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More "Drumming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of a king; his shoulders were high and his arms long, reaching to his knees: his nails grew to such a length as to curl round the ends of his fingers, and his feet resembled those of a tiger. He was drumming upon a skull, and incessantly exclaiming, "Ho, Kali! ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... in amazement. Rolf paid no heed, but went on, bawling and drumming and staring upward into vacant space. After a few minutes Skookum scratched and whined at the shanty door. Rolf rose, took his knife, cut a bunch of hair from Skookum's neck and burned it in the torch, then went on singing with ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... had failed to notice the competition of his drumming, he drummed still louder. Whereupon Mr. Slosson stopped drumming. Edward Henry gazed amiably around. Right at the back of the room—before a back-window that gave on the whitewashed wall—a man was rapidly putting his signature to a number of papers. But Mr. Slosson had ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... that you'd been sent for to the Maginnis child, and that you have got relations that go among rich people, I says to myself, she's my partner. I'll furnish the science, and I'll do the talking, and the drumming-up business, and the collecting bills, and all that; and you, with your stylish ways, don't you know? and your good looks, and your family connections, and all that, will help me to get in where I want to get in. Once in, ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... ahead with a head sea. By ten at night heavy sprays were flying and drumming over the forecastle; the companion of Steerage No. 1 had to be closed, and the door of communication through the second cabin thrown open. Either from the convenience of the opportunity, or because we had already ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seat quietly at the table. Sit firmly in your chair, without lolling, leaning back, drumming, or any other uncouth action. Unfold your napkin and lay it in your lap, eat soup delicately with a spoon, holding a piece of bread in your left hand. Be careful to make no noise in chewing or ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... crowd, lay on the deck farther aft. One was on top of the other, his fingers clutching the gullet of his helpless opponent. The agony of the man underneath found expression only in the drumming heels that beat a tattoo on the floor. The spasmodic feet were shod in Oxford tans of an ultra-fashionable cut. No doubt the owner of the smart footwear had been pulled down as he was escaping to shout ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... 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 on with admiration and surprise, ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... very unmusical voice, but fortunately he is aware of this deficiency, and his only attempt at music is drumming with his beak upon a ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... stood with one hand touching the table, the tips of his fingers drumming the rhythm of a song he hummed to himself. The boy's back was toward him. Waring's gaze traveled from his son's head to ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... he soon managed to catch Juan, when, holding tightly by the reins, the guide vented his displeasure and took his revenge by thoroughly drumming the poor brute's ribs with a stout stick, after which Tom mounted, and our journey for the next two ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... you itch! Well, perhaps our decision in this respect has added to the general fun of existence. In life's everyday, one doesn't notice these things, maybe. One has become so habituated to "Father" drumming "Colonel Bogey" on the chair-arm; or "Little Willee" playing "shakes" with two ha'pennies and a pen-knife—that one has ceased to pay any attention to these minor irritations. And, when we are among strangers, we are so busy watching ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... the fifth man standing behind the fourth at the northern side. Four drummers with small drums and an indefinite number of drummers around a large one, at a signal from the medicine-man in charge, who sings, begin drumming. The personated gods dance all about the circle, making motions with their sticks as if picking up and throwing something away, followed by blowing with the breath for the purpose of expelling evil spirits from their midst. While this is going on the fifth masker, ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... the drumming of the native pianoforte virtuosos. I fear that the newspapers will reproach me with the same thing, especially as the daughter of an editor is said to drum frightfully. However, it does not matter; as this cannot ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... is it?' he replied, showing no curiosity about it, or desire to look into it, but kept drumming on the table—a habit of his that was very annoying to me at times, but of which he was not aware. When 'A Year in the Fields' came out, he looked at some of the pictures, ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... settled the matter for me. The fellow was stooping with his head forward thrusting the boy through a tiny window, when I came down upon him just where the neck joins the spine. He gave a kind of whistling cry, dropped upon his face, and rolled three times over, drumming on the grass with his heels. His little companion flashed off in the moonlight, and was over the wall in a trice. As for me, I sat yelling at the pitch of my lungs and nursing one of my legs, which felt as if a red-hot ring were ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of answer, I will tell you the circumstance I alluded to, which was this: Last night, as I was crossing about town drumming up friends to attend the meeting tomorrow, seeing we are expecting a hard tussle, I met a man that I could have sworn was John Peters, if I had not known the fellow was close in Northampton jail; and as it was, I could swear it was his exact ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... pleasure, Halfman favored him with a military salute, and, crossing the moat by the now restored bridge, disappeared inside the house. Evander hastened to clothe himself, a task which he had but partially accomplished when the drumming of a pair of hands upon the door informed him that his custodian waited at the threshold. He opened the door, and Halfman walked in wearing for the occasion a manner in which good-fellowship and condescension, with the consideration of a noble victor for a noble vanquished, ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... French table stood empty save for a vase of shadowy flowers; Sir Peter was on his knees, candle in hand, searching the endless lines of book-shelves in the library. A strange suspicion stole into my heart which set it drumming on my ribs. Had Elsin Grey removed the pistols? Had she wit enough ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... you may be right," the Lensman pondered, his fingers drumming quietly upon his desk. "And you are not afraid of death—now—even subconsciously. But tell me, Storm, please, that you won't ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... to recognize Calendar—a badly frightened Calendar now, 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
... sent the slab crashing down into its place. Be that as it might, I seemed to see that woman's figure, still clutching at her treasure-trove, and flying wildly up the winding stair with her ears ringing perhaps with the muffled screams from behind her, and with the drumming of frenzied hands against the slab of stone which was choking her faithless ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... bade the intruders on his quiet 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 ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... was being shaved. A woman with a razor was shearing her eyebrows into a delicate line, and all round her forehead trimming disorderly hairs. Four women, seated on their heels in front of her, were fidgeting over her face; she, impassive as a log in their hands. A vast deal of singing and drumming went on all the time, a row of musicians keeping it up all round the room. The girl was washed; then her hair, magnificent black hair down to her heels, knotted in two great bows on either side of her head. Over these, gold ornaments like wings were fixed, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... 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 a ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... gentleman, with one hand in his breeches pocket, and the fingers of the other drumming a disconsolate rub-a-dub upon the window glass of an elegant mansion near Boston Common, is the personage I wish to call your attention to, friend reader, for the space of a few moments. The facts of my story are commonplace, and thereby the more ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... fingers were drumming the table. He did not fancy himself as the president of a great company in whose works not ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... 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 ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... Holmes was leaning back in his chair after his whimsical protest, and was unfolding his morning paper in a leisurely fashion, when our attention was arrested by a tremendous ring at the bell, followed immediately by a hollow drumming sound, as if someone were beating on the outer door with his fist. As it opened there came a tumultuous rush into the hall, rapid feet clattered up the stair, and an instant later a wild-eyed and frantic young man, pale, disheveled, and ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... determined that she was to open a little shop, and Jason advanced her one hundred taler. All the while he had the air of a made man. He held his head high, and his fat little cheeks glowed with health. He was fond of drumming with his fingers on the window pane and of whistling. The tune he whistled was the Marseillaise, but that tune was not known ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... time the officer looked at the sodden turf, and at the swollen Andelle beyond it, which was overflowing its banks; and he was drumming a waltz from the Rhine on the window-panes, with his fingers, when a noise made him turn round; it was his second in command, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... 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
... me," said the prince, dissatisfied, drumming with his fingers on the bench. "He is not here to please me, but to guard thy property. For that matter, these people do not concern ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... says he, 'when eaten after the Arab fashion, stewed with butter. They tasted somewhat like shrimps, but with less flavour.' In the wilderness of Judea, various kinds abound at all seasons, and spring up with a drumming sound, at every step, suddenly spreading their bright hind wings, of scarlet, crimson, blue, yellow, white, green, or brown, according to the species. They were 'clean,' under the Mosaic Law, and hence could be eaten by ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... a motion like drumming upon the table with his fingers, upon which I asked him whether he could beat a drum? To which he replied, 'Yes, sir, as well as any man in Scotland; for every Thursday night I beat all points to a sort of people ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... 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
... will fight him with cannon—or with soap-bubbles," answered De Malfort, lolling back in his chair, tilted at an angle of forty-five, and drumming a gay dance tune with his finger-tips on the table. "'Tis a foolish imbroglio from first to last: and only his lordship and I know how foolish. He came here to provoke a quarrel, and I must indulge him. Come, Lady Lucretia"—he turned to his fair friend, as he unbuckled ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... the rat-tat-tat. We all gazed expectantly at the closed door. Glancing at Holmes I saw his face turn rigid, and he leaned forward in intense excitement. Then suddenly came a low gurgling, gargling sound and a brisk drumming upon woodwork. Holmes sprang frantically across the room and pushed at the door. It was fastened on the inner side. Following his example, we threw ourselves upon it with all our weight. One hinge snapped, then the other, and down came the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... in July and on any mild misty morning, standing on the mound within the moat I would listen to the sounds from the wide open plain, and they were sounds of spring—the constant drumming and rhythmic cries of the spur-wing lapwings engaged in their social meetings and "dances," and the song of the pipit soaring high up and pouring out its thick prolonged strains as it slowly ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... but cackling tones from his thin lips, through which shone a few fanglike teeth. By some incomprehensible cooerdination of muscular movements he contrived to make sound simultaneously his curious armoury of instruments, and the whistling, screeching, scratching, drumming, wheezing, and tinkling of metal were appalling. But it was rhythmic, and at intervals the edge of a tune could be discerned, cutting sharply through the dense cloud of vibrations, like the prow of a boat cleaving the fog. Baki, his face red and swollen by his ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... man said. "There is trumpeting and drumming enough by that time, and no one could sleep longer if they ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... enjoy. How much of my enjoyment springs from my knowledge I do not know. The joy of knowing is very great; the delight of picking up the threads of meaning here and there, and following them through the maze of confusing facts, I know well. When I hear the woodpecker drumming on a dry limb in spring or the grouse drumming in the woods, and know what it is all for, why, that knowledge, I suppose, is part of my enjoyment. The other part is the associations that those sounds ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... industriously chasing two 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 ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... distinction to be tambourine; his expression indicating that this is the proudest day of his life. Every time the drum begins to rattle he flourishes his tail, and when each little ceremony is over he moves on to a fresh place with a jaunty air, as if he were aware that all this drumming and fuss were especially intended for his entertainment. No condemned wretch ever made his last appearance in ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... the laugh against his own critics, whom he professes to recognize on this May morning, as flocking into his garden in the guise of sweeps. He does not, he says, grudge them their fun or their one holiday of the year, the less so that their rattling and drumming may give him some inkling how music sounds; and he flings them, by way of a gift, the story he has just told, bidding them dance, and "dust" his "jacket" for a little while. But that done, he bids them clear off, lest his housemaid ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... 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 the souls ...
— From The Lips of the Sea • Clinton Scollard
... a distant window at the far end of the hall, whence all the front approaches to the house could be seen, he stood drumming on the glass and fixedly looking out. Sir Wilfrid, with an ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his escort. "Unbar the doors, gentlemen," he said. The blood was drumming in his ears, but his eye was clear and steady, and he noted with curious detachment the comic agony of the fat porter's face, and the strain and swell of the equerry's muscles as he ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... his back on the performers, and followed us to the house. So absorbed were the spectators in the dancing—if dancing it could be called—that they did not perceive our departure. We could hear the shrieks and shouts of laughter and applause, the drumming on tom-toms, and the sound of the horns until a late hour in the night. We had evidence of many barbarous customs of the natives, which I have not mentioned. I do not say that they are more savage, or rather fierce, than people of other parts of the ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... 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 ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... reign of Charles II, among working artisans of London, has been joined successively by the dead of past centuries in unbroken retrogression until now it embraces all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam and is drumming up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of Chaos and Formless Void. The order was founded at different times by Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucious, Thothmes, and Buddha. Its emblems and symbols have been found ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... drumming of the distant horses grew louder and louder with inconceivable rapidity, and the cavalcade of police rushed by below them in the lane, almost with the roar and rattle ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... compartment of the next car forward sat a very young man, all alone. He looked at once sulky and frightened. He wasn't smoking, but was drumming on the window sill with his finger nails. He had a gardenia in his button-hole, and was dressed evidently in his very best suit—a handsome dark gray, over a malaga-grape-colored waistcoat. In his necktie was ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... commented. "Very interesting, indeed!" He glanced towards the communicator, then returned his gaze to Telzey, drumming his fingers lightly ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... upstairs. As minute after minute passed, until at last a whole quarter of an hour elapsed, and neither servant nor cloak appeared, the young man lost his patience, though it was not easily disturbed, and when the door at last opened serious peril threatened the leaden panes on which he was drumming loudly with his fingers. Wilhelm doubtless heard it, yet he drummed with redoubled vehemence, to show the Italian that the time was growing long to him. But he hastily withdrew his fingers from the glass, for a girl's musical voice ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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 ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... sat drumming on his desk, lost in thought. "By George, that's a queer case. Her other reason is the real one. I wonder what ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... Woodpecker should succeed in finding it, he never could disturb Solomon by drumming upon the haystack. If Reddy tried that trick, his bill would merely ...
— The Tale of Solomon Owl • Arthur Scott Bailey
... shallow, one-sided circle of bent wood covered with tightly stretched moose skin. He showed them how the Indian drummer held this, straining it tight with thongs stretched from finger to thumb, and making the music by drumming with the ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... prodigies of valor, unmatched in history or song. Here was the sturdy Stoffel Brinkerhoff brandishing his quarter-staff, like the giant Blanderon his oak-tree (for he scorned to carry any other weapon), and drumming a horrific tune upon the hard heads of the Swedish soldiery. There were the Van Kortlandts, posted at a distance, like the Locrian archers of yore, and plying it most potently with the long-bow, for which they were so justly renowned. On a rising knoll were gathered the valiant ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... between my clinched teeth, drumming with my fingers impatiently on the table before me, and ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... warrior. On this occasion he listened with peculiar impatience. He sat with one arm a-kimbo, the other elbow on a table, the hand holding on to the small pipe he was pettishly puffing; his legs crossed, drumming with one foot on the ground and casting every now and then the side glance of a basilisk at the prosing captain. At length the latter spoke of Kidd's having ascended the Hudson with some of his crew, to land his plunder ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... the gallery, listening subconsciously for the drumming of Wiley's racing motor up the road, she ran over in her mind the circumstances of his visit; and she could explain them all but one. Why, after failing of his mission, and narrowly escaping her mother's gun, had he waved his hand and smiled so gayly as he thundered away up the street? Had he other ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... his elbows on his knees, gently tapping the floor with the ferrule of his slim walking-stick; Garlock, the scientist, had dropped into the depths of a huge leather chair and leaned back in it comfortably, his legs crossed, one boot swinging gently; Campbell stood behind this chair, drumming on the back occasionally with the fingers of one hand, speaking to Bennett over Garlock's shoulder, and from time to time turning to Tremlidge for corroboration and support of what ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... the small, brown fingers Gleaning them one by one, With the partridge drumming near her In the forest bare and dun, And the jet-black squirrel, winking His saucy, jealous eye At those tiny, pilfering fingers, From his sly nook ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... snow comes down! I thought it would never snow at all this winter. Just look at it! Now that's what I call tip-top," said Tom Chandler, gazing at the fast-whitening landscape, and drumming a cheerful tattoo on the ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... hunt the loamy swale And trail The snipe, their cunning wiles o'ercoming; And oft will flush the bevied quail, And hear the partridge slowly drumming Dull echoes in ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... 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. Milray had told ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... had been too absorbed in his drumming to notice the small quantity of flour which had been left in the basket. It was shaken out with each beat of the drum-sticks, and now lay thick on the velvet cover of the chair. Joseph got a whipping for his thoughtlessness, but that was nothing uncommon for children in the eighteenth ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... length chosen; but she had yet to complete her freight and secure a sufficient number of passengers. Days were consumed in drumming up a cargo. This was a tormenting delay to me, who was about to make my first voyage, and who, boy-like, had packed my trunk on the first mention of the expedition. How often that trunk had to be unpacked and repacked ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... he felt the man's injured stare. Mr. Granice had always been so mild-spoken to his people—no doubt the odd change in his manner had already been noticed and discussed below stairs. And very likely they suspected the cause. He stood drumming on the writing-table till he heard the servant go out; then he threw himself into a chair, propping his elbows on the table and resting his chin on ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... I loathe it. The everlasting drumming of the sea puts me on edge. It's as bad as living within sound of the elevated railway. And at night the frogs on the land side of the house add to the racket and make a row like a factory in full blast. I'd rather be condemned to a hospital ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... river You, they reached the city of Katagum, when a servant of the governor met them with a present, and, accompanied by a band of horsemen with drummers drumming and two bards singing the praises of their master, they entered the city. Here they remained, while the caravan ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... good ones too—high power hunting rifles for big game—lever action, automatic. In every igloo he found men stretched out asleep, and this on a splendid day for hunting. They were but waiting for the night, which they would spend in wild singing, tom-tom drumming and ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... comparing them with the dates already known to him, and with Fullaway's messages in reply. Eventually he put all the papers together, arranging them in sequence. He laid them on the table between Fullaway and himself, and for a moment or two sat reflectively drumming the tips of his ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... 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 ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... the 2nd August introduced on board a visitor of a new description. Through the heavy tropical rain which had been pouring almost incessantly since the arrival of the Sumter, covering the calm water of the harbour with little dancing jets, and drumming on the steamer's decks the most unmusical of tattoos, a little dingy was seen approaching, and in due time brought alongside of the Confederate man-of-war the master of a Baltimore brig, which, was lying at anchor some ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... 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 Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... head a trifle, and lifted his heavy lids to look at her, which so unnerved Miss Georgie that she turned and ran to the office. When she had sent the message she sat drumming upon the table while she waited ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... the great dim ocean. Mother came home from church, and said young Maurice was there, and inquired about me. He hoped I did not take cold; his friend Redmond had been hoarse ever since our ride, and had passed most of the time in his own room, drumming on the window-pane and whistling dirges. Mother dropped her acute eyes on me, while she was telling me this; but I yawned all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... invitation, Musyer Fransoir, who has stood confessed, ascends the narrow side steps which give entrance to the cottage, and vanishes through a diminutive door. He appears again hatless, and beckons his companions, who follow his lead with alacrity. Soon, a hollow drumming, rattling, and grating, is heard, varied by the occasional twang of an exceedingly light guitar making vain efforts to promote harmony. A shuffling of slippered feet, and voices singing, signify that a dance is pending. Everybody—meaning myself and my neighbours—moves ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... girl. The voice of the rapids had changed its tone now, for a cataract was drumming upon the after-deck and there was a crashing and a smashing as the piles of boxes came tumbling down. The scow drove higher upon the reef, its bow rose until it stood at a sharp incline, and meanwhile wave after wave cut like a broach over the stern, ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... the fall training-day make up its greatest worth. It is not enough that squads of "our company" advance, fire, and fall back, the drummer drumming his loudest all the while. It is mere boy's play to march in single and double files or in platoons. We are to meet the companies from the other towns at the muster, and they must be forced to admit our superiority ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... of late, I fancy. I must make up for lost time now." And sitting down at his table, he turned over the papers upon it, and took up a quill pen. But he did not begin to write for some minutes. He sat frowning at the paper, biting the feathers of his pen, drumming with his fingers on the table. And after a time he muttered to himself, "If any man harms Lesley, I'll wring his neck—that's all;" which did not sound as though he were giving to his literary work all the attention ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Home Missionary Board for someone to hold services at least once a fortnight. Later the "big meadow" so long coveted by a New York family as a building site was sacrificed to fill the empty war chest, and, temporarily in funds, she hired a boy to drive her about the country drumming up ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... 