"Tape" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... result in proportion to the magnitude of the sacrifice of money and life,—if a succession of incompetent generals in command,—if critical military opportunities neglected and enormous strategic blunders committed,—if indecision, nepotism, and red tape at home, envy, want of unity, and incapacity among officers, and unnecessary and inexcusable hardship among the privates,—if all this declares the decadence of a Government, then was the sun of England hastening to its setting during the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... National Bank of Poland's target range. Poland's economic performance could improve further if the country addresses some of the remaining deficiencies in its business environment. An inefficient commercial court system, a rigid labor code, bureaucratic red tape, and persistent low-level corruption keep the private sector from performing up to its full potential. Rising demands to fund health care, education, and the state pension system present a challenge to the Polish government's effort to ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... getting rid of the disease is to confine the ear. A piece of strong calico must be procured, six or eight inches in width, and sufficiently long to reach round the head and meet under the jaw. Along each side of it must be a running piece of tape, and a shorter piece sewed at the centre of each of the ends. By means of these the cap may be drawn tightly over the head, above the eyes, and likewise round the neck behind the ears, so as perfectly ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... Billy" again opened fire with energy. I was at the tailor's on the main street, and the shells were falling just round his shop. "Thirty-eight, thirty-four," said the little Scot measuring. "There's the Dutch church gone. Forty-two, sixteen. There's the bank. Just hold the tape, mon, while I go and look. Oh, it's only the Town Hall!" Among other shells one came in painted with the Free State colours, and engraved "With the compliments of the season." It is the second thus adorned, but whereas the first had been empty, this was charged with plum-pudding. Can it be a Dutchman ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... There were a dozen of these states, but the Grangers who had been elected were not permitted to take office. The incumbents refused to get out. It was very simple. They merely charged illegality in the elections and wrapped up the whole situation in the interminable red tape of the law. The Grangers were powerless. The courts were in the hands of ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... He ran tape through the charger to impregnate electronic setting that would guide the ship on its course to Crystal City. "We were on our way, there, anyhow," he mused. "I hope they've improved the ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... object of vital import could be shaken free from its bonds of red tape; and this one was saddled with an incubus, in the bill for the "construction of one hundred gunboats." The scheme to build that number of wooden vessels of small size seemed equally short-sighted and impracticable. They could only be built on inland rivers and creeks, to prevent ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... stood beside the stove. Then, standing with his left foot wrapped about his right ankle and his face full of suppressed eagerness, he felt in each pocket of his waistcoat, and produced first a knife, then a tape measure, a pincushion, a bunch of keys, and last a large, worn copper cent. It was smooth with age, but its almost obliterated date still showed that it had been struck the year of ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... into your head? Did anyone tell you about Beth's giving away her things?" asked Laurie soberly, as Amy laid a bit of red tape, with sealing wax, a taper, and a standish ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... now dragged along the turf until we reached the camp, where it was carefully measured with a tape, and showed an exact length of 12 feet 3 inches from snout to end ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... who like to hear a noble Briton's praise! I tell of valiant deeds one wrought in the Century's early days: When all the legions of Red Tape against him tore in vain, Man of stout will, brave ROWLAND ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... chest measurement, waist measurement, any peculiarity of structure, any mole, cicatrix, birth-mark and so on. I began to take these notes at the Major's own instance, for purposes of identification on the field of battle. Little did I dream, as I passed the tape around my admired friend, that his proportions would ever be the ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Miss Pimpernell hastily interposed. She hated to hear us arguing and bickering as was generally our way when we met. "Please bring the measuring tape, Frank," she said, "you will find it on that bench in the corner; and come and see how long my wreath is. It should be just nineteen feet, but I'm afraid ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the Duke at Ghent. This was extremely obliging upon their part, for if Valentine Dale were a "slow old gentleman," he was keen, caustic, and rapid, as compared to John Rogers. A formalist and a pedant, a man of red tape and routine, full of precedents and declamatory commonplaces which he mistook for eloquence, honest as daylight and tedious as a king, he was just the time-consumer for Alexander's purpose. The wily Italian listened with profound attention ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the Little Lad, otherwise Lieutenant Riley, led his party at a careful crawl and in wide-spaced single file out to the listening-post, while Brock and the Captain crawled out with a couple of men, a white tape, and a handful of pegs apiece to mark out the line of the new trenches converging from the outside ends of the curved main trench to ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... activity about the hotel as the hour for the contest arrived. Noddy's car seemed the finest of the six that lined up at the starting tape. The motor boys had drawn a position next to the bully ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... you would like to see among his native mountains. And yet he is but a dignified sort of pedlar, and would be very happy to sell you a dozen or so of table napkins, Alpine handkerchiefs, or a few pieces of tape. ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... sleeping they walked about the streets till six in the morning, when they returned and were admitted. They stated their business, inquired for the children, produced photographs and, after a little delay, Turiddu and Gennaro came running to them naked. It took some days of red tape, including a legal act whereby Corrado constituted himself their second father, before they were allowed to remove the boys. At last on the 11th January they took possession of them and dressed them ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... saw that it was not a doll; for out of one end of the box—an end that was open—extended a handful of long, slender, green stems. The gift was flowers, tied, not with common string, but with a flat, green tape which looked fully as expensive as ribbon, and nearly as handsome. "Oh, gee!"—this as he seized the stems, not being able to wait, he was so excited, and tried to draw the flowers from the box. "Oh, Cis, d'y' s'pose these ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... begun. In hospitals, or where bare floors are to be found, the patterns may be drawn with chalk. In carpeted rooms, which by the way are less suited for the work than plain boards or parquet floors, a piece of half-inch wide white tape may be laid in the required pattern, first in a straight line, later, as proficiency is gained, in curved, figure-of-eight, or angular patterns. The patient must be made to walk on the line, putting one foot directly in front of the other, with the heel of the forward foot touching the toe of ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... I'm expecting him back here every minute. He's gone over to the Department of Tape, to see what can be done there. Ah! here ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... She produced a tape-line and made measurements, then she stood with the tip of her tongue touching her upper lip. "I do wish Marion could see it," she said. "She will never believe what a fascinatingly funny place ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... in a sort of whoop. "Oh! Excuse me. I can't help it! It's the thought of you here," she said excitedly. "I know silence is golden, but there are tibes—— And to see Miss Ethel going round on her hands and dees with a tape beasure as if it was only an ordinary spring cleaning——" Never had the catarrh been so marked and so marked in its effects on her m's ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... from it a belt and holster, from which he removed a recent-model regulation stunner. "This is as powerful a weapon as we have here so far, except for the heavy stuff. I hope we never have to use any of that—clearing it for use is a lot of red tape." He looked up and saw the cold expression on Rynason's face. "Of course, I hope we don't have to use the ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... future. In the East, where Common Sense, not Fashion, rules dress, men, who have a protuberance to be concealed, wear petticoats and women wear trousers. The feminine article is mostly baggy but sometimes, as in India, collant- tight. A quasi-sacred part of it is the inkle, tape or string, often a most magnificent affair, with tassels of pearl and precious stones; and "laxity in the trouser-string" is equivalent to the loosest conduct. Upon the subject of "libas," "sarwal" and its variants the curious reader will consult Dr. Dozy's "Dictionnaire ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... writing her a letter just before you came in—informal, you know, to put her out of her misery. If I had waited for the governor to let her know in the usual course of red tape we should never have got anywhere. Also one to the nephew, telling him about his twenty pounds. I believe in humane treatment on these occasions. The governor would write them a legal letter with so many "hereinbefores" in it that they ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... in his family, I believe. Life is mighty uncertain. We don't know what minute we may be called. I'm a forehanded kind of man, and while his wedding-suit was being made I just stepped into the tailor's and ran it over with a tape-measure, so's to get some idea of his size. You'd hardly believe it, but I've got a black walnut casket at the shop that'll fit him as exact as if it had been built for him. It was the luckiest thing. An odd size, too, ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... new dispensation took the form of trying to draw the colonists together into towns, of reviving the Navigation Acts, of levying taxes on their infant commerce, and in general of tying fetters of official red tape on the brawny limbs of a primitive and natural civilization. The colony was accused of being the refuge of outlaws and traitors, rogues and heretics; and Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia, one of the proprietors under the Model Constitution, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... de l'Ourcq, and watched it stretching like a steel tape to meet the Canal Saint—Denis and the Canal Saint-Martin in the great basin at La Villette—a construction which, finished in 1809, was the making of La Villette as a commercial and industrial entrepot. I meant to walk to Bondy, and after a botanic stroll in its beautiful forest to retrace my ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... the two men glanced from time to time over his shoulder, and down towards the dusty high road which lay across the arid plain beneath them like a tape. The country here is barren and stone-ridden, but to the west, where Torrijos gleamed whitely on the plain, the earth was green with lush corn and heavy blades of maize, now springing into ear. Where the two ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... voyage was the two days' sports, and here Shafto distinguished himself by winning a severe obstacle race; he was a nimble, muscular youth, who, thanks to school games and the gymnasium, climbed, ran, and leapt with inspirited agility, and when at last he touched the winning tape, breathless but exultant, there was a spontaneous outburst ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... the preparation of the plans accompanying this paper will not be amiss. The methods pursued in making the surveys of the inhabited pueblos were essentially the same throughout. The outer wall of each separate cluster was run with a compass and a tape measure, the lines being closed and checked upon the corner from which the beginning was made, so that the plan of each group stands alone, and no accumulation of error is possible. The stretched tapeline afforded a basis for estimating ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... the day went forward in the usual way with all the red tape, the cool formalities, as if some trifling matter were at stake, and those who loved Mark sat with aching hearts and waited. The Severns in their corner sat for the most part with bended heads and praying hearts. The witnesses for the prosecution were most of them companions of the dead man, ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... of whose stainless honor I have been so proud, would consent to be a party to such an act of anarchy. I have insisted, as you well know, stoutly holding my position though the long delay has made me sick at heart, that when the long routine of official red tape had at length unrolled itself and the case should finally come to the President, justice would be done and the ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... was unwell this morning. The court, therefore, took a recess until three o'clock. Captain Edgerton's case was disposed of last evening. Colonel Mihalotzy's will come before us to-day. A court-martial proceeds always with due respect to red tape. The questions to witnesses are written out; the answers are written down; the statement of the accused is in writing, and the defense of the accused's counsel is written; so that the court snaps its fingers at time, as if it were of no consequence, and seven men, against ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... rudely on his dream. Traffic was congested with the immigrant movement; cars were side-tracked at nameless places for indefinite periods, but stock had to be fed and cared for; bonds had to be provided, and all the conditions of departmental red tape complied with when the effects entered the United States, for in 1882 the All-Canadian railway was a young giant fighting for life with the mighty rocks of the North Shore route, and railway traffic with the New West was, perforce, ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... expect to work steadily at his trade, even if he were able to work at all. He looked about him for somebody to manage the affair for him. Lawyer Penhallow undertook the business with alacrity; but the alacrity was all on his side, for there were thousands of yards of red tape to be unrolled at Washington before anything in that sort could be done. At that conservative stage of our national progress, it was not possible for a man to obtain a pension simply because he happened to know the brother of a man who knew another ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the victory. They slunk from the cabin, backing out as if they expected him to rush them. Harrigan locked the door and started to tend the captain. He washed McTee to the waist, cleansed the cut places carefully, and covered them with narrow strips of adhesive tape which he found in a small medicine chest. As the heavier breathing of the captain indicated that he was about to recover his senses, Harrigan performed the same services for himself. It was slow work, for now that the stimulus of action was gone, his weakness grew on him ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... tape-measure and, beginning at memory, pass carefully over the occiputal bone to the base of the brain in the region of love of home and offspring and you will see that, while the hen suffers much in comparison with the statement in the relative size of sublimity, ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... breasted the tape A cynic emitted this jape: "Pray notice, old son, 'Tisn't Oxford that's won, But Utah, Bowdoin and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... Tamper intrigi, enmiksigxi pri. Tan tani. Tan tanilo. Tan (the skin) brunigi. Tangent tangento. Tangible palpebla. Tangle (entangle) enmiksigi. Tank akvujo. Tankard pokalo, kaliko. Tanner tanisto. Tannin tanino. Tantamount to egalvalora al. Tap bateti, frapeti. Tap krano. Tape kotonrubando. Tape worm solitero. Taper kandeleto. Taper maldikigi. Tapestry, to hang with tapeti. Tapestry tapeto. Tar gudri. Tar gudro. Tardy malfrua, malrapida. Target celtabulo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... draftsmen, all of whom would be sneered at by the old engineer as "non-producers." For the same reason, modern management, with its minute time study and a managing department in which each operation is carefully planned, with its many written orders and its apparent red tape, looks like a waste of money; while the ordinary management in which the planning is mainly done by the workmen themselves, with the help of one or two foremen, seems simple and ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... the hour. Too early to dine—besides there were things to be done first. From a highly decorated vase that stood upon a particularly restless over-mantel, he drew a small packet of letters and untied the tape that circled them. They were written in a careless sprawling hand, with lots of ink and little thought. They were very full of 'darlings' and 'dearests' and 'how much do you love me's.' They were very, very rapturous—they were very, very silly. ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... tape, a dead language, and a horde of shysters! I'm afraid of law in this land; we're too new and too far away from things. It puts too much power in too few hands. Heretofore we men up here have had recourse ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... row is in several compartments. There is a saint in armour on horseback, life-size, killing a dragon, and a queen who seems to have been leading the dragon by a piece of red tape buckled round its neck—unless, indeed, the dragon is supposed to have been leading the queen. The queen still holds the tape and points heavenward. Next to this there is a very nice saint on horse-back, who is giving a cloak to a man who is nearly naked. Then comes St. Michael ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... strode back to the scout. Climbing into the craft, he picked up the audioscriber microphone and recorded a brief message. Removing the threadlike tape from the machine, he returned to the house and left it on the spool of the audioscribe-replay ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... of like mind, for he said: "Sure! We was a coupla brave guys in Dyea, but what's the good of runnin' up to an undertaker and giving him your measurements? He'll get a tape-line ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... in a corner of the room opposite the telegraphic machine, from which the "tape" was issuing with a monotonous click. On this "tape"—a narrow strip of paper seemingly endless, which fell on the floor in serpentine coils—were inscribed at regular intervals some cabalistic characters unintelligible to the general ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... would return to Lac Bain—but how? That was the question which puzzled him. He still had thirteen months of service ahead of him. He was not in line for a furlough. It would take at least three months of official red tape to purchase his discharge. These facts rose like barriers in his way. It occurred to him that he might confide in MacGregor, and that the inspector would make an opportunity for him to return into the north immediately. MacGregor had the power to do that, and he ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... properly sealed, and all ready for filling in the brands and numbers. The herd was put up within a mile of where four counties cornered, and that inspector was a believer in the maxim of the early bird. The office is a red-tape one, anyhow, and little harm in taking all the advantage you can.—This item marked 'sundries' was DRY goods, I suppose? All right, Quirk; I reckon rattlesnakes were rather ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... Proad Pottom[1]—a common complaint Among M.P.'s and weavers—from sitting too long. Should symptoms of speeching preak out on a dunce (Vat is often de case), it vill stop de disease, And pring avay all de long speeches at vonce, Dat else vould, like tape-worms, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... little earlier hour on the same evening, in a dining-room a mile away, eight men met "without political significance" to elect a new set of officers for the city. A bit of red-tape legislation permitted the people to ratify the choices at a "primary," to be held some months later; but the election came now. Unanimously, and with little or no discussion, the eight men elected one of their own number, ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... head. Nor should I have lived through the dreadful moment when that British officer at Gibraltar held up those papers, neatly folded and sealed and bound with bright, inappropriately cheerful red tape, and with an icy eye demanded an explanation beyond ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... runner in some great race, who had fallen at the last lap, and, waiting to recover himself before making the final dash toward the tape, watched anxiously lest his next rival should round the bend, and surprise him before he was up on his feet again, he could not have been more tensely excited. His breath came in gasps and spasms; his body jerked and trembled even while ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... there has been much heartburning, and many curses against officialdom and red-tape. While the back of the application is being turned out a christmas card, a stray immigrant comes along, and the squatter half-breed has once more to go back for a ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... which, at that time, was full of perplexity and trouble, yet, like all new governments, exceedingly tenacious of forms. Dr. Minor told me that the time and attention of Dr. McAllister had been fully occupied in untying, one after another, knots of red tape, and that, so far, perfect organization had ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... head so that he could see the ticker-tape as it reeled off. His heavy cheeks slowly relaxed. "Yes, yes," he ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... zigzags,—occasionally overlooking the sea,—sometimes following the verges of ravines. Now and then you catch glimpses of the road over which you passed half an hour before undulating far below, looking narrow as a tape-line,—and of the gorge of the Roxelane,—and of Pele, always higher, now thrusting out long spurs of green and purple land into the sea. You drive under cool shadowing of mountain woods—under waving bamboos like enormous ostrich feathers dyed green,—and exquisite ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... was coming on a transport, with other wounded, to be patched up in a hospital on Staten Island. So his wife Katharine smiled her way through innumerable entanglements of red tape and went to nurse him. Then she set her steady hand to pull all the wires necessary to get him discharged and sent home. Christmas was in her heart and she would not be denied. So it came to pass that the one-legged Hero was in his ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... and then his belly sowed up; then you are to thrust the spit through his mouth out at his tail; and then with four, or five, or six split sticks or very thin laths, and a convenient quantitie of tape or filiting, these laths are to be tyed roundabout the Pikes body, from his head to his tail, and the tape tied somewhat thick to prevent his breaking or falling off from the spit; let him be rosted very leisurely, and often basted with ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... good woman has gone to fetch an inch tape; I want to measure for the book shelves. How many of my books could I comfortably house ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... have material advantage over a good many foods. They keep indefinitely. They never putrefy. They are not infested with harmful bacteria. You can never get tape-worm or any other parasitic trouble, which occasionally follows the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... and the roadway is no longer perilous. And nothing save a fire will arouse Fifth Avenue till the next morning. Even on an election night the sole sign in Fifth Avenue of the disorder of politics will be a few long strips of tape-paper wreathing in the breeze on the asphalt ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... miscellaneous papers and envelopes; pigeon-holes crammed full of answered and unanswered notes, some with crests on them, some with plain wax clinging to the flap of the broken envelopes; many held together with the gum of the common world. Here, too, were bundles of old letters tied with tape; piles of pamphlets, quaint trays holding pens and pencils, and here too was always to be found, in summer or in winter, a big vase full of roses or blossoms, or whatever was in season—a ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... lives were being railroaded to the gallows by the legal hirelings of the Lumber Trust. The Labor Jury was composed of men with experience in the labor movement. They had eyes to see through a maze of red tape and legal mummery to the simple truth that was being hidden or obscured. The Lumber Trust did not fool these men and it could not intimidate them. They had the courage to give the truth to the world just as they saw it. They were convinced in their hearts and minds ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... manufacturing industry in the interior of Ecuador, but much more than on the coast. The chief articles manufactured are straw hats, shoes, baskets, carpets, embroidery, tape, thread, ponchos, coarse woolen and cotton cloth, saddles, sandals, soap, sugar, cigars, aguardiente, powder, sweetmeats, carved images, paints, and pottery. Wines, crockery, glassware, cutlery, silks, and fine cloth are imported. There are three cotton ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... actually "slumber out their immortality," are at least preserved from profane intrusion. This "noble story"[61]—as it was called by one of its earliest admirers—is no longer, in any sense, a book "under review." The painful student of the past may still, indeed, with tape and compass, question its details and proportions; or the quick-fingered professor of paradox, jauntily turning it upside-down, rejoice in the results of his perverse dexterity; but certain things are now established in regard to it, which cannot be gainsaid, ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... was England, and although he was hedged about, protected and restricted by War Office Regulation Red Tape twisted round to the strength of steel cables, yet he was in command of telegraphs, of telephones, and, in a secondary degree, of the railway system of the ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... folded respectably across the pitcher that did not match the bowl. The boards, though bare, were yellow as gold. The faded shutters were closed, and failing hooks were fastened to a nail in the shabby sill by a piece of aged pink tape. On a small table by the bed-side, were bottles and tumblers and remnants of rough ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... to their former constituencies in the provinces. So far as the Legislative Body and the Senate, [Note] also, were concerned, everything ended in a delightful bit of comedy. Not only were the doors of their respective meeting halls looked, but they were "secured" with strips of tape and seals of red wax. The awe with which red sealing-wax inspires Frenchmen is distinctly a trait of the national character. Had there been, however, a real Bonaparte in Paris at that time, he would probably have cut off the aforesaid ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... ranch. Its name was Alexander Fulton. I reckon Aleck was about twenty-one by the almanac, and anywhere's from three to ninety by the way you figure a man. Aleck stood six foot high as he stood, but if you ran the tape along his curves ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... using them. Personally, he was rather ashamed of having to employ such tame legal methods. From his point of view, shooting at sight was all that Tobias deserved, and to give him a trial by jury was an absurdity of legal red-tape. In this respect he agreed with the great Mr. Pickwick, that "the law is a hass." It was always England's way, he said, and, if she didn't mind, this leniency to traitors would some ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... This extraordinary man seemed to have a genius for order, discipline, economy, and dispatch. He found the palaces grand "circumlocution offices,"—with, in all the departments, an entangling network of red-tape, which needed to be swept away like cobwebs. He himself entered the Royal Nursery finally with the besom of reform. It is said in his "Memoirs"—"The organization and superintendence of the children's department occupied a considerable portion of Stockmar's time"; ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... return from this function, I found work had stopped; no more South Seas in my belly. Well, Henry had cleared a great deal of our bush on a contract, and it ought to be measured. I set myself to the task with a tape-line; it seemed a dreary business; then I borrowed a prismatic compass, and tackled the task afresh. I have no books; I had not touched an instrument nor given a thought to the business since the year of grace 1871; you can imagine with what interest I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... place to a flattening or depression immediately below it, so that a straight-edge applied to the lateral aspect of the limb touches both the acromion and the lateral epicondyle. The vertical circumference of the shoulder is markedly increased; this test is easily made with a piece of tape or bandage and is compared with a similar measurement on the normal side—we lay great stress on this simple measure, as it is a most reliable aid in diagnosis. The head of the bone can usually be felt ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... went to the Parliament House and wrote down "Oyez, Oyez, Oyez!" But he could not remember any more of the ancient language in which the speeches from the Throne were always written. He went home and hanged himself with a measure of tape and his wife buried the body under ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... melancholy fireside. Why has the poetic spirit of England folded its wings, and been content to abandon its brilliant region to the butterflies of albums, but that the spirit of England has suffered itself to be fettered by the red tape of a peddling parsimony? Should we have had a Shakspeare without the smiles of an Elizabeth, and the generosity of a Southampton? No. He would have split his pen after his first tragedy; have thrown his ink-stand ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... mother—as he turned away. Or it seemed so, for that was the only way she could account for his walking away so abruptly. In her hurry to get dressed and follow him, she caught up an undergarment that lay on the floor, without seeing that her own foot was on the tape that was to secure it, and a rip and partial disruption was the consequence. Never mind, it would hold up till she came in. Or, if it didn't, where was that safety-pin that was on her dressing-table yesterday? Not there? Again, never ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... seize your bundle (if you have one) in a crack, And tie it with a tape by way of bustle on your back; And make your waist so high or low, your shape will be a riddle, For anyhow you'll never have your ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... often wounded the more vain. His pretensions were scanned with eyes more jealous and less tolerant than at first. Proud aristocrats began to recollect that a mushroom peerage was supported but by a scanty fortune; the men of more dazzling genius began to sneer at the red-tape minister as a mere official manager of details; he lost much of the personal popularity which had been one secret of his power. But what principally injured him in the eyes of his party and the public were certain ambiguous and obscure ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... beyond or apart from the real wants it pretends to satisfy. The reason is that it starts from too high a point therefore extending over too vast a field. Transmitted by hierarchical procedures, it lags along in formalism, and loses itself in "red-tape." On attaining its end and object it applies the same program to all territories alike a program devised beforehand in the Cabinet, all of a piece, without experimental groping ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... legible and intelligible—some unposted in old pocket books—some on whole or half sheets, or mere scraps of paper, and backs of letters—some lost sight of and forgotten, stuffing out old portfolios, or getting smoky edges in bundles tied up with faded tape. There are, we are quite sure, countless boxes and drawers, and pigeon-holes of such things, which want looking over, and ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... been said is true," she began, this ought to be a good thing for me. If I go into it, I'll go in heart, soul, brain, and pocket-book. I do know the skirt business from thread to tape and back again. I've managed to save a few thousand dollars. Only a woman could understand how I've done it. I've scrimped on little things. I've denied myself necessities. I've worn silk blouses instead of linen ones to save laundry-bills and taken a street-car or 'bus to save a quarter ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... forgotten!" He faced Manton. "Remember that can of undeveloped stuff, a two- hundred roll?" He turned to Kennedy, explaining. "When negative's undeveloped we keep it in taped cans. Take off the tape and you spoil it—the light, you know. Mr. Manton sent down this can with a regular order, marking on it that some one had to come to watch it being developed—in about a week. Of course I didn't open the can or look in it. I put it up on top ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... a cigar at the stall and strolled over to the tape. It was a busy afternoon, and reports from America were coming in fast. He nodded as he turned away. Weiss and the rest had had their lesson. They were keeping, at any rate, to ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... again, he took the tape measure with which he had provided himself on his way out, and calculated the length of the closet from ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... every word. He looked at the signatures. He looked at the blank page on the back. He looked at the tape with which it was bound. He fingered the knot with which it was tied. He folded it carefully, and ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... that they might set about their work understandingly, Nelly produced what had originally been a tape-measure one foot in length. It had seen such hard usage, however, that only about eight inches remained. With this the amateur architect set about a portion of his work, which was ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... space of the long corridors to books; the middle part of the train is indeed a comfortable library with abundant armchairs and couches, each with its green-shaded light, and soft carpets upon the soundproof floor. Further on will be a news-room, with a noiseless but busy tape at one corner, printing off messages from the wires by the wayside, and further still, rooms for gossip and smoking, a billiard room, and the dining car. Behind we shall come to bedrooms, bathrooms, the hairdresser, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... be just twisted together and then bound with tape to form a joint. Twisted wires sometimes break and sometimes come loose; then an arc forms, and the house catches fire. Good wiring always means soldering every joint and screwing the ends of the wires tightly into the switches or sockets ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... Voyage tape fed into the controls of the ship had taken the men, and, when rewound, had—by a miracle—returned them to Terra with a cargo of similar tapes found in a building on a world which might have been the central capital for a government comprised ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... mine, who had made what they considered a very imprudent marriage, and where considerable pecuniary privations were too likely to accompany the step she had taken. The poor niece had to bear many a taunt directed against her improvident union, as for example:—One day she had asked for a piece of tape for some work she had in hand as a young wife expecting to become a mother. Miss Nelly said, with much point, "Ay, Kitty, ye shall get a bit knittin' (i.e. a bit of tape). We hae a'thing; we're no married." It was this lady who, by an inadvertent use of a term, showed what was passing in her ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... She was a deep-tinted blonde, with the calm poise of a lady who cooks butter cakes in a window. She stood behind her counter in the Biggest Store; and as you closed your hand over the tape-line for your glove measure you thought of Hebe; and as you looked again you wondered how she had come ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... a party of Fuegians. At first they were not inclined to be friendly; for until the Captain pulled in ahead of the other boats, they kept their slings in their hands. We soon, however, delighted them by trifling presents, such as tying red tape round their heads. They liked our biscuit: but one of the savages touched with his finger some of the meat preserved in tin cases which I was eating, and feeling it soft and cold, showed as much disgust at it, as I should have done at putrid ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... she was sure they did not come from any tree that grew in England. She crawled about the floor, peering at it with a candle for marks of a strange foot. She rattled the poker up the chimney and tapped the walls. She let down a tape from the window to the pavement, and it was a sheer drop of thirty feet, without so much as a spout to ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... single share. The growing private sector accounts for about one-third of national output according to unofficial estimates. Privatization of state enterprises is progressing, although excessive red tape, bureaucratic oversight, and uncertainties about pricing have slowed the process. Escalating unemployment and high rates of inflation may impede efforts to speed up privatization and budget reform, while Hungary's heavy foreign debt will make ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... box, containing a needle-book, in which are needles of every size, both blunts and sharps, with a larger number of those sizes most used; also, small and large darning-needles, for woollen, cotton, and silk; two tape-needles, large and small; nice scissors, for fine work; buttonhole scissors; an emery-bag; two balls of white and yellow wax; and two thimbles, in case one should be mislaid. When a person is troubled with damp ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... remember her. In the kitchen was a well-scrubbed table of about three-quarters of a mile in length, and possessed of as many legs as a centipede, some of which could be moved to support flaps. (To put a measuring-tape over that table nowadays, or over other things in the kitchen, for that matter, might bring disappointment, I suppose.) These legs formed fascinating walls and boundaries for a series of romantic dwelling-places, shops, caves, and suchlike resorts, among which a small boy could wander at will, ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... of an hour dressing himself. His face was too raw to endure a razor, and the surgeon had put little cross-patches of adhesive tape on one of his cheek-bones and at the edge of his mouth, where his lip had split as the tooth behind it ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... of papers would have to go through, and how much delay and tedium would be involved before the simplest business proposition could be carried out. But, of course, it is argued by Socialists that Government Departments are only slow and tied up with red tape because they have so long been encouraged to do as little as possible, and that as soon as they are really urged to do things instead of pursuing a policy of masterly inactivity, there is no reason why they should not develop a promptitude and elasticity quite as great as that hitherto ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... was more strictly "official" than any ever worn by a naval officer before or since, perhaps—for it was the voluntary offering of a whole nation, and came direct from the people themselves without any intermediate red tape—the people of the Sandwich Islands. It was a title that came to him freighted with affection, and honor, and appreciation of his unpretending merit. And in testimony of the genuineness of the title it was publicly ordained that an exclusive flag should be devised for him ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was sitting on a stool at my grandfather's feet, winding a long piece of tape round and round her little finger. She ran to meet me as I came in, and held up her face to ...
— Saved at Sea - A Lighthouse Story • Mrs. O.F. Walton
... victory due to lack of information or to being kept in the dark by the "iron censorship," for the "iron censorship" is itself a myth. It is liberal, even judged by democratic standards, and surprisingly free from red tape. There is no embargo on the importation of foreign newspapers; even the anti-German journals of neutral countries have free entry and circulation, while at a number of well-known cosmopolitan cafes you can always read The London Times and The Daily ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... purser's shoes, with a bit of a ribbon for a bow; no socks, save the natural, flesh-tinted ones, a blue star, done in India ink, gleaming on his instep; his broad blue collar, decorated with stars and two rows of white tape, falling gracefully from a neck which, as we youngsters asserted, had received its odd-looking twist from hanging too long by a grape vine, with which the Isle of Pines' pirates had strung him up when he was chasing them under old Commodore Kearney's command. Anyhow, old, sharp-faced, wrinkled ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... have seen some people suffering with cataract in the eyes, and some foot-runners complained that their sight sometimes became impaired during or after a race. The Tarahumares have not any cases of tape-worm, although their sheep have it; probably the large quantities of tesvino drunk during the winter may have something ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... to recommend me to John Deegan, I wired to myself from Philadelphia to New York, using "R. Callery's" name (without permission), I have the telegram, which was done by the House Printing Telegraph (in type on long strips, or tape, much like the ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... twenty-five dollars that goes out. And have an automobile follow you, with a doctor in it, to take care of John—Mr. Jewel, when he is found. We will start all our riders out from here, and ride until we meet you. Now hurry! Don't stop for a lot of red tape and orders and things—get right out on the trail. And don't forget the thousand dollars reward." Just when the sheriff was saying "Aw right—goo'by," Mary V ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... show you!" said Lydia, and picking up the cloak she turned over the tab at the neck, by which it was hung up. At the back of this there was a small piece of tape with printed black letters. "Baxter & Co., General Drapers, Bayswater," she read out, throwing down the cloak contemptuously. "I don't go to a London suburb for my frocks; I ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... either with knives, hot irons, or chalk. The breakfast and dining-rooms, which opened from the great hall, were wainscotted, their chief embellishments being some old pictures in black frames, and a number of hunting, shooting, and racing prints, with red tape round them to serve the purpose of frames; while the library so-called was worthy of being the habitation of an ascetic monk, though two of the walls were covered with book-shelves which contained but few books, and they served chiefly to ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... a ground to the other side of it. He used an induction coil to energize the spark gap, and a telegraph key in the primary circuit to break up the current into signals. Adding a Morse register, which printed the dot and dash messages on a tape, to the Popoff receptor he produced the first system for sending ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins
... practice, though still lying in the river, so as to be at once able to meet a foe when she put out to sea. The British captain, often owing his command to his social standing or to favoritism, hampered by red tape, [Footnote: For instance, James mentions that they were forbidden to use more than so many shot in practice, and that Capt. Broke utterly disregarded this command.] and accustomed by 20 years' almost uninterrupted success to regard the ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... but actually record it. Before he landed from the Sully he had worked out sketches of a printing telegraph. In this the current actuated an electro-magnet on the end of which was a rod. This rod was to mark down dots and dashes on a moving tape ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... before the French revolution, Turgot, who had been one of the unsuccessful ministers of finance of Louis XVI, had preached the novel doctrine of "economic liberty." Turgot lived in a country which had suffered from too much red-tape, too many regulations, too many officials trying to enforce too many laws. "Remove this official supervision," he wrote, "let the people do as they please, and everything will be all right." Soon his famous advice of "laissez faire" ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... Roger. "I'm sure there would have been a message for us on the chatter wire if he had." Roger referred to a tape recorder that was standard equipment in each of the dormitory rooms, ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... Similarly, a potato missing the receptacle or bounding out of it must be placed in it before the next potato be touched, or the player is disqualified. When all the potatoes have been placed in the receptacle, the player finishes by dashing across a finish line, a tape, or strand of worsted, stretched five feet back of the receptacle. As in all races in athletic form, a player is disqualified for interfering with any other competitor, or for touching the finish tape with the hands or arms: the tape ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... doing a good business, or at any rate a distinguished business, unless he can assert in his trade card that he occupies at least half a dozen houses—Nos. 105, 106, 107, 108, 109 and 110. The old way of paying for what you want over the counter is gone; and when you buy a yard of tape or a new carriage— for either of which articles you will probably visit the same establishment—you go through about the same amount of ceremony as when you sell a thousand pounds out of the stocks ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... island, a lovely spot within its encircling ring, over which the Bishop and Patteson waded, and found thirteen men on the beach. Patteson went up to the first, tied a bit of red tape round his head, and made signs that he wanted a cocoa-nut in exchange for a fish-hook. Plenty were forthcoming; but the Bishop, to his companion's surprise, made a sudden sign to come away, and when the boat was regained he said: 'I saw some young men running through the bush ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge |
