"Red tape" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and hunters are attracted. But, when he is trimmed, smoothed, and varnished, according to the mode; when he is aweary of vice, and aweary of virtue, used up as to brimstone, and used up as to bliss; then, whether he take to the serving out of red tape, or to the kindling of red fire, ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... thrown out from the steward's department. In the month of October, 1884, one of these birds was caught by the passengers upon a steamship just as she was leaving the coast of America for Japan. A piece of red tape was made fast to one of its legs, after which it was restored to liberty. This identical gull followed the ship between four and five thousand miles, into the harbor of Yokohama. Distance seems to be of little account to these ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... have heard) that your Lectures {37} are excellent in this way; I can say I should like very much to attend a course of them, on the Greek Plays, or on Plato. I dare say you are right about an Apprenticeship in Red Tape being necessary to make a Man of Business: but is it too late in Life for you to buckle to and screw yourself up to condense some of your Lectures and scholarly Lore into a Book? By 'too late in Life' I mean too late to ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... have its flaws, perhaps the chief one that might be charged against the Z. P. is "red tape." Strictly speaking it is no Z. P. fault at all, but a weakness of all ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... came a loud protest from the guardians of the law, a frantic waving of spotless banners, and a prating of virtue; but the popular will has a way of obtaining its desires regardless of red tape, trickery, or politics, and in this case it demanded a reorganization of the department ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... military point of view effective, without at the same time leading to a breach with America. The order that "liners" should not be torpedoed under any circumstances was regarded simply as a piece of red tape, and not applicable to war conditions, as the submarine was not in a position to distinguish through its periscope between "liners" and other craft. We thus contrived at one and the same time to cripple our submarines, and yet to fail to give satisfaction to America. ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... old building that he had ordered fitted up for a school for three hundred freed children in that part of his district. But he found that nothing had been done. "Upon my word," he exclaimed, "not a stroke, not a stone, not a window. O, I can't stand this red tape; I just want to leave every other duty and pitch into this house. I know I am too impulsive, but that is the way of an Irishman. I have often thought Peter was an Irishman, he was ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... of a man-of-war is to keep a strict account of the expenditure of all gunnery stores. This was more exactly done under Queen Victoria than it was under Queen Elizabeth. Naval officers are more hostile to 'red tape' than most men, and they may lament the vast amount of bookkeeping that modern auditors and committees of public accounts insist upon, but they are convinced that a reasonable check on expenditure of stores is indispensable to efficient organisation. ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... am sure you read my letters, I'll make them much more interesting, so they'll be worth keeping in a safe with red tape around them—only please take out that dreadful one and burn it up. I'd hate to think that you ever read ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... Valois coasts down to Monterey. He finds Fremont gone, already on his way east. His soldier wrists are bound with the red tape of arrest. The puppet of master minds behind the scenes, Fremont has been ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... "They shall not escape! Am I set at naught by a crazed buffoon?" But in fifty fathoms of thin red tape The Lord Swank swaddled his portly shape, Like a large, insane cocoon. Then round and round and round and round. The Swanks, the Swanks, the whirling Swanks, The twirling Swanks they wound— The swathed and ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... the Rolls, said to Mr. Grattan, "You would be the greatest man of your age, Grattan, if you would buy a few yards of red tape, and tie up your ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... it with the Circumlocution Office!" exclaimed the President. "I'm surprised at you, Huntingdon! You know what the budget and red tape of Washington does to a temperament like Miss Allen's. On the other hand, here is my friend, who would give her absolutely free rein and take an intense pride in ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... off to the government tug Active by salaaming peons from the government agent's office. At five o'clock the tug was ready to start Colomboward the instant the "despatches" I was to deliver came on board. At last the precious package, with a parade of red tape and impressive wax seals, was handed over the side. It may have contained something as priceless as a last year's directory; I never knew. It was my deep-seated suspicion, however, that the packet was somebody's excuse for letting the public treasury ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... lad, For all they used him so, went to the bad: Leastways left the red men, that he knew, 'N' come to look for folks like me an' you;— Goldarned white folks that he never saw. Queerest thing was—though he loved a squaw, 'T was on her account he planned escape; Shook the Apaches, an' took up red tape With the U. S. gov'ment arter a while; Tho' they do say gov'ment may be vile, Mean an' treacherous an' deceivin'. Well, I ain't sayin' our gov'ment ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... restrained himself when Titmouse again and again asked if he could not "have the law" of the man who had so imposed on him. Gammon diverted the thoughts of his suffering client, by taking from his pocket some very imposing packages of paper, tied round with red tape. From time to time, however, he almost split his nose with efforts to restrain his laughter, on catching a fresh glimpse of poor Titmouse's emerald hair. Mr. Gammon was a man of business, however; and in the midst of all this distracting ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... any value; but a piece of paper was discovered, wrapped up in oilskin, and carefully fastened with red tape, in the vest pocket of the dead man. It contained writing, and had been so securely wrapped up, that it was only a little damped. Davy Spink, who found it, tried in vain to read the writing; Davy's education had been neglected, so he was fain to ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... officer, however, was called in to do the work. The difference between a British officer of the old school and the Canadian is that when the former is confronted with some work he says, "I'll call my man," that is a non-commissioned officer with a "red tape" training, to do the job. The Canadian takes the responsibility himself and sees that the matter is ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... later the trial came to an end. The seemingly endless spool of legal red tape having unrolled over a period of four and a half years, suddenly snapped off. Anthony and Gloria and, on the other side, Edward Shuttleworth and a platoon of beneficiaries testified and lied and ill-behaved generally in varying degrees of greed and desperation. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... excitement of our trip so far has been the day in Honolulu. I wanted to sing for joy when we sighted land. The trees and grass never looked so beautiful as they did that morning in the brilliant sunshine. It took us hours to land on account of the red tape that had to be unwound, and then there was an extra delay of which I was the innocent cause. The quarantine doctor was inspecting the ship, and after I had watched him examine the emigrants, and had gotten my feelings wrought up over the poor miserable ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... parchment up in triumph, and boasted that Minister —— had at length moved in the matter. The young man coolly replied, 'Yes, I spoke to my uncle last evening, and asked him to urge the matter with Cardinal Antonelli; but for that it would never have come!' There had been 'red tape,' and I had not ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... requisition papers with which he was provided were good only in Colorado, and that it was simpler to wait than to go through all the red tape of having them reissued for Arizona. Knowing that the wires were completely at his service, the ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... wide harbour, the blue cloud of the distant Tengger soaring abruptly on the horizon. The ship becomes our home for a month, and affords a welcome relief from divers struggles on land, involved by a dual language, official red tape, and native incompetence. A brilliant sunset flames across the heavens, and we glide across a golden sea as a fitting prelude to unknown realms of enchantment. The dreamful calm of the two days' passage obliterates the memory of bygone ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... another officer. "What have you got there?" And when Jimmie answered maps, he demanded them; he seemed as greedy for maps as a child for his gifts on Christmas morning. He ripped open the packet—what is called "cutting red tape" in the army—and spread out the papers and began to call out figures to another officer who sat on a camp stool at a little folding table, with many sheets of figures in front of him. This officer went on noting ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... followed passed in a blur. Fred Starratt went through the motions of living, but they were only motions. Between the intervals of legal adjustments, court examinations, and formal red tape he would lie upon his narrow bed at the hotel reading his wife's message—that sharp-edged message which had shorn him of his strength—as if to dull further his blunted sensibilities. In all this time he saw only Watson. He did not ask for Hilmer or Helen. But one day ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... John Canoe or Jack Pudding. He was a light, active, clean made young Creole negro, without shoes or stockings; he wore a pair of light jean small—clothes, all too wide, but confined at the knees, below and above, by bands of red tape, after the manner that Malvolio would have called cross—gartering. He wore a splendid blue velvet waistcoat, with old—fashioned flaps coming down over his hips, and covered with tarnished embroidery. His shirt was absent on leave, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... night at the Ansonia and a hard night for M. Gritz. France is a land of infinite red tape where even such simple things as getting born or getting married lead to endless formalities. Judge, then, of the complicated procedure involved in so serious a matter as getting murdered—especially in a fashionable restaurant! Long before ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... making up my mind to the train was to have the car shipped at the same time," went on Sir Samuel, "but it seems that can't be done. There's lots of red tape about such things, and the motor might have to wait days on end here at Marvels, before getting off, to say nothing of how long she might be on the way. Whereas, I've been calculating, if you start now and go as quick as you can, you ought ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... this neat little packet of manuscript; it is paginated, you see, and I have indulged in the civil coquetry of a ribbon of red tape. It has almost a legal air, hasn't it? Run your eye over it, Austin. It is an account of the entertainment Mrs. Beaumont provided for her choicer guests. The man who wrote this escaped with his life, but I do not think he will live many years. The doctors tell ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... a patron and gave him a sugared sonnet for a pittance, or strained themselves to the length of an Ode for a berth in his household. Or frequently they supported a political party and received a place in the Red Tape Office. But even in politics, on account of the smallness of the reading public and the politicians' indifference to its approval, their services were of slight account. Too often a political office was granted from a pocket borough in which a restricted electorate could be bought at a trifling ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... have,' she replied, untying the red tape with trembling fingers. 'Here is the certificate of marriage which my poor Annie gave me on her dying bed. I would have shown it before to all Beorminster had I known of Mrs Pansey's false reports. Look at it, bishop.' She thrust it into his hand. 'Ann ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... backed with initials—soap in a silver cup. Red morocco Turkish slippers with pointed toes; embroidered smoking-cap—all appointments of a man of refinement and of means. Tucked beside his razor-case were some books richly bound, and some bundles tied with red tape. Like most educated Russians, he spoke English ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... paper parcel addressed to Mrs Herzchen in a very queer handwriting. She opened it with much excitement, thinking it would contain a silk dress, at least. But lo and behold, all the presents that she had intended for her children, tied together with red tape and a card between, on ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... customs, manufactures, and trade. The whole financial administration at this time under King Frederick William III was in a state of great confusion, from an unnecessary number of officials who did not work harmoniously. There was too much "red tape." Stein brought order out of confusion, simplified the administration, punished corruption, increased the national credit, then at a very low ebb, and re-established the bank of Prussia on a basis that enabled it to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... "Of all the government red tape!" he muttered wrathfully. "I didn't think the fool Secretary would do anything like this. I thought he'd just call Darrin down hard and plenty, and perhaps bounce him out of the Naval Academy. Humph! I guess all these Navy folks stand together. ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... intentions. We owe Mr. Squeers, Mrs. Squeers, Fanny Squeers, Wackford and all, to Dickens's indignation against the nefarious school pirates of his time. If he is less successful in attacking the Court of Chancery, and very much less successful still with the Red Tape and Circumlocution Office affairs, that may be merely because he was less in the humour, and not because he had a purpose in his mind. Every one of a man's books cannot be his masterpiece. There is nothing in literary talk so annoying as the spiteful joy with which many people declare that an ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... to be the new permanent secretary at the War Office. Let's hope he has no connection with the firm of Gold Brade and Red Tape. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... and opened all the drawers which Walker had not locked before his departure. He only found three-halfpence and a bill stamp, and about forty-five tradesmen's accounts, neatly labelled and tied up with red tape. These three worthies, a groom who was a great admirer of Trimmer the lady's-maid, and a policeman a friend of the cook's, sat down to a comfortable dinner at the usual hour, and it was agreed among them all that Walker's ruin was certain. The cook made the policeman a present ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... usual dusty, business-like aspect of such places, but presented more the appearance of a gentleman's drawing-room; and, but for the ponderous cases of books bound in law-sheep, and a table covered with tin boxes and bundles of papers secured with red tape, the visitor would easily have mistaken it for such. The space on the walls not occupied by book-cases was hung with rich paintings, whose artistic beauty and elevated themes betokened a refined taste. ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... to get people blind as bats to the radiant beauty of some lofty character, and insensible as rocks to the wants of a sad humanity, commend me to your religious formalists, whose religion is mainly a bundle of red tape tied round men's limbs to keep them from getting at things that they would like. These are the people who will be as hard as the nether millstones, and utterly blind to all ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... but little, for there was but little to pick up. I learned, however, to call for "Red tape and sealing-wax"—to cry "What a bore!" "Did you ever see such a quiz?"—to call "Lord Charles," "Mr. Henry," and pronounce "good for nothing"—a remark applied by the young men to the pens, which they flung away ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... red tape tied on such a perfect forgery that the crux will be to prove it is one; safe locked up, and every ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... regards the question of school accommodation, it is well within the bounds of possibility for most regiments to provide themselves with a fourth school—eventually even with a fifth—out of their own financial resources. No investment could be more remunerative. Certainly under circumstances red tape may stand in the way; but when his superiors will support the Regimental Commander, and sometimes without, one will generally find appreciative backing, even from the ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... blocks later, and Jerry walked until he came to the Red Tape Bar & Grill, a favorite hangout of the local journalists. There were three other newsmen at the bar, and they gave him snickering greetings. He took a small table in the rear and ate his meal in ...
— The Delegate from Venus • Henry Slesar
... ran away with that bit of parchment, Kavanagh had to enlist as a private, and you had to go wandering over the world for years, leaving your mother and sister in poverty and anxiety!" said Tom Strachan, meditatively. "People are always talking about red tape in the army; surely there is still more of it in ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... night he was the one to carry the huge lantern, which, according to the number of candles, is the insignia of rank. "I must give the Turks what they want," said the consul, with a twinkle in his eye—"form and red tape. I would not be a consul in their eyes, if I didn't." To illustrate the formality of Turkish etiquette he told this story: "A Turk was once engaged in saving furniture from his burning home, when he noticed that a bystander was rolling a cigarette. ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... nostrils, and immediately covering them with his hand, as if he were putting some spell upon him. Opposite to the tall old chimney-piece were two portraits: one of a gentleman with grey hair (though not by any means an old man) and black eyebrows, who was looking over some papers tied together with red tape; the other, of a lady, with a very placid and sweet expression of face, who ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... overhauled, refitted, etc., in the British dock-yard here. Navy yards are much the same the world over, I guess. I will say, however, that they have dealt with us quickly and efficiently, with the minimum of red tape and correspondence. We have become in fact an integral part of the British Navy. Admiral Sims is in general supervision of us, but we are directly in command of the British Admiral commanding the station. Of the U-boat situation, I may say little. There is nothing about which so much ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... streets till six in the morning, when they returned and were admitted. They stated their business, inquired for the children, produced photographs and, after a little delay, Turiddu and Gennaro came running to them naked. It took some days of red tape, including a legal act whereby Corrado constituted himself their second father, before they were allowed to remove the boys. At last on the 11th January they took possession of them and dressed them in the street with clothes they ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... red tape to leaving that hotel—people to see, cards to sign and get signed. Everyone was nice. I told Kelly—and the news spread—the truth, that I was unexpectedly going to Europe, being taken by the same lady who brought me out from California, ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... much delay and tedium would be involved before the simplest business proposition could be carried out. But, of course, it is argued by Socialists that Government Departments are only slow and tied up with red tape because they have so long been encouraged to do as little as possible, and that as soon as they are really urged to do things instead of pursuing a policy of masterly inactivity, there is no reason why they should not develop a promptitude and ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... occasion to know what it meant to lie awake nights, and wonder if fortune would ever take a turn for the better. His father had been left a valuable property away up in Alaska, by a brother who had died; but there was a lot of red tape connected with the settlement; and a powerful syndicate of capitalists had an eye on the mine, which was really essential to their interests, as it rounded out ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... Shanks, the attorney, the most difficult person to deal with whom she had ever met in her life. She had remarked that he was keen, active, intelligent, unscrupulous, confident in his own powers, bold as a lion in the wars of quill, parchment, and red tape; without fear, without hesitation, without remorse. There was nothing that he scrupled to do, nothing that he ever repented having done. She had fancied that the only difficulty which she could have to encounter was that of concealing from him, at least in a ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... license comes I am not expected to transmit messages from this station. We have to get from the government both an operator's license and a permit for the station; and although I put in the application promptly there is so much red tape about it that it seems as if the inspector would never show up. If I had been caught sending a message this morning without these blooming papers there would have been the deuce of a row. However, I took a chance ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... Royce filled his lungs with a big sigh. "Bein' a Packard, you didn't wait all year to get where you was goin'. But there'll be plenty of red tape that can't be cut through; that'll have to be all untangled an' untied. Unless your grandfather'll do the right thing by you an' call all ol' bets off an' give you a free hand an' ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... Hall, painted grey; a wooden Post Office, painted brown; a red college, where boys in white disported upon a green field; a fawn-coloured school, with a playground full of pinafored little girls; and a Red Tape Office—designed in true Elizabethan style, with cupolas, vanes, fantastic chimney-tops, embayed windows, wondrous parapets—built entirely of wood and painted the colour of Devonshire cream, with grit in the paint to make ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... his own calm judgment on the great question which forms the subject of this Proclamation, I see in that Proclamation not so much an emanation from the humane and just mind of Lord Canning, as the offspring of that mixture of red tape and ancient tradition which is the foundation of the policy of the old civilian Council of Calcutta. But, Sir, if it were a question of hurting Lord Canning's feelings and denouncing this Proclamation, I could have no hesitation as to the choice which I should ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... appeal be made to the people to bring food to the army, to feed their sons and brothers; but the Commissary-General opposes it; probably it will not be done. No doubt the army could be half fed in this way for months. But the "red tape" men are inflexible and inscrutable. Nevertheless, the commissaries and quartermasters are ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... the room, breathing quickly, and looked in surprise from the corpse to the inspector. But the latter, without loss of time, proceeded to turn out the dead man's pockets, commencing with the bulky object that had first attracted his attention; which proved to be a brown-paper parcel tied up with red tape. ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... indeed there is no Bishop here. The present Bishop of Bamberg—one of those Von Schonborns, Counts, sometimes Cardinals, common in that fat Office,—is a Kaiser's Minister of State; lives at Vienna, enveloped in red tape, as well as red hat and stockings; and needs no exhortation in the Kaiser's favor. Let us yoke again, and go.—Fir woods all round, and dead malefactors blackening in the wind: this latter point I know of the then Bamberg; and have explanation of it. Namely, ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... for a third lump and put him to the trouble of starting his literary labors all over again. Besides, by that time the coffee would be cold. So I took it as it was—with two lumps only—and it was pretty fair coffee for European coffee. It tasted slightly of the red tape and the chicory, but it was neatly prepared and ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... Philippine Islands." The hardships and perils of the long voyage daunt many at the start, and he who is in charge of them must use great discretion in managing them. At the court, he cannot get his documents without much importunity, locomotion, and red tape, and long and tedious delays. The sum of money allowed for the traveling expenses of the missionaries to Sevilla is far too small; and, arriving there, they encounter more red tape and delays. Besides, the amount granted for provisions on the voyage ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... have an automobile follow you, with a doctor in it, to take care of John—Mr. Jewel, when he is found. We will start all our riders out from here, and ride until we meet you. Now hurry! Don't stop for a lot of red tape and orders and things—get right out on the trail. And don't forget the thousand dollars reward." Just when the sheriff was saying "Aw right—goo'by," Mary ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... confess it, I have seen money wasted and lost through red tape in the mission business. And after all is not mission business part of the world's business, and must not the measure of success depend largely on the same factors in the one case as in the other? Has one man more than another the right to be called "missionary," ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... of the results obtained has not yet brought the discussion to a close. The administration of the Haras still keeps up its opposition to the raising of thoroughbreds, and will no doubt continue to do so for some time to come, so tenacious is the hold of routine—or, as the Englishman might say, of red tape—upon the official mind in France, whether the question be one of finance, of war or ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... boy, I never did. It would mean a good deal of red tape for a man who changed his mind frequently. He could not fool his relations; they would know. The laws of the dark peoples have always amazed me, because if you dig deep enough into them you are likely ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... on trial for their lives were being railroaded to the gallows by the legal hirelings of the Lumber Trust. The Labor Jury was composed of men with experience in the labor movement. They had eyes to see through a maze of red tape and legal mummery to the simple truth that was being hidden or obscured. The Lumber Trust did not fool these men and it could not intimidate them. They had the courage to give the truth to the world just as they saw it. They were convinced in their ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... much patience with red tape that barred the way to the truth, yet there were times when law and legal procedure had to be respected, no matter how much they hampered, and this was one of them. The next day the order was obtained permitting the opening again of the grave of ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... clouded. "I will swear that the man Fairfield killed him," she cried passionately. "You will let him get away—you and your red tape." ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... all points. The one mistake is Abercrombie,—"Mrs. Nabby Crombie" the soldiers called him. He was an indifferent, negative sort of man; and indifferent, negative sorts of people, by their dishwater goodness, can sometimes do more harm in critical positions than the branded criminal. Red tape had forced him on Pitt, but Pitt trusted to the excellence of the subordinate ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... his Regular training, Wetherall could appreciate and himself possessed to no small degree the peculiar virtues of the temporary officer, who based his methods on common sense and actual experience in the war rather than servile obedience to red tape and 'Regulations.' He had studied during the war as well as before it, with the result that military tradition—his regiment was the Gloucestershire—and his long service in the field combined to fit him for command of ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... things were at sixes and sevens; red tape was loose where it should have been tight and tight where it should have been loose. Little men with the rank of officer sat in swivel chairs and tried to direct big things; big men, without rank, were tied to the trivial. Many, many things ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... of the mouth, in talking, was produced by a long tape, running down to a pedal, which was controlled by the foot of the performer. And the smile consisted of long strips of red tape, which were drawn out through slits at the corners of the mouth by means of threads which passed through holes in the sides of the head. The performer—who was always your humble servant—stood on a box behind the wall, his head just reaching the top of the egg, which ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... the supply of red tape in Richmond seemed temporarily exhausted. Stuart was Lee's right hand, and when he made a request, the War Office deigned to listen. Four days afterward, I was seated under the canvas of a staff tent, when Stuart hastened up with ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... were in Alabama each citizen who so desired was allowed by law to import from outside the State a small allotment of strong drink for personal use, but the red tape involved in this procedure had already discouraged all but the most ardent drinkers, and those found it next to impossible, even by hoarding their "lonesome quarts," and pooling supplies with their convivial friends, to provide sufficient alcoholic ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... BOB BAYLY! So will cry officials cold and steely, Who do not wish to be disturbed while pottering genteely, At their old business of Red Tape circumlocuting gaily, By tales of wrecks for want of wires, as truly told by BAYLY. Oh, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various
... the Intermediate Board, and it is quite impossible for any central authority, however eagle-eyed and sympathetic, to appreciate the peculiar atmosphere and wants of every locality. In such cases, local initiative is far more valuable than red tape, and more likely to result in an intelligent interest in his pupils and subject on the part ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... across me a vision of Drake crushed into our modern life by the shrinkage of the world; Drake caught in the meshes of red tape, electric wires, and all the lofty appliances of our civilization. Does a type survive its age; live on into times that have no room for it? The blood is there—and sometimes there's a throw-back.... ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... went forward in the usual way with all the red tape, the cool formalities, as if some trifling matter were at stake, and those who loved Mark sat with aching hearts and waited. The Severns in their corner sat for the most part with bended heads and praying hearts. The witnesses for the prosecution were ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... most beautiful and most appropriate Christmas gift—Peace. The Magi of Versailles and Washington having unwound for us the tissue paper and red ribbon (or red tape) from this greatest of all gifts, let us in days to come measure up to what has been born through such anguish and horror. If war is illness and peace is health, let us remember also that health is not merely a blessing ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... under embargo. I have been waiting here since half tide and there's nothing doing. Somebody's in there chewing red tape, but I don't calculate to let anybody else have a turn at it until I get my bit wound up an' tied in a knot. Now don't tell me you've got business ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... frequently directed to a small green box, which constituted part of my luggage, and which, with the rest of my things, stood in one corner of the room, till at last, leaving my breakfast unfinished, I rose, and, going to the box, unlocked it, and took out two or three bundles of papers tied with red tape, and, placing them on the table, I resumed my seat and my breakfast, my eyes intently fixed upon the bundles of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... leading to the possession of a French chauffeur's license, filling out parentage and enlistment blanks, and getting proper written introductions and identifications. All these steps have entailed a good deal of rather necessary "red tape," for in war time it is essential to prove every step in ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... reported our progress. The best organized woman's society in the State is probably the Women's Christian Temperance Union. In its different departments, although hampered by too much theological red tape, it is reaching thousands of ignorant, prejudiced, good sectarian women who would expect the "heavens to fall" if they accidentally got into a meeting where "woman's rights" was mentioned even in a whisper. Mrs. Clara Hoffman, of Kansas City, is State president, and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... to be a little of the sailor's mind, when they were landing a cable out of a store into a ship, and one of 'em said: ''T is a long heavy cable, I wish we could see the end of it.' 'Damn me,' says another, 'if I believe it has any end; somebody has cut it off.'" A cable twisted of British red tape was indeed a coil without an end. In this case, before the patent was granted, Franklin had become so unpopular, and the Revolution so imminent, that the matter was dropped by ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... envelope had the air of an official record of some period long past, when clerks engrossed their stiff and formal chirography on more substantial materials than at present. There was something about it that quickened an instinctive curiosity, and made me undo the faded red tape, that tied up the package, with the sense that a treasure would here be brought to light. Unbending the rigid folds of the parchment cover, I found it to be a commission, under the hand and seal of Governor Shirley, in favor of one Jonathan Pue, as Surveyor of ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he came forward with all the hospitable courtesy due to a post-captain. There was shaking of hands, and doffing of cocked hats, and calling for wine, and pipes, and coffee, in the Alhambra-like hall, where a table covered with papers tied with red tape, in front of a homely leathern chair, looked more homelike than suitable. Other chairs there were for Frank guests, who preferred them to the divan and piles of cushions on ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unfortunately become established {145} in Canadian politics, there would probably be campaign contributions in the one case and graft in the other, but in the one case, also, there would probably be efficiency, and in the other red tape and stagnation. ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... to it—in a land where everybody knows everybody else, and all his business, and where it has taken him—an address could never be too vague. The bush-folk love to say that when it opened out its swag in the Territory it found red tape had been forgotten, but having a surplus supply of common sense on hand, it decided to use ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... don't understand how you can put up with that sneak, that nasty phiz. Ugh! how can you live here! The atmosphere is stifling and unclean! Do you call yourselves schoolmasters, teachers? You are paltry government clerks. You keep, not a temple of science, but a department for red tape and loyal behaviour, and it smells as sour as a police-station. No, my friends; I will stay with you for a while, and then I will go to my farm and there catch crabs and teach the Little Russians. I shall go, and you can stay here ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... excellent "oldest inhabitant" METHUSELAH would have made in a "Right of Way" case, when DICK FIBBINS rises from the wooden arm-chair on which he has been sitting at a table crowded with papers, and bundles tied up in dirty red tape, and shakes hands heartily. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... hospitals, do I not know how many of them pander to the barbarous inhumanity of vivisection!—and have I not experienced to the utmost dregs of bitterness, the melting of cash through the hands of secretaries and under-secretaries, and general Committee-ism, and Red Tape-ism, while every hundred thousand pounds bestowed on these necessary institutions turns out in the end to be a mere drop in the sea of incessant demand, though the donors may possibly purchase a knighthood, a baronetcy, or ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... like to hear a noble Briton's praise! I tell of valiant deeds one wrought in the Century's early days: When all the legions of Red Tape against him tore in vain, Man of stout will, brave ROWLAND HILL, of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... of impatience broke from him. "Laws! In some states, yes. In others, no. It is a mere technicality—a trifle! There is about it a bit of that which you call red tape. It amounts to nothing—to that!" He snapped his fingers. "A few months' residence in another state, perhaps. These American laws, ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... parchment. This envelope had the air of an official record of some period long past, when clerks engrossed their stiff and formal chirography on more substantial materials than at present. There was something about it that quickened an instinctive curiosity, and made me undo the faded red tape that tied up the package, with the sense that a treasure would here be brought to light. Unbending the rigid folds of the parchment cover, I found it to be a commission, under the hand and seal of Governor ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in whom the quality of common sense is well developed will be ever ready to devise or to accept improvements in library methods. Never a slave to "red tape," he will promptly cut it wherever and whenever it stands in the way of the readiest service of books and information ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... thought. "I wonder if she's finished checking the catalogue yet? I saw her walking down the stream five minutes ago with Mabel Hoyle. Why shouldn't I have the American Gems for half an hour? It wouldn't do any harm. It really is the merest red tape that we mayn't use the books. I shall just take French leave ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... received a bottle, tied significantly round with red tape, for his host was somewhat of a wag. On tasting it, Tom poured out a glass and drank it off, but the instant afterwards regretted his precipitancy, for he declared that he had never tasted anything so execrable. ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... unless the whole depth across was 18 feet in accordance with the specifications. The earth was taken from one side of the bottom of the tank and deposited on the other, to reduce the whole depth by 18 inches. "Great is Red Tape." ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... who was suffering in town rather—you remember little Emmy, sir?—yes, suffering a good deal." The old gentleman's eyes were wandering as he spoke, and he was thinking of something else, as he sate thrumming on his papers and fumbling at the worn red tape. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a lack of the necessary dyes there will soon be no more red tape available for the War Office and elsewhere. It is to be hoped, however, that the familiar and picturesque salutation with which staff officers are in the habit of taking leave of one another, "So long, Old Tape!" will not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... yet been discovered to keep in order the brown curls. Their distressed owner tied them back firmly with a wide ribbon each morning; but the ribbon generally was missing early in the day, and might be replaced with anything that came handy—possibly a fragment of red tape from the office, or a bit of a New Zealand flax leaf, or haply even a scrap of green hide. Anything, said Norah, decidedly, was better than your hair all over your face. For the rest, a nondescript nose, somewhat freckled, ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... thought again. "We've worked under severe handicaps," he said. "Look, just suppose a lot of valuable material and equipment were ferried into space. If it's an ordinary government deal, you know how many light-years of red tape are involved. Requisitions have to be filled out in triplicate, every last rivet has to be accounted for—there'd simply have been too much chance of a rebel spy getting a lead on us. It was safer all around to use whatever chance materials could be obtained ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... absence of red tape about the new institution that it only needed a word in the right ear to set things going; and then, with a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together, Joe Collins was taken up and safely landed in the Home he so much needed and so ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... was about a hundred yards from the red tape, and the contestants were compelled to stand back of this. Mr. Wingate, the president of the yacht club and member of the Boy Scout Council, had already shuffled the numbers of the contestants in a hat, and they ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... signs at first of declining to unwind, but further investigation proved the frauds so great, that even the red tape was thrilled into action, and the Government began a suit in the United States District Court at New York for $1,000,000 for penalties for fraudulent custom-house under-valuations. It sued William E. Dodge, William E. Dodge, Jr., D. Willis James, Anson Phelps Stokes, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... real estate, sales, settlements under trust, final or interim judgments,—all the glory of a lawyer's office. Behind the head clerk was an enormous room, of which each division was crammed with bundles of papers with an infinite number of tickets hanging from them at the ends of red tape, which give a peculiar physiognomy to law papers. The lower rows were filled with cardboard boxes, yellow with use, on which might be read the names of the more important clients whose cases were juicily stewing at this present time. The dirty window-panes admitted but little daylight. Indeed, there ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... some things, for he stares impudent at the galls, has a cigar in his mouth, dresses snobbishly, and talks of making a book at Ascot. The young lawyer struts along in his seven-league boots, has a white-bound book in one hand, and a parcel of papers, tied with red tape, in the other. He is in a desperate hurry, and as sure as the world, somebody is a dying, and has sent for him to make his will. The Irish priest walks like a warder who has the keys. There is an air of authority about him. He puts his cane down on the ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Miss Fisher, one of the skirt fitters, came up, in her black alpaca apron with a pair of scissors suspended by red tape from her waist, to ask Madame a question. As Mrs. Bydington had not kept her appointment, was it not impossible to send her gown ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... crawled into a hospital train bound for Cape Town. It was an order, and he obeyed. Nevertheless, he shrank from the very mention of Cape Town. It had been the core of his universe; but now the core had gone bad. But his time of service had expired. Red tape demanded that he receive the papers for his discharge from the Cape Town citadel. That done, he would take the first outgoing steamer for London. Afterwards, he would leave his life in the hands of Fate. He ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... Premier took nearly two years to convince London that he was much more than the civilian colleague of Gen. Hughes. Sir Sam was idolized from the beginning; at times when generals at the front were baffled, discouraged and beaten, and when patient old Kitchener was enduring red tape and making perfunctory reports to the Lords, knowing that the war was bigger ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... a complete picture of a third-rate solicitor's office; with the stained wooden cases, the letter-files so old that they had grown beards (in ecclesiastical language), the red tape dangling limp and dejected, the pasteboard boxes covered with traces of the gambols of mice, the dirty floor, the ceiling tawny with smoke. A frugal allowance of wood was smouldering on a couple of fire-dogs on the hearth. And on the chimney-piece above stood a foggy ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... to Washington to arrange it. She has a friend at court in the shape of a senator who was once an intimate school chum of the President's. (We think he was one of her many bygone suitors. Isn't that romantic?) Among them they managed to untie enough red tape to let ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the latter by a clear and satisfactory schedule of regulations. Under its operation foreign exhibitors have all their troubles at home; their goods, once on board ship, reaching the interior of the building with more facility and less of red tape than they generally meet with in attaining the point ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... painful births and deaths of I don't know how many committees, after six weeks' struggling with something we imagined to be Red Tape, which proved to be the combined egoism of several persons all desperately anxious to "get to the Front," and desperately afraid of somebody else getting there too, and getting there first, we are actually off. Impossible to describe the mysterious ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... so easy of execution. It required two days of red tape and official dispensation before she finally reached the seaside hospital that, by unpleasant coincidence, only a year before had been the resort hotel of ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... skyn leather, ye hose & dublett with hookes & eyes," a "sute of Norden dussens or hampshire kersies lynd, the hose with skins, dublets with lynen of gilford or gedlyman kerseys," four bands, two handkerchiefs, a "wastcoate of greene cotton bound about with red tape," a leather girdle, a Monmouth cap, a "black hatt lyned in the browes with lether," five "Red knit capps mill'd about 5d a piece," two pair of gloves, a mandillion "lyned with cotton," one pair of breeches and waistcoat, and a "lether ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... and tragic reverses of the war did not stir the stolid British bulk. Men fought for a chance to fight; restriction still oppressed factory output. Red tape vied with tradition to block the path of military and ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... Once in a while a horde of them descended to Quebec or Montreal, disposed of their furs to merchants, filled themselves with brandy and turned bedlam loose in the town. Then before the authorities could unwind the red tape of legal procedure they were off ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... enough for me," he said. "At last—at last," he whispered, "all the red tape is over, and I've got you to myself! Do you love me just ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... came for him late last night," explained her husband. "The sheriff has unexpectedly returned, and Kurt has to be in town for a week to settle up all the red tape routine for his release; and besides, the trial of So Long Sam has been called, and ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... Senate chose one theatre for its future meeting-place and the Chamber of Deputies another. And from these places, sometimes the most incongruous—one hears, for instance, of M. Delcasse maintaining his dignity in a bedroom now used as the office for the minister of foreign affairs—the red tape is unwound which eventually sends the life-blood of the remotest province flowing up to its ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... apparent to me. So I talked it over with Sophie and one or two other men who wanted to do something, and we talked to returned soldiers. We couldn't do what it's the business of the country to do—and may perhaps do when the red tape is finally untangled. But we could do something, with a little brains and money and initiative. So we went ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... WALLACE, AGNEW! Here be three good names, Friends of true Art, and furtherers of her aims; Munificence but waits to take sound shape; Say, shall it be frustrated by—Red Tape? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various
... equally successful, although they have not so often been called into "particular service." By the bye, particular service is all done at the same price as general service in his Majesty's navy, which is rather unfair, as we are obliged to find our own red tape, pens, ink, and stationery. ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... which held the letters together. Yes, there was a piece of circumstantial evidence which might have helped to convict my friend had he been on his trial in a criminal court. The red tape bore the mark of the place in which it had been tied for half a century; and a little way within this mark the trace of a very recent tying. Some of the letters had been extracted, and the tape had ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... "These fellows usually do nothing more than disrupt an organization. We have a force that has been here, many of them, for years. There is as little lost motion in this plant as in any in the country, and if we start in saddling these men with a lot of red tape which will necessitate their filling out innumerable forms for every job, about half their time will be spent in bookkeeping, which can just as well be done here in the office as it is now. I hope that you will reconsider your intention and let us work out our own solution in a practical ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was yet speaking, a lad entered the store, and laid upon the counter a small sealed package, bearing the superscription, "Leonard Jasper, Esq." The merchant cut the red tape with which it was tied, broke the seal, and opening the package, took therefrom several papers, over which he ran his eyes hurriedly; his clerk, as he ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... of the drawer lifted, showing another cavity beneath. From this the searcher withdrew a long envelope, tied with red tape. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... doctor's degree. He came home to find his lectures deserted for the irresponsible teachings of a mere undergraduate. He made grievous complaint, and Linnaeus was silenced, to his great good luck. For so his friend the professor, though he was unable to break the red tape of the university, got him an appointment to go to Lapland on a botanical mission. His enemies were only too glad to ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... got it all in writing. It was amongst my Marion's papers. You will find, in the bureau in the book-closet, in the pigeon-hole farthest to the left, a packet tied with red tape: bring that, and I will find ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Cicero, with a Catiline on his hands, this must have been more than usually heavy. How he did it, with what assistance, sitting at what writing-table, dressed in what robes, with what surroundings of archives and red tape, I cannot make manifest to myself. I can imagine that there must have been much of dignity, as there was with all leading Romans, but beyond that I cannot advance even in fancying what was the official life ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... speech at Manchester on June 4, and again on June 5, before the employers and workmen of Lancashire, the new Minister of Munitions announced his policy of discontinuing the methods of red tape that had hindered the mobilization of labor for the production of arms and ammunition. His speech at Lancashire ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of those official wavings of red tape in the air, which army officers' families learn to dread as signals of approaching trouble, and Colonel Allenthorne was transferred from Luzon to Mindanao; and among the troops sent with him were the companies ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... safety requires this. As they have established certain modes of lawful procedure for their own security, so may they adopt other modes when their safety demands it. Their laws and their codes of procedure are for their uses, not for their destruction. 'When a sister State is endangered, red tape must be cut,' said Governor Seymour, when it was telegraphed to him that some delaying forms must be gone through in order to arm and send off our State troops who were ordered to the defence of Harrisburg; and all the people said, Amen! ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... accompanied by slow but palpable gains in privatization, deficit reduction, and the curbing of inflation. Nonetheless, recent macroeconomic gains have done little to address Romania's widespread poverty, while corruption and red tape ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... named Smithson left his estate to his nephew named Hungerford with the stipulation that if Hungerford died without heirs, the state was to go to found the Smithsonian Institution in America. Hungerford obligingly died without issue. It was in 1835, I think, and after a great deal of red tape, about half a million dollars was turned over to the American Congress to go ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... SECURED.—The method by which a copyright is obtained under the revised acts of Congress is as simple and inexpensive as can be reasonably asked. All unnecessary red tape is dispensed with, and the cost to the author who is seeking thus to protect himself in the enjoyment of the profits of his work, is so small as to be scarcely appreciable. This is an example of cheapness and directness toward which ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... red tape lay upon the table. With a portion of one of these, the back of the chair in which the Maire sat was lashed to the handle of a heavy bureau. Then his feet were fastened to the two legs of the chair, so that he could neither kick nor upset himself. ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... the military surroundings, as they flitted about under the rough timber framing of the old barn, carrying comfort and hope from one rude couch to another. As to supplies, hardly a man in a regiment knew how to make out a requisition for rations or for clothing, and easy as it is to rail at "red tape," the necessity of keeping a check upon embezzlement and wastefulness justified the staff bureaus at Washington in insisting upon regular vouchers to support the quartermaster's and commissary's accounts. But here, too, men were gradually found who had special talent ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... the packet; it was sealed, and tied with red tape. "Papers belonging to Lieutenant William De Benyon, to be returned to him at my decease." "Alice Maitland, with great care," was written at the bottom of ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... movements of the new dispensation took the form of trying to draw the colonists together into towns, of reviving the Navigation Acts, of levying taxes on their infant commerce, and in general of tying fetters of official red tape on the brawny limbs of a primitive and natural civilization. The colony was accused of being the refuge of outlaws and traitors, rogues and heretics; and Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia, one of the proprietors under the Model Constitution, was deputed to make as much ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... tin saucepan, somewhat the worse for wear, and well blackened, was placed on his head for a helmet, and in his hands a huge cavalry sabre. To throw a dash of color into what would otherwise have been a rather sombre-looking costume, Mopsey laced a quantity of red tape around each leg, which gave him a very striking appearance, to ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... only, are to be taught; great prominence is to be given to the minor arts; at first there will be no fees; above all and before all, the great College of ours is not to be made a Government department, to be tied and bound by the hard-and-fast rules and red tape which are the curse of every department, nor is it to be under the direction of any School Board, but, like most things in this country that are of any use, it is to be governed ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... then everything was easy. And surely there is something very attractive about a system where everything is done as an act of friendship, and not as the soulless reflex of some official machine. It is easier to drink red wine than to eat red tape, and not nearly so wearing ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... service men of the Imperial police on a par with the lower ranks of the subordinates. Muller's official rank is scarcely much higher than that of a policeman, although kings and councillors consult him and the Police Department realises to the full what a treasure it has in him. But official red tape, and his early misfortune... prevent the giving of any higher official standing to even such a genius. Born and bred to such conditions, Muller understands them, and his natural modesty of disposition asks for no outward honours, asks for nothing but an income ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... determined opposition from their own side; but the great fact that was brought out by the earlier part of this campaign is that the man of intelligence and initiative and ability and energy was fast in the clutches of the Red Tape spider, which fussed round him until he was enveloped in the scarlet web and impotent to use brains or energy. Engineering is one of the few things of which corporate bodies admit their ignorance; therefore the sappers got through much ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... spilling the poisoned slop of these houses of crime and tears were blessed in their DEEDS. Oh! that the W. C. T. U. would do as they did, what a reform would take place. I love the organization of mothers. I love their holy impulses but I am heart-sick at their conventionality, their red tape. This organization could put out of existence every drinking hell in the United States if they would demand it and use the power they have even without the ballot. I intend to help the women of the Kansas W. C. T. U., but not one that ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... follow," he said, slowly, "trying to get back dues from the government. There's red tape and lawyers and rulings and evidence and courts to keep you waiting. I'm not certain," continued the commissioner, with a profoundly meditative frown, "whether this department that I'm the boss of has any jurisdiction or not. It's only Insurance, Statistics, and ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... containing ink enough for a county; a magnifying glass; a carpenter's rule; several large steel pens, which it was high treason to touch; a glass bowl full of shot and water, to clean these precious pens; and some red tape, which he called 'one of the grammars of life'; a measuring line, and various other articles, more useful than ornamental. At this writing establishment, unique of its kind, he could turn his mind with ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... married at once; so, that decided, the women sent us about our own affairs, and spent the intervening fortnight in a riot of visits to the costumer: for, in Paris, even for a very quiet wedding, a bride must have her trousseau. But the great day came at last; the red tape of French administration was successfully unknotted; and at noon they were wedded, with only we three for witnesses, at the pretty chapel of St. Luke's, near ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... tell you something: I happened to be up in the mayor's office the day Blanche signed for the place. She had to go through a lot of red tape before she got it—had quite a time of it, she did! And say, kid, ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... the room and took from it a belt and holster, from which he removed a recent-model regulation stunner. "This is as powerful a weapon as we have here so far, except for the heavy stuff. I hope we never have to use any of that—clearing it for use is a lot of red tape." He looked up and saw the cold expression on Rynason's face. "Of course, I hope we don't have to use the stunners, either," he ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... churches and galleries? They may want to go to bed early. But you never can tell till you try. You may become the rage on the continent. Yet, you go into the enemy's country. It isn't the same as going to London, among tolerant cousins. In Italy and in Germany there is always so much red tape, blundering, confusing red tape, custom duties, excessive charges. But your manager must ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... the fire in the grate, and in a moment was out of bed and at her desk. She opened the envelope very carefully, expecting to see the pictured face of her kind friend smiling at her, But there was no picture. There were only two documents tied with red tape, and with big red seals on them, and a number of printed ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis
... even visiting the Neut-world was considered a bit far out and somewhat suspect of going beyond the old time way of doing things—even among the Uppers. Securing a passport for a Middle's trip, not to speak of a Lower's, involved such endless bureaucratic red tape as to be nonsensical. ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... at his trade, even if he were able to work at all. He looked about him for somebody to manage the affair for him. Lawyer Penhallow undertook the business with alacrity; but the alacrity was all on his side, for there were thousands of yards of red tape to be unrolled at Washington before anything in that sort could be done. At that conservative stage of our national progress, it was not possible for a man to obtain a pension simply because he happened to know the brother of a man who knew another man that had intended to ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... red tape in the country grew redder at the bare mention of this bold and original conception, and it took till 1826 to get these sticks abolished. In 1834 it was found that there was a considerable accumulation of them; and the question then arose, what was to be done ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... matters we are all slaves to red tape! I can promise you, however, that your Captain will be released from prison before this month is out, so you are not ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... by the Government would be known to the so-called Government of the Confederate States almost as soon as thought of. All means to thwart and delay the carrying out of the Government's purposes that the excuses of routine and red tape admitted of would be used by the traitors within the camp to aid the traitors without. No one knew all this better than Mr. Lincoln. With no army, no navy, not even a revenue cutter left—with forts and arsenals, ammunition and arms, in possession ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... there in helping carry out certain party measures—measures to which he pledged himself before his election. Down here, a British steamship line has laid down local rules which, in my case anyway, are ridiculous. The question is, are you going to be bound by the red tape of a ha'penny British colony, or by your oath to the ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis
... with all possible despatch through the red tape necessary to secure his acquittal, and then led him out by a side door. He ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... filed a formal declaration to the effect that such a movement is on foot, and have received a promise that the commissioner of police will investigate the matter. But before that happens our enemies will strike. There is no time for red tape or investigations. We must achieve our own salvation. And to achieve that ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... than at any time in the previous history of the island. When the late Admiral Schroeder was governor of Guam he consulted his log-book and discovered that he was altogether too far away from Washington to be tied to rules and regulations, or to be tangled up in official red tape. So he cut the tape and used good common sense instead. Perhaps the government was a bit patriarchal, but it was good, clean, and wholesome—and every ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... two generals, several colonels, and once even a sergeant-major? A padre, fourth class, though he had once been curate of St. Ethelburga's, was a feeble person. But Miss Willmot! Miss Willmot got things done, levelled entanglements of barbed red tape, captured the trenches of official persons by virtue of a quiet persistence, and—there is no denying it—because the things she wanted done were generally ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... compendiums required for gentlemen each of whom may have said, respecting his connection with subject-matter of the Secretary (none more emphatically so than Messrs. Adams and Burlingame), quorum pars magna fui? Yet, it must be remembered that diplomacy, like jurisprudence (with its red tape common to both), taketh few things for granted, and constantly maketh records for itself, under the maxim de non apparentibus non existentibus eadem est ratio; and ever beareth in mind that when certioraris to international tribunals are served, the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that this was merely the red tape of a frontier fortress, but I had an instinct that difficulties were in store for us. If Rasta had started wiring I was prepared to put up the brazenest bluff, for we were still eighty miles from Erzerum, and at all costs we were going to be landed ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... and safe wedding ceremony commend him to an enthusiastic, newly-arrived young missionary; and for rapid handling of red tape connected with a license, pin your faith to a fat and jolly American consul. So that was what the blessed rascal was doing all that afternoon he left me in Kioto to myself. Cannot you see success in life branded on William's freckled brow ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little |