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, ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... became apparent that there was another letter inside, at the superscription of which the Major having looked, put it in his pocket, and turning round to the mantel-piece, with his back to the others, began drumming against the fender with ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... will yield a sufficient number of resemblances, in killed, wounded, and missing, in the elemental matter of hatred, or, if you choose to give it a milder name, rivalry. These things are of the essence of war, and the manifestations run parallel even in the finer lines. One cock-pheasant finds the drumming of another cock-pheasant a very irritating sound, Chanticleer objects to the note of Chanticleer, and the more articulate human being is rasped by the voice of his neighbor. The Attic did not like the broad Boeotian speech. ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... have Mateo." Captain Riley sat drumming his fingers gently on the table, studying Johnny with his chin dropped a little so that he looked up under his eyebrows, which grew long, unruly hairs ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... dealt out to them by their former persecutors and become a tribe of nomads and serfs. But to these Ulster immigrants such a choice was no choice at all. They knew themselves strong men, who had made the most of opportunity despite almost superhuman obstacles. The drumming of their feet along the banks of the Shenandoah, or up the rivers from Charleston, and on through the broad sweep of the Yadkin Valley, was a conquering people's challenge to the Wilderness which lay sleeping like an unready sentinel at the ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... a few moments sufficed to restore my self-confidence; and without further hesitation I dived under the inner little fan-shaped fall—which was there, indeed, as Camille had described it—and recovered my balance with pulses drumming thicker than I ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... the honey-bee, Flying now so merrily Here and there with busy hum— Humming, drumming, drumming, drum. Never idle, never still, ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various
... embodied thanksgivings for the past and prayers for the future lives of every individual present, adapted to their several cases, as far as the elder could guess at them from appearances. This grace might not have ended so soon as it did, had it not been for the somewhat impatient drumming of his knife-handle on the table with which Captain Holdernesse accompanied the latter half of the ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... among its foliage, and if you eat of this fruit, you will grow wise in the wisdom of birds. You will know where the oven-bird secretes her nest, and where the wood-cock dances in the air at night; the drumming-log of the ruffed grouse will be easy to find, and you will see the dark lodges of the evergreen thickets inhabited by hundreds of warblers. There will be no dead silence for you in the forest, any longer, but you will hear sweet and ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... oathes 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 the ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... time he had set foot there. So great was his luck at the time, that he had not been forced to go ashore in the usual way drumming up cargo. The shippers had come off begging him to become their carrier, and he had muleted them in heavy freights accordingly. So he stepped into the town with many of the feelings of a conqueror, and demanded to be led to the office of a man with whom he had ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... people at the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races; and Judge Douglas evidently is basing his chief hope upon the chances of his being able to appropriate the benefit of this disgust to himself. If he can by much drumming and repeating fasten the odium of that idea upon his adversaries, he thinks he can struggle through the storm. He therefore clings to this hope as a drowning man to the last plank. He makes an occasion for lugging it in, from the opposition to the Dred Scott decision. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... leaders detect the first streaks of gray coming up in the east. The national council can now properly meet. Like their two chiefs, these men are prompt. The whips had been out over the city drumming up the members for this extraordinary session. There seems to have been a full attendance. Jesus, still bound, is led through the streets; followed by the mixed rabble, to the meeting hall, probably in the ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... McEachern continued his drumming. "Don't think there's been anything underhand about this," said Jimmy. "She absolutely refused to do anything unless you gave your consent. She said you had been partners all her life, and she was going to do ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 Sally in an access of manly ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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
... 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
... neglected it a good deal of late, I fancy. I must make up for lost time now." And sitting down at his table, he turned over the papers upon it, and took up a quill pen. But he did not begin to write for some minutes. He sat frowning at the paper, biting the feathers of his pen, drumming with his fingers on the table. And after a time he muttered to himself, "If any man harms Lesley, I'll wring his neck—that's all;" which did not sound as though he were giving to his literary work all the attention that ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... bluff, through which the trail from the settlement led, ran close up to the homestead, cutting against the pale green glow of the sky. For a few minutes there was a deep silence, intensified by the musical clash of cowbells in the distance, and then a measured, drumming sound rose softly from ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... senseless humming and drumming, old Adam, and come to the window ere thou hast drenched thy senses in the pint-pot there. See here comes a merry minstrel with his crowd, and a wench with him, that dances with bells at her ankles; and see, the yeomen and pages leave their horses ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... emotions. But presently his thoughts resolved themselves. For, throwing back his head, he gave a laugh: a laugh long, rather loud, but replete with anything in the world save mirth: suggesting strongly, indeed, the savageness of the frown which presently replaced it, when, drumming a scale upon the edge of the table in front of him, he muttered: "Conduct a symphony played by a full concert orchestra without a single rehearsal!—Good Heavens! Nicholas is turning ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... the little yellowhammer Droppeth head in winglet down. Now the rocks rise bleak and barren Through the twilight, gray and still; In the marsh-land now the heron Clappeth close his horny bill. Death-watch now begins his drumming And the fire-fly, going, coming, Weaveth zigzag lines of light,— Lines of zigzag, golden-threaded, Up the marshy valley, shaded O'er and o'er with vapors white. Now the lily, open-hearted, Of her dragon-fly deserted, Swinging on the wind so low, Gives herself, with trust audacious, To the wild ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... 