"Drum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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, knees ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... excellent opportunity of escaping the bills of your tailor,) and if you practice the deception with skill, you will be set down for a man of wonderful capacity. But if you knew what a miserable thing it is to be a critic, you would, I knew, say a man had better follow the devil with a fife and drum than depend on the tricks of booksellers for his bread, which is come the fashion with critics at ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... Boulogne. Nothing was to be seen but glittering bayonets, and nothing to be heard but the harsh monotonous sound of the drum. Flags floated in the breeze, and cheers echoed from the distant hills, and everything proclaimed the festivity of liberty. It was a grand sight, and yet a sad one for me. I could not help contrasting with the scene before me the fate of my own unfortunate country. At ten o'clock we were on ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... excitements, but they do it in a much more objectionable way than the classical authors, that is, they do it with less delicacy, and with a more sanguinary applause. But where, as I observed before, shall we retire from such impressions? Does not the recruiting drum propagate them in all our towns? Do not the ringing of the bells, and the illuminations, which occasionally take place in the time of war, propagate them also? And do we not find these, both in war and in peace, the sentiments and impressions of ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... Caswell being posted at Corbett's Ferry could not be reached for want of boats. The royalists were again in extreme danger; but at a point six miles higher up the Black river they succeeded in crossing in a broad shallow boat while MacLean and Fraser, left with a few men and a drum and a pipe, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... of drum-heads filled the air. The entrance to the hut was darkened by a tall, swarthy Arab in long, flowing robes, followed by negro-bearers, who cast on the ground bales of cloth and guns. The Arab wore on his head a red fez, round which a coloured ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... strips, two feet long, with rests for the arrows, and tiny cherry-wood arrows, bone-tipped, and feathered red, blue, and white, and smilingly, but quite unobtrusively, ask you to try your skill or luck at a target hanging in front of a square drum, flanked by red cushions. A click, a boom, or a hardly audible "thud," indicate the result. Nearly all the archers were grown-up men, and many of them spend hours at a time in this ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... war, when the end was almost reached, in the poem that records the sore loss to his own family,—his three nephews, "likely lads as well could be,"—slain on the battle-field. In that lofty, mournful verse, there is no drum and trumpet clangor, but the high purpose whose roots are ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... whole aspect of the birch-grove had changed. Over the forest was a deep calm. A gentle, barely perceptible wind sighed among the leaves, like rustling silk. The far-off drowsy drum of a grouse intruded on the vast stillness. The silence of the birds betokened a message. That mysterious breathing, that beautiful life of the woods lay hushed, locked in a waiting, brooding silence. Far away among the somber trees, ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... Brassica. KOHLRABBI.—A hardy kind of Turnip cabbage, grown much in Germany for fodder: it is very nutritive, and has the property of resisting frost better than either the turnips or cattle-cabbage. The seed and culture of this are the same as of Drum-head cabbage. ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... just wait till we get in there. If we don't find it I'll agree to give you my drum and every thing I've got in the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... us dug sum hung dust cub mug bun bung must hub pug dun lung rust rub tug run sung gust bud jug sun hulk drum ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... pasteboard, the game might go on very well, picture-less. But the beauty of cards would be extinguished for ever. Stripped of all that is imaginative in them, they must degenerate into mere gambling.—Imagine a dull deal board, or drum head, to spread them on, instead of that nice verdant carpet (next to nature's), fittest arena for those courtly combatants to play their gallant jousts and turneys in!—Exchange those delicately-turned ivory markers—(work of Chinese artist, unconscious of their symbol,—or as profanely ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... would say to his brother, "what a pleasure this rural laziness is to me. Not an idea in one's brain, as empty as a drum!" ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... came with your Chris'mas presents for him, Santa Claus. We had told him about you, and he used to go to the chimney every night and make a little prayer about what he wanted you to bring him. And you brought 'em, too—a stick-horse, an' a picture-book, an' some blocks, an' a drum—they 're on the shelf in the closet there, and his little Chris'mas stockin' with 'em—I 've saved 'em all, an' I 've taken 'em down an' held 'em in my hands, oh, ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... may also take, to avoid certain defects in 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
... the time appointed for service, a drum was beat and the conch shell blown; the same shell which had been used to give the war call. Directly all those canoes were covered with men, and they were plunging into the water and wading to shore. ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... in just as Lakme is gone for some sacred water in which she and Gerald were to pledge eternal love for each other, to each other. But, spurred on by Frederick and the memory that "England expects, etc.," Gerald finds the call of the fife and drum more potent than the voice of love. Lakme, psychologist as well as botanist, understands the struggle which now takes place in Gerald's soul, and relieves him, of his dilemma by crushing a poisonous flower (to be exact, the Datura stramonium) between her teeth, dying, it would ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... your children, and to live according as you speak, and that is work enough for you. There are many more of us, who, for various legitimate reasons, are precluded from taking part in organised forms of Christian service. Do not so fatally misunderstand me as to suppose that I am merely beating a drum to get recruits for societies. What I want to impress upon every Christian person listening to me now is simply this, the anomaly of the fact, if it be a fact, that you are a dumb Christian. You can all speak, if you will; you all have people with whom ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Spider Sexton, jubilantly. "I skipped the best part of my usual feed this morning, I was so excited and afraid I might get left; and I want to warn you all I'm as empty right now as a drum. So cook enough for an extra man or two ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... pulled off his hat and thanked her. The lady of the caravan then bade him come up the stairs, but the drum proving an inconvenient table for two, they descended again and sat upon the grass, where she handed down to them the tea-tray, the bread and butter, the knuckle of ham, and in short everything of which she had partaken herself, except the bottle which ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... ye glorious dead, now resting in eternal peace, whom the drum and fife will rouse no more to superhuman effort in our behalf, sweet be your sleep in the heart of the country you died to save, and ever green the laurel above your grassy graves! We will not forget you, wrapped in your gory shrouds for the land ye loved! Never shall ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... glittering bayonets he caught the flourish of energetic drumsticks. The big drum gave forth its clamor with window-shaking insistence; it seemed to be the summons of power that all else should stand aside. On they came, these spruce Guards, each man a marching machine, trained to strut and pose exactly as his fellows. ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... foes are moving. Hark to the mingled din, Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, and roaring culverin. The fiery duke is pricking fast across Saint-Andre's plain, With all the hireling chivalry of Guelders and Almayne Now by the lips of those ye love, fair gentlemen of France, Charge for the golden lilies—upon them ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... the son of William Irving, a sturdy native of the Orkneys, allied to the Irvines of Drum, among whose kindred was an old historiographer who said to them, "Some of the foolish write themselves Irving." William Irving of Shapinsha, in the Orkney Islands, was a petty officer on board an armed packet ship in His Majesty's service, when he ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... bore a conspicuous share. Having displayed their military prowess to the utmost in these warlike shows, they marched in glittering order to the Chelsea Bun House, and regaled in the adjacent taverns until dark. Then at sound of drum they fell in again, and returned amidst the shouting of His Majesty's lieges to the place ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... its relative fortissimo, that was never harsh or noisy, and at all the exquisitely graded nuances that lay between, with those time fluctuations expressive of the ebb and flow of his poetic inner being. No wonder Balzac maintained that if Chopin should but drum on the table his fingers ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... three intersecting lights. The drip-mould is also treated in the common Manoelino way with large spreading finials. Above the cornice, which is less elaborate than in the nave, was a short octagonal drum capped by a low spire, now replaced by a poor dome ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... my whistle!" said Juan, and he blew the horn. "And to show you how big our stomachs are, hear us beat them!" and he beat the drum. The outlaws were so frightened that they ran away. Some of them even jumped out of ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... lamenting his fate. When a chief was dying in pain he was mercifully strangled,—though the common people were allowed to linger to their end,—and his deeds were rehearsed in ballads sung to the drum. There was a belief in ghosts, albeit they could not be seen in the light, unless in a lonely place, nor by many persons. When they did mingle with the people it was easy to distinguish them from the living, as they had ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... attached to the magnetic needles of three variometers. A ray of light is reflected from the mirrors for several feet on to a slit, past which revolves sensitized photographic paper folded on a drum moving by clockwork. The slightest movements of the suspended needles are greatly magnified, and, when the paper is removed and developed in a dark-room, a series of intricate curves denoting declination, ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... musket, which he had left leaning against the wall, and which Don Baltasar found and fired, followed the words of alarm. The bullet whistled over the heads of the fugitives. In another instant all was noise and confusion in the village. The rattle of the drum was heard, lights appeared at the windows, and the clatter of arms and tramp of man and horse reached the ears of Herrera and his companions. Soon they heard a small party of cavalry gallop down a road which ran parallel to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... began to gather in the booths; women in gorgeous trailing gowns, the men bearing showy batons and clad in gay shirts or satin jackets, and with a mongrel infant rabble at their heels. When the goombay—a flour-barrel drum—sounded, the town knew the bamboula had begun. On two confronting lines, the men in one, the women in the other, a leading couple improvised a song and all took up the refrain. The goombay beat time, and the dancers rattled or tinkled the woody seed-cases of the sand-box tree set on long ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... exhilaration ebbed they gave edge to his natural fears. He perceived that it had grown very dark and lonely. The rain, falling sheer, seemed to shut him into a queer wintry world. All around the land echoed with the steady drum of it, and the rumour of swollen runnels. A wild bird wailed out of the mist and startled Mr. Lovel like a ghost. He heard the sound of men talking and drew rein; it was only a larger burn foaming by the wayside. ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... loud clangor 25 Excites us to arms, With shrill notes of anger And mortal alarms.[6] The double double double beat Of the thundering drum 30 Cries, "Hark, the foes come! Charge, charge, 't ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... ever kiss again?" 'twas said; But Love made light of that absurd conundrum; And lo! your breast is pillow to my head, And we've a pair of hearts that beat as one drum; Our bonds, if anything, are even more Tight ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... letter which I have received from that land, the writer says: "The Indians now all profess themselves to be Christians. Scores of them by their lives and testimonies assure us of the blessed consciousness that the Lord Jesus is indeed their own loving Saviour. Every conjuring drum has ceased. All vestiges of the old heathenish life are gone, ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... children of a persecuted mother, When nations heard the drum of battle beat, Through coward Europe, brother leagued with brother, Rallied and perished ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... silver showed where a ripple of the rising tide was turning over the mud-banks. The wind had dropped, and in the intense stillness they could hear a donkey cropping the frosty grass many yards away. A faint beating, like that of a muffled drum, came out of ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... flushed as if she had somehow committed herself, and before he could reply had almost run from him into the hotel lobby. But he had caught a look in her eyes that caused his heart to lose a beat, then to thump like a bass drum in martial band. He was made suddenly aware that he was gawking after her with his mouth hanging open and his eyes bulging, by the delighted snickers of a pair of impertinent door boys and the suppressed comment of ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... thinking it was all up with him, C. dived straight for the nearest, meaning to take a Boche down with him, but Hans didn't think that was playing the game, and promptly hooked it. The other fellow had been blazing away and was getting a new drum fixed, when he saw C. was on his tail making tremendous business with his useless gun, so Fritz immediately dived away out of range, and C. got home with about fifty bullet holes in his wings and his gun crocked, and—oh, here ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... for a moment in his own the hand of the girl whose father he had killed. It was lifeless and cold. Her lips moved, merely speaking his name. His own were mute. McDowell was saying something about the glory of the service and the sovereignty of the law. And then, breaking in like the beat of a drum on the introduction, his voice demanded, "Conniston—DID YOU GET ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... his spare time hanging around the headquarters of the forming regiments. One day he asked a recruiting officer if he needed a drummer boy. "You are pretty small, sonny," said the soldier, "can you drum?" "No," said Paul, "but I can learn mighty quick." Pleased with the answer, the soldier took him to his headquarters and said: "Here is a little volunteer." Paul was closely questioned and untruthfully assured the officers in charge that his mother would be glad to ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... his school books. The pages look like well-used drum parchments, and I am certain Jack must often find it hard to decipher the words upon them. His exercises look as if they had been left out in an ink shower, and the very pen he uses is generally wet with ink up to the very tip of the handle, which, ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... sat back to drum idly on his desk, then got up and walked over to his master file control board. He glanced at the index, then punched out a sequence on the buttons. There was a subdued hum and a door opened. Kweiros reached into the compartment, ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... department was open to us. Their troops guarded us, and we reconnoitred, surveyed, located, and built inside of their picket-line. We marched to work by the tap of the drum with our men armed. They stacked their arms on the dump, and were ready at a moment's warning to fall in and fight ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... it all put that glorious little achy feeling in my throat that you get when they start the fife and drum, or when a cavalry column wheels at the word of command, or when a regiment swings past with even tread, or when you stand on a dock and watch a liner dropping out into the fog. It's the feeling that you're a man and mighty proud ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... a strange 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 get all the dancing ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... Madame Latournelle? All these absurdities of the worthy woman, who is truly pious and charitable, might have passed unnoticed, if nature, amusing herself as she often does by turning out these ludicrous creations, had not endowed her with the height of a drum-major, and thus held up to view the comicalities of her provincial nature. She has never been out of Havre; she believes in the infallibility of Havre; she proclaims herself Norman to the very tips of her fingers; she venerates her father, and ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... his plate for inspiration. Finding no succor there, his thoughts again galloped off to the young woman who had come late, where they evidently delighted to linger. A peaceful smile stole over the speaker's worried face, and absently taking up his fork he began to drum contentedly on the table with it, utterly forgetful of those who were waiting anxiously for the remainder of ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... in the fullness of time—'twas near about midnight as we guessed it—we had our patience well rewarded. Hovering on the confines of the camp we heard the muffled drum-tap of the reveille, and soon there was the stir of an army making ready ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... these carts a large number are owned by distilleries, and go round the country collecting grain, from which to brew whisky. One of the first things to be heard in the morning after daylight, in a quiet market town, is a peculiar beating of a wooden drum. Ask what it means, and you will be told it is such and such a distillery calling its hands to breakfast. Ask how many hands they have, and you may find that one establishment has some sixty or seventy men who eat their food! The whisky trade is ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... nor casts his heavy eye afar, Lest he should view his vineyard desolate, Blasted below the dun hot breath of war. No more beneath soft Eve's consenting star Fandango twirls his jocund castanet: Ah, monarchs! could ye taste the mirth ye mar, Not in the toils of Glory would ye fret; The hoarse dull drum would sleep, and Man ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... on the drum of the ear, These thoughts in cat language conveyed— The which I interpret lest it should appear Of ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... building there comes floating the dull roar of the turbulent river Kura, mingled with shouts from the hucksters of the Avlabar Bazaar (the town's Asiatic quarter) and as a cross motif thrown into these sounds, the sighing of the wind and the cooing of doves. In fact, to be here is like being in a drum which a ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... replies my companion, still pityingly regarding the flushed discomposure of my face; "but people would insist on bawling so loudly down it, that they nearly broke the drum of his ear, and so he ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Suppose, for example, that a gang of labourers were at work in the harvest-field, three-quarters of a mile from the farmhouse. Now, why not have a field telegraph, like that employed in military operations? The cable or wire was rolled on a drum like those used for watering a lawn. All that was needed was to harness a pony, and the drum would unroll and lay the wire as it revolved. The farmer could then sit in his office and telegraph his instructions without a moment's delay. He could tap the barometer, ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... the occasion, and they did all that lay within the compass of their power to keep me out, insomuch, that there was obliged to be a guard of soldiers to protect the presbytery; and it was a thing that made my heart grieve when I heard the drum beating and the fife playing as we were going to the kirk. The people were really mad and vicious, and flung dirt upon us as we passed, and reviled us all, and held out the finger of scorn at me; but ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... parental arms over a rustic bench, that had been constructed beneath it for the accommodation of the foot-traveler, or, perchance, some idle dreamer like myself. It seemed to look round with a lordly air upon its old hereditary domain, whose stillness was no longer broken by the tap of the martial drum, nor the discordant clang of arms; and, as the breeze whispered among its branches, it seemed to be holding friendly colloquies with a few of its venerable contemporaries, who stooped from the opposite bank of the pool, nodding ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... groans of death and battle's bray Have rung discordant thro my turgid lay: The drum's rude clang, the war wolfs hideous howl Convulsed my nerves and agonized my soul, Untuned the harp for all but misery's pains, And chased the Muse from corse-encumber'd plains. Let memory's balm its pious ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... furnishes its own drum and fife corps and a very fine military band, the players, of course, devoting a proper proportion of their time to the practice on their instruments. Friday is the best day on which to visit the school, for on that ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... papers said if dey could not be freedom by good men dere would be freedom by blood. Dey fighted an' kept on fightin' a long time. Den de Yankees come. [HW correction: New paragraph] I heard dem beat de drum. Marster tole us we wus free but mother an' father stayed on with Marster. He promised 'em sumptin, but he give 'em nothin'. When de crop wus housed ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... finished. Slowly the rhythm of thought was increased, till the slight quiver of consciousness was reached. Then came the beating drum of intelligence, the radiation of its yet-uncontrolled thoughts. Quickly as the strings of its infinite knowledge combined, the radiation ceased. It gazed about it, and all things were familiar in ...
— The Last Evolution • John Wood Campbell
... that drown Our psalms of worship with their impious drum, The sweetest chimes in all the land lie dumb In some ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... the devil—that Neifkins' big loss put such a crimp in you that an honest bank examiner could close your doors! I'll bet my hat against a white chip that even a boys'-size 'run' could shut your little two by twice bank up tight as a drum!" ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... we carry Was not, could not be, thy spouse. Art thou not a Bayadere? So hast thou no nuptial vows. Only to death's silent hollow With the body goes the shade; Only wives their husbands follow: Thus alone is duty paid. Strike loud the wild turmoil of drum and of gong! Receive him, ye gods, in your glorious throng— Receive him in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... thinks he has said enough in saying that Heine proclaimed in German countries, with beat of drum, the ideas of 1789, and that at the cheerful noise of his drum the ghosts of the Middle Age took to flight. But this is rather too French an account of the matter. Germany, that vast mine of ideas, had no need to import ideas, as such, from ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Ch'ang-an, with its triple rows of glittering walls with their tall towers uprising at intervals, its seven royal palaces all girdled with gardens, its wonderful Yen tower nine stories high, encased in marble, the drum towers and bell towers, the canals and lakes with their floating theatres, dwelt Ming Huang and T'ai Chen. Within the royal park on the borders of the lake stood a little pavilion round whose balcony crept jasmine ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... school-books. The first two books I ever read in private, and which gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read since, were the Life of Hannibal, and the History of Sir William Wallace. Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn, that I used to strut in rapture up and down after the recruiting drum and bag-pipe, and wish myself tall enough to be a soldier; while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins which will boil along there, till the flood-gates of life ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... The words! the words! And I turned sharp round, shaking like a leaf, with a heart that beat in my body like a drum. Lo! there, just before me, stood the lady of my dream. And exactly as before, her dark blue garments shone like copper in the red sun's rays, and the star stood trembling in her high dark hair. And exactly as before, she stood up, absolutely straight, as if on purpose ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... who have any relish for devotion; and this is here a prevailing taste. We have had transient visits of a puppet-shew, strolling musicians, and rope-dancers; but they did not like their quarters, and decamped without beat of drum. In the summer, about eight or nine at night, part of the noblesse may be seen assembled in a place called the Pare; which is, indeed, a sort of a street formed by a row of very paltry houses on one side, and on the other, by part of the town-wall, which screens ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... rock itself. Times were different upon Dhu-Heartach when it blew, and the night fell dark, and the neighbour lights of Skerryvore and Rhu-val were quenched in fog, and the men sat prisoned high up in their iron drum, that then resounded with the lashing of the sprays. Fear sat with them in their sea-beleaguered dwelling; and the colour changed in anxious faces when some greater billow struck the barrack, and its pillars quivered and sprang under the blow. It was then that the foreman builder, Mr. Goodwillie, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... objection. His face at once assumed a different expression, his features wearing a mingled air of impudence, conceit, and irony. He caught up a ruler that was lying on the magistrate's desk, and, flourishing it wildly, began as follows, in a shrill falsetto voice: "Silence, music! And you, big drum, hold your peace! Now is the hour, now is the moment, ladies and gentlemen, to witness the grand, unique performance of these great artists, unequaled in the world for their feats upon the trapeze and the tight-rope, and in innumerable other exercises ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... march around; At times they threatened governors to hang, Unless they would surrender to their gang; But few they wanted to complete the force, And soon a royal army made of course. From day to day their numbers would augment, Without the beat of drum, to great extent; Their rank was always fixed by length of horn: Foot soldiers those, whose branches short were borne; Dragoons, lieutenants, captains, some became, And even colonels, those of greater fame. ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... cantata on Longfellow's "Hiawatha," which has been frequently performed. In this work use is made of an actual Indian theme, which was jotted down by H.E. Krehbiel, and is worked up delightfully in the cantata, an incessant thudding of a drum in an incommensurate rhythm giving it a decidedly barbaric tone. The cantata contains also a quaint and touching contralto aria, and a pathetic setting of the death-song of Minnehaha. Burton is a graduate of Harvard, and a writer as well as a composer. He organized, in 1896, the Yonkers ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... interpreting the thought of the composer, does twenty things at once: reads the score, waves his baton, watches the singer, makes a motion sideways, first to the drum then to the wind-instruments, and so on. I do just the same when I lecture. Before me a hundred and fifty faces, all unlike one another; three hundred eyes all looking straight into my face. My object is to dominate this many-headed monster. If every moment as I lecture I have ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Belle were real girl chums, but they never knew all, the delights of chumship until they "went in" for motoring. Living in the New England town of Chelton, on the Chelton River, life had been rather hum-drum, until the advent of the "gasoline gigs" as Jack, Cora's brother, slangily dubbed them. Jack, with whose fortunes we shall concern ourselves at more length presently, had a car of his own—one strictly limited to two—a ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... were they, to reveal the watch-word, or nerve enough to point out the entrance to the fort. But the watch-word was obtained; the entrance was pointed out; and the 100th regiment were inside of Fort Niagara before a single drum had rolled or a bugle sounded. By the time indeed that the garrison were alarmed the whole British force were in the fort, and, after a show of resistance, the Americans surrendered. Only one officer and ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... the time to pack has come, And love is put away; Farewell! I hear the roll of drum, And may no longer ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... the bottom being too noticeable. When picking up his "tom-tom" the performer also picks up the bees wax, and attaching it to the "tom-tom" the arrangements are complete. Bringing the "tom-tom" closer to the body makes the duck dive under water. The ordinary shaking of the drum makes ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... pair of lungs you've got concealed in that body of yours. I'm nigh deaf with your shouting. Come within the doorway, my lad, and whisper. Perhaps I'll catch the meaning of your question when it does not drum through me like the cry of ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... it were, for what he was worth. The giant seemed happy. He was humming a tune softly through his beard. Suddenly Jose paused, dropped to the foot of a pine, and put his ear to it. Pierre understood. He had caught at the same thing. "There is a dance on," said Jose, "I can hear the drum." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was happening, and that out of the corners of her laughing eyes Keok was enjoying Tautuk's jealousy. Tautuk was so stupid he would never understand. That was the funny part of it. And he beat his drum savagely, scowling so that he almost shut his eyes, while Keok ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... there!" and, ceasing to insist, he began wistfully to plead. "Oh, if you knew how I have hated these past months. I used to sit at night, alone, alone, alone, eating my heart for want of you; for want of everything I care for. I could not sleep. I used to see the morning break. Perhaps here and there a drum would begin to beat, the cries of children would rise up from the streets, and I would lie in my bed with my hands clenched, thinking of the jingle of a hansom cab along the streets of London, and the gas lamps paling as the grey ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... thing to do, Save to wait for the sign to come: So, like things of stone in a valley lone, Quiet we sat and dumb: But each man's heart beat thick and quick, Like a madman on a drum! ...
— The Ballad of Reading Gaol • Oscar Wilde
... the Ark, and directed the movements of those in charge of the drum of the cable so nicely that the descent ceased at the exact moment when the bell came to rest upon a group of beams at the top of the tower. The radio-control, which is so familiar in its thousand applications to-day, was then a new thing, having been invented only a year or so before the deluge, ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... Hapley 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 ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... were finishing their meal, they heard a chorus of young and gay voices, coming near, accompanied by a drum, the boys of Etchezar, coming for Ramuntcho to bring him with them in their parade with music around the village, following the custom of New Year's eve, to go into every house, drink in it a glass of cider and give a joyous serenade ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... acquaintance, one Upaka, a wandering sophist, on the way. The latter, struck with his expression, asks him whose religion it is that makes him so glad, and yet so calm. The reply is striking. "I am now on my way," says the Buddha, "to the city of Benares, to beat the drum of the Ambrosia (to set up the light of the doctrine of Nirvana) in the darkness of the world!" and he proclaims himself the Buddha who alone knows, and knows no teacher. Upaka says: "You profess yourself, then, friend, to be an Arahat and a conqueror?" The Buddha says: "Those indeed are ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... I surely heard a drum. Look there is a company of boys dressed up like soldiers. One playing the fife, another the drum, while at the side of the company, stands a boy, with his drawn sword over his shoulder, for all the world like a captain. And then there ...
— The Skating Party and Other Stories • Unknown
... women and children; fires in front where yams were roasting; the dark brown forms glancing to and fro in the flickering light; the moon's rays quivering down through the vast trees, and the native hollow drum beating at intervals to summon the people to the monthly feast on the morrow. I slept comfortably on a mat in a cottage with many other persons in it. Much talk I had with a large concourse outside, and again in this cottage, on Christianity; and all were quiet when I knelt down ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... body gracefully, to speak The language pure; or turn his mind Or manners more to the harmony of nature Than in these nurseries of nobility? Host. Ay, that was when the nursery's self was noble And only virtue made it, not the market, That titles were not vended at the drum And common outcry; goodness gave the greatness And greatness worship; every house became An academy; and those parts We see depicted in the practice now Quite from the institution. Lovel. Why do you say so? Or think ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... mounting in hot haste: the steed, The mustering squadron, and the clattering car, Went pouring forward with impetuous speed, And swiftly forming in the ranks of war; And the deep thunder peal on peal afar; And near, the beat of the alarming drum Roused up the soldier ere the morning star; While thronged the citizens with terror dumb, Or whispering, with white lips—"The foe! They ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... handle, and some with two, exhibiting appropriate devices, in golden characters four feet high, and stout in proportion. There was a grand band of trumpets, bassoons, and drums, marshalled four abreast, and earning their money, if ever men did, especially the drum beaters, who were very muscular. There were bodies of constables with blue staves, twenty committee men with blue scarves, and a mob of voters with blue cockades. There were electors on horseback and electors on foot. There was an open carriage and four, ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood
... days later, when Father Maguire told his uncle that the Salvationists had come to Kilmore, and that he had walked up the village street and slit their drum with a carving knife, his uncle had not approved of his conduct, and what had especially annoyed Father Tom was that his uncle seemed to deplore the slitting of the drum in the same way as he deplored that the Kavanaghs had a barrel of porter in every Saturday, ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... heard of her great-uncle's property down here till this little Schrimpe told her. But we can't connect him with Strout. Strout's skirts are clear. And this Schrimpe had a perfect legal right to drum up trade. He's that kind of lawyer," ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... blankets the warriors of the camp were adorning themselves with white clay and feathers and long, shaggy beards of bark, while the leader of the orchestra began to tune his boomerang and fire-hardened sticks, and his attendants to squat ready to drum on thighs and lap with hollowed hand in time with his refrain and clicking music. The fires flared up, and the band emerged with thumping step and emphatic grunts to illustrate the ceremonious visit of strangers to a camp at which the nature of the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... thy tone and by thy significant language. Yet have I nothing but censure to speak; for better I know thee. Thou concealest thy heart, and thy thoughts are not such as thou tellest. Well do I know that it is not the drum, not the trumpet that calls thee: Neither in uniform wouldst thou figure in sight of the maidens; Since, for all thou art honest and brave, it is thy vocation Here in quiet to care for the farm and provide for the household. Tell me honestly, therefore, what ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... impression upon him. But occasionally a letter comes along that "gets under the skin," that STANDS OUT from the rest because it has "human interest;" because it is original in its statements; because it departs from the prescribed hum-drum routine; because, in short, it reflects a live, breathing human being and not a ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... Hugo in the forest did; But far more in returning made, For now the foe he had survey'd Rang'd, as to him they did appear, With van, main battle, wings, and rear. I' th' head of all this warlike rabble, Crowdero marched, expert and able. Instead of trumpet and of drum, That makes the warrior's stomach come, Whose noise whets valour sharp, like beer By thunder turn'd to vinegar; (For if a trumpet sound, or drum beat, Who has not a month's mind to combat?) A squeaking engine he apply'd Unto his neck on north-east side,[1] Just where the hangman ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... did glow like the glow o' the West, When the drumly cloud had it half o'ercast; Or the struggling moon when she's sair distrest. O, Sirs! it was Aiken-Drum." ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... there is a twenty-nine and a half inch long sandstone block of no very remarkable general aspect, weather-worn and abraded, but ending in a jagged crowned head of some such animal as a fish. The second is a block of quartz, like the drum of a column, damaged in places by exposure, but still recognizable as a fine ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... scores of cuckoos gliding in the sun and calling from the budding branches; woodpeckers laugh from oak to oak; plovers tumble in the wind; herons flap up lazily at a bend in the stream, and flap lazily down again; snipe cut high arcs in the blue and drum down from the sailing clouds; perhaps from the very heart of the thicket the nightingale bursts into a pulsing riot of song. Surrey varies extraordinarily widely as a shelter and a nesting ground for birds, but most of its birds, I think, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... dwelling had been burned when my troops were passing, and I was greatly disturbed by their apparent responsibility for it. My anger was increased by repetitions of similar outrages during the afternoon. From our camp at Turner's Bridge I issued an order directing summary trial by drum-head court-martial and execution of marauders guilty of such outrages, whether belonging to my own corps or stragglers hanging on at its skirts. [Footnote: Id., pt. iii. p. 189.] The evidence seemed conclusive that the crimes were committed by "bummers" who had separated themselves from the ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... attention. A lusty German boy, B., showed no signs of sexuality until his third year, when he laughed about his newly-appearing pubic hair, and told several of us openly of how he enjoyed to play "a drum-beat" on his penis before going to sleep. "I don't do it too much, though," he explained. He showed a mild curiosity when I gave him the resume of a book on cohabitation which contained illustrations of the erect penis and the female organs. I had found this book in the woods and I read ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the town-crier—he who daily beat the drum in front of the Hotel de Ville and read lengthy bulletins, was interested in the workings of Gunner Black's colt automatic. Gunner Black, most anxious to show her, demonstrated the action of the pistol but, forgetting that ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... for man, being a Protean animal, swiftly shares and changes with his company and surroundings; and these changes are the better part of his education in the world. To strike a posture once for all, and to march through life like a drum-major, is to be highly disagreeable to others and a fool for oneself into the bargain. To Evelyn and to Knipp we understand the double facing; but to whom was he posing in the Diary, and what, in the name of astonishment, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nothing to show—' and then, just between the andirons, I hit a blow that rang as hollow as a drum! ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon |
