"Drone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... upon the saddle with another yell as he pushed the machine before him, and the next instant was whirling down the thoroughfare with the rapidity of an express train, bawling for people to "Stand clear!" In another moment he was out of sight, in a cloud of dust, and his yells fell to a drone in the distance. ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... thee, when the rays are now full, Do the oaks form an evergreen glade; While the drone of the locust overhead, seemed to lull The cattle that rest in ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... scandal, twenty huge, handsome Switzers in the dress devised by Michelangelo, some ushers, a choir caged off by gilded railings, the insolence and eagerness of polyglot tourists, plenty of wax candles dripping on people's heads, and a continual nasal drone proceeding from the gilded cage, out of which were caught at intervals these words, and these only,—'Saecula saeculorum, amen.' Such was the celebrated Sistine service. The chapel blazed with light, and very strange did Michelangelo's Last Judgment, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... state-craft, upon the foot-races he has run nor the wrestlers he has thrown. His superiority is based upon the fact that he doesn't have to work, and that others are compelled to work for him. And so the Korean drone flaunts his clean white clothes, for the same reason that the Chinese flaunts his monstrous finger-nails, and the white man and woman flaunt the ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... things we could spare; we could watch without weeping A Tutor's extinction, a Dean's disappearance. And Professors who drone while their pupils are sleeping, Though they went at a loss, we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... as if the business of this mighty world could be carried on by innocent people fond of ease and quiet, or that Providence would permit innocent quiet drones to occupy any portion of the earth and to cumber it. God had, at any rate, decreed that this man should not cumber it as a drone. He brings a certain affliction upon him, the agony of which produces that terrible whirling of the brain which, unless it is stopped in time, produces madness; he suffers indescribable misery for a period, until one morning his attention ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... going to say horrible, as he recalled one of his pet abominations, a dirty, kilted and plaided Scotchman, who made night hideous about the Bloomsbury squares with his chanter and drone. ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... Hebrides, Oct. 15, 1773). Not six months before his death he asked Dr. Burney to teach him the scale of music (ante, p. 263, note 4). That 'he appeared fond of the bagpipe, and used often to stand for some time with his ear close to the great drone' (Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 15), does not tell for much either way. In his Hebrides (Works, ix. 55), he shews his pleasure in singing. 'After supper,' he writes, 'the ladies sung Erse songs, to which I listened, as an English audience to an Italian opera, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... its bare "lands" and barren class-rooms, in time waxed wearisome to Sylvanus. He grew to loathe the drone of the classes, the snuffy prelections of professors long settled on the lees of their intellects, who still moused about among the dusty speculations which had done duty for thought when their lectures were new, thirty years ago. "A West Indian nigger," ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... a cloud fly up From their sweet feeding in the fruit; The droning of the bees and flies Rises gradual as a lute; Is it for fear the birds are flown, And shrills the insect-drone? ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... blue melts away toward the horizon in dreamy violet, and the retreating sun leaves limber shafts of orange light, like Parthian arrows, among the green branches of the elms, what sounds can charm the ear like the soft chirrup of the cricket, the homely drone of the hive-seeking bee, and the cool rustle of the breeze through the tops of the spring-sodden water grasses? How fondly the mind blends the evening colors and the incipient voices of the night! 'Oh,' says the metaphysician, 'this is association: just so a strain of music reminds you of a ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions. This alone, I was convinced, had driven him out to the edge of the forest, to the bush, towards the gleam of fires, the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations; this alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations. And, don't you see, the terror of the position was not in being knocked on the head—though I had a very lively ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... of voices sank upon their advent, it became a hissing whisper, then a faint drone like that of bees, and then utter silence. In the solemn and grave demeanour of the dalals there was something almost sacerdotal, so that when that silence fell upon the crowd the affair took on the aspect ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... bearing something in a cooler. There were a few swift motions, a pop distinctly heard above the drone of the orchestra. The man tossed aside his cigarette and leaned forward. Two glasses with slender stems, each containing a liquid that effervesced and sparkled, one in the man's hand, one in the woman's, met midway of the board. The empty glasses ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... valley," the philosopher proceeded, harking back to the book which had arrived by the evening's mail. "Florence was a devil—Florence was divine. They raised geniuses and devils and martyrs: the most cloud-topping geniuses, the worst devils, the most saintly martyrs. But better than being a drone in a Florence pension is all this"—with a wave of his hand to the garden and the stars—"which I owe to Mary and the little speck on her lungs which brought us here after—after we had found that we had not as much money as we thought we had and an old fellow who had ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... have to say Contrive to spend the longest time in doing it; They turn and vary it in every way, Hashing it, stewing it, mincing it, ragouting it; Sometimes they keep it purposely at bay, Then let it slip to be again pursuing it; They drone it, groan it, whisper it and shout it, Refute it, flout it, swear to 't, prove it, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... cards or eating chunks of red melon. Pilgrims with great bundles on their backs stood staring vacantly at the walls or at the sea; monks in long grey cloaks, square hats, and long hair, passed in and out like bees about a hive, and from a distance came a musical drone, the chanting of ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... Of a lazy drone, And a bed on a cushioned knee; But in wild free ways I will spend my days, And at night on the ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... they talked, and his rays were growing hot in the clear air. The mist had lifted from the city below, and all the streets and open places were alive with noisy buyers and sellers, whose loud talking and disputing came up in a continuous hum to the palace on the hill, like the drone of a swarm of bees. The ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... and tasselled, till each heather stalk Is delicately fringed. The sycamores, Through all their mystical entanglement Of boughs, are draped with silver. All the green Of sweet leaves playing with the subtle air In dainty murmuring; the obstinate drone Of limber bees that in the monk's-hood bells House diligent; the imperishable glow Of summer sunshine never more confessed The harmony of nature, the divine, Diffusive spirit of the beautiful. Out ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... ridiculous position to be smoked out of your fortune with brimstone as soon as you had made it. You would have a very mean opinion of a Manchester man if he spun cotton for no other purpose. He must say he thought a drone the embodiment of a pleasanter and wiser idea. The drone said unaffectedly, "You will excuse me; I really cannot attend to the shop! I find myself in a world in which there is so much to see and so short a time to see it in that I must take the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Norfolk born people, and the people from the neighboring counties, formed the base—a pretty broad base, but only a base. Everybody was busy. Wirt, writing a year or two later to a friend, likened the borough to a hive in which their was no drone. The outward appearance of things was bad enough. The houses on the wharves and in the business streets were all of wood, and have since been swept away by successive fires. There was not a paved street within ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... aperture that served for a window, all the ever unfamiliar noises of night in the wilderness—the long nameless note of a distant coyote; the stilly pulsing thrill of tireless insects in trees; strange cries of night birds, so different from those of the birds of day; the drone of great blundering beetles, and all that mysterious chorus of small sounds that seem always to have been but half heard when they have suddenly ceased, as if conscious of an indiscretion. But nothing ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... sounds.] Ululation. — N. cry &c. v.; crying &c. v.; bowwow, ululation, latration[obs3], belling; reboation[obs3]; wood-note; insect cry, fritiniancy|, drone; screech owl; cuckoo. wailing (lamentation) 839. V. cry, roar, bellow, blare, rebellow[obs3]; growl, snarl. [specific animal sounds] bark [dog, seal]; bow-wow, yelp [dog]; bay, bay at the moon [dog, wolf]; yap, yip, yipe, growl, yarr|, yawl, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... North, Fox, and Co. Gowff'd Willie like a ba', man; Till Suthron raise, an' coost their claise Behind him in a raw, man: An' Caledon threw by the drone, An' did her whittle draw, man; An' swoor fu' rude, thro' dirt an' bluid, To mak it guid ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... instant's pause. Their alert ears caught the sounds of a distant scuffle. Then a pistol shot jarred the peaceful drone ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... had the feeling that no one in the house was asleep yet, not even Julia whom she could hear now and then moving as softly as physical conditions permitted in her room. That her father and mother were awake, she knew from the drone of their ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... of Weyrother's voice ceased, Kutuzov opened his eye as a miller wakes up when the soporific drone of the mill wheel is interrupted. He listened to what Langeron said, as if remarking, "So you are still at that silly business!" quickly closed his eye again, and let his ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... him with a touch of that chagrin which came to men like Tacitus from disbelief In the moral government of a degenerate world. Though he strives, like Tacitus, to take up his parable nec amore et sine odio, the disgust is ill concealed. There are passages where we almost hear the drone of a dowager in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. It was said of Tocqueville that he was an aristocrat who accepted his defeat. Sir Henry Maine in politics is a bureaucrat who cannot bear to think that democracy will win. ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... sound outside. It was Enid listening with all her ears. She had not been long in discovering what had happened. Once the ghastly farcical incubus was off her shoulders she had followed Littimer upstairs. As she passed Henson's room the drone of voices struck on her ears. She stood there and listened. She would have given much for this not to have happened, but everything happened for the worst ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... vigor; but to be nearly refined without being quite refined is as harrowing as singing just a little off the key. To be far off the key is to be in another key, but to smite at a note and muff it is excruciation. Better far to drone middle C than to aim at high C and ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... masses, that hissed about her like angry skirts. A light, V-shaped wake spread after, scarcely agitating the surface. She dragged no water. There was no churning at her stern. Only the dull, sub-aqueous drone, felt rather than heard beneath the rapid banging of her exhaust, told me how the ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... by The Seraph, singing his morning song. It was a tuneless drone, yet not unmusical. Always the first to open his eyes in the morning, he began his day with a sort of Saga of his exploits of the day before, usually meaningless to us but fraught with colour from his own peculiar sphere. At last he laughed outright—a ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... his resources are but partial, the want of power in the Government to compromise and release the demand instigates to fraud as the only resource for securing a support to his family. He thus sinks into a state of apathy, and becomes a useless drone in society or a vicious member of it, if not a feeling witness of the rigor and inhumanity of his country. All experience proves that oppressive debt is the bane of enterprise, and it should be the care of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... that the men would concern themselves about details that, in Anglo-Saxon countries at least, have for centuries been firmly relegated to the partner of the second part. How many American women drive their husbands to the club by their incessant drone about the iniquities of servants and ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... sparkling silver, and snowy covers of the supper room were visible. Here a high-light gleamed upon a bare shoulder; there, a stalwart male back showed, blocked out in bold black upon the bright canvas. Waiters flitted noiselessly about. The drone of that vocal orchestra filled the place: the masculine conversation, the brass and wood-wind—the sweeter tones of women, the ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... run warm on the waves of the grass that lifts like a scented sea. No sound of the surf, no sob of the tides; but the drone of the drowsy bee Is drawing me out from the purple shades to wade in the daffodils, Where the long green billows go drifting by to lap the feet of ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... Tryst" were in bed and asleep long ago. Whether by natural gift or acquired habit they could suffer pandemonium to reign all over the house, and yet lie ranked in the kitchen like Egyptian mummies, only that the sound of their snoring rose and fell ceaselessly like the drone of a bagpipe. Here the Six-Footers invaded them—in their citadel, so to speak; counted the bunks and the sleepers; proposed to put me in bed to one of the lasses, proposed to have one of the lasses out to make room for me, fell over chairs, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wasn't hurt, and Casey would laugh at him. Aye, Casey would have laughed! .... They are men. There are thousands of them. The U. P. R. goes on. It can't be stopped. It has the momentum of a great nation pushing it on from behind.... And I, who have lost all I cared for, and you, who are a drone among the bees, and Ruby and Stanton with their kind, poor creatures sucked into the vortex; yes, and that mob of leeches, why we all are so stung by that nameless spirit that we are stirred beyond ourselves and dare both height ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... exactly as much of the Christian doctrine as suits him. Now when I compare myself with the miller, I feel that, as far as human usefulness goes, I am far lower in the scale. I am, when all is said and done, a drone in the hive, eating the honey I did not make. I do not take my share in the necessary labour of the world, I do not regulate a little community of labourers with uprightness and kindness, as he does. But still I suppose ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Secundus was then alive,— Snuffy old drone from the German hive. That was the year when Lisbon-town Saw the earth open and gulp her down, And Braddock's army was done so brown, Left without a scalp to its crown. It was on the terrible Earthquake-day That the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in chinks of the crumbling adobe and in interstices of the sidewalk—remained without, motionless, as if stuffed, their eyes closed to mere slits, basking, stupefied with heat. At long intervals the prolonged drone of an insect developed out of the silence, vibrated a moment in a soothing, somnolent, long note, then trailed slowly into the quiet again. Somewhere in the interior of one of the 'dobe houses a guitar snored and hummed sleepily. On the roof of the hotel ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... he is known To be the same poor lazy drone: The sweetest songs Believers find Make no impression on his mind; And round the fire he'd rather nod Than labor in ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... propeller—like the drone of a giant locust—resounded over the town, people came pouring out from houses and shops to witness the descent. The crowd gathered so quickly that Peggy had difficulty to avoid hitting some of them. However, she managed to bring the aeroplane to a ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... of Arras;[31107] the last day it is spoken aloud in his great speech in the Convention;[31108] during the interval, it crops out and shines through all his compositions, harangues, or reports, in exordiums, parentheses and perorations, permeating every sentence like the drone of a bag-pipe.[31109]—Through the delight he takes in this he can listen to nothing else, and it is just here that the outward echoes supervene and sustain with their accompaniment the inward cantata which he ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... fool! Honoured by my friendship, but not ready to accept me as his daughter's suitor! As if I would lounge away hours that mean dollars to me in his stiff old drawing-room, just to hear his everlasting drone about stocks up and stocks down, and politics gone all wrong. He has heard that I play cards, and—How pretty she looked! I believe I half like that girl, and when I think she has a million in her own right—Damn it, if I cannot ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... among double-reed instruments the various bagpipes, cornemuses, and musettes, which are shawm or oboe instruments with reservoirs of air, and furnished with drones inclosing single reeds. I shall have more to say about the drone in the third lecture. In restricting our attention to the Highland bagpipe, with which we are more or less familiar, it is surprising to find the peculiar scale of the chaunter, or finger pipe, in an old Arabic scale, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... house is an old place with low rooms and all cosey. Octavia was in there—the dining-room—helping to lay the cloth, as she had been rather clumsy, too, and been sent away, and her young man was as nice as mine; and we four had a superb time, as happy as children, but Tom was nothing but a drone, for he sat with Kitty in a window seat behind some curtains, and did not ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... sun grew ever hotter; birds chirped drowsily from hedge and thicket, and the warm, still air was full of the slumberous drone of a myriad unseen wings. Therefore Beltane sought the deeper shade of the woods and, risking the chance of roving thief or lurking foot-pad, followed a devious course by ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... working well, but not very well; the small difficulties will be got over, but I rather fear they will never draw the loads we expect of them. Still they promise to be a help, and they are lively and attractive features of our present scene as they drone along over the floe. At a little distance, without silencers, they sound ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... "sea-green incorruptible," too humane to swat a fly, yet capable of sending half of France to the guillotine in order that the half that was left might believe unanimously in the rights of man; all this the girl had let go by unheard, in favor, apparently, of the drone of a street piano, which came in through the open window on the prematurely warm March wind. Of all his philosophizing, there was not a pen-track to mar the virginity of the page she had opened her note-book to when the ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... drowsy drone of honey-laden bees, The poppied breath of gardens blooming fair, The scent of elder blossoms, sweet and rare, Come stealing in on balmy southern breeze; And dying lays, whose long lost melodies Still haunt old storied ruins ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... The drone of bees and the carol of birds are naturally an incessant accompaniment to my toil—at least, in these spring and summer months. The tall, straight flue of the chimney, like the deep diapason of an organ, is softly murmurous ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... Spirit gripped him by the hair and carried him far away, Till he heard as the roar of a rain-fed ford the roar of the Milky Way: Till he heard the roar of the Milky Way die down and drone and cease. ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... (An air on the drone-pipes is heard, and Montfleury enters, enormously stout, in an Arcadian shepherd's dress, a hat wreathed with roses drooping over one ear, blowing into ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... to those calls, which had in them a certain element of mystery, as have all things which reach only one sense. They were in their humble way the voices of the unseen, and as he listened they seemed to take on a rhythmic cadence. Presently the drone of multifold vibrations sounded in his ears with even rise and fall, like the mighty breathing of Nature herself. The sun was low, and the sky was full of violet clouds. Barney could see outlined faintly against them the gray sweep of the roof ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... thundered. "Have you again dared to save life, and neglect the object of our expedition? Fool! you will yet be driven forth as a drone from the hive. The girl's dead; throw her into the sea; she will be a dainty morsel ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... mails. Why shall we degrade ourselves by depending upon others for our mail facilities? It alway humbles and mortifies me to see one human being lick the hand of another; one who acknowledges himself a stupid drone that must needs have a master to direct and protect him. And so with our nation when she stoops to subserviency and begging, for even so much as the postal charities of other ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... breathlessly still, except for the drone of insects at the screens, attracted by the glow of the library lamp. A steeple clock clanged its ten sonorous strokes, and still the old men chatted on, and the Duke had not ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... but do her will. We saw her take The chain in her own hands and walk behind. Indeed thy servants bore a troubled mind, O King, but how do else? So time went by. Meanwhile to make it seem she wrought some high Magic, she cried aloud: then came the long Drone of some strange and necromantic song, As though she toiled to cleanse that blood; and there Sat we, that long time, waiting. Till a fear O'ertook us, that the men might slip their chain And strike the priestess down and plunge amain For safety: yet the dread our eyes to ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... words I can answer you," said the book-hawker. "I was once a monk, a lazy drone. Our convent was rich, and we had nothing to do except to appear for so many hours every day in church, and repeat or chant words, of the sense of which we did not for a moment trouble ourselves. Copies of the blessed gospel, however, were brought among us, and certain works ...
— The Woodcutter of Gutech • W.H.G. Kingston
... myself," said he, "by the comparison with such a rascal, what art thou but a vagabond without house or home, without stock or inheritance? born to no possession of your own, but a pair of wings and a drone-pipe. Your livelihood is a universal plunder upon nature; a freebooter over fields and gardens; and, for the sake of stealing, will rob a nettle as easily as a violet. Whereas I am a domestic animal, furnished ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... the night Grew dreamy with a shadowy sweet delight, And with the high-risen moon came pensive thought, And men in love's despite must grow distraught And loiter in the dance, and maidens drop Their gathered raiment, and the fifer stop His dancing notes the pensive drone that chid, And as they wander to their dwellings, hid By the black shadowed trees, faint melody, Mournful and sweet, their soft good-night must be. Far better spoil the gathering vat bore in Unto the pressing shed, than midst the din Of falling houses in war's waggon lies Besmeared ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... and the far woods are dim, and the rooks cry and call. Down in the valley the lamps, and the mist, and a star over all, There by the rick, where they thresh, is the drone at an end, Twilight it is, and I travel the road ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... vellum in Gregorian notes, and can be little less ancient than the event which it recorded;" and that there is with it a paper which shows that an attempt was made in the last century (17th) to give it a modern dress, but that too many liberties had been taken with the melody, and the drone bass, which had been set to it for the lute, is a mere jargon. He then presents what he says is a faithful copy of this venerable relic of our nation's prowess ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... witnesses, their removal to a separate room, the decision on the evidence of the medical expert. Then the secretary arose and began to read the indictment, loud and with distinctness, but so rapidly that his incorrect sounding of the letters l and r turned his reading into one continuous, weary drone. The judges leaned now on one side, now on the other side of their arm-chairs, then on the table, and again on the backs of the chairs, or closed their eyes, or opened them and whispered to each other. One of the gendarmes several times stifled ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... there was a patch of vivid emerald where the water fell. To the north it was possible to make out the arms of a semaphore lying idle. There was no sound in the place. The river itself flowed silently. Only the occasional deep drone of a hornet or the note of a mosquito came to the ear. The sun seemed to be drawing the land together, sucking up ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... sidewalks. It was past one o'clock in the morning. The wicked Forties were still ablaze with light and noisy foxtrots; but in the virtuous Hundreds, where Mr. Pett's house stood, respectable slumber reigned. Only the occasional drone of a passing automobile broke the silence, or the love-sick cry of some feline Romeo ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... reproves me thereupon, More sweet than Nature's, when the drone Of bees is sweetest, and more deep Than when the rivers overleap The shuddering ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... said it was a pity that some people you knew, not a thousand miles away, couldn't go to the School of the Bees, and learn that line from Watts about Satan finding mischief for idle hands to do. And Joyce said yes, it was too bad for a fine fellow to get into trouble just because he was a drone, and had no ambition to make anything of himself; that if Alaka had gone to the School of the Bees he wouldn't have lost his eyes. And then you said that if somebody kept on he would at least lose his turquoises. Do you ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... disguises for our desires and appetites. Perhaps it is fear of the wrath to come that is partly responsible for the clamour of the economists and sociologists in the publishers' announcements, almost drowning there the drone of the cataract of new novels. But it is too late now. The wrath will come. After mischievously bungling with the magic which imprisoned the Djinn, we may wish we had not done it; but once he is out there is nothing for it but to be surprised and sorry. The lid is off; and it is useless ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... was expirin' fr'm a dose iv proosic acid. All was comparitive peace. In th' warrum summer's afthernoon th' Czar felt almost dhrousy as he set in his rile palace an' listened to th' low, monotonous-drone iv bombs bein' hurled at th' Probojensky guards, an' picked th' broken glass out iv th' dhrink that'd just been brought to him be an aged servitor who was prisidint iv th' Saint Pethersburg lodge iv Pathriotic Assassins. Th' monarch's mind turned to th' subjick iv war an' he says to himsilf: 'What ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... that all young persons should endeavor to make each day stand for something. Neither heaven nor earth has any place for the drone; he is a libel on his species. No glamour of wealth or social prestige can hide his essential ugliness. It is better to carry a hod, or wield a shovel, in an honest endeavor to be of some use to humanity, than to be nursed in luxury and ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... Again the dull drone of the heavy stuff—the practised ear could gauge its fall, and I retreated a few yards into the passage. The courtyard outside caught it, and the entire chateau trembled violently at the concussion. But why, why these big guns? Another landed in the yard, followed by ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... of Americanism that she had voiced, and it became a trifle nobler when he considered that it meant industry, energy, and honesty. To do something and do it well. To be proud of doing something well. To be proud that one wasn't a loafer or a drone, or a parasite on the body economic. He was striving to correlate all this when made aware that the taxi had stopped and that they were at their destination. He actually submitted to an overcharge of a half-dollar inflicted by the hatchet-faced brigand who had jerked his ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... earth is burdened by So many a fool, so many a drone, Whose thoughts and deeds are all awry— These trees of flesh, these forms ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... angles and distances. I will keep it in mind. It is a complete perplexity to me, and yet certainly insects can rudely somehow judge of distance. There are special difficulties on account of the gradation in size between the worker-scells and the larger drone-cells. I am trying to test the case practically by getting combs of different species, and of our own bee from different climates. I have lately had some from the W. Indies of our common bee, but the cells SEEM certainly to be larger; but they have not yet been carefully ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... were open all around and the sweet breath of the opening roses stole in with the summer breeze, while the drone of bees and the pure notes of a song sparrow lulled ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... fantasia that poured itself through his obedient fingers; it held the wistful chants of ancient ritual, the festival roulades and plaintive yearnings of melodious cantors, the sing-song augmentation of Talmud-students oscillating in airless study-houses, the long, melancholy drone of Psalm-singers in darkening Sabbath twilights, the rustle of palm-branches and sobbings of penitence, the long-drawn notes of the ram's horn pealing through the Terrible Days, the passionate proclamation ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... said, in her level, crystal-clear tones; "you know nothing of a man. Your men are maromeros. They are fit only to roll cigarettes in the shade until the sun strikes and shrivels them up. They drone in your hammocks and you comb their hair and feed them with fresh fruit. My man is of no such blood. Let him drink of the wine. When he has taken sufficient of it to drown one of your flaccitos he will come home to me more of a man than one thousand of your pobrecitos. ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... happiness. They loved their kinsman for his kindness to them. He became attached to them as helpmates; and the end of it all was, he came to Socrates and told him with delight how matters fared; "and now," he added, "they tax me with being the only drone in the house, who sit and eat the ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... songx'i, -o; (day-), rev'o, -i. dredge : skrapegi. dress : robo; vesti, sin vesti. drill : bori; ekzerco, manovro. drink : trinki, (to excess) drinki. drive : veturi; peli. "—away", forpeli. droll : ridinda, sxerca. drone : abelviro; zumi. drop : gut'o, -i. drown : dron'i, -igi. drug : drogo. drum : tamburo. drunken : ebria. dry : seka. "—land", firmajxo. duck : anasino, anaso. duration : dauxro. duty : devo, (tax) imposto. "be on—", dejxori. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... families, and every discreet person will be a law unto himself. But amongst us the badge of gentry is idleness: to be of no calling, not to labour, for that's derogatory to their birth, to be a mere spectator, a drone, fruges consumere natus, to have no necessary employment to busy himself about in church and commonwealth (some few governors exempted), "but to rise to eat," &c., to spend his days in hawking, hunting, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... to the question. "It's a place where there's misery, starvation, and crime of all sorts,—and there I am in the very midst of it—just where I want to be. Ye see, I was meant to be a meenister—one of those douce, cannie, comfortable bodies that drone in the pulpit about predestination and original sin, and so forth a—sort, of palaver that does no good to ony resonable creature—an' if I had followed out this profession, I make nae doot that, with my aunt's seventy thousand, I should be a vera comfortable, respectable, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... by the blast through the loose windows, flapped dismally, and the people drew their wraps about them, for the fireless room was cold. Steadily, insistently, the hive-like drone of conversation ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... "You cannot but agree with me that ours was never the love of a man and woman whose hearts were attuned to one another, and sang in perfect unison. We really drifted into an engagement more because of propinquity than anything else. I am a drone—the product of society at its worst—and you are one of the workers, Donald. I feel quite sure that you will always gain your truest happiness in your work. Although I know how you love children (and I don't), I cannot think of you in the role of a ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... The drone of an aeroplane high in the midnight sky came to them at intervals. At last the sound died away under ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... overhead, the horizon was veiled in a thin blue haze into which the landscape and distant objects seemed to fade and lose themselves. Filmy threads of gossamer floated through the air, suffused with a soft golden glow. Most of the birds had ceased to sing and the drone of insects became less persistent, as if fearful to disturb the hush and calm that ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... Heilig was a drone if he were your son," replied Mrs. Brauner. She knew that if any one else had dared thus to attack their boy, his father would have been growling and snapping ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... prospective passengers were beginning to turn and stare; the drone of the train was audible, it increased to a clamor. Gloria's efforts redoubled, then ceased altogether, and she stood there trembling and hot-eyed at this helpless humiliation, as the engine roared and thundered into ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the cottage Stuart built on the hills. A jaunty sailboat nods at the buoy near the water's edge. The drone of bees from the fruit trees in full bloom on the terraces promise a luscious harvest in the summer and fall. The lawn is a wilderness of flowers and shimmering green. The climbing roses on the southeastern side of the house have covered it to the very eaves of ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... he said; "not industry alone. Keep good company, my boy. Keep good hours. Never forget that a gentleman must look like a gentleman, dress like a gentleman, frequent the society of gentlemen. To be a mere bookworm is to be a drone in the great hive. I hate a ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... scamper of nearly a mile on a hot day in June was described with gusto. Doris, who knew the village constable well, laughed outright, while Furneaux cackled shrilly. None who might be watching the little group in that delightful garden, with its scent of old-world flowers and drone of bees, could have guessed that a grewsome ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... universal hurry, no man ought to be so little influenced by example, or so void of honest emulation, as to stand a lazy spectator of incessant labour; or please himself with the mean happiness of a drone, while the active swarms are buzzing about him: no man is without some quality, by the due application of which he might deserve well of the world; and whoever he be that has but little in his power, should be in haste to do ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... lonely cottage. Holmes tied the dog to the hedge, and we hastened onward. My friend knocked at the little rustic door, and knocked again without response. And yet the cottage was not deserted, for a low sound came to our ears—a kind of drone of misery and despair which was indescribably melancholy. Holmes paused irresolute, and then he glanced back at the road which he had just traversed. A brougham was coming down it, and there could be no mistaking those ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... their faces: for the room was darkened. Those who were not handsome, or who had not long beards, carried THEIR tapers anyhow, and abandoned themselves to spiritual contemplation. Meanwhile, the chaunting was very monotonous and dreary. The procession passed on, slowly, into the chapel, and the drone of voices went on, and came on, with it, until the Pope himself appeared, walking under a white satin canopy, and bearing the covered Sacrament in both hands; cardinals and canons clustered round him, making a brilliant show. ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... hunter round and dropped sheer for a thousand feet, coming up in a fairly thick bank of white cloud. He there flattened out again and began climbing, not being sure of his altitude. No sooner had his engine begun to drone out the rhythm of its full power, and the good hunter-plane begun to rise majestically, than what should he see but the second enemy fighter right in front of him! A new drum was in place on his Lewis gun, and he let go. The Boche pilot threw up both ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... But I was by this time so weary that I could have slept twelve hours at a stretch; I had the taste of sleep in my throat; my joints slept even when my mind was waking; the hot smell of the heather, and the drone of the wild bees, were like possets to me; and every now and again I would give a jump and find I ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tea-table made a slight—a very slight—movement that scarcely amounted to a gesture of impatience. The gentle drone of her stepmother's voice was becoming monotonous. But she said nothing whatever, and ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... though it should result in his banishment. He rejoiced that he should even thus be set at liberty from his horrible situation.[16] He longed to feel the tide of human life ebbing and flowing around him, and to feel that he himself was not a mere drone in the hive. During the progress of the trial, though he was oblivious of most that was going on in the court-room, memory and fancy were keenly alert, and he rapidly lived over again many episodes of his ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... is my own, if labour in getting, and care in augmenting, can make a right of property; and no drone shall feed on my honeycomb. Think on it well: what I have said is not without reflection, and what I resolve upon ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... flown, That the brook's verge is green;—and bid thee hear, In yon irriguous vale, the Blackbird clear, At measur'd intervals, with mellow tone, Choiring [1]the hours of prime? and call thine ear To the gay viol dinning in the dale, With tabor loud, and bag-pipe's rustic drone To merry Shearer's dance;—or jest retail From festal board, from choral roofs the song; And speak of Masque, or Pageant, to beguile The caustic memory of a cruel wrong?— Thy lips acknowledge this a generous wile, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... would, I believe, be frightful. In America, the "boys" get up so early, that it is said they frequently "catch the birds by their tails as they are going to roost;" and it is no doubt owing to this that they are so 'cute. Talk about "catching a weasel asleep," let me see any of my metropolitan drone friends who can catch ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... the greensward slopes to a wheat-field that is like a wall of gold. Here I lie and laze away the time, or dip into a favorite book, Stevenson's Letters or Belloc's Path to Rome. Bees drone in the wild thyme; a cuckoo keeps calling, a lark spills jeweled melody. Then there is a seeming silence, but it is the ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... with all the pretty garments, with which she had been bedecked, drenched in her own blood. A small clasp knife lay by her side, and there was a ghastly gash in her throat. The women lifted her up, and strove to staunch the bleeding, and as they fought to stay the life that was ebbing from her, the drone of the priests, and the beat of the drums, came to their ears from the men who were making merry without. Then suddenly the news of what had occurred spread among the guests, and the music died away, and was replaced by a babble of excited ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... their duenna, who knew what they meant. A shower came up, and they would remain outside; so the boy put up a leathern hood, and they sat inside in such a merry mood that the silent youth suddenly caught the infection, and burst forth into a Breton melody, which he continued to drone till ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... stove slate pore rave snipe snore mere flake cove stone spine store stole cave flame blade mute wide stale grove crime stake hone mete grape shave skate mine wake smite grime spike more wave white stride brake score slope drone spade spoke fume strife twine shape snake wade slime strive whale strike slave mode stripe blame stroke shine smile swore scrape smoke shade shore ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... still morning air arose a sound like the drone of some gigantic hive, or of the sea when the tide is making. Affonso Henriques recognized it for the murmur ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... and farms. Maren knew fairly well for whom Soeren had worked, and it was quite time they paid their debts. She never asked directly for the money, but would stand just inside the door with the child in front of her, rattling a big leather purse such as fisher folk used, and drone: ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... rules of good policy had before inclined him. He entered at last into the cause of his brother-in-law and the distressed English. He persuaded the King of Denmark to enter into the same measures, who agreed to invade England with a fleet of a thousand ships. Drone, an Irish king, declared in their favor, and supplied the sons of Earl Godwin with vessels and men, with which they held the English coast ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... laid low by the smallest beast of them all. Well, he had the remedy for this one, too. Rolling up his sleeve with shaking fingers, he pressed the mouth of the medikit to his bare arm. It clicked and began to drone an angry whine. That meant something, he knew, but he just couldn't remember what. Holding it up he saw that one of the hypodermics was projecting halfway from its socket. Of course. It was empty of whatever antibiotic ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... daily uses is loved and petted; and in decorating our rooms we educate ourselves in design. The place in church which has been our own for years,—is not that dear to us, and the voice that has told us of God's tidings—even though the drone become more evident as it waxes in years, and though it grows feeble and indolent? And the faces of those who have lived around us, do we not love them too, the servants who have worked for us, and the children who have first toddled beneath our eyes and prattled in our ears, and now ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... dependent on a sister of his, everybody in the farmhouse treated him as a beggar who is eating the bread of others. At every meal the very food he swallowed was made a subject of reproach against him; he was called a drone, a clown; and although his brother-in-law had taken possession of his portion of the inheritance, the soup was given to him grudgingly—just enough ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... always, and the way of taking them thus: Set Pursenets on their Holes, and put in a Ferret close muzzled, and she will boult them out into the Nets: Or blow on a sudden the Drone of a Bag-Pipe into the Burrows, and they will boult out: Or for want of either of these two, take Powder of Orpiment and Brimstone, and boult them out with the Smother: But pray use this last seldom, unless you would destroy ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... circle to await events. I noticed that my neighbour was the fellow 'Mwanga whom I had kicked out of the store. Happily I was so dusty that he could scarcely recognize me, but I kept my face turned away from him. What with the light and the warmth, the drone of the water, the silence of the folk, and my mental and physical stress, I grew ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... if, like a drone, we have but a single task in existence: to live. A drone must die, when it has performed its mission. I am not at all blind to the beauty of the butterfly, which lets its magnificent velvet wings glisten in the sunshine throughout a long summer day, and has no organs for receiving nourishment, ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... avenue, a flood of mellow light from a butcher's shop was thrown out over the snowy sidewalk. Its windows were garlanded with Christmas greens and hung with pathetic looking turkeys and geese. Belated shoppers passed out, their arms piled high with bundles. A car swept by, its drone muffled by the snow. The spirit of Christmas was in the very air. Satherwaite's depression increased and, of a sudden, inaction became intolerable. He would go and see somebody, anybody, and make them talk ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... and an Ass. } Because a Cuckold's Life was his hard fate, Must Wedlock be abused at this rate? Because he had a strumpit for his Wife, He now commends a mopish single Life. Let him content himself to live a Drone, In some dark Corner of the World alone; And trouble not his Brains with our blest State, Which now is far above his wretched fate; He talks of prayers a little while before, And then he curss'd his Wife ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... the hill, and sighed, and followed her flight, And there were the lodges below, each with its door alight; From folk that sat on the terrace and drew out the even long Sudden crowings of laughter, monotonous drone of song; The quiet passage of souls over his head in the trees; {2g} And from all around the haven the crumbling thunder of seas. "Farewell, my home," said Rua. "Farewell, O quiet seat! To-morrow in all your valleys the drum ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in a thousand ligatures. On the other hand, there was a wretched fellow, preparing with celandine and beef's blood, his "leg of God," for the next day. Two tables further on, a palmer, with his pilgrim's costume complete, was practising the lament of the Holy Queen, not forgetting the drone and the nasal drawl. Further on, a young scamp was taking a lesson in epilepsy from an old pretender, who was instructing him in the art of foaming at the mouth, by chewing a morsel of soap. Beside him, a man with the dropsy was getting ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... The drone of the engine ceased and little spurts of dust shot up from the landing wheels as the young aviator at the helm of the beautiful craft applied his brakes, threw out the spark and cut off the engine. The plane ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... said the fool, thinking. "Since Eve fell into sin, women's counsel is often the best. You, Nunkey, shall be turned into a butterfly, and not into a drone, and grace the flowers as ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the girl's wants was done. Whether it was a continuous supply of peat for the fire in these chilly April days; or a newspaper from the town; or a bundle of daffodils from the wood below—some signs of a fatherly mind he was always showing towards this little drone in the hive. And Laura delighted in him—racked her brains to keep him ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The drone grew loud. The figure caught the bonnet close to her face and held it there, turning it about anxiously. Her eyes were eager. Her lips wore a ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... scold you, Miss Drone," said Beatrice when the two girls had set themselves to rights, and recovered breath; "it was all ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Valley of the Mills; and in some of them lights were burning; and the drone of the mill-stones, where the women were still grinding, came out into the night like the humming of drowsy bees. As the women heard the pattering and bleating of the flock, they wondered who was passing ...
— The Sad Shepherd • Henry Van Dyke |
