"Tap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was half-way through, we find that a great number of these ornamental pets were in the hands of working men living in the East End of London, and the competition among them to own the best was very keen. They held miniature dog shows at small taverns, and paraded their dogs on the sanded floor of tap-rooms, their owners sitting around smoking long church-warden pipes. The value of good specimens in those early days appears to have been from P5 to P250, which latter sum is said to have been refused by a comparatively ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... induna again, "you bade us strike him with sticks, and our orders were to obey you. Who would have guessed that the old man's skull was so thin from thinking? You or I would never have felt a tap like that. But they are 'gone beyond,' and we will not defile ourselves by touching them. Dead bones are of no use to anyone, and their ghosts might haunt us. Come, brethren, let us go back to the King and make report. The order was Ibubesi's, and ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... tap came to the door, and Donnel, on hearing it, went out, and in a minute or two returned ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... and the hero has been thrust upon the mean and disgusting clay of the stockbroker; the grocer, horribly wrapped in everlasting marble, has put on ignominy for evermore; while the plebeian, bewildered by the tyranny of life, crouches over his dead wife, for ever afraid lest death tap him too on the shoulder. How the wind whistles among these immortal jests, where the pure stone of the Carrara hills has been fashioned to the ugliness of the middle classes. This is the supreme monument not of Genoa only, but of our time. In that grotesque marble we see our ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... learnt at his bin. His faculties extraordinary is the warming of a pair of cards, and telling out a dozen of counters for post and pair, and no man is more methodical in these businesses. Thus he spends his age till the tap of it is run out, and then a fresh one ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... judgment. The captain of the claque is an important personage, respected by his subordinates, courted by the actors, and skilled in the strategy of his profession, which yields him a handsome income. A tap of his cane on the ground is the signal for applause. The chatouilleur, or tickler, a variety of the genus claqueur, is in vogue chiefly at the smaller theatres. His duty is to laugh, and, if possible, infect his neighbours with his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... Law and Argenson, who each laid the blame upon the other. The Scotchman was the best supported, for his manners were pleasing, and his willingness to oblige infinite. He had, as it were, a finance tap in his hand, and he turned it on for every one who helped him. M. le Duc, Madame la Duchesse, Tesse, Madame de Verue, had drawn many millions through this tap, and drew still. The Abbe Dubois turned it on as he pleased. These were grand ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... bar magnet and showering iron filings upon the paper, I notice a tendency of the filings to arrange themselves in determinate lines. They cannot freely follow this tendency, for they are hampered by the friction against the paper. They are helped by tapping the paper; each tap releasing them for a moment, and enabling them to follow their tendencies. But this is an experiment which can only be seen by myself. To enable you all to see it, I take a pair of small magnets and by a simple optical ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... been lying throughout the night almost without motion, but toward three o'clock he was aware that she had left the bed. A moment, and he heard the tap of her slippers across the polished floor of the chamber, the hail, and the dining-room. She paused, he could tell, at the sideboard; when, presently, she slipped again into bed, she was trembling violently. He turned and put his arms about her. "I am so ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... when they heard a tap at the door. "Come in!" cried Mr. Balch; and, in answer to the request, in ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... 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 ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... is played as follows:—It is agreed by the player and his confederate that one tap on the floor shall represent A, two taps E, three taps I, four taps O, and five taps U, and that the first letter of each remark the confederate makes shall be one of the consonants of the word or sentence ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... hand's turn, but just sit and be resting, and every one was very merry about the place. The two sons were scattering clean sand on the floor, and the fine scent of cooking in the kitchen was wafted to the tap-room and made my very teeth water for a square meal, for the sea had made me hungry. Ronny left us at the inn and made his way homewards, and I would be hearing his cheery cries to the folk he passed, ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... Further there is the psycholegal field where the memory and the perceptions, the suggestibility and the emotions of the witness are to be studied, where the psychological conditions which lead to crime, the means to tap the hidden thoughts of the criminal, the inhibitions for the prevention of crime, the mental effects of punishment and similar causal processes must be determined. There are the psychoscientific problems referring to psychological influences on the observations and ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... gentle tap on the neck: "Let me beat my beloved sauce-box," said he: "is it thus you rally my watchful care over you for your own good? But tell me, truly, Pamela, are you not a little sullen? Look up to me, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... which Brace saw fit to make to this statement elicited a sharp tap upon the knuckles ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... vessel as this"—pointing to the schooner—"that Indiaman to-day had never shown heels. And more, how think ye my store is replenished? Dost think I tap the rock for wine? Does Milo crush the granite and bring forth meat for thy hungry bellies? Are my treasures kept at high tide by snatching the colors from the sunset? Fools!" she cried, and for a moment passion conquered her calm. "In that schooner are wines ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... connections are made in the manner described, is to change them, and by changing them at once much trouble, or even a disastrous explosion, may be avoided. Put the feedpipe in through the front head, at the point marked p in Fig. 1, drill and tap a hole the proper size for the feed pipe, cut a long thread on the end of the pipe, and screw the pipe through the head, letting it project through on the inside far enough to put on a coupling, then screw into the coupling a piece of pipe not less ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... backs)—must not be allowed to bother him. Mrs. Kirkby said, "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 ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... not miss them; but the horses only twitched their tails, as if he were a new kind of fly. The 4.7 crashed hoarsely back, and a black nimbus flung up far above the trees on the mountain. And still the steady tack and tap—from the right among the Devons and Liverpools, from the right centre, where the Leicesters were, from the left centre, among the 60th, and the extreme ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... to him that she must have spent all her spare time picking up phrases about the books and pictures and plays and music of the hour, so as to be ready for possible mention of them at her dinner-parties. She had opinions on tap about everything; opinions just enough "advanced" to be striking and original, and yet not too far "advanced" for good form. Jesse Dyckman's short stories were the sort in which you read how the hero handled his cigarette, and were told that ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... There was a tap at the door. Claude opened it and two of their American friends came in and stayed a few minutes, saying how well the opera was going, how much they liked it, how splendidly it was "put on"—all the proper and usual things which are said by proper and usual persons on such occasions. One ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... continued with such violence during the night that sleep was next to impossible; and long before the first streak of light in the east, we were busy in the numberless preparations for a first action. Orderlies and aides-de-camp were speedily in motion, and at the first tap of the reveille all were on parade. The sun rose brightly, gave one broad blaze along our columns, and after thus cheering us, instantly plunged into a mist, which, except that it was not actually black, obscured our road nearly as much as if ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... the potential fertility of its soil or for other causes, has held out promise of some day becoming populated. Along the railway the population has then flowed. In forcing its way westward each company in its course has sought to tap with its lines the richest strips of territory: all alike endeavoured to obtain a share of the traffic originating from a point where a thriving town was already established or topographical conditions pointed out a promising site. As the American laws impose practically ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... while water there was none. The contents of the two casks swinging behind the waggon were jealously guarded for the travellers' use; but so miserable did the cattle seem that the two boys asked their father to tap one of them for the oxen ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... one of my size, you dog?' returned Quilp. 'Take the key, or I'll brain you with it'—indeed he gave him a smart tap with the handle as he ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... o' use to tap maples less than a foot across. They hain't no sugar in 'em,' said Zack, among his other practical hints. 'The older the tree, the richer the sap. This 'ere sugar bush is as fine as I'd wish to tap: mostly hard maple, an' the right age. Soft maple don't make nothing ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... Failing to tap their bonanza freight-producer on the route up Blue Canyon, the projectors—small fish in the great money-pool—had talked vaguely of future extensions to Salt Lake, to San Francisco, to Puget Sound, or to some other of the far-beyonds, ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... forceful tap on the human jaw are various. One man lies inert, dead of body, blank of mind; a second writhes about and babbles; a third retains a modicum of control over locomotion, but the mind journeys afar ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... very instant that Miss Bowes was installed in her study, a "rap-tap-tap" sounded ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... obviously the puzzle with him, and the position was scarcely less awkward for the rabbit, which several times made a move to end this intolerable suspense. Whereupon Porthos immediately gave it a warning tap with his foot, and again fell to pondering. The strain on me ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... having such a good time; it is absolutely successful. Isn't Borden sweet to bother teaching me that heel tap. Go in and talk to Mrs. Craddock again; ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... both to an adventurer from East Prussia," pursued the farmer: "leaves the girl to be seduced and to go on from bad to worse, till her name's become a tap-room by-word, and she not yet twenty; leaves the country to be overtaxed, and bullied with armaments, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... master in the Altstrasse know that you did your best to carry out his instructions and make a fool of me. Should you be able to drag yourself about presently you have my full permission to hold your mouth under any tap there in the cellar, and we'll never ask for payment of the score." And drinking the wine which remained in his own tankard and also in the Frenchman's he left the cellar, locking the ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... Silver in "Treasure Island" the result is a composite of what we see and what we shudderingly guess: eye and mind are satisfied alike. Even in a mere sketch, such as that of the blind beggar at the opening of the same romance, with the tap-tap of his stick to announce his coming, we get a remarkable example of effect secured by an economy of details; that tap-tapping gets on your nerves, you never forget it. It seems like the memory of a childhood terror ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... Terence, that man Schultz has the key to my state-room in his pocket. Now if you could manage to tap that Dutchman on the head with something hard and heavy, take the key out of his pocket and throw him overheard, you could let me out of this purgatory I'm in. Then I wouldn't be surprised if the sight of me and the absence of Mr. Schultz would put a bit of heart in that little ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... said Joe; "I used to call here regular when I was travellin' in breeches. Where the commercials are gathered together the tap is good," he added, laying a finger against the side of his nose. "And they've a fine brand ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the public as essayist, poet, pianist and composer for twenty years. He had given himself without stint to almost every musical enterprise of Germany, and his sympathy was ever on tap for every needy and aspiring genius. You may give your purse—he who takes it takes trash—but to give your life's blood and then hope for a renewal of life's ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 standing charmed at his little green gate; the cobbler (there is always ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and tapping every rotten tree-stump in search of him while he is sitting comfortably in some large theatre and eyeing the ballet-dancers through his opera glass; but he will be very much surprised when, one fine day, without any preliminary siege-operations we shall tap at his own door and enquire: ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... cage-bird. The best method of catching the goldfinch is to wait until it settles on the lowest branch of a tree, then approach it from behind and gently tap its right wing with your right hand. This causes it immediately to turn its head to see who has touched it; you can then bring up your left hand unnoticed, into which it falls ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... quite imagined that he was in his dormitory at school, and that by an oversight the rest of his chums had left him in bed. The suggestion was strengthened by the sound of gurgling water, as if the bathroom tap were running. Then he became aware that everything was pitching up and down. Once before he had experienced a similar sensation—when he had had a violent headache following ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... a crisp October afternoon, and along Iffley Road the wind was chivvying the yellow leaves. We stood at the window watching the flappers opposite play hockey. One of them had a scarlet tam-o'-shanter and glorious dark hair underneath it.... A quiet tap at the door, gentle but definite, and in came ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... Tige's bark under her window, or Sam's voice, or the kicking and trampling of horses in the barn—sounds that usually broke her slumbers in the morning. But no such noises were forthcoming. Suddenly she heard a light, quick tap, tap, and then a rattling in the corner. It was like no sound but that made by a pebble striking the floor, bounding and rolling across the room. There it was again. Some one was tossing stones in at her window. She slipped out of bed, ran, and leaned on the window-sill and looked out. The moon ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... shirts, and as Madame Boche advised her to take a pailful of lye, she answered, "Oh, no! warm water will do. I'm used to it." She had sorted her laundry with several colored pieces to one side. Then, after filling her tub with four pails of cold water from the tap behind her, she plunged her pile of ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... 