"Drummer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of finding his prospects, I had some of his friends interviewed, and managed to learn that the friend on whom Maroney principally relied to furnish bail, was one whom he had met in the South when he was a drummer, but who had now become ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... a bumping-match between a fat warrior and a dwarf. Standing erect, his paunch like a bass-drum before a drummer, the fat man was run at, head-a-tilt by the dwarf, and sent spinning ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... came a drummer for a grocery house, and began telling how much his sales had been in that town: To one grocer a car-load each of rice, nutmegs, cinnamon and pepper, besides several hundred barrels of flour and as many chests of tea. I told him I didn't doubt his ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... and render the outcome of the trial significant. The only case of its sort in its time, it was nevertheless most typical of the superstition of the time. A little town in Wiltshire had been disturbed by a stray drummer. The self-constituted noise-maker was called to account by a stranger in the village, a Mr. Mompesson of Tedworth, who on examining the man's license saw that it had been forged and took it away from ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... darkness Bobby looked in on the score or more of men doubtfully, ready for instant disappearance on the slightest alarm. Desperate was the emergency, forlorn the hope that had brought him there. At every turn his efforts to escape from the Castle had been baffled. He had been imprisoned by drummer boys and young recruits in the gymnasium, detained in the hospital, captured in ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... nation invokes its God before beginning a campaign of murder, rape and pillage. The ruthless exploitation of India becomes the civilizing fulfilment of the "white man's burden"; not infrequently the missionary, drummer, and prospector are embodied in one man. In the nineteenth century church, press and university devoted no inconsiderable part of their time to proving the high moral and scientific justice of ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... fatigues of a harried retreat. Pride was forgotten in extreme misery, and they were grateful for any attention or assistance. One of them was taken into our institution as a servant. He had been in the army eighteen years, fifteen of which he had served as drummer. He had been in some of the severest battles, had gone through the Russian campaign, and was among the few of his regiment who survived the carnage of Waterloo. And yet this man, who had been familiar with death more than half his life, and who at times talked as though he were a perfect tornado ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... the men got together in defence of their homes and kindred was generally spoken highly of in the records of the times, but I am sorry to add that in one case a drummer belonging to the Royston Volunteers was tried by Court Martial and sentenced to receive 50 lashes for absenting himself without leave, but the rev. captain, though a stern disciplinarian, had a tender heart and fatherly interest in his men, ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... train was heard in the distance as the colonel recrossed the square. Glancing toward the hotel, he saw the landlord come out, drive across the square to the station, and sit there until the passengers had alighted. To a drummer with a sample case, he pointed carelessly across the square to the hotel, but made no movement to take the baggage; and as the train moved off, the colonel, looking back, saw him driving back to ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Latin manners, Lempriere held out his arms, and Le Gallais fell upon his breast. Meanwhile a drummer from the Castle was seen to ascend the bill, bearing a white pennon at the end of a lance, which he planted on the ground when he came within sight, and beat the chamade ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... the memorandum very carefully on the shiny black surface of his sample-case. "Oh, I hope I ain't been too familiar," he added, with sudden contriteness. "Maybe I ought to have introduced myself first. My name's Clifford. I'm a drummer for Sayles & Sayles. Maine and the Maritime Provinces—that's my route. Boston's the home office. Ever been in Halifax?" he quizzed a trifle proudly. "Do an awful big business in Halifax! Happen to know the Emporium store? The ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... fort, observing a droll semblance of military precision and pomp, and forcing a passage through lounging unmilitary buckras with an air of, "Out of de way, Ole Dan Tucker!" We glanced at the yet unfinished ditch, half full of water, and walked on to the gateway. A grinning, skipping negro drummer was showing a new pair of shoes to the tobacco-chewing, jovial youth who ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... marriage and was received with laughter. Not a year had passed, before his master, conscious of growing infirmities, took him for a partner; he proposed again; he was accepted; led two years of troubled married life; and awoke one morning to find his wife had run away with a dashing drummer, and had left him heavily in debt. The debt, and not the drummer, was supposed to be the cause of the hegira; she had concealed her liabilities, they were on the point of bursting forth, she was weary of Bellairs; and she took the drummer as she might have taken a cab. The blow disabled her husband, ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Maloney had been a drummer for a large importing house in New York, his field of labor in the South. He had also been employed in the western states, and endowed with good address, portly figure, much volubility, unfailing check and invincible assurance, he successfully pushed his way. He came to California ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... It is reported among persons of the best intelligence at Olney—the barber, the schoolmaster, and the drummer of a corps quartered at this place—that the belligerent powers are at last reconciled, the articles of the treaty adjusted, and that peace is at ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... self-reproaches of poor Cassio because Master Will Shakespeare, there is evidence to prove, was a gentleman, alas! much too fond of the bottle? The man that beats the drum may be himself a coward. It is the drum that is the important thing to us, not the drummer." ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... military distinction that made him doubly certain; so, he bore away the letter, in great trepidation, to his quarters in the tiles, there to be much relieved by its contents; vowing, as he lay on his bed, to be watchful as the Duke on the look-out in his "Battle of Waterloo," and dumb as a dead drummer in the foreground. ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... James Mackintosh, one sergeant and twenty-six rank and file killed; and Captain John Graham of Duchray, Lieutenant Duncan Campbell, two serjeants, two drummers, and thirty rank and file, wounded. Of Montgomery's Highlanders one drummer and five privates were killed; and Lieutenant Donald Campbell and volunteer John Peebles, three ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... was so weak that he could hardly fly, and he shook with chills. He made straight for the apple-tree where Farmer Brown's boy always keeps a piece of suet tied to a branch for Tommy and his friends. Drummer the Woodpecker was there before him. Now it is one of the laws of politeness among the feathered folk that when one is eating from a piece of suet a newcomer ...
— Old Granny Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... to our astonishment, were drummed the very next morning. Augustine had made the discovery of a missing shoulder-cape; she had taken it upon herself to call in the drummer. So great was the attendance of villagers, even the abstractors of the lost garment must, we were certain, be among the crowd assembled to hear our names shouted out on the still air. We were greatly affected ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... enough to account for the commotion among the horses, and slipping the knife into his pocket, entered the saloon from which he emerged unobserved while the boisterous crowd was refilling its glasses at the solicitation of a white goods drummer who had been among the first to accept the ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... the hidden paper, and carried it to the General. Montcalm kept it several days, till the English rampart was half battered down; and then, after saluting his enemy with a volley from all his cannon, he sent it with a graceful compliment to Monro. It was Bougainville who carried it, preceded by a drummer and a flag. He was met at the foot of the glacis, blindfolded, and led through the fort and along the edge of the lake to the entrenched camp, where Monro was at the time. "He returned many thanks," writes the emissary in his Diary, "for the courtesy of our nation, and protested ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... doctor,' said my mother, placing her hand on the old officer's arm and smiling into his face, 'you must grant me this favour. The man is far too old to be flogged. And then he was a soldier himself once—he was a drummer boy, so he once told me, ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... familiar music. In the enclosure set apart for the orchestra the massed musicians earned their living violently in the midst of the gaily dressed idlers, who heard them with indifference, and saw them as wound-up marionettes. The drummer hammered on his blatant instrument with all the crude skill of his tribe, producing occasional terrific noises with darting fists, while his face remained as immovable as that of a Punchinello. A flautist piped romantically an Arcadian measure, while his prominent eyes stared ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... contact with a circle of friends that rather astonished me by its catholicity. It included, for instance, and quite naively, real estate dealers, clerks, a bank cashier or two, some man who had a leather shop or cigar factory in the downtown section, a drummer, a printer, two or three newspaper artists and reporters—a list too long to catalogue here and seemingly not interesting, at least not inspiring to look at or live in contact with. Yet his relations with all of these ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... which wishes to mask and soften itself, as much as of virtuous civilisation,—had not yet made sufficient progress. Even Johnson, in his 'London,' has two or three passages which cannot be read aloud, and Addison's 'Drummer' some ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... whimpered a drummer, looking up from his duty of attending to a wounded comrade. "He knowed how to put his men in the right place, and his men knowed when they was in the right place. But it's goin' to be uphill through the steepest part of hell the ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... were commonly known as the Raiders, and most excellent they were at the job—the Hun had a holy horror of the men from Glasgow. I well remember a chat after a good raid with the big drummer and a little corporal of the H.L.I. Both had greatly distinguished themselves and they asked me not to question them as to details of the raid, as some very dirty work took place across the way! ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... the high chair on which he sat slightly back from the table, and dropped himself, standing, to the floor,—his head being only a little above the level of the table, as he stood. With pain and labor, lifting one foot over the other, as a drummer handles his sticks, he took a few steps from his place,—his motions and the deadbeat of the misshapen boots announcing to my practised eye and ear the malformation which is called in learned language ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... his haying and rounded up the faithful. There were seven members of the order in the community, all of whom were willing to stand for their country's honor. There was James Shewfelt, who was a drummer, and could play the tunes without the fife at all. There was John Barker, who did a musical turn in the form of a ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... came nearer and nearer, and then the silhouette of the drummer cut the sky above the eastern terrace. The fading light lingered a moment on his belt and bayonet, then he passed into the shadows, drumming the echoes awake. The roll became fainter along the eastern terrace, then grew and grew and rattled with increasing ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... kind," said she, drily, "but I can by no means consent to take up any more of your time." Then looking on the window-seat, she presently found the books, and added, "Come, here are just three, and so like the servants in the Drummer, this important affair may give employment to us all." She then presented one of them to Lord Orville, another to me, and taking a third herself, with a most provoking look, she ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... the whole lasting less than half a minute. The tips of his wings barely brush the log, so that the sound is produced rather by the force of the blows upon the air and upon his own body as in flying. One log will be used for many years, though not by the same drummer. It seems to be a sort of temple, and held in great respect. The bird always approaches it on foot, and leaves it in the same quiet manner, unless rudely disturbed. He is very cunning, though his wit is not profound. It is very difficult to approach him by stealth; you will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... only forty-two men survived; all the officers, except five, were either dead or captured. Three thousand combatants had been massacred in that barn. A sergeant of the English Guards, the foremost boxer in England, reputed invulnerable by his companions, had been killed there by a little French drummer-boy. Baring had been dislodged, Alten put to the sword. Many flags had been lost, one from Alten's division, and one from the battalion of Lunenburg, carried by a prince of the house of Deux-Ponts. The Scotch Grays no longer existed; Ponsonby's great dragoons had been hacked ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... in love over his depth with that beefy Mrs. Claymore and takes me motoring to pour his love (of her) into my aural labyrinths. I don't object to playing second fiddle, but when it comes to holding the triangle for the drummer, I pass blind. Never mind, while he isn't watching some day he'll get stung, for I'm really fond of him. You say that you are so much stronger willed than I am—did you ever look at yourself in the mirror? Carlton has eyes that I adore—they ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... little Brown, who had come in at Shock's earnest invitation, and because he was anxious to hear about the new country from one who was coming to be recognised as an authority, "he sees one thing sure enough. I say, what a drummer he'd make! Talk like that is worth 100 a minute to any firm. I'll put my Governor on to him. When that chap opened his sample case he wouldn't talk weather and politics, and then sidle up to business. Not much! ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... stood,—one or two nervous younger ones sometimes bobbing up a little ahead of time, but sitting down again in confusion under the contemptuous scowls and pluckings of the rest),—where the emperor dashed by, and reined up to ask an officer what regiment that was that had broken, and who was that drummer that had been promoted to ensign;—they all knew how, on the grand review afterwards, the Sergeant, beating his drum with one hand (while the other, which had been broken by a bullet, was in a sling), had marched with his company ...
— "A Soldier Of The Empire" - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... morning of the 13th of November, said that the stars shot over in the form of a bow, and seemed to drop into the lake. Such a display, he added, was never before seen. He says that the Chippewa Indians called the Wolverine "Gween-guh-auga," which means underground drummer. This animal is a great ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... own inherent beauty and with the vast weight of harrowing tradition, was to wring the tears from Constance's eyes; they fell on her aproned bosom, and she sank into a chair. And though, the cheeks of the trumpeters were puffed out, and though the drummer had to protrude his stomach and arch his spine backwards lest he should tumble over his drum, there was majesty in the passage of the band. The boom of the drum, desolating the interruptions of the melody, made sick the heart, but with a lofty grief; ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... succeeded by a dance, in which many performers assisted, all of whom were provided with little bells, which were fastened to their legs and arms; and here too the drum regulated their motions. It was beaten with a crooked stick, which the drummer held in his right hand, occasionally using his left to deaden the sound, and thus vary the music. The drum is likewise applied on these occasions to keep order among the spectators, by imitating the sound of certain Mandingo sentences: for example, when the wrestling match is ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... orchestra plays it, The German band brays it, 'T is sung on the platform and stage; All over the city They're chanting the ditty; At summer resorts it's the rage. The drum corps, it beats it, The echo repeats it, The bass-drummer brings it out strong, And we speak, and we talk, And we dance, and we walk, To the ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... poor drummer, crawling out from the mass of snow, which had torn him from his comrades, began to beat his drum for relief. The muffled sound came up from his gloomy resting-place, and was heard by his brother soldiers; but none could go to his rescue. For an hour, ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... a drummer boy in Captain Borrow's regiment. Borrow describes him upsetting the New Town champion in one of the bickers. Seven years later he was condemned to death at Edinburgh, and to earn a little money ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... horse enabled you to keep your appointment at the risk of your neck. Why, L'Isle, you might have become a ballad hero. Mabel would have put your adventure in verse, and set it to music, and you would have been sung by all our musical folks, from Major Lumley down to the smallest drummer-boy. You are a lucky fellow; but this time your luck ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... the constituent parts of the 'Golden Ass' is startling, and is well illustrated by the selection given previously and that which follows. The story of the "drummer" comports exactly with the modern idea of realism in fiction: a vivid and unflinching picture of manners and morals, full of broad coarse humor and worldly wit. The story of Cupid and Psyche is the purest, daintiest, most poetic of fancies; in essence ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... woman—slender, tall, and brown! She snatches up the standard as it falls— In her hot haste tumbles her dark hair down, And to the drummer-boy aloud she calls To beat the charge; then forwards on the pont They dash together;—who could bear to see A woman and a child, thus Death confront, Nor burn ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... paint on my sabre shows, it has been intended to conceal? In the one case even the slightest reflection of light is guarded against, while in the other a large field of colors undoes all that it has been wished to accomplish. The drummer, on the other hand, must beat his drum as he goes to the attack, yet he is expected to run into the enemy unarmed. He would prefer exchanging his drum for a rifle, so that he would be able to shoot down ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... had no public celebration, but some of the children in our neighborhood got up a celebration of their own at our house. Mamma made the oration, and played the national airs on the piano, after which we had a parade. We all had paper caps, and we had a flag and a drummer-boy. My little two-year-old cousin Gordon brought up the rear of the procession, with a paper cap on, and as gay as any ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the lieutenant, fuming at the way the carpenter had spoken to him. Suddenly, however, it seemed to occur to him that the carpenter was right, and he ordered the drummer to beat to quarters, that the guns might be run into their places, ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston
... for the moment as she read, half aloud: "L. Middleton—with Frank Brothers. Dealers in first-class canned goods," the New York address being in the corner. The feeling of disappointment only lasted for a moment, for was not a travelling man, as the drummer is always called in country towns, a person of experience and knowledge of the world, as well as being not infrequently shrouded in mystery? As she pondered on the card, wondering if she dared put it in her pocket, he said in a matter-of-fact ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... witness it; and, with all my desire and with every intention to encourage native talent, I was compelled to turn away, "more in sorrow than in anger," (SHAKSPEARE again—Hamlet's Ghost, I think,) when the pipe-and-drummer man came to me for a contribution. Not a penny in my pocket. "I will reimburse thee nobly," said I, "on my return from the Mine-land." He quoted some line or other, which I did not catch, and gave the name of the writer, one "WALKER," as his ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... Pope, who, on the contrary, after Addison's death, deliberately printed his matchlessly malignant verses in the "Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot.'' In 1716 there was acted, with little success, Addison's comedy of The Drummer, or the Haunted House. It contributes very little to his fame. From September 1715 to June 1716 he defended the Hanoverian succession, and the proceedings of the government in regard to the rebellion, in a paper called the Freeholder, which he wrote entirely ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... I have heard, 'tis fit a general Should not endanger his own person oft; So that he make a noise when he 's a-horseback, Like a Danske drummer,—Oh, 'tis excellent!— He need not fight! methinks his horse as well Might lead an army for him. If I live, I 'll charge the French foe in the very front Of all my troops, ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... arranged by Napoleon with Prince Lichtenstein, Major-General of the Austrian army. A heavy rain fell without cessation, and the prisoners were amazed to see the Emperor, who had not taken off his boots for a week, wet through, covered with mud, and more tired than the humblest drummer. When some one spoke of it, he said to Prince Lichtenstein: "Your Emperor wanted to remind me that I was a soldier. I hope he will acknowledge that the throne and the Imperial purple have not made me forget my old trade." ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... another signal from the flag-ship, and then on board all the boats there was a shrill whistle. It was the boatswain piping all hands to quarters. The drummer beat his roll, and the marines seized their muskets. The sailors threw open the ports, ran out the guns, brought up shot and shells, stowed away furniture, took down rammers and sponges, seized their handspikes, stripped off their coats, rolled up their sleeves, loaded ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... Manchester," he said, "was entered, and in part seized, by one Scots sergeant and his drummer. Of a certainty near a score of Maclachlans can intake yon ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... his king. Dunbar, however, who was on shore engaged in the business of the surrender, was held as a prisoner. The Whigs were not much nearer taking the Bass. On September 3 they sent a sergeant and a drummer to offer a free pardon to the Cavaliers. They were allowed to land on the rock, but Middleton merely laughed at the promise of a free pardon, and he kept the sergeant and drummer, whom he afterwards released. A Danish ship, sailing between the Bass and shore, had a gun ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... was but fifteen years old at that time. I didn't do much good or harm, for I was but a snare drummer the first two years of my soldiering, and the last year I was detailed as mounted orderly at brigade headquarters. But just see the people! Give them some messages! We shall be out of 'Yankee ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... at the railroad station entertained any doubt whatever as to just what this stranger was. His clothes, his sample case, his ogling eyes, his hat cockily perched on one side of his head proclaimed him "a fresh drummer," according to ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... of the Pelican for the cholera!" (He fired off the word cholera like a cannon shot.) "Appoints you Legionary" ("Knight," whispers the King very low). "Yes, Knight Legionary" (the King bent his head in despair). "Knight Legionary of his Majesty's r-r- royal order of the Legion of Honour! Drummer! Fermez le ban!" ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... I see myself at the end of that time any nearer what I was after? I hadn't slacked, mind you. I'd worked! Everything they'd ever spilled I'd sopped up like a sponge. And did it finally bring me a chance? Sure it did, believe you me. A whiskey drummer with false teeth!" ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... Woodpecker was beating his long roll on a hollow tree in the Green Forest. Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat! Drummer thought it the most beautiful sound in the world. After each long roll he would stop and listen for a reply. You see, sometimes one of his family in another part of the Green Forest, or over in the Old Orchard, would hear him drumming ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... Chuck sat on his door-step watching Drummer the Woodpecker building a new home in the old apple-tree. Drummer's red head flew back and forth, back and forth, and his sharp bill cut out tiny bits of wood. It was slow work; it was hard work. But Drummer seemed ...
— The Adventures of Johnny Chuck • Thornton W. Burgess
... That's what I like; although here, too, there's calmness. But the speech is the sepulchral beat of a drum, and the drummer ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... she could see Steering at the pen-and-ink desk, loitering there, one arm on the desk, watching the thin stream of people that went by him to the convex glass-and-pine booth where the post-office boxes were. The men from the Canaan stores, a lonely drummer from the hotel, some belated farmers and several Canaan young ladies passed Steering, the young ladies seeming not to see him, but, in some subtly feminine way, making it impossible for Steering not to see them—their glowing young faces, their enormous hats, the ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... of a heavenly nymph: For I will use it as my writing paper; And so reduce him, from a scolding drum, To be the herald, and dear counsel-bearer, Betwixt a goddess and a mighty king. Go, bid the drummer learn to touch the lute, Or hang him in the braces of his drum; For now we think it an uncivil thing To trouble heaven with such harsh resounds. Away! [Exit Lodowick. The quarrel that I have requires ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... he reached the springy life net he straightened out and came down feet first, bouncing up, and down like a rubber ball. The instant he landed the bass drum gave forth a thundering "boom," and as Joe rose, and came down again, the drummer punctuated each descent with a bang, until the crowd that had applauded madly at the jump was laughing at the queer effect of Joe's bouncing to the ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... hill of summer, Sleepy with the flow of streams, Far I hear the steady drummer Drumming like a ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... soon as the sound of battle has died away following the departure of Washington and his army, put on the tableau of "The Spirit of '76." The fifer, the drummer, and the little boy should be good musicians playing patriotic music of the Revolution. Their wounded and ragged comrades ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... drawn up on the flags under the semicircular piazza just before Mrs. Yearsley's library. A little band of children, who had been mustered by Lady Diana Sweepstakes' SPIRITED EXERTIONS, closed the procession. They were now all in readiness. The drummer only waited for her ladyship's signal; and the archers' corps only waited for her ladyship's word of ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... Institute and the Quai de la Monnaie. At the Pont Neuf we pass a band of men armed with pikes, axes and rifles, headed by a drummer, and led by a man brandishing a sabre and wearing a long coat of the King's livery. It is the coat of the coachman who has just been killed in the ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... their arms and legs, so they could imagine how dreadful it was to pull them off. Sister turned pale and said nothing, but Boy Comfort, who at last had decided, to open his mouth and had become quite a chatterbox, jabbered away and stuck out his little stomach like a drummer. He was a sturdy little fellow, and Ellen's eyes followed him proudly as he went round ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... he heard the low, clear melody of a woman's voice issuing from an open window of the Hoogstraten mansion. He listened, and noticing with a shudder how much Henrica's voice—for the singer must be the young lady—resembled Isabella's, ordered the drummer ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... life we have led since then! You can't imagine it, my dear. He has been a tavern-keeper, a drummer,—everything! Why, last summer we sold rugs and Turkish things in Atlantic City! But he is always afraid of meeting someone who knows him, and—and he drinks too much. So we have not got on in the world, Ned and I; and now, after ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... five months with a wholesale grocery and miners supply firm, Elder and Smith, Fourth and J streets, Sacramento, and three months in the mines as a drummer, or solicitor and collector for the same firm. I returned to Sacramento and was almost ready to start home when the Scots River excitement broke out. I then went to the mines on Trinity River and associated myself in mining with ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... ex-President. The legal struggle was one of the most celebrated in the annals of the New York bar. There was abundant evidence of moral delinquency on the part of both parties to the suit, but the verdict was in favor of Mrs. Forrest. She was the daughter of John Sinclair, formerly a drummer in the English army and subsequently a professional singer. James Gordon Bennett said of her in the Herald that "being born and schooled in turmoil and dissipation and reared in constant excitement she could not live ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... man could complain, and we generally went at the double-quick, with occasional rests. The road lay along Deer Creek, passing several plantations; and occasionally, at the bends, it crossed the swamp, where the water came above my hips. The smaller drummer-boys had to carry their drums on their heads, and most of the men slang their cartridge-boxes around their necks. The soldiers generally were glad to have their general and field officers afoot, but we gave them a fair specimen of marching, accomplishing ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... suppose I heard to-day?" she answered. "I met Josiah Ellis down to 'Liphalet's store and he told me he see Mr. Phillips yesterday. Josiah drove one of the livery hoss-'n'-teams over to Denboro—had a Boston notion drummer to cart over there, he did—and who should come drivin' along but Mr. Phillips. Josiah said he was dressed just as elegant as ever was, and the hoss-'n'-team he was drivin' was styled-up to match. Josiah hailed him and Mr. Phillips stopped and talked ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... not much like the month of March. March is said to come in a lion and go out a lamb, while the drummer comes in a lyin' and goes out ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... of Hughes, the fifer, is inexhaustible; he can blow five miles at a stretch. The members of the band are in good pluck, and when not playing, either sing, tell stories, or indulge in reminiscences of a personal character. Russia has been badgering William Heney, a drummer. He says that while at Elkwater Heney sparked one of Esquire Stalnaker's daughters, and that the lady's little sister going into the room quite suddenly one evening called back to the father, "Dad, dad, William Heney has got ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... and my father was Andrew Jackson. I had three brothers fought in the War. I was too young. They talked of taking me in a drummer boy the year it ceased. My nephew give me this uniform. It is warm and it is good. My breeches needs some repairs reason I ain't got them on. [He has worn a blue uniform ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... Kelly. Third Lieutenant, Henry Bedinger. First Sergeant, John Crawford. Second Sergeant, John Kerney. Third Sergeant, Robert Howard. Fourth Sergeant, Dennis Bush. First Corporal, John Seaburn. Second Corporal, Evert Hoglant. Third Corporal, Thomas Knox. Fourth Corporal, Jonathan Gibbons. Drummer, Stephen Vardine. Fifer, Thomas ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... it could be heard in the centre of Paris. Around the Fort of Noisy the projectiles sank into the frozen ground to a depth of two and a half metres, and raised blocks of earth weighing 30lbs. Shells fell as far as Romainville. In the Rue de Pantin a drummer had his head carried off; his comrades buried him on the spot. In the court of Fort Noisy three men, hearing the hissing of a shell, threw themselves on the ground. It was a bad inspiration; the shell fell on the one in the middle, ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... asked "'S matter?" and the conductor answered, "Waiting for No. 5." Five minutes passed and not a wheel turned; six, eight, ten minutes, and no sound of the coming west-bound express. Up ahead we could hear the flutter and flap of the blow-off; for the black flier was as restless as the fat drummer who was snapping his watch, grunting "Huh," and washing suppressed ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... matter into their own hands, and on the 7th of September 1736, a body of strangers, supposed to be from the counties of Fife, Stirling, Perth, and Dumfries, many of them landed gentlemen, entered the West Port of Edinburgh between nine and ten o'clock at night, and having seized the Portsburgh drummer by the way, brought along his drum with them, and his son. Some of them advancing up into the Grassmarket, commanded the drummer's son to beat to arms. They then called out, "Here! all those who ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... had been stolen away from her home when an infant, and sold for three guineas to Sir Thomas Booby; the name of her family was Andrews, and they had a daughter of a very strange name, Pamela. This story he had received from a dying woman when he had been a drummer ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... whistle, the drummer beat the long roll, and the sailors, who had been dozing about the decks, were instantly astir, weighing the anchors, running out the great guns, bringing up shot and shell from the hold, and clearing the deck for action. The great wheels turned, and the Essex swung out into ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... dates. I am proud, however, to record the names of four soldiers belonging to the Seventeenth Mississippi Regiment: J. Wm. Flynn,[1] then a mere lad, but whose record will compare with the brightest; Samuel Frank, quartermaster; Maurice Bernhiem, quartermaster-sergeant, and Auerbach, the drummer of the regiment. I was proudly told by a member of Company G, Seventeenth Mississippi, that Sam Prank, although excelling in every duty of his position, was exceeding brave, often earnestly asking permission to lead the skirmishers, and would shoulder a musket sooner than stay ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... it seems, a recruiting sergeant, who, having listed two country fellows over night, dreaded they had mutinied, and threatened to murder him and the drummer who was along with him. This made such an impression on his imagination, that he got up in his sleep and expressed himself as above. When our apprehension of danger vanished, the company beheld one another with great surprise ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... June 1801, was an instinctive criminal, who, at Leith Races, in 1813, enlisted, whilst drunk, as a drummer in the West Norfolks. Eventually he obtained his discharge and continued on his career of crime and prison-breaking, among other things murdering a policeman and a gaoler, until, on 18th July 1821, ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... "Cowpens!" exclaimed a necktie drummer who was stopping at the Rye House for a day or so, "I thought Cowpens was a battle fought between the United States and the ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... tells of a widow's arrival in town, with a drummer beating before her, whose cap was bedecked with ostrich feathers; a bowman walking on foot at the head of her horse; a train behind, armed with bows, swords, and spears. She rode a-straddle on a fine horse, whose trappings were of the first order for this ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... ship as a powder monkey, on one of the ships of war; or enlist as a drummer, in one of the regiments; and then I should be beyond your ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... his forehead and fell upon his coarse, matted brown beard. But he believed what he said, and language was so little an accomplishment with him that he was not tempted to say more than he believed. He had been a drummer boy in the Civil War, on the losing side, and he ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... mention these things in passing because I'm afraid you're apt to be the fellow who's doing the talking; just as I'm a little afraid that you're sometimes like the hungry drummer at the dollar-a-day house—inclined to kill your appetite by eating the cake in the centre of the table ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... Crosses. But every regiment very jealously counts up its honours. You'll hear men say: 'Our regiment has two V.C.s, five D.S.O.s, and twenty Distinguished Conduct Medals.' and the feeling is that all the honours are lumped together and shared by everybody, from the Colonel to the drummer-boys. And each individual is proud of his share because he knows that he deserves it. And so it happens that those whom chance has set aside for distinction, like the lucky winners in a sweepstake, are the most embarrassed people you can imagine, because everybody ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... surging up to the gates. "At midnight my house was beset with 500 of these rascal routers," notes the indomitable little prelate. He had received notice in time to secure the house, and after two hours of useless shouting the mob rolled away. Laud had his revenge; a drummer who had joined in the attack was racked mercilessly, and then hanged and quartered. But retaliation like this was useless. The gathering of the Long Parliament sounded the knell of the sturdy little minister who had ridden ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... not preside over thee. To corporalship, lance-corporalship, thou didst attain; alas, also to the halberts and cat: but thy rewarder and punisher seemed blind as the Deluge: neither lance-corporalship, nor even drummer's cat, because both appeared delirious, brought ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... serve our apprenticeship, and we do not mean to be treated as gentlemen, but as real apprentices who are not there for fun; why should not we actually be apprenticed? Peter the Great was a ship's carpenter and drummer to his own troops; was not that prince at least your equal in birth and merit? You understand this is addressed not to Emile but to you—to you, ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... of physiognomy. As he was now in the foremost van, he gradually edged near and nearer to the object of his attraction, whilst the learned beast was making preparations for a grand display; and just as Bruin had reached the place where the drummer had taken his stand, Herr Schwein (so was he called) gave orders for a flourish of music by way of opening the performance. But how describe the effect which the sound produced on our bear? At the first stroke of the stick on the drum, he leaped from the ground ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... surgeon; M. Boden, W. Hopley, assistant surgeons; P. H. Humphrey, mineralogist; Lieutenant Fosbrook, deputy-commissary-general; G. P. Harris, deputy-surveyor; John Clarke and William Patterson, superintendents of convicts; Lieutenants W. Sladen, J. M. Johnson, and Edward Lord; 39 marines, 3 sergeants, 1 drummer, 1 ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... burglars, I said. Mr. Drummer, or something—I never did get the name of the folks—found three of them trying to break into his safe, and they knocked him down and half-killed him, and the servants chased them, and then everyone ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... followed and the parade faded away. I stood my ground until my eye-glasses were knocked off, and then I groped my way to the sidewalk. When the confusion had subsided, all that could be discovered of my band was the drum-major in front and the bass-drummer in the rear rank. Their comrades had fled, but these men were good soldiers, and having received no orders to disperse had stood ...
— The Experiences of a Bandmaster • John Philip Sousa
... landlord of the tavern. There was a wire-fenced patch of sandy red earth a hundred yards from the house, a patch wherein the white woman who was mistress at the tavern had tried to grow a few common English flower-seeds out of a gaily-covered packet left by a drummer who had passed that way. She had grown tired of the trouble of watering and tending them, so that some of them had withered, and the lean fowls had flown over the fence and scratched the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... hurrying up; one is leading a baboon by a string around the neck, and the other is carrying a gourd drum. Reaching me, the man with the baboon commences making the most ludicrous grimaces and causes the baboon to caper wildly about by jerking the string, while the drummer proceeds to belabor the head of his drum, apparently with the single object of extracting as much noise from it as possible. Putting my fingers to my ears I turn away; ten minutes afterward I observe another similar combination making a bee-line for my person; waving them ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Holland and Zealand for war expenses amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand florins monthly. The pay of a captain was eighty florins monthly; that of a lieutenant, forty; that of a corporal, fifteen; that of a drummer, fifer, or Minister, twelve; that of a common soldier, seven and a half. A captain had also one hundred and fifty florins each month to distribute among the most meritorious of his company. Each soldier was likewise furnished with food; bedding, fire, light, and washing.—Renom de France ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... your Sunday clothes," panted Mrs. Bolum, when she reached the floor again. Stepping back, she eyed him critically. "You look handsomer than a drummer," ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... them wincing under the thong, the pompous poltroons! If you only knew how they behaved to me! By Jove, sir, they hooted me going to the House of Lords, and nearly pulled me off my horse. The ruffians would have massacred me if they could; and then they all ran away from a drummer-boy and a couple of grenadiers, who were going the rounds to change guard. Was not that good? Fine, eh? A brutish mob in a fit of morality about to immolate a gentleman, and then scampering off from a sentry. I call that ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... it was; he tried not to seem to see the looks or hear the remarks as he passed along, but they were food and drink to him. Smaller boys than himself flocked at his heels, as proud to be seen with him, and tolerated by him, as if he had been the drummer at the head of a procession or the elephant leading a menagerie into town. Boys of his own size pretended not to know he had been away at all; but they were consuming with envy, nevertheless. They would have given anything to have ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... ourselves be tempted to soil our hands under pretext of vindictive damages. The man who thinks that all the money in Germany could pay for the life of a single British drummer boy ought to be shot merely as an expression of the feeling that he is unfit to live. We stake our blood as the Germans stake theirs; and in that ganz besonderes Saft alone should we [missing text]r accept payment. We had better **[missing text]y to the Kaiser at the end of the **[missing ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... Sometimes he left his hall, this devilish musician, and strode along the battlements drumming and drumming, a terrible figure nine feet high. Most people were frightened, but there were those who said that the drummer was nothing more nor less than a gardener in league with the Pevensey smugglers, whose notes, rattled out on the parchment, rolled over the marsh and ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... a "drummer girl"—a brilliant uniform with knee skirt, long boots, a little, round, "Tommy Atkins" cap with chin-strap, and a little snare-drum at her hip that ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... three or four such turnings I went into a small temperance hotel and took lodgings for the night. There was but a single commercial traveler in the sitting room—a special room set apart in every English hotel, sacred to the 'drummer' fraternity. In the course of the evening he handed me a small railway map of Ireland, which, in my subsequent flight through the country, proved of incalculable service ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... opposite his hotel window. The scene enacted in an office of a building not far away led him to believe that a murder was being committed, and the action which followed was extremely funny. The scene in the office, watched by the "drummer" through the binoculars, appeared on the screen as though viewed through a large and very round figure eight, lying on its ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... more an aide is to awake the drummer and have him ready by the fire to beat the reveille, when all at once the attack begins. A sentinel, standing on the bank of Burnet's Creek near the northwestern angle of the camp, sees an object crawling on ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... dance is interrupted by the unexpected appearance of Don Alhambra, who looks on with astonishment. Marco and Giuseppe appear embarrassed. The others run off, except Drummer Boy, who is driven ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... I know she almost lives on acids and small whey— laces herself by pulleys and often in the hottest noon of summer you may see her on a little squat Pony, with her hair plaited up behind like a Drummer's and puffing round the ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... formal organization, as at public festivals, no president elected, and no list of toasts prepared. It was intended to be a sociable gathering. No band of well-arranged and harmonized instruments appeared, but old Jacob Brown and old Samuel Hanson, a fifer and a drummer of the continental army, occasionally stirred the hearts and fired the eyes of the company with the music which had nerved the patriots of Bunker's Hill and Bennington. Each of the veterans sat in an arm-chair at the table, ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... around in an automobile, and he can make five times more visits than with a horse. So, too, with the contractor and the builder. The drummer carries his samples in a gasoline runabout, and, in addition to seeing twice the number of customers, he can get their goodwill by taking them for a spin. Fire-engines, hose-wagons, and police patrols race to conflagrations propelled ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... they heightened it with spiritual pride,—they encouraged their soldiers to rave from the tops of tubs against the men of Belial, till every trooper thought himself a prophet. They taught them to abuse popery, till every drummer fancied that he was as infallible ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... prim front of her squares, the cordial grasp of hand-in-hand with which they form to resist all masculine charges, no one would imagine the ruthless severity with which woman was breaking some poor drummer-boy inside. ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... was well crowded, the old man in the skull cap across the aisle from her gouging out an orange. She ordered with a sense of novelty and thrift, passing on from grilled spring chicken, bar-le-duc, and honey-dew melon to eggs and bacon. A drummer with a gold-mounted elk's tooth dangling from his chain ogled her, so she sat very prim of back, gazing out over flying villages that were like white-pine toys cut in the cisalpine Alps and invitingly more clipped and groomed than the straggling Indiana towns of yesterday. She was cruelly conscious ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... a native of Cheshire, after consuming a fortune of 700l. was corporal in the second regiment of foot; and John Hammond, an American by birth, was drummer in the thirty-sixth; both ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... created out of nothing, what should you say if I were frank about the other characters of my story? Could you deny that the drummer who was first engaged to Cornelia was anything more than a materialization from seeing a painter very long ago make his two fingers do a ballet-dance? Or that Ludlow was not at first a mere pointed beard and a complexion glimpsed in a slim young Cuban one night at Saratoga? Or that Cornelia's ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells |
