The mourner's chant sounds above the bourdon of the tom-tom, the wail of the saringis.

Whether commerce is effectually helped by the street-fair, or a town assisted to get on a firm financial basis through the ministry of the tom-tom, is a problem.

For Appleboy, in spite of his apparent calm, was a very much frightened man, and under the creases of his floppy waistcoat his heart was beating like a tom-tom.

'Martin took his seat astride of an African tom-tom or drum; and I noticed at the time that Jean Marie's naked foot hung down from the cross-beam almost directly over Martin's head.

'Martin now began to chant a monotonous African song, accompanying with the tom-tom.

To the music of tom-tom and chac-chac, the coloured folk would dance perpetually till ten o'clock, after which time the rites of Mylitta are silenced by the policeman, for the sake of quiet folk in bed.

Well: but is the nightly tom-tom dance so much more absurd than the nightly ball, which is now considered an integral element of white civilisation?

These tom-tom dances are not easily seen.

A hundred yards below we espied a dance in a negro garden; a few couples, mostly of women, pousetting to each other with violent and ungainly stampings, to the music of tom-tom and chac-chac, if music it can be called.

[Vibrating surfaces] cymbal, bell, gong; tambour^, tambourine, tamborine^; drum, tom-tom; tabor, tabret^, tabourine^, taborin^; side drum, kettle drum; timpani, tympani^; tymbal^, timbrel^, castanet, bones; musical glasses, musical stones; harmonica, sounding-board, rattle; tam-tam, zambomba^.

And from one and another of the sangars the monotonous beat of a tom-tom came to Luffe's ears.

The very drummerI ought to call him a tom-tomerhad ceased to beat his tom-tom.

There is the tinkle of a cow-bell, the barking of a pariah dog, the monotonous dub-a-dub-dub of a timber-toned tom-tom, muffled and slightly mellowed by the distance.

Above the ground the tom-tom would be sounded, but below ground the tom-tom was buried.

Above the ground the tom-tom would be sounded, but below ground the tom-tom was buried.

About nine o'clock, when the sun is now well up, the distant sound of a tom-tom is heard, and the first of the returning fleet of muchwas appears at the mouth of the creek.

With the exception of the man at the helm, who sits stolid, minding his business, and one youth who plays the tom-tom, the crew are standing in a ring, gesticulating with their arms and legs, or waving wands and branches of trees.

[Illustration: Ceylon Girls Playing the Tom-Tom.

She made a hideous rattle and crash and clatter of sound compared to which an Indian tom-tom would have seemed as dulcet as the strumming of a lute in a lady's boudoir.

In from the life of the old messuage, came a touch of the barbaric; weird minor songs that belonged with the hot throb of the African tom-tom floated in through the deep windows, and strangely mingled with the thin tinkle of the harpsichord and the tender strains of an old English ballad.

R119224, 16Oct53, Marion Valensi (A) VANDERCOOK, JOHN W. Tom-tom.

" [Illustration] Some talk of WAGNER chorus, of war's wild rataplan, Or of the well thumped tom-tom of happy Hindustan; But sweetest of all shindy to which man's ear may list, Is the tow-row, tow-row, tow-row of the loud Salvationist!

She danced, near nude, to tom-tom beat, With swaying arms and flying feet, 'Mid swirling spangles, gauze and lace, Her all was dancingsave her face.

At 8 a chief came off from the village in a large canoe pulled by about a dozen men, with a tom-tom beating in the bow.

If I went to the theater, church or concert, the call of that germ-ridden spot of the unholy name beat into my brain with the persistency of a tom-tom on a Chinese holiday.