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 that ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... think they went UP-stream?" She was looking squarely at him now, and he dropped his eyes. "No, the posse started in that direction, but I put them right." There was an odd light in her glance, and he felt the blood drumming in his ears. ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... portable collection on a frame.' We gather from Leech's picture that other instrumentalists were also present. Sad to relate, the drummer was not quite sober, an unfortunate state of things, certainly, but not always confined to the drumming fraternity, since in the account of the Party at Minerva House (S.B.T.) we read that amongst the numerous arrivals were 'the pianoforte player and the violins: the harp ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... which in summer oft made this duty irksome. The partridges were almost the sole birds remaining in the bleak woods, and, much as their curious ways of hiding in the snow, and the resounding thunder of their strange drumming, mystified and attracted me, I was not alert enough to catch them. All my devices of horse-hair and deer-hide snares were foolishness in their sharp eyes. The water-fowl, too—the geese, ducks, cranes, pokes, fish-hawks, and others—had flown, sometimes ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... A peculiar drumming wafts from the shore-line. "Pa-pas-ku," says one of the Cree lads, pulling his pipe from his mouth and listening. Young Hudson's Bay to my enquiring look returns, "The Canadian ruffed grouse," which Sussex elucidated, ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... Tom and he soon managed to catch Juan, when, holding tightly by the reins, the guide vented his displeasure and took his revenge by thoroughly drumming the poor brute's ribs with a stout stick, after which Tom mounted, and our journey for the next two hours ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... patter on the leaves of the brake. Faster and faster came the drumming of the long rods of rain. But Rabbit was not afraid, because the rain fell in accordance with a rhythm which was very familiar to him. And besides the rain did not strike him for it had not yet been able to pierce ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... lighted by a single jet of gas, which flickered in a thin greenish flame. In the centre of the room a pine table, without a cloth, was laid for supper, and three small children, in chairs drawn close together, were impatiently drumming with tin spoons on the wood. A haggard woman, in a soiled blue gingham dress, was bringing a pot of coffee from the adjoining room; and in one corner, on a sofa from which the stuffing sagged in bunches, a man sat staring vacantly at ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... secretly misunderstood Jack the more that he was so lavish and open in his adulations. If he rode, he exhausted eulogy in describing her pose, her daring, her skill; if they danced, as they did nearly every night until poor Merry's fingers ached from drumming the unholy strains of Faust, Strauss, and what not, in the old-fashioned waltzes—he pantingly declared that she made the music seem a celestial choir by her lightness; in long walks in the rose-fields he exhausted a not very laborious store of ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... (Vol. vii., pp. 128. 328.).—Bells under ground and under water, so often referred to, remind me of the Oundle Drumming Well, which I remember seeing when a child. There is a legend connected with it which I heard, but cannot accurately recollect. The well itself is referred to in Brand, vol. ii. p. 369. (Bohn's ed.), but the legend ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... back to his desk and sat there nervously drumming on its top with his fingers. He was not himself. He had never been so disturbed before and did not know it was possible for him to be upset in this manner. There had been other crises, other disagreeable happenings in his life, but he had met them calmly, dispassionately, with what he was pleased ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... 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 Sally in an ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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, ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... averting suspicion. Perhaps! But the conclusion was not particularly satisfactory. Every lead Robert had followed seemed to bring him to a blind wall. He rose restlessly and walked up and down the room, and then sat down again, drumming drearily on the arm of his chair. What now? What new line could he follow? By eliminating the servants, Tatsu, and himself, what remained? His guests. He felt a swift recoil at the bare suggestion, even though a mental and hidden one, of implicating them in this matter, and experienced a succeeding ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... mighty umbrella and an unsuspected rhinoceros-hide whip. The tent boys and the cook scattered along the flank anywhere, as befitted the free and independent who had nothing to do with the serious business of marching. A measured sound of drumming followed the beating of loads with a hundred sticks; a wild, weird chanting burst from the ranks and died down again as one or another individual or group felt moved to song. One lot had a formal chant and response. Their leader, in a high falsetto, ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... instance, a very unmannerly and ill-bred thing—is direct evidence that the prevailing habit of mind is dullness and lack of thought. In Germany it seems as though care were taken that no one should ever think for mere noise—to mention one form of it, the way in which drumming goes on ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... too good," answers M. Linders, making a grand bow, whilst his companion, having finished dealing, sat puffing away at his cigar, and drumming impatiently with his fingers on the table; "but the hour is rather late; what do you say, Madelon? Will you go ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... talked, and the sound of our laughter drowned the cry of the wind in the chimney and the drumming of the rain ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... with a lengthening visage. Now also it became apparent that there was another letter inside, at the superscription of which the Major having looked, put it in his pocket, and turning round to the mantel-piece, with his back to the others, began drumming against the ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... took up their drumming and the slow dance went on. There was a certain fascination in the savage ceremony that held the girl spellbound, and as there seemed little likelihood of her being discovered, she felt that she might as well remain the balance ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of 'em!" accused the Kid sternly, and pointed to the Old Man drumming irritatedly upon his chair arms. "He don't want to help the boys, but I do. I'll help 'em get their cattle, Mr. Blake. I'm one of the bunch anyway. I'll ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... extended farther and farther to the north and south, until it seemed to come from all parts of our intrenched line on the crest of the San Juan ridge. For nearly half an hour the rattle and sputter of rifles, the drumming of machine-guns, and the intermittent thunder of artillery filled the air from the outskirts of Santiago to the hospital camp, drowning the murmur of the rippling brook, and silencing again the crickets, birds, and tree-toads in the jungle beyond it. Then the uproar ceased, ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... in railway traffic; the second, the waste of competition by the construction and threatened construction of competing lines where present facilities are ample for the traffic. Of the first it need only be said that in advertising, "drumming," and soliciting patronage the railways spend many millions of dollars every year, which comes out of the pockets of the public. The second is most serious, for it involves a far greater waste. It is a conservative estimate to say that 5 per cent. of the railways of the country were only built ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... the tiny waves and the musical trickling of the rivulet amongst the rocks and stones. Then I jumped, for a peculiar cry arose from the forest behind us, and this seemed to be the signal for an outburst of sounds new to me, piping, thrumming, drumming, shrieking, howling, grunting in every variety, and I turned to look in Uncle Dick's face, which was lit up by the glow ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... temper. The alliterative verse, wherever it is found, declares itself as belonging to an elaborate poetical tradition. The alliterative line is rhetorically capable of a great amount of emphasis; it lends itself as readily as the "drumming decasyllabon" of the Elizabethan style to pompous declamation. Parallelism of phrases, the favourite rhetorical device, especially with the old English poets, is incompatible with tenuity of style; while the weight of ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... lamp with very fine reflectors. This Mr. Hume fixed on a movable bracket within reach of his arm as he sat at the wheel, and when the lights at the village faded astern, he lit the lamp, in order to thread a passage by its light through the dark waters. As the noise of shouting, the drumming, and the report of fire-arms died down, other sounds reached their strained hearing—the booming of the Congo bittern, the harsh roar of a bull crocodile, ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... had brought out the Knights and Ladies of Tabor. The singing and the drumming gradually grew upon the air. The passengers in the white cabin, came out on the guards at this unexpected fanfare. As soon as the white travelers saw the marching negroes, they began joking about what caused the demonstration. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... out of the ground, you may look for the first chipmunk. When I hear the little downy woodpecker begin his spring drumming, then I know the chipmunk is due. He cannot sleep after that challenge of the woodpecker reaches ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... and who had put the best wrestler in Rumford on his back, to lie in bed and let his father do all the chores, with the cows lowing to get to the pasture. With a spring he was on his feet and slipping on his clothes. He was soon on his way to the barn, drumming on the tin pail and whistling as he walked to ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... faces that one at least of them had some difficulty to render' expressive of calm repose the two American boys marched along with the others. As they advanced the drumming grew louder and they could feel the earth shake as the ponderous beast that caused it went ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... 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
... remembered those few minutes. There was a sort of volcanic intensity in the atmosphere. He was acutely conscious of small extraneous things, of the perfume of a great bowl of hyacinths, the ticking of a tiny French clock, the restless drumming of her finger tips upon the arm of her chair. All the time he seemed actually to feel her eyes, commanding, impelling, beseeching him to turn round. He did so at last, and looked ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... after him]. Perhaps it is better so. Now please, Lady Fritterly, I must request a few moments of the most profound silence on the part of all. You will not hear the sound as though coming from a distance, but it will seem rather like a muffled drumming taking place inside your head, scarcely perceptible at first, when ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... after, Mrs. Barton surprised the young ladies by visiting them in the sitting-room. Barnes was working at the machine, Olive stood drumming her fingers idly against ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... damp moss. The looming trees, so straight. And I listen for their silence. Big, tall-bodied trees, with a certain magnificent cruelty about them. Or barbarity. I don't know why I should say cruelty. Their magnificent, strong, round bodies! It almost seems I can hear the slow, powerful sap drumming in their trunks. Great full-blooded trees, with strange tree-blood in them, ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... muttered, between my clinched teeth, drumming with my fingers impatiently on the table before me, and smiling scornfully ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... was drumming down the night road at a pace that astonished the Easterner. Dobe seemed to be doing his best, yet he could not overtake the buckskin. Behind Bartley the patter of hoofs sounded nearer. Bartley thought he heard Cheyenne call back to him. He leaned forward, ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... 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 a throng like yon bedded at evening. Some day they'll be off your hand, and it'll ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... 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 illusion of Lindamira, ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... of the small, brown fingers Gleaning them one by one, With the partridge drumming near her In the forest bare and dun, And the jet-black squirrel, winking His saucy, jealous eye At those tiny, pilfering fingers, From his ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... table I could not understand, and I stole to the door and looked in. The French table stood empty save for a vase of shadowy flowers; Sir Peter was on his knees, candle in hand, searching the endless lines of book-shelves in the library. A strange suspicion stole into my heart which set it drumming on my ribs. Had Elsin Grey removed the pistols? Had she wit enough to ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... was smoking his pipe and Mrs. Stanley was darning socks over a mending-gourd, and the two young Stanleys were whispering and giggling about some matter of supreme consequence to youth. The windows were open, and we could smell the sweet scent of the lilacs from the yard and hear the drumming of the rain as it fell on ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... him. He stared and stared at this shadow, as he wiped out the glasses, and began to feel cold and strange about the heart. The silence weighed upon him, for he could hear nothing now, not even the river, but the drumming of his own arteries in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... energetic, enterprising, kindly Prince, rather bold himself and tolerant of heathen. Fray Juan Perez even intimated a doubt if God wanted the Inquisition. "But that's going rather far!" he said hastily and sat drumming the table and pursing his lips. Presently he brought out, "But you know I ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... had outlived her mind,—and only looked on cringingly. In addition to these two old people, and three potbellied brats in long shirts, Anton's great-grandchildren, there dwelt in the service-rooms of the manor a one-armed little old peasant, who was exempt from compulsory service; he made a drumming noise like a woodcock when he spoke, and was not capable of doing anything. Not much more useful than he was the decrepit dog, who had welcomed Lavretzky's home-coming with his bark: it had already been ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... 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 of ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... eternal snow, towered above the deep-sunk valley, when, one morning, Geoffrey Thurston limped painfully out of a redwood forest of British Columbia. The boom of a hidden river set the pine sprays quivering. A blue grouse was drumming deliriously on the top of a stately fir, and the morning sun drew clean, healing odors from ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... table with his big hand. The surface of the table was covered with powdered chalk that the baronet had dusted over it in the hope of developing criminal finger prints. Now under the drumming of his palm the particles of white dust ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... happy boat To hear the ringdoves coo, To mark again the drumming snipe Zigzag the ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... how greedy you look as you stare at my plate, Your mouth waters so, and your big tail is drumming Flop! flop! flop! on the carpet, and yet if you'll wait, When we have quite finished, your dinner ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... 