"Tap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Rap, tap, tap! "There's your master, Jemima," screamed the lady. "I hear him, marm," replied the cook. "Run down, my dear, and let Mr Handycock in," said his wife. "He'll be so surprised at seeing you ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... muttered Sandy, under his breath. But more evolutions were coming. These preliminaries having been finished, the solemn procession went back to the kitchen regions, and presently came forth again, bearing a glittering array of shining metal covered dishes. At the tap of the pompous head-waiter's bell, every man stood at "present arms," as Oscar said. Then, at another tap, each dish was projected over the white cloth to the spot for which it was designed, and held an inch or two above the table. Another tap, and every ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... so absorbed that a step crossing the next room failed to attract her attention. She did not even hear the light tap at the door. But when it opened, and some one entered, closing the door behind him, she turned abruptly and faced the intruder, fully ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... his volumes of Balzac's "Droll Stories," Rabelais complete, "Mlle. de Maupin," Burton's "Arabian Nights," and the "Decameron" being in constant demand. He could tell literally hundreds of dirty stories, always having a new one on tap, always looking when he told it ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... for its silence, and which certainly in that particular does not so well merit the epithet cold-blooded, by which naturalists distinguish it, as certain bipeds, afflicted with ditch-water on the brain, who take occasion to tap themselves in Fanueil Halls, meeting-houses, and other ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... Harson, warming as he went on; 'Frank's the very devil and all; we'll tap the cask in the corner of the cellar. It's prime stuff, which I've kept for some great occasion; and this is a glorious one. And there's the fat saddle of mutton, hanging in the store room: we'll have that. It'll be the very thing for the half-starved ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... is a little trickle of royalties to me from that. I also contrived to have our mixture made concentrated, got the bottles, which all came sliding down a guarded slant-way, nearly filled with distilled water at one tap, and dripped our magic ingredients in at the next. This was an immense economy of space for the inner sanctum. For the bottling we needed special taps, and these, too, I ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... sir," said Peter, "I must do it;" and he drained the little vessel, with almost as much avidity as his patient, "Fine tap, ain't it, sir?" he continued, as he ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... Oakford and I made our way to the head-quarters of Major-General Sumner, commanding the Second Army Corps, to whom the colonel was ordered to report. We finally found him asleep in his head-quarters wagon. A tap on the canvas top of the wagon quickly brought the response, "Hello! Who's ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... and kissed his hands and feet, waiting to speak until she was spoken to; and he did not speak to her at all, but signed to her with a tap on the head and a gesture to take her place on the rug behind him. Then at a motion from me Ali Baba's two sons brought forward the presents and the medicine-chest, setting them down ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... do," muttered the man, impatiently; "and even that is as much as my place is worth. Now, just tap at yonder door, and they'll ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... put his ear to the heart of the car, and tap its vitals, and count its pulse-beats as a doctor sounds you with his stethoscope. The look on his face was that of a violinist who tries ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... same hour, as two of the laird's servant-maids were engaged in washing in an out-house, there came a slight tap to the door. "Come in," said one of the maids; and the lady entered, dressed, as on the previous night, in green. She swept past them to the inner part of the washing-room; and, seating herself on a low bench, from which, ere her death, she used occasionally to superintend their employment, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... former owner offered, as one of the inducements to purchase, the fact that there was a superb sugar-maple tree in the garden. It was a noble tree, and Butterwick made up his mind that he would tap it some day and manufacture some sugar. However, he never did so until last year. Then he concluded to draw the sap and ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... five months this little seed just grew and did not let anybody know it was there, until one day it began to tap against the sides of the walls of this little room, and every time it did mamma's heart just bounded with joy as she thought of the precious seed growing to be a darling baby—and all inside of her very own body. And one day, after nearly a whole year had passed, the door to the room began to ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... which he had pressed to go faster, put his foot into a rut or hole, and stumbled, and Felix was flung so far forward that he only saved himself from being thrown by clinging to his neck. A slight whizzing sound passed over his head, followed immediately by a sharp tap against ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... be seen in this capacity, among them Prince Louis Napoleon Buonaparte, afterwards Emperor of the French, stood with his constable's baton as a custoder of order. The troops, which had been called from distances, and were billeted in the suburbs, rapidly concentrated at tap of drum and call of bugle. The Duke of Wellington, having the command, so disposed them that, without appearing through the day, they were ready to act at a moment's notice, wherever their presence might be necessary, and so posted that each detachment could readily ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... we can't give a show of our own," says Doctor Kirby, "with you boys and Danny and me and that balloon. What we want is a lot with a high board fence around it, like a baseball grounds, and the chance to tap a gas main." He says he'll be willing to take a chancet on it, even paying the gas company real money to ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... A modest tap at the door silenced the Count, who expected to see the two ladies appear. A little page came in, evidently in a great hurry; but, abashed by the presence of the two gentlemen, he beckoned to a housekeeper, who followed him. Dressed in a blue cloth jacket with short tails, and blue-and-white ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... quieter moods the Boy would sit in the dim lamplight on a footstool beside the Tenor's chair, leaning his head against the arm of it, while the latter smoked, and the tap, tap, tap, of the clematis and honeysuckle on the window pane kept time to the thoughts of each. Long intervals of silence were natural to the Tenor, and it was generally the Boy who broke the charm. He would talk seriously ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Over this rhythm is introduced a piquant march figure, hopping and skipping along as if the musicians were dancing at the head of the marchers. As the procession approaches and the music becomes louder, one hears in the bass an accentuation of the characteristic rhythm, like the tap of a bass drum. When the march has swelled to a forte, it sinks to a brief piano, as if the winding path had led the procession away again. Then there is another brief outburst, this time fortissimo, as if the marchers were quite near; and then a pianissimo, ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... which is terrible now—some say that in London one-third of the water is wasted—begins to lessen; and both water and expense are saved. If you will only think, you will see one reason why. If a woman leaves a high-pressure tap running, she will flood her place and her neighbour's too. She will be like the magician's servant, who called up the demon to draw water for him; and so he did: but when he had begun he would not stop, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... doctors having recommended him on a hot day to go about in a growler with both windows up. However, it's a bad thing in this world to be too knowing, so though I own I felt a bit curious at times, I never put myself out o' the way to find out what the little game was. One day, I was driving tap to my usual place of dropping him—for by this time we had got into the way of going a regular beat every morning—when I saw a policeman waiting, with a perky sort of look about him, as if he had some job on hand. When the cab stopped out jumped the little ...
— The Cabman's Story - The Mysteries of a London 'Growler' • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tap on my shoulder, and heard a gentle voice say, "Arise, Sir Backsight Forethought;" but in a trice my dream of bliss was shattered—the gentle voice changed into the well-known croak of my servant. "Time to pack your kit on the wagon, sir. Corfy's been up some time now, ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton
... of them were on the same side of the veil with us, and they were rather decent; so we chummed up in the end and Ockley took us all away together. They were jolly lucky in getting Ockley. There I go again! Come on, it's your turn. Has the bathroom tap been mended yet?' ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... upon impartial terms, every mortal, from King Solomon to the idiot pauper, must sooner or later pass to immortality. When a fit applicant, after the preliminary probation, kneels with fainting sense and pallid brow before the veil of the unutterable Unknown, and the last pulsations of his heart tap at the door of eternity, and he reverentially asks admission to partake in the secrets shrouded from profane vision, the infinite Hierophant directs the call to be answered by Death, the speechless and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... oxidation by heat, and change of any sort; and which, therefore, I may heat in the atmosphere without any flux. I bend the wire so as to make the ends cross: these I make hot by means of the blowpipe, and then, by giving them a tap with a hammer, I shall make them into one piece. Now that the pieces are united, I shall have great difficulty in pulling them apart, though they are joined only at the point where the two cylindrical surfaces came together. ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... There was a tap at the door. Thrusting the letters quickly in her desk, she closed the lid, securely locked it, and put the key in the ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... our friend Audley Egerton. You have just had a glimpse of the real being that struggles under the huge copper;—you have heard the hollow sound of the rich man's coffers under the tap of Baron Levy's friendly knuckle—heard the strong man's heart give out its dull warning sound to the scientific ear of Dr. F vanishes the separate existence, lost again in the flame that heats the boiler, and the smoke that curls into air ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... Margaret Wakefield, bursting with opinions about politics and woman's suffrage; pretty Jessie Lynch, and the Williams sisters whose dark lustrous eyes seemed to see beyond the outer crust of things. Last of all, after a discreet interval, would come a soft, deprecating tap at the door, and Otoyo Sen, most charming of little Japanese ladies, with a beaming, apologetic smile, would glide into the room on her ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... pleased his auditors, and a deputation waited on him to request he would print it. "Gentlemen, I thank you for the compliment; but I must give the same answer that I have given on other like occasions; and that answer is—The tap is out." "The Archbishop of York," said he, speaking of a late primate, "preached one day at Carlisle; I was present, and felt muzzy and half asleep; when on a sudden I was roused, and began to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... nice get-up to come and see me in, to be sure!" was his greeting to a newspaper writer who called to tap him on art, clad in a brown jacket, blue trousers, and decked with a red necktie. "I must request you to leave this place instantly! These scribblers, rag-smudges, incroyable! Why, it is perfectly preposterous! Did you ever hear such dissonance? ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... tap the country lying behind the Julier Pass, but, as no railway helps here, the tours entail a lot of climbing and a drive on ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... the first to tap the wealth of the gorgeous East, into her lap fell the stream of gold from that quarter. The secret of her windfall was the small bulk and enormous value of her cargoes. From Malabar she fetched pepper and ginger, from Ceylon cinnamon and pearls, from Bengal opium, the only known ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... the potential fertility of its soil or for other causes, has held out promise of some day becoming populated. Along the railway the population has then flowed. In forcing its way westward each company in its course has sought to tap with its lines the richest strips of territory: all alike endeavoured to obtain a share of the traffic originating from a point where a thriving town was already established or topographical conditions pointed ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... One great tap-root of our national increase has been the growth of self-government, or government by deliberative bodies, representing opposed principles and conflicting interests. With the system of self-government has grown the habit—not of tolerance precisely, for Englishmen ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... had my fingers round the thrapple o' that leein' scoundrel on the tap of the coach! Gie me your hand, Captain Smith—it's all a mistake. I'll set it right in two minutes. Come with me to Chatterton's rooms—ye'll make him the happiest man in England. He's wud wi' love—mad with affection, as a body may say. He thought you had run ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... but—oh, confound it!" A faint tap at the door was followed by the entrance of a ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... and fury of the issue and division of the goods, the sombre figures in the background have scarcely moved. Not one has ventured to approach the center where the bucks are at work, measuring off the cloth, etc.; they are waiting for the tap of the bell, when they will receive just what the head man chooses to give them. There is no system of exchange there; it is take what you get or get nothing. In a great many cases they do not use the goods at all, but openly offer them for sale ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... censure by venturing, without his wife's authority, to lean forward and tap on the door-frame with the butt of his whip. At the sound, a shrill voice called instantly from the region of the stove pipe, "Clem! Clementina? Go to the front dooa! The'e's somebody knockin'." The sound of feet, soft and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... put out to sea and again we were living the life of seiners, having it hard and easy in streaks. There were the times when we went along for a week and did not do a tap but eat, sleep, stand a trick at the wheel, a watch to the mast-head, and skylark around the deck, and read, or have a quiet game of draw or whist or seven-up below. But again there were times when we were on fish, and our skipper being a driver, ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... ale tap' is an allusion, under cover of the similarity in sound between the words ale and aisle, to the Church, of which it was dangerous at the time to be an avowed follower; and so the members were cautioned that indiscretion might lead to ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... ask no questions, sir. And when the hares was done, they rolled the red-hot clay out, gave it a tap, and it cracked from end to end, an' come off like a shell with the skin on it, and leaving the hares all smoking hot. I never ate anything so ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... told the story of the mighty lance. This had been the lance of a famous Arikaree warrior, Won-ga-tap. Some years back, maybe seven or eight, the Mandans and the Arikarees had met on horses near the Mandan towns, and had fought. The Mandans chased the Arikarees, but after the chase the brother of Mahtotohpa did not ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... to be hidden by a woman who wants to vanish through the earth, dissolve in air, become a shade, become dust, become a corpse; if she can only escape from where she is and from being what she is. Then Irene, with a light tap, dropping her cup on ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... books. In other pathological cases, insane delusions, for example, or psychopathic obsessions, the source is yet to seek, but by analogy it also should be in subliminal regions which improvements in our methods may yet conceivably put on tap. There lies the mechanism logically to be assumed—but the assumption involves a vast program of work to be done in the way of verification, in which the religious experiences of man must play ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... seemed to him a provocation and an attraction. They were the defects of her qualities—of her courage, candour, generosity, affection. Carmichael leant upon a stile, and recalled the carriage of her head, the quick flash of her eye, the tap of her foot, the fascination of her manner. She was free from the affectations, gaucheries, commonplaces, wearinesses of many good women he had known. St. Theresa had been the woman enshrined in the tabernacle of his heart, but ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... of the first settlers, who, having intermarried with the Widow Gardner, is now resting from his labors, at the great age of ninety-four. The white-bearded corpse, which was his spirit's earthly garniture, now lies beneath yonder coffin-lid. Many a cask of ale and cider is on tap, and many a draught of spiced wine and aqua-vitae has been quaffed. Else why should the bearers stagger, as they tremulously uphold the coffin?—and the aged pall-bearers, too, as they strive to walk solemnly beside ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... This camp is gettin' healthy. Adjourned!" And the meeting was brought to a formal conclusion by a tap of the ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... in the velvet robe, twined the pearls in her golden hair, and clasped the jewelled girdle round her slender waist. One snow-white rose was pinned in her bosom. Never had she looked so wildly beautiful. But still Lord Guildford came not. At last a tap ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... the sound of gentlemanly boots in the passage, and raised our heads, looking at each other. There was a tap at Marcas' door—he never took the key out of the lock—and we heard ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... candle-flame was fluttering and flaring, in articulo, in the silver socket. But the fire was still bright and cheery; so he popped the extinguisher on the socket, and almost at the same time there came a tap at his door, and a sort of crescendo "hush-sh-sh!" Once more my uncle was sitting up, scared and perturbed, in his bed. He recollected, however, that he had bolted his door; and such inveterate materialists are we in the midst of our spiritualism, that this reassured him, ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... he went to the tavern, where they engaged rooms. Fernando and Sukey retired to their rooms, while Terrence remained in the tap-room, where there was a crowd of Marylanders. He began telling them a most horrible story of the impressment of himself and his friends by a British vessel and of their recent escape. He stated that they had been closely ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... much accounted of. It was reckoned effeminate to require more than two meals a day, though, just as in the verdurer's lodge at home, there was a barrel of ale on tap with drinking horns beside it in the hall, and on a small round table in the window a loaf of bread, to which city luxury added a cheese, and a jug containing sack, with some silver cups beside it, and a pitcher of fair water. Master Headley, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... figure in the annals of mankind—unparalleled for three good reasons: first, because he was a man known to his contemporaries in a halo of almost historical pomp, and to his remote descendants with an indecent familiarity, like a tap-room comrade; second, because he has outstripped all competitors in the art or virtue of a conscious honesty about oneself; and, third, because, being in many ways a very ordinary person, he has ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said; "young men in my office talking of fighting, as if it were the tap-room of a public house? George Weston! I did ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... no particular observation on the car in front as it sped along to and through the northern edge of the City and beyond. But Millwaters woke to action as their own car progressed up Whitechapel Road, and suddenly he gave a warning word to the barrister and a smart tap on the window behind their driver. The car came to a halt by the curb; and Millwaters, slipping out, pushed some money into the man's hand and drew Perkwite amongst the people who were crowding the sidewalk. ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... dunnest of all duns! thou daily Knockest at doors, at first with modest tap, Like a meek tradesman when approaching palely Some splendid debtor he would take by sap: But oft denied, as Patience 'gins to fail, he Advances with exasperated rap, And (if let in) insists, in terms unhandsome, On ready money, or "a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the door and knocked, but nobody came. Again rap-tap-tap; still nobody; and at last she lifted the latch ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... A tap at the door came, and without taking my eyes off the stairs I opened it. Burke slid in and gulped ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... handsomely furnished parlour, and reclined himself upon a sofa, thinking still, and with a pleasurable emotion that warmed his bosom, of the success of his expedient to draw custom. He had been lying down, it seemed to him, but a few moments, when a tap at the door, to which he responded with a loud "come in," was followed by the entrance of a thin, pale, haggard-looking creature, her clothes soiled, and hanging loosely, and in tatters about her attenuated ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... resort, his hands in his pockets, his brow wrinkled, his mouth set. He was getting some vague comfort out of a good cigar, but it was no panacea for the ill which affected him. Every once in a while he would clinch his fingers and tap his foot—signs of the stirring mental process he was undergoing. His whole nature was vigorously and powerfully shaken up, and he was finding what limits the mind has to endurance. He drank more brandy and soda than ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... about a quarter to six, a little tap came to Mr. Audley's door, and Angela stood there, saying, with a most serious face, 'Please, Mr. Audley, Cherry wants to know whether you don't think something must have happened.' And going upstairs, he found the poor young deputy in a nervous agony of despair at the non-return of any ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... inn was regarded with a jealous eye. So well known was the beauteous Marian, "the fair maid of Windleshaw," that the present residence of the cavaliers, if such they were, was the worst that could have been chosen for concealment; inasmuch as her fame drew many customers to the tap who otherwise would have eschewed so humble a halting-place as that ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... did not permit her to listen very closely to the remarks that fell one by one from Poiret's lips like water dripping from a leaky tap. When once this elderly babbler began to talk, he would go on like clockwork unless Mlle. Michonneau stopped him. He started on some subject or other, and wandered on through parenthesis after parenthesis, till he came to regions as remote as possible from his premises ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... goes on well, my friend. Fiesco could not do better;" and rising upon his toes to tap Olivier ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... time that you turned on your tap of tenderness, it was all over for me, my dear friend. Sometimes we would embrace for five minutes, in one interminable kiss, one of those kisses which make lovers close their eyes, as if part of it would escape through ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... to have got off that subject altogether. [There comes a portentous tap at the door.] Good ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... I perceived my patient, who I was informed was an old post-boy, sitting in the settle of the tap-room, quite recovered; and when I was pointed out to him by his master, as his deliverer from a watery grave, the fellow attacked me in the most violent and abusive manner, and called down horrid imprecations upon my head for having saved him from ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... still the abandonment of it by the Company might be attended by more serious loss to the trade than that which is incurred in its retention, Undoubtedly the Saskatchewan, if abandoned by the Hudson Bay Company, would be speedily occupied by traders from the Missouri, who would also tap the trade of the richer fur-producing districts of Lesser Slave Lake and the North. The products-of the Saskatchewan proper principally consists of provisions, including pemmican and dry meat, buffalo robes and leather, linx, cat, and wolf skins. The ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... tea, he had accomplished what she had fervently wished for the night she had met him—he succeeded, by several easy moves, in isolating her from her aunt, and, notwithstanding her admiration, her desire to tap with her knuckles the metal of her idol and listen for a ring of hollowness, she was alarmed. Yet, perversely, she knew that he would not exhibit his paces before his wife—naturally a disinterested spectator—or before her aunt, who was hardly "intimate" enough. The long-desired hour found ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... wheat or corn either, after being cultivated two or three years in castor beans has borne great crops. This has been attributed to the completeness and the long time the crop shades the ground, and also to the long tap root of the plant, which makes it a crop of all others, suited to dry soils, and hot climate. After preparing the land as for corn, it should be laid off so the plants will stand, for your latitude, five feet each way. Three or four seeds are usually planted, but when the beans are five ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... scramble and swing and knock their heads against the glass, they seem to have no purpose—something senseless inspires them. One gets tired of watching them, as they amble round the lantern and blindly tap as if for admittance, one large toad being the most besotted of any and shouldering his way through the rest. Ah, but what's that? A terrifying volley of pistol-shots rings out—cracks sharply; ripples spread— silence laps smooth ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... the afternoon, the bell rang with an important-sounding tinkle. Immediately after, the door shut with an important-sounding slam. The footsteps, clattering across the room to the show case, had an important-sounding tap. And the little girl, who looked inquisitively across the counter at Maida, had ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... extirpation of that noble old chimney, still to this day my wife goes about it, with my daughter Anna's geological hammer, tapping the wall all over, and then holding her ear against it, as I have seen the physicians of life insurance companies tap a man's chest, and then incline over for the echo. Sometimes of nights she almost frightens one, going about on this phantom errand, and still following the sepulchral response of the chimney, round and round, as if it were leading her ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... and paid the debts of everybody in jail. We hung lanterns on the tree in the evening, set off rockets, and kindled bonfires. John Hancock kept open house, with ladies and gentlemen feasting in his parlors, and pipes of wine on tap in the ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... growing reputation who illustrated his own work, was making a series of pencil sketches for a romance partly finished. The story was as joyous and elusive as sunlight, and until to-day his sketches had held the same quality. Now he could not tap the reservoir from which he had taken the wind-blown hair and smiling eyes ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... powers, stones into bread, but also into motor cars, fat bank balances and lands and houses. Such are heading to disaster, for they are working against the combined Spiritual Power of the Universe. The Enemy of Souls offers those who have learned to tap the inexhaustible Power of the Universe, and who have discovered that they are sons of God, wealth, power, pomp, the applause of men—the glittering things that perish—if only they will mis-use their God-given power. Like Jesus, they must refuse. They must put service before self, ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... tap, tap; tap, tap, tap," and a pause. Then it was repeated, and its meaning could not be doubted. As plain as human ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... Sabbaths; and the Session, holding that it might be quite as well for people to pray for their young Queen at church, and then quietly drink her health when they got home, as to grow glorious in her behalf in taverns and tap-rooms, refused to alter their day. Believing that, though essentially in the right, they were yet politically in the wrong, and that a plausible case might be made out against them by the newspaper press, I waited on ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... from the gong. But the instrument is now as it was at first, the current again flows, and the hammer strikes the gong, only to fly back a second time. In this way, as long as the button is pressed by the operator, the hammer will continue to tap the bell and give a ringing sound. Press-buttons are of various patterns, and either affixed to the wall or inserted in the handle of an ordinary bell-pull, as shown ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... of anything (you would have said) but glass into delicate carafes and sparkling vases. Meanwhile the sweat streams from them in rivulets, a small Aquarius ever and anon fetches tumblers of water from a tap outside or glasses of red wine, and a soft voice at your ear, in whatever language you happen to be, supplies a commentary on the proceedings. Beware of listening to it with too much interest, for it is this voice which, when the glass-blowing flags, is proposing to sell you ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... the long, wide-open windows. The verandah was a dozen feet from the ground, and the dark passage below, leading to the gate, was deserted. At the other end sat the watchman with his lantern, presumably asleep. Liu had not heard his drum tap for an hour. A shaft of moonlight penetrated the room, and a light wind blowing in from outside gently stirred the mosquito curtains over the bed. Liu tiptoed to the bed, and with infinite care drew the netting aside and stood surveying his victim. Rivers ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... had scarcely dawned when Mr. Fitzwarren stole from the bed of his beloved wife, to count over the cash, and settle the business for that day. He had just entered the compting-house, and seated himself at the desk, when somebody came, tap, tap, at the door. "Who's there?" says Mr. Fitzwarren. "A friend," answered the other. "What friend can come at this unseasonable time?" "A real friend is never unseasonable," answered the other. "I come to bring you good news of your ship Unicorn." The merchant bustled up in such an hurry ...
— The History of Sir Richard Whittington • T. H.
... The tap-room was empty when Barbara entered but as she sat down at the table, the door opposite opened, and a short, foreign-looking woman came out. She stepped dead on seeing the girl: Her face ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... refrigerating plants become that artificially cooled water is on tap in many public places in the great cities. Theatres are cooled during hot weather by a portion of the same machinery that supplies the heat in winter, and it is not improbable that every large establishment, private, ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... by a tap at my door, and a pretty piping child's voice asking, in broken German, to come in. On giving the usual permission, Thekla entered, carrying a great lovely boy of two years old, or thereabouts, who had only his little night-shirt on, and was all flushed with sleep. ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... John sighed mournfully as he aided Barnabas to his feet, "and 't were only a love-tap, so to speak,—this is what comes o' your ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... A tap on the door announced Mrs. Dressel, garbed for conquest, and bestowing on her brilliant person the last anxious touches of the artist reluctant to part from ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... took part in the maple-sugar manufacture. The men used first to tap the trees, and then boil the sap over wood fires that they would build in the neighborhood of the sugar bush, as ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 22, April 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Peter Blood sat back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, frowning. Time moved on. Came a tap at the door, and an elderly negro slave presented himself. Would his excellency receive ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... the rest, in an under tone, with a little bit of scandal about a neighbouring Tabby, whom she had seen coming home in a sad condition about five o'clock in the morning, when she, Miss Violet, was taking her early walk;—just at this moment there sounded a tap at the door, and presently in came Diana, the youngest sister, bearing in her hand more cakes for tea, and in the plate with them a note addressed to Miss Rose,—the next to Violet in age, and by most people considered the beauty of the family. Violet took ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown
... a gentle tap on the door. Hermione went to it and opened it. Selim stood outside with a ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... of distant musketry, and I hurried out. It came from the north, and it was languidly echoed from Caesar's Camp. Tack-tap, tack-tap—each shot echoed a little muffled from the hills. Tack-tap, tack-tap, tack, tack, tack, tack, tap—as if the devil was hammering nails into the hills. Then a hurricane of tacking, running round all Ladysmith, running together into a scrunching roar. From the hill ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... Whose sound through wood and dale is heard. I tap, tap, tap, with noisy glee, To test the bark of every tree. I saw a rainbow stretching gay, Across the sky, the other day; And some one said, "Good-bye to rain, The woodpecker ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... jackasses, boys, and dogs occupied the rest of the square, and were differently engaged. At this moment a sergeant ran into the square, exclaiming, "el Commandante!" The military guard fell into their ranks at the tap of the drum, the idlers and boys took up a strong position in one corner, the jackasses were cudgelled into a retreat, while the dogs, like the pigs in New York, being free of the city, provided for themselves. A moment or two elapsed after these preparations had been ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... he spent money on his rather contemptuous nieces. He sent them gorgeous fans, and watch bracelets, and velvet bags. He took two expensive rooms at a downtown hotel, and there was something more tear-compelling than grotesque about the way he gloated over the luxury of a separate ice-water tap in the bathroom. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... streams and coasts in a cleanly and decent condition—whether primitive or adapted in one way or another to man's use—together with the communities of wild creatures that belong there, is quite as practical and urgent as their right to usable tap water or to a share in the Gross National Product. For upon the retention of these ancient realities future human sanity ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... is come for a great big change." He emphasised the word with a tap of his cue upon the floor. "We can't play our game the way we've been playing it the last three years. We've been hammering wheat down and down and down, till we've got it below the cost of production; and now she won't go any further with all the hammering in the world. The other fellows, the ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... feeble tap. There was no doubt about Trent being in. Inspection revealed the fact that the prefect was working and evidently ill-attuned to conversation. He wore a haggard look and his eye, as it caught that of the ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... one another in such wise that the result is universal order. And if we take any part of the whole system—such as that of organic nature on this planet—to examine in more detail, we find that it appears to be instinct with contrivance. So to speak, wherever we tap organic nature, it seems to flow with purpose; and, as we shall presently see, upon the monistic theory the evidence of purpose is here in no way attenuated by a full acceptance of any of the 'mechanical' explanations furnished by science. Now, these large and important facts of observation ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... tap Virgie gently responded "come in," and a low cry of delight escaped the humble woman's lips as she opened the door, and then ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... than Thor or Odin in his battles; when a Kiawaqu', or Jotun, rises to the clouds to oppose him, Glooskap's head touches the stars, and scorning to slay so mean a foe like an equal, he kills him contemptuously with a light tap of his bow. But in the family circle he is the most benevolent of gentle heroes, and has his oft-repeated little standard jokes. Yet he never, like the Manobozho-Hiawatha of the Chippewas, becomes silly, cruel, or fantastic. He has his roaring revel with a brother giant, even as Thor ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... paths; the whole way through the forest, we formed part of a jostling caravan along the Castrovillari-Morano track—how different from the last time I had traversed this route, when nothing broke the silence save a chaffinch piping among the branches or the distant tap of ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... their cargoes of Manitoba wheat. To-day the Mohawk depression through the northern Appalachians diverts some of Canada's trade from the Great Lakes to the Hudson, just as in the seventeenth century it enabled the Dutch at New Amsterdam and later the English at Albany to tap the fur trade of Canada's frozen forests. Formerly a line of stream and portage, it carries now the Erie Canal and New York Central Railroad.[2] Similarly the narrow level belt of land extending from the mouth of the Hudson ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... neither in a building or a villager of Cagnes. There is a Parisienne—" And I told him about Mademoiselle Simone. He was silent, and his fingers drummed upon the table, tipity-tap, tipity-tap. "Show me your sketches," ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... plain.' 'See, the old woman chides her; she deserves it; She'll not pick up admirers if she plays My Lady Cool so grandly. Watch mamma. The hook is nicely baited; where are all The gudgeons it should lure? I marvel not Mamma is in a fluster; tap, tap, tap, See her fan go! No strategy, no effort, No dandy-killing shot from languid eyes, On that girl's part! And ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... Andreevitch kept all his money in a great wrought-iron coffer, which stood under the head of his bed. The key of this coffer was intrusted to Yuditch. Every evening as he went to bed Ivan Andreevitch used to bid him open the coffer in his presence, used to tap in turn each of the tightly filled bags with a stick, and every Saturday he would untie the bags with Yuditch, and carefully count over the money. Vassily heard of all these doings, and burned with eagerness to overhaul the sacred coffer. In the course of ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... to him, your excellency," she ejaculated, gasping after each word. "That Amalia Ludwigovna, ah! Lida, Kolya, hands on your hips, make haste! Glissez, glissez! pas de basque! Tap with your heels, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... began now to look at each other, nod, wink significantly, and tap their fingers against their foreheads. There was a whisper, also, about securing the gun, and keeping the old fellow from doing mischief, at the very suggestion of which the self-important man in the cocked hat retired with some precipitation. At this critical ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... Nicol Brinn began to tap the fender again with his foot. "Let me think," he replied. "I recognize that you must regard my reticence as peculiar, Mr. Harley, but if ever a man had reason to look before he leaped, I am ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... the region of woodland, the former of these eminently sociable plants is the chief agent in the production of peat. Fresh leaves are always succeeding one to the other round the central tap-root, the lower ones soon decay, and in tracing a root downwards in the peat, the leaves, yet holding their place, can be observed passing through every stage of decomposition, till the whole becomes blended in one confused mass. The Astelia ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... you!" in the same whisper. Before he could tap at the door, then darkening in the receding light, it opened suddenly, and a big Irish woman bounced out, and then whisked in again, calling to some one in an inner room: "Here he is, Mrs. Mill'r," ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... another tap on our hero's shoulder, as he was looking into another window, and another nicely dressed young man said heartily: "Why, Ben, my boy, when did you ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... she had risen and was resting in her chair, feeling weaker and yet much stronger than before; waiting till she could dare show her face to Miss Collins; when a little low tap was heard at the front door. Company? But Diana had noticed no step and heard no wheels. However, there was no escape for her if it were company. She waited, and the tap was repeated. I don't know what about it this ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... rather shaky sort of tap at the door. It does not all at once reach the rather deaf ears of the little old lady and tall, still older gentleman who are seated in their usual arm-chairs, one with his newspaper by the window, the other with her netting by the fire, in the exceedingly neat—neat, indeed, is no ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... monk's direction, and made for a cell; but the doors were pretty close to one another, and it seems he mistook; for just as he was about to tap, he heard his old friend crying to him in an agitated whisper, "Nay! nay! nay!" He turned, and there was the monk at his cell-door, in a strange state of anxiety, going up and down and beating the air double-handed, like a bottom sawyer. Gerard ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade |
