"Tap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... person, Sir,' repeated O'Flaherty, 'by striking, kicking, or whipping any part or mimber of his body; or offering a milder assault, such as a pull by the chin, or a finger-tap upon the nose. It is usual, Sir, for the purpose of avoiding ungentlemanlike noise, inconvenience, and confusion, that one gentleman should request of another to suppose himself affronted in the manner, whatever it may be, most intolerable ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... slept for several hours when she was wakened by a soft tap on her shoulder. She opened her eyes and would have ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... to enter the narrow door of the tavern. Wedged in the doorway, each thought the other holding him. Fighting, cussing, scratching, they were pulled into the big tap room filled with guests. All imagined the two hostlers were fighting and ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... we poets had to do with this military person—who served under the lilies at the siege of Gibraltar that ended so badly in the year 1783, and who did a great deal of very pretty fighting later under the tri-colour—I am sure I do not know! Then on we went, to the quick tap of the drums, the Mayor and the glittering firemen preceding us, to the laying of a corner-stone that really was in our line: that of a monument to the memory of the dramatist Emile Augier. Here, naturally, M. Jules Claretie came to the fore. In the parlance ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... should have been borne in triumphal procession to his last resting place. Bells should have tolled, cannon thundered, and thousands should have followed his bier. But now, alas, by night, by stealth, without even a single drum tap, in fear and dread, we crept breathless to the rampart. This, or any one of a hundred other paraphrases, will suffice to render the vocal movement slow. And so it is with all slow time. Let it be remembered that a profound ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... write; it is my great-granddaughter, who is named Suzanne after me, who writes. And who that had not seen her at the work could even guess how she does it? I tell you that she has brought up from Durban a machine about the size of a pumpkin which goes tap-tap—like a woodpecker, and prints as it taps. Now, my husband Jan was always very fond of music in his youth, and when first the girl began to tap upon this strange instrument, he, being almost blind and not able to see it, thought that ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... 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, it ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... gentleman, and I'll never deny it; but I am neither his servant nor his tenant, and so he need send me none of his orders till he hears I have put on his livery. As for turning away folk from my door, I might as well plug up the ale-tap, and pull down the sign—and as for peaching, and such like, the squire will find the folk here are as honest to the full as those he brings ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... pat on the groom's shoulder, and a cheery smile, Bainton passed out, and left the rest of the company in the 'Mother Huff' tap-room solemnly gazing ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... stairs, 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 ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... the scene should be a saloon, no matter, it will come soon to be filled with rustics or sailors. Your companion to be sure will not have seen you, at first; that is the rule; upon which you will make up to him, and he will send you a packing. You will tap him on the shoulder with one hand, and he will give a spring from you to the other side of the stage. You will run after him; he, on his part will scamper away from you, and you will take pet at it. When he sees you angry, he will take it into his head to make peace; he will sue to ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... clean frae tap to taes, Are busked in crunklin' underclaes; The gartened hose, the weel-filled stays, The nakit shift, A' bleached on bonny greens for ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tap! It sounded like the tiny knuckles of a fairy's hand, knocking lightly and playfully on ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... incontinently sat down again with a concussion 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 ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... home, Colonel, and to bed," Fitz said in a positive tone. "I shouldn't sleep a wink if I knew you were thrashing around on that shake-down, and you wouldn't either. Good-night"; and holding out his hand to his host, he gave me a tap on my shoulder as he passed my chair and left the room, followed by ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... sounded 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
... Strathearn is singularly favoured, sheltered as it is from the biting east wind and fortified from the northern blasts by its mountain barriers. Its rainfall, also, is far from excessive; for many sky-piercing hill-tops tap the rain clouds from the Atlantic long before ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... but a little footpath, which, from its appearance, seemed to be rarely trodden, led to a small wicket, defended by a door well clenched with iron-headed nails, at which Magdalen Graeme knocked three times, pausing betwixt each knock, until she heard an answering tap from within. At the last knock, the wicket was opened by a pale thin female, who said, "Benedicti qui venient in nomine Domini." They entered, and the portress hastily shut behind them the wicket, and made fast the massive fastenings by ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... repeated 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 ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and showering iron filings upon the paper, I notice a tendency of the filings to arrange themselves in determinate lines. They cannot freely follow this tendency, for they are hampered by the friction against the paper. They are helped by tapping the paper; each tap releasing them for a moment, and enabling them to follow their tendencies. But this is an experiment which can only be seen by myself. To enable you all to see it, I take a pair of small magnets and by a simple optical arrangement ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... intensely, "But she's the dullest soul on earth, and her husband spends all his spare time in trying to think up ways of doing me dirt in business. Oh, by the way, did you get the water tap in the blue room fixed? It's dripping ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... a path which led him to the hills and into the hemlock forest. The walk up the hills was long, and the sun was hot, so that when he reached the depths of the wood he threw himself down with a grateful sense of the stillness which could not be disturbed by telephone or tap at the door. For a little while he lay with his eyes shut, steeping himself ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... current issues: tap water is not potable; poaching has diminished its reputation as one of the last great ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Bernis, who never missed a single Sunday, she would say to the first, with a light air, "Bon jour, Duclos;" to the second, with an air and voice more amiable, "Bon jour, abbe:" accompanying her words occasionally with a little tap on his cheek. Artists and men of letters were invariably better received than the titled courtiers of France; while many of the nobility were truly lords-in-waiting, the two Vanloos, De la Tour, Boucher, and Cochin, had never to remain in the antechamber. The account of her first and only interview ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... to 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 us we raised ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... blue pill is on tap, and likewise the sarsaparilla, And on the fence and the barn, quite worthy of S. Botticelli, Frisk the lithe leopard and gnu, in malachite, purple, and crimson, That we may know at a glance the circus is out on ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... that niche," replied Nick. "When he steps inside the very nature of the place will bring his back toward me. I will tap him on the back of the head with my fist and knock him into your arms. You are to grab him with your arms around him, and hold him so that he cannot get at a weapon, and until I can get my fingers on him. That is ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... thwart it. It is far better to use the desire for educational purposes and divert it into the channel of systematized noise. Let us suppose that we are carpenters today and pound the wooden objects on the floor in exact time with a building song; let us play we are drummer boys and tap with our drumsticks for the soldiers to march; or shall we make believe that the sphere is a woodpecker and let it tap on the trees while we recite ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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 playfully instructed a ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... table, her head leaning on her hand, anxious, perhaps even painful, visions occupying her reflective mind. The evening was gradually darkening into twilight, but still she did not move, nor was it till a well-known tap sounded at the door, and her husband stood before her, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... slow stealthy tread, that woke no echo, Cataline advanced to the door. There was no lamp in the cell of the atriensis; no sign of wakefulness in any of the casements; yet at the first slight tap upon the stout oaken pannel, although it was scarce louder than the plash of the big raindrops from the eaves, another tap responded to it from within, so faint that it appeared an echo of the other. The rebel counted, as fast as possible, fifteen; and ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... to the wood. The wood is what explains it. Yes, I see the whole thing. (He gazes at LOB.) You infernal old rascal! Let us try to think it out. Don't any one speak for a moment. Think first. Love ... Hold on to love. (He gets another tap.) I say, I believe I am not a deeply passionate chap at all; I believe I am just .... ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... branch of palm. Then he struck lightly on the brim of my straw hat; and this blow he continued to repeat at intervals, sometimes brushing instead my arm and shoulder. I have had people try to mesmerise me a dozen times, and never with the least result. But at the first tap—on a quarter no more vital than my hat-brim, and from nothing more virtuous than a switch of palm wielded by a man I could not even see—sleep rushed upon me like an armed man. My sinews fainted, my eyes ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... emperor, Caesar, Keiser, and Pheazar. I will entertain Bardolph; he shall draw, he shall tap; said ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... greatly to blame. The tradesmen had a little club at the Gauntlet, where Cope employed a horrid brazen barmaid who sometimes sang comic songs to the club members. Mrs. Cope felt strongly about the barmaid, and quite took the vicar's side in the dispute the day that Cope came out of the tap-room and was so rude and abusive to the reverend gentleman. Mrs. Cope said she'd be glad if Mr. Norton brought her husband to book before the magistrates and got ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... that it drinks the sun the day through; but let the protecting mountains carry perpetual snow to cool the land breeze all the night. Having chosen your site, drench it for two hundred years with the blood of freemen; drench it so deep that no tap-root can reach down below its fertilizing virtue. Plant it in defeat, and harvest it in hope, grape by grape, fearfully, as though the bloom on each were a state's ransom. Next treat it after the recipe of the wine of Cos; dropping ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... homely and paternal tap," he observes. "For first offenders only. That chap's all right. Soon find out it's no good fussing about your rights as a true-born British elector in ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... curiously and cautiously out through the leaves, and a flood of feelings struggled in my heart, and the digging went on—thud, thud, thud—beneath my very feet, and the two strange men trod ever up and down, staying at times upon their way to point to this side or that, to tap the wall, or draw figures with their swords ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... at his door 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
... the roots of the tamarack, of larch; such as coarse birch-baskets, bark canoes, and the covering of their wigwams. They call this 'wah-tap,' [Footnote: Asclepia paviflora.] (wood-thread,) and they prepare it by pulling off the outer rind and steeping it in water. It is the larger fibres which have the appearance of small cordage when coiled up and fit for use. This 'wah-tap' is very valuable to these poor Indians. There is also ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... she must have spent all her spare time picking up phrases about the books and pictures and plays and music of the hour, so as to be ready for possible mention of them at her dinner-parties. She had opinions on tap about everything; opinions just enough "advanced" to be striking and original, and yet not too far "advanced" for good form. Jesse Dyckman's short stories were the sort in which you read how the hero handled his cigarette, and were told that the heroine was clad in "dimity en princesse". ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... a penny to spend on training. I must be taken as I am, or not at all. Don't discourage me, Eleanor, please. Mollie runs the cold tap persistently at home, and I really need appreciation. There must be something that I can do, if I set my wits to work. I am not going to be a nurse, Dr Maclure, so don't think that I am leading up to a request that you should get me into a hospital. I don't like sick people unless they are my ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to sit at night, after a conversation of this kind, opposite an apparently reasonable person who is white and twitching with terror, even though one resolutely refrains from looking at him, without being slightly affected. One may argue with oneself to any extent, tap one's foot cheerfully on the floor, fill the mind most painstakingly with normal thoughts; yet it is something of a conflict, ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... hypocrisy mantles insincerity and depravity, the soul of a people goes out; and though the form or shadow of former greatness may remain for a time, like the oak which remains standing after the tap-root has been eaten out, vitality, growth, and life ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... no woman 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 maple grove ...
— 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
... particularly hot run we had the good fortune to come on a soda-water spring from which we all drank freely. A factory erected to tap the spring was in ruins. Evidently the ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... unstinted jollity; thought to be derived from turning on the tap that all might drink to the full ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... 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 ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Tap the cannikin, troll the cannikin, Toss the cannikin, turn the cannikin! Hold now, good son, and fill us a fresh can, That we may quaff it ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... complication of vegetables in the persons of his wife and daughter. The wife had a fine veneer of mahogany on her face, and in figure she resembled a cocoa-nut, surmounted by a head and tied in around the waist. She pivoted on her legs, which were tap-rooted, and her gown was yellow with black stripes. She proudly exhibited unutterable mittens on a puffy pair of hands; the plumes of a first-class funeral floated on an over-flowing bonnet; laces adorned her shoulders, as round ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... he may do her some harm! He may injure her; he may overpower her with rape! Ought I not to tap on the window? I—what for? But at the very first cry, I shall be on the spot, take ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... notes?' he asked slowly, emphasising almost every word by a tap of his knuckles upon the table, 'have passed ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... Chloe put her head in at the door, having taken the precaution first to give a gentle tap, to inquire if dinner should be served. Lucy dined at four, and it ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... said Tippy. "Let's tap on the window and beckon him to come in and warm himself before he ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... all spent, to the deuce went it! The landlord, he looks glum, On the tap-room wall, in a very bad scrawl, He has chalked to us a sum. But a glass we’ll take, ere the grey dawn break, And then saddle up and away— Theodolite-tum, ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... time," she says at last, washing her small hands under the scullery tap, and then reaching for a hat hanging ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... a fearful volubility, and her haranguing echoed in Dick's ears with the meaningless sound of a water-tap heard splashing on the flagstones of ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... sitting-room commanded the garden; and from this window the captain of the "Vixen" could see his daughter and the captain of the "Albatross" walking side by side upon the smoothly kept lawn. He used to look unutterably sly as he watched the two figures; and on one occasion went so far as to tap his nose significantly several times ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... of departure, a tap was heard at the door, and enter Holman to bid me good-bye. Another tap at the door, and enter Milutinovich, who is the best of the living poets of Servia, and has been sometimes called the Ossian of the Balkan. As for his other pseudonyme, "the Homer ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... night. Every distinguished man has at least one or two horses in his stable ready to be mounted as soon as they have been bridled. The Arabs, however, ride without bridles. The halter serves to check the horse, and a gentle tap with the open hand on the neck makes it go to the right or the left. Not more than a few seconds, therefore, elapsed before the agas of the pasha were mounted and in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... told us to sit down, and he took the poems from Noel, and began to read them. Noel got paler and paler; I really thought he was going to faint, like he did when I held his hand under the cold-water tap, after I had accidentally cut him with my chisel. When the Editor had read the first poem—it was the one about the beetle—he got up and stood with his back to us. It was not manners; but Noel thinks he did it 'to conceal his emotion,' ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... possibly mistake the quiet little tap at the door. It could be given by no other hand west of the Rockies save that of my old friend The Klootchman. I dropped a lap full of work and sprang to open the door; for the slanting rains were chill outside, albeit the December grass was green ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... heard a tap, and like lightning it flashed upon me what was coming. He entered. He stood before me. What his words were you can imagine; his manner you can hardly realize, nor can I forget it. He made me for the first time feel what it costs a man ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... Seventh Verse.—'The good 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 ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... soft brush, in a few moments the image progressively appears, the deep blacks first, then the half tints, and lastly the most delicate details, the whole requiring but a few minutes. It is now that the etching action should be stopped by washing under the tap. However, should by excess of exposure, or any other cause, the details not appear within five or six minutes, the ferric chloride should nevertheless be washed off, for then it may find its way under the film and the plate would be spoiled. After washing the gelatine is dissolved in ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... sharply at Isabel. The girl's head was bent so low over the rough head of the dog that her face was almost entirely concealed from view. So far as appearances went, she seemed to be entirely absorbed in fondling Tommie. Lady Lydiard roused her with a tap of the ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... the ball, seizing the prettiest girl by the hand and leading her to the head of the room, while the others quickly followed in pairs. Thus, with the touch of nimble fingers on the ivory keys and the tap of feet and the whirl of skirts over the unwaxed floor, mingled with jest and mirth, the evening passed gayly on, the old-fashioned Virginia reel closing the ball and bringing the day's busy reign of festivity to ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... 