"Tom-tom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The point to which I devoted my chief attention was the selection of the means for producing certain effects, and I carefully considered whether I should express the annihilating stroke of fate that befell the French Emperor in Russia by a beat on the tom-tom or not. I believe it was to a great extent my scruples about the introduction of this beat that prevented me from carrying out my ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... behind comes up the long-drawn nasal song of an Arab boatman—that quaint, plaintive, sing-song rhythm accompanied by a tom-tom, which encourages the rowers to bend at their oars, while away still further behind across the river, lays the desolate ruins of the once-powerful Thebes, and that weird, arid wilderness which is so impressive—the Valley of the Tombs ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... From far and near, up and down the valley, dim, ghostly, shadowy horsemen came darting to join the array. Close behind Red Dog some rabid warrior began a wild war chant, and others took it up. Somewhere along the throng a tom-tom began its rapid, monotonous thump, and here, there, and everywhere the rattles ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... the "Company," was crookedly painted the name Loseis. Making her fast, the breeds, with furtive stares at Garth, threw themselves on the ground like tired dogs. It was not long, however, before a "stick-kettle," the invariable tom-tom, was produced, the ear-splitting chant raised, and a game of met-o-wan, a sort of Cree equivalent for Billy-Billy-who's-got-the-button, started on ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... type of humanity we all encounter from day to day, at whose funeral I shall carry a banner and beat a tom-tom. He is the man who knows it all. In his grave, human forethought, and general knowledge, and mortal perfection and everything worth knowing, shall one day lie down and die. He never makes mistakes, nor loses his temper, nor gets the worst of an argument, nor is worsted in a bargain. He never acts ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... down with a thump on the white meat, and thereafter arose and fell in a sort of tom-tom accompaniment to the ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... but in what? Wherein did the deceased Akhoond of Swat Kotal's lamented Moolla late, As it were, emulate? Was it in the tented field With crash of sword on shield, While backward meaner champions reeled And loud the tom-tom pealed? Did they barter gash for scar With the Persian scimetar Or the Afghanistee tulwar, While loud the tom-tom pealed— While loud the tom-tom pealed, And the jim-jam squealed, And champions less well heeled Their war-horses wheeled And fled the presence of these ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... directly transported from old Cairo across the sea to Midway Plaisance. There were the importunate street venders, the donkey boys begging and pulling at the clothing of the visitors, the pompous drivers of camels beseeching the visitors to try their "ship of the desert;" tom-tom pounders, reed blowers, fakirs, child acrobat beggars, Mohammedans, Copts, Jews, Franks, Greeks, Armenians, Nubians, Soudanese, Arabs, Turks, and men and women from all over the Levant, all in the gorgeous apparel of the East, filling the booths or strolling about the street. They were the happiest ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... the profane Ump singing Old Hundred and riding the Bay Eagle up and down in a bunch of frightened cattle, and it was a piece of comedy for the gods. I have heard Jud, with no more tune than a tom-tom, bellowing the doxology to a great audience of Polled-Angus muleys on the verge of a stampede. And I have sung myself, many a time, like a circuit rider ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... extended, the position of each being marked even now by a glare of light above it, which struck up from the fire which the insurgents had lit behind the walls of stone. And from one and another of the sangars the monotonous beat of a tom-tom came to Luffe's ears. ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... and tore his pinafore right up the middle, and burst into the front hall with it hanging in two pieces by the armholes, his eyes shut, and a good grab of James's rouge powder smudged on his nose, yelling and playing the tom-tom on what is left ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... whisky-barrel in the middle, making his bagpipes squeal away; a Chinese with a bald head and long pigtail beat a gong, and capered with a solemn face; a Norwegian herd-boy blew a monstrous bark cow-horn; an Indian juggler twisted snakes round his neck to the sound of the tom-tom; and Lucy found herself and Leonidas whirling round with a young Dutch planter between them, and an Indian with a crown of feathers upon the other side ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... into the following subcastes: Dakhne, Khandeshe and Berarya, or those belonging to the Deccan, Khandesh and Berar; Ghodke, those who tend horses; Dafle, tom-tom players; Uchle, pickpockets; Pindari, descendants of the old freebooters; Kakarkadhe, stone-diggers; Holer, hide-curers; and Garori. The Garoris [183] are a sept of vagrant snake-charmers and jugglers. Many are ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... had seen Margot's picture. In silence they walked towards the open door of the dining-room. Somewhere not far away the Kabyle dogs were barking shrilly. In the distance rose and fell muffled notes of strange passion and fierceness, an Arab tom-tom beating like the heart of the conquered East, ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... aborigines. If I should find there some dusky maiden, like Palmer's Indian girl, who has no idea of puns, polkas, crinoline, or eligible matches, I will woo her in savage hyperbole, and she shall light my pipe with her slender fingers, and beat for me the tom-tom when I am sad. I will live in a calm and conscientious way; the Funny Fellow shall become like the dim recollection of some ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... is stirring. The dreamy silence is only broken by the voices that rise from the river below, by the clacking of the sarong weaver's shuttle or the dull boom of a far-away tom-tom. ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... appropriate figures in this desert place. I had just thought this, and was regarding my Sackville Street suit with disgust, when a low, distinct and near sound suddenly rose from behind a sand dune on my left. It was exactly like the dull beating of a tom-tom. The silence preceding it had been intense, for the breeze was as yet too light to make more than the faintest sighing music, and in the gathering darkness this abrupt and gloomy noise produced, I supposed, by some hidden nomad, made a very unpleasant, even sinister impression upon me. Instinctively ...
— The Desert Drum - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... slowly proceeded with their drawl, at convenient intervals, each made a slight bow behind his screen, his head touching it. As they did this with the regularity of drilled soldiers, and to the pounding of a tom-tom, they evidently were chanting in chorus, although the ear would have failed to distinguish it. The tom-toms and wooden drums were beaten at the pleasure of the parties in charge: nothing like time was apparent to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... came off from the village in a large canoe pulled by about a dozen men, with a tom-tom beating in the bow. He was very anxious to get some arrack, and ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... on with its accompaniment of song, its suggestion of regret. Once in the middle of a ballad a funeral passes in the street below. The mourner's chant sounds above the bourdon of the tom-tom, the wail of the saringis. "Hush, hush" cries Nur Jan, "let the dead pass in peace. It is not meet that the song of the dancing-girl should be heard upon the final journey." One more refrain, one more question on the mystery of her birth, and we ask permission to depart, offering ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... liked. He was not a warrior, or I should have hated him, but he was brought up with me in my father's house, and was a near relative. I was grave and full of pride, he was gay and fond of music; and although there was no music to me equal to the tom-tom, yet I did not always wish for excitement. I often was melancholy, and then I liked to lay my head in the lap of one of my wives, under the shady forest behind my house, and listen to his soft music. At last he went to a town near us where his father ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... monster of bad temper, bad manners, and bad language becomes precociously proficient in overbearing ways, and voluble in Hindostanee Billingsgate, before it has acquired enough of its ancestral tongue to frame the simplest sentence. It bullies its bhearer; it bangs distractingly on the tom-tom; it surfeits itself to an apoplectic point with pish-pash; it burns its mouth with hot curry, and bawls; it indulges in horrid Hindostanee songs, whereof the burden will not bear translation; it insults whatever is most sacred to the caste attachments ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... moment, then breaks into a loud laugh, and cries out, "Oh! This is some more psychology. Well, go as far as you like. It must have been your bell I heard in my dream just now, when I thought I saw a lot of cannibals beating the tom-tom". Having now obtained sufficient data for quite a lengthy discussion, we retire to our staff room and deliberate ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... of Earth was tainted. He re-read Kipling's Chant-Pagan with a new understanding, and began to search into neglected philosophies. He studied the news in detail, and his critical eye soon grew jaundiced—did this editorial or that feature story have any semantic content at all, or was it only a tom-tom beat of loaded connotations? The very statements of fact were subject to doubt—they should be checked against other accounts, or better yet against direct observation; but other accounts were forbidden and there was no ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... the 'ricksha boys, importunate beggars, the human currents that broke and flowed each side of him. The boy here in Shanghai! And that girl with those beads round her throat! It was as though his head had become a tom-tom in the hands of fate. The drumming made it impossible to think clearly. It was the springing up of the electric lights that brought him back to actualities. ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... invincible, an Esquimaux preferring whale's blubber to beefsteak, a native of the Gold Coast cherishing his tom-tom before a band of music, and certain travelled countrymen of our own saying, "Commend ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper |
