"Drone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blow, 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 ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... serious interest was going on upstairs. There sat Kate before the looking-glass, with flushed cheeks and quivering mouth. The low drone of many voices came to her through the floor. Then a dull silence and one voice, and Nancy Joe coming and going between the kitchen ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... 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
... stall, or tailor from his shopboard. Kitty Quintal's cant phrase—'we want food for our souls,' and praying at meals for 'spiritual nourishment,' smack not a little of the jargon of the inferior caste of evangelicals. Whoever this pastoral drone may be, it is but too evident that the preservation of the innocence, simplicity, and happiness of these amiable people, is intimately connected with his speedy removal ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... hae room to grumble! Hadst thou taen aff some drowsy bummle, [drone] Wha can do nought but fyke an' fumble, [fuss] 'Twad been nae plea; [grievance] But he was gleg as ony wumble, [lively, auger] ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... ways & by boystrous words indeferd to fritten men to accomplish his end. & he abusing me to my face, dru upon him with intent to corb his insolent & dastardli sperrite.... Ister daye on Pickeren their Chorch Warden caim up to us with intent to make some of ourse drone as is sospeckted but the Lord sofered him so to misdemen himslfe as he is likli to li by the hielse this too month.... My homble request is that you will be charitable of me.... Let justies and merci be goyned.... You may ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... came— Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame. Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom, Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume. Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung; The world was very old indeed when you and I were young. They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named: Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed. Weak if we were and foolish, not thus we failed, not thus; When that ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... well," he said. "It is making a man of Walter. He has been a drone, hitherto. Now he has become a worker, and, though I may not like him better, for he was always near to my heart, I respect ...
— Walter Sherwood's Probation • Horatio Alger
... 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 ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... towers on either side of the gate were lighted as usual. From one came the low drone of two men's voices; the other was silent. No other sound save that of the rattle of bit-chains as a horse somewhere shook ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... in this respect one may perceive to exist between the bees of the Luneburg heath and those of this country!"..."Removing an old queen and substituting a young one of the current year is here an infallible mode of keeping the strongest stock from swarming and preventing drone-breeding; whilst the same means if adopted in Hanover would certainly be of no avail." I procured a hive full of dead bees from Jamaica, where they have long been naturalised, and, on carefully comparing them ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... so if, at ten at night, he is not precisely as cool and collected as he was at one in the day. Another one calls a man so when he lies on the floor and holds himself on by the carpet. So,—as to soundness, some persons can not see that a horse is unsound, unless he works his flanks like the drone of a bagpipe, or blows and roars like a blacksmith's bellows; while some are so fastidious as to consider a horse as next to valueless because he may have a corn that he never feels, or a thrush for which he is not, nor likely to be, one dollar ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... 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 ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... in me, From me by strong assault it is bereft. My honey lost, and I, a drone-like bee, Have no perfection of my summer left, But robb'd and ransack'd by injurious theft: In thy weak hive a wandering wasp hath crept, And suck'd the honey ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... them made it their thoroughfare to and from the flower-covered plains below us. Particularly at morning and night their hum, echoing through the ravine and mingling with the murmur of the river, sounded like the drone of distant machinery. ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... 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 ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... the anticipatory hum of the insects. Getting into bed, I threw a propitiatory prayer in their general direction. A half hour later, I coughed pretentiously to attract my guru's attention. I thought I would go mad with the bites and especially the singing drone as the mosquitoes ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... work, and sleep, and pray, in peace— By industry we thrive, sir; And if a drone won't do his part, We'll scout him from the hive, ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... 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 her expression did ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... gilt chariot, never minding me nor your numerous family. Don't you hear how Lord Strutt has bespoke his liveries at Lewis Baboon's shop? Don't you see how that old fox steals away your customers, and turns you out of your business every day, and you sit like an idle drone, with your hands in your pockets? Fie upon it. Up, man, rouse thyself; I'll sell to my shift before I'll be so used by that knave."[178] You must think Mrs. Bull had been pretty well tuned up by Frog, who chimed in with her learned harangue. ...
— English Satires • Various
... turned to dismay, and when he had turned the last thin page his brain was in wildest turmoil. He thought he must be dreaming. He turned sick, aching eyes upon his surroundings to prove this thing a nightmare, but the prosaic clink of a typewriter and the drone of a voice dictating quotations on Brazilian coffee were conclusive evidence to the contrary. Those pages between his thumb and finger were real. Yes, and that was Rosa's writing. Could it be that he had misunderstood ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... earthly lot. She lifted her head and listened to that; it seemed a comment. Then a harsh quarrelling of dogs—Christian dogs—arose in the distance and died away, and again there was night and silence. Suddenly the long singing drone of a steamer's signal came across the city from the river, once, twice, thrice; and presently the sparrows began their twittering in the bushes near the verandah, an unexpected unanimous bird talk that died as suddenly and as irrelevantly away. A ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... we only see her when she's out for play or meals, And distresses the fastidious by her gestures and her squeals, But she is not always idle or a decorative drone, And if she wastes her wages, well, she wastes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... 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 hinted at ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... by Drone in his "Law of Copyright," as "the exclusive right of the owner to multiply and to dispose of copies of an intellectual production." It is also used as a synonym for literary property. Regarding ...
— International Copyright - Considered in some of its Relations to Ethics and Political Economy • George Haven Putnam
... buzz of small life in hot sunshine, a cooing of doves, and a sleepy drone of well-wheels across the fields. Slowly and impressively the lama began. At the end of ten minutes the old soldier slid from his pony, to hear better as he said, and sat with the reins round his wrist. The lama's voice faltered, the periods lengthened. ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... when his sharp sting is gone, Forgets his golden work, and turns a drone: Such is a satire, when you take away That rage, in which his noble vigour lay. What gain you by not suffering him to tease ye? He neither can offend you now, nor please ye. The honey-bag and venom lay so ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... let th' "dank wynd" moan, "Shimmer th' woold" and "rive the wanton surge;" I ask not much; grant but an "eery drone," Some "wilding frondage" and a "bosky dirge;" Grant me but these, and add a regal flush Of "sundered hearts upreared upon a byre;" Throw in some yearnings and a "darksome hush," And—asking nothing ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... sweat of thy brow" has a deep significance to one who has come into a knowledge of Truth. Drones have no place in the Divine Plan. It is not only essential but mandatory, that each one do his part for the common good. The non-producing rich man is as much a drone as is the vagabond who neither toils nor spins. The Biblical test concerning the difficulty of the rich man getting into Heaven means that it is impossible for a drone or parasite to get into harmony ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... middle ages the name chorus was given to a primitive bagpipe without a drone. The instrument is best known by the Latin description contained in the apocryphal letter of St Jerome, ad Dardanum: "Chorus quoque simplex, pellis cum duabus cicutis aereis, et per primam inspiratur per secundam vocem emittit." Several illuminated MSS.[1] ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... a child strike or even stone its mother, and the mother, so far from punishing, scarce ventures to resist. In some, when his child was born, a chief was superseded and resigned his name; as though, like a drone, he had then fulfilled the occasion of his being. And in some the lightest words of children had the weight of oracles. Only the other day, in the Marquesas, if a child conceived a distaste to any ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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
... cozen simplicity of charity. The juice of the malt is the liquor of his life, and at bed and at board a louse is his companion. He fears no such enemy as a constable, and being acquainted with the stocks, must visit them as he goes by them. He is a drone that feeds upon the labours of the bee, and unhappily begotten that is born for no goodness. His staff and his scrip are his walking furniture, and what he lacks in meat he will have out in drink. He is a kind ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... "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
... curious drone of the strange car as it swooped down upon us, coming to a sudden halt a yard distant, with ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... the sufferer! To the Anglo-Saxon, especially, those precious qualities are dangerous. That horse, taken to the water, will too seldom drink. Indifference to the future has a certain loveability, but is hardly a virtue when it makes of its owner a weary drone, eking out a pension with odd jobs. The sacred work is vitally concerned to defeat this hand-to-mouth philosophy. Side by side in man, and especially in Anglo-Saxon, there live two creatures. One of them lies on his back and smokes; ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... times did the Tonneraire thus prove herself a crack ship. A crack ship with a crack crew and officers, remember; for the best of ships is but a drone unless well managed. Not even a drone, indeed; for a drone is a most duty-full bee, and a most respectable member of the apiarian republic. There is a vast deal of very indifferent music in the very best of fiddles, and I feel quite convinced that had some less active officer commanded even ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... 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 ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... 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 a republic not ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... cover the world with the grey whiteness of a whitewashed ceiling. There was no freshness or fragrance in the air. On such a day even British workmen scarcely cared to do more then they were obliged, and moved about their business without the drone of talk which whiles away the pangs ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was a much-wanted gentleman, and evidently a tobie-man with a wide range of activities. Out of mere vacancy of mind I walked near to read the fly-sheet again, and, by a curious chance, among the drone of words from the other room, the only one my quick ear could pick out ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... doubt. He was a bee, and Sam was a drone, and the drones are always ready to avail themselves of the accumulations of their ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... heard a steady, humming drone, like a swarm of angry bees—felt a peculiar, soothing warmth about his head; and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... billiard-table. In the middle of this square was the limp body of a deceased mongoose. At the opposite side of it was a Mahometan school, where the children were instructed in the Koran, and their treble voices as they recited the inspired verses in unison kept up drone for hours. The build and surroundings of the hostelry left much opening for improvement, but we had no valid ground for complaint. The beds were clean, Bruzeaud was a good cook, the waiter was attentive and smiled perpetually, ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... squirrels were always friendly, and gave them nuts out of their own hoards; but the bees were selfish and rude, justifying themselves on the ground that Tangle and Mossy were not subjects of their queen, and charity must begin at home, though indeed they had not one drone in their poorhouse at the time. Even the blinking moles would fetch them an earth-nut or a truffle now and then, talking as if their mouths, as well as their eyes and ears, were full of cotton wool, or their own velvety fur. By the time they got out ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... the lantern on a table, dropped wearily upon a rough bench before it and looked at the jars beside him, lifted his hand and opened a compact, but thoroughly efficient field wireless "set." His right fingers dropped to the key, and the whining drone of the wireless rose higher and higher as he tuned up. He reached for his receivers, ducked his head and adjusted them with one hand, and sent a call spitting tiny blue sparks from the key ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... 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 bread ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... Dear, no! Grooby and Havershon may be trusted to drone the evening out, I should hope, with no trouble to anybody but themselves. The Government are just keeping a house, that's all. Have you been grinding at your ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... provide himself with an axe and a prayer-book, and while he kept one eye on the whirring, humming wheels he kept the other on the good book, which he read by the flickering light of a candle set on a table. So the hours at first passed quietly with nothing to disturb him but the monotonous drone and click of the machinery. But on the stroke of twelve, as he was still reading with the axe lying on the table within reach, the door opened and in came two grey cats mewing, an old one and a young one. They sat down opposite him, but it was easy to see that they did not like his wakefulness ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... done dinner, I slept a little as my custom is, and the last sound that I heard, and the first upon awaking, was the drone of the bees. When I awakened I thought that I would walk down to Master Richard's house and see how all fared. So I took my staff and ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... the colony inside the hive. To do this you will need smoke to subdue the guards and a veil to protect the face. Can you find the queen? Is she larger than the workers? Examine for honey-comb, bee-bread, worker brood, queen cells and drone cells. If possible study the actions of a colony ...
— An Elementary Study of Insects • Leonard Haseman
... understand. She had heard that Daddy was a harvestman. But she didn't know that some people called him by that name merely because he was seen in Pleasant Valley about the time Farmer Green harvested his crops. As for working in the fields, Daddy Longlegs knew no more about that than did that fat drone, Buster Bumblebee. And Farmer Green would have laughed heartily at the idea of either of them ...
— The Tale of Daddy Longlegs - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... for the three of them, and they leant against the bar and whispered in sullen accents. Something had evidently miscarried with the Ring. Mrs. Dawes continued to whine above the general drone of the bar. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... a breathless 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
... 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 drone—as I ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... England and Ireland, wee reade not of past twoo or three places well fortified, as Sancto Domingo in Hispaniola, and Havana in Cuba. I may therefore conclude this matter with comparinge the Spaniardes unto a drone, or an emptie vessell, which when it is smitten upon yeldeth a greate and terrible sound, and that afarr of; but come nere and looke into them, there ys nothinge in them; or rather like unto the asse which wrapte himselfe ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... it was one form 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 ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... from the rag-bag for bed-clothes; how they had hummed and whistled to themselves as they worked (she could hear them now!); and how the aromatic woodsy smell of the unfinished old room and the drone of the rain on the roof had been a part of ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the dinner over, and they gone up to the drawing-room. Think how agreeable and graceful it would be for Mrs. Daniel O'Connell to repair to the sofa, among a few respectable friends, and, taking up her bagpipes, set her elbow a-going, until the drone gives two or three broken groans, and the chanter a squeak or two, like a child in the cholic, or a cat that you had trampled on by accident. Then comes the real ould Irish music, that warms the heart. Dan looks upon her graceful position, until the tears of love, taste, and ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... and said good-by to Mother Binning and went. The ash-tree, the hazels that fringed the water, a point of mossy rock, hid the cot. The drone of the wheel no longer reached his ears. It was as though all that had sunk into the earth. Here was only the deep, the green, and lonely glen. He found a pool that invited, cast, and awaited the speckled victim. In the morning he had had fair ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... music; Eddie to reading up his French and German—for he found both those languages would be very useful to him in the City; while Agnes was busy over her drawing-board, tracing designs for Christmas and Easter cards. She declared she was not going to be the only drone in the hive, and bade fair to be successful later on, for two of her little cards had already been accepted by a great City publishing firm. When Mr. Murray dropped in of an evening he used to have a long look from one to the other of their cheerful, contented faces, and then he would have ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... sudden birth and doom, Whose sound and motion not alone declare, But are their whole of being! If the breath[425:2] 5 Be Life itself, and not its task and tent, If even a soul like Milton's can know death; O Man! thou vessel purposeless, unmeant, Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes! Surplus of Nature's dread activity, 10 Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finished vase, Retreating slow, with meditative pause, She formed with restless hands unconsciously. Blank accident! nothing's anomaly! If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... present day. The next step was probably the bagpipes. Here we find four of these pipes attached to a bag. The melody or tune is played on one of the pipes furnished with holes for the purpose, while the other three give a drone, bass. The bag, being blown up, forms a wind reservoir and the amount of tone can be regulated by the pressure of the arm. Here we have the precursor of the organ bellows. Next comes the Irish bagpipes, with a bellows worked by the arm furnishing the wind to the bag, the reservoir, and producing ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... forward before the judge's desk, and Myra had glimpses of the prisoners. She saw one girl, bespectacled, hard, flashy, pushed to the bar, and suddenly heard her voice rise shrill and human above the drone-like buzzing ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... or does begin in most courts, the same dreary old drone, like the giving out of a hymn, of the same ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... face of a Drone-fly is nothing almost but eyes. 2. Those are of two magnitudes. 3. They are Hemispheres, and very reflective and smooth. 4. Some directed towards every quarter. 5. How the fly cleanses them. 6. Their ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... comb, and swell With luscious nectar every flowing cell. By turns they watch, by turns with curious eyes Survey the heavens, and search the clouded skies, To find out breeding storms, and tell what tempests rise. By turns they ease the loaden swarms, or drive 210 The drone, a lazy insect, from their hive. The work is warmly plied through all the cells, And strong with thyme the new-made honey smells. So in their caves the brawny Cyclops sweat, When with huge strokes ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... parties on the other hand was deformed. But being in the federal city, I became forcibly impressed with the fact, that your smallest man has the largest expectations, though he will not object to become the nation's drone. Having made this wonderful discovery, I took up my line of march for the National Hotel, a gorgeous palace where an uncouth million meet to revel in cheap luxury. So large was the house that a pilot to guide me through its thousand galleries to bed was ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... everything so heavily. Even in the chase they make their slaves carry Plato with them; and whenever the boar is lost, out they take their books and their papyrus, in order not to lose their time too. When the dancing-girls swim before them in all the blandishment of Persian manners, some drone of a freedman, with a face of stone, reads them a section of Cicero "De Officiis". Unskilful pharmacists! pleasure and study are not elements to be thus mixed together, they must be enjoyed separately: the Romans lose both ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... creature instantly sat up, with a surge of splendid passion, hissing, bowing, and expanding angrily its great tawny hood. The garuda put his pungi to his lips, and blew for a while upon it a low and wheezy drone,—the invariable prelude to a little jadoo, or black art,—which the beautiful animal appeared to appreciate: and then, pointing with the end of his pipe to the "spectacles" on its hood, he said, ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... that. Let those who are fit for nothing else go and drone over A B C with ragged children, if they like. It is just their vocation; but there is an order in everything, Margaret, and minds of a superior kind are intended for higher purposes, not to be wasted in ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... on a divan in front of him, Baya would drone him monotonous tunes with a guitar in her fist; or else, to distract her lord and master, favour him with the Bee Dance, holding a hand-glass up, in which she reflected her white teeth ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... Swelling up of the puffy form, and reddening ripples of the broad face heralded it, it began with a contagious cackle, it deepened into a flabby guffaw, and after all the others roundabout had finished their cachinnatory tribute it wound up with what was between a roar and the lazy drone of ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... valerian waving along the low stone boundarywall, there was a dim honey-coloured expanse that stretched away like an inland sea, where, the afternoon sunshine lay in a yellow haze over brown and yellow and blue tracts of the Plain. Nothing was to be heard but the drone of wings near at hand and the whirr of a haycutter far down in the valley. No one was near and summer lay heavy on ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... take the diminishing drug. From across the room there came a very queer sound. A scuttling, scratching, and the drone of wings. ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... wrapped closely in blankets, though the night was warm. The gnats and mosquitoes were humming lazily, the trees barely stirring, and the voices of gossiping squaws or merry youths blended into a low drone. There was the smell in the air of wood and leaves burning, from a hundred smouldering fires. Father Claude stood for a long time gazing at the row of huts, and wondering that such an air of peace and happiness could ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... Some power over the emotions it must have; for the Negroes are said to be gradually maddened by it; and white people have told me that its very monotony, if listened to long, is strangely exciting, like the monotony of a bagpipe drone, or of a drum. What more went on at the dance we could not see; and if we had tried, we should probably not have been allowed to see. The Negro is chary of admitting white men to his amusements; and no wonder. If a London ballroom were suddenly invaded by Phoebus, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... (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
... Collonel; are Pleasure and Business inconsistent, must ev'ry Citizen be a Drone, that crawls among Furr Gowns, or a Cuckold that's preferr'd by the Common-Hall; pray tell me, what difference is there between a Merchant of a good Education, and a Gentleman of Two Thousand Pounds a Year, only one has Threescore Thousand Pounds clear in his Pocket, and t'other ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... known, I believe, to the Greeks, and we find mention of it in the Latin as 'tibia utricularia;' Suetonius tells us that Nero promised to appear publicly as a bagpiper. Then, too, Chaucer's Miller played a bagpipe, and Shakespeare frequently mentions the 'drone of a Lincolnshire Bagpipe.' Yes, it is certainly a very old, and, I ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... curiously enough, instead of destroying romance, this gave a certain majestic romance of its own; the romance of man's struggle to conquer the stupendous forces of Nature with his science. It was as if Vulcan's stithy had been dropped down into a profound ravine of the Alps, and the drone of machinery mingled with the music of the fleeting ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... 