"Drumming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some Irish and Scotch airs, in poor settings, and with much stumbling. After a little, Fenwick listened restlessly, his brow frowning, his fingers drumming on the arm of his chair. They were all glad when it ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to occupy a seat which he may not keep, to listen to debates whose conclusion he is likely not to hear, to implant in his eyes and ears the delightful memory of parliamentary sessions, with their ocean of bald or apoplectic heads, the endless noise of crumpled paper, the shouts of the pages, the drumming of paper knives on the tables, and the hum of private conversations, above which the orator's voice soars in a timid or vociferous solo ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... clearly that I should not have written that which I had written. But his God was an energetic, enterprising, kindly Prince, rather bold himself and tolerant of heathen. Fray Juan Perez even intimated a doubt if God wanted the Inquisition. "But that's going rather far!" he said hastily and sat drumming the table and pursing his lips. Presently he brought out, "But you know I ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... out into a thunder of approval, their feet drumming on the board seats sounding not ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... lessons of a drumming master. He was in the grist-mill to day, and practised with two sticks on the half-bushel. I was astonished at the great number of strokes in a second, and if I had not seen that he had but two sticks, should have supposed that he ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... suppression of any portion of my history, no matter how damaging its effect might be expected to be upon my interests. When I had told him everything he remained silent for quite two or three minutes, drumming the table ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... in Mr. Gorham's hands, turning his pale face away, and drumming nervously on the arm of his chair with his fingers. The minutes seemed hours, and when he turned, he found Gorham's penetrating eye fixed firmly upon him. He had counted on the strength of the statements contained ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... looked around. There was no one in sight. He could hear Charlie Jones in the forecastle drumming on his banjo, and Burns whistling the same tune as he went aft to strike the bell. (It was the duty of the officer on watch to strike the hour.) It was then half after eleven. As he passed the captain's door again, his foot struck something, ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... foe with curious outcries. And now might be seen prodigies of valor, unmatched in history or song. Here was the sturdy Stoffel Brinkerhoff brandishing his quarter-staff, like the giant Blanderon his oak-tree (for he scorned to carry any other weapon), and drumming a horrific tune upon the hard heads of the Swedish soldiery. There were the Van Kortlandts, posted at a distance, like the Locrian archers of yore, and plying it most potently with the long-bow, for which they ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... daybreak, and my young readers can rest assured that by that time his appetite was decidedly keen. Listening intently, he could hear the grouse drumming in the ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... to let fly first,' said the Swabian second to his chief. 'Now, Hollenstein, old man, jump into your drumming skin!' ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... Chinaman who came to the gate of his flower-yard, and gave us 'Good-day' in excellent English; and a little farther on it would be some natives who set us down by the wayside, made us a feast of mummy-apple, and entertained us as we ate with drumming on a tin case. With all this fine plenty of men and fruit, death is at work here also. The population, according to the highest estimate, does not exceed six hundred in the whole vale of Atuona; and yet, when I once chanced to put the question, Brother ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... standing beside his Captain, veiled his eyes with his hand; then, ashamed of his weakness, gazed steadfastly at the lifted figure. Arden, drumming with his fingers upon the rail, looked sidewise at ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... those hot days, it is a universal drumming, kettle-drumming, coast-ward; preparation of transports at Gravesend, at the top of one's velocity. 'All the coopers in London are in requisition for water-casks, so that our very brewers have to pause astonished for want of tubs.' ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... sat drumming on his desk, lost in thought. "By George, that's a queer case. Her other reason is the real one. I wonder what ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... glanced anxiously at Roger; but his eyes were fixed on the floor, and he sat drumming gently on the table with ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... talented coloured gentleman who had been extracted from small-time vaudeville by Mr. Abrahams to do a nightly speciality at the Flower Garden. He was, in fact, a trap-drummer: and it was his amiable practice, after he had done a few minutes trap-drumming, to rise from his seat and make a circular tour of the tables on the edge of the dancing-floor, whimsically pretending to clip the locks of the male patrons with a pair of drumsticks held scissor-wise. And so it came about that, just as Mr. Carmyle was bending towards ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... everything muddled, everybody thought they knew better than I did, and now you come to me! How mend matters? There is nothing to mend! The principles laid down by me must be strictly adhered to," said he, drumming on the table with his bony fingers. "What is the difficulty? ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... twelve. She rose with a start, bethinking her suddenly of Diana, and wondering why she had not yet arrived. Was the child's indisposition graver than she had led Ruth to suppose? She crossed to the windows and stood there drumming impatiently upon the pane, her eyes straying idly over the sweep of elm-fringed lawns towards the river gleaming silvery here and there between the trees ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... feeling of desolation, homesickness, uncertainty, and anxiety with which an emigrant makes his first voyage across the ocean? I proved to be a good sailor, but the sea frightened me. The thumping of the engines was drumming a ghastly accompaniment to the awesome whisper of the waves. I felt in the embrace of a vast, uncanny force. And echoing through it all were the heart-lashing words: "Are you crazy? You forget your place, young man!" When Columbus was crossing the Atlantic, on his first great voyage, his ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... The stocky, grizzle-haired man in the centre was a plain-clothes man from headquarters, named Barlow; at the lower end of the table Reddy Curley and Haines, his partner, faced each other, Curley drumming indifferently with his fingers on the table-top, Haines scowling and chewing his lower lip, a certain coarse brutality in both their faces that was neither pleasant nor inviting; but it was the white-haired old man, bent of form, standing at the head ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... hands closing softly over the restless brown one drumming a tattoo on the window-sill, and her golden head drooping so close to Eve's, her curls mingled with her dark locks, "I could never love any one in this world again. I loved once—it was the sweetest, yet the ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... troubles. The dining-car was well filled, and, though the faces of the diners were all unfamiliar, the hum of talk, the hurrying of the waiters, and the subdued clamor drowning itself in the under-drone of the drumming wheels answered well enough for companionship. There are times when even the voice of a friend is an intrusion, and the returning exile had happed upon one of them. Largeness, the inspiring breadth of the immensities, ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... insects, but at the same time had disappeared many of the enticements which in summer oft made this duty irksome. The partridges were almost the sole birds remaining in the bleak woods, and, much as their curious ways of hiding in the snow, and the resounding thunder of their strange drumming, mystified and attracted me, I was not alert enough to catch them. All my devices of horse-hair and deer-hide snares were foolishness in their sharp eyes. The water-fowl, too—the geese, ducks, cranes, pokes, fish-hawks, and others—had flown, sometimes darkening ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... Napoleon's sister in marriage, and had really a very good presence, and wore his fine black hair in curls, and would shortly enter the city in state and would certainly please all the ladies. Meanwhile, the drumming continued in the street, and I went and stood outside the door and watched the French troops marching in, those glorious happy Frenchmen, who marched through the world with songs and shining sabres, the gay firm-set faces of the Grenadiers, the bear-skins, ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... slippery slugs. Thus was sleep averted, until a merciful gin, hearing the man's groans, came and cracked two or three of these little black pots with a waddie or club, so then George got leave to sleep, and just as he was dozing off, ting, tong, ti tong, tong, tong, came a fearful drumming of parchment. A corroboree or native dance was beginning. No more sleep till that was over—so all hands turned out. A space was cleared in the wood, women stood on both sides with flaming boughs and threw a bright ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... a hurry. The bullets from the Indians pattered like hail, sending the bark flying, and drumming upon the bare trunks of the breastworks. The heavy carbines stanchly replied. Horses reared again, and screamed and fell, kicking. The Indians were making certain of the cavalry mounts. That was the first job—to ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... paper and sprang up; the boys came expectantly forward. Even the book-keeper stopped to watch the new-comer as he came rapidly toward the office. Only the head of the house sat unconcernedly at his desk—his long, pale, bony fingers drumming on the port-folio—his hard eyes ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... The chilly feeling woke him again, and he tried once more to say his prayers, and this time with better success. He was able to add a special petition that "mother" might soon be well again, and that dear Vicky might be happy. And then he fell asleep—so soundly, so heavily, that when a drumming at the door made itself heard, he fancied he had only just begun the night. He sat up. Where was he? At first, in the darkness, he thought he was in his own bed at home, and he wondered who was knocking so roughly—wondered still more at the rude ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... horse sped faster than before. Ere he had advanced a hundred yards, I took off my hat, in obedience to the advice which Mr. Petulengro had given me, in his own language, and holding it over the horse's head, commenced drumming on the crown with the knob of the whip; the horse gave a slight start, but instantly recovering himself, continued his trot till he arrived at the door of the public-house, amidst the acclamations of the company, who had all ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... minutes. There was a sort of volcanic intensity in the atmosphere. He was acutely conscious of small extraneous things, of the perfume of a great bowl of hyacinths, the ticking of a tiny French clock, the restless drumming of her finger tips upon the arm of her chair. All the time he seemed actually to feel her eyes, commanding, impelling, beseeching him to turn round. He did so at last, and looked her full ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... light under the lamp was an open book, an inkstand and a pen. A nurse—not his nurse—was standing by the table, her fingers idly drumming the cloth, and near her a man in evening dress. Perhaps a doctor. They were conversing in low tones. In the middle of the ward was an open stove, and the restless flames were reflected in all the brass knobs of the bedsteads and in some shining metal balls which ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... snow comes down! I thought it would never snow at all this winter. Just look at it! Now that's what I call tip-top," said Tom Chandler, gazing at the fast-whitening landscape, and drumming a cheerful tattoo on the ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... filled with gas, and it was stifling. The old boat pitched a good deal going into shell holes, and it was all a man could do to keep his station. I put my nose up to my loop-hole to get air, but only once. The machine-gun bullets were simply rattling on our hide. Tock, tock, tock they kept drumming. The first shell that hit us must have been head on and a direct hit. There was a terrific crash, and the old girl shook all over,—seemed to pause a little even. But no harm was done. After that we breathed ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... your own room," Mrs. Hunter whispered in Elizabeth's ear, and the young girl stole a shy look at her lover, who was drumming on the window and had not heard, and made no reply, but it gave her a sense of possession in the new house which she had very nearly ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... swift patter of heralding drops, and then a steady, rhythmical drumming on the shake roof. The man smiled, with that ineffable delight in the music which no one really knows but the tiller ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... seats herself at the loom of thought, and weaves strange figures into the web that looks so familiar and ordinary in the dry light of every-day. Just as we are flattering ourselves that the old spirit of sorcery is laid, behold the tables are tipping and the floors drumming all over Christendom. The faculty of wonder is not defunct, but is only getting more and more emancipated from the unnatural service of terror, and restored to its proper function as a minister of delight. ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... 'Alas!' he said, drumming with his fingers on the table 'there are too many here who know me to make that possible. I ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... strenuously, and there were times when, looking back in reverie, she saw the great silent prairie roll back under the red sunrise into the east, and fade, vast, solemn, and restful, a cool land of shadow, when the first pale stars came out. Then she longed for the jingle of the bridles and the drumming of the hoofs, and felt once more the rush of the gallop stir her blood. But this was what she would not show, and her eyes twinkled ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... that Banker had dropped his rifle and scuttled like a scared rabbit into some place of shelter. Her whole attention was concentrated on those rattling, drumming hoofs. She looked up, tried to rise, but fell back with the pain of ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... Land, and even those who were engaged in essential work behind the lines were far from being safe from death or wounds. On the morning of June 7th, 1917, before dawn had broken, I was out with a working party. Suddenly, overhead, sounded the ominous drumming and droning of an aeroplane. It proved to be a Hun plane; the aviator had spotted us, and was speedily in touch with the battery for which he was working. Fortunately for us, he had mistaken our exact position, and evidently thought we were on a road which ran towards ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... you'd been sent for to the Maginnis child, and that you have got relations that go among rich people, I says to myself, she's my partner. I'll furnish the science, and I'll do the talking, and the drumming-up business, and the collecting bills, and all that; and you, with your stylish ways, don't you know? and your good looks, and your family connections, and all that, will help me to get in where I want to ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... and the gong of the station dining-room below was adding its raucous clamor to the drumming thunder of the incoming train from Green Butte, when the vice-president concluded his outline sketch of the Red ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... away from him; or some strange invisible insect is making uncanny noises in the underbrush. One of my recollections of the railway woods at St. Augustine is of a cricket, or locust, or something else,—I never saw it,—that amused me often with a formless rattling or drumming sound. I could think of nothing but a boy's first lesson upon the bones, the rhythm of the beats was so ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... he, 'when eaten after the Arab fashion, stewed with butter. They tasted somewhat like shrimps, but with less flavour.' In the wilderness of Judea, various kinds abound at all seasons, and spring up with a drumming sound, at every step, suddenly spreading their bright hind wings, of scarlet, crimson, blue, yellow, white, green, or brown, according to the species. They were 'clean,' under the Mosaic Law, and hence could be eaten ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... from church, and said young Maurice was there, and inquired about me. He hoped I did not take cold; his friend Redmond had been hoarse ever since our ride, and had passed most of the time in his own room, drumming on the window-pane and whistling dirges. Mother dropped her acute eyes on me, while she was telling me this; but I yawned all expression from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... out, sir," Dobbin said, rather alarmed at the fury of the old man, the veins of whose forehead began to swell, and who sate drumming his papers with his clenched fist. "We are going to hunt him out, sir—the Duke's in Belgium already, and we expect marching ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sweep of sky began to glitter with white stars. A little chill breeze sprang up in the west and fanned the fire, sending a fairy shower of tiny lemon-yellow sparks into the air. And borne on the breeze came a hoarse pounding and drumming that grew momentarily louder and reverberated from wall to wall. The ground trembled and the grazing burros lifted their ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... here," said Basil, "I struck off through the woods in a line that led from the river, in a diagonal direction. I hadn't walked more than three hundred yards, when I heard a drumming sound, which I at first took to be thunder; but, after listening a while, I knew it was not that, but the drumming of the ruffed grouse. As soon as I could ascertain the direction of the sound, I hurried on in that way; but for a long time I appeared to get no nearer ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... is nothing to be done. If anything goes wrong, eternity is too close to consider. There came a muffled drumming on the steam-chests; a stagger and a terrific impact; and then the recoil, like the stroke of a trip-hammer. The snow shot into the air fifty feet, and the wind carried a cloud of fleecy confusion over ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... now," said Norton, drumming upon his chair. "I want you there. You belong to mamma and me, and to nobody else in the whole world, Pink; do ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... grim when he saw that more of the horses were inclined to behave similarly, but he flicked his team with the whip, and there was cheering and derision when, with a drumming of hoofs and rattle of wheels, wagons and horsemen swept away into the dust-cloud that rolled about ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... country used to believe when the moon suffered an eclipse. See how the shadow is covering the bright disk. When the ancients saw this happening they used to make a noise, shaking the sistrum with its metal rings, drumming and trumpeting, shouting and yelling, to scare off the evil one and drive him away. It may be about four hundred years since that last took place, but to this day—draw your kerchiefs more closely round your heads and come with me to the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... an accident, but an instant afterwards I received another and a harder one. I dropped my paper with a growl, but the moment that I glanced at him I saw how the matter stood. His foot was jerking spasmodically, his two hands clenched, and drumming against his breast, while his eyes were rolling upwards until only the rim of his iris was to be seen. I sprang upon him, tore open his collar, unbuttoned his waistcoat, and pulled his head down upon the seat. Crash went one of his heels through ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... she said in a penetrating whisper, indicating a woman with a resolutely abstracted expression and constrained hands. The children were gathered finally and formed into a line which, to the drumming piano, moved and halted, divided and subdivided. Led by the instructor it was involved in an apparently issueless tangle and then straightened smoothly out. The dancing class at an end, Helena and Gregory, wedged into the seat with Lee in the car, swept into an eager chatter, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... wanted also a chance to say "'Ear', 'ear!" in an intelligent and honourable manner and clap their hands and drum with their feet. The great constructive process in history gives so little scope for clapping and drumming and saying "'Ear, 'ear!" One might as well think of hounding on ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... quiet, and I had such a tense feeling inside of me that I couldn't say a word, and didn't want to anyway. The fingers of one of Mr. Black's hands were sort of drumming on the desk, and he was looking at something in the very front of the Bible in the place where people nearly always write their names, to ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... disturbed, he has a funny habit of drumming on the ground with his hind feet in much the same way that Peter Rabbit and Jumper the Hare thump, only he does it rapidly. Sometimes he builds his house in a tree. When he finds a cabin in the woods he at once ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... He had been too absorbed in his drumming to notice the small quantity of flour which had been left in the basket. It was shaken out with each beat of the drum-sticks, and now lay thick on the velvet cover of the chair. Joseph got a whipping for his thoughtlessness, but that was nothing uncommon ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... laugh against his own critics, whom he professes to recognize on this May morning, as flocking into his garden in the guise of sweeps. He does not, he says, grudge them their fun or their one holiday of the year, the less so that their rattling and drumming may give him some inkling how music sounds; and he flings them, by way of a gift, the story he has just told, bidding them dance, and "dust" his "jacket" for a little while. But that done, he bids ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... small, brown fingers Gleaning them one by one, With the partridge drumming near her In the forest bare and dun, And the jet-black squirrel, winking His saucy, jealous eye At those tiny, pilfering fingers, From his ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... the old man, gasping and inarticulate, raised his withered arm; the Christian judges whispered together, but at cross-purposes, while the Jew fidgeted his round little person on the bench, drumming incessantly with his fingers on his breast, and trying to meet Orion's or Paula's eye and to make her understand that he was the man who would warn Joanna. But a thump from the Vekeel's fist, that came down ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Street. The house was surrounded by pine trees and there was no grass beneath the trees. A rusty tin eaves-trough had slipped from its fastenings at the back of the house and when the wind blew it beat against the roof of a small shed, making a dismal drumming noise that sometimes persisted all ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... 1862, drumming for a house that sold fine linens, laces and silks, and had never done anything but sell silks, etc. He was sitting in a kind of a tavern one morning and chanced to see an advertisement in the paper that struck his "funny side." A gentleman living at the corner of Fifth and Shawnee Streets in ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... words I cast aside my pen, and, throwing myself upon the bed, buried my face in the pillow. I could feel the drumming pulses in my ears, and my heart swelled till it was like to burst within my bosom. Though I pressed my hot fingers against my close-shut eyes, I still could see my poor love's white, set face, the great hollows in his ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... not that the lady does not command our favor," declared the spokesman, very pale now and drumming nervously with his fingers on the edge of a blotting pad. "Those of us who have met her are charmed with her manners and appearance, and our only regret is that Providence did not ordain that her birthplace should be on the ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... o'clock, with the soft fingers of the snow drumming drowsily against the pane, Richard went to sleep and dreamed of angels, all of whom were blue-eyed ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... shearing her eyebrows into a delicate line, and all round her forehead trimming disorderly hairs. Four women, seated on their heels in front of her, were fidgeting over her face; she, impassive as a log in their hands. A vast deal of singing and drumming went on all the time, a row of musicians keeping it up all round the room. The girl was washed; then her hair, magnificent black hair down to her heels, knotted in two great bows on either side of her head. ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... several days' journey in the jolting cars, she grew drowsy. The steady drumming of hoofs, the slapping of the traces, and the rattle of wheels were strangely soothing. She fancied that once or twice when they sped furiously down an incline, the driver held her fast, but she did not resent the support ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... book, is it?' he replied, showing no curiosity about it, or desire to look into it, but kept drumming on the table—a habit of his that was very annoying to me at times, but of which he was not aware. When 'A Year in the Fields' came out, he looked at some of the pictures, but that ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... legs, and her heaving me up and down, and my riding cock-horse and that it was not the first time I had done so; then I fell flat on her, she heaved me up and down and squeezed me till I cried. I scrambled of! of her, and in doing so, my hand, or foot went through a drum, I had been drumming on, at which ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... several places of the same kind already I should not have taken much notice of this one, perhaps, if my attention had not been attracted by a peculiar drumming noise which seemed to proceed from the inside, and sounded very strange and awful in the darkness. I rode up as near as I dared, and then stopped, listening. The drumming grew louder and louder, and I presently began to distinguish a purpose in it. The sounds rose and fell in a certain regular ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... Westminster, a small, brown-faced man with black eyes, looking considerably younger than his years; and on this side the third judge, pale and bald and colourless—a priest who held the degree of Doctor in Physical Science as well as in Theology—he at this instant was drumming gently with a large white hand on ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... our preserves showed that all our treasured mastodons from the Jurassic, Triassic, and other periods of history, had been killed off, root, stock and branch, by our honored guest, and poor Noah was reduced to the necessity of drumming up trade among such commonplace creatures as the Rhinoceri, the Yak, the Dromedary, and that vain but ornamental combination of fuss and feathers ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... over again, and, mad acceleration now reversed, rushed on toward the earth, but with constantly diminishing speed. Finally a measurable atmospheric pressure was encountered, the needle prow dipped downward, and the Silver Sliver shot forward upon her tiny wings and vanes, nose-rockets now drumming in staccato thunder. Her metal grew hot: dull red, bright red yellow, blinding white; but it neither melted nor burned. The pilot's calculations had been sound, and though the limiting point of safety of temperature was reached and steadily held, it was not exceeded. As the density of the air ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... made their way to the barbarian camp. A strong gale was blowing at the time. Pan Ch'ao ordered ten of the party to take drums and hide behind the enemy's barracks, it being arranged that when they saw flames shoot up, they should begin drumming and yelling with all their might. The rest of his men, armed with bows and crossbows, he posted in ambuscade at the gate of the camp. He then set fire to the place from the windward side, whereupon a deafening noise of ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... and he soon managed to catch Juan, when, holding tightly by the reins, the guide vented his displeasure and took his revenge by thoroughly drumming the poor brute's ribs with a stout stick, after which Tom mounted, and our journey for the next ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... the pond a little scow floated in pond-lilies. All around were chestnut trees, their burrs full of fruit. Across the lane, only a few feet from the house, the ancient mill gave forth a snoring and drumming together as if the spirit of solitude was having a dance all to itself and only breathing hard. Then the crystal water, shooting the old black mill-wheel, fell off it like the beard from Duff Salter's face, and went away in pools and flakes across a meadow, under spontaneous willow ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... which had lately been erected to subserve the two-fold purpose of kitchen and dairy, where they both had been busily engaged at the time of his arrival, while he sauntered familiarly to his seat by the fire, and commenced drumming a tune upon the head-board of the mantle-piece. In a few moments the widow made her appearance, and politely requested her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... and drum that became louder and louder, until finally I thought the whole Army must be marching to the house. I stumbled over everything in the room in my haste to get to one of the little dormer windows, but there was nothing to be seen, as it was still quite dark. The drumming became less loud, and then ceased altogether, when a big gun was fired that must have wasted any amount of powder, for it shook the house and made all the windows rattle. Then three or four bugles played a little air, which it was ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... over and stretched each of her handsome limbs, she sang, as she washed, a sentimental Lied in fourteen couplets, threw water at Christophe's face—he was outside drumming on the window—and as they left she plucked the last rose in the garden and then they took the steamer. The mist was not yet gone: but the sun shone through it: they floated through a creamy light. Ada ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... children were unmanageable. They had taken possession of a saucepan and were drumming on it with spoons. Mamma Coupeau and Father Bru were talking earnestly. The old man was speaking of his two sons who had died in the Crimea. Ah, had they but lived, he would have had bread to eat in ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... chosen; but she had yet to complete her freight and secure a sufficient number of passengers. Days were consumed in drumming up a cargo. This was a tormenting delay to me, who was about to make my first voyage, and who, boy-like, had packed my trunk on the first mention of the expedition. How often that trunk had to be unpacked and repacked before ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... of the wine to earth the other's passion had apparently spent itself. The red slowly left his face, and he leaned at ease against the cask, drumming upon its head with his fingers. The sunlight, shrinking from floor and wall, had left but a single line of gold. In the half light strange and sombre shapes possessed the room; through the stillness, beneath the sound of the tattoo upon the cask ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... her bearing, an indefinable something,—whether it lay in the carriage of her head, which impressed one as both spirited and independent, or in an equally certain but less tangible air of self-confidence and reliance,—to set Mad Maitland's pulses drumming with excitement. For, unless indeed he labored gravely under a misapprehension, he was observing her for the second time within the ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... boom of the great bell of Tokoji the Zenshu temple, shakes over the town; then come melancholy echoes of drumming from the tiny little temple of Jizo in the street Zaimokucho, near my house, signalling the Buddhist hour of morning prayer. And finally the cries of the earliest itinerant venders begin—'Daikoyai! ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... on his boxes, whistling to himself and drumming his heels on the platform. The train came up at last, and in he jumped, finding himself and a grave elderly gentleman in joint ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... made no reply. His thoughtful air, however, as he stood absently drumming on the window-pane, showed that the mischief-maker had not spoken in vain. By way of striking while the iron was hot, Juechziger continued: 'As I was on my way to your worship's house this morning, I saw the Herr Burgomaster Richzenhayn going to call on the commandant, no doubt ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... she secretly misunderstood Jack the more that he was so lavish and open in his adulations. If he rode, he exhausted eulogy in describing her pose, her daring, her skill; if they danced, as they did nearly every night until poor Merry's fingers ached from drumming the unholy strains of Faust, Strauss, and what not, in the old-fashioned waltzes—he pantingly declared that she made the music seem a celestial choir by her lightness; in long walks in the rose-fields he exhausted a not ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... rather scattered in that neighborhood, but occasionally they passed country homes, when all the folks would rush forth to learn what the drumming and fifing meant. ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... Spargo sat drumming his fingers on the desk before him. His eyes were fixed on a map of London that hung on the opposite wall; his ears heard the throbbing of the printing-machines far below. But what he really saw was the faces of the two girls; what ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... to go to the front-door,' she said reluctantly, as she sat drumming her fingers on the table, 'and I can't ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... this gentleman "drumming around" our suburb, I had the curiosity to stop and inspect his live freight. In doing so I lighted upon Dicky Chips, as I subsequently christened him: a sturdy little bullfinch, who looked somewhat out ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the hall. Berry was bellowing, clawing at his temples and drumming with his heels upon ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... disturbance of privacy. Mingled with this explanation were derogatory opinions of some one, delivered with extraordinary bitterness. From the context it would seem that those remarks were meant to apply to Peter Johnson. Listening intently, Peter seemed to hear from the first floor a feeble drumming, as of one beating the floor with bound feet. Then the tumult broke ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... was not thirsty. I did not say the liquor was not paid for," said the young Colonel, drumming ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... to have two simple clauses. It enforces a principle in the struggle for existence, a test in the survival of the fittest. Great heavens, are not these enough, without having our ears deafened by powder and drumming? That is why I am devoting a good deal of time and no small amount of money to an international crusade against the warlike idea, and I see no reason why a beginning should not be made with the airship and the airplane. We are too late with the submarine, ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... had Armstrong spoken to him that day and an expression of fine scorn upon the handsome president's face had been the answer. The sophomore was stretched out upon the bed, the revolver still in his hand, and drumming with the fingers of his left hand upon the ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... homestead by saying that his Bible seemed truer to him there. If one stood in the doorway of his cave, and looked off at the rough land, the smiling sky, the curly grass white in the hot sunlight; if one listened to the rapturous song of the lark, the drumming of the quail, the burr of the locust against that vast silence, ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... seclusion of Gray's Inn grew daily more irksome. There he would sit, in mute despair, drumming the table with his fingers, and biting the quill, whose use he so bitterly contemned. Of winter afternoons he would stare through the leaded window-panes at the gaunt, leafless trees, on whose summits swayed the cawing rooks, until servitude seemed intolerable, and he prayed ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... take his cue immediately. He sat drumming a heavy tattoo on the tabletop, forehead corrugated in a frown of intensive thought. When he did speak it was in a ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... The drumming of the wheels over the rail joints became a single note—an increasing roar of sound. The electric locomotive shot up the grade. The arrow on the speedometer crept around the dial and Ned's eye was more often fastened on that ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... the women out to go traipsin' up to Thacher's folks?" inquired Jacob, holding his cider mug with one hand and drumming it with the finger ends of ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... drumming grew louder, the roar of voices filled the air, and the great coloured umbrellas were seen whirling and bobbing above the heads of the surging crowd of natives. The great barrel-like drums, with their grim ornamentations, boomed forth, and ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... pleased him. For so many nights to come there would be none of it; but ceaselessly the drumming of the engines, quiver of the screw, and wash of the water against the ship's side.—All the same he did not quite like the colour of the moon or that frayed flattened edge of it westward. Why is there always something a trifle menacing about a waning moon? ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... accident during the three-quarters of an hour which they allow for the entertainment of us men of fashion on the stage, before the curtain draws up for the bally, while the ladies in the boxes are gaping, and the people in the pit are drumming with their feet and canes in the rudest manner possible, as though they ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... paper to Alphabetical Morrison, who happened to be in the office at the time, pawing through the discarded exchanges in the waste-basket, looking for his New York Sun, and, after Colonel Morrison had read the item, he began drumming with his finger-nails on the chair-seat between his knees. His eyes were full of dreams and no one disturbed him as he looked off into space. Finally ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... home. Not far away Melody the Wood Thrush was pouring out his beautiful evening song. Whitefoot stopped to listen. Somehow it made him more unhappy than ever. Melody stopped singing for a few moments. It was just then that Whitefoot heard a faint sound. It was a gentle drumming. Whitefoot pricked up his ears and listened. There it was again. He knew instantly how that sound was made. It was made by dainty little feet beating very fast on an old log. Whitefoot had drummed that way himself many times. It was soft, but clear, ...
— Whitefoot the Wood Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... The drumming humble-bee [Transcriber's note: bumble-bee?] voice of the crowd below the windows watching Volney Sprague's bulletin suddenly lifted in a lion roar. Elation in that quarter was ominous, and Shelby drew a curtain. It appeared that a minor revolt against the Boss in New York City, with which ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... disguise; He is not coming! Sweet lips Let slip no sighs; Cease, heart, your drumming! He is not coming, [A]Lada! He is not coming. Lada ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... moves!" She did indeed, and in fine style, her front as straight as a string, her reserve regiments in columns doubled on the center, following in true subordination; no braying of brass to apprise the enemy, no fifing and drumming to amuse him; no ostentation of gaudy flags; no nonsense. This was ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... great drumming in Jolly Roger's head, and for a time he failed even to hear Peter yelping at their side, for all the world was drowned in those moments by the breaking sobs in Nada's breath and the wild thrill of her body in his arms; and he saw nothing but the upturned face, crushed close against ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... to the soft wind. Presently he heard, or imagined he heard, low beats. Like the first faint, far-off beats of a drumming grouse, they recalled to him the Illinois forests of his boyhood. In a moment he was certain the sounds were the padlike steps of hoofs in yielding sand. The regular tramp was not that ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... flat upon the vine leaves, grows dizzy with the heat and frisks for very pleasure; "with its feet it taps rapidly on its resting-place, and thus produces a drumming like that of a shower of rain falling thickly on the leaves." Fabre takes a keen delight in the production of these pictures, at once so exact and lifelike; but we must not therefore suppose that his mind is incapable of ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... had had her lonely lunch and her letters to her uncle and Mirko were written, she found herself drumming aimlessly on the window panes, and wondering if she ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... start as the necklace fell with a thud on the floor; but he was old and wise, and soon fell again to his meal. I sat drumming my heels against the corn bin. Evening was falling fast, and everything was very still. No man ever had a more favorable hour for reflection and introspection. I employed it to the full. Then I rose, and crossing ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... I like your drumming, but am not yet sure about your author; but he must be an exceedingly interesting one, to hold your attention a long ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... desert wake and croon of hidalgos coming— Now for her children's sake she is whetting her sword to slay, And the armored squadrons break, and our iron-shod hoofs are drumming On the rocks of the mountain pass—we are free, we are off ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... had attributed to them in harpsichords more than a hundred and fifty years before, by a bassoon pedal, a card which by a rotatory half-cylinder just impinging upon the strings produced a reedy twang; also by pedals for triangle, cymbals, bells, and tambourine, the last drumming on ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... time the officer looked at the sodden turf, and at the swollen Andelle beyond it, which was overflowing its banks; and he was drumming a waltz from the Rhine on the window-panes, with his fingers, when a noise made him turn round; it was his second in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... possible forms of self-possession for their first meeting; but on the rainy February afternoon when she came in from representing Aunt Victoria at a reception and saw him sitting by the fire, her heart sank down and stopped for an instant, and when it went on beating she could hear no sound but the drumming of her pulse. The back of his chair was towards her. All she could see as she stood for a moment in the doorway was his head, the thick, graying dark hair, and one long-fingered, sensitive, beautiful hand lying ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... his head, and played out the line, as the boat dipped her masthead waterward, and came about on the other tack. When the sails were again drumming under the fingers of the wind, ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... away into the wood. That night a drumming noise was heard in the wood. The people were afraid. They could not sleep, because of ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... touch their disgraced swords, I compelled them to deliver theirs up to my colored servant, who also cut from their coats every insignia of rank. Then, after there had been read to the command an order from army headquarters dismissing the four from the service, the scene was brought to a close by drumming the cowards out of camp. It was a mortifying spectacle, but from that day no officer in that division ever ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... Holmes was leaning back in his chair after his whimsical protest, and was unfolding his morning paper in a leisurely fashion, when our attention was arrested by a tremendous ring at the bell, followed immediately by a hollow drumming sound, as if someone were beating on the outer door with his fist. As it opened there came a tumultuous rush into the hall, rapid feet clattered up the stair, and an instant later a wild-eyed and frantic young man, pale, disheveled, and palpitating, burst into the room. He looked ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... or far aloof Fell to a sough remote and dull; And all night long with rush and lull The rain kept drumming on the roof: I heard till ear and sense were full The clash or silence of the leaves, The gurgle in the ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... snow, towered above the deep-sunk valley, when, one morning, Geoffrey Thurston limped painfully out of a redwood forest of British Columbia. The boom of a hidden river set the pine sprays quivering. A blue grouse was drumming deliriously on the top of a stately fir, and the morning sun drew clean, healing ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... grotesque ceremonies and fantastic costumes, which, originating in the reign of Charles II, among working artisans of London, has been joined successively by the dead of past centuries in unbroken retrogression until now it embraces all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam and is drumming up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of Chaos and Formless Void. The order was founded at different times by Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucious, ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... January. All the winter birds are doing their share in the chorus and orchestra; crows, jays, woodpeckers, nut-hatches, juncos, tree-sparrows. But suddenly a woodpecker begins a new sound,—his vernal drumming! Not the mere tap, tap, tap, in quest of insects, but the love-call drumming of the nidification season, nearly three months ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... a habit of flaring up, but becoming good-natured again before he was through. Immediately there was quiet in the school, until the pepper grinders again began to go; they read aloud, each from his book; the most delicate trebles piped up, the rougher voices drumming louder and louder in order to gain the ascendency, and here and there one chimed in, louder than the others. In all his life Oyvind had never had ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson |
