"Tuneless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bewildered—almost stunned—by the strangeness of the sound; then, as he comprehended its meaning, he listened intently and his heart began to throb. He listened for Madame de Cintre's voice, and in the very heart of the tuneless harmony he imagined he made it out. (We are obliged to believe that he was wrong, inasmuch as she had obviously not yet had time to become a member of the invisible sisterhood.) The chant kept on, mechanical and monotonous, with dismal repetitions ...
— The American • Henry James
... table under the quiet trees the first part of the waltz movement of Weber's "Invitation" sounded out through the upper window. The brilliant tuneless passages bounding singly up the piano, flowing down entwined, were shaped by ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... and where art thou My country? On thy voiceless shore The heroic lay is tuneless now— The heroic bosom beats no more. And must thy lyre, so long divine, Degenerate into ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... front of the cafe. The shutters were closed, no light came from any of the stores or houses along the street, but from behind the closed door of the cafe came the sound of voices and laughter mixed with the metallic banging of a very old piano beating out tuneless accompaniment to a bull-voiced singer roaring through the many verses of "Hinkey Dinkey ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... England with an equivalent as suitable to their requirements as the Salvation Army was to the requirements of the foolish, the hysterical, the unthinking people who played the tambourines and brayed on the tuneless trombones. Thus it is that one man says to another nowadays, when he has got nothing better to talk about, "Are you a man of intelligence, or do you ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... harping on this one string—the supposed slight put upon him in the matter of the vote. Colonel Stewart was more than willing to drop the subject, and at last Captain Ross, thinking the matter settled, momentarily turned away, in an endeavour to stop the monotony of Timpendean's tuneless, ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... priest in and locked the door, going back to Tula with the key. She sat where he had left her, and was crooning again the weird tuneless dirge at which Marto had ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... heart and home music. You all know that there is no recreation about most of your music now-a-days. You bore yourselves and other people with much practising, and when you have learned, as you think, then you drop it all. Who is ready with a song for some weary, tuneless life? or who "keeps up her music" till the tired years of her own? Work for it, pay for it, drop it,—that is the record. Your music, as it is, is a dead thing; and I want you to put the principle of life in it. For whatever you begin for your Master, you ...
— Tired Church Members • Anne Warner
... aisles of the hastily converted hospitals and into dim prison cells came almost daily a little woman with a big smile, always with her hands full of flowers or delicacies, a basket swinging from her arm. As she walked she hummed tuneless airs, and her expression was such a dazed and meaningless one that the prison guards and other soldiers paid little heed to the coming and going of "Crazy Bet," as she was called. "Mis' Van Lew—poor creature, ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... two o'clock, and Sunday. They have all been to church. They have struggled manfully through their prayers. They have chanted a depressing psalm or two to the most tuneless of ancient ditties. They have even sat out an incomprehensible sermon with polite gravity and ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... let us never forget that the Spanish Gypsy is a very grand conception, that it has some noble scenes, and here and there some stately lines—even some beautiful passages, could we forget the artificial alliteration and the tuneless discords to which the poet's ear seems utterly insensible. The opening lines seem to promise well and have much of mellow thought, in spite of five hissing sibilants ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... proceed from, the slow motions of the mind. Was this the avant-courier of the Hudson's Bay, delayed, like ourselves, by the storm? I had hardly spelled out my own suspicion, when to the measured beatings of the tom-tom, gradually becoming faster, and with a low, weird, tuneless chant, like the voices of the forest, the Indians began to tread a mazy, winding pace, which my slow eyes could not follow, but which in a strange way brought up memories of snaky convolutions about the naked ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... the number, I think, we may reckon blank verse. Nothing but the greatest sublimity of subject can render such a measure pleasing; however, we now see it used upon the most trivial occasions.' On the same page he speaks of 'the tuneless flow of our blank verse.' See post, 1770, in Dr. Maxwell's Collectanea and the beginning of 1781, under The Life of Milton, for ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... poet linger long, Far from his listening throng,— Nor lute nor lyre his trembling hand shall bring; Here no frail Muse shall imp her crippled wing, No faltering minstrel strain his throat to sing! These hallowed echoes who shall dare to claim Whose tuneless voice would shame, Whose jangling chords with jarring notes would wrong The nymphs that heard the Swan if ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... clack of typewriters beyond the glass partitions of her little private office left her unaffected. It was incessant. She would have missed it had it not been there. She would have lost that sense of rush which the tuneless chorus of modern commercialism inspired. And, to a woman of her temperament, that would have been ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... One of the Marathas had somehow possessed himself of a tom tom, and proved himself an excellent performer on that weird instrument. While he tapped its sides, his fellow Maratha, in a strange hard tuneless voice, chanted a song, repeating its single stanza again and again without apparently wearying his hearers, and clapping his hand to mark ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... prelude now played by Valentine was neither the great music that is of all time and of all countries, nor the music that is of any one country. It was not even distinctively northern or southern in character, impregnated with the mystery of the tuneless, wonderful East, or with the peculiar homeliness that stirs Western hearts. Both the doctor and Julian felt, as they listened, that it was music without an earthly home, without location, devoid of that sense of relation to humanity which links the greatness of the arts to the smallness of those ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... could see. Not a light showed anywhere; and to make things worse the moon had abandoned us. For one good hour we swept through chaos to the tuneless lamentations of Sheepshanks, who declared that his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said to him, and left him there with a heavy heart. Never again would Rene sit and whittle on the doorstep and sing his tuneless Tipperaree. Never again would he gaze with boyish adoring eyes at Sara Lee as she moved back and forth in the ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... number of species sing in a highly finished manner. Looking at many species, we find every gradation, every shade, from the simple joyous chirp and cry to the most perfect melody. Even in a single branch of the true vocalists we may see it—from the chirping bunting, and noisy but tuneless sparrow, to linnet and goldfinch and canary. Not only do a large majority of species show the singing instinct, or form of display, in a primitive, undeveloped state, but in that state it continues to show itself ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... the party, and had a moment's leisure to examine them before the echo of Ethan's blast returned from the hill. Not one, but many echoes had caught up the harsh and tuneless sound, untwisted its complicated threads, and found a thousand aerial harmonies in one stern trumpet tone. It was a distinct yet distant and dreamlike symphony of melodious instruments, as if an airy band had been hidden on the hillside and made faint music ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... there sighing and groaning, prayerless, tuneless, hopeless, a thought flashed into his mind. What he had done for the poor and the wayfarer, he would do for himself. He would fill his den of despair with the name of God and the magic words of holy writ, and the pious, prayerful consolations of ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the look of a fighter, a struggler with something—but there was nothing there. And out on the side porch Mynie would be sitting, her head thrown back against the wooden column of the porch, her hands clasped about her knees, smiling, smiling, always smiling. Sometimes she would hum a sort of low tuneless chant—it sounded like a pagan ritual of some sort, all repetitions, rising and falling in a monotonous, haunting drone. And once, as I stood watching her curiously, the word for that noise flashed suddenly into my mind—incantation. That was ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... nothing of Warren the next day, but on the day following he strode into the room, whistling in tuneless good humor. ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... made his way by a variety of stratagems, sometimes recruiting his finances by the acquisition of small sums proposed in the foreign universities to public disputants; at others, securing himself a hospitable reception by the exercise of a moderate share of skill in playing the flute—his "tuneless pipe," as he calls it, in that passage of The Traveller, where he alludes to this method of supplying ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... to be mistaken on subjects of this kind that generalizing is dangerous. Many great authorities have liked tuneless music. One of the most telling arguments in its favor was recently advanced by a foreigner. The Chinese ambassador told us last winter in a club at Washington that Wagner’s was the only European music that he appreciated and enjoyed. “You see,” he added, “music is a much older art with us than ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... the dust until he marched, soldier-wise, in a cloud of it, that rose and grimed his moist face and added to the heavy, brown powder upon the wayside weeds and flowers, whistling a queer, tuneless thing, which yet contained definite sequences—the whistle of a bird rather than a boy—approached Johnny Trumbull, aged ten, small of his age, but accounted by his ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... "her ladyship," as he jocularly called her, seated at that old and tuneless piano in the drawing-room, which had scarcely been touched since Becky Sharp played quadrilles upon it—seated at the piano with the utmost gravity and squalling to the best of her power in imitation of the music which she had sometimes heard. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of pleasure followed this verse, and a tuneless chorus thundered the refrain, "Oh, such a knave's a Roundhead," with the most evident relish for the sentiments of the song. Brilliana looked with some impatience at the unruffled face of her adversary, and when the immediate clamor dwindled she ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... from the shack and was seated on the threshold; even she was conscious of a certain elation, for she was humming to herself one of those endless, tuneless, barbaric Indian airs which only take on the pretence of music when they are assisted by the stamping of many feet, and the clapping of many hands. When Granger turned his head in her direction, she lowered her eyes, and her singing ceased. ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... for Clara, to get her to go up to Gussie's for a smoke. She opened a door she had never happened to enter before—a dingy door with the glass frosted. Just inside there was a fetid little bar; view of the rest of the room was cut off by a screen from behind which came the sound of a tuneless old piano. She knew Clara would not be in such a den, but out of curiosity she glanced round the screen. She was seeing a low-ceilinged room, the walls almost dripping with the dirt of many and many a hard year. In a corner was ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... flags, with the drums, As the military comes. It's a famous tune to walk to, And I wonder where they're off to. Step-step-stepping to the beating of the drums. But the rhythm changes as though a mist Were curling and twisting Over the landscape. For a moment a rhythmless, tuneless fog Encompasses her. Then her senses jog To the breath of a stately minuet. Herr Altgelt's violin is set In tune to the slow, sweeping bows, and retreats and advances, To curtsies brushing the waxen floor as the Court dances. Long and peaceful like warm Summer nights When stars shine in ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... blossom, Infant fair, Fondling of a happy pair, Every morn and every night Their solicitous delight, Sleeping, waking, still at ease, Pleasing, without skill to please Little gossip, blithe and hale, Tattling many a broken tale, Singing many a tuneless song. Lavish of a heedless tongue; Simple maiden, void of art, Babbling out the very heart, Yet abandon'd to thy will, Yet imagining no ill, Yet too innocent to blush, Like the linnet in the bush To the mother-linnet's note Moduling her slender throat; Chirping forth thy petty joys, Wanton ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... square carpet occupying the centre of the floor, accompanied by a Nubian boy who twanged upon a guitar, and by most of the assembled company, who clapped their hands to the music or droned a low, tuneless dirge. ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... and limped across the room to his coat in an effort to recover himself, and Dick, more stirred than he cared to admit by the affection in his voice, tramped out to the little porch in front and pretended to whistle a tune, that proved tuneless. He looked at the little valley around the shoulder of the mountain at the head of the ravine, which they had so carelessly invaded that morning, and shuddered. Inside he heard Bill moving around, and then after a time his steps ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... unpretending street organ than such abominations; and, indeed, some of the itinerant music is, to our unsophisticated ears, sweet beyond expression, especially when accompanied, as it is sometimes, by a rich Italian or reedy German voice; for whose sake we can forgive the tuneless squalls that too often greet our ears from ambulatory minstrels, be they of the Madonna, or fishy, Dutch-swamp style of beauty. A sweet-toned street organ, heard in the distance, when all around is still, is not a thing to be despised, by those who have music enough in their souls to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... find Middlemarch very tuneless. There are hardly any good musicians. I only know two gentlemen who sing at ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... at the back of William Skin, who had started to hum—or rather to croon—a tuneless song while knotting a rope to the second ladder. No: it was impossible to say what he wished to say in the presence of William Skin, confound him! Skin's deafness, Skin's imperturbability, might have limits. ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the second changin'-station, Suffered sudden dislocation, fled before the tuneless jar Of a Wagner obbligato, scherzo, doublehand staccato, Played on either pony's ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... labour shall be men of dream, With hand seer-guided, knowing Deity That breathes in sonant wood and fluting stream, Shapes too the wheel, the shaft, the shouldering beam, Nor ceased to build when Magian toil began To lift its towered world. What chime supreme Shall turn our tuneless march to music when Sings the achieving God in ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... he sat there and waited he began, of a sudden and at unawares, to sing to himself. It was the same tuneless chant that had taken possession of him by Harvington-on-Avon; but more instant now and more confident, breaking from him now upon the open sea, with moon and stars above him. Tilda did not hear it, for she slept. He himself was hardly conscious of it. His thoughts were on the Island, ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... creeper on a wall, burst out suddenly into a confused rapturous chorus of chirruping sounds, mingled with others of a finer quality, liquid and ringing. At such times one is vexed to think that there are writers on birds who invariably speak of the sparrow as a tuneless creature, a harsh chirper, and nothing more. It strikes one that such writers either wilfully abuse or are ignorant of the right meaning of words, so wild and glad in character are these concerts of town sparrows, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... twice, but he "had the Gaelic," and the sing-song voice and mysterious words sounded weirdly in her ears. Sometimes, as he put the final polish on the boots, he would break into song,—a strange, tuneless song which quavered up and down, and ended on long-sustained notes. Once even she saw the slippered feet move in jaunty dance-step to and fro, but at the sound of a clatter of saucepans from the kitchen close ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... song the judge had a peculiarity. It made no difference what the words might be or the theme—he sang every song and all songs to a fine, high, tuneless little tune of his own. At this moment Judge Priest, as Jeff gathered, was showing a wide range of selection. One second he was announcing that his name it was Joe Bowers and he was all the way from Pike, and the next he was stating, for the benefit of all who might care ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... tuneless ear, I linger by soft Music's cell, And in my heart of hearts would hear What to her own she ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... it is to hold That here, where sang he, more of him Remains than where he, tuneless, ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... a moment at Aunt Anne and saw her in an ecstasy, singing in her cracked tuneless voice, a smile about her lips and in her eyes, that gazed far, far beyond that Chapel. Maggie felt the approach of tears; she stopped singing—softly the refrain of the ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... cliffs at home, and it was a scented summer morning; the air was balmy, the sun was shining, the little waves rippled up over the sand, the birds were singing, and the dew-drops hung on the yellow gorse; but that joy in her own being which lent a charm to these was wanting, and the songs seemed tuneless, the scent oppressive, the sea all sameness, the land a waste, and the sun itself a glaring garish baldness of light, that accentuated her own disconsolation, the length of a life that is not worth living, and the size ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... see his town-patients, he whistled a little under his breath, as he stood with his back to the fire, looking at Cynthia, and thinking that he had not done her justice when describing her to the squire. Now this soft, almost tuneless whistling was to Mr. Gibson what purring is to a cat. He could no more have done it with an anxious case on his mind, or when he was annoyed by human folly, or when he was hungry, than he could have ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... it—he takes up with white mice, or, lacking these, constructs a dancing-doll, which, with the aid of a short plank with an upright at one end, to which is attached a cord passing through the body of the doll, and fastened to his right leg, he keeps constantly on the jig, to the music of a tuneless tin-whistle, bought for a penny, and a very primitive parchment tabor, manufactured by himself. These shifts he resorts to in the hope of retaining his independence and personal freedom—failing to succeed in which, he is driven, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... unsuitable, the personal terminations of the verb, though from the earliest times to the present day they have usually been contracted and often omitted by the poets, ought still perhaps to be considered grammatically necessary, whenever they can be uttered, agreeably to the notion of our tuneless critics. The critical objection to their elision, however, can have no very firm foundation while it is admitted by some of the objectors themselves, that, "Writers generally have recourse to this mode of expression, that they may avoid harsh terminations."— Irving's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... surgical operations—comprised the entire furniture of the room. The bees were humming among a few flowers placed in pots outside the window; the birds were singing in the garden, and the faint intermittent jingle of a tuneless piano in some neighbouring house forced itself now and again on the ear. In any other place, these everyday sounds might have spoken pleasantly of the everyday world outside. Here, they came in as intruders on a silence which nothing but human ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... common voice proclaims Our only serious vocation Confined to giving nothings names And dreams a "local habitation"; Believe me, there are tuneless days, When neither marble, brass, nor vellum, Would profit much by any lays That haunt ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... village there were people; old men playing the "lady's game" with stones set in squares of sand, women peeping from flat roofs and doorways, children driving goats. A man, like a fair and beautiful Christ, with long hair and a curling beard, beat on the ground with a staff and howled some tuneless notes. He was dressed in red and green. No one heeded him. A distant sound of the beating of drums rose in the air, mingled with piercing cries uttered by a nasal voice. And as if below it, like the orchestral ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... the adverse fates Gave thy lyre to Mr. Yates[2], I have melted at thy strain When Bunn reign'd o'er Drury-lane; For the music of thy strings Haunts the ear when Romer sings. But to me that voice is mute! Tuneless kettle-drum and flute I but hear one liquid lyre— Kettle bubbling on the fire, Whizzing, fizzing, steaming out Music from its curved spot, Wak'ning visions by its song Of thy nut-brown streams, Souchong; Lumps of crystal saccharine— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... tuneless humming began again. "Yes, fond of horses," he said vaguely, his eyes quick ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... orders in a tuneless voice that hopped gayly up and down. He had invented words and music years ago as a lullaby and the song was in ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... are they? And where art thou, My country? On thy voiceless shore The heroic lay is tuneless now,— The heroic bosom beats no more! And must thy lyre, so long divine, Degenerate into ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... between their meals!) at the monstrous, many-mouthed iron tube in the cellar; while I chafed and scolded at the delays, unwilling to leave the men, weary of my dear Island now its chief jewel was gone, irritated by the tramping feet and tuneless whistling where I had heard so much the patter of petite Marie's slippers and the rich ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... for me. Thine eyes gleam like God's own midnight skies— All is gone— Tuneless are my spirit's chords. I but look up, like the birds, And trust Christ to ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... end of three disillusionizing weeks Abe Potash and Morris Perlmutter sat in the show-room of their place of business. Abe's hat was tilted over his eyes and he whistled a tuneless air. Morris was biting ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... gentler manners reign, We turn, where France displays her bright domain. Thou sprightly land of mirth and social ease, Pleas'd with thyself, whom all the world can please, How often have I led thy sportive choir With tuneless pipe, along the sliding Loire? No vernal bloom their torpid rocks display, But Winter lingering chills the lap of May; No zephyr fondly sooths the mountain's breast, But meteors glare ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... there be any music here, I trust it will not fail, like notes Of May-birds, when the warning year Abates their summer-wearied throats. Shame on us, if we drudge once more As dull and tuneless as before. ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... Heart had come into its own at last; the Centipede, most scorned and hated of rivals, was due for lasting defeat. Even Cloudy, the Indian, relaxed and spoke at rare intervals, while Willie worked about the place gleefully, singing snatches of Sam Bass in a tuneless falsetto. Carara had come back from the Centipede with news that gladdened the hearts of his hearers: not only would that despicable outfit consent to run a foot-race, but they clamored for it. They did not dicker over details nor haggle ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... and lark, when they welcome the dawn, Make a chorus of joy to resound through the lawn: But the mavis is tuneless, the lark strives in vain, When my beautiful charmer renews ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Durham saw a horse and rider. The horse was making its own way, the rider having as much as he could do to keep in the saddle. He was swaying from side to side, occasionally waving his arms in the air and howling out a tuneless ditty in a strident ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... on the languid eye Life's autumn scenes grow dim; When evening's shadows veil the sky; And pleasure's siren hymn Grows fainter on the tuneless ear, Like echoes from another sphere, Or dreams of seraphim— It were not sad to cast away This dull ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... fourth, was a lovely chubby baby of eight months, so full of sunshine and content and blessed good health, that although her two first teeth were just grumbling through, she would sit in her high chair by the window or roll and wriggle about on the floor, singing tuneless songs and telling herself wordless stories, an hour at a time, without making any demands on anybody, so that grandma and the aunties declared that half the time they would not know there was a baby in the house. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... gaping muscles, left upon the mud, Slope their slow passage to the fall'n flood: Here dull and hopeless he'd lie down and trace How side-long crabs had crawled their crooked race; Or sadly listen to the tuneless cry Of fishing gull or clanging golden-eye; What time the sea-birds to the marsh would come, And the loud bittern, from the bull-rush home, Gave from the salt ditch-side the bellowing boom: He nursed the feelings these dull scenes produce And loved to stop beside the opening sluice; Where the ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... but the sense of the brotherhood of human suffering touched his heart in a way that made compassion and tenderness appear to him to be the highest and simplest of duties. It was Ida's temper that answered his avowal. Still staring at him she burst into loud laughter, and as he turned away her tuneless mirth grew shriller and shriller till it became hysterical. A frightened effort to regain her self-control, and her voice broke in something like a sob, while tears trembled on her lashes. The Professor's head was bent over his desk and ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... primitively. Beds were of bearskins and blankets, and the floor was the only bedstead. There were rustic tables of hewn boards, and benches without backs. In a storehouse there was a Fairbanks' scale, somewhat worn and rusty, and I found a tuneless melodeon from Boston and a coffee mill from ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... tray that was placed upon a stand. As she sipped the coffee and looked at the pointed head and twisted gaze of Safti, the Princess heard some distant Arab at a street corner singing monotonously a tuneless song, and the scent, the darkness, the reiterated song, and the tall, strange creature standing silently before her gave to her, in their combination, the atmosphere of a dream. She found it difficult to speak, to ...
— The Princess And The Jewel Doctor - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... on the platform at King's Cross, alternately smoking a large pipe and singing tuneless songs. They told him that the next train from York would not arrive ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... an interval of relief from the Colonel's muttering monotone, they heard Nig making some sort of unusual manifestation outside; heard the grunting of those pioneer pigs; heard sounds of a whispered "Sh! Kaviak. Shut up, Nig!" Then a low, tuneless crooning: ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... dulled by blatant praise, Awonder why the scented fumes And surplices at evensong Avail not as in other days. Shrunken and mean the spirit fails Like old snow falling from the crags And priest and pedagog compete With nostrums for the age that ails, But learn not why the spirit lags. Tuneless and dull the loose lyre thrums Ill-plucked by fingers strange to skill That change and change the fever'd chords, But still no inspiration comes Though priest and pundit labor still. Lust-urged the clamoring clans denounce Whate'er their sires agreed was ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... hillside Mediunah, in whose pens they are kept safe from thieves at night. As though he were a reincarnation of Daphnis or Menalcas, one of the brown-skinned boys leans over a little promontory and plays a tuneless ghaitah, while his companion, a younger lad, gives his eyes to the flock and his ears to the music. The last rains of this favoured land's brief winter have passed; beyond the plateau the sun has called flowers to life in every nook and cranny. Soon ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan |
