"Drumming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the editorial chambers came a photograph and an article from Michaelstown, Massachusetts. A boy placed the packet and many others upon the desk of a young man who was standing before a window and thoughtfully drumming upon the pane. He turned at the thudding of the packets upon his desk. " Blast you," he remarked amiably. " Oh, I guess it won't hurt you to work," answered the boy, grinning with a comrade's Insolence. Baker, an assistant editor for the Sunday paper, took scat at his desk ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... for another interest in life ourselves instead of drumming up one for Joey," Doc said. He meant it as a joke but it had a shaky sound; "Something besides getting beered up every ...
— To Remember Charlie By • Roger Dee
... been on some craft three hundred miles farther on in the direct course of the Kittlewake, he might have caught the thunderous drumming of two powerful Liberty motors. He might also have seen a spot of light playing constantly upon the black waters. While this light was constant, it moved rapidly forward in a wide circle. The circle was never the same in size or location, yet the spot of ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... laughing!" cried Katherine. "But Oily Dave is such a slippery old rogue, and sometimes he overreaches even himself." Then she told Mrs. M'Kree about the disappearance of the lard, and how she had recognized the bucket upon which Jamie had been drumming so vigorously. ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... truth, a good deal of fallacy, a great deal of perversion and misrepresentation; while Mrs. Evelyn listened and smiled, and half parried and half assented to his positions; and Fleda sat impatiently drumming upon her elbow with the fingers of her other hand, in the sheer necessity of giving some expression to her feelings. Mr. Stackpole at last got his finger upon the sore spot of American ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... paused upon the threshold with a little "Oh!" of surprise. There was a reek of cigar smoke; its origin between the lips of a burly young man who stood drumming a tune ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... vulnerable parts, and, exploding inside, killed men and dismounted guns. The groans of the stricken, the crash of steel against steel, the roar of the turret-guns, the rattling chorus of quick-fire rifles, and the drumming of heavy shells against the armor and turrets made an uproarious riot of sound over which no man above the water-line could lift his voice. But there were some there, besides the dead,—men who worked through and survived the action,—who, after the first impact of ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... starting of the game afforded for conversation of a general nature. They had gone on in this manner for some time, and having been tolerably successful in their sport were meditating their return to the party on the beach, when the ear of Gerald was arrested by the drumming of a partridge at a short distance. Glancing his quick eye in the direction whence the sound came, he beheld a remarkably fine bird, which while continuing to beat its wings violently against the fallen tree on which it was perched, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... awakened by a cessation of the drumming of the wheels. Opening his eyes, he saw that the train was no longer in motion. He also saw—and his consciousness of that fact was much more acute—the rim of a revolver about six inches from his forehead. Behind the revolver was a man, a young Spanish gypsy, ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... talking like old friends, he and I, in the little white bedroom. Through the two curtains of the window high up in the wall a great ray of sunshine falls, a column of dancing light that dies on the table between us. I sit drumming absent-mindedly with my fingers in the shimmering motes. He looks at me and I feel no need to speak or to turn my head. The novelty of his presence makes no impression on me beyond a feeling of surprise that I do not find it strange. When by chance we do not hold ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... are false. Our pride is like that of a partridge drumming on his log in the wood before the fox leaps upon him. Our sight is like that of the mole burrowing under the ground. Our wisdom is like a drop of dew upon the grass. Our ignorance is like the great water which no eye ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... you, Mary," I cried, drumming at the little green table with my fist. "I want you. I want nothing else in all the world unless it has to ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... fears disguise; He is not coming! Sweet lips Let slip no sighs; Cease, heart, your drumming! He is not coming, [A]Lada! He is not coming. ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... from heaven to meet me when my breath Chokes, and through drumming shafts of stifling death I stumble toward escape, to find the door Opening on morn where I may breathe once more Clear cock-crow airs across some valley dim With whispering trees. While dawn along the rim Of night's horizon flows in lakes of fire, Come down ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... grew more placid (Optimists should not be acid.) "Come in!" I exclaimed—"confound you! Pray stand drumming there no more." But the donkey still kept tapping. "Dolt!" I muttered, sharply snapping, "Why the deuce do you come rapping, rapping at my Office-door? Yet not 'enter' when you're told to?"—here I opened wide the door— Darkness there, and ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various
... all sailors lay nigh to them, restless and ravenous, drumming against the cliffs ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... being hearde to the other side of the creeke." For aiding and abetting this noisy and disgraceful spree, and also for partaking in it, Drummer Basset was fined L5, which must have been more than his yearly salary, and in disgrace, and possibly in disgust, quitted drumming the New Haven good people to meeting and moved his residence to Stamford, doubtless to the relief and delight of both magistrates and people of ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... of shouting, drumming on battledores, and blowing through discordant horns, let them know, as they came up the lane, that the community was in a state of high activity; and when they reached the garden gate they were just in time to see the whole family vanish round a corner, running at full speed after ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... rain are at the pane, Shrilling, drumming without cease; And the breakers' loud refrain Gives the shuddering heart no peace. Lord of all the things that be, Pity Thou ...
— From The Lips of the Sea • Clinton Scollard
... this sounded like a gong," said Johnny, "perhaps we are near some island now; but what could they be drumming for so ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... himself of this bad language, Billy waddled to his master's chair, and climbing up by the aid of his claws and beak, soon established himself in his old position. Slivers, however, was not attending to him, as he was leaning back in his chair drumming in an absent sort of way with his lean fingers on the table. His cork arm hung down limply, and his one eye was fixed on a letter lying in front of him. This was a communication from the manager of the Pactolus Mine requesting Slivers to get him more ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... Zaccarath. Then the King shouted and the warriors sang—almost they remembered then old battle-chants. And, as they sang, the sound of the drums dwindled, and the musicians walked away backwards, and the drumming became fainter and fainter as they walked, and altogether ceased, and they blew no more on their fantastic horns. Then the assemblage beat on the floor with their palms. And afterwards the queens besought the King to send for another prophet. ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... forward, idly drumming on the polished desk, and regarded her with a sort of impersonal speculation. A little ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... he declared. "Three times a week for many months I have been drumming the fact into the handful of wooden-headed Englishmen who have deigned to come to our meetings. I have made myself a nuisance to the House of Lords and the Press. It is a terrible thing to realise how hard it is to make an Englishman reflect, so long as he is making money and having a good time.—You ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... there alone in the void, looking not very happy, and looking puzzled, and drumming upon his knee, and staring at the little bent gray woman, who was busied with her children and grandchildren, and had forgotten all about him. "But surely, Lindamira," he hears Steinvor say, "we are not yet in Heaven."—"Ah, my dear mother," replies her ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... of heralding drops, and then a steady, rhythmical drumming on the shake roof. The man smiled, with that ineffable delight in the music which no one really knows but the tiller of ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... the gallop, and the beat of hoofs rose up, dulled a little, in a wild staccato drumming. There was an insistent crunching beneath the runners, and a fine mist of snow beat against the sleigh, but the girl leaning forward, a tense figure, with nerveless hands clenched upon the reins, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... hand. When I had thrown yonder stone, I walked quietly down to the Governor's house and looked through the window. The Governor hath the Company's letters, and he and the Council—all save the reprobate Pory—sit there staring at them and drumming with their ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... they would return, and so had patiently waited, crouched in the rock hole, waist deep in water. This, perhaps, did not improve its flavour, but emu meat was worth procuring at the small cost of tainting the water with the taste of clothes. Presently I heard the drumming of the approaching birds, and, cautiously looking up, found them attentively examining the bucket and pannikin, I had left on the rock. They made such a quaint, pretty picture that unless we had really wanted meat, I should not have disturbed ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... this reply, fetched a copper poker, and, while beating on the hand-stove, she laughingly said: "I shall go on tattooing. Now mind if when the drumming ceases, you haven't accomplished your task, you'll ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... the sitting-room again, where she made a larger fire, and began drying herself. The fire soon flared up the chimney, giving the room an appearance of comfort that was doubled by contrast with the drumming of the storm without, which snapped at the window-panes and breathed into the chimney strange low utterances that seemed to be the prologue to ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... Eggleston began to be nervous. Every now and then he would walk out into the main office, interview one of the clerks as to his knowledge of Phil's whereabouts and return again to his private office, where he occupied himself drumming on the desk with the end of his gold pencil, and watching the clock. The junior had no such misgivings—none of any kind. He had a game of polo that afternoon at three, and was chiefly concerned lest the day's work might intervene. The signing of similar papers had once kept ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... a common, ordinary thing to do," protests Mrs. Garvey. "Drumming! Why, out in Kansas City I remember that the man who played the traps in our Country Club orchestra worked daytimes as a plumber. He was a ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... the delightful Mr. Good Indian off to?" Evadna stopped drumming upon the gatepost and turned toward the person she heard coming up behind her, who happened to be Gene. He stopped to light a match upon the gate and put his cigarette to work before he answered her; and Evadna touched tentatively the wide, blue ribbon wound round her arm and tied in a bow at her ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... short time the scouts knew they were in for a real drenching. The patter of the rain came heavier and thicker, until it was drumming on the fir-branches in steady streams. Soon great spots began to fall from the lower branches of the ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... the little letter when Dr. Van Buren, his classmate at the Point, his one intimate since then, and his physician now, entered the room, greeted him curtly, and stood at the window for a moment, drumming his fingers fiercely against the pane. Hamilton knew the symptoms; Van Buren was nervous and worried about something. He dropped the small envelope into his ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... "What?" I queried, still drumming away at my typewriter, copying the list of incendiary fires against the moment when the case should be complete and the story released ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... the window, where he stood looking out, idly drumming his fingers on the pane. How was it possible to break such fearful tidings as that? What a horrible calamity! He wished himself a hundred miles away, yet some one must tell her. At that moment shrill cries arose in the street outside—the familiar, distressing, almost exultant cries ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... haunts defiance; yet so bold in his indignation, he scarcely condescended to ascend beyond their reach. The long-continued, hollow tapping of the large red-headed woodpecker, or the singular subterranean sound caused by the drumming of the partridge striking his wings upon his breast to woo his gentle mate, and the soft whispering note of the little tree-creeper, as it flitted from one hemlock to another, collecting its food between the fissures ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... bringing in Zelter's little tune again and again, and then Zelter in a voice of pretended wrath cried, "Cease that tin-pan drumming and play something ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... slouching away. Presently there came the sound of a furiously galloping horse. The drumming of the hoofbeats died in ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... How is your paper coming out? I read it daily. By the way, you are getting up a report of this grand assembly, I suppose?" Editor—"No. By the way, how is your store coming on? My cook buys a good deal of you. You are here drumming ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... Williams was the talented coloured gentleman who had been extracted from small-time vaudeville by Mr. Abrahams to do a nightly speciality at the Flower Garden. He was, in fact, a trap-drummer: and it was his amiable practice, after he had done a few minutes trap-drumming, to rise from his seat and make a circular tour of the tables on the edge of the dancing-floor, whimsically pretending to clip the locks of the male patrons with a pair of drumsticks held scissor-wise. And so it came about that, just as Mr. Carmyle was bending towards ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... their mouths get very red. In connection with personal ceremonies upon assumption of the perineal band, admission to the emone (excepting, as regards this, the case of a child of very tender years), qualifying for drumming and dancing, devolution of chieftainship and nose-piercing, the person concerned, male or female, is under the same food restriction for a day prior to that of the ceremony, and as regards nose-piercing this taboo is prior ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... I had suffered from Mrs Beaufort, was very zealous that I should punish her to the utmost rigour of the law, even to drumming her out of the town; but forbearance was my best policy, so I only persuaded my colleagues to order the players to decamp, and to give the Tappit-hen notice, that it would be expedient for the future sale of her pies and porter, at untimeous ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... rose from his chair. With thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat and fingers drumming loudly on his breast he stood over the secretary, ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... faces of the four men who were gathered around the table. He knew them all. The stocky, grizzle-haired man in the centre was a plain-clothes man from headquarters, named Barlow; at the lower end of the table Reddy Curley and Haines, his partner, faced each other, Curley drumming indifferently with his fingers on the table-top, Haines scowling and chewing his lower lip, a certain coarse brutality in both their faces that was neither pleasant nor inviting; but it was the white-haired ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... blast off?" asked Tom, a note of rising hope in his voice. While the black ship had made it to Ganymede under full power without refueling, the strain might have damaged her seriously. Tom waited patiently for the reply, drumming his fingers on ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... Omnibuses careered along, every window rattling loudly; drays creaked and strained; non-descript delivery wagons tried to outrattle the omnibuses; horsemen picked their way amid the melee. The din was described as something extraordinary—hoofs drumming, wheels rumbling, oaths and shouts, and from the sidewalk the blare and bray of brass bands before the various auction shops. Newsboys and bootblacks darted in all directions. Cigar boys, a peculiar product ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... one bright evening after an exciting day, during which the prisoners, shut up as they were within the walls of the Emir's so-called palace, had gone through hours of feverish impatience, listening to the trumpeting and drumming outside accompanying the marching of the troops, but knowing nothing of what was going on save that the Egyptian army was approaching. That they had learned through Ibrahim, and it was endorsed by the officer ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... young man approached the back of the shop the general effect became more and more fantastic. On some skylight far overhead he could hear the rain drumming; but otherwise the place was completely silent, peopled only (so it seemed) by the gurgitating whorls of smoke and the bright profile of the essay reader. It seemed like a secret fane, some shrine of curious rites, and the young man's throat was tightened by a stricture which was half ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... in a groping way, to the bed, and stooped over it. Nearly at the same moment there came a scrunching blow; an unnatural shriek, accompanied by a convulsive sound, as of the motion of running, and the arms drumming on the bed, and then another blow—and silence. The diabolical surgery was over. There came a little ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... and from clime to clime, Like the roll of the wheels of the coming of time;— A sound as of cities, and sound as of swords Sharpening, and solemn and terrible words, And laughter as solemn, and thunderous drumming, A tread as if all the world were coming. And then was a lull, and soft voices sweet Call'd into music those terrible feet, Which rising on wings, lo! the earth went round To the burn of their speed with a golden sound; With a golden sound, ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... had broken now into a wild spring storm and the rain was drumming like canister on the roof of Stuart's cottage, so they did not hear the purr of a motor which stopped outside. They were without warning when the door suddenly burst open, and across the bare shoulder ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... their way to the barbarian camp. A strong gale was blowing at the time. Pan Ch'ao ordered ten of the party to take drums and hide behind the enemy's barracks, it being arranged that when they saw flames shoot up, they should begin drumming and yelling with all their might. The rest of his men, armed with bows and crossbows, he posted in ambuscade at the gate of the camp. He then set fire to the place from the windward side, whereupon a deafening noise of drums and shouting arose on the ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... uneasily at each other. Only Grimswitch continued to smile vacantly at the little old man up front, drumming his fingers on the glass table top. When the President's machine-gunning glance caught his eyes, Colihan went white. Does he know ...
— The Success Machine • Henry Slesar
... the grass leading up the mill-race, and on the pond a little scow floated in pond-lilies. All around were chestnut trees, their burrs full of fruit. Across the lane, only a few feet from the house, the ancient mill gave forth a snoring and drumming together as if the spirit of solitude was having a dance all to itself and only breathing hard. Then the crystal water, shooting the old black mill-wheel, fell off it like the beard from Duff Salter's face, and went away in pools ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... haunted Montgomery, and on this day when it seemed that things must culminate or he would go mad, he hastened again down to the Planters' Hotel and was quickly ushered to John Taylor's room. The place was filled with tobacco smoke. An electric ticker was drumming away in one corner, a telephone ringing on the desk, and messenger boys hovered outside the door ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... troops of children and old women, and they beat the drum-taps and the reveille. That fetches the pennies. Then when the New Year is well drummed in the city, they go into the country and drum for meat and porridge. The drumming in of the New ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... placard outside one said, "St. Saviour's chapel. For those who wish to rest and pray." All white marble, this little nook, gleaming softly in the gray half-light. Fanny entered, and sat down. She was quite alone. The roar and crash of the Eighth avenue L, the Amsterdam cars, the motors drumming up Morningside hill, were softened here ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... said, her little hands closing softly over the restless brown one drumming a tattoo on the window-sill, and her golden head drooping so close to Eve's, her curls mingled with her dark locks, "I could never love any one in this world again. I loved once—it was the sweetest, yet the most bitter, experience of my life. The same voice that spoke tender words to me cruelly ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... shipping the anchor and scrambling back to the cockpit as the sloop settled down on an even keel again, the squall drumming on the ropes and stays. "You've sailed a ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... the state of affairs when I began to interest myself in the state of Genoa. Seeing the populace in large numbers armed and giving up their work, the National Guard assuming an air of more importance, and constant drumming and parading and reviewing going on, I saw clearly what all this was fast coming to. And on calling on La Palavacini I seriously spoke of the prospects of Genoa, she laughed and called it Buffonata; but as you will see in the ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... the pavement, the high note of the forged steel lock-opener as it hammered the foot-board, the mellow ding-dong of the bell, the creak of the forty-and fifty-foot extensions, the rattle of the iron-shod hooks, the rat-tat-tat of the scaling ladders on the bridge and the muffled drumming of the leather helmets as they ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... nothing further, but called from the open door, "Sukey, Sukey! Suk, Suk, Suk!" A plaintive lowing responded; then the snapping sound of a cow's eager hoofs; the hoarse drumming of the milk in the bucket followed, subduing itself to the soft final murmur of the strippings in the foam. Jane carried the milk to the spring house before she reappeared in the cabin with a cup of it for ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... sight of a village, shall seat themselves under a tree, and send forward a messenger to announce their arrival and state their object. The chief then gives them a ceremonious reception, with abundance of speech-making and drumming. It is no easy matter to get away from these villages, for the chiefs esteem it an honor to have strangers with them. These delays, and the frequent heavy rains, greatly retarded ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... a thousand miles to Vyazma . . . my boy," sighed Brama-Glinsky, drumming on the window-pane. "And what do you want to ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... that the chief of the clerks has left this morning for a holiday, on the ground of his health. He is to be away a month. Now, we all know what waiting for a month means. You deliver me over to the mockery of my enemies, and it is bad enough to be drummed upon one side; drumming on both at once, monsieur, is ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... finish of the president's speech, and Preston's health was drunk amid a scene of the wildest enthusiasm. Cries of "On your pins, Preston!"—"Well bowled, sir!"—"Order!"—"Speak up!" etc., rent the air; while the pounding of fists and drumming of feet were continued until a game leg of one of the forms suddenly gave way, causing a temporary disappearance of half ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... c'est la gloire—au grabat!" said Cigarette, now grinding her pretty teeth. She was in her most revolutionary and reckless mood, drumming the rataplan with her spurred heels, and sitting smoking on the corner of old Miou-Matou's mattress. Miou-Matou, who had acquired that title among the joyeux for his scientific powers of making a tomcat into a stew so divine that you could not tell it from ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... made no reply. His thoughtful air, however, as he stood absently drumming on the window-pane, showed that the mischief-maker had not spoken in vain. By way of striking while the iron was hot, Juechziger continued: 'As I was on my way to your worship's house this morning, I saw the Herr Burgomaster Richzenhayn going to call on the commandant, no doubt meaning to offer ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... in the midst of the drumming and piping and chanting and firing of guns and pistols and scampering of horses which constitute a religious festival in Egypt. The last day of the moolid of Abu-l-Hajjaj fell on the 1st January so you came to wish me 'May all the year be good to thee' ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... nevertheless, tolerably well, and for an hour or two was very hardly used and roughly handled by the young MacStingers: who in their childish frolics, did a little damage also to the glazed hat, by sitting in it, two at a time, as in a nest, and drumming on the inside of the crown with their shoes. At length the Captain sorrowfully dismissed them: taking leave of these cherubs with the poignant remorse and grief of a man who was ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... the Mataafa camp, which stood on a high plateau overlooking Apia. Below them the search-lights of the men-of-war moved restlessly about, shining at times with a bewildering brilliancy into their very faces; and from the little war-encompassed capital there rose a distant drumming and bugling as the missionary boy king, unsafe even under the guns of Britain and America, took his precautions against a night attack. After the stillness of Oa there was something confusing in the stir and bustle of Mataafa's big camp—in the constant passing of armed men, the change of ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... hues, of music, and ceaseless hum of human enjoyment! For miles around, the wandering peasants beheld the wide, misty, prismatic circle that overarched the enchanted ground, and heard the silver harmonies and drumming thunders of the orchestras floating over the woods, and filling the void darkness with sounds of unseen festivities. In such a scene all are in good-humor—all wear their best looks. Each finds his appropriate amusement. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... find out! I shall find out!" was drumming in his temples when the council rose; and, without a word or a backward glance, he was the first to ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... these words I cast aside my pen, and, throwing myself upon the bed, buried my face in the pillow. I could feel the drumming pulses in my ears, and my heart swelled till it was like to burst within my bosom. Though I pressed my hot fingers against my close-shut eyes, I still could see my poor love's white, set face, the great hollows in his bearded cheeks, the ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... receipt of my telegraphed report of his prompt action against Malabanan's brigands." As the Major did not take it but continued to regard him steadily out of brooding eyes, the Governor returned the commission to the basket and fell to drumming his desk. ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... like that in this town," he reflected, drumming idly on the table with his pencil. "Who is she? I've seen her there for months, and I ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... she sat forward in the cab drumming idly with her forefingers upon the apron. In a few minutes he came back. His appearance was quite sufficient. He was very pale. The change in him was so ludicrous ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... cleanness. Keeper of the strong rain, Drumming on the mountain; Lord of the small rain That restores the earth in newness; Keeper of the clean rain, Hear ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... frequently. He drank large quantities of tea, he walked about aimlessly, and when he sat down he did not budge for a long time. He spent some time drumming on the window with his finger-tips quietly. In his listless wanderings round about the table he caught sight of his own face in the looking-glass and that arrested him. The eyes which returned his stare were the most unhappy eyes ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... farmer. 'Ay, it is a pleasant bit. It is pleasant even here, if one had time, with the brook drumming in that black pool, and the green things hanging all about the rocks, and, dear heart, to see the very pebbles! all turned to gold and precious stones! But you have come to that time of life, sir, when, if you will excuse me, you must look to have the rheumatism ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... however, put on Limby's plate, but he kept on drumming as before. At last he drummed the bottom of the mug into the soft pudding, to which it stuck, and by which means it was scattered ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... take his cue immediately. He sat drumming a heavy tattoo on the tabletop, forehead corrugated in a frown of intensive thought. When he did speak it was in a manner ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... sure. Don't stop me, old fellow; good-bye,' and Johnnie ran off and up to his room as fast as he could go. He had not been there more than five minutes, when there was a sound of little toddling steps along the passage, and two fat hands came drumming on the door. 'What do you want, baby?' said Johnnie, rising ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... seaman's hospital in Liverpool, that well-known convention of ocean-travel, which is sure at some time or other, to enlist all the talent on board every English steamer in some sort of public appeal. He was not very clear how he came to be on the committee for drumming up talent for the occasion; his distinction seemed to have been conferred by a popular vote in the smoking room, as nearly as he could make out; but here he was, and he was counting upon Miss Claxon to help him out. He said Mrs. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... ship was only a shower, compared with this storm in the tropical jungle. The rain was falling in a solid mass as if poured from a gigantic bucket, while the red lightning blazed without a pause. There was no wind; it was the weight of the water that made the hut tremble—of rain drumming so steadily that even the thunder ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... symbolized something which the thought of war had stirred awake in his heart. He had a hot sense of love and pride and pity all mingled, he felt somehow as if the city were his, and as if an enemy's hand had been stretched out to spoil it. The drumming, the flag-waving, and the noise of bugles were still astir in his imagination, but the river had called something else to life behind their glamour. It did not occur to him to call it love of country, yet ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... He sat silent, drumming a tattoo on his chair-arm with long, strong fingers; and when he resumed his argument, it was with an entire absence of ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... say? My drumming says quite enough. You have known for over a year what I think about it. At the time when Innstetten's letter came, a flash from a clear sky, I was of your opinion. But that was half an eternity ago. Am I to play the grand inquisitor ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... that the lady does not command our favor," declared the spokesman, very pale now and drumming nervously with his fingers on the edge of a blotting pad. "Those of us who have met her are charmed with her manners and appearance, and our only regret is that Providence did not ordain that her birthplace should be on the right side of ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... the howls, yelpings, and lugubrious songs that resounded from without. One of them, however, by some artifice, contrived to escape, hid behind a bush, and saw the whole solemnity: the procession of the medicine-men and the bedaubed and befeathered warriors; the drumming, the dancing, the stamping; the wild lamentation of the women, as they gashed the arms of the young girls with sharp mussel-shells and flung the blood into the air with dismal outcries. A scene of ravenous feasting followed, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a mighty hour. No sounds of drumming, No flying flags, no heralds do appear; No Wise Men of the East proclaim His coming; Yet He is coming—nay, our Christ is here! And man shall leave his fever dreams behind him; Those dreams of avarice, and lust, and sin, And seek his Lord; yea, he shall seek and find Him, In his own ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... imperiously toward the door and turned his back to them. With drooping heads, pale and trembling, MM. de Lepel and de Malsburg left the room. Napoleon stepped to the window, and was vigorously drumming a ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... his caftan, and betook himself—looking, in his shoes and stockings, very like a lean chicken—with his wife, to something resembling a cupboard. Two little Jews lay down on the floor beside the cupboard, like a couple of dogs. But Taras did not sleep; he sat motionless, drumming on the table with his fingers. He kept his pipe in his mouth, and puffed out smoke, which made the Jew sneeze in his sleep and pull his coverlet over his nose. Scarcely was the sky touched with the first faint gleams of dawn than he pushed ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... same story!" said the judge, angrily drumming his fingers on the desk. "You refuse to answer. But even in your own interests you must have the courage to adopt some definite theory. Well, would you have been glad if your son had taken his ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... said M'Iver, drumming with a horn spoon on his knee, and winking and smiling very friendly to the little fellows in a row in the bed, who, all but the oldest, thawed to this humour of the stranger. "It must be a task getting ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... men from town when the storm caught me. You know what I mean—not drumming them out of the city, but merely pursuing them in this general direction. I wonder if by any chance you happened to pass them on ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... however, and hardly to be identified with the sleek, glib fellow who had interviewed Kirkwood in the afternoon. His flabby cheeks were ashen and trembling, and upon the back of his chair the fat white fingers were drumming incessantly an inaudible tattoo ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... injury, this stout woman deemed it prudent to go off into hysterics, and began by uttering a yell that would have put to shame a Comanchee Indian, and did more damage, perhaps, to the nerves of her sensitive hearers than the accident itself. She followed it up by drumming heavily on the ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... for the moment nervously drumming upon the table. He knew that the other was purposely disparaging the property and trying to tempt him into an equal stake; and yet he suffered himself to be tempted. The luck might this time be with him. It were worth while to try it, at least. If he lost, it would be but one more buffet ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... fires kindled by the soldiers as they make their bivouacs blaze up in the gloom, and throw their glares a long way, revealing on the slopes of the hills many suffering ones who have not yet been carried in. The last victorious regiment comes up from the rear, fifing and drumming ere it reaches its resting-place the last bars of "The Downfall ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... old fellow. He never jumped nor shied. He preferred walking to any other gait. Without a whip Johnnie Green had hard work to make him trot. It took a great deal of drumming against his ribs by Johnnie Green's heels to induce him to ...
— The Tale of Pony Twinkleheels • Arthur Scott Bailey
... their drumming, slid to the desk edge, tightened there, and a whiteness crept into his face. Then, with an effort, he jerked himself erect ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... only a thought, that came that day In the midst of the muffled drumming And funeral music and sad display, That I knew was right and becoming Only a thought as the mourning train Moved, column after column, Bearing the dead to the burial plain With ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... she was bid. The sunlight left the hollow, but stayed bright upon the hills beyond. It was August, but in a treetop somewhere a solitary bird was singing. Nearer the earth the crickets and cicadas began their evening concert, a shrill drumming in the warm, still air. There was a scent of dry grass, a feeling of summer at its full. Dewy freshness, tender green, mist of bloom, and a thousand songs were far away, and yet upon the bench beneath ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... down there?" asked Madame Beattie peremptorily, with the air of drumming him up to some task that would have to be reckoned with in the end. "Come, Jeff, why don't you ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... Owen sat drumming on his desk, lost in thought. "By George, that's a queer case. Her other reason is the real one. I ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... still, the rain pounding down on their plastic headgear, holding rifles ready and straining their ears for some sound other than the drumming of rain. ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... flew away into the wood. That night a drumming noise was heard in the wood. The people were afraid. They could not ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... second of the three young men—the one looking out of the window, drumming idly on the glass, and continually tossing back his head to clear the long black hair from his brow, over which it hung in an incurable cowlick—was a short, compact, nervous person, twenty-five years old. Mr. Overtop had been educated for the law, but, finding the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... elation of the bright, clear, bracing air, he whirred his wings in loud defiance. Then, giving fuller vent to this expression of vigor, just as a colt frisks to show how well he feels, he whirred yet more loudly, until, unwittingly, he found himself drumming, and tickled with the discovery of his new power, thumped the air again and again till he filled the near woods with the loud tattoo of the fully grown cock-partridge. His brother and sister heard and looked ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... had elapsed, and the gong of the station dining-room below was adding its raucous clamor to the drumming thunder of the incoming train from Green Butte, when the vice-president concluded his outline sketch of the Red ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... down in the clerk's room. Lord Hartledon went into the other, and stood drumming on the window-pane, as he gazed out upon the ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Alex rose to his knees, and began creeping forward to investigate. When half way a loud creak of the boards brought him to a halt with his heart in his mouth. But the loud conversation below continued, and heartily thanking the drumming rain on the roof overhead, Alex moved on, and ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... family and had been given the Emperor Napoleon's sister in marriage, and had really a very good presence, and wore his fine black hair in curls, and would shortly enter the city in state and would certainly please all the ladies. Meanwhile, the drumming continued in the street, and I went and stood outside the door and watched 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 War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... brooded on it all the week, hearing the rain drumming on the roof outside, smoking countless cigarettes, harassed, balky and beaten. He thought of it now, his hands deep in his pockets, his chest hollowed, his sullen eyes surveying the hill opposite, up which a cable car crawled like a large wet beetle. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... could not bury her dead. She rode about the veld, she sat by the lake and watched the wild fowl, or at night heard them flighting over her in flocks. She listened to the cooing of the doves, the booming of the bitterns in the reeds, and the drumming of the snipe high in air. She counted the game trekking along the ridge till her mind grew weary. She sought consolation from the breast of Nature and found none; she sought it in the starlit skies, and oh! they were very far away. Death reigned within ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... overhauled; the tale of Topelius and the trade was told in appreciative ears and cemented their acquaintance. Trent's suspicions, thus finally disposed of, were succeeded by a fit of profound thought, during which he sat lethargic and stern, looking at and drumming on the table. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... head; interruptions worried him, for he lived maddeningly, like a man that has a drumming in his ear. ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... great questions of the game, namely, the price of three dozen counters, and whether, all things considered, it would be better to call the round counters or the oblong half-a-dozen each. Miss Browning, drumming the pack of cards on the table, and quite ready to begin dealing, decided the matter by saying, 'Rounds are sixes, and three dozen counters cost sixpence. Pay up, if you please, and let us begin at once.' Cynthia sate between Roger and ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... neither did she purr. They must have smelt her, though. Anyway, she seemed to be a little island in the mist—the faint, faint, ethereal dew-mist—where nobody walked. You could hear them—a rustle here, a squeak there, a thud somewhere else, a displaced leaf, a cracked twig—this only once—a drumming, a patter, a sniff, a snuffle, a sigh; but they all passed by on the other side, so to say, and gave the silver tabby room to think. Apparently cats are not considered good company in the wild; lonely creatures, they ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... overlooks the road. The child had seated herself at my feet near my table, and was playing softly, drumming on her knees. I was hard at work on my seventeenth chapter, where Protrap Singh, the hero, had just caught Kanchanlata, the heroine, in his arms, and was about to escape with her by the third story window of the castle, when ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... the Carnival's coming, Oh Thomas Moore, The Carnival's coming, Oh Thomas Moore, Masking and humming, Fifing and drumming, Guitarring and strumming, Oh ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... he did he would be hanged, and as he wished to live a little longer he restrained himself. He gave me a scowl, which showed how ready he was for the crime if he could commit it with impunity. On another occasion most vigorous drumming was carried on above our heads, which made speaking and hearing impossible. As after many years spent in Benares I cannot recollect any more violent acts than those I have mentioned, the reader may infer how little reason we have to complain of ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... Valentine's admiration over his breast, and, modestly scratching his elbows, looked at young Thorpe with an expression of utter bewilderment. "Yes! decidedly the most magnificent muscular development I ever remember studying," reiterated Mr. Blyth, drumming with his fingers on the table, and concentrating the whole of his critical acumen in one eye by totally ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... him. For so many nights to come there would be none of it; but ceaselessly the drumming of the engines, quiver of the screw, and wash of the water against the ship's side.—All the same he did not quite like the colour of the moon or that frayed flattened edge of it westward. Why is there always something a trifle ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet |
