"Tattoo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were pulled to their haunches with a vociferous shout. The cab swerved and creaked, and the horses' hoofs beat an alarming tattoo ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... swept him a profound courtesy, and, while her fingers beat a tattoo on the book she held, she watched him with a peculiar sparkle in her eyes, which he had already learned to understand was a beacon flame kindled by intense displeasure. Dr. Grey seated himself, and, taking off his hat, said gently and winningly, as he pushed ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... like living cords. In a corner of the cage cowered the powerful creature, its broad, snake-like head thrust forward, its tiny golden eyes fixed before it, a curious snarl—like a grin—now and then contorted the immobility of its powerful jaws. The sinewy tail beat a restless tattoo on the ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Colonel Jacques sat and smiled; but he is a modest man, and his fingers were beating a nervous tattoo on the table. The young officer stood and read, glancing up now and then to smile at his chief's embarrassment. The wind howled outside, setting the sacks ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... about our heads. It was bumpers and no heeltaps, and we were full to the throat. Then to the nard; and enter to us guitar and light fantastic toe. Thereafter, one shinned up the ladder, on post-prandial japery intent, another beat the devil's tattoo, a third writhed cachinnatory. ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... Paul became an excellent hunter, and was out with my papa nearly every day, bringing home plenty of quail and other game. He was a happy dog, taking great interest in garrison life, always attending retreat and tattoo with the officer of the day, and even going the rounds with him on his tour of inspection after midnight. No weather was too bad for Paul, who knew every note of the bugle, and was always on ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... made according to tribal custom and law, become tribal marks (tattoo), and are then essential to one's standing in the community. This custom is general in Polynesia and in parts of North America.[238] The use of oil and other unguents early established itself as a custom of savage society. They were probably useful in a variety ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... one behind, but women who have already had a child wear two in front, one over the other. A similar remark applies to tattooing and kindred ornamentations of the body and its members. Among the women of the Bajansi on the middle Congo, for example, a certain form of tattoo indicated that the woman had borne a ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... who live in tents, and are regarded with contempt even by the peasantry. Their women tell fortunes, tattoo, {189} and sell small-wares; the men work in iron (quincaillerie). They are all adroit thieves, and noted as such. The men may sometimes be seen going around the country with monkeys; in fact, they appear to be in all respects the same people as ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... pregnant with possibility. The doomed creature summons its last ounce of physical might. Down drops the head till the hot blast of nostrils flings up the mouldering soil of the ages. The great split hoofs stamp a furious tattoo. They claw at the loose earth. Then, like a flash, an avalanche of rage is ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... assignment of rooms, the supply of food, the heating, lights, silver, and livery. He commanded the detachments of the Imperial Guard on duty in the Imperial palaces. He gave orders to beat the reveill and the tattoo, to open and shut the palace gates. When the Emperor was with the army, or travelling, he had to find him quarters. In 1805 the Grand Marshal's budget amounted to 2,338,167 francs. In 1806 it reached the sum of 2,770,841 francs. There were four tables ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... the slamming of the outside door, and by a voice in the entry; a moment later, there was a sharp tattoo on the library door. The colonel opened it ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... 15th.—After we had gone to bed last night,—we in the tent, the Doctor and Pilgrim under the fly, which serves as a porch roof,—the heavenly floodgates lifted; the rain, coming in sheets, beat a fierce tattoo on the tightly-stretched canvas, and visions of a sudden rise in the fickle river were uppermost in our dreams. Everything about us was sopping at daybreak; but the sun rose clear and warm from a bed of eastern clouds, and the ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... from being painful produce a comic expression to her, and I am a charming 'rogue', and I am entertained on the topic she assumes to be principally interesting me. I must avoid her. The thought of her leaves me no choice. She is clever. She could tattoo me with epigrams." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the whistling wind, I heard the welcome rain,— A fusillade upon the roof, A tattoo on the pane: The keyhole piped; the chimney-top A warlike trumpet blew; Yet, mingling with these sounds of strife, A softer voice ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... at home, the whole community being away in the forest peeling bark from the birch trees for the making of canoes. But the same kind of thing had happened before, so Katherine was not at a loss. Picking up a tin pan, she commenced beating a military tattoo upon it with a thick stick; while Phil, with a trumpet improvised from a roll of birchbark, produced an ear-splitting din which must have carried far through the quiet woods. It was not long before their customers arrived on the scene, and then the business of barter began. A very long business ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... woman stood on bank of the Alleghany, vigorously waving her hand and hailing the youthful navigator. The forward end of the one by twelve inch board was reluctantly headed for shore, and slowly idled in. As the child reached land, he was grasped by the angry and anxious mother, who beat a merry tattoo on a tender portion ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... beyond speech. The decanter from which he was trying to pour himself a drink played a musical tattoo upon his glass; his face ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... No other metre allows of anything like the variety of blank verse in this regard, and no other metrist makes so splendid a use of its freedom. He never forgets the pattern; yet he never stoops to teach it by the repetition of a monotonous tattoo. Hence there are, perhaps, fewer one-line quotations to be found in the works of Milton than in the works of any other master of blank verse. De Quincey speaks of the "slow planetary wheelings" of Milton's verse, and the metaphor is a happy one; the verse ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... a gesture of contempt indicative also of complete self-satisfaction and unalterable self-belief, shrugged his broad shoulders. His short fat fingers, covered with rings, beat a tattoo upon the ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... took the form of stunts. He turned more handsprings. He twisted his body sinuously, like a snake, until, having sufficiently limbered up, he bent from the hips, and, with legs straight and knees touching, beat a tattoo on the ground with the palms of his hands. He whirligigged and pirouetted, dancing and cavorting round like an inebriated ape. All the sun-warmth of his ardent life beamed in his face. I am so happy, was the song ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... on his return from town, his first care, as became the trained groom, was for his horses, and he was rubbing them down and bedding their stalls for the night when the sergeant of the battery guard, lantern in hand, appeared at the door. It was not yet tattoo, but by this time the darkness was intense, the heavens were hid, and the wind was moaning about the stables and gun-shed and whistling away over the dismal expanse of flat, wet, ditch-tangled fields towards ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... men lived in the face of danger was something truly remarkable. One would barely encounter a working miner at that time who had not, on face or hands, a deep blue mark like an irregular tattoo, branded where the blast of the exploding gas had driven the coal-dust into his skin, and every man thus marked had been in imminent peril of his life at least once, and had probably found himself in the ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... benefit of their services in working their vessels along the Slave Coast. And in order to prevent any Kruboy being carried off as a slave by mistake, which would have prejudiced these useful allies, the slavers persuaded them always to tattoo a band of basket-work pattern down their foreheads and out on to the tip of their broad noses: this is the most extensive bit of real tattoo that I know of in West Africa, and the Kruboys still keep the fashion. Their next tutors were the traders, who have taught ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... left. As the Tattoo is still a long way off, the folk run hither and thither, as if uncertain from which quarter ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... to your laughing!" cried Doughby—"Steward, another glass—d'ye hear, you cursed neger, where are you hidden? Don't you hear when a gentleman speaks to you? D'ye want me to tattoo your black brainpan? You laugh," he continued to Richards and myself, relapsing into his whimpering tones; "but if you only knew—none of the women will have me—this is the seventh who has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... bower of lances, the rescued princess gracefully fainting in her arms, and the vanquished demon scowling fiercely under her foot, while four-and-twenty dishevelled damsels sang a song of exultation, to the barbaric music of a tattoo ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... who had lugged the heavy machine gun all the way with him, patted its snout affectionately. "It plays the devil's tattoo," he said. ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... all, The Clown, making mirth for all the town, With his lips curved ever upward and his eyebrows ever down, And his chief attention paid to the little mule that played A tattoo on the dashboard with ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... quivering nose and swelled his heaving chest. Beyond the baggageman he saw through the open door, as on a moving-picture screen, sunlit fields and sunlit woods whirling past. He began to bark at them eagerly, his eyes hungry, his tail beating against the taut chain an excited tattoo. The ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... with primitive man, in Oceania and elsewhere, have imbued me with a deplorable taste for tattoo-work; and I had wished to carry away on my own person, as a curiosity, an ornament, a specimen of the work of the Japanese tattooers, who have a delicacy of finish ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... your friends," he began tentatively, "in the streets, you know." He paused and looked down at his own hands; he turned one palm up, showing the faint tattoo on the wrist. "I'm only a rough seafaring man," he went on. "They might think it strange—might wonder whom ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... parade ground of Wellington Barracks the drums and fifes sounding the tattoo shrilled through the open window with a startling clearness like a sharp summons, and diminished as the band marched away across the gravel and again grew loud. Feversham did not change his attitude, but the look upon his face was now that of a ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... asserts its sway. The more it has been studied in late years the more valuable has been the information in deciding the kinship relations of tribes. Unfortunately, in the Philippines the greater part of the early tattoo designs have been lost and the art itself is also nearly eliminated. But since the journey of Carl Semper it has been known that not only Malays but also Negritos tattoo; indeed, this admirable explorer has decided that the "Negroes of the East Coast" practice a different ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... that moment two little, futile, frenzied fists began to beat a mad tattoo on Jo Hertz's broad back. Jo tried to turn in the crowd, all indignant resentment. "Say, ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... at 8:45 and "Tattoo" at 9:00. It was now time to go. Cordially each boy thanked our gracious hosts. "And should I live a thousand years I'll ne'er forget." Reverently, gallantly, devotedly, each said bon jour to darling Annette. To each she represented womanhood—beautiful, modest, lovable. ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... his head; but he might as well have tried to dam up a spring, as to keep his confidence from overflowing at the first words of kindness. He seized her hand, and his fingers during a moment of nervous indecision beat a tattoo upon her glove—then he ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... in the bud. He, of course, had to disclose the fact that in his earlier life he had committed a pardonable youthful indiscretion and had had both his forearms fancifully adorned in indelible blue tattoo with a representation of snakes, mermaids, and sundry. A solemn council of the senior members of the company was forthwith held, presided over by the Mem Sahib, "Old Party," and "Syl" Dignam. After a good deal of anxious thought and discussion ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... at the same time kicking a tattoo on the ribs of the snoring Antonsen. "You go back to White Horse. We'll go ahead and ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... a Coolie reaches the age of twenty-one, he is allowed to choose his own "Loubra." Every male who then takes unto himself a helpmate, loses a front tooth, which is knocked out of him. The natives generally tattoo their arms and breasts, but not their faces; many carry a long white wooden pin, or a feather, pierced through the thin part of the nose; and they all twist kangaroo teeth and the bones of fishes more or less in their hair. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... embarked yesterday and the day before, and the thirteen thousand others sail as soon as the transports can return. Messieurs d'Allemagne (576) roll their red eyes, stroke up their great beards, and look fierce-you know one loves a review and a tattoo. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... hesitation in using him, and our petted young hero was to learn what work meant for the first time in his life. He wrote most of the day, often half the night; but although he chafed angrily at the confinement, beat many a tattoo on the floor with his heels, and went for a hard ride more than once that he might keep his temper, the result was that mass of correspondence, signed "George Washington," which raised the commander of the American forces so high in the estimation of Europe, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... morning air, the swift hoofs beat their tattoo along the road, keeping time to the pulsing of two hearts that are moved with the same eager desire—to conquer space, to devour the distance, to attain ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... paragraph he glanced quickly at Archie, whose fork was beating a queer tattoo on ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... the pass, eyes and ears open. The white horse took the climb as if it had been level ground, his hoofs ringing a brisk tattoo against the stones. ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... Poitiers, where the interior is gaudy with childish colouring and raw tones; for there, instead of expressing regret and tranquillity, it rouses a suggestion of the childish glee of an old savage in his second childhood, who laughs when his tattoo marks are renewed, and his skin rough-cast with ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... by allowing themselves to be stampeded. Their English friends, the enemy, playing upon their prejudices, they became drunk with hate, and then their shillalahs resounded a tattoo upon the head of their leader. Nations and people who turn upon their best friends are too common ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... Okooloo was covered with small tattoo marks, each of which I was assured represented a victim ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... are rather sleepy-headed in the morning and it is a part of the cook's job to get them up. The next I knew, Herman had a tin pan on which he was beating a vigorous tattoo, all the time hollering, "We haf cackle-berries und antelope steak for breakfast." The baby was startled by the noise, so I attended to him and then dressed myself for breakfast. I went down to the little spring to wash my face. The morning was lowering and gray, but a wind had sprung ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... heard that he wished to see her, she thought her heart could beat no faster, but his words made that small organ tattoo against her sides like the flutter of a bird's wing in fright. She could do something for him! Oh, what ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... the Io with his cargo I don't think I ever saw a happier mech. His relay banks were beating a tattoo like someone had installed an accordion in his chest. Before either of us could break the bad news to him he was hotfooting it around the wheel ...
— The Love of Frank Nineteen • David Carpenter Knight
... a loud tattoo and the trumpeter blew a call that startled the squaws and the children into shrieks; the braves were quicker in hiding their astonishment. Then Smith and Newport walked forward, Newport ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... say we have lost," said Athos, quietly, drawing four pistoles from his pocket and throwing them upon the table. "Come, gentlemen," said he, "they are beating the tattoo. Let ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the Ibo. The Akus [Footnote: This is a nickname from the national salutation, 'Aku, ku, ku?' ('How d'ye do?')] or Egbas of Yoruba, the region behind Lagos, the Eyeos of the old writers, so called from their chief town, 'Oyo,' are known by their long necklaces of tattoo. They are termed the Jews of Western Africa; they are perfect in their combination, and they poison with a remarkable readiness. The system of Egba 'clanship' is a favourite, sometimes an engrossing, topic for invective ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... tattoo sounded,—not loud and shrill, as on ordinary occasions, but in a subdued and cautious manner, as if fearful of being heard by the British, whose white tents might be seen in the distance. Obedient to the signal, the greater part of the ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... imitation of one man by another in the evolution of civilisation. Imitation is one of the chief spurs to action. Imitation begets custom, custom begets sanctity. At first all custom is sacred. To the savage it is as much a religious duty to tattoo himself as to sacrifice to his gods. But certain customs naturally survive, because they are really useful; they actually have good effects, and so need no social sanction. Others are really useless; but man is too conservative and imitative to abandon ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... came out of the darkness and at that instant I made a discovery. Leith was not alone. Keeping time with the clatter of the shoes was a softer tattoo that told me that a barefooted runner was racing beside the man we ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... sad roll has beat The soldier's last tattoo; No more on Life's parade shall meet That brave and fallen few. On Fame's eternal camping-ground Their silent tents are spread, And Glory guards, with solemn round, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... said BULMER to me, while he inserted his thumbs in the arm-openings of his waistcoats, and drummed an approving tattoo upon his shining shirt-front, "my dear boy, I have always been your friend, and nobody knows it better than you. Many a time have I proved it to you, and I can honestly assure you that nothing gives me greater pleasure than to welcome you in person ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... In the end the natives won and Kosti was summoned to carry on board the chest which the servants had brought. Having seen it carried safely inside the spacer, the aliens departed, but Van Rycke was frowning and Jellico's fingers were beating a tattoo on his belt as ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... so I can get a good look. That is queer—the hilt of the knife is curved a little just the same on both sides. It looks to me as if somebody had drawn it on your back—only the color doesn't look like a tattoo." ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... the man also scratch his though he takes much more pains over his hair, combing and smoothing it in order to divide it well in front and display the tattoo which ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... man cannot bear, doctor," said he, beating the devil's tattoo on the floor with one of his feet, "though God knows I ought to be patient now, for I am made to bear a good many things. You had better tell Scatcherd that I am obliged to him for his offer, but that I will ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... the feathers in the meshes of their hats and caps, or fastened them into scepters with pitch. They could make houses, etc., with their axes only by long-continued industry.[231] South American Indians made tools for printing tattoo patterns on the body. They were blocks, on each face of which a pattern was raised, perhaps a different one on each side.[232] It should be noticed what prodigious power a large body of men can put forth when they all work at the same task and are ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... that he might find it again when necessary, but he did not put it in his breast pocket. And then he sat for some time doing nothing, looking before him, with his legs stretched out and his hand beating a little tattoo upon the table. "Well: well? well!" That was about what he said to himself, but it meant a great deal: it meant a vague but great disappointment, a sort of blank and vacuum expressed by the first of these words—and then it meant a question of great importance and many divisions. ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... alone, she slipped into the chair, beat a light tattoo with her riding-whip against her teeth, and looked fixedly at the wall again, as if to gaze beyond it, into the dim future. But she saw nothing save that she was young and that the days in Dresden, for all their penury, were far ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... out of a madman's dream, this dim-lit cavern with its circling, dancing pigmies, the human figure lying sidewise on the ground, the rattling, savage chant and the metallic tattoo of Darl's hopeless message. A diabolic orgy of ...
— The Great Dome on Mercury • Arthur Leo Zagat
... out upon the quarter-deck beneath the awning, he pulled a large tub from under a boat turned upside down over the deck cabin; and then, while the young monkey had scrambled round to his back, and was beating a tattoo with his tiny fists on his shoulders, Banou caught up a bucket and proceeded to draw water from over the side, which he dashed into the tub. When he had nearly filled the tub he felt around with his black paws as delicately as if he was about to ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... and tended them for days as gently as a mother, dressing their wounds with cold cream, feeding them with a doll's spoon, and mourning over them when they died, till she was consoled by one of Demi's best turtles. She made Silas tattoo an anchor on her arm like his, and begged hard to have a blue star on each cheek, but he dared not do it, though she coaxed and scolded till the soft-hearted fellow longed to give in. She rode every animal on the place, from the big horse Andy to the cross pig, from whom she was rescued ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... knew I should see you again," said the girl as though she had not heard Armitage's banality. "I know now why I spoke to you on the General and why I wrote you that note in church." Her slipper beat an impatient tattoo on the door. "But why," she began, "why are you willing to enter service as a physical instructor, or motor ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... side they stick on. You see chaps who wouldn't have been in the third in a good year walking about in first fifteen blazers, and first fifteen scarves, and first fifteen stockings, and sweaters with first fifteen colours round the edges. I wonder they don't tattoo their faces with first ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... before the fireplace, his hands deep in his pockets, where his guest could see his long fingers beat a tattoo on his thighs, Newton Winch dangled and swung himself, and threw back his head and laughed. "Well, I must say you take it amazingly!—all the more that to see you again this way is to feel that if, all along, ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... nervously to his feet, strode to the further corner of the room and sat down at as great a distance from Vandeman as its dimensions would permit. He turned his face to the small window there, and through all that Vandeman said, kept up a steady, maddening tattoo with his ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... wife and all the lassies came flying in upon me, crying all in the name of heaven, what could it be? by which I was obligated to put on my big-coat, and, with my hat and staff, go out to enquire. The whole town was aloof, the aged at the doors in clusters, and the bairns following the tattoo, as it was called, and at every doubling beat of the drum, shouting as if they had been in the ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... The remaining three circled the cabin, sniffing explosively at the cracks between the logs. Shady was seized with a fit of excessive shivering induced by these dread sounds, and Collins heard her hind leg-joints beating a spasmodic tattoo on the cabin floor. Then he turned on ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... dog and the child deflected their common stare. He was at first grateful, then interested. The child was beaming, the dog's tail was thumping a merry tattoo on the wooden step. Footsteps crunched on the gravel and he turned to look, although it was not the direction from which he expected his ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... blood, which proceeded from a series of irregular wounds. One group of these clustered upon his left temple, another beneath his right eye, and others extended from the chin down to the throat. They were black, almost like tattoo marks, and the entire injured surface was bloated indescribably. His fists were clenched; he was ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... bed with every hair standing on end. It was morning. I looked at Virginia's bed. I could see her quite distinctly, parts of her at least. Her head was buried, ostrich-wise, in the blankets, while her feet beat a wild tattoo in the air. Stell woke up and joined the chorus. The cause of it all was a bewildered Navajo buck who stood mutely in the doorway, staring at the havoc he had created. At arm's length he tendered a pair of moccasins ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... sudden gust of wind that caught her by the skirts and drew her back, that set the branches tossing and swept the dead leaves racing about her ankles. And at the same instant from just above her head there beat upon the air a violent, joyous tattoo—a sound that was neither of the sea nor of the woods, a creaking, swiftly repeated sound, like the flutter of ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... and tore at the hawse-pipes; luckily the anchors, lying as they were on a strip-sloping bottom, came away easily, without damage to windlass or hawse-pipes. Slowly as we disappeared into Sound, the light in the hut died away. At 11.30 p.m. the ice around us started to break up, the floes playing tattoo on the ship's sides. We were out in the Sound and catching the full force of the wind. The moon broke through the clouds after midnight and showed us the pack, stretching continuously to northward, ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... looking at her. He was now feeling quite certain that his suspicions had fallen on the guilty party. Here was a jealous woman who evidently knew a good deal. Putting two and two together is the very essence of scientific thought and Dr. Starr was no beginner. Sophy's foot was beating a rapid tattoo on the floor. On her face the color kept going ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... was inwardly in ecstasies. So much so, that she could not wait to beat the tattoo and effect any alterations. But having succeeded, while conversing with her cousins, in devising a stanza in her mind, she promptly inscribed it on the first piece of paper that came to hand. "I have," she remarked, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... the Torres Strait islanders: some of them friz their hair up into a mop two feet in diameter, wear a comb nearly a yard long, and bunches of dogs' teeth hanging behind, by way of ornament, and take no little pride in adorning their persons with paint and tattoo-marks, and flowers and plants of strong odour. Bracelets of various kinds are a favourite decoration, and among these the most curious 'is that made of a human lower jaw, with one or more collar-bones closing the upper side, crossing from ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... seaman, and part shepherd too: You scarce knew which, as, pausing with the pail Half filled with goat's milk, silently he drew An anvil forth, and reaching shoe and nail, Bared a red forearm, bringing into view Anchors and hearts in shadowy tattoo. ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... is different—sonorous, tense, elastic; On it you might a tattoo beat, with fingers or with a stick. There's costiveness and atrophy, with features Hippocratic; When these appear, there's much to fear, all safety is erratic. Although a cordial laxative, mix'd up with some carminative, Might be prescribed, with morphia, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... storm still raged and the old house shook and creaked in the blast. The rain swirled furiously against the windows, and a swift rush of hailstones beat a fierce tattoo on the roof. Built on the summit of a hill and with only a few trees near it, the Judson mansion was but poorly ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... a member of the House of Representatives. There is no trace of the savage about him, as he struts along in his patent leather boots, shining broadcloth, snowy shirt-front, massive watch-guard, and glossy silk hat, unless it be in the richly decorative tattoo that adorns his brown face, and over which a gold double-eyeglass has a ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... Alfred Sully, where nearly all the officers of the garrison were assembled, listening to Sully's stories. Lieutenant Derby, "Squibob," was one of the number, as also Fred Steele, "Neighbor" Jones, and others, when, just after "tattoo," the orderly-sergeants came to report the result of "tattoo" roll-call; one reported five men absent, another eight, and so on, until it became certain that twenty-eight men had deserted; and they were so bold and open in their behavior that it amounted to defiance. They had deliberately ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... room, sent no gloom to his soul. It had been a happy evening. It had cost him a hard struggle to restrain the emotion which he had felt at times; and when he withdrew, soon after the trumpets sounded tattoo, and the ladies fell to discussing him, as women will, there was but one verdict,—his manners ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... things began to have their share. But I could not stand, though the blood was returning, warm and tingling, in my legs and hands. She looked at me with a sharp frown puckering her brows a little; beat a hasty tattoo with one of her feet, and cast a startled glance towards the forward door that led on deck. Then she walked to the other side of the table, and sat looking at me in ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... was silent, and the Misses O'Grady cast fearful sidelong glances at "Pa," whose strange irritation always bespoke his not being in what good people call a "sweet state of mind;" he laid hold of a tea-spoon, and began beating a tattoo on the mantel-piece to a low smothered whistle of some very obscure tune, which was suddenly stopped to say to Furlong, ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... deplorable. Mr. Figgs was least unhappy, for he took to his bed and slept through the entire period, with the exception of certain little intervals which he devoted to meals. The Doctor sat quietly by an upper window playing the devil's tattoo on the ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... There's gossip for you, thick as mortar," cried the charcoalman, and the mealman's fingers beat a tattoo on his stomach. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... intending to dress with Kitty and stay all night. The girls scrambled through a half dozen things forgotten at the last minute, and then proceeded to dress with haste. But, sure enough, at a quarter past eight, Ferren, true to his word, emerged immaculate from his bedroom, and commenced beating a tattoo ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... But tattoo had not sounded that still and starlit evening when a strange story was in circulation about the post, brought up from the trader's store by pack-train hands who said they were there when Mr. Blakely came in and asked ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... club which, in turn, rested on the floor. Calmly he was waiting for the final rush. Olaf was peering through the gun-hole again. And then came what he had expected—a rattle of fire from the snow-ridge. The PIT-PIT-PIT of bullets rained against the cabin in a dull tattoo. Through the door came a bullet, sending a splinter close to Armin's face. Almost in the same instant a second followed it, and a third came through the crevice so close to Philip that he felt the hissing breath of it in his face. One of the dogs emitted a wailing howl and flopped ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... circle swayed forward. The rather pretty girl who had mustered the nerve to come as a bearded lady trembled with excitement, hoping to be rewarded for an evening's hideousness. The man who had spent the afternoon having tattoo marks painted on him by a sign painter skulked on the edge of the crowd, blushing furiously when any one told him he ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... up. The line was formed, the procession advanced, 'Zekiel and Quincy bringing up the rear. As Quincy took the last wrister from the pan that the Professor held, the latter turned quickly away and beat a tattoo on the bottom of the pan with his knuckles and cried out, "Gentlemen will please find their partners. The wristers become ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... you think the fleur-de-lis is only a fancy kind of an emblem, but it ain't. He told me the old monks that used to carve things—no matter what they carved you could always find a cross, or something like a cross in it. 'Cause they think that way, see? The same as sailors always tattoo fishes and ships and things on their arms. He said some places in the Black Forest the toymakers are French peasants and you can always tell if a fancy thing is carved by them on account of the shape of the fleur-de-lis. It ain't ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... Jack, and, nothing loath, Mark assented. The two lads broke into a run, but, as they leaped forward, the man also increased his pace, and they could hear his feet pounding out a tattoo on ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... petticoat and a jacket. The men wear a turban, a loose robe, and a jacket; they tie up their hair in a knot behind, and tattoo their legs, by pricking their skin, and then putting in black oil. They have the disagreeable custom of smoking, and of chewing a stuff called "coon," which ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... from its corner, with the drumsticks; hitched the sling over her beautiful neck; tightened the straps carefully; and began to play a soft tattoo. ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... her, but trembling like a leaf with nervous fear. A terrific gust of wind roared around the corner, shaking the little brown house from rafter to foundation; the great elm trees tossed and groaned in sympathy, and the leafless vines over the porch beat a mournful tattoo against the walls. ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... agreed to tattoo each other. One marked the breast and back of the other, his arms and legs, and even his face. And when he had finished, he took soot off the bottom of a cooking-pot and rubbed it into all the marks; and he ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... whined a welcome to the little lad's appearance, and with his tail beat a friendly tattoo upon the kennel floor; but the woman spoke no word. With impassive face she watched the shivering little figure as it hurried into its clothes, and then, with celerity born of experience, went about the making of a fire. Suddenly a hitherto unthought-of possibility flashed into the boy's mind, and ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... earn it. What Sandusky was sensibly intent on was the determination that he should not contribute personally to the further upbuilding of anybody's reputation. His eyes with this resolve shining in them rested intently on de Spain, and at his side the long fingers of his right hand beat a soft tattoo against his pistol holster. De Spain's question seemed to arouse him. "What's your name?" he demanded bluntly. His voice was heavy and his deafness was reflected ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... prospect of seeing Paris, for the first time in one's life, before night. In my catalogue it stands numbered as sensation the 5th; Westminster, the night arrival in France, and the Cathedral of Rouen, giving birth to numbers 1, 2, and 4. Though accustomed to the tattoo, and the evening bugle of a man-of-war, the drums of Havre had the honour of number 3. Alas! how soon we cease to feel those agreeable excitements at all, even a drum coming in time to pall ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... usually so quiet and orderly, had been turned into one general nursery, where Baby Cameron reigned supreme, screaming with delight at the tinware which Aunt Betsy brought out from the cake cutter to the dipper, the little creature beating a noisy tattoo upon the latter with an iron spoon, and then for diversion burying its fat dimpled hands in Uncle Ephraim's long white hair, for the old man went down upon all fours to do his ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... rested upon this staircase: in renewed excitement he hurried down the hall and, regardless of the consequence, beat a quick tattoo with his knuckles ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... it?" said Amelia, beating a tattoo of impatience, with one hand, on the door. "You've been up attic, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... HOLIDAYS.—Calls are 1/2 hour later, except retreat, tattoo, call to quarters and taps. In case an entertainment is given on the post, taps usually follow its close by ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... fly has always inspired Indians of all tribes and of all degrees of civilization with wonder and reverence. The bird chiefs have their own places in Indian myths. Owl is chief of the night; Woodpecker, with his ceaseless tattoo on the trees, is chief of the trees; Duck is chief of the water; but Eagle is chief of the day. It is always Eagle who is chief of the birds, even though Wren may outwit him in a tale told by the fire glimmering in the tepee, when the story ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown
... completed her task, she heard a noise as though some footsteps were approaching. Instantly her heart began to beat a tattoo on her ribs, but she sat perfectly quiet, calling all her self-control into play to keep from making an outcry. This smart woman had already studied out a way in which to best this enemy, in case an enemy it should be. The footsteps, ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... were new George guineas; and the buttons on his coat were of silver, very beautifully chased. His shoes had big silver buckles on them, and there was a silver buckle to the flap of his grey slouch hat. The tattoo marks on his left hand were covered over by broad silver rings, of the sort the Spanish onion-boys used to sell in Dartmouth, after the end of the war. He looked extremely handsome in his fine clothes. I wondered how I could ever have been ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... run about with nothing on but a long, loose robe, and liked to have our feet bare. And then came the rough, barbaric age, the boyhood of our race. We didn't care what we wore then, but thought it nice to tattoo ourselves all over, and we never did our hair. And after that the world grew into a young man and became foppish. It decked itself in flowing curls and scarlet doublets, and went courting, and bragging, and bouncing—making ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... is the rule in Polynesia, with few exceptions; the higher the family, the better the man—better in sense, better in manners, and usually taller and stronger in body. A stranger advances blindfold. He scrapes acquaintance as he can. Save the tattoo in the Marquesas, nothing indicates the difference of rank; and yet almost invariably we found, after we had made them, that our friends were persons of station. I have said 'usually taller and stronger.' I might have been more absolute,—over ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Congo people have made a kingdom of their own like the Baganda. They belong to different tribes, each with its own customs and language. Most of them wear a piece of bark-cloth or the skin of an animal for clothing, but some wear very little, and paint or tattoo their bodies. Their houses are built of reeds, some tribes covering the reed-walls with a thick plaster of mud, others leaving them unplastered. The roofs of some are thatched with the long grass of the country, others are made of plaited palm-leaf mats. Each tribe has its own way of making a house, ...
— People of Africa • Edith A. How
... woman's only earthenware plate, smashed it up, and there she was dancing the Romalis, and making the bits of broken crockery rattle as well as if they had been ebony and ivory castanets. That girl was good company, I can tell you! Evening fell, and I heard the drums beating tattoo. ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... boy, and he beat a tattoo on the sides of the horse with his feet. But as Dick had on soft slippers, he did not hurt the White Rocking Horse in the least, nor did he chip off any paint. "Here I go! Here I go!" shouted Dick. "Oh, what a ...
— The Story of a White Rocking Horse • Laura Lee Hope
... high heels on the concrete sidewalk was a rattling tattoo so eloquent of disorganized panic that more than one head was thrust from a neighboring window to investigate, and more than one head was pulled back, nodding to the well-worn and charitable hypothesis, "Their first quarrel." ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... shoving Willy up the hatchway, for he was so encumbered with the weight of his new apparel that he never could have ascended without assistance—"I have stowed away some spirits in his hold, and he no longer beats the devil's tattoo with his grinders." ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... at the gate. Sunfish scrambled with his feet for secure footing, found it and waded up to the front door. The water was a foot deep on the porch. Thurston beat an imperative tattoo upon the door with the butt of his quirt, and shouted. And Mona's voice, shorn of its customary assurance, answered ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... the house and a leaden tattoo began on the door. "Other window!" whispered O'Neill. The foreman got there before him and, shoving his Colt out first to clear the way, yelled with rage and pain as a pole hit his wrist and knocked the weapon out of his hand. He was still commenting ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... still dousing us with water, but the shells were not falling on board now. The two German destroyers were sweeping down on the helpless boat ahead, the missiles from their light guns playing a regular tattoo on her. It was an even chance we wouldn't find a ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... and spreading homely themes over an inept-looking clavier confounding the wits of his children and all men's children down to the last generation. He marvels at the paradox, drums his head with the tattoo: how can a thing as small as he shape and maintain an art out of himself universal enough to carry her daily vigil to crystalled immortality? She lets ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... off a runaway sailor, fer a set of false whiskers and a tattoo needle. Will it do to pay fer ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... cloudy and a wind came sighing from the north, tossing the girl's hair and tugging at the careless folds of her dress, but she heard nothing save the devil's tattoo that rang in her head, and felt nothing beyond the pain at throat and breast, which in time became so bitter that the tears were wrung from her dry eyes, and she began to weep in a pitiful woman fashion, as if her ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... at our warrant?" exclaimed Duncan Cameron. "Hut-tut! We'll teach him to respect warrants issued under authority of 43d King George III.," and the dictator of Fort Gibraltar fussed angrily among the papers of his desk and beat a threatening tattoo with ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... are fast retreating, boys, The last tattoo is beating, boys, So let every man Finish his can, And drink to our next merry ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... mountain range. The poplars in front of the house flung slim black shadows across the low adobe buildings and splashed the tip of their shade in the dust-cloud that filled with haze the corral a hundred yards away. Sing Pete stepped from the door and beat a tattoo on the iron triangle suspended by a piece of wire from the lowest branch of a mesquit tree at the corner of the house, announcing by the metallic clamor that the work of the day was finished and supper was ready and waiting. ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... but a flimsy barricade against a mob, especially if that mob be led by five-and-twenty stout-bodied seaman. We had shut it merely to gain time, and when the cudgels outside began to play tattoo upon its upper panels I looked for no more than a minute's respite at ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... women are tattooed in the most grotesque patterns. When you look at them closely the invention displayed is truly remarkable; but at a distance they give a dingy, dusky appearance to the men, as if they were daubed with an inky sponge. Nature having denied them beards, they tattoo curly locks along their faces, always bordered by a vandyke fringe, which must task their utmost ingenuity. Tanee, who has followed us with some of his warriors, is the very exquisite of a Kenowit. He is made like a Hercules, and ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall |
