"Thrum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... presently, moving with the silent grace of swans on still water, came four girls closely veiled, carrying quaintly-shaped harps and lutes. A Nubian servant followed them, and spread a gold-embroidered carpet upon the ground, whereon they all sat down and began to thrum the strings of their instruments in a muffled, dreamy manner, playing a music which had nothing of melody in it, and which yet vaguely suggested a passionate tune. This thrumming went on for some time when all at once from a side entrance in the ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... me into this digression—The funeral sermon upon poor Le Fever, wrote out very fairly, as if from a hasty copy.—I take notice of it the more, because it seems to have been his favourite composition—It is upon mortality; and is tied length-ways and cross-ways with a yarn thrum, and then rolled up and twisted round with a half-sheet of dirty blue paper, which seems to have been once the cast cover of a general review, which to this day smells horribly of horse drugs.—Whether these marks of humiliation were designed,—I something doubt;—because at the end of ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... dirty shirts, stinking breaths, and uncleanly carcases, poisoned our nostrils far worse than a Southwark ditch, a tanner's yard, or a tallow-chandler's melting-room. The ill-looking vermin, with long, rusty beards, swaddled up in rags, and their heads—some covered with thrum-caps, and others thrust into the tops of old stockings. Some quitted their play they were before engaged in, and came hovering round us, like so many cannibals, with such devouring countenances, as if a man had been but a morsel with 'em, all crying out, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... busby, coif, berretta, biretta, barret, caul, callot, head-gear, turban, fez, calotte, toque, mortarboard, mitre, tarboosh, Tam-o-Shanter, zuchetto, wimple, shako, morion, mozetta, casque, helmet, mutch, montero, domino, beaver, glengarry, calpac, thrum cap, beret, keffieh, mortier, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... wore on, wet and dreary outside, but all within the "Herald's" bosom was snug and busy and murmurous with the healthy thrum of life and prosperity renewed. Toward six o'clock, system accomplished, the new guiding-spirit was deliberating on a policy as Harkless would conceive a policy, were he there, when Minnie Briscoe ran joyously up the stairs, plunged into the room, waterproofed and radiant, ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... Flower of his life! And now that she couldn't have it! He turned to the window for some air. Daylight was dying, the moon rising, gold behind the poplars! What sound was that? Why! That piano thing! A dark tune, with a thrum and a throb! She had set it going—what comfort could she get from that? His eyes caught movement down there beyond the lawn, under the trellis of rambler roses and young acacia-trees, where the moonlight fell. There she was, roaming up and down. His heart gave a little sickening jump. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... number of primroses be gathered, it will be found that some plants yield nothing but "pin-eyed" flowers, in which the style (or organ for the transmission of the pollen to the ovule) is long, while the others yield only "thrum-eyed" flowers with short styles. Thus primroses are divided into two sets or castes differing structurally from each other. My father showed that they also differ sexually, and that in fact the bond between the two castes more nearly resembles ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... factory-wheels in cadence hum, From brawling parties concords come; All this I hear, or seem to hear, But when, enchanted, I draw near 40 To mate with words the various theme, Life seems a whiff of kitchen steam, History an organ-grinder's thrum, For thou hast slipt from it and me And all thine organ-pipes left ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... boldly, I began to thrum the air of the Hungarian waltz which they had played that night at the Duchess of Carmona's, while I told Monica I loved her. Often its passionate refrain had echoed in my ears since, and brought the scene before me. I hoped that Monica also ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... glimpses were to be caught of the blue caps, strongly marked countenances, and fierce mustaches of the Carlist soldiers; their strangely-sounding Basque oaths and ejaculations mingling with the clack of the castanets and monotonous thrum of the tambourine, as they followed the sunburnt peasant girls through the mazes of the Zorcico, and other national dances. Hanging over the window-sills, or suspended from nails in the wall, were the belts, which the soldiers had profited ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... hand," spake the minstrel Werbel. "Sir Hagen of Troneg, what had I done to you? I came in good faith to your masters' land. How can I now thrum the tunes, sith I have ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... by her vertical lift units, coasted toward a stop. The drone of the fleeing super-planes diminished and was gone, and for a time the thrum of the generator and the tap-dance of relays adjusting circuits was ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... Live chattels, mincers of each other's fame, Full of weak poison, turnspits for the clown, The drunkard's football, laughing-stocks of Time, Whose brains are in their hands and in their heels But fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to thrum, To tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to scour, For ever slaves at home and ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... observer; one becomes an atom of the crowd, sharing the anxiety of certain women that one knows are on their way to a hospital and who half mad with impatience are clutching the fatal telegram in one hand, while with the fingers of the other they thrum on one cheek or nervously catch at a button or ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard |
