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Drum   /drəm/   Listen
Drum

noun
1.
A musical percussion instrument; usually consists of a hollow cylinder with a membrane stretched across each end.  Synonyms: membranophone, tympan.
2.
The sound of a drum.
3.
A bulging cylindrical shape; hollow with flat ends.  Synonym: barrel.
4.
A cylindrical metal container used for shipping or storage of liquids.  Synonym: metal drum.
5.
A hollow cast-iron cylinder attached to the wheel that forms part of the brakes.  Synonym: brake drum.
6.
Small to medium-sized bottom-dwelling food and game fishes of shallow coastal and fresh waters that make a drumming noise.  Synonym: drumfish.



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"Drum" Quotes from Famous Books



... one young man carried his tortured spirit forth of the city and all the day long, by one road and another, in an endless pilgrimage of misery; while the other hastened smilingly to spread the news of Weir's access of insanity, and to drum up for that night a full attendance at the Speculative, where further eccentric developments might certainly be looked for. I doubt if Innes had the least belief in his prediction; I think it flowed rather from a wish to make the story as good and the scandal as great as possible; not from ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... made a fine display, and homeward-bound boats from Cape Horn, from Pernambuco, Para, Madeira, spoke highly of her two revolving-drum lighthouses: for these, from opposite corners of the roof, at the rate of a revolution per minute, poured into space two shimmering comets, like Calais and the Eddystone—rapt spinning- dervishes ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... various voices do mine ears invade And have a concert of confusion made? The shriller trumpet and tempestuous drum, The deafening clamour from the cannon's ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... Sergeant-Major Banks; the other boys were farther along the trench. I had never seen anything like what we were getting; machine guns were enfilading our trench—just at my feet was an old empty water can, and the bullets going in sounded as though some one was playing a drum. They couldn't hit me, because I was behind a traverse, or jog in the trench. After a while it quieted down a little, but it didn't entirely stop, and next morning, just at dawn, it started again, and I hope that I shall never be called on ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien

... front itself, with its coating of travertine, had been built to the height of several feet. The construction of the dome was begun on Friday, July 15, 1588, at 4 P. M. The first block of travertine was placed in situ at 8 P. M. of the thirtieth. The cylindrical portion or drum (tamburo) which supports the dome proper was finished at midnight of December 17, of the same year, a marvellous feat to have accomplished. The dome itself was begun five days later, and finished in seventeen months. If we remember that ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... a sword; some The flange and the rail; flame, Fang, or flood' goes Death on drum, And storms bugle his fame. But we dream we are rooted in earth—Dust! Flesh falls within sight of us, we, though our flower the same, Wave with the meadow, forget that there must The sour scythe cringe, and ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins

... front door to court or garden, out at the back door, in at the back door of the next open house, and through to the street again—the beadles preceding with wreathed wands, the band with decorated drum, the couples 'turning' duly at the break in the tune, though it catch them in the narrowest entrance or half-way down ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the merry month of May, When bees from flower to flower do hum, And soldiers through the town march gay, And villagers flock to the sound of the drum. Young Roger swore he'd leave his plough, His team and tillage all begun; Of country life he'd had enow, He'd leave it all and follow ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... the overture in what they called orchestral time; though it is doubtful whether even their playing could have kept pace with the hurrying of excited fiddles in a presto passage, or the roll of the big drum, simulating distant thunder. Be that as it may, the four performers were pounding along at a breathless pace; and if their pianissimo passages failed in delicacy, there was no ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... or it was about half-past six o'clock, when the drum beat the rappel. At one period, scarcely a day passed that we did not hear this summons; indeed, so frequent did it become, that I make little doubt the government resorted to it as an expedient to strengthen itself, by disgusting the National Guards with the frequency ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... developing, for he was continually saying witty but malicious things about Gusher, and would even point significantly with his thumb over his right shoulder. When a more than ordinarily verdant customer would come with his money, Mr. Books would shrug his shoulders, drum with his fingers on the desk, and hum ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams

... which went into even such humble things as a butter box a century ago, for mother had inherited it from her mother. It must once have contained ten pounds of butter, but all traces of its original service had long disappeared. The drum, of very thin, tough wood, which had kept its shape uncracked, had been polished a dark nut brown by countless hands. The bottom and cover, of pine, were darkened, too, but without polish. This box dwelt on the second shelf of the old what-not, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... senses. And the white, square-nailed hands beat gently upon the piano till many people, unconsciously, began to sway ever so little to and fro. An angry look came into Millie Deans's eyes, and when the last drum throb died away and the little girl of Tombouctou slept for ever in the sand, slain by her Prince of Darkness, for a reason that seemed absurdly inadequate to the British composer who was a prop of the provincial festivals, but quite adequate to almost every woman in ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... to a full stop over the center of Penguin Deep where we were to gamble our lives in a game with Neptune. Sea anchors were rigged to lessen our drift and the donkey engine was geared to the first cable drum. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... century before. The guides had dived somewhere underground and, while Ledyard stood nonplussed, came running back carrying a light skin boat which they launched. It was made of oiled walrus hide stretched like a drum completely round whalebones, except for two manholes in the top for the rowers. Perpheela, the guide, signalled Ledyard to embark; and before the white man could solve the problem of how three men were to sit in two manholes, he was seized ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... have, by God,' rejoined Shubin; and suddenly grinning and brightening,—'but I didn't like it, my dear boy, the stuff sticks in my throat, and my head afterwards is a perfect drum. The great Lushtchihin himself—Harlampy Lushtchihin—the greatest drunkard in Moscow, and a Great Russian drunkard too, declared there was nothing to be made of me. In his words, the bottle does not speak ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev

... all ages and heights, between six and sixteen. They carry all sorts of old firelocks and are "falling in." They are properly sized, and form a "squad with intervals." In the rear stands a mash-tub with a sheepskin stretched over it for a drum, and near it is the drummer-boy, a child of six; a bugle, a cornet and a bassoon are laid in a corner, and two ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon

... cheers. Then in a brake came cheerers and hooters Peppering folk from tin peashooters; The Green Man's Friendly in bright mauve caps Followed fast in the Green Man's traps, The crowd made way for the traps to pass Then a drum beat up with a blare of brass, Medical students smart as paint Sang gay songs ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield

... paroxysm of coughing that followed threatened to burst a blood-vessel. Finally with crimson faces and streaming eyes, both cooks gazed ruefully down on the black marbles that had been potatoes, and the charred drum-stick that had once been a ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs

... was a "weavers' walk" and five or six others, the "women's walk" being the most picturesque. These were processions of the members of benefit societies through the square and wynds, and all the women walked in white, to the number of a hundred or more, behind the Tillie-drum band, Thrums having in those days no band of ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie

... what the conquerors call "niggers," without attempting to understand the people first. Temper, justice, insight, and conciliation would have done more in four years than martial intolerance and drum tyranny accomplished in forty. ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... houses. The canoes row past the room sram or house where the young men live; and as they pass, the murderers throw as many pointed sticks or bamboos at the wall or the roof as there were enemies killed. The day is spent very quietly. Now and then they drum or blow on the conch; at other times they beat the walls of the houses with loud shouts to drive away the ghosts of the slain. So the Yabim of New Guinea believe that the spirit of a murdered man pursues his murderer and seeks to do him a mischief. Hence they drive away ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... known in camps and on the battle-field under the nickname of Old Blood-and-Thunder. This war-worn veteran, being now infirm with age and wounds, and weary of the turmoil of a military life, and of the roll of the drum and the clangor of the trumpet, that had so long been ringing in his ears, had lately signified a purpose of returning to his native valley, hoping to find repose where he remembered to have left it. The inhabitants, ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... up his "tom-tom" the performer also picks up the bees wax, and attaching it to the "tom-tom" the arrangements are complete. Bringing the "tom-tom" closer to the body makes the duck dive under water. The ordinary shaking of the drum ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson

... an idea that the possibilities of life ought to include something more heroic for her than keeping house for her brother, and she had determined that she would not sink herself in the hum-drum of uneventful existence without some effort to avoid it; and so it happened that that same evening, after doing her duty by the baby pup and Tom's new cricket bat, she startled her father and mother by the somewhat abrupt and ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... author, with his good birth, his brilliant wit, and his scanty means, had made him well acquainted with every phase of society, "from the Minister at his Levee, to the Bailiff at his spunging-house; from the Duchess at her drum, to the Landlady behind her bar"; but it was in the rural seclusion of an old cathedral town that he wooed and won the beautiful Miss Cradock. Indeed it is impossible to conceive of Sophia as for ever ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... the tapis, with the celebrated Miss Mexico, on whose million he had determined to set up a character and a chariot, and at the same time pension his mistress, and subscribe to the Society for the Suppression of Vice. Felix left England for the Continent, and in due time was made drum-major at Barbadoes, or fiscal at Ceylon, or something of that kind. While he loitered in Europe, he made a conquest of the heart of the daughter of some German baron, and after six weeks passed in the most affectionate manner, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... weapons and then marched inside the American lines and taken directly to headquarters. A drum-head court was convened at once ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey

... nothing reached me, excepting a low, dull murmur, as if voices chanted in muffled monotone, the sound commingling with a sharp crackling of flames, and an occasional doleful beating upon some surface resembling the taut parchment of a drum. Suddenly a deep voice close at hand roared out hoarsely, and my heart leaped in excitement, although I at once ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... resided near Strand Lane, beat her husband with so much violence and perseverance, that the poor man was compelled to leap out of the window to escape her fury. Exasperated at this virago, the neighbours made a "riding," i.e. a pedestrian procession, headed by a drum, and accompanied by a chemise, displayed for a banner. The manual musician sounded the tune of "You round-headed cuckolds, come dig, come dig!" and nearly seventy coalheavers, carmen, and porters, adorned with ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... several convulsive circuits in its orbit and the bass drum performed a solo inside his head during the moment that followed. When the tumult subsided he found a pair of bright brown eyes smiling up at him and a small ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... gallery sixty cubits long and forty cubits wide. This pavilion had three gates, the middle one being reserved for the emperor, and that on each side was smaller. Above this kiosk, and over the right and left gates, was a kurkeh, or great drum; and a bell hung over the middle gate, attended by two persons, to give notice of the appearance of the emperor on his throne. They reckoned that near 300,000 persons were assembled before the palace, among whom were 2000 musicians, who sung hymns for the prosperity of the emperor. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... bog-trotting marauders were as peaceably inclined as you are.—Fait and troth, but you're a fine looking lad after all, and with the assistance of your master, and a touch of Prometheus, we might raise a regiment of braver fellows than the King's Guards, without bounty or beat of drum, in the twinkling of an eye, honey; but with your leave, and saving yourself unnecessary trouble, we'll be after paying a visit to the company above stairs; "and the party ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... just at the conclusion of a quadrille to the air of La Casquette du pere Bugeaud, in which the cymbals, the sleigh-bells and the drum had infected the dancers with the giddiness and madness of their uproar. At a glance she embraced the whole room, all the men leading their partners back to the places marked by their caps: she had been misled; he was ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... the evening the generale,(a sort of beat of drum) was heard in all the sections, the tocsin was likewise rung, (an alarm, by pulling the bells of the churches, so as to cause the clappers to give redoubled strokes in very quick time. Some bells were struck with ...
— A Trip to Paris in July and August 1792 • Richard Twiss

... Anahuac! thou recallest other scenes, far different from these— scenes of tender love or stormy passion. The strife is o'er—the war-drum has ceased to beat, and the bugle to bray; the steed stands chafing in his stall, and the conqueror dallies in the halls of the conquered. Love is now the victor, and the stern soldier, himself subdued, is transformed into a suing lover. In gilded hall or garden bower, ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... of the clamour came the roll of a drum, and, clear and musical, the ringing of bugles blown by men who had marched with Grant and Sherman when they were young. The effect was stirring, and a cheer went up, for there were other men present in whom the spirit which, underlying immediate ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... notes, he had nothing in himself to add to them when he played them. It's easy to learn all the notes that make good music and all the rules that make good business, but a fellow's got to add the fine curves to them himself if he wants to do anything more than beat the bass-drum all his life. Some men think that rules should be made of cast iron; I believe that they should be made of rubber, so that they can be stretched to fit any particular case and then spring back into shape again. The really important part of a rule is the exception ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... air of truth. He was negligent in his dress; and so little studious of appearances, that having despatched his labours, while others were yet in bed, he might have been found, at the usual hours of study, loitering on the banks of his beloved Cherwell, or in the streets, following the drum and fife, a sound which was known to have irresistible attraction for his ears,—a spectator at a military parade, or even one amongst a crowd at a public execution. He retained to old age the amiable simplicity and unsuspecting frankness of boyhood: his affection for his brother, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... party in favour of Duncan. But for the baby, I doubt if he would have had a chance, for he was a stranger and interloper; the women, however, with the baby in their forefront, carried the day. Then his opponents retreated behind the instrument, and strove hard to get the drum recognised as an essential of the office. When Duncan recoiled from the drum with indignation, but without losing the support of his party, the opposition had the effrontery to propose a bell: that he rejected with a vehemence of scorn that had nearly ruined his cause; and, assuming straightway ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... Bhishma and Drona and Karna and Bhurishrava were slain unrighteously, they became afflicted with grief and wept in sorrow. Beholding the Pandavas filled with anxiety and grief, Krishna addressed them in a voice deep as that of the clouds or the drum, saying, "All of them were great car-warriors and exceedingly quick in the use of weapons! If ye had put forth all your prowess, even then ye could never have slain them in battle by fighting fairly! King Duryodhana also could never be slain in a fair encounter! The same is ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... these things to pass shall come Then farewell Musket, Pick, and Drum, The Lamb shall with the Lion feed, Which were a happy time indeed. O let us pray we may all see the day That peace may govern in his name, For then I can tell all things will be well When the King comes home in ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... quiet, and leave the thunderbolt at home; make yourself as smart as you can; curl your hair and tie it up with a bit of ribbon, get a purple cloak, and gold-bespangled shoes, and march forth to the music of flute and drum;—and see if you don't get a finer following than Dionysus, for all ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... our resources do we not all feel the presence within us of certain renegades? Does there not exist inside every man a certain big, ferocious-looking faculty who is his drum major—loving to strut at the head of a peaceful parade and twirl his bawble and roll his eyes at the children and scowl back at the quiet intrepid fellows behind as though they were his personal prisoners? Let but a skirmish ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... and it was always danced by men only. One warrior beat upon the drum, ganojoo, and another used gusdawasa or the rattle made of the shell of a squash. A dozen warriors danced, and players and dancers alike sang. It was a most singular dance and Robert, as he ate and drank, watched it with ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler

... that followed, the funeral-drum came booming in upon them over the ridge, and once they saw an Indian from the encampment standing on top of the hill to look down at their fire. Then the ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... the alarm-drum ceased to beat; the people scarcely breathed; the daughters wrung their hands silently, and the fire-bell called anxiously to the ineffectual engine-showers, for the flames rose ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... weird splutterings of the banjos, the twanging of the guitars, the shrill music of the violins and clarionet, the monotonous rag-time pom-pom of the piano accompanist, the clash and bang of cymbal and base-drum, the coarse minor cadences of the negro singers—all so essential to cabaret dancing of this class—sounded like the war pibroch of a Satanic clan ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball

... literally "head of the mat," perhaps because when the company sat around or on the mat his place was at its head, was the official who had charge of the tunkul or wooden drum, with which public meetings, dances, summons to war, etc. were proclaimed, and with which the priests accompanied their voices in reciting the ancient chants (Cogolludo, Hist. de Yucatan, Lib. IV, cap. V). He was called ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various

... lowered voice. Looking at their footmarks on the ground they seem to throw an almost straight track, neither splayed nor in-toed, and to set their feet down with a gentle forward pressure, rather like the Australian's stealthy footfall. Talking among themselves, or waiting for friends, they did not drum with their fingers, fiddle with their feet, or feel the hair on their faces. These things seem trivial enough, but when breeds are in the making everything is worth while. A man told me once—but I never tried the experiment—that each of our ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... of one of those remote stars at which he gazed. He remembered the absurd antics of his companion and laughed softly, yet without a feeling of mirth. Soon the daily army of milk wagons made of the city a roaring drum to which they marched. Vallance fell asleep on his ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... in the immediate cause of the war; we know what nation has that blot to wipe out; but for fifty years or so we heeded not the rumblings of the distant drum, I do not mean by lack of military preparations; and when war did come we told youth, who had to get us out of it, tall tales of what it really is and of the clover beds to which ...
— Courage • J. M. Barrie

... beer, but it'll do no harm." Hutchinson began to chuckle. "They're talkin' o' gettin' out th' fife an' drum band an' marchin' round th' village with a calico banner with 'Vote for T. Tembarom' painted on it, to show what ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... haste, and, regaining the city, proceeded like a brave and stubborn soldier to make preparations for its defence, and, like a prudent man, to arrange for his own flight should further resistance be impossible. He ordered his great war-drum to be beaten and the ombya to be blown, and for the last time those dismal notes boomed through the streets of Omdurman. They were not heeded. The Arabs had had enough fighting. They recognised that all was lost. Besides, to return to the city ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... spin she stretches her limbs, She golfs, she punts, she rows, she swims - She plays, she sings, she dances, too, From ten or eleven till all is blue! At ball or drum, till small hours come (Chaperon's fan conceals her yawning), She'll waltz away like a teetotum, And never go home till daylight's dawning. Lawn tennis may share her favours fair - Her eyes a-dance and her cheeks a-glowing - Down comes her hair, but what does she care? It's all her own and it's ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... morning we drove over to the city and drew up in the thick of the crowd gathered at the foot of the Castle Hill to see the 4-th march out. We had waited half an hour, perhaps, when we heard two thumps of a drum and the first notes of the regimental quick-step sounded within the walls; the sentry at the outer gate stepped back and presented arms, and the ponderous archway grew bright with the red coats and brazen instruments of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... with two or three of the guard, attired in round hose, long stockings, a close doublet, a high-crowned hat, with a brooch, a long, thin beard, a truncheon, little ruffs, white shoes, his scarfs and garters tied cross, and his drum beaten before him. ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris

... militia companies or train-bands. But in equipment, discipline, and morale the fighting force of New England was very imperfect. The troops had no uniforms; there was a very inadequate commissariat; and alarums, whether by beacon, drum-beat, or discharge of guns, were slow and unreliable. Weapons were crude, and the method of handling them was exceedingly awkward and cumbersome. The pike was early abandoned and the matchlock soon gave way to the flintlock—both heavy and unwieldy instruments of ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews

... Sheep in the corner there Was bleating long and loud; But the Parrot said "Hush!" and pulled his hair, And he galloped off with the crowd! And the Tin Horn blew and the Toy Drum beat, But away they went down the frightened street, Till they all caught up with the Railroad Train, And they never went back to their ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various

... on the island; he heard drum and bugle calling to the muster, and relieved of the fear that Captain Smithers would be surprised, he fought on manfully ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... morning, early in September, and by seven o'clock the drum was heard beating before the Archiepiscopal palace, where it was understood the trial, involving life or death, ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... I shall write sled, and skates, and drum, and violin, and all the things on this paper. Then when Santa Claus goes to my stocking he will find the list. He can see it and put the things in as fast as ...
— The Night Before Christmas and Other Popular Stories For Children • Various

... to the foes that drown Our psalms of worship with their impious drum, The sweetest chimes in all the land lie dumb In some ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod

... apprentice was important only from its consequences. One afternoon he had gone with some comrades on an expedition beyond the city gates. "Half a league from the town," say the "Confessions," "I hear the retreat sounded, and hasten my steps; I hear the drum beat, and run with all my might; I arrive out of breath, all in a sweat; my heart beats; I see from a distance the soldiers at their posts; I rush on; I cry with a failing voice. It was too late. When twenty yards from the outpost I see the first drawbridge going up. ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... different Africans, I found they had many horses amongst them, and much larger than those I then saw. We were not many days in the merchant's custody before we were sold after their usual manner, which is this:—On a signal given,(as the beat of a drum) the buyers rush at once into the yard where the slaves are confined, and make choice of that parcel they like best. The noise and clamour with which this is attended, and the eagerness visible in ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano

... his strong town of Vianne on the Leek, over which he claimed the rights of sovereignty, and which he hastily placed in a state of defense, and there awaited a reinforcement from the league, and the issue of Nassua's negotiations. The flag of war was now unfurled, everywhere the drum was heard to beat; in all parts troops were seen on the march, contributions collected, and soldiers enlisted. The agents of each party often met in the same place, and hardly had the collectors and recruiting officers of the regent quitted a town when it had to endure a similar visit ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... the boy's as empty as a drum. The devil a wonder he went off like he did a bit back. And you ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... yours In safetie thus, applie your harmlesse toile? My sonne (quoth he) this pore estate of ours Is euer safe from storme of warlike broile; This wildernesse doth vs in safetie keepe, No thundring drum, no trumpet ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... onslaught upon the Acadian settlers, one minister marched with the Colonial troops, axe in hand, to hew down the images in the French churches; while another officiated in the double capacity of drummer and chaplain,—a "drum ecclesiastic," ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... life by engaging a very eloquent political speaker, the late Mr. Mulhallen Marum, M.P., to stump the country. He gave to the propaganda a relish which my prosaic economics altogether lacked. The nationalist band sometimes came out to meet him. We all know the efficiency of the drum in politics and religion, but it seemed to me a little out of place in economics. However, he created an excellent impression, but unhappily he died of heart disease before he had attended more ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett

... of the United States number many hundred species, some of them of great value as food. Among the most important are cod, haddock, hake, halibut, Flounder, herring, bluefish, mackeral, weakfish or squeteague, mullet, snapper, drum, and ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... band, on a terrace appearing, Perform'd many tunes that enchanted the hearing; The Ape, on the haut-boy much science display'd— The Monkey the fiddle delightfully play'd— The Orang Outang touch'd the harp with great skill, } The Ass beat the drum, with effect and good will, } And the Squirrel kept ringing ...
— The Elephant's Ball, and Grand Fete Champetre • W. B.

... knew that they were a part of the fabric of civilized society, not vitally important and yet not wholly trivial. He was a member of an aristocracy, it is true, both by birth and situation. There was a recognized social aristocracy in every colony before the Revolution, for the drum-beat of the great democratic march had not then sounded. In the northern colonies it was never strong, and in New England it was especially weak, for the governments and people there were essentially democratic, although they hardly recognized it themselves. ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge

... were playing an occasional blast amidst the roaring winds; whilst the stewards alone, like Horace's good man, walked serene amidst the wreck of crockery and the fall of plates. Driven from our stronghold on deck, indiscriminately crammed in below like figs in a drum; "weltering," as Carlyle has it, "like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed vipers," the cabin windows all shut in, we tried to take it coolly, in spite ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... from the forecastle ahead of them rang through the night. It was so loud and so fraught with alarm that it came in a muffled note to the men in the depths of the torpedo boat. A bugle call rang out, a drum was beaten. The erstwhile silent ship was filled with tumult ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... permitted, their beds, and the contents of their chests and bags, were opened out and exposed to the sun and air. On the Sunday and Thursday mornings, the ship's company was mustered, and every man appeared clean shaved and dressed; and when the evenings were fine, the drum and fife announced the fore castle to be the scene of dancing; nor did I discourage other playful amusements which might occasionally be more to the taste of the sailors, and were ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders

... again amid drum beats. War sweeps even sentiment from the world—sentiment that is stronger than common sense, and ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... contend that it ought to be spelled drummy, being addressed to a lady who was probably fond of warlike instruments, and who had a singular predilection for a canon. Drummy, say they, was a tender diminutive of drum, as the best authors in their more familiar writings now begin to use gunny for gun. But Hardius, a contemporary critic, contends, with more probability, that it ought to be written Drome, from hippodrome; a learned leech and elegant bard of Bath having left it on record that this ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... out. Colonel Nixon, who in private life was Mr. Caleb Nixon, secretary of the Pullmore Tractor Company, put on a long khaki coat and stalked through crowds, a .44 automatic in hand. Even Babbitt's friend, Clarence Drum the shoe merchant—a round and merry man who told stories at the Athletic Club, and who strangely resembled a Victorian pug-dog—was to be seen as a waddling but ferocious captain, with his belt tight about his comfortable little belly, and his round little mouth petulant as he piped to chattering ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... did not come to tea, but she had given him till morning, when, late at night there came up from the village the sound of a fife and drum, with a tumult of voices, in shouting, singing, and laughing. The noise drew nearer and nearer; it reached the street end of the avenue; there it silenced itself, and one voice, the voice she knew best, rose over the silence. ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells

... the stars had hidden themselves from view, there was seen standing before Polikey's home a low wagon, the same in which the superintendent himself used to ride; and harnessed to it was a large-boned, dark-brown mare, called for some unknown reason by the name of Baraban (drum). Aniutka, Polikey's eldest daughter, in spite of the heavy rain and the cold wind which was blowing, stood outside barefooted and held (not without some fear) the reins in ore hand, while with the other she endeavored to keep her green and yellow overcoat wound around her body, and also to ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... interpreting the thought of the composer, does twenty things at once: reads the score, waves his baton, watches the singer, makes a motion sideways, first to the drum then to the wind-instruments, and so on. I do just the same when I lecture. Before me a hundred and fifty faces, all unlike one another; three hundred eyes all looking straight into my face. My object is to dominate this many-headed monster. If every ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... door of the room where the dancing was done a confused uproar overflowed, as if several men of powerful physique were banging a number of pokers against a number of saucepans, and blowing whistles, and occasional catcalls, and now and then beating a drum and several sets of huge cymbals, and ceaselessly twanging at innumerable banjoes, and at the same time singing in a foreign language, and shouting curses or exhortations or street cries, or imitating hunting-calls ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various

... "I hope soon to enable the poor fellows to loosen their belts, and fill their stomachs till they are as tight as a drum. Saddle the horses, Bremen. Omrah, you ride my spare horse and carry ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat

... aura leni. Of innovations, there has been none in history like that which he propounded, but neither would he strive nor cry. There was no voice in the streets, there was no red ensign lifted, there was no clarion-swell, or roll of the conqueror's drum to signal to the world that entrance. He, too, claims a divine authority for his innovation, and he declares it to be of God. It is the providential order of the world's history which is revealed in it; it is the fulfilment of ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... "mourners"—kneeling they knew not why, trembling at they could not tell what, pledging themselves frantically to dogmas and mysteries they knew nothing of, under the influence of a hubbub of outcries as meaningless in their way, and inspiring in much the same way, as the racket of a fife and drum corps—the spectacle saddened and humiliated him now. He was conscious of a dawning sense of shame at being even tacitly responsible for such a thing. His fancy conjured up the idea of Dr. Ledsmar coming in and beholding this maudlin and unseemly scene, and he felt ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... At once the "drum ecclesiastic" beat to arms. In view of the impending danger that their scattered fellow-countrymen might come into mutual fellowship on the basis of their common faith in Christ, the Lutheran leaders at Halle, who ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... be used to either open or close the circuit at any desired time. An alarm clock is firmly fastened to a wooden bracket and provided with a small wood or metal drum, A, to which is fastened a cord, B. The other end of the cord is tied to the switch handle so that when the alarm goes off the switch is either opened or closed, depending on whether the cord is passed over pulley ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... morning, to try their hand on purging the High Kirk o' Popish nick-nackets. But the townsmen o' Glasgow, they were feared their auld edifice might slip the girths in gaun through siccan rough physic, sae they rang the common bell, and assembled the train-bands wi' took o' drum. By good luck, the worthy James Rabat was Dean o' Guild that year—(and a gude mason he was himself, made him the keener to keep up the auld bigging)—and the trades assembled, and offered downright battle to the commons, rather than their kirk should coup the crans as others ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... name was as queer a combination as himself, for he seemed to be about half horse, so wonderful was his understanding of those animals, and so more than wonderful theirs of him, took his "yo'ng sem'nary ladies a-gallopin' th'oo de windin's ob de kentry roads," proud as a Drum ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... the Emperor. The impulse thus given in a manner decided the question. Labedoyere's superior officer in vain interfered to restrain his enthusiasm and that of his men. The tri-coloured cockades, which had been concealed in the hollow of a drum, were eagerly distributed by Labedoyere among them, and they threw away the white cockade as a badge of their nation's dishonour. The peasantry of Dauphiny, the cradle of the Revolution, lined the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... lads!" Captain Martin shouted; "it is a question of speed now. The alarm is spread on shore already." The sentries of the various batteries were discharging their muskets and shouting, and the roll of a drum was heard almost immediately. The crew soon had every stitch of sail set upon the brig. She was moving steadily through the water; but the wind was still light, although occasionally a stronger puff gave ground for hope that it would ere ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty

... heard the tap of a drum and the relieving Brigade, which had been delayed, came up at a rapid double quick, and deployed to the right of our guns; they had heard the sound of our firing and struck a trot. A few minutes more, and the Brigade ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame

... them all day, and it is worth remarking that they having met Mr. Evans and the one seamen led them down to the beach and even gave them a duck each to eat on their making signs of their hunger. We had a drum, fife and fiddle on shore with us but on playing and beating they signified their displeasure and some of them ran off but on our ceasing returned. We made them presents of caps, tomahawks, etc., ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee

... with the cautious, thoughtful character of both parties. It was, he said, analogous to a pentagon flirting with a hexagon; whereas Guy, a knight of the Round Table, in name and nature, and Amy, with her little superstitions, had been attached in the most matter-of-fact, hum-drum way, and were in a course of living very happy ever after, for which nature could never have designed them. Mrs. Edmonstone smiled, sighed, hoped they were prudent, and wondered whether camphor and chloride of lime were ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... female confronts him unmoved, but whether her attitude is critical or defensive, I cannot tell. Presently she flies away, followed by her suitor or suitors, and the little comedy is enacted on another stump or tree. Among all the woodpeckers the drum plays an important part in the matchmaking. The male takes up his stand on a dry, resonant limb, or on the ridgeboard of a building, and beats the loudest call he is capable of. A favorite drum of the high-holes about me is a hollow wooden ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... procession!" cried Ida. And one was immediately formed. Mr. Ormond went first, carrying the lamp; Guy followed, beating a tray to represent a drum; Ida, Elsie, and Brian improvised musical instruments out of the fire-irons, and Mrs. Ormond brought ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery

... been ordered to cross the bridge, went right about face, as soon as they came in sight of the Dalecarlians, and did not halt till they reached the sluicegate, which had been drawn up, so that nobody might pass. It was now proclaimed with beat of drum, that those of the Dalecarlians who should not have left the city by five o'clock, would be dealt with as rebels and traitors. More than a thousand did leave, but the others stood firm. Counsellors and generals went to them, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... Not even the furniture had been disturbed, and old Membertou, the Indian chief, welcomed the white men back with taciturn joy. Pere La Fleche assembles the savages, tells them the story of the Christian faith, then to the beat of drum and chant of "Te Deum" receives, one {42} afternoon, twenty naked converts into the folds of the church. Membertou is baptized Henry, after the King, and all his frowsy squaws renamed after ladies of the most dissolute court ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... sunshine. O'er the trees In front, the village-church, with pinnacles, And light grey tow'r, appears, while to the right An amphitheatre of oaks extends Its sweep, till, more abrupt, a wooded knoll, Where once a castle frown'd, closes the scene. And see, an infant troop, with flags and drum, Are marching o'er that bridge, beneath the woods, On—to the table spread upon the lawn, Raising their little hands when grace is said; Whilst she, who taught them to lift up their hearts In prayer, and to "remember, in their youth," God, "their Creator,"—mistress ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various

... only act as the representative of the commandant of the fort, the ceremonies which should have accompanied a meeting between the heads of the adverse forces were, of course, dispensed with. The truce still existed, and with a roll and beat of the drum, and covered by a little white flag, Duncan left the sally-port, within ten minutes after his instructions were ended. He was received by the French officer in advance with the usual formalities, and immediately ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... they ought to steal away while she was asleep.... There never was such an opportunity.... (A murmuring in the leaves.) Ah, that's the Beech's voice!... Yes, you are right; we must inform the animals.... Has the Rabbit got his drum?... Is he with you?... Good, let him beat the troop at once.... ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck

... council of war was held among the principal generals, and the plan of battle arranged. In an open space, with a dim fire in the midst, and a drum on which to write, you could see grouped around their "little Napoleon," as Beauregard was sometimes fondly called, ten or twelve generals, the flickering light playing over their eager faces, while they listened ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson

... Outside the bookseller's a blind minstrel was playing the guitar in the care of a small boy who was selling, not singing, the ballads. They celebrated the prowess of Spain in recent wars, and it would not be praising them too highly to say that they seemed such as might have been written by a drum-major. Not that I think less of them for that reason, or that I think I need humble myself greatly to the historian of Ronda for associating their purchase with that of his excellent little book. If I had bought some of the blind minstrel's almanacs and jest-books I might indeed apologize, ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... in common time, but tuneless. On the other hand, besides being certain that Friar Tuck's jovial song will "catch on," I must record the complete satisfaction with which I heard the substantial whack on the drum so descriptive of Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert-sans-Sullivan's heavy fall "at the ropes." This last effect, being as novel as it is effective, attracted the attention of the wily and observant DRURIOLANUS, who mentally booked the effect as something startlingly new and original for his next Pantomime. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various

... headache, neuralgia and cold extremities. Other symptoms are pain from lack of food at the proper hour, or from food taken at the improper time; both of which practices may be followed by flatulency, occasioning a swollen, drum-like condition of the stomach and abdomen; the body of the tongue will be coated white, while the edges will present a redder appearance ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... his scorn of our pronunciation, when we met it, of the sovereign word liberte, the poverty of which, our deplorable "libbete," without r's, he mimicked and derided, sounding the right, the revolutionary form out splendidly, with thirty r's, the prolonged beat of a drum. And then we believed him, if artistically conservative, politically obnoxious to the powers that then were, though knowing that those so marked had to walk, and even to breathe, cautiously for fear of the mouchards of the tyrant; we knew all about mouchards ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... poetry. The whole matter-of-fact assembly was there by a misapprehension, nor did they, for the most part, know what they had come out for to see. There are some words that draw a public as unfailingly as the clash of cymbals, the trumpet, or the mountebank's big drum; "beauty," "glory," "poetry," are words ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... and again changed: but the human battle-engine in the inside of any or of each of these, ready still to do battle, stands there, six feet in standard size. There are Pay-Offices, Woolwich Arsenals, there is a Horse-Guards, War-Office, Captain-General; persuasive Sergeants, with tap of drum, recruit in market-towns and villages;—and, on the whole, I say, here is your actual drilled fighting-man; here are your actual Ninety-thousand of such, ready to go into any quarter of ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... It struck me all at once that this shaky old whisper of a voice was not speaking the Dutch of nowadays. I never before knew the depths, the essence, of that uncertainty which we call fear. In the silence, I thought a drum was beating,—it was the pulse in my ears. The fire ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... very young, engaged in journalistic work, until the drum of the recruiting officer called him to join the ranks of his country's defenders. As the reader is told, he was made a prisoner. He took with him into the terrible prison enclosure not only a brave, vigorous, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... case a fire should take place, they might be cool and collected, and know exactly what to do. This was very different from "calling wolf," because a sailor must obey whatever signal is made to him or order given by his superior, without stopping to consider why it is issued. When the drum beats to quarters, he must fly to his station, though he knows perfectly well that ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston

... play on the piano the transposed Kiowa song, emphasising the notes that represented the drum-beats. Strange as it may seem, the music translated itself into pure colour—and the rhythmic beating of the time seemed to aid the process. I thought of the untutored Indians as they sat in groups about the flickering camp-fire while others beat the tom-toms and droned the curious melody. ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... of hearts, will be discussed around the homely hearth of Toil, and dreamed of on the couch of Poverty.... Yes, John Brown, dead, is verily a power like Samson in the falling temple of Dagon, like Ziska, dead, with his skin stretched over a drum head still routing the foe he bravely fought while living." The New York Herald of the same date, voicing the sentiment of those who actively or passively upheld slavery, alludes to the Hero as "Old John Brown, the culprit, hanged for murder," etc., and states that the South was correct. ...
— John Brown: A Retrospect - Read before The Worcester Society of Antiquity, Dec. 2, 1884. • Alfred Roe

... my mission of mercy and found the child bandaged as tight as a drum. When I took out the pins and unrolled it, it fairly popped like the cork out of a champagne bottle. I rubbed its breast and its back and soon soothed it to sleep. I remained a long time, telling them how ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... Heart of a Man,' Beggars' Opera; quartett for four pianofortes, great bustle arranging them, and then only three performers forthcoming—an apology—attack of bronchitis—but Mr Braham will kindly (thunders of applause) sing 'The Death of Nelson;' quartett for double-bass, trombone, drum, and triangles—curious effect; the audience hardly know whether they like it or not; the bravura song of the 'Queen of Night,' from Zauberfloete; overture to William Tell; ballad, 'When Slumber's Heart ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various

... we are reported to have made that strenuous but futile effort to break through the enemy's lines, and not a shot was fired on our side. The Boers must have been startled at their own shadows or at the movements of a subaltern's patrol which they magnified into an army, and having beat the big drum they perhaps tried to justify themselves by sending that cock-and-bull ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... the legends told about this second model emperor is the story that he had a board before his palace on which every subject was permitted to note whatever faults he had to find with his government, and that by means of a drum suspended at his palace gate attention might be drawn to any complaint that was to be made to him. Since Kun had not succeeded in stopping the floods, he was dismissed and his son Yue was appointed in his stead. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... of the busy occupation which is called 'Christian work' is detected to be spurious by this simple test! How much so-called prayer is reduced by it to mere noise, no better than the blaring trumpet or the hollow drum! ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren



Words linked to "Drum" :   tabor, timbrel, hit the books, go, gran casa, Sciaenops ocellatus, vessel, drum major, tom-tom, play, Equetus lanceolatus, mademoiselle, head, channel bass, bongo, snare, study, tabour, redfish, Equetus pulcher, music, tambourine, sciaenid fish, sound, Bairdiella chrysoura, tambour, sciaenid, percussion instrument, percussive instrument, jackknife-fish, silver perch, cylinder



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