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More "Drumming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... suppression of any portion of my history, no matter how damaging its effect might be expected to be upon my interests. When I had told him everything he remained silent for quite two or three minutes, drumming the table ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... in Mr. Gorham's hands, turning his pale face away, and drumming nervously on the arm of his chair with his fingers. The minutes seemed hours, and when he turned, he found Gorham's penetrating eye fixed firmly upon him. He had counted on the strength of the statements contained ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... looked around. There was no one in sight. He could hear Charlie Jones in the forecastle drumming on his banjo, and Burns whistling the same tune as he went aft to strike the bell. (It was the duty of the officer on watch to strike the hour.) It was then half after eleven. As he passed the captain's door again, his foot struck something, ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... foe with curious outcries. And now might be seen prodigies of valor, unmatched in history or song. Here was the sturdy Stoffel Brinkerhoff brandishing his quarter-staff, like the giant Blanderon his oak-tree (for he scorned to carry any other weapon), and drumming a horrific tune upon the hard heads of the Swedish soldiery. There were the Van Kortlandts, posted at a distance, like the Locrian archers of yore, and plying it most potently with the long-bow, for which they ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... daybreak, and my young readers can rest assured that by that time his appetite was decidedly keen. Listening intently, he could hear the grouse drumming in the ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... to let fly first,' said the Swabian second to his chief. 'Now, Hollenstein, old man, jump into your drumming skin!' ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... Chinaman who came to the gate of his flower-yard, and gave us 'Good-day' in excellent English; and a little farther on it would be some natives who set us down by the wayside, made us a feast of mummy-apple, and entertained us as we ate with drumming on a tin case. With all this fine plenty of men and fruit, death is at work here also. The population, according to the highest estimate, does not exceed six hundred in the whole vale of Atuona; and yet, when I once chanced to put the question, Brother ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... standing beside his Captain, veiled his eyes with his hand; then, ashamed of his weakness, gazed steadfastly at the lifted figure. Arden, drumming with his fingers upon the rail, looked sidewise at ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... those hot days, it is a universal drumming, kettle-drumming, coast-ward; preparation of transports at Gravesend, at the top of one's velocity. 'All the coopers in London are in requisition for water-casks, so that our very brewers have to pause astonished for want of tubs.' ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... sat drumming on his desk, lost in thought. "By George, that's a queer case. Her other reason is the real one. I wonder what ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... glanced anxiously at Roger; but his eyes were fixed on the floor, and he sat drumming gently on the table with ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... talented coloured gentleman who had been extracted from small-time vaudeville by Mr. Abrahams to do a nightly speciality at the Flower Garden. He was, in fact, a trap-drummer: and it was his amiable practice, after he had done a few minutes trap-drumming, to rise from his seat and make a circular tour of the tables on the edge of the dancing-floor, whimsically pretending to clip the locks of the male patrons with a pair of drumsticks held scissor-wise. And so it came about that, just as Mr. Carmyle was bending towards ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... everything muddled, everybody thought they knew better than I did, and now you come to me! How mend matters? There is nothing to mend! The principles laid down by me must be strictly adhered to," said he, drumming on the table with his bony fingers. "What is the difficulty? ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... twelve. She rose with a start, bethinking her suddenly of Diana, and wondering why she had not yet arrived. Was the child's indisposition graver than she had led Ruth to suppose? She crossed to the windows and stood there drumming impatiently upon the pane, her eyes straying idly over the sweep of elm-fringed lawns towards the river gleaming silvery here and there between the trees ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... feeling of desolation, homesickness, uncertainty, and anxiety with which an emigrant makes his first voyage across the ocean? I proved to be a good sailor, but the sea frightened me. The thumping of the engines was drumming a ghastly accompaniment to the awesome whisper of the waves. I felt in the embrace of a vast, uncanny force. And echoing through it all were the heart-lashing words: "Are you crazy? You forget your place, young man!" When Columbus was crossing the Atlantic, on his first great voyage, his ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... The stocky, grizzle-haired man in the centre was a plain-clothes man from headquarters, named Barlow; at the lower end of the table Reddy Curley and Haines, his partner, faced each other, Curley drumming indifferently with his fingers on the table-top, Haines scowling and chewing his lower lip, a certain coarse brutality in both their faces that was neither pleasant nor inviting; but it was the white-haired old man, bent of form, standing at the head ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... hands closing softly over the restless brown one drumming a tattoo on the window-sill, and her golden head drooping so close to Eve's, her curls mingled with her dark locks, "I could never love any one in this world again. I loved once—it was the sweetest, yet the ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... troubles. The dining-car was well filled, and, though the faces of the diners were all unfamiliar, the hum of talk, the hurrying of the waiters, and the subdued clamor drowning itself in the under-drone of the drumming wheels answered well enough for companionship. There are times when even the voice of a friend is an intrusion, and the returning exile had happed upon one of them. Largeness, the inspiring breadth of the immensities, ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... insects, but at the same time had disappeared many of the enticements which in summer oft made this duty irksome. The partridges were almost the sole birds remaining in the bleak woods, and, much as their curious ways of hiding in the snow, and the resounding thunder of their strange drumming, mystified and attracted me, I was not alert enough to catch them. All my devices of horse-hair and deer-hide snares were foolishness in their sharp eyes. The water-fowl, too—the geese, ducks, cranes, pokes, fish-hawks, and others—had flown, sometimes darkening ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... Napoleon's sister in marriage, and had really a very good presence, and wore his fine black hair in curls, and would shortly enter the city in state and would certainly please all the ladies. Meanwhile, the drumming continued in the street, and I went and stood outside the door and watched the French troops marching in, those glorious happy Frenchmen, who marched through the world with songs and shining sabres, the gay firm-set faces of the Grenadiers, the bear-skins, ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... slippery slugs. Thus was sleep averted, until a merciful gin, hearing the man's groans, came and cracked two or three of these little black pots with a waddie or club, so then George got leave to sleep, and just as he was dozing off, ting, tong, ti tong, tong, tong, came a fearful drumming of parchment. A corroboree or native dance was beginning. No more sleep till that was over—so all hands turned out. A space was cleared in the wood, women stood on both sides with flaming boughs and threw a bright ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... a hurry. The bullets from the Indians pattered like hail, sending the bark flying, and drumming upon the bare trunks of the breastworks. The heavy carbines stanchly replied. Horses reared again, and screamed and fell, kicking. The Indians were making certain of the cavalry mounts. That was the first job—to ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... paper and sprang up; the boys came expectantly forward. Even the book-keeper stopped to watch the new-comer as he came rapidly toward the office. Only the head of the house sat unconcernedly at his desk—his long, pale, bony fingers drumming on the port-folio—his hard eyes ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... The chilly feeling woke him again, and he tried once more to say his prayers, and this time with better success. He was able to add a special petition that "mother" might soon be well again, and that dear Vicky might be happy. And then he fell asleep—so soundly, so heavily, that when a drumming at the door made itself heard, he fancied he had only just begun the night. He sat up. Where was he? At first, in the darkness, he thought he was in his own bed at home, and he wondered who was knocking so roughly—wondered still more at the rude ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... horse sped faster than before. Ere he had advanced a hundred yards, I took off my hat, in obedience to the advice which Mr. Petulengro had given me, in his own language, and holding it over the horse's head, commenced drumming on the crown with the knob of the whip; the horse gave a slight start, but instantly recovering himself, continued his trot till he arrived at the door of the public-house, amidst the acclamations of the company, who had all ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... minutes. There was a sort of volcanic intensity in the atmosphere. He was acutely conscious of small extraneous things, of the perfume of a great bowl of hyacinths, the ticking of a tiny French clock, the restless drumming of her finger tips upon the arm of her chair. All the time he seemed actually to feel her eyes, commanding, impelling, beseeching him to turn round. He did so at last, and looked her full ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... light under the lamp was an open book, an inkstand and a pen. A nurse—not his nurse—was standing by the table, her fingers idly drumming the cloth, and near her a man in evening dress. Perhaps a doctor. They were conversing in low tones. In the middle of the ward was an open stove, and the restless flames were reflected in all the brass knobs of the bedsteads and in some shining metal balls which ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... snow comes down! I thought it would never snow at all this winter. Just look at it! Now that's what I call tip-top," said Tom Chandler, gazing at the fast-whitening landscape, and drumming a cheerful tattoo on the ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... filled with gas, and it was stifling. The old boat pitched a good deal going into shell holes, and it was all a man could do to keep his station. I put my nose up to my loop-hole to get air, but only once. The machine-gun bullets were simply rattling on our hide. Tock, tock, tock they kept drumming. The first shell that hit us must have been head on and a direct hit. There was a terrific crash, and the old girl shook all over,—seemed to pause a little even. But no harm was done. After that we breathed ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... your own room," Mrs. Hunter whispered in Elizabeth's ear, and the young girl stole a shy look at her lover, who was drumming on the window and had not heard, and made no reply, but it gave her a sense of possession in the new house which she had very nearly ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... swift patter of heralding drops, and then a steady, rhythmical drumming on the shake roof. The man smiled, with that ineffable delight in the music which no one really knows but the tiller ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... seats herself at the loom of thought, and weaves strange figures into the web that looks so familiar and ordinary in the dry light of every-day. Just as we are flattering ourselves that the old spirit of sorcery is laid, behold the tables are tipping and the floors drumming all over Christendom. The faculty of wonder is not defunct, but is only getting more and more emancipated from the unnatural service of terror, and restored to its proper function as a minister of delight. ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... 'Alas!' he said, drumming with his fingers on the table 'there are too many here who know me to make that possible. I ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... strenuously, and there were times when, looking back in reverie, she saw the great silent prairie roll back under the red sunrise into the east, and fade, vast, solemn, and restful, a cool land of shadow, when the first pale stars came out. Then she longed for the jingle of the bridles and the drumming of the hoofs, and felt once more the rush of the gallop stir her blood. But this was what she would not show, and her eyes twinkled ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... that Banker had dropped his rifle and scuttled like a scared rabbit into some place of shelter. Her whole attention was concentrated on those rattling, drumming hoofs. She looked up, tried to rise, but fell back with the pain of ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... Land, and even those who were engaged in essential work behind the lines were far from being safe from death or wounds. On the morning of June 7th, 1917, before dawn had broken, I was out with a working party. Suddenly, overhead, sounded the ominous drumming and droning of an aeroplane. It proved to be a Hun plane; the aviator had spotted us, and was speedily in touch with the battery for which he was working. Fortunately for us, he had mistaken our exact position, and evidently thought we were on a road which ran towards ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... you'd been sent for to the Maginnis child, and that you have got relations that go among rich people, I says to myself, she's my partner. I'll furnish the science, and I'll do the talking, and the drumming-up business, and the collecting bills, and all that; and you, with your stylish ways, don't you know? and your good looks, and your family connections, and all that, will help me to get in where I want to ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... and the gong of the station dining-room below was adding its raucous clamor to the drumming thunder of the incoming train from Green Butte, when the vice-president concluded his outline sketch of the Red ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... away from him; or some strange invisible insect is making uncanny noises in the underbrush. One of my recollections of the railway woods at St. Augustine is of a cricket, or locust, or something else,—I never saw it,—that amused me often with a formless rattling or drumming sound. I could think of nothing but a boy's first lesson upon the bones, the rhythm of the beats was so ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... he, 'when eaten after the Arab fashion, stewed with butter. They tasted somewhat like shrimps, but with less flavour.' In the wilderness of Judea, various kinds abound at all seasons, and spring up with a drumming sound, at every step, suddenly spreading their bright hind wings, of scarlet, crimson, blue, yellow, white, green, or brown, according to the species. They were 'clean,' under the Mosaic Law, and hence could be eaten ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... from church, and said young Maurice was there, and inquired about me. He hoped I did not take cold; his friend Redmond had been hoarse ever since our ride, and had passed most of the time in his own room, drumming on the window-pane and whistling dirges. Mother dropped her acute eyes on me, while she was telling me this; but I yawned all expression from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... out, sir," Dobbin said, rather alarmed at the fury of the old man, the veins of whose forehead began to swell, and who sate drumming his papers with his clenched fist. "We are going to hunt him out, sir—the Duke's in Belgium already, and we expect marching ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sweep of sky began to glitter with white stars. A little chill breeze sprang up in the west and fanned the fire, sending a fairy shower of tiny lemon-yellow sparks into the air. And borne on the breeze came a hoarse pounding and drumming that grew momentarily louder and reverberated from wall to wall. The ground trembled and the grazing burros lifted their ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... here," said Basil, "I struck off through the woods in a line that led from the river, in a diagonal direction. I hadn't walked more than three hundred yards, when I heard a drumming sound, which I at first took to be thunder; but, after listening a while, I knew it was not that, but the drumming of the ruffed grouse. As soon as I could ascertain the direction of the sound, I hurried on in that way; but for a long time I appeared to get no nearer ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... is nothing to be done. If anything goes wrong, eternity is too close to consider. There came a muffled drumming on the steam-chests; a stagger and a terrific impact; and then the recoil, like the stroke of a trip-hammer. The snow shot into the air fifty feet, and the wind carried a cloud of fleecy confusion over ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... now," said Norton, drumming upon his chair. "I want you there. You belong to mamma and me, and to nobody else in the whole world, Pink; do ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... grim when he saw that more of the horses were inclined to behave similarly, but he flicked his team with the whip, and there was cheering and derision when, with a drumming of hoofs and rattle of wheels, wagons and horsemen swept away into the dust-cloud that rolled about ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... country used to believe when the moon suffered an eclipse. See how the shadow is covering the bright disk. When the ancients saw this happening they used to make a noise, shaking the sistrum with its metal rings, drumming and trumpeting, shouting and yelling, to scare off the evil one and drive him away. It may be about four hundred years since that last took place, but to this day—draw your kerchiefs more closely round your heads and come with me to the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... an accident, but an instant afterwards I received another and a harder one. I dropped my paper with a growl, but the moment that I glanced at him I saw how the matter stood. His foot was jerking spasmodically, his two hands clenched, and drumming against his breast, while his eyes were rolling upwards until only the rim of his iris was to be seen. I sprang upon him, tore open his collar, unbuttoned his waistcoat, and pulled his head down upon the seat. Crash went one of his heels through ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... she said in a penetrating whisper, indicating a woman with a resolutely abstracted expression and constrained hands. The children were gathered finally and formed into a line which, to the drumming piano, moved and halted, divided and subdivided. Led by the instructor it was involved in an apparently issueless tangle and then straightened smoothly out. The dancing class at an end, Helena and Gregory, wedged into the seat with Lee in the car, swept into an eager chatter, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... wanted also a chance to say "'Ear', 'ear!" in an intelligent and honourable manner and clap their hands and drum with their feet. The great constructive process in history gives so little scope for clapping and drumming and saying "'Ear, 'ear!" One might as well think of hounding on ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... quiet, and I had such a tense feeling inside of me that I couldn't say a word, and didn't want to anyway. The fingers of one of Mr. Black's hands were sort of drumming on the desk, and he was looking at something in the very front of the Bible in the place where people nearly always write their names, to ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... disturbed, he has a funny habit of drumming on the ground with his hind feet in much the same way that Peter Rabbit and Jumper the Hare thump, only he does it rapidly. Sometimes he builds his house in a tree. When he finds a cabin in the woods he at once ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... He had been too absorbed in his drumming to notice the small quantity of flour which had been left in the basket. It was shaken out with each beat of the drum-sticks, and now lay thick on the velvet cover of the chair. Joseph got a whipping for his thoughtlessness, but that was nothing uncommon ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... laugh against his own critics, whom he professes to recognize on this May morning, as flocking into his garden in the guise of sweeps. He does not, he says, grudge them their fun or their one holiday of the year, the less so that their rattling and drumming may give him some inkling how music sounds; and he flings them, by way of a gift, the story he has just told, bidding them dance, and "dust" his "jacket" for a little while. But that done, he bids ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... small, brown fingers Gleaning them one by one, With the partridge drumming near her In the forest bare and dun, And the jet-black squirrel, winking His saucy, jealous eye At those tiny, pilfering fingers, From his ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... the old man, gasping and inarticulate, raised his withered arm; the Christian judges whispered together, but at cross-purposes, while the Jew fidgeted his round little person on the bench, drumming incessantly with his fingers on his breast, and trying to meet Orion's or Paula's eye and to make her understand that he was the man who would warn Joanna. But a thump from the Vekeel's fist, that came down ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Street. The house was surrounded by pine trees and there was no grass beneath the trees. A rusty tin eaves-trough had slipped from its fastenings at the back of the house and when the wind blew it beat against the roof of a small shed, making a dismal drumming noise that sometimes persisted all ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... 1862, drumming for a house that sold fine linens, laces and silks, and had never done anything but sell silks, etc. He was sitting in a kind of a tavern one morning and chanced to see an advertisement in the paper that struck his "funny side." A gentleman living at the corner of Fifth and Shawnee Streets in ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... words I cast aside my pen, and, throwing myself upon the bed, buried my face in the pillow. I could feel the drumming pulses in my ears, and my heart swelled till it was like to burst within my bosom. Though I pressed my hot fingers against my close-shut eyes, I still could see my poor love's white, set face, the great hollows in his ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... not that the lady does not command our favor," declared the spokesman, very pale now and drumming nervously with his fingers on the edge of a blotting pad. "Those of us who have met her are charmed with her manners and appearance, and our only regret is that Providence did not ordain that her birthplace should be on the ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... o'clock, with the soft fingers of the snow drumming drowsily against the pane, Richard went to sleep and dreamed of angels, all of whom were blue-eyed ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... shearing her eyebrows into a delicate line, and all round her forehead trimming disorderly hairs. Four women, seated on their heels in front of her, were fidgeting over her face; she, impassive as a log in their hands. A vast deal of singing and drumming went on all the time, a row of musicians keeping it up all round the room. The girl was washed; then her hair, magnificent black hair down to her heels, knotted in two great bows on either side of her head. ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... several days' journey in the jolting cars, she grew drowsy. The steady drumming of hoofs, the slapping of the traces, and the rattle of wheels were strangely soothing. She fancied that once or twice when they sped furiously down an incline, the driver held her fast, but she did not resent the support ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... book, is it?' he replied, showing no curiosity about it, or desire to look into it, but kept drumming on the table—a habit of his that was very annoying to me at times, but of which he was not aware. When 'A Year in the Fields' came out, he looked at some of the pictures, but that ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... legs, and her heaving me up and down, and my riding cock-horse and that it was not the first time I had done so; then I fell flat on her, she heaved me up and down and squeezed me till I cried. I scrambled of! of her, and in doing so, my hand, or foot went through a drum, I had been drumming on, at which ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... several places of the same kind already I should not have taken much notice of this one, perhaps, if my attention had not been attracted by a peculiar drumming noise which seemed to proceed from the inside, and sounded very strange and awful in the darkness. I rode up as near as I dared, and then stopped, listening. The drumming grew louder and louder, and I presently began to distinguish a purpose in it. The sounds rose and fell in a certain regular ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... Westminster, a small, brown-faced man with black eyes, looking considerably younger than his years; and on this side the third judge, pale and bald and colourless—a priest who held the degree of Doctor in Physical Science as well as in Theology—he at this instant was drumming gently with a large white hand on ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... our preserves showed that all our treasured mastodons from the Jurassic, Triassic, and other periods of history, had been killed off, root, stock and branch, by our honored guest, and poor Noah was reduced to the necessity of drumming up trade among such commonplace creatures as the Rhinoceri, the Yak, the Dromedary, and that vain but ornamental combination of fuss and feathers ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... over again, and, mad acceleration now reversed, rushed on toward the earth, but with constantly diminishing speed. Finally a measurable atmospheric pressure was encountered, the needle prow dipped downward, and the Silver Sliver shot forward upon her tiny wings and vanes, nose-rockets now drumming in staccato thunder. Her metal grew hot: dull red, bright red yellow, blinding white; but it neither melted nor burned. The pilot's calculations had been sound, and though the limiting point of safety of temperature was reached and steadily held, it was not exceeded. As the density of the air ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... made their way to the barbarian camp. A strong gale was blowing at the time. Pan Ch'ao ordered ten of the party to take drums and hide behind the enemy's barracks, it being arranged that when they saw flames shoot up, they should begin drumming and yelling with all their might. The rest of his men, armed with bows and crossbows, he posted in ambuscade at the gate of the camp. He then set fire to the place from the windward side, whereupon a deafening noise of ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... and he soon managed to catch Juan, when, holding tightly by the reins, the guide vented his displeasure and took his revenge by thoroughly drumming the poor brute's ribs with a stout stick, after which Tom mounted, and our journey for the next ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... the pond a little scow floated in pond-lilies. All around were chestnut trees, their burrs full of fruit. Across the lane, only a few feet from the house, the ancient mill gave forth a snoring and drumming together as if the spirit of solitude was having a dance all to itself and only breathing hard. Then the crystal water, shooting the old black mill-wheel, fell off it like the beard from Duff Salter's face, and went away in pools and flakes across a meadow, under spontaneous willow ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... which had lately been erected to subserve the two-fold purpose of kitchen and dairy, where they both had been busily engaged at the time of his arrival, while he sauntered familiarly to his seat by the fire, and commenced drumming a tune upon the head-board of the mantle-piece. In a few moments the widow made her appearance, and politely requested her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... and drum that became louder and louder, until finally I thought the whole Army must be marching to the house. I stumbled over everything in the room in my haste to get to one of the little dormer windows, but there was nothing to be seen, as it was still quite dark. The drumming became less loud, and then ceased altogether, when a big gun was fired that must have wasted any amount of powder, for it shook the house and made all the windows rattle. Then three or four bugles played a little air, which it was ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... over and stretched each of her handsome limbs, she sang, as she washed, a sentimental Lied in fourteen couplets, threw water at Christophe's face—he was outside drumming on the window—and as they left she plucked the last rose in the garden and then they took the steamer. The mist was not yet gone: but the sun shone through it: they floated through a creamy light. Ada ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... children were unmanageable. They had taken possession of a saucepan and were drumming on it with spoons. Mamma Coupeau and Father Bru were talking earnestly. The old man was speaking of his two sons who had died in the Crimea. Ah, had they but lived, he would have had bread to eat in ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... chosen; but she had yet to complete her freight and secure a sufficient number of passengers. Days were consumed in drumming up a cargo. This was a tormenting delay to me, who was about to make my first voyage, and who, boy-like, had packed my trunk on the first mention of the expedition. How often that trunk had to be unpacked and repacked before ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... of the wine to earth the other's passion had apparently spent itself. The red slowly left his face, and he leaned at ease against the cask, drumming upon its head with his fingers. The sunlight, shrinking from floor and wall, had left but a single line of gold. In the half light strange and sombre shapes possessed the room; through the stillness, beneath the sound of the tattoo upon the cask ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... her bearing, an indefinable something,—whether it lay in the carriage of her head, which impressed one as both spirited and independent, or in an equally certain but less tangible air of self-confidence and reliance,—to set Mad Maitland's pulses drumming with excitement. For, unless indeed he labored gravely under a misapprehension, he was observing her for the second time within the ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... boom of the great bell of Tokoji the Zenshu temple, shakes over the town; then come melancholy echoes of drumming from the tiny little temple of Jizo in the street Zaimokucho, near my house, signalling the Buddhist hour of morning prayer. And finally the cries of the earliest itinerant venders begin—'Daikoyai! ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... on his boxes, whistling to himself and drumming his heels on the platform. The train came up at last, and in he jumped, finding himself and a grave elderly gentleman in joint ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... made no reply. His thoughtful air, however, as he stood absently drumming on the window-pane, showed that the mischief-maker had not spoken in vain. By way of striking while the iron was hot, Juechziger continued: 'As I was on my way to your worship's house this morning, I saw the Herr Burgomaster Richzenhayn going to call on the commandant, no doubt ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... she secretly misunderstood Jack the more that he was so lavish and open in his adulations. If he rode, he exhausted eulogy in describing her pose, her daring, her skill; if they danced, as they did nearly every night until poor Merry's fingers ached from drumming the unholy strains of Faust, Strauss, and what not, in the old-fashioned waltzes—he pantingly declared that she made the music seem a celestial choir by her lightness; in long walks in the rose-fields he exhausted a not ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... rather scattered in that neighborhood, but occasionally they passed country homes, when all the folks would rush forth to learn what the drumming and fifing meant. ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... Spargo sat drumming his fingers on the desk before him. His eyes were fixed on a map of London that hung on the opposite wall; his ears heard the throbbing of the printing-machines far below. But what he really saw was the faces of the two girls; what ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... to go to the front-door,' she said reluctantly, as she sat drumming her fingers on the table, 'and I can't ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... this gentleman "drumming around" our suburb, I had the curiosity to stop and inspect his live freight. In doing so I lighted upon Dicky Chips, as I subsequently christened him: a sturdy little bullfinch, who looked somewhat out ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the hall. Berry was bellowing, clawing at his temples and drumming with his heels upon ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... disturbance of privacy. Mingled with this explanation were derogatory opinions of some one, delivered with extraordinary bitterness. From the context it would seem that those remarks were meant to apply to Peter Johnson. Listening intently, Peter seemed to hear from the first floor a feeble drumming, as of one beating the floor with bound feet. Then the tumult broke ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... was not thirsty. I did not say the liquor was not paid for," said the young Colonel, drumming ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... to have two simple clauses. It enforces a principle in the struggle for existence, a test in the survival of the fittest. Great heavens, are not these enough, without having our ears deafened by powder and drumming? That is why I am devoting a good deal of time and no small amount of money to an international crusade against the warlike idea, and I see no reason why a beginning should not be made with the airship and the airplane. We are too late with the submarine, ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... had Armstrong spoken to him that day and an expression of fine scorn upon the handsome president's face had been the answer. The sophomore was stretched out upon the bed, the revolver still in his hand, and drumming with the fingers of his left hand upon the ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... homestead by saying that his Bible seemed truer to him there. If one stood in the doorway of his cave, and looked off at the rough land, the smiling sky, the curly grass white in the hot sunlight; if one listened to the rapturous song of the lark, the drumming of the quail, the burr of the locust against that vast silence, ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... seclusion of Gray's Inn grew daily more irksome. There he would sit, in mute despair, drumming the table with his fingers, and biting the quill, whose use he so bitterly contemned. Of winter afternoons he would stare through the leaded window-panes at the gaunt, leafless trees, on whose summits swayed the cawing rooks, until servitude seemed intolerable, and he prayed ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... take his cue immediately. He sat drumming a heavy tattoo on the tabletop, forehead corrugated in a frown of intensive thought. When he did speak it was in a ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... The drumming of the wheels over the rail joints became a single note—an increasing roar of sound. The electric locomotive shot up the grade. The arrow on the speedometer crept around the dial and Ned's eye was more often fastened on that ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... the women out to go traipsin' up to Thacher's folks?" inquired Jacob, holding his cider mug with one hand and drumming it with the finger ends of ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... drumming grew louder, the roar of voices filled the air, and the great coloured umbrellas were seen whirling and bobbing above the heads of the surging crowd of natives. The great barrel-like drums, with their grim ornamentations, boomed forth, and ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... pleased him. For so many nights to come there would be none of it; but ceaselessly the drumming of the engines, quiver of the screw, and wash of the water against the ship's side.—All the same he did not quite like the colour of the moon or that frayed flattened edge of it westward. Why is there always something a trifle menacing about a waning moon? ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... accident during the three-quarters of an hour which they allow for the entertainment of us men of fashion on the stage, before the curtain draws up for the bally, while the ladies in the boxes are gaping, and the people in the pit are drumming with their feet and canes in the rudest manner possible, as though they ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... paper to Alphabetical Morrison, who happened to be in the office at the time, pawing through the discarded exchanges in the waste-basket, looking for his New York Sun, and, after Colonel Morrison had read the item, he began drumming with his finger-nails on the chair-seat between his knees. His eyes were full of dreams and no one disturbed him as he looked off into space. Finally ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... home. Not far away Melody the Wood Thrush was pouring out his beautiful evening song. Whitefoot stopped to listen. Somehow it made him more unhappy than ever. Melody stopped singing for a few moments. It was just then that Whitefoot heard a faint sound. It was a gentle drumming. Whitefoot pricked up his ears and listened. There it was again. He knew instantly how that sound was made. It was made by dainty little feet beating very fast on an old log. Whitefoot had drummed that way himself many times. It was soft, but clear, ...
— Whitefoot the Wood Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... disguise; He is not coming! Sweet lips Let slip no sighs; Cease, heart, your drumming! He is not coming, [A]Lada! He is not coming. Lada ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... moves!" She did indeed, and in fine style, her front as straight as a string, her reserve regiments in columns doubled on the center, following in true subordination; no braying of brass to apprise the enemy, no fifing and drumming to amuse him; no ostentation of gaudy flags; no nonsense. This was ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... great drumming in Jolly Roger's head, and for a time he failed even to hear Peter yelping at their side, for all the world was drowned in those moments by the breaking sobs in Nada's breath and the wild thrill of her body in his arms; and he saw nothing but the upturned face, crushed close against ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... to the soft wind. Presently he heard, or imagined he heard, low beats. Like the first faint, far-off beats of a drumming grouse, they recalled to him the Illinois forests of his boyhood. In a moment he was certain the sounds were the padlike steps of hoofs in yielding sand. The regular tramp was not that ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... flat upon the vine leaves, grows dizzy with the heat and frisks for very pleasure; "with its feet it taps rapidly on its resting-place, and thus produces a drumming like that of a shower of rain falling thickly on the leaves." Fabre takes a keen delight in the production of these pictures, at once so exact and lifelike; but we must not therefore suppose that his mind is incapable of ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... had had her lonely lunch and her letters to her uncle and Mirko were written, she found herself drumming aimlessly on the window panes, and wondering if she ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... start as the necklace fell with a thud on the floor; but he was old and wise, and soon fell again to his meal. I sat drumming my heels against the corn bin. Evening was falling fast, and everything was very still. No man ever had a more favorable hour for reflection and introspection. I employed it to the full. Then I rose, and crossing ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... I like your drumming, but am not yet sure about your author; but he must be an exceedingly interesting one, to hold your attention a long ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... desert wake and croon of hidalgos coming— Now for her children's sake she is whetting her sword to slay, And the armored squadrons break, and our iron-shod hoofs are drumming On the rocks of the mountain pass—we are free, we are off ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... had attributed to them in harpsichords more than a hundred and fifty years before, by a bassoon pedal, a card which by a rotatory half-cylinder just impinging upon the strings produced a reedy twang; also by pedals for triangle, cymbals, bells, and tambourine, the last drumming on ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... time the officer looked at the sodden turf, and at the swollen Andelle beyond it, which was overflowing its banks; and he was drumming a waltz from the Rhine on the window-panes, with his fingers, when a noise made him turn round; it was his second in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... possible forms of self-possession for their first meeting; but on the rainy February afternoon when she came in from representing Aunt Victoria at a reception and saw him sitting by the fire, her heart sank down and stopped for an instant, and when it went on beating she could hear no sound but the drumming of her pulse. The back of his chair was towards her. All she could see as she stood for a moment in the doorway was his head, the thick, graying dark hair, and one long-fingered, sensitive, beautiful hand lying ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... his head, and played out the line, as the boat dipped her masthead waterward, and came about on the other tack. When the sails were again drumming under the fingers of the wind, ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... away into the wood. That night a drumming noise was heard in the wood. The people were afraid. They could not sleep, because of ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... touch their disgraced swords, I compelled them to deliver theirs up to my colored servant, who also cut from their coats every insignia of rank. Then, after there had been read to the command an order from army headquarters dismissing the four from the service, the scene was brought to a close by drumming the cowards out of camp. It was a mortifying spectacle, but from that day no officer in that division ever ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... Holmes was leaning back in his chair after his whimsical protest, and was unfolding his morning paper in a leisurely fashion, when our attention was arrested by a tremendous ring at the bell, followed immediately by a hollow drumming sound, as if someone were beating on the outer door with his fist. As it opened there came a tumultuous rush into the hall, rapid feet clattered up the stair, and an instant later a wild-eyed and frantic young man, pale, disheveled, and palpitating, burst into the room. He looked ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... or far aloof Fell to a sough remote and dull; And all night long with rush and lull The rain kept drumming on the roof: I heard till ear and sense were full The clash or silence of the leaves, The gurgle in the ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... snow, towered above the deep-sunk valley, when, one morning, Geoffrey Thurston limped painfully out of a redwood forest of British Columbia. The boom of a hidden river set the pine sprays quivering. A blue grouse was drumming deliriously on the top of a stately fir, and the morning sun drew clean, healing ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... grotesque ceremonies and fantastic costumes, which, originating in the reign of Charles II, among working artisans of London, has been joined successively by the dead of past centuries in unbroken retrogression until now it embraces all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam and is drumming up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of Chaos and Formless Void. The order was founded at different times by Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucious, ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... January. All the winter birds are doing their share in the chorus and orchestra; crows, jays, woodpeckers, nut-hatches, juncos, tree-sparrows. But suddenly a woodpecker begins a new sound,—his vernal drumming! Not the mere tap, tap, tap, in quest of insects, but the love-call drumming of the nidification season, nearly three months ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... a habit of flaring up, but becoming good-natured again before he was through. Immediately there was quiet in the school, until the pepper grinders again began to go; they read aloud, each from his book; the most delicate trebles piped up, the rougher voices drumming louder and louder in order to gain the ascendency, and here and there one chimed in, louder than the others. In all his life Oyvind had never had ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... bayberry bushes and young locusts in the same places where the prairie warbler is found. Nor is it only the true songs that delight us. We love to hear the flickers call, and we readily pardon any one of their number which, as occasionally happens, is bold enough to wake us in the early morning by drumming on the shingles of the roof. In our ears the red-winged blackbirds have a very attractive note. We love the screaming of the red-tailed hawks as they soar high overhead, and even the calls of the night heron that nest in the tall ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... being admirably well taught himself by his uncle, who was an excellent scholar and a great brute. I have young Maule now in my mind's eye suspended by the hair of his head while being well caned, and recollect as if it was yesterday his doggedly drumming a lesson of Terence into my dull and reluctant brain as we walked up and down the garden walk before the house. When I was introduced to him I had no recollection of him, but when I found out who he was I went up to him with the blandest manner as he sat reading a newspaper, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... depressing gloom seemed. to hang over everybody. Several of the older men pushed back their plates and began drumming oh the table-cloth with their fingers, a far-away look in their eyes. One or two talked in whispers, their coffee untasted. Old Mr. Lang looked down the line of empty seats and took his place with a dejected air. He was the oldest man in the house and the oldest boarder; this gave him ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... soft fingers of the snow drumming drowsily against the pane, Richard went to sleep and dreamed of angels, all of whom were ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Rueda, left alone, sat quite silent, his finger-tips drumming upon the table. He rose suddenly and flung back his shoulders, all resolution. On the stairway he passed the black little landlord, who was now in a sad twitter, foreseeing bloodshed. But Miguel de Rueda went on to the room above. The door was ajar. ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... Big Cloud for his nightly sitting with Bob Donkin. He could see Bob Donkin there now; and he could hear the big dispatcher growl at him in his bluff way: "Use your head—use your head—Hoogan!" It was always "Hoogan," never "Toddles." "Use your head"—Donkin was everlastingly drumming that into him; for the dispatcher used to confront him suddenly with imaginary and hair-raising emergencies, and demand Toddles' instant solution. Toddles realized that Donkin was getting to the heart of things, and that some day ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... out this morning on the old drill-ground to witness a somewhat sad and novel scene, namely, the branding and drumming out of service of two deserters from Company K. The command was formed into a hollow square, facing inward. Upon the arrival of the blacksmith's forge, the deserters were partially stripped of their clothing, irons were heated, and the ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... Slosson had failed to notice the competition of his drumming, he drummed still louder. Whereupon Mr. Slosson stopped drumming. Edward Henry gazed amiably around. Right at the back of the room—before a back-window that gave on the whitewashed wall—a man was rapidly putting his signature to a number of papers. ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... the captain, shipping the anchor and scrambling back to the cockpit as the sloop settled down on an even keel again, the squall drumming on the ropes and stays. "You've sailed a ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... toward the door and turned his back to them. With drooping heads, pale and trembling, MM. de Lepel and de Malsburg left the room. Napoleon stepped to the window, and was vigorously drumming a march ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... Alice was drumming with her foot on the floor. She sat forward, her arms crossed upon her lap. Her eyes were still ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... The Ballawhaine was drumming on the edge of the open door. "You are right, young man," he said, "a woman's hysteria is of ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... Drumming and trumpeting of course go on for ever in our French watering-place. Flag-flying is at a premium, too; but, we cheerfully avow that we consider a flag a very pretty object, and that we take such outward signs of innocent liveliness to our heart of hearts. The people, in the town and ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... Mamma had gone away! That was a great shame—really a great shame. Rosy was offended, and she wanted mamma to see how offended she was, and mamma chose just that moment to leave the room. Rosy looked round—there was no good going on pouting and frowning and drumming and stamping to make mamma notice her if mamma wasn't there, and all that sort of going on caused Rosy a good deal of trouble. So she left off. But she wanted to quarrel with somebody. In fact, she felt that she must quarrel with somebody. She looked round again. The only "somebody" to ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... or so the drumming in my ears grew less violent. Dalmahoy bent over the aeronaut, who was bleeding at the nose and now began to breathe stertorously. Sheepshanks had fallen into placid slumber. I kept the valve open until we descended into a stratum of fog—from which, no doubt, the Lunardi ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... what she would say if she could know to what battlefield the drumming wheels of the Limited were speeding him. Would she be loyal to her mentorship and tell him he must win, at whatever the cost to Mr. Somerville Darrah and his business associates? Or would she, womanlike, be her uncle's partizan and write one John Winton down in her ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... and he shunned publicity in his wedding-garments, so they remained in the upstairs sitting-room. He stood by the window, drumming his fingers upon the pane, and looking down into Northumberland Avenue. He had often pictured this day, and associated it with sunshine and flowers and every emblem of joy. But Nature had not risen to the occasion. ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... for he was anxious to consult Jervis as to his proceedings in the morning; so they soon found themselves drumming at his oak, which was opened shortly by "the stroke" in an old boating-jacket. They followed him in. At one end of his table stood his tea-service and the remains of his commons, which the scout had not cleared away; at the other, open ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... the thud of drumming feet, and one awful shriek from the man who had found the door locked ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... all sailors lay nigh to them, restless and ravenous, drumming against the cliffs with ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... KNEW a boy in our town, whose name was Billy Hood: He had a sword all made of tin, a musket made of wood. His drum would always let you know when Billy Hood was coming; For all the neighbors used to say, "I wish he'd stop that drumming." ...
— The Nursery, October 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 4 • Various
... hours before he awakened and sat up on the locker, shivering. He had left the hatch slightly open, and a confused uproar reached him from outside; the wail of wind-tossed trees; the furious splash of ripples against the bows; and the drumming of the halyards upon the mast. There was no doubt that it was blowing hard, but the wind was off the land ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... foamed in the pail and the milker, his forehead against the cow's warm pelt, watched it rise on the tin's side. It made a loud drumming which prevented his hearing a hail from the picket fence. The hail came again in ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... fight him with cannon—or with soap-bubbles," answered De Malfort, lolling back in his chair, tilted at an angle of forty-five, and drumming a gay dance tune with his finger-tips on the table. "'Tis a foolish imbroglio from first to last: and only his lordship and I know how foolish. He came here to provoke a quarrel, and I must indulge him. Come, Lady Lucretia"—he turned to his fair friend, as he unbuckled ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... he tried once more to say his prayers, and this time with better success. He was able to add a special petition that "mother" might soon be well again, and that dear Vicky might be happy. And then he fell asleep—so soundly, so heavily, that when a drumming at the door made itself heard, he fancied he had only just begun the night. He sat up. Where was he? At first, in the darkness, he thought he was in his own bed at home, and he wondered who was ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... people, I demanded of him several astrological questions, which he answered with great subtility, and through all his discourse carried it with a cunning much beyond his years, which seemed not to exceed ten or eleven. He seemed to make a motion like drumming upon the table with his fingers, upon which I asked him, whether he could beat a drum, to which he replied, 'Yes, sir, as well as any man in Scotland; for every Thursday night I beat all points to a sort of people that use to meet under ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... India—the whole Orient in fact—bear witness to the importance of the forestry messages which Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt have been drumming into our more or less uncaring ears for a decade past. When I reached Yokohama I found it impossible to get into the northern part of the island of Hondo because of the {264} flood damage to the railroads, and the lives of several ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... twice a day, whether it rained or shone, it seemed to be the law that this "band" should patrol the whole township limits, playing its only tune, lifting the tops of men's heads with its infernal drumming, and delighting nobody except the players and the township urchins, who marched in ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... their best, but it was hard advice to follow. The hooves were drumming and the sticks were rattling all up and down the ground, and yells of applause from the English troops told that the Archangels were pressing the Skidars hard. The native soldiers behind the ponies groaned and grunted, and said things in undertones, and presently they heard a long-drawn shout ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... fantastic and daring, had a sweet, bright charm very fascinating. He writes in one of his treatises: "Methinks music ought appeal directly to the heart, and in this no performer on the piano-forte will succeed by merely thumping and drumming, or by continual arpeggio playing. During the last few years my chief endeavor has been to play the piano-forte, in spite of its deficiency in sustaining the sound, so much as possible, in a singing manner, and to compose ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... the second of the three young men—the one looking out of the window, drumming idly on the glass, and continually tossing back his head to clear the long black hair from his brow, over which it hung in an incurable cowlick—was a short, compact, nervous person, twenty-five years old. Mr. Overtop had been educated for the law, but, finding the profession ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... of the drum 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 sharpness when he passed the avenue by the bronze lion and turned down the western terrace walk. Louder and louder ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... this piece, though it enchanted the musical part of the audience, disgusted the promenaders, and was received but coldly. This, however, was made up for when the drumming, smashing, and brass-blurting of the overture to "Zampa" was noised forth: this was encored with ecstacies, and so were some of the quadrilles. Happy musical taste! Beethoven's septour, arranged as a set of quadrilles, is a desecration unworthy of Musard. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... ship was only a shower, compared with this storm in the tropical jungle. The rain was falling in a solid mass as if poured from a gigantic bucket, while the red lightning blazed without a pause. There was no wind; it was the weight of the water that made the hut tremble—of rain drumming so steadily that even the thunder ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... near a torrent mountain-brook, All thro' the crash of the near cataract hears The drumming thunder of the huger fall At distance, were the soldiers wont to hear His voice in battle, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... said nothing, but read it over twice with a lengthening visage. Now also it became apparent that there was another letter inside, at the superscription of which the Major having looked, put it in his pocket, and turning round to the mantel-piece, with his back to the others, began drumming against the fender with his ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... now the sweet, bewildered murmur of purple martins grew into sustained melody; thrush and mocking bird, thrasher and cardinal, sang from every leafy slope; and through the rushing music of bird and pouring waterfall the fairy drumming of the cock-o'-the-pines rang out ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... Joseph, however! He had been too absorbed in his drumming to notice the small quantity of flour which had been left in the basket. It was shaken out with each beat of the drum-sticks, and now lay thick on the velvet cover of the chair. Joseph got a whipping for his thoughtlessness, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... that a couple of Croats had slept on the mat outside of it all night. It might be a special mark of honour to myself; but I rather think that they are accustomed to bivouac in the passages and lobbies. The eternal drumming in the streets is enough to deafen one for life. To the traveller it is sufficiently annoying; how much more so to the Bolognese, who knows that that is music for which he must pay dear! Since 1848, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... come back to life and the world again, Daisy." said Preston, standing at the back of her sofa and drumming ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... examination and had to pass in September or be forever labeled a dunce by his fond family. Now you see why I can understand the psychology of saying 'no' to a proposal. This stripling, who was at least five years my junior, proposed to me out of sheer gratitude. I actually succeeded in drumming quadratic equations into his stupid head, and he offered me his hand by ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... man! why, then, what are you afraid of, I ask you?" Loveit coloured, went on drumming, and again, in a lower voice, said "HE DIDN'T KNOW." But upon Tarlton's repeating, in a more insolent tone, "I ask you, man, what you're afraid of?" he suddenly left off drumming, and looking round, said, "he was not afraid of anything that he ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... the signals is still less, as it is only the figures that require indication: but to make these indications it is necessary to execute a sort of pantomime, according to certain authors, such as blowing the nose, coughing, drumming on the table, sneezing, &c. Such evolutions, however, are totally unworthy of your modern Greek, and would soon be denounced as gross fraud. The signals which he employs are only appreciable ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... gums aflame Capturing the cool night with spicy riches; Still after her through the hollow moveless air The sounded ceremonies came, the cry Of dainty lust in winding tune of fifes, The silver fury of cymbals clamouring Like frenzy in a woman-madden'd brain; And drumming underneath the whole wild noise, Like monstrous hatred underneath desire, The thunder of the beaten serpent-skins. Yea, in the town behind her, flaring Shushan, She heard Man, meaning to adore himself, Throned on the ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... "Helas!" sighed Abellino, drumming a march on his plate with his knife and fork. "An unavoidable piece of business. A gentleman who lives abroad has many necessities, and my father only left me an income of a mouldy four hundred thousand francs. Now, I ask you, how can a man live decently on that? If a man wants ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... to raise her eyes from this chilling consolation. Then, when she thought she had got lid of all the traces of her trouble, she went cautiously to the back music-room. Janey was there, moping alone, drumming on the ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... little creature, like a gray meadow-lark remoulded! You call it partridge, I call it quail. But I speak of the crested thunder—drumming cock that struts all ruffed like a Spanish grandee of ancient times. Wait, sir!" and he pointed to a string of birds' footprints in the dust just ahead. "Tell me what manner of creature ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... his snuff-box and drumming on the table with his fingers looked out of his eye corners at Copplestone who still stood with his back to the rest, staring ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... loud and clear, answered "yes." A drumming on the cone followed, and Mrs. Lambert, her voice full of maternal pride, remarked: "Waltie is the life of our sittings—he's such a rogue! You must be a nice boy to-night—on account of these ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... silence. Undine lay still, her eyes shut, drumming on the arm of the sofa with a restless hand. The other lay cold in Ralph's clasp, and through it there gradually stole to him the benumbing influence of the thoughts she was thinking: the sense of the approach of illness, anxiety, ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... paper and fell to work, while Smith looked on, drumming with his fingers and contorting his huge black eyebrows. For half an hour complete silence reigned, broken only by the gliding sound of Cosmo Versal's pencil, occasionally emphasized by a soft thump. At the end of that time he threw down the pencil and held out the paper ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... were glad to get near their cozy fires. All day threatening clouds rolled in from the sea, as if the storm had planted batteries there and the smoke from the cannonade was thickening. At night Charlie, passing a window in his chamber, heard the rain drumming on the panes. He had gone to his warm nest and been there only two minutes, when he said to himself, as he gaped, "If it would only rain so hard that I wouldn't have to go to school to-mor—" Here the angel of sleep came along, and, putting his ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... He sat looking straight before him, one hand drumming on the table. The whole attitude was haughtily irresponsive. The slight note of compassion in Mr. Gregory's tone was almost intolerable to him, and ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... holiday wherever General Saxton's proclamation reaches. The chilly sunshine and the pale blue river seems like New England, but those alone. The air is full of noisy drumming, and of gunshots; for the prize-shooting is our great celebration of the day, and the drumming is chronic. My young barbarians are all at play. I look out from the broken windows of this forlorn plantation-house, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... lived ten years ago. Kinds of game: partridge, quail, squirrels. Partridge drumming. My father went hunting often. How he was injured. Birch brush near hemlock; partridge often found in such localities. Loading the gun. Going to the woods. Why partridge live near birch brush. Fall season. Hunting for partridge allowed from September to December. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... winning!' 'Jo Chauncy is winning!' It swells like the roar of the sea; But Jo hears the drumming of somebody coming, And sees a lean head by his knee. 'Nuneaton! Nuneaton! The Spider is beaten!' It is but a spurt at the most; For lose it or win it, they have but a minute Before they ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... nomads and serfs. But to these Ulster immigrants such a choice was no choice at all. They knew themselves strong men, who had made the most of opportunity despite almost superhuman obstacles. The drumming of their feet along the banks of the Shenandoah, or up the rivers from Charleston, and on through the broad sweep of the Yadkin Valley, was a conquering people's challenge to the Wilderness which lay sleeping like an unready sentinel at ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... honey-bee, Flying now so merrily Here and there with busy hum— Humming, drumming, drumming, drum. Never idle, never still, Humming, ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various
... limply on the foot of the bed, faint and dizzy, and wondering if he really heard a regular, rhythmic drumming through the snapping of the flame. It grew louder while he listened, and a faint musical ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... clinched teeth, drumming with my fingers impatiently on the table before me, and smiling ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... to get the ship under way for Friendly Cove. We were there received by the inhabitants of the village with loud shouts of joy and a horrible drumming of sticks upon the roofs and sides of their houses. Maquina took me on ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... of this bad language, Billy waddled to his master's chair, and climbing up by the aid of his claws and beak, soon established himself in his old position. Slivers, however, was not attending to him, as he was leaning back in his chair drumming in an absent sort of way with his lean fingers on the table. His cork arm hung down limply, and his one eye was fixed on a letter lying in front of him. This was a communication from the manager of the Pactolus Mine requesting Slivers to get him more hands, and Slivers' thoughts ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... trombones and trumpets have no sinecure, and there is always a great mortality amongst the fiddle-strings. Eight bars of impossible variation is sure to be succeeded by sixteen of the deafening fanfare of trumpets, combined with smashing cymbalism, and dreadful drumming. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... such as serve people of condition, went out to look for some one to defraud. Presently she came to a by-street, spread with carpets and lighted with hanging lamps, and heard a noise of singing-women and drumming of tambourines. Here she saw a handmaid bearing on her shoulder a boy, clad in trousers laced with silver and a little Aba-cloak of velvet, with a pearl embroidered Tarbush-cap on his head, and about his neck ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... his eyes; but he could make out little more than a shadow at table with him. He stared and stared at this shadow, as he wiped out the glasses, and began to feel cold and strange about the heart. The silence weighed upon him, for he could hear nothing now, not even the river, but the drumming of his own ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... His drumming heart cheers up his burning eye, His eye commends the leading to his hand; His hand, as proud of such a dignity, Smoking with pride, march'd on to make his stand On her bare breast, the heart of all her land; Whose ranks of blue veins, as his hand did scale, Left ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... you, let me in,' he repeated, drumming incessantly on the glass. There was no trace now of his sleepy jeering way. Rachel saw that something was very wrong, and beckoned him toward the porch in silence, and having removed the slender fastenings of the door, it opened, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the young man who had visited them and given them meat was the chief of the Wolf band, and by that band they pitched their lodge. Truly that was a happy place. Food was plenty. All day long people were shouting out for feasts, and everywhere was heard the sound of drumming and ...
— Blackfeet Indian Stories • George Bird Grinnell
... been given the Emperor Napoleon's sister in marriage, and had really a very good presence, and wore his fine black hair in curls, and would shortly enter the city in state and would certainly please all the ladies. Meanwhile, the drumming continued in the street, and I went and stood outside the door and watched the French troops marching in, those glorious happy Frenchmen, who marched through the world with songs and shining sabres, the gay firm-set faces ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... answering trumpet blast; a trumpeting that was sounded again from the south and from the north. Then there came a low and muffled drumming, like the pounding ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... the distant drumming of hoofs on the turf of the hillside. Then she caught the report ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... Daddy with twinkling eyes. As for Lomax, he received the onslaught with a curious mixture of expressions, in which a certain malicious pleasure, crossed by an uneasy sense of responsibility, was the most prominent. He sat drumming on the table, his straggling beard falling forward on to his chest, his mouth pursing itself up. At last he threw back his head ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... up, straddled into the seat ahead of Bland. He placed his feet, pulled down his goggles, grasped the wheel and felt himself balanced—poised, with a drumming beat in his throat, a suffocating fulness in his chest. His moment had come, he thought swiftly, as one thinks when facing a sudden, whelming event. The biggest moment in his life—the moment that he had dreamed of—the culmination of all ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... generosity equaled his might. Where the villages were closer to one another the arrival of the extraordinary travelers was announced from one village to the other by the beating of drums, for the negroes give notice of everything with the aid of drumming. It happened also that the entire populace would come out to meet them, being well disposed ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... by an open stove and lighted by a single jet of gas, which flickered in a thin greenish flame. In the centre of the room a pine table, without a cloth, was laid for supper, and three small children, in chairs drawn close together, were impatiently drumming with tin spoons on the wood. A haggard woman, in a soiled blue gingham dress, was bringing a pot of coffee from the adjoining room; and in one corner, on a sofa from which the stuffing sagged in bunches, a man sat staring vacantly at a hole in the ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... are accustomed to the drumming of the native pianoforte virtuosos. I fear that the newspapers will reproach me with the same thing, especially as the daughter of an editor is said to drum frightfully. However, it does not matter; as this cannot ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... has a very unmusical voice, but fortunately he is aware of this deficiency, and his only attempt at music is drumming with his beak upon a hollow limb ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... hauled ahead with a head sea. By ten at night heavy sprays were flying and drumming over the forecastle; the companion of Steerage No. 1 had to be closed, and the door of communication through the second cabin thrown open. Either from the convenience of the opportunity, or because we had already a number of ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with Fullaway's messages in reply. Eventually he put all the papers together, arranging them in sequence. He laid them on the table between Fullaway and himself, and for a moment or two sat reflectively drumming the tips of ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... march!" called Nan again, and amid drumming and tooting the procession started off to parade through the center of ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... who was coming to him out of the night; his knowledge of the desert enabled him, by the drumming sound of the hoofs upon the sand—a sound which has not its semblance in the world—to know to a second when the mare would stop before ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... gleam of a tanager flashing through sunlit foliage, the oriole and vireo where they hid. And his was the ear that first caught the exquisite, distant note of the hermit. Once he stopped them, startled, to listen to the cock partridge drumming to its mate.... ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the library one afternoon, the Director and a Swiss Brother sitting by the lamp reading, I standing at one of the tall, narrow windows, drumming on the panes and dreaming. The view was not an inspiring one. There was a long horizontal line of pale yellow sky and another of flat, black land, out of Avhich an occasional poplar raised itself solemnly. The great mass below the stripes was brown; above, gloomy gray. Close under ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... ten Mr. Eggleston began to be nervous. Every now and then he would walk out into the main office, interview one of the clerks as to his knowledge of Phil's whereabouts and return again to his private office, where he occupied himself drumming on the desk with the end of his gold pencil, and watching the clock. The junior had no such misgivings—none of any kind. He had a game of polo that afternoon at three, and was chiefly concerned lest the day's work ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... lady does not command our favor," declared the spokesman, very pale now and drumming nervously with his fingers on the edge of a blotting pad. "Those of us who have met her are charmed with her manners and appearance, and our only regret is that Providence did not ordain that her birthplace should be on the right side ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... bear the thought of the great stallion struggling helpless in the snaky coils of the rope. But of course there was no other way. Yet his muscles tightened, and the perspiration poured out on his forehead as he heard a shout from one of the men, then a brief drumming of Diablo's hoofs, and finally the heavy thud as the stallion struck full length on ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... the matter in hand. When I had thrown yonder stone, I walked quietly down to the Governor's house and looked through the window. The Governor hath the Company's letters, and he and the Council—all save the reprobate Pory—sit there staring at them and drumming with their ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... trickling of the rivulet amongst the rocks and stones. Then I jumped, for a peculiar cry arose from the forest behind us, and this seemed to be the signal for an outburst of sounds new to me, piping, thrumming, drumming, shrieking, howling, grunting in every variety, and I turned to look in Uncle Dick's face, which was lit up by the glow ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... were to march forward against the enemy, drumming and trumpeting, and then retreat as far as the watch-tower as the enemy approached over the plain. If the Blemmyes allowed themselves to be tempted thither, a second third of the warriors of the oasis, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the knock at the door. The living room was brightly lighted; Uncle John and the Major were playing checkers in a corner and Patsy was softly drumming on the piano. Louise had a book and Beth had been ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... Risler went up to his room, leaving Sidonie and Madame Dobson at the windows of the salon. The music from the neighboring Casino reached their ears, with the "Yo-ho!" of the boatmen and the footsteps of the dancers like a rhythmical, muffled drumming on the tambourine. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... above its glittering roof, or lurid storm-clouds with the red glow of sunset beneath their wings. In the dusk or the darkness there was silence along the banks but for a ceaseless throbbing of distant gun-fire, rising sometimes to a fury of drumming when the French soixante-quinze was at work, outside Roye and the lines beyond Suzanne. It was what the French call la rafale des tambours de la mort—the ruffle of the drums of death. The winding waters of the ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... that resounded from without. One of them, however, by some artifice, contrived to escape, hid behind a bush, and saw the whole solemnity,—the procession of the medicinemen and the bedaubed and befeathered warriors; the drumming, dancing, and stamping; the wild lamentation of the women as they gashed the arms of the young girls with sharp mussel-shells, and flung the blood into the air with dismal outcries. A scene of ravenous feasting followed, in which the French, released from ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... feasted in Zaccarath. Then the King shouted and the warriors sang—almost they remembered then old battle-chants. And, as they sang, the sound of the drums dwindled, and the musicians walked away backwards, and the drumming became fainter and fainter as they walked, and altogether ceased, and they blew no more on their fantastic horns. Then the assemblage beat on the floor with their palms. And afterwards the queens besought the King to send for another prophet. And the heralds brought a singer, and placed ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... McEachern continued his drumming. "Don't think there's been anything underhand about this," said Jimmy. "She absolutely refused to do anything unless you gave your consent. She said you had been partners all her life, and she was going to do the ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... and took inventory. There was nothing but bacon and eggs and coffee. She had forgotten to order that morning. She lit the gas range and began to prepare the meal. As she broke an egg against the rim of the pan the nearby Elevated train rushed by, drumming tumpitum-tump! tumpitum-tump! She laughed, but it wasn't honest laughter. She laughed because she was conscious that she was afraid of something. Impulse drove her to the window. Contact with men—her unusual experiences as a reporter—had developed her natural fearlessness to a point ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... struck or not. The wind drummed in his ears, the flying grit and gravel and spray stung his face; but he struggled on hoping that this midnight walk would not come to an abrupt end by his grandfather's declining to go any farther. Above the drumming of the wind the roar of the sea became more audible every moment; the spume was thicker; the end of the valley, ordinarily the meeting-place of sand and grass and small streams with their yellow flags and forget-me-nots, was a desolation of white ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... the women glittered Their libertine show, their drumming tapped out crowds, The Sabazian Mysteries summoned their mob, Adonis been wept to death on the terraces, As I could hear the last day in the Assembly? For Demostratus—let bad luck befoul him— Was ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... plateau overlooking Apia. Below them the search-lights of the men-of-war moved restlessly about, shining at times with a bewildering brilliancy into their very faces; and from the little war-encompassed capital there rose a distant drumming and bugling as the missionary boy king, unsafe even under the guns of Britain and America, took his precautions against a night attack. After the stillness of Oa there was something confusing in the stir and bustle ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... madness of joy that sent the blood drumming and beating through my brain, my first impulse was to run for help. Then I bethought me of the closed doors, and I realised that no matter how I shouted none would hear me. I must succour her myself as best I could, and meanwhile she must be protected from the chill air of that ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... but little doubt that we were on some marauding expedition. Now and then we stopped, apparently that our leader might listen to ascertain whether any enemy was near, when from the forest there came forth shrill whistles, chirrups, unearthly cries, drumming noises, such as make one of these Indian forests apparently more full of life during the night than when the sun sheds his beams over the scene. Now we glided away more towards the centre of the river, which was as smooth as polished glass, ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... home, when the rain is drumming on the roof, and to feel that there are no heavy dull ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... bright, clear, bracing air, he whirred his wings in loud defiance. Then, giving fuller vent to this expression of vigor, just as a colt frisks to show how well he feels, he whirred yet more loudly, until, unwittingly, he found himself drumming, and tickled with the discovery of his new power, thumped the air again and again till he filled the near woods with the loud tattoo of the fully grown cock-partridge. His brother and sister heard and looked on with admiration and surprise, so did his ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... beside him sat a heavy built, clean-shaven man of middle age. That would be Cloran, of course—the man who was to have been lured to his death. And Danglar was nervous and uneasy, she could see. His fingers were drumming a tattoo on the table; his eyes were roving furtively about the room; and he did not seem to be paying any but the most distrait attention to his companion, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... arranged through the Home Missionary Board for someone to hold services at least once a fortnight. Later the "big meadow" so long coveted by a New York family as a building site was sacrificed to fill the empty war chest, and, temporarily in funds, she hired a boy to drive her about the country drumming up a congregation. ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... arranged it that you were to be a student instead, and doomed you to pass your existence drumming learning into the brains of a couple of the stupidest, ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... moon, but the dark lantern of summer, who came to hunt northward the cowering spring. In the nearest corral a flock of sheep lay silent until a groundless panic would send a squad of them huddling together with a drumming rush. For other sounds a shrill family of coyotes yapped beyond the shearing-pen, and whippoorwills twittered in the long grass. But even these dissonances hardly rippled the clear torrent of the mocking-birds' notes that fell from a dozen neighbouring shrubs and trees. It would not have ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... porter dropped the paper and sprang up; the boys came expectantly forward. Even the book-keeper stopped to watch the new-comer as he came rapidly toward the office. Only the head of the house sat unconcernedly at his desk—his long, pale, bony fingers drumming on the port-folio—his hard eyes ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... the delightful Mr. Good Indian off to?" Evadna stopped drumming upon the gatepost and turned toward the person she heard coming up behind her, who happened to be Gene. He stopped to light a match upon the gate and put his cigarette to work before he answered her; and Evadna touched tentatively the wide, ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... mesh in early January he haunted Montgomery, and on this day when it seemed that things must culminate or he would go mad, he hastened again down to the Planters' Hotel and was quickly ushered to John Taylor's room. The place was filled with tobacco smoke. An electric ticker was drumming away in one corner, a telephone ringing on the desk, and messenger boys hovered outside the door ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... They must have smelt her, though. Anyway, she seemed to be a little island in the mist—the faint, faint, ethereal dew-mist—where nobody walked. You could hear them—a rustle here, a squeak there, a thud somewhere else, a displaced leaf, a cracked twig—this only once—a drumming, a patter, a sniff, a snuffle, a sigh; but they all passed by on the other side, so to say, and gave the silver tabby room to think. Apparently cats are not considered good company in the wild; lonely creatures, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... be a social upheaval," said the Russian, drumming on the table with his slim fingers. "The time has not come for that yet. A third alternative is a mishap to a crowned head—and that we can offer ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... to find that his employer was not alone. A man whom he now recognized as the agent of the estate controlling the building was seated at one end of the desk and was drumming upon it with ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... is—gone," wildly panted Marigny, who had run himself blind and as yet could hear nothing but the drumming in ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... season, went along the line to look at the traps, as usual. He had his gun with him, but only two or three charges of powder. After proceeding to the extreme end of the line, he thought he would go on and look for some partridges, which he heard "drumming"* some little distance a-head. ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... far at the gallop, and the beat of hoofs rose up, dulled a little, in a wild staccato drumming. There was an insistent crunching beneath the runners, and a fine mist of snow beat against the sleigh, but the girl leaning forward, a tense figure, with nerveless hands clenched upon the reins, saw nothing but the blue-grey ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... cracking of the carbines, rose a peculiar drumming sound, and some of the men cried, "The Spanish machine-guns!" Listening, I made out that it came from the flat ground to the left, and jumped to my feet, smiting my hand on my thigh, and shouting aloud with exultation, "It's the Gatlings, men, ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... night the riotous drumming continued, and, as one lay awake and listened, one pictured the old scholar sitting in the cool night air on his verandah, reading his ancient palm-leaf books by the light of the little lamp in the niche of ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... canaries, five rabbits, three hares, two guinea-pigs, a squirrel, a magpie, a jay, and a starling. In addition he had, at least, one cat, for Lady Hesketh says, "One evening the cat giving one of the hares a sound box on the ear, the hare ran after her, and having caught her, punished her by drumming on her back with her two feet hard as drumsticks, till the creature would actually have been killed had not Mrs. Unwin rescued her." It might have been this very cat that was the inspiration of Cowper's poem, "To a Retired Cat," which had as a moral ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... seemed to be no rules of the road. Omnibuses careered along, every window rattling loudly; drays creaked and strained; non-descript delivery wagons tried to outrattle the omnibuses; horsemen picked their way amid the melee. The din was described as something extraordinary—hoofs drumming, wheels rumbling, oaths and shouts, and from the sidewalk the blare and bray of brass bands before the various auction shops. Newsboys and bootblacks darted in all directions. Cigar boys, a peculiar product of the time, ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... ocean. Mother came home from church, and said young Maurice was there, and inquired about me. He hoped I did not take cold; his friend Redmond had been hoarse ever since our ride, and had passed most of the time in his own room, drumming on the window-pane and whistling dirges. Mother dropped her acute eyes on me, while she was telling me this; but I yawned all expression from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... assault was delivered. In one trench there was a temporary shortage of ammunition, but the enemy fought even with stones and sticks and fists. A battalion came hurrying up from the Turkish right to reinforce it, was caught on open ground by the drumming 75's, and it melted away. Six hundred yards of Turkish trenches were taken, and still the bombardment was continued in order to ward off ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... of every individual present, adapted to their several cases, as far as the elder could guess at them from appearances. This grace might not have ended so soon as it did, had it not been for the somewhat impatient drumming of his knife-handle on the table with which Captain Holdernesse accompanied the latter ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
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