"Tattoo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ruptured mohair sofa; Dr. Petrelli, the lean, waspish chemist, was nervously trimming his fingernails with his teeth: and the M.D., Dr. Smathers, had a hangdog expression on his pudgy face and had begun drumming his fingers in a staccato tattoo ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett
... and pressed her palms to her eyeballs, so firmly that when she removed them, the room was a blur. Maurice, standing at the window, beat a tattoo on the pane. Then, with his back to her, he began to speak. He blamed himself for what he called the folly of the past weeks. "I gave way when I should have been firm. And this is the result. You have got ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... to beat a tattoo on the floor: "There is not a soul in the house but you can do the simplest thing. Eyes and no eyes! Fingers and ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... this staircase: in renewed excitement he hurried down the hall and, regardless of the consequence, beat a quick tattoo with his knuckles ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... and tattoo their faces, hands and wrists, in lines, triangles and circles. On their bodies also stripes of irregular design and varying colors are often used, all having a symbolic meaning originally, now lost, however, at least to all ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... in Wine Creek," cried Joe Welling with the air of Pheidippides bringing news of the victory of the Greeks in the struggle at Marathon. His finger beat a tattoo upon Ed Thomas's broad chest. "By Trunion bridge it is within eleven and a half inches of the flooring," he went on, the words coming quickly and with a little whistling noise from between his teeth. An expression of helpless ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... in the pine-scented ship- yard, amid the tattoo of the mallets; Or he leaned on the rail of the bridge, letting his thoughts flow with the whispering river; He hearkened also to ancient tales, and made them young again ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... know how it happened," he said, "but I overslept myself. I've only just waked up, and he'd play the devil's tattoo on me if he knew the letter hadn't gone. I know a famous secret, Antoine; but don't say anything about it to the clerks if I tell you; promise? He would send me off if he knew I had said a single word; he told ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... Phillips, shoving Willy up the hatchway, for he was so encumbered with the weight of his new apparel that he never could have ascended without assistance—"I have stowed away some spirits in his hold, and he no longer beats the devil's tattoo with his grinders." ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... dancing pole. Kohokumu caught the line that was fast to the butt of the pole and under-handed it in until a two-foot ukikiki, battling fiercely to the end, flashed its wet silver in the sun and began beating a tattoo on the inside bottom of the canoe. Kohokumu picked up a squirming, slimy squid, with his teeth bit a chunk of live bait out of it, attached the bait to the hook, and dropped line and sinker overside. The stick ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... a cigar, and waited very impatient for the squall to pass; and as he went to the window and beat a little tattoo on it with his finger nail, I noticed he was all dressed up like I'd never seen him before. Then he came back, looking at me very steadfast, and says: "Well, Ben, you're out ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... they tumbled; whistles sounded distantly; a trench mortar crashed; then the accentless tattoo of machine ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... shell, they command very high prices, one hundred and fifty pesos or more. Many men were elaborately tattooed, the pattern starting well down the chest on each side and running up around the front of the shoulder and part way down the arm. If, as is said, this elaborate tattoo indicates that its owner has killed a human being, then Bontok during our stay was full of men that had proved their valor in this particular way. Earrings were very common in both sexes; frequently the lobe was distended ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... he started from incipient slumber; he thought he heard the cow in her stall, clattering her chain. Surprised, he collected his wits. "Of course," he then said to himself, "it is the tattoo. I ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... came from the sea a sudden gust of wind that caught her by the skirts and drew her back, that set the branches tossing and swept the dead leaves racing about her ankles. And at the same instant from just above her head there beat upon the air a violent, joyous tattoo—a sound that was neither of the sea nor of the woods, a creaking, swiftly repeated sound, like the flutter of ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... gown that lay in an iridescent avalanche of sequins about her feet, her foot, tilted to an unbelievable hypothenuse off a cloth-of-silver heel, beat a small and twinkling tattoo, her fingers tattooing, ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... to tell you about it? It belongs to the man that takes care of our furnace; he's got a peach of a tattoo mark on his arm. My mother told me I had to wear a sweater so I grabbed that as I went through the back hall. I always go out through the kitchen, ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... a girl!" cried Folly, tossing her frizzled head, "and there never yet was a girl that could not be wheedled by Folly into doing the silliest thing in the world. If I persuaded Matty that Fashion required her to tattoo her nose all over, to dye her hair green, or blue, or mauve, or to walk on all fours like a cat,—don't you suppose that she ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... response. The brilliant state of the door-brass afforded evidence of the fact that Ah Tsong had arisen, even if the other members of the household were still sleeping, and Harley, growing irritable, executed a loud tattoo upon the knocker. This had its effect. The door opened and Ah ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... horse went flying up the hill road, beating a tattoo of new life upon the soft, breathing ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... Atlantic City." A gun pops foolishly in the rear and the 3-inch bullseye clangs. In a corner behind the Postal Card Photo Taken in a Minute gallery sits Dutch, the world's leading tattooer. Sample tattoo designs cover the two walls. Dragons, scorpions, bulbous nymphs, crossed flags, wreathed anchors, cupids, butterflies, daggers and quaint decorations that seem the grotesque survivals of the mid-Victorian ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... I had a moment of consolation, because I met with something which seemed to me ideally perfect. It was a poor drummer beating the tattoo in the streets of Paris. I walked behind him in returning to the school on the evening of a holiday. His drum gave out the tattoo in such a way that, at that moment at least, however peevish I were, I could find ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... England bringing General William Howe, General Henry Clinton, and General John Burgoyne, with several thousand troops to carry on the war. Every morning Miss Newville heard the drums beating the reveille and in the evening the tattoo. Many officers called at the hospitable home of Honorable Theodore Newville to enjoy the society of his charming daughter, who received them with grace ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... brought from the White Nile, remark: "As to their psychology, what struck us first was the exaggeration of their modesty; not in a single case would the men allow us to examine their genital organs or the women their breasts; we examined the tattoo-marks on the chest of one of the women, and she remained sad and irritable for two days afterward." They add that in sexual and all other respects these people are highly moral. (Lombroso and Carrara, Archivio di Psichiatria, 1896, vol. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... drummers to rub a handful of snow over the skins to prevent them from cracking under the heavy blows. The drum is held aloft and struck with a thin stick (mumwa).[8] It gives a deep boom in answer. The shaman uses a smaller baton with which he beats a continuous tattoo as an accompaniment to his songs. The northerners strike the back of the rim with their sticks, while the Yukon people belabor the face of ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... the slamming of the outside door, and by a voice in the entry; a moment later, there was a sharp tattoo on the library door. The colonel opened it ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... turned towards Florent and looked at him; then she looked at Gavard, who was beating a tattoo with his finger-tips on the marble table. She smiled at them, as though inviting them ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... out upon the quarter-deck beneath the awning, he pulled a large tub from under a boat turned upside down over the deck cabin; and then, while the young monkey had scrambled round to his back, and was beating a tattoo with his tiny fists on his shoulders, Banou caught up a bucket and proceeded to draw water from over the side, which he dashed into the tub. When he had nearly filled the tub he felt around with his black paws as delicately as if he was about to seize a musquito, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... out, in they had to come again. Flop-flop went the fish on the bottom-boards as we jerked them carelessly off the hooks. Every moment or two one of them would dance up and flip its tail wildly; beat on the bottom-boards a tattoo which spattered us with scales; then sink back among the glistening mass that was fast losing its beauty of colour, its opalescent pinks and steely blues, even ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... this expression of vigor, just as a colt frisks to show how well he feels, he whirred yet more loudly, until, unwittingly, he found himself drumming, and tickled with the discovery of his new power, thumped the air again and again till he filled the near woods with the loud tattoo of the fully grown cock-partridge. His brother and sister heard and looked on with admiration and surprise; so did his mother, but from that time she began to be a little afraid ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... colonels, generals, all are subject to the orders of their superior officers. All must obey the general in command. You march, drill, eat, sleep, go to bed, and get up by order. At sunrise you hear the reveille, and at nine o'clock in the evening the tattoo. Then the candle, which has been burning in your tent with a bayonet for a candlestick, must be put out. In the dead of night, while sleeping soundly and dreaming of home, you hear the drum-beat. It is the long roll. There is a rattle of ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... the docks we shot Into the screaming night; We steered by lightning's light; The paddles beat a mad tattoo; The gridded walking-beam Pumped up, pumped down, Against the misty gleam; Faster and faster jets the stand-pipes' steam. And the white water whirls Astern in phosphorescent whorls— It swirls And then leads ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... the truth. Wait till you see me thump the Devil's tattoo with my old flail on your thrashin'-floor! But you look as cheery as an Easter-mornin' sun; you've not much for to complain of, these ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... a humming-bird, green-backed and glittering, hung and tasted for a moment, then flashed to where the larkspurs were. A red-headed woodpecker swung downward on the wing to the white-brown side of a dead elm, sounded a brief tattoo upon the surface, then dived at a passing insect. A phoebe bird was singing somewhere. A red squirrel sat perched squarely on the drooping limb of a hickory tree and chewed into a plucked nut, so green that the kernel was not formed, then dropped it to the ground, and ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... remark, emphasizing with a little tattoo of her teaspoon on the Chippendale tea-tray before her. ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 'Twas his signing aboard the One-and-All—' Rosewarne's coffin,' they call her—that nigh broke me. He didn' let me know till two nights afore he sailed. 'Beggars can't be choosers,' he said; and afterwards I found out from Peter Benny that he'd covered his poor body with tattoo marks—his body that I've a-washed hundreds o' times, and loved to feel his legs kickin' agen' me. Beautiful skin he had as a child; soft as satin the feel of it, and not a blemish anywhere. 'Tis hard to think of it criss-crossed with them nasty marks. But there! thank the Lord God he's safe, ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and a wind came sighing from the north, tossing the girl's hair and tugging at the careless folds of her dress, but she heard nothing save the devil's tattoo that rang in her head, and felt nothing beyond the pain at throat and breast, which in time became so bitter that the tears were wrung from her dry eyes, and she began to weep in a pitiful woman ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... taught some other trade. Giustino was seldom punished. On the contrary, the Director was so enamoured of his progress and blue eyes that he entered him as a fox long before the regular three years' course was up, and offered to tattoo the symbol of proficiency, a cross, on the ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... hand tenderly on his chest. His heart was beating a heavy tattoo against the blue ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... was a-brewing: The day of our vengeance was come! Through scenes of what carnage and ruin Did I beat on the patriot drum! Let's drink to the famed tenth of August: At midnight I beat the tattoo, And woke up the Pikemen of Paris To follow ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Into these punctures a preparation made from the kernel of the candle-nut, mixed with cocoa-nut oil, is rubbed, and the mark thus made is indelible. The operation is performed by a class of men whose profession it is, and they tattoo as much at a time as the person on whom they are operating can bear; which is not much, the pain and inflammation caused by tattooing being very great, sometimes causing death. Some of the chiefs were tattooed with an ornamental ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... Roll — N. roll &c v.; drumming &c v.; berloque^, bombination^, rumbling; tattoo, drumroll; dingdong; tantara^; rataplan^; whirr; ratatat, ratatat-tat; rubadub; pitapat; quaver, clutter, charivari^, racket; cuckoo; repetition &c 104; peal of bells, devil's tattoo; reverberation &c 408. [sound of railroad ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a good joke, he thought, to get the boy he was abusing to contribute some needful assistance towards the work; it added a flavor to treachery. But Frank did not so much enjoy the pleasantry. He was wild to be beating the tattoo, not on the said drum, but on the head of the rogue who was writing on the drum, and with his ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... succeed in attracting attention. And yet the silence was profound; he could distinctly hear the creaking of the baron's boots, as he paced to and fro, and the sound of fingers nervously beating a tattoo on the table. If he desired to avoid hearing the confidential conversation, which would no doubt ensue between the baron and his wife, there was but one course for him to pursue, and that was to reveal his presence at once. He was about to do so, when some one ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... de Poitiers, where the interior is gaudy with childish colouring and raw tones; for there, instead of expressing regret and tranquillity, it rouses a suggestion of the childish glee of an old savage in his second childhood, who laughs when his tattoo marks are renewed, and his skin ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... now, although the obvious and sensible thing was to go about my business, I wandered on aimlessly, my brain employed with a hundred idle conjectures and the query, "Where have I seen The Stetson Man?" seeming to beat, like a tattoo, in my brain. There was something magnetic about the accursed slipper, for without knowing by what route I had arrived there, I found myself in Great Orchard Street and close under the walls of the British Antiquarian Museum. Then I was effectually ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... read the paragraph he glanced quickly at Archie, whose fork was beating a queer tattoo ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... almost boundless influence of the imitation of one man by another in the evolution of civilisation. Imitation is one of the chief spurs to action. Imitation begets custom, custom begets sanctity. At first all custom is sacred. To the savage it is as much a religious duty to tattoo himself as to sacrifice to his gods. But certain customs naturally survive, because they are really useful; they actually have good effects, and so need no social sanction. Others are really useless; but man is too conservative ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... deep rivers, the breadth of broad isles. Upon the highest pinnacles of commanding capes and promontories, he loved to hoist his flag. He circled Mardi with his watch-towers: and the distant voyager passing wild rocks in the remotest waters, was startled by hearing the tattoo, or the reveille, beating from hump- backed Bello's omnipresent drum. Among Antartic glaciers, his shrill bugle calls mingled with the scream of the gulls; and so impressed seemed universal nature with the sense of his dominion, that the very clouds in heaven never ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... dressed it!" and others looked up and said: "Oh, how you make me think of my mother!" and others said: "Tell the folks at home I died thinking about them;" and another looked up and said: "Miss, won't you sing me a verse of 'Home, Sweet Home,' before I die?" And then the tattoo was sounded, and the hats were off, and the service was read: "I am the resurrection and the life;" and in honor of the departed the muskets were loaded, and the command given: "Take aim—fire!" And there was a shingle set up at the head ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... table with a lead-pencil a tattoo, while his forehead puckered. Then he spoke into the ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... of his writing-table, so that he might find it again when necessary, but he did not put it in his breast pocket. And then he sat for some time doing nothing, looking before him, with his legs stretched out and his hand beating a little tattoo upon the table. "Well: well? well!" That was about what he said to himself, but it meant a great deal: it meant a vague but great disappointment, a sort of blank and vacuum expressed by the first of these words—and then it meant a question of great importance and many ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... sentence in relation to the line. No other metre allows of anything like the variety of blank verse in this regard, and no other metrist makes so splendid a use of its freedom. He never forgets the pattern; yet he never stoops to teach it by the repetition of a monotonous tattoo. Hence there are, perhaps, fewer one-line quotations to be found in the works of Milton than in the works of any other master of blank verse. De Quincey speaks of the "slow planetary wheelings" of Milton's verse, and the metaphor is a happy one; the ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... Ricky beat a perfect tattoo in joy and was quickly answered. Then the thud, thud began again, but this time the ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... head, partially stunning me and knocking me to the deck. My first thought was that something had carried away aloft; but even as I went down, and before I struck the deck, I heard the devil's own tattoo of rifles from the boats, and twisting sidewise, I caught a glimpse of the sailor who was standing guard. Two big niggers were holding his arms, and a third nigger from behind was braining him ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... her task, she heard a noise as though some footsteps were approaching. Instantly her heart began to beat a tattoo on her ribs, but she sat perfectly quiet, calling all her self-control into play to keep from making an outcry. This smart woman had already studied out a way in which to best this enemy, in case an enemy it ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... I went to the military tattoo, at which, by an unpardonable indifference, I have not regularly been present, although these patriotic demonstrations have been organized by Monsieur Joseph Boneas and his League of Avengers. A long-drawn shudder, shrill and sonorous, took flight through ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... count as hours in times like these. All depends on the promptness of our decision. You, Picart, go to the cure and order him to ring the alarm-bell, in order to get together the people, to whom I am going to announce the news. You, Torchebeuf beat the tattoo throughout the whole neighborhood as far as the hamlets of Gerisaie and Salmare, in order to assemble the militia in the public square. You, Pommel, get your uniform on quickly, just the coat and cap. We are going to the town-hall to demand Monsieur de Varnetot to surrender ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... under the arm that rested across her forehead, realized how her last night's breach of authority had impressed each one of them. And secretly rejoicing at her triumph, she kept up a brisk tattoo. ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... o' mine with the Noo Zeeling savages, after cutting away from his ship; but our old skipper said he ought to be ashamed of hisself for going and living that way, and them beginning to tattoo him in a pattern. He said he was a-degrading of hisself, and fetched him aboard, saying as if he wanted tattooing some of his messmates should mark his back with a rope's end. No, sir, we thinks a deal o' that monkey—our crew does—and we don't ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... patience. Their women, whom they do not confine, will, it is said, do more field-work than the men; indeed, one often finds women at work in the crops when the men are lying down. Like the women of low Hindu castes they tattoo their bodies, a practice disapproved by Musalmans in general. Abul Fazl writes that the Meos were in his time famous runners, and one thousand of them were employed by Akbar as carriers of ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... Weston came running down a street in Islington. He knocked at the door of No. 16, and in his impatience, until it was opened, commenced a tattoo with his ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... he beat a tattoo on the sides of the horse with his feet. But as Dick had on soft slippers, he did not hurt the White Rocking Horse in the least, nor did he chip off any paint. "Here I go! Here I go!" shouted Dick. "Oh, what a ...
— The Story of a White Rocking Horse • Laura Lee Hope
... he had no luck in the town, he would go to sea. And then one day he would come to some coast that interested him, and he would land, and go to the gold-diggings. Over there the girls went mother-naked, with nothing but some blue tattoo-work to hide their shame; but Pelle had his girl sitting at home, true to him, waiting for his return. She was more beautiful even than Bodil and yellow-haired Marie put together, and whole crowds followed her footsteps, but she sat at home and was faithful, and she would ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... railroad would hardly keep pace with one's eagerness, and here were we crawling at the rate of four miles per hour. I fancied that the last three miles never would be accomplished; and often wished internally, as I beat the devil's tattoo upon the footboard of the coach-box, that I had bought or borrowed or stolen a horse at Chippewa, and galloped to the wonder ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... something being moved beyond the kitchen. Dan sits on the sofa with a jerk, looking before him. His fingers beat a rapid tattoo on the sides of the sofa. He looks at them, rises convulsively and walks round the room, grasping chairs and furniture as he goes round. He returns to the sofa, sits, and begins the tattoo again. With a sudden wild ...
— Night Must Fall • Williams, Emlyn
... told me that if I was stationed at Greenlaw Barracks I had walked in a very curious direction, for I was thirteen miles, by the ordinary road, out of my course. I was exceedingly ill at ease to hear this pronouncement, and told him that it would be "hot" for me if I was not in before the "tattoo," or the "last post." The keeper, I found, was a true Scotchman, and of a very obliging nature. He proffered to take me through the wood to a place called Milton Bridge. We started, and were soon at the village mentioned, where, at the "Fishers' ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... to be beyond doubt that men and women began to ornament, mutilate, paint, and tattoo themselves chiefly in order to make themselves attractive to the opposite sex—that they might ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... eggs, milk, butter, buttermilk, vegetables, etc., gun squad drills, dinner, and in fine weather and good condition of the ground in afternoon often, field drill of which battery, with guns, caissons, teams, cannoneers, drivers and all stable call, supper, camp amusements of all kinds, tattoo and finally taps. There were two buglers in the company, Charles M. Donoho was at the company headquarters. He acted as messenger also. The other, Rufus Menander Rosser was in the same mess as the writer. One of his duties was to blow the Reveille call at a certain hour each morning. His ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little
... by allowing themselves to be stampeded. Their English friends, the enemy, playing upon their prejudices, they became drunk with hate, and then their shillalahs resounded a tattoo upon the head of their leader. Nations and people who turn upon their best friends are too ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... drum's sad roll has beat The soldier's last tattoo: No more on life's parade shall meet That brave and fallen few; On fame's eternal camping ground Their silent tents are spread, And glory guards, with solemn round, The bivouac ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... silent inside. Then Dick played a tattoo on the locked door with his fists. Still no ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... have the benefit of their services in working their vessels along the Slave Coast. And in order to prevent any Kruboy being carried off as a slave by mistake, which would have prejudiced these useful allies, the slavers persuaded them always to tattoo a band of basket-work pattern down their foreheads and out on to the tip of their broad noses: this is the most extensive bit of real tattoo that I know of in West Africa, and the Kruboys still keep the fashion. Their next tutors were the traders, who have taught and still teach them beach ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... to my lips;—her hand, holding a spoon, trembled so that the spoon beat a tattoo on her saucer. She was watching me in breathless suspense; and all at once I ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... oak, and I were silence personified. A dead branch would crack, or the trunks of smaller and ignorant pines would knock together, and the Duke would look around the corner and say "Chut!" in a low voice, thinking I was playing a tattoo on ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... blood-thirsty proclivities. Leaving his countryman to beat his devil's tattoo on the submarine commander, Terence leaped to the open scuttle just in time to bang another head as it appeared on a ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... This'll teach him!" He strained his ears for sounds of Jerry, but could hear nothing above the slatting of wet canvas, the tattoo of drops, and the roar of wind in the tree- tops. After the first violence of the squall had passed he fancied he could hear his former partner stirring, so he arose and peered out into the night. At first he could see nothing, but in time he dimly made out ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... hand and took his. He was terrifically conscious of the warm smoothness of her fingers playing a soft tattoo on the back of his hand, while ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... pencil from the arsenal of them in his breast-pocket, and with it was beating a noiseless tattoo on his open left palm. With an effort he ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... on his pillows, the hectic passed from either gaunt and sallow cheek, leaving the red and blue tattoo marks visible in most ghastly distinctness, while the sweat poured in drops ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... to be strong like you, Brick," said Goosey. "Some of us kids have been talking about it and one fellow says he's noticed that strong men like sailors and railroad men always have tattoo marks like you got. A brakeman told him that's what made him strong. Some of us want you to ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... said BULMER to me, while he inserted his thumbs in the arm-openings of his waistcoats, and drummed an approving tattoo upon his shining shirt-front, "my dear boy, I have always been your friend, and nobody knows it better than you. Many a time have I proved it to you, and I can honestly assure you that nothing gives me greater pleasure than to welcome ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... above the whistling wind, I heard the welcome rain,— A fusillade upon the roof, A tattoo on the pane: The keyhole piped; the chimney-top A warlike trumpet blew; Yet, mingling with these sounds of strife, A softer voice ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... recovered themselves. As one looks back to that period of our experience, all sorts of pictures, bright and sombre, crowd the mind—the Square at Poperinghe in the evening, the Guards' fife and drum bands playing tattoo in the old town while hundreds of men looked on; the dark station of Poperinghe in the evening, and the battalions being sent up to the front in railway trucks; the old mill at Vlamertinghe with the reception room for the wounded, and the white ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... number and size of the fleas. On my first night on the Ingodah the fleas did not disturb me as I came after visiting hours and was not introduced. On all subsequent nights they were persevering and relentless; I was bitten until portions of my body appeared as if recovering from a Polynesian tattoo. They used to get inside my under clothing by some mysterious way and when there they walked up and down like sentries on duty and bit at every other step. It was impossible to flee from them, and they appointed their breakfasts and lunches at ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... laughs at our warrant?" exclaimed Duncan Cameron. "Hut-tut! We'll teach him to respect warrants issued under authority of 43d King George III.," and the dictator of Fort Gibraltar fussed angrily among the papers of his desk and beat a threatening tattoo with ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... same author states that "a sometime headman of Senendan had two square tattoo marks on his back. This was because he ran away in a fight, and showed his back to the enemy." This explanation seems ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... in doing. Booted for the purpose, I laid myself back, and then commenced beating a tattoo with ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... kindly motioned me to come round from the side-table, where I had been eating, to enjoy the sport of the search. On the first page there were only some scraps of writing, such as a man with a pen in his hand might make for idleness or practice. One was the same as the tattoo mark, "Billy Bones his fancy"; then there was "Mr. W. Bones, mate," "No more rum," "Off Palm Key he got itt," and some other snatches, mostly single words and unintelligible. I could not help wondering who it was that had "got itt," and what "itt" was that he got. A knife ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was struggling through the clouds, and I could dimly discern the outline of the quaint gabled front of the house, with its mullioned windows, and masses of clinging ivy. Dismounting at the old stone porch, I seized the knocker and beat a mighty tattoo. There was no reply. Even the light had disappeared from the window almost simultaneously with the approach of our carriage wheels, and though I hammered for fully five minutes I failed to obtain the slightest response to my knocks. I was on the ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... a high stool, and curled himself up on the rounded seat in the accepted posture of Buddha, while Devar, who was by way of being a gymnast, stood on his hands and beat a tattoo with his feet against the edge of the counter. Not to be outdone, Curtis began to sing. He had a good baritone voice, and entered with zest into the mad spirit of the frolic. The song he chose was redolent of the sea. It related a tar's escapades among witches, cruisers, and ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... bloodshot eyes positively ached, until tears of weakness dribbled down his face and splashed on to the pavement. As for his head, it throbbed as if a giant hammer were within it, and some demon were rattling the interior of his skull and were dancing a tattoo upon ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... lumbering times when methinks there was more of goodwill and less of haste in the world. The great brass knocker, once resplendent from Scipio's careful hand, no longer fantastically reflects the guest as he beats his tattoo, and Mr. Peale's portrait of my grandfather is gone from the dining-room wall, adorning, as you know, our own drawing-room ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... but a flimsy barricade against a mob, especially if that mob be led by five-and-twenty stout-bodied seaman. We had shut it merely to gain time, and when the cudgels outside began to play tattoo upon its upper panels I looked for no more than a minute's ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... from head to toe for scratches, cuts, bruises, moles, tattoo marks. Everything about the hair, eyes, teeth, nose, ears, and other parts, is written down. The height, the age, the muscular ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... quite sexless to him, but as devoid of personality as it is to any Western materialist. Lesser deities suffered a like unsubstantial transformation. The thunder-god, with his belt of drums, upon which he beats a devil's tattoo until he is black in the face, is no longer even indirectly associated with the storm. As for dryads and nymphs, the beautiful creatures never inhabited Eastern Asia. Anthropoid foxes and raccoons, wholly lacking in those engaging qualities ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... Tuesday, May 15th.—After we had gone to bed last night,—we in the tent, the Doctor and Pilgrim under the fly, which serves as a porch roof,—the heavenly floodgates lifted; the rain, coming in sheets, beat a fierce tattoo on the tightly-stretched canvas, and visions of a sudden rise in the fickle river were uppermost in our dreams. Everything about us was sopping at daybreak; but the sun rose clear and warm from a bed of eastern clouds, and the midnight gale had softened ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... its occupant, who, except for an entire want of animation, looks much like what he did in the railway-carriage—the same strong-looking man with well-marked cheek-bones, very thick brown hair and bushy brows, a skin rather tanned, and a scar on the bridge of the nose; very strong hands with a tattoo-mark showing on the wrist and an abnormal crop of hair on the back, running on to the fingers, but flawed by a scar or two. Add to this the chief thing you would recollect him by, an Elizabethan beard, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... with scraps of paper, out into the garden and the distance beyond, where the sea could be always guessed at, even when not seen. Sir Marmaduke had his back to the light: he was sitting astride a low chair, his high-booted foot tapping the ground impatiently, his fingers drumming a devil's tattoo against the ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... do," said Barnabas, nodding, "only—hurry, Martin!" By the time the old groom had returned with the scarlet hunting-frock and helped Barnabas into it, "The Terror" was led out from his box, and immediately began to snort and rear and beat a ringing tattoo with his great, round hoofs to a chorus of chirruping ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... greaser, tinsmith, copper-smelter, and now, endlich, enfin, at last, a donkeyman. His frame is gigantic, his strength prodigious. On his chest is a horrific picture of the Crucifixion in red, blue, and green tattoo. Between the Christ and the starboard thief is a great triangular scar of smooth, shiny skin. One of his colossal knees is livid with scars. He tells me the story like this, keeping time with the click of ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... expression to her, and I am a charming 'rogue', and I am entertained on the topic she assumes to be principally interesting me. I must avoid her. The thought of her leaves me no choice. She is clever. She could tattoo me ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... all "raw"; and my duty, with others, consisted in "licking them into shape". It was drill, drill, from morning till night; and, by early tattoo, I was always glad to crawl into my tent and go to sleep—such sleep as a man can get among scorpions, lizards, and soldier-crabs; for the little islet seemed to have within its boundaries a specimen of every reptile that came safely out ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... for the lady, and felt for my hat too, Improvised on the crown of the latter a tattoo, In lieu of expressing the feelings which lay Quite too deep for words, as Wordsworth would say: Then, without going through the form of a bow, Found myself in the entry,—I hardly knew how,— On doorstep and sidewalk, past ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Pintados, who inhabit the provinces of Camarines in this island of Luzon, and those of Leyte, Samar, Panay, and other neighborhoods, came, I have heard, from the districts of Macasar, where it is said that Indians live who make designs on and tattoo the body, in the manner of our Pintados. Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, in the relation which he wrote of the discovery of the Salomon Islands in 1595, says that an island called Madalena was found in ten degrees north latitude, at a distance from ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... He was not devout himself, but in the darkness of the night, with the rain beating a tattoo on the canvas walls of the tent, he felt very solemn. This was war, red war, and he was in the midst of it. War meant destruction, wounds, agony and death. He might never again see Pendleton and his father and his aunt and his cousin, Dick Mason, and Dr. Russell and all his boyhood and school friends. ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... less than two hours did I arrange and he disarrange my effects. I was not troubled again by him till after supper, when he inspected again, merely opening the door, however, and looking in. He told me I could not go to sleep till "tattoo." Now tattoo, as he evidently used it, referred in some manner to time, and with such reference I had not the remotest idea of what it meant. I had no knowledge whatever of military terms or customs. However, as I was also told that I could ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... But tattoo had not sounded that still and starlit evening when a strange story was in circulation about the post, brought up from the trader's store by pack-train hands who said they were there when Mr. Blakely came in and asked for Hart—"wanted ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... when killing and capturing was rife, the tattooing was for the purpose of the identification of a captive. It was customary to change the name of a captive, and as he was sold and resold, the only way to identify him was by his tattoo marks. ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... words had been a cue, the sounds again burst forth—no longer muffled nor faint. They roared; they seemed to pelt through air and drop upon us; they beat about our ears with thunderous tattoo like covered caverns drummed upon by Titans with ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... does every one who knows her. You do, don't you, Mike?" added Donald, and the dog beat a tattoo on the rug with ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... enough to wait. Joe mused an appreciable time, beating his tattoo on the table. "Yes," he finally said, "they've got to give the minority something, and I know one of the members who can get what I want. He's owing me a little favor—see? I needn't figure in the deal at all, and Burroughs will be mad as thunder." Again ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... hand went out instinctively to silence the interruption. "Sh-h!" she warned, but the Frenchman seemed not to have heard and continued his narrative, while his hand beat a nervous tattoo on the ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... rather sleepy-headed in the morning and it is a part of the cook's job to get them up. The next I knew, Herman had a tin pan on which he was beating a vigorous tattoo, all the time hollering, "We haf cackle-berries und antelope steak for breakfast." The baby was startled by the noise, so I attended to him and then dressed myself for breakfast. I went down to the ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... even as spectator, in the events that followed the appearance of Sir Patrick and his companions in the room—was Geoffrey. The only change visible in him was a change in the handling of his walking-stick. Instead of tracing patterns on the carpet, it beat a tattoo. For the rest, there he sat with his heavy head on his breast and his brawny arms on his knees—weary of it by anticipation before ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... she looked out on her shadowy garden, and tapped a little feverish tattoo with her finger on the window pane; and she meditated a great while, trying to bring back distinctly her recollection of Lady Constance, and also vaguely conjecturing who had arranged the marriage, and how it had ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... sin of omission came about in this way. I was anxious to turn in early and get a little sleep if possible, but could not do so, as I had to report "all present and correct" at tattoo. Anyhow, I strolled down to our hut at nine o'clock and found that the poor gunner alluded to already was in great pain, writhing about and groaning horribly. One of his chums who was with him told ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... rattle of horseshoes in the stable yard, and the great gates were opening as we skimmed past in the nick of time. In another minute we were skulking in the shadow of the kitchen-garden wall while the high-road rang with the dying tattoo ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... Lieutenant Alfred Sully, where nearly all the officers of the garrison were assembled, listening to Sully's stories. Lieutenant Derby, "Squibob," was one of the number, as also Fred Steele, "Neighbor" Jones, and others, when, just after "tattoo," the orderly-sergeants came to report the result of "tattoo" roll-call; one reported five men absent, another eight, and so on, until it became certain that twenty-eight men had deserted; and they were so bold and open in their behavior that it amounted ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... piece of the hot cake and lay down again. The morsel was still in his throat when consciousness left and a deep sleep overwhelmed him. His wife immediately undressed him and put on him the garments of the kalandar. The servant shaved his head and made some tattoo marks on his body. When the night set in the lady called her servant and said, "Hyacinth, be kind enough to take the superintendent on thy back, and carry him to the convent instead of that kalandar, and if he wishes to return to the house in the morning, do not let him." The servant ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... weave their own hair on pieces of hide into the form of buffalo horns; or, as in No. 4, make a single horn in front. The features given are frequently met with, but they are by no means universal. Many tattoo their bodies by inserting some black substance beneath the skin, which leaves an elevated cicatrix about half an inch long: these are made in the form of stars, and other figures of no ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... assignment of rooms, the supply of food, the heating, lights, silver, and livery. He commanded the detachments of the Imperial Guard on duty in the Imperial palaces. He gave orders to beat the reveill and the tattoo, to open and shut the palace gates. When the Emperor was with the army, or travelling, he had to find him quarters. In 1805 the Grand Marshal's budget amounted to 2,338,167 francs. In 1806 it reached the sum of 2,770,841 francs. There were four tables in ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... himself in the pine-scented shipyard, amid the tattoo of the mallets; Or he leaned on the rail of the bridge, letting his thoughts flow with the whispering river; He hearkened also to ancient tales, and made them young again with ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... she was dancing the Romalis, and making the bits of broken crockery rattle as well as if they had been ebony and ivory castanets. That girl was good company, I can tell you! Evening fell, and I heard the drums beating tattoo. ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... while the little brain was at work. "Goin' to Angel's mamma,—her goin' to her mamma," suddenly the child broke forth as Norma hurried along the hot streets, and the little hand beat a gleeful tattoo as ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... fellows soon get very mirthful on the ginger-wine; keeping up a continual buzz, like a colony of bees, sadly itching to be at something—a wish that is not to be realized at once, for little Miss Newsoince is going to do that eternal tattoo, the "Rataplan:"—yes, there she is, in Tom's felt-hat and polonaise, as "La Vivandiere," thumping upon an empty band-box with two knitting-pins, singing, as some of the mammas say, very prettily; but as the boys, who have heard it many times before, designate it "a jolly bother!"—"a ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... the valley of the eastern source of the Irawadi. This agrees with Martini's indication of the seat of the Kin-Chi as north of Yung-ch'ang. One of Hannay's notices of Singpho customs should also be compared with the interpolation from Ramusio about tattooing: "The men tattoo their limbs slightly, and all married females are tattooed on both legs from the ankle to the knee, in broad horizontal circular bands. Both sexes also wear rings below the knee of fine shreds of rattan varnished ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa |