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 ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... into a thunder of approval, their feet drumming on the board seats sounding not unlike the ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... Ethan felt the blood drumming in his temples. He had to wait a moment before he could find voice to say: "Oh, it ain't ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... last that drumming the cob's sides was of no use, jerking the bit of not the slightest avail, and that whacks with the sheathed sword only produced whisks of the tail, Mark subsided into a sulky silence, and rode at a walk, watching the enemy's back ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... There was a faint drumming in the air—the sound of rain coming down the mountain side, beating its "charge" upon the leaves as it came. There were no other sounds, for the birds and insects had sought shelter before the ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... to the drawing-room after tea, but did not stay long. There were no visitors, and it was very dull and quiet there, no one seeming inclined for conversation. Old Mr. Dinsmore sat nodding in his chair, Louise was drumming on the piano, and the rest were reading or sitting listlessly, saying nothing, and Elsie and her papa soon slipped away to their old seat by his dressing- ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... 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 old man, bent of form, standing at the head of the ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... than twenty-five pounds. It follows that even in desultory firing about 160,000 pounds of iron, or from four to five carloads, are raining on the French positions every hour. And this is magnified many times when the fire is increased to the intensity which the artillerymen call 'drumming' the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... very little cheering. It was too serious a matter for that. The men and women of Britain were thinking, not about what they should say, but about what they should do. There was no time for shouting, for to-morrow, perhaps even to-night, the guns would be talking—"The drumming guns which have ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... motto was that men's craft is superior to women's craft, into marrying the ugly daughter of the kazi; and that of the merchant to get rid of his bad bargain by disgusting the kazi with the alliance. The scene at the house of the worthy judge— the crowd of low rascals piping, drumming, and capering, and felicitating themselves on their pretended kinsman the merchant's marriage—is highly humorous. This does not occur in the Persian story, because it is the kazi, who has been duped into marrying the dyer's deformed daughter, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... They were fond to ca' it papistrie; but I think our great folk might take a lesson frae the papists whiles. They gie another sort o' help to puir folk than just dinging down a saxpence in the brod on the Sabbath, and kilting, and scourging, and drumming them a' the sax ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... where you itch! Well, perhaps our decision in this respect has added to the general fun of existence. In life's everyday, one doesn't notice these things, maybe. One has become so habituated to "Father" drumming "Colonel Bogey" on the chair-arm; or "Little Willee" playing "shakes" with two ha'pennies and a pen-knife—that one has ceased to pay any attention to these minor irritations. And, when we are among strangers, we are so busy watching that people don't put their hands into our pockets, that we ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... distant drumming of hoofs on the turf of the hillside. Then she caught the report ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... much louder came the rat-tat-tat. We all gazed expectantly at the closed door. Glancing at Holmes I saw his face turn rigid, and he leaned forward in intense excitement. Then suddenly came a low gurgling, gargling sound and a brisk drumming upon woodwork. Holmes sprang frantically across the room and pushed at the door. It was fastened on the inner side. Following his example, we threw ourselves upon it with all our weight. One hinge snapped, then the other, and down came the door with a crash. Rushing over it we ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... long silence. Undine lay still, her eyes shut, drumming on the arm of the sofa with a restless hand. The other lay cold in Ralph's clasp, and through it there gradually stole to him the benumbing influence of the thoughts she was thinking: the sense of the approach of ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... are ill-endowed from a musical point of view, have their wing feathers or tails peculiarly developed and stiffened, and are able to produce with them a strange snapping or cracking sound. Thus several species of snipe make drumming or "bleating" noises—something like the bleat of a goat—with their narrowed tails as they descend in flight.[74] Magpies have a still more curious method of call, by rapping on dry and sonorous branches, which they use not only to attract the female, but also to charm her. We may ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... are in the Pagods or Temples, and place them on Stools at one end of the house, which is hanged with Cloth for that purpose, and before them on other Stools they lay Victuals: and all that time of the Sacrifice there is Drumming, Piping, Singing, and Dancing. [Who eat the Sacrifices.] Which being ended, they take the Victuals away, and give it to those which Drum and Pipe, with other Beggars and Vagabonds; for only such do eat of their Sacrifices; not that they do account such things hallowed, and so dare ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... 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
... there!" shouted the skipper to Bonney, who was at the wheel. The old sea-dog, Trull, caught up a tin bucket setting near, and began drumming furiously; while the skipper, diving down the companion way, brought up a loaded musket, which he hastily discharged ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... the broad window in the sewing room in her favorite attitude, her head sideways against the pane, her eyes languidly gazing upon the Bay, fingers drumming this time a very slow march on the window sill. Dorothy sat in a rocking-chair, reading a letter for the second time. There had been silence in the room for some minutes, accentuated rather than broken by the quiet drumming of the girl's fingers on the window sill. Finally Katherine ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... was sitting upon a torn bale of hay in a livery stable in Portland. Through the wide, open door he could see the muddy street. Gray water-needles darted incessantly up from the pavement where the straight lines of rain struck. On the roof the rain was drumming a monotone. In his fingers was a crumpled bit of ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... 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 menacing about a waning moon? He ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... that kept every point of consciousness vibrating to a different note, so that while one set of nerves was torn as with pincers by the dominant scream of the looms, others were thrilled with a separate pain by the ceaseless accompaniment of drumming, hissing, grating and crashing that shook the great building. Amherst felt this tumult only as part of the atmosphere of the mills; and to ears trained like his own he could make his voice heard without difficulty. ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... what she would say if she could know to what battlefield the drumming wheels of the Limited were speeding him. Would she be loyal to her mentorship and tell him he must win, at whatever the cost to Mr. Somerville Darrah and his business associates? Or would she, womanlike, be her uncle's partizan and write ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... from interruptions, for Latin was her shakiest subject, especially the rules of indirect discourse. The instructor had warned the class that this weak spot was to be the point of attack. If Robbie Belle should not succeed in drumming the rules into her head before the ideas in it began to spin around and around in their usual dizzy fashion when she waxed sleepy, she might just as well stay away from the recitation room. Or better perhaps, for in absence there was ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... one of them, good ones too—high power hunting rifles for big game—lever action, automatic. In every igloo he found men stretched out asleep, and this on a splendid day for hunting. They were but waiting for the night, which they would spend in wild singing, tom-tom drumming and naked dances. ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... the village, drumming and shouting to keep off the Watuta, and the next morning, instead of a march, after striking my tent I found that the whole of my porters, the Pig's children, were not to be found. They had gone off and hidden themselves, saying that they were not such fools as to go any farther, as ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... combativeness to desire the vindication at such a price as she would have to pay for it. When Emma Dunstane spoke to her of the certainty of triumphing, she suggested a possible dissentient among the fateful Twelve, merely to escape the drumming sound of that hollow big word. The irreverent imp of her humour came to her relief by calling forth the Twelve, in the tone of the clerk of the Court, and they answered to their names of trades and crafts after the manner of Titania's elves, and were questioned as to their fitness, by ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his stubby fingers whose black and cracked nails were drumming on the table. "Well—I might give you a bed. There's a place I could put one in my daughter's room. She sings and dances over at Louis Blanc's garden in Third Avenue. Yes, I could put you ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... to the very edge of the water before they could persuade them to take wing. Now for that little alder coppice at the further end of the marshy swamp. Hark to that whipping sound so different from the rush of the rising pheasant or the drumming flight of the partridge! I cannot see the bird, but I know it is a woodcock. This must be one of his favourite haunts, for I perceive the tracks of his feet and the perforations of his bill in every direction on the black mud around. Mark! again. A second is sprung, and as he flits ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... and from that to pale yellow and brown; and now, with every lightest breeze that stirred, there were showers of leaves came fluttering to the ground. The deer left the lake-shore and took to the "hard-wood", and the drumming of partridges thundered at sunset. The nights were bitterly cold, and he spent a good part of his day chopping logs and carrying them to camp, so that he might keep a blazing fire all night. There were hunting-parties ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... you can instruct a person older than yourself, do you—you-with the brains of a butterfly, the acumen of a bat; the backbone of a jelly-fish. You can tell me something, can you? I was managing governments when you were sitting in your high chair, drumming on a tin plate with a spoon." Her voice boomed like a gun. "You dare to tell me how ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... observation, he watched, hoping against hope, while the car lunged and tore like a mad thing through the night, snoring up grades, screaming down them, drumming across the levels, clattering wildly through villages and hamlets; while the moon rose and gathered strength and made the road a streaming river of milk and ink; while his heart sank as minute succeeded minute, mile followed mile, and ever the lights of the pursuing ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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 march ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... anxiously at Roger; but his eyes were fixed on the floor, and he sat drumming gently on the table with the fingers of ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... a head sea. By ten at night heavy sprays were flying and drumming over the forecastle; the companion of Steerage No. 1 had to be closed, and the door of communication through the second cabin thrown open. Either from the convenience of the opportunity, or because we had already a number ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Pharanites were to march forward against the enemy, drumming and trumpeting, and then retreat as far as the watch-tower as the enemy approached over the plain. If the Blemmyes allowed themselves to be tempted thither, a second third of the warriors of the oasis, that could easily be in ambush ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... than a year ago I had turned her out of this garden, fearing for the boy the first woman he had seen, and to my ascetic mind because a woman, a minx. I eyed the broken grille regretfully and then suddenly rose and started hurriedly toward the Manor, the new thought drumming in my mind. ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... and in fine style, her front as straight as a string, her reserve regiments in columns doubled on the center, following in true subordination; no braying of brass to apprise the enemy, no fifing and drumming to amuse him; no ostentation of gaudy flags; no nonsense. This was a ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... a tune to ourselves, drumming with our fingers on the table, making a noise with our feet, and such like, are all breaches of good manners, and indications of our contempt for the persons present; therefore they should hot ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... thought he had picked up a great bargain. Now this writer used to be somewhat connected with the Aurora. When his crops were short and prices low he could always get a job with Colonel Miller during the winter months to help out making ends meet, collecting and drumming up new subscribers. The Aurora was very popular—good coarse print so everybody could read it—and most everybody took it whether they could read or not. Its chief policy was to flatter all its patrons—those who paid for it because they paid and those who did not pay in hopes they would pay. ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... the Colonel brooded, drumming on the little table. What now! Dolly was unjust! Poor Dolly! He was as fond of her as ever! Of course! How could he help Olive's being young—and pretty; how could he help looking after her, and wanting ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... warfaring Denis Diderot; how he looked and lived, what he did, what he said." Instead of which, nothing but "a dull, sulky, snuffling, droning, interminable lecture on Atheistic Philosophy," delivered with the vehemence of some pulpit-drumming Gowkthrapple, or "precious Mr. Jabesh Rentowel." Naigeon belonged to the too numerous class of men and women overabundantly endowed with unwise intellect. He was acute, diligent, and tenacious; fond of ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... The drumming of Jeannie's fingers on the table ceased. She sat quite still, looking out in front ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... the voice of Mr. Butler. But how came that voice into the body of this peasant? Terrified, with drumming pulses, yet obedient to the injunction, she remained without speech or movement, whilst crouching so as to keep below the level of the balustrade the man crept forward until he was immediately before and ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... for a second word, but ran off, and Dan and Me and Billy Fish walked across to where the drums were drumming and the horns were horning. It was cold—awful cold. I've got that cold in the back of my head now. There's a lump ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... party last night was, as I have said, disguised by firing, drumming, and shouting from the fleet and forts; and, in the deep stillness of the fine night, the booming of the guns, the clamor of the gongs, and the outcries raised from time to time, came on our ears like the spirit of discord ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... 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, in which the French, released ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
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