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 Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... six months in the year. The other six he's throwed loose like a range horse to rustle or starve. Hardest work in the world—but he don't know it, or money wouldn't hire him to lift his hand. He thinks it's play. Not one out of ten but what prides himself that he can't be browbeat into doing a tap of work. Ask him to cut a stick of firewood and he'll arch his back and laugh at you scornful ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... in Abington dry, and laid the taps on the tables, when I had done: 'sblood, I'll challenge all the true rob-pots in Europe to leap up to the chin in a barrel of beer, and if I cannot drink it down to my foot, ere I leave, and then set the tap in the midst of the house, and then turn a good turn on the toe on it, let me be counted nobody, a pingler,[281]—nay, let me be[282] bound to drink nothing but small-beer seven years after—and I had as ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... in the nest now, and if you tap on the trunk with a stick you will hear them making a noise. This seems to be Woodpecker day, for Nat has seen the little Downy in the woods, you have seen the Flicker on the lawn, and I was telling him about two others; so you are just in time ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... 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 man—just for ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... parts of the continent—the Nile valley and temperate South Africa. But France has also gained a huge extent of country covering almost the whole of North-West Africa. While much of this is merely desert, there are caravan routes which tap the basin of the Niger and conduct its products to Algeria, conquered by France early in the century, and to Tunis, more recently appropriated. The West African provinces of France have, at any rate, this advantage, ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... was a large cement tank, primarily for washing clothes. Its floor was as slippery as ice. One held to the window-frame at the side, and turned the tap. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... between Page and—shall I say Fluette?—in the hall, Burke had in some way secured the ruby, and with diabolical cleverness had pressed it into the bar of soap! A bit of manipulation under the water-tap had removed all traces. Think of the brain that could light upon a hiding-place like that in the stress of such a moment! And I had paused by that very bar of soap, philosophizing and moralizing—it made me sick to think of it. No wonder they were all so interested ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... buckles on their black shoes glinting with each step; through the narrow slits in the blue capuchas, whose conical peaks tapered far above the wearers' heads, their dark eyes burned with mysterious intensity. Two and two they moved, noiseless as bats save for the tap of silver batons, making an avenue of gliding stars, like will-o'-the-wisps, from the black mouth of Las Sierpes across the length ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... I think religious meetings have been improved in the last few years. One of the grandest results of the Fulton street prayer-meeting is the fact that all the devotional services of the country have been revolutionized. The tap of the bell of that historical prayer-meeting has shortened the prayers and exhortations of ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... plates and cups I dried on a greasy rag which I found lying on the sink; and this seemed to me a refinement of luxurious living; for at home, when we did wash plates, we merely held them under the tap till the remains of food ran off, and we never thought of drying them. When I returned to the bedroom Paragot was dressed for the day. His long lean wrists and hands protruded far through the sleeves of an old brown jacket. He wore a grey flannel shirt and an old bit of black ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... thick-set man, humming the air of a vulgar ditty; his hands were thrust into the pockets of a velvet shooting-jacket, ornamented with large ivory buttons, such as are commonly worn by cabmen and other tap-room blackguards. His countenance was by far too dark and sinister-looking to be honest, and, as he occasionally favoured us with a few oblique and professional glances from beneath a white castor, half-pulled over his ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... of all pot houses; snug little bar with red curtains; stout old benevolent female in spectacles; barmaid an houri; and for malt the most touching tap in Oxford, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... why you do not invite me to breakfast," replied Crillon, laughing good-humoredly, and taking his leave quite contentedly, for the tap on the shoulder consoled him ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... completed her task, when there was a tap-tapping upon the stone floor, and down the long aisle, leaning upon his crutch, came Father Varennes. He stopped near the chapel and watched her as she whisked the last chair into place and then paused with her hands upon her hips to make a final ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... assembly, since though they scramble and swing and knock their heads against the glass, they seem to have no purpose—something senseless inspires them. One gets tired of watching them, as they amble round the lantern and blindly tap as if for admittance, one large toad being the most besotted of any and shouldering his way through the rest. Ah, but what's that? A terrifying volley of pistol-shots rings out—cracks sharply; ripples spread— silence laps smooth over sound. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... quick, and the ale he did tap, The maidens did make the chamber full gay; The servants did give me a fuddling cup, And I did carry 't ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... current issues: tap water is not potable; poaching has diminished the country's reputation as one of the last great wildlife ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... exception; Homer is the one poet of authentic epic who had sufficient genius to make unfailingly, nobly beautiful poetry within the strict and hard conditions of purely auricular art. Compare Homer's ambrosial glory with the descent tap-water of Hesiod; compare his continuous burnished gleam of wrought metal with the sparse grains that lie in the sandy diction of all the "authentic" epics of the other nations. And, by all ancient accounts, the other early Greek epics ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... shirt in hand, went Rufus, and tapped at Mrs. Nettley's door. That is, the door of the room where she usually lived, a sort of better class kitchen, which held the place of what in houses of more pretension is called the 'back parlour.' Mrs. Nettley's own hand opened the door at his tap. ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... have you heard, Up on the lonely rath's green mound? Only the plaintive yellow-bird Singing in sultry fields around? Chary, chary, chary, chee-e! Only the grasshopper and the bee? "Tip-tap, rip-rap, Tick-a-tack-too! Scarlet leather sewn together, This will make a shoe. Left, right, pull it tight, Summer days are warm; Underground in winter, Laughing at ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... tap at the door, and try if we can get in as benighted travelers; if that won't do—and I fear it will not—while you remain begging for admittance at the door, and keep him occupied, I will try the door behind, that leads into the garden; ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... buzzing a moment since, was suddenly very quiet; a breath of air crept in through the open front door carrying the noise of a passing motor; she heard faint sounds from upstairs and then a grinding racket in the pipe behind the bookcases-her husband turning of a water- tap—- ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... extending his hand and enforcing his consolation by a love-tap upon Magde's shoulder. In her affliction Magde did not withdraw from this salute, and Mr. Fabian had an opportunity of gazing upon her lovely neck for a full moment, to prolong which he would have given the value of a hundred hares and partridges. But Magde arousing herself ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... are equal to a wholesale grocery. Very well. Come, Basil, we'll tap the maples; let the ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... in the door of the principal saloon, where the stage always stopped, the Challenge Hill constable was seen to approach the colonel, and tap him on the shoulder, upon which all men who had bet that the colonel was dodging somebody claimed the stakes. But those who stood near the ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... December evening had set in when he chanced to be a guest of the Rockville Hotel.... At midnight, when he was about to retire, he was a little surprized however by a tap on his door, followed by the presence of Mistress Peg Moffat, heiress, and landlady of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... anything suspicious," Peter said, "tap the table with your forefinger. Personally, I will admit that I have had my doubts of the Baroness, but on the whole I have come to the conclusion that they were groundless. She is not the sort of woman to take up a vendetta, ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... skirt more than filled the width of the corridor. Sophia watched her habitual heavy mounting gesture as she climbed the two steps that gave variety to the corridor. At the gas-jet she paused, and, putting her hand to the tap, gazed up into ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... eight miles from Roosefelt under the hill to the North leaving the South free for a Black Rising and the East for the Civil War;—there in the seventeenth cottage, with green shutters, below the bridge—with the pine cones occasionally tap-tapping against the pantry window—owing to a strange combination of circumstances Rupert Plinge's elder sister first saw the light of day. Rupert himself being born ten months ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... appeal, however, to any one who fully understands present-day industrial and political conditions. This capitalistic sympathy for the weak and the oppressed of other nations may be regarded by some as the expression of a broader patriotism, but its tap-root is class selfishness—the desire to secure high profits through maintaining active competition among laborers. As a matter of fact, all legislation does, and always must, appeal to the interest of those without whose influence ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... the beautiful angel-dream they have had, when suddenly their attention is aroused by the sight of a little house, made entirely of cake and sugar. Approaching it on tiptoe, they begin to break off little bits, but a voice within calls out "Tip tap, tip tap, who raps at my house?" "The wind, the wind, the heavenly child" they answer continuing to eat and to laugh nothing daunted. But the door opens softly and out glides the witch, who quickly throws a rope around Hansel's throat. Urging the children to enter her house, she tells her ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... practice we find it to be so. The question then arises—What is a rotation of crops? It is the ordering of a succession in such a manner that the crops will tax the soil for mineral aliments in a different manner. A good rotation will include both chemical and mechanical differences, and place tap-roots in a course between surface roots, as, for example, Carrot, Parsnip, and Beet, after Cabbage, Cauliflower, and Broccoli; and light, quick surface crops, such as Spinach, to serve as substitutes for fallows. ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... the Coal-Giant in the Pit in the centre of the earth, the Giant had told him, if he ever needed an earthquake to help him out, to call on him. All Marmaduke was to do was to tap on the earth three times with his right foot, three times with his left, and three times more, standing on his head. Then he was to run away. The Giant had promised to allow five minutes so that Marmaduke and his ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... are making luminous tracks on the water, and a great swell rolls and shines on the outer reef; and here is another door - all these places open from the outside - and you go in, and find photography, tubs of water, negatives steeping, a tap, and a chair and an inkbottle, where my wife is supposed to write; round a little further, a third door, entering which you find a picture upon the easel and a table sticky with paints; a fourth door admits you to a sort of court, where there is a hen sitting - I believe on ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sap and juice in their talk. When they think they think clearly. When they speak they express themselves with an energy and directness which mortify the thin speech of conventional persons. Here is Farfrae, the young Scotchman, in the tap-room of the Three Mariners Inn of Casterbridge, singing of his ain contree with a pathos quite unknown in that part of the world. The worthies who frequent the place are deeply moved. 'Danged if our country ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... Charley, I will, if you will help me to put away my things." Charles ran about, and helped Henry put his play-room in nice order, and then climbing on his back, and holding fast to a ribbon, for a bridle, which Henry held between his teeth, he gave him a little tap on the shoulder, and crying "Get up, old fellow," away they went around the room, Henry galloping so hard, that Charles bounced about almost as much as if he ...
— Aunt Fanny's Story-Book for Little Boys and Girls • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... of, and the second river bed would be also covered o'er, and sae the same game went on and is still progressin'. Sae when the first miners came doon tae this land of Ophir the gold they got by scratchin' the tap of the earth was the latest deposit, and when ye gae doon a few hundred feet ye come on the second river—or rather, I should say, the bed o' the former river-and it is there that the gold is tae be found; and these dried-up rivers we ca' ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... in France that cafe noir is a much more ready and abundant tap than water, and so it was here; notwithstanding which, the bedroom apparatus was most comfortable and complete. The chambermaid was a boy, and under his auspices a sheet of postage-stamps and a lead ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... boy was wakened by a tap-tap, as of someone knocking for admittance, and stealing to his mother's side, he cried, "Aaron Latta has come; hearken to him chapping at ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... was a stir and bustle, a confused sound made up of many, as the never-ending tread of feet, the sound of hoarse voices now faint and far and anon clear and loud, the scrape of a fiddle, snatches of rough song, the ceaseless ring and tap of hammers—a very babel that, telling of life and action, made my gloomy prison the harder to endure. And here (mindful of what is to follow) I do think it well to describe in few words the place wherein ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... the work he had done in the preceding round. Now he would show them another style of fighting! And he did. From the tap of the gong he rushed his opponent about the ring at will. He hit him when and where he pleased. The man was absolutely helpless before him. With left and right hooks Billy rocked the "coming champion's" head from side to side. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... verandah, and passed out through the long, wide-open windows. The verandah was a dozen feet from the ground, and the dark passage below, leading to the gate, was deserted. At the other end sat the watchman with his lantern, presumably asleep. Liu had not heard his drum tap for an hour. A shaft of moonlight penetrated the room, and a light wind blowing in from outside gently stirred the mosquito curtains over the bed. Liu tiptoed to the bed, and with infinite care drew the netting aside and stood surveying his victim. Rivers lay quite still ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... which attract attention during the winter are the cheerful notes of the chickadee, the bold clarion call of the blue jay, and the sharp tap, tap, tap, ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... of helpless and beautiful animals followed, for the next few moments, for Regnar, with a single tap on the nose, killed two Greenland seals; and following his example, Peter and Waring disposed of as many more. Suddenly a loud cry from the latter broke ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... the secretary, not wishing to receive a further reproof from the minister. Pausing at the door, Bernouin gave a discreet tap, which was ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... no liquid mire to add to its substance. The soil is formed completely of vegetable matter, without any admixture of earthy particles. In many even of the softest parts juniper-trees stand firmly fixed by their long tap roots, affording a dark shade, beneath which numerous ferns, reeds, and shrubs, together with a thick carpet of mosses, flourish, protected from the rays of the sun. Here and there also large cedars and ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... bewildered as I was. The same thought had, as I believe, occurred to us both at the same moment. Was it really possible—in spite of his mother's opposition to our marriage—that we were Man and Wife? My aunt Starkweather settled the question by a second tap on ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... three sharp taps upon his music desk, and then—so queer a thing is an audience—those people, brought to their feet in an agony of terror, of fire, panic, and sudden death by a woman's cry, now at that familiar tap, tap, tap, broke here and there into laughter. By sixes and sevens, then by tens and twenties, they sheepishly seated themselves, only turning their heads with pitying looks while the ushers removed ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... the pen and examined the beasts critically, especially as to their eyes and horns; then, approaching the nearest one, he raised his stick and bestowed a smart tap on the under-side of the right horn, following it by a similar tap on the left one, a proceeding that the beast viewed ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... 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 ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... with the gracious dignity of a Prince of the Church, he bowed low to the aunt, gave the nephew's cheek a friendly tap, and marched out ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... upon a knot of men standing just at the entrance of the yard that led to the tap-room. They were none of them exactly drunk; and certainly none were exactly sober. There were some among them whom he never saw at church, and never found at home. He was grieved to see these men in high discussion and dispute, when ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... will remember many instances of his insolence to others: Nor are his manners always free from the taint of vulgar society;—"This is the right fencing grace, my lord," says he to the Chief Justice, with great impropriety of manners, "tap for tap, and so part fair": "Now the lord lighten thee," is the reflection of the Chief Justice, "thou art a very great fool."—Such a character as I have here described, strengthened with that vigour, force, and alacrity ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... must be content with the spider and the rat, to crawl and scratch round your flock bed! I have known prisoners in the Bastille to feed them for companions,—why don't you begin your task? I have known a spider to descend at the tap of a finger, and a rat to come forth when the daily meal was brought, to share it with his fellow prisoner!—How delightful to have vermin for your guests! Aye, and when the feast fails them, they make a meal of their ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... a tap on the head from the butt of a pistol. He cannot have been dead long, and yet every groat is gone. A man of position, too, I should judge from his dress—broadcloth coat by the feel, satin breeches, and silver buckles on his shoes. The rogues must have had some plunder with him. Could ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... through a gap in the curtains and I risked a tap on the glass. My God, how surprised he was to see me standing there! I grinned at him and he let me in, and then——" He broke off and fell forward in his chair with his face in his hands. "This whisky has ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... Mr. Maynard tap at King's door, and call out some gay greeting to him, and then they heard King splashing about, as if making his toilet in a great hurry. All this spurred the girls to dress more quickly, and it was not long before they were tying each other's ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... there by the fervor of their religious zeal and the austerity of their lives. There were other young men there at the time who grew into close affinity with the Wesleys. There was George Whitefield, the son of a Gloucester innkeeper, who at one time was employed as a drawer in his mother's tap-room; and there was James Hervey, afterwards author of the flowery and sentimental "Meditations," that became for a while so famous—a book which Southey describes "as laudable in purpose and vicious in style." These young men, with others, formed a sort ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Tap, tap! came a knock on the door, and in the same instant it flew open, for Mr. Anguish was in a hurry. As he plunged into their presence a pair of heels found ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... a tap at his door, and when he arose and opened it, Mrs. Hicks handed in a pitcher of hot water and inquired "if he had recollected ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... up the river till you strike your level," explained Smith, "and then you tap it and take ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... sounded in the mellow breeze The rhythmic movement of the maidens' toil; Before them on the sand a snowy sheet Lay spread,—the tapa cloth; tutunga trees Yield them their inner bark, and lightly then The maidens tap the fibres till they join, Made firm with scented gums and bright with dyes, To form a fabric that a bride might choose, And this was for a bride. Among the rest One maiden shone; a moon beside her stars, Taka, the fair. Her father was the chief Of this ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... of muscle, and that ever-fresh well-spring of delight to the hard worker, the censorial but not censorious contemplation of equally fine fellows, equally lazy, yet pegging hard, because of nothing in their pockets to tap. Such were the golden periods of standing, or, still better, sitting with his back against a tree, and a cool yard of clay between his gently smiling lips, shaving with his girdle-knife a cake of rich tobacco, and then milling it complacently betwixt his ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... appeared in print. Obviously then Gossip's Corner served Mr. Brown in some other way than as a vehicle for scandal, and the veil was partly lifted on this mysterious business on an afternoon when there had come a sharp tap at the outer door of the office. Poltavo pressed the button on the desk, which released the lock, and presently the tap was repeated on ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... there was a tap on Hale's window just at his bedside, and when he looked out he saw the Red Fox's big rifle, telescope, moccasins and all in the moonlight. The Red Fox had discovered the whereabouts of Rufe Tolliver, and that very night he guided ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... low tap at the door, and he started to his feet—the summons had come; no need to question the messenger who brought it, he heard the first words and ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... "tap-tap" of the cobbler's hammer continued for an hour until dusk, and all the while the soldier lay dressed on his bed. Soon after, a creaking of the stairs told of the surreptitious approach of the unwilling ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... strike on. But we found a milk-lorry travelling our way. So Smith had the entire use of my right ear into which to say, "I told you so," for an hour, while we travelled to the spot on which we win our bread. He had dragged from me the fact that our hot-water tap had also struck. The milk cans clattered. Smith chattered. So did ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... buglers of the Ninth Pennsylvania, and all the information he gave was as reliable as the McClellan story. A halt of two or three hours was made at Bear Wallow, to enable Mr. Ellsworth (popularly known as "Lightning"), the telegraphic operator on Colonel Morgan's staff, to tap the line between Louisville and Nashville, and obtain the necessary information regarding the position of the Federal forces in Kentucky. Connecting his own instrument and wire with the line, Ellsworth began to take off the dispatches. Finding the news come slow he entered into a conversation with ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... have had any knowledge of their presence. And all this is done in a few minutes. It is almost all done by machinery. Do you see that little apparatus yonder in the corridor? That is a hydraulic machine brought into action by the turning of that tap there, which places it in connection with the high-pressure service from the Kenia cascades. (In other towns, where a hydraulic pressure of thirty-five atmospheres is not so easily to be had, electric or atmospheric motors are ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka |
