voice was comforting. He was, in a word, human, and this attracted all that ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... A song sung with feeling and expression is good, however accompanied. Otherwise, the pianoforte is not much to my mind. All its intervals are false, and temperament is a poor substitute for natural intonation. Then its incapability of sustaining a note has led, as the only means of producing effect, to those infinitesimal subdivisions of sound, in which all sentiment and expression are twittered and ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... I employed him to read aloud to me, and derived pleasure from his intonation. I talk as a scholar; yet he learned to answer me in language as precise as my own. My cast-off garments fitted him not more irreproachably than did my amenities of manner. Divest him of his tray, and you ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... more and more convinced that this city had at last solved the problem. I took the earliest opportunity to visit its schools. When I reached the city I went to the superintendent's office. I asked to be directed to the best school. "Our schools are all 'best,'" the secretary told me with an intonation that denoted commendable pride, and which certainly made me feel extremely humble, for here even the laws of logic and of formal grammar had been transcended. I made bold to apologize, however, and amended my request to make ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... profane purpose and been converted on the spot to holiness. Sinking again into her chair to listen she showed a deep interest in the anecdote. Then thinking it over gravely she returned with her odd intonation: "Yes, but you do see him!" I had to admit that this was the case; and I wasn't so prepared with an effective attenuation as I could have wished. She eased the situation off, however, by the charming quaintness with which she finally said: ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... with an intonation which interrupts his work for a minute while he looks at me. I profit by this moment, and, changing from tragedy to a good-humoured ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... vice that prevents true intonation, robs the voice of its expressiveness, limits its range, lessens its flexibility, diminishes its volume, and makes true ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... talk for ten minutes without interruption, and you close with an appealing "Well?" armed with an intonation which suggests an interrogation point of the most ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... Parkinson; and envied him and internally noted, and with an unholy fervor cursed, the adroitness of intonation and the discreetly modulated gesture with which the colonel gave to every point of his ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... cigarette, which she had let go out. "I had thought of that," said she. "But—I doubt if he'd tolerate it. Also"—she laughed with the peculiar intonation that accompanies the lifting of the veil over a deeply and carefully hidden corner of one's secret self—"I am afraid. If I don't marry him, in a few weeks, or months at most, he'll probably find out that I shall never be a great ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... and broken and hollow; but the hideous whole is indescribable, for the simple reason that no similar sounds have ever jarred upon the ear of humanity. There were two particulars, nevertheless, which I thought then, and still think, might fairly be stated as characteristic of the intonation—as well adapted to convey some idea of its unearthly peculiarity. In the first place, the voice seemed to reach our ears—at least mine—from a vast distance, or from some deep cavern within the earth. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the last forty years. A woman of genius, Mademoiselle Rachel, had brought back its long forgotten glory to the Theatre Francais. For my part I never saw anything so absolutely perfect on the stage. With hardly any gesture, simply by the play of her countenance, her expressive glance, and the intonation of her voice, she expressed all the passions with an intensity that affected all her audience. She had a genius for dress and drapery. In her peplum she might have been taken for an antique statue, and she knew how to endue herself with the ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... a sulphurous cavern about twenty feet deep, and seven or eight feet in diameter at its mouth, out of which the steam is thrown in jets with a sound resembling the puffing of a steam-boat when laboring over a sand-bar, and with as much uniformity and intonation as if emitted by a high-pressure engine. From hundreds of fissures in the adjoining mountain from base to summit, issue hot sulphur vapors, the apertures through which they escape being encased in thick incrustations of sulphur, which in many instances ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... conscious yet?" It was the voice of a foreigner, with a queer, indescribable intonation. A ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... consisting of an orchestral selection by four players belonging to St. Ignace and to the choir of Father Rielle's big church, St. Jean-Baptiste-on-the-Hill. A cornet, two fiddles and a flute rendered the music with good time and fair intonation, and as it was lighthearted, even gay in character, melodious and tripping, Ringfield thought it must be of operatic origin, but found later on to his intense surprise that it was a transcription of Mozart's Twelfth Mass, interpreted by Alexis Gagnon, the undertaker, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... we will close our budget. One evening, while Rowland Hill was preaching, a shower came on, and his chapel was speedily filled with devotees. With that peculiar sarcastic intonation which none could assume so successfully as himself, he quietly remarked, "My brethren, I have often heard that religion can be made a cloak, but this is the first occasion on which I ever knew it could be ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... wild bound,—then almost stood still from sheer terror. She felt herself swaying into unconsciousness, and made a violent effort to master the physical weakness that threatened her. That voice—what voice? Surely one evoked from her own imagination! It spoke again—this time with an intonation that was exquisitely soothing ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... received with eyes alight, and nerves aquiver, and blood all in a rush. The favorite of the whole camp was a young fellow who had achieved that enviable station by virtue of an inane yet inconceivably droll intonation of the phrase, "Bong chure" (Bon jour), delivered at all manner of unconformable times and in inappropriate connections, and invariably greeted with shouts of laughter. And when at last the party reached the vicinity of Blue Lick and the stationers swarmed out to meet them, taking ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... closed and directed this how far away Harold Beecham seemed! Less than two years ago I had been familiar with every curve and expression of his face, every outline of his great figure, every intonation of his strong cultivated voice; but now he seemed as the shadow ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... may be to poetic beauty.—A literal translation in the plainest prose, will always shew the precise quantity of real poetic matter, contained in any Production, independent of the music of its intonation, and numbers, and the elegance of its style.—The prose translations of Horace' Odes evince that their merit does not consist in the plenitude of poetic matter, or essence, constituted by circumstances of startling interest, by exalted sentiment, impassioned complaint, or appeal, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... West. More than 90 per cent of the seamen are native-born, and on any ship may be heard the Southern drawl, the picturesque vernacular of the lower East or West side of New York City, the twang of New England, the rising intonation of the Western Pennsylvanian, and that indescribable vocal cadence that comes only from ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... theology, and writing too often with the blood of some innocent victim. The poor patient student is meanwhile gazing on the moon in dreamy devotion; until as the writing on the mirror is read with solemn intonation, it all appears before his moon-struck gaze as a heavenly revelation. Woe to the truth-loving critic who breaks the enchantment and the mirror, crying out in the vernacular tongue, Your mysteries are myths, your writings are ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... on Tremont Street, contributing our presence and our dimes in aid of the meeting. Speakers were few and as the weeks went by the audiences grew smaller and smaller till one night Chairman Roche announced with sad intonation that the meetings could not go on. "You've all got tired of hearing us repeat ourselves and we have no new speaker, none at all for next week. I am afraid we'll have ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... caught this vast Aeolian intonation, when my eye filled with the golden fulness of life, the pomps of the heavens above, or the glory of the flowers below, and turning when it settled upon the frost which overspread my sister's face, instantly a trance fell upon me. A vault seemed to open in the zenith ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... was obtained a perfect system of intonation. The Chinese system is minutely exact in theory, bombastic in fancy. The Hindus sedulously avoided applying mathematics to their scales. The development of the scale is shown in the construction of the ancient Greek scale, the modern Japanese, and the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... Orthodox Barber." The barber has been sarcastic about the new shaving—presumably in reference to M. Gillett's excellent invention. "'It seems you can shave yourself with anything—with a stick or a stone or a pole or a poker' (here I began for the first time to detect a sarcastic intonation) 'or a shovel or a——' Here he hesitated for a word, and I, although I knew nothing about the matter, helped him out with suggestions in the same rhetorical vein. 'Or a button-hook,' I said, 'or a blunderbuss or a battering-ram ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... strained, despairing tone, "could I have done any thing to save her? I have been engrossed with my own affairs, my own dreams of advancement. I wanted to have money again, but it was for her sake and my mother's," with a lingering tremulous intonation. "She has been too solitary, she has brooded over every thing. But she would not go out, or see any company; and somehow it was our misfortune to grow up without any warm, vital interest in each other. When I was a boy I used to like it at your house, because your father and mother took ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... it, rough as it might be. 'You seem an old man for such work,' said he, 'but if you are strong enough to lift those stones why are you not in the army?' As he spoke I noticed that he had not the intonation of a true Frenchman. He had the accent of the foreigner ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... was evident that the answer contented him, and Ethne felt that it was the intonation to which he listened rather than the words. His very attitude of concentration showed her that. She began to wonder whether it would be so easy after all to quiet his suspicions now that he was blind; she began to realise that it might possibly on ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... her grammar and intonation were perfect. Many of the Virginians and Marylanders who emigrated to Kentucky in that far-off border time were people ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... answering call of lusty young chanticleers, and the satisfied cackle of laying hens and motherly old biddies, surrounded by broods of downy, greedy little newly-hatched chicks. The shrill whistle of a distant locomotive startles one with its clear, resonant intonation, which on a less quiet day would pass unnoticed. Mary, with the zest of youth, enjoyed to the full the change from the past months of confinement in a city school, and missed nothing of the beauty of the country and ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... me about her mouth, a whimsicality, a sort of humorous resolve in the way in which the upper lip fell upon the lower and in a faint obliquity that increased with her quickening smile. She spoke with a very clear delicate intonation that made one want to hear her speak again; she often said faintly daring things, and when she did, she had that little catch in the breath—of one who dares. She did not talk hastily; often before she spoke came a ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... in a passion?" repeated grandmother with a parrot-like intonation. "Not one of the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... theology. The mass of all this controversial stuff is no more absurd, no more frantic, than it used to be: but in language it has lost its dignity with its homeliness. It has lost the colouring of the Scriptures, the intonation of the ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... sister, who asks your will; and she answers you in good Italian and cultivated intonation. You hear the voice quite distinctly, but as if it was far, far away. She is really separated from you by a slender slice of wood, but she is absolutely invisible. Not the smallest ray of light, nor the smallest chink is visible between you and her. Sound travels through the barrel, but sight is ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... had quite an extensive vocabulary of sounds, varying from a gruff bark to a shrill whistle; and we could tell by them, without seeing him, when it was he was hungry, eating, frightened, or menacing; doubtless, one of his own species would have understood various minor shades of intonation and expression that we, not entering so fully into his feelings and wants, passed over as unintelligible.* There is a third species of monkey (Mycetes palliatus), called by the natives the congo, ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... slowly and abstractedly, and then, as if appreciating his sympathetic reticence, or mayhap finding some relief in monotonous expression, talked mechanically, deliberately, but unostentatiously about herself. So colorless was her intonation that at times it did not seem as if she was talking to him, but repeating some conversation ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... marked in the intonation of the King's voice that Frina Mavrodin was on her guard in a moment. "She is a woman, your Majesty, and, since I am no ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... the stranger said, addressing him in pure and limpid English, which sounded to Philip like the dialect of the very best circles, yet with some nameless difference of intonation or accent which certainly was not foreign, still less provincial, or Scotch, or Irish; it seemed rather like the very purest well of English undefiled Philip had ever heard,—only, if anything, a little more so; "I beg your pardon, but I'm a stranger hereabouts, ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... impression he received was deep and lasting. On the seat behind him were two girls whose intermittent talk held him with irresistible charm throughout the whole ceremony. He had not imagined that girls could display such intelligence, and the sweet clearness of their intonation, the purity of their accent, the grace of their habitual phrases, were things altogether beyond his experience. This was not the English he had been wont to hear on female lips. His mother and his ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... again assuming the most deliberate and lingering lowland Scotch intonation, "if ye're really verra anxious to ken whar a' come fra', I'll tell ye as a verra great secret. A' come from Scotland. And a'm gaein' to St. Pancras Station. ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... at my door. He had wandered into the wrong pew, for his words were obviously intended to hurry up a brother officer with whom he was to take the morning ride to the firing line. Sticking his curly, sunburnt head around the corner he drawled in inimitable British intonation:- ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... and he shouted for the darkies to move aside and not to block the gangway. The youngish man drew the girl in the tailor suit close to him and started through with her. Peter heard him say, "They won't hurt you, Miss Negley." And Miss Negley, in the brisk nasal intonation of a Northern woman, replied: "Oh, I'm not afraid. We waste a lot of sympathy on them back home, but when ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... it were into her thin cheeks. Yet both looked as if smiles were no strangers to their lips, though there were lines of anxiety and sorrow traced round Mrs. Evelyn's temples. Their voices were sweet and full, and the elder lady spoke with a tender intonation that inspired Babie with trustful content and affection, but caused Janet to pass a mental verdict of "Sugared milk ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... they would not interest the reader as they did me, and not because I have forgotten them. No; I remember them well; for I thought them over and over again in the course of that day and many succeeding ones, I know not how often; and recalled every intonation of his deep, clear voice, every flash of his quick, brown eye, and every gleam of his pleasant, but too transient smile. Such a confession will look very absurd, I fear: but no matter: I have written it: and they that read it ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... him. You're no better than swindlers, both on you. Don't be a bullyin' ME. I won't stand it. Pay us our selleries, I say. Pay us our selleries." It was evident, from Mr. Trotter's flushed countenance and defective intonation, that he, too, had ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... there was a world of disapprobation in his tone, as well as a subtle intonation of contempt. "You are ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... minutes, himself snapping his fingers and uttering most unearthly sounds. Finally, incense was brought, of charcoal with juniper-sprigs; it was swung about, and concluded the morning service to our great relief, for the noises were quite intolerable. Fervid as the devotions appeared, to judge by their intonation, I fear the Lama felt more curious about us than was proper under the circumstances; and when I tried to sketch him, his excitement knew no bounds; he fairly turned round on the settee, and, continuing his prayers and bell-accompaniment, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... day—if only she would look for two minutes as if she liked me a little—as if she didn't utterly despise me"; and the poor fellow burst into a hysterical laugh, which was almost a sob. Then he suddenly began to laugh outright, exclaiming, with a sort of vulgarity of intonation which was extremely ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... decidedly. "There must be some hour in the day when you can be spared. I shall speak to Farmer Hartley about it. Don't look at your clothes, you foolish boy," she continued, with a touch of Queen Hildegardis' quality, yet with a kindly intonation which was new to that potentate. "I am not going to teach your clothes. You are not your clothes!" cried Her Majesty, wondering at herself, and a little flushed with her recent victory over the "minx." The boy's face ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... lads were treating the crisis. It was to them no com- mon scrimmage at Washurst, of course, but it flashed through Coleman's mind that they had not the slightegt sense of the size of the thing. He expected every instant to see the flash of knives or to hear the deafening intonation of a rifle fired against hst ear. It seemed to him miraculous that the tragedy was ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... the slightest foreign intonation in the voice,—something of deliberate utterance, as though English was not the language ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... look at, for beauty of feature, perfection of form and grace of carriage and movement. He had a charm about him of a sort quite unusual to my Western ignorance and inexperience—a charm of manner, intonation, apparently native and unstudied elocution, and all that—the groundwork of it native, the ease of it, the polish of it, the winning naturalness of it, acquired in Europe where he had been Charge d'Affaires some time at the Court of Vienna. He was joyous ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... same, too, and so were the expression, the intonation, the attitude, everything. But the words brought him back to the present, and to the recollection of all that had happened since that walk ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... had ever known Larrabee Harman, if, instead of the two strange glimpses I had caught of him, I had been familiar with his gesture, walk, intonation—even, perhaps, if I had ever heard his voice—the truth might have ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... met hers steadily. "I can padlock my mouth when it is necessary," he answered, the suggestion of a Southern drawl in his intonation. ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... breathless attention, the tears and suppressed sobs of the gathered listeners. No lapse of time can ever efface the impression of the 107th Psalm, as read by Mrs. Fry with such extraordinary emphasis and intonation, that it seemed to make the simple reading ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... insinuating voice, with a strange seductiveness in its silvery intonation. And instead of feeling startled he felt a sudden wave of happiness, as if a beautiful female had breathed upon ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... speaking a few words as she did so. Her voice was soft and musical, and the words of a peculiar quality that we generally describe as liquid, for want of a better term. What she said was wholly unintelligible, but whether the words were strange or the intonation different from anything I had ever ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... out of his preoccupation a little vaguely. "Why, yes. Yes, of course," he said absently. Then, coming a little further, and with a different intonation, he went on: "We're really getting pressed for time, you see. And the opening won't wait for anybody. It's ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... not praise the musical talent of Spanish Americans; their intonation is too nasal, while in their jumpings and chirpings they take after the grasshopper. A resident Englishman, who has traveled in many countries, and sings the songs of nearly every nation, told us he could not remember one of Ecuador. Pianos they have brought ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... However. Excursion trains will be run from distant shires to see this Postage Department. American visitors to London will do it before going on to the Tower. And now,' he broke off, with a crisp, businesslike intonation, 'I must ask you to excuse me. Much as I have enjoyed this little chat, I fear it must now cease. The time has come to work. Our trade rivals are getting ahead of us. The whisper goes round, "Rossiter and Psmith are talking, ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... natural, but that does not in any way impair the force of what I have said. You will all admit that you place more weight upon your ceremonials than upon your faith. You deem it more important to preserve a certain position of the feet, a proper intonation of the voice during prayers than to fully understand the prayer itself, and in spite of your pretended belief in the greatness and goodness of God, you belittle Him by the thought that an omission of a single ceremony, the eating of meat and milk together, ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... young man,' the doctor went on with an intonation that suggested that something highly insulting to me was contained in these two words, 'what's the use of your prevaricating, when, thank God, what's in your heart is in your face, so far? But there, what's the use of talking? I shouldn't come ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... intonation and smile which accompanied these words puzzled the American, who would have given much to have had them explained. But it was useless to question the Captain and the only comfort was in the thought that he was ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... Her intonation demanded a negative, but Artois did not hasten to give it. Instead he turned the conversation once more ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... kindred. Wax will not avail you: her song will penetrate through all; for therein is every grace that Terpsichore, Melpomene, Calliope herself, could inspire. In a word, imagine that you hear such notes as should issue from those lips, those teeth that you have seen. Her perfect intonation, her pure Ionic accent, her ready Attic eloquence, need not surprise you; these are her birthright; for is not Smyrna Athens' daughter? And what more natural than that she should love poetry, and make it her chief study? Homer is her fellow citizen.—There you have my first portrait; ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... most machine-made music is its unhuman accuracy. The phonograph companies seldom give out a record which is not practically perfect in technic and intonation. As for the mechanical piano, there is no escape from the certainty of just what notes are coming next—that is, if little Johnnie has not been editing the paper record with his father's leather-punch. Therefore one grows after a while to long ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... those variations of intonation which mean an effort to be delicate, "is—is there any likelihood that the factory will open ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... The very intonation of his voice warned Scraggs that the present was not a time for argument or trifling. Silently he paid Mr. Gibney the money due him; in equal silence the navigating officer went to the pilot house, unscrewed his framed certificate from the wall, packed it with his few belongings, and departed for ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... in the girl's presence, felt a need to be gentle and friendly and to make amends for his inexplicable rudeness. An unexpected sense of pity softened him. He took the small, ice-cold hands between his own and said, kindly, with the intonation of a big brother ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... pronounced the last words with an intonation which added to their force; and his face wore a singular expression, full of gravity and significance. Another of the company rose hastily, and, with some appearance of alarm, prepared to take his leave. There were only two who held ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gravely inquired, "Would you, Mr. Caldecott, have us believe that every kind of boring is matter of science?" With finer humor he nipped in the bud one of Randle Jackson's flowery harangues. "My lords," said the orator, with nervous intonation, "in the book of nature it is written——" "Be kind enough, Mr. Jackson," interposed Lord Ellenborough, "to mention the page from which you are about to quote." This calls to mind the ridicule which, at an earlier period of his career, he cast on ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... trouble to themselves about the girl," she said, with her bitter intonation. "They're afraid they'll be called on to do something ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... constrained to seek the society of the maiden of uncertain years. Her presence was forbidding, her countenance severe, and her voice and intonation something appalling. But she might know Miss Ray's address; he could at least write his thanks; but he found the vice-president of the Order of the Patriotic Daughters of America in evil mood. She didn't know Miss Ray's address, ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... to; and this did not make the actors any better, although the little plays were tolerable. But Madame de Feucheres wishing to play Alzire and to take the principal part, which she doled out with sad monotony, without change of intonation from the first line to the last, and with a strongly pronounced English accent, it was utterly ridiculous, and Voltaire would have flown into a fine passion had he seen one of his chefs-d'oeuvres mangled ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... no doubt be death to those on whom her eyes had smiled, for whom her set lips had parted, for those whose soul had drunk in the melody of that voice, lending to her words the poetry of song by its peculiar intonation. Inhaling the perfume of violets that accompanied her, I understood how the memory of this wife had arrested the Count on the threshold of debauchery, and how impossible it would be ever to forget a creature who really was a flower to the touch, a flower to the eye, a flower of fragrance, a heavenly ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... breathlessly, Milburgh told the story of his meeting with Sam Stay. In his distress and mental anguish he reproduced faithfully not only every word, but every intonation, and the Chinaman listened with half-closed eyes. Then, when Milburgh had finished, he put down his bottle and thrust ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... a pity a professional man should make himself so ludicrous,' she said with such careless intonation that it was almost impossible, even for Charlotte, who knew her so well, to believe her ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... having a prayer meeting," he answered. "And I keep the key because—because my father used to." He gave the reason with an intonation half playful. "I do many a ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... expected that an extremely English intonation should ever be agreeable to Americans, or an extremely American intonation to Englishmen. We ourselves laugh at a "haw-haw" intonation in English; why, then, should we forbid Americans to do so? If "an accent like a banjo" ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... Rector's voice took a dry intonation. "Yes—well!-you Liberals will have to take your part, and fire your shot some day, ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... effect in choruses. Antonio, who is a powerful young fellow, with bronzed cheeks and a perfect tempest of coal-black hair in flakes upon his forehead, has a most extraordinary soprano—sound as a bell, strong as a trumpet, well-trained, and true to the least shade in intonation. Piero, whose rugged Neptunian features, sea-wrinkled, tell of a rough water-life, boasts a bass of resonant, almost pathetic quality. Francesco has a mezza voce, which might, by a stretch of politeness, be called ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... beneath the palm tree, like myself, for the purposes of shade and repose. They had beside them a basket filled with dead game, fruit, and honey; and the parrot had a long instrument near him on the ground, which I afterwards learned was a fowling-piece. They talked a strange jargon of different intonation, like that of the respective chatter of the grey and the green parrots. Both seemed to complain, and, by the expression of their ugly and roguish faces, to interrogate each other. As soon as they went away, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... in the leash, we awaited the signal—at last it came—the shrill notes of the war whistle pierced the air, and it was instantly followed by the wild intonation of the Camanche war whoop as we burst forth from the timber and charged with headlong fury upon the foe. For a moment I thought that the surprise would be complete, for our sudden appearance seemed likely to ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... in his pious intonation, "if the Osages are loyal, that clears Jean here. He's an Osage, ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... intonation which she thought so musical, and was inclined to laugh at her former fears, for there were no 'Mark Clays' at the party, and she soon heard many familiar names ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... my senses, I should have considered him, personally, as being rather a suspicious specimen of an old soldier. He had goggling, bloodshot eyes, mangy mustaches, and a broken nose. His voice betrayed a barrack-room intonation of the worst order, and he had the dirtiest pair of hands I ever saw—even in France. These little personal peculiarities exercised, however, no repelling influence on me. In the mad excitement, the reckless triumph of that moment, ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... roofs and copse and wall, and the unlovely landscape seemed all tinged with purple haze and tipped with gold. The blare of a bugle summoning the men to supper seemed softened by distance, or some new, strange intonation, and gave to the ugliest of all our service calls the effect of soft, sweet melody; and there was sympathy and genuine feeling in the deep voice as he once again held out his hand ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... taken into consideration her voice, which, always musical in its Southern intonation and quite audible in the quiet garden, struck him now as being full of joyous sweetness. Well, she was certainly very happy—or very thoughtless. She was actually romping with Milly, and was now evidently being chased down the rose-alley by that volatile ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte |
