"Tap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nothing about etiquette, and cared nothing about it; in speech, manner, carriage, and conduct he was the reverse of conventional. He was frank, to the limit; he had opinions on all subjects; they were always on tap and ready for delivery, and he cared not a farthing whether his listener liked them or didn't. Whom he loved he loved, and manifested it; whom he didn't love he hated, and published it from the housetops. In his young days he had been a sailor, and ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... and I sought the shade of the wagon and fell asleep. It was some time after midday when, on sighting the expected conveyance approaching our camp, the cook aroused us. Performing a rather hasty ablution, I met the vehicle, freshened, and with my wits on tap. I nearly dragged the detective from the livery rig, addressing him as "Charley," and we made a rough ado over each other. Several of the other boys came forward and, shaking hands, greeted him with equal familiarity. As two strangers alighted ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... five hundred thousand. It all depends. I'm going to play unearned increment to the limit. People haven't begun to come to California yet. Without a tap of my hand or a turn over, fifteen years from now land that I can buy for ten dollars an acre will be worth fifty, and what I can buy for fifty will ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... "Rap-a-tap" was heard on the door, and Tippy Toes was so polite he went to the door and brought the ...
— Snubby Nose and Tippy Toes • Laura Rountree Smith
... dressing-room, walking heavily and quickly. There he carefully cleaned his teeth, many of which were filled, with tooth powder, and rinsed his mouth with scented elixir. After that he washed his hands with perfumed soap, cleaned his long nails with particular care, then, from a tap fixed to his marble washstand, he let a spray of cold water run over his face and stout neck. Having finished this part of the business, he went into a third room, where a shower bath stood ready for him. Having refreshed his full, white, muscular body, and dried it with a rough ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... his pupils, after vainly striving with reins and whip, knee, heel and spur to execute a movement which the master had compelled his horse to perform while apparently holding himself as rigid as bronze. "I ride here, sir," was the grim answer, with another tap ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... more miserable the longer he dwelt on them. As the shades of evening drew in he felt his head swimming, and the long solitude made him feel afraid as he wondered whether they would leave him there all night. And then he heard a light step approach the door, and a gentle tap. He made no answer, for he thought he knew the step, and he could not summon up voice to speak for a fit of sobbing which it brought on. Then he heard the boy stoop down, and push a ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... for it to do which might not quite as well be done without it. The hydraulic engineer, sitting in his central office, has to wind up the whole machinery from time to time, and to turn now this tap, now that, when he wishes to set this or that particular machine in motion. But, as no one need be told, our chose pensante has nothing to do with the winding up of our digestive, circulatory, or respiratory apparatus; and so far ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... had retired to bed; and her husband, who had, according to his wont, lingered behind to smoke a cigar over his last glass of brandy and water, had just thrown aside the stump, and was winding up his watch, when he heard a low tap at his window. He stood mute and alarmed, for the window opened on a back lane, dark and solitary at night, and, from the heat of the weather, the iron-cased shutter was not yet closed; the sound was repeated, and he heard a faint voice. He glanced at the poker, and then cautiously moved to the ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... from the garage, when he heard the click of her latchkey in the outer door and the silken whisper of her garments passing quickly through the hallway. Then came a knock at the consulting-room door—sharp, quick, imperious, oddly unlike Lynette's soft tap.... At the summons Saxham made two strides across the carpet and opened to her, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the west, both the Pacific fleet and the reserve Atlantic fleet were individually far inferior to the Japanese fleet. The maintenance of a fleet in the Pacific as well as of one in the Atlantic was a fatal luxury. It was superfluous to keep on tap a whole division of ships in our Atlantic harbors merely posing as maritime ornaments before the eyes of Europe or at the most coming in handy for an imposing demonstration against a refractory South-American Republic. All this could have been done just as well with a few cruisers. ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... wholesale commerce oh the provinces was suspended, but the minute and indispensable traffic of daily life was entirely at a stand. The shops were all shut. "The brewers," says a contemporary, "refused to brew, the bakers to bake, the tapsters to tap." Multitudes, thrown entirely out of employment, and wholly dependent upon charity, swarmed in every city. The soldiery, furious for their pay, which Alva had for many months neglected to furnish, grew daily more insolent; the citizens, maddened ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Genevieve's questions were answered, in a way, before she slept; for, after she had gone up to bed that night, there came a ring at the doorbell, followed, a moment later, by a tap ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... hay-scented interior, I practised rapturously and to my heart's content upon my tin whistle. I learned "Money Musk" until I could play it in Old Tom Madison's best style—even to the last nod and final foot-tap. I turned a certain church hymn called "Yield Not to Temptation" into something quite inspiriting, and I played "Marching Through Georgia" until all the "happy hills of hay" were to the fervid ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... move until he, of his own accord, expressed his enthusiasm for the plan and asked for a share in the holdings. You know, perhaps, how he can laugh, too. Well, he laughed that way and confessed that we had just beaten him to it. He said it would tap a gold mine—this 'strip of steel,' as he called it. He even told us that he'd parallel our road with a competitor, jokingly to be sure, if we hadn't tied up the only available and practicable ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... kerchiefs, bracelets, dresses, ribbons; or she would send pies from the table, or a piece of roast meat, or a bottle of wine. She liked feasting the peasant-women, too, on holidays; they would dance, and she would tap with her heels and throw herself ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... completed their toilet when a tap at the door was followed by the entrance of Violet's mother, looking grave and sad, and with traces of tears about ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... at Y.D.'s right; Linder at Transley's right. In 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 ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... to by Mr. Casely had gone home in a state of stupefaction. He did not attempt to frame a thought. His limbs took him along mechanically. He passed one of his aunts as he went to his room, but he did not make any sign. When he had settled down, a tap ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... is nothing I can do, while Mr. Seaforth and I have reached our limits. If Alton opens his eyes, let him see you, and you will give him the draught yonder in an hour from now. It is of vital importance that he should take it. If he does not, tap ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... treason—went immediately to the city and told the governor that the Sangleys had risen, and that they were collecting on the other side of the river. The governor, suspecting the mischief, had him immediately arrested and carefully guarded; and he was afterward executed. Then, without tap of drum, the governor ordered the companies, both of the camp and the city, to be notified, and all to hold their arms in readiness. Very shortly after nightfall, Don Luys Dasmarinas, who was living near the monastery and church of Minondoc, on the other side of the river, came hurriedly ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... opening the mine, profitable operations can be carried on irrespective of the general economic condition of the country. Trikoupis saw how much potential wealth was locked up in these mineral seams. The problem was how to attract the capital necessary to tap it. The nucleus round which have accumulated those immense masses of mobilised capital that are the life-blood of modern European industry and commerce, was originally derived from the surplus profits of agriculture. But a country that finds itself reduced, like Greece in the nineteenth century, ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... see if any one else had arrived. Having climbed the rickety stairs he scrutinized his room resignedly, concluding that it was hopeless to attempt any more inspired decoration than class banners and tiger pictures. There was a tap at ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... silent laugh in his yellow beard. But she would not let him leave off his work; she begged him to take up his hammer again, because she loved him the more when he wielded it with his big arms swollen with muscles. She would go and give Etienne a gentle tap on the cheek, as he hung on to the bellows, and then remain for an ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... in silvery brightness down the gutter of the humble street. A "helper," rubbing down one of Lady Smigsmag's carriage-horses, even paused in his whistle to listen to the strain. Mr. Tressle's man, who had been professionally occupied, ceased his tap-tap upon the coffin which he was getting in readiness. The greengrocer (there is always a greengrocer in those narrow streets, and he goes out in white Berlin gloves as a supernumerary footman) was ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and closed, on the bricks of the pavement was heard only the tap of his stout walking-stick; for he was gouty and wore loose low shoes of the softest calfskin, and these made no noise except ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... the action of acids, resists oxidation by heat, and change of any sort; and which, therefore, I may heat in the atmosphere without any flux. I bend the wire so as to make the ends cross: these I make hot by means of the blowpipe, and then, by giving them a tap with a hammer, I shall make them into one piece. Now that the pieces are united, I shall have great difficulty in pulling them apart, though they are joined only at the point where the two cylindrical surfaces came together. And ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... had given her the original price she asked. At last I returned triumphant with two nice looking little "Merlans," too small to cut their heads off, I decided. I had never coped with fish before, so after holding them for some time under the tap till they seemed clean enough, put them on to fry in butter. I duly took them in on a tray to Wicks, and I'm sure they looked very tasty. "Have you cleaned them?" she asked suspiciously. "Yes, of course I have," I replied. She examined them. "May I ask what you did?" she said. "I held them ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... used to be. I remember at the age of ten doing a thing that I have never dared to do since. I sat in the bath with my back to the taps. Do you suppose the innocent designer of baths meant everybody to sit like that, with a tap looking over each shoulder? Taps are known to be savage brutes, and it is everybody's instinct to sit the other way round, and keep an eye on the danger. If I were as brave now as I was at ten, I could probably win ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... action of the sensory stimulus so as to assist in the production of the reflex. We see excellent examples of cerebral facilitation and inhibition in the case of the knee jerk. This sharp forward kick of the foot and lower leg is aroused by a tap on the tendon running in front {55} of the knee. Cross the knee to be stimulated over the other leg, and tap the tendon just below the knee cap, and the knee jerk appears. So purely reflex is this movement that it cannot ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... the front door letting in the usual Wednesday-evening visitor, but now he came running in immediately with his own invention in the way of a gas-stick,—a piece of broom-handle notched at the end,—and began turning one tap after the other, until the room was reduced ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... the fact that all Western Europe, down to the agricultural labourers, can read and write and does read newspapers and "get ideas." The explanation of economic and social processes that were mysterious to the elect a hundred years ago are now the commonplaces of the tap-room. What happened then darkly, and often unconsciously, must happen in 1916-26 openly and controllably. The current bankruptcy and liquidation and the coming reconstruction of the economic system of Europe will go on in a quite unprecedented amount of light. We shall see and know ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... tap, tap of a crutch sounded as Aunt Emma approached the door. "Come in out of dat rain, chile, or you sho' will have de pneumony," she said. "Come right on in and set here by my fire. Fire feels mighty good today. I had to build it to iron de white folkses clothes." Aunt Emma leaned ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... "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 foremost. ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... marks these notable points: A strange country was England in those far-off days; there was but little difference between the general state of society under William and the general state of society under George II. If we compared the courts of George IV. and William with the company of a low tap-room, we should not flatter the tap-room. Broad-blown coarseness, rank debauchery, reckless prodigality, were seen at their worst in the abode of English monarchs. A decent woman was out of place amid ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... in our own, that wisdom and philosophy have been able to produce this change? Not so. Here is a proof that he retains his proper majesty. The military men and the military boys are wheeling round the corner, and meet the funeral full in the face. Immediately the drum is silent, all but the tap that regulates each simultaneous footfall. The soldiers yield the path to the dusty hearse and unpretending train, and the children quit their ranks and cluster on the sidewalks with timorous and instinctive curiosity. The mourners enter the churchyard at the base ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sat in his study, a very gentle tap was heard at the door. "Come in," said he; but no one came. He opened the door, and there stood before him a man so remarkably thin that he felt seriously troubled at his appearance. He was, however, very well dressed, and looked like a ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... at her side, offering gently to relieve her of hood and cloak, and with a tap on his arm drawing Mr. Van Brunt's ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... longer by the window when it did so, so that he was totally unprepared for the visitor, whose trembling and twice-repeated tap at his door ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... 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
... mother-in-legal matters. She is gentle and unoffending. She prefers minding her own business to assuming a trust control of other people's affairs, but HER mother—well, I don't wish any ill to Mrs. Evarts, but if anybody is ambitious to adopt an orphan lady, with advice on tap at all hours in all matters from winter flannels to the conversion of the Hottentots, I will cheerfully lead him to the goal of his desires, and with alacrity surrender to him all my right, title, and interest ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... side, or, rather, the practical shape, of the Old and the New Testament doctrine of holiness. A man becomes God's when he says, 'Lord, take me and mould me, and fill me and cleanse me, and do with me what Thou wilt.' In that self-surrender, which is the tap-root of all holiness, the first and foremost thing to be offered is that most obstinate of all, the will that is in us. And when we yield our wills in submission both to commandments and providences, both to gifts and to withdrawals, both to gains and to losses, both to joys ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... swallow something that might act as an emetic. I asked Curtis for a little of the lukewarm water. As the contents of the broken barrel were now exhausted, the captain, in order to comply with my request, was about to tap the other barrel, when Owen started suddenly to his knees, and with a ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... from suspecting as of comprehending. In the utter silence of the house they could hear the distant stable-clock strike eleven. The wind was rising, and blew in fitful gusts, rustling the branches of the trees, and causing a loose rose-branch to tap carelessly against the window panes. It sounded like the knock of someone anxious to come in. The candles flickered and guttered in the draught; the wavering light cast strange shadows over the dead man's face. You might have thought that his features ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... 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
... go?" he said; she, asking no questions (marvelous woman!) told him. He said "G'tap!" angrily; Lion backed, and the wheel screeched against the curb. "Oh, g'on!" he said. Lion switched his tail, caught a rein under it, and trotted off. Mr. Houghton leaned over the dashboard, swore softly, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... Hydro-Carbon Oil Works, Southall, W. One more: On a Sunday morning a stoker came in to break the joint of a manhole, empty the boiler and fill her up again with water. After taking the dogs off and securing the cover from falling into the boiler, the stoker gave the cover a tap with the end of the spanner to loosen the joint, but the cover showed no signs of slackening, and the end of a crowbar was requisitioned but without result; and in this case, as in a former one, my opinion ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... for there was a sharp, but faint tap on the panel of the door, as if some one had sharply loosened one ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... his hands and feet, waiting to speak until she was spoken to; and he did not speak to her at all, but signed to her with a tap on the head and a gesture to take her place on the rug behind him. Then at a motion from me Ali Baba's two sons brought forward the presents and the medicine-chest, setting them down ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... Freake were here, Oliver, I think he would remark that there was no market for colonels to-day," said her father to me with a wry smile. He gave the lid of his snuff-box a final tap, opened it, and held it out to me. In the sense of the term known to fashionable London, he was not a good-looking man, but as he stood there, waiting gravely while I took my pinch, he had the irresistible charm of ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... "Yes, I understand," about a hundred and thirty times, and glanced at the clock. She stood with one finger on the electric button for at least five minutes before venturing to ring for her maid, and it was only that lady's discreet tap at one minute before eight that finally got Jack out of the room. He looked in on Frank in the middle of his dressing, found to his relief that an oldish suit of dress-clothes fitted him quite decently, and then went to put on his own. He came down to the drawing-room seven minutes after the gong ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... thickets, mossy rocks, green hollows, high fern, and the tangled hair of hiding river-gods; I meet not pedlers and bagsmen, but stumble upon fawns just dropped, and do not scare their doting mothers; I quench not my noonday thirst with fiery drams from a brazen tap, but, lying over the cold brook, drink to its musical Naiades; I walk no dusty roads of a working-day world, but flit upon the pleasant places of one made up ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Tigress awoke, and as she felt the warm little thing nestling beside her, she chuckled to herself. Then she gave him one tap with her mighty paw; crack! went his neck, and his dancing days were over; the Tigress gobbled him up, skin, bones, and teeth. It was pitch dark, you know, and she could not see that she was eating her own cub. "One ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... I felt a tap on my shoulder, and heard a gentle voice say, "Arise, Sir Backsight Forethought;" but in a trice my dream of bliss was shattered—the gentle voice changed into the well-known croak of my servant. "Time to pack your kit on the wagon, sir. Corfy's ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton
... raised himself on his elbow and watched her as she ran to the tap in the pantry and filled a tumbler to the ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... Tippy. "Let's tap on the window and beckon him to come in and warm himself before ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Mr. Ferguson," the Captain Maid quietly, and at the first tap of the drum the sailors, who had been expecting the order, ran to their stations. As they gained them the little battery on shore opened fire. Although the distance was but a hundred yards, only three of the balls hit the hull, the others ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... week she heard some one tap at the window; it was Fred. He asked her why he had not seen her; she answered that she had ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... replies by tapping her fan on the back of her left hand; one distinct tap for every thousand pounds she possesses. If the number of taps be satisfactory to the gentleman, he must, by a deep inspiration, inflate his lungs so as to cause a visible heaving of his chest, and then, fixing his eyes upon the chandelier, slap his forehead with an expression ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... and fresh, and have your brush-strokes firm and free. Never tap, tap, tap, your paint; make up your mind what the color is, and mix it as you want it. Decide just where the touch is to go, and lay it on frankly and fairly, and leave it. If it isn't right, daubing into it or ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... 