"Drumming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... men from town when the storm caught me. You know what I mean—not drumming them out of the city, but merely pursuing them in this general direction. I wonder if by any chance you happened to pass them on ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... 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 ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... wherever General Saxton's proclamation reaches. The chilly sunshine and the pale blue river seem like New England, but those alone. The air is full of noisy drumming and of gunshots; for the prize-shooting is our great celebration of the day, and the drumming is chronic. My young barbarians are all at play. I look out from the broken windows of this forlorn plantation-house, through avenues of great live-oaks, with their hard, shining ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... cigarette away as though the flavour had suddenly become distasteful and sat drumming with his fingers upon the table, his eyes ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... back on the performers, and followed us to the house. So absorbed were the spectators in the dancing—if dancing it could be called—that they did not perceive our departure. We could hear the shrieks and shouts of laughter and applause, the drumming on tom-toms, and the sound of the horns until a late hour in the night. We had evidence of many barbarous customs of the natives, which I have not mentioned. I do not say that they are more savage, or rather fierce, than people of other parts of the world; indeed, in some respects they are less ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... me they would stand erect, shoot up their long cars, and then leisurely lope away. Coyotes trotted out of thickets and watched me suspiciously. I could have shot several, but deemed it wise to be saving of my ammunition. Once I heard a low drumming. I could not imagine what made it. Then a big blue grouse strutted out of a patch of bushes. He spread his wings and tail and neck feathers, after the fashion of a turkey-gobbler. It was a flap or shake of his wings ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... 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 ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hold services at least once a fortnight. Later the "big meadow" so long coveted by a New York family as a building site was sacrificed to fill the empty war chest, and, temporarily in funds, she hired a boy to drive her about the country drumming ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... had opened in 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 put ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... across chaos, and McTurk had turned on the fags' tea-urn, so that many were parboiled and wept with an unfeigned dolor. The Fourth and Upper Third broke into the school song, the "Vive la Compagnie," to the accompaniment of drumming knife-handles; and the junior forms shrilled bat-like shrieks and raided one another's victuals. Two hundred and fifty boys in high condition, seeking for more light, ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... Tom 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 two ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... that the news reached our part of the country that Monmouth had landed the day before at Lyme, a small seaport on the boundary between Dorsetshire and Devonshire. A great beacon blaze upon Portsdown Hill was the first news that we had of it, and then came a rattling and a drumming from Portsmouth, where the troops were assembled under arms. Mounted messengers clattered through the village street with their heads low on their horses' necks, for the great tidings must be carried to London, that the Governor ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sat 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 possession ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... my life did I have such a task, as in drumming up a few women to attend the primary township meeting for the election of delegates. It was impossible to make them comprehend its importance. Even after I had done my best to explain the technicalities of male politics, and fancied that I had made some impression, the answer would be: "Well, ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... up; the drummers began to strike with their sticks, and forthwith all the geese stood on both legs. On Timour saying, 'Don't you see that they have two legs?' the Cogia replied, 'If you keep up that drumming you yourself will ...
— The Turkish Jester - or, The Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin Effendi • Nasreddin Hoca
... sound." He puzzled his brains for a long time, and searched every corner of the house; but discovering nothing, he went to bed again. He was no sooner snug under the clothes than the noise began again more furiously than ever, sounding very much like a "thumping and drumming on the top of his house, and then by degrees going off ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... unsuspected rhinoceros-hide whip. The tent boys and the cook scattered along the flank anywhere, as befitted the free and independent who had nothing to do with the serious business of marching. A measured sound of drumming followed the beating of loads with a hundred sticks; a wild, weird chanting burst from the ranks and died down again as one or another individual or group felt moved to song. One lot had a formal chant and response. Their leader, in a high ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... this reply, fetched a copper poker, and, while beating on the hand-stove, she laughingly said: "I shall go on tattooing. Now mind if when the drumming ceases, you haven't accomplished your task, you'll have to bear ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... ate our dinner in the cafe, facing the beautiful Place Stanislas, we were disturbed by a strange and curious drumming sound. Going out into the square, we saw an aeroplane, or rather its lights, red and green, like those of a ship. It was the first of several, the night patrol, rising slowly and steadily, and then sweeping off in a wide curve toward the enemy's line. ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... and subdivision of noise that kept every point of consciousness vibrating to a different note, so that while one set of nerves was torn as with pincers by the dominant scream of the looms, others were thrilled with a separate pain by the ceaseless accompaniment of drumming, hissing, grating and crashing that shook the great building. Amherst felt this tumult only as part of the atmosphere of the mills; and to ears trained like his own he could make his voice heard without difficulty. But his attempts at speech were unintelligible to Mrs. Westmore and her companions, ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... like that in the Grand Choir, the first day you land here, but you hardly ever see it again. There were billions of people; when they were singing or hosannahing, the noise was wonderful; and even when their tongues were still the drumming of the wings was nearly enough to burst your head, for all the sky was as thick as if it was snowing angels. Although Adam was not there, it was a great time anyway, because we had three archangels on the Grand Stand—it is a seldom thing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... rain are at the pane, Shrilling, drumming without cease; And the breakers' loud refrain Gives the shuddering heart no peace. Lord of all the things that be, Pity Thou ...
— From The Lips of the Sea • Clinton Scollard
... but a companion, sobbed himself to sleep. The wood birds sang merrily above his head; the squirrels, whisking their bravery of tail, ran barking from tree to tree, unconscious of the pity of it, and somewhere far away was a strange, muffled thunder, as if the partridges were drumming in celebration of nature's victory over the son of her immemorial enslavers. And back at the little plantation, where white men and black were hastily searching the fields and hedges in alarm, a mother's heart was breaking for ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... arose from his chair and crossed the room to the window where he stood for some time peering out into the darkness, in the interim drumming ceaselessly on the pane with the tips of his fingers. During that time there was not a word spoken. Presently he turned and came back to the chair where I was seated, towering over me like a veritable giant, the most magnificent specimen of masculine humanity I have ever seen; ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... general nature. They had gone on in this manner for some time, and having been tolerably successful in their sport were meditating their return to the party on the beach, when the ear of Gerald was arrested by the drumming of a partridge at a short distance. Glancing his quick eye in the direction whence the sound came, he beheld a remarkably fine bird, which while continuing to beat its wings violently against the fallen tree on which it was perched, had its neck outstretched and its ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... no money just now," he whispered at last, drumming his fingers on the window pane, "but I could get some. Have you got ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... 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 ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to the princes, who flogged him and flung him into a vault in the house of Jonathan, the Secretary. After many days he was sent for by the king who asked, Is there Word from the Lord? There is, he replied, and, as if drumming a lesson into a stupid child's head, repeated his message, Thou shalt be delivered into the hand of the King of Babylon. He asked what he had done to be treated as he had been, and, by contrast, where were the prophets who ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... the room and reached the table that stood between the arm-chairs Miriam and Ford had occupied, he stopped. He stood there, with fingers drumming soundlessly on the polished wood, waiting ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... elevation to over seven thousand feet. Most of the way the trail was through heavy fir and sugar-pine. Going up we ran into two beautiful full-grown deer, a buck and a doe. They fled to security with easy, graceful jumps, into the thick underbrush. We heard grouse drumming loudly, in two or three different localities and saw one bird make a long dive from one pine tree to another. We found wild flowers in profusion, of the same variety, fragrance and coloring as encountered ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... the field just across the road; a red squirrel pursuing a gray one along our stone wall, almost within arm's-reach; a blue heron among the willows by the brook, probably prospecting for trout; some bob-whites running along by the roadside; while in the woods just beyond a partridge was drumming up further ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... within the forest called Benta, three hours and a quarter from Ugunda. The road led through the cornfields of the Wagunda, and then entered the clearings around the villages of Kisari, within one of which we found the proprietor of a caravan who was drumming up carriers for Ufipa. He had been halted here two months, and he made strenuous exertions to induce my men to join his caravan, a proceeding that did not tend to promote harmony between us. A few days afterwards I found, on my return, that he had given up the idea of proceeding ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... sat drumming upon the table with his long white fingers. He had waved the Marquis and Vanringham aside. "A passing weakness,—I am not adamant," he had ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... Rueda, left alone, sat quite silent, his finger-tips drumming upon the table. He rose suddenly and flung back his shoulders, all resolution. On the stairway he passed the black little landlord, who was now in a sad twitter, foreseeing bloodshed. But Miguel de Rueda went on to the room above. The door was ajar. ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... fathomless grave of all sailors lay nigh to them, restless and ravenous, drumming against the cliffs with ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... was his comment. "You've done a good piece of work." He sat silent, drumming noiselessly on the table with his stumpy, hairy, fat fingers. At last he began: "It ought to be worth at least twenty thousand. Do ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... said the abbot, at last, drumming on the table nervously and absently with the tips of his white fingers. "They who do their own will only are quick to condemn those who hope to accomplish the will ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... (June 6th and 7th, 1851) heard in all directions. This I believe to be the marital summons from the males. Standing in thick chestnut sprouts about as high as my head, where hundreds were around me, I observed the females coming around the drumming males." He adds, "this season (Aug. 1868) a dwarf pear-tree in my garden produced about fifty larvae of Cic. pruinosa; and I several times noticed the females to alight near a male while he was uttering ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... drumming on the edge of the open door. "You are right, young man," he said, "a woman's hysteria is of ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... us were so 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 show ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... Iktomi stopped drumming with his horn ladle, and looking upward into the muskrat's face, ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... and wondered what she would say if she could know to what battlefield the drumming wheels of the Limited were speeding him. Would she be loyal to her mentorship and tell him he must win, at whatever the cost to Mr. Somerville Darrah and his business associates? Or would she, womanlike, be her uncle's partizan and write one John Winton ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... scattered in that neighborhood, but occasionally they passed country homes, when all the folks would rush forth to learn what the drumming ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... sweet, bewildered murmur of purple martins grew into sustained melody; thrush and mocking bird, thrasher and cardinal, sang from every leafy slope; and through the rushing music of bird and pouring waterfall the fairy drumming of the cock-o'-the-pines rang ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... the grave; the house deathly still. He could hear his own heart drumming; but, from Shaynon's ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... bettered it, and he thought he had picked up a great bargain. Now this writer used to be somewhat connected with the Aurora. When his crops were short and prices low he could always get a job with Colonel Miller during the winter months to help out making ends meet, collecting and drumming up new subscribers. The Aurora was very popular—good coarse print so everybody could read it—and most everybody took it whether they could read or not. Its chief policy was to flatter all its patrons—those who paid for it because they paid and those who did not pay in hopes ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... Did you think they went UP-stream?" She was looking squarely at him now, and he dropped his eyes. "No, the posse started in that direction, but I put them right." There was an odd light in her glance, and he felt the blood drumming in his ears. ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... a thought, that came that day In the midst of the muffled drumming And funeral music and sad display, That I knew was right and becoming Only a thought as the mourning train Moved, column after column, Bearing the dead to the burial plain With ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Liverpool, that well-known convention of ocean-travel, which is sure at some time or other, to enlist all the talent on board every English steamer in some sort of public appeal. He was not very clear how he came to be on the committee for drumming up talent for the occasion; his distinction seemed to have been conferred by a popular vote in the smoking room, as nearly as he could make out; but here he was, and he was counting upon Miss Claxon to help him out. He said Mrs. Milray had told him about that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... superhuman energy, "Feuer—im Sachsenhausen," and the almost continuous winding of all manner of bugles and trumpets, sometimes in stirring flourishes, and sometimes in mere tuneless wails. Occasionally there was another rush of feet past the window, and once there was a mighty drumming, down between us and the river, as though the soldiery were turning out to keep the peace. This was all we had of the fire, except a great cloud, all flushed red with the glare, above the roofs on the other side ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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
... strong men in their strength! Ah the banner-poles, the stretch of straightening streamers Straining their full reach out! Ah the men's hands making true the dreams of dreamers, The hopes brought forth in doubt! Ah the noise of horse, the charge and thunder of drumming, And swaying and sweep of swords! Ah the light that led them through of the world's life coming, Clear of its lies and lords! By the lightning of the lips of guns whose flashes Made plain the strayed world's way; By the flame that left her dead old sins in ashes, Swept out of sight of day; By ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... one look them in the face as I have looked them in the face, study their photographs as I have studied them, and I venture to affirm that they will say with me, "These women are not responsible beings." For years I have been drumming this fact into the ears of the public, and at length the authorities acknowledged it, for in 1907 the Home Office Inspector issued a report on inebriate reformatories, and gave the following account of those who ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... the finish of the president's speech, and Preston's health was drunk amid a scene of the wildest enthusiasm. Cries of "On your pins, Preston!"—"Well bowled, sir!"—"Order!"—"Speak up!" etc., rent the air; while the pounding of fists and drumming of feet were continued until a game leg of one of the forms suddenly gave way, causing a temporary disappearance of half the company ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... potterings and polishings, the ruminations, and rewritings and refinements which make the joy of the man of letters. For five-and-twenty years he had been a busy Cambridge coach, tied year in and year out to the same strictness of hours, the same monotony of subjects, the same patient drumming on thick heads and dull brains. Now that was all over. A brother had left him a little money; he had saved the rest. At sixty he had begun to live. He was editing a series of reprints for the Cambridge University Press, and what mortal ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... disgust in the minds of nearly all white people at the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races; and Judge Douglas evidently is basing his chief hope upon the chances of his being able to appropriate the benefit of this disgust to himself. If he can, by much drumming and repeating, fasten the odium of that idea upon his adversaries, he thinks he can struggle through the storm. He therefore clings to this hope, as a drowning man to the last plank. He makes an occasion for lugging it in from the opposition to the Dred ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... it was of rosy hues, of music, and ceaseless hum of human enjoyment! For miles around, the wandering peasants beheld the wide, misty, prismatic circle that overarched the enchanted ground, and heard the silver harmonies and drumming thunders of the orchestras floating over the woods, and filling the void darkness with sounds of unseen festivities. In such a scene all are in good-humor—all wear their best looks. Each finds his ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... last night was, as I have said, disguised by firing, drumming, and shouting from the fleet and forts; and, in the deep stillness of the fine night, the booming of the guns, the clamor of the gongs, and the outcries raised from time to time, came on our ears like the spirit of discord ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... great curtain of Virginia creeper and trumpet-vine fell behind them, half screening them from the road, and from the deluge which now broke more fiercely. For five minutes the world was blotted out in rain, with these two watching its gray swirls and listening to its insistent drumming, safe and ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... know," he said to himself, "I don't know if this story can be made to satisfy a jury or not. A little shady. Too much coincidence to suit me." He sat drumming with his fingers on his desk for a while, and then rose and turned to his books. "I'll have a little law on this case,—some point upon which we can go to the Supreme Court," and for the rest of that day and long into the night ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... 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 ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... slipped away. For an hour she heard him moving about his room, lighting a cigar, drumming with his knuckles on a chair. She felt that he was a bulwark between her and the darkness that grew thicker as the delayed storm came down ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... how the 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 ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and on. Vann Shatrak summoned a robot to furnish him with a cold beer and another cigar. Erskyll was drumming an impatient devil's tattoo with his fingernails on the gold-encrusted table in front of him. Lanze Degbrend began interpolating sarcastic comments. And finally, Pyairr Ravney, who came from Lugaluru, reverted to the idiom ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... dare, however, to call for Miss Lucy at old Pa's, but waited for her at the corner of the street, patiently drumming on my boot, with a knowing little bit of bamboo; and projecting my left arm to her, off we ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... all that he rose not immediately, for the head of the young man whirled, and little drumming pulses beat in his temples. His heart cried within him like the overword of a song, "Does she hear? Will she care? Will this bring me nearer to her?" So that, in spite of his lord's command, he continued to kneel, ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Fenton waked from his long and refreshing sleep, after his weary tramp and his row upon the river, the sun was shining brightly, the blue-birds were singing, the partridges were drumming, and a red squirrel, which even Turk would not disturb, was looking for provisions in his cabin, or eyeing him saucily from one of the beams over his head. He lay for a moment, stretching his huge limbs and rubbing his eyes, thinking over what he had ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... The drumming ceased, the gay laugh died out of Villon's eyes, and he sat ruefully silent. To hint at death to Louis, even remotely, ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... Denis Diderot; how he looked and lived, what he did, what he said." Instead of which, nothing but "a dull, sulky, snuffling, droning, interminable lecture on Atheistic Philosophy," delivered with the vehemence of some pulpit-drumming Gowkthrapple, or "precious Mr. Jabesh Rentowel." Naigeon belonged to the too numerous class of men and women overabundantly endowed with unwise intellect. He was acute, diligent, and tenacious; fond of books, especially when they had handsome margins and ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... bid. The sunlight left the hollow, but stayed bright upon the hills beyond. It was August, but in a treetop somewhere a solitary bird was singing. Nearer the earth the crickets and cicadas began their evening concert, a shrill drumming in the warm, still air. There was a scent of dry grass, a feeling of summer at its full. Dewy freshness, tender green, mist of bloom, and a thousand songs were far away, and yet upon the bench beneath the catalpa there ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... it enchanted the musical part of the audience, disgusted the promenaders, and was received but coldly. This, however, was made up for when the drumming, smashing, and brass-blurting of the overture to "Zampa" was noised forth: this was encored with ecstacies, and so were some of the quadrilles. Happy musical taste! Beethoven's septour, arranged as a set of quadrilles, is a desecration ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... our woodpeckers have that endears them to me, and that has never been pointedly noticed by our ornithologists, is their habit of drumming in the spring. They are songless birds, and yet all are musicians; they make the dry limbs eloquent of the coming change. Did you think that loud, sonorous hammering which proceeded from the orchard ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... my uncle my mother's brother? I made a sign I would remain, on which she kissed my hands; and then I patted her on the shoulder, and could not help letting fall a tear. Then she got up, and bestirred herself for the men, hoping, no doubt, they would intermit their drumming if she could but conciliate them. But as soon as one relay ceased drumming another took it up; and thus, shameful to relate, they continued the whole night without intermission, crowding round my uncle's bed, making his room intolerably hot ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... drumming lightly on a table by his side. It was evident that two emotions were struggling ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... not. The wind drummed in his ears, the flying grit and gravel and spray stung his face; but he struggled on hoping that this midnight walk would not come to an abrupt end by his grandfather's declining to go any farther. Above the drumming of the wind the roar of the sea became more audible every moment; the spume was thicker; the end of the valley, ordinarily the meeting-place of sand and grass and small streams with their yellow flags and forget-me-nots, was a desolation of white foam beyond which against the cliffs ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... ending in a hysterical giggle. Then we heard rhythmic beating on the top of the stand behind the medium. Startling as it was at the beginning, increasing as it did from a slow beat to an incredibly rapid drumming, when the initial shock was over Herbert commenced ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... up, straddled into the seat ahead of Bland. He placed his feet, pulled down his goggles, grasped the wheel and felt himself balanced—poised, with a drumming beat in his throat, a suffocating fulness in his chest. His moment had come, he thought swiftly, as one thinks when facing a sudden, whelming event. The biggest moment in his life—the moment that he had dreamed of—the culmination of all ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... again and again. She felt as if she never wished to raise her eyes from this chilling consolation. Then, when she thought she had got lid of all the traces of her trouble, she went cautiously to the back music-room. Janey was there, moping alone, drumming on the window-pane with ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... 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 ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... window, his fingers drumming on the sill. The contrast between the youth of the figure and the absence of youth in face and voice was curious. Perhaps Lady Tressady felt vaguely that he looked like a boy and spoke like a master, for her ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of my room overlooks the road. The child had seated herself at my feet near my table, and was playing softly, drumming on her knees. I was hard at work on my seventeenth chapter, where Protrap Singh, the hero, had just caught Kanchanlata, the heroine, in his arms, and was about to escape with her by the third story window of the castle, when all of a sudden Mini left her play, and ran to the window, crying, "A Cabuliwallah! ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... I 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
... and sat down in the clerk's room. Lord Hartledon went into the other, and stood drumming on the window-pane, as he gazed out upon the ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... slumped down in a big easy chair at the other side of the table, swinging a restless foot; drumming now and then with his fingers. It was many silent minutes since the storm of reproach with which he had repelled her plea for a part in the actual responsible care of her children had died away. He had spoken with unnecessary ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... crouching on the ground before this instrument, beat out of it a wailing sound with shaped sticks, while on larger kettle-drums, hung by ropes from a wooden railing at one side, two men accompanied the "piano," an old woman in the background drumming out an independent air of her own on ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... the City Hall to-day, that he came of a very good family and had been given the Emperor Napoleon's sister in marriage, and had really a very good presence, and wore his fine black hair in curls, and would shortly enter the city in state and would certainly please all the ladies. Meanwhile, the drumming continued in the street, and I went and stood outside the door and watched the French troops marching in, those glorious happy Frenchmen, who marched through the world with songs and shining sabres, the gay firm-set faces of the Grenadiers, the ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... twice with a lengthening visage. Now also it became apparent that there was another letter inside, at the superscription of which the Major having looked, put it in his pocket, and turning round to the mantel-piece, with his back to the others, began drumming against the fender with ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... to give to the Anishinb[-e]g the rites of the Mid[-e]wiwin, he took his Mid[-e] drum and sang, calling upon the other Manid[-o]s to join him and to hear what he was going to do. No. 1 represents the abode in the sky of Kitshi Manid[-o], No. 2, indicating the god as he sits drumming, No. 3. the small spots surrounding the drum denoting the m[-i]gis with which everything about him is covered. The Mid[-e] Manid[-o]s came to him in his Mid[-e]wign (No. 4), eleven of which ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... mesa. They separated as the rider swept up. One terror-stricken lamb, bleating piteously, hesitated on the very edge of the chasm. Fadeaway swung his hat and laughed as the little creature reared and leaped out into space. There had been but little noise—an occasional frightened bleat, a drumming of hoofs on the mesa, and they ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... General Saxton's proclamation reaches. The chilly sunshine and the pale blue river seems like New England, but those alone. The air is full of noisy drumming, and of gunshots; for the prize-shooting is our great celebration of the day, and the drumming is chronic. My young barbarians are all at play. I look out from the broken windows of this forlorn plantation-house, through avenues of great live-oaks, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... 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 ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan
... odor lay heavily all around. Trigger heard her blood drumming in her ears, and, for a second then, she imagined she could feel, like a tangible fog, the body warmth of the monster standing in ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... and comparatively happy, for the St. Johns' cottage. From the piazza he saw through the lighted windows a home-scene that he had once dreamed might bless his life. Hilland, evidently, was reading the evening paper aloud, and his back was toward his friend. The major was nervously drumming on the table with his fingers, and contracting his frosty eyebrows, as if perturbed by the news. But it was on the young wife that Graham's eyes dwelt longest. She sat with some sewing on the further side of the open fire, and her face was toward him. ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... the piano was open, and half a dozen children were drumming upon it; therefore, seeing that "music" on Sundays was not prohibited by the rules of the house, I went to the piano when the children wearied of it, and sung, at Ida's request, an Ave Maria, and ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... ten at most, being found together. It has been said, on good authority, that they occasionally assemble in large numbers, in gambols. My informant asserts that he saw once not less than fifty so engaged, hooting, screaming, and drumming with sticks upon old logs, which is done in the latter case with equal facility by the four extremities. They do not appear ever to act on the offensive, and, seldom, if ever, really on the defensive. When about to be captured, they resist by throwing their arms about their opponent, and attempting ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... contrived the ways and means, and, in short, did the principal head-work of the establishment; while Mark, being of a more stirring turn, and, from his brisk bon homme manner and less scrupulous disposition, better calculated for drumming up customers and securing bargains for the store, did most of the outdoor business, riding about the country, contracting for produce, securing barter deal, and making himself, in all things, the runner and trumpeter ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... smirk and ogling eyes And straddling legs and swinging hips she tries To swagger it like a soldier, while the chords Of rampant ragtime jangle, clash, and clatter; And over the brassy blare and drumming din She strains to squirt her squeaky notes and thin Spirtle ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... drive from Mrs Malcolm's door with them in it, and me coming out, jealoused what had been done, and told their mistress outright of the marriage, which was to her like a clap of thunder; insomuch that she flung herself back in her settee, and was beating and drumming with her heels on the floor, like a madwoman in Bedlam, when I entered the room. For some time she took no notice of me, but continued her din; but, by-and- by, she began to turn her eyes in fiery glances upon me, till I was terrified lest she would fly at me with her claws in her ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... with him when he was taken—it was Hues the man he trusted more than any other!" Ware gave the overseer a ghastly grin and was silent, but in that silence he heard the drumming of his own heart. He went on. "I tell you to save himself John Murrell will implicate the rest of us; we've got to get him free, and then, by hell—we ought to knock him in the head; he isn't ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... disagreeable tricks which many children practice even in families counted well-bred. Such, for example, are drumming with the fingers on some piece of furniture, or humming a tune while others are talking, or interrupting conversation by pertinacious questions, or whistling in the house instead of out-doors, or speaking several at once and in loud voices to gain attention. All these are violations of good-breeding, ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... A wild drumming was at Dol's heart, and a reckless singing in his ears, as he raised his gun to his shoulder, and fired among them. Nevertheless, his aim was sure and deadly. Two quackers were killed with one shot! The others ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... rum thing," said Macey, who helped a great deal by strolling down from the rectory, sitting on a box, and drumming his heels on the side, while he made disparaging remarks, and said that the whole affair was sure ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... look as you stare at my plate, Your mouth waters so, and your big tail is drumming Flop! flop! flop! on the carpet, and yet if you'll wait, When we have quite finished, ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... against the one-eyed warrior. On this occasion he listened with peculiar impatience. He sat with one arm akimbo, the other elbow on the table, the hand holding on to the small pipe he was pettishly puffing, his legs crossed, drumming with one foot on the ground, and casting every now and then the side glance of a basilisk at the prosing captain. At length the latter spoke of Kidd's having ascended the Hudson with some of his crew, to ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... for 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
... and wandered unsteadily about, but Elim sat motionless, silent, drinking. He was conscious now of a drumming in his ears like distant martial music, a confused echo like the beat of countless feet. He tilted his glass and was ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Mary," I cried, drumming at the little green table with my fist. "I want you. I want nothing else in all the world unless it has to ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... mantles of eternal 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 odors from ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... the presence of Miss Flora Cooper makes Willow Valley a new place. At least six hours are taken from the length of the days, though I have given up my afternoon slumber, and play chess and backgammon instead of drumming on the table or piano. Now am I relieved from that tedious companion, my own self. I never liked him very well; I had rather do any thing than have a sober talk with a serious personage, who always takes me to do for not making more of him. He scolds me, just as a stay-at-home ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... little hard, I think," said Brun, somewhat hurt at Pelle's firmness, and drumming on the quilt with ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... a very unmusical voice, but fortunately he is aware of this deficiency, and his only attempt at music is drumming with his beak upon ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... bird flew away into the wood. That night a drumming noise was heard in the wood. The people were afraid. They could not sleep, because ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... up hope, she saw a head shoot above the water, then a pair of arms. The next instant she gripped both her companion's wrists and lifted as she never lifted before. There was wild terror in her eye. The roar of the second wave was drumming ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... turned her out of this garden, fearing for the boy the first woman he had seen, and to my ascetic mind because a woman, a minx. I eyed the broken grille regretfully and then suddenly rose and started hurriedly toward the Manor, the new thought drumming in ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... down at a table at the end of the room farthest from where I was. I should have noticed her more, but I was in a reverie about Mary's admirable charms, and I only just looked at her; she was frowning and drumming angrily with her fingers on the table. The head waiter hurried up to her; his face was covered with smiles, and he gave me a confidential nod en passant. Nothing else occurred except that a villainous looking fellow—something, to judge by his appearance, between a valet ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... Toinette had been asleep some hours when she was roused by a sharp tapping at the window pane. Startled, and only half awake, she sat up in bed and saw by the moonlight a tiny figure outside which she recognized. It was Thistle drumming with his ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... ferocity at the hunter, and one little tap of that huge paw crushed his skull like an egg-shell. His companion brought his body home; and now the whole tribe had formally declared war on that bear, and all this dancing and painting and drumming was in preparation for a war party, composed of all the men, dogs and guns in the town. They were going on the warpath to get that bear. Greatly relieved, I gave them my blessing and sped ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... the soft fingers of the snow drumming drowsily against the pane, Richard went to sleep and dreamed of angels, all of whom ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... were rifles in each one of them, good ones too—high power hunting rifles for big game—lever action, automatic. In every igloo he found men stretched out asleep, and this on a splendid day for hunting. They were but waiting for the night, which they would spend in wild singing, tom-tom drumming and naked dances. ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... Mortlake," said the young officer, drumming the table with his fingers impatiently. Honorable and upright in all his dealings, the young officer had no liking for the business in hand. Yet it was his duty to see the thing through now, unpleasant ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... upon a hollow log he makes a noise like an Indian at work upon a canoe, and when an Indian taps at a canoe it sounds afar off like the drumming of a partridge, even of Mitchihess. And this comes because that N'karnayoo, of ancient days, the Partridge, was the canoe builder for all the other birds. Yes, for ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... more drumming, a plague of all drummes, onely to seeme to deserue well, and to beguile the supposition of that lasciuious yong boy the Count, haue I run into this danger: yet who would haue suspected an ambush where I was taken? Int. There is no ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Guard! See the sheet-lightning pouring into us from the walls of St. Privat! Look at that fellow with his head bound up, and this one with no head to bind. That's meant for our colonel on the white horse. See him hounding us on to hell! And there's a drummer drumming as though we could hear a single beat! Our very colours were blown to ribbons, you see, and we ourselves to shreds; but the shreds hung together, my young fellow, and so will you and I in our day of battle!" Baumgartner might have known his boy for years, so sure was his touch upon the ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung |