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 ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... at first a mere breeze playfully teasing the north wind, like a child that kicks the bed-sheets before falling asleep, increased its force and swiftness, and scattered huge mountains of snow, but the steadily rising drone of the north wind soon mastered the situation. Like silver grain strewn by an unseen hand the snow fell obliquely in steady streams over the land. A great calm followed. The long Dobrudgean winter had started. In the dim steady light, in ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... anything to do, you mean, you lazy Cat! You are a good-for-nothing drone. Do you know what we do to our drones? We kill them; and that is all they are fit for. Good morning ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Victoria. Better than this is the lot of our restless countrymen, whose modern instinct bids them tend always towards "fresh woods and pastures new." Rather than such monotony of sluggish ages, loitering on a village-green, toiling in hereditary fields, listening to the parson's drone lengthened through centuries in the gray Norman church, let us welcome whatever change may come,—change of place, social customs, political institutions, modes of worship,—trusting, that, if all present things shall vanish, they will but make room for better systems, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... perchance two or three, straining every sense, when a sound brought me to a stand. At first I could not distinguish it because of my heavy breathing, but presently I made sure that it was the low drone of human voices. Getting down on my hands and knees, I crept forward, and felt the ground rising. The voices had ceased. I gained the crest of a low ridge, and threw myself flat. A rattle of musketry set me shivering, and in an agony of fright I looked behind me to discover that I could ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... by his own standard, regarding that man to be most manly who could be most useful in the world, he did think himself to be infinitely superior to the Earl. He was the working bee, whereas the Earl was the drone. And he was one who used to the best of his abilities the mental faculties which had been given to him; whereas the Earl,—so he believed,—was himself hardly conscious of having had mental faculties bestowed upon him. ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... together in the furious chaos of human elements. The tortured airs of heaven howl out curses in a horrid unison, this fair free soil of ours, dishonored and befouled, moans beneath our feet in a dismal drone of hopeless woe; there is no rock or cavern or ghostly den of our mighty land but hisses back the echo of some hideous curse, and hell itself is upon earth, split and rent ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... worked long enough and that he should send for me. I was surprised when I received the word, "Mother, come," not aware he knew the condition. I had many hours of thought before I could decide when my voice was not even impaired, to give up my life's work and be a drone in the hive. At last I yielded to the desire of my sons to go south. I promised on condition that I came unheralded. I supposed I was going so far away no one knew me. Alas, this world is small, so it behooves us all to make our reputation without fault. I sent in my resignation to Calvary and ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... On the holy day assoone as morne is past, When all men resteth while all the day doth last, They drinke, they banket, they reuell and they iest They leape, they daunce, despising ease and rest. If they once heare a bagpipe or a drone, Anone to the elme or oke they be gone. There vse they to daunce, to gambolde and to rage Such is the custome and vse of the village. When the ground resteth from rake, plough and wheles, Then moste they it trouble ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... the best use of his force. The woods are loaded with go-getters who claim they are men of action and therefore have no need of books; that they are "the flat-bottoms who can ride over the dew." Though they are a little breezier, they are of the same bone and marrow as the drone who is always counseling halfspeed. "Don't sweat; just get by; extra work means short life; you're better off if they don't notice you." This chant can be heard by anyone who cares to listen; it's the old American invitation to mediocrity. But while mediocre, as commonly used, means "indifferent, ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... drinking tea in a corner. But there was the usual bustle going on in the other rooms of the tavern; there were shouts for the waiters, the sound of popping corks, the click of billiard balls, the drone of the organ. Alyosha knew that Ivan did not usually visit this tavern and disliked taverns in general. So he must have come here, he reflected, simply to meet Dmitri by arrangement. Yet Dmitri ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... 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 miss it ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... warmly. 'Most assuredly not. I would not have it otherwise. I am a worker. A bee, not a drone. A Lusitania, not a limpet. Perhaps I have not yet that grip on my duties which I shall soon acquire; but it is coming. It is coming. ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... holes in front and one at the back as well as two keys, was known as the dulceian, dolcian, doucaine, and also in France as courtaud and in England as the curtail, curtal,[15] curtoll, &c., being mentioned in 1582—"The common bleting musick of ye Drone, Hobius (Hautboy) and Curtoll." The next step in the evolution produced the double curtail, a converted bass pommer an octave below the single curtail and therefore identical in pitch as in construction with the early fagotto in C. The instrument ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... mountain. The white frame building, oblong in shape, had four windows with green outer blinds on each of its two sides, and a door at the end nearer the road. As Webb traversed the open space, where, on Sundays, horses were hitched to the trees and saplings, a drone as of countless bees fell on his ears. To a native this needed no explanation. During five of the week-days the building was used as a schoolhouse. The sound was made by the students studying aloud, and John's niece, Dolly Drake, ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... leer on the darkened face of the Peruvian. But it did not last. In a few minutes the two young Burghers were not the only ones whom the spell had subdued—the wizard was netted too. And then, as he stood, his hands still fluttering, they heard him drone a string of words, a dull chant, level like an incantation, inevitably apt to the hour and ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... people think that all their piles of yellow chink, are weary burdens, to be borne, with eyes that weep and hearts that mourn; but as you jog along the road, you see no millionaires unload. They like to talk and drone and drool, to growing youths in Sunday school, and tell them that the poor man's lot is just the thing that hits the spot; to warn them of ambition's goad—they talk, and talk, but don't unload. They like to talk of days long gone, when life for them was ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... at night, but this London moved with the decorum and caution of an undertaker. There was a silence, and yet there was no silence. There was a low drone, perhaps a humming contributed inevitably by closely-gathered thousands, and yet on second thoughts it was to me silence. I had perched my ears for the note of London, the sound made simply by ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... blush, Before green nuts embrown, Why, one day in the country Is worth a month in town; Is worth a day and a year Of the dusty, musty, lag-last fashion That days drone elsewhere. ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... another: if the eyes did not see, whither then would the feet go? how would they stumble and fall? If the hands did not fasten and take hold, how then should we eat? If the feet went not, where then would the hands get anything? Only the maw, that lazy drone, lies in the midst of the body, and is fatted like a swine. This parable, said Luther, teacheth us that mankind should love one another; as also the Greeks' pictures do teach concerning two men, the one lame and the other blind, who showed kindness the one to the other, as much as in them lay. ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... that Foster had ever heard this peculiar whining buzz. As he listened it rose in a sudden thin crescendo that rippled along his spine like a file rasping over naked nerve-ends. For one shuddering second there seemed to be an intangible living quality in that metallic drone, as though some nameless creature sang in horrible exultance. ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... twilight did my Graunie summon, To say her prayers, douce, honest woman! Aft yont the dyke she's heard you bummin, Wi' eerie drone; Or, rustlin, thro' the boortries ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... The perfumed crop on grounds above, And sailors chant the "yeo, heave yeo," Then young hearts wake to life and love. When still and slow the murmuring swell Of ocean, rising from his throne, O'erleaps the beach, and matin's bell To prayer invites the college drone; Then, when the pennant floats on high, And anchor's weigh'd again to rove, And tuneful larks ascend the sky, Then young hearts wake to life and love. When, by unerring nature's power, Creation breaks the spell of night, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... of air was stirring as yet; but there was the promise of wind in that cloud. The still leaves on the bushes, the absence of bird life overhead, the lazy drone of insects, portended a swift change soon. Nan was ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... XIV played the musette, which is French for bag-pipe. It was the fashionable instrument of an epoch and the musettes played by the grandes dames were elaborately decorated. The word in time slunk into the dictionaries of musical terms as descriptive of a drone bass. Many of Gluck's ballet airs bear the title, Musette. Perhaps the bass was even performed on a bag-pipe.... "Mal frequente" in Parisian argot has a variety of significations; in this particular instance it suggested apaches to me. A bal, for instance, attended ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... burdened by So many a fool, so many a drone, Whose thoughts and deeds are all awry— These trees of flesh, ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... drone out the same verse as before. The sound of a key being inserted in the lock is heard. The door is opened from ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg |