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 ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... girl, gently; thou little knowest the dangers that may beset thee. Come up, my good fellows, come to the Spotted Dog; I will tap a barrel on purpose for you; and we will settle the plan of defence for the night. Jacobina, come in, I say, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the reserve strength which Ruth as well as myself seemed to tap. Then of course the situation as a whole was such as to make any woman with imagination buoyant. Ruth had an active part in making a big rosy dream come true. She was now not merely a passive agent. She wasn't economizing merely ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... of this confusion, out of the infinite, as it were, came another sharp tap at the door, and all within sank to utter ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... already colouring the horizon, and the freshness of the breeze of dawn had insinuated itself into the lofty halls of the palace of the Blacquernal, when a gentle tap at the door of the chamber awakened Douban, who, undisturbed from the calm state of his patient, had indulged himself in a brief repose. The door opened, and a figure appeared, disguised in the robes worn by an officer of the palace, and concealed, beneath an artificial ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Rose yesterday, it was understood that she should sometimes come to see me in the evening, when her day's work has not been too hard. She is to come across the downs and tap at the shutters of the room where I sit every ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... wrongs of the religious sects to which they respectively belonged. Richard Lloyd, on the one hand, and the old blacksmith, on the other, would stir the discussion now and again with a sagacious word. It is easy to imagine the ripple of musical Welsh which sometimes drowned the tap-tap of the cobbler's hammer, or was submerged beneath the clang of the anvil. The bright eyes and excited faces of these Celts partly illumined by the oil-lamp or by the sudden glow of the blacksmith's furnace must have provided pictures worth record for themselves, quite apart from the personal ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... admire what is better and more beautiful than themselves. The touchstone of political and social institutions is their ability to supply them with worthy objects of this sentiment, which is the very tap-root of civilization and progress. There would seem to be no readier way of feeding it with the elements of growth and vigor than such an organization of society as will enable men to respect themselves, and so to justify ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... moment, a tap was heard at the door, and opening it, the doctor beheld the person ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... an hour, she rapped long and low at the window. Gradually the sound penetrated to him. When, in despair, she had ceased to tap, she saw him stir, then lift his face blindly. The labouring of his heart hurt him into consciousness. She rapped imperatively at the window. He started awake. Instantly she saw his fists set and his eyes glare. He ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... thorny bed one evening, Henry, who would not quit him, watching faithfully beside him, when a tap—too light to be that of Mrs. Gill or the housemaid—summoned young ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... tap his ear with the tip of his forefinger knowingly. Even when the number of the miners alone rose to over six hundred he seemed to know each of them individually, all the innumerable Joses, Manuels, Ignacios, from the villages primero—segundo—or ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... departure from God. That disobedience may be as virulently active in a trifle as in a deed that men call great. Self-will is the tap root of all sin, however labyrinthine the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Water Clock was supplied by a small pipe, about 80 feet in length, connected with the 3-inch Observatory main (which passes through the Park), at a distance of about 250 feet from any other branch pipe. In spite of this distance I have seen that, on stopping the water-tap in the Battery-Basement under the North-East Turret, the pressure in the gauge of the Water Clock has been instantly increased by more than 40 lbs. per square inch. The consequent derangement of the Water Clock in its now incessant daily use ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... The salvation rises from the heart of God. You cannot touch the stream at its source, but you can tap it away down in its flow. What do you want machinery and pumps for? Put a yard of wooden pipe into the river, and your house will have ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... grave, then she hastily pushed her brown moreen and box into a somewhat more orderly state of disorganization, and went up stairs, with a quick light step that was not heard before her tap at Mr. Linden's door. And then receiving permission she went in, a little rosy this time at venturing into the charmed region when its occupant was there; and came with her step a little lighter, a little slower, up to the side of the couch and held ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... a primary school. The little boys of six came with knapsacks strapped to their backs for their books and dinners, instead of satchels. At the tap of a bell they formed themselves into column and marched like little veterans to the schoolroom door. I visited a school for boys of thirteen or fourteen. Casting my eyes into the yard, I saw the spiked helmet in the shape of the half-military manoeuvres ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... like a white flower; her transparent little waxen face, her delicately chiselled nose and closed pink lips looked so angelic under her sunny curls and the white of her veil. The children approached the choir silently and slowly: 'twas as though they were floating. At the second tap of the key, they knelt; one more ... and their hands were under the lace communion-cloth. From the organ-loft the Magnificat resounded. The priest took the ciborium, gave the benediction and with stately tread descended the altar-steps. In his slender fingers he held the Sacred Host, ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... but a little waif in the god's power. Not Theseus himself could protect her. One tap of the god's wand, and, lo! she, too, would be filled with the frenzy of worship, and, with a wild cry, would join the dancers, his for ever. But the god is not unscrupulous. He would fain win her by gentle and fair means, even by wedlock. That chaplet ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... illumining. 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. Burdett ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Quietly and without 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
... or something great would occur that would meet the emergency. Twice only had the drum been beaten, and assistance came, first in the persons of the great Admiral Blake and then Admiral Nelson. Some one must have given it a sly tap to bring the ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... were on the same side of the veil with us, and they were rather decent; so we chummed up in the end and Ockley took us all away together. They were jolly lucky in getting Ockley. There I go again! Come on, it's your turn. Has the bathroom tap been mended yet?' ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... thoughts: that they were not altogether disagreeable was to be inferred from the smiles which occasionally covered a countenance hard and martial in its usual expression, though there were moments in which all its severe sobriety prevailed. Half an hour might have passed, when a tap at the door was answered by a direction to enter. A middle-aged man, in the dress of an officer, but whose uniform wanted the usual smartness of the profession, made his appearance, and was saluted as ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... There was a gentle tap on the door. Hermione went to it and opened it. Selim stood outside with a pencil note on ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... could not read this new Arthur. His thoughts were a closed book. Superficially, he was all that she could have wished. He still continued to escort her to the Tube, to buy her occasional presents, to tap, when conversing, the pleasantly sentimental vein. But now these things were not enough. Her heart was troubled. Her thoughts frightened her. The little black imp at the back of her mind kept whispering and whispering, till at last she was forced to listen. 'He's tired of you. He doesn't ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... relay of horses and some dinner—for it was then past five o'clock—I found the host, a hale old fellow of five-and-sixty, as he told me, a man of easy and garrulous benevolence, willing to accommodate his guests with any amount of talk, which the slightest tap sufficed to set flowing, on ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... finished between Moronval and Constant, the principal approached his new pupil, and giving him a little friendly tap on the cheek, he said, "Come, come, my young friend, you ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... friendly mind, and a tap now and then upon his document, to give emphasis to his story, recounted the whole of it, and set forth how much was come of it already, and how much it might lead to. To Scargate Hall, and the better part of the property always ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... the afternoon, the bell rang with an important-sounding tinkle. Immediately after, the door shut with an important-sounding slam. The footsteps, clattering across the room to the show case, had an important-sounding tap. And the little girl, who looked inquisitively across the counter at Maida, had ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... without you?" She almost laughed at the idea. He bolted the door, and he ran into the chart-house to tap the barometer. It moved appreciably. It was rising! Ah, if only the wind moderated, he could save the Kansas yet! He glanced at the compass. Still the same course. Not a fraction of a point gained to the north. That was bad. The ship was already ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... or stay out of it!" he advised. "I'll see you at my lawyer's to-morrow at eleven. Come with me a minute, Johnny. I want you to meet a friend of mine who has a big real estate deal on tap, and he may not go back ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... man acquainted with Hindustani to tap any message which might be sent to or from the cafe used by Chunda Lal. I learned that the Grand Duke had taken a stage box at the Montmartre theatre at which the dancer was appearing, and I decided that ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... his door drew him about. It was a light, quick TAP, TAP, TAP—not like the fist of either Bateese or Nepapinas. In another moment the door swung open, and in the flood of sunlight that poured into the cabin ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... filled the air with an odor which seemed to increase the child's hunger. The man and child without a word sank down upon the wooden benches and listened to the conversation of some men who were drinking in the tap-room. The peals of laughter and loud talk certainly were very unlike the staid Puritans of New England. Anon, one of them struck up a cavalier song very popular among that sect at the period, ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... later, a tap sounded on the door. Cummings stood by while I opened it to Barbara, and a slender, veiled woman, taller by half a head in spite of bent shoulders and the droop of weakness which made the girl's supporting arm ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... The foot tap of Mrs. Nesbit became audible. She shook her head with some force and exclaimed: "O Jim, wouldn't I like to have that ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Mr. Northcote happening to be alone, a gentle tap was heard, and the studio door being opened, in walked his Royal Highness. "Mr. Northcote," said he, "I am come to return your sister's umbrella, which she was so good as to lend me yesterday." The painter bowed, received it, and placed it in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... off. And then, when you took hold on 'em, Mistress Blum, with your tender care, night an' day, day an' night, always studyin' their babby naturs so partic'lar and insistin' upon their havin' their grog from one tap—" ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... excitement of her welcome had been subdued into mere gladness, there was a discreet tap at the door, and the respectable maid came in with a tray of sherry-glasses and cake. Mary Leonard and Lucy Eastman looked at each other brimming over with smiles. It was the same kind of cake, and might have been cut off ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... quickly swung about—he was, in fact, groping along the passage floor for a two-quart tin pail partly filled with tap water. The glare had blinded him, for the time being, and he was in reality feeling for a drink. But the Advance reporter had thought the movement meant that his presence was discovered. And the two men ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... these dreams he was awakened by a sound that had slowly and persistently become a part of his mental consciousness. It was a tap, tap, tap at his window. At last he sat up and listened. It was in the gray gloom of dawn. Again the sound was repeated: tap, tap, tap on ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... some duration this time, for his candle-flame was fluttering and flaring, in articulo, in the silver socket. But the fire was still bright and cheery; so he popped the extinguisher on the socket, and almost at the same time there came a tap at his door, and a sort of crescendo "hush-sh-sh!" Once more my uncle was sitting up, scared and perturbed, in his bed. He recollected, however, that he had bolted his door; and such inveterate materialists are we in the midst of our spiritualism, that ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... There was naething intill 't but a pennyworth o' blastin' pooder. It wadna blaw the froth aff o' the tap o' a jaw (billow)." ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... pipe a-smoaking; and though the scene should be a saloon, no matter, it will come soon to be filled with rustics or sailors. Your companion to be sure will not have seen you, at first; that is the rule; upon which you will make up to him, and he will send you a packing. You will tap him on the shoulder with one hand, and he will give a spring from you to the other side of the stage. You will run after him; he, on his part will scamper away from you, and you will take pet at it. When he sees you angry, he will take it into his head to make peace; ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... do with this military person—who served under the lilies at the siege of Gibraltar that ended so badly in the year 1783, and who did a great deal of very pretty fighting later under the tri-colour—I am sure I do not know! Then on we went, to the quick tap of the drums, the Mayor and the glittering firemen preceding us, to the laying of a corner-stone that really was in our line: that of a monument to the memory of the dramatist Emile Augier. Here, naturally, M. Jules Claretie ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... mark the time with the listless apathy of an automaton; the smoke curled from his meerschaum, the drum continued to tap-tap-tap, until it seemed to sound like thunder to my strained ears, for every sense was painfully excited. All count had long been lost, but when several hundred lashes had been given, Van Wandenberg and half his Dutchman were asleep in ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... A low tap at the door was heard. Philip rose and opened it (for they had retired to rest), and Pedro came in. Looking carefully round him, and then shutting the door softly, he put his finger on his lips to enjoin them to silence. He then in a whisper told them what he had overheard. "Contrive, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... occurring men are kept in the ends of all the passages listening for the tap-tap of the ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... last, "it was something more than mere desire to give you a pleasant surprise that led me to your office this afternoon. Have you leisure to listen? Good! Please try one of these cigars. If, while I am talking, you should hear any one moving in the garden, just tap quietly on the table. Tell me, have you, before to-day, ever heard of the Corporation ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... quarrel existed between Snarley and the spiritualists with whom he had once been associated. They had cast him forth from among them as a smoking brand; and Snarley on his part never lost a chance of denouncing them as liars and rogues. One of the most violent scenes ever witnessed in the tap-room of the Nag's Head had been perpetrated by Snarley on a certain occasion when Shoemaker Hankin was defending the thesis that all forms of religion might now be considered as done for, "except spiritualism." Even Hankin, who reverenced no thing in heaven or earth, had protested against ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... that niche," replied Nick. "When he steps inside the very nature of the place will bring his back toward me. I will tap him on the back of the head with my fist and knock him into your arms. You are to grab him with your arms around him, and hold him so that he cannot get at a weapon, and until I can get my fingers on him. That is all. Now, ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... his own accord, without force, must be accomplished by some means of conveying our ideas to his mind. I say to my horse "go 'long" and he goes; "ho!" and he stops: because these two words, of which he has learned the meaning by the tap of the whip, and the pull of the rein that first accompanied them, convey the two ideas to his mind ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid |
