"Tap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... This time, not expecting a rich patient, he would not open it. After a moment a slight tap was heard on the panel. He rose quickly and ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... some years ago when I was one of them. Sometimes when we were visiting and asked to communicate to a "brother chip," anything that it was not advisable for the persons around us to know, a slight tap-tapping on the table or chair would draw the attention of the party we asked to talk to, and then by his watching the forefinger of the writer, if across the room, or if near enough, by placing the hand of the writer carelessly on the shoulder of the party we desired to ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... A discreet tap was heard at the door. It was Nancy Rouse. On being invited to enter, she came in and said, "Oh, Miss Helen, I've got a penitent outside, which he done it for love of me, and now he'll make a clean breast, and the fault was partly mine. Come in, ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... (prison-like sounds) there was a great rattling of chains as the mules were harried with stimulant imprecations to their places by the waggon-tongues. A little vicious "dummy" engine, with a train of flat cars in tow, stewed and fumed on the plantation tap of the narrow-gauge railroad, and a toiling, hurrying, hallooing stream of workers were dimly seen in the half darkness loading the train with the weekly output of sugar. Here was a poem; an epic—nay, a tragedy—with work, the curse of the ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... ground by way of a grand finale. He made a great fuss about it; said it cost seven shillings. There was a little difficulty in getting it alight. At last it went off; but after a couple of slow revolutions it stopped. I had my stick with me, so I gave it a tap to send it round, and, unfortunately, it fell off the stake on to the grass. Anybody would have thought I had set the house on fire from the way in which they stormed at me. I will never join in any more firework parties. It is a ridiculous waste of ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... He'll tumble off his saddle presently. Is that a cook of London, red flames take him! He knoweth the agreement—wake him, wake him: We'll have his tale, to keep him from his nap, Although the drink turn out not worth the tap. Awake, thou cook," quoth he; "God say thee nay; What aileth thee to sleep thus in the day? Hast thou had fleas all night? or art thou drunk? Or didst thou sup with my good lord the monk, And hast a jolly ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... said it,—"the only day in my recollection." But all the time that she said it her cheeks got pinker and pinker. It was when she looked in the glass and saw how mistaken her positiveness looked that her cheeks got so pink. Tap—Tap—Tap her foot stamped on the rug. "Did—Did you know who it was going to be——when you brought the dog?" she said. "That is,—did you know when you first saw the advertisement in the paper." Her white forehead got all black and frowny. "How in ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... 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 the pane ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... them a little when there was no one to see her relaxing mood? Poor Pam! Theo sighed again, and was just deciding to go to sleep, if possible, when she heard a door open, which was surely Pamela's, and feet crossing the narrow corridor, which were surely Pamela's own, and then a sharp yet soft tap on the door, and a voice which could have been no other than ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to the window and tapped upon the pane. He did that often when his mind was troubled. To tap upon the pane eased his heartache. It was ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... almost completed dressing when there came a tap at the door. Finishing what he was doing in front of the mirror, he answered, ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... and fury of the issue and division of the goods, the sombre figures in the background have scarcely moved. Not one has ventured to approach the center where the bucks are at work, measuring off the cloth, etc.; they are waiting for the tap of the bell, when they will receive just what the head man chooses to give them. There is no system of exchange there; it is take what you get or get nothing. In a great many cases they do not use the goods at all, but openly offer ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... up at the Hotel of the Golden Lion, and was in my own room arranging plans with the brave Courier, when there came a modest little tap at the door, which opened on an outer gallery surrounding a court-yard; and an intensely shabby little man looked in, to inquire if the gentleman would have a Cicerone to show the town. His face ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... went, he groaned and shuddered. For about 2500 of Jack's steps we only passed one house—that where the lantern was; and about 1500 of these are in the darkness of the pit. But now the moon is on tap again, and the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in response to his order, assisted by the sharp tap of a boot accompanying it, tripped over a gun barrel one of the guard facetiously inserted between my legs, and went down once more, uttering such howl of terror as could be only partially drowned beneath ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... slowly along the lightly ballasted line—only laid yesterday, and over which no engine has yet travelled—two men running on in front to tap the rails and joints, and to see that all was safe. About three-quarters of a mile of rail is laid each day. It is being built on what is called the land-grant system; that is to say, for every mile completed ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... "A low tap sounded at the door, and then it slowly opened; and to the astonished gaze of the two sitting by the hearth, there appeared the figure of a little child. A snow-white robe draped his slender limbs. In one hand he bore a lighted taper, and in the other a most beautiful wreath of white ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... know that's the way they make maple sugar? In the spring, about April, when the sap begins to run up into the maple-trees, and often while the snow is still on the ground, they what they call tap the tree; they drive a sort of little spout right into the tree and soon the sap begins to ooze out and drop into buckets that are placed to catch it. Afterwards they boil it down in huge kettles made for ...
— Tattine • Ruth Ogden
... would have been vastly disappointed if I 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 ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... her, I told her all I'd ever done that could be told, and all I wanted to do; including a resolve to carry her off to some desert place and set up a Kingdom of Two. I don't know how she did it. I was like a tap, and poured myself out; and when it was all over, I thought she was the best talker I'd ever heard. But yet she'd done nothing except look at me and listen, and put in a question here and there, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... quite ready to speak, a tap at the door told us that Durbin had arrived with Mr. Jeffrey. When they had been admitted and the latter saw Miss Tuttle standing there, he, too, seemed to realize that a turn had come in their affairs, and that courage rather than endurance was the ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... a step and a low tap at the door; then, before Mrs. Lawrence could answer, Fred marched in, kissed his mother dutifully, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... forth from its profoundest bed, The slow-repeated tap, with frowning brows. The brandished pinch, the fingers widely spread, The arm tossed round, returning ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... and the 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 ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... and again tried to lead them upwards, finally betaking herself to the repetition of hymns, which put them to sleep. She had spent some time in sitting between them in the summer darkness, when there was a low tap, and opening the door, she saw her father. Indicating that they slept, she followed him out, and a whispered conference took place as he stood below her on the stairs, their ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the bowl from side to side, and there was an answering whisper from its interior as if the contents slid loosely there. Then one of her companions reached forward and gave a quick tap to the bottom of that container, spilling out upon the table a shower of brightly colored slivers each an ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... Advocate in the struggle to keep woman from canonizing herself by main force I want to be as fair as I can, always reserving the privilege where things are about even, of giving my own side a shade the better of it. The main tap-root reason why women confide over-much and too much in other women is because leading more circumscribed lives than men commonly lead they are driven back upon themselves and into themselves and their sisters for ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... would have dinner, and then Mr Holroyd would begin again. He was a very clever person with regard to the face and the hands and the feet. Georgie had been conscious of walking a little lamely lately; he had been even more conscious of the need of hot towels on his face and the "tap-tap" of Mr Holroyd's fingers, and the stretchings of Mr Holroyd's thumb across rather slack surfaces of cheek and chin. In the interval between the hair and the face, Mr Holroyd should have a good supper downstairs with Foljambe and the cook. And tomorrow ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... came across the water with a sharp ring like the tap of a hammer on steel. "You cannot use your hands, I suppose? That saves you, but if you say any such words again in regard to England or Englishmen, I shall ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... to think I have a story on tap all the time," he said with an indulgent smile, "but the fact is I've told you about all the exciting things that ever happened to me, or that I ever heard of. My memory is squeezed as ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... of stopping up in the kitchen by himself, and at last he went down into the cellar too, to see what they were after; and there they three sat a-crying side by side, and the beer running all over the floor. And he ran straight and turned the tap. Then he said: "Whatever are you three doing, sitting there crying, and letting the beer run all over ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... Bartas, and other scholarly writers of the seventeenth century, no one could doubt of its identity with 'phantasy,' as no Greek scholar could miss its relation with phantasia. Spell 'analyse' as I have sometimes seen it, and as phonetically it ought to be, 'annalize,' and the tap-root of the word is cut. How many readers will recognize in it then the image of dissolving and resolving aught into its elements, and use it with a more or less conscious reference to this? It may be urged that ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... next morning the cannon began to boom from the Castle of St. Angelo. Gabriel Zimandy sprang out of bed and dressed himself quickly. His first care was to tap at Madam Dormandy's door and inquire for her health. The patient answered in a pitiful voice that the guns were fairly splitting her poor head, and that she did not expect to live the day through. This reply seemed to be quite to the advocate's liking: ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... again, he started, seeing something creeping swiftly up a tree-trunk. It was a little bird. And the bird was whistling overhead. Tap-tap-tap——it was the small, quick bird rapping the tree-trunk with its beak, as if its head were a little round hammer. He watched it curiously. It shifted sharply, in its creeping fashion. Then, like ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... Just then a sharp tap at the door was answered by Lady Anastasia, who went quickly from beneath the curtain hung across it (in consideration, no doubt, of the privacy my illness enjoined), but not before I had caught once, and this time clearly, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... was 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 ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... still standing. A few have even been taverns since first built; others have served many other uses. A well-preserved old house, built in 1690 in Sudbury, Massachusetts, was originally known as the Red Horse Tavern, but has acquired greater fame as the Wayside Inn of Longfellow's Tales. Its tap-room with raftered ceiling and cage-like bar with swinging gate is a picturesque room, and is one of the few old tap-rooms left unaltered ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... those who regain equanimity in exact proportion as an opponent loses it, chuckled grimly; was still chuckling when an interrupting tap came at the locked door. Blount got up and turned the latch to admit an office-boy wearing the uniform of the railroad headquarters. "Note for Mr. McVickar," said the messenger; and at a gesture from the senator he crossed the ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... 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 ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... American-born populace, the peaceablest and most good-natured race in the world, and the most personally independent and intelligent, and the least fitted to submit to the irksomeness and exasperation of regimental discipline, sprang, at the first tap of the drum, to arms—not for gain, nor even glory, nor to repel invasion—but for an emblem, a mere abstraction—for the life, the safety of the flag. We have seen the unequal'd docility and obedience of these soldiers. We have seen them tried ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... and stood for several minutes outside the door of the east gable before he summoned courage to tap on it with his fingers and then open the ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... us. The Camp itself is less wonderful than the mines upon the western side of it. Here we have not only numerous pits from ten to seventy feet in diameter and from five to seven feet deep, but really vast excavations leading to galleries which tap a belt or band of flints. That these mines were worked by neolithic man it is impossible to doubt, but he may not have discovered or first used them. They may be older than he, though all record even upon that marvellous hill- side, has been lost of those who first exploited ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... cur, and at the first tap of the bell they always, with a united yelp, rushed for the spot, where they formed a ring round the post, each seated on his haunches and brushing the ground with his tail, with a rapid motion, from side to side, nose in the air, eyes fixed upon the bell, and throat sending ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... door opened noiselessly on its hinges, and was closed without the slightest jar. Directly Will heard a soft tap at the window and pressed ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... "But she's the dullest soul on earth, and her husband spends all his spare time in trying to think up ways of doing me dirt in business. Oh, by the way, did you get the water tap in the blue room fixed? It's dripping all ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... me. She had been studying my face quietly and eagerly, and had gradually come to see what was passing in my mind. She whispered that the chiefs, far from desiring me to kill the girl for a cannibal feast, were offering her to me as a wife, and that I was merely expected to tap her on the head with the stick, in token of her subjection to her new spouse! In short, this blow on the head was the legal marriage ceremony tout simple. I maintained my dignity as far as possible, and proceeded to carry out my part of the ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... flowers are all at first encased in a pod. Essnousee tells me, Abd-El-Geleel destroyed the palms of Sockna by simply cutting off the tops or heads of the palms, in the same way as people do when they tap palms for leghma. Some of them grow again, others do not, it being all a matter of chance. The date-palm is most abundantly cultivated on the Tripoline Coast, supplying the people with a full third ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... shoulders and her culture; it seemed 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 the heroine was clad in "dimity en princesse". ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... blinding beads came into my eyes at that story, but they were soon dashed away by Martin who saw them coming and broke into the vernacular. I broke into it, too, (hardly knowing that the well of my native speech was still there until I began to tap it), and we talked of Tommy the Mate and his "starboard eye," called each other "bogh mulish," said things were "middling," spoke of the "threes" (trees) and the "tunder" (thunder), and remembered that "our Big Woman was a wicked devil ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... started to drill another hole, but he was still so full of giggles that he could not get his mouth closed, and every time just as he went to tap the tree with his bill he ...
— Exciting Adventures of Mister Robert Robin • Ben Field
... own sitting-room, as was her custom, leaving her father and his curate together. Presently she heard the study-door open, and expected to hear the succeeding clash of the front door. Instead, came a tap; and, "like lightning, it flashed upon me what was coming. He entered. He stood before me. What his words were you can imagine; his manner you can hardly realise, nor can I forget it. He made me, for the first time, feel what it costs a man to declare affection when he doubts ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... to sleep and Sam tried his best to study. But it was hard work and the youngest Rover made slow progress. An hour passed and then there came a soft tap on the door. Songbird ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... Wendover's cigarette, and sipping Mr. Wendover's Apollinaris slightly coloured with brandy—a very modest form of entertainment surely, and yet the cigarettes and the superfine cognac, which were always on tap in Elm Court, made no small appearance in the accounts of tobacconist and wine merchant. 'You would be sorry if anything were to happen to him, no doubt; just as I shall be sorry when the governor bursts up—poor old fellow! But I know I want his ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... about two spoonfuls to ten Gallons. Hang it in a bag with a little sliced Ginger, but almost a Porengerfull of Cloves. Cover the bung lightly, till it have done working; then stop it up close. You may tap and draw it a year or two after. It ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... the big best room on the ground floor of Donna Marcella's house, Porter slept. A man's step outside and the fingering of a shutter-latch disturbed him not at all; even when there came a nervous tap on the window frame, Porter slept on. A moment of silence followed, and then a voice breathed stridently, "Signore!" Porter stirred in his sleep. A man's head and shoulders appeared over the sill of the open window. "Signore! ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... table-beer cask, who appeared to be some authorized medical attendant upon the poor, was far too well accustomed, evidently, to little differences of opinion between man and wife, to interpose any remark in this instance. He sat softly whistling, and turning little drops of beer out of the tap upon the ground, until there was a perfect calm: when he raised his head and said to Mrs. ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... apartment had only three rooms, but it possessed that luxury of luxuries, a bath. It was not a bath in the usual sense of water on tap, and shining nickel plate, but a bath for all that, where with premeditation and forethought one might bathe. The room had once been a fuel and store room, but now boasted a tin tub and a stove with a reservoir on top, where water might be heated ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... wooden boxes, in which each pupil kept his white linen blouse, his compasses, and colours. In one corner, the stove, neglected since the previous winter, stood rusting by the side of a pile of coke that had not been swept away; while at the other end a large iron cistern with a tap was suspended between two towels. And amidst the bare untidiness of this shed, the eye was especially attracted by the walls which, above, displayed a litter of plaster casts ranged in haphazard fashion on ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... the ordinary broad form, and a deep glossy green, with splashes and dots of deep red towards the base. He knew of no other leaves quite like them. The plant was placed on a low bench near the thermometer, and close by was a simple arrangement by which a tap dripped on the hot-water pipes and kept the air steamy. And he spent his afternoons now with some regularity meditating on the approaching flowering of this ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Faust edged close enough to tap the other man's ribs with his thumb, "were you born yesterday? I say," continued the Cherub, for Langdon had turned away somewhat impatiently, "what's the good av givin' me that gup; you didn't stand for it yourself—not on yer life. Th' old man's pretty slick; buys a bad horse to help ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... A little tap at the window, as though some missile had struck it, followed by a plentiful, falling sound, as light, though, as if a shower of sand were being sprinkled from a window overhead; then the fall spread, took on an order, a rhythm, became liquid, loud, drumming, musical, innumerable, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... 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 employed.) Here the steel shaft in ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... with a 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 ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... demolished by shell fire that it seemed nothing could now inhabit it. But the truth was soon apparent. The machine gun nest was in the cellar, and from there, well hidden, had been doing terrible execution on the allied forces. Pausing only to make sure of his surmise, Tom began to tap out on his wireless key the location of the hidden ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... returned from their trip over the Torso and Northern in the best of spirits. Lane felt sure that the purchase had been decided upon by this inner coterie of the A. and P., of which the mouthpiece, Senator Thomas, had emitted prophetic phrases,—"valuable possibilities undeveloped," "would tap new fields,—good feeder," etc., etc. Lane thought pleasantly of the twenty equipment bonds in his safe, which would be redeemed by the Atlantic and Pacific at par and accrued interest, and he resolved to secure another block, if they were to be had, before the sale was officially confirmed ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... her daughter in the bitter service. But past forty years.... 'Tis useless to think of it. Perhaps some expedient will come to mind." She brought out the arm rest and placed it near his side. Then she sat apart watching him. From time to time was heard the tap of her pipe as she knocked out the ashes. At last, overcome by sleep and seeing no sign of movement on the husband's part, she went off to bed, expecting that ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... way hither and thither, cast at random now, for the thick weather made shooting almost impossible. There came, too, through that embrasure, or through the gateway of the fort, every now and again, the rattle of rifles, the sharp tap-tap of machine-guns, and the snap and bark of the soixante-quinze as the French sent their curtain-fire out beyond the plateau. There was fighting still to the left and to the right of the fort, in the neighbourhood of Thiaumont farm and the village of Douaumont, while to the right, ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... tap water is not potable; poaching has diminished its reputation as one of the last great ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... one had evidently read and left open. Perhaps what brought the old times back again more than anything else was the fact that as I came out of the larder the sleeve of my wind clothes caught the tap of the copper and turned it on. When I heard the drip of the water I turned instinctively and turned the tap off, almost expecting to hear Bobs' raucous voice cursing me for my clumsiness. Perhaps what strikes one more forcibly than anything else is the fact that ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... cover, with unexpected propriety, a much wider or more momentous experience. The force of experience in any moment—if we abstract from represented values—is emotional; so that for sublime poetry what is required is to tap some reservoir of feeling. If a phrase opens the flood-gates of emotion, it has made itself most deeply significant. Its discursive range and clearness may not be remarkable; its emotional power will quite suffice. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... slept I do not know, but it was a long time, for I was very tired. It was a long time since I had slept in a soft clean bed, and I did not fail to appreciate the one Tamsin had prepared. I awoke at length, however, and heard a tap ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... had risen and was resting in her chair, feeling weaker and yet much stronger than before; waiting till she could dare show her face to Miss Collins; when a little low tap was heard at the front door. Company? But Diana had noticed no step and heard no wheels. However, there was no escape for her if it were company. She waited, and the tap was repeated. I don't know what about it this second time sent a thrill all down Diana's nerves. ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... knots in the handkerchief, and stowed away in the largest of his pockets. He walked with conscious pride, knowing that he was a person of "property," and entering the pottery shop at the corner of the Piazza, began to cunningly tap the scaldinos, and peer into them; while Tutti stood by, lost in admiration at his ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... should have had the better, but that the Captain, joining suddenly in the general and indecent hilarity, which was doubled when I fell down, stopped and said, 'Well, Jims, I won't fight on my marriage-day. Go into the tap, Jims, and order a glass of brandy-and-water at my expense—and mind I don't see your face to-morrow morning, or I'll make it more ugly ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in all its Parts. When my Female Regiment is drawn up in Array, with every one her Weapon in her Hand, upon my giving the Word to handle their Fans, each of them shakes her Fan at me with a Smile, then gives her Right-hand Woman a Tap upon the Shoulder, then presses her Lips with the Extremity of her Fan, then lets her Arms fall in an easy Motion, and stands in a Readiness to receive the next Word of Command. All this is done with a close Fan, and is generally learned in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... scene is a listening-post. Two men are stretched on their stomachs in the brown grass. A little hole, just enough to conceal their bodies, has been dug there. The upturned roots of an old tree that a bursting shell had desecrated was just in front. "Tap! Tap! Tap!" came the sounds of Boches at work somewhere near and underground. It is needless to say that this was a Silhouette of Silence, and that a certain Y. M. C. A. secretary was glad when it was all over and he got ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... assurance of a welcome to your deliberative councils in our country's centennial year, to reannounce our oft-repeated protest against bondage to tyrant law. Most holy cause! Woman's equality, why so long denied?... I was ready at the first tap of the drum that sounded from that hub of our country, Seneca Falls, in 1848, calling for an assembly of men and women to set forth and remonstrate against the legal usurpation of our rights.... I cannot think of anything that would give me as much pleasure ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... as he could see. An occasional cry told that the arrows were doing execution upon the unseen assailants behind the mantlets, and soon the blows of cross-bow bolts against the wall and the sharp tap of arrows told that the enemy had also betaken themselves to their arms. A number of giant torches had been prepared, consisting of sheafs of straw soaked with pitch, and one of these was now lighted and elevated on ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... her head, while she waved in her hand, like a sword, a long-handled tin dipper. Such a picturesque medley of fun, war, and music I believe no white regiment in the service could have shown; and yet there was no straggling, and a single tap of the drum would at any moment bring order out of this seeming chaos. So we marched our seven miles out upon the smooth and shaded road,—beneath jasmine clusters, and great pine-cones dropping, and great bunches of misletoe still in bloom among the ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... leader he had won his party. He has no such tower of strength now. And in the doing of this thing, if he means to do it, he must encounter the assured conviction of every man on his own side, both in the upper and lower House. When he told them that he would tap a Conservative element by reducing the suffrage they did not know whether to believe him or not. There might be something in it. It might be that they would thus resume a class of suffrage existing in former days, but which had fallen into abeyance, because not properly protected. ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... just finished setting his last copy and was engaged in piling the copy-books neatly, one on top of another, when there came a soft tap at the door. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... mother that we should do our best to be back the next day. I was still so sleepy and tired that Mary persuaded me to lie down on the bed, in preparation for the possibility of a night's journey. I was nearly asleep when a tap came to the door, and a servant informed Mary that a gentleman was waiting to speak ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... remained on guard. At a few minutes after nine the maid, Edith Baxter, carried down to the stables his supper, which consisted of a dish of curried mutton. She took no liquid, as there was a water-tap in the stables, and it was the rule that the lad on duty should drink nothing else. The maid carried a lantern with her, as it was very dark and the path ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... until I began to pen these memoirs I had really forgotten that I ever had. Things come my way now almost of themselves. All I have to do is to be on hand in my office—cheerful, hospitable, with a good story or so always on tap. My junior force does the law work. Yet I challenge anybody to point out anything dishonorable in those tactics by which I first got my feet on the lower rungs of ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... maid had left her, there came a gentle tap at her door, and an instant after the door opened. The tap had been a warning, not a request; it had in a measure prepared Stephen, who was not surprised to see her Aunt in dressing-gown, though it was many a long day since she had visited her niece's ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... her looking, first this way and then that, in her efforts to see the stage, getting angrier and more angry as she was thwarted in her desire, and then, in her final indignation, leaning forward to tap on his shoulder and beg him to keep his head apart from Maggie's so that she might conveniently see the stage. His sense of violated privacy became stronger. His love for Maggie, for he accepted it now as a settled fact, was not a thing for prying eyes to witness: it was a secret, intimate thing ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... constant consoler of the Japanese in all his troubles. Why he smokes such diminutive pipes I have never been able to understand. They only hold sufficient tobacco for a few whiffs, and when staying in a Japanese house the constant tap, tap, tap of the owner's pipe as he empties the ashes out prior to refilling it ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... good, Charley," he said, "and one of those savages may in a moment give you a tap with his club, and kill you, as an idle boy ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... shoe on a last and began to tap with his hammer. "She did fight him," he said. "She went out to him twirling her moustaches. He lay down on his back. She lay down on her side. They kept grinning and sparring at each other like that for half an hour. At last ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... cried, and, suddenly stooping down and examining the tap of the air apparatus, he saw that it had been only half turned off. Consequently the air was gradually getting more and more impregnated with this powerful gas, colorless, odorless, tasteless, infinitely precious, but, ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... substitutes are chicory and cereals. Chicory, succory, Cichorium Intybus, is a perennial plant, growing to a height of about three feet, bearing blue flowers, having a long tap root, and possessing a foliage which is sometimes used as cattle food. The plant is cultivated generally for the sake of its root, which is cut into slices, kiln-dried, and then roasted in the same manner as coffee, usually with the addition of a small proportion of some kind ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... was, however, a substantial sound, a gentle tap at his door: he answered it, and ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... spring, it must be through that pile. While the vault retained its abnormal elevation, Arthur believed that there was still water at an immense and incalculable pressure in the pipe. He dared not attempt to tap the pipe until the ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... these men will pour in every day this winter. They will stand in a long queue filing by the counter for more than two hours. Here are large urns, each holding ten gallons of tea. Cup after cup is rapidly pushed across the counter without turning off the tap; as 160 men are served in ten minutes, and there is no stop save to place a fresh urn full of tea. As fast as the workers can move, not only hot tea and coffee, but bread and biscuits, cake and chocolate, tobacco, matches, candles, ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... short indeed, but not the less significant. Not long after they had all separated, just so long as to allow of the house being quiet, Adolphe, still sitting in his room, meditating on what the day had done for him, heard a low tap at his door. "Come in," he said, as men always do say; and Marie opening the door, stood just within the verge of his chamber. She had on her countenance neither the soft look of entreating love which she had worn ...
— La Mere Bauche from Tales of All Countries • Anthony Trollope
... the landlord, talking about his bad prospects and his long run of ill-luck, and diverging from these topics to the subjects of horse-flesh and racing. Nothing was said either by himself, his host, or the few laborers who strayed into the tap-room, which could, in the slightest degree, excite the very small and very dull imaginative faculty ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... Mr. Fabian, 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
... had attempted cure by the method of free association, attempting to get the hysteric to pour out her mental life. Not succeeding, and his interest aroused by her continual references to her dreams, he discovered that by means of those dreams he could tap the subconscious and unconscious in regions hitherto inaccessible. For in the dreams, ideas, persons, and experiences appeared that never came upon the stage of the conscious. From that finding he developed the concept of repression, i.e., the relegation of a painful experience ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... Its solemn murmur, even in calm, always reaches the place, and when in storm, its spray. As one watches it from the lawn among the fuchsias, one scarcely knows which mood becomes it best. The fuchsias grow against our walls and tap at our window-panes in the morning as though they were roses; they even make their homes in the rocks, like the conies. The island is a very garden of fuchsias, tall as trees; and there are no other trees. The 'Welcome' itself is a sort of farmhouse without the farm; there is a goat or two ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... ceased the echo of the shrieking engine, it seemed to me, when I heard the tap of the gong at the entrance. I started at once for Page's room where Zura and ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... for cacao. An open sandy or loamy alluvial soil is considered ideal. The physical condition of the soil is equally important: heavy clays or water-logged soils are bad. The depth of soil required depends on its nature. A stiff soil discourages the growth of the "tap" root, which in good porous soils is generally ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... round orifice in the middle of one side, and the side opposite covered with stout cloth stretched tight over a framework. A saucer containing strong ammonia water, and another containing strong hydrochloric acid, will cause dense fumes in the box, and a tap with the hand upon the cloth back will force out a ring from the orifice. These may be made to follow and strike each other, rebounding and vibrating, apparently attracting each other and being attracted ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... in a beerhouse tap Awaking from a gin-born nap, With pipe and sloven dress; Amusing chums, who fooled his bent, With muddy, maudlin sentiment, And ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... would compare with this glorious daring? He sat glowing in dreams of such delicious, roseate delight, that he took no heed of time, and was startled when he heard Dick and Jack bidding each other good-night. Then in a few minutes be heard Jack's door open and a tap at Dick's door. ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... A low tap at the door again betokened the presence of Lettice, who came to announce a warm friend of the Doctor's, one Master Eccleston. On being admitted, the latter brought with him a low, ferret-eyed personage, whose leering aspect betrayed an inward consciousness of great cunning and self-satisfaction ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Service Code to whistle, foghorn, bugle, or trumpet, one short blast indicates a dot and one long blast a dash. With the drum, one tap indicates a dot and two taps in rapid succession a dash. Although these signals can be used with a dot and dash code, they should be so used in connection with ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... came to touching it, I don't believe he would, because the fact would remind him that it wasn't fair. He has to realize things in the objective way before he can realize them at all. That's the stage. If they can have an operator climbing a real telegraph-pole to tap the wire and telegraph the girl he loves that he is dead, so that she can marry his rich rival and go to Europe and cultivate her gift for sculpture, they feel that they have got ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... 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
... When a tap came at his door presently, and Father Blackmore looked in for a talk before going to bed, Percy told ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... dhrownded wid them, had no monument. 'Twas a quare world; a poor man had the chance of dying wid a rich man, but was not to be berrid in his company. Well, he supposed it was for the best," and here he hammered the heel-tap out of his pipe on the side of his shoe; "when the last bugle sounded a field-officer would feel uncomfortable like if he had to be looking for his bones in the ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... bleeding to death while they were carrying him out, when the report of a rifle sounded, seemingly quite near, and a bullet passed with a swift vehement buzz close by their ears. At the instant Frank felt something like a quick tap or jerk on his arm. He looked, and saw that the strip of red flannel, which betokened the service he was engaged in, and which should have rendered his person sacred from any intentional harm, had been shot away. A hole had been ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... bowed head, her lips compressed; she smiled again, but more faintly. In the silence there sounded a soft tap ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... 90 The Pomyeshchick's long absence, Some slip of posrednik's, By wiles of the commune, You managed to capture A slice of the forest. How proud are the peasants In such happy corners! The Elder may tap At the window for taxes, The peasant will bluster,— 100 One answer has he: "Just sell off the forest, ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... Inn thereupon proceeded to explain to the pilgrims how this apparently impossible task could be done. He first filled the 5-pint and 3-pint measures, and then, turning the tap, allowed the barrel to run to waste—a proceeding against which the company protested; but the wily man showed that he was aware that the cask did not contain much more than eight pints of ale. The contents, however, do not ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... are many. He sleeps, he says, with one eye open, and his gun by his side, and thinks nothing of a sally forth in the dark hours of night and exploding a charge in the direction of a marauder. He and his cronies of the tap-room, of an evening, before a glowing fire of logs, above which is the significant gun-rack (quite in old picture-book fashion), will give a deal of copy to an able writer who seeks atmosphere and ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning; but the rain Is full of ghosts to-night, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply; And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain, For unremembered lads that not again Will turn to me at midnight ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... a first-rate dinner, and his usual tap of excellent wine. ('Vino del Popolo' he called it.) The 'Osteria' had filled; the combatants were placed opposite each other on either side of a small table on which stood two 'mezzi'—long glass bottles holding about a quart apiece. For a moment the two ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Magistrate presiding in the North-West London Police Court. The approaches to the Court were crowded from an early hour. Amongst those in the street we noticed BILLY BLOWFROTH, and SAM SNEEZER, the well-known pot-boys from "The Glove and Wadding" and "The Tap o'Claret" Hotels, SHINY MOSES, AARON ISAACS, and SANDY the Sossidge (so-called by his friends on account of his appearance), the celebrated bankers from the West-end of Whitechapel, and a large gathering ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... merry Christmas came, and the Yule-log lent its flame To the face of squire and dame in the hall, The cellarer went down to tap October brown, Which was rather of renown 'Mongst ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... to her question, there came a soft tap on the door and their hostess' voice speaking ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... or thy name. I wot not where thou dwellest, but teach me thereto, tell me how thou art called, and I shall endeavour to find thee,—and that I swear thee for truth and by my sure troth." "That is enough in New Year," says the groom in green, "if I tell thee when I have received the tap. When thou hast smitten me, then smartly I will teach thee of my house, my home, and my own name, so that thou mayest follow my track and fulfil the covenant between us. If I spend no speech, then speedest thou the better, for then mayest thou remain in thy own land and seek no further; but ...
— Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight - An Alliterative Romance-Poem (c. 1360 A.D.) • Anonymous
... her mother's interest and sympathy she burst into the room with only the faintest apology of a tap at the door. Her father was there too, standing by the bed with a letter ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... another pair of spies. I think I'll try and find out something about them. Do you stay here, Neal, and watch. Let me know if any of the three of them leave the house. I'll go down the passage to the tap-room. I'll drink a glass or two, and I'll see what information I can pick up. You see, my boy, if the other two are honest men we ought to warn them of our suspicions about Finlay. If they are spies we ought to know their names and warn somebody else. Any way, keep your eye on Finlay, ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... There is a tap in the Stable-yard. Soon everyone is washing in a tin basin. The two cooks have dressed quickly, said their prayers in the little chapel, and are off up the hill to ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... their imaginations had given potency to the beverage, and cheated them into a fit of intoxication. Indeed, in the excitement of the moment, they were loud and extravagant in their commendations of "the mountain tap"; elevating it above every beverage produced from hops or malt. It was a singular and fantastic scene; suited to a region where everything is strange and peculiar:—These groups of trappers, and hunters, and Indians, with their wild costumes, and wilder countenances; their boisterous gayety, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... blown himself as red as fire with curses. An honest fool! Follow me, honest fool, But if thou blurt thy curse among our folk, I know not—I may give that egg-bald head The tap ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... started violently, looked round, and were relieved to see a sporadically rosy face beneath a furry silk hat. "Tap?" asked ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... you would, old tap, as long as you lasts," said Willock with an unwonted note of gentleness. Bill was so embarrassed by the tone that he cringed awkwardly. After a pause, Willock suggested that Wilfred wait for one more ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... quietly if you try, but it empties under the study window, and makes the very devil of a noise about it. No, Bunny, I bale out every drop and pour it away through the scullery sink, so you will kindly consult me before you turn a tap. Here's your room; hold the light outside while I draw the curtains; it's the old chap's dressing-room. Now you can bring the glim. How's that for a jolly wardrobe? And look at his coats on their cross-trees ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... have got off that subject altogether. [There comes a portentous tap at the door.] Good ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... was already at work, with the windows open. I was washing my face and thinking I would run over to Quatre Vents, when all at once a bugle and two taps of a drum were heard at the gate of France, just as when a regiment arrives, they try their mouthpieces, and tap their drums just to get the sticks well in hand. When I heard that my hair stood on end, and I exclaimed, "Mr. Goulden, it ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... wanted to churn the butter; but when he had churned a while, he got thirsty, and went down to the cellar to tap a barrel of ale. So, just when he had knocked in the bung, and was putting the tap into the cask, he heard overhead the pig come into the kitchen. Then off he ran up the cellar steps, with the tap in his hand, as fast as he could, to look after the pig, lest it should ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... lucidity of the general mind, 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 ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... any new environment is always the most exciting. Gissing was already awake, and watching the novel sight of a patch of sunshine sliding to and fro on the deck of the chart-room, when there was a gentle tap at the door. The Captain's steward ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... "Shot in San Diego by another man, but not by me. I had him tracked as far as that, and had my eyes on him, but it wasn't my deal. But there," he added, giving her magnetized arm a gentle and final tap as if to awaken it, "he's dead, and so is the whole story. And now we'll drop ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... off. In the Detective Office the Sergeant who had come in at roll-call stretched himself behind the desk and thought of home. The lights of a Christmas tree in the abutting Mott Street tenement shone through his window, and the laughter of children mingled with the tap of the toy drum. He pulled down the sash in order to hear better. As he did so, a strong draught swept his desk. The outer door slammed. Two detectives came in bringing a prisoner between them. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... abdominal dropsy and that not having menstruation was the cause of it. He said I would have to be tapped. He tapped me once and took eleven quarts of water from me and in a week I began to fill up again and he was waiting to tap me again. I wrote to Mrs. Pinkham and began to take the Vegetable Compound and the water began to leave me. When I had taken two bottles it had all left me and menses appeared. I now feel as well as I ever did and am able to do all my work. I ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... There came a tap on the door of the private room, and instinctively everyone started. Then came the voice ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... heard her tap on her father's door. He was awake and dressed, apparently—for it seemed at any rate but a moment later that her voice was guiding his blind footsteps by whispers down the stairs. Had I guessed more of the ordeal before her, my eyes had closed less easily than they did. As it was, I ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... forward and speaking eagerly. "It's a genuine offer. I'll ask your attention for a minute or two. Canada's an undeveloped country; we have scarcely begun to tap its natural resources, and there's wealth ready for exploitation all over it. We roughly know the extent of the farming land and the value of the timber, but the minerals still to a large extent await discovery, while perhaps the most readily and profitably handled product is oil. Now I know ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... the library door. It was not a loud knock. It was in reality scarcely more than a gentle tap. But it fell upon a silence of Manderton's own creating, a rapt silence following a pause which preceded the climax of his narrative. So the discreet knocking resounded loud and clear through ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... be heard, Tho' but in play, to break upon his story. The children sit and listen with the rest; And should the youngest raise its little voice, The careful mother, ever on the watch, And always pleas'd with what her husband says, Gives it a gentle tap upon the fingers, Or stops its ill tim'd prattle with a kiss. The soldier next, but not unask'd, begins, And tells in better speech what he has seen; Making his simple audience to shrink With tales of ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... secretion was not increased. Squill with opium, deobstruents of different kinds, sublimate solution, fixed alkaly, tobacco infusion, were now successively tried, but with the same want of success. The fullness of his belly made it necessary to tap him, and by repeating this operation he continued alive to the end of ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... be more loathsomely idiotic than the average music-hall ditty, with its refrain and its quaint stringing together of casual filthiness? If I had not wanted to fix a new picture on my mind I should have liked better to be in a tap-room among honestly brutal costers and scavengers than with that sniggering, winking gang. The drink got hold, glasses began to be broken here and there, the time was beaten with glass crushers, spoons, pipes, and walking-sticks; and then the bolder spirits ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... door was decorated with a large, bronze knocker of curious design. A tap of the falling hammer on its metallic plate, brought to the threshold a jet-black maid-servant wearing a gaudy turban. She ushered the visitors into a spacious drawing-room and took their cards and a note from Judge Brackenridge, to ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... of the gentle gardener lay in a few plants of zinnias close to a dripping tap. In bright red, gold, and white, he accepted them as substitutes for the sacred lotus, and prison flowers never flaunted more freely. As innocent as they, he deftly, tirelessly trained each plant, caressed each opening bud, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... you calmer, love; not till then;" and the tender-hearted man could himself have wept to see the heroic efforts of that delicate nature to control itself and put his fears to rest. He still was soothing her, when, with a tap at the door, entered James, followed by Susan, who hurriedly announced that 'Toinette was not to be heard of at any of the neighbors, and asked where ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... contrary alike to the laws of the Prophet and to the laws of hospitality. But my eyes fell on a beam of light coming from a tiny window niched deep down in a recess of the building. And even as I saw this, there came to my ears a faint, regular sound—a muffled 'tap, tap, tap.' Instantly every fibre of my being was ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... board need not have concerned themselves in regard to the waiting girls. Josie and Mary Louise had been fully occupied. At the moment that the hubbub had arisen, marking the time when Dr. Weston had made his announcement, there had been a sharp tap on the office door. Josie had opened the door and there had entered a woman and two children, a girl of eight and a boy of about six. The girl carried a ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... there is no level recorded, get down to a stream bed (the larger the better) and read it there, recording the exact place on the map. The level may then be worked out approximately by points above and below on the stream, for accurate reading, hold the aneroid face up, gently tap it, and read; then face down similarly, and take the mean. Guard that the wind does not blow against any keyhole in ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... as a knock at the door may have a character which excites apprehension. This was no quiet gentle tap, intimating a modest intruder; no redoubled rattle, as the pompous annunciation of some vain person; neither did it resemble the formal summons to formal business, nor the cheerful visit of some welcome friend. ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... exploration was OK, but serious theft of services was taboo. There was significant crossover between the hacker community and the hard-core phone phreaks who ran semi-underground networks of their own through such media as the legendary "TAP Newsletter". This ethos began to break down in the mid-1980s as wider dissemination of the techniques put them in the hands of less responsible phreaks. Around the same time, changes in the phone network made old-style technical ingenuity less effective as a way of hacking it, so phreaking ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... near one o'clock in the morning, while the wardrobe woman was pinning up the queen's hair, there was a sudden rap-tap at the dressing-room door. Extremely surprised, I looked at the queen, to see what should be done; she did not speak. I had never heard such a sound before, for at the royal doors there Is always a peculiar kind of scratch used, instead of tapping. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... no more, and her husband went away. About half an hour afterwards, as Mrs. Darlington sat in her room, there was a light tap at her door, which was immediately opened, and Mrs. Marion stepped in. Her face was pale, and it was some moments before her quivering lips ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... woodpecker began a tap-tapping soft and insistent somewhere out of sight, a small noise yet disturbing, that followed them wheresoever they went. Thus they wandered, close entwined, but ever the wood grew darker until they came at last to a mighty tree whose sombre, far-flung branches ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... as to see in its original situation. About the year 1815 I was invited by a friend, who was an artist, to visit a small public-house in Leadenhall Street, to see a picture by Hogarth: it was "The Elephant," since, I believe, pulled down, being in a ruinous condition. In the tap-room, on the wall, almost obscured by the dirt and smoke, and grimed by the rubbing of numberless foul jackets, was an indisputable picture by the renowned Hogarth. It represented the meeting of the committee of the {413} South Sea Company, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... light tap at the door, and the governess of the little Archduchess Maria Theresa entered ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... winter evening the poor man was enjoying (if you can call it so) his frugal supper as above, when there came a gentle tap at the door; and on opening it he perceived upon the threshold a very old woman dressed in a cloak of faded rags. She was so old and so remarkably ugly that had she been a duchess not the most inventive of reporters ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... succeeded in raising that impossible ire, which, she believed, MUST lurk somewhere in Dove—for, as she plodded along at his side, sheltered from the brunt of the weather, it occurred to her that here was some one whom she might tap on the subject of Maurice. She opened fire by congratulating her companion on his recent performance in an ABENDUNTERHALTUNG; at the time, even she had been forced to admit it a creditable piece of work. Dove, who privately considered it epochmaking, was outwardly very modest. He ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... just excessively. I dinna wunner at her being able to write sae weel as she does about drawing-rooms wi' sofas and settees, and about the fine folk in them seeing themsels in lookin-glasses frae tap to tae; but what puzzles the like o' me, is her pictures o' poachers, and tinklers, and pottery-trampers, and ither neerdoweels, and o' huts and hovels without riggin' by the wayside, and the cottages o' honest puir men, and ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... "and it's the weak little women that have sons that air so ready to march to the tap of the drum. But I give you and our daughter all the love thar is in this old heart o' mine, and that ought ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... hair, pinch the arms of schoolmates who were reciting, and behave themselves in general as if they were savages. The pupils lolled in their seats, passed notes, kept up an undertone of conversation, arose from their seats at the first tap of the bell, and piled in disorder out of the classroom while the instructor was still talking. If the lessons had been tedious, one might perhaps at least have palliated such conduct, but the instruction was very far from tedious. It was bright, lively, animated, beautifully clear, ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... of picking her up in his car, when he could. And he would tap at the matron's door, smiling and showing all his beautiful teeth, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... 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
... writhed himself half out of the corner of the room, Ross debated the wisdom of another silencing—say a tap on the skull with the heavy hilt of his dagger. Deciding against it because he might need a guide, he freed the victim's ankle bonds and pulled him to his feet, holding the dagger ready where the man could see it. Were there any more surprises to be encountered ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... a'nist tap'ster chor'is ter for'est er grant ee' mort ga gee' as sign ee' em'press shep'herd ess ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... gave the call for Tucson, preparatory to transmitting the conductor's message to the division superintendent. His fingers were just striking the first tap when a ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine |
