"Tap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... really did him any harm, but they screamed and crouched down whenever they passed him—they could not resist it. Then he would scream too, and cower with fear. The girls would sometimes run up and tap him on the back, and then he screamed in terror. Afterward all the children gave him some of their food. He ate it all, roared, and was as famished ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... galloping of hoofs indicated that there was a second call, and the engines from up town were answering. I began to tap my feet restlessly, and Miss ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... row, and three upper stories, each with the same number. They are about ten and a half feet square by eight and a half feet high, and are with boarded floors, a glazed window, and fireplace in each, for male debtors. Nearly adjoining to this is a detached building called the 'Tap,' which has on the ground floor a wine and beer room. The upper story has three rooms for female debtors, similar to those for men. At the extremity of this prison is a small courtyard and building for admiralty prisoners, and ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... after a preliminary tap the bonnie face peeped into the sickroom. 'All right, dear little mother: I was rather in a scrape just now, but papa has forgiven me, and I'm going down-stairs again. Good-night, dear mamma.' The white curtains of the bed were drawn ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... Sylvia, at his first movement, had slapped him in the face with no gentle tap. And Thomas, with only one hand on the wheel, and too amazed to keep his wits about him, had allowed the car to slide down the side of the road into the deep, muddy gutter, straight in front of the ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... My rivals, or my imitators, whichever you like to call them, may prove superior to me; they maybe more ingenious, more various, more witty, or more profound; but take my word for it, bland Header, there is always something in the original tap, whether the liquor be Harvey sauce or L.L. whisky, and such is mine. You are, in coming to me, frequenting the old house; and if I could only descend to it, I could print you more testimonials to success than Mr Morrison's of the pills, or the other man of cod-liver oil, but ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... fresh, and brisk from top to toe as if she had just been made, and not in the least as if she had found her quarters in the peahen's egg either close or confining. She shook out her petticoat with a brisk little flirt, hopped lightly down from the table, and hit the Prince a tap on the ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... had heard, and had at once transferred to the files in the Memory cupboard. Senior, without knowing it, had, I doubt not, some little trick which enabled him to get easily en rapport with his subconsciousness, and so tap the rich and recently stored vintage. His writing was probably half automatic. It certainly was vivid and dramatic in ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... it in— Children's heads are hollow; Rap it in, tap it in— Bang it in, slam it in Ancient archaeology, Aryan philology, Prosody, zoology, Physics, climatology, Calculus and mathematics, Rhetoric and hydrostatics. Stuff the school children, fill up the heads of them, ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... the weak little women that have sons that air so ready to march to the tap of the drum. But I give you and our daughter all the love thar is in this old heart o' mine, and that ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... motionless in the wild saraband of dancing shadows. Then the ship, obedient to the call of her anchor, forged ahead slightly and eased the strain. The cable relieved, hung down, and after swaying imperceptibly to and fro dropped with a loud tap on the hard wood planks. Singleton seized the high lever, and, by a violent throw forward of his body, wrung out another half-turn from the brake. He recovered himself, breathed largely, and remained for a while glaring down at the powerful and compact engine ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... rather broader over the shoulders, and are sometimes elevated behind, quand ils veulent le faire tres soufflement. Pewter brooches are still in great request, as are also pewter-pots, which are used in the tap-rooms of some des cribbes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... pieces, saw that one of ours was levelled at the balloon, and that before they could fire, a single shot from us must send them earthwards, to be crushed into one shapeless mass by the fall. Endo saw that he had no choice but to obey or affect obedience, and, turning the tap that let out the gas by a pipe passing through the car, sent his vessel rapidly downward, as with a formal salute he affected to accept the command of his Prince. Instantly grasping, not the lightning gun, which, if it struck ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... the pencil began to tap on the table, and with its stir his nerves took fire. A leaf of paper flew by, brushing his face like the wing of a bird. A hand clutched his shoulder; then, as if to make every explanation of no avail, the room filled ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... by, without a break in the discussion, the seven walked back into the cabin and stood where, on the first tap of the supper bell, each could snatch a seat near the upper end of the table and so collectively assume among the hundreds on the boat that separate and superior station to which the laws of nature ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... tap at the door made Aspasia start up suddenly; and stooping over the alabaster vase of water, she hastened to remove all ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... pause in her meditations by a tap at her door. She was now able to have two rooms at her command in Prince's Mansions, and Franks, who had come to see her, was ushered into a neatly-furnished ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... been the old farmer's special pride. He loved those big old-growth maples, loved them so well that he would not tap them in the spring for maple sugar. It shortened the lives of trees, he said, to tap them, particularly large ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... Hucheloup family. They were reached by a staircase which was a ladder rather than a staircase, and had for their entrance only a private door in the large room on the first floor. Under the roof, in two mansard attics, were the nests for the servants. The kitchen shared the ground-floor with the tap-room. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... his teeth together and set his feet as if for the sound of the referee's whistle. He heard the orchestra leader tap his music-stand; then, as the first strains of the waltz floated forth, he stepped into the ballroom and made toward his sweetheart. All at once he found that his brain was clear, his ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... Coal-Giant in the Pit in the centre of the earth, the Giant had told him, if he ever needed an earthquake to help him out, to call on him. All Marmaduke was to do was to tap on the earth three times with his right foot, three times with his left, and three times more, standing on his head. Then he was to run away. The Giant had promised to allow five minutes so that Marmaduke and his ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... the terrible silence of a still night. All those small sounds lost in the hum of midday life now came into relief—a ticking in the wainscot, a crack now and then in the joining of the furniture, and occasionally the tap of a moth against the window pane from outside, sounds sharp and odd, which made her wish the stillness of the night were not ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... his horse by an ostler and two local sots from the tap-room, his valise was strapped none too securely before him, and with a farewell, which was meant to be gracious but was only foolish, he tittuped into the rain. He was as drunk as an owl, though he did not know it. All afternoon he had been mixing strong Cumberland ale ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... and the use of ice are, therefore, to be absolutely condemned. The only rational and natural treatment of inflammatory conditions is that by compresses, packs and ablutions, using water of ordinary temperature, as it comes from the cold water tap. ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... large sarcophagi of white marble. One of these has been elaborately worked in rich garlands of flowers and very grand bulls' heads, together with nude figures, all of which have been much damaged. These sarcophagi have been used as cisterns for containing water, as the tap is still visible. Immediately opposite is the entrance to the great hall, which is in good repair, as a new cement floor was added by the British authorities, with the intention of converting it into a temporary hospital ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... inevitably as the gas from a soda-water bottle when the cork is slightly loosened, or, if this illustration be too strong (it is employed because gas, air, is concerned in each case), let us say, as water from the pipe of a waterworks' system when the tap is turned. The tone should come, the breath ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... unexpectedly in her room threw Mary for a second off her balance. She had been cleaning knives in her little scullery, and when she had let him in she went back again, and turned on the cold-water tap to its fullest volume, and then turned it off again. "Now," she thought to herself, as she screwed it tight, "I'm not going to let these silly ideas come into my head.... Don't you think Mr. Asquith deserves to be hanged?" she called ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... upon the table beside its mistress. The whisperings and voices, sometimes accompanied by soft or mocking laughter, continued for the space of several moments, and appeared to be interrupted at last by the tap of the wise woman's wand upon the table, which three times repeated enforced ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... one of the features of the place, and the farmers set their clocks by him as he went plodding past. Everybody knew him, and he knew the past history of every man, woman and child in the place. He was an encyclopedia of the village gossip and tradition for fifty years past. This he kept always on tap, and only a hint was needed to set him ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... There came a tap at a window that opened out upon the verandah, and the young fellow, looking around, saw the girl sitting in the "best room." She tried to put on the appearance of having accidentally attracted his attention. He moved his chair closer ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... gleams the sun on yon hill-tap, The dew sits on the gowan; Deep murmurs through her glens the Spey, Around Kinrara rowan. Where art thou, fairest, kindest lass? Alas! wert thou but near me, Thy gentle soul, thy melting eye, Would ever, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... gathered only perplexity from the encounter. What were Pellerin's eyes saying to him? What orders, what confidences, what indefinable apprehension did their long look impart? The young man was still trying to decipher their complex message when he felt a tap on the arm, and turned to encounter the rueful gaze of Bob Wade, whose meaning lay clearly enough on the surface of his ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... themselves in Nicholas's brain. Each syllable was like the incisive tap of a hammer. They fell on a ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... the warning tap of the conductor's baton; the applause was hushed as though by a charm, and the orchestra broke into the overture to 'Zampa.' She could not understand, she could not think. As she tripped tragically to the artists'-room in her new yellow dress she said to herself that the conductor must ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... much to my gratification, found myself a safe "inside." Still came crash after crash, until I thought it high time to see as well as hear. "What on earth is the matter?" said I to the first waiter I met, as I descended from the coffee-room, and got to the door of the "tap," or room for accommodation of the lower grade of persons frequenting the establishment. "Oh! sir," said he, "it is two dreadful Irishmen fighting: one has broken a table on the other's head; the other smashed a chair." I stopped short, and well do I recollect that the blood rushed to ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers
... floor, while Scudamore's gentle eyes flashed and fell; "if it is the will of God, so be it. But if it once begins again, God alone knows where France will be before you and I are in our graves. They have drained all our patience, and our pockets very nearly; but they have scarcely put a tap into our energy and endurance. But what are they? A gang of slaves, rammed into the cannon ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... legs, two black pins for his eyes, and a narrow strip of paper, first curled round a match, for his tail. It was neither artistic nor realistic, but it was an exceedingly comical pig, and soon it began to squeak in an astonishingly pig-like voice. Then a tap at the window was heard, and a farmer's gruff voice shouted: "Have you my pig in ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... came the tap of crutches, and the man saw then what he had not seen before; a slip of a girl, perhaps twelve years old, with a helpless little foot hanging limp below ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... at him, wondering how to meet this mood, when there came a light tap at the window, a French window that ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... where he would see an ass's head stuck on one of the poles of the vineyard, and as often as he observed the muzzle turned towards Florence, he might visit her without any sort of misgiving; and if he found not the door open, he was to tap it thrice, and she would open it; and when he saw the muzzle of the ass's head turned towards Fiesole, he was to keep away, for then Gianni would be there. Following which plan, they forgathered not seldom: but on one of these evenings, when Federigo was to sup with Monna ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... were answered, in a way, before she slept; for, after she had gone up to bed that night, there came a ring at the doorbell, followed, a moment later, by a tap at her door. ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... tap. He depends upon his dad fer a livin'. See what he did this mornin'. Instead of stayin' home an' lookin' after the hayin', he went to the city. That's what he's always doin'; runnin' away when ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... broke out afresh. He had been the one living creature for whom Madam Rachel's flinty breast had nursed a spark of love, and at fourteen he had rewarded her by trying to set fire to her skirts as she dozed in her chair. At nineteen, in a fit of drunkenness, he struck his father. He married a tap-room girl from St. Austell, and beat her. She gave him two sons: the elder (named Nicholas, after his father), a gentle boy, very bony in limb, after the fashion of the Rosewarnes; the younger, Michael, an epileptic. ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... crying of the ghosts. It was a wild winter when Theobald left us, and they cried every night. It is a sound I have never grown used to, though I have heard it every winter I can remember. And also the swish of the satin as it went by my door, and the tap of high-heeled shoes. They cried more that winter than I ever heard them, except in the winter after Uncle Luke went away (but then I was little, and had the company of Maureen Kelly, my nurse); and in a winter which was ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... pity, Terence, that man Schultz has the key to my state-room in his pocket. Now if you could manage to tap that Dutchman on the head with something hard and heavy, take the key out of his pocket and throw him overheard, you could let me out of this purgatory I'm in. Then I wouldn't be surprised if the sight of me and the absence of Mr. Schultz would put ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... soft tap Randolph opened the door. When he saw Steve he broke into a great sob and laid his head on the shoulder of the dear friend of ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... not quail. His plethora of plums he spilt; They did not wince, they did not wilt. Poor fellow! As they left him there, He heard one beardless boy declare, "Jove! what a milk-and-water chap! I thought non-coms. had oaths on tap." Another said, "We'd soon be fit If we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... off a bit when it begins to rain again like as if some one had turned on the tap o' a waterfall, but he tried to cheer himself remarkin' that most likely 'is Battery was bein' flooded out of their dug-outs. But I could see he was beginnin' to doubt whether the Am. Col.'s job was as cushy as he'd reckoned when the off-lead o' Number One wagon tries a cross-Channel-swim ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... even gone to bed. She was sitting by her window, gazing out on the hushed, gloomy, breathless summer night,—waiting, waiting, she scarce knew for what,—when she was aware of a figure approaching, and knew Penn's light, quick tap at the door. ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... queerest of rooms, fitted and furnished more like a luxurious amateur tap-room than anything else within the ken of Silas Wegg. There were two wooden settles by the fire, one on either side of it, with a corresponding table before each. On one of these tables the eight volumes were ranged flat, in a row like ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... said the older Mr. Weller, looking in at the door after a prefatory tap. 'I'm afeerd we've come in rayther arter the time, mum, but the young colt being full o' wice, has been' a boltin' and shyin' and gettin' his leg over the traces to sich a extent that if he an't wery soon broke in, he'll wex me into a broken heart, and then he'll never be brought ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... to tap out the message slowly and carefully. Behind him, he could hear Brooks hammering against the locker door. Tom felt like opening the door and freezing the pirate with his paralo-ray gun to keep him quiet, but he ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... in the body, Peter, but the doctor means to get you round in no time. Yes," he continued, seeing Peter's eyes fixed on his bandaged shoulder, "I have had a tap too, but there's no great harm done. There, drink some brandy-and-water, and go off to sleep ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... attitude, her thin, white shoulders glimmering bare, a graceful and nymph-like figure, when a light tap at the door froze her into immobility, and then she saw her mistress's face reflected in the mirror. With a little cry of embarrassment, she turned and leaned against the bureau, lifting one hand with that instinctive gesture which Greek sculptors ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... Cheyenne, to whom the enfranchisement of the women of Wyoming was largely due, was ready, as she often said, at the first tap of the drum at Seneca Falls. She occupied the place of honor by the side of the Governor on that proud day when the admission of Wyoming as a State ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... watch and sent messengers to the outlying places, but somehow you slipped through our meshes, and nothing turned up until the car man returned at about 11 p.m., as drunk as a soldier on furlough. After putting him under a water tap until he was half drowned we got him sober enough to tell where he had left you; but he swore you were a priest, and his evident sincerity caused us all to roar with laughter. This angered him, and he said: "Ye may twist me head an' dhroun me intirely, but I wull niver ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... Multiplication of "Small Masters."—Having made so much progress in our analysis, we shall approach more intelligently another important aspect of the "sweating system." Mr. Booth and other investigators find the tap-root of the disease to consist in the multiplication of small masters. The leading industrial forces of the age, as we have seen, make for the concentration of labour in larger and larger masses, and its employment in larger and larger ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... Bulteel, M.C., was leading, and when 1000 yards from the objective the order was given to gallop, and horses swept over the last portion of the plain and up the hill at a terrific pace, the thundering hoofs raising clouds of dust. The tap-tap of machine guns firing at the highest pressure, intense rifle fire from all parts of the enemy position, the fierce storm of shells rained on the hill by the Berks battery, which during the charge fired with ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... a strictly local view. In high official quarters the feeling was quite different. The reaction there was more like paralyzed horror. Fran was known to be behind the breakdown of the plant. He'd caused it by trying to tap its lines for a monstrous amount of power. He'd been trying to signal to so great a distance that tens of thousands of kilowatts were required. He'd failed, but the high brass knew with absolute certainty that he'd tried to signal ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... third a spray of late asparagus, and even the tenth and eleventh a sprig of mangel-wurzel of an armful of hay. Her room was full of gardeners all the time, while at evening the aged butler, touched at the friendless girl's loneliness, would tap softly at her door to bring her a rye whiskey and seltzer or a box of Pittsburg Stogies. Even the dumb creatures seemed to admire her in their own dumb way. The dumb rooks settled on her shoulder and every dumb dog ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... before the public as essayist, poet, pianist and composer for twenty years. He had given himself without stint to almost every musical enterprise of Germany, and his sympathy was ever on tap for every needy and aspiring genius. You may give your purse—he who takes it takes trash—but to give your life's blood and then hope for a renewal of life's lease, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... were, to feel how Spanish, how literary, how picturesque, how romantic. There they were such as the wine-skins are that hang from the trees of pleasant groves in many a merry tale, and invite all swains and shepherds and wandering cavaliers to tap their bulk and drain its rich plethora. There they were such as Don Quixote, waking from his dream at the inn, saw them malignant giants and fell enchanters, and slashed them with his sword till ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... no longer by the window when it did so, so that he was totally unprepared for the visitor, whose trembling and twice-repeated tap at his door he answered ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... dirty little villages, in stone barracks, in towns, in great camps that served the country for miles with rows of black warehouses and narrow barrack buildings standing with their feet a little apart; giving their little brass bugles a preliminary tap before putting out their cheeks and blowing in them and stealing a million and a half (or was it two million or three million) lives, and throwing the warm sentient bodies into coarse automatons who ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... I had my fingers round the thrapple o' that leein' scoundrel on the tap of the coach! Gie me your hand, Captain Smith—it's all a mistake. I'll set it right in two minutes. Come with me to Chatterton's rooms—ye'll make him the happiest man in England. He's wud wi' love—mad with affection, as a body may say. He thought you had run off with his sweetheart, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... announcing its character by a very flagrant sign of the Rising Sun. They entered it as men accustomed, and were greeted with smiles and many civil words from the lady at the bar, who inquired very cheerfully what the gentlemen would have. They soon found themselves seated in the tap, and, though it was not entirely unoccupied, in their accustomed places, for there seemed a general understanding that they enjoyed a ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... cask, who appeared to be some authorized medical attendant upon the poor, was far too well accustomed, evidently, to little differences of opinion between man and wife, to interpose any remark in this instance. He sat softly whistling, and turning little drops of beer out of the tap upon the ground, until there was a perfect calm: when he raised his head and said ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... railroad north to Florence and south to Naples. It would open up a fine tract of county which is capable of growing grain; it would tap the great olive-growing districts, and originate a vast trade of ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... flat. Jawleyford had stopped the champagne tap, though the needle-case glasses stood to tantalize the party till about the time that the beverage ought to have been flowing, when Spigot took them off. The flatness then became flatter. Nevertheless, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... asked one of his pupils, after vainly striving with reins and whip, knee, heel and spur to execute a movement which the master had compelled his horse to perform while apparently holding himself as rigid as bronze. "I ride here, sir," was the grim answer, with another tap ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... finished between Moronval and Constant, the principal approached his new pupil, and giving him a little friendly tap on the cheek, he said, "Come, come, my young friend, you must look brighter ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... a bitterly cold night in February, with three inches of dry and gritty snow upon the ground—while Hiram sat thus brooding, there came, of a sudden, a soft tap ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... had suffered to lift him on horseback, as he now sat, without raising his morose eyes once. Howie, on the other hand, had offered a good deal of futile opposition, cursing his captors as the fit moved him, and once struggling so insanely in his bonds as to earn a tap from the wrong end of a revolver and a bloody face for his pains. Stingaree glowered in deep delight. His mate's part was as well acted as his own; but it was he who had conceived them both, and expounded them in countless camps against some such extremity ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... into a big chair and stretching back, with his clasped hands behind his head. He eyed the man gravely and without resentment, for no spy would tap upon his window at night save that the business ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... A low tap at the door again betokened the presence of Lettice, who came to announce a warm friend of the Doctor's, one Master Eccleston. On being admitted, the latter brought with him a low, ferret-eyed personage, whose leering aspect betrayed an inward consciousness of great cunning and self-satisfaction ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... table on which the insect is lying on its back. The shock is very slight, not enough to shake the table perceptibly. The whole thing is limited to the inner vibrations of a resilient body which has received a blow. But it is quite enough to disturb the insect's immobility. At each tap the tarsi are flexed ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... the department hasn't had to depend on some cistern which always went dry just at a critical moment, there hasn't been a conflagration in Homeburg big enough to get into the city papers. The boys may be a little overzealous now and then, but they are always on the job ten minutes after the first tap of the bell, and the way they go after a red tongue of flame on a kitchen roof reminds me of a terrier shaking a rat. They are our real heroes,—the fire-laddies,—for outside of Frank Ericson and Shorty McGrew, who work on the switching-crew, and come sailing ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... youngest Miss Talbot-Lowry, and half the twins, a slight change fell upon Mr. Coppinger's voluble guests. A stiffening faint, almost imperceptible, yet electric, enforced the circle round Larry. Even Mrs. Whelply's confluent simper, that suggested an incessant dripping from the tap of loving kindness, failed a little. A young Mr. Coppinger was a simple affair, but a Miss Talbot-Lowry, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... break up the musical program; she was quite capable of the latter. After the piano was silenced, he lost himself again in his book to be recalled by an undecided knock on the door. He waited, not sure that it was a knock. The timid tap came again and he called, "Come in." The door opened, closed, and Rosemary stood facing him, her back against it. In her hands she held a brown ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... he would come. "You want Harry!" the doctor repeated after me; "you had better learn to live without him." "What an absurdity!" I said and wondered when he would come. Still later, Miriam, father, and I were in the parlor, when there was a tap on the window, just above his head, and I saw a hand, for an instant. Father hurried out, and we heard several voices; and then steps going away. Mother came down and asked who had been there, but we only knew that, whoever it was, father had afterward gone with ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... inconveniences. A free nation, perhaps, especially when arms are become so essential to our existence as a free people, may want a little opposition: as it is a check that has preserved us so long, one cannot wholly think it dangerous; and though I would not be one to tap new resistance to a government with which I have no fault to find, yet it may not be unlucky hereafter, if those who do not wish so well to it, would a little show themselves. They are not strong enough to hurt; they may be of service by keeping ministers ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... with his little variations of playfulness. Many a time in early summer when out-of-doors she would be reminded of it by hearing some bird sounding its love signal on a piece of dry wood—that tap of heart-beat. Now it crashed close to ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... slight tap was heard at the door. The young girl turned pale, for in her present frame of mind any little matter affected her. Nor were her apprehensions materially allayed by the entrance of Dorothy, who, looking ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Mississippi Valley and sought its alliance. Sectional rivalry likewise saw that the balance of power possessed by the interior furnished an opportunity for combinations. This was a fundamental feature of Calhoun's policy when he urged the seaboard South to complete a railroad system to tap the Northwest. As Washington had hoped to make western trade seek its outlet in Virginia and build up the industrial power of the Old Dominion by enriching intercourse with the Mississippi Valley, as Monroe wished to bind the West to Virginia's political interests; ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... setting his last copy and was engaged in piling the copy-books neatly, one on top of another, when there came a soft tap at the door. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... do not feel quite safe yet, Vane, my boy," he said, "and I shall not till I really see the great success. Who can feel safe over an affair which depends on the turning on or off of a tap." ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... hope I shall he hated. I shall shun people who love me," and with that she struck the horse a lively tap and soon was far ahead of her tongue-tied wooer. Was this a challenge? Vincent asked himself, as he sped after her. When he reached her side the tender words were chilled on his lips, for Olympia had in her laughing eye the, to him, odious expression he saw there when she ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... the laboratory all piled, running down the hall, Locke paused only a second to tap on Eva's door, as she had asked, if anything happened, so that she might be present at the capture. An instant and Eva, too, ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... with a quick movement toward her. She recoiled before him, precipitately retreated, closed the door, shot the bolt, and leaned, for faintness, against the wall. She expected each moment to hear him tap. She neither heard a knock nor the sound of soft, departing feet. He was still there! He was on guard! He had had good reason for his terrible certainty! He had foreseen what her plan might be, and she knew he would no more let her get past him down the hall ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... Tsar," and the three stammered, "God save the Tsar!" After which he saw them to the door. When the door had closed after them, he said, "My little Annouchka, you mustn't reckon without me." He hurried toward the sofa, where Rouletabille was lying forgotten, and gave him a tap ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... with Janet and Binet, the {311} credit of demonstrating the simultaneous existence of two different strata of consciousness, ignorant of each other, in the same person. The 'extra-consciousness,' as one may call it, can be kept on tap, as it were, by the method of automatic writing. This discovery marks a new era in experimental psychology, and it is impossible to overrate its importance. But Gurney's greatest piece of work is his laborious 'Phantasms of the Living.' As an example ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... Count Mirabel was, however, a substantial sound, a gentle tap at his door: he answered it, and ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... First Person Singular in current education naturally follows from The Disgrace of the Imagination in it. Our typical school is not satisfied with cutting off a boy's imagination about the outer world that lies around him. It amputates his imagination at its tap root. It stops a boy's imagination about himself, and the issues, connections, and ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... to him. Springing up he hurried into the car, and, drawing a pail of water from the tap, ran out with it. Mr. Snowden had just ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... sitting alone—it was about nine o'clock in the middle of summer—there came a gentle tap at the door. I opened the door myself, and a gentleman said with great modesty, 'Mr Tate, I am Mr Surtees of Mainsforth. James Raine begged I would call upon you.' 'The master of Richmond School is delighted to see you,' said I; 'pray walk in.' 'No, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... otherwise we two are usually some distance ahead. These water-vessels are merely goat-skins, taken off with as little mutilation of the hide as possible; one of the legs serves as a faucet, and the tying or untying of a piece of string opens or closes the "tap." It is the handiest imaginable contrivance for carrying liquids on horseback, the tough, pliant goat-skin resisting any amount of hard usage and accommodating itself readily to the contour of the pack-saddle, or itself forming a soft enough seat ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... until she has company, and decides to tap a little of her choice fruit. After the supper is well under way, she sends for a jar, and tells the servant to unscrew the top, and pour the fruit into a dish. The girl brings it into the kitchen, ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... nose a tap. He licked her glove then, and looked up with his head tilted in roguish inquiry. "We must ride over and thank the other Mister Mac," she explained; and a few minutes later they were going at a spirited pace across the ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... during his hour of leisure after dinner, the abbe came to the box with the key in his hand. "Tap, tap," he went. There was no answer. "I thought so," said he. Then he opened the box and, mingled with the debris of the nest, the letter ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... with cool water from her pitcher, and then scrambled into her clothes and tidied her hair. She tiptoed to the door of the bedchamber occupied by her uncle and aunt. At her first tap on ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... iron. Barlow thought the branding iron was surely going to be used upon the seat of his pants, but the accommodating Vickeroy had the frying pan used instead. He gave the victim three taps on the seat of his pants with the hot frying pan, one tap for "U," one for "S" and the other for "M," then slapped him soundly and said, "Go, Mr. Mule, when the Indians find you they will take you to the station because your brand shows you to be the 'United States Male.'" Barlow's howls and Vickeroy's laughter made those old plains resound with noises ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... tap of her whip a white angora and a sleek tabby jumped from the stands and took up their positions one at each end of a miniature tight-rope. Lola stuck a tiny Japanese umbrella in the collar of each and sent them forth on their perilous journey. When they met in the middle, they spat and caterwauled ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... were on the same side of the veil with us, and they were rather decent; so we chummed up in the end and Ockley took us all away together. They were jolly lucky in getting Ockley. There I go again! Come on, it's your turn. Has the bathroom tap ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... the eyes, its green disk was discovered far down the river, gently floating seaward with many twigs and leaves from the mountains that evening, and so perfectly balanced that it had not keeled at all, and no water had run in at the tap which had been taken out to ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... matter succinctly, and told the truth faithfully, when he said: "The first time I met her, I told her all I'd ever done that could be told, and all I wanted to do; including a resolve to carry her off to some desert place and set up a Kingdom of Two. I don't know how she did it. I was like a tap, and poured myself out; and when it was all over I thought she was the best talker I'd ever heard. But yet she'd done nothing except look at me and listen, and put in a question here and there, that was like a baby asking to see your watch. Oh, she was a lily-flower, ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... still investigating the room there came the sound of wheels on the gravel outside the house. There was a ring at the hall door, and a few minutes later, after a preliminary tap at the door and an answering "Come in!" Doctor Winchester entered, followed by a young woman in the ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... to the Signal dug-out of "A" Company, where, by the best fortune in the world, Private M'Gurk in person is installed as officiating sprite. Let us render ourselves invisible, sit down beside him, and "tap" his wire. ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... us have had any knowledge of their presence. And all this is done in a few minutes. It is almost all done by machinery. Do you see that little apparatus yonder in the corridor? That is a hydraulic machine brought into action by the turning of that tap there, which places it in connection with the high-pressure service from the Kenia cascades. (In other towns, where a hydraulic pressure of thirty-five atmospheres is not so easily to be had, electric or atmospheric motors are employed.) ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... iron pail at the boiler-tap, and, as I stood waiting, my thoughts flew back to earlier days at Acacia Road, and to Jane and her energetic manner of smacking the oilcloth. But I suppose my ideas had developed since those times, and certainly I felt this morning that I was being subjected to the lowest ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... the Inspector, and then down at the writing-table before which she was seated. She began to tap the blotting-pad with an ivory paper-knife. Kerry was watching ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... sir, and the best of wine too; and old Salterne had a good tap of Alicant in old time, old time, old time, sir! and you must drink it now, whether he does or not!" ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the sleeve fall well down over his wrist, he held the bamboo tube and a cow's teat in one hand, and so, the moment one's eyes were averted, he was able to turn on the tap and let water flow into the pail together with ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... Swift, I do think I be wanted at home. My father's not got Abel now; but it's my mother that mostly wants me. I be bothered about mother, somehow," said Jan, with an anxious look. "She do forget things so, and be so queer. She left the beer-tap running yesterday, and near two gallons of ale ran out; and this morning she put the kettle on, and no water in it. And she do cry terrible," Jan added, breaking down himself. "But Abel says to me the day ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... it denied me to perpetuate What so much loving labor did create?— I hear Oblivion tap upon the gate, And acquiesce, ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... began to spell itself in Morse. Taking a pencil, the operator scribbled various hieroglyphics on the naval signal paper lying on the desk in front of him; then after a pause of a few seconds he pulled forward a tiny lever and began a rhythmic tap on an ebonite key. ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... require after her day's journey. Osborn lighted one of the jets of the gas-stove. What a neat stove! A kettle was handy. What a 'cute kettle! Aluminium, wasn't it? None of those common tin things. He filled the kettle from a tap which was a great improvement on any tap ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... with so much pains acquired. Do you know—he told me that for fifteen years not once had he dined out, except when he thought his ambitions would be furthered by so doing, and then, as one turns on a tap, he turned on the charm he now knew himself to possess. It is not astonishing, is it, when you come to think of it, that eventually he became rich and famous? Most people are unwilling to sacrifice ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... objection will ever catch you napping. It will do you no good to look up the right answer after you leave the prospect. Nothing can be more exasperatingly worthless than an idea of something you "might have said" but could not think of until too late. Have all your facts on tap. And be practiced in making use of them in every imaginable way. Rare indeed will be cases that you are not ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... pleased his auditors, and a deputation waited on him to request he would print it. "Gentlemen, I thank you for the compliment; but I must give the same answer that I have given on other like occasions; and that answer is—The tap is out." "The Archbishop of York," said he, speaking of a late primate, "preached one day at Carlisle; I was present, and felt muzzy and half asleep; when on a sudden I was roused, and began to prick ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... Tattle, kill'd by the Tap of a Fan on his left Shoulder by Coquetilla, as he was talking carelessly with her in ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... is no response at B, and we obtain the unbalanced response, due to disturbance at A; the same effect is obtained by putting a clamp between A and B, so that the disturbance may not reach B. But we may get response even without injury or block. If we have the contacts at A and B, and if we give a tap nearer A than B (fig. 26, a), then we have (1) the disturbance reaching A earlier than B. (2) The disturbance reaching A is much stronger than at B. The disturbance at B may be so comparatively feeble as to ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... of Gayarre gave us an opportunity to make our presence known to Aurore. I was about to climb up to the verandah and tap on the glass; but my companion ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... flourish when transplanted. I noticed the slender the large trees have of the ground, and it is not at all surprising, after such a gale as we had three weeks ago, to see many of the finest blown down in the clearings where the wind could reach them. They do not seem to have any tap-root at all, merely a very insufficient network of fibres, seldom of any size, which spreads a short way along the surface of the ground As long as a Bush is undisturbed by civilization, it appears to be impervious to wind or weather; but ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... taking a cozy nap Her hands were folded in her (lap) When she wakened she heard a (tap) In the maple tree that was full of (sap.) She soon spied the tapper—he wore a red (cap) White vest and black coat, and his wings gave a (flap) As he hopped about with a rap-a-tap-(tap) What did ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... "hotel" was the social centre of the great majority of the men who lived and moved around the town of Links. Not the drink itself, but the desire of men to meet with men, to talk and swap the news or bandy mannish jokes, was the attracting force. But the drink was there on tap and all the ill-adjusted machinery of our modern ways operated to lead men on, to make abstainers drink, to make the ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... up and found myself having coition. I was angry and felt I had been put back in my progress, but a fever of lust now came over me. I would sit under the tap and let the cold water run over me to conquer the fever, but at the end of a week my hopes were frustrated and I even turned against my natural diet, on which I had made flesh. A., as I expected, went through her usual fits, and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... different aptitudes I belong to the latter class; I never had the slightest love for mechanism; on the contrary, I have a sort of abhorrence for complicated machinery. I never had ingenuity enough to whittle a cider-tap so it would not leak. I never could make a pen that I could write with, or understand the principle of a steam-engine. If a man was to take such a boy as I was, and attempt to make a watchmaker of him, the boy might, after an apprenticeship of five or seven years be able to take apart and put together ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... dreaming these idle fancies, when there was a tap at the door and, in response to her permission, ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... will see from A in Fig. 51 it has three taps. The two taps which are connected with the ends of the resistance coil are shunted around the A battery and the third tap, which is attached to the movable contact arm, is connected with the B battery tap, see B, at which this battery gives 18 volts. Since the A battery gives 6 volts you can vary the potential of the ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins
... compared with the reeking oven they had escaped; and a little fountain bubbled, and fed a little meandering gutter that trickled away among the ferns; it ran crystal clear over little bright pebbles and shells. It did not always run, you understand; but Miss Lucas turned a secret tap, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... discharge matter. An abscess formed and retarded the healing of the wounds and it was not till I discovered a cure myself that it showed any symptoms of healing. The cure was to hold the stump under a tap of cold water, using friction afterwards. This I continued to do long after the wound ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... letter when there came a light tap at the office-door, and then the door itself opened to admit Patricia—a Patricia bright-eyed and determined, alluringly charming in her tightly veiled driving-hat, muffling ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... she had to be ill, she was almost glad that she had a contagious illness. Otherwise she would have been at the mercy of the people in the house. She knew that they disliked her, yet now that she was ill, they took it upon themselves to tap at her door, send her messages, books, even a miserable flower or two. Thea knew that their sympathy was an expression of self-righteousness, and she hated them for it. The divinity student, who was always whispering soft things to her, sent ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... cavaliers Set ringing helmets by the ears, And scatter plumes about? Or blood—if they are in the vein? That tap will never run again— ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... ten chimed from the Dresden clock on the mantelpiece, there was a gentle tap at the door, and Francis ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn |
