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We arrived about nine o'clock: a servant sprinkled us with rose-water, and we were ushered into a large saloon, where the bayaderes were seated with a couple of musicians, one of whom played the tam-tam and another a sort of violin.
Life's only got one meanin', doctor; seen plain, there's only one object in everything we do; and that's to keep a sound roof over our heads and a bite in our mouths and in those of the helpless creatures who depend on us. The rest has no more sense or significance than a nigger's hammerin' on the tam-tam.
The chief part of the religious ceremonies of the Buddhists consists in presents of flowers and money. Every morning and evening a most horrible instrument, fit to break the drum of one's ear, and called a tam-tam, together with some shrill trumpets and fifes, is played before the door of the temple.
Till a late hour of the night this town was very lively: processions of men and a number of women and children followed the noise of the tam-tam, which they accompanied with a wild, howling song, and proceeded to some tree, under which an image of an idol was set up. We had on this day to cross several ranges of low hills.
In the score of the Second Symphony he calls for six timpani, bass and snare-drums, a high and a low tam-tam, cymbals, a triangle, glockenspiel, three deep-toned bells, in the chief orchestra; besides a bass-drum, triangle and cymbals in the supplementary. In the Eighth Symphony, the instruments of percussion form a little band by themselves.
The bridegroom then departs with his friends; a closely covered waggon, which has been held in readiness, is drawn up to the door; the females slip into the house, bring out the thickly-veiled bride, push her into the waggon, and follow her with the melodious music of the tam-tam. The bride does not start until the bridegroom has been gone a quarter of an hour.
On Sundays after Josephine had religiously and faithfully listened to an early mass, she gladly attended in the evening the "barraboula" of the negroes, dancing their African dances in the glare of torches and to the monotonous sound of the tam-tam.
Here, porters trudge by loaded with bales of tea; there, under an awning of felt, are encamped itinerant restaurateurs with their cooking-stoves; yonder, the mendicant bonzes beat the tam-tam, and second-hand dealers display their wares.
Then there is the thump, thump of the tam-tam, the whistling of fifes, and the screeching of a horrible instrument resembling a fiddle, which can only be compared with the Belzebub music of Hawai. If, amongst these discordant sounds, you throw in a cloud of mosquitoes and a hurricane of dust, you will have a tolerable idea of an Indian street."
The noisy tam-tam, or a couple of violins, headed the procession, and greater or less followed, who, laughing and singing, danced from house to house, or from one place to another. Several, indeed, on this occasion, found the toddy rather too exciting, but not so much as to lose their consciousness or to exceed the bounds of decorum.
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