"Rap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Powers, to the gratification of its owner and the envy of Verden. The cool indifference with which Mrs. Van Tyle ignored the city's social elite had aroused bitter criticism. Since she did not care a rap for this her escapades were frankly indiscreet. James could not really afford a machine, but he justified it on the ground that it was an investment. A man who appears to be prosperous becomes prosperous. A good front ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... A quick rap came on the door, and before Charity could even call "come in" Peggy entered with her usual galaxy behind her, Amy, Norma, and a newcomer from Iowa, Henrietta Jinks, whom the girls had instantly dubbed "the Jinx," because of her infallible ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... got to know them to the bones here. You've made me know them. If you'd loved me I should never have complained, have attacked you, been brutal to you; but when I think that you've never cared a rap about me, never cared for anything but my body, and that—that——" his voice broke for a moment; then he recovered himself and went on, more harshly,—"and that merely from desire, or whatever you choose to ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... many at a time I shall rap your knuckles with the spoon," said the ghost, as she stirred up the flames to keep ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... skirts and sudden vanishment, even as Miss Norvell's ears caught the sound of a low rap on the outer door. She stood breathing heavily, her hands clasped upon her breast, until the knock had been repeated twice. Her voice utterly failing her, she pressed the latch, stepping backward to permit his entrance. The first swift, inquiring glance ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... rides in it, and some fine day she won't. I never did like those freak acts. But the public does," sighed the old circus man. "The really difficult feats, that require years of practice, patrons don't seem to give a rap for. But let somebody do a stunt in which he is in danger of suddenly ending his life, then you'll see the people howl with delight. I sometimes think they would be half tickled to death to see some of us break our necks. There's ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... one of them. "You're so ugly that I like you. Will you go with us, and become a bird of passage? Near here, in another moor, there are a few sweet lovely geese, all unmarried, and all able to say 'Rap?' You've a chance of' making your fortune, ugly as ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... have produced less however, even though they felt more. A super-cat artist would have valued the pictures he drew for their effects on himself; he wouldn't have cared a rap whether anyone else saw them or not. He would not have bothered, usually, to give any form to his conceptions. Simply to have had the sensation would have for him been enough. But since simians love to be noticed, it does not content them to ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... to finish their task by easier means, and the firing from the front went on more briskly than ever, the young officers contenting themselves with holding theirs and displaying no excitement now, their shelter, so long as they lay close, being sufficient, the worst befalling them now being a sharp rap from a scrap of stone struck from the rocks, or the fall of ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... knew without geographical reference. Far away in their island continent they have been working out their own destiny, not caring for interference from the outside. To put it in strong language, there is a touch of the "I don't care a rap for anybody who does not care a rap for me" in their extreme moments of independence. It is refreshing that a whole population may have an island continent to themselves and ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... jackal called out "Well, I will eat your fowls to-morrow;" but Anuwa the next night sat by the fowl house with a sickle and when the jackal came and poked in his head, Anuwa gave him a rap on the snout with the sickle, so the jackal made off crying "Well, Anuwa, your fowls have pecked me on the head, you shall die." So the next day Anuwa pretended to be dead and his mother went about crying; she took her way to the jungle and there ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... patella, and extends for some distance in the synovial pouch underneath the quadriceps. The patella is raised from the front of the femur by the collection of fluid in the joint—"floating patella"—and, if firmly pressed upon, it may be made to rap ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... outside the windows opening on the garden. There was a rap at the knocker on the front-door. A minute later, Victor, the man-servant, brought ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... before the mirror in her room, putting the last touches to her toilet, there was a rap ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... care. She just hit the door a good rap with the hatchet and kept pushing the button. Boy, I ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... when lo! at once the postman came, mighty was his striding in the kitchen, and strong was his voice for ale. In short, I have as yet received no letter from you, and great is my wonder and astonishment, even Donaldson has not sent me my Critical Review; would to God he had one rap ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... Virginia creeper shaded the front porch of Mary's five-room frame house, where a rap on the front door brought the response: "Here I am, honey! Come right on through the house to the back porch." The aged mulatto woman was hanging out clothes on a line suspended between two peach trees. To the inquiry for Mary, she answered: "Yes, Honey, this is Mary. They say ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... gave him a rap over the head with his rifle that he sat down in amazement and wiped the sweat from his brow. He forgot the chill of the night air. His brain ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... president of the Board of Trade was his first experience as Cabinet Minister. He, nevertheless, established innovations the thought of which would have given respectable and long-established statesmen a shudder. He cared not a rap for convention. He was not in the least afraid of his permanent officials, who so often control their department and their political chief with it. A Cabinet Minister in Britain is hedged with a certain divinity and ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... my face nearer to the opening, and had just made out through the gloom two figures—one that of a tall, slight man, wearing a cloak, the other, I fancied, a woman's, in a sheeny white dress—when a thundering rap on the door of my garret made me spring back a yard from the lattice, and lie down hurriedly on my couch. The ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... the morning of Beatrice's capture Brandon was roused by a rap at his bedroom door. He rose at once, and slipping on his dressing-gown, opened it. A ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... who's at home? hostler, chamberlain, tapster? Ho! take in gentlemen. Knave, slave, host, hostess, ho! [Rip, rap, rip, rap. What, is there none that answers? Tout a la mort? Sir, you must make entrance at some other ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... "We found their headquarters. One of their members cracked. Ben Ruthenberg of the F.B.I. found he had a morals rap against him some years ago and scared him into talking by threats of exposure. At any rate, you're right. They had established themselves in some government buildings going back to Spanish-American War days. We've arrested eight ...
— Status Quo • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Then Mr. Pecksniff, gently warbling a rustic stave, put on his garden hat, seized a spade, and opened the street door; calmly appearing on the threshold as if he thought he had, from his vineyard, heard a modest rap, but was not ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... a horse clattered on the stony pavement, and stopped suddenly at the door. A light step and the clink of a scabbard rang on the steps. A familiar rap followed. Angelique, with the infallible intuition of a woman who recognizes the knock and footstep of her lover from ten thousand others, sprang up and met Le Gardeur de Repentigny as he entered the boudoir. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... purple with anger, stalked majestically away from his tormentor without arriving at any adequate reply, and Jimmy was left alone. In the gray, cold dawn of four o'clock the next morning, as Jim followed the porter out, he paused behind just long enough to rap loudly on the Judge's stateroom door and to explain, "Baltimore. I'm leaving you ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... sounded my churchwardens on the subject, but without reaping any benefit from the advice given. "Do you see any harm in selling them simply as paper?" I asked one of them, a Mr. Bloggs. "Not a rap! Not a rap! Get rid of 'em!" was his reply. Naturally I felt hurt. It was not so much what he said as the way he said it. The mere mention of my sermons always seems to make him irritable. Why ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... trap, which was empty, but the one after that contained a rat, and there were footprints in the snow. "That's where the porrage-heart of the Scotchman comes in," said Jimmy, as he held up the rat by one foot, and gave it a sharp rap over the head with the trap to make sure it was dead. "Dannie could no more hear a rat fast in one of me traps and not come over and put it out of its misery, than he could dance a hornpipe. And him only sicond hand from hornpipe land, too! But his feet's like lead. Poor Dannie! ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... bolt right through the door, carrying my boat-hook with him. I rushed after him to try and get it back, for it was a new ash one I had bought but a few days before, and I did not want to lose it, but I only knocked my head a hard rap against the door, and though I looked about everywhere I never could find it from that day to this; and that, mates, mind you, is the circumstantial and voracious way Jerry Vincent lost his boat-hook." And the old man gave one of his comical and expressive ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... the doctor's door, She lifts the knocker, rap, rap, rap, The doctor at the casement shews, His glimmering eyes that peep and doze; And one ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... a rotten little actress; but I love you, and I don't care a rap for money. And there aren't many as good as me. And ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... stone flagging to his room and dropped listlessly into a chair. It was not long before he heard Britt's alert step in the corridor quickly followed by his brisk rap upon the door. He always had liked the ambitious young engineer and they shook ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... with two Arab stallions, Zarif and Mohammed. Both these animals learnt to count by means of rapping out the numbers with their hoofs on a board. One rap with the left fore-hoof always counted as "ten," while each rap with the right fore-hoof counted as "one" only. The number twenty-five was, therefore, composed of two left raps and five right ones. Spelling was similarly indicated ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... made a little sharp rap on the table, and there was a movement of suppressed misery like a quiver in her slender upright form. Her voice was low and tremulous. "If you'd got religion, Ephraim, you wouldn't speak in that light manner of one who has the awful wickedness of adding to the ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... to tell you. Four days ago I was in the office of the head clerk, and in come one client, two clients, three clients, with whom the governor had made an appointment. They waited impatiently, and requested me to go and rap at the door of the study. I rapped, and, receiving no answer, ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... corner of the battle of Vauquois was suddenly brought close to us—the rush of French infantry up the slopes, the feathery drift of French gun-smoke lower down, and, high up, on the wooded crest along the sky, the red lightnings and white puffs of the German artillery. Rap, rap, rap, went the answering guns, as the troops swept up and disappeared into the fire-tongued wood; and we stood there dumbfounded at the accident of having stumbled on this visible episode ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... a new roommate who says he's a Yank who was stationed at Diss," the Britisher grinned. "He got shot down a while back. He just came out of a hospital. Got a bad rap on the head." ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... Congresses for the last ten years except the things I told them to do ten years before, and that its path is white with the bones of the Socialist superstitions I and my fellow Fabians have slain. Useless. They do not care a rap whether I am a Socialist or not. All they want to know is; Am I orthodox? Am I correct in my revolutionary views? Am I reverent to the revolutionary authorities? Because I am a genuine free-thinker they look at me as a policeman looks at a midnight prowler or as a Berlin bourgeois looks at a ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... again he heard the knocker rap on his street-door. For a moment he had an instinct to run to the window and see who was there; but he put it aside; there was scarcely time to hide the ashes; and it was best too to give no hint of anxiety. He lifted the package of burnt papers once more, and stood hesitating; a press ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... so he dumped his pack and while Scout Van Sant and I stayed back he walked out, up the trail. We saw him turn in at the dug-out and rap on the door. Nobody came. He hung about and eyed the trail and ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... terrible. Every summer I get scared to death and hide somewhere in the dark. Storms up on the sage are bad, but nothing to what they are down here in the canyons. And in this little valley—why, echoes can rap back and forth so ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... embarrassed, and as I was one of the officers of the lodge I would put it to him light, and he said he would go, so my chum got five other boys to help us put him through. So we steered him down to the gymnasium and made him rap on the storm door outside, and I said 'who comes there?' and he said it was a pilgrim who wanted to jine our sublime order. I asked him if he had made up his mind to turn from the ways of a hyena, ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... said he; 'take this in your hand, and it will carry you to your mother's with more safety than such a horse as you ride.' I was in doubt, when I got it into my hand, whether I should not in the first place apply it to his pate; but a rap at the street-door made the wretch fly to it, and when I returned to the parlour, he introduced me, as if nothing of the kind had happened, to the gentleman who entered, as Mr. Goldsmith, his most ingenious and worthy friend, of whom he had so often heard him speak with rapture. I could scarcely ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Rap, tap, tap! "There's your master, Jemima," screamed the lady. "I hear him, marm," replied the cook. "Run down, my dear, and let Mr Handycock in," said his wife. "He'll be so surprised at seeing ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... a lager-beer cask, and stops the buzz of conversation by bringing her mallet down with a smart rap upon the head of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... again now, sent out a flash such as Basil knew. "You're not going to fail me, are you?" she exclaimed. Her impulse was to add shrilly, "Now that you've made your own market, and don't care a rap what happens to any one else!" As she was Mrs. Bal's guest still, and had been royally entertained, she sacrificed the momentary satisfaction. Besides, this was the last moment in which it would be safe ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... in a great Family, and am in Love with the House-maid. We were all at Hot-cockles last Night in the Hall these Holidays; when I lay down and was blinded, she pulled off her Shoe, and hit me with the Heel such a Rap, as almost broke my Head to Pieces. Pray, Sir, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... almost separation; but he was still my friend, he was the man, and he always will be, to whom my youth, with all its aspirations, was most closely united. So I turned to say good-bye to him and to my past life. Rap—rap—rap! ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the rendition of the music, it is far better to give merely the place of beginning without making any remarks at all. Securing quiet by a prolonged rapping with the baton is a sign of weak discipline. Do not rap at all until the music is distributed, the accompanist in his place and ready to begin, your score open, and until you know exactly what you are going to do first. Then let just a slight tap or two suffice to notify everyone that the rehearsal is to ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... in his relation to this world, and he is not without value to the next, for popular belief has credited him with the office of warning revisiting spirits to retire from the earth; and when he crows all through the night, the Katie Kings and other ghostly persons who come from space to rap upon tables and evoke discordant twangs from guitars are deaf to the seductive entreaties ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... you, and your eyes generally bent on the carpet (except, by-the-bye, when they are directed piercingly to my face; as just now, for instance); and when one asks you a question, or makes a remark to which you are obliged to reply, you rap out a round rejoinder, which, if not blunt, is at least brusque. What do you mean ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... Brying: "Well whip them with a birchen rod, and never mind their crying." From the Blue Coat School of London wrote Professor Rupert Gower: "At arm's length make them hold a book the space of half-an-hour." From the Naval School of Liverpool wrote head-master Mr. Jointer: "Just rap them on the knuckles with a common teacher's pointer." From the People's School of Manchester wrote head-master Mr. Flowers: "Make them kneel down as still as death for just about two hours." From the Infant ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... your stick, tell us what's up,' said an old Republican colonel, who cared not a rap for Imperial ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... following telegram to Swearengen Jones was awaiting the arrival of a messenger-boy, and Brewster was blandly assuring Messrs. Grant & Ripley that he did not "care a rap ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... we hold pretty much all the trumps," he went on complacently. "My idea is, Pevensey's all alone over there. That was a pretty smart rap on the nut, the boy got. But even if there's two of them, what can they do? We've got cover, and they've got to show themselves; it's a funny thing if we can't pot them easy. We got a right to; they ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... adhesive pressure. "I'm awfully obliged to you for telling me this; but perhaps you won't mind my asking you not to mention our talk to Miss Copt? It might bother her, you know, to think the picture isn't exactly up to the mark; and it won't make a rap of ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... of Hetty Wesley, which we shall take up next, is a case in point. So, too, is the history of the Fox sisters, who were extremely juvenile when they discovered the possibilities latent in the properly manipulated rap and knock. And the spirits who so maliciously disturbed the peace of good old Dr. Phelps in Stratford, Connecticut, a half century and more ago, unquestionably owed their being to the nimble wit and abnormal fancy of his two ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... "'I don't care a rap about that,' he said. 'I shall not need to talk to her except to tell her what I will have for dinner, and if she is deaf she won't want to be away gossiping. Does she ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... night of June 3, Simon, in his quarters, heard a rap on his door and a low voice. He opened. Mrs. Harvey was there. She beckoned him into the darkness, and spoke rapidly. She was out of ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... "gentility-nonsense," nor did he ever discover that gentility was of the same family, if it was not an albinism of the same species, as pious and oily respectability. So delighted was he with the new dialect that he rolled it on his tongue to the confusion of habitues, who had to rap him over the knuckles for speaking of becoming "useful to the Deity, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... thou gets to the Black Bear, count three doors down the lane, and thou'lt see a sign with a bell. That's where I live. Thee rap at the door, and my daughter shall go along with you to Thorpe, and help to carry the meal too. Maybe we can find you a sup of broth or milk while you ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... mere pretense. No sooner was the presidente gone than he came staggering into the patio of the curato. The women ran into our room, in terror: "The fiscal comes; bar the door; do not let him in." A moment later a feeble rap at the door, a call and a mournful request for admission; the barricaded door gave no encouragement. At intervals through the morning there came the flying maids: "He comes! don't let him in." Again and again the barricade; ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... tidings were brought to her that the Crescent had arrived and anchored in Cawsand Bay; the boy was playing in the passage with his nurse, awaiting the appearance of his father, when at length the short hasty rap was heard! All ran to the door, and in the hurry of opening it the light was extinguished, and total darkness obscured the objects of his affection; but the eager, parental tone with which the words "Where art thou, my darling boy?" were uttered, left such an impression on the mind ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... all had a great attraction for me,—and this although I was somewhat severely held to the proper observance of worship. I remember well that at the age of six years, if I faltered in the public reading of the Psalter, a gentle rap on the side of my head from my father's knuckles reminded me ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... must bid a stander by, lay it theron, saying, that you meane to cast all those three Balls into your mouth at once: and holding a knife as a penne in your hand, when he is laying vpon the poynt of your knife, you may easily with the haft rap him on the fingers, for the other matter ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... What, deere Sir, Thus rap's you? Are you well? Iach. Thanks Madam well: Beseech you Sir, Desire my Man's abode, where I did leaue ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the mighty fallen,' and then went on telling me things without end to drive me mad." That was in March. In August she writes, actually under siege: "Here I am quite alone in C. Square ... no carriage to watch for, no rap at the door ... and alas! no chance of hearing your step upon the stair.... Whilst I was regretting all this, suddenly, the knock did come, to my utter astonishment. I ran to the stair, and in a moment heard Sheridan's voice. I do not know why, but I took ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... I sat there I know not; it may have been one hour or it may have been many; but some time during the night there came a rap at the door and the pictures of Jane Ryder were blotted out of the fire and went flitting up the chimney. The knocking was on the outer door, which was unlocked, as the woman had said, and I cried out, "Come in!" Responsive to the invitation, Whistling Jim made ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... of so much more cost than the value of the waste words they overlie, that one comes at last to groan and change color at the very sight of a package, and to dread the postman's knock as if it were that of the other visitor whose naked knuckles rap at every door. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... upon his words, there was the sound of a faint rap at the door. Then it opened, and through the dense blue haze of the room they saw some shadowed forms softly indistinct save where the light from the ceiling outside shone down upon a group of coiffured heads. ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... Violet growes, Quite ouer-cannoped with luscious woodbine, With sweet muske roses, and with Eglantine; There sleepes Tytania, sometime of the night, Lul'd in these flowers, with dances and delight: And there the snake throwes her enammel'd skinne, Weed wide enough to rap a Fairy in. And with the iuyce of this Ile streake her eyes, And make her full of hatefull fantasies. Take thou some of it, and seek through this groue; A sweet Athenian Lady is in loue With a disdainefull youth: annoint his eyes, But doe it when the next thing he espies, May be ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... part, that she would have drawn back again, if it had been possible; but the usher led her forward, and Robin Hood and the foresters having bent the knee before her, the hobby-horse began to curvet anew among the spectators, and tread on their toes, the fool to rap their knuckles with his bauble, the piper to play, the taborer to beat his tambourine, and the morris-dancers to toss their kerchiefs over their heads. Thus the pageant being put in motion, the rush-cart began to roll on, its horses' ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... you don't! You wouldn't mind if I went with forty girls! You don't care a rap for ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... 'it may be that he is a sound sleeper, and may not answer my first rap. I will therefore, with your permission, take the lamp, and will ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a rap at the front-door, and, just as she concluded, the prim maid entered with a letter ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... forty or fifty people were going to bed. The thump of jugs set down on the floor above could be heard and the clink of china, for there was not as thick a partition between the rooms as one might wish, so Miss Allan, the elderly lady who had been playing bridge, determined, giving the wall a smart rap with her knuckles. It was only matchboard, she decided, run up to make many little rooms of one large one. Her grey petticoats slipped to the ground, and, stooping, she folded her clothes with neat, if not loving ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... of the farmer on the hill who liked me. He'd been in America in his early days, and had plenty of money. He didn't care a rap what people said, and every single year he proposed to me, always on New Year's Day. He came that year too, and now that Knut was dead, I couldn't have done better than have taken him and been mistress of a farm; ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... mock, Though he may be a blockhead, he's no real block. He can eat, drink, and sleep; now and then for a friend He'll not be too proud an old kettle to mend; He can lie like a courtier, and think it no scorn, When gold's to be got, to forswear and suborn. He can rap his own raps[1] and has the true sapience, To turn a good penny to twenty bad halfpence. Then in spite of your sophistry, honest Will Wood Is a man of this world, all true flesh and blood; So you are but in jest, and you will not, I hope, Unman the poor knave for the sake of a trope. 'Tis a metaphor ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... sharp engagement took place that night, in which the British first carried the position, but afterwards retired, leaving it to be reoccupied by the enemy. The movement on their part seems to have been simply precautionary, a sharp rap to check the over-confidence of the opponent, and to deter him from pushing attacks upon the railroad, which for the time being might be inconveniently successful; the reinforcements from Durban having as yet only partially ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... it is almost impossible I should think, because he generally gave a very loud rap at the door, and he ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... thought it was a big monkey!" and he mentally pictured what had passed in the night, when a smart tap caught his ear which sounded as if the shaft of the spear had been brought down with a rap upon the ground. This was followed by a ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... at his word and so completely that the small and early saw him no more. What was that to him? There were other pastures, less scrumptious perhaps, but also far less fatiguing. He had not cared, not a rap. Behind him the yard of brass yodled in a manner quite as lordly as before. His high-steppers lost none of their sheen; his yacht retained all its effulgence; so, too, did the glare of his coin. No, he had not cared. ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... last century. You will be derided with your Jenny Lind and Henrietta Sontag. They are lifeless images of singers, to be kept in a glass case. Are you willing to remain ignorant of the magnificent modern style of voice? Can you not go forward with the advancing age? Progressive philosophers will rap you over the knuckles. You imagine that our times will stop for a couple of lectures! You will yet have to learn what "intellect" signifies. In short, I should not like to stand in your shoes. You should conclude ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... I heard her to rap on the door of Father's closet. For me, I sat and sewed a while longer: and yet none coming, I went up to our chamber, partly that I should wash mine hands, and partly to see what ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... the maple tree and stood there in its shade. He was raging. Chased from the field! Routed out as though he didn't amount to a rap, and he the best catcher in ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... a feeble rap on her door. At the threshold stood the wheelchair to which her father was confined like a slave chained to his seat in the galley. She caught a brief impression of a pair of eyes beyond him: the eyes of Eleanor Kent, full of the message of strength; ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... staying in Oban, wished to visit the island of Coll, and discovered, on enquiry at Macbrayne's office, that the S.S. Fingal left for that outer isle at five in the morning. He accordingly gave serious instructions to the "boots" of his hotel to rap him up at 4.30 A.M., and to show him no mercy. At six o'clock, the tourist was awakened by a noise like that of a battering-ram at his door, and a stentorian voice sternly enquiring: "Are you the gentleman that's going with the early boat?" "Yes, yes, I am," said ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... rap upon the door. It was one of those old-fashioned doors which opens in two parts. The upper half swung outward, ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... stood there, baffled, "a woman scorned" in the presence and hearing of another, who nevertheless stepped quickly forward to express her opinion of such heartless, soulless conduct despite the interposing shade, there came a sharp, imperative rap on Loring's door, and the summons "Wanted at ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... Welsh shook his head dubiously. "Not that I care a rap," he declared. "And if you are, just gimme a couple of lines of notice, the right kind, good ad, you know. And if yer not, why yer all right anyway. Yer not our class, ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... David, if you can." And Eve, thoroughly depressed, relapsed into silence. The postman's rap was heard, and soon after a long inclosure was placed ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... ended better than he anticipated. The Pelican and the Curlew were at Diablo by now. He should hear from them any minute. While he was waiting there was much that he could do. He took up his personal bank-book and began to balance it. A low rap at ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... A rap on the window drew the writer's attention, and, looking up, he saw, against the twilight sky, the broad German face of the boy Carl darkening the pane. He ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... "I don't care a rap about laws such as yours. As for gangs—that was what you were going to say—I'd snap my fingers in the face of Ike the Dropper himself if he were here. You could kill me, but I ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... affection that should tonight, if ever, have been faithful! So [half to herself] one can be jealous of a man without caring a rap for him! Well, it is something to have found out that vanity is the ruling passion. I shall take more care of its feelings than ever after this. But—your story, ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... entered the Rue de Boucheries. About half way down the street they stopped before a mean-looking house. Develour rapped twice in quick succession at the door, and then, after a short interval, once more, and louder than before, immediately after the third rap, the door was partially and cautiously opened, and some one asked, in an under tone, ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... She is as natural and simple as a girl can be, and doesn't throw Greek roots at you, nor try to convince you of the difference between the songs of the troubadours and the sonnets of Petrarch. She doesn't care a rap whether Dante's Beatrice was a real woman or a principle; whether James the First poisoned his son; or what's the margin between a sine and a cosine. She can take a fence in the hunting-field like a bird—! Oh, all right, just hold ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a good listener again, though he could not refrain now and again from making audible chuckles of satisfaction and delight. That was the scheme. Bob always whirled to the right. Very well. He would double the quirt in his hand and, the instant of the whirl, that doubled quirt would rap Bob on the nose. The horse didn't live, after it had once learned the lesson, that would whirl in the face ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... never shows a trace of what he once was. He is excessively given to mystifying his friends, and is never so delighted as when he has persuaded some one into a belief in one of his grave inventions.... There was a rap at the door at last, and enter a gentleman in black small clothes and gaiters, short and very slight in his person, his hair just sprinkled with grey, a beautiful, deep-set, grey eye, aquiline nose, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... rap on the door and the knob turned as he shot the photograph into his pocket and pretended to be reading a volume of Bacchylides—upside down. The intruder was Teed. Litton was too much startled and too throbbing with guilt to ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... consisting of Everard, Lilias, and Dulcie, promptly presented themselves at the study door and tapped for admission. As there was no reply to a second rap, they opened the door and walked into the room. Grandfather was rather deaf, and sometimes, when he had ignored a summons, he would say: "Well, why didn't you come in?" He was generally to be found writing letters at this hour in the morning, but to-day the revolving chair was empty. He had apparently ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... of those who are not aware of the fact, it may be as well to state that the class of people known as spiritualists, hold that when raps are heard, it is the best thing for the hearer to say aloud, "If you are intelligent, will you please to rap three times?" and if this is done, to ask the intelligence to rap three times for yes, once for no, and twice for doubtful. It is obvious that considerable conversation can be carried on by such a code, and where it is inadequate, as, for instance, in obtaining ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... trunk-maker; how, or why, or when, or wherefore, you don't take the trouble to inquire; but there you are, pasting the lining in the lid of a portmanteau. Confound that other apprentice in the back shop, how he is hammering!—rap, rap, rap—what an industrious fellow he must be! you have heard him at work for half an hour past, and he has been hammering incessantly the whole time. Rap, rap, rap, again—he's talking now—what's that he said? Five o'clock! You make ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... from him. "But I am afraid you didn't get the letter, because I put no name on the envelope.'' That's the reason why I didn't get it, but who did get it? It must have been some fellow without any name. "My dear brother, the other day a rap came to my door, and some fellows came in and proposed a quiet game of porker.'' A quiet game of porker, why, they wanted to kill him with a poker. "I consented and got stuck—'' Sam's dead, I've got a dead lunatic for a brother—"for the drinks.'' He got on the other ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor
... good boy and listen?" she exclaimed, playfully emphasizing each word with a light rap ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... handle. There it is boiled to a froth three times on a charcoal brazier, with or without sugar as you prefer. But to desecrate it by the admixture of milk is an unheard of sacrilege. Some kahvehjis replace the pot in the embers with a smart rap in order to settle the grounds. You in the meanwhile smoke. That also takes time, particularly if you "drink" a narguileh, as the Turks say. This is familiar enough in the West to require no great description. It is a big carafe with a metal top for holding tobacco and a long coil of leather tube ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... rap for family," he said, "but at the same time I suppose every man would like his daughter—" Here he stopped abruptly. "I mean to say," he said, "would like to have for his son-in-law a man of good family. I grant that it is a very stupid prejudice, still I suppose it is a general one. ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... assisting Nina—the Jewess kneeling as the Christian sat on the bedside—there came a low rap at the door, and Rebecca was summoned away. "I shall be but a moment," she said, and she ran down to the ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... rap of Arturo Toscanini's baton that cuts the ear like a whiplash brought the rehearsal of the NBC Symphony Orchestra to a sudden, shocking stop. Overtones from chords of Wagner's "Faust Overture," killed in mid-career, vibrated ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... it, my pretty dear! You would rap at the door of the future; I pull the cord, and ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... said Angel, "let's rap on the pane, and then when she looks up, we'll all stick our tongues out at her. ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... prepared for his reception. Dolph, having talked his mother into a state of tranquillity, sought the mansion of his quondam master, and raised the knocker with a faltering hand. Scarcely, however, had it given a dubious rap, when the doctor's head, in a red night-cap, popped out of one window, and the housekeeper's, in a white night-cap, out of another. He was now greeted with a tremendous volley of hard names and hard language, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... the place were rushing through the main office toward the private office, in answer to Mr. Armstrong's summons. The call for them had been so furious that they rushed in pell-mell, without waiting to take time to rap. ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... hush of the temple, through the quiet of her motherly dreams, Hannah heard a voice. Hannah didn't have to say, 'If you are a spirit, rap so many times.' No: she knew the voice. God prepares the listenin' soul His own self. 'They know my voice,' ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... looking over the balcony about the time when Mr. Rickman would be coming home from the shop, and to Mr. Rickman's looking to see if Poppy was looking; and so on, to that wonderful night when he saw her home from the Jubilee Theatre. The stars were out; not that Poppy cared a rap about ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... the little oaken gate, and walking up the path, was about to rap at the door with ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... man had lived whose house had been one of her stations of the under-ground, or unseen railroad. They reached the house, and leaving her party huddled together in the middle of the street, in a pouring rain, Harriet went to the door, and gave the peculiar rap which was her customary signal to her friends. There was not the usual ready response, and she was obliged to repeat the signal several times. At length a window was raised, and the head of a white man appeared, with the gruff question, "Who are you?" and "What do you ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... respectability! What you brought me up on. What you've rammed down my throat all along. What you're thinking of now. You're not thinking of me; you're thinking of yourself, and how respectable you are, and how I've dished you. You don't want me to take my wife back because you care a rap about me and my children. It's because you're afraid. That's what it is, you're afraid. You're afraid of the rotten scandal; you're afraid of what people'll say; you're afraid of not looking respectable any more. You know what my wife's done—you ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... of doing anything else," replied Jack. "It only takes a smart rap with a club on the head to end their sufferings. I'd hate to think of even a fish dying by inches, and flapping all over the boat or the ground, as it gasps its life away. That's one of the things scouts ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... shuffling of feet outside the door, a clinking of glass and crockery, and a jarring sort of blow, as if some one were trying to rap on the panel with the edge of a heavy-laden waiter. Bartley threw the door open and found the landlord there, red and smiling, with the waiter in ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... Why do the beggars rap their chins constantly, with their right hands, when you look at them? Everything is done in pantomime in Naples, and that is the conventional sign for hunger. A man who is quarreling with another, yonder, lays the palm of his ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... "a great thing, as long as one is not sure one is right, but ready to learn, and not desirous to teach. That is the mistake. We are children at school—we ought not to forget that; but many of us want to sit in the master's chair, and rap the desk, and cane ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and both your hands, bewitched fingers and all, home with me. There they may weave and stitch as much as you like; but as man and wife no one shall part us, and we will lead a life such a life! The joys of Paradise shall be no better than a rap on the skull with an ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... amateur surgeon, as he proceeded to re-stow his materials in the medicine chest; "you know that the Fishermen's Mission never asks a rap for its services, but neither does it expect to receive a rap without asking. Come, David, you mustn't flourish it about like that. We all know you're a plucky fellow, but it'll never splice properly if you ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... swore, and swore truly to the end of his life, a slow and distinct rap was given on the crown ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... book and brief note of kind words. One Saturday morning she sat quite alone in her small room; the week had been specially painful, and, wearied in soul, the girl laid her head down on her folded arms, and thought of her home in the far South. A loud rap startled her from this painful reverie, and ere she could utter the stereotyped "come in," Louisa ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... queer thing; I felt pretty sure. But if you're telling the truth, I don't care a rap ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... this rap. 'I have never formed a deep attachment,' continued Knight. 'I never have found a woman worth it. Nor have I been once ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... propulsion &c 284. percussion, concussion, collision, occursion^, clash, encounter, cannon, carambole^, appulse^, shock, crash, bump; impact; elan; charge &c (attack) 716; beating &c (punishment) 972. blow, dint, stroke, knock, tap, rap, slap, smack, pat, dab; fillip; slam, bang; hit, whack, thwack; cuff &c 972; squash, dowse, swap, whap^, punch, thump, pelt, kick, punce^, calcitration^; ruade^; arietation^; cut, thrust, lunge, yerk^; carom, carrom^, clip [Slang], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... furniture was his own. This was his convenient state of mind when, late one night, a step came up the stairs, and a hand passed over his door feeling for his knocker, and then one deep and solemn rap was rapped that might have been a spring in Mr. Testator's easy- chair to shoot him out of it; so promptly was it attended with ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens |
