"Drum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the boy, looking into her flashing eyes. "Polly's always crazy about music," explained Ben; "she'll drum on the table, and anywhere, to make believe ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... Make the old game worth the candle: variety At all costs: hurly-burly, razzle-dazzle— Life, cowping creels through endless flaming hoops, A breakneck business, ending with a crash, If only in the big drum. The devil's to pay For what we have, or haven't; and I believe In ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... to me to be an excellent quality in the American character. I was informed that these stories, forming so important a feature of American dinners, are the product mainly of drummers and certain prominent men; but why men that drum are more skilful in story inventing I failed to learn. President Lincoln and a lawyer named Daniel Webster originated a large percentage of the current stories. It is difficult to understand ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... Sir Edmund Andros and his favorite councillors, being warm with wine, assembled the red-coats of the governor's guard and made their appearance in the streets of Boston. The sun was near setting when the march commenced. The roll of the drum at that unquiet crisis seemed to go through the streets less as the martial music of the soldiers than as a muster-call to the inhabitants themselves. A multitude by various avenues assembled in King street, which was destined to be the scene, nearly a century afterward, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... old drum," cried Dick eagerly; "and how the drumsticks are giving it to his sides," a remark which ensured for the old bay horse the nickname of the "Drum" to ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... stretches her limbs, She golfs, she punts, she rows, she swims - She plays, she sings, she dances, too, From ten or eleven till all is blue! At ball or drum, till small hours come (Chaperon's fan conceals her yawning), She'll waltz away like a teetotum, And never go home till daylight's dawning. Lawn tennis may share her favours fair - Her eyes a-dance and her cheeks a-glowing - Down ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... a council of war was held among the principal generals, and the plan of battle arranged. In an open space, with a dim fire in the midst, and a drum on which to write, you could see grouped around their "little Napoleon," as Beauregard was sometimes fondly called, ten or twelve generals, the flickering light playing over their eager faces, while they listened to his plans and made suggestions as to the conduct of the fight. ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... we landed, three other gentlemen came to welcome the ones I had saved, and seemed very glad to see them. They appeared to have just landed from a tub in which was a drum, rub-a-dub-dubbing all by itself. One of the new men had a white frock on, and carried a large knife; the second had dough on his hands, flour on his coat, and a hot-looking face; the third was very greasy, had a bundle of candles ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... expensive suite at an apartment hotel near the Fabians, and much to little Mr. Alexander's joy, although much to Mrs. Alexander's disgust, they settled down to a hum-drum life that winter. She sighed as she referred to ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... dull roll of the drum; and, suddenly, in the near silence, a hoarse voice barked out a ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... mysterious affair, which the old woman told her had been communicated to her three days before by her husband, who was chief of one of the divisions of the city, and was now with his warriors, giving directions for their co-operation with the Mexican troops, and who had lately received a gold drum from Mexico, as an ensign of command. Donna Marina desired the old woman and her son to remain in her apartment till she went in search of her valuables; but went immediately to Cortes, to whom she communicated ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... Garnett to hold his ground, and then turned to restore the fight. Seizing a drummer by the shoulder, he dragged him to a rise of ground, in full view of the troops, and bade him in curt, quick tones, to "Beat the rally!" The drum rolled at his order, and with his hand on the frightened boy's shoulder, amidst a storm of balls, he tried to check the flight of his defeated troops. His efforts were useless. His fighting-line was shattered into fragments; and although, according to a Federal ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... short distance into the woods, however, before both of them stopped abruptly and listened to a strange sound which carried to them eerily in the quiet night with all the mystery of the unaccountable. It was like the beat of a distant drum, a hollow tattoo that came ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... few are stretched out in death on the ground. They must be placed in as great a variety of positions as possible, and in such a manner that one figure will not obscure the other. The countenances of all should appear excited. The booming of cannon and roll of the drum can be produced behind the scenes. The picture should be illuminated by a brilliant red fire burned at the ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... Like a drum-major with his staff, he threw his sword high in the air and caught it, while he chanted his song to the French, and terrified the English. The rhymed chronicle of Geoffrey Gaimer who wrote about 1150, and that of Benoist who was ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... of day penetrated nowhere but into the circular vestibule, which was lighted by openings in the drum of the cupola that rested on four gigantic columns. In the inner hall there was only dim twilight; while the hypostyle was quite dark, but for a singularly contrived shaft of light which produced a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... off.) On the 11th the villagers burned a piece of flax plant in front of their houses. That night the priest said a special prayer in the temple and used the cymbals in addition to the ordinary gong and drum. The prayer seemed peculiarly sad. Before the shrines in their houses the villagers placed offerings. One was a horse made out of a cucumber, the legs being bits of flax twig and the tail and mane the hair-like substance from maize cobs. There were also offerings of real and artificial flowers and ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... The hawser snubbed, the drum of the rusty winch rattled and banged on worn bearings to a tune of escaping steam, laboriously warping the smelly hull alongside the dock. Terry watched the sturdy little Moros spring into agile life as the vessel slowly neared the pier, then he turned to look ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... "on this side, where I fell in the chapel. I fell on my ear, you know, and I must have burst the drum of it, or injured it in some way, for all through the winter it has ached and it ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... pushing on my preparations for further captures. A large, mahogany-faced safe was fixed in the dining-room to contain the silver; a burglar alarm was fitted under the floor in front of the safe and connected with a trembler-drum that was kept (with the concussor and a few other appliances) locked in a hanging cupboard at my bed-head, ready to be switched on and placed under my pillow at night. I secretly purchased a quantity of paste ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... also furnishes its own drum and fife corps and a very fine military band, the players, of course, devoting a proper proportion of their time to the practice on their instruments. Friday is the best day on which to visit the school, for on that ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... that went beyond anything I had heard. And later I learned that I had made no mistake in thinking that there was something unusual and portentous about the fire that night. What I had listened to was the preliminary drum fire and bombardment that prepared the way for the great attack at Messines, near Ypres—the most terrific bombardment recorded in all ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... idiotic orchestra! Did anybody ever hear such an idiotic orchestra? Three violins, one cello, one cornet, one flute and a drum all out of tune, all out of time. The prelude. And his nobs grins. Poor fellow. But who taught him how to ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... to loosen up his joints—scratches up the ground with his hands and feet, flops his arms and crows like a rooster, and says, "Bully for Bragg; he's hell on a retreat," and announces his readiness. The drum is tapped, and off they start. Well, Billy Webster beat him one hundred yards in the two hundred, and Tennessee came back and said, "Well, boys, I'm beat; Billy Martin, hand over the stakes to Billy Webster. I'm beat, but hang me if I didn't ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... But I miss something to which I have become accustomed in the south; I miss light, form, greatness, and breadth. Instead, there is grey or golden haze, blurred outlines, tender skies, lush luxurious greenery. Italy rings like metal; England is a muffled drum. The one has the ardour of Beauty; the other the charm of the Picturesque. I dwell upon this because I seem to see—perhaps I am fanciful—a kindred distinction between the north and the south in quality of mind. The Greek intelligence, and the Italian, ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... Vampire climb the stairs From vaults below the church; And hark! the Pirate's spectre swears! O Psychical Research, Canst THOU not hear what meets my ear, The viewless wheels that come? The wild Banshie that wails to thee? The Drummer with his drum? ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... in playing a fife. They are wearing little masks and are dressed in ragged tunics; they carry drum and, fife, ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... 1593, showing many of the characteristics of the ornament of the time, is 103-1/2 inches high, 94 inches long, 68 inches wide. The majority of the beds were smaller and lower, however, and the pillars usually rose out of drum-like members, huge acorn-like bulbs that were often so large as to be ugly. They appeared also on other articles of furniture. When in good proportion, with pillars tapering from them, they were very effective, and gradually they grew smaller. ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... my wife has been teasing me to do for the last six months—get her a rain-barrel. I tried to get an old oil-cask, but couldn't find one. They make the best rain-barrels. Just burn them out with a flash of good dry shavings, and they are clear from all oily impurities, and tight as a drum." ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... lak a swamp, de farm he got, De water ev'ryw'ere— Might drain her off as tight as a drum. An' back dat water is boun' to come In less 'n a day or two—ba Gum! 'T would mak' de ...
— The Voyageur and Other Poems • William Henry Drummond
... to L84. All the spite and jealousy now broke loose, and the whole company of the Comedie, more particularly the men, with the exception of M. Worms, started a campaign against me. Francisque Sarcey, as drum-major, beat the measure with his terrible pen in his hand. The most foolish, slanderous, and stupid inventions and the most odious lies took their flight like a cloud of wild ducks, and swooped suddenly down upon all ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... azure home. And it looked from its proud towers on the Future's magic scene, Till the Present grew all gladsome with the brightness of its sheen; Far off-notes of triumph swelling, floated up from years to come, Silver blast of clarion blending with the roll of stormy drum! ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... battery. Ransom, uniting with the detachment left by General Smith, took possession of Padierna, driving the Mexican General Mendoza. Riley's command was the first to pass the pedregal, when it occupied the road on the opposite side with Captain Simon Henry Drum's company of the Fourth Artillery. A detachment of Mexican lancers escorting a train was encountered ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... misled by thy tone and by thy significant language. Yet have I nothing but censure to speak; for better I know thee. Thou concealest thy heart, and thy thoughts are not such as thou tellest. Well do I know that it is not the drum, not the trumpet that calls thee: Neither in uniform wouldst thou figure in sight of the maidens; Since, for all thou art honest and brave, it is thy vocation Here in quiet to care for the farm and provide for the household. ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... storm, in silence, and with downcast looks, the soldiers plodded wearily on, through mud and water, ankle deep. No tap of drum or bugle-call put life into their heavy tread. The sense of defeat and disgrace brooded over the minds of officers and men, as they stole away in darkness and gloom from an enemy for whom they had but lately felt such high disdain. Grief, shame, and indignation were ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... his philosophy to reason away his pleasure is not much wiser than a child who cuts open his drum to see what is within it that ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... clear and sunshiny has clouded rapidly over. Even as the four gray companies come "trotting" in from parade, and, with the ease of long habit, quickly forming line in the barrack area, some heavy rain-drops begin to fall; the drum-major has hurried his band away; the crowd of spectators, unusually large for so early in the season, scatters for shelter; umbrellas pop up here and there under the beautiful trees along the western roadway; the ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... drum and fife, inside a tent, drew attention to "a rare and wonderful show of wild animals," which the fakir at the door declared to consist of "a pair of bald eagles, two panther cubs, a prairie wolf and Hindoo seal," and sometimes he said "prairie wolf ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... KNEW a boy in our town, whose name was Billy Hood: He had a sword all made of tin, a musket made of wood. His drum would always let you know when Billy Hood was coming; For all the neighbors used to say, "I wish ...
— The Nursery, October 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 4 • Various
... calls Roxana's gown "a volcanic eruption of infernal splendors.") Yet there are some who claim that the child craves them, and must have them to produce a thrill. So also does he crave candies, matches, and the carving-knife. He covets the trumpet, fire-gong, and bass-drum for their "thrill"; but who would think them necessary to the musical training of the ear? Like the blazing bill-board and the circus wagon, they may be suffered out-of-doors; but such boisterous sounds and color sprees are unfit ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... The drum of their heels on fast-drying sidewalks struck sharp echoes from the silence of that drowsy quarter, a lonely clamour that rendered it impossible to ignore their apparent solitude—as impossible as it was for Lanyard to ignore the fact that ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... had walked many blocks. She imagined that she was pursued—someone was lurking behind her in the shadow of an area—someone had peeped at her from behind drawn blinds. She started to run, but her bursting heart restrained her. She tried to still its beating; it seemed loud, clamorous as a drum; everyone must hear it and wonder what consciousness of guilt could make a heart beat so loudly in one's breast. She began walking again as rapidly as she dared. She must not attract attention. She ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... as queer a combination as himself, for he seemed to be about half horse, so wonderful was his understanding of those animals, and so more than wonderful theirs of him, took his "yo'ng sem'nary ladies a-gallopin' th'oo de windin's ob de kentry roads," proud as a Drum Major ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Suddenly a drum rolled in the yard, in front of the house. In an instant everybody was on his feet, save a few indifferent ones; and they all ran to the door and windows with their mouths still ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... like that of an antelope, but he has prodigious breadth of chest; he wears a military undress, that of the regiment, even of a drummer, for it is wild Davy, whom a month before I had seen enlisted on Leith Links to serve King George with drum and drumstick as long as his services might be required, and who, ere a week had elapsed, had smitten with his fist Drum-Major Elzigood, who, incensed at his inaptitude, had threatened him with his cane; he has ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... view these two machines without feeling impressed with a conviction that both countries would soon feel the advantage of an amalgamation between the two forms of the machine. The drum of the Scotch thrashing-machine would most certainly be improved by a transfusion from the principles of the English machine; and the latter might be equally improved by the adoption of the manufacturing-like ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... the men we sing,—not those panoplied and helmeted according to Virgil, nor those of our own day, armed with repeating rifles and drum-majored into popular favor, but rather the heroes of the flint-lock and the priming-wire in the New England of two or three generations ago, the sturdy train-bands that have left scarce one John Gilpin to tell the tale ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... a perjured villain. Old Fulcher, before he left the town with his son,—and here it will be well to say that he and his son left it in a kind of triumph, the base drummer of a militia regiment, to whom they had given half-a-crown, beating his drum before them—old Fulcher, I say, asked me to go and visit him, telling me where, at such a time, I might find him and his caravan and family; offering, if I thought fit, to teach me basket-making: so, after my father had been sent off, I went and found up old ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... continued the drum-major, "will you please bring some more wood, and will you please put your mind on it and keep bringing it? These little twigs that make the best fire burn out in a twinkling, please notice," but Mabel did not hurry so very much for the next armful; since she could see for herself there ...
— Tattine • Ruth Ogden
... cried Gluck, convulsed with laughter. "I followed his advice. I sprinkled the choruses with trumpet and drum, and the second time the opera came out it was ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the nape of the neck, without disturbing the elaborate head-dress, which must never be taken down; the pretty black hair I shall probably never see undone. My pillow, a Chinese model, is a kind of little square drum covered over ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... large tent; and, as the night was warm, the bottom of the tent cover had been lifted to let the breeze blow through. This had given an opportunity for the crowd outside to look within and watch the ceremony and the dramatic dance. To the right of the door, in two circles around the drum, sat the choir of men and women, all in their gala dress. Each member of the society, wrapped in his robe, with measured steps entered the tent, and silently took his seat on the ground against the wall. The ceremony had opened by the choir singing the ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... place to take hold; but now the board moved only to make a noise that was amazing. The method of its surprising operation was like the stuttering of a stick when it is rubbed endwise on a box; but as this was a board and as it operated against a rumbly shack, it reverberated like a giant drum; it was an excellent apparatus for making artificial thunder. At her very first effort it gave a little jump and made a noise sufficient to put all the silence on the prairie to flight. She let ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... and looked as if a sound blow would send it to pieces. Yet here were the Mohune coffins that had been put away for generations, and must be rotten as tinder, tapping against each other with a sound like a drum, as if they were still sound and air-tight. Still, Mr. Glennie must be right; for if it was not the coffins, what should it ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... censure oneself tacho, paila, pan (sugar manuf.) tacones, heels tacos, cues (billiard) tacto, feel, touch, tact tal, such tal cual, as it is talvez, perhaps taller, workshop tambien, also, too, as well tambor, drum (machinery, etc.) tampoco, neither, either (after neg.) tan .... como, so, as .... as tapete, carpet, rug tarde, afternoon, evening, late tardo, slow tarea, task tarjeta, card tasajo, jerked ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... machinery," the captain informed him. "Each end of the chain fender goes about a drum, which winds and unwinds by hydraulic power. Once a ship hits the chain its speed will gradually slacken, but it takes a pressure of one hundred tons to make the chain begin to yield. Then it will stand a pressure up to over two hundred and fifty tons before it will break. But before that ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... of the 75's. Their increasing crackling thunder arouses and elates us. We shout with our guns, and look at each other without hearing our shouts—except for the curiously piercing voice that comes from Barque's great mouth—amid the rolling of that fantastic drum whose every note is the ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... market-place. First came the music. It comprised a variety of instruments, perhaps imperfectly adapted to one another, and played with no great skill; but yet attaining the great object for which the harmony of drum and clarion addresses itself to the multitude,—that of imparting a higher and more heroic air to the scene of life that passes before the eye. Little Pearl at first clapped her hands, but then lost, for an instant, the restless agitation that had kept her in a continual ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the staff, the infantry could make no real resistance; and so rapidly was the English advance pushed home that the struggling mass of friend and foe entered pell-mell through the open gates of the town. For an hour, alarms of drum and trumpet mingling confusedly with the sounds of street-fighting reached the listening fleet as the two columns forced their way to meet upon the Plaza. But how they fared none could tell, till ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... greatest delight of my youth. I learned to dance and could sing all the songs and get off the jokes. Dupree & Benedict's were the first minstrels I ever saw. I marched in their parade and carried the drum. George Evans (Honey Boy) was a life-long friend. We were born within three miles of each other in Wales and came to this country ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... Algiers. It is the old story of trying to govern what the conquerors call "niggers," without attempting to understand the people first. Temper, justice, insight, and conciliation would have done more in four years than martial intolerance and drum tyranny accomplished ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... "I then destroyed the drum of the ears, and disorganized as much as I could of the inner ear. When the intense inflammation thus excited had rendered it almost deaf, I filled its ears with wax, and it could hear me no longer. Then I could stand by its side, speak to it in a loud voice, and even ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... treated as a mutineer and run the risk of being shot without the benefit of a drum-head court-martial," said the captain; whereupon the men backed off, thrust their hands into their pockets and looked at him and at one another. "I tell you, boys, this is no time for foolishness," the captain went on, earnestly. "Ever ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... sunshine. In 1884 time would fail him who should undertake to read the roll of regions occupied and churches organized. An American statesman once said, in words that have been often quoted, that England's drum-beat never ceased as it passed around the world. We can say that our English Te Deum, with its "Day by day we magnify Thee," rolls round the world as well, in ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... "Garryowen" set the horses frantic—and the men, too. The band, still advancing at a walk, was dropping rapidly behind. A bullet hit kettle-drummer Pillsbury, and he fell with a grunt, doubling up across his nigh kettle-drum. A moment later Peters struck his cymbals wildly together and fell clean out of his saddle, crashing to the sod. Schwarz, his trombone pierced by a ball, swore aloud and dragged his frantic horse ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... quick time past the officer of the day, according to the principles of review, and is brought to eyes right at the proper time by the commander of the guard; the adjutant, commander of the guard, leaders of platoons, sergeant major, and drum major salute. ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... bells of Cadiz tolled for them Mournful and glum; Up in the Citadel requiems rolled for them On the black drum; Priests had many a mass to handle, Nuestra Senora many a candle, And many a lass grew old in praying For a sight of those topsails homeward swaying— But it's late to wait till a girl is bride of A Jack who won't be back this side of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... was a cry from beyond the gates, followed by the rat-tat-tat of a drum, and one of those perpetually arriving 'processions' came filing down the platform and across the bridge. I was in no haste to accost Miss Jenrys at the very entrance, and possibly in the face of one or more of my ever-present brethren of the watchful ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... into the river, then thundered, 'Strike those fields with hail! drench the hill!' And the obedient clouds flung themselves down. The wind whistled the reveille, the rain beat the drum; like hounds released from the leash the clouds bounded forward...downward, following the direction to which the flashes of lightning pointed. The evil spirit ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... you four cents. Don't think I'm buying him for work. I want only his skin. It looks very tough and I can use it to make myself a drumhead. I belong to a musical band in my village and I need a drum." ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... course of a man's life from the position of the planets, had erected a high platform with large tables displayed to view, and the instrument wherewith he aimed at the stars as it were with a bow; and his Syrian slave, accompanying himself on a gayly-painted drum, proclaimed his master's powers. There were closed tents in which magical remedies were to be obtained, though their open sale was forbidden by the authorities, from love-philters to the wondrous fluid which, if rightly applied, would turn lead, copper, or ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... much a head for sunsets, or if God sent round a drum before the hawthorns came into flower, what a work we should make about their beauty. But these things, like good companions, stupid people early cease to observe;' a state of affairs fortunately incomprehensible ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... Irungu's drummers and fifers kept us alive on the way. This we heard was a privilege that Uganda Wakungu enjoyed both at home and abroad, although in all other countries the sound of the drum is considered a notice of war, unless where it happens to accompany a dance or festival. Leaving the valley of Uthenga, we rose over the spur of N'yamwara, where we found we had attained the delightful altitude ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... 'Tis the warning voice of the rolling drum. Through the awakened night air come The stern command and the busy hum Of hurried preparation. 'Tis no time now for idle strumming Of light guitars: in that loud drumming Is fearful meaning; the hour is coming That ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... whenever she wished to prepossess the minds of her people in favor of any extraordinary measure of government. The hostile effects of this music were apprehended by her successor, and severely felt by his son. "When pulpit, drum ecclesiastic," &c. See Heylin's Life of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... tear all the big deep facts of life, show to compare to the unflinching powerful work of the best writers over in France? In Paris they were training men to write of life as it really is! How that prof did drum it in. Better still, how he talked it up to my mother—the last time she came ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... said the Showman, "the most interesting entertainment to be witnessed on earth! Walk up! walk up, and judge for yourselves!" And with that he beat the drum and blew shrilly on ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... reconcile it to his sense of fairness to omit distinct reference to this most anomalous case. The gentleman in question was born in England in the year 1766, and received his first commission in the army in 1786. Serving his country in almost every military station in the world where the martial drum of England is heard—in India, at the Cape, in the Canadas, on guard over Napoleon at St. Helena—he illustrates, as almost a solitary exception, the fact that a use of opium for half a century, varying in quantity from forty grains daily to many times this amount, does ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... drum or trumpet, maid and baggage and all, having dismissed her cook and shut up the flat. It was incredible. I wandered aimlessly about Chelsea trying to make up my mind what to do. Should I go to Paris and bring her back by main force? ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... Middle Ear. At the inner end of the outer ear passage is the tympanum, known as "the drum of the ear." It is a thin, oval membrane, stretched at an angle across the deep end of the passage, which it completely closes. The tympanum is thus a partition between the passage of the outer ear and the cavity of the middle ear. On its inner side is a ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... He knit his brows and began to drum with his fingers on the window-pane. "And we must put the interest at five per cent. . . . With my first in Moderations I might find some post as an usher in a small school. . . . There's an agency which puts you in the way of such things: I must look up the address. . . . We will ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... There is a thing one sometimes meets with in the suburbs—or one used to; I do not know whether it is still extant, but when I was a boy it was quite common. It has a hurdy-gurdy fixed to its waist and a drum strapped on behind, a row of pipes hanging from its face, and bells and clappers from most of its other joints. It plays them all at once, and smiles. This cow reminded me of it— with organ effects added. She didn't smile; there was that to be ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... is one for me. Donnerwetter! If they get into Prussia, they'll find a tough old Landsturm! Only let Vater Wilhelm turn his hand, and to-morrow close upon a million trained and well-armed troops could be stepping to the drum." It was an evening at the end of June. Napoleon was having the finishing touches put to the new Opera House at Paris, thinking, so far as the world could tell, of nothing more important than how many imperial eagles it would do to put along the cornice. King William was packing for Ems, designing ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... the Drum-Horse—the Drum-Horse of the White Hussars! Perhaps you do not see what an unspeakable crime he had committed. I will try to make it clear. The soul of the Regiment lives in the Drum-Horse who carries the silver kettle-drums. He is ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... tall fights by land and sea, and the land we live in was considerably excited upon the subject, and patriotism rose to many degrees above blood heat. Philadelphia, about that time, like all other cities, I suppose, was the scene of drum-beating, marching and counter-marching, and volunteering of the ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... business all r-right, an' hed f-f-forty rounds b-b-buckled on him. H-here goes, Mike," and Brown grasped the warped handle of the windlass and began to grind slowly, coiling the heavy rope, layer upon layer, around the straining drum. He brought the huge ore-bucket to the surface, dumped its load of rock over the edge of the shaft-hole, and had permitted it to run down swiftly to the waiting Mike, when a slight noise behind sent the man whirling suddenly about, his hand instinctively ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... gates unbar, the column's solemn tread, I saw the Tree of a single leaf its splendid foliage shed To wave awhile that August morn above the column's head; I heard the moan of muffled drum, the woman's wail of fife, The Dead March played for Dearborn's men just marching out of life; The swooping of the savage cloud that burst upon the rank And struck it with its thunderbolt in forehead and in flank, The spatter ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... normal healthy three-year-old child, by the way, is something incredible. Dinkie reminds me more and more of a robin in cherry-time. He stuffs sometimes, until his little tummy is as tight as a drum, and I verily believe he could eat his own weight in chocolate blanc-mange, if I'd let him. Eating, with him, is now a serious business, demanding no interruptions or distractions. Once he's decently filled, however, his greediness takes the form of exterior application. He ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... resemble brooms, and planted on pedestals of chalk, and a few other points, do not edify me. The French Opera, which I have heard to-night, disgusted me as much as ever; and the more for being followed by the Devin de Village, which shows that they can sing without cracking the drum of one's ear. The scenes and dances are delightful; the Italian comedy charming. Then I am in love with treillage and fountains, and will prove it at Strawberry. Chantilly is so exactly what it was when I saw it above twenty years ago, that I recollected ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... and serious blue eyes. Further back, assembling his marines in marching order, was Lieutenant Henry Watson, a smaller man of extraordinary nervous energy. Montgomery gave the marching order. Fife and drum struck up a lively air and to its strains the feet of Yerba Buena's first invading army kept uncertain step as sailors and marines toiled through the sand. Half a thousand feet above them stood the quaint adobe customs house, its red-tiled roof ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... flickering with fireflies, the purer outlines of the hilltops and distant mountains to the left, the porters' tiny fires before the little white tents; and in the distance, from the direction of V.'s boma, the irregular throb of the dance drum and the occasional snatch of barbaric singing borne down on the night wind from where his Wakambas were holding an n'goma. A pair of ibis that had been ejected when we made camp contributed intermittent outraged ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... a sort of drum composed of twelve pieces, perforated with round windows and supported on four massive piers. On the level of the eye are frescos by Luini of St. Rocco, St. Sebastian, St. Christopher, and St. Anthony—by no means in his best style, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... recognition of our isolated weakness and our need to make painful progress by getting close together and moving forward in close formation. In any case, the pathos is there. Consider a children's May party, on its way to Central Park. A fife-and-drum corps of three little boys in uniform leads the way. The Queen of the May, all in white, walks with her consort under a canopy of ribbons and flowers, a little stiffly, perhaps, and self-consciously, but not more so than older queens and kings on parade. A long line of boys and girls in many-coloured ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... "You're a head taller than I am, Mister Giant, but I'm a colonel of the Grand Empire, and it won't do for drum-majors ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... in the production of fashionable tortures; and when that outraged and indignant poet savagely asserted, that 'Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn,' I have an abiding conviction that he had just been victimized at a 'Reception,' or 'German,' or 'Kettle-drum,' or 'Masque Ball,'—or some such fine occasion, where people are amused by treading on each other's toes, and gnawing (metaphorically) their ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... selected a virtuous young man of the name of Shun as his successor. Among the legends told about this second model emperor is the story that he had a board before his palace on which every subject was permitted to note whatever faults he had to find with his government, and that by means of a drum suspended at his palace gate attention might be drawn to any complaint that was to be made to him. Since Kun had not succeeded in stopping the floods, he was dismissed and his son Yue was appointed in his stead. Probably the waters ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... fight at Elandslaagte, when the uproar of various sounds was simply terrific, from the shrill treble of the whimpering bullets to the trumpet-like whoop of the shells as they arched overhead, to alight with a drum-boom and burst with a cymbal crash; the whole orchestra of battle was playing—it seemed that everyone must recognise the air—"The Ride of the Valkyrie;" and now the driving rain and the salt spindrift, the flapping ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... who fire and work the engines, and superintend the machinery by means of which the collieries are worked. Previous to the introduction of the steam-engine the usual machine employed for the purpose was what is called a "gin." The gin consists of a large drum placed horizontally, round which ropes attached to buckets and corves are wound, which are thus drawn up or sent down the shafts by a horse travelling in a circular track or "gin race." This method was employed for drawing ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... so much alarm, was, in fact, a French ship of considerable force, apparently well manned, and armed for offensive or defensive operations. The national flag streamed gaily on the wind, and, as it anchored just against Castle Island, the roll of the drum, and the shrill notes of the fife, were distinctly heard, and men were seen busied on deck, as if preparing for some important action. The little bark, already mentioned, was filled, chiefly, with females ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... clamour of cries—why should one's heart leap, and his nerves go restless, and joy and sadness get mixed up inside him? A few birds flying over—yet stirring as a military pageant! A jangle of senseless "honks"—yet in it the irresistible urge of bugle and drum! ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... watchmen, unlike those of Canton, come round every hour and beat two sharp taps on a drum at intervals of half a minute, compelling you to listen against your will, until the sound dies away in the distance for a ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... given an angel to pay for their dinner. Later in the day, meeting the Mayor on the street, they again asked leave to play, and, being refused, abused the Mayor with "evyll and contemptuous words, and said they would play whether he wold or not," and went "in contempt of the Mayor with drum and trumpet through the town." On apologising later to the Mayor and begging him not to inform the Earl of Worcester, they secured leave to play on condition that they prefaced their performance with an apology for their misconduct and a statement that they were permitted ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson |
