"Tambourine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as children use the drum or tambourine in their games. They are fond of notching the edges of two bits of whalebone, and whirling them round their heads to make a humming sound, just as English boys do; and they also make toys like wind-mills, with arms to turn ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... with Torriano in making little puppets,—soldiers that would go through their exercises, dancing tambourine-girls, etc. It is even asserted that they constructed birds that would fly in and out of the window, a story rather difficult to accept. The monks began to look upon Torriano as a professor of magic when ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... organ was a proper musical instrument for use in sacred buildings, he certainly was not going to tolerate banjos and bones. This decision was a great disappointment to Benny Mallow, who had been selected by the managers to perform upon the tambourine, but in the revision of the programme Benny was assigned to duty in a tableau as a little fat goblin, and this so tickled his fancy that he did not ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... mantilla pirouettes in the middle of a dusky room, to the accompaniment of her own castanets and that of a row of men and women who sit in straw chairs against the whitewashed wall and thrum upon guitar and tambourine or lift other castanets into the air. She appears almost colossal, and the twisted and inflated folds of her long dress increase her volume. She simpers, in profile, with a long chin, while she slants back at a dangerous angle, and the lamplight (it proceeds from below, ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... moment Dimsdale ceased to be the practical scientist—he was all sentimentalist. He gave himself the luxury of retrospection, he enjoyed the languorous moment; the music, the voice, the tinkle of the tambourine, the girl herself, sinuous, sensuous. It struck him that he had never seen an a'l'meh so cleanly and so finely dressed, so graceful, so delicate in manner. It struck him also that the kemengeh-player was a better-class Arab than he had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of a country community. Old black Ebenezer—but whose name had also been cut down for convenience sake to Sam, by the old Captain—did the orchestral duties upon his fiddle, which, aided by a youngster on the triangle and another on the tambourine, formed quite "a full band" for the occasion, and dancing was done up ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... and Donatello emerged from among the trees, the musicians scraped, tinkled, or blew, each according to his various kind of instrument, more inspiringly than ever. A darkchecked little girl, with bright black eyes, stood by, shaking a tambourine set round with tinkling bells, and thumping it on its parchment head. Without interrupting his brisk, though measured movement, Donatello snatched away this unmelodious contrivance, and, flourishing it above his head, produced music of indescribable potency, still dancing with frisky ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the future. After keeping up their noisy confabulation for some time, they removed to a level spot close to where I was lying: one of them squatted down on the ground, and commenced singing to the music of a sort of tambourine, that he beat with the flat of his hand; and the others at once formed a circle, and commenced a rude dance, which had probably been brought by themselves or their fathers from the shores of Eastern Africa. The air was at first low ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... General Vallee had an entertainment got up for him in the harem. There were great illuminations, singing, music with tambourine accompaniment and the danse du ventre. Amongst those present was General de Caraman, who commanded the artillery. He was seized with cholera just as he was going away, and was dead by six o'clock the next morning. Such is life! Several ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... tying the ribbons on Split's tambourine, looked in vain for a reflection of that fever of delight which possessed herself. Split was cross. She was languid. She was dull. She did not seem to enjoy even the pair of slippers she was pulling on. They had been given to Sissy by Henrietta Blind-Staggers, and their newness and beauty ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... left but grace of detail. The intellectual feebleness of his style may be seen in many figures of women playing upon instruments of music, ranged around the walls. One girl at the organ is graceful; another with a tambourine has a sort of Bassarid beauty. But the group of Apollo, Pegasus, and a Muse upon Parnassus, is a failure in its meaningless frigidity, while few of these subordinate compositions show power of conception or ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... no more on all the Bar, and silence reigns through the calico halls of the Humboldt. His bland smile and his dainty plats, his inimitably choice language and his pet tambourine, his woolly corkscrew and his really beautiful music, have, I fear, vanished forever ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... who should I see get out of it, but the gipsy girl! She was dressed up, this time, to the eyes, togged out in golden ribbons—a spangled gown, blue shoes, all spangled too, flowers and gold lace all over her. In her hand she carried a tambourine. With her there were two other gipsy women, one young and one old. They always have one old woman who goes with them, and then an old man with a guitar, a gipsy too, to play alone, and also for their dances. You ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... a small sitting-room, simply and almost shabbily furnished, remarkable for some strange articles which were heaped at random on various small tables. There was a planchette, a tambourine, and other more mysterious appliances which suggested that the inmate spent much time with the trappings and rappings of spiritualism. Papers and journals devoted to spiritualism were scattered about the room, and framed "spirit ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... ranches and come to town in piles; The ladies—"kinder scatterin'"—had gathered in for miles. And yet the place was crowded, as I remember well, 'Twas got for the occasion at "The Morning Star Hotel." The music was a fiddle and a lively tambourine, And a "viol come imported," by stage from Abilene. The room was togged out gorgeous—with mistletoe and shawls, And candles flickered frescoes around the airy walls. The "wimmin folks" looked lovely—the boys looked kinder treed, Till their leader commenced yellin': "Whoa, fellers, let's ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... cleared, an amateur luti from among the villagers produces a tambourine and castanets, and, taking the middle of the room, proceeds to amuse the company by singing extempore love songs in praise of the bride and groom to tambourine accompaniment and pendulous swayings of the body. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... sight when several of these boats are moored together, when, their day's work over, their crews will gather round the fires, and to the accompaniment of tambourine or drum sing songs or recite stories until it is time to sleep. No sleeping accommodation is provided, and all the hardy boatman does is to wrap his cloak about his head and lie among whatever portion of the cargo is least ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... right, Lieutenant! Play 'Jerusalem' on the cornet while I pass the tambourine. Damn the post-mortems! I want my wife, not a 'Ballington Booth' on the terrors of intemperance. I've got to have her, too. I—can't last this way. She's the only person who can straighten me up. ... I was doing fine. Had a job ... I'll go straight to hell again if I don't find her." There ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... to-day I found such a bored old bear dancing for a bored crowd. I've never seen anything quite so tired and patient as his eyes. His little old master was half asleep but he whacked his tambourine and whined his mournful song without a pause. I left Lupe and the C.E. and went out and patted the bear and asked the man (I am as handy as that with my Spanish!) how much he earned in a day. Less than fifteen cents in our money! Well, I asked him if I could buy the bear a week's vacation ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... "Tristia" given in New York City, by Theodore Thomas; also Rameau's gavotte, tambourine, and minuet, from ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... thieves are about the house," said Pen, grimly pursuing the simile, "forty besetting thieves in the shape of lurking cares and enemies in ambush and passions in arms, my Morgiana will dance round me with a tambourine, and kill all my rogues and thieves with a smile. Won't she?" But Pen looked as if he did not believe that she would. "Ah, Blanche," he continued after a pause, "don't be angry; don't be hurt at my truth-telling.—Don't you see that I always take you at your word? You say you will be ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... as the cherries that hung over my head or as the graceful knots of ribbon that tied the long braids of their hair, and made me compose couplets for them to sing to their sweethearts in the afternoon, to the sound of the tambourine, under the walnut trees where the young people danced and the elders chatted and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... means to an end, and my end has generally been military material. Perhaps the vicissitudes of my life have made me insensible to what are called reverses of fortune, for, when a child, I remember sleeping on the moonlit flags of Paris, with no pillow except my tambourine; and I remember it not without delight. Let us sit down. I feel I am talking in an excited, injudicious, egotistical, rhapsodical, manner. I thought I was calm, and I meant to have been clear. But the fact is, I am ashamed ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... elephants' powers in clearing a passage through it, was presently varied by a sharp trumpet, then by a low growl, followed by that peculiar noise emitted by elephants when excited, resembling blows upon a tambourine or kettle-drum. This is a sound that invariably is heard whenever an elephant detects the fresh scent of a tiger; and Nielmonne, instead of standing quiet, became doubly excited, as she evidently understood ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... of them, like Deborah, Beat the tambourine and danced While she sang a hymn in praise Of the ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... inhabitants as prisoners of war, females are almost entirely wanting. On those occasions we sometimes find them carried on mules or in chariots (see Figs. 30 and 31). In certain bas-reliefs of Assurbanipal, treating of his campaign against Susa, women are playing the tambourine and singing the king's praises. But all these are exceptions. Woman, whose grace and beauty were so keenly felt by the Egyptians, is almost completely absent ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... who was dancing with her, with those long streamers of red ribbon flying round his peaked hat, he looked almost as handsome as she did. How I wish I could see them dance the saltarello again! O Mamita Lila, as soon as we get back to Rome, do buy a tambourine." Inspired by the remembrance, she straightway began to hum the monotonous tune of that grasshopper dance, imitating the hopping steps and the quick jerks of the arms, marking the time with ever-increasing ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... scene of gluttony, one of the chiefs entertained the assembly with a wild and most unmusical chant, to which he beat time on a sort of tambourine, while the women outside the enclosure beat ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... a tambourine, signifies you will have enjoyment in some unusual event which will ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... muttering something about non compos mentis, the Lieutenant stalked away; while the Down Easter beat a melancholy retreat, holding up his pan like a tambourine, and making dolorous music on it ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... himself, in dancing, with castanets. Corinne before she began saluted the assembly most gracefully with both her hands, then turning round upon her heel took the tambourine which the Prince Amalfi presented her with. She then began to dance, striking the air upon the tambourine, and there was in all her motions, an agility, a grace, a mixture of modesty and voluptuousness, which might give an idea of that ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... has no nest; Nor band, in brass and scarlet dressed, Nor tambourine, nor man; It is not hymn from pulpit read, — The morning stars the treble led ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... procession," he went on. From a nook on the veranda, where he had hidden them, he produced a drum, a tambourine, and a cornet. ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... the young fellows, after a while, seeing a gathering of painted fans, and rustling hoops, and fluttering laces, upon the lawn, and a large immigration of hilarious neighbours besides, and two serious fiddlers, and a black fellow with a tambourine preparing for action, and the warm glitter of the western sun among the green foliage about the window, could stand it no longer, but stole away, notwithstanding a hospitable remonstrance and a protest from old Strafford, to ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... tendency to strong and highly colored language. To make the marching more effective and develope a better sense of time, I instituted a very simple and rudimentary form of orchestra with a triangle, a tambourine, and finally a drum. When the latter instrument made its first appearance Jacob sought a secluded spot by the piano and gave himself up to a fit of fairly courteous but excessive mirth. "A drum!" he exclaimed, between his fits of laughter. "What'll ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... box I had seen before. But one afternoon Paragot took it down and extracted therefrom a violin which after tuning he began to play. Now although fond of music I have never been able to learn any instrument save the tambourine—my highest success otherwise has been to finger out "God save the Queen" and "We won't go home till morning" on the ocarina—and to this day a person able to play the piano or the fiddle seems possessed of an uncanny ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... short and dark-featured, with a velvet cap, was grinding out music from a hand-organ, while a woman with a complexion equally dark, and black sorrowful-looking eyes, accompanied her husband on the tambourine. They were playing a lively tune as Paul came up, but quickly glided ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... might observe, not in order to combat your views, but merely to continue an interesting conversation, that there are still some knowledges which you have not assimilated—you do not yet know how to play the tambourine, nor how to be nice to your wife, nor how to get up first in the morning and cook the breakfast. Have you learned how to smoke strong tobacco as I do? or can you dance in the moonlight with a woman of the Shee? To understand the theory which underlies all things is not sufficient. ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... of Palestine, and in appearance almost suggests to European eyes a dustpan and brush. The frame is of wood, covered, like a tambourine, with parchment, and placed across a handle from which hangs a single string of thick, black horsehair, very coarse in texture. It is played with a bow, also of horsehair, and is held much after the fashion of a violin, being chiefly used to accompany songs and the romances in which Eastern ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... house is pure; your father is a drum, Your mother is a kettledrum, you scum! Your brother is a tambourine—tum, tum! And you—why, you 're a captain of ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... towards the round table in the centre of the room, on which lay a tambourine and a little green box. Lagune developed unsuspected lengths of knobby wrist and finger directing his guests to their seats. Lewisham was to sit next to him, between him and the Medium; beyond the Medium sat Smithers ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... made this drawing, Michelangelo had not seen those frescoes of the dancing Bacchantes from Pompeii; nor had he perhaps seen the Maenads on Greek bas-reliefs tossing wild tresses backwards, swaying virginal lithe bodies to the music of the tambourine. We must not, therefore, compare his concept with those masterpieces of the later classical imagination. Still, many of his contemporaries, vastly inferior to him in penetrative insight, a Giovanni da Udine, a ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... her hour! His eyes rested idly on a little old coloured print of a Bacchante, with flowing green scarf, shaking a tambourine at a naked Cupid, who with a baby bow and arrow in his hands, was gazing up at her. He turned it over; on the back was written in a pointed, scriggly hand, "To my little friend.—E. H." Fiorsen drew smoke deep down into his lungs, expelled it slowly, and went to the piano. He opened it and began ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the smoky fog from outside thickened and hung visibly in mid-air, and there was the empty seat of the man who was talking. Laura Filbert was one of the women. She might have been flung upon her chair; her head drooped over the back, buried in the curve of one arm. A tambourine hung loosely from the hand nearest her face; the other lay, palm outward in its abandonment, among the folds that covered her limbs. The folds hung from her waist, and she wore above them a short close bodice like a Bengali woman. Her head covering had slipped, ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... frivolous life. The loungers grunted, and moved up to see. Clusters of children, little angels with dark eyes and language sufficiently seasoned to melt a glacier, slipped up from nowhere, and, one by one, the girls among them slid into the dance. One of them had a beribboned tambourine. Two others wanted it, and would snatch it away. Its owner said they were—something they could not ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... jacket,—handed down from mother to daughter, and a wonderful sample of the handiwork that once made the country famous,—your numerous necklaces and other ornaments. You would carefully braid your heavy dark tresses and bedeck your shapely head with bright flowers, then with your panderetta or tambourine in hand, you too would join the merry throng that fill the air with mirthful songs and music ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... of singers and dancers now invaded the terrace. A coppery-hued girl, handsome and dirty, with wavy hair, great gold hoops in her ears and an apron of many colored stripes, was dancing under the arbor, waving on high a tambourine that was almost the size of a parasol. Two bow-legged youngsters, dressed like ancient lazzarones in red caps, were accompanying with shouts the agitated dance ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... in their thousands on market-place, or green, With blatant brazen brayings, and thump of tambourine. Are you at prayer, asleep or sick? What odds? You're forced to list To the tow-row, tow-row, tow-row of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various
... were rouged. They ran in and out of the dance room with escorts or without, stood at the bar for drinks, entwined their arms with those of the men. In the dance room a band was playing. A man with a tambourine added to the hilarity of the music. It was a wild spectacle, unlike anything I had ever seen. No one accosted me. I could feel a different spirit in the crowd from that I had seen on the boats or in New York. There was no ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... dandies on the roof of a neighbouring coach, who have been listening open-mouthed to the siren, and shillings and half-crowns, and a bit of gold from the one last out of the Bench, pour into it; and she moves off, to make way for three French glee-maidens with a monkey and a tambourine, and the swells return to their cigars and their betting, and we are all attention for the next event on the card, because it is a gentlemen-riders' race; and the performances will consequently be as different as possible from what we ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... musicians to be found among the reckless and jolly fellows composing a man-of-war's crew. A big landsman from Utica, and a dare-devil topman from Cape Cod, are the leading vocalists; Symmes, the ship's cook, plays an excellent violin; and the commodore's steward is not to be surpassed upon the tambourine. A little black fellow, whose sobriquet is Othello, manages the castanets, and there is a tolerable flute played by one of the afterguard. The concerts usually commence with sentimental songs, such as "Home, sweet Home," and the Canadian ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... Allegro molto, again followed by the phrase of the story teller. The sea returns Allegro molto e frenetico in full force, and likewise the vague motive of the story in a cadenza of violin solo. Then Vivo comes the dance, the pomp and gaiety of the Festival, with tripping tambourine and strings and the song first in the flutes.[A] Presently a reminder of the sea intrudes,—con forza in lower wood and strings. But other familiar figures flit by,—the evil jinn and the love-idyll. Indeed the latter has a full verse,—in ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... "He cleared three pound twelve an' nine las' night—but 'ow? That Mortimer carried on something 'ateful. There was 'is wife—you wouldn' think it in ordinary life, but, dressed up, she goes to your 'eart; an' she wore, first an' last, more dresses than you could count. First of all she 'it a little tambourine, an' said she was a gipsy maid. 'I'm a narch little gipsy,' she said, ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this season than at other times, comes merely to investigate the sound, as he and most other wild creatures do with every queer or unknown thing they hear. The Alaskan Indians stretch a skin into a kind of tambourine and beat it with a club to call a bull; which sound, however, might not be unlike one of the many peculiar bellows that I have heard from cow moose in the wilderness. And I have twice known bulls to come to the chuck ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... watered it every morning, it scarcely grew, for there was no sun. One day the woman and child disappeared together with their pretty poodle; they left nothing in their quarters except a worn-out, broken tambourine. ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... nodding at the fire. 'Tommo will like to have me go with him and sing, while he plays his harp in the streets. I know many songs, and may get money if I am not frightened; for people throw pennies to other little girls who only play the tambourine. Yes, I will try; and then, if I do well, the little ones shall have ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... harmless pranks withal. Between the long church services, if she went into the country with girls of her own age, she made no fuss about doing as they did, but would sing and dance away and flourish her tambourine. But such days were few. Most times her chief delight was to climb up to the top of the house, to bring herself nearer heaven, to obtain a glimpse of daylight, to look out, perhaps, on some small strip of sea, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... half of my lozens broken, by their knocking one another's heads through, I was obliged to get quit of them at last, by selling them to a man and his son, that kept dancing dogs, Pan's pipes, and a tambourine; and that made a livelihood by tumbling on a carpet in the middle of the street, the one playing "Carle now the King's come," as the other whummled head over heels, and then jumped up into the air, cutting capers, to show that not a bone of his body ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... a novena not outside but within some of the village houses before a kind of altar gaily decorated and bearing at the top a waxen image of the Child Jesus. "Close to it the orchestra was grouped—a 'cello, two violins, a guitar, and a tambourine. The kneeling women huddled in front of the altar. All had on their heads their black mantelline. They began at once singing the novena stanzas appointed for that day; the tune was primitive ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... Italian girl, in love with Wilhelm, her protector. She glides before us in the mazy dance, or whirls her tambourine like an Ariel. Full of fervor, full of love, full of rapture, she is overwhelmed with the torrent of despair at finding her love is not returned, becomes insane, and dies.—Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... dare to interfere with it, and I continued to hold on to the jelly. Whoever was being materialized was doing it so slowly, and without any kind of system, that we hardly had the patience to sit it out. Then a tambourine walked up some one's arm, Prince Nassau's spectacles were pulled off his august nose by invisible hands (of course, who else would have dared?), thus making him more near-sighted than ever. His wife's necklace of turquoises was unclasped from her neck and hooked on to the neck of the acolyte ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... had left the ranches and come to town in piles; The ladies, kinder scatterin', had gathered in for miles. And yet the place was crowded, as I remember well, 'Twas gave on this occasion at the Morning Star Hotel. The music was a fiddle and a lively tambourine, And a viol came imported, by the stage from Abilene. The room was togged out gorgeous—with mistletoe and shawls, And the candles flickered festious, around the airy walls. The wimmen folks looked lovely—the boys looked kinder treed, Till the leader commenced yelling, "Whoa, ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... indeed, than the Gypsies are in the habit of carrying it: a slack-rope dancer might be termed bittitardranoshellokellimengro, or slightly- drawn-rope-dancing fellow; a drum, duicoshtcurenomengri, or a thing beaten by two sticks; a tambourine, angustrecurenimengri, or a thing beaten by the fingers; and a fife, muipudenimengri, or thing blown by the mouth. All these compound words, however, would be more or less indefinite, and far beyond the comprehension of ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... he and Mr. Lewis were walking silently homeward, when they came upon an Italian street musician. The man ground at his movable piano, the wife held the tambourine, while his leggy little daughter danced with surprising grace on the stone walk. As she trotted about gathering her harvest of pennies, Parks put his hand on ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... these verses and said to her, "I conjure thee, by my life, O Num, sing to us with the tambourine and other instruments!" So she sang the following verses ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... tambourine band were sitting among the company, Quickear suggested why not strike up? 'Ah, la'ads!' said a negro sitting by the door, 'gib the jebblem a darnse. Tak' yah ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... him at home when I next called. One afternoon, when nearing my own home, I met him in one of his favorite disguises,—a long blue swallow-tailed coat, striped cotton trousers, large turn-over collar, blacked face, and white hat, carrying a tambourine. Of course to others the disguise was perfect, although it was known to myself, and I passed him—according to an old understanding between us—without the slightest recognition, trusting to a later explanation. At another time, as I was making a professional ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... was a gipsy maiden within the forest green, There was a gipsy maiden who shook a tambourine. The stars of night had not the face, The woodland wind had not the grace, ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... admired the promenade of the Peyrou, whence are perceived the sea, the Pyrenees, and the Alps, and saw the foundations prepared for an equestrian statue of Louis XIV. The 17th, at Tarascon, she breakfasted with the Marquis de Gras-Preville, and was present at the games instituted by good King Rene,—tambourine dances and the races of the Tarasque. The 18th, at Arles, she visited the Cloister of Saint Trophime, and the Roman circus. About eighteen thousand persons were crowded on the ancient benches. The galleries resounded with military music which, borne from echo to echo, spread beneath all the ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... proclamation, which was received with nine rounds of British cheers. Our party then formed a large circle by joining hands; and sang the national anthem, accompanied by the Goderich band, which was composed of two fiddles and a tambourine. "Rule Britannia" for our sailor-king was also played and sung—I was going to say in good style, but at all events with great loyalty ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... beets, and flour by drying potatoes. Her practical little head was resourceful for any emergency. She felt sad at the separation from her husband, and her large black eyes were mournful but not tearful. To be and doing was her spirit. In spare moments she sat down to her tambourine to do crewel work on a tapestry picture. It was a large subject—The bard Ossian playing his harp to Malvino. Ossian seated on the front of some brown rocks, Malvino seated before him, her hands folded across his knees, full of tender regard for the gentle musician. This work was her pastime ...
— The Little Immigrant • Eva Stern
... night which had been selected by Sergeant Troy—ruling now in the room of his wife—for giving the harvest supper and dance. As Oak approached the building the sound of violins and a tambourine, and the regular jigging of many feet, grew more distinct. He came close to the large doors, one of which stood ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... the evening came to a beautifully green spot, refreshed by flowing rivulets, where he found, to his surprise, a ready-roasted deer, and some bread and salt. He alighted, and sat down near the enchanted provisions, which vanished at the sound of his voice, and presently a tambourine met his eyes, and a flask of wine. Taking up the instrument he played upon it, and chanted a ditty about his own wanderings, and the exploits which he most loved. He said that he had no pleasure in ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... powers thus aggregated and organized become an efficient spiritual energy; and the higher the organism the grander the power that is developed, man being the most perfect organization evolves the grandest spiritual power, as a superior violin evolves finer music than a tambourine. But the intelligence and will of man are only phenomena, like the music, and have no existence beyond that of the organism that produces them. This is substantially the theory of materialists generally, and of the old school medical colleges which consider human life a ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... the next event the old reliable Tug was entered, among others; and in the Rope-Climb he ran up the cord like a monkey on a stick, and touched the tambourine that hung twenty-five feet in the air before any of his rivals reached their goal, and in better form than ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... man, by the mere audacity of his request, must have some good in him. A weak man doesn't say: "Give me this and that." He whines: "Why haven't I been given this and that?" If you were in the Army, I should say learn to spin plates or play a tambourine with your toes. As it is ask! You belong to a Service that ought to be able to command the Channel Fleet, or set a leg at twenty minutes' notice, and yet you hesitate over asking to escape from a squashy ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... clarion, trumpet, trombone, ophicleide^; French horn, saxophone, sax [Slang], buglehorn^, saxhorn, flugelhorn^, althorn^, helicanhorn^, posthorn^; sackbut, euphonium, bombardon tuba^. [Vibrating surfaces] cymbal, bell, gong; tambour^, tambourine, tamborine^; drum, tom-tom; tabor, tabret^, tabourine^, taborin^; side drum, kettle drum; timpani, tympani^; tymbal^, timbrel^, castanet, bones; musical glasses, musical stones; harmonica, sounding-board, rattle; tam-tam, zambomba^. [Vibrating bars] reed, tuning fork, triangle, Jew's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and eyes meekly cast down, bends to receive the golden coronet he is about to place on her brow. The Dove is omitted, but eight seraphim, with rainbow-tinted wings, hover above her head. On the right, a most graceful angel strikes the tambourine; on the left, another, equally graceful, sounds the viol; and, amidst a flood of light, hosts of celestial and rejoicing spirits ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... no time. He and the fifty-five dollars vanished into the street. In his haste he bumped into a Salvation Army lassie with a tambourine. ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... anklets her feet. Behind her stands a band of three instrumental performers, all of them women, and somewhat variously costumed: the first plays the double pipe, the second performs on a lyre or harp, the third beats the tambourine. In front of the goddess is a table or altar, to which a votary approaches bringing offerings. Then follows another table whereon two vases are set; finally comes a procession of six females, holding hands, who are perhaps performing a solemn dance. Behind them are a ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... individual world. But one short year ago she had followed a hand-organ man and a monkey to a point safely distant from too-observant relatives and servants; there, beside the chattering monkey, she had sung and danced and scrambled for pennies and shaken a tambourine, and generally conducted herself like a ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... Great Music-master, went to Ch'i; Kan, the conductor at the second meal, went to Ch'u; Liao, the conductor at the third meal, went to Ts'ai; Chueeh, the conductor at the fourth meal, went to Ch'in. The drum master Fang-shu crossed the River; the tambourine master Wu crossed the Han; Yang the second bandmaster and Hsiang, who played the ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... separate troops, with songs and dances, after the fashion and accompanied by the music of the provinces they represented,—the Poitevins playing on bagpipes; the Provencales on the viol and cymbal; the Burgundians and Champagners on the hautboy, bass viol, and tambourine; in like manner the Bretons and other provincialists. After the collation was served and the feast at an end, a large troop of musicians, habited like satyrs, was seen to come out of the opening of a rock, well lighted up, whilst nymphs were descending from the top in rich habits, who, ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... 'singing-house' provided for Jack's amusement when ashore (U.T. 5) consisted of a fiddle and tambourine; while at dances the instruments were fiddles and harps. It was the harps that first aroused Mr. Jingle's curiosity, as he met them being carried up the staircase of The Bull at Rochester, while, shortly after, the tuning of both harps and fiddles ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... daughter or sister, she generally accompanies him in his rounds. Sometimes girls and women make regular business engagements of this kind with the grinders, and receive for their services in beating the tambourine, or soliciting money from the bystanders, a certain fixed proportion of the earnings of ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... lama, they approached the door leading to the temple, which at this instant opened, and from it another band came forth, whose heads were covered by copper masks. Their dresses were of rich materials, embroidered in various bright colors. In one hand each of them carried a small tambourine and with the other he agitated a little bell. From the rim of each tambourine depended a metallic ball, so placed that the least movement of the hand brought it in contact with the resonant tympanum, which caused a strange, continuous undercurrent of pulsating sound. There ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... across his palace, about one hundred and fifty feet from the ground, and of equal length. On to this a Portuguese mounted, walked straight along, going backwards and forwards, and dancing to the sound of the tambourine. He also hung from the rope with his head downwards, and went through all sorts of tricks. The ladies who were looking on could not help hiding their eyes in their handkerchiefs, from fear lest they should see him overbalance ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... mode of dancing as well as I can:—They all get in a circle, while two sit down outside and play the tom-tom, a most unmelodious instrument, something like a tambourine, only not half so sweet; it is made in this way:—they take a hoop or the lid of a butter firkin, and cover one side with a very thin skin, while the other has strings fastened across from side to side, and upon this they pound with ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... to complete the expected company, and to give the signal for "the opening of the ball," for before seats could be found for the elders of the party the musicians, consisting of two negro fiddlers, a tambourine and a banjo player, struck the stirring, old-fashioned tune of the "Fisher's Hornpipe." And gentlemen immediately took their partners—Mr. Force led out Mrs. Anglesea; Leonidas took Odalite; Ned and Sam Grandiere, ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... painting of a naked Hermaphroditus. In his right hand is a little torch reversed; his left arm rests on the shoulders of Silenus, who appears to accompany his songs on the lyre, whilst a winged Cupid sounds the double flute. On the other side is a Bacchante with a thyrsus and tambourine, and near her a little Satyr, who also holds ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... incantations a Wb[)e]n[-o] uses a drum resembling a tambourine. A hoop made of ash wood is covered with a piece of rawhide, tightly stretched while wet. Upon the upper surface is painted a mythic figure, usually that of his tutelaly daimon. An example of this kind is from Red Lake, Minnesota, presented in Fig. 22. The human figure is painted red, while the ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... in Roman times played an important role in the worship of Isis, was shaped somewhat like a tennis racquet, with four wire strings on which rattles were strung. The sound of it must have been akin to that of our modern tambourine, and it served much the same purpose as the primitive drum, namely, to drive away Typhon or Set, the god of evil. Dead kings were called "Osiris" when placed in their tombs, and sistri put with them in ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... the contrary, he was all "effusion," as the French say, dashing off his hat as if he metaphorically flung it at their feet for a gage d'amour, not of battle—just like an Ethiopian minstrel striking the gay tambourine on his knee in a sudden flight of enthusiasm. All in all, Horner was essentially a ladies' man, his points lying in that way; and, although what is popularly known as "harmless," he was not by any means a bad sort of fellow on the whole, when judged by the ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... full view of the audience fastened to a bench. Then the door of the cabinet was closed, the people upon the platform descended into the body of the hall, and the lights were turned very low. The audience sat in suspense, and then abruptly in the silence and the darkness there came the rattle of a tambourine from the empty platform. Rappings and knockings seemed to flicker round the panels of the hall, and in the place where the door of the cabinet should be there appeared a splash of misty whiteness. The whiteness shaped itself dimly into the figure of a woman, a face dark and Eastern became visible, ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... all! I see it all!" shouted Evelyn, suddenly springing up and whirling about the room, using her letters as a tambourine. "It's Jessie's cousin! ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... applause, her husband leaped up, and gave the signal: "Fire a volley!" Whereupon his troops gave a tremendous cheer, followed by a roll of drums and a blast of trumpets. The chief agency which the army employs to gather its audiences is music—whether it be the rattling of the tambourine, or the martial sound of a brass band. Some of their hymns are little better than pious doggerel, and they do not hesitate to add to Perronet's grand hymn, "All hail the power of Jesus name," such ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... this type have all got the following percussion stops: Chimes, Chrysoglott, Glockenspiel, Electric Bells (with resonators), Xylophone, and carefully-tuned Sleigh Bells—in addition to single percussive instruments, such as Snare-drum, Bass-drum, Kettle-drum, Tambourine, Castanets, ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... girls were coaxing maudlin youths, with faded southernwood in their button-holes; another long low booth, from every crevice of which reeked odours of stale beer and smoke, by courtesy denominated tobacco, to the treble accompaniment of a jigging fiddle and a tambourine, and the bass one of grumbled oaths and curses within— these were the means of relaxation which the piety, freedom, and civilisation of fourteen centuries, from Hengist to Queen Victoria, had devised and made possible for the ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... as they came back from Antwerp over the snow, which had become hard and smooth as marble over all the Flemish plains, they found dropped in the road a pretty little puppet, a tambourine player, all scarlet and gold, about six inches high, and, unlike greater personages when Fortune lets them drop, quite unspoiled and unhurt by its fall. It was a pretty toy. Nello tried to find its owner, and, ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... formerly bound to render an annual tribute to the king of the Matabele in the shape of four black oxen and one dance. A missionary has seen and described the deity discharging the latter part of his duty in front of the royal hut. For three mortal hours, without a break, to the banging of a tambourine, the click of castanettes, and the drone of a monotonous song, the swarthy god engaged in a frenzied dance, crouching on his hams like a tailor, sweating like a pig, and bounding about with an agility which ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... with it, an air of being on exhibition, of belonging to a troupe, of living in the gaslight, which pervaded even the details of her dress, fashioned evidently with an attempt at the histrionic. If she had produced a pair of castanets or a tambourine, he felt that such accessories would have ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... you've sung "God Save the Queen"— When you've finished killing Kruger with your mouth— Will you kindly drop a shilling in my little tambourine For a gentleman in kharki ordered South? He's an absent-minded beggar and his weaknesses are great— But we and Paul must take him as we find him— He is out on active service, wiping something off a slate— And he's left a lot o' ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... the view that the lower animals have it not, we shall be inclined to smile when any of them show traces of it—any such exhibition seeming out of place, and leading us to compare them with men. But when we are accustomed to see a monkey taking off his hat, or playing a tambourine, or even smoking a pipe, we by degrees see nothing laughable in ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... musicians present, a man who had a thorough knowledge of the tambourine was invited from the village of Tantrum Clangley,—a place long celebrated for the skill of its inhabitants as performers on instruments of percussion. These important members of the assembly were ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... but one couple was dancing. Whether they had been sent there by advice of Agricola is not certain. Snatching a tambourine from a bystander as he entered, the stranger thrust the male dancer aside, faced the woman and began a series of saturnalian antics, compared with which all that had gone before was tame and sluggish; and as he finally leaped, ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... heads. An uprooted tree had been hurled from some point above, like an enormous spear, and, striking the rock at a slant, slid over the rough surface like the finger of a player over the face of a tambourine and out beyond, hunting for some spot where it could penetrate. It found it on the ground, but it was instantly wrenched loose by the resistless power that had first thrown it forward, and went end over end into the general wreck and ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... was an Italian woman came to the village with a broken hand-organ, a filthy, starving wretch, and Gurney's little girl went with her from house to house in the snow, singing Christmas carols, and handing the tambourine. Everybody said, "Why, you little tot!" and gave her handfuls of silver. Such a wonderful voice she had even then, and looked so chubby and pretty in her little blue cloak and hood; and going about with the woman was such a pure-hearted thing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... Short?' With that they shook hands in a very friendly manner. The young people being too high up for the ordinary salutations, saluted Short after their own fashion. The young gentleman twisted up his right stilt and patted him on the shoulder, and the young lady rattled her tambourine. ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... The painted tambourine Shall grace its wall, And many a table small And folding screen Shall on its floor ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... the drawingroom, of course. [She goes out. Onward, Christian Soldiers, on the concertina, with tambourine accompaniment, is heard when the door opens]. ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... they offered to play to their hostesses, if there were any instruments in the house. The ladies were delighted at the idea, and Sadie went to see what she could find, returning in a few moments laden with two different kinds of flutes and a tambourine. Each Calender took the one he preferred, and began to play a well-known air, while the ladies sang the words of the song. These words were the gayest and liveliest possible, and every now and then the singers had to stop to indulge the laughter which almost choked them. In the midst ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... had with him a little Italian girl with a red silk handkerchief knotted about her head. She sang and played on a tambourine, and Gabriel persuaded his companion to watch and listen for a ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... inn-doors, attract the fiddler, and he strolls on his own account, when the payment of salaries is suspended. A veteran actor was wont to relate his experiences of fifty years ago as a member of the Stratford-upon-Avon company, when the orchestra consisted only of a fife and a tambourine, the instrumentalists performing, as they avowed, "not from notes but entirely by ear." Presently the company removed to Warwick for the race week. But here the managerial difficulties increased—no band whatever could be obtained! This was the more distressing in that the performances were to be ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... again!" he muttered. "You good-for-nothing! I'll teach you! Now take the tambourine and gather up the coins from the crowd. You'll get a beating anyway for this. But if you don't take up more than we had at the last town, you'll have such a trouncing as you never ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... rattle. The gentleman who moved the mechanism was a sacristan in red cotton drawers and a lace cassock, who sat in full view in the niche behind the high altar. There seemed to be a spirited rivalry between him and the tambourine artists as to which could contribute the most noise, and I think a fair judge would have granted ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... resting on the ground, feet in the air, while a servant brandishes a short sword with which he is about to decapitate the fourth beast. Above these, again, three musicians march in procession, one playing on a harp, another on a five-stringed lyre, and the third on a tambourine. An attendant holding a bow, and the minister Shutsururazi, stand quietly waiting till the sacrifice is accomplished. The long text which runs across several of the figures is doubtless a prayer, and contains the names of peoples and princes ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... is quite as much a showman as Barnum, but he is a pious showman. He is a perfect master of the vulgar art of attracting fools. Every day brings a fresh change in his "Walk up, Walk up." Tambourine girls, hallelujah lasses, converted clowns and fiddlers, sham Italian organ grinders, bands in which every man plays his own tune, officers in uniform, Davidic dances, and music-hall tunes, are all served up with a plentiful supply of blood and fire. The "General" evidently means ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... into their dresses to-day with little ceremony, and hitched them together anyhow. Conny caught up a tambourine and Patty a worn-out pack of cards, and they clattered down the tin-covered back stairs. In the lower hall they came face to face with Miss Jellings, clothed in cool muslin, and in a more affable frame of mind. Patty never held her ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... slave he had brought with him to the pastry-cook's while Musli skipped homewards and brought with him a tambourine of chased silver, which he could beat right cunningly and also accompany it with a voice not without feeling; and thus Halil's bridal evening flowed pleasantly away with an accompaniment of wine and music ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... chamber, and putting a tambourine into the cauzee's hands, led him out and began to play a merry tune upon her lute, to which the affrighted magistrate danced with a thousand antics and grimaces like an old baboon, beating time with the tambourine, to the great delight of the husband, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... which are distinctly unmusical that it is entirely easy to recall their peculiarities, and the features by means of which this is usually done amount to parody. For example, when it is a question of something Turkish, much is made of the tambourine, the cymbals, and the fife. In something Persian or Arabic, the triangle cuts quite a figure; but when it is a question between composers of the civilized countries of Europe, music has become a cosmopolitan language among them all, and only a small number ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... Therese; 'and they are all the same family, except the drummer, who belongs, I hear, to Ypres. Sometimes there are six of them, two little ones, who, I suppose, are left at home to-day; they look quite like little angels; the boy plays the triangle and his sister beats a tambourine.' ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... children no rights? What is a train-ride with children without Hershey's charcoal bars? Or gypsum? What more picturesque on a ride through the country-side than a band of gypsum encamped by the road with their bright colors and gay tambourine playing? Are these simple folk to be kept out of this country simply because a Republican tariff insists on ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... Aristide to the murky recesses of a dirty little theatre in the Batignolles, where Aristide performed such prodigies of repercussion that he was forthwith engaged to play the drum, the kettle-drum, the triangle, the cymbals, the castagnettes and the tambourine, in the orchestra of the Tournee Gulland at the dazzling salary of thirty francs ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... my train. And while I was waiting for the next I must 'a' et something poison. I was awful sick. I guess it was ten days or so before I come to enough to know where I was. I've had hard luck, bo—I'll say I have. I was robbed while I was sick, and only for a tambourine queen I got acquainted with, I guess I'd 'a' died. They're treacherous as hell, though. Long as she thought I had money—oh, well, they's no use expecting kindness in this world. Or gratitude. I'm always helpin' folks out and gittin' kicked ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... stuffed in a hot shed all day, wheezing polkas out of the hurdy-gurdy, but a real good idea of improving on the handcart. What if he didn't make a whole band out of himself, with a harness holding a comb across his mouth, and a bass drum for him to kick with one foot and a tambourine to frisk with the other. My, when he started off with "The Stars and Stripes Forever" you might have thought he was six, with a drum major prancing along in front! He give a demonstration that night in the Tivoli ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... same ballad-singer that had twice crossed her path, and given her mysterious intimations of the lurking mischief that surrounded her. When the rest of the performances were concluded, she seized a tambourine, and, tossing it aloft, danced alone to the melody of her own voice. In the course of her dancing, she approached to where Inez reclined: and as she struck the tambourine, contrived dexterously to throw ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... "rinking" was a novelty on the stage or off it. But what a jolly lot these Anabaptists were! They enjoyed themselves with their dancing-girls and their picnicking on the ice. Substitute General BOOTH for Jean of Leyden, and the tambourine girls for PALLADINO and the ballet, and then you have a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... trade. It would be no more absurd to give an idiot a tambourine and call him a musician—he would be an idiot all the same. So with the clerk, the laborer, the hod-carrier, the teacher; he remains the same in spite of all the polished arms, resplendent uniforms, and pompous titles bestowed upon him. ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... match the plush; a dreary clock like a black marble tomb—it was silent as the grave too, for it had long since forgotten how to tick. And there were painted glass vases that never had any flowers in, and a painted tambourine that no one ever played, and painted brackets with ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... the excited hum of voices, the violent commotion of the water, passed by us with an impetuosity that took my breath away. They had started in a bunch. There must have been amongst them at least one crew of negroes, because somebody was beating a tambourine smartly, and the rowers chorused in a quick, panting undertone, "Ho, ho, talibambo.... Ho, ho, talibambo." One of the boats silhouetted herself for an instant, a row of heads swaying back and forth, towered over astern by a full-length figure as straight as an arrow. A retreating ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer |