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 ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the time being at The Derby Winner. It was more probable that she would go to the hotel than run the risk of being arrested in the gipsy camp, so Cargrim, adopting this argument, took his way down to Eastgate. He hoped to run Mother Jael to earth in the tap-room of ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... mean," suggested Tom, laughing at the man's expression; "of course I have, and why not? There's plenty more of the same tap here." ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 ma ken that at present ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... a tap at the door, and Sir Giles, telling the person without to enter, it was opened by Clement Lanyere, wrapped in his long mantle, and with his countenance hidden ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... must have been the evening of the second day after the tragedy of the shell that I was sitting alone in my little room, when there came a tap at the door. "Come in," I said listlessly, never for a moment supposing it to be any one but the housemaid. The door opened and I glanced up. My visitor was Aunt Lois. I had forgotten all about her coming, though I now remembered hearing that she was expected ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... the soul of man, generally called the philosophic branches, metaphysics and epistemology should have the smallest, and logic the next least place. Psychology should be taught on the genetic basis of animals and children, and one of its tap-roots should be developed from the love of infancy and youth, than which nothing in all the world is more worthy. If a woman Descartes ever arises, she will put life before theory, and her watchword will be not cogito, ergo sum, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... went up to the door and knocked, but nobody came. Again rap-tap-tap; still nobody; and at last she lifted ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... ahead of the settler into whatever territory, by reason of 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 ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... confusion in the scolding of herring-wives than in the public disputes of men of this profession? I had rather my son should learn in a tap-house to speak, than in the schools to prate. Take a master of arts, and confer with him: why does he not make us sensible of this artificial excellence? and why does he not captivate women and ignoramuses, as we are, with admiration ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... violently, looked round, and were relieved to see a sporadically rosy face beneath a furry silk hat. "Tap?" asked the ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... 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, be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... in a God-created world made for the 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
... restored, there was a tap at my door. I demanded the name of my visitor in as brave a voice as I could command. "Mrs. Pringle," returned the broken voice of the landlady. I saw, when I opened the door, that she wanted to talk to me. I also saw, what I had not ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... of whom he inquired for John Swinton's cottage told him that it was the last on the left. Although he told himself that he had nothing to be afraid of, it needed all Ned's determination to nerve himself to tap at the door of the low thatched cottage. A young woman ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... tap sounded on the door. Cummings stood by while I opened it to Barbara, and a slender, veiled woman, taller by half a head in spite of bent shoulders and the droop of weakness which made the girl's supporting ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... about half an hour in this situation, without exchanging a word, when a light tap was heard from without, and ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... sentiments, of superstitious scruples, of a refinement of loyalty. Certainly it added at the same time hugely to the price of Vereker's secret, precious as this 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 fast my luckless idea, convert it into the obsession of which ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... at the bottom of the boiler was turned, and the syrup came out bright and clear,—about the colour of sherry wine. The scum descended unbroken on the surface of the liquor; and when the copper was nearly empty the tap was closed, and the scum and what little liquor remained was taken out. The bright syrup was now again poured into the boiler, the fire re-lighted, and the syrup was kept boiling, to evaporate the water and condense the syrup down to the point at which ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... the help of his eye he could just know she was touching him. Presently she informed him he was measured for a list shoe: and she would run home for the materials. During her absence came a timid tap to the door; and Edouard Riviere entered. He was delighted to see Josephine, and made sure Rose was not far off. It was Dard who let out that she was gone to Beaurepaire for some cloth to make him a shoe. This information set Edouard fidgeting on his chair. He ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... close the night. I hae gude experience of these matters. The first night is aye the warst o't. I hae never heard o' ane that sleepit the night afore trial, but of mony a ane that sleepit as sound as a tap the night before their necks were straughted. And it's nae wonder—the warst may be tholed when it's kend—Better a finger ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... neat—being his own property, for he is an unfurnished lodger. A bachelor so situated must be a happy fellow. Mr. Snoxall is happy—a smile radiates his face—he takes wine with himself; but has scarcely tapped the decanter for his first glass, before he hears a tap at his door. The hospitable "Come in!" is answered by the appearance of Mr. Dunne Brown, a captain by courtesy, and Snoxall's neighbour ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... his father's room. When he had been a mere 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 ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and other such — The comfortable smell of friendly fingers, Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers About dead leaves and last year's ferns. . . . Dear names, And thousand other throng to me! Royal flames; Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring; Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing; Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain, Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train; Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home; ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... or Mr. Fine-Ear himself, ever heard the tiny tap of the young bird, when he breaks the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... leave to explain it to them in all its Parts. When my Female Regiment is drawn up in Array, with every one her Weapon in her Hand, upon my giving the Word to handle their Fans, each of them shakes her Fan at me with a Smile, then gives her Right-hand Woman a Tap upon the Shoulder, then presses her Lips with the Extremity of her Fan, then lets her Arms fall in an easy Motion, and stands in a Readiness to receive the next Word of Command. All this is done with a close Fan, and is generally learned in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... side at Y.D.'s right; Linder at Transley's right. In the better light Linder noted Y.D.'s face. It was the face of a man of fifty, possibly sixty. Life in the open plays strange tricks with the appearance. Some men it ages before their time; others seem to tap a spring of perpetual youth. Save for the grey moustache and the puckerings about the eyes Y.D.'s was still a young man's face. Then, as the rancher turned his head, Linder noted a long scar, as of a burn, almost grown over in the right cheek.... Across the table ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... occur during the rains, the beds, or pots, perhaps better, must be sheltered, removing the plants when they are few inches high to the spot where they are to remain, care being at the same time taken in removing those that have tap roots, such as Hollyhock, Lavatera, &c not to injure them, as it will check their flowering strongly, the best mode is to sow those in pots and transplant them, with balls of earth entire, into the borders, at the close of ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... came for Tam Dale to take young solans. This was a business he was weel used wi', he had been a craigsman frae a laddie, and trustit nane but himsel'. So there was he, hingin' by a line an' speldering on the craig face, whaur it's hieest and steighest. Fower tenty lads were on the tap, hauldin' the line and mindin' for his signals. But whaur Tam hung there was naething but the craig, and the sea below, and the solans skirling and flying. It was a braw spring morn, and Tam whustled as he claught in the young geese. Mony's the time I heard him tell of this experience, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on. A few ruddy-faced farmers and drovers from the Bed Horse Vale still lingered at the Boar Inn door and by the tap-room of the Crown; and in the middle of the street a crowd of salters, butchers, and dealers in hides, with tallow-smeared doublets and doubtful hose, were squabbling loudly about the prices ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... 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 population is overstraining ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... was a gentle tap at the door; some one said "Come in," and, without a word of preparation, Dr. Mildman entered the apartment. Our surprise and consternation at this apparition may easily be imagined. Cumberland and Lawless tried to carry it off by assuming an easy unembarrassed air, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... silly name like that, it doesn't matter how you spell it. The point is that it would be simply ridiculous to attempt that sort of thing now. Suppose, for instance—— I put it to you, padre. Suppose you saw Maitland mounted on one of the transport gee-gees trotting tap to that tin cathedral of yours—on a week-day, mind! I'm not talking about Sundays. Suppose he got down and went inside all by himself, what would you think, padre? There's only one thing you could think, that Maitland ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... there was a lull in the revelry for a moment. Serpuhovskoy went into the house to the bathroom to wash his hands and found Vronsky there; Vronsky was drenching his head with water. He had taken off his coat and put his sunburnt, hairy neck under the tap, and was rubbing it and his head with his hands. When he had finished, Vronsky sat down by Serpuhovskoy. They both sat down in the bathroom on a lounge, and a conversation began which was very ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... quite cold, power it into a Sack-cask, wherein you have first put a little fresh Ale-yest, about two spoonfuls to ten Gallons. Hang it in a bag with a little sliced Ginger, but almost a Porengerfull of Cloves. Cover the bung lightly, till it have done working; then stop it up close. You may tap and draw it a year or two after. It ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... HEEL TAP. A peg in the heel of a shoe, taken out when it is finished. A person leaving any liquor in his glass, is frequently called upon by the toast-master to ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... him; well, he was learning to do without Helen. And he had got away from the Grange, and Lucy, and that nurse. He was a man among men. And then, just as he was feeling most manly and important, and quite equal to facing any number of judges, there came a little tap at the door of the guard-room, and a very ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... head, her lips compressed; she smiled again, but more faintly. In the silence there sounded a soft tap ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... edge of its bung-hole. Then we had another drink all round, after which we bathed our smarting, blistered hands in the cooling liquid before emptying it into the sea. The downpour lasted for perhaps twelve minutes; then it ceased as suddenly as it had begun—as suddenly as though a tap had been turned off up aloft—and we had an opportunity once more to look around us. And, glancing instinctively to the westward in the first instance—for that was where we expected the wind to come from—the first thing we saw, in the fast-deepening twilight, ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... broken only by the tap, tap, tap of the Lieutenant-Governor's paper-cutter on the silver-mounted blotter. Presently he looked up and met ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... like a wise musician, he had marked the place in his symphony where he intended to tap his drum. When he saw Colleville attempting to warn Thuillier against him, he fired his broadside, cleverly prepared during the three or four months in which he had been studying Flavie; he now succeeded with ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... 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 from the kitchen ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... suppuration the matter generally can be felt to fluctuate in the groin, or near the top of the thigh. In this circumstance, my friend Mr. Bent, Surgeon near Newcastle in Staffordshire, proposes to tap the abscess by means of a trocar, and thus as often as necessary to discharge the matter without admitting the air. Might a weak injection of wine and water, as in the hydrocele, be used with great caution to inflame the walls of the abscess, and cause them to unite? See Class ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... come to him. A strange longing was filling his heart. The old days when he had kissed her carelessly upon the forehead seemed far enough away. Then, in that brief period of silence which seemed to him too wonderful to break, there came a little tap at the door. ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... von Montfort, the inmate of her home, also compelled her to gaze after her, for Heinz Schorlin had approached the vivacious native of the Vorarlberg, and the freedom with which she treated him—allowing herself to go so far as to tap him on the arm with her fan—vexed and offended her like an insult offered to her whole sex. To think that a girl of high station should venture upon such conduct before the eyes of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... once, had forgotten to lock the door. As soon as Aunt Jemima's back was turned, the child huddled her little pink print sun-bonnet upon her small black head, and, with one furtive glance over her shoulder towards her father's workshop, whence she could distinctly hear the quick "tap-tap" of his hammer, she opened the front-door, and slipped into the street. Her first action was to shoot a keen glance, from her sharp little eyes, to right and left. There was no one to be seen but one of the funny little twin men who kept a huckster's shop across ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... close of school, some compositions were read. One was entitled 'The Magical Ring,' and commenced, 'As I was sitting alone last evening, I heard a gentle tap on the door, and immediately a beautiful fairy appeared before me. She placed a ring on my finger, and left me.' The next began, 'It is my week to write composition, but I do not know what to say. However, I must write something, so it shall be a dialogue.' Another ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... 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
... and beautiful animals followed, for the next few moments, for Regnar, with a single tap on the nose, killed two Greenland seals; and following his example, Peter and Waring disposed of as many more. Suddenly a loud cry from the latter broke ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... 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 ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... near dawn when Job heard another owl's hoot and stole past Pat Rooney up to the rear door of the old stone office, which opened softly in a few minutes as he gave the well-known private tap of the clerks. What a wretched, haggard lot of men rose excitedly to meet him! He hushed them to silence, told his story, and bade them rest and wait a few hours. Troop A would ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... vain attempts to rise, I leaned my head against the marble chimney-piece, and gazing on the evergreens that filled the fire-place, moralized on the vanity of human expectations; regardless of the company. I was roused by a gentle tap on my shoulder from behind Charlotte's chair. I turned my head, and George slid a guinea into my hand, putting his finger to his mouth, to enjoin ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... Tap and pail were by the door of the back verandah. In a minute the hamal entered and flung a pail of water on the burning pool of oil, reducing the mass ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... 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 an increasing forgetfulness of ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... 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 , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... those produced by the application of the tongue to an interrupted electric current. These are distinct sensations, due to some chemical action excited probably in the touch cells, although the true tastes may be excited by causes not strictly chemical. Thus a smart tap on the tongue may excite ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... is played as follows:—It is agreed by the player and his confederate that one tap on the floor shall represent A, two taps E, three taps I, four taps O, and five taps U, and that the first letter of each remark the confederate makes shall be one of the consonants of the word or sentence ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain |
