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More "Inflection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ornithologists have made the discovery that it is a link between the geese and swans, but is more goose than swan. It is a beautiful white bird, with bright red bill and legs, the wings tipped with black; and has a loud musical cry of three notes, the last prolonged note with a falling inflection. ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... slight change of inflection as she said "the packer" had not quite the effect she had intended. Stirling himself had once labored with his hands, and, what was more, afterward had a good deal to bear on that account. He was not particularly vindictive, ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... in, his voice speaking the word with a rising inflection of intense interest. "It is well that you have come. I, too, know something of the visitors to the roses of Konopisht. The talk was not all of roses, nicht wahr?" he said quietly, with ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... do you suggest shall be done with my—rival?' asked the German with a sinister inflection ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... but only as such differences would be apparent in real life. Indeed, the aim today is to mimic reality in externals, precisely as the real characters themselves are impersonated in every shade of thought and artistic inflection of speech. There are, to be sure, ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... said, with the velvety South of Ireland vowel-inflection. "We keep Wednesday for the Women's Laager, always. Many of them are so miserable, poor souls, about their husbands and sons and brothers who are in the trenches, or who have been killed, and then there are the children ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Gentlemen, this next lot'll tempt you, I'm sure! Lot 33, a magnificent and very finely executed dramatic group out of the "Merchant of Venice," Othello in the act of smothering Desdemona, both nearly life-size. (Assist., with a sardonic inflection. "Group 'ere, Gen'lm'n!") What shall we say for this great work by ROCCOCIPPI, Gentlemen? A hundred guineas, just to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various
... stylus is attached; so that a human mouth uses a pen and inscribes its sign vocal. Yet after all we are just as far away as ever from enabling the young actors at Harvard to give Aristophanes with all the true, subtle intonation and inflection of the Athens of 400 B.C. The instrument is dumb. Ingenuity has been shown also in the invention of "talking-machines," like Faber's, based on the reed organ pipe. These automata can be made by dexterous manipulation to jabber a little, like a doll with its monotonous "ma-ma," or a cuckoo clock; ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... of a gracious and pleasant personality. She was tall and fair, rather English in type, and spoke with a noticeable English accent. She frequently ended sentences of simple statement with a rising inflection and was addicted to the use of the word very, which ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... considerable shrewdness frequently remarked that Stan was an awful ass, but he could paint some. This was the common last analysis, the degree of qualifying favor being measured in each case by the comparative pause between the last two words and the accent and inflection upon the ultimate. ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... Every lineament of his face, every inflection of his voice, as well as every act of his life, and every trait of his ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... think—" said the elderly gentleman, getting in. The inflection of his voice suggested the Irishman. It was not a brogue. There were no strange words. But the general effect was Irish. Garnet congratulated himself. Irishmen are generally good company. An Irishman with a pretty daughter should ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... a warm welcome with gentle dignity, not forgetting the cloud of sadness which hung over the house and rendered her presence necessary. She called her "Nurse Gray" at the conclusion of every sentence, with an upward inflection and pretty rolling of the r's, which charmed Jane. She longed to say: "You old dear! How I shall enjoy being in the house with you!" but remembered in time that a remark which would have been gratifying condescension on the part of the Honourable Jane Champion, would be little short of impertinent ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... interrupted, in a bewitching and rising inflection of his soft and plaintive voice. "I know you got a kind feeling by me, and I couldn't to tell even how I got a kind feeling by you. Only it's about that kind feeling I should give you a present. I didn't"—with a glance at the crowded desk—"I didn't to have no soap nor ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... fumbled at his breast. Twisting his head aside, he got something between his teeth, and through the fetid fog went the shiver and whine of the Metropolitan Police Call. Three times he blew, with the correct inflection. ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... Millar, with an obstinate inflection of her voice which said, "I am of my own opinion still." She illustrated this by adding, in an ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... affections, this, the first that takes root in the infant's heart, is the last to die out under the blighting influence of vice, the deadening blows of time. "My Mother" is spoken by the world-hardened citizen with a gentler inflection,—a reverential cadence, as if the inner man stood with ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... with her back to it, smiled in enjoying recognition of the thin, high academic note, the prim finish of the inflection. It reminded her of a man she knew ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... a blind person in the canoe with the Lockwood sisters, that unfortunate person could never in this world have told which girl spoke at each time. Their voices were exactly alike—the same inflection, the same turning of phrases, the ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... saying yes was one of his chief weapons of annihilation. He had a peculiar, taunting inflection which he could give to it, upon occasion, which caused prickles of flesh upon the victim. To say that Miss Whitmore was not utterly quenched argues well for her courage. She only gasped, as though treated to an unexpected dash of cold ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... Was it the gentle inflection of the question, or his intent glance that made me feel, as I had felt before that day, that I was face to face with an alert antagonist? He called on me to speak, and I was loth to break my silence. If he had only left me to my own bitter thoughts,—but why should I have expected ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... got home," answered Mrs. Dent with rising inflection. "Be you gone crazy over that girl? The last boat from Porter's Falls was in before we went to bed. Of course she ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... company," remarked my uncle, who did not seem to catch the sceptical inflection in his younger daughter's voice, "and I sometimes fear she wishes to be alone because she is brooding ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... This word appears to be derived from the same root as Paup-puk-ke-nay, a grasshopper, the inflection iss making it personal. The Indian idea is that of harum scarum. He is regarded as a foil to Manabozho, with whom he is frequently brought in contact in aboriginal ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... conversation above recorded can hardly be had except my reader will take the trouble to imagine the contrast between the Scotch accent and inflection, the largeness and prolongation of vowel sounds, and, above all, the Scotch tone of Malcolm, and the pure, clear articulation, and decided utterance of the perfect London speech of Lenorme. It was something like the difference ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... rising inflection and a drawling note in his voice that was almost too much for the others. "I really must be going, anyway," he continued. "My party will be some distance ahead. Sure you ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... hastened to assure her. "I don't think there is anything for you to be uneasy about, except that his influence is always evil—" he paused on a raised inflection and looked at her admiringly. "One of the reasons," he went on regardless of the abrupt change, "why I like you and feel so sure that you are sound and good and strong clear through is because you have not yielded in the least to the subtle influence ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... some minutes had passed, the rattle of the newspaper and the measured ticking of the clock being the only disturbing sounds, "Father," he repeated, this time with a falling inflection. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... on reading into June. For the sake of the finer effects (in "Copperfield" principally), I have changed from St. James's Hall to the Hanover Square Room. The latter is quite a wonderful room for sound, and so easy that the least inflection will tell anywhere in the place exactly as it leaves your lips; but I miss my dear old shilling galleries—six or eight hundred strong—with a certain roaring sea of response in them, that you have stood upon the beach of many and ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... first to make a sound—a broken, hypnotic sound, without emphasis or inflection, as though his lips were frozen, or the words torn from him ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... watch my companion, as he told me the names of the Tories who followed in Colden's wake, and commented on their characters. I do not recall them, but I remember every line of Philip Schuyler's face, and every inflection of his voice. He was then not quite forty years of age, almost of my stature—that is to say, a tall man. He held himself very erect, giving strangers the impression of a haughty air, which his dark face and eyes, and black lines of hair peeping from under ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... her a pillow, handing it without speaking and waiting significantly. She took it in silence, then got out her purse, a meagre-looking one, and put a little coin into the woman's hand. As she did so she said, "Thank you," and the least little foreign inflection—a lingering difficulty with the "th"—gave Noel the last assurance that he needed. How unforgotten the voice was! He believed he would almost have ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... was always too quick for him, and this reply held him in puzzled silence while she extended her hand and added, with the faintest inflection of sadness in her voice: "Before we bid each other goodbye, I want at least to thank you for having once thought of me ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... with so disagreeable an inflection that Arved was astonished. He looked around and ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... tones to him, the love displayed in every inflection, set out in more bitter contrast the coldness with which ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... was about to go." She turned to give Bailey her hand, smiling involuntarily in her relief. With a glance, an inflection, Lestrange had stripped their former meeting of its embarrassment and unconventionality, how, she neither analyzed ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... in the courtyard at last—but the only window that looked that way was set high in the wall of the little corridor, and he could not see who it was to whom she was talking. And he wondered, because the inflection of her voice was English—not the exquisite imitation of the French inflexion which he had so ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... partner, don't you think? Are you—but of course you must be acquainted with him, living in the same neighborhood?" Her inflection made ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... brilliant episode when individuals seem lost sight of in the general vividness of the scene with its gaily colored costumes and flash of jewels. There are alternating sentimental passages until, toward the end, the first melody bursts into a fortissimo—a great rising inflection, insistent and impassioned—then a final pitch of excitement as all seem to throw themselves into the whirl and the waltz reaches a brilliant end. While Nevin in the waltz which I selected from among his works, appears to tell the story of two people, Moskowszki here places before our eyes ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... Fritz repeated with a strong, rising inflection on the "los." And at that he drew his overcoat, which apparently had been thrown across his shoulders, high above his head and down over it, as if he were cold. I can see the silhouette of that coat against the stars ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... undeserving?" It was he who added the words, as though he had read them in my own mind; and there was a slight, sarcastic rising inflection of the voice at the end of the sentence, as if he put it ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... sentence, and was so devised in the mind of the composer, without the extensions. The method of manipulation is ingenious; observe the variety obtained by the striking dynamic changes from ff to pp; and, hand in hand with these, the changes from major to minor, and back (as shown by the inflection of b-flat to b-double-flat). These are first applied to members only, of the Antecedent, as indicated by the brackets a and b, and then to the entire Consequent phrase. Observe, also, that in the repeated form of the latter, the rhythm is modified ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... but not very far from them, come those that recognize a constructed object: for example, the fox, which knows quite well that a trap is a trap. No doubt, there is intelligence wherever there is inference; but inference, which consists in an inflection of past experience in the direction of present experience, is already a beginning of invention. Invention becomes complete when it is materialized in a manufactured instrument. Towards that achievement the intelligence of animals tends as towards an ideal. And though, ordinarily, it ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... subtle and plastic inflection of his voice, like the poise of wings descending, he dropped from that almost inspired height of emotion, and became shrewd and practical, thoroughly informed and competent, a physician with a flair for the secret of disease, a surgeon of the Soul, relentless in his handling of ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... and in addition he knew the different cockney voices of all the rabble of the London streets. He had learnt to know the queer types of people who drifted about the river banks and the poorer sections of the city. He knew every small inflection of their voices and their every trick and gesture, and now he acted them out to the great delight of the other clerks. But he could put his powers of mimicry to greater uses. He went to the theatre, particularly to hear Shakespeare's plays, as often as he could, ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... when a man expresses a wish that the rain may be dammed, he voices a desire for its everlasting condemnation, or the mere placing in its way of an impediment which shall prevent its further overflow. I think much depends upon the manner, the inflection, and the tone of voice in which the desire is expressed, and I am sorry to say that upon the occasion to which I refer, there was more of the asperity of profanity than the calmness of constructive suggestion in my father's manner. In any event I did not blame him, for ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... ladies of Monastier; it seemed to them frolicsome and racy, like a page of Pickwick; and they all got it carefully by heart, as a stand-by, I presume, for winter evenings. I have tried it since then with every sort of accent and inflection, but I seem to lack ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... blundering?" she echoed; and the inflection of the pronoun might have flattered him had he not reflected that it was impossible she could have understood his allusion. And now she bethought her that she had not thanked him—and the debt was a heavy one. He had come to her aid in an hour when hope seemed dead. He had come single-handed—save ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... hear the man and to see the poison of that rat soul of his exuding from his every pore, in every gesture and in each fresh inflection of his rasping voice. And all his men shouted their fierce approval and shook in our faces their bloody butcher's bayonets. It was a bitter draught. If they had killed us then it would have had to have been done ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... "Mist-er.....er Brierly!" (Mr. Braham had in perfection this lawyer's trick of annoying a witness, by drawling out the "Mister," as if unable to recall the name, until the witness is sufficiently aggravated, and then suddenly, with a rising inflection, flinging his name at him with startling unexpectedness.) "Mist-er.....er ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... If I turned slowly it was because I knew what was waiting me, and was adjusting several possibilities to meet it. It was a man's voice that called, yet its every inflection was familiar, familiar as the beating of my heart. For madame, my wife, had called to me more or less often in the twin of that voice with its slurring deliberateness and its insolent disregard of the pitfall accents of a foreign tongue. And now I turned to meet her cousin, ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... Field!" a voice behind him cried. "What are those cryptic rites that you're performing? What on earth are you bowing into a hairdresser's window for?"—a smooth, melodious voice, tinged by an inflection that was half ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... speeches, to herself. She only felt a slight shock, such as a word or a look from one we love too often gives us,—such as a child's trivial gesture or movement makes a parent feel,—that impalpable something which in the slightest possible inflection of a syllable or gradation of a tone will sometimes leave a sting behind it, even in a trusting heart. This was all. But it was true that what she saw meant a great deal. It meant the dawning in Myrtle Hazard of one of her as yet unlived secondary lives. Bathsheba's ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... difference in his delivery when he read the lessons after his visit. We all observed it, and some of the old-fashioned people thought that he was going to intone—to which there was a strong objection—but his efforts not carrying him beyond a peculiar rising inflection towards the middle of a verse, and a remarkable lingering fall into deep bass at the end, we soon regarded it as a praiseworthy attempt to give variety to his previous vapid utterances, and came rather to like it, as it gave the church somewhat of a cathedral flavour. The old pew-opener ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... to the warning. Deborah's voice had but reminded him of Deborah's presence. Its tone had escaped him. He was too engrossed in the purpose he had in mind to notice shades of inflection. ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... children, is this rhythm the law; and grace and strength are inflections thereof. All human movement is a variation upon symmetry, and without symmetry it would not be variation; it would be lawless, fortuitous, and as dull and broadcast as lawless art. The order of inflection that is not infraction has been explained in a most authoritative sentence of criticism of literature, a sentence that should save the world the trouble of some of its futile, violent, and weak experiments: "Law, the rectitude of humanity," says Mr ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... Owen thought me the only woman worth looking at in the whole world. Ah, well! that is all over, long ago!" Mildred would say, with an inflection that was meant to be tenderly reassuring. And she would tilt her still pretty head on one side and smile with pensive kindness at her successor upon the throne ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... a chair up to the couch, and his first words roused the woman's interest. He spoke for ten minutes or more, now in whispers, now with a rising inflection; now persuasively, now with well-feigned indignation and scorn. The effect which his argument had on his companion was shown by the swift changes that passed over her face; she interrupted him frequently, asking questions and making comments. At the end the woman rustled her ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... the false accusation made upon himself. Indeed, his noble and candid nature easily explained all as the ravings of some heartrending remembrance. Waiting, therefore, until the violent convulsions of the old man's frame had somewhat subsided, Herbert went to him, and with a low and respectful inflection of voice, said: ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... mastered only by long practice. Serious as they are, they need not frighten any one who is in the habit of learning foreign tongues. The ear and the tongue gradually become familiar with the peculiarities of inflection and accentuation, and practice fulfils the same function as ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... said in reproof, "But verily, your name is on all lips. The Roumi have branded you common criminal. You are to be seized on sight and great reward will be given he who delivers you to the authorities." He spoke without inflection, and Crawford could read neither support nor animosity—nor greed for the reward offered by El Hassan's enemies. He gathered the impression that the Tuareg chief was playing his cards ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... gravely, with that quaintest inflection of the English he had ever heard, "yes, mistaken. He mais—but it is just that the complaint. You ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... on some animal. Lessons are sometimes given on cats. As an element in a reading lesson—to arouse interest—to hold the attention—to secure correct emphasis and inflection—to make sure of the reading being good: such work is appropriate. But let us see what the effect upon the pupil is as regards the knowledge he gains of the cat, and the effect upon his habits of thought and study. The ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... only word he could have spoken just then, but it was all that was necessary. It told her everything. It was an outburst from a heart too full of emotion to grope after speech, the cry of a man for the One Woman who alone can call forth an inflection more eloquent than phrases and poetry. And, as she came into his outstretched arms as straight and direct as a homing pigeon, they closed about her in a convulsive grip that held her straining to him, almost crushing her in the ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... worry my head about you, you old fox. You're too much of a master hand," Cronin returned, with an inflection that sounded like a grin. "I imagine you can hold up ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... or send it flowing on In pleasant waves? Can draw soft tears, or concentrate them hard To form a base whereon the martyr stands To take his leap to Heaven? What is this sound that, in Niagara's roar Brings us to Sinai; Or in the infant's prayer to Him, "Our Father?" That by a small inflection wakes the world, And sends its squadroned armies on To victory or death; Or bids it, peaceful, rest, and grow, and build? That reassures the frighted babe; or starts The calm philosopher, without a word? That, in the song of little bird speaks glee; Or in a groan strikes mortal agony? ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... will enable me to substitute for the face of some common-place player, or for that face repainted to suit his own vulgar fancy, the fine invention of a sculptor, and to bring the audience close enough to the play to hear every inflection of the voice. A mask never seems but a dirty face, and no matter how close you go is still a work of art; nor shall we lose by staying the movement of the features, for deep feeling is expressed by a movement of the whole body. In poetical ...
— Certain Noble Plays of Japan • Ezra Pound
... trial-scene from Pickwick, and a Christmas Carol in a prelude and three scenes. Scene first, Marley's Ghost. Marley was dead, to begin with." These words, or words very similar, were spoken in a husky voice, not remarkable in any way, and with the English cadence in articulation, a rising inflection at the end of every few words. They were spoken with perfect simplicity, and the introductory description was read with good sense, and conveyed a fine relish upon the reader's part of the things described. There was nothing formal, no effort of any kind. ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... eyes as he raised his head her own widened, and she withdrew from him imperceptibly, dismissing him with a mere inflection. ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... make my husband insane in order to establish the fact that his grandfather was not of sound mind?" queried pretty Mrs. Browne, with her calmest Boston inflection. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... collection of shells; and since then every noon and night he found her waiting here by her gate to speak to him; and she invariably asked the same question about his wife, always in the same tone, always with the same inflection. The meeting with her had become one of the frightfully unvarying things of his day. As he walked on now, he saw stretching before him an interminable vista of days, weeks, years—one deadly sameness of ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... Inflection Defined Number The Formation of Plurals Compound Nouns Case The Formation of the ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... example of this willingness to dispense with inflection, of this endeavour on the part of the speakers of a language to reduce its forms to the fewest possible, consistent with the accurate communication of thought. Of our adjectives in 'en', formed on substantives, and expressing the material ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... the beloved. Taking their source and their element from the soul itself, the vibrations of the air, charged with passion, put our hearts so powerfully into communion, carrying thought between them so lucidly, and being, above all, so incapable of falsehood, that a single inflection of a voice is often a revelation. What enchantments the intonations of a tender voice can bestow upon the heart of a poet! What ideas they awaken! What freshness they shed there! Love is in the voice before the glance ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... launch the desperate pun, A pun-job dangerous as the Indian one. Turned by the current of some stronger wit Back from the object that you mean to hit, Like the strange missile which the Australian throws, Your verbal boomerang slaps you on the nose. One vague inflection spoils the whole with doubt, One trivial letter ruins all, left out; A knot can choke a felon into clay, A not will save him, spelt without the k; The smallest word has some unguarded spot, And danger lurks in i without ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... tapestry, gay with silver lace, coquettish fans, and high-heeled Spanish slippers. Eighteen years old, married, and dead; and muy querida, much beloved! My thoughts stayed behind, as I moved on, and the words, with their soft inflection, would recur dreamily to me, again and again—muy querida; ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... another thing to hear Stevenson as he stood reading it aloud, with his hand stretched out holding the manuscript, and his body gently swaying as a kind of rhythmical commentary on the story. His fine voice, clear and keen it some of its tones, had a wonderful power of inflection and variation, and when he came to stand in the place of Silver you could almost have imagined you saw the great one-legged John Silver, joyous-eyed, on the rolling sea. Yes, to read it in print was good, but better yet ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... but a slight sound came from the lake, and he stayed. It was merely the cry of the night bird, calling to its mate, one would have said, but Robert's attention was attracted by an odd inflection in it, a strain that seemed familiar. He listened with the utmost attention, and when it came a second time, he was so sure that his pulses beat ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... as he stood over his bed, having come to announce the arrival of Julia. "August!" Andrew tried to speak quietly, but there was a something of hope in the inflection, a tremor of eagerness in the utterance, that made the mother look up ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... English, and middle English: for instance, "dages endi nahtes" (Heliand), "daeges and nihtes" (Beowulf), "daeies and nihtes" (Layamon), all meaning "by day and by night." In all, or almost all, words ending in "ward," the genitive inflection, according to modern English practice, can either be retained or dropped at will. It is a mere pedantry to declare "toward" better English than "towards," "upward" than "upwards." Thus we see that here again there is neither logical principle nor ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... glad to receive you," he said. "It will be among the most memorable incidents of my reign that I welcome to my Court the first visitor from another world, or," he added, after a sudden pause, and with an inflection of unmistakable irony in his tone, "the first who has descended to our world from a height to which no balloon could reach and at ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... "I?" The inflection of doubtful surprise was a delight to the ear. "Oh!... I couldn't think of accepting.... Besides, I have ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... last, who till then had kept silence without having for a moment ceased to behold Corinne, "to which of your poetical talents do you yourself give the preference? To the work of inflection, or of momentary inspiration?" "My lord," answered Corinne, with a look that expressed the highest interest and the most delicate sentiment of respectful consideration, "it is you that I would wish to make the judge ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... "buffer," more than he could stand—or, rather, sit. Leaped to feet, and, with thrilling energy, repudiated gross imputation. Prince ARTHUR taken aback; hadn't meant anything particular. To call a thing or a person a buffer not necessarily a term of opprobrium. Everything depends on inflection of tone. Suppose, now, leaning across the table, he had addressed Mr. G. as "old buffer," that would perhaps have been a little ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... straws would have seemed stable, caught the inflection of defiance and daring and hope ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... the faintest suggestion of the derisive inflection. After all, it might have been but a mannerism. The man had such a mild face and such a ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... belong to the Fairfaxes of Kirkham? Is your grandfather Richard Fairfax of Abbotsmead?" she said in a quick voice, with an inflection of surprise. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... who seek to spare us the discomfort of repentance by teaching us to declare with a new inflection, "It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves," forget that there is another side to this argument. It is, of course, very alluring to be told that we are not really blameworthy for acts which hitherto ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... courtliness he could muster, and releasing his passive prisoner, pushed her gently into the safe-keeping of the old cniht. Yet he was not so obtuse as to step back, as though the incident were closed; he read the King's inflection more correctly than that. Holding himself somewhat stiff in the tenseness of his feelings, he stood his ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... been so engrossed in the landscape that she seemed not to have been listening. It was her voice, come out of the distance, that asked, without any inflection except ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... bureau scarves that are in good condition but they have been washed so many times that they're a little faded. If you'd like those—?" she ended with an upward inflection. ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... are made, gentlemen should be presented to ladies, younger people to older people, etc. The formula for introductions may be abbreviated to a mere announcement of the two names: "Mr. Smith—Mrs. Jones"—the pause and inflection filling the ellipsis; and really, upon the tone and manner depends the courtesy of the introduction so barren of phrasing. A formal presentation is made in this form:—"Miss Smith, allow me ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... attention has been turned for many years, and the conviction grows upon me continually. There is no book in which children a little advanced beyond the simplest monosyllabic lessons will learn to read faster, or more readily catch the proprieties of inflection, emphasis, and cadence, than the Bible. I would by no means put it into the hands of a child to spell out and blunder over the chapters before he has read any thing else. The word of God ought not to be so used by mere beginners. But it contains ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... it difficult to say this with the proper inflection. It did not sound as business-like as he could have wished. But she was too much ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... in the habit of talking much about the things you see." She put it in the form of a statement, but the rising inflection indicated ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... or ordinary adjectives. Instead of having our attention taken up with thinking of the proper endings, we are left free to attend to the thought rather than to the vehicle of its expression. Although our pronouns are still declined, the sole inflection of our nouns, with the exception of a few like ox, oxen, or mouse, mice, is the addition of 's, s, or es for the possessive and the plural. Modern German, on the other hand, still retains these troublesome case endings. How did English ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... daredevils and were trying to imitate them. They were intimidated by Christophe's defiant manner, and when he said curtly: "This place is taken," they hastily begged his pardon and withdrew to their end of the bench so as not to disturb him. There had been a masterful inflection in his voice; their natural servility came to the fore. They saw that Christophe was ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... apartment in Braden's car, while Stella contrived prettily to take so much of Warrington's time with the wraps that by the time they were ready to go the manner of the breaking up of the party was as she wanted it. In her final triumph she could not help just an extra inflection on, "I hope I'll see you again at Vera's ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... varieties in inflection, such as "spiritu sancta" for "spiritu sancto," "pauperorum," for "pauperum," "vocitus" for ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... his arms on top of the open Bible, and leant forward for a long, silent moment, looking earnestly from side to side into the upturned faces of his hearers. Then he began to talk—to talk, not to preach, speaking every word with an inflection of the truest sincerity. The text was "Forgetting the things that are behind, I press towards the mark," and the "talk" ran pretty much ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... lessons fall into their natural order of sequence. When, through the development of the sentence, all the offices of the different parts of speech are mastered, the most natural thing is to continue the work of classification and subdivide the parts of speech. The inflection of words, being distinct from their classification, makes a separate division of the work. If the chief end of grammar were to enable one to parse, we should not here depart from ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... in the training is to try a more varied use of the voice, without a loss of what has been acquired as to formation of tone. The student is to make himself able to slide the voice up and down in pitch, by what is called inflection, to raise or lower the pitch by varied intervals, momentarily to enlarge or diminish the tone, in expressive ways; in short, to adapt the improved tone, the more effective method of voice control, to more varied ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... Fortunately, however, effort was unnecessary, for Bob won his way quite as uncontestedly with the little inventor as with Celestina. There was no question that his aunt was delighted with him. One could read it in her affectionate touch on his arm; in her soft, nervous laughter; in the tremulous inflection ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... until he entered the lists, so the sly old fox had said to the baroness at the last moment: "Don't forget your cue. You are a mediator, and not an interested party. Troubert also is a mediator. Weigh your words; study the inflection of the man's voice. If he strokes his ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... cold, measured voice as ever, with only a slight sarcastic inflection to vary the deep, grave tones; but a very close observer might have seen his fingers clench the handle of a knife while he was speaking, as if their gripe would ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... Spruce," he said, endeavouring to throw an inflection of sternness into his mellow voice, "I must ask you to explain matters a little more clearly. I know that the Manor has been practically shut up ever since I've been here,—that you are the housekeeper in charge, and ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... dramatic suggestion to be looked for in the Pickwick trial, thus rendering comparison inapposite. Nevertheless one was bound to contrast them. Thackeray's features were impassive, and his voice knew no inflection. But his elocution in other respects was perfect, admirably distinct and impressive from its ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... diversity of sound. The syntax is the next source of effect. What could be better than Homer, or what worse than almost any translation of him? And this holds even of languages so closely allied as the Indo-European, which, after all, have certain correspondences of syntax and inflection. If there could be a language with other parts of speech than ours, — a language without nouns, for instance, — how would that grasp of experience, that picture of the world, which all our literature contains, be reproduced in it? Whatever ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... scornful eyes, poor Lady Jane grew silent under those baleful glances. Her simple little fancies shrank away tremulously, as fairies in the story-books, before a superior bad angel. She could not go on, although Rebecca, with the smallest inflection of sarcasm in her voice, besought her to continue that charming story. And on her side gentle thoughts and simple pleasures were odious to Mrs. Becky; they discorded with her; she hated people for liking them; she spurned children and children-lovers. "I have no taste ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I could not rid my tone of an ironical inflection. I was goaded to it by her attitude, by the scornful turn of her lip and the disdainful glance of her grey eyes—she had her father's eyes, saving that her gaze was as steadfast ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... father sitting, straight and slender, in his chair, talking in that quiet voice of his that never went sharp or deep or quavering, that paused now and then on an amused inflection, his long lips straightening between the perpendicular grooves of his smile. She loved his straight, slender face, clean-shaven, the straight, slightly jutting jaw, the dark-blue flattish eyes under the black eyebrows, the silver-grizzled hair that fitted ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... look at him, for there had been a curious inflection in his "what, what!" He was a stout, highly colored man with large, staring gray eyes. The young American wondered where ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... who had their interests in keeping. He tried his best to be cordial and natural in manner—to be, in brief, the sincere friend that he had professed himself—and Mr. Mayhew did not notice anything amiss; but even at some inflection of his voice, or at a pause in the conversation, Ida would turn towards him this sudden, questioning, child-like look, which touched him deeply while it puzzled him. But she gradually began to grow ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... foregoing without pause or inflection of voice from beginning to end, came to an abrupt stop. Whether from want of breath or ideas it is difficult to ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... kind of jumble between reading and acting,—staring, and bending his brow, and twisting his face, and gesticulating as if he were on the stage and dressed out in all his costume. My father's manner is quite different; it is the reading of a gentleman, who produces effect by feeling, taste, and inflection of voice, not by action or mummery. Lucy Bertram rides remarkably well, and I can now accompany her on horseback, having become emboldened by example. We walk also a good deal in spite of the cold. So, upon the whole, I have not quite so much time for ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... built dreams on the fanciful imagining that she should, despite everything, some day like him. He wearied his brain in recalling a chance expression of her eyes that could not have been unfriendly; an inflection of her voice that might have carried a hope, if only their paths had been less crossed: and his pride, despite rebuffs, sought her as a moth seeks a flame. It drew him to her and kept him from her, for he lacked for the first time in ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... in the man's eyes, a mocking inflection in his voice, that sent a thrill of cold horror through Cuthbert's veins. He was absolutely powerless in that merciless clasp. He felt the strength leaving his limbs and his head turning giddy. He only just knew it when he was laid upon the grass, his ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... music." His method was practically the memoriter method. A gentleman, who heard him give his "Daniel O'Connell" four times in succession, found that the lecture was repeated without the slightest variation whatsoever, in ideas, sentences, inflection of the voice, or even gesture. Phillips prepared his lectures with the greatest care, and then repeated them hundreds of times. From the moment when he came upon the platform his presence filled the eye and satisfied it. His very ease and poise begat confidence and delight. He carved ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... which has great interest for me. This pair were exceedingly talkative at first, uttering not only the usual musical three-syllable warble or call, which Lanier aptly calls the "heavenly word," but often soft twittering prattle, of varying inflection and irregular length, which was certainly the most interesting bird-talk I ever heard. When they could not see me they indulged in it more freely, with changing tones at different times, and after they became accustomed to ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... of isolation. They were enclosed in their common risk as in some secret meeting-place where no consciousness of the outer world intruded; and though their talk kept the safe level of their immediate concerns he felt the change in every inflection of Fulvia's voice and in the subtler emphasis ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... never do," groaned the chief inquisitor. "Now, Freddy, try not to cry. What is your papa's name,—Mr.—?" with the leading inflection as before. ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... born of her own rejected passion, which caused her to read in the beautiful girl's face all that lay hidden behind the pale, impassive mask. That same second sight made her understand Merlin's hints and allusions. She caught every inflection of his ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... at something, or listening to something, far away. As I grew older, I came to believe that it was only because she was so often thinking of things that were far away. She was quick-footed and energetic in all her movements. Her voice was high and rather shrill, and she often spoke with an anxious inflection, for she was exceedingly desirous that everything should go with due order and decorum. Her laugh, too, was high, and perhaps a little strident, but there was a lively intelligence in it. She was then fifty-five years old, a strong woman, of ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... "what" without the "how" in speech. The same written sentence becomes two diametrically opposite ideas, given opposing inflection and accompanying voice-effect. "He stood in the front rank of the battle" can be made praiseful affirmation, scornful skepticism, or simple question, by a simple varying of voice and inflection. This is the more unmistakable ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... and a coaxing kind of recitative it is, after all. Don't tell me of your soft Etruscan, your plethoric. Hoch-Deutsch, your flattering French. To woo and win the girl of your heart, give me a rich brogue and the least taste in life of blarney! There's nothing like it, believe me,—every inflection of your voice suggesting some tender pressure of her soft hand or taper waist, every cadence falling on her gentle heart like a sea-breeze on a burning coast, or a soft sirocco over a rose-tree. And then, think, my boys,—and it is a fine thought after all,—what ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... his the sign and test of that type of high, sincere manhood which he represents; but it is a dangerous business, this attempting to define the character and disposition of people by the turn of an eyelid, the curve of a lip, or a particular vocal shade and inflection. Not only has Art learned to imitate Nature very closely, but Nature herself plays many a trick upon our credulity in matters of this kind. Upon a woman who owns no higher motive than low and selfish cunning she bestows the musical tones of a seraph, as she sheathes the sharp claws of all her feline ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... know!" said Calvin, with an inflection of sympathetic inquiry. "Is it anything you feel disposed to mention, Mr. Cheeseman, or ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... window," he said with that inflection that Maggie was already beginning to think of as "his ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... you must go this afternoon?' said the Ironmonger's daughter dismally, but with an inflection that made it more ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... know and to have confidence in a gentle driver, and soon discovers how to secure for himself that which he desires, and to understand his surroundings and his duties. The tone, volume, and inflection of his master's voice indicate much, perhaps more than the words that are spoken. Soothing tones rather than words calm him if excited by fear or anger, and angry and excited tones tend to excite or anger him. In short, bad ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... combinatory, or inflectional, and that the transition from one stage to another is in fact constantly taking place under our very noses. Even Chinese is not free from combinatory forms, and the more highly developed among the combinatory languages show the clearest traces of incipient inflection. The difficulty is not to show the transition of one stratum of speech into another, but rather to draw a sharp line between the different strata. The same difficulty was felt in Geology, and led Sir Charles Lyell to invent such pliant ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... kill the familiar! Kill the devil's imp!" came in various voices, the angry tones being not without an inflection of fear. ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... of His life, yet gentleness was the flower and fruitage of it all. For in Him the lion and the lamb dwelt together. Oak and rock were there, and also vine and flower. Weakness is always rough. Only giants can be gentle. Tenderness is an inflection of strength. No error can be greater than to suppose that gentleness is mere absence of vigor. Weakness totters and tugs at its burden. When the dwarf that attended Ivanhoe at the tournament lifted the bleeding sufferer he staggered under his ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... fragments of it were flashed before him fitfully, in swift disorder. If he would attempt to seize upon one of those fragments, to detain and fix it, for consideration—a speech of hers, a look, an inflection—then the whole experience suddenly lost its outlines, his recollection of it became a jumble, and he was left, as it were, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... furrowed their way across his forehead, and under his eyes were deep black marks. His bronze cheeks were white and sunken, and a bright red spot burned on one of them. But it was a change of which the details could give no idea. His face had caught the inflection of his inward agony, and retained it. It was there, if not for the world to see, at any rate terribly evident to me, to those ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... wall of human masonry, and apparently barred further progress. Taking from his bosom the twisted section of a polished horn, only a finger's length, the cowled figure raised it to his lips, and blew three whistles, that ended in a rising inflection which waked all the wolfish pack of mountain echoes into fitful barking. Two moments later, an answering signal seemed to issue from the invisible jaws of Hades; a wild, quivering sepulchral cry, as of a monster half throttled. Twenty feet beyond the spot where the party had halted, a ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... from a little distance called, "Clarion!" in a guarded inflection; meantime the hound had discovered his mistress, and was jumping about her horse, giving ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... a beady-eyed, cheery-looking ancient woman, answers questions with a rising inflection, and gives a good account of the Captain, who got into the vehicle without assistance, and was in excellent spirits.—Of course he had struck for Hagerstown as the terminus of the Cumberland Valley Railroad, and was on his way to Philadelphia via Chambersburg and Harrisburg, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... they call you?" This was said with a contemptuous, rasping inflection that irritated the new scholar. His eyes twinkled, partly with annoyance and ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... a satiric inflection. "Well, why in the name of common sense didn't you say so at first? I do not know, however, that I can positively get you an appointment today. You must not mind if His Lordship keeps you waiting for a few minutes if he happens to be talking with the Czar of Russia on the long-distance ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... fine moral speeches, to herself. She only felt a slight shock, such as a word or a look from one we love too often gives us,—such as a child's trivial gesture or movement makes a parent feel,—that impalpable something which in the slightest possible inflection of a syllable or gradation of a tone will sometimes leave a sting behind it, even in a trusting heart. This was all. But it was true that what she saw meant a great deal. It meant the dawning in Myrtle Hazard of one of her as yet unlived secondary lives. Bathsheba's virgin perceptions had ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Indian one. Turned by the current of some stronger wit Back from the object that you mean to hit, Like the strange missile which the Australian throws, Your verbal boomerang slaps you on the nose. One vague inflection spoils the whole with doubt, One trivial letter ruins all, left out; A knot can choke a felon into clay, A not will save him, spelt without the k; The smallest word has some unguarded spot, And danger lurks ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... law; and grace and strength are inflections thereof. All human movement is a variation upon symmetry, and without symmetry it would not be variation; it would be lawless, fortuitous, and as dull and broadcast as lawless art. The order of inflection that is not infraction has been explained in a most authoritative sentence of criticism of literature, a sentence that should save the world the trouble of some of its futile, violent, and weak experiments: "Law, the rectitude of ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... shy," he says, half proudly, half in apology; but Laura, who does not care a fig for children in general, kisses Cecil in spite of resistance. "Mother, I have added to your dignity by bringing home a granddaughter." Then, with a tender inflection, "This is ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... bronchial tubes), the larynx, pharynx, the mouth, and the nares anterior and posterior, or head chambers of resonance. The free tone is modified through all its varieties of expression by those subtle changes in form, intensity, movement, inflection, and also direction, which are too fine for the judgment to determine, or even observe successfully. These varieties are made possible by the very organism of the voice, which is vital, not mechanical, and are determined by the influences working from the mind through the nerves ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... And Sir Percy himself was surprised at the marvellous way in which he had caught the very inflection of Heriot's voice. ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... these good ladies of Monastier; it seemed to them frolicsome and racy, like a page of Pickwick; and they all got it carefully by heart, as a stand-by, I presume, for winter evenings. I have tried it since then with every sort of accent and inflection, but I seem to lack ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... That, by the curt inflection, the autocratic peremptoriness, was Lessard. I had one hand on MacRae's shoulder, and I felt a tremor run through his body, like the rising of a cat's fur at ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... should we fear the Change?" he answered her unspoken question, calm serenity in every inflection of his quiet voice. "The life-principle is unknowable to the finite mind, as is the All-Controlling Force. But even though we know nothing of the sublime goal toward which it is tending, any person ripe for the Change ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... a word which has been corrupted to Mohawk. It is the third person plural, in the sixth "transition," of the Algonkin word mowa, which means "to eat," but which is only used of food that has had life. Literally it means "they eat them;" but the force of the verb and of the pronominal inflection suffices to give to the word, when used as an appellative, the meaning of "those who eat men," or, in other words, "the Cannibals." That the English, with whom the Caniengas were always fast friends, should have adopted ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... speech, gesture, and song, in the larger sense of the word, had their origin together. This is also true of many of the languages of modern savages, and of those of more civilized peoples, such as the Chinese, which have not quite attained inflection; in this case the frequent repetition of the same monosyllable conveys a different meaning, not only from its relative position, but from the modulation and tone in which it is uttered. The same thing may be observed in children who are just ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... involuntarily. There was in our hero's features a distinction and an elegance which could not escape Bathilde's eyes. The chevalier's dress, simple as it was, betrayed the elegance of the wearer: then Bathilde had heard him give some orders, and they had been given with that inflection of voice which indicates in him who possesses it the habit ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... night, becuz Dan said his mother useter toast his; and whenever the sun comes out, I take his clothes off and leave him sprawl in it, but I guess I miss a good deal." She finished with a wistful, half-questioning inflection, and Mrs. ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... easy-chair and confronted him. The firelight played upon her red-gold hair, and surprise had driven the weariness from her face. Against the black oak of the chimneypiece she had almost the appearance of a framed cameo. Her voice was quite steady, although its inflection betrayed some indignation. ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... stood over his bed, having come to announce the arrival of Julia. "August!" Andrew tried to speak quietly, but there was a something of hope in the inflection, a tremor of eagerness in the utterance, that made the mother look ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... the same time I heard him sizzle out "Zhid" from between his tightly closed lips. I looked at him in amazement: how on earth could he guess I was a Jew, when I spoke my Russian with the right accent and inflection, while his was lame, broken, and half mixed with Polish? That was a riddle to me. But I had no time to puzzle it out, and I forgot it on ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... was deaf to the warning. Deborah's voice had but reminded him of Deborah's presence. Its tone had escaped him. He was too engrossed in the purpose he had in mind to notice shades of inflection. ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... a cigar stub on the table edge, and certain of her adjustments of the room when he entered had been rather quick. He could be like that with her, crazily the slave of who knows what beauty he found in her; jealous of even an unaccountable inflection in her voice. There had been unmentionable frenzies of elemental anger between them and she feared and exulted in these strange poles ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... with a curious hardness in her inflection; but her face softened suddenly. "Larry, while you only talked we didn't mind; but no one fancied you would have done this. Yes, I'm angry with you. I have been home 'most a month, and you never rode over to see me; while now you want to ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... records of Table V. was read to the subjects, the tones were in every case those of the speaking voice, and intervals having a definite speech character were chosen. The fifth is the interval of the rising inflection of the question, the fourth is the interval of the rising inflection of indifference or negation, and the single falling slide used is a descending interval of a third or fourth at the close of the sentence. The fifth appears in the table as 5/, the fourth as 4/, and the single descending ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... to go on reading into June. For the sake of the finer effects (in "Copperfield" principally), I have changed from St. James's Hall to the Hanover Square Room. The latter is quite a wonderful room for sound, and so easy that the least inflection will tell anywhere in the place exactly as it leaves your lips; but I miss my dear old shilling galleries—six or eight hundred strong—with a certain roaring sea of response in them, that you have stood upon the beach of many and ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... to spare us the discomfort of repentance by teaching us to declare with a new inflection, "It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves," forget that there is another side to this argument. It is, of course, very alluring to be told that we are not really blameworthy for acts which hitherto we have blamed ourselves ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... discoveries of Newton those which he made on the inflection of light hold a high place. They were first published in his "Treatise on Optics," ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... returned Colonel Clive, with a slight inflection of bitterness in his tone. "But you are right, Ford, he is a very great man, and though his battles have been won within the four walls of St. Stephen's Chapel, while we lesser men have to fight in very different scenes, far be it from me to grudge ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... awful stylish store where she works, Case and Rosenstein's. And Gladys, she's awfully stylish, too. She looks as if she'd just stepped out of a fashion plate." And something in her inflection suggested even to Peggy that from Rosetta Muriel's standpoint, she had failed to live up to her opportunities. Certainly in a gingham frock two seasons old, and faded by frequent washings, Peggy did not remotely suggest those large-eyed ladies of willowy figure, so seldom ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... as if the money had come to both?" asked Miss Sherman, with a curious inflection of ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... of your soft Etruscan, your plethoric. Hoch-Deutsch, your flattering French. To woo and win the girl of your heart, give me a rich brogue and the least taste in life of blarney! There's nothing like it, believe me,—every inflection of your voice suggesting some tender pressure of her soft hand or taper waist, every cadence falling on her gentle heart like a sea-breeze on a burning coast, or a soft sirocco over a rose-tree. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... of grab—see?" he went on, with a new inflection of intimacy in his murmur. He was looking straight ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... uttered the foregoing without pause or inflection of voice from beginning to end, came to an abrupt stop. Whether from want of breath or ideas it is difficult ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... which Anthony but too well understood, accompanied these words; and villain was expressed by indications too unequivocal to be easily mistaken through every change and inflection of his visage. Anthony, though not of the most unsullied reputation, and probably habituated to crimes at which humanity might shudder, pressed the little victim closer to his breast. The prattle of the babe had won his heart: and the morning ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... this fierce Ingoma, conveyed by sound, gesture and inflection of voice, not the exact words, remember, which are very rude and simple, leaving much to the imagination, may perhaps be rendered somewhat as follows. An exact translation into English verse is almost impossible—at ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... The inflection on the last word is always a rising one. This is especially true on the last syllable of the last word, "tip." The counting out is not very different from that of white children. They all place two fingers of each hand in a circle; the one who repeats ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... her back to it, smiled in enjoying recognition of the thin, high academic note, the prim finish of the inflection. It reminded her of a man she ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... with that soft inflection that seems so much a part of some men of rough manners, "I want you to listen careful to a yarn I'm goin' to tell you ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... the Onondagas, walked back and forth in the space between the two groups, chanting a welcome. Like all Indian songs it was monotonous. Every line he uttered with emphasis and a rising inflection, the phrase "Haih-haih" which may be translated "Hail to thee!" or better, "All hail!" Nevertheless, under the moonlight in the wilderness and with rapt faces about him, it was deeply impressive. ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... attempt made to teach any French sounds but u and the four nasal vowels; all the rest are unquestioningly replaced by the English vowels and consonants that most nearly resemble them." The substitution of sounds from one's own language in speaking a foreign tongue, and the changes in voice-inflection, are more numerous and more marked if the man who learns the new language is uneducated and acquires it in casual intercourse from an uneducated man ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... distinction between daylight and darkness. In fact we were in darkness, and God said "Let there be light," and immediately the darkness and gloom of oppression disappeared. Shall I, then, hesitatingly say "God knows which was right"? I will say it, but with a different inflection; for not only does He know, but I know, every one who has seen the wonderful change since the contest, knows that God smiled on our cause. With this deep conviction, then, in our hearts is it not meet that we should keep ever green the memory of the man who more than any other, ...
— John Brown: A Retrospect - Read before The Worcester Society of Antiquity, Dec. 2, 1884. • Alfred Roe
... no! never! Every lineament of his face, every inflection of his voice, as well as every act of his life, and every trait of his character, forbade the ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... beyond doubting or denial. Not a single inflection of his low-pitched, gently modulated voice was wanting; not a single infinitesimal mannerism was changed, even to the little tilting of the chin when he spoke, or the quick winking of the eyelids, or the smile that narrowed the corners of the eyes ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... erbout one y'ar ago, Bas," came the even and implacable inflection of the other, "thet us two stud up hyar tergither, an' a heap hes done come ter pass since then—don't ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... by the eloquence and gestures of Saint-Aignan, made a thousand efforts to stem this torrent of words, of which, by the by, he did not understand a single one; he remained upright and motionless on his seat, and that was all he could do. Saint-Aignan continued, and gave a new inflection to his voice, and an increasing vehemence to his gesture: "As for the portrait, for I readily believe the portrait is the principal cause of complaint, tell me candidly if you think me to blame?—Who was it who wished to have her portrait? ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... voice had a stinging inflection. 'Don't talk to me of our geniuses; it is they that have betrayed us. Every other people has its great men; but our great men—they belong to every other people. The world absorbs our sap, and damns us for our putrid remains. Our best must pipe alien ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... and pronouns, many of the nouns, adjectives, prepositions and adverbs are subject to inflection for number and person. Similar inflections have, to some extent, been observed in certain islands of the Pacific Ocean, but have not hitherto been reported in Australia. I have also discovered two forms of the dual and ...
— The Gundungurra Language • R. H. Mathews
... cried, her inflection seeming to imply that Wilbur's crime was explained by his surname. "Wilbur Minafer! It's the queerest thing I ever heard! To think of her taking Wilbur Minafer, just because a man any woman would like a thousand times better was a little wild one ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... the true sense of rhythm and the clearest enunciation; she has a deep and musical voice, which in moments of pathos thrills with a sweet and tender inflection. She has seized, in this instance, upon the touching rather than the harmonious side of Galatea, the pure and innocent girl who is not fit to live upon this world. She is only not human because she is superior to human folly; she cannot understand sin because it is so ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... professor found it difficult to say this with the proper inflection. It did not sound as business-like as he could have wished. But she was too ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... One night he essayed a reproduction of Dr. Rogers, then one of the most celebrated men of his cloth. Knox rehearsed the sermon of the previous Sunday, not only with all the divine's peculiarity of gesture and inflection, but almost word for word; for his memory was remarkable. At the start his listeners applauded violently, then subsided into the respectful silence they were wont to accord Dr. Rogers; at the finish they stole out without a word. As for Knox, he ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... poverty through us. Thank God, there will be enough produced by the sale of the estate to clear off every liability,—to the last shilling. You feel with me in this matter?" he went on, confidently appealing to his brother; yet with a certain inflection of anxiety in his voice. It would have wounded Everett cruelly, had he been misunderstood or rebuffed in this. "You have your commission, and Uncle Everett's legacy, and the reversion of my mother's fortune, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... too quick for him, and this reply held him in puzzled silence while she extended her hand and added, with the faintest inflection of sadness in her voice: "Before we bid each other goodbye, I want at least to thank you for having once thought ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... above such follies," Kitty said, and it is impossible to tell you what a disagreeable inflection there was to her voice. "Mother, I am sorry that the poor child has to associate with such volatile creatures as you and I. She ought to have some ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... composer, without the extensions. The method of manipulation is ingenious; observe the variety obtained by the striking dynamic changes from ff to pp; and, hand in hand with these, the changes from major to minor, and back (as shown by the inflection of b-flat to b-double-flat). These are first applied to members only, of the Antecedent, as indicated by the brackets a and b, and then to the entire Consequent phrase. Observe, also, that in the repeated ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... to make a sound—a broken, hypnotic sound, without emphasis or inflection, as though his lips were frozen, or the words ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... happened to be at the end of a chapter in his book, and he closed the volume, uttering only the single negative participle, with the interrogative inflection, as he glanced at his charge in ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... of the Kentuckians who accompanied them, with that peculiar drawling inflection of the word that it were hopeless to attempt to represent in print, "ef ye want ter send some one in yer places me an' Si heah will be powerful glad ter go. Jes' git a note ter the Jineral at Wildcat ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... to see Lily, too, and failed. She had been very gentle over the telephone, but, attuned as he was to every inflection of her voice, he had thought there was unhappiness in it. Almost despair. But she had ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... pleasure in cruelty toward the woman he loves, but that he regards this as an essential element. He is convinced that it gives the woman pleasure, and that it is possible to distinguish by gesture, inflection of voice, etc., an hysterical, assumed, or imagined feeling of pain from real pain. He would not wish to give real pain, and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... curvature, curvity^, curvation^; incurvature^, incurvity^; incurvation^; bend; flexure, flexion, flection^; conflexure^; crook, hook, bought, bending; deflection, deflexion^; inflection, inflexion^; concameration^; arcuation^, devexity^, turn, deviation, detour, sweep; curl, curling; bough; recurvity^, recurvation^; sinuosity &c 248. kink. carve, arc, arch, arcade, vault, bow, crescent, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a strong inflection of triumphant joy in Miss Clegg's voice as she called the momentous news to her friend that it would have been at once—and most truthfully—surmised that the getting of Hiram had been a ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... warned you that only in double irons would you leave the island," Grief murmured down with a sad inflection. ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... shows of the 14th century. A mask will enable me to substitute for the face of some common-place player, or for that face repainted to suit his own vulgar fancy, the fine invention of a sculptor, and to bring the audience close enough to the play to hear every inflection of the voice. A mask never seems but a dirty face, and no matter how close you go is still a work of art; nor shall we lose by staying the movement of the features, for deep feeling is expressed by a movement of the whole body. In poetical painting & in sculpture ...
— Certain Noble Plays of Japan • Ezra Pound
... instinct born of her own rejected passion, which caused her to read in the beautiful girl's face all that lay hidden behind the pale, impassive mask. That same second sight made her understand Merlin's hints and allusions. She caught every inflection of his voice, heard everything, ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... poles if against the current. The propelling poles are fitted with neatly carved "crutch-trees" to fit the shoulder; the polers, sometimes numbering as many as a dozen, walk back and forth along side-planks and encourage themselves with cries of "ha-i, ha-i, ha-i." A peculiar and indescribable inflection would lead one, hearing and not seeing these boatmen, to fancy himself listening to a flight of brants in stormy weather. Yung Po, poling by himself, gives utterance to a prolonged cry of "Atta-atta-atta aaoo ii," every time ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... saw, over the teeth of which a small stick was rubbed forcibly backward and forward. With these, rude as they were, very good time was preserved with the vocal performers, who sat around them, and by all the natives as they sat, in the inflection of their bodies, or the movements of their limbs. After the lapse of a little time, three individuals leaped up, and danced around for a few minutes; then, at a concerted signal of the master of ceremonies, the music ceased and they retired to their seats, uttering a loud noise, which, ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... a nasty way of saying "thank you" to a waiter; with the rising inflection, you know, which is nicely calculated to make the servant feel himself the last of ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... self-abnegation than the fact, that, for a long time after she had become perfectly blind, a dislike to trouble others with her infirmities led her to conceal the misfortune from her general acquaintance. Her eyes kept their brightness, and her hearing was most acute: she recognized, by the first inflection of the voice, those who drew near. The furniture was carefully arranged, always in the same way, so that she could move about confidently; and many persons, when she spoke of her "poor eyes," never dreamed that she had actually ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... the uses of perversity," he said, with inimitable inflection. For a moment his wife eyed him, speechless with ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... two buds, scarcely separated from the stem that bore them, swayed by the same breeze, lying in the same ray of sunlight; but the one was a brightly colored flower, the other somewhat bleached and pale. At a glance, a word, an inflection in their mother's voice, they grew heedful, turned to look at her and listened, and did at once what they were bidden, or asked, or recommended to do. Mme. Willemsens had so accustomed them to understand her wishes ...
— La Grenadiere • Honore de Balzac
... chair up to the couch, and his first words roused the woman's interest. He spoke for ten minutes or more, now in whispers, now with a rising inflection; now persuasively, now with well-feigned indignation and scorn. The effect which his argument had on his companion was shown by the swift changes that passed over her face; she interrupted him frequently, asking questions and making comments. At ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... breath. She muttered rather than spoke these few words, but with a contemptuousness of inflection that was most expressive. Hilbrough was left in some doubt as to whether all the contempt was intended for the church socials in Degraw street, or whether a part of it might not be meant for a husband whose mind had not ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... their clothes, but only as such differences would be apparent in real life. Indeed, the aim today is to mimic reality in externals, precisely as the real characters themselves are impersonated in every shade of thought and artistic inflection of speech. There are, to be sure, ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... certain inflection in the voice, may indicate that a sentence, though declarative in form, is really a question and ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... circle in which the phantoms of all his sensations in presence of this woman surged and wheeled around him. Suddenly there would emerge from this tangle of memory, with singular precision, some phrase of hers, an inflection of her voice, an attitude, a glance, the seat where they had sat, the finale of the Beethoven sonata, a burst of melody from Mary Dyce, the face of the footman who had held back the portiere—anything that happened to have caught ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... the man's voice, but while he talked in low, pleasant tones, with a good inflection, he was puzzled, knowing and ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh
... clean up the house. Landy does that. You won't have to do a single thing but cook." The speech ended with a rising inflection. Mary Louise's eloquent picture inspired even herself ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... Inflection. Change in the form of a word to show a modification or shade of meaning. At a very early period in our language there was a separate form for practically every modification. Although separate forms are now less numerous, inflection is still a convenient term in grammar. Its scope is ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... lie!" burst from Nina's lips. "I heard him making love to you! I was standing near and heard every tone, every inflection of his voice! I saw how he looked at you!" And so crazed was she by jealousy that her face became distorted and almost ugly, if such a thing were possible, and her ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... glance again at Ray; instead, he looked interested in the smoke of his cigar. "'Contribution,'" he repeated, with no inflection whatever. "'Toward my support.'" ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... Connors, flushing a little. "But, for God's sake, are you going to sit here like a wart on a dead dog an' wait for 'em?" he demanded with a rising inflection. "Do you reckon yo're running a dance, or a party, or ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... much inflection, and using as few words as she could. When she had finished she still lay there, as silent and out of Francis's reach as if she were dead. He tiptoed out with a sick feeling that everything was over, which he had never had before. She was so remote. She cared so ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... sentiment may control the connotation of a word. A word or phrase may have a double or triple connotation, and depend upon vocal inflection, upon gesture, upon the words with which it is linked, upon the experience of speaker or hearer, upon time, place, and external fact, or upon other forces outside it for the sense in which it is to be taken. You may ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... far as it may afford them a larger volume or a wider scope for what has in latterday colloquial phrase been called "graft." These personages are, of course, not to be spoken of with disrespect or with the slightest inflection of discourtesy. They are all honorable men. Indeed they afford the conventional pattern of human dignity and meritorious achievement, and the "Fountain of Honor" is found among them. The point of the argument is only that their material or other self-regarding ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... him the long, musical name, without missing a syllable, and with a certain approving inflection which evidently had an ingratiating effect upon the many-syllabled aristocrat; for he lifted his carefully gloved hand and passed it gently over the ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... Farfrae, with the unmistakable inflection of the lover pure, which Henchard had never heard in full resonance of his lips before, "you are sure to be much sought after for your position, wealth, talents, and beauty. But will ye resist the temptation to be one of those ladies with lots ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... should be presented to ladies, younger people to older people, etc. The formula for introductions may be abbreviated to a mere announcement of the two names: "Mr. Smith—Mrs. Jones"—the pause and inflection filling the ellipsis; and really, upon the tone and manner depends the courtesy of the introduction so barren of phrasing. A formal presentation is made in this form:—"Miss Smith, allow me to present ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... richest-new-rich-merchant families in England. He was very highly educated, had, I take it, spent the most of his life with the classics. He was long and thin and sallow and fish-eyed. He spoke in a low colorless monotone, absolutely without any inflection whatever. The men thought he was balmy. Hence ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... master of the anecdote this generation has known. He claimed the humorous story as an American invention, and one that has remained at home. His public speeches were little mosaics in the finesse of their art; and the intricacies of inflection, insinuation, jovial innuendo which Mark Twain threw into his gestures, his implicative pauses, his suggestive shrugs and deprecative nods—all these are hopelessly volatilized and disappear entirely from the printed copy of his speeches. ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... we're to have a Fourth of July celebration," said he, driving steadily on. His tone became casual, with a pleasant inflection, quite as if there had been no controversy. "It will do the natives good—stir them up. I took the liberty, after you had sent your order, of wiring the dealer to add rather a good lot of explosives on ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... they think that will do them?" Mrs. Oglethorpe's face and inflection betrayed no sympathy with ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... fallen, and in the cleared sky the stars shone bright. Paul, his head against the lintel of the van door, looked up at them, enthralled by the talk of Barney Bill. The vagabond merchant had the slight drawling inflection of the Home Counties, which gave a soothing effect to a naturally soft voice. To Paul it was ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... on the map the respective positions of the German and French armies on Sept. 6 as previously described, it will be seen that by his inflection toward Meaux and Coulommiers General von Kluck was exposing his right to the offensive action of our left. This is the starting point of the victory of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... do anything you want to, Maria and I will get the breakfast." Mrs. White spoke with a kindly, almost humorous inflection. Maria felt that she could go down ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Brender said. "Variable and unrelated definitions, undetectable shades of inflection—and sometimes a language that has no discernibly separate words. The Singer brothers of Ship Eight ran into the latter. We've given ...
— Cry from a Far Planet • Tom Godwin
... language had become very simple, very direct, almost without accent, and he spoke slowly, picking his way with that lack of inflection, of emotion characteristic of a child reading ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... this time with a more decided upward inflection. Then he added: "You've made up your mind what you're going ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... replied one of the mounted artillerymen, with a negative inflection. "You'll get a hell of a long ways without us. If you doughboys start anything without the artillery, you'll see Berlin through the bars ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... indolent inflection in her soft voice. "You." That "you" is a peculiar characteristic caress of the Southerner. Its meaning is infinite. "I'm too happy to analyze," she confided, her eyes growing dark. "And it is not the charity of Heaven, but the ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... spoken in a clear, even tone; but something made me doubt their truth. It was not the voice or inflection; there was no hesitation or stammer, but a sudden and momentary droop of Miss Lloyd's eyelids seemed to me to give ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... universe-centres leaping and yelling around him. Then would come the rhythm—a clapping of hands; the beating of a stick upon a log; the example of one that leaped with repetitions; or the chanting of one that uttered, explosively and regularly, with inflection that rose and fell, "A-bang, a-bang! A-bang, a-bang!" One after another of the self-centred Folk would yield to it, and soon all would be dancing or chanting in chorus. "Ha-ah, ha-ah, ha-ah-ha!" was one of our favorite choruses, and another ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... are very generally used by the Americans as a sort of reply, intimating that they are attentive, and that the party may proceed with his narrative; but, by inflection and intonation, these two syllables are made to express dissent or assent, surprise, disdain, and (like Lord Burleigh's nod in the play) a great deal more. The reason why these two syllables have been ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Nevertheless, by a subtlety of discrimination, that seemed almost intuitive, by a force of judgment and a fervency of mind, that were simply exquisite and irresistible, this was the very man who could at any moment, by an inflection of his voice or by the syncope of a chuckle, move his audience at pleasure to tears or to laughter. He could haunt their memories for years afterwards with the infinite tenderness of his ejaculation as Hamlet, of "The fair Ophelia!" He could convulse them with merriment by his hesitating utterance ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... importance to the arguer is sincerity. This he must really possess if he is to be eminently successful. To feign it is almost impossible; some word or expression, some gesture or inflection of the voice, the very attitude of the insincere arguer will betray his real feelings. If he tries to arouse an emotion that he himself does not feel, his affectation will be apparent and his effort a failure. There are few things that an audience resents more ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... Leaped to feet, and, with thrilling energy, repudiated gross imputation. Prince ARTHUR taken aback; hadn't meant anything particular. To call a thing or a person a buffer not necessarily a term of opprobrium. Everything depends on inflection of tone. Suppose, now, leaning across the table, he had addressed Mr. G. as "old buffer," that would perhaps have been a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... Deerfoot, with a marked rising inflection. Another shake of the head might indicate a denial of such tribal relation, or what was more likely, a failure to comprehend the question. Deerfoot repeated the word "Nez Perce," and was replied ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... could judge by the inflection of his voice his sorrow was genuine. "I'll be with you in ten minutes—he's quite ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... questioned the acumen of either lady. Harold's speech, even if you heard it in the next room and could not see him, told you that he had no sense of the absurd,—a throaty staccato, with never a downward inflection, trustfully striving to please. ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... so complicated. With him, it was either, "She loves me," or, "She does not;" he never tormented himself, after the fashion of women, by wondering what this look meant, or that inflection, and fearing that the innermost recesses of his mind might be guessed from a calm and ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... with a writer of some deep learning and research, who, amongst other topics, entered into the subject of musical inflection by orators, &c. Now, unfortunately, the title and preface of the book is absent without leave, nor is there any heading to it, so I can do no more than say, the author refers to a passage ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... mix in here, and meddle with you?" Dick asked, helping himself to a piece of pie. You know the tone; it had just that inflection of surprised sympathy which makes you tell your troubles without that reservation which a more ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... annihilate all traces of the original mother-tongue. It was not long enough for the usual processes by which languages are changed, to eject from even the Irish Gaelic (the most unlike of the two) every word and inflection which the progenitors of the present Irish brought from Gaul, and to replace them by others. So that, at the first view, we have a limit in this direction; yet unless we have settled certain preliminaries, the limit is unreal. All that it gives us is the comparatively recent introduction of the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... and the attitude of the body. Destruction refers to the conquest of desire and attachments, i.e., renunciation of all attractive things. Certainty means the unalterable belief that what is said about yoga in the Vedas and by preceptors is true. The nom. sing. inflection stands for the instrumental plural. Eyes include the other senses. All these should be restrained. Food means pure food. Suppression refers to the subjugation of our natural inclination towards earthly objects. Mind here has reference to the regulation ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... all his letters were in writing, you know. Such wonderful letters!" She raised her blue eyes toward the ceiling in a naive rapture. "So tender, and so—er—interesting!" Somehow, the inflection on the last word did not altogether suggest ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... age Beth had her own point of view in social matters, and frequently disconcerted Harriet by a word or look or inflection of the voice which expressed disapproval of her conduct. Harriet had been at home on one occasion for a week's holiday, a charwoman having done her work in her absence, and on her return she had much to relate of Charles Russell, the groom at Fairholm, who continued to be an ardent ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... drawled Quinton Edge, with that well-remembered, fine-gentleman inflection. "I am almost sorry that I interfered, but this young lady would have it so, and a woman's will is ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... tone or colour. Of course the historical nature of his subject precluded the dramatic suggestion to be looked for in the Pickwick trial, thus rendering comparison inapposite. Nevertheless one was bound to contrast them. Thackeray's features were impassive, and his voice knew no inflection. But his elocution in other respects was perfect, admirably distinct and impressive from its ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... Dr. Owen, himself a popular preacher, confessed he had never possessed such an easy flow of that language. As for Ebben Owens himself, as the sermon proceeded, although he understood but little English, not a word, nor a phrase, nor an inflection of the beloved voice escaped his attention; and as he bent his head at the benediction tears of thankfulness, pride, and joy filled his eyes. But he dried them hastily with his bran new silk handkerchief, and followed Ann out of the church with the ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... yourself have heard, is very contracted and poor, without inflection or expression, being nothing but the repetition of the same sounds, by which means—that is simply by the number and the depth of hollowness of the same monosyllables—they convey their wishes to each other. It is, indeed, ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... interrogative eye—they pause, by a happy instinct, directly under my window, and dispute their point or tell their story or make their confidence. One scarce is sure which it may be; everything has such an explosive promptness, such a redundancy of inflection and action. But everything for that matter takes on such dramatic life as our lame colloquies never know—so that almost any uttered communications here become an acted play, improvised, mimicked, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... reputation—and had built dreams on the fanciful imagining that she should, despite everything, some day like him. He wearied his brain in recalling a chance expression of her eyes that could not have been unfriendly; an inflection of her voice that might have carried a hope, if only their paths had been less crossed: and his pride, despite rebuffs, sought her as a moth seeks a flame. It drew him to her and kept him from her, for he lacked for the first ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... the nasal inflection made it more forceful, so I said, 'No, I won't haul no rubbish for no dollar and a half, and you can tell old Skinflint I ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... in job; his whole speech, indeed, had the engaging inflection of the Scandinavian tongue overlaid upon ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... deal of the white, and looked as steadily, as unwinkingly, at you as if it were a steel ball soldered in her head; and when, while looking, she began to talk in an indescribably dry, monotonous tone—a tone without vibration or inflection—you felt as if a graven image of some bad spirit were addressing you. But it was all a figment of fancy, a matter of surface. Miss Mann's goblin grimness scarcely went deeper than the angel sweetness of hundreds of beauties. She ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... quo in Mediterranean, FERGUSSON had stood up and recited the multiplication table up to twelve times twelve, the remarks would have been just as relevant and informing as those he read from the paper. Moreover, the gravity of his aspect and the solemn inflection of his voice, would have compelled Members to listen to the end of the recitation with a sort of dim consciousness that they were really being informed as to the details of an understanding come to between Her majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... the velvety South of Ireland vowel-inflection. "We keep Wednesday for the Women's Laager, always. Many of them are so miserable, poor souls, about their husbands and sons and brothers who are in the trenches, or who have been killed, and then ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... The little maid always amused her. There was something cheerful in the queer little scolding sentences, spoken with a rising inflection on almost every word, musical and yet always seeming to protest gently ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... calling him Mr. Ryan and addressed him as Casey Ryan instead, with a little teasing inflection in her voice. Once Casey happened to mention Lund, and when he saw her look of surprise he explained that he drove a stage out of ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... With a rising inflection on the end it would have been a question. "Are they going to surrender?" It was neither of these. The sentence carried no other message than that contained in the simplest meanings of the separate words. It had intellectual connotations, but these could only be gained from past knowledge, not ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... the mingled strength and beauty of His life, yet gentleness was the flower and fruitage of it all. For in Him the lion and the lamb dwelt together. Oak and rock were there, and also vine and flower. Weakness is always rough. Only giants can be gentle. Tenderness is an inflection of strength. No error can be greater than to suppose that gentleness is mere absence of vigor. Weakness totters and tugs at its burden. When the dwarf that attended Ivanhoe at the tournament lifted the bleeding ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... away. As I grew older, I came to believe that it was only because she was so often thinking of things that were far away. She was quick-footed and energetic in all her movements. Her voice was high and rather shrill, and she often spoke with an anxious inflection, for she was exceedingly desirous that everything should go with due order and decorum. Her laugh, too, was high, and perhaps a little strident, but there was a lively intelligence in it. She was then fifty-five years old, a strong woman, of ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... simply allows the choice between two suggested possibilities is also fruitless so far as demanding thought is concerned. In a question like, Was Paul a Gentile or was he a Jew? the bright child can usually tell from the teacher's inflection how to answer. In any case he will run an even chance of giving the right answer from ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... delivered with a mocking inflection, fanned to sudden laughter chuckles that the ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... can't. Thank you, Winnie and Norma, for the lovely invitation, and please let me put it down to my credit account? I would like a refund," and she laughed her irresistible explosive outburst, in which the whole party joined, whether willingly or from acute inflection. ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... these questions, and to a certain extent their cause, Constance had been quite conscious that the doctor was still watching her, and now she once more turned to him, to say, with an inflection of disapproval,— ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford
... on top of the open Bible, and leant forward for a long, silent moment, looking earnestly from side to side into the upturned faces of his hearers. Then he began to talk—to talk, not to preach, speaking every word with an inflection of the truest sincerity. The text was "Forgetting the things that are behind, I press towards the mark," and the "talk" ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... some animal. Lessons are sometimes given on cats. As an element in a reading lesson—to arouse interest—to hold the attention—to secure correct emphasis and inflection—to make sure of the reading being good: such work is appropriate. But let us see what the effect upon the pupil is as regards the knowledge he gains of the cat, and the effect upon his habits of thought and study. The student gives some statement as to the appearance—the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... there had been a blind person in the canoe with the Lockwood sisters, that unfortunate person could never in this world have told which girl spoke at each time. Their voices were exactly alike—the same inflection, the same turning of phrases, ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... find no spelling to reproduce that combination of guttural and aspirate and the inimitable inflection of voice. It is so delightful that I ask him again, and again the answer comes with even more emphasis upon guttural and aspirate, and an ...
— Beyond the Marshes • Ralph Connor
... merely henchmen of the worthy Jed, and not negligible quantities when taken by themselves. But over the name of Timothy Forbes—"Delicate Forbes," Bud explained was his nickname—the boy lingered with that loving inflection of admiration that a younger boy will sometimes have for a husky, courageous older lad. The second time Bud spoke of him he called him "Forbeszy," and Margaret perceived that here was Bud's model of manhood. ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... red creeping up under his dark skin. He smothered the retort on his lips, however, and when he did speak it was with entire control, though there was, nevertheless, an uncompromising quality in his inflection which for the moment silenced his sister as if he had laid ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... with blundering?" she echoed; and the inflection of the pronoun might have flattered him had he not reflected that it was impossible she could have understood his allusion. And now she bethought her that she had not thanked him—and the debt was a heavy one. He had come to her aid in an hour ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... And she was sorry for him! She had made those statements in a matter-of-fact way, but with a voice that was like music. She had spoken perfect English, but in her words were the inflection and velvety softness of the French blood which must be running red in her veins. And her name ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... in a calm even monotone, without inflection, but with many pauses, whilst I watched ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... and, after a moment, with a gently rising inflection, Delamater murmured, "You heard what I called you?" He approved of the sachet that Allie used, and he became acutely conscious of the jewels resting in the palm of his left hand. The girl was rich and she was—different, unusual. Ever since she had learned to yield herself to his embrace, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... the courtyard at last—but the only window that looked that way was set high in the wall of the little corridor, and he could not see who it was to whom she was talking. And he wondered, because the inflection of her voice was English—not the exquisite imitation of the French inflexion which he had ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... in the dining-room, the floor strewn with exchange papers, and having secured his consent, ushered in the lady. She told me afterward that she heard the poor little questioner speak with a rising inflection only two or three times. But Mr. Greeley was always ready to answer at length and with extreme earnestness. He said afterwards: "Why that woman is way ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... not when a man expresses a wish that the rain may be dammed, he voices a desire for its everlasting condemnation, or the mere placing in its way of an impediment which shall prevent its further overflow. I think much depends upon the manner, the inflection, and the tone of voice in which the desire is expressed, and I am sorry to say that upon the occasion to which I refer, there was more of the asperity of profanity than the calmness of constructive suggestion in my father's manner. In any event I did not blame him, for here was ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... read in the press of the verbal clash between this Jefferson Davis and Douglas in the Senate. With an insulting inflection Davis had said: "I have a declining respect for platforms. I would sooner have an honest man on any sort of a rickety platform you could construct than to have a man I did not trust, on the best ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... one may often hear an extraordinary performance. Beginning the usual call of "quee-o," in a tender and mournful tone, he will repeat it again and again at short intervals, every time with more pathetic inflection, till the wrought-up listener cannot resist the feeling that the next sound must be a burst of tears. Although his notes seem melancholy to hearers, however, the beautiful bird himself is far from expressing ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... quietly, his voice had yet the conscious fullness, the deliberate inflection, of a man accustomed to speak to ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... part of the column from a great height, when almost as quick as lightning that part shot downwards out of the common track, but soon rising again, continued advancing at the same height as before. This inflection was continued by those behind, who, on arriving at this point, dived down almost perpendicularly to a great depth, and, rising, followed the exact path ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... whimsical inflection, but there was a deeper note in it, too. She parried him gently, yet not quite so composedly as ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... as his carriage, Miss Carstairs. See what a week of New York has done for him. Where did he disappear to—did you notice? A great day it has been"—in the rising inflection of ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... left in my mind that form, determined by structure, is the true criterion of Families. In the Unios it consists of the rounded outline of the anterior end of the body reflected in a more or less open curve of the shell, bending more abruptly along the lower side with an inflection followed by a bulging, corresponding to the most prominent part of the gills, to which alone, in a large number of American Species of this Family, the eggs are transferred, giving to this part of the shell ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... is written, the reader must group the words together in the way intended by the writer; and in doing this he can receive assistance in various ways. Partly by the inflection of the words; partly by their arrangement; partly also by punctuation. As to inflection, we see in Latin an adjective and a substantive standing together, yet differing in gender, in number, or in case; ...
— "Stops" - Or How to Punctuate. A Practical Handbook for Writers and Students • Paul Allardyce
... fruit the rounded arch was bent according to the same inflection. The two semicircles could have fitted one into the other, both very narrow, both a little long-shaped and oval and of a restricted radius which was the very character ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... The rising inflection in his tone seemed to demand a reply, but Willa vouchsafed none and after a moment he ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... Blecker peered through his glass at every line and motion, as she came out from the eternal castle in the back scene. Any gnawing power or gift she had had found vent, certainly, now. Every poise and inflection said, "Here I am what I am,—fully what God made me, at last: no more, no less." God had made her an actress. Why, He knows. The Great Spirit of Love says to the toad in your gutter,—"Thou, too, art my servant, in whom, fulfilling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... once, Betty's heart seemed to stop still. She heard a voice, familiar in a sense, and yet so unlike the voice of which she had once known every inflection. ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... "Miss Terroll," the inflection of surprise remained in his voice. It was well after ten o'clock and in those circles of society where he was received the system of chaperonage was rigid enough to fail of understanding for the women who dared the streets at night unescorted. He knew ladies who went to their several rostrums ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... that voice whose soft inflection had always thrilled him, but never as it did now as, turning the handle, he ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... Kibei brought O'Hana with him from the next room. She seemed alarmed and embarrassed. Said Kwaiba—"What have you there; the inventory? Ah! A letter: and there is no one to read a letter like Iemon San. Deign, Sir, to favour us. Iemon San alone can give the contents the proper inflection." He handed it to Iemon. A glance showed the latter that it was a letter from O'Hana, probably that of the previous night. His pocket had been neatly picked by Kibei. It was plain. He had been trapped. The pretended entertainment had been a plot in which ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... and plastic inflection of his voice, like the poise of wings descending, he dropped from that almost inspired height of emotion, and became shrewd and practical, thoroughly informed and competent, a physician with a flair for the secret of disease, a surgeon of the Soul, relentless in his handling of ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... a handsome lad this time last week, with naturally curly hair," remarked the lady. She spoke with a rising inflection, suggestive ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... incomparably better informed than the mass of his congeners. Mr. Browning was the readiest, the blithest, and the most forcible of talkers, and when he dealt in criticism the edge of his sword was mercilessly whetted against pretension and vanity. The inflection of his voice, the flash of his eye, the pose of his head, the action of his hand, all lent their special emphasis to the condemnation. "I like religion to be treated seriously," he exclaimed with ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... to David's Psalter, banished from my ears, and the Church's too; and that mode seems to me safer, which I remember to have been often told me of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, who made the reader of the psalm utter it with so slight inflection of voice, that it was nearer speaking than singing. Yet again, when I remember the tears I shed at the Psalmody of Thy Church, in the beginning of my recovered faith; and how at this time I am ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
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