“...This monotonous beat* is so suggestive of musical emotion, that it seldom fails to excite some familiar air among the workmen as they deal their blows on the anvil, or the sailors who draw the windlass; it calls up the instinct of song and merry feeling when the trio or quartet of flails resounds through the rural air, and its operations are, perhaps, most striking in martial music, where the measured tread of the soldier keeps time to the beat of the drum, that in its turn follows the natural impulse of the Tact-feeling.”
[Harmony of Tone, Dwight's Journal of Music, vol.VI, no.11, 16 Dec 1854]

*Bone music.