"Drumhead" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Catholic people get, or have ever got, from you and such as you, in return for the luxury which you draw, without thanks, from their sweat and labor, but gaols, and chains, and scourges, and halters. Hanging, and transportations, triangles, and drumhead verdicts, are admirable means to conciliate ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Bring him out!" as if all the world knew the object of his search and the righteous reason of his enmity. "Bring him out! I'll have a drumhead court ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... one of the most daring and resourceful of the Dutch leaders fell into the hands of the British. It is a pity that his record is stained by his dishonourable conduct in breaking the compact made on the occasion of the capture of Prinsloo. But for British magnanimity a drumhead court-martial should have taken the place of the hospitality of the ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... show phalanxes of these men smiling as if they were glad to be captives. On the other hand there are no smiles in the pictures of the spies and francs-tireurs. They know that they are fated for a hasty trial, a drumhead decision, and to be shot at dawn. The prospect of that walk through the early morning dews to the execution-ground made their shoulders droop along with ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... whistle. "Thur-r-r!" went the automatic in soulless, mechanical repetition, its tape spinning through the cylinder, while the rifles spoke with the human irregularity of steel-tipped fingers pounding at random on a drumhead. All along the line facing La Tir the volume of fire spread until it was like the ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... Joseph, Lucien, Louis, Jerome, Caroline, Eliza, Pauline—all! I have seen them every one. And their children—pah! Who can deceive me? I will go to Pontiac, I will see to this tomfoolery. I'll bring the rascal to the drumhead. Does he think there is no one? Pish! I will spit him at the first stroke. Here, here, Manette," he cried to his grand- daughter; "fetch out my uniform, give it an airing, and see to the buttons. I will show this brag how ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of course, and I amuse myself by listening to the remarks that society makes upon my productions. Society talks about them a great deal, and I divide attention with the last novelist, whether an unknown young lady of the South, or a drumhead writer of romances. People say, 'That was a brilliant article of so and so's in the last ——, wasn't it?' You will often hear this remark. I am that gentleman—I wrote that article—it was brilliant, and, though I say it, I am capable of producing ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... I have answered it for myself," said Frank. "I was going to say, I should think it would be better to learn to drum on a drum; but I see now, if I get to roll the sticks on a board, which is hard, I can roll them so much the better on a drumhead, which is elastic." ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... bitterness of civil war. The smallness of the field of combat had intensified personal ill-will. Both sides had practiced cruelties in guerrilla warfare; but the Patriots forgot Marion's raids, Simsbury mines, and the drumhead hangings, and remembered only Hessian brutalities, Indian scalpings, Tarleton's harryings, and the infamous prison ships of New York. The war had been a long one. The tide of battle had ebbed and flowed. A district ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... of coarse sense and stretch it on the tenterhooks of half-a-score rhymes, until it crack that you may see through it and it rattle like a drumhead. When you see his verses hanged up in tobacco-shops, you may say, in defiance of the proverb, "that the weakest does not always go to the wall;" for 'tis well known the lines are strong enough, and in that sense may justly take the wall of any that have been written in our language. He seldom makes ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... table, while he let the water run, that it might grow cold. It sounded in the silence as if it were falling on a drumhead. The moment—it was hardly more—seemed interminable to Dosia. The white cat, jumping up on the table, put its paws on her shoulders, and she leaned back very absently, and curved her throat sideways, that her cheek might touch him in recognition. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... had been impressed into the service of Great Britain deserted, but was pursued and brought back. He was flogged and, on being released struck the captain, knocking him down. For this act, he was tried by a "drumhead court martial" and sentenced to die. Tom had a wife and children in New York, but was not permitted to write to them. Only one prayer was granted, and that was that he might be shot instead of hung, and thrown ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... had blundered into the Spanish lines. He had been promptly made a prisoner, and, despite his papers proving his American citizenship, and the nature of his job, and the red cross on his sleeve, he had been tried by drumhead court martial and sentenced to be shot at dawn. All this he had written out, and then, that his account might be complete, he had gone on and imagined his own execution. This was written in a sort of pigeon, or ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... and try any form of government in which the citizen has in the smallest degree to co-operate in the execution of the laws, you have need of these virtues at every step. As soon as you give up the attempt to rule men by drumhead justice, you have to begin to trust in some degree to their intelligence, to their love of order, to their self-respect, and to their desire for material prosperity, and the nearer you get to what is called ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al. |
