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More "Tap" Quotes from Famous Books



... what'll set me up again. Had a sprained ankle once afore, and I used to sit on a high stool with my foot in the back-kitchen sink under the tap." ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn

... the Colonel's broken head upon the tapis. We both agreed that if I had not given him that rather smart tap of my walking-cane, he would have beheaded half the inmates of the Belle Etoile. There was not a waiter in the house who would not verify ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... state of dejection, with the echo of this sad sentence in both our ears, when a light tap at the door was followed by the entrance of Letty, the nurse-maid. She wore an unusual look of embarrassment and held something crushed in her hand. Mrs. Packard advanced hurriedly to ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green

... back, stood a short, thick-set man, humming the air of a vulgar ditty; his hands were thrust into the pockets of a velvet shooting-jacket, ornamented with large ivory buttons, such as are commonly worn by cabmen and other tap-room blackguards. His countenance was by far too dark and sinister-looking to be honest, and, as he occasionally favoured us with a few oblique and professional glances from beneath a white castor, half-pulled over his ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown

... heart of its water supply. From these, smaller ditches carried the supply to the different fields. These represented the arteries. The small streams trickling down the long irrigation marks through the grain and root crops might be likened to veins. To supply these it was necessary to tap the arteries every few yards; and the adjustment of these outlets, as ditches always lower during the heat of the day when suction and evaporation are the greatest and rise in the cooler hours of the night, was a matter of some ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... quickly. "Think of the few people who have seen wild animals as they are, of those who have ever seen an earthquake, or a volcano in action. You can go to Japan, and get pictures of earthquakes. They have them on tap there. And as for volcanoes, why the Andes mountains are full of 'em. Think of how many people will be thankful to you for showing them ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton

... Mitford just excessively. I dinna wunner at her being able to write sae weel as she does about drawing-rooms wi' sofas and settees, and about the fine folk in them seeing themsels in lookin-glasses frae tap to tae; but what puzzles the like o' me, is her pictures o' poachers, and tinklers, and pottery-trampers, and ither neerdoweels, and o' huts and hovels without riggin' by the wayside, and the cottages o' honest ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... primary school. The little boys of six came with knapsacks strapped to their backs for their books and dinners, instead of satchels. At the tap of a bell they formed themselves into column and marched like little veterans to the schoolroom door. I visited a school for boys of thirteen or fourteen. Casting my eyes into the yard, I saw the spiked helmet in the shape of the half-military manoeuvres ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... task, when there was a tap-tapping upon the stone floor, and down the long aisle, leaning upon his crutch, came Father Varennes. He stopped near the chapel and watched her as she whisked the last chair into place and then paused with her hands upon her hips to make a ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... silliness, you see, that I would have liked to do something for William, even if it was only going into a convent—to be bricked up alive, perhaps. And then I hears a scratch, scratch, scratching, and 'Drat the mice,' says I; but I didn't take any notice, and then there was a little tap, tapping, like a bird would make with its beak on the window-pane, and I went and opened it, thinking it was a bird that had lost its way and was coming foolish-like, as they will, to the light. So I drew the curtain and opened the ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit

... past it was customary whenever it was known that Sir Jasper would sit up late, for Mrs. Fraudhurst, on passing the door of his chamber before descending to the breakfast room, to tap and enquire whether the Baronet would come down to his breakfast or have it sent up to him. On the following morning the widow on stopping at the chamber door discovered that it was ajar, and on pushing it gently open found the room was vacant, the bed undisturbed and, it was ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest

... not rap at all until the music is distributed, the accompanist in his place and ready to begin, your score open, and until you know exactly what you are going to do first. Then let just a slight tap or two suffice to notify everyone that the rehearsal ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens

... quickly. "I'm old enough to realize that papa may need pressure of all sorts; I only think it makes him more obstinate to get him cross. You probably do understand him better, but that's one thing I've found out and you haven't. There!" She gave her mother a friendly tap on the shoulder and went to the door. "I'll hop in and ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington

... sea. Once or twice he leaps clean into the air, a flying bar of silver. Then he sulks at the bottom, a mere dead weight, attempting devices only to be conjectured. A common plan now is to tighten the line, and tap the butt end of the rod. This humane expedient produces effects not unlike neuralgia, it may be supposed, for the fish is off in a new fury. But rush after rush grows tamer, till he is drawn within reach of the gaff, and so on to the grassy bed, where a tap on the head ends his sorrows, and ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... own thoughts: that they were not altogether disagreeable was to be inferred from the smiles which occasionally covered a countenance hard and martial in its usual expression, though there were moments in which all its severe sobriety prevailed. Half an hour might have passed, when a tap at the door was answered by a direction to enter. A middle-aged man, in the dress of an officer, but whose uniform wanted the usual smartness of the profession, made his appearance, and was saluted ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... the tap downstairs, if that's the nearest! If this man dies before you've brought it I'll have you locked up as sure as you're ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... she was glad she had not troubled them, for Hoodie seemed better and brighter than for some days past. She did not seem impatient for the news of Maudie, not as impatient as Lucy herself, who ran along to tap at Martin's door as soon as she awoke, and came back with a relieved face to tell Hoodie that the news was much better this morning, Maudie seemed really to have got ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... song, MRS. BATHOLOMMEY has given a quick tap on the door and entered. She is about forty years of age. Her faded brown hair is streaked with grey. She wears a plain ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco

... Old John, "I'll show you something." So he got a stout stick and began to tap the tree. Tap, tap, tap, tap, as if he were beating time to music. This tapping had a strange effect upon A-bal-ka. At first he was greatly excited and tried to run farther up the tree. Soon he gave this up, turned around, and began to come down head foremost. He would lift his little ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix

... tap Davidge's elbow and smile, putting out her hand with coquetry. She saw her debarrass herself of her companion, a French officer whose exquisite horizon-blue uniform was amazingly crossed with the wound and service chevrons of three years' warfaring. Nevertheless, ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... laboratory, in which the work was done, was very roughly equipped, supplied by a standpipe tap with water, and draining into a pipe that ran down into a swampy rush-bordered pool under an alder tree in a secluded corner of the common just outside the garden hedge. The pipe was cracked, and ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... with the conscious swagger of genius, read Tooke's Pantheon, and prated of the Heathen gods. This was very harmless and innocent pastime; tiresome, to be sure, yet laughable withal; nor did it call for any further rebuke than an occasional tap upon the cranium of some blockhead who forsook his legitimate sphere, thrust himself in your way, and became unsufferably blatant. Now the spirit of the times has changed. The literary youth of London are all in the facetious line. They have regular clubs, at which they meet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... "Stand by to dismount!" the Quarter-Gunner of the division on the deck above that in which the gun is to be dismounted removes the screw-tap, and stands ready to place the washer, key and un-key the bolt ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN

... Inn proved some years ago to be too small for its would-be visitors. An addition couldn't be built because there wasn't any room; but the landlady succeeded in getting a house across the way. Here there are bedrooms, a sort of quiet tap-room of very great respectability, and the kitchens. As the dining-room is in house number one, the matter of serving dinner might seem to be attended with difficulty, but it is not apparent. The maids run across the narrow street with platters and dishes surmounted by great Britannia covers, ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... a little knot of men, in the faded, dilapidated garments of the army, entered the tap-room of Hatchie's protector. They drank deeply, and, as was their constant practice, they seated themselves at the broken table, and commenced gambling with the negro's dirty cards for the few dollars which remained in their possession. This amusement ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... Brandenburg he was, very literally, the blessing of blessings; redemption out of death into life. In the ruins of that old Friesack Castle, battered down by Heavy Peg, Antiquarian Science (if it had any eyes) might look for the tap-root of the Prussian Nation, and the beginning of all that Brandenburg has since ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle

... death of an enemy. Behind them the house was guarded by a sentinel with drawn sword. The unfortunate tenant, who looked a martyr to ague, sat "in palaver" with a petty island "king," and at times the tap of a war-drum roused my experienced ear. The monarch, habited in a shabby cloth coat, occupied a settee, with a "minister" on either side; he was a fat senior of light complexion, with a vicious expression upon features, which were not those of the "tobacconist nigger," ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... I wearied of journalism; the daily article soon grows monotonous, even when you know it will be printed, and this I did not know; my prose was very faulty, and my ideas were unsettled, I could not go to the tap and draw them off, the liquor was still fermenting; and partly because my articles were not very easily disposed of, and partly because I was weary of writing on different subjects, I turned my attention to short stories. I wrote a dozen with a view to preparing myself ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... sleep of a tired, satisfied and drunken man worn out with cold and weariness. Raisky went to the window, raised the curtain, and looked out into the dark, starlit night. Now and then a flame hovered over the unemptied bowl, flared up and lighted up the room for a moment. There was a gentle tap on ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov

... said in praise of any one, and it seemed to excite his interest, she would pooh-pooh it, literally with a "pooh!" a shrug of the shoulders, a toss of the head, or an impatient tap of ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... which admitted of no argument but which interested them deeply. So after all they did not hear the rumble and creak of the rustic stairway, nor the quick steps crossing the garden on the roof of the sun parlor for Nolan was forgotten until his sharp tap on the glass was followed by the instant appearance of his head, and his pleasant voice said ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston

... fellow and a bold," says he, "but I am not so sure that you are doing yourself justice. I would have you to consider whether you would not do better, ay, and safer, to serve me instead of serving so commonplace a rascal as Mr. Harris. Consider of it," he concluded, dealing the man a gentle tap upon the shoulder, "and don't be in haste. Dead or alive, you will find me an ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... papers, and all the other debris which collect around a busy and untidy man. Motioning his visitor into a chair, Raffles Haw pulled off his coat, and, turning up the sleeves of his coarse flannel shirt, he began to plunge and scrub in the warm water which flowed from a tap in the wall. ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle

... to mark the time with the listless apathy of an automaton; the smoke curled from his meerschaum, the drum continued to tap-tap-tap, until it seemed to sound like thunder to my strained ears, for every sense was painfully excited. All count had long been lost, but when several hundred lashes had been given, Van Wandenberg and half his Dutchman were asleep ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... fetch it, but I was quite unsteadied by all that had fallen out, and I broke one glass and fouled the tap, and while I was still getting in my own way, I heard a loud fall in the parlour, and running in, beheld the captain lying full length upon the floor. At the same instant my mother, alarmed by the cries and fighting, came running downstairs to help me. Between ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... more, and her husband went away. About half an hour afterwards, as Mrs. Darlington sat in her room, there was a light tap at her door, which was immediately opened, and Mrs. Marion stepped in. Her face was pale, and it was some moments before her quivering lips ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur

... slowly. "Shot in San Diego by another man, but not by me. I had him tracked as far as that, and had my eyes on him, but it wasn't my deal. But there," he added, giving her magnetized arm a gentle and final tap as if to awaken it, "he's dead, and so is the whole story. And now we'll drop ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... probably run out on some short errand. She went up the stairs softly. The bedroom door, she knew, would be open. Mrs. Phillips had a feeling against being "shut off," as she called it. She meant to tap lightly and walk straight in, as usual. But what she saw through the opening caused her to pause. Mrs. Phillips was sitting up in bed with her box of cosmetics in front of her. She was sensitive of anyone seeing her make-up; ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... repeated after me; "you had better learn to live without him." "What an absurdity!" I said and wondered when he would come. Still later, Miriam, father, and I were in the parlor, when there was a tap on the window, just above his head, and I saw a hand, for an instant. Father hurried out, and we heard several voices; and then steps going away. Mother came down and asked who had been there, but we only knew that, whoever it was, father had afterward gone with them. Mother went on: ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... A tap-tap of the brass knocker on the "pig-door" off the side porch announced the callers, Lalia and Lucille Hayden, and brought the scout girls ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis

... view by clumps of trees, corn and underbrush. This repelling force was not kept long in suspense, and it was evident that the movement had not been made a moment too soon for safety. Suddenly from the shadow of the white-oaks, out came the Confederates by regiments, without tap of drum or bugle-call, pouring from the various openings in double-quick time, and by the right and left flanks. They filed rapidly right and left until the woods were cleared; then by a halt and face-to-the-front they were brought quickly into line of ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... of acids, resists oxidation by heat, and change of any sort; and which, therefore, I may heat in the atmosphere without any flux. I bend the wire so as to make the ends cross: these I make hot by means of the blowpipe, and then, by giving them a tap with a hammer, I shall make them into one piece. Now that the pieces are united, I shall have great difficulty in pulling them apart, though they are joined only at the point where the two cylindrical surfaces came together. And now I have succeeded in pulling the wire ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday

... he tasted a small quantity, and paused awhile to feel the effect. He then took another taste, and remarked, "It's sourish." He put the tumbler to his mouth a third time, and emptied it quickly. Then he placed one hand on his stomach, said "Oh, my," and ran away to the water tap outside to rinse his mouth and get rid of the unpleasant flavour. His verdict was ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... family owned a cur, and at the first tap of the bell they always, with a united yelp, rushed for the spot, where they formed a ring round the post, each seated on his haunches and brushing the ground with his tail, with a rapid motion, from side to side, nose in the air, ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley

... soothingly, "they ain't no call for you to say nothin' more that'll incrimigate you before the bar of Justice. Steady, now, or I'll tap you ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh

... fearful volubility, and her haranguing echoed in Dick's ears with the meaningless sound of a water-tap heard splashing on the flagstones of an ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... sleeping-car, the tram-car, the electric trolley, the best bicycles, the best motor-cars, the steam-heater, the best and smartest systems of electric calls and telephonic aids to laziness and comfort, the elevator, the private bath-room (hot and cold water on tap), the palace-hotel, with its multifarious conveniences, comforts, shows, and luxuries, the—oh, the list is interminable! In a word, Republican Simplicity found Europe with one shirt on her back, so to speak, as far as real luxuries, conveniences, and the comforts ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Century Map, we all know the chap Who can trace his proud place without fear, Who claims the drum-tap found him first in the gap, Though he skulked forty miles ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw

... a night of feverish restlessness. It was with a feeling of relief that she answered a tap that came at her door in the early dusk of the January morning; but she gave a start of surprise when she ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell

... and the three stammered, "God save the Tsar!" After which he saw them to the door. When the door had closed after them, he said, "My little Annouchka, you mustn't reckon without me." He hurried toward the sofa, where Rouletabille was lying forgotten, and gave him a tap on ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux

... down the village streets Strange are the forms my fancy meets, For the thoughts and things of to-day are hid, And through the veil of a closed lid The ancient worthies I see again I hear the tap of the elder's cane, And his awful periwig I see, And the silver buckles of shoe and knee. Stately and slow, with thoughtful air, His black cap hiding his whitened hair, Walks the Judge of the great Assize, Samuel Sewall the good and wise. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... controversy, while the country's dynamic private sector is denied both financing and access to markets. Reform of the banking sector is proceeding slowly, raising concerns that the country will be unable to tap sufficient domestic savings to maintain current high levels of growth. Administrative and legal barriers are also causing costly delays for foreign investors and are raising similar doubts about Vietnam's ability to maintain the inflow of foreign ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... III and was interrupted by a light tap on the door panel, at which he went silent, turning away as if ...
— Old Mr. Wiley • Fanny Greye La Spina

... province retains some link which binds it to all the rest, and makes it part of the general harmony. The Arctic lichen is found growing under the shadow of the palm on the rocks of the tropical serra, and the song of the thrush and the tap of the woodpecker mingle with the sharp discordant cries ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... "We must first tap at the door, and try if we can get in as benighted travellers: if that won't do, and I fear it will not, while you remain begging for admittance at the door, and keep him occupied, I will try the door behind, that leads into the ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... the mighty wine Sir Walter bottled? The enthusiast provokes to wrath. It's a very good duberge—it's a capital, comfortable house of call, and we should like to sit there often. And the wine—we found no fault with the wine. It's an honest tap, and a wholesome and a palatable, and here's the landlord's health in it. But ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray

... Caroline with gloomy despair, and here are the phantom-like thoughts which tap, with wings of a bat, the beak of a vulture, the body of a death's-head moth, upon the walls of the palace in which, enkindled by desire, glows your brain like a ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac

... Captain Pretorius, dismounted one evening at the farm of a Mr. B. in the district of Bethulie. The farmer, hearing a tap at the door, went and opened it. Pretorius, who posed as an English officer, asked Mr. B., "Where are the Boers?" The latter, pointing to certain ridges in the distance, said in rather broken English, "Do you see those kopjes yonder? They are full of Boers." But asked at the same time, "Do ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald

... given, or hinted at; but incidentally we find Gundling in full blast "in the year 1718;" [Von Loen, Kleine Schriften, i. 201 (cited in Forster, i. 260).] and conclude his instalment was a year or two before. Gundling came to his Majesty from the Tap-room of Boisterous-Jack; read the Newspapers, and explained everything: such a Dictionary-in-breeches (much given to liquor) as his Majesty had got, was never seen before. Working into the man, his Majesty, who had a great taste for such things, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... caught the tap of your knuckles and he had thrown wide the green door, what a welcome would have awaited you! How warm the grasp of his fine old hand; how cordial ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... are equal to a wholesale grocery. Very well. Come, Basil, we'll tap the maples; let ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... filled her breast with fear, When William, fishing, chanced a pike to hook, And gave it to his dear at once to cook, Who, quite delighted, hastened to the priest, And begged his rev'rence on the fish to feast. The parson with the present much was pleased; A tap upon the shoulder care appeased; And with a smile he to the bringer said This fish, with trifles on the table spread, Will all complete; 'twas holyday we find, When other clergy with our rector dined. Will you still more oblige, the parson cried, And let the fish at home by ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... sediment, and consequently bring down no liquid mire to add to its substance. The soil is formed completely of vegetable matter, without any admixture of earthy particles. In many even of the softest parts juniper-trees stand firmly fixed by their long tap roots, affording a dark shade, beneath which numerous ferns, reeds, and shrubs, together with a thick carpet of mosses, flourish, protected from the rays of the sun. Here and there also large cedars and other deciduous trees have grown up. The black soil formed beneath, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... as if it were yesterday being awakened during the night by a tap at the back window by men who had come to inform my parents that my uncle, Bailie Morrison, had been thrown into jail because he had dared to hold a meeting which had been forbidden. The sheriff with the aid of the soldiers had arrested him a few miles from the town where the meeting had been held, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... knock at the street-door, and she changed countenance. Presently there came a gentle tap at their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Henley; I 'm merely a man who drifted into this adventure blindly, but now I am going to fight it out for sake of the woman. It's a pity for you that you did n't tap me on the head a bit harder back in ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish

... do our best to be back the next day. I was still so sleepy and tired that Mary persuaded me to lie down on the bed, in preparation for the possibility of a night's journey. I was nearly asleep when a tap came to the door, and a servant informed Mary that a gentleman was waiting ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth

... had furnished a first-rate dinner, and his usual tap of excellent wine. ('Vino del Popolo' he called it.) The 'Osteria' had filled; the combatants were placed opposite each other on either side of a small table on which stood two 'mezzi'—long glass bottles ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... I am taking on the role of Devil's Advocate in the struggle to keep woman from canonizing herself by main force I want to be as fair as I can, always reserving the privilege where things are about even, of giving my own side a shade the better of it. The main tap-root reason why women confide over-much and too much in other women is because leading more circumscribed lives than men commonly lead they are driven back upon themselves and into themselves and their sisters for interests and for ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... afterwards, as Lady O'Shane was sitting with her back to the glass-door of the green house, which opened into the ball-room, she was startled by a peremptory tap on the glass behind her; she turned, and saw young Ormond, pale as death, and ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... heavily, and of course communicated its motion to me, so that as the cord turned in its horribly giddy way, I first rode from side to side, and then by degrees to and fro, with the result that when nearest, I made a dash with one hand to tap on the window opposite to me; but being unable to govern the force exercised, my hand went right through the pane, and the glass fell tinkling to ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn

... vegetables filled the air with an odor which seemed to increase the child's hunger. The man and child without a word sank down upon the wooden benches and listened to the conversation of some men who were drinking in the tap-room. The peals of laughter and loud talk certainly were very unlike the staid Puritans of New England. Anon, one of them struck up a cavalier song very popular among that sect at ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... that his remaining in would injure the church, and that in turn involves the idea that it is the excellent character of the parishioners which imparts virtue to the church. The Catholics' conception, you see, is quite the converse. Such virtue as they keep in stock is on tap, so to speak, here in the church itself, and the parishioners come and get some for themselves according to their need for it. Some come every day, some only once a year, some perhaps never between their baptism and their funeral. But they all have ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... Grace and her friend had risen from the breakfast-table to welcome their ex-hostess and valued neighbor, and the three ladies looked as though news from the front brought far more of anxiety than comfort. Before anything further was said there came a light tap at the door, and Mrs. Turner fluttered in, bewitchingly pretty in her white muslin, with bright-colored ribbons. There were ill-natured people who observed at times of Mrs. Turner that she took far more pains with her dress when the captain was away on campaign and "the doughboys" were ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... iron pail at the boiler-tap, and, as I stood waiting, my thoughts flew back to earlier days at Acacia Road, and to Jane and her energetic manner of smacking the oilcloth. But I suppose my ideas had developed since those times, and certainly I felt this morning that I was being subjected to the lowest humiliation. However, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... drink this up, and then we'll get some more at the saloon, and—we'll paint the town red." He rose and fetched two glasses from a cupboard and set them on the table. Then he took his sheath knife from his belt, and, with a skilful tap, knocked the neck ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... "Could you tap a bottle of Chablis, with a few dozen oysters, and a filet saute with mushrooms to follow it?" said Laurent, who wished to ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac

... see and know woods and plains and mountains and streams and coasts in a cleanly and decent condition—whether primitive or adapted in one way or another to man's use—together with the communities of wild creatures that belong there, is quite as practical and urgent as their right to usable tap water or to a share in the Gross National Product. For upon the retention of these ancient realities future human sanity and wholeness may ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... well, my friend. Fiesco could not do better;" and rising upon his toes to tap Olivier upon the shoulder, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny

... drew him about. It was a light, quick TAP, TAP, TAP—not like the fist of either Bateese or Nepapinas. In another moment the door swung open, and in the flood of sunlight that poured into the cabin ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... however, because there are signs that they may come also from Germany. The same crowd that supplies money to buy labour-leaders and the press and to blow up factories in the United States keeps a good supply of peace-liars on tap. It'll be fun to watch Bryan perform and never suspect that anybody is lying to him or laughing at him; and he'll go home convinced that he's done the job and he'll let loose doves all over the land till they are as thick as English sparrows. Not even the President could teach him anything ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... merry Christmas came, and the Yule-log lent its flame To the face of squire and dame in the hall, The cellarer went down to tap October brown, Which was rather of ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... The whole confusion had not taken up even the time of grace at the beginning of the hour; and a great burst of applause greeted the mild old dean as he came absently in, as was his wont, at the tap of the ten-minute bell. He looked up innocently at the unusual greeting, and the cheer was repeated with interest. As first in authority he was supposed to report all such inter-class offences; but ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... autoclave (having previously removed the cotton-wool plugs, caps, etc.), in the vertical position, and before replacing the basket see that there is a sufficiency of water in the bottom of the boiler. Now attach a piece of rubber tubing to the nearest water tap, and by means of this fill each tube ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... to the wars—those stout and ruddy youths. Every one anxious to have his head taken off by a cannon ball, all for the honor and glory of it. They marched along cheering, as the white handkerchiefs waved; they proudly kept step to the tap of the drum, or moved briskly beside the cannon, or cantered by on their ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... together, she meditated on them minutely, until suddenly her heart was stricken with pain and her soul fleeted away, while from her eyes trickled down drops of tears. But while nothing could dispel her present state of mind, she unexpectedly realised that some one from behind gave her a tap; and, turning her head round to look, she found that it was a young girl; but who it was, the next ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... o'er the plains of the west walked the sun at the end of his journey, And forth came the brave and the guest, at the tap of the drum, for the trial. Like a forest of larches the hordes were gathered to witness the contest; As loud as the drums were their words and they roared like the roar of the Ha-ha. For some for Tamdoka ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... beer. Here sat generals in uniform, ministers of state wearing their orders, ambassadors and noble guests from foreign realms, all smoking short Dutch pipes and breathing the vapors of tobacco. Before each was placed a great mug of beer, and the beer-casks were kept freely on tap, for the old despot insisted that all should drink or smoke whether or not they liked beer and tobacco, and he was never more delighted than when he could make a guest drunk or sicken him with smoke. For food, when they were in need of it, bread and cheese ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris

... The messengers tap on the windows. The windows of the soul. They carry this news from our Savior, "I died that ye might be made whole." "I died that ye might be made whole, I died that ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts

... the Sappers volunteered. I found him in the tap-room. They should be on their way by ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... held them erect. They stepped out freely. But against the wooden chop boxes, the bags of cornmeal potio, the bundles of canvas that made up some of the loads, the long safari sticks went tap, tap, tap, in rhythm. This tapping was a steady undertone to the volume of noise that arose from thirty throats. Every man was singing or shouting at the full strength of his lungs. A little file of Wakamba sung in unison ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... fortunate in having gifted poets to write his dramas. As rich as he was in melodic affluence, his creative faculty seems to have had its tap-root in deep personal feelings and enthusiasms. One of the most poetic and picturesque of composers, he needed a powerful exterior suggestion to give his genius wings and fire. The Germany of his time was alive with patriotic ardor, and the existence ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... on tap at every conference of the independents. They have not squabbled for partisan advantage. They have worked together to give The People an honest and genuine Direct Primary measure. Senator Wright won a brilliant fight. ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn

... a winnowing machine. New hats, but old faces. Could his great-great-grandfather have been dug up and set in that barn door, he would have looked just the same, so would the sacks, and the wheat, and the sunshine. At the market town, where the auctioneer's hammer goes tap tap over bullocks and sheep, crowds of men gather together,—farmers, and bailiffs, and shepherds, drovers and labourers—and their clothes are different, but there are the same old weather-beaten faces. Faces that you may see in the ancient illuminated manuscripts, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... quail. His plethora of plums he spilt; They did not wince, they did not wilt. Poor fellow! As they left him there, He heard one beardless boy declare, "Jove! what a milk-and-water chap! I thought non-coms. had oaths on tap." Another said, "We'd soon be fit If we were only cursed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various

... central nervous system, which is composed of the brain and spinal cord. We might liken the nerves, singly, to wires, and all of them together to a system of wires. The things of the external world tap at the switchboard by using the organs of special sense; the nerves, acting as wires, transmit their messages; at the switchboard is the operator—consciousness—accepting and interpreting ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter

... billow, sorrow like the floating bubbles, false views like the Makara fish, amidst all these the ship of wisdom only can carry us across the mighty sea. The mass of ills are like the flowers of the sorrow-tree, old age and all its griefs, the tangled boughs; death the tree's tap-root, deeds done in life the buds, the diamond sword of wisdom only strong enough to cut down the mundane tree! Ignorance the burning-glass, covetous desire the scorching rays, the objects of the five desires the dry grass, wisdom alone ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... very closely stopped; when you tap a bottle of sauce, throw away the old perforated cork, and put in a new taper velvet cork; if the air gets to it, the fish takes the rust,[281-] and it is ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... where he was, and proclaiming his intention of remaining there as long as suited his pleasure. Every now and then the watchmen made a rush at him with their cudgels, the blows from which his faithful shillaly enabled him to ward off, and occasionally to bestow a pretty heavy tap on the heads of the most ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... had well recovered himself, a slight tap at the door was heard, and the sound seemed at ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... moments of fearful expectation are long drawn out; their nature is of centuries, not years. One thing was certain, and one only—that there was a wind, and a very cold one, blowing upon him. He stared at the door. It moved. It opened a little. A light tap followed. He could not speak. Then came a louder, and the spell was broken. He started to his feet, and with the courage of terror extreme, opened the door—not opened it a little, as if he feared an unwelcome ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald

... a tremendous convenience. He was the only idle man in town, always on tap, ready to stay out any and every night until the cocks crowed. Why shouldn't he? He had nothing to do all next day, except, perhaps, to decide which stick he should carry! With a busy man's good- humoured contempt for the mere idler, Keith looked upon Sansome as a harmless ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... profane prying, contrary alike to the laws of the Prophet and to the laws of hospitality. But my eyes fell on a beam of light coming from a tiny window niched deep down in a recess of the building. And even as I saw this, there came to my ears a faint, regular sound—a muffled 'tap, tap, tap.' Instantly every fibre of my ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... A continuous tap-tapping in the villages shows that bark cloth is being made. The bark, on being removed from the-tree, is steeped in water, or in a black muddy hole, till the outer of the two inner barks can be separated, then ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... Another tap at the door. It was Morris, with the news that it was a fine morning, that the whole house was astir, and that she had ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... prejudge them, Captain," began Winslow, when with a tap upon the door Squanto himself appeared ushering in a strange Indian whom he fluently presented as a friend of his who had come with great news. Bidden to deliver it, the stranger stated that a great Dutch ship had gone ashore at Sowams (Bristol), and would be wrecked unless help ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... and Mrs. Simmons gave him farewells which were full of feeling. Aunt Suse had come down the brick walk, tap-tapping with her cane, as Harry stood at the gate ready ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler

... shame for gentlemen to frighten a poor foolish child like I was. I sometimes think it might be tricks. There was two on 'em on the tap o' the coach beside me. And they began to question me after nightfall, when the moon rose, where I was going to. Well, I told them it was to wait on Dame Arabella Crowl, of Applewale House, near ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... little while Bob pulled the string again, and the dangling nail went tap! tap! tap! against ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster

... might almost have dreamed the moon had forgotten its familiar place of rising, and was about to mount into a startled expectant west. Not a light in all the wide expanse, and for a while not a sound of human life, save the beat of Robert's step, or the occasional tap of his stick against the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Miriam and Dr. Woods, talking of Harry and wishing he would come. "You want Harry!" the doctor repeated after me; "you had better learn to live without him." "What an absurdity!" I said and wondered when he would come. Still later, Miriam, father, and I were in the parlor, when there was a tap on the window, just above his head, and I saw a hand, for an instant. Father hurried out, and we heard several voices; and then steps going away. Mother came down and asked who had been there, but ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... came a tap on the door, and on going to answer it Katherine found Mrs. Seabrook and Miss ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... to go?" he said; she, asking no questions (marvelous woman!) told him. He said "G'tap!" angrily; Lion backed, and the wheel screeched against the curb. "Oh, g'on!" he said. Lion switched his tail, caught a rein under it, and trotted off. Mr. Houghton leaned over the dashboard, swore softly, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... little lumps of granite, is placed in a tray at the bottom of the generator for acetylene gas, which is of the form of a small portable gasometer. The tap, admitting water to the carbide trays, is turned on, and gas at once generates, and forces up the generator in the way so familiar to those who often see a gasometer. This gas passes through a tube to the blow-pipe ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser

... Tap, tap, tap—nearer and nearer through the darkness. How soon would the rats be swarming out, blood-fanged and wholly vicious? How soon would the ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long

... of the day had evidently slipped his memory entirely. I touched him on the shoulder. "She's going to-day!" I said. Edward's carol subsided like a water-tap turned off. "So she is!" he replied, and got down at once off the gate: and we returned to ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... all having such a good time; it is absolutely successful. Isn't Borden sweet to bother teaching me that heel tap. Go in and talk to Mrs. Craddock again; I thought you ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... sore head, the result of trying to vanquish the ambassador and the two other Austrians when the diplomat had ordered him seized. The lad put up such a battle that one of his opponents had found it necessary to tap him gently on top of the head with the butt of his revolver. That had settled the argument, and when Chester returned to consciousness he was aboard the special train, bound, and seated across ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes

... are there, fussing about, sometimes to the extent of blackening the whole slab of yellow eggs. They inspect the treasure, flutter their wings and brush their hind-legs against each other, a sign of keen satisfaction. They sound the heap, probe the interstices with their antennae and tap the individual eggs with their palpi; then, this one here, that one there, they quickly apply the tip of their abdomen to the egg selected. Each time, we see a slender, horny prickle darting from the ventral surface, close to the end. This is the instrument that deposits the germ under the film ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... obeyed, a slight tap was heard at the door. The young girl turned pale, for in her present frame of mind any little matter affected her. Nor were her apprehensions materially allayed by the entrance of Dorothy, who, looking white ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... one, and although Rosmore keenly watched the landlord he could discover no sign of fear either in his face or attitude. Watson had nothing to report when they returned to the tap-room. ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner

... to his courage, he is absolutely lion-hearted where he can help or defend any one else. On one occasion Daddy lost his temper with Dimples (Boy Number 2), and, not without very good provocation, gave him a tap on the side of the head. Next instant he felt a butt down somewhere in the region of his waist-belt, and there was an angry little red face looking up at him, which turned suddenly to a brown mop of hair as the butt was repeated. No one, not even ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the streets around. In every door and window there was nothing to be seen but heads ranged one above the other; the terraces were covered with people, and curious spectators were observed an the roof of the Duomo and on the tap ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... their hostess; ay, man, and right glad to be the hostess of such gallant gentlemen,—gentlemen, I warrant, too fine to insult a defenceless girl; gentlemen spies that did not cock their boots on the table, or turn an honest farmer's house into a tap-room." ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte

... in silvery brightness down the gutter of the humble street. A "helper," rubbing down one of Lady Smigsmag's carriage-horses, even paused in his whistle to listen to the strain. Mr. Tressle's man, who had been professionally occupied, ceased his tap-tap upon the coffin which he was getting in readiness. The greengrocer (there is always a greengrocer in those narrow streets, and he goes out in white Berlin gloves as a supernumerary footman) was standing charmed at his little green gate; the cobbler (there is always a cobbler ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Mesge struck a light tap with his finger on the forehead of Sir Archibald Russell. It ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... in the forest was that it was not sound. It lacked inside strength. Even a slight tap of the ax proved that it was a sort of 'hollow mockery.' It was a good-looking tree on the outside, but its heart was not right. And isn't that exactly the case with a lot of good-looking, well-dressed people? Why, even a boy or a girl can be all wrong at the heart, though ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold

... to be. I remember at the age of ten doing a thing that I have never dared to do since. I sat in the bath with my back to the taps. Do you suppose the innocent designer of baths meant everybody to sit like that, with a tap looking over each shoulder? Taps are known to be savage brutes, and it is everybody's instinct to sit the other way round, and keep an eye on the danger. If I were as brave now as I was at ten, I could probably win the War. Oh, Jay, I can't stop talking, I am so ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson

... delectation of mankind, to forego its pleasures would be to offend the Creator, if indeed stark madness could kindle His ire. But to curb one's thirst for life and to spurn its joys because one holds them to be the tap root of all evil, is an action at once intelligible and wise. And this is what Job evidently does when he practises difficult virtues and undergoes terrible sufferings without the consciousness of past guilt or the faintest ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... all goes on well, my friend. Fiesco could not do better;" and rising upon his toes to tap Olivier upon ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny

... the contestants evidently had anything to ask. They knew what they had to do only too well; and both were like restive horses, awaiting the tap of the bell, or the crack of the pistol, to be off on ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy

... together, cousin?" asked Catharine; "you have neither deer sinews nor war-tap." The Indian name for the flexible roots of the tamarack, or swamp larch, which they make use of in manufacturing ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill

... to be "out of Spirits." Why doesn't he come to New-York, where he can get plenty of the article, either in the sense of the Tap or in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various

... pane, on the right. Down the glass, across the bottom, down from the other corner, and then over the top line, he cut with the diamond, using a peculiar pressure. He rose to his feet, gave the lower part of the pane a sharp tap. The glass, practically cut loose from its case, now dropped and would have slid out to the roadway with a crash had he not dexterously caught it, to draw it into the car. Quickly he repeated the operation with the door pane ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... early in the desirable second-story window in Durfee, looking down on the tree. Brant was a senior and a "Bones" man, and so had a leading part to play in the afternoon's drama. He must get the girl and the chaperon off his hands, and be at his business. This was "Tap Day." It is perhaps well to explain what "Tap Day" means; there are people who have not been at Yale or had sons or ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... He sent them gorgeous furs, and watch bracelets, and bags. He took two expensive rooms at a downtown hotel, and there was something more tear-compelling than grotesque about the way he gloated over the luxury of a separate ice-water tap in ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber

... all know the chap Who can trace his proud place without fear, Who claims the drum-tap found him first in the gap, Though he skulked ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw

... there was a strike on. But we found a milk-lorry travelling our way. So Smith had the entire use of my right ear into which to say, "I told you so," for an hour, while we travelled to the spot on which we win our bread. He had dragged from me the fact that our hot-water tap had also struck. The milk cans clattered. Smith ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various

... a friendly mind, and a tap now and then upon his document, to give emphasis to his story, recounted the whole of it, and set forth how much was come of it already, and how much it might lead to. To Scargate Hall, and the better part of the property always enjoyed therewith, Philippa Yordas and Eliza Carnaby had no claim ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... curiosities, may be seen oaks, chestnuts, pines, and cedars growing in flowerpots, and fifty years old, but not twelve inches high! They take the young plant, cut off its tap-root, and place it in a basin of good soil kept well watered. Should it grow too rapidly, they dig down and shorten in several roots. Year by year the leaves grow smaller, and in course of time the trees become little dwarfs, and are made pets of ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... Gayarre gave us an opportunity to make our presence known to Aurore. I was about to climb up to the verandah and tap on the glass; but my companion prevented ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... stairs, and through the dining-room where an orderly table for breakfast had already been laid, and out on to the terrace. The rain for the moment had been utterly stayed, as if the tap of the heavens had been turned off, and under the lowering black sky, not quite dark, since the moon rode somewhere serene behind the conglomerated thunder-clouds, Darcy stumbled into the garden, followed by the servant with the candle. The monstrous ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... through my head: Thank God the door was locked! The terrible feeling that it was not Carse came back upon me, and I sat motionless as I listened to the sounds from outside. For a moment there were no sounds from the intruder, but I did hear a faint tap-tap-tap like that of a liquid falling to the wooden floor. In a minute the knob was released and the footsteps continued down the hall to ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce

... until there was not a drop left in it. The indignant owner said: 'You infernal hog, why did you drink up all my apple-jack?' His friend answered: 'I beg your pardon, Job, but I could not bite off the tap, because I have lost all my teeth.'" The aptness of the story was the success ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew

... rapping with the baton is a sign of weak discipline. Do not rap at all until the music is distributed, the accompanist in his place and ready to begin, your score open, and until you know exactly what you are going to do first. Then let just a slight tap or two suffice to notify everyone that the rehearsal is to ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens

... out a few telegrams, and then De Wet entered into conversation with the Postmaster-General. His tone and manner lacked the slightest cordiality. He asked the Postmaster-General whether he was sure, quite sure, that the British side of our telegraph lines was always cut, so that the enemy could not tap our messages. Yes, the chief was quite sure. But De Wet thought it best that instructions to that effect should be re-issued, so as to leave no excuse for any possible negligence. This suggestion was carried out ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar

... consideration to the selection of the site of his house. He wanted a southern aspect, it must be high up, it must not be crowded amongst the other houses. The twins needed air. Then the nearer he was to the creek, where the gold was to be found, the better. And again his prospecting must tap a part of it where the diggers had not yet "claimed." There were a dozen and one things to be considered, and he thought of them all until his gentle mind became confused and his sense of ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... a hearty tap on the shoulder, and chuckled as merrily as the shortness of her breath after her rapid course would permit. The few English phrases she knew fell far short of expressing her triumph and exultation; but I was resolved to confer with her affably. My patient's case was too serious for ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... the Place. The Inn. Ludicrous Mistakes. The Public Room. Astonishment of the People at the sight of Englishmen. The Priests. Scene in the Tap-Room. Kindness of the People. Our Fishing Operations. A Chasse, and a Daylight ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig

... far westing with the sun, Thro all the midlands recent channels run, Tap the redundant lakes, the broad hills brave, And Hudson marry with Missouri's wave. From dim Superior, whose uncounted sails Shade his full seas and bosom all his gales, New paths unfolding seek Mackensie's tide, And towns and empires rise along their side; Slave's ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... put the shoe on a last and began to tap with his hammer. "She did fight him," he said. "She went out to him twirling her moustaches. He lay down on his back. She lay down on her side. They kept grinning and sparring at each other like that for half an hour. At last the ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly

... of melody. They would be wiser in going back to Pergolese, Campagnole. The Mefistofole was good—of the school of the foreign master. Aida and Otello, no. I confess to a weakness for the old barleysugar of Bellini or a Donizetti-Serenade. Aren't you seduced by cadences? Never mind Wagner's tap of his paedagogue's baton—a cadence catches me still. Early taste for barley-sugar, perhaps! There's a march in Verdi's Attila and I Lombardi, I declare I'm in military step when I hear them, as in the old days, after leaving the Opera. Fredi takes little Mab Mountney ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... wherefore, rationale, occasion, derivation; final cause &c (intention) 620; les dessous des cartes [Fr.]; undercurrents. rudiment. egg, germ, embryo, bud, root, radix radical, etymon, nucleus, seed, stem, stock, stirps, trunk, tap-root, gemmule^, radicle, semen, sperm. nest, cradle, nursery, womb, nidus, birthplace, hotbed. causality, causation; origination; production &c 161. V. be the cause of &c n .; originate; give origin to, give ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... you have all escaped, Monsieur Stansfield! We will lose no time. I have two men sleeping in a cottage, close to where the boat is made fast. They sleep on the ground floor, and I can tap at the window and get them out. I told them to turn in as they stood, as they might be ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty

... There was a tap at the door, and a servant entered with a note for the King. It was from Constantine Beliani, ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... Buonaparte, afterwards Emperor of the French, stood with his constable's baton as a custoder of order. The troops, which had been called from distances, and were billeted in the suburbs, rapidly concentrated at tap of drum and call of bugle. The Duke of Wellington, having the command, so disposed them that, without appearing through the day, they were ready to act at a moment's notice, wherever their presence might be necessary, and so posted that each detachment could readily render ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... quiet tap at the door, but could not answer. She saw the door open slowly. An enormous figure stood on ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming

... for a large tract of land through the "Fertile belt" of the Hudson's Bay territory, the Governor answered, almost in terror, to the Duke of Newcastle:—"What! sequester our very tap-root! Take away the fertile lands where our buffaloes feed! Let in all kinds of people to squat and settle, and frighten away the fur- bearing animals they don't hunt and kill! Impossible. Destruction— extinction—of our time-honoured ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... attention...." Tom continued to tap out the message slowly and carefully. Behind him, he could hear Brooks hammering against the locker door. Tom felt like opening the door and freezing the pirate with his paralo-ray gun to keep him quiet, but he didn't dare to ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell

... uncontrollable, Johnnie began to thrash about and scream. And as Barber half dropped, half flung him to the floor, old Grandpa roused, and came round in his chair, tap-tapping with the cane. "Captain!" he shrilled. "The right's falling back! They're giving us grape and canister!—Oh, our boys! Our poor boys!" Frightened by any trouble, his mind always reverted to old scenes of battle, when his broken sentences were like a halting, squeaky record in some talking ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... is not for us to dilate upon the firm whose operations are carried on here, but it may interest the reader to know that the very sheet he is now perusing was printed on the site of the old coaching inn, and published very near the old tap-room of La Belle Sauvage; for where coach-wheels once rolled and clattered, only printing-press ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... there one of my size, you dog?' returned Quilp. 'Take the key, or I'll brain you with it'—indeed he gave him a smart tap with the handle as he spoke. 'Now, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... in its existence. He had strayed into Faery somehow—into Atlantis, or Avalon, or "a wood near Athens,"—into a land of opalescence and vapor and delicate color, that would vanish, bubble-like, at the discreet tap of Pawsey fetching in his shaving-water; meantime John Bulmer's memory snatched at each loveliness, jealously, as a pug snatches bits ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... immortality of the poet and the hero has been thrust upon the mean and disgusting clay of the stockbroker; the grocer, horribly wrapped in everlasting marble, has put on ignominy for evermore; while the plebeian, bewildered by the tyranny of life, crouches over his dead wife, for ever afraid lest death tap him too on the shoulder. How the wind whistles among these immortal jests, where the pure stone of the Carrara hills has been fashioned to the ugliness of the middle classes. This is the supreme monument not of Genoa only, but of our time. In that grotesque marble we see our likeness. ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... noble chief whisked the subject, as not worth a discussion; but he turned to a younger chap, who said he detested girls, and asked him how about a sister at home; and the youngster coloured, and Matey took him and spun him round, with a friendly tap on the shoulder. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... They heard Mr. Maynard tap at King's door, and call out some gay greeting to him, and then they heard King splashing about, as if making his toilet in a great hurry. All this spurred the girls to dress more quickly, and it was not long before ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells

... so that I had perforce to tap his shoulder to come on deck. He came round with a start, and staggered back a few paces to stare at me. It needed no expert eye to tell that the ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells

... loosely down the back and sides to the ankles. It is frequently of some gay colour, the fashion in Mawkhar and Cherrapunji being some pretty shade of French gray or maroon. Over the head and shoulders is worn a wrapper called ka tap-moh-khlieh. This, again, is frequently of some bright colour, but is often white. There is a fold in the jainsem which serves as a pocket for keeping odds and ends. Khasi women in cold weather wear ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon

... present-day industrial and political conditions. This capitalistic sympathy for the weak and the oppressed of other nations may be regarded by some as the expression of a broader patriotism, but its tap-root is class selfishness—the desire to secure high profits through maintaining active competition among laborers. As a matter of fact, all legislation does, and always must, appeal to the interest of those without whose ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith

... devious mountain paths, the woman would come and tap lightly at Hund's door. Hund had built himself two cabins, one behind the other (these are now, as I think I have explained to you, connected by a passage); the smaller one was the homestead; in the other he carved and wrote, so that while the ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome

... reflection Doctor Rolfe was withdrawn by a tap on the surgery door. He called "Come in!" with no heart for the event. It was no night to be abroad on the ice. Yet the tap could mean but one thing—somebody was in trouble; and as he called "Come in!" and looked up from ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... Theobald left us, and they cried every night. It is a sound I have never grown used to, though I have heard it every winter I can remember. And also the swish of the satin as it went by my door, and the tap of high-heeled shoes. They cried more that winter than I ever heard them, except in the winter after Uncle Luke went away (but then I was little, and had the company of Maureen Kelly, my nurse); and in a winter which was ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan

... The tap-room was empty when Barbara entered but as she sat down at the table, the door opposite opened, and a short, foreign-looking woman came out. She stepped dead on seeing the girl: Her face seemed familiar ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... him. And he flung his arms out toward his closed door, wanting her. At three o'clock he dropped lightly asleep and dreamed of her. With the first pale streaks of daylight stealing into his room, he awoke. It was after four o'clock. A little later,—just a few minutes later,—he heard a light tap on his door. It came again, and he bounded ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston

... of that, missie," said another voice in English, and her hands were rudely pulled aside; "you must get up and walk. Perhaps we won't hurt you. But if you make a noise I'll give you a tap on the head with this waddy," and the speaker flourished a short club over her head. "Come! ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke

... night there was a tap on Hale's window just at his bedside, and when he looked out he saw the Red Fox's big rifle, telescope, moccasins and all in the moonlight. The Red Fox had discovered the whereabouts of Rufe Tolliver, and that very night he guided Hale and six of the guard to the edge of a little ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... while the fair singers who came to try the critic's piano filled his room with melody. All the time Madame Theophile would evince great pleasure. She was, however, made nervous by certain notes, and at the high la she would tap the singer's mouth with her paw. This was very amusing, and my visitors delighted in making the experiment. It never failed; the dilettante in fun was ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... now to look at each other, nod, wink significantly, and tap their fingers against their foreheads. There was a whisper, also, about securing the gun, and keeping the old fellow from doing mischief, at the very suggestion of which the self-important man in the cocked hat retired with ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... family features, as of family qualms, he was, as yet, radiantly unaware. Snatching his towel, he scampered barefoot down the passage to the nursery bathroom, where the tap was already running. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... received no answer. The woman had probably run out on some short errand. She went up the stairs softly. The bedroom door, she knew, would be open. Mrs. Phillips had a feeling against being "shut off," as she called it. She meant to tap lightly and walk straight in, as usual. But what she saw through the opening caused her to pause. Mrs. Phillips was sitting up in bed with her box of cosmetics in front of her. She was sensitive of anyone seeing her make-up; and Joan, knowing this, drew back a step. ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... utterly unintelligible. What, she wondered, was the connection between fire and water. But, rather characteristically, she was disinclined to ask. She walked to the sink, however, and turned the tap; a long husky cough came from it, but ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller

... looked at each other in astonishment, at a response so little expected. It was followed by a solemn and peculiar tap, such as a kind of freemasonry had introduced among royalists, and by which they were accustomed to make themselves and their principles known to each other, when they ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... from the keen and cutting air would indeed have been a blessing—a blessing that was about to be realized in strange places. Turning sharply up a side street, we walked a short distance and stopped at a certain house. A gentle tap, tap at the door. It was opened by a woman, and we entered. It was a vivid picture—a picture of low life ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... right to be where he was, and proclaiming his intention of remaining there as long as suited his pleasure. Every now and then the watchmen made a rush at him with their cudgels, the blows from which his faithful shillaly enabled him to ward off, and occasionally to bestow a pretty heavy tap on the heads of the most daring of ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... frying the fat, preparing the hide, and greasing our harness. Charley, in riding after the horses, came to some fine lagoons, which were surrounded by a deep green belt of Nelumbiums. This plant grows, with a simple tap root, in the deep soft mud, bearing one large peltate leaf on a leaf stalk, about eight feet high, and from twelve to eighteen inches in diameter, the flower-stalk being of the same length or even ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... had become exceedingly painful and difficult, and so slow that even a little fresh air at the best part of the day could only be procured at the risk of chill and cold—a risk great and dangerous. And barely six months ago the tap of his crutch had been one of the most familiar sounds in the little town; he had been able to walk two or three miles with perfect ease and the hearty enjoyment which his happy nature seemed to find under all circumstances. It had not proved untrue to itself ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... lantern. Apparently the effect of the love tap administered by his automatic was more or less of a lasting character, and the men were put to some ado to restore the body of Kell to consciousness. At length their efforts began to bear fruit, however, and it became expedient to remove the patient to the softer couch in the sitting room below. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... large apartment with smoke-cured and age-blackened beams in the ceiling. This was the ancient tap-room of the tavern, which had been built at that pre-Revolutionary time when the stuffed catamount, with its fangs and claws bared to the York State officers, crouched on top of the staff at Bennington—for Polktown was one of the oldest settlements ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long

... had become engaged, the wedding being fixed to take place in the middle of November. Even as Jean stood there, a faint tap was heard at the door, and ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux

... whole way through the forest, we formed part of a jostling caravan along the Castrovillari-Morano track—how different from the last time I had traversed this route, when nothing broke the silence save a chaffinch piping among the branches or the distant tap of ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... unheard. But a sharp, quick sound, that appears to break the air, like ice, into sharp radii, can be heard, especially if struck against anything on the water. The sound of driving a nail on the ship above, for example, or a sharp tap on the diving-bell below, is distinctly and reciprocally audible. Conversation below the surface by ordinary methods is out of the question, but it can be sustained by placing the metal helmets of the interlocutors together, thus ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... tobacco-smoke kept his thoughts among the mountains. He might have quite dozed off had not a sudden noise from within aroused him—the unmistakable crash of falling crockery. It made him laugh, a laugh of humorous expostulation. A minute or two passed, then came a timid tap at his door, and ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing

... school. The little boys of six came with knapsacks strapped to their backs for their books and dinners, instead of satchels. At the tap of a bell they formed themselves into column and marched like little veterans to the schoolroom door. I visited a school for boys of thirteen or fourteen. Casting my eyes into the yard, I saw the spiked helmet in the shape ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... the old farmer's special pride. He loved those big old-growth maples, loved them so well that he would not tap them in the spring for maple sugar. It shortened the lives of trees, he said, to tap them, particularly large ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... copper the light shines through the transparent lines and dots of the negative and hardens the sensitized surface of the plate. The black parts of the negative between the transparent lines and dots protect the sensitized surface. When the plate, after printing, is placed under a water tap, the parts of the sensitized surface that have not been acted upon by light wash away, leaving a print that becomes acid proof after being subjected ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... an eight-inch,' he said, after the shell had fallen with a crash behind them, a spout of earth and mud leaping up and spattering down over them and fragments singing and whizzing overhead. 'Just tap in on the wire, Jackson, and raise ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable

... here is Professor Webster, endungeoned for the murder of Dr. Parkman. One morning he sent for his jailer and asked to be placed in another cell. "At midnight," he said, "the prisoners in the next cell tap on the wall and whisper, 'Thou art a murderer.'" Now there were no prisoners in the next cell. The whispers were the ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... not America defeat the machinations of all monopolies and other trusts? Wasn't America the land of actual gold and silver where there was plenty of room for everyone? There soon grew up a wild belief that you could tap America for precious metals almost as its Indians tapped maple trees for sugar. The 'Mountains of Bright Stones' were surely there. Peru and Mexico were nothing to these. Only find them, and 'get-rich-quick' would be the order of the day for every true adventurer. These mountains moved about in men's ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... country's attention is arrested—her fears aroused—her peace disturbed, and her independence endangered—when in the dread and momentous hour, the tap of the drum, the roll of the reveille, the shrill sound of the bugler's trumpet, or the thunders of the cannon's roar, summons the warrior on to the pending conflict—upon whom then do the citizens place their dependence, and in whom the country her trust? Upon him who braves the consequences, ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany

... K.," said Joe; "I used to call here regular when I was travellin' in breeches. Where the commercials are gathered together the tap is good," he added, laying a finger against the side of his nose. "And they've a fine brand of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... and he then gave me a number which I carefully noted down. To my inexpressible pleasure I found that Rolf never forgot the numbers he had given, though I, to this day, must have my notes to hand whenever Rolf wishes to tap out anything. It is also remarkable that on a nearer investigation of his "alphabet" it becomes evident that the letters Rolf requires least are made up of the highest numbers, whereas those to which he has constant recourse ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann

... couch and reached out his hand for his tea, when there came a soft tap at the door and Ling Chu slipped into ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace

... had been rumors that extensive capital was ready to tap a certain big railway and afford a shorter cut to the sea. Such a cut-off would mean opening great tracts of woodland to the steam horse—and where the steam horse goes there go settlers. The timberland owners had found that settlers do not wait for clear ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day

... and Sir Henry de Clare were one and the same person. As I passed a crossing, a man in tattered habiliments, who was sweeping it, asked for alms, but being in no very charitable humour, I walked on. He followed me, pestering me so much, that I gave him a tap with the cane in my hand, saying to him, "Be ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... later occasion, when the Governor-General's camp was peculiarly dull and stagnant, every one yawning and grumbling, Yule effected a temporary diversion by pretending to tap the telegraph wires, and circulating through camp, what purported to be, the usual telegraphic abstract of news brought to Bombay by the latest English mail. The news was of the most astounding character, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... dear girl! Stick to your plan. Don't let me spoil your afternoon! Gracious heaven! I—I—why, I can quite well take Madame Frabelle myself.' He looked at the barometer. 'The glass is going up,' he said, giving it first a tap and then a slight shake to encourage it to go up higher and to look sharp about it. 'So that's settled, then, dear. That's fixed up. I'll take her on the river. I don't mind in the very least. I shall be only too pleased—delighted. ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson

... man could desire. Where, he asked, would you find harvests so generous, mines so abundant in precious metals, factories managed with so splendid an ingenuity? If wine and oil are your quest, said he, you have but to tap the surface of the munificent earth. One thing only, he confessed, was lacking, and that need a few years would make good. "Wait," said he, with an assured if immodest boastful-ness,—"wait until we get a bit degenerate, and then ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... the Englishman asked in a tone of astonishment, and his query was emphasized with a firm tap of ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... him down, by reason he soon finds there's nothing to be got by rhodomontading. Let every man be his own carver; but what I say is, them gentlemen that are what one may call geniuses, commonly think nothing of the main chance, till they get a tap on the shoulder with a writ; and a solid lad, that knows three times five is fifteen, will get the better of them in the long run. But as to arguing with gentlemen of that sort, where's the good of it? You can never bring them to the point, say what you will; all you can get ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... pen and examined the beasts critically, especially as to their eyes and horns; then, approaching the nearest one, he raised his stick and bestowed a smart tap on the under-side of the right horn, following it by a similar tap on the left one, a proceeding that the ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman

... September, 1853—passed along the street with a ladder, dropping stars as he went. There are no lamplighters now, no real ones that run up ladders. Their ladders vanished first, leaving them with a magic wand that lighted the gas as soon as you got the tap turned; only that was ever so long, as often as not. Perhaps things are better now that lamps light themselves instinctively at the official hour of sunset. At any rate, one has the satisfaction of occasionally seeing one that won't ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... gleams the sun on yon hill-tap, The dew sits on the gowan; Deep murmurs through her glens the Spey, Around Kinrara rowan. Where art thou, fairest, kindest lass? Alas! wert thou but near me, Thy gentle soul, thy melting eye, Would ever, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... and the tall buildings opposite. It immediately occurred to Triffitt that here was an easy way of making a call upon your next door neighbour; instead of crossing the corridor and knocking at his door, you had nothing to do but walk along the balcony and tap at his window. Filled with this thought Triffitt immediately stepped out on his balcony and inspected the windows of his own and the next flat. He immediately saw something which filled him with a great idea. ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher

... he himself did suspect the said Amy to be a witch, and charged her with being the cause of his child's illness, and set her in the stocks. Two days after, his daughter Elizabeth was taken with such strange fits, that they could not force open her mouth without a tap; and the younger child being in the same condition, they used to her the same remedy. Both children grievously complained that Amy Duny and another woman, whose habit and looks they described, did ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... which appear to call up sad memories, the little widow, with a coquettish pout, gave a hardly perceptible tap to the end of Captain Hurricane's nose, indicating by a movement of her hand that in the neighboring room one can hear him, and says with a mischievous air, "That will teach you to ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... where the said friend had to discuss some business matter with the landlord. They went into the taproom, and Dandy, finding that the business was going to be a rather long affair, settled himself down to have a nap. Now it chanced that a barrel of beer which had just been broached had a leaky tap, and the landlord had set a basin on the floor to catch the waste. Dandy, waking from his nap and hearing the trickling sound, got up, and going to the basin quenched his thirst, after which he resumed his nap. By-and-by he woke again and had a second drink, and altogether he woke ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson

... yeoman of about sixty, who said very little indeed when his wife was present, (he had not much chance,) but could, when disposed, let out many a droll story of "College Gents" in bygone days, when he was a brewer's apprentice at Abingdon, came, by invitation, to taste the college tap, and carried home in each pocket a bottle of wine ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... was followed by a signature traveling perpendicularly down the page in Chinese fashion. It was outlined in an oblong of red ink, but was itself written in green, the capitals being supplied with tap-roots extending to the base of each name. Mary tossed the letter over to Stefan with a smile. He looked ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... the arm of flesh, I find my trusty stick sufficient to defend myself against hostile Indians or savage beasts;" and as he whisked it round his head with a rapidity which dazzled the eyes, I could easily understand how it would prove a formidable weapon against either bears or wolves—a tap of it on their skulls being sufficient to stun them; while it seemed to me that he might be able to ward off either the arrows or the tomahawks ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston

... the advice, and started among the hills, not returning until the midday meal was ready. Before he had finished his dinner there was a tap at the door, and then a young fellow, whom he knew to be employed in Mr. Jervoise's stables, looked in. Charlie sprang to ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty

... there grew a splendid lot Of noble maples, in a sheltered spot. Convenient to this place, there also grew Some good black-ash, of which he chose a few From these he made small troughs to catch the sap, Whene'er the time should come the trees to tap. A good pine tree he sought, with eager eyes, To form a store-trough, of most ample size. Obtained a gouge, and next his spiles prepared; For all the toil required he little cared. "Good axe-men fifty small ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... Rap, tap, tap! "There's your master, Jemima," screamed the lady. "I hear him, marm," replied the cook. "Run down, my dear, and let Mr Handycock in," said his wife. "He'll be so surprised at seeing you ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... muttered Sandy, under his breath. But more evolutions were coming. These preliminaries having been finished, the solemn procession went back to the kitchen regions, and presently came forth again, bearing a glittering array of shining metal covered dishes. At the tap of the pompous head-waiter's bell, every man stood at "present arms," as Oscar said. Then, at another tap, each dish was projected over the white cloth to the spot for which it was designed, and held an inch or two above the table. Another tap, and every ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks

... so absorbed that a step crossing the next room failed to attract her attention. She did not even hear the light tap at the door. But when it opened, and some one entered, closing the door behind him, she turned abruptly and faced the intruder, fully ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various

... his volumes of Balzac's "Droll Stories," Rabelais complete, "Mlle. de Maupin," Burton's "Arabian Nights," and the "Decameron" being in constant demand. He could tell literally hundreds of dirty stories, always having a new one on tap, always looking when he told it ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks

... for its silence, and which certainly in that particular does not so well merit the epithet cold-blooded, by which naturalists distinguish it, as certain bipeds, afflicted with ditch-water on the brain, who take occasion to tap themselves in Fanueil Halls, meeting-houses, and other ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... Harson, warming as he went on; 'Frank's the very devil and all; we'll tap the cask in the corner of the cellar. It's prime stuff, which I've kept for some great occasion; and this is a glorious one. And there's the fat saddle of mutton, hanging in the store room: we'll have that. It'll be the very thing for the half-starved ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... is a little trickle of royalties to me from that. I also contrived to have our mixture made concentrated, got the bottles, which all came sliding down a guarded slant-way, nearly filled with distilled water at one tap, and dripped our magic ingredients in at the next. This was an immense economy of space for the inner sanctum. For the bottling we needed special taps, and these, too, I ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... sir," said Peter, "I must do it;" and he drained the little vessel, with almost as much avidity as his patient, "Fine tap, ain't it, sir?" he continued, as he ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... Oakford and I made our way to the head-quarters of Major-General Sumner, commanding the Second Army Corps, to whom the colonel was ordered to report. We finally found him asleep in his head-quarters wagon. A tap on the canvas top of the wagon quickly brought the response, "Hello! Who's ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock

... and kissed his hands and feet, waiting to speak until she was spoken to; and he did not speak to her at all, but signed to her with a tap on the head and a gesture to take her place on the rug behind him. Then at a motion from me Ali Baba's two sons brought forward the presents and the medicine-chest, setting them down ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy

... do," muttered the man, impatiently; "and even that is as much as my place is worth. Now, just tap at yonder door, and they'll ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... put his ear to the heart of the car, and tap its vitals, and count its pulse-beats as a doctor sounds you with his stethoscope. The look on his face was that of a violinist who tries ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber

... same hour, as two of the laird's servant-maids were engaged in washing in an out-house, there came a slight tap to the door. "Come in," said one of the maids; and the lady entered, dressed, as on the previous night, in green. She swept past them to the inner part of the washing-room; and, seating herself on a low bench, from which, ere her death, she used occasionally to superintend their employment, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... former owner offered, as one of the inducements to purchase, the fact that there was a superb sugar-maple tree in the garden. It was a noble tree, and Butterwick made up his mind that he would tap it some day and manufacture some sugar. However, he never did so until last year. Then he concluded to draw the sap and ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... five months this little seed just grew and did not let anybody know it was there, until one day it began to tap against the sides of the walls of this little room, and every time it did mamma's heart just bounded with joy as she thought of the precious seed growing to be a darling baby—and all inside of her very own body. And one day, after nearly a whole year had passed, the door to the room began to ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... which he had pressed to go faster, put his foot into a rut or hole, and stumbled, and Felix was flung so far forward that he only saved himself from being thrown by clinging to his neck. A slight whizzing sound passed over his head, followed immediately by a sharp tap against ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... be seen in this capacity, among them Prince Louis Napoleon Buonaparte, afterwards Emperor of the French, stood with his constable's baton as a custoder of order. The troops, which had been called from distances, and were billeted in the suburbs, rapidly concentrated at tap of drum and call of bugle. The Duke of Wellington, having the command, so disposed them that, without appearing through the day, they were ready to act at a moment's notice, wherever their presence might be necessary, and so posted that each detachment could readily ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... we can't give a show of our own," says Doctor Kirby, "with you boys and Danny and me and that balloon. What we want is a lot with a high board fence around it, like a baseball grounds, and the chance to tap a gas main." He says he'll be willing to take a chancet on it, even paying the gas company real money to ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis

... A modest tap at the door silenced the Count, who expected to see the two ladies appear. A little page came in, evidently in a great hurry; but, abashed by the presence of the two gentlemen, he beckoned to a housekeeper, who followed him. Dressed in a blue cloth jacket with short tails, and blue-and-white ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac

... quieter moods the Boy would sit in the dim lamplight on a footstool beside the Tenor's chair, leaning his head against the arm of it, while the latter smoked, and the tap, tap, tap, of the clematis and honeysuckle on the window pane kept time to the thoughts of each. Long intervals of silence were natural to the Tenor, and it was generally the Boy who broke the charm. He would talk seriously ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... Over this rhythm is introduced a piquant march figure, hopping and skipping along as if the musicians were dancing at the head of the marchers. As the procession approaches and the music becomes louder, one hears in the bass an accentuation of the characteristic rhythm, like the tap of a bass drum. When the march has swelled to a forte, it sinks to a brief piano, as if the winding path had led the procession away again. Then there is another brief outburst, this time fortissimo, as if the marchers were quite near; and then a pianissimo, ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb

... which is terrible now—some say that in London one-third of the water is wasted—begins to lessen; and both water and expense are saved. If you will only think, you will see one reason why. If a woman leaves a high-pressure tap running, she will flood her place and her neighbour's too. She will be like the magician's servant, who called up the demon to draw water for him; and so he did: but when he had begun he would not stop, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... doctors having recommended him on a hot day to go about in a growler with both windows up. However, it's a bad thing in this world to be too knowing, so though I own I felt a bit curious at times, I never put myself out o' the way to find out what the little game was. One day, I was driving tap to my usual place of dropping him—for by this time we had got into the way of going a regular beat every morning—when I saw a policeman waiting, with a perky sort of look about him, as if he had some job on hand. When the cab stopped out jumped the little ...
— The Cabman's Story - The Mysteries of a London 'Growler' • Arthur Conan Doyle

... of them were on the same side of the veil with us, and they were rather decent; so we chummed up in the end and Ockley took us all away together. They were jolly lucky in getting Ockley. There I go again! Come on, it's your turn. Has the bathroom tap been mended yet?' ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie

... upon impartial terms, every mortal, from King Solomon to the idiot pauper, must sooner or later pass to immortality. When a fit applicant, after the preliminary probation, kneels with fainting sense and pallid brow before the veil of the unutterable Unknown, and the last pulsations of his heart tap at the door of eternity, and he reverentially asks admission to partake in the secrets shrouded from profane vision, the infinite Hierophant directs the call to be answered by Death, the speechless and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... oxidation by heat, and change of any sort; and which, therefore, I may heat in the atmosphere without any flux. I bend the wire so as to make the ends cross: these I make hot by means of the blowpipe, and then, by giving them a tap with a hammer, I shall make them into one piece. Now that the pieces are united, I shall have great difficulty in pulling them apart, though they are joined only at the point where the two cylindrical surfaces came together. ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday

... our friend Audley Egerton. You have just had a glimpse of the real being that struggles under the huge copper;—you have heard the hollow sound of the rich man's coffers under the tap of Baron Levy's friendly knuckle—heard the strong man's heart give out its dull warning sound to the scientific ear of Dr. F vanishes the separate existence, lost again in the flame that heats the boiler, and the smoke that curls into air ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... Margaret Wakefield, bursting with opinions about politics and woman's suffrage; pretty Jessie Lynch, and the Williams sisters whose dark lustrous eyes seemed to see beyond the outer crust of things. Last of all, after a discreet interval, would come a soft, deprecating tap at the door, and Otoyo Sen, most charming of little Japanese ladies, with a beaming, apologetic smile, would glide into the room on her ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed

... pleased his auditors, and a deputation waited on him to request he would print it. "Gentlemen, I thank you for the compliment; but I must give the same answer that I have given on other like occasions; and that answer is—The tap is out." "The Archbishop of York," said he, speaking of a late primate, "preached one day at Carlisle; I was present, and felt muzzy and half asleep; when on a sudden I was roused, and began to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various

... nice get-up to come and see me in, to be sure!" was his greeting to a newspaper writer who called to tap him on art, clad in a brown jacket, blue trousers, and decked with a red necktie. "I must request you to leave this place instantly! These scribblers, rag-smudges, incroyable! Why, it is perfectly preposterous! Did you ever hear such dissonance? ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz

... the first to tap the wealth of the gorgeous East, into her lap fell the stream of gold from that quarter. The secret of her windfall was the small bulk and enormous value of her cargoes. From Malabar she fetched pepper and ginger, from Ceylon cinnamon and pearls, from Bengal opium, the only known ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... the potential fertility of its soil or for other causes, has held out promise of some day becoming populated. Along the railway the population has then flowed. In forcing its way westward each company in its course has sought to tap with its lines the richest strips of territory: all alike endeavoured to obtain a share of the traffic originating from a point where a thriving town was already established or topographical conditions pointed ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... One great tap-root of our national increase has been the growth of self-government, or government by deliberative bodies, representing opposed principles and conflicting interests. With the system of self-government has grown the habit—not of tolerance precisely, for Englishmen ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... had my fingers round the thrapple o' that leein' scoundrel on the tap of the coach! Gie me your hand, Captain Smith—it's all a mistake. I'll set it right in two minutes. Come with me to Chatterton's rooms—ye'll make him the happiest man in England. He's wud wi' love—mad with affection, as a body may say. He thought you had run ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... but—oh, confound it!" A faint tap at the door was followed by the entrance of a ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres

... and fury of the issue and division of the goods, the sombre figures in the background have scarcely moved. Not one has ventured to approach the center where the bucks are at work, measuring off the cloth, etc.; they are waiting for the tap of the bell, when they will receive just what the head man chooses to give them. There is no system of exchange there; it is take what you get or get nothing. In a great many cases they do not use the goods at all, but openly offer them for sale ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... censure by venturing, without his wife's authority, to lean forward and tap on the door-frame with the butt of his whip. At the sound, a shrill voice called instantly from the region of the stove pipe, "Clem! Clementina? Go to the front dooa! The'e's somebody knockin'." The sound of feet, soft and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... put out to sea and again we were living the life of seiners, having it hard and easy in streaks. There were the times when we went along for a week and did not do a tap but eat, sleep, stand a trick at the wheel, a watch to the mast-head, and skylark around the deck, and read, or have a quiet game of draw or whist or seven-up below. But again there were times when we were on fish, and our skipper being a driver, ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly

... ale tap' is an allusion, under cover of the similarity in sound between the words ale and aisle, to the Church, of which it was dangerous at the time to be an avowed follower; and so the members were cautioned that indiscretion might lead to ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell

... ask no questions, sir. And when the hares was done, they rolled the red-hot clay out, gave it a tap, and it cracked from end to end, an' come off like a shell with the skin on it, and leaving the hares all smoking hot. I never ate anything so ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... told the story of the mighty lance. This had been the lance of a famous Arikaree warrior, Won-ga-tap. Some years back, maybe seven or eight, the Mandans and the Arikarees had met on horses near the Mandan towns, and had fought. The Mandans chased the Arikarees, but after the chase the brother of Mahtotohpa did not ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin

... to be hidden by a woman who wants to vanish through the earth, dissolve in air, become a shade, become dust, become a corpse; if she can only escape from where she is and from being what she is. Then Irene, with a light tap, dropping her cup on ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... books. In other pathological cases, insane delusions, for example, or psychopathic obsessions, the source is yet to seek, but by analogy it also should be in subliminal regions which improvements in our methods may yet conceivably put on tap. There lies the mechanism logically to be assumed—but the assumption involves a vast program of work to be done in the way of verification, in which the religious experiences of man must play ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... seemed to him a provocation and an attraction. They were the defects of her qualities—of her courage, candour, generosity, affection. Carmichael leant upon a stile, and recalled the carriage of her head, the quick flash of her eye, the tap of her foot, the fascination of her manner. She was free from the affectations, gaucheries, commonplaces, wearinesses of many good women he had known. St. Theresa had been the woman enshrined in the tabernacle of his heart, but ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... of the first settlers, who, having intermarried with the Widow Gardner, is now resting from his labors, at the great age of ninety-four. The white-bearded corpse, which was his spirit's earthly garniture, now lies beneath yonder coffin-lid. Many a cask of ale and cider is on tap, and many a draught of spiced wine and aqua-vitae has been quaffed. Else why should the bearers stagger, as they tremulously uphold the coffin?—and the aged pall-bearers, too, as they strive to walk solemnly beside ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... This camp is gettin' healthy. Adjourned!" And the meeting was brought to a formal conclusion by a tap of the ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... in the velvet robe, twined the pearls in her golden hair, and clasped the jewelled girdle round her slender waist. One snow-white rose was pinned in her bosom. Never had she looked so wildly beautiful. But still Lord Guildford came not. At last a tap ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge

... the sound of gentlemanly boots in the passage, and raised our heads, looking at each other. There was a tap at Marcas' door—he never took the key out of the lock—and we heard ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac

... candle-flame was fluttering and flaring, in articulo, in the silver socket. But the fire was still bright and cheery; so he popped the extinguisher on the socket, and almost at the same time there came a tap at his door, and a sort of crescendo "hush-sh-sh!" Once more my uncle was sitting up, scared and perturbed, in his bed. He recollected, however, that he had bolted his door; and such inveterate materialists are we in the midst of our spiritualism, that this reassured him, ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu

... he went to the tavern, where they engaged rooms. Fernando and Sukey retired to their rooms, while Terrence remained in the tap-room, where there was a crowd of Marylanders. He began telling them a most horrible story of the impressment of himself and his friends by a British vessel and of their recent escape. He stated that they had been closely ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... much accounted of. It was reckoned effeminate to require more than two meals a day, though, just as in the verdurer's lodge at home, there was a barrel of ale on tap with drinking horns beside it in the hall, and on a small round table in the window a loaf of bread, to which city luxury added a cheese, and a jug containing sack, with some silver cups beside it, and a pitcher of fair water. Master Headley, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... figure in the annals of mankind—unparalleled for three good reasons: first, because he was a man known to his contemporaries in a halo of almost historical pomp, and to his remote descendants with an indecent familiarity, like a tap-room comrade; second, because he has outstripped all competitors in the art or virtue of a conscious honesty about oneself; and, third, because, being in many ways a very ordinary person, he has ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... said; "young men in my office talking of fighting, as if it were the tap-room of a public house? George Weston! I did ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder

... no particular observation on the car in front as it sped along to and through the northern edge of the City and beyond. But Millwaters woke to action as their own car progressed up Whitechapel Road, and suddenly he gave a warning word to the barrister and a smart tap on the window behind their driver. The car came to a halt by the curb; and Millwaters, slipping out, pushed some money into the man's hand and drew Perkwite amongst the people who were crowding the sidewalk. ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher

... dunnest of all duns! thou daily Knockest at doors, at first with modest tap, Like a meek tradesman when approaching palely Some splendid debtor he would take by sap: But oft denied, as Patience 'gins to fail, he Advances with exasperated rap, And (if let in) insists, in terms unhandsome, On ready money, or "a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... the door and knocked, but nobody came. Again rap-tap-tap; still nobody; and at last she lifted the latch ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... handsomely furnished parlour, and reclined himself upon a sofa, thinking still, and with a pleasurable emotion that warmed his bosom, of the success of his expedient to draw custom. He had been lying down, it seemed to him, but a few moments, when a tap at the door, to which he responded with a loud "come in," was followed by the entrance of a thin, pale, haggard-looking creature, her clothes soiled, and hanging loosely, and in tatters about her attenuated ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... resort, his hands in his pockets, his brow wrinkled, his mouth set. He was getting some vague comfort out of a good cigar, but it was no panacea for the ill which affected him. Every once in a while he would clinch his fingers and tap his foot—signs of the stirring mental process he was undergoing. His whole nature was vigorously and powerfully shaken up, and he was finding what limits the mind has to endurance. He drank more brandy and soda than ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... about a quarter to six, a little tap came to Mr. Audley's door, and Angela stood there, saying, with a most serious face, 'Please, Mr. Audley, Cherry wants to know whether you don't think something must have happened.' And going upstairs, he found the poor young deputy in a nervous agony of despair at the non-return of any ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... inn was regarded with a jealous eye. So well known was the beauteous Marian, "the fair maid of Windleshaw," that the present residence of the cavaliers, if such they were, was the worst that could have been chosen for concealment; inasmuch as her fame drew many customers to the tap who otherwise would have eschewed so humble a halting-place as that ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... did not permit her to listen very closely to the remarks that fell one by one from Poiret's lips like water dripping from a leaky tap. When once this elderly babbler began to talk, he would go on like clockwork unless Mlle. Michonneau stopped him. He started on some subject or other, and wandered on through parenthesis after parenthesis, till he came to regions as remote as possible from his premises ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... goes on well, my friend. Fiesco could not do better;" and rising upon his toes to tap Olivier ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... time that you turned on your tap of tenderness, it was all over for me, my dear friend. Sometimes we would embrace for five minutes, in one interminable kiss, one of those kisses which make lovers close their eyes, as if part of it would escape through ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... to have got off that subject altogether. [There comes a portentous tap at the door.] Good ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker

... I perceived my patient, who I was informed was an old post-boy, sitting in the settle of the tap-room, quite recovered; and when I was pointed out to him by his master, as his deliverer from a watery grave, the fellow attacked me in the most violent and abusive manner, and called down horrid imprecations upon my head for having saved him from ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt

... still the abandonment of it by the Company might be attended by more serious loss to the trade than that which is incurred in its retention, Undoubtedly the Saskatchewan, if abandoned by the Hudson Bay Company, would be speedily occupied by traders from the Missouri, who would also tap the trade of the richer fur-producing districts of Lesser Slave Lake and the North. The products-of the Saskatchewan proper principally consists of provisions, including pemmican and dry meat, buffalo robes and leather, linx, cat, and wolf skins. The ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... tea, he had accomplished what she had fervently wished for the night she had met him—he succeeded, by several easy moves, in isolating her from her aunt, and, notwithstanding her admiration, her desire to tap with her knuckles the metal of her idol and listen for a ring of hollowness, she was alarmed. Yet, perversely, she knew that he would not exhibit his paces before his wife—naturally a disinterested spectator—or before her aunt, who was hardly "intimate" enough. The long-desired hour found ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... wheat or corn either, after being cultivated two or three years in castor beans has borne great crops. This has been attributed to the completeness and the long time the crop shades the ground, and also to the long tap root of the plant, which makes it a crop of all others, suited to dry soils, and hot climate. After preparing the land as for corn, it should be laid off so the plants will stand, for your latitude, five feet each way. Three or four seeds are usually planted, but when the beans are five ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... scramble and swing and knock their heads against the glass, they seem to have no purpose—something senseless inspires them. One gets tired of watching them, as they amble round the lantern and blindly tap as if for admittance, one large toad being the most besotted of any and shouldering his way through the rest. Ah, but what's that? A terrifying volley of pistol-shots rings out—cracks sharply; ripples spread— silence laps smooth ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... the afternoon, the bell rang with an important-sounding tinkle. Immediately after, the door shut with an important-sounding slam. The footsteps, clattering across the room to the show case, had an important-sounding tap. And the little girl, who looked inquisitively across the counter at Maida, had ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin

... extirpation of that noble old chimney, still to this day my wife goes about it, with my daughter Anna's geological hammer, tapping the wall all over, and then holding her ear against it, as I have seen the physicians of life insurance companies tap a man's chest, and then incline over for the echo. Sometimes of nights she almost frightens one, going about on this phantom errand, and still following the sepulchral response of the chimney, round and round, as if it were leading her ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville

... and paid the debts of everybody in jail. We hung lanterns on the tree in the evening, set off rockets, and kindled bonfires. John Hancock kept open house, with ladies and gentlemen feasting in his parlors, and pipes of wine on tap in the ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... growing reputation who illustrated his own work, was making a series of pencil sketches for a romance partly finished. The story was as joyous and elusive as sunlight, and until to-day his sketches had held the same quality. Now he could not tap the reservoir from which he had taken the wind-blown hair and smiling eyes ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... powers, stones into bread, but also into motor cars, fat bank balances and lands and houses. Such are heading to disaster, for they are working against the combined Spiritual Power of the Universe. The Enemy of Souls offers those who have learned to tap the inexhaustible Power of the Universe, and who have discovered that they are sons of God, wealth, power, pomp, the applause of men—the glittering things that perish—if only they will mis-use their God-given power. Like Jesus, they must refuse. They must put service before self, ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin

... Sabbaths; and the Session, holding that it might be quite as well for people to pray for their young Queen at church, and then quietly drink her health when they got home, as to grow glorious in her behalf in taverns and tap-rooms, refused to alter their day. Believing that, though essentially in the right, they were yet politically in the wrong, and that a plausible case might be made out against them by the newspaper press, I waited on ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... from the gong. But the instrument is now as it was at first, the current again flows, and the hammer strikes the gong, only to fly back a second time. In this way, as long as the button is pressed by the operator, the hammer will continue to tap the bell and give a ringing sound. Press-buttons are of various patterns, and either affixed to the wall or inserted in the handle of an ordinary bell-pull, as shown ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro

... of anything (you would have said) but glass into delicate carafes and sparkling vases. Meanwhile the sweat streams from them in rivulets, a small Aquarius ever and anon fetches tumblers of water from a tap outside or glasses of red wine, and a soft voice at your ear, in whatever language you happen to be, supplies a commentary on the proceedings. Beware of listening to it with too much interest, for it is this voice which, when the glass-blowing flags, is proposing to sell you ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... the long, wide-open windows. The verandah was a dozen feet from the ground, and the dark passage below, leading to the gate, was deserted. At the other end sat the watchman with his lantern, presumably asleep. Liu had not heard his drum tap for an hour. A shaft of moonlight penetrated the room, and a light wind blowing in from outside gently stirred the mosquito curtains over the bed. Liu tiptoed to the bed, and with infinite care drew the netting aside and stood surveying his victim. Rivers ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte

... had scarcely dawned when Mr. Fitzwarren stole from the bed of his beloved wife, to count over the cash, and settle the business for that day. He had just entered the compting-house, and seated himself at the desk, when somebody came, tap, tap, at the door. "Who's there?" says Mr. Fitzwarren. "A friend," answered the other. "What friend can come at this unseasonable time?" "A real friend is never unseasonable," answered the other. "I come to bring you good news of your ship Unicorn." The merchant bustled up in such an hurry ...
— The History of Sir Richard Whittington • T. H.

... refrigerating plants become that artificially cooled water is on tap in many public places in the great cities. Theatres are cooled during hot weather by a portion of the same machinery that supplies the heat in winter, and it is not improbable that every large establishment, private, ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday

... by a tap at my door, and a pretty piping child's voice asking, in broken German, to come in. On giving the usual permission, Thekla entered, carrying a great lovely boy of two years old, or thereabouts, who had only his little night-shirt on, and was all flushed with sleep. ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell

... John sighed mournfully as he aided Barnabas to his feet, "and 't were only a love-tap, so to speak,—this is what comes o' your ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... took part in the maple-sugar manufacture. The men used first to tap the trees, and then boil the sap over wood fires that they would build in the neighborhood of the sugar bush, as ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 22, April 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... Peter Blood sat back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, frowning. Time moved on. Came a tap at the door, and an elderly negro slave presented himself. Would his excellency receive ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... the rest, in an under tone, with a little bit of scandal about a neighbouring Tabby, whom she had seen coming home in a sad condition about five o'clock in the morning, when she, Miss Violet, was taking her early walk;—just at this moment there sounded a tap at the door, and presently in came Diana, the youngest sister, bearing in her hand more cakes for tea, and in the plate with them a note addressed to Miss Rose,—the next to Violet in age, and by most people considered the beauty of the family. Violet took ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown

... a gentle tap on the door. Hermione went to it and opened it. Selim stood outside with a ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens

... of distant musketry, and I hurried out. It came from the north, and it was languidly echoed from Caesar's Camp. Tack-tap, tack-tap—each shot echoed a little muffled from the hills. Tack-tap, tack-tap, tack, tack, tack, tack, tap—as if the devil was hammering nails into the hills. Then a hurricane of tacking, running round all Ladysmith, running together into a scrunching roar. From the hill ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens

... Whose sound through wood and dale is heard. I tap, tap, tap, with noisy glee, To test the bark of every tree. I saw a rainbow stretching gay, Across the sky, the other day; And some one said, "Good-bye to rain, The woodpecker ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various

... jackasses, boys, and dogs occupied the rest of the square, and were differently engaged. At this moment a sergeant ran into the square, exclaiming, "el Commandante!" The military guard fell into their ranks at the tap of the drum, the idlers and boys took up a strong position in one corner, the jackasses were cudgelled into a retreat, while the dogs, like the pigs in New York, being free of the city, provided for themselves. A moment or two elapsed after these preparations had been ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... he spent money on his rather contemptuous nieces. He sent them gorgeous fans, and watch bracelets, and velvet bags. He took two expensive rooms at a downtown hotel, and there was something more tear-compelling than grotesque about the way he gloated over the luxury of a separate ice-water tap in the bathroom. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... streams and coasts in a cleanly and decent condition—whether primitive or adapted in one way or another to man's use—together with the communities of wild creatures that belong there, is quite as practical and urgent as their right to usable tap water or to a share in the Gross National Product. For upon the retention of these ancient realities future human sanity ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... is come for a great big change." He emphasised the word with a tap of his cue upon the floor. "We can't play our game the way we've been playing it the last three years. We've been hammering wheat down and down and down, till we've got it below the cost of production; and now she won't go any further with all the hammering in the world. The other fellows, the ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... feeble tap. There was no doubt about Trent being in. Inspection revealed the fact that the prefect was working and evidently ill-attuned to conversation. He wore a haggard look and his eye, as it caught that of the ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... one another in such wise that the result is universal order. And if we take any part of the whole system—such as that of organic nature on this planet—to examine in more detail, we find that it appears to be instinct with contrivance. So to speak, wherever we tap organic nature, it seems to flow with purpose; and, as we shall presently see, upon the monistic theory the evidence of purpose is here in no way attenuated by a full acceptance of any of the 'mechanical' explanations furnished by science. Now, these large and important facts of observation ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes

... than Thor or Odin in his battles; when a Kiawaqu', or Jotun, rises to the clouds to oppose him, Glooskap's head touches the stars, and scorning to slay so mean a foe like an equal, he kills him contemptuously with a light tap of his bow. But in the family circle he is the most benevolent of gentle heroes, and has his oft-repeated little standard jokes. Yet he never, like the Manobozho-Hiawatha of the Chippewas, becomes silly, cruel, or fantastic. He has his roaring revel with a brother giant, even as Thor ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... paths; the whole way through the forest, we formed part of a jostling caravan along the Castrovillari-Morano track—how different from the last time I had traversed this route, when nothing broke the silence save a chaffinch piping among the branches or the distant tap of ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... their cargoes of Manitoba wheat. To-day the Mohawk depression through the northern Appalachians diverts some of Canada's trade from the Great Lakes to the Hudson, just as in the seventeenth century it enabled the Dutch at New Amsterdam and later the English at Albany to tap the fur trade of Canada's frozen forests. Formerly a line of stream and portage, it carries now the Erie Canal and New York Central Railroad.[2] Similarly the narrow level belt of land extending from the mouth of the Hudson ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... neither in a building or a villager of Cagnes. There is a Parisienne—" And I told him about Mademoiselle Simone. He was silent, and his fingers drummed upon the table, tipity-tap, tipity-tap. "Show me your sketches," ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... plain.' 'See, the old woman chides her; she deserves it; She'll not pick up admirers if she plays My Lady Cool so grandly. Watch mamma. The hook is nicely baited; where are all The gudgeons it should lure? I marvel not Mamma is in a fluster; tap, tap, tap, See her fan go! No strategy, no effort, No dandy-killing shot from languid eyes, On that girl's part! And ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... Andreevitch kept all his money in a great wrought-iron coffer, which stood under the head of his bed. The key of this coffer was intrusted to Yuditch. Every evening as he went to bed Ivan Andreevitch used to bid him open the coffer in his presence, used to tap in turn each of the tightly filled bags with a stick, and every Saturday he would untie the bags with Yuditch, and carefully count over the money. Vassily heard of all these doings, and burned with eagerness to overhaul the sacred coffer. In the course of ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... to him, your excellency," she ejaculated, gasping after each word. "That Amalia Ludwigovna, ah! Lida, Kolya, hands on your hips, make haste! Glissez, glissez! pas de basque! Tap with your heels, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... began now to look at each other, nod, wink significantly, and tap their fingers against their foreheads. There was a whisper, also, about securing the gun, and keeping the old fellow from doing mischief, at the very suggestion of which the self-important man in the cocked hat retired with some precipitation. At this critical ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... Nicol Brinn began to tap the fender again with his foot. "Let me think," he replied. "I recognize that you must regard my reticence as peculiar, Mr. Harley, but if ever a man had reason to look before he leaped, I am ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer

... the region of woodland, the former of these eminently sociable plants is the chief agent in the production of peat. Fresh leaves are always succeeding one to the other round the central tap-root, the lower ones soon decay, and in tracing a root downwards in the peat, the leaves, yet holding their place, can be observed passing through every stage of decomposition, till the whole becomes blended in one confused mass. The Astelia ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... you!" in the same whisper. Before he could tap at the door, then darkening in the receding light, it opened suddenly, and a big Irish woman bounced out, and then whisked in again, calling to some one in an inner room: "Here he is, Mrs. Mill'r," ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor

... another tap on our hero's shoulder, as he was looking into another window, and another nicely dressed young man said heartily: "Why, Ben, my boy, when did you ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... she had risen and was resting in her chair, feeling weaker and yet much stronger than before; waiting till she could dare show her face to Miss Collins; when a little low tap was heard at the front door. Company? But Diana had noticed no step and heard no wheels. However, there was no escape for her if it were company. She waited, and the tap was repeated. I don't know what about it this ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... rather shaky sort of tap at the door. It does not all at once reach the rather deaf ears of the little old lady and tall, still older gentleman who are seated in their usual arm-chairs, one with his newspaper by the window, the other with her netting by the fire, in the exceedingly neat—neat, indeed, is no ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth

... monk's direction, and made for a cell; but the doors were pretty close to one another, and it seems he mistook; for just as he was about to tap, he heard his old friend crying to him in an agitated whisper, "Nay! nay! nay!" He turned, and there was the monk at his cell-door, in a strange state of anxiety, going up and down and beating the air double-handed, like a bottom sawyer. Gerard ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... enough; but at night the hush became acute. In the quarter I inhabit, always deserted in summer, the shuttered streets were mute as catacombs, and the faintest pin-prick of noise seemed to tear a rent in a black pall of silence. I could hear the tired tap of a lame hoof half a mile away, and the tread of the policeman guarding the Embassy across the street beat against the pavement like a series of detonations. Even the variegated noises of the city's waking-up ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... Bessie briskly. "Have you not promised me another ride to-morrow?" But all the same, as she went upstairs, she thought a talk with her mother and Hatty would have been very soothing. She was sitting by her window, thinking over things in general, when there was a tap at her door, ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... at his watch again mechanically; then he crossed the stage to the left, and hurried down a small, winding stair-case to the pit, where the orchestra waited. A sharp tap of the baton—a glance over his ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs

... head, while she waved in her hand, like a sword, a long-handled tin dipper. Such a picturesque medley of fun, war, and music I believe no white regiment in the service could have shown; and yet there was no straggling, and a single tap of the drum would at any moment bring order out of this seeming chaos. So we marched our seven miles out upon the smooth and shaded road,—beneath jasmine clusters, and great pine-cones dropping, and great bunches ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... this without a murmur. He was trembling with impatience to hear the new fact. Minutely and diffusely Mitya told them everything about the signals invented by Fyodor Pavlovitch for Smerdyakov. He told them exactly what every tap on the window meant, tapped the signals on the table, and when Nikolay Parfenovitch said that he supposed he, Mitya, had tapped the signal "Grushenka has come," when he tapped to his father, he answered precisely that he had tapped that signal, that ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... no man becomes a pocket hunter by first intention. He must be born with the faculty, and along comes the occasion, like the tap on the test tube that induces crystallization. My friend had been several things of no moment until he struck a thousand-dollar pocket in the Lee District and came into his vocation. A pocket, you must know, is a small body of rich ore occurring by itself, or ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin

... help with her guests. Geoffrey Fox went with me. He was very picturesque in a ragged jerkin with a black bandage over his eyes and with old Mamie leading him at the end of a cord. She enjoyed it immensely, and they attracted a lot of attention, as he went tap-tapping along with his cane over the polished floor, or whined for alms, while she sat up on her haunches with a tin cup ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey

... halted, as if a tap was turned off: whoever was inside was all ears. She rapped again. And now a scuffling; and Maria opened the door, and six pairs of astonished eyes gloated on the stranger. And no less did hers ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington

... actu et visu." He can pilot you, on occasion, to vice or virtue with equal assurance. Blest with the eloquence of a hot-water spigot turned on at will, he can check or let run, without floundering, the collection of phrases which he keeps on tap, and which produce upon his victims the effect of a moral shower-bath. Loquacious as a cricket, he smokes, drinks, wears a profusion of trinkets, overawes the common people, passes for a lord in the villages, and never ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... came crash after crash, until I thought it high time to see as well as hear. "What on earth is the matter?" said I to the first waiter I met, as I descended from the coffee-room, and got to the door of the "tap," or room for accommodation of the lower grade of persons frequenting the establishment. "Oh! sir," said he, "it is two dreadful Irishmen fighting: one has broken a table on the other's head; the other smashed a chair." I stopped short, and well do ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers

... sunlight. Numbers of slaves were running about, but they were all so busy that Alerta did not like to stop them. At last, however, she saw one of them approach a small green insect which was clinging to a leaf, and tap it gently. A big drop of honey came out of the little insect, and the ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy

... in a country house who will insist on telling you a series of good stories about himself, one after the other, until the guests in the smoking-room, in sheer despair of ever getting their turn of talking about themselves, or of turning on the tap of their own good stories, light their candles, yawn, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various

... and Miss MacMahon arrived, and were at once shown into the private office. At ten minutes past, Mr. Murphy's respectful tap was heard. "Don't, Eddie," said Mrs. MacMahon in a queer, flurried voice. "Come in," said her husband. Nora was examining some judicial cartoons pinned over the mantelpiece. Mr. Murphy opened the door a few inches, slid ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... window behind us gives an extensive view of grey rain and grey sea. But I prefer to look at the smiling, freckled face that speaks so eloquently of sunny days. The wet, trailing fingers of the briar-rose climbing over the porch tap at the casement, the loose branch of the plane-tree creaks in the wind, the distant sea moans and murmurs; but I prefer to listen to my little friend's artless and occasionally "h-less" English, as she tells me how the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various

... that, missie," said another voice in English, and her hands were rudely pulled aside; "you must get up and walk. Perhaps we won't hurt you. But if you make a noise I'll give you a tap on the head with this waddy," and the speaker flourished a short club over her head. "Come! ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke

... ceased, a tap was heard at the door; and she, bidding whoever was without to enter, a young girl appeared, and closing the door, approached her. She wore the red embroidered Greek cap, with her hair hanging in two long plaits behind, full trousers, and a silk waistcoat, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... aware that Merriwell was a spectator, for he braced up and gave Bascomb a merry go for a few minutes, forcing the big fellow back, and seeming to tap him with ease and skill whenever and ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish

... faint tap at the door had as instant an effect as a squib, planted in the mane of the monarch of the ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... Frederic's opera-audience, with the pit full of his tall grenadiers with their wives on their shoulders, never daring to applaud except when he gave the order, as if by tap of drum, opposed to the tender and expansive nature of the artist, is one of the best tragicomedies extant. In Russia, too, all is military; as soon as a new musician arrives, he is invested with a rank ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... of its species, it probably does not think about it as a person would, any more than the plant or tree thinks about the light when it bends toward it, or about the moisture when it sends down its tap-root. Touch the tail of a porcupine ever so lightly, and it springs up like a trap and your hand is stuck with quills. I do not suppose there is any more thinking about the act, or any more conscious exercise of will-power, than there is in a trap. An outward ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs

... Certainly it added at the same time hugely to the price of Vereker's secret, precious as that mystery already appeared. I may as well confess abjectly that Mrs. Corvick's unexpected attitude was the final tap on the nail that was to fix, as they say, my luckless idea, convert it into the obsession of which I am for ever conscious. But this only helped me the more to be artful, to be adroit, to allow time to elapse before renewing my suit. There ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... and encouragement. If he deigns to make a public appearance there is a throng at the doors which overtaxes the energy and ability of the police. We must be glad that we have a public commentator like Mark Twain always at hand and his wit and wisdom continually on tap. His sound, breezy Mississippi Valley Americanism is a corrective to all sorts of snobbery. He cultivates respect for human rights by always making sure that he has ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... This means that they should not be left to germinate in loosely packed soil, full of air spaces, ready to dry out at the first opportunity, and to let the tiny seed roots be shriveled up and die. The soil should touch the seed—be pressed close about it on all sides, so that the first tiny tap root will issue immediately into congenial surroundings where it can instantly take hold. Such conditions can be found only in a seed-bed fine but light enough to pack, reasonably rich and sufficiently moist, and where, in addition to this, the seed ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell

... back a couple of days.] Never can hear the —— coming, in them carpet slippers. Turned round and found him standing right to my back this morning. Could have stuck a knife into me easy. 'Look here!' says I, and fetched him a tap on the ear that will make him walk louder next time, I warrant. He could have stuck a knife into ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... with theosophy [15] and spiritualism; whereas, they are by no means iden- tical—nor even similar. Christian Science, antagonis- tic to intemperance, as to all immorality, is by no means associated therewith. Do manly Britons patronize tap- rooms and lazar-houses, and thus note or foster a fem- [20] inine ambition which, in this unknown gentleman's language, "poises and poses, higgles and wriggles" it- self into publicity? Why fall into such patronage, unless from their affinity for the worst ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... be drilled to quick execution of duty, even as in a machine the several parts. The navy is manned after this pattern; but there is a touchstone which sharpens the edge dulled with routine,—the touchstone of war. When the time comes that the drum-tap calls to quarters, and the decks are strewn with sand,—when with silence as of the grave, fore and aft, the frigate moves stately and proud into the line of her adversaries' fire, then it is that the officer and the man meet face to face, and the awful truth of battle compels them to own ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... It doesn't hurt—over the glass. And then you take these pots when danger of frost is over, plant them out, in nursery rows, or, if you want to put them in permanent places, it's perfectly all right. Take this, put your finger under like that (demonstrating), give her a tap, and the ball comes out of the pot in your hand. And if it's permanent, plant it down to here; cover ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various

... no josh. But the trouble with faith is that it's about the scarcest article on earth—and I haven't got any more Floppers to lead the way." Madison adroitly sent the cigar ash through the window with a tap of his forefinger on the body of the cigar—he frowned, and for a long time sat musingly silent. Then he spoke again; this time addressing the toes of his boots: "With the house sold out for the season, the box-office doing itself proud and the audience ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... meals a long string of hungry men would form in line, and at the first tap would make a rush for the table like a flock of sheep. After all were seated a waiter came around and collected a dollar from each one, and we thought this paid pretty well for the very poor grub they ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... and preserve the intellectual faculties of your guests so that they may be seen at their best. I am not unmindful that in the menu the courses grew shorter until they culminated in the pungent and brief episode of cheese, and so I take it that as to the oratory here on tap, you desire it to become gradually ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... who was evidently a physician of sorts, after glancing admiringly at the young Englishman's stalwart proportions and magnificent muscular development—to which he particularly drew Adoni's attention—proceeded to tap Dick on the chest and between the shoulders, listen to the action of his heart and lungs, punch him in the ribs, and act generally as though he were examining the lad on behalf of a life insurance company; finally expressing his approval of the youngster's physical ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood

... gave him an admonitory tap on the arm with her red fan, but the joke seemed to amuse them hugely and the betting began at once. Hearing the bursts of laughter, other ladies and gentlemen joined the group in order to share the fun. The news of the approaching contest spread ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... rubicund person evidently not suffering from any great depression of spirit through the circumstance of being "out on bail," as he was, to Joe's intimate knowledge—sat astride a barrel, resting his instrument upon the foamy tap thereof, and playing somewhat after the manner of a 'cellist; in no wise incommoded by the fact that a tall man (known to a few friends as an expert in the porch-climbing line) was sleeping on his ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington

... went to the water-tap to turn off the hose he had been using. He disconnected it, coiled it and hung it up, and then picked up the water-bucket. Then, without warning, he hurled the water into the policeman's face, sprang forward, swinging the bucket by the bale, and hit ...
— Flight From Tomorrow • Henry Beam Piper

... I recall for its dense blackness, there came a tap, tap, tap, three of them, slowly and distinctly, at the small window of my room in the Castle. I knew by the method of the disturbance that it was not an accident, but I was on my feet and peering hard into the outer darkness before I realized that here was the prearranged signal of danger ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne

... rate, little or nothing for it to do which might not quite as well be done without it. The hydraulic engineer, sitting in his central office, has to wind up the whole machinery from time to time, and to turn now this tap, now that, when he wishes to set this or that particular machine in motion. But, as no one need be told, our chose pensante has nothing to do with the winding up of our digestive, circulatory, or respiratory apparatus; and so far from internally arranging those other ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... sitting up by himself, after a day spent in this manner, making entries in his journal, his friends having retired to bed, when he was roused by a gentle tap at the ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... so much lighter than iron that when the ore is melted the slag floats on top just as oil floats on water, and can be drained out of the furnace through a higher opening than that through which the iron flows. The slag tap is open most of the time, but the iron tap is opened only once in about six hours. It is a magnificent sight when a furnace is "tapped" and the stream of iron drawn off. Imagine a great shed, dark and gloomy, with many workmen hurrying about to make ready ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan

... story in which one gruesome touch lives. A clergyman's female servant was seated in the kitchen one Saturday night reading the Scriptures, when she was somewhat startled by hearing at the door the tap and voice of her sweetheart. Not expecting him, and the hour being somewhat late, she opened it in astonishment, and was still more astonished to hear him on entering abuse Scripture-reading. He behaved altogether in an unprecedented manner, and in many ways terrified the poor ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... retired for the night, and was sitting reading, when a low tap at the door roused him from a brown study. He gave the necessary permission, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... Regiment is drawn up in Array, with every one her Weapon in her Hand, upon my giving the Word to handle their Fans, each of them shakes her Fan at me with a Smile, then gives her Right-hand Woman a Tap upon the Shoulder, then presses her Lips with the Extremity of her Fan, then lets her Arms fall in an easy Motion, and stands in a Readiness to receive the next Word of Command. All this is done with a close Fan, and is generally learned in the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... asked herself in the starlit nights of those years, why not? All their lives he had been a good father to them, taking the place of the mother dead since she could just remember, speeding with tap and stroke of his humble craft those luckier ones who streamed through the stirring headquarters of Grand Portage at the mouth of Pigeon River each season, going into that untracked region of romance ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... the General Service Code to whistle, foghorn, bugle, or trumpet, one short blast indicates a dot and one long blast a dash. With the drum, one tap indicates a dot and two taps in rapid succession a dash. Although these signals can be used with a dot and dash code, they should be so used in connection with ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... wandering in the night, Tap at my windowpane; With ghostly fingers, snowy white, I heard him tug in vain, Until the shuddering candlelight Did cringe with ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein

... would have dinner, and then Mr Holroyd would begin again. He was a very clever person with regard to the face and the hands and the feet. Georgie had been conscious of walking a little lamely lately; he had been even more conscious of the need of hot towels on his face and the "tap-tap" of Mr Holroyd's fingers, and the stretchings of Mr Holroyd's thumb across rather slack surfaces of cheek and chin. In the interval between the hair and the face, Mr Holroyd should have a good supper downstairs with Foljambe and the cook. And tomorrow ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... blows which were really painful, he sprang away from the table so as to get more room. Torpander had not the least idea of using his fists, but hammered away like a blacksmith with his long skinny arms, either at Tom or else in the air, just as it might happen. Mr. Robson gave him a tap every now and then which made his bones rattle again, but on the whole he allowed the Swede to hammer away at his back as ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland

... of the chinquapin in America is limited northward by a plan of nature for checking distribution of the species. This plan is manifested in a habit which the nuts have of sprouting immediately upon falling in the early autumn. They proceed busily to make a tap root which may become several inches in length before frost calls a halt. In the north where the warm season is not long enough to allow the autumn sprout to lignify sufficiently for bearing the rigors ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various

... stone barracks, in towns, in great camps that served the country for miles with rows of black warehouses and narrow barrack buildings standing with their feet a little apart; giving their little brass bugles a preliminary tap before putting out their cheeks and blowing in them and stealing a million and a half (or was it two million or three million) lives, and throwing the warm sentient bodies into coarse automatons who must be kept busy, lest they grow restive, till ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... a fresh galloping of hoofs indicated that there was a second call, and the engines from up town were answering. I began to tap my feet restlessly, ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... and the next moment 'e got a tap on the jaw that nearly broke it, and that was followed up by one in the eye that sent 'im staggering up agin the side, and when 'e was there Dodgy's fists ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs

... just finished setting his last copy and was engaged in piling the copy-books neatly, one on top of another, when there came a soft tap at the door. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... shopkeeper distinguished his place of business by painted signs and graven images. Oxford and Cambridge Universities were little better than modern grammar and Latin school in a provincial village. The country magistrate used on the bench language too coarse, brutal, and vulgar for a modern tap-room. Fine gentlemen in London vied with each other in the lowest ribaldry and the grossest profanity. The poets of the time, from Dryden to Durfey, ministered to the popular licentiousness. The most shameless indecency polluted their pages. The theatre and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... table-beer cask, who appeared to be some authorized medical attendant upon the poor, was far too well accustomed, evidently, to little differences of opinion between man and wife, to interpose any remark in this instance. He sat softly whistling, and turning little drops of beer out of the tap upon the ground, until there was a perfect calm: when he raised his head and said to Mrs. ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... immoderately warm days. At intervals the brakeman carries round a pitcher of iced water, which he serves gratis to all who want it; and it is a pleasant sight on sultry summer days to see how the children welcome his coming. In some cases there is a permanent filter of ice-water with a tap in a corner of the car. At each end of the car is a lavatory, one for men and one for women. In spite, then, of the discomforts noted above, it may be asserted that the poor man is more comfortable on a long journey than in Europe; and that on a short ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... the hand of the young man and leading him up to the bed, he placed his hand in that of his wife, and gave it a little tap as though to unite them more closely. Then laying aside his professional tone and manner, he said with a satisfied air: "Well, now, that's done. Believe me, that is the best thing to do." The two hands, joined for a moment, separated immediately. Julien, not daring ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... Abington dry, and laid the taps on the tables, when I had done: 'sblood, I'll challenge all the true rob-pots in Europe to leap up to the chin in a barrel of beer, and if I cannot drink it down to my foot, ere I leave, and then set the tap in the midst of the house, and then turn a good turn on the toe on it, let me be counted nobody, a pingler,[281]—nay, let me be[282] bound to drink nothing but small-beer seven years after—and I had ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... the fireside. On the settle MAY is huddled, her head bent, the shawl drawn over her face. JANE BROWNING moves about, putting away work things, cups and plates, seeing that the window is closed, winding the clock, etc. There is a tap at the outer door and JANE opens it. STEVE, ANNIE and ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin

... paths, the woman would come and tap lightly at Hund's door. Hund had built himself two cabins, one behind the other (these are now, as I think I have explained to you, connected by a passage); the smaller one was the homestead, in the other he carved and wrote, so that while the young wife slept ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... habit of writing in what really amounts to a sort of 'pigeon English.' When we are told that 'Lady Duffreen, the mighty Queen's Vice-queen,' paces among the charpoys of the ward 'no whit afraid of sitla, or of tap'; when the ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... negative and hardens the sensitized surface of the plate. The black parts of the negative between the transparent lines and dots protect the sensitized surface. When the plate, after printing, is placed under a water tap, the parts of the sensitized surface that have not been acted upon by light wash away, leaving a print that becomes acid proof after being ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... girls of all ages, some sitting, some standing, and some squatting on the floor. Rachel Moseley, the owner of the long dark pigtail, seemed in a position of command, for she motioned Irene to a vacant chair, then rapped on the table with a ruler to ensure silence. She had to tap not once but several times, ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... I made an effort to get up, in order to put my threat into execution; but the ruffian just reached across the table very deliberately, and hitting me a tap on the forehead with the neck of one of the long bottles, knocked me back into the arm-chair from which I had half arisen. I was utterly astounded; and, for a moment, was quite at a loss what to do. In the meantime, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... furtive glance around, he fetched the poker from the fireplace. He felt horribly brutal, as if he were going to mutilate and maltreat a creature that could feel; but he nerved himself to tap the back of Aphrodite's hand at the dimpled base of the third finger. The shock ran up to his elbow, and gave him acute "pins and needles," but the stone hand was still intact. He struck again—this time with all his force—and the poker flew from his grasp, and his ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey

... There came a tap on the door of the private room, and instinctively everyone started. Then came the voice of ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton

... Priestess of Buhaism and the beardless, long-haired Dervish have many a conversation together: in the train, in the Hotel, in the parks and groves of Damascus, they tap their hearts and minds, and drink of each other's ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... put them at their ease, 'tis plain.' 'See, the old woman chides her; she deserves it; She'll not pick up admirers if she plays My Lady Cool so grandly. Watch mamma. The hook is nicely baited; where are all The gudgeons it should lure? I marvel not Mamma is in a fluster; tap, tap, tap, See her fan go! No strategy, no effort, No dandy-killing shot from languid eyes, On that girl's part! And all this ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... gave the call for Tucson, preparatory to transmitting the conductor's message to the division superintendent. His fingers were just striking the first tap when a silken voice ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... his wind for a good vicious rip. I felt his boiling foam dropping upon me as I lay quite still. I thought that was the best thing to do. All at once hoofs came up at a hard gallop; something swept above me with a rush; there was a short, smothered sound like a tap on a padded door, and then the beast stretched himself slowly out across my legs, and shivered, and died. That man opposite to you had leapt his horse over us both, and, while he was in the air, speared the boar through the spinal marrow. If he had been struck any where else he ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... but little accustomed to and only Smok thro form. after eateing the boiled fish which was delicious, I Set out & halted or came too on the Island at the two Lodges. Several fish was given to me, in return for Which I gave Small pieces of ribbond from those Lodges the natives Showed me the mouth of Tap teel River about 8 miles above on the west Side this western fork appears to beare nearly West, The main Columbia river N W.- a range of high land to the S W and parralal to the river and at the distance of 2 miles on the Lard. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... that," says MCLAUGHLIN. "I carry the keys of the Bumsteadville[1] churchyard vaults, and can tell to an atom, by a tap of my trowel, how fast a skeleton is dropping to dust in the pauper burial-ground. That's more than they can do who call me names." With which ghastly speech JOHN MCLAUGHLIN retires unceremoniously from ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various

... in response to his order, assisted by the sharp tap of a boot accompanying it, tripped over a gun barrel one of the guard facetiously inserted between my legs, and went down once more, uttering such howl of terror as could be only partially drowned beneath the uproarious laughter of my merry tormentors. It developed into a gantlet, yet ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... that moment, and probably sensing my intention, he gave his horn a tap. I'd have liked to talk longer with Miss Farrow, but a cab was what I wanted, so with a wave I took it and she went on down the steps to ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

... first tap at the door, and try if we can get in as benighted travellers: if that won't do, and I fear it will not, while you remain begging for admittance at the door, and keep him occupied, I will try the door behind, that leads into the garden; and if not the ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... to her brain, instinct in every fiber with the modern habit of taking in impressions from the printed page; and for years afterwards she could have told the names of the birds they saw during that long, still half-hour, broken by no sound but the tap-tap-tap of Mr. Bristol's typewriter. He did not once look towards them. This was partly a matter of policy, and partly because he was trying desperately to get a paper written for the next Convention of Public School Principals, which he was to address ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... was a strong spirit of emulation between the companies, which added greatly to their efficiency, each striving to be first at the fire, as it was considered an honor to have first water on the same. At the tap of the fire alarm men could be seen running from all quarters to the engine-houses, as the first man at the engine-house had the honor of carrying the pipe into the fire, which was ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett

... where it lived by selling beer and other sharp and cheap drinks to the villagers; nineteen-twentieths of whom appeared to be agricultural laborers. The entertainment proffered on the sign-board over the door was evidently limited to the tap-room. Indeed, this and the great, low- jointed and brick-floored kitchen opening into to it, seemed to constitute all the living or inhabited space in the building. I saw, at a glance, that the chance for a bed was faint and small; and I asked Landlord Rufus for one doubtingly, ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... sew it together, cousin?" asked Catharine; "you have neither deer sinews nor war-tap." The Indian name for the flexible roots of the tamarack, or swamp larch, which they make use of in manufacturing their ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill

... round, and survey this guard drawn up to receive him, a tap over the head with a capstan bar efficiently handled by Hagthorpe put him to sleep ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... the Boy would sit in the dim lamplight on a footstool beside the Tenor's chair, leaning his head against the arm of it, while the latter smoked, and the tap, tap, tap, of the clematis and honeysuckle on the window pane kept time to the thoughts of each. Long intervals of silence were natural to the Tenor, and it was generally the Boy who broke the charm. He would talk seriously then, and often about his sister, and ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... exploration of his own, and Lane and Ellison were still wounded men. I peered from behind our pile of brushwood and awaited events. The second gang of mutineers had brought a keg with them, and I saw them tap it. Only too clearly was its nature revealed. They had come ashore to an orgie. I counted ten of them, and thought I recognised one or two of the figures—Gray's and Pierce's for certain. Holgate evidently ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... Slop-tap too often," he said. "Quinny, my son, you're a clever little chap, but you're frightfully sloppy. I've read a lot ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... or the sun-ends o' gavels, The snuffie auld bodie is sure to be seen. Tap, tappin' his snuff-box, he snifters and sneevils, And smachers the snuff frae his mou' to his een. 'Since tobacco cam' in, and the snuffin' began, There hasna been seen ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... to pull her hair into a knot before the glass. There came a tap at her door and the voice of Charmian Maybough asked, "May ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells

... had seemed whirring, buzzing a moment since, was suddenly very quiet; a breath of air crept in through the open front door carrying the noise of a passing motor; she heard faint sounds from upstairs and then a grinding racket in the pipe behind the bookcases-her husband turning of a water- tap—- ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... strip Arabs by this time, then," said the Amie du Drapeau, turning the tap of her barrel to replenish the wine-cup; "and to steal from them too, living or dead. Thou must take him ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... the poor man was enjoying (if you can call it so) his frugal supper as above, when there came a gentle tap at the door; and on opening it he perceived upon the threshold a very old woman dressed in a cloak of faded rags. She was so old and so remarkably ugly that had she been a duchess not the most inventive of reporters could have done better for her than "distinguished looking." So the woodcutter, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various

... the dizzying kaleidoscope that it was in 1917. No longer does it change visibly from week to week as it changed in 19l8. Already, to get a clear vision of the direction in which it is changing, it is necessary to visit it at intervals of six months, and quite useless to tap the political barometer several times a day as once upon a time one used to do.... But it is still changing very fast. My journal of "Russia in 1919," while giving as I believe a fairly accurate picture of the state of affairs ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome

... the neck of the bottle, thus expanding it, or, if this is not effective, pour a little salad oil round the stopper, and place the bottle near the fire, then tap the stopper with a wooden instrument. The heat will cause the oil to work round the stopper, and it ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... we followed this rule in English, and you came to the word, 'TP,' you would be puzzled indeed to know whether tap, tip, or ...
— The Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff

... first was much smaller, and here Mr. Rushton held his more confidential interviews. Few persons entered it, however; and even Roundjacket would tap at the door before entering, and generally content himself with thrusting his head through the opening, and then retiring. ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... times it was known as the Mabie Tavern, and the old tap-room, with its ancient bar, is still as it was in ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 59, December 23, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... stared at if you called Timaru anything but "Timmeroo." In Otago Lake Wakatipu becomes anything, from "Wokkertip" to "Wackatipoo"; and I have heard a cultured man speak of Puke-tapu as "Buck-a-tap." ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... case," she answered, giving me a little tap on the cheek, "I see that you are jealous; but his must be a particular jealousy who at ten o'clock yearns for his mistress, only to hand her over at midnight to eight drunken men who will return her to him on the morrow as foul as the mud ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... said to me, "You're so artistic." emphasizing the conjunction with a tap of her dripping umbrella (Eleanor is out in all weathers: the elements are as powerless against her as man), I merely stipulated, "It's not old ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton

... speculative transaction carried through by means of the usual accompaniments. A defaulting State believed to be possessed of great potential wealth, thought, or was induced to think, that by building a railway it could tap that wealth. The whole thing was a pure possibility. If the loan had been successfully placed at the issue price it would have sufficed to build the first section (fifty-three miles) of railway, and to leave something over for work in the mahogany forests. It is barely possible that in time ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers

... without you?" She almost laughed at the idea. He bolted the door, and he ran into the chart-house to tap the barometer. It moved appreciably. It was rising! Ah, if only the wind moderated, he could save the Kansas yet! He glanced at the compass. Still the same course. Not a fraction of a point gained to the north. That was bad. The ship was already within the danger zone. Pray Heaven for a falling ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... impracticability of taking them from their natural protectors, and again tried to lead them upwards, finally betaking herself to the repetition of hymns, which put them to sleep. She had spent some time in sitting between them in the summer darkness, when there was a low tap, and opening the door, she saw her father. Indicating that they slept, she followed him out, and a whispered conference took place as he stood below her on the stairs, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... gone by this time, for it seemed to him that he had struggled about the bed, in his efforts to free himself, for an eternity. But the best that he could do was to attempt to attract attention from below, and so, after many failures, he managed to work himself into a position in which he could tap the toe of his boot against the floor. This he proceeded to do at short intervals, until, after what seemed a very long time, he was rewarded by hearing footsteps ascending the stairs, and presently a knock upon the ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... it out into a long rope and held it while Uncle Clem hit the ends a sharp tap with the edge of ...
— Raggedy Andy Stories • Johnny Gruelle

... train, after quarter of an hour's indecision between thoughts of Holly, his morning paper, the look of the bright day, and his dim memory of Newmarket, Val plunged into the recesses of a small square book, all names, pedigrees, tap-roots, and notes about the make and shape of horses. The Forsyte in him was bent on the acquisition of a certain strain of blood, and he was subduing resolutely as yet the Dartie hankering for a Nutter. On ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... reply or act,—and, in truth, the easy presumption of the young Englishman made it difficult for him, an inexperienced recluse as he was, to know what to do or say,—the drum beat a little tap, recalling the soldiers to their rank and to order. The young officer hastened back, with a laughing glance at Rose, and a light, contemptuous look of defiance at Septimius, the drums rattling out in full beat, and the ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... "Davy will tap at thy door as he goes down in the morning, and I will soon follow to show thee about matters. Good-night, and good rest, ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... He was a tall, big man, warm and violent, a great gambler, bad tempered,—who often treated M. le Grand and Madame d'Armagnac, great people as they were, so that the company were ashamed,—and who swore in the saloon of Marly as if he had been in a tap-room. He was feared; and he said to women whatever came uppermost when the fury of a cut-throat seized him. During a journey the King and Court made to Nancy, Boisseuil one evening sat down to play in the house of one of the courtiers. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... the stairway a footstep was heard And a rap-a-tap loud at the door, And the flickering hope that had been long deferred Blazed up like a beacon once more; And there entered a man with a cynical smile That was fringed with a stubble of red, Who remarked, as he tilted a sorry old tile To the back ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... by a sudden knock at the door—not the discreet tap of a well-bred domestic, but a flurried, almost an imperative summons. Before either of them could reply, the door was opened and Brookes, the elderly butler, presented himself upon the threshold. Even before he spoke, it was clear that he brought ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the other. Their burdens, carried on their heads, held them erect. They stepped out freely. But against the wooden chop boxes, the bags of cornmeal potio, the bundles of canvas that made up some of the loads, the long safari sticks went tap, tap, tap, in rhythm. This tapping was a steady undertone to the volume of noise that arose from thirty throats. Every man was singing or shouting at the full strength of his lungs. A little file of Wakamba sung in unison ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... trees on whose leaves the aphides have collected. Then an ant goes close to one of these insects for a drop of the sweet juice. If this be not soon given out, the ant will gently tap the body of the aphis, and thus obtain a supply of the sweet fluid. After feasting on this, the ant will pass to another little aphis and treat it in the same manner for ...
— The Nursery, Number 164 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... shut his eyes, and smiled at the prospect his fancy conjured up and completing his survey, retired to his own chamber, which opened, by a small door, upon one of the back courts. He had scarcely reached the room, when he heard a low tap at the outer door; and, when it was thrice repeated, he knew that it was one of his Jewish-brethren. For Ximen—as years, isolation, and avarice gnawed away whatever of virtue once put forth some meagre fruit from a heart naturally bare and rocky—still reserved ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... were at Yale, on what is known as "Tap Day," you would view in wonderment the solemnity and seriousness of the occasion. An election to a senior society is Yale's highest honor. As you sit on the old Yale fence you realize what it means to Yale men. In the secret life of the campus ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... and sympathy she burst into the room with only the faintest apology of a tap at the door. Her father was there too, standing by the bed with a ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... had just come to his counting-house and seated himself at the desk, when somebody came tap, tap, at the door. "Who's there?" said Mr. Fitzwarren. "A friend," answered the other; "I come to bring you good news of your ship Unicorn." The merchant, bustling up instantly, opened the door, and who should be seen waiting but the captain and factor, with a cabinet of jewels, and a bill ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... together—there's nothing to be afraid of. It's natural enough. It's faith, Helena—and that's what we were banking on—only not quite so hard. That kid and Mrs. Thornton annexed the real brand, that's all—and when the genuine thing is on tap I cross my fingers and yell for faith—there's nothing to stop it. And that's the way it's got both of you too, eh? Well, that only makes our game the safer and the more certain, doesn't it? So, come on now, pull ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... queen of the fairies, giving him a smart tap with her wand, "stir yersel', and be at work; for ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... quite satisfied with the work he had done in the preceding round. Now he would show them another style of fighting! And he did. From the tap of the gong he rushed his opponent about the ring at will. He hit him when and where he pleased. The man was absolutely helpless before him. With left and right hooks Billy rocked the "coming champion's" head from side to side. He landed upon the swelling optics ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... fed a little meandering gutter that trickled away among the ferns; it ran crystal clear over little bright pebbles and shells. It did not always run, you understand; but Miss Lucas turned a secret tap, and started it. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... 6d. per piece, the old lead to be the property of the plumber. The two cisterns to be carried up and replaced on new roof, the pipes attached to them to be lengthened as required by the alterations; and a water tap to be fitted ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... chubby-faced fellow with sleepy eyes, rose automatically and in one single stream, like a running tap, recited, without stopping to take breath, "The Wolf and the Lamb," rolling off La Fontaine's fable like the thread from ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... months past it was customary whenever it was known that Sir Jasper would sit up late, for Mrs. Fraudhurst, on passing the door of his chamber before descending to the breakfast room, to tap and enquire whether the Baronet would come down to his breakfast or have it sent up to him. On the following morning the widow on stopping at the chamber door discovered that it was ajar, and on pushing it gently open found the room was vacant, the ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest

... understand it, and tolerate it," the other went on savagely, "if you succeeded at it. You've never earned a cent in your life, nor done a tap of man's work." ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... unwarrantable reflections both against Dr. Johnson and Mr. Francis Barber. BOSWELL. See post, under Oct. 20, 1784. In 1775, Heely, it appears, applied through Johnson for the post that was soon to be vacant of 'master of the tap' at Ranelagh House. 'He seems,' wrote Johnson, in forwarding his letter of application, 'to have a genius for an alehouse.' Piozzi Letters, i. 210. See also post, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... ejaculated Lady Blunt, with a suddenness which stopped Jimmy's eloquence as if a tap had been turned off. "If I found one coming after my jewels and I had a gun handy, I'd shoot him. ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse

... altogether lost{174}; or like 'tapster', which was female in Chaucer ("the gay tapstere"), as it is still in Dutch and Frisian, and distinguished from 'tapper', the man who keeps the inn, or has charge of the tap, or as 'bakester', at this day used in Scotland for 'baker', as 'dyester' for 'dyer', the word did originally belong of right and exclusively to women; but with the gradual transfer of the occupation to men, and ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... periodical inspection of our prison hospitals. In the meantime my stump continued to discharge matter. An abscess formed and retarded the healing of the wounds and it was not till I discovered a cure myself that it showed any symptoms of healing. The cure was to hold the stump under a tap of cold water, using friction afterwards. This I continued to do long after the wound ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous

... recollection a method which was in use among the "telegraph boys" some years ago when I was one of them. Sometimes when we were visiting and asked to communicate to a "brother chip," anything that it was not advisable for the persons around us to know, a slight tap-tapping on the table or chair would draw the attention of the party we asked to talk to, and then by his watching the forefinger of the writer, if across the room, or if near enough, by placing the hand of the writer carelessly on the shoulder of the party we desired ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... was lionized unbearably, and was soon taken up by the very cream of Florentine society: (a little clique really difficult for foreigners to penetrate); till behold! the old Principessa, head of the lofty house of Contarini, reached a stage of liking and familiarity where she did not hesitate to tap her Prince on the arm with her fan, commanding his escort during her formal progress through her sparsely ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... reduced to stratagem. Since the churches were closed to them, they opened their own houses. By arrangement with Mr Rose, service was held in the Lamb on the evening of the Coronation Day, safety being secured by a preconcerted signal-tap. About forty persons gathered, exclusive of the families of the host and the minister. A small congregation; but a congregation of live souls, who were ready to yield life sooner than faith. The majority of congregations ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... Cowboy, what have you heard, Up on the lonely rath's green mound? Only the plaintive yellow bird Sighing in sultry fields around, Chary, chary, chary, chee-ee!— Only the grasshopper and the bee?— 'Tip-tap, rip-rap, Tick-a-tack-too! Scarlet leather, sewn together, This will make a shoe. Left, right, pull it tight; Summer days are warm; Underground in winter, Laughing at the storm!' Lay your ear close to the hill. Do you not catch the tiny clamour, ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham

... docility, health might not only have been re-established, but a new juvenescence absolutely created. The nature of the medicine that should have been taken was even supposed to have been indicated in some very vague terms. Had he been allowed to operate he would have cut the tap-roots of the national cancer, have introduced fresh blood into the national veins, and resuscitated the national digestion, and he seemed to think that the nation, as a nation, was willing enough to undergo the operation, and be treated as he should choose to treat it;—but that the incubus of Mr. ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... the hall and stood for several minutes outside the door of the east gable before he summoned courage to tap on it with his fingers and then open ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... hail-proof, nonconducting Flickers with pipe and nozzle fitting all types of generator. Graduated tap on left hip. ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... working- capital for emergencies, you know. Whenever I had idle money, I put it into timber in the San Hedrin watershed, because I realized that some day the railroad would build in from the south, tap that timber, and double its value. I've not as yet found reason to doubt the wisdom of my course; but"—he sighed—"the railroad is ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... The foot tap of Mrs. Nesbit became audible. She shook her head with some force and exclaimed: "O Jim, wouldn't I like to have ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... of the attraction of opposites, that, among our elder poets, the war we are waging finds its keenest expression in the Quaker Whittier. Here is, indeed, a soldier prisoner on parole in a drab coat, with no hope of exchange, but with a heart beating time to the tap of the drum. Mr. Whittier is, on the whole, the most American of our poets, and there is a fire of warlike patriotism in him that burns all the more intensely that it is smothered by his creed. But it is not as a singular antithesis ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... man will put a single grape in the corner of his house, and tap it as if it were a beer-barrel. Is not that ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... making "nuts" as smartly as a baker makes ginger-nuts: some are raw and some are cooked—that is, some are punched hot and some cold, sufficing for different purposes: the cold are the softer, and the easier to "tap" or perforate with the screw—thread. Other machines are scissors trimming plates of iron like cardboard; others, in a careless kind of way, spend all their time in nipping off whatever bolts and bars are presented to them; and others make pretty rows of rivet-holes all along the edges ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... I think, was from a very gentle tap at the door, and a "May I come in?" from a soft voice, while the lock was turned, and a youthful and very lovely female ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... issues: deforestation; soil erosion; overgrazing; desertification; air pollution from industrial effluents and vehicle emissions; water pollution from raw sewage and runoff of agricultural pesticides; tap water is not potable throughout the country; huge and growing ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... waited uneasily. The great blue roll of mountain we had left was lit below the mist with a glory of emerald and gold. Ringan was whistling softly through his teeth, while I scanned the half moon of rock and matted vines which made our shelter. There was no sound in the air but the tap of a woodpecker and the trickling of the little runlets from the ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... to make her way plain before her face, to lead and guide her all her journey through. Then, calmed and quieted by casting her burden on the Lord, she lay down again and presently fell into a deep, sweet sleep. She was awakened by a gentle tap on the door, then ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley

... water has been laid on at high pressure, the waste, which is terrible now—some say that in London one-third of the water is wasted—begins to lessen; and both water and expense are saved. If you will only think, you will see one reason why. If a woman leaves a high-pressure tap running, she will flood her place and her neighbour's too. She will be like the magician's servant, who called up the demon to draw water for him; and so he did: but when he had begun he would not stop, and if the magician ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... movement toward her. She recoiled before him, precipitately retreated, closed the door, shot the bolt, and leaned, for faintness, against the wall. She expected each moment to hear him tap. She neither heard a knock nor the sound of soft, departing feet. He was still there! He was on guard! He had had good reason for his terrible certainty! He had foreseen what her plan might be, and she knew he would no more let ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... advancing, and Mr. Egremont was in haste to be gone, but Alice obtained one more run to Mentone, and once more climbed up the dark and dirty stairs to the room, where the well-known voice answered her tap, 'Come in! Ah, there she is, ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... somehow imperilled his play. All four stood silent, and footsteps came leisurely up the stone stairs, and were heard very distinctly in the stillness. The door had been left open, but one of the new-comers stopped to tap at it. ...
— Cruel Barbara Allen - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray

... to dismount!" the Quarter-Gunner of the division on the deck above that in which the gun is to be dismounted removes the screw-tap, and stands ready to place the washer, key and un-key the bolt of ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN

... Solomon to the idiot pauper, must sooner or later pass to immortality. When a fit applicant, after the preliminary probation, kneels with fainting sense and pallid brow before the veil of the unutterable Unknown, and the last pulsations of his heart tap at the door of eternity, and he reverentially asks admission to partake in the secrets shrouded from profane vision, the infinite Hierophant directs the call to be answered by Death, the speechless and solemn steward of the celestial Mysteries. He comes, pushes ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... is still possible to pick up interesting reminiscences of Longfellow and Lowell from old neighbors or townsmen, proud even to have seen these celebrities as familiar objects upon the street. "And Margaret Fuller," you suggest, further to tap the memory of your venerable friend. He smiles gently and says, Margaret Fuller was before his time; he remembers the table-talk of his youth. He remembers, when she was a girl at dancing-school, Papanti stopped his ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach

... square rod; out of the edge of this strip are cut a series of triangular openings—widest at top, leaving projecting teeth of iron (Appendix, Fig. 5); then each of these projecting pieces gets a little sharp tap with the hammer in front, which beaks its edge inwards, tearing it a little open at the same time, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... friendly shove on the shoulder and turned on her way again. Immediately she heard the tap of hurrying little feet behind, like the echoing sound of her own hasty footsteps. She stopped and swung ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann

... all been used to seeing bricklayers tap each brick after it is placed on its bed of mortar several times with the end of the handle of the trowel so as to secure the right thickness for the joint. Mr. Gilbreth found that by tempering the mortar just ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor

... She held out both her hands. Mabane seized one and bent over it with the air of a courtier. The other was offered to me. Arthur was content to beam upon us all from the background. At that precise moment came a tap at the door. Mrs. Burdett brought in ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... mind, and a tap now and then upon his document, to give emphasis to his story, recounted the whole of it, and set forth how much was come of it already, and how much it might lead to. To Scargate Hall, and the better part of the property always enjoyed therewith, Philippa Yordas and Eliza Carnaby had ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... sarcastic," she chided, giving him a playful tap. "If you feel strong enough, please help ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... lich gate[obs3]. way, path &c. 627; thoroughfare; channel; passage, passageway; tube, pipe; water pipe &c. 350; air pipe &c. 351; vessel, tubule, canal, gut, fistula; adjutage[obs3], ajutage[obs3]; ostium[obs3]; smokestack; chimney, flue, tap, funnel, gully, tunnel, main; mine, pit, adit[obs3], shaft; gallery. alley, aisle, glade, vista. bore, caliber; pore; blind orifice; fulgurite[obs3], thundertube[obs3]. porousness, porosity. sieve, cullender[obs3], colander; cribble[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... growls, the sow lifted up her little hoof and grunted good-humouredly. Apparently it was very agreeable to her to see her master, the cat, and Ivan Ivanitch. When she went up to the cat and gave him a light tap on the stomach with her hoof, and then made some remark to the gander, a great deal of good-nature was expressed in her movements, and the quivering of her tail. Kashtanka realised at once that to growl and bark at such ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... on the top of each staircase, with a tap from it on each landing, with six fire buckets hung near it, and three small hand pumps in every staircase; the officers and workpeople seeing these every day would be certain to run to them in case ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood

... and it is not at all surprising, after such a gale as we had three weeks ago, to see many of the finest blown down in the clearings where the wind could reach them. They do not seem to have any tap-root at all, merely a very insufficient network of fibres, seldom of any size, which spreads a short way along the surface of the ground As long as a Bush is undisturbed by civilization, it appears to be impervious ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... she said, in answer to a firm tap at the door, and smiled, looking over her shoulder ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... swear I didn't think a little tap like I gave that one would kill him," the bottle-wielder excused himself. "Of course, I was thinking only of ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper

... school is one in which this motive force is duly transmitted to every part of the school by means of a well-planned and carefully-elaborated machinery, analogous to that by which water and gas are laid on at every tap in every house in a well-governed town. Only those who are intimately acquainted with the inside of the elementary school can realise to what an extent the machinery of education has in recent years encroached upon the vital interests of the school and the time and thought of the teacher. ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... opening and shutting in a tempest. The sharp crack of rifle-shots showed that the snipers were busy on both sides, and once I stood in a deep pool, with the water up to my knees, listening to what sounded like the tap-tap-tap of invisible blacksmiths playing ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... bell, and when a tap came to the door, went out and gave some orders. When she came back she said to me, "I have some very fine girls, all entirely without prejudices, would you like to have one up? I have them of all ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... he who at length Shall tap at my door and shall cry, 'The king to new health and new strength Is returning; the king will not die!' Then she, who were now better dead, Will run, the news-bearer to see, And kiss him for what he hath said, That her brother ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... across the un-harvested fields. Gleaming palely through the French window at which I was standing, the radiance revealed the deserted kitchen, the rusty stove, the dusty pans, and the tarnished water-tap above the stone sink. The hard, wooden crash of grenades broke ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... touch here, and a slight brush there, they let her go; and she was absorbed into the pearly air of the fore-dawn. They heard her footsteps tap along the hard road as she stepped out to her full pace. Even Izz hoped she would win, and, though without any particular respect for her own virtue, felt glad that she had been prevented wronging her friend when momentarily ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... bowed head, her lips compressed; she smiled again, but more faintly. In the silence there sounded a soft tap at the door. ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... captious little girl been more docile, more obedient. Dressing Ethel that morning was a pleasure to Celeste. Scarcely had she completed the task and put on her own clothing when there was a tap on the door. ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... the same hour, as two of the laird's servant-maids were engaged in washing in an out-house, there came a slight tap to the door. "Come in," said one of the maids; and the lady entered, dressed, as on the previous night, in green. She swept past them to the inner part of the washing-room; and, seating herself on a low bench, from which, ere her death, she used occasionally to superintend ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... moment, but placed the edge of the great jack-knife on the soft tinned-iron hook, gave the back of the blade a sharp tap with the iron bar, and cut clean ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... the rest of the audience sitting on their desks. Ingred wisely did not venture on anything too classical, but tried a bright "Spanish Ballade," and managed to get successfully to the end of it without any breakdown. In the midst of the clapping that followed came a loud rap-tap-tap at the door, which immediately opened to admit—much to the astonishment of the Fifth—two of the prefects, and a consignment of ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... I would loan them if they wanted to open. They accepted the offer, and took turns in opening "snaps." Some opened as high as $1,000 at a time. I was playing poker, and did not pay much attention to their game. After supper I told them that I would open a $1,000 "snap," and they could tap it when they pleased. When I sat down to deal, I had a matched set of boxes; you could not tell one from the other. One box was fixed for all the cases to lose, and this I kept secreted. They knocked me out of $400 on one deal; on the next deal I shuffled up the same cards and put them in the ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol

... again remained silent for many minutes, so silent that the faint wash of the river against the bank sounded plainly, and a woodpecker could be heard making his last tap-tap on a ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... strong smell of paraffin oil in the room; and from somewhere at the far end came a faint tap, tapping sound, which might be the light knocking of a window-blind or the rap of ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson

... worked in rich garlands of flowers and very grand bulls' heads, together with nude figures, all of which have been much damaged. These sarcophagi have been used as cisterns for containing water, as the tap is still visible. Immediately opposite is the entrance to the great hall, which is in good repair, as a new cement floor was added by the British authorities, with the intention of converting it into a temporary hospital when the troops were ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... continually varies its direction, it never varies it suddenly. The application of anything sudden, even though the impression itself have little or nothing of violence, is disagreeable. The quick application of a finger a little warmer or colder than usual, without notice, makes us start; a slight tap on the shoulder, not expected, has the same effect. Hence it is that angular bodies, bodies that suddenly vary the direction of the outline, afford so little pleasure to the feeling. Every such change is a sort of climbing or falling in miniature; ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... one of ourselves," replied Sarrion quickly, for he heard her voice in the passage. With a brief tap on the door she came in. She was ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... "At the tap o' the stair, the lang corridor ran awa' intil the dark afore 's, for the can'le the maister carried flangna licht half to the en' o' 't; an' frae oot o' the mirk on a suddent cam to meet 's a rampaugin' an' a rattlin' like o' a score o' nowt rinnin' awa' wi' their iron ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... out," Bivens laughed, "through my little reception room and I'll be there. I'll meet some of the gentlemen who are waiting. When you are satisfied of the accuracy of my account, just tap on my door and I'll join you immediately. Do the inspection carefully. It's of grave importance. I shall call on you as a witness bye and bye before that ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... with the sun, Thro all the midlands recent channels run, Tap the redundant lakes, the broad hills brave, And Hudson marry with Missouri's wave. From dim Superior, whose uncounted sails Shade his full seas and bosom all his gales, New paths unfolding seek Mackensie's ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... seriously and doubtfully in her face, but Fanny was not to be so brought to a check. She furled her fan of black and gold, and used it to tap her sister's nose; with the air of a proud beauty and a great spirit, who toyed with and ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... contrary." The work on the Combination shaft has been by no means continuous. There have been long stoppages aside from those required at such times as they were engaged in running long drifts to the westward to tap the vein, and at times for many months, when the several companies interested in the shaft were engaged in prospecting the various levels it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various

... sap and juice in their talk. When they think they think clearly. When they speak they express themselves with an energy and directness which mortify the thin speech of conventional persons. Here is Farfrae, the young Scotchman, in the tap-room of the Three Mariners Inn of Casterbridge, singing of his ain contree with a pathos quite unknown in that part of the world. The worthies who frequent the place are deeply moved. 'Danged if our country down here is worth singing about like that,' says Billy Wills, the glazier,—while ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... the murmurs of his auditory to circle about the tap-room, swell and subside, and then brought out his conclusion. There was book-learning to be faced. "How about scholarship? 'I'd give him none,' says the man. 'Swallerin' comes by nature, and through more than the mouth. I'd open him his eyes ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... placed, and extending back as far as he could see. An occasional cry told that the arrows were doing execution upon the unseen assailants behind the mantlets, and soon the blows of cross-bow bolts against the wall and the sharp tap of arrows told that the enemy had also betaken themselves to their arms. A number of giant torches had been prepared, consisting of sheafs of straw soaked with pitch, and one of these was now lighted and elevated ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty

... names and English words, stared familiarly from every building. The universal "John Smith" there conspicuously posted his name and his "Bakery." Mine host of the "Hole in the Wall" invited the thirsty in good round Saxon to drink of his "Best Beer on Tap," or his "Bottled Porter," as "you pays your money and take ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... sit here a while, I can look after my babies. Should any change occur, tap at my door; I shall ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... in a kneeling posture all this time scarcely able to control her tears. A tap on the shoulder aroused her, and looking up she saw the kindly face of Lord Hunsdon, the lord chamberlain, ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison

... abstractedly at the file of blank sheets which had been substituted for the incriminating letters of the vote-selling corporation managers, with Gantry sitting back, alert and watchful, to mark the first signs of the coming storm, there came a tap on the locked door of the little room, and a deprecatory voice said: "It's our closing time, gentlemen: ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... by words and deeds I've run an Anti-Waste Campaign; On every tap the legend reads: "Teetotalers, abstain!" While on each bath and tub of mine I've drawn freehand a PLIMSOLL ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various

... one to twenty gallons, and covered with water; to the pan a dome-shaped lid is fitted, terminating with a pipe, which is twisted corkscrew fashion, and fixed in a bucket, with the end peeping out like a tap in a barrel. The water in the still—for such is the name of the apparatus—is made to boil; and having no other exit, the steam must pass through the coiled pipe; which, being surrounded with cold water in ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse

... carrying a brown paper parcel, and, as he walked along, the new boots he was wearing creaked, and the tap-tap of hard nail-studded heels rang out on the ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... if any naval Peers were created at the coronation, he would be one, I did not allow my thoughts to dwell upon it; and when the Gazette arrived without his name, I gave it up altogether. You may therefore judge my surprise on Wednesday morning, when a tap at my door announced Betty Williams, who, in breathless agitation, came to my bedside to say, Mr. C. Lefebvre was below, to inform me "Sir James ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross

... the zodiac, June by the Limberlost, and by every delight of a newly resurrected season it should have been June in the hearts of all men. Yet Freckles scowled darkly as he came down the trail, and the running TAP, TAP that tested the sagging wire and telegraphed word of his coming to his furred and feathered friends of the swamp, this morning carried the story of his discontent a ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter

... are always constructed on the vacuum principle. They are iron boxes, in which a bed is made of bricks, above them gravel, and over this sand, covered on the top by iron grids. The space below the sieve thus formed is connected by means of an outlet tap with a closed tank, and this again communicates with a vacuum pump. By this means the filtration is quickened by the atmospheric pressure, and goes on very rapidly, as also does the subsequent washing. The filtered caustic ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... lap—two boys of the ages of perhaps seven and eleven occupied a bench at her right—an infant of, I should think, three months old, slept in the cradle, which a little girl apparently about five years old stood rocking. The group was a very imposing one. As I entered, I gave a tap upon the door, which caused the mother to turn towards me; but she did not speak, waiting, it would seem, for me to introduce my business. I apologized for my unceremonious entrance, saying, that I had learned she was formerly a resident in the states; ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... drive them into camp with; and it was used so vigorously that no less than eight thousand arrests were made under it in the year before Roosevelt made them all close up. Pretty lively corpse, that! But we understood at last, most of us; understood that the tap-root of the police blackmail was there, and that it had to be pulled up if we were ever to get farther. We understood that we were the victims of our own shamming, and we grew to be better citizens for it. The police force became an army of heroes—for a season. ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... replied; but at this point the attention of the disputants was attracted by the rustle of silk; there was a light, quick tap at the glass-door which separated the den of books from the middle room, and before an answer could be given the emblazoned valves opened partly, and a sweet, decided voice asked, "Please, may we come in? or" (and the speaker opened the doors wide) ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... sense of romantic travel. There the spirit of ancient hospitality still survives, and, though the motor-car has replaced the stage-coach, that is, after all, but a detail, and the old, low-ceilinged rooms, the bay windows with their leaded panes, the tap-room with its shining vessels, the great kitchen, the solid English fare, the brass candlesticks at bedtime, and the lavendered sheets, still preserve the atmosphere of a novel by Fielding or an essay ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... simply amazing to see how much grows out of these discussions—how much of that social sympathy and understanding which is the very tap-root of democracy. It's cheaper to put up a miserable shack of an addition. Why not do it? So we discuss architecture—blindly, it is true; we don't know the books on the subject—but we grope for the big true things, and by our own discussion we educate ourselves to know why a good building is ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson

... his den as well as mine. I keep sugar on tap, so as to put him through some of his paces. Here Carlo, how's your sweet tooth coming on?" and Jack snapped his fingers ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren

... the feast was really over—the Portuguese picked their teeth with their forks, and the wine was circulated briskly. On such an occasion as the marriage of her daughter, the old lady had resolved to tap a pipe of Madeira, which was, at the very least, fifty years old, very fine in flavour, but, from having been so long in the wood, little inferior in strength to genuine Cognac. The consequence was that many of the gentlemen became noisy ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... pencil began to tap on the table, and with its stir his nerves took fire. A leaf of paper flew by, brushing his face like the wing of a bird. A hand clutched his shoulder; then, as if to make every explanation of no avail, the room filled with fairy unseen folk. Books began to hurtle through ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... precocious verse than his has been written, and when yet, on the other, some of the greatest poets had not achieved a mastery of words equal to that already possessed by this young Wykehamist. The voice is faltering, and there is a want of sureness in the touch; the metrical hammer does not always tap the centre of the nail's head. But what pathos in the sentiment, what tenderness in the devotion to beauty! Tennant had, we may suppose, read Flecker before he wrote "How shall I tell you of the roads that stretch away?"; or was it merely the family likeness in the generation? ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... at Exeter. Yes, our fellow does make good soup, and it's about all that he does do well. As for getting a potato properly boiled, that's quite out of the question. Yes, it is a good glass of sherry. I told you we'd a fairish tap of sherry on. Well, I was there, backwards and forwards, for ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... there is no level recorded, get down to a stream bed (the larger the better) and read it there, recording the exact place on the map. The level may then be worked out approximately by points above and below on the stream, for accurate reading, hold the aneroid face up, gently tap it, and read; then face down similarly, and take the mean. Guard that the wind does not blow against ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various

... A final 'tap-tap' from the kitchen; then a sound like the squawk of a hurt or frightened child, and the faces in the room turned quickly in that direction and brightened. But there came a bang and a sound like ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... keen bright eye fixed on the window; then they would stop for two pecks; then stay till they were satisfied. The shyer birds, tamed by their example, came next; and at last one saucy fellow of a blackbird—a sad glutton, he would clear the board in two minutes,—used to tap his yellow bill against the window for more. How we loved the fearless confidence of that fine, frank-hearted creature! And surely he loved us. I wonder the practice is not more general. 'May! May! naughty May!' She ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... sadly to seek in the fiction of the passing hour. The realist would, of course, repudiate the bare idea of putting a bold and brilliant tongue in every man's head, but even where the moment of the story naturally demands eloquence the eloquence seems frozen in the tap. Take any contemporary work of fiction and turn to the scene where the young Socialist denounces the millionaire, and then compare the stilted sociological lecture given by that self-sacrificing bore with the surging joy of words ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... rose suddenly, and as he staggered struck the tables and overthrew the benches; some leaned upon the balustrades sick unto death. Here and there one rose who staggered to the wine jars and lay down beside them. He turned the wine tap, but sleep overcame him as he lay there, and the ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner

... the heid of the Sausage-Killer,'" Tam went on, "bathin' his shaven croon wi' saft radiance. There was a discreet tap at the door, and Wilhelm MacBethmann, his faithful retainer, staggered in, bearin' his ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace

... very light tap was heard, the door was opened to the extent of three inches, and a female voice which I readily recognised called ...
— The O'Conors of Castle Conor from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope

... slid clear off, getting an instantaneous effect of her haughty sister unsupported at a dizzy eminence, before Split came bumping down to earth, the see-saw giving that regal head a parting, stunning tap as the long end finally settled down and the short ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... few minutes there was a tap at her door and Iola came in, her hair hanging like a dusky curtain about her face. Margaret uttered an involuntary ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... bitter and so bold! Shake the windows with your tap, tap, tap! With half-shut, dreamy eyes The drowsy baby lies Cuddled closely in ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate

... these," he said, "and they all lie in a line with one another. Any one of them will tap the tunnel that connects the laundry—the former Museum—with the chamber where the mummy now ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... heard a tap at the door, and the landlord, carrying a few letters on a salver, entered the room. Sara pulled down her veil—a foolish action, which she regretted a moment later. Orange thanked the man for the letters and threw them on the table. The landlord, with ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... and the best of wine too; and old Salterne had a good tap of Alicant in old time, old time, old time, sir! and you must drink it now, whether he does or not!" and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... lay stretched on a dirty mattress, and a little bantam kept watch beside him, to the steps of another caravan, where, from the sounds we heard, high jinks were going on with some children. At the sound of a tap on the door there was an instant hush, and then a girl of nineteen, who had a baby in her arms, asked us to come in. We looked up in amazement; the girl's face appeared like an apparition—so fair, so beautiful, so ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... had rushed up the back stairs just as Miss Mohun had darted up the front, so as to behold, on the landing between the two, the boys, one spinning the top, the other working the pump which stood in its own trough of water, receiving a reckless supply from the tap in the passage. The maid's scream of 'What will your aunt say?' was answered by her appearance, and rush to ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... separated for the evening; anxious thoughts kept the captives awake. But after all was silent in the inn, Isabel heard a gentle tap at the chamber-door. In a state of agitation, every sound is alarming. She listened, and heard Barton whisper, "Arise." Before she could open the door, the watchful Eustace had flown to their protection. Barton was closely muffled in his cloak, and inquired if they dared to trust themselves with ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... he was; she was glad that she wasn't dragging along at his side. He seemed bigger and rounder than usual. She heard the tap of his cane as he left the Common for Pleasant Street; then his feet moved and stopped, moved and stopped, up the steps of ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... that fellow," said Mr. Trowbridge cheerfully. "Now we'll have a look around the camp and I'll show you how we tap the maple trees for the sap; then afterwards we'll go into the sugar house where we boil it down and make the ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... suddenly aroused from my ruminations by a light tap on the shoulder. Judge of my astonishment when Meg Merrillies stood before me, clad in the same wild gipsy garb in which she had warned the Laird of Ellangowan on Ellangowan's height! In her shriveled ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... a toe or so into the zinc receptacle, in order to test the accuracy of his dispensing of the recipe, when he heard a sharp tap at ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett

... it is generally possible to demonstrate the presence of Chvostek's sign and of Trousseau's sign. Chvostek's sign consists in a visible twitch of the facial musculature, especially of the orbicularis palpebrarum or of the orbicularis oris, in response to a gentle tap administered over the facial nerve in front of the ear. Trousseau's sign is the production of tetany by applying firm and prolonged pressure to the brachial nerve in the upper arm. The aetiology of spasmophilia is still a matter for dispute, but the evidence ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron

... musqueteers to clear the road for the hinter: Or again, if you want a guide by night, in a dangerous highway Beset with the enemies' marksmen and swarming with murderous ambush, To train your horse in the art of delicate insinuation, Gently raising a hoof to tap at the door o' the woodsman. But, if he persists in snoring, or pretending to snore, or is angry At your summons to leave his lair in the arms of his wife or his infants, To practise your horse in the duty of stormy recalcitration, Wheeling round to present ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... assure silence. The other side of him was a man of the tunnelling section, who had been at his post listening. The silence was uncanny after the din outside. In a few moments I heard a queer, muffled tap—tap—tap, coming through the earth on the left. I crept closer to my companion, and with my mouth close to his ear enquired whether that was the ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins

... he said. "Just put your head under the tap and jump into a dressing-gown. The green one with golden dragons is the most unique. You'll have to hold an informal reception here in your dressing-room. We can't ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer

... which would pass through the meshes of that annoying statutory net, the Sherman Anti-trust Law. New mines were to be purchased, extending over a certain large area; wide coal deposits; little strips of railroad to tap them. The competition of the Keystone Plate people was to be met by acquiring and bringing up to date the plate mills of King and Son, over the borders of a sister state; the Somersworth Bridge and Construction Company and the Gring ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... it with the force he can exert by a blow from the hand alone, although a man of ordinary strength would try in vain. In most of these instances, if one were to take a piece of the exhibitionist's stone, he would find that a slight tap of the hammer would break it. Again, there are many instances in which the stone has been found already separated and fixed quite firmly together, placing it out of the power of an ordinary man to break, but which the exhibitionist ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... brought a long black cylinder along, but the rubber tubing was knotted in a bundle and several seconds passed before it could be disentangled. At last the end of the tube was pushed into the mouth of the dying man. The tap of the cylinder was turned on, but there was no sound of gas running through. The anaesthetist glared angrily around ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt

... to hear a friend, Tak tent, and nae wi' strunts offend, I've seen queans dink, and neatly prim'd Frae tap to middle, Looking just like the far-aff end O' an auld ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop

... top of a common wood clothespin just above the slot, saving all the solid part. Fasten this to the cover near the back side in an upright position with a screw. A tap on the front side of the pin will turn it over backward until the head rests on the desk thus bringing the cover up in the upright position. When through using the pad, a slight tap on the back side of the cover will turn it down in place. —Contributed ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... baby, he had been taught to make a special sign on the door when he wished to speak to Loristan. He stood still outside the back sitting-room and made it now. It was a low scratching sound—two scratches and a soft tap. Lazarus opened ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... everything. Date is not given, or hinted at; but incidentally we find Gundling in full blast "in the year 1718;" [Von Loen, Kleine Schriften, i. 201 (cited in Forster, i. 260).] and conclude his instalment was a year or two before. Gundling came to his Majesty from the Tap-room of Boisterous-Jack; read the Newspapers, and explained everything: such a Dictionary-in-breeches (much given to liquor) as his Majesty had got, was never seen before. Working into the man, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... the honey'd dew-drap Still trembles at the flower-tap, The fairest bud I pu't up, An' kiss'd for sake o' thee. An' when by stream or fountain, In glen, or on the mountain, The lingering moments counting, I pause an' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... its final and most pronounced stage. The Song to David, with its bold mention of unfamiliar things, its warm and highly-coloured phraseology, its daring adjectives and unexampled adverbs, was an outrage upon taste, and one which was best accounted for by the tap of the forefinger on the forehead. No doubt the poem presented and still may present legitimate difficulties. Here, for instance, is a stanza which it is not for ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... must pass it on under cover of a handkerchief. He takes the borrowed ring and wraps it up in the middle of the handkerchief which he asks some one to hold, and to feel the ring wrapped up in it. In order to let everyone know that the ring is really there, he takes the stick from A and B and gives a tap on the ring. He then gets A and B to hold the stick once more and persuades C, who is assisting with the handkerchief, to hold it over the middle of the stick. The performer holds the corner of the handkerchief and instructs C to let go his hold on ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson

... glancing at his watch, uttered an exclamation of annoyance. "Oh, by Jove, I shan't have time after all. Gill is waiting for me now; we must have dawdled over dinner." He went to give his mother a caressing tap on the cheek. "Now don't worry," he adjured her; and as she smiled back at him he added with a sudden happy blush: "She doesn't, you know: she's ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton

... Tap, tap, tap, on the back kitchen door of Esq. Pimble's great brick mansion, and a clattering of plates and tea things within which quite drowned the timid knock. A second and louder one brought a fat, red-faced woman with rolled-up sleeves and a dish-towel ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... about letting him off; and as soon as he got the club in his hands, he sat down on the bresna, and gave it a tap with the kippeen, and says, "Faggot, I had great trouble gathering you, and run the risk of my life for you, the least you can do is to carry me home." And sure enough, the wind o' the word was all it wanted. It went off ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

... "Small Masters."—Having made so much progress in our analysis, we shall approach more intelligently another important aspect of the "sweating system." Mr. Booth and other investigators find the tap-root of the disease to consist in the multiplication of small masters. The leading industrial forces of the age, as we have seen, make for the concentration of labour in larger and larger masses, and its employment in larger and larger factories. Yet in London and ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson

... writers of the seventeenth century, no one could doubt of its identity with 'phantasy,' as no Greek scholar could miss its relation with phantasia. Spell 'analyse' as I have sometimes seen it, and as phonetically it ought to be, 'annalize,' and the tap-root of the word is cut. How many readers will recognize in it then the image of dissolving and resolving aught into its elements, and use it with a more or less conscious reference to this? It may be urged that few do so even now. The ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... This is his last voyage, he tells me. He is going "shore donkeyman" in future—what you call longshoreman. His wife has a nice little business in Neath now, and "she wants 'im 'ome." Have I noticed how that high-press guide is leaking? Should he tighten up the tap-bolts in the bottom plate? I dissent, because one cannot reach them safely while she is running. It is only a trifle; better let it go. He acquiesces doubtfully, and resumes greasing. And the hours ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... ours was levelled at the balloon, and that before they could fire, a single shot from us must send them earthwards, to be crushed into one shapeless mass by the fall. Endo saw that he had no choice but to obey or affect obedience, and, turning the tap that let out the gas by a pipe passing through the car, sent his vessel rapidly downward, as with a formal salute he affected to accept the command of his Prince. Instantly grasping, not the lightning gun, which, if it struck their balloon, must destroy their ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... it's the weak little women that have sons that air so ready to march to the tap of the drum. But I give you and our daughter all the love thar is in this old heart o' mine, and that ought ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read

... invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... I felt a tap on my shoulder, and heard a gentle voice say, "Arise, Sir Backsight Forethought;" but in a trice my dream of bliss was shattered—the gentle voice changed into the well-known croak of my servant. "Time to pack your kit on the wagon, sir. Corfy's been up some time now, sir." I was still ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton

... as "the Martyr," and every little while they moved through the principal street in procession—at midnight, black-robed, masked, to the measured tap of the solemn drum—on pilgrimage to the Martyr's grave, where they went through with some majestic fooleries and swore vengeance upon his murderers. They gave previous notice of the pilgrimage by small posters, and warned everybody to keep indoors and darken ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... instant there came a tap on the door, and on going to answer it Katherine found Mrs. Seabrook and Miss Williams, another ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... Latchfield, by a deliciously green and shady path. The warm sun, pouring between the thick leaves, made little radiant patches of golden light among the deep shadows under the trees; the whole air seemed alive with the hum of insects; and here and there rang out the sharp tap of a woodpecker, or the melancholy "coo-coo-coo" ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... fresh, and brisk from top to toe as if she had just been made, and not in the least as if she had found her quarters in the peahen's egg either close or confining. She shook out her petticoat with a brisk little flirt, hopped lightly down from the table, and hit the Prince a tap on the head ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam

... it, then, my dear girl! Stick to your plan. Don't let me spoil your afternoon! Gracious heaven! I—I—why, I can quite well take Madame Frabelle myself.' He looked at the barometer. 'The glass is going up,' he said, giving it first a tap and then a slight shake to encourage it to go up higher and to look sharp about it. 'So that's settled, then, dear. That's fixed up. I'll take her on the river. I don't mind in the very least. I shall be only too pleased—delighted. Oh, don't thank me, my dear girl; I know one ought ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson

... genuine one, for there are two) consists of a large, well-built, brick and weather-board house, with bed-rooms for private families. There is a detached weather-board, and stone kitchen, and tap-room, with sleeping-lofts above, a large yard with sheds and good stabling. A portion of the house and stables is always engaged for the use of the escort. About two hundred yards off is the "New Bush Inn," somewhat similar to the other, not quite so large, with an attempt at ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey

... that farthest about, diverting herself in gathering nuts, running after butterflies, and making nosegays of such little flowers as she met with. The Wolf was not long before he got to the old woman's house. He knocked at the door—tap, tap. ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... whom he had taken into his service. The boy complained to him that one of the sailors had taken from him a stick which was in appearance of no value. Captain Frankland recovered it for the boy, and on returning it gave him a tap on the shoulder, when, hearing something rattle, he took off the head, and found jewels (according to the Frenchman's account) worth 20,000 pistoles. When the captain surrendered, he had given this stick to the boy in ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... Mrs. Nancy had asked me to be there to help with her guests. Geoffrey Fox went with me. He was very picturesque in a ragged jerkin with a black bandage over his eyes and with old Mamie leading him at the end of a cord. She enjoyed it immensely, and they attracted a lot of attention, as he went tap-tapping along with his cane over the polished floor, or whined for alms, while she sat up on her haunches with a tin cup ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey

... moodiness; she laughed, she joked, she told a number of things that happened, she hummed the air of the last waltz. "Isn't it divine?" she asked. "Oh! I feel as if I could dance for a week." She was still dancing; she gave Colville's foot an accidental tap in keeping time on the floor of the carriage to the tune she was humming. No one said anything about a next meeting when they parted at the gate of Palazzo Pinti, and Mrs. Bowen bade her coachman drive Colville to his hotel. But both the ladies' voices called good-night to him as ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells

... a tap at the door which faced her, but was on Newton's left. A high screen protected the old lawyer from draughts, and prevented him from seeing who entered until the visitor stood ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... the sister sat round the desolate breakfast table, attempting some sort of desultory consultation. The morning's post had given the final tap to the family fortunes, and all was over. The dreary dining-room itself, with its heavy mahogany furniture, looked as if it were waiting to be ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence

... the bubble of distant musketry, and I hurried out. It came from the north, and it was languidly echoed from Caesar's Camp. Tack-tap, tack-tap—each shot echoed a little muffled from the hills. Tack-tap, tack-tap, tack, tack, tack, tack, tap—as if the devil was hammering nails into the hills. Then a hurricane of tacking, running round all Ladysmith, ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens

... not want a house, in the ordinary sense of the word. What she wants is something made by a genii. You have found, as you think, the ideal house. You show her the Adams fireplace in the drawing-room. You tap the wainscoting of the hall with your umbrella: "Oak," you impress upon her, "all oak." You draw her attention to the view: you tell her the local legend. By fixing her head against the window-pane she can see the tree on which the man was hanged. You ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... suffered to lift him on horseback, as he now sat, without raising his morose eyes once. Howie, on the other hand, had offered a good deal of futile opposition, cursing his captors as the fit moved him, and once struggling so insanely in his bonds as to earn a tap from the wrong end of a revolver and a bloody face for his pains. Stingaree glowered in deep delight. His mate's part was as well acted as his own; but it was he who had conceived them both, and expounded them in countless camps against some such ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... supported by 1 square inch of surface is 1/144 of 62.5 pounds, or .43 pound, nearly 1/2 pound. Suppose a vessel held water to the depth of 10 feet, then upon every square inch of the bottom of that vessel there would be a pressure of 4.34 pounds. If a one-inch tap were inserted in the bottom of the vessel so that the water flowed out, it would gush forth with a force of 4.34 pounds. If the water were 20 feet deep, the force of the outflowing water would be twice as strong, because the pressure would be ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark

... the wise ones had to be told," chirped Steve, jauntily. "But never mind arguing, Toby; it's all right, and I'm only joking. I get the idea; and now, has any one a scheme on tap that would ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie

... suddenly very quiet; a breath of air crept in through the open front door carrying the noise of a passing motor; she heard faint sounds from upstairs and then a grinding racket in the pipe behind the bookcases-her husband turning of a water- tap—- ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... responded to throughout the years; so often with his little variations of playfulness. Many a time in early summer when out-of-doors she would be reminded of it by hearing some bird sounding its love signal on a piece of dry wood—that tap of heart-beat. Now it crashed close ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen

... some convenient place: the stiffened gauze, or canvass, or paper, of which its inner framework is composed, rustles and crackles with every attempt at compression; and a pound's worth or two of damage may be done by a gentle tap or squeeze. Women, if candid, would allow that their bonnets gave them much more trouble than comfort, and that they have remained in use solely as conventional objects of dress—we will not allow, of ornament. The only position in which a bonnet is becoming—and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... demolished by shell fire that it seemed nothing could now inhabit it. But the truth was soon apparent. The machine gun nest was in the cellar, and from there, well hidden, had been doing terrible execution on the allied forces. Pausing only to make sure of his surmise, Tom began to tap out on his wireless key the location of the hidden machine ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach

... So at Christmas we tap that vast reservoir of wisdom and strength—call it efficiency or the fundamental energy if you will—Kindness. And our kindness, thank heaven, is not the placid kindness of angels; it is veined with ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... went down and tapped his pocket slily, and with that he turned and shuffled away down the street. I stared after him into the foggy darkness, listening to the tap of ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... distance. Over this rhythm is introduced a piquant march figure, hopping and skipping along as if the musicians were dancing at the head of the marchers. As the procession approaches and the music becomes louder, one hears in the bass an accentuation of the characteristic rhythm, like the tap of a bass drum. When the march has swelled to a forte, it sinks to a brief piano, as if the winding path had led the procession away again. Then there is another brief outburst, this time fortissimo, as if the marchers were quite near; and then a pianissimo, ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb

... attack, the presumptuous individual, with his hand twisted in my neck-handkerchief, cocks his head in a semi-sidewise attitude, in splendid position to be dropped like a pole-axed steer by a neat tap on the temple. He wears the green kammerbund of a seyud, however; and even under the shadow of the legations in Teheran, it is a very serious and risky thing to strike a descendant of the Prophet. For a lone infidel to do so in the presence of two thousand Mussulman fanatics, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... Verloc was moved to say. Though since his return from Greenwich he had spent most of his time sitting in the tap-room of an obscure little public-house, he could hardly have hoped for ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... the steeple, and tamer fowls have gone home from the darkening and dewy green. But old Bunyan's donkey is still browzing there, and yonder is old Bunyan's self—the brawny tramper dispread on the settle, retailing to the more clownish residents tap-room wit and roadside news. However, it is young Bunyan you wish to see. Yonder he is, the noisiest of the party, playing pitch-and-toss—that one with the shaggy eyebrows, whose entire soul is ascending in the twirling ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton

... man who walked beside her with the baby perched high on his shoulder, and who had his other arm around the waist of the baby's mother. A tiny paw reached out of the hamper Captain Smith was carrying, and the dog felt the tap of Hippity-Hop's paw on his ear. He turned at the touch and put his nose to the basket, and then he saw Cheepsie, fluttering in the cage that was gripped by ...
— Prince Jan, St. Bernard • Forrestine C. Hooker

... should be set forth here. Even though I am taking on the role of Devil's Advocate in the struggle to keep woman from canonizing herself by main force I want to be as fair as I can, always reserving the privilege where things are about even, of giving my own side a shade the better of it. The main tap-root reason why women confide over-much and too much in other women is because leading more circumscribed lives than men commonly lead they are driven back upon themselves and into themselves and their sisters for interests and for ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... on yon hill-tap, The dew sits on the gowan; Deep murmurs through her glens the Spey, Around Kinrara rowan. Where art thou, fairest, kindest lass? Alas! wert thou but near me, Thy gentle soul, thy melting eye, Would ever, ever ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... as I tauld ye of, and the second river bed would be also covered o'er, and sae the same game went on and is still progressin'. Sae when the first miners came doon tae this land of Ophir the gold they got by scratchin' the tap of the earth was the latest deposit, and when ye gae doon a few hundred feet ye come on the second river—or rather, I should say, the bed o' the former river-and it is there that the gold is tae be found; and these dried-up rivers we ca' leads. ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... quack-doctor, Oriel's foster-father, in particular might well be praised in language that would sound exaggerated. Mr. DUFFY'S work, depending as it does mainly on a flow of charming and even exquisite side incident, suggests that he is no more than beginning to tap a most extensive reservoir. I greatly hope that this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various

... instant of time, the horse, which he had pressed to go faster, put his foot into a rut or hole, and stumbled, and Felix was flung so far forward that he only saved himself from being thrown by clinging to his neck. A slight whizzing sound passed over his head, followed immediately by a sharp tap against a ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... said. "A small stream on the south side. We go up it. On the third day you meet us. We'll pass by on the third day. Anywhere you tap that stream you'll meet us or ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... and Zwanziger grinned. His boss was a source of humour. At night, when he sat in his favourite tap-rooms over his beer, he would entertain his boon companions with the witticisms of Schimmelweis, and ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... but not the less significant. Not long after they had all separated, just so long as to allow of the house being quiet, Adolphe, still sitting in his room, meditating on what the day had done for him, heard a low tap at his door. "Come in," he said, as men always do say; and Marie opening the door, stood just within the verge of his chamber. She had on her countenance neither the soft look of entreating love which she had worn up there ...
— La Mere Bauche from Tales of All Countries • Anthony Trollope

... for the profitable growth of any particular plant. Depth of soil, and facilities for deepening it, with the nature of the subsoil, so as to know whether it retains or parts with water, are also important considerations, because tap-rooted plants require free scope for penetrating deep ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... dissolving some time after the steam not so specialised has disappeared? Such vortex rings can be produced artificially by a cubical box, one open side of which is covered with canvas, while on the opposite side of the box is a circular hole. A tap on the canvas will cause a vortex ring to start from the hole; and if the box be filled with smoke, this ring will be visible for many feet of its path. It would certainly be far too much to assert that the annular ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... "Tap-tap, tap-tap," sounded inside another shell, and they knew that there would soon be a second damp little Duckling beside the first. The visitors could not stay to see this one come out, and they went ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson

... horse; but they only said it was Dave's ghost and nobody else's. I told 'em about him bein' dry as a bone after gettin' caught in that storm; but they only laughed and said it was a dry place where Dave went to. I talked and argued about it until the chaps began to tap their foreheads and wink—then I left off talking. But I didn't leave off thinkin'—I always hated a mystery. Even Dave's father told me that Dave couldn't be alive or else his ghost wouldn't be round—he ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson

... tricks. He knows when he has reached this limit, and soothes you at once by a tender, far-off whisper, like the wind through pines, sometimes almost like an Aeolian harp; then he rouses you from your dreams by what you are sure is a tap at the door. You turn, speak, listen; no one enters; the tap again. Ah! it is only a little more of the ventriloquism of this wonderful creature. You are alone with him, and there was no tap ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... was windy all the latex seemed to contract to the summit of the trees and hardly flowed at all from the incisions. When it rained, on the contrary, it flowed freely, but was spoilt by being mixed with water; so that a good seringueiro must know well not only where and how, but also when to tap the trees, in order to ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... his hour of leisure after dinner, the abbe came to the box with the key in his hand. "Tap, tap," he went. There was no answer. "I thought so," said he. Then he opened the box and, mingled with the debris of the nest, the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... her lips compressed; she smiled again, but more faintly. In the silence there sounded a soft tap at the door. ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... that stirred the bar below to its depths. He banged the arms of the chair with his fist, and swore again. "Of all the accursed fools that were ever spawned," he was chanting, "I, Bechamel—" when with an abrupt tap and prompt opening of the door, Stephen entered ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells

... and her soul fleeted away, while from her eyes trickled down drops of tears. But while nothing could dispel her present state of mind, she unexpectedly realised that some one from behind gave her a tap; and, turning her head round to look, she found that it was a young girl; but who it was, the next chapter will ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... father did! To be sure 'a did expect us—to taste the little barrel beyond compare that he's going to tap." ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy

... the mail-car that was to take us away, the loafers and the litigants had alike been swallowed up, apparently by the brown, hungry hillsides; possibly also, some of them, by Mr. Heraty's tap-room. Again we clambered to our places among the inevitable tourists and their inevitable bicycles, again the laden car lumbered heavily yet swiftly along the bog roads that quivered under its weight, while the water in the black ditches on either side quivered ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... hour in this situation, without exchanging a word, when a light tap was heard from without, and a ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... For the first three hundred and sixty-five mornings after peace had been declared I was to be wakened by the sound of my bath being filled; water was to be so plentiful that I could tumble off to sleep again without even troubling to turn off the tap. In France one has to go dirty so often that the dream of being always clean seems as unrealisable as romance. Our drinking-water is frequently brought up to us at the risk of men's lives, carried through the mud in petrol-cans strapped on to packhorses. To use it carelessly would ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson

... of water, and that other profound naturalists have remarked on them before me. Now Harry Warrington had been floundering for ever so long a time past, and out of his proper element. As soon as he found it, health, strength, spirits, energy, returned to him, and with the tap of the epaulet on his shoulder he sprang up an altered being. He delighted in his new profession; he engaged in all its details, and mastered them with eager quickness. Had I the skill of my friend Lorrequer, I ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Mr. Fabian, extending his hand and enforcing his consolation by a love-tap upon Magde's shoulder. In her affliction Magde did not withdraw from this salute, and Mr. Fabian had an opportunity of gazing upon her lovely neck for a full moment, to prolong which he would have given the value of a hundred hares and partridges. But Magde arousing herself from her stupor, looked ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen

... Frank went to where the weak, helpless man lay exposed to the cool night air and turned one side of the rich rug gently over him, receiving for thanks a gentle tap or ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn

... and watched the dusty column until the last blue leg swung out of sight and over the grey hills the last drum-tap died away, and then turned and retraced his steps ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... century, no one could doubt of its identity with 'phantasy,' as no Greek scholar could miss its relation with phantasia. Spell 'analyse' as I have sometimes seen it, and as phonetically it ought to be, 'annalize,' and the tap-root of the word is cut. How many readers will recognize in it then the image of dissolving and resolving aught into its elements, and use it with a more or less conscious reference to this? It may be urged that few do so even now. The more need they should not ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... is a nice get-up to come and see me in, to be sure!" was his greeting to a newspaper writer who called to tap him on art, clad in a brown jacket, blue trousers, and decked with a red necktie. "I must request you to leave this place instantly! These scribblers, rag-smudges, incroyable! Why, it is perfectly preposterous! Did ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz

... hour afterwards, as Lady O'Shane was sitting with her back to the glass-door of the green house, which opened into the ball-room, she was startled by a peremptory tap on the glass behind her; she turned, and saw young Ormond, pale as ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... remember all the hard housewifely things her stepmother had taught her; and try to order his house well. But that troubled her not at all at present. She was more concerned with the ceremony, and the many eyes that would be turned upon her. It was a relief when a tap came on the door and the dear old ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... laboratory all piled, running down the hall, Locke paused only a second to tap on Eva's door, as she had asked, if anything happened, so that she might be present at the capture. An instant and Eva, too, had joined ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... into the well. So Christine had to pluck the fruit; and as soon as she had done so the oldest sister wrapped it up in a napkin and set off with it to the King's house, as pleased as pleased could be. Rap! tap! tap! she knocked at the door. Had she brought ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle

... bottom. Once there, Roy used his quirt again, and the horse broke into a gallop that carried them fast over the sandy bed. On both sides the walls of adobe and yellow clay rose as straight as though of masonry. Along the brink grew stunted bushes of greasewood and of sage. Here and there the tap root of a greasewood was half exposed for its entire length, just as it had been left by the falling earth. Many of these yellow-brown roots, tough as hempen rope, descended quite to the bottom of the arroyo, for the greasewood ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour

... a mile of warm sea-scented beach; Three fields to cross till a farm appears; A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch And blue spurt of a lighted match, And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears, Than the two hearts ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... drilled to quick execution of duty, even as in a machine the several parts. The navy is manned after this pattern; but there is a touchstone which sharpens the edge dulled with routine,—the touchstone of war. When the time comes that the drum-tap calls to quarters, and the decks are strewn with sand,—when with silence as of the grave, fore and aft, the frigate moves stately and proud into the line of her adversaries' fire, then it is that the officer and the man meet face to face, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... do blow over with time, and if you don't make too much stir when you go back. I should have to keep pretty quiet; but I bet I'd have a good time for all that. Fancy the luxury of having good Glenlivet in a cask again, with a tap half-way up, after the beastly stuff one got on the coast, or, worse still, what one gets up here—and that's ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... Republic tap water is not potable; poaching has diminished the country's reputation as one of the last great wildlife ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... next morning they started for the sugar camp far up on the side of the mountain, and long before noontime they had built a fire in the log shack, and Roy was out in the woods helping Uncle Henry tap the maple trees. ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 9, March 1, 1914 • Various

... the lad, obeying the instructions to the letter, while the two men who stood on the shrouds to starboard and port watched him carefully. "That's it, isn't it?" he continued, as he stepped lower, and the trap-door bottom closed with a gentle tap. ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn

... and the folk of St. Marys had not yet accustomed themselves to drawing water from a tap and turning on the light with a switch ere Clark began a frontal attack on the resources of the country to the north. It was typical of his methods that he invariably used new agencies by which to approach affairs which, in the main, differed from those ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... cried, in what his wife described as his "barracks" voice, and which had the effect in this instance of making her turn on the tap of the urn so hurriedly that she had not had time to place her cup underneath. She blushed and frowned. Pixie deftly moved the toast-rack so as to conceal the damage, and proceeded to eat a hearty breakfast with ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey

... the whole day, and comes back white and exhausted, worn to a shadow, and sleeps for many hours? Sometimes he is in his room all right, but awake. I can hear him moving backwards and forwards, and hammering, tap, tap, tap, ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... temperature of more than a thousand degrees, you do not guess its presence save when its great doors open to let out a steel monster. And the monster is handled by only three or four workmen, who now here, now there, open a tap causing immense cranes to move one way or another by ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... certainly not thinking about the old Witch, when, a few minutes later, she heard a "tap-tap" on the door, louder and more insistent than the pattering of ...
— More Tales in the Land of Nursery Rhyme • Ada M. Marzials

... hand, and immediately after it Mr. Currie was to return to Canada to superintend the formation of the Grand Ottawa and Superior line. He and his assistants were hard at work on the specifications, when a heavy tap and tramp came up the stairs, and Owen Sandbrook stood before them, leaning on his crutch, and was greeted with joyful congratulations on being on his ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... as he sat in his study, a very gentle tap was heard at the door. "Come in," said he; but no one came. He opened the door, and there stood before him a man so remarkably thin that he felt seriously troubled at his appearance. He was, however, very well dressed, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... house, no one else thought of answering the telephone. Mrs. Waddington would have been the last to usurp the prerogative. For that instrument was the tap root of her spy system over her daughter. By it, she picked up things; learned what this irresponsible responsibility of hers was doing. Mrs. Waddington had her mental lists of Kate's telephonic friends. She imagined that she could tell, by the tone of her daughter's voice, just who was on the ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... curse. I had never heard my giant prate of agriculture; the camp and the tap-room had been his haunts. This appeared to be a method of working toward ill news. I lay back on my rushes and tried ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... the tree, an' the laithly worm was me mesel'; an' I was the laithly worm. The verra hert gaed frae me for hoarible dreid, an' scunner at mysel'! Sae there I was! But I wasna lang there i' my meesery, afore I saw, oot o' my ain serpent e'en, maist blin't wi' greitin', ower the tap o' the brae afore me, 'atween me an' the lift, as gien it reacht up to the verra stars, for it wasna day but nicht by this time aboot me, as weel it micht be,—I saw the bonny sicht come up o' a knicht in airmour, helmet an' shield an' ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... put it away in his pocket-book; after that he proceeded to collect a few possessions of his own, instruments, books from various drawers and shelves. He was placing these things in a small hand-bag when a gentle tap sounded on the door by which patients ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher

... her feet and sipping the chocolate which Phebe always had ready for her, as she never ate supper, when a hurried tap came at the long window whence the light streamed and Mac's voice was heard softly asking to be let in "just ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... of the general mind, the fact that all Western Europe, down to the agricultural labourers, can read and write and does read newspapers and "get ideas." The explanation of economic and social processes that were mysterious to the elect a hundred years ago are now the commonplaces of the tap-room. What happened then darkly, and often unconsciously, must happen in 1916-26 openly and controllably. The current bankruptcy and liquidation and the coming reconstruction of the economic system of ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... hack, employed by the curiously named Gentleman's Magazine, slung together a column of abuse and lies, founded on tap-room gossip: ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... grows monotonous, even when you know it will be printed, and this I did not know; my prose was very faulty, and my ideas were unsettled, I could not go to the tap and draw them off, the liquor was still fermenting; and partly because my articles were not very easily disposed of, and partly because I was weary of writing on different subjects, I turned my attention to short stories. I wrote a dozen. Some were printed in weekly newspapers, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... screams halted, as if a tap was turned off: whoever was inside was all ears. She rapped again. And now a scuffling; and Maria opened the door, and six pairs of astonished eyes gloated on the stranger. And no less did hers on the party within; for there sat Mrs Gunning, beautiful and maternal, with ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington

... connected with the 3-inch Observatory main (which passes through the Park), at a distance of about 250 feet from any other branch pipe. In spite of this distance I have seen that, on stopping the water-tap in the Battery-Basement under the North-East Turret, the pressure in the gauge of the Water Clock has been instantly increased by more than 40 lbs. per square inch. The consequent derangement of ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... were walking one on the heels of the other. Their burdens, carried on their heads, held them erect. They stepped out freely. But against the wooden chop boxes, the bags of cornmeal potio, the bundles of canvas that made up some of the loads, the long safari sticks went tap, tap, tap, in rhythm. This tapping was a steady undertone to the volume of noise that arose from thirty throats. Every man was singing or shouting at the full strength of his lungs. A little file of Wakamba sung in ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... billion billions of ergs to draw on, man will have nothing to worry about for a good many years to come! That represents a flood of power vaster than man could comprehend. Why try to release any more energy? We have more than we can use; we may as well tap that vast ocean ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... what have you heard, Up on the lonely rath's green mound? Only the plaintive yellow bird Sighing in sultry fields around, Chary, chary, chary, chee-ee!— Only the grasshopper and the bee?— 'Tip-tap, rip-rap, Tick-a-tack-too! Scarlet leather, sewn together, This will make a shoe. Left, right, pull it tight; Summer days are warm; Underground in winter, Laughing at the storm!' Lay your ear close to the hill. Do you not catch the tiny clamour, ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham

... Game Department, where a solitary light (which burnt night and day) threw a dim radiance over vast surfaces of white marble dominated by silver taps. The fish and game were below in the refrigerators. Simon let the cylinder fall on to a slab; Albert turned a tap, and immediately the cylinder was surrounded by clouds of steam. The phenomenon was like some alchemical and mysterious operation. And the steam, as it rose and spread abroad in the immense, pale interior, might have been ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett

... stage were late, and could she make the long journey alone and in safety, he asked himself a thousand times as he impatiently paced up and down the platform of the station; the tap of his gold-headed cane marking the time of his steps on the boards ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... descended far a gentle tap came to the door, and in response to an invitation to enter a lady appeared, wrapped up in furs to her ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... heard the responsive tap-tap of a tail in the dry dust. He climbed out of his clothes, leaving them in a pile in the middle of the floor, tumbled into bed, and pulled ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... A slight tap at the door made Aspasia start up suddenly; and stooping over the alabaster vase of water, she hastened to remove all traces of ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... below. She did not move, though she heard it, knew what it meant. After a few minutes there was a tap at the door. ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... violently, looked round, and were relieved to see a sporadically rosy face beneath a furry silk hat. "Tap?" asked the face, and ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells

... known at the time, Michael—he of the sinister face—must have been in the hallway, careful that no one saw him. A tap at the door and the Clutching Hand, that night, must have beckoned him. A moment's parley and they separated— Clutching Hand going back to Elaine, who was now under the influence of the ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... rush and fury of the issue and division of the goods, the sombre figures in the background have scarcely moved. Not one has ventured to approach the center where the bucks are at work, measuring off the cloth, etc.; they are waiting for the tap of the bell, when they will receive just what the head man chooses to give them. There is no system of exchange there; it is take what you get or get nothing. In a great many cases they do not use the goods at all, but openly offer them for sale to ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... probably have been buried beneath this mass. But our most sensational discovery was the fact that two enormous pieces of shell, weighing certainly 15 pounds each, were found touching the legs of my chair, and the smallest tap from one of these would have prevented our ever seeing another sunrise. Needless to say, we left our ruined quarters that evening, and I reposed more peacefully in my bomb-proof than I had done for many nights ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... to roll-call; and the men were seen emerging from their tents and huts. It will give some idea of the internal organization of the Texian army, if I record the proceedings of the company that lay opposite to us, the soldiers composing which were disturbed by the tap of the drum in the agreeable occupation of cooking their breakfast. This consisted of pieces of beef, which they roasted at the fire on small wooden spits. Soon a row of these warriors, some only half-dressed, stood before the sergeant, who, with the roll of the company in his hand, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... you tap, tap, tap! With your hands you clap, clap, clap! Right foot first, Left foot then, Round about and ...
— Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades • Florence Holbrook

... tongue spares The owner the fag of thinking: it's the listeners Who get the headache. And yet, I could talk At one time to some purpose—didn't dribble Like a tap that needs a washer: and, by carties, It's talking I've missed most: I've always been Like an urchin with a withy—must be slashing— Thistles for choice: and not once, since I came, Have I had a real good shindy to warm ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

... war-feeling against France was steadily growing, and the enthusiasm of the people over the infant navy knew no bounds. Toasts to the "wooden walls of Columbia," and the "rising navy of America," were drunk with cheers at stately public banquets, and by bands of jolly roisterers at tap-houses. The patriotic song writer invaded the columns of the newspapers; and, as these could not afford space for all the poetic effusions, they were printed on broadsides, and hawked about the streets. At Harvard College the students made the chapel walls ring with the ode written ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... fresh and perennial means of life. A very dull secret is made of water, for example, and the plumber sets his seal upon the floods whereby we live. They are covered, they are carried, they are hushed, from the spring to the tap; and when their voices are released at last in the London scullery, why, it can hardly be said that the song is eloquent of the natural source of waters, whether earthly or heavenly. There is not one of the circumstances of this capture of streams—the ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... breakfast hour, by a tap on my door. Why it gave me consternation I could not have told; I dare say my inveracities of the day before had failed to digest. "Come in," I called, and in ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable

... his outstretched hands, crept inward through the narrow tunnel in which he found himself. His fingers came in touch with the chilly surface of a steel-faced door. It sounded heavy and unyielding to his tentative tap, and his left hand was already reaching back for the tool-bag which hung by its strap over his shoulder when his questioning right hand, pushing forward, discovered that the door was unlocked, and ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... The mob of the French Revolution is a crowd of devils till their poet arrives and restores these maniacs to manhood. They are misguided brothers, doing what we should do in their place. Genius in every situation takes hold on reality, a tap-root going down to the source. Equilibrium appears in a staggering as well as a standing figure, and is perfectly restored in every fall. The landscape seen in detail is broken and ragged,—here a raw sand-bank, there a crooked butternut-tree, yonder a stiff black cedar: but look with a larger ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... thought's sunshine to a focus heat That blinds and burns and maddens! What, my friend! Are we, then, salamanders? Do we live A charmed life? Do gases feed like air? Pray you, pack up your crucibles and go! Your statements are too awfully abstract; Your logic strikes too near our warm tap-roots: We shall breathe freer in our natural air Of common sense. What are your gallipots And Latin labels to this fresh bouquet?— Friend, 'tis a pure June morning. Ask the bees, The butterflies, the birds, the little girls. We are after flowers. You are after—what? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... rites and ceremonies of the Church, with all the damasks, and laces, and leadings by the tips of the fingers, and lavishings of larkspurs, lupins, and tiger-lilies proper for the occasion, which Dulcie had lost. Nay, the supper came off at the very "Rod and Fly," with the tap open to the roaring, jubilant public; a score of healths were drunk upstairs with all the honours, the bride and bridegroom being king and queen of the company: even Uncle Barnet owned that Sam Winnington was very complaisant—rather exceed in his complaisance, he supplemented scornfully; but ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... to the river. Trench light after trench light rose, showing the disused railroad track running across the un-harvested fields. Gleaming palely through the French window at which I was standing, the radiance revealed the deserted kitchen, the rusty stove, the dusty pans, and the tarnished water-tap above the stone sink. The hard, wooden crash of ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... Appearance of the Place. The Inn. Ludicrous Mistakes. The Public Room. Astonishment of the People at the sight of Englishmen. The Priests. Scene in the Tap-Room. Kindness of the People. Our Fishing Operations. A Chasse, and ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig

... kill'd by the Tap of a Fan on his left Shoulder by Coquetilla, as he was talking carelessly with her in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... Barbara to the Emperor's lodgings, he had accompanied his child to the Golden Cross, where she was received by Maestro Appenzelder. Then, since he could only have heard the singing under conditions which seemed unendurable to his pride, he sullenly retired to drink his beer in the tap-room of the New Scales. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Just then a tap was heard at the door. "Come in," roared the captain. A tall, broad-shouldered, nautical-looking man entered, took off his hat, and stood before the hammock, whence the captain gave him a stern, searching glance, and opened fire on him with ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne

... the Angouleme Law Courts were then in process of construction. Petit-Claud muttered these words to himself as he passed by the hoardings, and heard a tap upon the boards, and a voice issuing from a crack ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... pseudo Pelham's communications. But the progress from the one stage so revolting to Miss Freer, to the other so delightful, a sign of increased refinement to Mr. Myers, was hardly more a change than the turning on a hot tap after a cold water tap into a basin. The receptacle was the same. But as a strong hypnotist herself, Mrs. Piper could bring off the Sutton matter; she could easily give Mrs. Sutton visual hallucinations. The startling position taken up by Mr. Myers in his article ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris

... often she gargled she felt unclean and disgusting. Still, if she had to be ill, she was almost glad that she had a contagious illness. Otherwise she would have been at the mercy of the people in the house. She knew that they disliked her, yet now that she was ill, they took it upon themselves to tap at her door, send her messages, books, even a miserable flower or two. Thea knew that their sympathy was an expression of self-righteousness, and she hated them for it. The divinity student, who was always whispering soft things ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... and babbled over with mysterious jests and laughter, which sometimes he feared to be at his expense, and so joined in, and made them laugh the more at his misconception. He went and came among them at will; he had but to tap at Mrs. Ellison's door, and some voice of unaffected cordiality welcomed him in; he had but to ask, and Kitty was frankly ready for any of those strolls about Quebec in which most of their waking ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... aunt, as soon as he came in after dinner, and leaning over her with his arm on the mantelpiece, or drawing a chair beside her, would laugh and talk with endless spirit and amusement. When he talked of the people in the neighbourhood who afforded scope for satire, she would tap him with her fan and say, "Why do I not see these originals? bring them to see me," to Lucy's wonder and often dismay. "They would not amuse you at all," Sir Tom would reply, upon which the lady would turn and call Lucy to her. "My little angel! he pretends that ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... door, and laid himself down in the bed, and waited for Little Red Riding-Hood, who very soon after reached the door. Tap, tap! "Who is there?" She was at first a little frightened at the hoarse voice of the Wolf, but believing that her grandmother had got a cold she answered: "It is your grandchild, Little Red Riding-Hood. Mamma has sent you some cheesecakes, and a little pot of butter." The Wolf ...
— A Apple Pie and Other Nursery Tales • Unknown

... seated in the library, he heard a gentle tap at the door, and Mademoiselle entered, looking very pale. Somewhat astonished, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... be. I remember at the age of ten doing a thing that I have never dared to do since. I sat in the bath with my back to the taps. Do you suppose the innocent designer of baths meant everybody to sit like that, with a tap looking over each shoulder? Taps are known to be savage brutes, and it is everybody's instinct to sit the other way round, and keep an eye on the danger. If I were as brave now as I was at ten, I could probably win the War. Oh, Jay, I can't stop ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson

... (earlier afterward), we were required to go to our respective cells at the tap of the turnkey's key on the stove, and he passed along the ranges and locked us in for the night. In a little while, then, we would hear the steady, rolling tramp of the convicts, who slept in the hall at the other end of the wing, as they marched in ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... occasion, when the Governor-General's camp was peculiarly dull and stagnant, every one yawning and grumbling, Yule effected a temporary diversion by pretending to tap the telegraph wires, and circulating through camp, what purported to be, the usual telegraphic abstract of news brought to Bombay by the latest English mail. The news was of the most astounding character, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... though they are extremely large, high and majestic; the beauty and usefulness of them are not to be described; they supply the inhabitants of the country with meat, drink and clothes;[A] the body of the palm tree is very large; at a certain season of the year they tap it, and bring vessels to receive the wine, of which they draw great quantities, the quality of which is very delicious: the leaves of this tree are of a silky nature; they are large and soft; when they are dried and pulled to pieces it has much the same appearance as the English ...
— A Narrative Of The Most Remarkable Particulars In The Life Of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, An African Prince, As Related By Himself • James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw

... Rose yesterday, it was understood that she should sometimes come to see me in the evening, when her day's work has not been too hard. She is to come across the downs and tap at the shutters of the room where I sit ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc

... blocks, and purchases, as well as a "fender," not to keep coals on the hearth, but to keep the mahogany sides of the Rob Roy safe from the rude jostlings of other craft coming alongside. Above these odds and ends is the "Spirit room," a strong reservoir made of zinc, with a tap and screw plug and internal division not to be rendered intelligible by mere description here, but of important use, as from hence there is served out, two or three times daily, the fuel which is to cook for the whole ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... the brake, watchful and motionless in the wild saraband of dancing shadows. Then the ship, obedient to the call of her anchor, forged ahead slightly and eased the strain. The cable relieved, hung down, and after swaying imperceptibly to and fro dropped with a loud tap on the hard wood planks. Singleton seized the high lever, and, by a violent throw forward of his body, wrung out another half-turn from the brake. He recovered himself, breathed largely, and remained for a while glaring down at the powerful ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... remarked in my presence. "To think that a thinking being has to be beholden to a thing like that for his weekly income! Somebody ought to tap him with a ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... master or mistress one of the family or household must go to the hives and tap on them and say who is dead and who is to be their new master. If this is neglected the bees will pine away. Some sugared beer is given to the bees ...
— Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack

... German, as to what it was that Aristotle really meant by the famous words in the sixth chapter of the Poetics, about tragedy accomplishing the purification of our moods of pity and sympathetic fear, is one of the disgraces of human intelligence, a grotesque monument of sterility. The great tap-root of fallacy has been and remains the incessant imputation of ethical or social purpose to the dramatist, and the demand of direct and combined ethical or social effect from the drama. There is no critic, from the great Aristotle downwards, who has steered quite ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... some with me ... wait a minute." I went into the kitchen, turned on the tap softly, filled a glass half full of water, brought it ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... change of any sort; and which, therefore, I may heat in the atmosphere without any flux. I bend the wire so as to make the ends cross: these I make hot by means of the blowpipe, and then, by giving them a tap with a hammer, I shall make them into one piece. Now that the pieces are united, I shall have great difficulty in pulling them apart, though they are joined only at the point where the two cylindrical surfaces came together. And now I have succeeded in ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday

... upon the queen, he raised his fist threateningly, and cried: 'Mirabeau is a traitor, who wants to sell our new, young liberty to the monarchy. But he will meet the fate of Judas, who sold the Saviour. He will one day atone for it with his head, for if we tap him for his treachery, we shall do for him what Judas did for himself. This Mirabeau Judas ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... as she went, so that the time might not appear long. When she was below she fetched herself a chair, and set it before the barrel so that she had no need to stoop, and did not hurt her back or do herself any unexpected injury. Then she placed the can before her, and turned the tap, and while the beer was running she would not let her eyes be idle, but looked up at the wall, and after much peering here and there, saw a pick-axe exactly above her, which the masons had ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... there came a tap at the door. Rycroft cried, "Come in," and a messenger entered with ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade

... Scots, which no man in the submarine or in our boat could have understood a word of. "Maister Tammy," I cried, "what for wad ye skail a dacent tinkler lad intil a cauld sea? I'll gie ye your kail through the reek for this ploy the next time I forgaither wi' ye on the tap o' Caerdon." ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... other young men there at the time who grew into close affinity with the Wesleys. There was George Whitefield, the son of a Gloucester innkeeper, who at one time was employed as a drawer in his mother's tap-room; and there was James Hervey, afterwards author of the flowery and sentimental "Meditations," that became for a while so famous—a book which Southey describes "as laudable in purpose and vicious in style." These young men, with others, formed a sort of little religious association ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... south side of a ripening plum, 280 And each rock-maple on the hillside make His ten days' sunset doubled in the lake; The very stone walls draggling up the hills Seemed touched, and wavered in their roundhead wills. Ah! there's a deal of sugar in the sun! Tap me in Indian summer, I should run A juice to make rock-candy of,—but then We get such weather scarce one ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... paper. I want everything, as I told you; Don't you remember the sketch I gave you of my ideals? But I want it in the right way and of the right brand. If I can't get it in the shape I like it I don't want it at all; first-rate first-hand information, straight from the tap, is what I'm after. I don't want to hear what some one or other thinks that some one or other was told that some one or other believed or said; and above all I don't want to print it. There's plenty of that flowing in, and the best part of the job's ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James

... cessation of the ceaseless tap tap, he listened. Silence was never profounder than in this forest on that windless night. Earth and air seemed, to his strained ear, emptied of all sound. The clatter of his own steady, unhastened ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green

... Sanders, dropping into a big chair and stretching back, with his clasped hands behind his head. He eyed the man gravely and without resentment, for no spy would tap upon his window at night save that the business was a ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace

... wooden box about a foot on a side, with a round orifice in the middle of one side, and the side opposite covered with stout cloth stretched tight over a framework. A saucer containing strong ammonia water, and another containing strong hydrochloric acid, will cause dense fumes in the box, and a tap with the hand upon the cloth back will force out a ring from the orifice. These may be made to follow and strike each other, rebounding and vibrating, apparently attracting each other and being attracted by ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear

... to that strict surveillance to which those who had broken the law were supposed to be submitted. It was of his own free will that he disregarded the various privileges which lay open to him: others in his place would have frequented the passages, hung about the yards and grown familiar with the tap, where spirits were openly bought and sold. Money could do much in those days of lax discipline, and the man who could pay and could give need have very few wants unsatisfied. But Adam's only desire ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... Never can hear the —— coming, in them carpet slippers. Turned round and found him standing right to my back this morning. Could have stuck a knife into me easy. 'Look here!' says I, and fetched him a tap on the ear that will make him walk louder next time, I warrant. He could have stuck a ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... "A silent tap upon the shoulder aroused him from his abstraction, and looking up he perceived the person of the Indian standing in the shadow of a myrtle bush close to ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson

... cinders, and ought to have been run out at 7.30 P.M. But Snape and his mates, engaged in talking and drinking, neglected their duty, and in the meantime, the iron rose in the furnace until it reached a pipe wherein water was contained. Just as the men had stripped, and were proceeding to tap the furnace, the water in the pipe, converted into steam, burst down its front and let loose on them the molten metal, which instantaneously consumed Gardner; Snape, terribly burnt, and mad with pain, leaped into the canal and then ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... Giambresi, have invented an improvement suggested by a dodge of the Indians on the Amazon River. They make machines which are only in tune with each other. Their machine fires off a message which no other machine can receive or tap except that of their customer, say Mr. Macrae. The other receivers all over the world don't get it, they are not in tune. It is as if Jones could only appear as a wraith to Miss Smith, ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... Dominion: Knowledge, Will,— These two are strong, but stronger yet the third,— Obedience, the great tap-root, that still, Knit round the rock of Duty, is not stirred, Though the storm's ploughshare spend its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... one of the hall chairs, but started up again and would have liked to run away when she heard the familiar tap of the crutches on the polished floor. It was silly to feel so embarrassed, she thought; she had meant well, at least, in what she had done, and if she had gone too far she was sorry but it couldn't be helped now. She tried to think only of the game they were playing and said ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick

... A faint tap at the door at last apprised Kearney that some one was without, and he hastily, half angrily, cried, 'Come in!' Old Kearney almost started with surprise ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... groups do these persons belong? What are the interests of these groups? What sort of means do the groups use to promote their interests? How strong are these groups, as compared with groups that have conflicting interests? These questions go to one tap root of all social interpretation, whether in the case of historical events far in the past, or of the most practical problems of our ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... knowing that we are apparently securely bound, won't keep as strict guard as they should, I hope. Once freed, perhaps we can tap one of them over the head and appropriate his uniform. After that another uniform and so on until there are garments for all. We'll climb into them. Then we'll crawl under the tent, and once outside, ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes

... right and a arf, mate, I am, and ain't going' to rough up, no fear! Becos two or three second-hand 'ARRIES is tipping the public stale beer. The old tap'll turn on now and then, not too often, and as for the rest, The B.P. has a taste for sound tipple, and knows when it's served ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various

... Was it possible that it could be Miss Selby? But before she could ask herself the question, there was a light tap at the door, and the girl had entered, and was holding out ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... Morton had retired to bed; and her husband, who had, according to his wont, lingered behind to smoke a cigar over his last glass of brandy and water, had just thrown aside the stump, and was winding up his watch, when he heard a low tap at his window. He stood mute and alarmed, for the window opened on a back lane, dark and solitary at night, and, from the heat of the weather, the iron-cased shutter was not yet closed; the sound was repeated, and he heard a faint voice. He glanced at the poker, and ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... After all, there is no certainty in the matter; Garth is stupid enough betimes for one of his own boars, and there was a christening-party at the barracks last night. You know what that means—the can clinking until the tap runs dry." ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... lavished all his hoard, full tale; They did not blench, they did not quail. His plethora of plums he spilt; They did not wince, they did not wilt. Poor fellow! As they left him there, He heard one beardless boy declare, "Jove! what a milk-and-water chap! I thought non-coms. had oaths on tap." Another said, "We'd soon be fit If we were only cursed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various

... contradicted. "Manufacturers' claims to the contrary, there is no such thing as a tap-proof radio. Maybe he wasn't supposed to leave his post, but if he did, he used his head ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper

... the whole the fault is ours. The first, and least important, of the three passages—that of the blow—seems to me the most doubtful. I confess that, do what I will, I cannot reconcile myself with it. It seems certain that the blow is by no means a tap on the shoulder with a roll of paper, as some actors, feeling the repulsiveness of the passage, have made it. It must occur, too, on the open stage. And there is not, I think, a sufficiently overwhelming tragic feeling in the passage to make it bearable. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... result is a composite of what we see and what we shudderingly guess: eye and mind are satisfied alike. Even in a mere sketch, such as that of the blind beggar at the opening of the same romance, with the tap-tap of his stick to announce his coming, we get a remarkable example of effect secured by an economy of details; that tap-tapping gets on your nerves, you never forget it. It seems like the memory of a childhood terror on the novelist's ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... and the precious metal would be washed fra the hills in the same way as I tauld ye of, and the second river bed would be also covered o'er, and sae the same game went on and is still progressin'. Sae when the first miners came doon tae this land of Ophir the gold they got by scratchin' the tap of the earth was the latest deposit, and when ye gae doon a few hundred feet ye come on the second river—or rather, I should say, the bed o' the former river-and it is there that the gold is tae be found; and these dried-up rivers we ca' leads. Noo, laddie, ye ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... me up again. Had a sprained ankle once afore, and I used to sit on a high stool with my foot in the back-kitchen sink under the tap." ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn

... village to village, carrying their stage furniture in their little carts, and acted in their booths and tents the grand stories of the mythology; so in England the mystery-players haunted the wakes and fairs, and in barns or taverns, tap-rooms, or in the farm-house kitchen, played at saints and angels, and transacted on their petty stage the entire drama of the Christian Faith. We allow ourselves to think of Shakespeare or of Raphael or of Phidias as having accomplished their work by the power of their own individual genius; ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... knowledge of Pope; and it is safe to say that if you love Pope you would loathe Homer. Pope held that water should manifest, so to say, through Kew or Versailles fountains; but it was essentially to be from the Kitchen-tap—or even from the sewer. Homer was more familiar with it thundering on the precipices, or lisping on the yellow sands of time-forgotten Mediterranean islands. Which pronunciation do you prefer for his often-recurring and famous ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... the cool water wash it out thoroughly. If you are sure that the thing you cut it with was clean, let the blood dry on the cut and form a scab over it. If the wound is large, or there is any danger of the water of the well, or tap, having sewage in it (see chapter IX), it is better to boil the water before using it. Unless the blood is spurting in jerks from a cut artery, or bleeding very freely indeed, it is better to let ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... woodpecker began a tap-tapping soft and insistent somewhere out of sight, a small noise yet disturbing, that followed them wheresoever they went. Thus they wandered, close entwined, but ever the wood grew darker until they came at last to a mighty tree whose sombre, far-flung branches shut out the kindly sun. And ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol

... sheep, and gave one bottle of powder and five flints. We slept there, and next day early went round and crossed the river Kirgout again. At nine A.M. passed Maretoumane; farther on, passed a large rock called Tap-pa. Arrived at noon at Camatingue, after crossing five rivers; we staid there two days; received a bullock and a sheep from the Seracoolies residing in Casso. I gave to Nare-Moussa, the Chief, half a bottle of powder, and ten grains of amber. One of my slaves was there redeemed, ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park

... there came a little resolute tap at the door, and Beth walked in without waiting to be asked, and seeing in a moment with that further faculty of hers into the old lady's heart that it was sad, she went to her impulsively, and laid her unkempt brown head against ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... freshness. The only very noticeable change was the excessive depression of the abdominal walls, which seemed crowded downward to the posterior side; at the right, a slight elevation indicated the place of the liver. A tap of the finger on the various parts of the body produced a sound like that from dry leather. While Leon was pointing out these details to his audience and doing the honors of his mummy, he awkwardly broke off the lower part of the right ear, and a little ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... a more appalling greatness than Thor or Odin in his battles; when a Kiawaqu', or Jotun, rises to the clouds to oppose him, Glooskap's head touches the stars, and scorning to slay so mean a foe like an equal, he kills him contemptuously with a light tap of his bow. But in the family circle he is the most benevolent of gentle heroes, and has his oft-repeated little standard jokes. Yet he never, like the Manobozho-Hiawatha of the Chippewas, becomes silly, cruel, or fantastic. ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... the dark Jack knows he is on duty; and he went past that lantern steady and swift; only, as he went, he groaned and shuddered. For about 2500 of Jack's steps we only pass one house - that where the lantern was; and about 1500 of these are in the darkness of the pit. But now the moon is on tap ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... I said, "of explanations of every conceivable difficulty. You have only to tap me and an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various

... operations can be carried on irrespective of the general economic condition of the country. Trikoupis saw how much potential wealth was locked up in these mineral seams. The problem was how to attract the capital necessary to tap it. The nucleus round which have accumulated those immense masses of mobilised capital that are the life-blood of modern European industry and commerce, was originally derived from the surplus profits of agriculture. But a country that finds itself reduced, like Greece in the nineteenth ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... minute. "I've always been land-poor," he explained apologetically. "Never kept much of a reserve working- capital for emergencies, you know. Whenever I had idle money, I put it into timber in the San Hedrin watershed, because I realized that some day the railroad would build in from the south, tap that timber, and double its value. I've not as yet found reason to doubt the wisdom of my course; but"—he sighed—"the railroad is ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... git heem—an' she would. A'm know 'bout dat, too. A'm know Tex. A'm know he gon' git drunk today, sure as hell. So A'm com' long tonight an' git heem hom'. He lov' dat oman too mooch. Dat hurt heem lak hell een here." The old half-breed paused to tap his breast, and proceeded. "He ain' wan' see dat 'oman no more. She com' 'long, w'at you call, de haccident. Me, A'm ain' know how dat com' dey gon'—but no mattaire. Dat all right. Dat good 'oman an' Tex, he good man, too. He ain' harm ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx

... back a step or two before this onslaught of feminine virtue, and the movement did not tend to raise him in the lady's esteem. He felt that he would rather face General Grant a thousand times than this person. She was, indeed, preparing to sweep away when there came a familiar tap-tap behind them on the bare floor, and he turned to behold Ephraim hobbling toward them with the aid of his green umbrella, Cynthia ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... move until he, of his own accord, expressed his enthusiasm for the plan and asked for a share in the holdings. You know, perhaps, how he can laugh, too. Well, he laughed that way and confessed that we had just beaten him to it. He said it would tap a gold mine—this 'strip of steel,' as he called it. He even told us that he'd parallel our road with a competitor, jokingly to be sure, if we hadn't tied up the only available and practicable ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... engaged, Mavis heard a tap at the door. She got up impatiently as she called to whomsoever it ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... the procession and awful conclave were to assist His Serenity in restoring the water to wholesomeness, impossible, in the belief of consumers, except by solemn exorcism.... Heed now, my friend—I am about to tap the heart of my story. A plague struck the city—a plague of crime. A woman disappeared. There was search for her, but without success. The affair would have been dismissed within the three days usually allotted wonders of the kind, had not another like it occurred—and then another. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... able to pause in the door while the match burned and his mind raced. There leaped to the eye of his imagination the two stricken figures he had seen slinking from the house, the weeping of the woman, the muffled tap of the man's crutch. There followed, in an inevitable sequence, the memory of them in their torment as they sat at meat with ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... come in, she jumped up, and stood staring at me. I went to the tap, and turned the flow off, and then ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... illumining. It seemed to include us all. She held out both her hands. Mabane seized one and bent over it with the air of a courtier. The other was offered to me. Arthur was content to beam upon us all from the background. At that precise moment came a tap at the door. Mrs. ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... England. Once there, the Authorities took pity on the poor fellow;—furnished the modicum of cash and help; sent him with Admiral Norris to assist the Portuguese, menaced with Spanish war at this time; among whom he gradually rose to be Major of Horse. Friedrich Wilhelm cited him by tap of drum three times in Wesel, and also in the Gazettes, native and Dutch; then, as he did not come, nailed an Effigy of him (cut in four, if I remember) on the gallows there; and confiscated any property he had. Keith had more pedigree than property; was of Poberow in Pommern; son of poor gentlefolks ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... it, feeling very miserable the while, for he was growing very much attached to his nervous, excitable companion, when both started violently, for some one had come up in perfect silence and given a sharp tap ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn

... he cried, and, suddenly stooping down and examining the tap of the air apparatus, he saw that it had been only half turned off. Consequently the air was gradually getting more and more impregnated with this powerful gas, colorless, odorless, tasteless, infinitely precious, but, unless when strongly diluted with nitrogen, capable of producing fatal ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... innkeeper told Mr. Mayhew that "he would rather have twenty poor Englishmen drunk in his tap-room than a couple of poor Irishmen, who will quarrel with anybody, and sometimes clear the room." But this remark, if it shows any thing, shows only how and why the Irish have obtained that reputation of being a nation of drunkards, which is slanderous and false. IV. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... already so many more nutritious roots at our disposal—turnips, mangels, and potatoes. Simply for this reason:—Between the departure of the roots and the advent of the grasses, there is a kind of interregnum.[33] Now we want a good tuberous, bulbous, or tap-rooted plant to fill up this interregnum. Such a plant we have in the radish. The root is certainly a small one, but then it grows so rapidly that a good supply can be had within thirty days from the sowing of the seed, and a crop can be matured before ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... top of one's skull suddenly lifted off by some surgeon Asmodeus, and the noonday sun poured into every cranny of his brain, he suffers a shock compared with which any galvanic battery, not fatal, gives but a gentle tap. The suddenness of the transition—no gentle fading out of half-remembered dreams, no slow lifting of lids, no pleasant uncertainty of time and place gradually replacing itself by dawning outlines of familiar chair ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... came a soft tap on the outer door, which Constance at once recognized. Mechanically she moved forward and opened the door. Mrs. Lamotte ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... "Except I am convinced that it required dexterity to slip Grimes inside the casket. The butler is small and slight, but he must have been unconscious from that tap on the forehead and, therefore, a dead weight. Whoever picked him up must have been some athlete, and"—running his eyes up and down Colonel McIntyre's well-knit, erect frame—"pretty familiar with the workings ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... purpose and ambition. You have studied the first shrinkage of the earth when the plains wrinkled and broke into mountain peaks. The mystery of the stars is to you as familiar as your garter. If such depth is yours, I am content to sit before you like a bucket below a tap. ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... lying flat in bed on New-Year's Day, thinking of the foolishness of humanity, when I heard a tap at the door. I looked at the ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor

... but the dyke-side brat o' the late Grizel Cawm'ell, 'at the fowk tuik for a sant 'cause she grat an' said naething. I laid the Cawm'ell pup i' yer boody (scarecrow) airms wi' my ain han's, upo' the tap o' yer curst scraighin' bagpipes 'at sae aften drave the sleep frae my een. Na, ye wad nane o' me! But I ga'e ye a Cawm'ell bairn to yer hert for a' that, ye auld, hungert, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... for a relay of horses and some dinner—for it was then past five o'clock—I found the host, a hale old fellow of five-and-sixty, as he told me, a man of easy and garrulous benevolence, willing to accommodate his guests with any amount of talk, which the slightest tap sufficed to set flowing, on ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... was interrupted by a light tap upon her shoulder. Ruth glanced around and up quickly. She saw standing beside her the tall old gentleman who had been sitting two seats behind on the other side of the aisle ever since the train ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson

... his quality of Bishop of Meaux, has the right of entry into this house; he has come here three times since my arrival; he has given me each time a little tap on my check in token of goodwill, and such as one gets at confirmation; he told me that he longs to see me take the veil of the Ursulines, as well as my little scholar; it is by that name ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... all, captain," interposed Payne. "You looked so wicked with that knife, I just happened to tap you in ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen

... John, "I'll show you something." So he got a stout stick and began to tap the tree. Tap, tap, tap, tap, as if he were beating time to music. This tapping had a strange effect upon A-bal-ka. At first he was greatly excited and tried to run farther up the tree. Soon he gave this up, turned around, and began to come down head foremost. ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix

... for the whole day, and comes back white and exhausted, worn to a shadow, and sleeps for many hours? Sometimes he is in his room all right, but awake. I can hear him moving backwards and forwards, and hammering, tap, tap, tap, ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... a soothing way, as though he grieved to see Invidious torments prey upon a nice young chap like me. He waves me to an easy chair and hands me out a weed And pumps me full of that advice he seems to know I need; So sweet the tap of his philosophy and knowledge flows That I can't help wishing that I knew a half what ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field

... Set ringing helmets by the ears, And scatter plumes about? Or blood—if they are in the vein? That tap will never run again— Alas! the Casque ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... cannot be insured by the common method, as it tends considerably to weaken the plant, and renders it very liable to fog off, before taking root. By potting them low, and only just covering the roots at first, the stems of the plants become hardened, and strike very freely upwards: as the tap roots of a cucumber always decay when forced with a strong ...
— The art of promoting the growth of the cucumber and melon • Thomas Watkins

... "Go tap on her door, please, Bates, and tell her that I am back with nothing to report. Wait—take Mr. Krech up with you and show him my room. He has a forehead he ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... land is fitted for the profitable growth of any particular plant. Depth of soil, and facilities for deepening it, with the nature of the subsoil, so as to know whether it retains or parts with water, are also important considerations, because tap-rooted plants require free scope for penetrating deep into ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... merrily, and Zwanziger grinned. His boss was a source of humour. At night, when he sat in his favourite tap-rooms over his beer, he would entertain his boon companions with the witticisms of Schimmelweis, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... the clash of the garden gate, a tap at the door, and its opening. Christian Cantle appeared in the room ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... as he found immediately afterwards, when, as he was kneeling down at the tap, trying to coax the last few drops of hot water into his can, a voice behind ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... only rebuke; and she added, with a tap on his cheek: "It is lucky I shall have a sword ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... contemptuous nieces. He sent them gorgeous fans, and watch bracelets, and velvet bags. He took two expensive rooms at a downtown hotel, and there was something more tear-compelling than grotesque about the way he gloated over the luxury of a separate ice-water tap in ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... gentle tap came to my door, and Tom entered. He looked pale and anxious, and there was an uncertainty about his motions which ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... all alike, these ardent sweepers: in their excessive zeal, they fear lest they should block up the place with a speck of dust which they might drop in front of the new house. The glass tubes, which I myself have rinsed under the tap, are not exempt from a scrupulous cleaning. The Osmia dusts them, brushes them thoroughly with her tarsi and then sweeps them out backwards. What does she pick up? Not a thing. It makes no difference: ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... a quarter to six, a little tap came to Mr. Audley's door, and Angela stood there, saying, with a most serious face, 'Please, Mr. Audley, Cherry wants to know whether you don't think something must have happened.' And going upstairs, he found the poor young deputy in a nervous agony of despair at the non-return ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... not begin until she has company, and decides to tap a little of her choice fruit. After the supper is well under way, she sends for a jar, and tells the servant to unscrew the top, and pour the fruit into a dish. The girl brings it into the kitchen, and proceeds to unscrew the ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... Come in, Lebret. I know the tap. My old friend and chief has always got a cask of wine smuggled away somewhere or other, even when all the rest of Paris is ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... his work, and she to the sitting-room. He read industriously for some time, occasionally pausing to annotate; and once or twice he raised his head and listened. A light tap at the door was followed by the entrance of the two girls. Irene came very reluctantly, fearful of intruding; but he rose, and placed a chair for her close to his own, assuring her that he was glad to see her there. Louisa found the portfolio, and, bringing it to the table, began to exhibit its ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... against the wall of the cottage. Well, when its master entered the door, leaving this wonderful staff behind, what should it do but immediately spread its little wings, and go hopping and fluttering up the doorsteps! Tap, tap, went the staff, on the kitchen floor; nor did it rest until it had stood itself on end, with the greatest gravity and decorum, beside Quicksilver's chair. Old Philemon, however, as well as his wife, was so taken up in attending to ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... midshipman took his heavy glass from under his arm to tap both blacks on the head: but second thoughts stayed his hand, and he glanced forward to see Tom Fillot's figure dimly as he leaned over the bulwark staring ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn

... footsteps, he ran along the passage, and knocked timidly. He heard a low, a very low murmur in the room, but there was no answer. He knocked again a little louder; still no notice; then, overdoing it in his fright, he gave a very loud tap indeed. ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... issues: tap water is not potable; poaching has diminished reputation as one of last great wildlife refuges; desertification natural hazards: hot, dry, dusty harmattan winds affect northern areas; floods are common international ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... beneath it for the accommodation of the foot-traveler, or, perchance, some idle dreamer like myself. It seemed to look round with a lordly air upon its old hereditary domain, whose stillness was no longer broken by the tap of the martial drum, nor the discordant clang of arms; and, as the breeze whispered among its branches, it seemed to be holding friendly colloquies with a few of its venerable contemporaries, who stooped from the opposite bank of the pool, nodding gravely now ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... guessing it'll be a match as ye say. Oh the b'y's doing well. He ain't for every market, as I'm bound to admit. Ef she wan't deaf she wouldn't look at him, no doubt. But she has scads of money—they won't need to do a tap of work unless they like—and she's a good housekeeper too her aunt tells me. She's pretty enough to suit him—he's as particular as never was—and he wan't crooked and she wan't deaf when they was born, so it's likely their children ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... the lad's lips; but there was a stern decision in Sir Robert's eyes and tones which silenced it, and with quivering lip he stood listening to his father's instructions, till there was a tap at the door, and an officer appeared to announce that the ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn

... varying in size from that capable of holding from one to twenty gallons, and covered with water; to the pan a dome-shaped lid is fitted, terminating with a pipe, which is twisted corkscrew fashion, and fixed in a bucket, with the end peeping out like a tap in a barrel. The water in the still—for such is the name of the apparatus—is made to boil; and having no other exit, the steam must pass through the coiled pipe; which, being surrounded with cold water in the bucket, condenses the vapor before it can arrive at the tap. With the steam, the ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse

... himself exchanging urbane chatter with other beautifully turned out characters, who hung on his every word. He'd seen himself striding between low-bowing lines of assorted courtiers and soldiery, pausing now and then to tap at the pavement with his jeweled ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole

... must be the social intercourse of the respected departed. It is worthy of note, also, that if the spirit, I will not say the medium, perceives, after one knock, that it were wiser to say yes, he can conveniently add the second tap. Some such arrangement in real life would, it appears to me, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... skipping along as if the musicians were dancing at the head of the marchers. As the procession approaches and the music becomes louder, one hears in the bass an accentuation of the characteristic rhythm, like the tap of a bass drum. When the march has swelled to a forte, it sinks to a brief piano, as if the winding path had led the procession away again. Then there is another brief outburst, this time fortissimo, as if the marchers were quite near; and then a pianissimo, as if ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb

... sleepless, with his hands folded under his head, there came a light tap at his door, and he knew his mother had come to him. She wore a rose-colored dressing-gown, and at sight of it he remembered, with tenderness, how she had always longed "to ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane

... excellency," she ejaculated, gasping after each word. "That Amalia Ludwigovna, ah! Lida, Kolya, hands on your hips, make haste! Glissez, glissez! pas de basque! Tap with your ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... every time you can, boys," he advised. "It doesn't take so much of a tap to put them across the fence there; and if you can't get so far land a few in the bleachers for ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton

... seen Hamish more annoyed. When he had secured the money, he gave a pretty sharp tap to Annabel, and ordered her, in a ringing tone of command, not to meddle with his things again. He quitted the room, and Annabel ran after ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... store closet, and a sort of baggage-room, fitted with berths for two servants, occupied the end of the car nearest the engine. Then came a dressing-closet, with ample marble basins where hot water as well as cold was always on tap; then a wide state-room, with a bed on either side, and then a large compartment occupying the middle of the car, where by day four nice little dining-tables could be set, with a seat on either side, and by night six ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge

... buried beneath this mass. But our most sensational discovery was the fact that two enormous pieces of shell, weighing certainly 15 pounds each, were found touching the legs of my chair, and the smallest tap from one of these would have prevented our ever seeing another sunrise. Needless to say, we left our ruined quarters that evening, and I reposed more peacefully in my bomb-proof than I had done for many nights past. The air at the convent had accomplished ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... be a tank on the top of each staircase, with a tap from it on each landing, with six fire buckets hung near it, and three small hand pumps in every staircase; the officers and workpeople seeing these every day would be certain to run to them in case of fire, and by having a constant supply of ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood

... discreet tap at the door. She looked up. "Come in, come in." A face, round and childish, within its sleek bell of golden hair, peered round the opening door. More childish-looking still, a suit of mauve pyjamas made ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... when he was seated in the library, he heard a gentle tap at the door, and Mademoiselle entered, looking very pale. Somewhat astonished, he rose and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... France that cafe noir is a much more ready and abundant tap than water, and so it was here; notwithstanding which, the bedroom apparatus was most comfortable and complete. The chambermaid was a boy, and under his auspices a sheet of postage-stamps and a lead pencil vanished from the table. When it ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... postpone my task for a few weeks longer, I may fall in with my memories some time in the raging days of the dog-star, when the overwhelming sense of dog, in which, for the true working out of these memories, I must first dip my mind, may debar me from enjoying to the fullest extent the bounteous tap of Croton water which tinkles with such rivulet chiming from the silver (German) faucet into the marble (wash-hand) basin with which one side of my apartment is adorned. Hydrophobia is one thing, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... O the trees! Beneath their shade the hairless coot Waddles at ease, Hushing the magic of his gurgling beak; Or haply in Tree-worship leans his cheek Against their blind And hoary rind, Observing how the sap Comes humming upwards from the tap- Root! Thrice ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman

... would you have me say?" persists Beauclerk still lightly, with wonderful lightness, in fact, considering the weight of that playful tap upon his bent knuckles. "That we shall not be sorry? Would you have me lie, then? Fie, fie, Miss Maliphant! The truth, the truth, and nothing but the truth! At all risks and hazards!" here he almost imperceptibly sends flying ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... which pervaded every part of his uncle's establishment, he gave the usual gentle knock at the bolted door, by which he was accustomed to seek admittance, when accident had detained him abroad beyond the early and established hours of rest at the house of Milnwood. It was a sort of hesitating tap, which carried an acknowledgment of transgression in its very sound, and seemed rather to solicit than command attention. After it had been repeated again and again, the housekeeper, grumbling betwixt her teeth as she rose from ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... Just then a timid tap upon the door of the reception-room was followed almost simultaneously by the entrance of Mrs. Waul, who held a card in ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... this led me to think that there might be a void space in it some way up. "Should this prove to be the case," I said, "our work will be half done, for we shall then have but to fix the stairs in the tree round the trunk." The boys got up and went to the top of the root to tap the trunk, and to judge by the sound how far up the hole went. But they had to pay for their want of thought; the whole swarm of bees came out as soon as they heard the noise, stung their cheeks, stuck to their hair and clothes, and ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin

... the entire staff—Domenico and the boy Giuseppe coaxing the patent stove to burn, restraining it when it burnt too fiercely, using the bellows to it when it threatened to go out, relighting it when it did go out; Francesca anxiously hovering over the tap regulating its trickle, because if it were turned on too full the water instantly ran cold, and if not full enough the stove blew up inside and mysteriously flooded the house; and Costanza and Angela running up and down bringing pails of hot water ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim

... studies for the best part of an hour, uninterrupted by the ladies, who each, in profound silence, pursued some female employment. At length, a light and modest tap was heard at the parlour door. "Is that you, Caxon?come ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... sought the kitchen and, making a light, washed up at the tap, then foraged for breakfast. Persistence turned up a spirit-stove, a half-bottle of methylated, a packet of tea, a tin or two of biscuit, as many more of potted meats: left-overs from the artist's stock, dismally scant and uninviting in array. With these he ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... A coy tap sounds on her door and she glides to it. "Who—who?" But in spite of her it opens to the bearer of ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... good, Charley," he said, "and one of those savages may in a moment give you a tap with his club, and kill you, as an idle boy does ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston

... would. Now I'm going to telephone your Aunt Jessica that you feel better, and you just lie quiet and go to sleep. Then you will feel better still. I'll put the bell right here beside the bed. If you want anything, tap it." ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist

... there was a tap on Hale's window just at his bedside, and when he looked out he saw the Red Fox's big rifle, telescope, moccasins and all in the moonlight. The Red Fox had discovered the whereabouts of Rufe Tolliver, and that very night he guided Hale and six of the guard to the ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... been out. But the sisters were awake; Virginia had not even gone to bed. She was sitting by her window, gazing out on the hushed, gloomy, breathless summer night,—waiting, waiting, she scarce knew for what,—when she was aware of a figure approaching, and knew Penn's light, quick tap at the door. ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... Pretorius, dismounted one evening at the farm of a Mr. B. in the district of Bethulie. The farmer, hearing a tap at the door, went and opened it. Pretorius, who posed as an English officer, asked Mr. B., "Where are the Boers?" The latter, pointing to certain ridges in the distance, said in rather broken English, "Do you see those kopjes yonder? They are full of ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald

... cigaritos, and the children made merry. In the long summer evenings sweet strains of Spanish music from violin and guitar filled the air, and the hard earthen floor of the courtyard resounded to the tap-tap of high-heeled slippers, the swish of silken skirts, and the jingle of silver spurs, as the young people took part ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini

... was gaining ground with me: I was reasoning myself into something above esteem for him, and I turned to put my hand in his, when there was a tap at the window, and the little bird, struggling from my hand, burst into such a flood of singing that the whole place ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various









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