"Tape" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... see—only if anyone had passed and had asked for our papers there would have been trouble. However, we had our laugh, and decided that it was not worth while to risk it again. But I could not help asking myself how, with all their red tape, they ever caught any ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... gave me a penny, And Mr Whittle sold me sweets (but not so very many). You never know your luck, and so I look to see what's new In Mr Whittle's window. There's a peppermint or two, Some buttons and tobacco (Mr Whittle calls it "baccy"), And fish in tins, and tape, and pins. . . . And then a voice ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... took up in 1877 was a battle ground. The treasury he resigns to his successor in 1881 is a well-ordered machine of red tape and routine, requiring for its future successful administration little else than mediocrity, method and laissez faire. As we said before, we take off our hat to John. He is not a magnetic man like Blaine, not a lovable man like our poor, dear friend Matt. Carpenter, not ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... follow," he said, slowly, "trying to get back dues from the government. There's red tape and lawyers and rulings and evidence and courts to keep you waiting. I'm not certain," continued the commissioner, with a profoundly meditative frown, "whether this department that I'm the boss of has any jurisdiction or not. It's only Insurance, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... already well tenanted, gradually filled. Groups of men entered, stopped to glance at the tape of a sporting news ticker near the bar, exchanged a word or two with the bartenders, and then selected tables. Several times the two vacant chairs at the captain's table were on the point of being taken, but each time the prospective occupants ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... stopping in the middle of the hall, calling for attention, and then asking the students if they were getting enough of various articles which he would name, such as sweet potatoes, corn, and blackberries. Cutting red tape was one of his special delights. Sometimes he would discover, for instance, that certain vegetables were not being served because the steward had objected to the price charged by the Farm Department. He would immediately ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... and I left him slumbering as peacefully as a baby. But we went through his clothes, hoping to get a trace of his friends, so they could be notified. His bathing suit is his own, not rented, and the name 'A. Jones' is embroidered on tape and sewn to each piece. Also the key to bathhouse number twenty-six was tied to his wrist. The superintendent sent a man for his clothing and we examined that, too. The letters 'A.J.' were stamped in gold on his pocketbook, and in his cardcase were a number of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... operations With fierce speculations In Stocks of all manner and shape; But whatever she chooses Her "cover" she loses, And sees it run off on the tape. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... minutes, and Mrs. Vernon would hear about it, and go and warn 'Carl' somehow. As for the police, they'd spend a week in preliminaries. They'd have to send a constable to look at the letter, and ask questions of us, and Miss Pearson, and Mr. Rivers, and no end of red-tape nonsense; and by that time Carl would be safely out of the country, and on to a neutral vessel. No, my idea is to 'set a thief to catch a thief'. I'm going to ask the gipsies to help us. If anybody can deal with ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... shabby exterior holding converse at the entrance of Capel Court, or on the steps of the auction mart. These are the "Alley men." You will see one, perhaps, take from his pocket a good-sized parcel of dirty-backed letters, all arranged, and tied round with string or red tape, which he sorts with as much care and attention as if they were bank-notes. That parcel is his stock-in-trade. Perhaps those letters may contain the allotment of shares in various companies, to an amount, if the capital subscribed was paid, of many ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... covering them with his hand, as if he were putting some spell upon him. Opposite to the tall old chimney-piece were two portraits: one of a gentleman with grey hair (though not by any means an old man) and black eyebrows, who was looking over some papers tied together with red tape; the other, of a lady, with a very placid and sweet expression of face, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the boy's fault, for he belonged to our country post-office and the telegram had been sent to London and was returned from there; and yet I started to abuse that boy as though he were not only the POSTMASTER-GENERAL himself but the inventor of red-tape into the bargain. And all for a piece of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... tape and he measures you all over, taking mental notes but writing nothing down, the Chinese ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... Government looks to you as its best aid, for moral sanction is its living soul; it looks to you for higher life, for, unless the heart of love is the throbbing life-pulse of Government, it sinks into a dull, lethargic mechanism. Far above the din of faction, the red tape of cabinets, the rivalry of generals, the strife of politicians, shines the resolve, and pulses the determination of woman, that mankind shall be free. For this, the dusky nation bless her as she moves; the frighted ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... yard was closing. He sensed it rather than saw it. He saw nothing now, not even Calvert. Blinded with effort, his lungs aching, his heart pounding terribly, he fought on, mechanically keeping between the two white lines. Ten yards from the tape he was almost abreast of Calvert. He saw the tape through a red haze; he made a final valiant leap for it—but he never touched it: Calvert's chest had broken it a tiny fraction of a ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... most careful avoidance of any official responsibility here in trying to find out where our passports are, and who is to return them. We have already unraveled yards of red tape, and still there is no end. Of course, ever since Peter came he has followed a schedule of visits—one day to the English Consul; another day to the secret police, then to the Military Governor, the Civil Governor, the Chief of Staff, and back, in desperation, ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... in the management of red tape avail anything to men lying gasping,—we may say, all but dead; could despatch boxes with never-so-much velvet lining and Chubb's patent be of comfort to a people in extremis, I also, with so many ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... Castle Island, and out of the ruins of the castle a comfortable sheiling could be built, and the ground thus freed from the ruins of the Welshman's castle might be cultivated. He remembered commandeering the fisherman's boat, and rowing himself out, taking a tape to measure, and how, after much application of the tape, he had satisfied himself that there was enough arable land in the island for a garden; he had walked down the island certain that a quarter of an acre could grow enough vegetables to support ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... corridor that led to Lakely's office, he caught a fresh impression of action and vitality from the click of the tape machines in the subeditors' office, and a glimpse through the open door of the subeditors themselves, each occupied with his particular task; then without time for further observation he found himself at Lakely's door. Without ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... Smith, stooping over Marguerite's portfolio of designs, and glancing round at her for permission to open it. Already his hand was on the tape. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... with strips of tape, but not locked. He forced the lid open, and saw inside a few simple articles of woman's wearing apparel; a little work-box; a lace collar, with the needle and thread still sticking in it; several letters, here tied up in a ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... must be kept under your eye from the time it leaves the storehouse in Beaufort till it is put in your mule-cart, on Ladies Island. Then you must be at home when the team arrives and see everything brought into the storeroom. There is a good deal of red tape, too, at Beaufort, the untying and retying of which is a tedious and vexatious operation.[52] They are becoming more strict here in Beaufort in several respects; passes are needed by every one. There is a great deal of running to Hilton Head and Bay Point, which ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... had he used dishonourable means to secure his ends: his name stood high in his own country for commercial integrity; men said: he "played square." He had, maybe, too keen a contempt for dulness and incompetency in enterprise, and he loathed red-tape; but this was racial. His mind was as open as his manners. He was utterly approachable. He was a millionaire, and yet in his own offices in New York he was as accessible as a President. He handled things ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... thinking of delays more than anything else. There are a thousand ways a lawyer can push or halt matters at will, and your project will never be free of legal red tape until completed—if then! I'm not unselfish in this, I admit; the business would be valuable to me. But aside from that, I'll give you this advice anyway:—secure another lawyer in any case, one without antagonistic personal interests, if you can find another in San Mateo besides ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... a searing scorn in her voice. "Quartermaster's Department! Safety first! When half the little fifteen-per tape-snippers in the Emporium are breakin' their fourteen-inch necks volunteerin' early and often to get where ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... admitted. "Recording TV cameras, 16mm movie cameras, tape recorders, 35mm still cameras—the works. I wanted to get good coverage, and if you've got any men that you won't be using during the take-off, I'd like to borrow them to ...
— By Proxy • Gordon Randall Garrett
... us to-morrow. The young people exercised their bows and arrows in shooting at marks for beads, which we distributed to their best marksmen. In the evening the whole party danced until a late hour, and, in the course of their amusement, we threw among them some knives, tobacco, bells, tape, and binding, with ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... can cut the red-tape in one minute. What those bosses are doing is a thing that can only be done ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... made another wrenching effort, and there was a change. She hadn't got back into the garden, but the noisy, swirling colors were gone and she had the feeling of reading a rapidly moving microtape now, though she didn't actually see the tape. ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... was a belt, composed of a number of corks strung together on a strong cord, there being many rows of them, one above the other. The corks were of all sizes, the cord passing through them on the short axis. There were two holes for the arms, and a sort of tape by which the belt ...
— Cowboy Dave • Frank V. Webster
... things which Craig had brought down from the laboratory was a package which he had not yet unwrapped. He placed it near the window, still wrapped. It was quite large, and must have weighed fifteen or twenty pounds. That done, he produced a tape-measure and began, as if he were a surveyor, to measure various distances and apparently to calculate the angles and distances from the window-sill of the Spencer house to the skylight, which was the exact centre of the museum. The straight distance, if I recall correctly, ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... taking care not to allow it to break; when cold, peel, cut off one end and remove seeds with spoon. Prepare stuffing:—chop onion finely; melt nut fat and mix ingredients together. Then stuff marrow and tie on decapitated end with tape; sprinkle with breadcrumbs and bake 30 minutes. ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... one of his chief assets, so submerges this asset in other and more apparent qualifications, that every plain man he comes in contact with takes it for granted that he is an equally "plain" man himself. He is plain in so far as he is straightforward in attitude and simple in manner. No red tape is required apparently to penetrate into this president's private office, whereas many "small" men are guarded with pretentiousness that is often an effort to give an ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... a confidential whisper, "your ladyship knows there are plenty of little grocery shops round in these poor neighborhoods, where they sell onions, and combs, and molasses, and fish, and tape, and gingerbread, and rum. Most of them sell milk, (none of the best, sure, but it does for the likes of us poor folks.) It stands round in the sun in the shop windows, your ladyship, till it gets turned, ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... the stitches are filled in, cord of a suitable size is carried around the petals and foliage of the design, and rows of it are also used to indicate the vine, though the latter may be outlined with the tape and then with the cord. The petals of the blossoms are filled in in point de Bruxelles and point de Venise stitches, while point d'Espagne and point Brabancon are used for the foliage and vine. Point ...
— The Art of Modern Lace Making • The Butterick Publishing Co.
... data which he had derived from his metric photograph, from plumb line, level, compass, and tape, astronomical triangle, vertices, zenith, pole and sun, declination, azimuth, solar time, parallactic angles, refraction, and ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... natural conditions the vagina also plays an active part in the process. He was led to suspect such an action many years ago, as well by an experience of his own, as also by hearing from a young woman who met her lover after a long absence that by the excitement thus aroused a tape attached to the underclothes had been drawn into the vagina. Since then the confidences of various friends, together with observations of animals, have confirmed him in the view that the general belief that coitus must be effected by forcible ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... his last sentence particularly. It smacked so strongly of miles of red tape and months of ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Germany, I feel sure that they must be right, and yet I wish they could have come shopping with me a year or two ago in a small Black Forest town. One of us wanted a watch key and the other a piece of tape, and we set off light-heartedly to buy them, for we knew that there was a draper and a watchmaker in the main street. We knew, too, that in South Germany everyone is first dining and then asleep between twelve and two, so we waited till after two and then went to the watchmaker's. ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... the wounded get well, but as a place in which they also "have a good time." The two things, truth to tell, are interlinked—a truism which might seem to need no labouring, were it not for the evidence brought from more rigid and red-tape-ridden establishments. A couple of our most valued departments are the "Old Rec." and the "New Rec."—the old and new recreation rooms. The new recreation room, a spacious and well-built "hut," contains three billiard tables, a library, and current newspapers, British ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... number of pigeonholes and divisions, filled with various odds and ends, the collection of many years. In some of these compartments are bundles of letters, very yellow, and tied in packets with faded tape; in another, all by itself, is a fragment of plum-pudding stone, which Mr. Leslie has picked up in his walks, and considered a rare mineral. It is neatly labelled, "Found in Hollow Lane, May 21st, 1804, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it is, as large as life—really so, without a touch of exaggeration. I have measured it carefully with a tape foot-rule, and I find the dimensions to be five inches and a ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... cannot understand how a big tradesman scorns a little one," Kitty rejoined. "My aunt kept a shop, but she would never let me help her sell pins and needles and tape. No, I must go to school with girls whose fathers sold pins by the ton instead of by the paper,—or by the pound, as you do here. His father sold them by the ton,—a mere matter of big and little. The family was reconciled to me after a while. You see, the family had to be reconciled, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... stood a bed not yet made, with the bedclothes still in disorder. Close by on two arm-chairs lay heaps of crumpled feminine garments. Petticoats and sleeves with rumpled lace and flounces were trailing on the carpet, on which here and there lay bits of white tape, cigarette-ends, and the papers of caramels. . . . Under the bed the toes, pointed and square, of slippers of all kinds peeped out in a long row. And it seemed to the lieutenant that the scent of the jasmine came not from the flowers, but from the ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... a pretty little room opening out of her mother's, but George's was in an upper story. When they were both asleep, the mother took out of her son's bureau a clean white sock, sewed a tape loop on the edge, put a small parcel inside, and hung it on a neat brass nail, which was driven in a door directly opposite his bed, where it would catch his eye as soon as ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks, Part First - Being the First Book • Sarah L Barrow
... on the feed-in tape of the computer. Sections of the tape are chosen at random by someone who is blindfolded. They are fed unread into the computer, together with instructions to multiply, subtract, extract roots, et cetera, which are similarly ...
— The Leader • William Fitzgerald Jenkins (AKA Murray Leinster)
... standing in a corner of the room opposite the telegraphic machine, from which the "tape" was issuing with a monotonous click. On this "tape"—a narrow strip of paper seemingly endless, which fell on the floor in serpentine coils—were inscribed at regular intervals some cabalistic characters unintelligible to the general ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... there can be no objection,' was the reply. 'In one of my rambles over the old house, I espied in a small escritoire a packet of letters bound up in tape, which was sealed at the ends. The tape had, however, been eaten by moths, and the letters liberated from it. Female curiosity prompted me to read them, and they gave me a full exposition of ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... and stretched out his foot. The cobbler took down from its nail his tape line and measured him. And the twilight deepened and ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... up to me, and I thought and thought till after supper-time. And then I had a plan—a risky chance, but a chance, just the same. I went up to the store and bought four feet of medium-size rubber hose and some rubber tape, same as they sell to bicycle fellers in the summer. 'Twas almost dark when I got back in sight of my shanty, and instead of going to it I jumped that board fence that me and Prince had negotiated for, hustled along the path past the notice boards, ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... aghast. "That would take all summer! And besides, I made out all that tomfoolery last summer. I supposed you must have unwound all that red tape long ago!" ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... said the Judge, "is to be the organizer of a lodge without flub-dub, gold tassel uniforms, red tape ritual, a regiment of officers with high-sounding titles, a calisthenic drill of idiotic signs and grips, a goat, and members who call each other 'brother.' I would name the presiding officer 'it,' and its first by-law would provide for ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... of administrative authority at one point has proved impracticable, first because of the great amount of red tape involved in the handling of the endless detail, and second because of the resulting destruction of initiative and enterprise. Such a centralization of social function would be just as cumbersome as a like centralization of all bodily functions in the higher ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... which he had taken the hapless dressing-case the night before, was pulled out and the heavy black tin box hauled into position and unlocked. With the raising of the scarred and dented top a mass of letters and papers came into view, filling the box to the brim—some tied with red tape, others in big envelopes. In a corner lay some photographs—one in a gilt frame, the edge showing clear of the tissue-paper in which it was wrapped. This he took out and studied long and earnestly, his lips tightly pressed together. Retying ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... said Whiteside. "Pushed to the bottom and covered with a lot of wool and odds and ends of tape." ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... the tape about Viola's wrists and sewed it fast to her close-fitting satin cuffs. She then encircled her ankles with the tape, and Morton drew the long ends under and far back of the chair and nailed them to the floor. Thereupon Weissmann ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... Government and society can control the elements, and regulate a spring freshet, a whirlwind or a cyclone, they will find that red tape is not strong enough to hold their ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... in several compartments. There is a saint in armour on horseback, life-size, killing a dragon, and a queen who seems to have been leading the dragon by a piece of red tape buckled round its neck—unless, indeed, the dragon is supposed to have been leading the queen. The queen still holds the tape and points heavenward. Next to this there is a very nice saint on horse-back, who is giving a cloak to a man who is nearly naked. Then comes St. Michael ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... but little manufacturing industry in the interior of Ecuador, but much more than on the coast. The chief articles manufactured are straw hats, shoes, baskets, carpets, embroidery, tape, thread, ponchos, coarse woolen and cotton cloth, saddles, sandals, soap, sugar, cigars, aguardiente, powder, sweetmeats, carved images, paints, and pottery. Wines, crockery, glassware, cutlery, silks, and fine cloth are imported. There are three cotton mills in the country; ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... yards of tape, and papers of pins, and boots and shoes and bread, and all the multitudinous things that are bought and sold every minute, were being done up in papers by complaisant, or surly, or conceited, or well-behaved clerks; and in all the large and little houses of the city, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... easier and simpler to do so than to take chance fractional measurements. Then comes your geometrical theorist, and observes that "the apartment is planned precisely in the proportion of six to five." So it is, but it is only the philosophy of the measuring-tape, after all. Secondly, it is a question whether the value of this geometrical basis is so great as has sometimes been argued, seeing that the results of it in most cases cannot be judged by the eye. If, for instance, the room we are in were nearly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... long-legged bird, the man of science, with a giant magnifying glass held up to his eye, sped hither and thither on his long, angular limbs, inspecting minutely the drawings and crude attempts at decoration. Already he had out his tape-measure and sketch-book, making observations and recording measurements. Presently, however, he recalled himself from the first ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... steam at once," whispered the leader of the party, as he hastened forward to the long midship gun, where he proceeded to take his measurements as though he were in real earnest, though it was so dark that he could not possibly see the marks on his tape, even if he tried ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... part, and tell her I've been cut to pieces in an underground dungeon and stuck together again rather badly; and she'd want to know exactly what the process felt like. You don't think she'd believe it, Riccardo? I'll bet you my Indian dagger against the bottled tape-worm in your den that she'll swallow the biggest lie I can invent. That's a generous offer, and you'd ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... I never did. It would mean a good deal of red tape for a man who changed his mind frequently. He could not fool his relations; they would know. The laws of the dark peoples have always amazed me, because if you dig deep enough into them you are likely to find common sense at the bottom. We must search ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... whole booth fell heavily over, mouth uppermost, and we within it. It was the final of the animal race that was responsible for our overthrow. The black pig, blind with jealous rage and mortification at being beaten on the tape by a cochin china, had borne violently down upon the booth and upset it, ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... of the Beef: then provide some thin Slices of the same Beef to lay before the first Turn, that the Collar may not be hollow in the middle. This must be roll'd as hard as possible, so that every Part is equally press'd to each other; then get some Tape about an Inch wide, and bind it hard about your Collar of Beef, in a Screw-like manner, till you have closed your Collar from top to bottom as tight as can be; observing to bind the top and bottom in ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... the sense of line like no other man since Frate Lippo, although his people were oddly out of joint) could take pleasure in putting half-a-dozen veils atop of each other, and then tying them all into bunches and bunches with innumerable bits of tape! As to himself, he invariably worked out every detail of the nude, in the vain hope that the priests and monks for whom he worked would allow at least half of those beautiful anatomies to remain visible; and when, with infinite difficulties and bad language, he gradually gave in to the necessity ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... frozen—fossilized, man! I called you man! You're not a man at all, but a nineteenth century machine! You're run like a motor, from a power house; by the force of conventional thought, over wires of red tape. Fie on you! I thought to meet a human being, not a lifeless thing." She looked at him steadily, her chin in the air, a world of scorn in her face. "Go on sweating beneath the useless load! Go on building your structure ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... there, and you never know, nor does he, what he's going to drag out to light in the end. But let him have it all clear and straight first! There's only one character I know of, more free from regulations and limitations and red-tape than a coroner, and that's the police-sergeant who runs the coroner. Goodday ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... caverns explored were made with a tape line; others were estimated by stepping, or in the case of elevations, by sighting, consequently are only approximate, but the figures given will in no case ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... range of women, who came to bid me farewell. They were all dressed (after the manner of the country) in blue or green cloth, with their hair fresh greased, separated before, and falling down behind, not in careless tresses, but in a good sound tail, fastened with black tape or riband. This was considered a great compliment, and the ceremony consisted in embracing the ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... began, seating himself opposite the shabby-looking office-table, with its covering of dusty faded baize, upon which there seemed to be always precisely the same array of papers in little bundles tied with red tape; "but first let me ask you a question: Have you heard from ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... condescendingly informed her, about six months ago, that he'd just as lief she would make him a watch-case if she wanted to very much. Girls always would jump at the chance to get up any such nonsense. Be sure she did it up in style, with gold and silver tape, and some of your blue alpaca. (Tom's conceptions of the feminine race, their apparel, occupations and implements, were bounded by tape and alpaca.) So Tom was provided for; the watch-case was nearly ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... having the water piped to this building, the same as to the dairy house, for a short hose gave them all the water they needed, when and where they needed it, and with the cement stored in the wagon shed near by they had all the materials they required to begin work. Bob took his tape line and with Tony holding the ring against the fence that divided the south field from the barnyard, measured off fifty feet and drove a peg. Then going eighty rods along the fence, measured out fifty feet again and drove ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... fault. You listened to the experts, usually career policemen who expect to cure any social evil with clubs and prisons. I am reminded of the simpleton found measuring two horses with a tape in order to be able to distinguish the black one from the white. Until I came along, nobody had ever reached the core of the matter. You don't kill a flourishing plant—in this case an Upas Tree—by lopping off a handful of leaves. You strike at the roots. ...
— Revenge • Arthur Porges
... just off the booking-office. Orderlies would rush in with messages, and the Clerk would instantly decide whether to send them over the wire, by push-cyclist, or by despatch rider. Again, he dealt with all messages that came in over the wire. Copies of these messages were filed. This was our tape; from them we learned the news. We were not supposed to read them, but, as we often found that they contained information which was invaluable to despatch riders, we always looked through them and each passed on what he had found to the others. The Signal Clerk might not ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... other key in her hand, stooping down. She counted the drawers—one, two three—fitted in the key, turned it, and realised with a little start the presence in the drawer of a roll of parchment, tied around with tape and sealed with a black seal. She laid her hand upon it, but even at that moment she felt a shiver pass through her body. There had been no sound in the room, which she could have sworn had been empty when she entered it, yet she had now a conviction ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that no civilian duty should be expected of him; and when Phillip forced him to admit that the British Government had sent him out to do more than mount guard, he quoted regulations and many other red-tape reasons why he should not be anything but a soldier. To crown this, he quarrelled with all his subordinate officers in turn, and at one time had them nearly all under arrest together. During his service in the colony he ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... beginning to furnish your house and own no pictures, we would suggest good photographs of your favourite old masters, framed close, without a margin, in the passepartout method (glass with a narrow black paper tape binding). ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... mantelpiece at home. An ugly little ginger dog, with a bit of red tape for his tongue and two black beads for his eyes, he viewed his limited world with an air of innocent impertinence very attractive to visitors. Common he looked and Common he was called, with a Christian name of Howard ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... more dangerous than red-tape happened for a while. There was an expensive quantity of investigation from Washington, and this gave the hostiles time to increase ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... Voyage tape fed into the controls of the ship had taken the men, and, when rewound, had—by a miracle—returned them to Terra with a cargo of similar tapes found in a building on a world which might have been the central capital for a government comprised not of countries or of worlds ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... red tape which held the letters together. Yes, there was a piece of circumstantial evidence which might have helped to convict my friend had he been on his trial in a criminal court. The red tape bore the mark of the place in which it ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... packet, laying the money in it again after further consideration—in and out amongst the paper, so that the money should not chink, and then placing it in the enclosure with the letter, he tied it up with a piece of the red tape the doctor kept in a little drawer, sealed it, and directed it in his plainest hand to Sir ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... found himself in the port of Vera Cruz, commanding an old hulk, the Supply. Looking about for something to do, it occurred to him to write to the Secretary of the Navy asking permission to explore the Dead Sea. Under ordinary circumstances the proposal would doubtless have been strangled with red tape; but, fortunately, the Secretary at that time was Mr. John Y. Mason, of Virginia. Mr. Mason was famous for his good nature. Both at Washington and at Paris, where he was afterward minister, this predominant trait has left a multitude of amusing traditions; it was of him that Senator Benton said, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... was less cold than it would have been five minutes before. But he walked home through the moonlit streets both puzzled and distressed—till he reached his club in Pall Mall, where the news coming through on the tape quickly drove everything out of his soldier's mind but ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I had to go down to the Canadian Hospital to receive my final Board—just a matter of that child of the devil, red-tape. August 13th saw me on my way to Regent's Park, where St. Dunstan's is situated. My heart leaped within me; I was going to have first-hand knowledge of the marvellous things about which I had heard. I was going to learn things that would put me out of the stick, tin-cup, ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... well-established fact that the larva of a working-bee will develop into a queen-bee, if, before it is too late, its food be changed to that on which the larvae of queen-bees are fed. Even more remarkable is the case of certain entozoa. The ovum of a tape-worm, getting into its natural habitat, the intestine, unfolds into the well-known form of its parent; but if carried, as it frequently is, into other parts of the system, it becomes a sac-like creature, called by naturalists the Echinococcus—a creature so extremely different from the ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... and four or five inches long, and insert these at the pages which contain anything notable. Then, when the book is finished, go through and transcribe or memorise such passages as are thus marked. I think it a great mistake to attempt too rigid a system in note-books, or too much red tape of any kind, because whenever this is done, the time and thought, which should be given to the matter of the extract helping to fix it upon the memory, is given instead to the secondary matter of keeping ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... somebody come aboard for a yard o' tape, or the seizings of a pair of shoes," he growled. "I'd ought to hauled in the gang-plank when ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... do not actually "slumber out their immortality," are at least preserved from profane intrusion. This "noble story"[61]—as it was called by one of its earliest admirers—is no longer, in any sense, a book "under review." The painful student of the past may still, indeed, with tape and compass, question its details and proportions; or the quick-fingered professor of paradox, jauntily turning it upside-down, rejoice in the results of his perverse dexterity; but certain things are now established in regard to ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... contemplated by the Government would be known to the so-called Government of the Confederate States almost as soon as thought of. All means, to thwart and delay the carrying out of the Government's purposes, that the excuses of routine and red-tape admitted of, would be used by the Traitors within the camp, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... to have a circular plate for the top cut by a glazier's turn-table. These are really better for showing up anything than the round-topped mounts, as they cast no reflection; but the top plates are harder to put on and to keep on when finished. Strongly pasted black tape will do to fix the very small ones, but for larger the tops should be cemented with thick white-lead, left to dry, and then further cemented with narrow tape smeared with white-lead, or any of the cements ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... return to his native city, and as short a stay in Philadelphia, he took down his shingle forever, and proceeded to New Orleans to study law. In two years he was admitted to the bar of Louisiana. But because clients were few, or because the red tape of the law chafed his spirit, within a year, as already he had abandoned the Church and Medicine, he abandoned his law practice and became an editorial writer on the New Orleans Crescent. A year later the restlessness which had rebelled ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... until some one invented A sort o' jerky tape-line clock, to help on wasteful ways. An' that infernal ticker spends money fur 'em quicker Than any neighbourhood o' men in good old ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the cave, took from his pocket a ball of string and a tape-measure, tied the string to the flint corner, fastened a pebble at the nineteenth metre and flung it toward the land side. The pebble at most reached ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... made such an omelet without breaking a great many eggs? Is it wonderful that the employers have sometimes felt themselves unbearably hustled, sometimes misunderstood, and at other times annoyed, or worried by what seems to them the red tape of the new Ministry, and its apparent multiplicity of forms ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... job or section of the job must be drawn out on paper first and any obstacles noted and avoided before the piping is cut. This not only saves time but it is also the forerunner of a good job. When getting measurements for piping the same rule or tape should be used to get out the pipe as was used to get ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... figure that you would like to see among his native mountains. And yet he is but a dignified sort of pedlar, and would be very happy to sell you a dozen or so of table napkins, Alpine handkerchiefs, or a few pieces of tape. ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... tore the remaining material into narrow tape-like ligaments, knotted each to each as before, but on a smaller scale, and wound the lengthy string she had thus formed round and round the linen rope, which, without this binding, had a ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... fix and distance computations by all stations. At the same time, we want two kinds of recordings. We'll continue making Sanborn tapes, but we also want audio-tape recordings." ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... nicety, into the ground, at the precise spot where the beetle fell, my friend now produced from his pocket a tape-measure. Fastening one end of this at that point of the trunk of the tree which was nearest the peg, he unrolled it till it reached the peg, and thence further unrolled it, in the direction already established by the two points ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... swear that the man Fairfield killed him," she cried passionately. "You will let him get away—you and your red tape." ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... packet of manuscript; it is paginated, you see, and I have indulged in the civil coquetry of a ribbon of red tape. It has almost a legal air, hasn't it? Run your eye over it, Austin. It is an account of the entertainment Mrs. Beaumont provided for her choicer guests. The man who wrote this escaped with his life, but I do not think he will live many years. The doctors tell him ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... is spoken to like all that have gone before. The Queen is referred to tenderly in most of the speeches, although she has never done anything to merit the approbation of the advocates of suffrage for woman. As on this occasion a woman conducted the meeting, much of the usual red tape was omitted. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... from the deep control bank and gave his full attention to the scanner as the slender, efficient girl started feeding a tape of reversal ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... a long envelope tied up with red tape and sealed," she answered. "Yes! he made a great fuss ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... calendars with land disputes, suits for debt, and exciting murder cases, which gave to lawyers more importance and better chances of advancement than they possessed in the older States. Mr. Clay had two strings to his bow. Besides being a man of red tape and pigeon-holes, exact, methodical, and strictly attentive to business, he had a power over a Kentucky jury such as no other man has ever wielded. To this day nothing pleases aged Kentuckians better than to tell stories which they heard their fathers tell, of Clay's happy repartees ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... to brag when the facts are there, staring you in the face. It's just a matter of feet and inches,—any one can do the measurement who has a tape-line. Wait till you see it. And as for its being vulgar to be big, why is the 'right little, tight little' always stretching out her long arms to rope in new territory, in that case, I should like to know? It would be much eleganter ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... matter was that Cousin Ann had only one hoop skirt, and it was the same she had worn in the sixties. Inch by inch its body had been renewed to reclaim it from the ravages of time until not one iota of the original garment was left. Here a tape and there a wire had been carefully changed, but always the hoop kept its original form. The spirit of the sixties still breathed from it and it enveloped Miss Ann as ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... up the stairs to the second floor. "Come on up and join them, Mr. Holmes, before you begin your usual tape-measuring, snooping around with a magnifying-glass, and analyzing cigar ashes! You see, I'm on to all ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... worth at least three-and-six. That was how it went: it would nearly all of it iron out into something really nice, poor James' crumpled stock. His fine, semi-transparent face flushed pink, his eyes flashed as he took in the sixpences and handed back knots of tape or packets of pins for the notorious farthings. What matter if the farthing change had originally cost him a halfpenny! His shop was crowded with women peeping and pawing and turning things over and commenting in loud, unfeeling tones. For there were still many comic items. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... yesterday. The peddlers on the sidewalk—("sleeve-buttons, three for five cents")—the handsome little fellow with canary-bird whistles—the cane men, toy men, toothpick men—the old woman squatted in a heap on the cold stone flags, with her basket of matches, pins and tape—the young negro mother, sitting, begging, with her two little coffee-color'd twins on her lap—the beauty of the cramm'd conservatory of rare flowers, flaunting reds, yellows, snowy lilies, incredible orchids, at the Baldwin mansion near Twelfth street— the show of fine poultry, beef, fish, at ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... your head? Did anyone tell you about Beth's giving away her things?" asked Laurie soberly, as Amy laid a bit of red tape, with sealing wax, a taper, and a ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott |
