"Tap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the tap at the bottom of the boiler was turned, and the syrup came out bright and clear,—about the colour of sherry wine. The scum descended unbroken on the surface of the liquor; and when the copper was nearly empty the tap was closed, and the scum and what little liquor remained was taken out. ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... she selected that evening fitted her exquisitely, and the dull, heavy folds suited her tall, queenly figure. She looked at herself for a moment, then with a hesitating hand she fastened a spray of white lilac in her dress. The next moment there was a familiar tap at her door, and Dinah, flushed and ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... remained silent for many minutes, so silent that the faint wash of the river against the bank sounded plainly, and a woodpecker could be heard making his last tap-tap on ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... to Manufacture any more Sorrow for the Bereaved," said the Author. "They have had Trouble enough. If I have to deal in White Caskets or tap the Lachrymal Glands in order to thrash out an Income, I will cease being an Author and go ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... Postmaster-General. His tone and manner lacked the slightest cordiality. He asked the Postmaster-General whether he was sure, quite sure, that the British side of our telegraph lines was always cut, so that the enemy could not tap our messages. Yes, the chief was quite sure. But De Wet thought it best that instructions to that effect should be re-issued, so as to leave no excuse for any possible negligence. This suggestion was ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... affected his incantation would be of no avail. Smith then handed it to his wife, who gave it to the witch doctor, and he returned 1s. to her. He then proceeded to foil the witch's power over his patient by tapping her several times on the palm of her hand with his finger, telling her that every tap was a stab on the witch's heart. This was followed by an incantation. He then gave her a parcel of herbs (which evidently consisted of dried bay leaves and peppermint), which she was to steep and drink. She was to send to a blacksmith's shop and get a donkey's ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... stared at if you called Timaru anything but "Timmeroo." In Otago Lake Wakatipu becomes anything, from "Wokkertip" to "Wackatipoo"; and I have heard a cultured man speak of Puke-tapu as "Buck-a-tap." ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... ermine gown sell; I wish I were a mile hence! It's easy to bid one rack one's brain— I'm sure my poor head aches again, I've scratched it so, and all in vain. Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap!' Just as he said this, what should hap At the chamber door, but a gentle tap? 'Bless us,' cried the Mayor, 'what's that? Anything like the sound of a rat ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... by the curiously named Gentleman's Magazine, slung together a column of abuse and lies, founded on tap-room gossip: ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... slumber in the apartment usually sacred to Judge Trent, the burden of Sylvia's vague and helpless future bore down upon her and seemed heavier than she could bear. Long-repressed tears were rising scaldingly to her eyes when she heard a light tap on ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... want to do no fursin' with them constables; but you know Mistuh Phil he told me to see that Robin didn't git into no trouble, and—and—we-e-ell, I didn't care for their motions none at all, I didn't. So I jes' had to tap 'em a little." ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... to the window, which had just resounded to a slight tap or blow, as if something soft had struck it. With an instinctive suspicion of the propinquity of the adjoining street he rose, but a single glance from the window satisfied him that no missile would have reached it from thence. He scanned the low bushes on the level before him; ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... near the foot of Blue Mountain. But Nimble never had a mock battle with Cuffy. Cuffy Bear was a famous boxer. And in each of his paws he carried long sharp claws. What if Cuffy should forget to pull in those claws sometime, when he struck you a playful tap? Ah! That wouldn't be very pleasant! This was what Nimble thought about the matter. So he never butted Cuffy Bear nor pricked him with ...
— The Tale of Nimble Deer - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... pluck at his forehead. As he gazed at the fool's-cap in his hand a roar of merciless laughter greeted his discovery. Miss Willis had realized the fairy's deed too late to prevent the catastrophe. The sharp tap of her ruler on the desk produced a silence interjected with giggles. The fairy was a successful scholar, and would not have harmed a fly willingly. It was a case of fun—the rough expression of an indisputable fact. Jimmy ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... died down, and in the gloom the man by the piano ventured to ask what would happen if an objective cow had a subjective calf. Ansell gave an angry sigh, and at that moment there was a tap on the door. ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... able to tap that vast, hidden and unsung reservoir of knowledge which is the epitome of all that the human mind has grasped and which, though flowing through the subconscious mind of all, is available in its entirety to but few—and then ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... woods and plains and mountains and streams and coasts in a cleanly and decent condition—whether primitive or adapted in one way or another to man's use—together with the communities of wild creatures that belong there, is quite as practical and urgent as their right to usable tap water or to a share in the Gross National Product. For upon the retention of these ancient realities future human sanity ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... the night, lying sleepless, with his hands folded under his head, there came a light tap at his door, and he knew his mother had come to him. She wore a rose-colored dressing-gown, and at sight of it he remembered, with tenderness, how she had always longed "to ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... not a meal much accounted of. It was reckoned effeminate to require more than two meals a day, though, just as in the verdurer's lodge at home, there was a barrel of ale on tap with drinking horns beside it in the hall, and on a small round table in the window a loaf of bread, to which city luxury added a cheese, and a jug containing sack, with some silver cups beside it, and a pitcher of fair water. Master Headley, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... discovered by little BILLY SILTZER, an impudent dog without veneration or reticence, that both the bottles of Pontet Canet were disgustingly corked. To my relief, but to CHUMP's discomfiture, BILLY announced his discovery. "BEN, my boy," he shouted across the table, "the moths have been at this tap of wine. I'm afraid his Lordship won't care to take it off your hands." BEN became blue with suppressed fury. The trembling butler obeyed his angry summons. "Take that stuff away," said BEN, "and drink it yourself. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... the better light Linder noted Y.D.'s face. It was the face of a man of fifty, possibly sixty. Life in the open plays strange tricks with the appearance. Some men it ages before their time; others seem to tap a spring of perpetual youth. Save for the grey moustache and the puckerings about the eyes Y.D.'s was still a young man's face. Then, as the rancher turned his head, Linder noted a long scar, as of a burn, almost grown over in the right cheek.... Across ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... on the head, Miss Olive, distinctly on the head," he assured her, with a bow and smile so suave as to be devoid of meaning. "Really," and Olive felt as if she were a young child and he were offering her a stick of candy; "it was a very smart little tap. Yes, as you say, a Mamie is an anticlimax to one's best endeavours. Now, if all the ladies," Olive had a momentary longing to hurl a plate in his unctuous direction; "only were blessed with names ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... seated myself at the desk when there came a tap at the door and a white slip of paper slid under it. I ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... one was swelled out with a fabulous number of petticoats, and the other pinched in, till she gasped and screamed for mercy, while Blanche and Gertrude danced about, beautiful to behold, under their shady hats; and presently, with a light tap at the door, Meta Rivers stepped in, looking so pretty, that all felt that to try to attain to such ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... face into her hands, and in the rapture of her own daring and in the recollection of the excitement which had frozen them into a stillness through which the beating of their hearts sounded like a faint tap of drums, there came the doubt of ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... with me: I was reasoning myself into something above esteem for him, and I turned to put my hand in his, when there was a tap at the window, and the little bird, struggling from my hand, burst into such a flood of singing that the whole place ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Could his great-great-grandfather have been dug up and set in that barn door, he would have looked just the same, so would the sacks, and the wheat, and the sunshine. At the market town, where the auctioneer's hammer goes tap tap over bullocks and sheep, crowds of men gather together,—farmers, and bailiffs, and shepherds, drovers and labourers—and their clothes are different, but there are the same old weather-beaten faces. Faces that you may see in the ancient illuminated manuscripts, in the ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... a listening-post. Two men are stretched on their stomachs in the brown grass. A little hole, just enough to conceal their bodies, has been dug there. The upturned roots of an old tree that a bursting shell had desecrated was just in front. "Tap! Tap! Tap!" came the sounds of Boches at work somewhere near and underground. It is needless to say that this was a Silhouette of Silence, and that a certain Y. M. C. A. secretary was glad when it was all over and he got back where ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... tap of drum the small, battle-worn battalions filed out of their bivouacs into the highway, ordered arms and waited for the word to march. With a dull rumble the field-pieces trundled slowly after, and halted in rear of the infantry. ...
— The Brigade Commander • J. W. Deforest
... design, she smears it with pigment and presses it on to the limb between two lines. The tatuer or her assistant stretches with her feet the skin of the part to be tatued, and, dipping a pricker into the pigment, taps its handle with the striker, driving the needle points into the skin at each tap. The operation is painful, and the subject can rarely restrain her cries of anguish; but the artist is quite unmoved by such demonstrations of woe, and proceeds methodically with her task. As no antiseptic precautions are taken, a newly tatued part often ulcerates, ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... wandering mendicants of centuries ago, the chains, which had hung from throats long since crumbled into dust, adorned with lucky rings and fetishes to preserve the wearer from evil spirits. There were other bowls, of crystal pure as full-blown bubbles, bowls which would ring at a tap like clear bells of silver. Some of these were guiltless of ornament, some were graven with gold flowers, but all seemed full of lights reflected from tilted, pearl-framed mirrors, and from ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... A discreet tap was heard at the door. It was Nancy Rouse. On being invited to enter, she came in and said, "Oh, Miss Helen, I've got a penitent outside, which he done it for love of me, and now he'll make a clean breast, and the fault was partly mine. Come in, ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... suddenly. The application of anything sudden, even though the impression itself have little or nothing of violence, is disagreeable. The quick application of a finger a little warmer or colder than usual, without notice, makes us start; a slight tap on the shoulder, not expected, has the same effect. Hence it is that angular bodies, bodies that suddenly vary the direction of the outline, afford so little pleasure to the feeling. Every such change is a sort of climbing or falling in miniature; so that squares, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... reason why; why and wherefore, rationale, occasion, derivation; final cause &c (intention) 620; les dessous des cartes [Fr.]; undercurrents. rudiment. egg, germ, embryo, bud, root, radix radical, etymon, nucleus, seed, stem, stock, stirps, trunk, tap-root, gemmule^, radicle, semen, sperm. nest, cradle, nursery, womb, nidus, birthplace, hotbed. causality, causation; origination; production &c 161. V. be the cause of &c n .; originate; give origin to, give rise, to, give occasion to; cause, occasion, sow the seeds of, kindle, suscitate^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Failing to tap their bonanza freight-producer on the route up Blue Canyon, the projectors—small fish in the great money-pool—had talked vaguely of future extensions to Salt Lake, to San Francisco, to Puget Sound, or to some other of the far-beyonds, and had even ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... iron pail at the boiler-tap, and, as I stood waiting, my thoughts flew back to earlier days at Acacia Road, and to Jane and her energetic manner of smacking the oilcloth. But I suppose my ideas had developed since those times, and ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... characters of his story. Then the story-teller would hold his fan like a rod of command, whilst he kept his audience in rapt attention, then sometimes, amidst the laughter of those present, he would raise his voice to a shrill whine, and would emphasize a joke by a sharp tap on the table with his fan. After they had listened to one tale Yoshi-san was sleepy. So they went and bargained with a man outside who had a carriage like a small gig with shafts called a "jin-riki-sha."[12] He ran after them ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... told the story of the mighty lance. This had been the lance of a famous Arikaree warrior, Won-ga-tap. Some years back, maybe seven or eight, the Mandans and the Arikarees had met on horses near the Mandan towns, and had fought. The Mandans chased the Arikarees, but after the chase the brother of Mahtotohpa did not ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... first tap at the door, and try if we can get in as benighted travellers: if that won't do, and I fear it will not, while you remain begging for admittance at the door, and keep him occupied, I will try the door behind, that leads into the garden; ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... "A low tap sounded at the door, and then it slowly opened; and to the astonished gaze of the two sitting by the hearth, there appeared the figure of a little child. A snow-white robe draped his slender limbs. In one hand he bore ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... down that strength, not with one blow, nor ten, but with blow after blow, without end, until that enormous strength should be beaten sheer out of its body. There was no rest for the man. Joe followed him up, step by step, his advancing left foot making an audible tap, tap, tap, on the hard canvas. Then there would come a sudden leap in, tiger-like, a blow struck, or blows, and a swift leap back, whereupon the left foot would take up again its tapping advance. When Ponta made his savage rushes, Joe ...
— The Game • Jack London
... It seemed to include us all. She held out both her hands. Mabane seized one and bent over it with the air of a courtier. The other was offered to me. Arthur was content to beam upon us all from the background. At that precise moment came a tap at the door. Mrs. ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Buonaparte, afterwards Emperor of the French, stood with his constable's baton as a custoder of order. The troops, which had been called from distances, and were billeted in the suburbs, rapidly concentrated at tap of drum and call of bugle. The Duke of Wellington, having the command, so disposed them that, without appearing through the day, they were ready to act at a moment's notice, wherever their presence ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... agreed upon between the leader and his assistant that one tap of the stick on the floor will represent "a"; two taps, "e"; three taps, "i"; four taps, "o"; five taps, "u." Thus all the vowels are indicated by taps, and the consonants, by having the first word of the sentence which the leader gives begin with the chosen letter. ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... with all the damasks, and laces, and leadings by the tips of the fingers, and lavishings of larkspurs, lupins, and tiger-lilies proper for the occasion, which Dulcie had lost. Nay, the supper came off at the very "Rod and Fly," with the tap open to the roaring, jubilant public; a score of healths were drunk upstairs with all the honours, the bride and bridegroom being king and queen of the company: even Uncle Barnet owned that Sam Winnington was very complaisant—rather exceed in his complaisance, he supplemented ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... sooner or later pass to immortality. When a fit applicant, after the preliminary probation, kneels with fainting sense and pallid brow before the veil of the unutterable Unknown, and the last pulsations of his heart tap at the door of eternity, and he reverentially asks admission to partake in the secrets shrouded from profane vision, the infinite Hierophant directs the call to be answered by Death, the speechless and solemn steward of the celestial Mysteries. He ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... explain that when baby swallowed safety-pins, or pennies, or fish-bones, or button-hooks, or any little household articles, that all you had to do was to give it a spoonful of the Priceless Boon, tap it gently fore and aft, hold your hand under its mouth, and the little article would drop out like chocolate from ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... afforded transportation to Dawson City and the Canadian territory, and had proven itself such a financial success that builders began to look for a harbor, more to the westward, from which they could tap the great heart of Alaska. Thus it was that Cortez awoke one morning to find herself selected as the terminus of a new line. Other railway propositions followed, flimsy promotion schemes for the most part, but among them two that had more than paper and "hot air" behind them. One of ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... says I. 'I'm a dab at rockeries. Lemme make you one.' You see, I'd 'elped my brother make a rockery in the beer garden be'ind 'is tap, so I knew 'ow to do it to rights. 'Lemme make you one,' I says. 'It's 'olidays, but I'm that sort of chap, I 'ate doing nothing,' I says. 'I'll make you one to rights.' And the long and the short of it was, ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... but I was quite unsteadied by all that had fallen out, and I broke one glass and fouled the tap, and while I was still getting in my own way, I heard a loud fall in the parlor, and, running in, beheld the captain lying full length upon the floor. At the same instant my mother, alarmed by the cries and ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... A tap-tap of the brass knocker on the "pig-door" off the side porch announced the callers, Lalia and Lucille Hayden, and brought the scout girls up from ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... below—his place being taken by Bludson after a fashion—now led Ralph to the grated door where stood the loaded howitzer. The sentry was not there; another sign of the crew's demoralization. He had slipped into one of the store rooms, now left unlocked, to tap a water butt unseen, for all hands were on ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... striker's retirement, nevertheless either forward runners to the bases or bring runs in. After a batsman has become a base-runner, whether by a hit, a fielding error, or a battery error, if he be forwarded to second by a safe bunt or a neat tap of the ball, both being base hits; or by a sacrifice hit, the batsman is equally entitled to credit if he forward a ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick
... little bent inward toward the root, had preserved all their freshness. The only very noticeable change was the excessive depression of the abdominal walls, which seemed crowded downward to the posterior side; at the right, a slight elevation indicated the place of the liver. A tap of the finger on the various parts of the body produced a sound like that from dry leather. While Leon was pointing out these details to his audience and doing the honors of his mummy, he awkwardly broke off the lower part of the right ear, and a little piece of the colonel remained ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a rut or hole, and stumbled, and Felix was flung so far forward that he only saved himself from being thrown by clinging to his neck. A slight whizzing sound passed over his head, followed immediately by a sharp tap against a tree ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... watch and sent messengers to the outlying places, but somehow you slipped through our meshes, and nothing turned up until the car man returned at about 11 p.m., as drunk as a soldier on furlough. After putting him under a water tap until he was half drowned we got him sober enough to tell where he had left you; but he swore you were a priest, and his evident sincerity caused us all to roar with laughter. This angered him, and he said: "Ye may twist me head an' dhroun me intirely, but I wull niver spake ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... its existence. He had strayed into Faery somehow—into Atlantis, or Avalon, or "a wood near Athens,"—into a land of opalescence and vapor and delicate color, that would vanish, bubble-like, at the discreet tap of Pawsey fetching in his shaving-water; meantime John Bulmer's memory snatched at each loveliness, jealously, as a ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... shadow of provocation, for the avowed purpose of crushing her liberties and giving absolute power to the most detestable of modern tyrants. We find Charles X. invading a dependence of his ally, the Sultan, and confiscating a province to revenge a tap on the face given by the Bey of Algiers to a French consul. We find Louis Philippe breaking the most solemn engagements with almost wanton faithlessness; renouncing all extension of territory in Africa and then conquering a country ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Old John, "I'll show you something." So he got a stout stick and began to tap the tree. Tap, tap, tap, tap, as if he were beating time to music. This tapping had a strange effect upon A-bal-ka. At first he was greatly excited and tried to run farther up the tree. Soon he gave this up, turned around, and began to come down head ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... nothing but cisterns, and the main cistern was so big that the builders had had to install it before the roof was put on, for it would never have gone through a door. This cistern, by means of a ball-tap, filled itself from the main nearly as quickly as it was emptied. Out of it grew pipes, creeping in secret downwards between inner walls of the house, penetrating everywhere. One went down to a boiler behind the ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Session, holding that it might be quite as well for people to pray for their young Queen at church, and then quietly drink her health when they got home, as to grow glorious in her behalf in taverns and tap-rooms, refused to alter their day. Believing that, though essentially in the right, they were yet politically in the wrong, and that a plausible case might be made out against them by the newspaper press, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... do think I be wanted at home. My father's not got Abel now; but it's my mother that mostly wants me. I be bothered about mother, somehow," said Jan, with an anxious look. "She do forget things so, and be so queer. She left the beer-tap running yesterday, and near two gallons of ale ran out; and this morning she put the kettle on, and no water in it. And she do cry terrible," Jan added, breaking down himself. "But Abel says to me the day he was took ill, 'Janny,' he says, 'look to ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the two seamen looked with wistful eyes at the cask of beer in the corner of the tap-room, but Voules, without offering them any, ordered them to hasten back to the boat. They grumbled as they went, looking back to ascertain if the midshipmen had left the inn, resolving to return, should they have the chance, to drink as many glasses of ale as they had money in ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... made it so difficult to edit a valid and interesting review (and so creditable to succeed as we have in several instances succeeded), is a brake also upon the family magazine in its attempt to regain virility. The newspaper magazines have cornered the market for clever reporters who tap the reservoirs of special knowledge and then spray it acceptably upon the public. This is good as far as it goes, but does not go far. The scholars must serve us themselves—and ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... named Suzanne after me, who writes. And who that had not seen her at the work could even guess how she does it? I tell you that she has brought up from Durban a machine about the size of a pumpkin which goes tap-tap—like a woodpecker, and prints as it taps. Now, my husband Jan was always very fond of music in his youth, and when first the girl began to tap upon this strange instrument, he, being almost blind and not able to see it, thought that she was playing on a spinet such as stood in my grandfather's ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... spent a night of feverish restlessness. It was with a feeling of relief that she answered a tap that came at her door in the early dusk of the January morning; but she gave a start of surprise when she saw Mrs. ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... portrait of Hawthorne, by one who knew him, in a few simple words; and behind a calm thoughtful face there is that mysterious unknown quantity which puzzles Longfellow here, and always perplexed Hawthorne's friends. It may have been the nucleus or tap-root of his genius. ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... quarter to six, a little tap came to Mr. Audley's door, and Angela stood there, saying, with a most serious face, 'Please, Mr. Audley, Cherry wants to know whether you don't think something must have happened.' And going upstairs, he found the poor young deputy in a nervous agony of despair ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... scene of the frame, With the face, the dear life for me, fled. No window a lute to my name, No watcher there plying the thread. But the blackbird hung peeking at will; The squirrel from cone hopped to cone; The thrush had a snail in his bill, And tap-tapped the shell hard ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in Durfee, looking down on the tree. Brant was a senior and a "Bones" man, and so had a leading part to play in the afternoon's drama. He must get the girl and the chaperon off his hands, and be at his business. This was "Tap Day." It is perhaps well to explain what "Tap Day" means; there are people who have not been at Yale or had sons or ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... slender the large trees have of the ground, and it is not at all surprising, after such a gale as we had three weeks ago, to see many of the finest blown down in the clearings where the wind could reach them. They do not seem to have any tap-root at all, merely a very insufficient network of fibres, seldom of any size, which spreads a short way along the surface of the ground As long as a Bush is undisturbed by civilization, it appears to ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... on, but not for long. High above the sound of the violins, the laughter that grew more unlicensed as the night wore on, the sound of voices, the thud of feet, the tap of heels and rustle of brocades on a polished floor, came terrible shrieks and groans that made the heart of each wedding guest stand still. There could be no doubt from which room they came, and the panic-struck company dashed upstairs ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... with great composure, 'the squire is a very worthy gentleman, and I'll never deny it; but I am neither his servant nor his tenant, and so he need send me none of his orders till he hears I have put on his livery. As for turning away folk from my door, I might as well plug up the ale-tap, and pull down the sign—and as for peaching, and such like, the squire will find the folk here are as honest to the full as those he brings ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... girl's pluck and loyalty. But she was puzzled to know how to proceed. Her judgment and her sympathies revolted against punishing this prize pupil, and still it looked as if Miss Leece had everything on her side. A tap at the door interrupted her reflections, and Anne opened it, admitting Mrs. Gray ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... into another planet, was separated by an immense space from his past and by an immense ignorance from his future. His quick, fervent utterance positively shocked everybody. 'An excitable devil,' they called him. One evening, in the tap-room of the Coach and Horses (having drunk some whisky), he upset them all by singing a love song of his country. They hooted him down, and he was pained; but Preble, the lame wheelwright, and Vincent, the fat blacksmith, and the other notables too, ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... her present guests; indeed, it was a good deal covered by the heartiness of Adams, who no sooner heard that Fanny had neither eat nor drank that morning than he presented her a bone of bacon he had just been gnawing, being the only remains of his provision, and then ran nimbly to the tap, and produced a mug of small beer, which he called ale; however, it was the best in his house. Joseph, addressing himself to the parson, told him the discourse which had past between Squire Booby, his sister, and himself concerning Fanny; he then acquainted ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... interest and sympathy she burst into the room with only the faintest apology of a tap at the door. Her father was there too, standing by the bed with a ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... way still hold their promise of good cheer, and the great kitchens and tap-rooms have seen wild revelry enough; but even for them has been the sight of political or other martyr done to death in their court-yards, while no foot of playground, no matter how much the people's own, but has been steeped in blood and watered with tears of English matron and maid. If "Merrie ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... it'll be a match as ye say. Oh the b'y's doing well. He ain't for every market, as I'm bound to admit. Ef she wan't deaf she wouldn't look at him, no doubt. But she has scads of money—they won't need to do a tap of work unless they like—and she's a good housekeeper too her aunt tells me. She's pretty enough to suit him—he's as particular as never was—and he wan't crooked and she wan't deaf when they was born, so it's likely their children ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... little light that was in the east had not yet crept downward along the weather-blackened house-fronts to the roadway, and in the old city, shrouded in opaque fog, the darkness still reigned impenetrable. In the tap-room of a low pot-house in the Rue au Beurre, dimly lighted by a tallow candle, she saw two drunken Turcos and a woman. It was not until she turned into the Rue Maqua that she encountered any signs of life: soldiers slinking furtively along the sidewalk and hugging the walls, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... shaky sort of tap at the door. It does not all at once reach the rather deaf ears of the little old lady and tall, still older gentleman who are seated in their usual arm-chairs, one with his newspaper by the window, the other with her netting by the fire, in the exceedingly neat—neat, ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... Republic tap water is not potable; poaching has diminished its reputation as one of the last great wildlife ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... well, my friend. Fiesco could not do better;" and rising upon his toes to tap Olivier ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... that an innkeeper told Mr. Mayhew that "he would rather have twenty poor Englishmen drunk in his tap-room than a couple of poor Irishmen, who will quarrel with anybody, and sometimes clear the room." But this remark, if it shows any thing, shows only how and why the Irish have obtained that reputation of being ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... of a giant; he grows to a more appalling greatness than Thor or Odin in his battles; when a Kiawaqu', or Jotun, rises to the clouds to oppose him, Glooskap's head touches the stars, and scorning to slay so mean a foe like an equal, he kills him contemptuously with a light tap of his bow. But in the family circle he is the most benevolent of gentle heroes, and has his oft-repeated little standard jokes. Yet he never, like the Manobozho-Hiawatha of the Chippewas, becomes silly, cruel, or fantastic. He has his roaring ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... the parlor Of the place of last resort, The smiler and the snarler And the guests of every sort— The elocution chap With rhetoric on tap; The mimic and the funny dog; The social sponge; the money-hog; Vulgarian and dude; And the prude; The adiposing dame With pimply face aflame; The kitten-playful virgin— Vergin' on to fifty years; ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... we had the good fortune to come on a soda-water spring from which we all drank freely. A factory erected to tap the spring was in ruins. Evidently the ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... sulphur having been introduced into the retort and heated to the boiling-point, the tap of the aspirator is turned on and a current of coal-gas drawn through the boiling sulphur; the hydrogen sulphide formed is washed by the water contained in B, passes on into F, and finally into the aspirator. The speed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... very fragrant, and they have been used for scenting tea leaves in India, if not in China, as other flowers are used by the Chinese. In India a perfume has been distilled from tea blossoms; and a valuable oil is expressed from the very oily seeds. The long tap root of the tea plant renders it ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... pounce on those that venture forth at night. Of the insect-eating birds, the larks, wrens, thrushes and sparrows search the ground for worms, eggs and insects under leaves and logs everywhere. The nuthatches, vireos, warblers and creepers search every part of the tree, while the woodpeckers tap beneath the bark for grubs and worms. The fly-catching birds catch their insect food on the wing among the trees and branches, and, last of all, the swallows skim high in the air and catch the few insects that rise high ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... in vain to attract the officer's attention. Then the woman obligingly stepped into the pantry with some dishes, and quickly Jack gave a single tap on the window-pane. Boyle looked up instantly, started, smiled, then nodded his head in the direction of the railroad. Jack held up the parcel containing the telegraph instruments, the detective nodded again, and in a ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... the house by words and deeds I've run an Anti-Waste Campaign; On every tap the legend reads: "Teetotalers, abstain!" While on each bath and tub of mine I've drawn freehand a PLIMSOLL line, Impressionist ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... appeared to be some authorized medical attendant upon the poor, was far too well accustomed, evidently, to little differences of opinion between man and wife, to interpose any remark in this instance. He sat softly whistling, and turning little drops of beer out of the tap upon the ground, until there was a perfect calm: when he raised his head and said to ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... horseback exercise: he plays much on the violin, and rides away into the forest attended by only one groom, and is gone for days together. He has composed an opera, which has not yet been put on the stage. People, when they speak of him, tap their foreheads with one finger. But I don't believe it. The same liberality that induced him, years ago, to restore "William Tell" to the stage has characterized the government under ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... them both to an adventurer from East Prussia," pursued the farmer: "leaves the girl to be seduced and to go on from bad to worse, till her name's become a tap-room by-word, and she not yet twenty; leaves the country to be overtaxed, and bullied with armaments, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... selection of the site of his house. He wanted a southern aspect, it must be high up, it must not be crowded amongst the other houses. The twins needed air. Then the nearer he was to the creek, where the gold was to be found, the better. And again his prospecting must tap a part of it where the diggers had not yet "claimed." There were a dozen and one things to be considered, and he thought of them all until his gentle mind became confused and his sense of proportion ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... prescribed part at the altar, kneeling and reading at intervals. The busy censer boys in white gowns; the flaring candles casting long shadows athwart the high altar; the files of soldiers kneeling and rising at the tap of the drum; the atmosphere clouded with the fumes of burning incense,—all combined to make up a singularly dramatic picture. The gross mummery witnessed at the temple of Buddha in Ceylon differed only in ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... probability of depriving himself of his daughters, that ceremony must, for a time at least, be postponed. While yet the handkerchief-hunt was in full cry, the professor's ears caught the rattle and flap of the opening gate, and following it the quick, vigorous tap of small boot-heels upon the marble flagstones. Next came a light, rustling spring up the creaking porch-steps, and ere the old gentleman could get his head far enough over his knees to see down the entry, a fresh-looking young woman appeared smiling in the door-way, dressed in a tawny summer-suit, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... "But she's the dullest soul on earth, and her husband spends all his spare time in trying to think up ways of doing me dirt in business. Oh, by the way, did you get the water tap in the blue room fixed? It's dripping all ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... still, so that a sparrow lit on the window-sill and looked at her a moment or two before he flew away again. She could even hear the pigeons walking on the roof overhead and hopping on the shingles, with a tap, from the little fence that went about the house-top. When Mr. Leicester waked he still wished to hear the "Scholar Gypsy," which was accordingly begun again, and repeated with only two or three stops. Sometimes they said a verse together, and then they fell to talking about ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... and skipping along as if the musicians were dancing at the head of the marchers. As the procession approaches and the music becomes louder, one hears in the bass an accentuation of the characteristic rhythm, like the tap of a bass drum. When the march has swelled to a forte, it sinks to a brief piano, as if the winding path had led the procession away again. Then there is another brief outburst, this time fortissimo, ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... time he returned with the mare and the musket, and preferred not to say what had happened to the thief. The petty kingdom of Casso, which they came to next, proved very trying. There were six rivers to cross, full (says Isaaco) of alligators and hippopotami. There was the forbidding rock of Tap-Pa in the desert of Maretoumane to get by. And there was the mountain of Lambatara, on the top of which they were attacked by a cloud of bees. Maddened with the stings, the Negroes ran everywhere; the mules broke loose and threw their packs down the hill. Poor ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... the laboratory all piled, running down the hall, Locke paused only a second to tap on Eva's door, as she had asked, if anything happened, so that she might be present at the capture. An instant and Eva, too, ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... it's a case of 'Au revoir, my little Hyacinth.' We shall meet at Philippi. This is my Moscow. To-morrow I shall go out into the night with one long, choking sob. Years hence a white-haired bank-clerk will tap at your door when you're a prosperous professional cricketer with your photograph in Wisden. That'll be me. Well, I suppose I'd better go down. We'd better all get to bed some time to-night. ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... many comforts, for the want of which he is continually grumbling. If this sum is expended for only two glasses of spirits, what must be the expense to the habitual and daily sot, who constantly haunts the tap-room or the wretched bar? to say nothing of the loss of time, health, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... there was a gentle tap at the door; some one said "Come in," and, without a word of preparation, Dr. Mildman entered the apartment. Our surprise and consternation at this apparition may easily be imagined. Cumberland and Lawless tried to carry it off by assuming an easy ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... juice in their talk. When they think they think clearly. When they speak they express themselves with an energy and directness which mortify the thin speech of conventional persons. Here is Farfrae, the young Scotchman, in the tap-room of the Three Mariners Inn of Casterbridge, singing of his ain contree with a pathos quite unknown in that part of the world. The worthies who frequent the place are deeply moved. 'Danged if our country down here ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... curse. I had never heard my giant prate of agriculture; the camp and the tap-room had been his haunts. This appeared to be a method of working toward ill news. I lay back on my rushes and tried to fix ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... poorer classes consists mainly of rice and salt-fish, curries of both, maize, sugar-cane, bananas, and jungle fruits, cocoa-nut milk being used in the preparation of food as well as for a beverage. As luxuries they chew betelnut and smoke tobacco, and although intoxicants are forbidden, they tap the toddy palm and drink of its easily fermented juice. Where metal finds its way into domestic utensils it is usually in the form of tin water-bottles and ewers. Every native possesses a sweeping broom, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... strong smell of paraffin oil in the room; and from somewhere at the far end came a faint tap, tapping sound, which might be the light knocking of a window-blind or the rap of ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... the lantern. Apparently the effect of the love tap administered by his automatic was more or less of a lasting character, and the men were put to some ado to restore the body of Kell to consciousness. At length their efforts began to bear fruit, however, and it became expedient to remove the patient to the softer couch ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... deliberately sabotaged, he was planning for us to use our canteens in the preserve. That is lion country and there are long distances between springs. This is jungle below us and there is a source there I think we can safely tap. But first I must find Nymani and prove to him that this is truly deviltry of a sort, ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... There was naething intill 't but a pennyworth o' blastin' pooder. It wadna blaw the froth aff o' the tap o' a ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... I've got the best opinion that's to be had. The best opinion that's to be had just gives you one leer over its spectacles. I guess that look will fix you if you ever get it straight. I've been able to tap, indirectly," Mr. Simmons went on, "the solicitor of your usurping cousin, and he evidently knows something to be in the wind. It seems your elder brother twenty years ago put out a feeler. So you're not to have the glory of ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... had to speak. Hard and shut down and silent within herself, she slipped out one evening to the workshed. She heard the tap-tap-tap of the hammer upon the metal. Her father lifted his head as the door opened. His face was ruddy and bright with instinct, as when he was a youth, his black moustache was cut close over his wide mouth, his black hair was fine and close as ever. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... clothes; and other such — The comfortable smell of friendly fingers, Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers About dead leaves and last year's ferns. . . . Dear names, And thousand other throng to me! Royal flames; Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring; Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing; Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain, Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train; Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam That browns and dwindles ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... as every one newly discovers after every long, chilly walk, that water from the cold tap feels amazingly warm on hands congealed by the tramp), and was loitering in the upper hall, Ruth called to him ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... explosive than his blood-brother Jerry, while his father and mother were a sedate old couple indeed compared with him. Far more than mature Jerry, was mature Michael playful and rowdyish. His ebullient spirits were always on tap to spill over on the slightest provocation, and, as he was afterwards to demonstrate, he could weary a puppy with play. In short, ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... that the people overflowed into all the streets around. In every door and window there was nothing to be seen but heads ranged one above the other; the terraces were covered with people, and curious spectators were observed an the roof of the Duomo and on the tap of ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in answer to a timid tap at the office door. Mr. Wickes laid a file before him. It needed only a rapid survey of the sheets to give him the whole story. Incompetence and worse, sheer carelessness looked up at him from every sheet. The planing mill was in ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... all the healthy pilgrims rose up to look, and it occurred to Madame de Jonquiere to call to Marthe, Brother Isidore's sister, and tell her to tap the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... No longer does it change visibly from week to week as it changed in 19l8. Already, to get a clear vision of the direction in which it is changing, it is necessary to visit it at intervals of six months, and quite useless to tap the political barometer several times a day as once upon a time one used to do.... But it is still changing very fast. My journal of "Russia in 1919," while giving as I believe a fairly accurate picture of the state of affairs in February and March of 1919, pictures a very different ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... sides, placing it smoothly on the bottom and sides of the tin. When the cake is baked, let it remain in the tin until it is cold; then set it in the oven a minute, or just long enough to warm the tin through. Remove it from the oven; turn it upside down on your hand, tap the edge of the tin on the table and it will slip out ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette |
