"Drum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and the symphony (Op. 36) are full of novel and dazzling effects—for example, the scherzo of the symphony played mainly by the strings pizzicato, and the scherzo of the suite, with the short, sharp notes of the brass and the rattle of the side-drum; the melodies also are new, and in their way beautiful; in form both symphony and suite are nearly as clear as anything Tschaikowsky wrote: in fact, each work is a masterwork. But each is lacking in the human element, ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... some strange and ghastly figure of legend; as the wandering Jew met by a traveller at cross roads, and distinguished for an instant by an oblique flash of lightning; as the shrouded Arab of the Eastern tale, who announces coming disaster to the wanderers in the desert by beating a death-roll on a drum ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... performance. The instruments of percussion, placed, as I have indicated, upon one of the last rows of the orchestra, have a tendency to modify the rhythm, and slacken the time. A series of strokes on the drum struck at regular intervals in a quick movement, ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... in a dignified manner, as if she were rectifying an error of etiquette that I had inadvertently committed, Chrysantheme takes up her piece of wood, putting in its place my snake-skin drum; I shall therefore be in the middle between the two. It is really more correct, decidedly more proper; Chrysantheme is evidently ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of their armor with coats and skins. But when they approached and the general gave the signal, immediately all the field rung with a hideous noise and terrible clamor. For the Parthians do not encourage themselves to war with cornets and trumpets, but with a kind of kettle-drum, which they strike all at once in various quarters. With these they make a dead hollow noise like the bellowing of beasts, mixed with sounds resembling thunder, having, it would seem, very correctly observed, that of all our senses hearing most confounds ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... them in the rebel States. They have had enough of war; they have been thoroughly whipped, and do not desire to be whipped again. You will not get them from the loyal people of the Northern or Southern States. If you get any at all, you may drum up a few recruits from the Democratic ranks, but in the present weak and shattered condition of that party you would hardly be able to raise a very formidable army, and I tell the gentleman if the party decreases ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... you will be startled by the rolling drum-call. This begins slowly, increases rapidly, and ends something like this: "Dum! dum! dum! dum-dum-dum-dumdumdum!" The drum-call is made by the male bird who, beating the air with his wings, produces the sound. It is said to be a mating-call, but is heard at other ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... readiness that perhaps constitute the greatest merit of a naval captain. The yards were slung in chains; the booms were sent down; the lofty sails were furled, and, in short, all the preparations that were then customary were made with the usual promptitude and skill. Then the drum beat to quarters, and when the people were at their stations, their young commander had a better opportunity of examining into the true efficiency of his ship. Calling to the master, he ascended ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... great disorder. Immediately Lieutenant Kay, wheeling round with his horse, took them in flank, doing great execution as they fled. There were slain of the enemy about thirty men. The spoil was forty muskets, one drum, and six prisoners. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... like the top of a cabbage-tree in shape. It is much affected by bushmen. A 'billy' is the tin pot in which the bushman boils his tea; a 'pannikin,' the tin bowl out of which he drinks it. A 'waler' is a bushman who is 'on the loaf.' He 'humps his drum,' or 'swag,' and starts on the wallaby track;' i.e., shoulders the bundle containing his worldly belongings, and goes out pleasuring. A 'shanty,' originally a low public-house, now denotes ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... sit down and read, and, finding a drum of marble conveniently placed, from which Marathon could be seen, and yet it was in the shade, while the Erechtheum blazed white in front of him, there he sat. And after reading a page he put his thumb in his book. Why not rule countries ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... dust of forgetfulness away. You cannot forget the night you met William Kinkaid? Of course you cannot forget that, for when you are Mrs. Kinkaid—But there! I won't poke fun at you. But I think every married person needs to treasure every shred of romance against inevitable hum-drum days. Isn't that a sad sentiment? But I want to ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the French troops marching in, those glorious happy Frenchmen, who marched through the world with songs and shining sabres, the gay firm-set faces of the Grenadiers, the bear-skins, the tricolour cockades, the gleaming bayonets, the merry skilful horsemen, and the huge great drum-major with his silver-embroidered uniform, who could throw his drum-stick with its gilt button up to the first floor, and his eyes up even to the girls in the second floor windows. I was pleased that we were to have soldiers billeted on us—my mother ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... church folk. And indeed the next moment he descried a curate among the peacocks. The procession made another curve into Wedgwood Street, on its way to the supreme rendezvous in Saint Luke's Square. The band blared; the crimson cheeks of the trumpeters sucked in and out; the drum-men leaned backwards to balance his burden, and banged. Every soul of the variegated company, big and little, was in a perspiration. The staggering bearers of the purple banner, who held the great poles in leathern sockets slung from the shoulders, and their ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... "why do you blame the woman for the only sensible thing she could do—talking of her family and her affairs? For how should a woman who is as empty as a drum, talk upon any other subject? If you speak to her of the sun, she does not know it rises in the east;—if you speak to her of the moon, she does not know it changes at the full ;—if you speak to her of the queen, she does not know she is the king's wife.—how, then, can you blame ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... mine enterprise! I hate thee not, to thee my conquests stoop: Caesar is thine, so please it thee, thy soldier. He, he afflicts Rome that made me Rome's foe." This said, he, laying aside all lets[595] of war, Approach'd the swelling stream with drum and ensign: Like to a lion of scorch'd desert Afric, Who, seeing hunters, pauseth till fell wrath And kingly rage increase, then, having whisk'd 210 His tail athwart his back, and crest heav'd up, With jaws wide-open ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... be, it is certain that when we beat the big drum of patriotism and set the guns firing, the thrill which it arouses in the vocal populace is different from the thrill in a people accustomed to violence and blood. We say the "vocal" populace, remembering that there is a portion of the population, very important to the ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... caused considerable consternation. Ridgway rose, and said he considered the motion dealt far too leniently with the mutineers. He would say, drum them out of the ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... of the verdict given in favour of Vjera Sassulitch, a fresh trial was ordered, to be held in a country town, at Novgorod, as soon as she could be recaptured. Finally, Alexander the Liberal, seeing that all ordinary procedures were of no avail, instituted a state of siege and drum-head law for political offenders over a large ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... convulsive circuits in its orbit and the bass drum performed a solo inside his head during the moment that followed. When the tumult subsided he found a pair of bright brown eyes smiling up at him and a small hand clasped ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... black ember All my heart has writ for me. Let the fairest flowers surround me, Sunlight laugh about my bed, Let the sweetest of musicians To the door of death be led. Bid them sound no strain of sadness—Muted string or muffled drum; Come to me with songs of gladness—Whirling in the wild waltz come! I would hear—ere yet I hear not—Trembling strings their cadence keep, Chords that quiver: so I also Tremble as I fall asleep. Memories of life and laughter, Memories of earthly glee, As I go ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... Amphibians known only as fossils, but if they were in a general way like the frogs and toads, newts and salamanders of the present day, we may say that they made among other acquisitions the following: true ventral lungs, a three-chambered heart, a movable tongue, a drum to the ear, and lids to the eyes. It is very interesting to find that though the tongue of the tadpole has some muscle-fibres in it, they are not strong enough to effect movement, recalling the tongue of fishes, ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... said Shanw, ready for the frequent fray. "They won't have your hum-drum old church fregot[3], perhaps, but you come and see, and hear Hughes Bangor, Price Merthyr, Jones Welshpool. Nothing to give them, indeed! Why, Price Merthyr would send your old red velvet cushion at church flying into ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... but objected that he did not give definite suggestions for the improvement of the age which he rebuked. "Here," said he, "is a man who beats a big drum under my windows, and when I come running down stairs has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Innsbruck, the exiled duke was anxiously watching the course of events, and awaiting a favourable moment to return and claim his own. "I will beat the drum in winter and dance all the summer," was the motto which he adopted, together with the device of a tambourine, in reference to his future hopes. A letter which the well-known preacher, Celso Maffei of Verona, addressed ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... uproarious. There were no bands in Paris, and any school-boy with a tin horn or a toy drum could start a procession. Bearded little poilus, arm in arm from curb to curb, marched grinning down the center of the streets, capturing and kissing pretty midinettes, or surrounding officers and dancing madly; Audrey saw an Algerian, ragged and dirty ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that experience in camp and hospital the pieces called "Drum-Taps," first published in 1865,—since merged in his "Leaves,"—were produced. Their descriptions and pictures, therefore, come from life. The vivid incidents of "The Dresser" are but daguerreotypes of the poet's own actual movements among the ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... skin and hissed past my ears. I stumbled into holes. I tripped over bushes. I fell among brambles. I was torn and breathless and bleeding. My tongue was like leather, my feet like lead, and my heart beating like a kettle-drum. Still I ran, and I ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Zuni executioner, armed with a war club, was stationed in front of each victim, and another one, armed likewise, stood behind him. A war chief raised his arms and yelled, and forty clubs were raised in air. Then the great war drum, or tombe, boomed out the knell of death. There was a sickening, crashing thud, and twenty Navajos fell to earth with crushed skulls, each cabeza having been whacked simultaneously, right and left, fore and aft, by two stone clubs in the hands ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... beans swell, and consequently cause greater discomfort the longer they are in; do not poke at any foreign body lodged either in the nose or the ear, for the ear drum may thus be injured, while in the former case it may be pushed into one of ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... blaze of day penetrated nowhere but into the circular vestibule, which was lighted by openings in the drum of the cupola that rested on four gigantic columns. In the inner hall there was only dim twilight; while the hypostyle was quite dark, but for a singularly contrived shaft of light which produced a most ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the tranquil mind! Farewell content! Farewell the plumed troops and the big wars That make ambition virtue! O farewell! Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump, The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, The royal banner, and all quality, Pride, pomp and circumstance of ...
— Swan Song • Anton Checkov
... lamb's intestine; a discord of atmospheres renders the phenomenon possible. It is still a conflict of corporeal emanations that explains the other aphorism of an ancient philosopher: "The sound of a drum made with a wolf's skin takes away all sonorousness from a drum made with a ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... just like a coffin, and cotton wool—we steal the cotton wool most times. We know where Fortune has got a lot of it put away. Iris does not think it quite right to steal, but the rest of us don't mind. And we have banners, and Orion plays the Jew's harp, and I beat the drum, and Iris sings, and Apollo digs the grave, and the dead 'un is put into the ground, and we all cry, or pretend to cry. Sometimes I do squeeze out a tiny tear, but I'm so incited I can't always manage it, although I'm sure I'll cry ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... wing; in this disguise they performed many antic tricks, waving their sticks and feathers about with great skill, to imitate the flying and fluttering of birds, keeping exact time with their music." This music was the measured thumping of an Indian drum. From time to time, a warrior would leap up, and the drum and the dancers would cease as he struck a post with his tomahawk, and in a loud voice recounted his exploits. Then the music and the dance began anew, till another warrior caught the ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... down the side, the militia of the Seine kept howling at the moon before going forth to conquer Prussia. That was a deafening uproar at the wine shops, a hubbub of glasses, cans and shrieks, cut into here and there by the rattling of a window shaken by the wind. Suddenly the roll of the drum muffled all that clamor; a new column poured out of the barracks; there was carousing and tippling indescribable. Those soldiers who were drinking in the wine shops shot now out into the streets, followed by their parents and friends who disputed the honor of carrying their ...
— Sac-Au-Dos - 1907 • Joris Karl Huysmans
... of it. Not more than five winters ago we had a storm-stayed show on a small scale; but nowadays the farmers are less willing to give these wanderers a camping-place, and the people are less easily drawn to the entertainments provided, by fife and drum. The colony hung together until it was starved out, when it trailed itself elsewhere. I have often seen it forming. The first arrival would be what was popularly known as "Sam'l Mann's Tumbling-Booth," with its tumblers, jugglers, sword-swallowers, and balancers. This travelling ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... arrival from Europe of an old friend and former parishioner. She was a rich woman, and was now alone in the world. Perhaps he could get away in a few days and run down to New York to see her. He began to drum absently on the desk with his fingers, turning over in his mind some details in the arrangement of the chapel which he had never settled to his satisfaction. Presently he realised that something was lacking, and reaching forward, he took a ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... it, the boy's as empty as a drum. The devil a wonder he went off like he did a bit back. And ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... might be done by one. Competing stores needlessly occupy the time of hundreds of thousands of employees in a mixture of idleness and industry. An inconceivable quantity of human effort is spent on advertising, mere shouting and display, as unproductive in the social sense as the beating of a drum. Competition breaks into a dozen inefficient parts the process that might conceivably be carried out, with an infinite saving of effort, by ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... paint on my sabre shows, it has been intended to conceal? In the one case even the slightest reflection of light is guarded against, while in the other a large field of colors undoes all that it has been wished to accomplish. The drummer, on the other hand, must beat his drum as he goes to the attack, yet he is expected to run into the enemy unarmed. He would prefer exchanging his drum for a rifle, so that he would be able ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... laughter of women, and the screams and yells of children could be heard through it, together with the pistol-like explosion of sap turned to steam, and rending its way from green wood. Other sounds also fretted the air, for a hundred yards distant—in a hut-circle—the Chagford drum-and-fife band lent its throb and squeak to the hour, and struggled amain to increase universal joy. So the fire flourished, and the plutonian rock-mass of the tor arose, the centre ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... out with his butterfly net, running after winged words. That's nonsense. I've a little pad and a big pencil, and a hot potato in my pocket for to warm the numb fingers at. And father's got an old typewriter in his office that's to be put in order for me; and nights I shall drum upon it and print off what was written down in the morning, and study to see why it's all wrong. I think I'll never write anything but tales about people who love each other. 'Cause a fellow wants to stick to what ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... merry month of May, When bees from flower to flower do hum, And soldiers through the town march gay, And villagers flock to the sound of the drum. Young Roger swore he'd leave his plough, His team and tillage all begun; Of country life he'd had enow, He'd leave it all and follow ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... dictum in regard to music holds good when applied to the Eskimo, for they have but little music in their souls, and among no people is there such a noticeable absence of "treason, stratagem and spoil." A rude drum and a monotonous chant, consisting only of the fundamental note and minor third, are the only things in the way of music among the more remote settlements of which I have any knowledge. Mrs. Micawber's singing has ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... feasts, music was commonly an accompaniment. The flute, the pipe, the drum, and the instrument called eambuca, appear to have been known to them; and they understood how to combine these instruments in concerted harmony. They are said to have closed their feasts with dancing—an amusement of which they were inordinately fond—but this was probably ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... He had left my dear lady Joanna without drum or trumpet. As my destiny hung with his, I should never behold her adored face again. All the graciousness seemed suddenly to be swept out of my life. I pictured her forsaken, heartbroken, for the second time, weeping bitterly over this repetition of history, and including me in her ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... with a piece of shell or a knife- blade. This excruciating instrument, I warn any one who may think of living among the Bubis, is very popular. The drums used are both the Dualla form—all wood—and the ordinary skin-covered drum, and I think if I catalogue fifes made of wood, I shall have nearly finished the Bubi orchestra. I have doubts on this point because I rather question whether I may be allowed to refer to a very old bullock hide—unmounted—as a musical instrument without bringing ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... and Richard will dash in to kiss Meg before Toby, and have the first kiss of the new year (he'll get it too); and the neighbours will crowd round with good wishes; and a band will strike up gaily (Toby knows a Drum in private); and the altered circumstances, and the ringing of the bells, and the jolly musick, will so transport the old fellow that he will lead off a country dance forthwith in an entirely new step, consisting of his old familiar trot. Then quoth the inimitable—Was it a ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... and the manufacture of arms. If a woman is fit to paint, she is not prevented from doing so; nevertheless, music is given over to the women alone, because they please the more, and of a truth to boys also. But the women have not the practice of the drum and ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... the river, then thundered, 'Strike those fields with hail! drench the hill!' And the obedient clouds flung themselves down. The wind whistled the reveille, the rain beat the drum; like hounds released from the leash the clouds bounded forward...downward, following the direction to which the flashes of lightning pointed. The evil spirit had put out ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... the top of the tower of Stephen's church, and which had enabled him to overawe the "military bully who was the terror of Fort St. David," now found its best vent in "welcoming the French," like the hero of Burns's ballad, "at the sound of the drum." The peace which was concluded between England and France sent Clive for a season, however, back to the counting-house, and gave back Madras again ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... were summoned to our outlook by the vigorous beating of a drum. Madame Mouchard and Augustine were already at their own post of observation—the open inn door. The rest of the village was in full attendance, for it was not every day in the week that the "tambour," the town-crier, had business enough to render his appearance, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... sight,—the picturesque group, and the contrast between the quiet manners of the true Malay and the grotesque fun of the half-negro. The latter made his tambourine do duty as a drum, rattled the bits of brass so as to produce an indescribable effect, nodded and grinned in wild excitement, and drank beer while his comrade took water. The dancing was uninteresting enough. The Dutchmen danced badly, and said not a word, but plodded on so as to ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... least six hundred maple-trees, making sometimes four thousand pounds of sugar a year. He could mow six acres a day, giving nine tons of hay; his strong, long arms cut a swath twelve feet wide. In his spare time he worked as a cooper, and he was a famous drum-maker. Truly there were giants in those days. I love to read of such vigorous, powerful lives; they seem to be of a race entirely different from our own. Still, among our New England forbears I doubt not many of ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... candle-ends, and lock up the soap. There are the spiteful women whose very breath is acidity and venom. There are the frivolous women whose chitter-chatter and senseless giggle are as empty as the rattling of dry peas on a drum. In fact, the delicacy of women is extremely overrated—their coarseness is never done full justice to. I have heard them recite in public selections of a kind that no man would dare to undertake—such as Tennyson's 'Rizpah,' for instance. I know a woman who utters every line of it, ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... ten o'clock when the sound of a drum was heard from the direction of the Methodist Church. The crowd started toward the sound, then paused as Binny Bates, the barber, in a stove-pipe hat, mounted on a much excited horse, rode up the street. Binny was a Levine man and the crowd broke ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... rapidly getting there. This silver agitation is beginning to weaken stocks and tighten money. I suggest that our banks here loan him all the money he wants on call. When the time comes, if he isn't ready, we can shut him up tighter than a drum. If we can pick up any other loans he's made anywhere else, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... manner, before almost all the fashionable company in town." Our hero expressing a curiosity to know the particulars of this adventure, the knight gratified his desire, by telling him, that one evening, while he was engaged in a party of cards, at a drum in the house of a certain lady of quality, he was given to understand by one of the servants, that a stranger, very richly dressed, was just arrived in a chair, preceded by five footmen with flambeaux, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... soldiers and their traps. Look at them," continued Captain Oughton, turning to a party of the troops ordered for a passage, who were standing on the gangway and booms; "every man Jack with his tin pot in his hand, and his greatcoat on. Twig the drum-boy, he has turned his coat—do you see?—with the lining outwards to keep it clean. By Jove, that's ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... he had begun to push forward, let it stand in the middle of the studio, and went and sat down on his engraving-stool in the corner, with a somewhat haughty look, and a defiant smile lurking behind his beard. He rested his elbow on the table and began to drum with his fingers. ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... of a small basket, which he now and then glanced at with a grin of peculiar satisfaction. Then the band mustered in full force—a genuine temperance band, which never mingled its strains of harmony with streams of alcohol. And oh, what a noble drum it boasted of!—could musical ambition mount higher than to be permitted the privilege of belabouring thundering sounds out of its parchment ends? Such clearly was the view of two of the youngest members of the Band of Hope, who were gazing with fond and awed admiration at ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... attached to the end of the spit. The third method referred to involved the shifting of manual labour from man to his domestic beast, for the faithful hound was pressed into the service of the cook. The dog worked in a cage, operating a wheel or drum which in its turn revolved the turnspit. Such turnspits seem to have had a lingering existence, and were occasionally heard of in North Wales late in the ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... back to the most dilapidated when the adjutant calls his command to "attention." Age and wounds have not quenched the fighting spirit of the old soldiers; there is not a man of them but would, did the need arise, "clatter on his stumps to the sound of the drum." There are few breasts in those ranks that are not decorated with medals. In very truth the parade is a record of British campaigns for the last thirty years. Among the thicket of medals on the bosom of this broken old light dragoon note the one bearing the legend, "Cabul 1842" ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... Jewry of Smyrna the Messiah walked on the afternoon of the abolished fast, and a vast concourse seethed around him, dancing and singing, with flute and timbrel, harp and drum. Melisselda's voice led the psalm of praise. Suddenly a whisper ran through the mob that there were unbelievers in the city, that some were actually fasting and praying in the synagogue. And at once there was a wild ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... be discussed around the homely hearth of Toil, and dreamed of on the couch of Poverty.... Yes, John Brown, dead, is verily a power like Samson in the falling temple of Dagon, like Ziska, dead, with his skin stretched over a drum head still routing the foe he bravely fought while living." The New York Herald of the same date, voicing the sentiment of those who actively or passively upheld slavery, alludes to the Hero as "Old ...
— John Brown: A Retrospect - Read before The Worcester Society of Antiquity, Dec. 2, 1884. • Alfred Roe
... but you can drum 'Days of Absence,' as most girls do," and opening the lid she bade Maddy "thump as long ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... upon the big drum, bash upon the cymbals, As we go marchin' along, boys, oh! For although in this campaign There's no whisky nor champagne, We'll keep our spirits goin' ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd In the Parliament of man, the ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... winds; whilst the stewards alone, like Horace's good man, walked serene amidst the wreck of crockery and the fall of plates. Driven from our stronghold on deck, indiscriminately crammed in below like figs in a drum; "weltering," as Carlyle has it, "like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed vipers," the cabin windows all shut in, we tried to take it coolly, in spite of ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... with arms reversed, And the slow beating of the muffled drum, And funeral marches, bring our hero home These stormy woods where his young heart was nursed Ring with a trumpet burst Of jubilant music, as if he who lies With shrouded face, and lips all white and ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... an "Ugh!" they left their canoe and went on shore, where they were immediately pressed into the service to unload and gather hay for our beds. They had a "tom-tom"—an instrument something between a drum and a tambourine, which they play at all their feasts and gambling bouts—a scarlet top knotted cock of the woods, a small fish, a little birch bark basket with the lid tightly sewed down, and an old worn-out blanket in ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... power decided, however, that the most feasible equipment was a series of twenty-one stationary engines located at intervals along the right of way and hauling the cars stage after stage by means of a rope wound upon a drum-the principle of the cable railway which afterwards had its day in our streets. Still Stephenson would give the directors no peace. Finally, in order to settle the question of the practical utility of the traveling engine, the company offered a prize of five hundred pounds for the ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... Then followed a company that Falstaff would hardly have enlisted, armed in a suitable manner, with such caps and hats as became the variety of trades to which the wearers belonged, the rear being brought up by a most singular figure, with a small drum-shaped black cap on the very top of a stiff pale head, a long oil-skin cloak, and in his left hand a huge Toledo ready drawn, which he carried upright. The militia are better dressed, and are now employed in regular ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... A drum struck up suddenly and the broncho (never too tired to shy) gave a frenzied leap. The rider went with him, reins in hand, heels set well in, ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... surrounded with a quay a foot in width adjoining [but below the level of] the platform and has a little island in the middle. Around the platform and the quay are contrived docks for ducks. On the island is a little column arranged to turn on its axis and carrying a wheel-shaped table with hollow drum-like dishes fashioned at the ends of the spokes two and a half feet wide and a palm in depth. This is turned by a boy whose business that is, so that meat and drink is put before all my bird guests in turn. From ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... Europe, though he works ever silently and unobtrusively. Is he not always beforehand with your king? When Francis was preparing the gorgeous field of the cloth of gold for his English brother, did not Charles quietly leave for the little isle, and there, without beat of drum, arrange his own affairs before Henry was even seen by your pleasure-loving monarch? Yes; to the impostor and to Francis, Charles is in Austria; to us—for now you share my secret—is he in Spain, where by swift riding he ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... night When the moon Sets the tune To the woods! And the broods All run out, Frisk about, Go and come, Beat the drum— Here in groups, There in troops! Now there's one! Now it's gone! There are none! And now they are dancing like chaff! I look, and I laugh, But sit by my door, and keep to my habit— A ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... morning. So he starts off cheerfully for his ship. His legs never get affected nor his head either in the usual way. He gets aboard and simply grabs the first thing that seems to him suitable—the cabin lamp, a coil of rope, a bag of biscuits, a drum of oil—and converts it into money without thinking twice about it. This is the process and no other. You have only to look out that he doesn't get a ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... from the forecastle ahead of them rang through the night. It was so loud and so fraught with alarm that it came in a muffled note to the men in the depths of the torpedo boat. A bugle call rang out, a drum was beaten. The erstwhile silent ship was filled ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... spectators hold their breath, and the blue flame is turned on, and the man manages the lime-light so that its radiance shall fall on the face of the chief actor—or Actress! And the bassoons and 'cellos grumble inaudible nothings to the big drum! Administer ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... and if you ever saw the light of hell in a man's eyes, it was Coe as he formed us up on the beach and headed inland in a crowd. The whole settlement was buzzing like a hornet's nest, and they were beating a wooden drum in front of the king's house, and everybody was running every which way, telling the news, and how Mrs. Tweedie had been carried off by Afiola, and all screaming out at once, like ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... a sheet-iron contraption in the shape of a pocket inkstand, and it stood on a perch in the corner, like a Russian icon, with a small blue flame flickering beneath it. It looked as though its sire might have been a snare-drum and its dam a dark lantern, and that it got its looks from its father and its heating powers from the mother's side of the family. And the plumbing fixtures were of the type that passed out of general use on the American side of the ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... the dormant public enthusiasm was stimulated by music at an uncomfortably early hour in the morning. Two horn players and a clarionet player; a fat musician who blew through a very small fife and kept time with his head; and a withered little man who beat furiously on a mighty drum—drew up in martial array, one behind the other, before the principal inn. Two boys, staring about them in a stolidly important manner, and carrying flags which bore a suspicious resemblance to India pocket handkerchiefs sewn together, formed in front of ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... They penetrated Florette's inmost soul, and overwhelmed with passionate emotion she clasped his hands, kissed them, and exclaimed, softly "Thanks, thanks, Pasquale, for your love, for all. I will never, never forget it, whatever happens! Go, go; the drum ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... being completed, a score or more of men entered the Gymnase Theatre by the stage-door, and came out a few seconds later with some muskets and a drum which they had found in the wardrobe, and which were a part of what, in theatrical language, are termed 'the properties,' One of the men took the drum and began beating to arms. The others, with the overturned ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... of the country; he follows the drum and the flag. He may chance to be killed with a double cannon before he come home again. But what's ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... drum in the street drew them to the window. The city crier, in striped linsey-woolsey jacket and breeches, and with a yellow band across his shoulders, stood there, beat upon his drum, and proclaimed aloud from a written paper ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... guard against surprises, we are all warned to pay especial attention to the beat of the drum; always halting when they hear the long roll beat, and marching at the beat of the long march. We are more on the alert regarding the enemy now. We have our advanced pickets doubled, and two sentries at every post. The men on the advanced pickets are constantly under ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... voice as he soared to the sky Was that of a ghoul with the grumbles. His teeth were so hot, and his tongue was so dry, That his shout seemed us raucous as though one should try To play on a big drum ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... stabbed him in the side. The wounded man was quickly overpowered, for the citizens, afraid to forfeit their pledges, did not come to his aid as he had expected, and he was hurried to the Tower, where the expectant archbishop sat ready to condemn him. We can imagine what that drum-head trial would be like. Longbeard was at once condemned, and with nine of his adherents, scorched and smoking from the fire, was sentenced to be hung on a gibbet at the Smithfield Elms. For all this, the fermentation did not soon subside; the people ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... sent by the committee for the purpose of discontinuing hostilities, and inviting the governor to confide the keeping of the place to the citizens; but in the midst of the tumult, the cries, and the firing, they could not make themselves heard. A third was sent, carrying a drum and banner, that it might be more easily distinguished, but it experienced no better fortune: neither side would listen to anything. The assembly at the Hotel de Ville, notwithstanding it efforts and activity, still incurred the suspicions ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... when amid the booming of cannon, it moved on its way to Springfield, its final resting-place. The death of the President was like an electric shock to my soul. I could not feel convinced of his death until I gazed upon his remains, and heard the last roll of the muffled drum and the farewell boom of the cannon. I was then convinced that though we were left to the tender mercies of God, we were ...
— The Story of Mattie J. Jackson • L. S. Thompson
... water was pushed through the doorway, but he ate sparingly of the odd-colored fruits; the only thing that could hold his thoughts from the hopeless repetition of unanswerable "whys" was the sight of the fleet. And every bale and huge drum was tallied mentally as it passed before his eyes. The ships were being loaded, and with their sailing—But, no! He must not let himself think ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... is the race itself that he objects to; and as for active sympathy, which has become the profession of so many worthy people in our own day, he thinks that trying to make others good is as silly an occupation as 'beating a drum in a forest in order to find a fugitive.' It is a mere waste of energy. That is all. While, as for a thoroughly sympathetic man, he is, in the eyes of Chuang Tzu, simply a man who is always trying to be somebody else, and so misses the only possible ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Sixteenth Century art. Mr. Jephson, the artist, had assured her that this period would make a perfect background for her fresh and rather voluptuous coloring; it had not become so banal as any of the French Louis'. And so Arabella had been instructed to drum into her head the names of the geniuses of that time, and their works, and she could now babble sweetly all about Giorgione, Paolo Veronese and Titian's later works without making a single mistake. And while ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... the town, a body of Moors, who had been in hiding for days, drove off all the sheep and goats which were peacefully feeding on the slopes of a hill. Directly the loss was discovered, which was not for some hours, the king gave orders that the war drum should be beaten, and the warriors assembled in the great square before the palace, trembling with fury at the insult which had been put upon them. Loud were the cries for instant vengeance, and for Samba, son-in-law of ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... so," the other returned. Even when silent the sound of him seemed to encompass him, as the roll of a drum seems to salute you when merely beholding that instrument. His speech filled all the room, flowing forth into every corner, sweeping upward in waves to the very cornice. The feminine members of his congregation found this ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... another mood—she began to display with pride and pleasure the photographs of 'Alice's dear little boy.' She had a whole series of them, from the long-clothed babe on his sister's knee to the bright little fellow holding a drum—a very beautiful child, with a striking resemblance to his mother, quite startling to Mr. Dutton, especially in the last, which was coloured, and showed the ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... people who do not pass readily under hypnotic control. If there are too many of these, they have been known to pluck up courage and answer back to the speeches, sermons and editorials. Sometimes they refuse to hurrah when the bass-drum plays, in which case they have occasionally been arrested for contumacy and contravention by stocky men, in wide-awake hats, who lead the strenuous life. This Plan Number Three provides for an armed force that shall overawe, if necessary, all who are not hypnotized. The army is used ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... away. And lo! with a summons sonorous Sounded the bell from its tower, and over the meadows a drum beat. Thronged erelong was the church with men. Without, in the churchyard, Waited the women. They stood by the graves, and hung on the headstones Garlands of autumn-leaves and evergreens fresh from the forest. Then came the guard from ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... maty-boy proceeded to put his threat into execution, till the master, being the weaker of the two, was compelled to cry mercy; which being at length granted, and the door opened with at least as much alacrity as it was closed, Maotoo decamped without beat of drum, never to appear again.—Twelve ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... were just here and drank some coffee with me; I think there must be a couple of cups left, if you should like some. The bottom's the best. I don't believe I can drink any more, because I've got so much in me already that my stomach's like a drum. ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... on the very Roof of France! That solitude of solitude invaded by fife and drum; the wastes of Sauveterre echoing the hackneyed air, 'Hold the Fort;' Hallelujah lasses in hideous poke- bonnets parading the picturesque streets of St. Enimie; the very rapids silenced by the ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... astonished on seeing it made into candles, and lighted in his presence; saying, that the Europeans knew every thing. Their only musical instruments are two, one of which they have from the Moors, which is like a large drum[5]; the other is somewhat like a fiddle, having only two strings, which they play on with their fingers, but gives no sounds that can be ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... for the Glories of This World; and some Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come; Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go, Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum." ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... Is it the composer's fault that man has only ten fingers? Why can't a musical thought be presented as it is born—perchance "a bastard of the slums," or a "daughter of a bishop"—and if it happens to go better later on a bass-drum (than upon a harp) get a good bass-drummer. [Footnote: The first movement (Emerson) of the music, which is the cause of all these words, was first thought of (we believe) in terms of a large orchestra, the ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... beat of armed feet, The legions clanking on their way, The long shout rims from street to street, With rolling drum and trumpet bray. ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... away from you The world beats dead Like a slackened drum. I call out for you against the jutted stars And shout into the ridges of the wind. Streets coming fast, One after the other, Wedge you away from me, And the lamps of the city prick my eyes So that I can no longer see your face. Why should I leave you, To ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... do mine ears invade And have a concert of confusion made? The shriller trumpet and tempestuous drum, The deafening clamour from the cannon's womb. —Part ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... sight to see Lovelace minor come on parade. Every week exactly two seconds late, in the dead silence that followed the sergeant-major's thundered "Parade!" he would dash through the school gate, puffing and blowing, his drum knocking against his equipment, his hat crooked, half his buttons undone. He would barge through two sections, rush to the School House half-company, bang his rifle on the ground, and say to his companion in a stage whisper: "I ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... of Mayan Hieroglyphics, p. 93) claims to have discovered that this hitherto supposed "vessel" is, in reality, "a drum." As the four (Cort. 27a) are without any accompaniments to indicate their use as drums, and as each has above it one of the cardinal point signs, there is nothing, unless it be the form, to lead to the supposition that they are drums. In the same division of the two preceding and three following ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... Sundays and festivals, brayed desperately, calling to "Stables." Engine after engine toiling home along the spurs after her day's work whistled in answer till the whistles were answered from the far bank. Then the big gong thundered thrice for a sign that it was flood and not fire; conch, drum, and whistle echoed the call, and the village quivered to the sound of bare feet running upon soft earth. The order in all cases was to stand by the day's work and wait instructions. The gangs poured by in the dusk; men stopping to knot a loin-cloth ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... remarkable also for the acuteness of his hearing, having a large ear-drum, and being provided with an apparatus by which he can exalt this faculty, when under the necessity of listening with greater attention. Hence, while he is silent in his own motions, he is able to perceive the least sound from the motion of any other object, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... take his seat in the state Senate, and Bradford to represent Washington County in the House, where he "cut a poor figure." Gallatin despised him, and characterized him as a "tenth-rate lawyer and an empty drum." Gallatin found, however, that although the Pittsburgh meeting had hurt the general interest of his party throughout the State, and "rather defeated" the repeal of the excise law, his eastern friends ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... sound shall reach thine ear, Armor's clang or war-steed champing Trump nor pibroch summon here Mustering clan or squadron tramping. Yet the lark's shrill fife may come At the daybreak from the fallow, And the bittern sound his drum Booming from the sedgy shallow. Ruder sounds shall none be near, Guards nor warders challenge here, Here's no war-steed's neigh and champing, Shouting ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... and received for answer, that the general favourite was a villain, and had been banished from Ludwigsburg for denying that there was a Holy Ghost!—Schubart was happy to evacuate Munich without tap of drum. ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... restless life, and had more in him than he had training to unfold either in speech or act; a man eager, had he known how, to do service in the cause of his much-loved mankind; wrote "Leaves of Grass," "Drum-Taps," and "Two Rivulets" (1819-1892). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... for Robert. He listened almost incessantly to the sound of drum and fife, the drill master's word of command, or to voices raised in prayer, preaching or the singing of psalms. Recruits were continually coming in, awkward plowboys, but brave and enduring, waiting only to be taught. Master Benjamin Hardy was ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... off the flies was hung in the shade, but the hide he buried in the warm mud of a swamp hole, and three days later, when the hair began to slip, he scraped it clean. A broad ash wood hoop he had made ready and when the green rawhide was strained on it again the Indian had an Indian drum. ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... interests and engagements of my own to attend to,—social, civic, musical, charitable—that I haven't much time or nerves left, to devote to my children. An up-to-date emancipated woman could hardly be expected to subject herself to that kind of hum-drum strain, in any case. My nervous system is very highly organized and their restless activity makes me irritable. I couldn't stand very much of it—even if I didn't have my own affairs to occupy most of my time. I always ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... names for objects, for which there are properly no terms in Gypsy, might be carried to a great length—much farther, indeed, than the Gypsies are in the habit of carrying it: a slack-rope dancer might be termed bittitardranoshellokellimengro, or slightly- drawn-rope-dancing fellow; a drum, duicoshtcurenomengri, or a thing beaten by two sticks; a tambourine, angustrecurenimengri, or a thing beaten by the fingers; and a fife, muipudenimengri, or thing blown by the mouth. All these compound words, however, would be more or less indefinite, and far beyond the comprehension ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... and are put in storage in cribs. The plant at Henderson, Kentucky, was a popcorn processing plant, with a large crib under roof where the nuts are stored. After the moisture content is reduced somewhat, they pass through a tumbling drum to remove any of the extraneous hulls and other dirt that might ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... vision has fled like a sparkle of light, And dark is the dream that possesses him now; The morn of his doom has succeeded the night, And the damp dews of death gather fast on his brow. He hears in the distance a faint muffled drum, And the low sullen boom of the death-tolling bell; The block is prepared, and the headsman is come, And the victim, bareheaded, walks forth ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... doors; and when you hear the drum And the vile squeaking of the wrynecked fife, Clamber not you up to the casement then, Nor thrust your head ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... clipped to resemble brooms, and planted on pedestals of chalk, and a few other points, do not edify me. The French Opera, which I have heard to-night, disgusted me as much as ever; and the more for being followed by the Devin de Village, which shows that they can sing without cracking the drum of one's ear. The scenes and dances are delightful; the Italian comedy charming. Then I am in love with treillage and fountains, and will prove it at Strawberry. Chantilly is so exactly what it was when I ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... Nature's Quakers and hold communion with the silent worshippers through whom the Spirit speaks. His outdoor religion is in the Salvation Army class, and he can't warm up enough to admire a potted geranium unless he hears a bass drum or a hand organ to distract him on the side. If the sweet air and comforting silence of the country were to fall upon New York, the town would probably drop to even lower levels from the shock. The country boy, who has been used to concentrating on the wood-pile, runs the ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... was a worthy casket of the jewels that God had placed in them? Is a temperance lecturer never to quote the self-reproaches of poor Cassio because Master Will Shakespeare, there is evidence to prove, was a gentleman, alas! much too fond of the bottle? The man that beats the drum may be himself a coward. It is the drum that is the important thing to us, not ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... seemed like to me. Sisters, I haven't a nerve left in my body; my temples throb, my heart feels as if it had been blown up with brass horns. There is a drum beating in each temple. Oh, if I could only hear a robin sing, or a brook in full flow—anything soft, and low, and sweet—it would be ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... disputed the wisdom of Squire Hardy's orders to let the wharf and fish-house burn, and had attempted to give them a dousing. In less than five minutes they had retreated, singed and hairless, due to a sudden explosion of a drum ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... cylinder, having at its lower part a large number of apertures of small diameter, so that the motion of the waves does not perceptibly influence the level of the water in the interior of the cylinder. It is attached to a copper ribbon, B, whose other extremity is fixed to the drum, T. The ribbon winds around the latter in the rising motion of the float, owing to a spiral spring arranged so as to act upon the drum. The tension of this spring goes on increasing in measure as the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... the "Stabat." Castellan has a magnificent voice. Does she not lack passion? She certainly needs cultivation. The symphony was merely a musical picture of the battle—a battle of Prague for the orchestra! It begins with a drum, a bugle-call follows; a march—and what march do you think? "Malbrook." Imagine me, a fervid worshipper of Beethoven, rushing in the crowd to hear a symphony wherein, with all orchestral force, the old song, L-a-w, Law, was banged into my ears. I sat in motionless dismay, while there followed another ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... portable, is generally laid in the direction of the existing wind and the car, preferably a light platform-car, is placed on the track. The truck carrying the winding-drum and its motor is placed to windward a suitable distance—say from two hundred to one thousand feet—and is firmly blocked or anchored in line with the portable track, which is preferably 80 or 100 feet in length. The flying or gliding machine to be launched with ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... that his conduct and appearance had been strange and alarming. Confound the moth! and Pawkins! However, it was a pity to lose the moth now. He felt his way into the hall and found the matches, after sending his hat down upon the floor with a noise like a drum. With the lighted candle he returned to the sitting-room. No moth was to be seen. Yet once for a moment it seemed that the thing was fluttering round his head. Hapley very suddenly decided to give up the moth and go to bed. But he was excited. All night long ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the farther end of the kampong. We entered a large room, with seats arranged round it, and lighted up with dama torches. We had places reserved near the chief; and the room soon began to fill, till it was crowded with eager spectators. There were musicians ready, who played on the tom-tom, or drum, and the gong, which they beat either slow or fast, according to the measure of ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... evening, Macora provided a varied entertainment for his guests. It included a grand feast, with songs and dancing, the latter done to the sounds of the tom-tom drum, and ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... simple, direct, and convincing, and my heart fluttered like the drum-beat's morning call to action the moment I ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... hearts? Keep that aegis of yours quiet, and leave the thunderbolt at home; make yourself as smart as you can; curl your hair and tie it up with a bit of ribbon, get a purple cloak, and gold-bespangled shoes, and march forth to the music of flute and drum;—and see if you don't get a finer following than Dionysus, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... would tell the people there the whole truth, and beg them to write to Mrs. MacDougall. Perhaps she would come to Edinburgh and fetch them home. That would be the end of all their troubles. How glad she would be to come to the end of them, even though it meant going back to the old quiet hum-drum life. After all, Duncan had been really the wiser when he wanted her to write to their father instead of going to find him. She wished now she ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... company drew near the blockhouse there came a sharp command from within, and over its walls scrambled a few men who drew up at attention, while drum and fife sounded a welcome to the new captain. A dazzling light of pleased surprise came into the young man's eyes, and he squared his shoulders with an involuntary movement. From the village came the people to give welcome also; for the intrepidity with which ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... of the French invasion has occasioned this. They have a vast embarkation at Dunkirk; the Duc de Richelieu, Marquis Fimarcon, and other general officers, are named in form to command. Nay, it has been notified in form by the insolent Lord John Drummond,(1149) who has got to Scotland, and sent a drum to Marshal Wade, to announce himself commander for the French King in the war he designs to wage in England, and to propose a cartel for the exchange of prisoners. No answer has been made to this rebel; but the King has acquainted the Parliament ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... February, when the Revolution broke out, and Louis Philippe premier had to fly for his life. It was a very troublous time, and the school for a whole week was in a state of quite heavenly demoralization! Ten times a day, or in the dead of night, the drum would beat le rappel or la generale. A warm wet wind was blowing—the most violent wind I can remember that was not an absolute gale. It didn't rain, but the clouds hurried across the sky all ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... a "drum beat," comes from the Dutch tap-toe, "tap-to," an order for drinking-houses to shut. But tattoo, describing the cutting away of the skin and dyeing of the flesh so common among sailors, is a word borrowed from the South ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... market. When I mentioned forty shillings to the dancing-dog man and his son, they said nothing, but, putting their tongues in their cheeks, took up their hats, wishing me a good day. Next forenoon, however, a slight- of-hand character having arrived, together with a bass drum and a bugle horn, that was likely to take the shine out of them, and maybe also purchase my article—which was capital for his purpose, having famous wide sleeves—they came back in less than no time, asking the liberty, before finally concluding with me, of carrying them home ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... glad to come into the shelter of the pretty Sunday-school room, and while swelling with the importance of being "a society," wait to see what "Miss Etta" would do when she came. The girls were getting a little restless, and the boys had begun to drum rather impatiently upon the floor, when the young lady appeared, carrying in her hand a curious-looking box with a slit in the top and a basket mysteriously covered down, which she deposited on the desk, not as yet answering the questions which were spoken ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... brothers. You are out after Roger Audemard, the rascal! Is it not so? And you were shot at behind the rock back there. You were almost killed. Ma foi, and it was my Jeanne who did the shooting! Yes, she thought you were another man." The chuckling, drum-like note of laughter came again out of St. Pierre's great chest. "It was bad shooting. I have taught her better, but the sun was blinding there in the hot, white sand. And after that—I know everything that has happened. Bateese was wrong. I shall scold him ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... soared to one last high note: the bassoon uttered a final moan: the pensive person at the end of the orchestra-pit, just under Mrs Waddesleigh Peagrim's box, whose duty it was to slam the drum at stated intervals, gave that much-enduring instrument a concluding wallop; and, laying aside his weapons, allowed his thoughts to stray in the direction of cooling drinks. Mr Saltzburg lowered the baton which he had stretched ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... that the cylinder, A, may be given a vertical motion, cords, M M, fixed to a piece, S, loose on the hub, D, wind round the drum of a windlass, T, after passing over the pulleys, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... of the butios, in theory, at least, and designated the days for public worship. He led the procession of men and women festively adorned, beating on a drum, to the cavern where the priests awaited them. Presents were offered, and old dances and songs repeated in honor of the Zemes, and of departed caciques. Then the priests broke cakes and distributed the pieces to the heads of families, who carefully kept ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... water, close to their vessel, and that the sharks had taken us down. As the shriek of Hastings was heard by the people in the boat, the officer believed that it was the case, and returned to the ship. I heard the drum beat to quarters on board of the man-of-war, that they might ascertain who were the two men who had attempted to swim away, and a few minutes afterwards they beat the retreat, having put down D.D. against my name on the books, as well as against ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... games as could be carried on in camp made up the sum of our lives. The arrival of the mail with letters and papers from home was the event of the day. We noticed that Bladburn neither wrote nor received any letters. When the rest of the boys were scribbling away for dear life, with drum-heads and knapsacks and cracker-boxes for writing-desks, he would sit serenely smoking his pipe, but looking out on us through rings of smoke with a face ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich |
