"Monotony" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is being built, and how much of Birmingham and Bermondsey can be built into it, is only partially known now. It is partially known here, as days of testing and catastrophe break in on periods of monotony, and lay bare their soul. But full knowledge lies in the future—the great and final ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... carry, and when to that was added the cumbrous firearms and ammunition of those times, a day's journey was no light labour. The weary system of counting the paces all day must have considerably added to the monotony of the march. Two thousand and two hundred paces over good ground were allowed to a mile. When too, nature had barred the way with an apparently insurmountable range, it is not to be wondered at that the area of explored country was not very ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... succeeded in convincing the Warden that the portrait of even such a man as I, after all a prisoner, was out of place in such a solemn official room as the office of our prison. And now the portrait hangs on the wall of my cell, pleasantly breaking the cold monotony of ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... Mr. Tulkinghorn stops for an instant and repeats with some little emphasis grafted upon his usual monotony, "Real flesh and blood, Miss Dedlock. Sir Leicester, these particulars have only lately become known to me. They are very brief. They exemplify what I have said. I suppress names for the present. Lady Dedlock will not think me ill-bred, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... ride, although the day was particularly fine, and their way was amid some bits of charming scenery. After going out into the country some five or six miles, the horse's head was turned, and they took their way homeward. Wishing to avoid the Monotony of a drive along the same road the young man struck across the country in order to reach another avenue leading into the city, but missed his way and bewildered in a maze of winding country roads. While descending a steep hill, in ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... he was at times a prey to nervous anxiety. This showed itself in the harassed look which his pale face often wore, and in his marked dislike to being left alone. He derived, I think, a certain pleasure from the quietude and monotony of his life at Worth, and perhaps also from the consciousness that he had about him loving and devoted hearts. I say hearts, for every servant at Worth was attached to him, remembering the great consideration and courtesy ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... the sunny veranda where she knew she would find the women in their accustomed places, and immediately she was the center of the curious old ladies, who welcomed any excitement that would relieve the monotony ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... State Convention, which met at Columbus, January 8, 1867, forgetting that "war legislates," continued harping on the old State Rights theme. The temporary chairman of the convention, Dr. J. M. Christian, varied the monotony a little when he elegantly said: "We have come here not only to celebrate an honored day, but to nominate men of noble hearts, determined to release the State from the thralldom of niggerism, and place it under the control of the ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... most often in females, though in a milder degree. It is a disease of youth, being rarely seen beyond thirty years of age. It seems to depend often upon exhausting influences operating at a period of rapid growth. Monotony of thought and feeling or want of mental food can also induce it. Children who are sent at an early age into factories often pass into the condition of acute dementia. Prison life also tends to produce such a condition. Acute diseases such as typhoid and other fevers ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... soldiers' matchlocks, to the props of which red or white flags were attached, gave an additional touch of color to the otherwise dreary scenery of barren hills and snow. The tinkling of the horse-bells enlivened the monotony of these silent, inhospitable regions. The Tibetans dismounted some three hundred yards from us. One old man, throwing aside his matchlock and sword, walked unsteadily toward us. We received him kindly. He afforded us great amusement, for ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... between musical combinations of sound and noise; therefore the above definition must be taken in a very different sense from that which ordinarily would be the case. By harmony, Confucius evidently means similarity of noises, and by "melody flowing without a break" he means absolute monotony of rhythm. We know this from the hymns to the ancestors which, with the hymns to the Deity, are the sacred songs of China, songs which have come ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... and nights of the journey southward were devoid of any special interest or adventure. The lonely river, wrapped in the silence of the wilderness, brought to me many a picture of loveliness, yet finally the monotony of it all left the mind drowsy with repetition. Around each tree-crowned bend we swept, skirting shores so similar as to scarcely enable us to realize our progress. In spite of the fact that the staunch little Warrior was proceeding ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... the partial liberty of getting out of jail, and of working in the streets in chains, to the monotony of a residence within the walls of the prison, and the sedentary labour they might ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... Breulh was delighted at finding that he could have some occupation which would fill up the dreary monotony of his life. ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... number of syllables to a verse is fixed, subject only to the laws of syllable-counting given above. But if in this respect the Spanish poet has less freedom than the English versifier, he has infinitely greater liberty in the arrangement of his rhythms. The sing-song monotony of regularly recurring beats is intolerable to Latin ears. The greater flexibility of Spanish rhythm can ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... special merit in monotony as to require that the worship of God should be conducted wholly in one method rather than in several. Rather it must be acknowledged that there is merit in variety if it be subjected to dignity and order. For a certain measure of variety arrests and engages the ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... of our ancestors still love to linger; and there the half-sportful, half-serious charms of which I have spoken are oftenest resorted to. It would be altogether out of place to think of them by our black, unsightly stoves, or in the dull and dark monotony of our furnace-heated rooms. Within the circle of the light of the open fire safely might the young conjurers question destiny; for none but kindly and gentle messengers from wonderland could venture among them. And who of us, looking back to those long autumnal evenings ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... not entirely novel, whilst the technical construction is well-nigh faultless. Such expressions as "pearl-scarr'd" serve to exhibit the active and original quality of Mr. Lockhart's genius. "Another Endless Day", by Rheinhart Kleiner, is a beautiful and harmonious poetical protest against monotony. Much to be regretted is the misprint in line 3 of the third stanza, where the text ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... am sure you must make a delightful break in the monotony. As for me,"—she thrust out her hands with an expressive little grimace—"I have been rather a nuisance to everybody while these stupid doctors have been debating over the case. It's a comfort that they have made up their minds at last, and that I can be ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... where employers will prefer women when they can pay them less; but if they must give equal pay, they will choose men. Hence the tendency of the movements mentioned is to throw certain classes of women back into the home. The home of the future, however, will have lost much of the drudgery and monotony once associated with it. The ingenious labor-saving devices, like the breadmixer, the fireless cooker, the vacuum cleaner, and the electric iron, the propagation of scientific knowledge in the rearing of children, and wider outlets ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... given in the Squadron camp, being conducted there by certain gallants in two "G.S." wagons and "fours-in-hand"! Another diversion to the monotony here, was a trip to Jerusalem, which was well worth the tiring journey, although many were disappointed in the "side-show-at-an-exhibition" effect, which many of the most sacred spots presented. It was, however, gratifying to think, that this, the ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... grew scattering, and the wide, level, open country stretched away before us, its monotony broken here and there by groves of pine. The shell road ceased and our wheels now passed through many deep puddles, which in Virginia seem sacred, since they are preserved year after year in exactly the same places. A more varied class of vehicles than we met from time to time would scarcely be ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... thoughts dwelt incessantly on the appointed evening; the iron would then be hot, and she knew that she must strike, or lose a golden opportunity for exchanging the desolate monotony of a heavy single life for the sparkling, honorable, enviable title ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... very small bridge in a location and thunder, any thunder, this is the capture of reversible sizing and more indeed more can be cautious. This which makes monotony careless makes it likely that there is an exchange in principle and more than that, change ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... not croon to her fretful child, and who did not rock her babe to sleep with rhythmic lullaby? Song spans the gap from mother Eve to the mother of to-day: the song may vary, though the emotion of the mother-love remains the same. This crooning, with its element of soothing monotony, it is interesting to note is distinctly hypnotic in its effect, for the sleep of hypnosis is definitely induced by monotonous stimulation of any of the senses. The rocking and crooning on the part of the mother are quite akin, ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... men who came to bid her welcome; and tea at the Desmonds—with iced coffee or pegs as alternatives, and smoking a matter of course—soon became a daily institution; a respite, if only for an hour or two, from the monotony ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... had just reacquired influence over her, during a fit of boredom which had come on with the close of a wearying winter, when the usual dissipations, dinners, balls, and first-night performances were beginning to pall on her with their dreary monotony. And at last, her curiosity aroused, allured by the seeming mystery and piquancy of an intrigue, she had responded to his entreaties by consenting to meet him. However, so wholly unruffled were her feelings, that she was as little disturbed, seated here by the side of ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... made every effort to keep his family from noticing this change. He recognized mentally that he was in love, with the satisfaction of a mature man who sees in this a sign of youth the budding of a second life. He had felt impelled toward Concha by the desire of breaking the monotony of his existence, of imitating other men, of tasting the acidity of infidelity, in a brief escape from the stern imposing walls that shut in the desert of married life which was every day covered ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the Alimentive and monotony on the Thoracic, but leisure is what palls on the Muscular. He may have worked ten years without a vacation and he may imagine he wants a long one, but by the morning of the third day you will notice he has found a piece of work ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... as a colony from which Austria exacted what she could for her own advantage. The injurious consequences of this internal discord are evident." Coming to modern times we find that oppression followed oppression with sickening monotony, and that at last the determination of Austria to stamp out the Constitution in Hungary gave rise to the insurrection of 1849, which Austria suppressed with the assistance of Russia, and as a penalty declared the Hungarian Constitution to be ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... distinctly and correctly; he who makes use of the best words to express himself, and varies his voice according to the nature of the subject, will always please, while the thick or hasty speaker, he who mumbles out a set of ill-chosen words, utters them ungrammatically, or with a dull monotony, will tire and disgust. Be assured then, the air, the gesture, the looks of a speaker, a proper accent, a just emphasis, and tuneful cadence, are full as necessary, to please and to be attended to, as the subject ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... begun speaking with a forced calmness that gave a monotony to his voice, but the sincerity of his plea had brought a fire into it that mingled persuasively with the soothing softness of the voice itself. Conscience felt herself perilously swept by a torrent of thoughts that were all of the senses; ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... hand of his friend which he scarce perceptibly, though measuredly, lifted and let fall throughout the length of all the curious performance. The voice was not unmusical, nor was the quaint old ballad-air adopted by the singer unlovely in the least; simply a monotony was evident that accorded with the levity and chance-finish of the improvisation—and that the song was improvised on the instant I am certain—though in no wise remarkable, for other reasons, in rhythmic worth or finish. And ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... reader is apt to be careless as to the length of the syllable itself, and to make all final syllables long, even to the mispronouncing of the word, thereby both making a false quantity and otherwise injuring the effect of the verse, by importing into it a monotony foreign to the original. Does not Cicero himself say that a short syllable at the end of the verse is as if you 'stood' (came to a stand), but a long one as ...
— The Roman Pronunciation of Latin • Frances E. Lord
... companions. As an operator he had no superiors and very few equals. Most of the time he was monkeying with the batteries and circuits, and devising things to make the work of telegraphy less irksome. He also relieved the monotony of office-work by fitting up the battery circuits to play jokes on his fellow-operators, and to deal with the vermin that infested the premises. He arranged in the cellar what he called his 'rat paralyzer,' a very simple contrivance consisting of two plates ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... of a break in the monotony of the long morning, they observed with interest the movements of a tall young man, in a blue shirt open at the throat and green corduroy trousers, who caught the heaving line hurtling from the bow of the nearest barge, and hauled the attached towing-cable dripping ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... their mouths, eyes, and noses alone coming into contact with the air. If they had not been exposed the breath would have frozen their coverings, and they would have been obliged to take them off with the help of an axe—an awkward way of undressing. The interminable plain kept on with fatiguing monotony; icebergs of uniform aspect and hummocks whose irregularity ended by seeming always the same; blocks cast in the same mould, and icebergs between which tortuous valleys wound. The travellers spoke little, and marched on, compass in hand. It is painful to open one's mouth ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... dinner, rode twenty-one miles to Crossville, stopping on the way to contract for some lumber, arriving in Crossville in time for an eight o'clock supper; spent an hour after breakfast with brother Cameron, rode twenty-seven miles to Deer Lodge, half the way in a hard rain, getting pretty wet. The monotony of the trip was broken, Thursday, by picking my way through the brush rather than following the road. For ten miles before reaching Deer Lodge, I followed closely the track of the storm, the week before. Trees were torn up, houses and barns ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 44, No. 5, May 1890 • Various
... calculated the effect of this terrible speech, or perhaps he wished to judge the effect of it, like those who, suffering from a chronic pain, and seeking to break the monotony of that suffering, touch their wound to procure a sharper pang. Anne of Austria was nearly fainting; her eyes, open but meaningless, ceased to see for several seconds; she stretched out her arms towards her other son, who supported ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... enough that the man was manoeuvring his cockleshell about, so as to get the cutter between it and the shore, and with pleasant visions in his mind of a lobster, crab, or some other fish to vary the monotony of the salt beef and pork, of which they had, in Hilary's thinking, far too much, he leaned over the side till the man allowed his boat ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... narrow escape from being cashiered. At first he had been humbly thankful, too, that they had sent him to this Godforsaken Congo post instead of court-martialing him, as he had so justly deserved; but now six months of the monotony, the frightful isolation and the loneliness had wrought a change. The young man brooded continually over his fate. His days were filled with morbid self-pity, which eventually engendered in his weak and vacillating ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... night, she went back to Fillmore Street—when she thought of the monotony, yes, and the sordidness of home, when she let herself in at the door and climbed the dark and narrow stairway, that her feet grew leaden. In spite of the fact that Hannah was a good housekeeper and prided herself on cleanliness, the tiny flat reeked ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and he felt that a gulf lay between them; it was the gulf of experience. Freda's life in society, the whirl of gaiety, the excitement and success which she had been enjoying throughout the season, and his miserable monotony of companionship with his invalid father, of hard work and weary disappointment, had broken down the bond of union that had once existed between them. From either side they looked at each other—Freda with a wondering perplexity, Derrick ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... without any signs of a change, such a departure from the ordinary routine of the ship was permissible, and I have no doubt everybody on board was glad enough of an occurrence which gave such an excuse for breaking in upon the monotony of ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... his bride had a very keen taste for society, as in those days Peking could not boast of any. The Diplomatic Corps was small; no concession-hunters or would-be builders of battleships enlivened the capital with their intrigues, and the monotony of life was broken only by an ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... the moment of the stranger's appearance, nothing had happened to break the monotony of her long return journey towards Cloudy Mountain Camp. Far back in the distance now lay the Mission where the passengers of the stage had been hospitably entertained the night before; still further ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... along, followed by a large herd of all ages, the mothers carrying their little ones upon their backs, the latter with a regular jockey-seat riding most comfortably, while at other times they relieve the monotony of the position by sprawling at full length and holding on by their mother's back hair. Suddenly a sharp-eyed young ape discovers a bush well covered with berries, and his greedy munching being quickly ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... a gallant escort that brother was! And what a change from the dull monotony of her home life those days were ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... breaks to the monotony of this weary life occurred when the Court was at Windsor. Then the poor little prisoners were permitted to come out of durance, and—still under strict surveillance—to join the royal party. These times were ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... royal sufferer,-the victim of Richelieu,—the unfortunate and ambitious Mary de Medicis. Alas! the cell and the convent are but a vain emblem of that desire to fly to God which belongs to Distress; the solitude soothes, but the monotony recalls, regret. And for my own part in my frequent tours through Catholic countries, I never saw the still walls in which monastic vanity hoped to shut out the world, but a melancholy came over me! What hearts at war with themselves! what unceasing regrets! what pinings after ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... on the fields and the rushes along one margin of the river; along the other side ran a wall of tawny brick almost overhanging the water. He had shipped his oars and was drifting for a moment with the stream, when he turned his head and saw that the monotony of the long brick wall was broken by a bridge; rather an elegant eighteenth-century sort of bridge with little columns of white stone turning gray. There had been floods and the river still stood very high, with dwarfish trees waist ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... sense in a torrent of words? Can you be loud enough to overpower the voice of all who shall attempt to interrupt or contradict you? Are you mistress of the petulant, the peevish, and the sullen tone? Have you practised the sharpness which provokes retort, and the continual monotony which by setting your adversary to sleep effectually precludes reply? an event which is always to be considered as decisive of the victory, or at least as reducing it to a drawn battle:—you and Somnus divide ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... lonely beyond expression. Down in these thick foundations no sound penetrated to break the terrible monotony of the silence around her, except the dull, solemn voice of the bell striking ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... beef shops," and "chop-houses" abounded in the "City," and with unvarying monotony served four, six, or ninepenny "plates" with astonishing rapidity, quite rivalling in a way the modern "quick lunch." The waiter was usually servile, and in such places as the "Cheshire Cheese," "Simpson's," and "Thomas'," ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... chair opposite his father's and laid his faded cowpuncher hat and the rose on the desk. They looked odd in the company of the pushbuttons and the pile of papers in that neutral-toned room which was chilling in its monotony of color. And though Jack was almost boyishly penitent, in the manner of one who comes before parental authority after he has been in mischief, still John Wingfield, Sr. could not escape the dead weight ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... were more full of interest than dread, while the eyes of the little choristers who stood robed for chapel service shone with delight. Evidently to all that community the interruption was an event filled with possibilities of excitement that was welcomed as breaking the monotony of the daily round. Perhaps no one had noticed those gondoliers! Only Father Gianmaria, the Superior, and the Senator Giustinian Giustiniani, the Chief of the Ten, were stern and angry; and Fra Paolo stood between them—calm and inscrutable ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... the season and climate, adding gloom to the surrounding objects, in themselves sufficiently cheerless. The house was situated on an obscure road in a remote part of the town, surrounded by level and sandy fields; and the monotony of the prospect only broken by scattered clumps of dwarf-pine and shrub-oak; a few stunted apple-trees, the remains of an orchard which the barren soil had refused to nourish; some half ruinous out-houses, and a meagre kitchen garden enclosed with a common rough ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... the workers at Ravenna and Rome, than in Venice. Architectural schemes were introduced to break up the surface: clouds and backgrounds, fields of flowers, and trees, and such devices, were used to prevent the monotony of the unbroken glint. But in Venice the decorators were brave; their faith in their material was unbounded, and they not only frankly laid gold in enormous masses on flat wall and cupola, but they even moulded the edges and archivolts without separate ribs or strips to relieve them; ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... in beauty and comfort, it might be sanctioned for the sake of uniformity, as suggested in the previous chapter; but when it is otherwise why should we imitate? Why should the world assume a depressing monotony of costume? Why should we allow nature's diversities to disappear? Formerly a Chinese student when returning from Europe or America at once resumed his national dress, for if he dared to continue to favor the Western garb he was looked upon as a "half-foreign ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... country. Elinor, indeed, proposed to her aunt that they should pass the winter at Wyllys-Roof, but Miss Agnes and her grandfather were unwilling to do so. The variety of a life in town would be preferable for her sake to the quiet monotony of a country winter. They knew she had too much sense to wish to play the victim; but it was only natural to believe, that in a solitary country life, painful recollections would force themselves upon her oftener than among her friends in town, where she would he obliged ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... cultivation is universal, and the soil good, and produce luxuriant, and though the mind and the eye cannot but be pleased by the abundance and verdure of the country, yet in picturesque effect it is extremely deficient. Monotony, even of excellence, displeases. I am speaking of the road which passes through Bolbec and Yvetot: there is another which lies nearer to the banks of the Seine, through Lillebonne and Caudebec, and this, I do not doubt, would, in every point of ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... wounded comrades, in hope of rescuing them when darkness fell. Beaumont Hamel will not be remembered by us as bearing any resemblance to the official description. We look back upon it now, from the personal point of view, as a touchstone of the individual soul, as a prominent landmark in the vast monotony of death and horror—a chapter of inspiring deeds. It represents to us the heroism of a forlorn hope, the glory of unselfish sacrifice, the success of failure." 'Tis too easy to despond "while the tired waves" visibly gain ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... said, went down as far as Redding in thirty-three days. It had its share of tribulation. The men worked fourteen and sixteen hours at times. Several bad jams relieved the monotony. Three dams had to be sluiced through. Problems of mechanics arose to be solved on the spot; problems that an older civilisation would have attacked deliberately and with due respect for the seriousness of the situation and the dignity of engineering. ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... anywhere inland is as useful to the ear as the noise of breakers on the shore. But the voice of the breakers is louder and fainter by turns. The roar of waters in a river-bed is like an audible fog, a monotony of sound beyond reason, contrary to all sense, a miracle of idiocy. "What is the time, do you know?" "Yes, isn't it?" "Day or night?" "Yes!" As if some one had laid a stone on six keys of an organ, and walked off and left ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... fear, if fear it was, was gradually dispelled as the moments sped by, and nothing beyond the wind and the fast driving rain penetrated to where I stood. Nor did it look as if any break in what seemed likely to become a somewhat dread monotony would ever occur. The fierce dash of the storm was like a barrier, shutting me off from the rest of the world, and had my purpose been less serious, my will less nerved, I might have succumbed to the dreariness ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... the monastery where Erasmus lived was a printing-outfit. Our versatile young monk learned the case, worked the ink-balls, manipulated the lever, and evidently dispelled, in degree, the monotony of the place by his ready pen and eloquent tongue. When he wrote, he wrote for his ear. All was tested by reading the matter aloud. At that time great authors were not so wise or so clever as printers, and it fell to the ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... had such an establishment, I should be loath to break it up. It is original, in these days of monotony. It is satisfactory, in these days of uncongenial relations between master and servant It is effective, in the admirable arrangements of the household. It is graceful, in the personal beauty and tasteful apparel of the maidens. ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... expedition to relieve some distant settlement, or a defense for themselves. For all, it meant a rollicking good time; to the old people a feast, and the looking on at the merriment of their children—to the young folk, a pleasing break in the monotony of their busy lives, a day given up to fun and gossip, a day of romance, a wedding, and best of all, a dance. Therefore Alice Reynold's wedding proved a great event to the inhabitants ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... word, expecting each moment to hear the voice of one or other of the Archbishops, but in this he was disappointed. The low tone universally used by each speaker gave a certain monotony of sound which made it almost impossible to distinguish one voice from another. This evident desire for concealment raised a suspicion in the young man's mind that probably each member of the Court did not know who his neighbours ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... Knight began to weary of the monotony of his existence, and to sigh for fresh adventures and more excitement. The Squire, too, wished for change, and was not altogether pleased with the buffet he regularly got every evening at ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... We are two lonely Western barbarians in a strange land. We'll play together for a little while. We're not used to each other's sort of play, but that will break up the monotony of life all the more. I don't know how ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... that I owe the reader an explanation. The day of which I write was the 9th of January, 1847, and just one week after we entered Fort Garry and exchanged the harsh monotony of travel for the comforts of this nourishing post ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... Industrious, skilful, with little ambition, they bustled about their narrow streets, jostling those at their elbow and uttering slander against those out of hearing. In short, they led the humdrum life incident to all small towns in time of peace, and were ever eager to vary this monotony at the first ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... whole force of the system is spent in producing masses of colours, the individual flowers being of no importance, except so far as each flower contributes its little share of colour to the general mass; and it is for this reason that so many of us dislike the system, not only because of its monotony, but more especially because it has a tendency "to teach us to think too little about the plants individually, and to look at them chiefly as an assemblage of beautiful colours. It is difficult in those blooming masses to separate one from another; all produce ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... his ease—are more attractive than the rest. In them are discernible an approach to freedom and something like a breath of life, whereas in the first and the last movement there is almost nothing but painful labour and dull monotony. The most curious thing, however, about this work is the lumbering passage-writing of our ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the one-legged boy went out of the room with the inspector, the latter accompanied by the anxious and protesting superintendent. After that monotony settled down again. The long morning and the longer afternoon wore away and the whistle blew for quitting time. Darkness had already fallen when Johnny passed out through the factory gate. In the interval the sun had made a golden ladder of the sky, flooded the world with ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... a singular thing about the appearance of Methodist preachers, Phyllis; they all look alike. If you see a dozen of them together, the monotony is tiresome. The best of them are only larger specimens of the same type—are related to the others as a crown piece is related to a shilling. You know a Methodist minister as ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... his chief hopes—and also his chief difficulties. That whenever there was a chance for a fight the men were very ardent, he was glad to acknowledge. But that when there was nothing to relieve the monotony of the camp they were indifferent to all discipline, he knew only too well. They were incorrigible traders of uniforms and equipment, sticklers for seniority upon but a few months' service, insistent for furloughs for return to labor on their own affairs, and troublesome even in demanding ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... it to be so. Often the ground was uneven; sometimes we had hills to ascend, and precipitous elopes to slide down, not knowing what might be at the bottom; and then a wide plain to traverse, without a tree or a shrub to break its monotony or to assist us in directing our course. Soon after we set out in the morning our eyebrows became covered with frost, our caps froze to our brows, surrounded by a rim of icicles. The fronts of our coats were ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... come to break in upon the heavy monotony of the time; she expected Ralph or Ellen, or at least Lyra; but she only saw Mrs. Bolton, and heard her about her work. Sometimes the child stole back from the kitchen or the barn, and peeped in upon her with a roguish expectance which her gloomy stare defeated, and ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... dreary monotony in all Italian rivers, once they have reached the plain. They are livelier in their upper reaches. At Florence—where those citron-tinted houses are mirrored in the stream—you may study the Arno in all its ever-changing moods. Seldom is its colour quite the same. The hue ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... imprisonment was it coincided, much to his own surprise, with the Jewish Penitential period, and the Day of Atonement came in the middle. A wealthy Jewish philanthropist had organized a prison prayer-service, and Elkan eagerly grasped at the break in the monotony. Several of the prisoners who posed as Jews with this same motive were detected and reprimanded; but Elkan felt, with the new grim sense of humour that meditation on Yvonne Rupert and the world she fooled ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... accustomed to cheer the monotony of his labors by a race with the boys during play hours. There was a fine sloping lawn in front of the school-house, terminating in a brook fringed with willows. The declivity gave an impetus to the runners, and as they ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... along in the day, when Dave from sheer weariness and worry had lain down among the heaps of burlap, that a diversion came to monotony. He started up as he heard voice outside of the door. Then the padlock rattled, the door opened, and some one stepped across the threshold. The visitor stared about to locate Dave, ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... on their lower slopes with blue-green thickets of pine. Across the river was a choppy sea of sand-dunes stretching away to the north as far as sight could reach. Here and there a high-flung mound, smooth and oval or capped with ledges of black, glistening rode broke the monotony of the view. ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... year," he had written, "but if you would rather have a house, darling, say so. Some people don't approve of flats. They say they are not so wholesome. One misses the air of the staircase, and there is a certain monotony in living altogether on one floor which may not be quite conducive to health. On the other hand flats are compact, and one knows almost at a glance what one's expenses are likely to be. I have been consulting Rivers—you ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... frequent reference to Lasinio's engravings of various frescoes, unaccompanied by any warning of their inaccuracy. No work of Lasinio's can be trusted for anything except the number and relative position of the figures. All masters are by him translated into one monotony of commonplace:—he dilutes eloquence, educates naivete, prompts ignorance, stultifies intelligence, and paralyzes power; takes the chill off horror, the edge off wit, and the bloom off beauty. In all artistical points he is utterly valueless, neither drawing nor expression being ever preserved ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... world, and with her own heart; looking forward to a life's toil for bread and for fame, with which she must try to quench one undying thirst—when she thus thought, she almost longed for such an existence as this quiet monotony, ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... is the picture of Souls we are given. When we think that if all men were perfect, all would be alike, we err with a wide mistake. The nearer you get to the Soul, and the more perfect is the expression of it, the less is there monotony or similarity; and almost the one thing you may posit about any avatar is, that he will be a surprise. Tom and Dick and Harry are alike: 'pipe and stick young men'; 'pint and steak young men'; they get born and marry and die, and the grass grows over them ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... the tedious hours of monotony that his sober senses would have told him must make up the greater part of any such labor as that he was now about to embark upon. Forgotten were the dull, deadly dull and uninteresting days that his experience should have told him lay before him. In his enthusiasm Henry ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... in the fort to wash a wound." They crossed to a neighboring island, where they were soon visited by the chaplain of the fort, the storekeeper, his wife, and three young ladies, glad of an excursion to relieve the monotony of the garrison. "My hunters," says Piquet, "had supplied me with means of giving them a pretty good entertainment. We drank, with all our hearts, the health of the authorities, temporal and ecclesiastical, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... that though I am ignorant of the intricacies of science (and lacked interest in same prior to my reading your first issue) same is described so plainly that I have no trouble in fully understanding exactly what the author conveys. I must thank you for this other interest in the monotony of life. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... Monotony had likewise marked my course— By that I mean that nothing rare Had happened at all, to cause recourse To friendly joy ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... things: so, too, when we visit the sick or unfortunate; we should leave our smiles at the door, compose our face and manner to dolefulness, and talk of anything heartrending. Thus we carry darkness to those in darkness, shade to those in shade. We increase the isolation of solitary lives and the monotony of the dull and sad. We wall up some existences as it were in dungeons; and because the grass grows round their deserted prison-house, we speak low in approaching it, as though it were a tomb. Who suspects the work of infernal cruelty which is thus accomplished ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... we went back to the Lievin sector again on May 25th and took over the line from Fosse 9 and Cite-St. Theodore to just South of the Lievin-Lens Road. Battalion Headquarters were at the corner house near the "Marble Arch" in Lievin. Here the monotony of trench life was varied by long distance patrols, and an enemy raid on the night of May 29/30th on our post at the junction of "Crocodile" Trench and the railway cutting, when we lost two men captured, three killed and seven wounded. Casualties during the whole of this period unfortunately were ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... desperately weary of my detention. Day after day the Itsuku cruised about, sometimes in company with other craft, sometimes alone. The enemy kept well out of sight, and few events occurred to chequer the monotony. Once we sighted two Chinese gunboats not far from Chefoo, and the Japanese varied the day's drill and gun exercise by shelling them into Wei-hai-wei. They ran ignominiously and never made the least show of fight. Had the Itsuku been a faster vessel, ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... read the sporting intelligence and the fashionable news. But he did not read very attentively, as he afterwards discovered. Then he looked at the clock again, and was almost angry at the imperturbable monotony of its face. Then he took out his pocket-book to amuse himself by reading his memorandums, but they were very few, and very unintelligible. Then he rose up from his seat, and went to the window; and looked at the people in the street; he thought they looked very stupid, and wondered what they ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... life." If the belt flew off I wasn't to grab it, or I'd land up at the ceiling. For the rest, I merely clamped a round piece on the top of a nail-like narrow straight piece—the part that turned the lamp wick up and down. Hundreds and thousands of them I made. The monotony did not wear on me there; it was mixed with no physical exertion. I could have stayed on at the brassworks the ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... am," observed lady Feng, "and I only wish some one would come and have a chat with me to break my dull monotony." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... restoration have been so watchfully and plausibly practised that it seems all of one harmonious antiquity. The vast stony oval rose high against the sky in a single clear, continuous line, broken here and there only by strolling and reclining loungers. The massive tiers inclined in solid monotony to the central circle, in which a small open-air theatre was in active operation. A small quarter of the great slope of masonry facing the stage was roped off into an auditorium, in which the narrow level space between the foot-lights and the lowest step figured as the pit. Foot-lights are a figure ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... not without friends, although we had no company: the little party at Government House, as it was then called, were very agreeable and uniformly kind. It is, however, a common mistake to imagine that the life of a missionary is an exciting one. On the contrary, its trial lies in its monotony. The uneventful day, mapped out into hours of teaching and study, sleep, exercise, and religious duties; the constant society of natives whose minds are like those of children, and who do not sympathize ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... a man turns from his own people, and dwells in isolation among an alien race, he suffers many things. The solitude of soul—that terrible solitude which is only to be experienced in a crowd—the dead monotony, without hope of change; the severance from all the pleasant things of life, and the want of any substitutes for them, eat into the heart and brain of him as a corrosive acid eats into iron. He longs for the fellowship of his own people with an exceeding great longing, till ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... scales; but it may also very probably have arisen from the neglect of the regulation about lime-juice, either as to issue or quality, or both. But it is also a fact of very great importance that mere monotony of diet has a most serious effect upon health; variety of food is not merely a pandering to gourmandism or greed, but a real sanitary benefit, aiding digestion and assimilation. Our Board of Trade has nothing to do with the food scales of ships, but Mr. Gray hints that the Legislature will ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... greatest joy among the Pioneers, when they received instructions to prepare for an advance to Khusalghar. Officers and men alike were in the highest spirits, and not the least pleased was Lisle, who had begun to tire of the monotony of camp life. The mention of the place at which they were to assemble put an end to the discussion, that had long taken place, as to route to be followed. Six days' easy march along a good road would take them to Shinawari and, in three or four ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... scenes of the sort quoted above, where the apparent monotony and verbal padding could be converted into coin for laughter by the clever comedian. Amph. 551-632 could be worked up poco a poco crescendo e animato; in Poen. 504 ff., Agorastocles and the Advocati bandy extensive rhetoric; in ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... duchesses, and other persons of high degree, of whom they spoke familiarly, as if they were next-door neighbours. Although she was very young, and knew nothing of their life, she gathered that its monotony was very irksome to them, and that they were compelled to seek something, if only in the pages of an unwholesome and unreal story, to lift them out of it. It was evident that Liz, at least, chafed intolerably under her present lot, and that her head was full of dreams and imaginings regarding ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... were ever two artists more unlike! Just compare "The Dancing Sylphs" and "The Gleaners." The theme of all Millet's work is, "Man goeth forth to his labors unto the evening." Toil, hardship, heroic endurance, plodding monotony, burdens grievous to be borne—these things cover the canvases of Millet. All of his deep sincerity, his abiding melancholy, his rugged nobility are there; for every man who works in freedom simply reproduces himself. That is what true work is—self-expression, self-revelation. The style ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... The negativism and refusal to go to stool are the outcome of the nervous unrest, not its cause. Again, the nervous child, like the adult neuropath, very often improves for the time being with every change of scene and surroundings. It is the ennui and monotony of daily existence, in contact with the same restricted circle, that becomes insupportable and brings into prominence the lack of moral discipline, the fretfulness, and spirit of opposition. Lastly, the conduct of the nervous child is determined ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... reasons, then, among others, the most 'natural' spontaneous and straightforward prose is not always the best. Study and careful revision are necessary in order to avoid an awkward and unpleasant monotony of rhythmic repetition, and at the same time obtain a flow of sound which will form a just musical accompaniment to the ideas expressed. Only the great prose masters have done this with complete success. Of the three following examples the first ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... would not hear of aristocratic distinctions in our country. He was a Hail Columbia man, on the Democratic ticket. But something is wanted, he said, to get us out of grooves, and break the monotony. That something, said Pappa, Nature has mercifully provided in Freaks. The citizens feel this, unconsciously: that's why they spend their money at Barnum's. But Barnum was not scientific, and Barnum was not straight about his ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... which she recited to her adopted father, the religious instruction she received from the Marquise and long hours of play with Philip made up the life of Dolores. Day succeeded day without bringing anything to break the pleasant monotony of their existence, for the capture of a mischievous fox, an encounter with some harmless snake, or the periodical overflow of the Gardon could scarcely be dignified by the name of an event: yet these, or similar incidents furnished the children with topics of conversation ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... a high bluff shooting up on the eastern bank and running along for some distance. It was clothed in dense green forest, and it was rather a welcome break in the monotony of the low shores. ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... main steps in the early progress of the race, which it is thus possible to present, is all that is required for educational ends. Were it possible to present the subject in detail, it would be tedious and unprofitable to all save the specialist. To select from the monotony of the ages that which is most vital, to so present it as to enable the child to participate in the process by which the race has advanced, is a work more in keeping with the spirit of the age. To this end the ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... happiness we are equal to as yet is that of wrestling with the difficult and overcoming it. Every call of duty has its place in this ideal; every irksome job, every wearisome responsibility. The fact that we are not always aware of it in no way annuls the other fact that it is so. Boredom, monotony, drudgery, bereavement, loneliness, all the clamour of unsatisfied ambitions and aching sensibilities, have their share in this divine yearning of the spirit to grasp what as yet is beyond its reach. All of that hacking of the man to fit the job rather than the shaping ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... children was raisin' particular Cain, an' the oldest, a pretty little girl of thirteen, was doin' her best to quiet 'em. There was six others besides what had been accounted for, but I soon found that they belonged to a neighbour, an' was just visitin' to relieve the monotony. ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... head and gave a hearty laugh. He was enjoying this conversation, as it broke the monotony of ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... The monotony of barrack life, however, did not last long. The news of the outbreak of the Sioux Indians in the western part of the state turned all thoughts from anticipations of Southern campaigns to the necessities of the hour. The regiment was put on a war footing, ...
— History of Company E of the Sixth Minnesota Regiment of Volunteer Infantry • Alfred J. Hill
... This was rigorously corroborated by my two soldier-men, to whom I appealed, and a parting word on the ordinary politeness of Western nations to a greasy fellow (he was a worker in brass), who felt my clothes with his dirty fingers, ended an interesting break in the day's monotony. In the street the crowd again was at my heels, and evinced more than comfortable curiosity in my straw sandals. They cost me thirty cash, equal to about a ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... evident, from the amount of snow in the mountains, that stories had not been exaggerated. The packers looked dubious. Even if we could make the climb to Doubtful Lake, it seemed impossible that we could get farther. But the monotony of the long ride was broken that afternoon by our first sight, as a party, ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... between us and the main west shore. This, so far as my eyes could distinguish, did not differ in appearance from our present abiding place, being composed of low, swampy land, thickly covered with a heavy growth of cane, and exhibiting no sign of human habitation. The sole break to this dull monotony of outline was a narrow fringe of trees situated farther back, where doubtless firmer soil gave spread ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... enjoyment of the former of their intervals of respite. I incline to think that the majority of cheerful cases is to be found among those patients who are not confined to one room, whatever their suffering, and that the majority of depressed cases will be seen among those subjected to a long monotony of objects ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... do so at Johannisberg; but I was so much pleased with the Rhine that I preferred to make my way over to Coblenz and to postpone the visit. When you and I saw it we had just returned from the Alps, and the weather was bad; on this fresh summer morning, however, and after the dusty monotony of Frankfort, the Rhine has risen very considerably in my estimation. I promise myself complete enjoyment in spending a couple of days with you at Ruedesheim; the place is so quiet and rural, honest people and cheap living. We will hire a small boat and row at our leisure downwards, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the camels kneel—heading now away from the hills toward a dazzling waste of silver sand, across which the eyes lost all sense of perspective, and all power to separate three objects in a row; a land of mirage and monotony, glittering in places with the aching white of ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... in and pour out all their sorrows, and it is so terribly hard always to be ready and willing to listen and sympathise. One actually grows "dof" (dull) from sheer weakness. O the monotony ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... said Wharton sardonically. "A raw wind, driving snow, pitchy darkness, slush and everything objectionable underfoot. Yet I'd like to be in Weber's place. A curse upon the man who invented life in the trenches! Of all the dirty, foul, squalid monotony it ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... pocket some toy or picture-book? Small things they often were—these gifts that meant so much to the child—often things of very slight money value; but to the invalid whose long, tedious days of convalescence were stretches of monotony the tiny presents seemed treasures from an ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... wide monotony of prairie with its undulating wavelets, a tawny green beneath the scorching summer sun. He was thinking deeply; perhaps dreaming, although dreaming had small enough place in his busy life. His lot was a stern fight against crime, and, in a land so vast, so new, where crime flourished upon virgin ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... entirely preventable, happen year after year with lamentable monotony. Each weir is a little Niagara, and a boat once within its influence is certain to be driven to destruction. The current carries it against the piles, where it is either broken or upset, the natural and reasonable alarm of the occupants increasing ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... the water, and expose large portions of their bodies to our view. The excitement occasioned among all on board, by the appearance of so many of these terrible monsters, greatly quickened our dull spirits, and tended much to alleviate the lonesomeness occasioned by the monotony of ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... the bare studio and waited for his return. The monotony of the past weeks, which had grown oppressive, was about to end and for this she was very grateful. For from a life of luxury the child had been dumped into a gloomy studio in the heart of a big, bustling city that was all unknown to her and where she had not a single friend or acquaintance. Her ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... all means, if I am not selfishly keeping you too long. Your talk has done me good rather than harm, for you are so vital yourself that you seem to give me a part of your life and strength. I believe I should have died under the old dull monotony." ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... and these are more easy and wholesome when practised in common than when they are displayed by individuals in defiance of the social order that surrounds them. The differences of temperament and of spiritual level in the group members would prevent monotony; and insure that variety of reaction to the life of the Spirit which we so much wish to preserve. Those whose chief gift was for action would thus be directly supported by those natural contemplatives who might, if they remained ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... This monotony was, to a certain extent, the result of natural selection. Most of the officers had chosen their wives very carefully, and this had brought about a fine similarity in their views, a similarity which ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... Penang. The pipe "up anchor" this morning was hailed with delight. Anything to change the dull monotony of the last few weeks. We started with an overcast and rainy sky, and by the next morning had reached Malacca, a small British settlement, essentially Malay, more a village than a town. It lies very low and close to the water's edge, the houses of the natives being all constructed on piles ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... meet trouble that might never come; while as to my being a strange sort of fellow, that, she supposed, I could not help, and if other people were willing to put up with me, there was an end of the matter. The monotony of life, she added, was a common experience; there she could ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... record of the first twenty-three years of my life is the enumeration of them. A simple bead-roll is enough; it represents their family likeness and family monotony. ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... its awed monotony, dwelt insistently on each word, then paused. "To-day," whispered Mary, caressing Minta's hand, while the tears streamed down her cheeks; "he repented, Minta, and the Lord took him to Himself—at once—forgiving ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... high, and so wide that two could sit on either side within. Upon the mantelpiece the Carnegie arms stood out in bold relief under the two crossed swords. One or two portraits of dead Carnegies and some curious weapons broke the monotony of the walls, and from the roof hung a finely wrought iron candelabra. The western portion of the hall was separated by a screen of open woodwork, and made a pleasant dining-room. A door in the corner led into the tower, which had a library, with Carnegie's bedroom above, and higher still Kate's ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... a determined opposition, to wring an unwilling consent from her father, and to leave her home in order to carry out her plan. This phase, however, does not last many weeks, and she is soon back once more on the parental hands. Thus the years pass on, the monotony of neglecting her home being varied by occasional outbursts of enthusiasm which carry her on distant expeditions in strange company. During one of these she falls in with a lay-preacher, who to a powerful and convincing style adds the fascination of having been turned from an early life of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... the monotony of this sort of thing the Canadian Corps organised a series of night raids ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... following this appeal by a rural lyric which recited in somewhat wearisome tonal monotony the adventures of a Little Black Bull that came Over the Mountain, when he observed that Chum was no longer lying at his feet. Indeed, the dog was in a far corner of the room, pressed close to the closed outer door, and with crest ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... pedigree was taken, with my credentials and a statement of my business. I was finally permitted to sit down in a waiting-room with a waiting crowd. Occasionally a senator or a congressman would break the monotony by pushing himself in whilst we cultivated our patience by waiting. Lunch time came and went. I waited. Several times I ventured some remarks to the attendant as to when I might expect my turn to come, but he looked ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... Town? By degrees the old phrases, old catch-words, and old opinions have come to reign again. Troy's unchanged loveliness too, the daily round full of experiences familiar as old friends, the dear monotony of sight and sound in the little port—all have made for healing and oblivion. If you question us on a certain three months in our life, the chances are you will get no answer. We have agreed to forget, you see; and so we are beginning to persuade ourselves, almost, that ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... on one spot of ground, unless you compare their position with some other object by which to mark their progress, so even is the repetition of the movement. And thus the sad events of the future life of this father and daughter were hardly perceived in their steady advance, and yet over the monotony and flat uniformity of their days sorrow came marching down upon them like an armed man. Long before Mr. Wilkins had recognised its shape, it was approaching him in the distance—as, in fact, it is approaching all of us at this ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... miles before reaching Mazaro, the scenery is tame and uninteresting. On either hand is a dreary uninhabited expanse, of the same level grassy plains, with merely a few trees to relieve the painful monotony. The round green top of the stately palm-tree looks at a distance, when its grey trunk cannot be seen, as though hung in mid- air. Many flocks of busy sand-martins, which here, and as far south as the Orange River, do not migrate, have ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... all that pertains to the outward life, to health, to labor, to individual interests, I would have more freedom, ease, and flexibility, would see more of individual judgment and peculiarity, more marks of personal character and affirmative force of will and opinion. As it is, there is a tedious monotony in all these things. Our houses are all made and furnished too nearly alike; and so of all our affairs. A fashionable sameness, somber and dull, spreads over our ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... movement, the monotony of the letter form and the terribly utilitarian nature of its morals, "Pamela" has the essentials of interesting fiction; its heroine is placed in a plausible situation, she is herself life-like and her struggles are narrated with a sympathetic insight into the human ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... that varied the dull monotony of my life, was the beating off a frigate equal in force to our own; though I believe that we were a little obliged to her for taking leave of us in a manner so abrupt, though we could not certainly complain of the want, on her part, of any attention ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... The monotony of hospital life became intolerable. My recovery was slow and my impatience great. When I felt my strength begin to return, I wrote to Captain Haskell. No answer came. Before the end of February I had demanded my papers and had started for the army yet near Fredericksburg. Transportation by rail ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... were herds or single deer to be seen along the way, and at a number of points we passed long piles of whitened antlers. Other game too, ducks, geese, and ptarmigan had become plentiful since we entered the caribou country, and now and then a few were taken to vary the monotony of the diet of dried caribou meat. Loons were about us at all hours, and I grew to love their weird call as much almost ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... his pleasant book one gets the idea that the recruiting business was quite popular with the islanders, as a rule. And yet that did not make the business wholly dull and uninteresting; for one finds rather frequent little breaks in the monotony of it—like this, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... railway runs through the desert, the coasting steamer calls at the Islands of the Blessed, the last mystery has been unveiled, the fairies are dead, the talking birds are silent. Our baffled curiosity turns for relief outwards. We call upon the dead to rescue us from our monotony. The first authentic ghost will be welcomed as the ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... not toil along it in the dust and the heat. The narration of the daily movements of troops, unmarked by variety of incident, is dull and wearying. Yet he who would obtain a true idea of the soldier's life on service, must mentally share the fatigues of the march and the monotony of the camp. The fine deeds, the thrilling moments of war, are but the high lights in a picture, of which the background is routine, ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... just as keen as you could be not to have his ship mixed up with anything discreditable. But passengers are an impious lot. They are just bursting for want of a job, most of them; they revel in anything like an accident to break the monotony; and if they can spot a bit of foul play—or say they helped to spot it—why, there they are, supplied with one good solid never-stale yarn for all the rest of their natural lives. So you see they've every inducement to do a lot ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... instructive to them to see and know, that all the hedge-trees, groves, and copses that intersect and internect the vast expanse of green and gold were planted by man's hands. Such a landscape would convince them that the prairies of Illinois and Iowa may be recovered from their almost depressing monotony by the same means. The soil of this district is apparently the same as that around Chicago—black and deep, on a layer of clay. It pulverises as easily in dry weather, and makes the same inky and sticky composition in wet. To give it more body, or to cross it with a necessary and supplementary ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... street, in a den of vice, you do not expect civilization, you do not expect order. But the horror of this was the fact that there was civilization, that there was order, but that civilisation only showed its morbidity, and order only its monotony. No one would say, in going through a criminal slum, "I see no statues. I notice no cathedrals." But here there were public buildings; only they were mostly lunatic asylums. Here there were statues; only they ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... heaven-born stock....That is not all, however. The truth of the matter is that they get so bored out here they would go frantic if they did not cultivate as many kinds of excitement and indigenous admirations as their wits are equal to. When they can, they vary the monotony of life with summers in Europe and winters in New York—or Santa Barbara, where they meet many interesting people from the East or England; but some of them won't leave their busy husbands or the husbands ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... dull and long to those of us who were too far from home to make it worth while to leave the school for the eight weeks of holiday. It was dreary indeed sitting in the great school-room, with its long rows of empty desks, with nothing before one to break the monotony of the four walls but the great map of France and the big dusty cross with its dingy wreath of immortelles. It is true, we did not bewail the absence of our companions. In fact, it was with a tranquil sense of security that I began my work every morning in vacation, knowing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... was not all Eve's, it was probably shared by the majority of the women present. She was the object that conjured their minds from the dull monotony of their daily routine to realms of happy fancy. And the picture was drawn in a setting of Romance, with Love well in the foreground, and the guardian angel of Perfect Happiness hovering over all. No doubt somewhere in the picture ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... the time placed many disadvantages in the way of her social and moral reform. As a rule, the young girl was confined to a convent until she reached marriageable age; when that came and with it an undesired husband, she was ready for almost any prank that would relieve the monotony of her uncongenial marital relations. The convents themselves were so corrupt or so easily corruptible, that, very frequently, young girls did not leave them with unstained purity. To certain of these institutions, women ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... army and returned home. He was heartily tired of the long inaction. When the regiment was stationed at Madras, life was very pleasant; but a considerable portion of his time was spent at out stations, where the duties were very light, and there was nothing to break the monotony of camp life. He received letters regularly from his mother, who gave him full details of their ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... of house or inn?" said the girl, peering afar down the road, which soon lost itself in the general monotony of the landscape. ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham |
