"Tapping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these days, of a broken wheel or axle on a railway coach, yet at the chief stopping places on our railways a man goes round each train as it comes in, tapping the tires with a hammer to detect cracks, feeling the hubs to see if there is any sign of a hot box, and looking into the grease containers to see if there is a proper supply of lubricant. There ought to be a similar inspection of every aeroplane every time it touches ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... by his father, after which that symptom no longer appeared; he would give none but irrelevant answers to questions; he masturbated openly. In the next phase he refused to answer questions altogether, sat in a chair by the window, rocking and tapping the floor or wall with his feet; reading a paper in a whisper or tearing it into scraps; spitting on the floor, his clothes or the window pane and then drawing pictures with his finger on the wet glass; intermittently chanting the same air over and over again with words, totally indistinguishable, ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... valentudinarian. No participation in what went on around him. I did venture, I think, to send you a few words of cutting from our local paper, which I took the occasion to contribute on his decease. If I recollect myself aright, such is very much the gist of them. But don't, Mr Humphreys,' continued Cooper, tapping him impressively on the chest,—'don't you run away with the impression that I wish to say aught but what is most creditable—most creditable—of your respected uncle and my late employer. Upright, Mr Humphreys—open as the day; liberal to all in his dealings. He had the ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... niece, Lucy Harmon Webster. After she had finished reading the letter, Ellen sat tapping her foot impatiently upon the floor. ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... would, as every one knew, have out his say had the King been present in person. "Be assured, your Excellency, it is not the King who orders that affront to his faithful colony; it is the King's ministers—the King's mistresses—the snuff-box-tapping courtiers at Versailles, who can spend the public money in more elegant ways than in raising up walls round our brave old city! Ancient honor and chivalry of France! what has become ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the good?": perhaps a certain consciousness of the happiness which he had failed to grasp. He had not force enough to struggle either with himself or with others. He had come to the end of a stage in his progress: he was reaping the fruits of all his former efforts, cumulatively: too easily he was tapping the vein of music that he had opened and while the public was naturally behindhand, and was just discovering and admiring his old work, he was beginning to break away from them without knowing as yet whether he would ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... as needed, depending on the size of the scion and insert a wooden wedge made from some hard wood. An old broom or hoe handle is good, tapering the wedge from both sides, leaving it thick in the center so it will come out easily after the graft is set by simply tapping lightly from first one side and then the other. In cutting the scion slope from each side with a long slope to fit the split in the stub. The outer edge of the scion should be somewhat thicker than the inner edge so that when the wedge is taken out it will be ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... a man waiting impatiently at the desk. He had put the card that had been given him by the registration robot on the desk and was tapping his fingers on it. ...
— Thin Edge • Gordon Randall Garrett
... undisciplined. Mrs. Talcott has been with my guardian for almost all the time ever since. It is a great and silent devotion. She is very reticent. She never speaks of herself. She talks to me sometimes in the evenings about her youth in Maine, and the long white winters and the sleigh-rides; and the tapping of the maple-trees in Spring; and the nutting parties in the fall of the year. I think that she likes to remember all this; and I love to hear her, for it reminds me of what my father used to tell me of his youth; and I love especially to hear of the ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... so long decried by sciolists as merely a fool with a note-book, would forego every rebuff or refusal. 'Boswell,' says Horace Walpole, 'that quintessence of busy-bodies called on me last week, and was let in when he should not have been. After tapping many topics, to which I made as dry answers as an unbribed oracle, he vented his errand; 'had I seen Dr Johnson's Lives of ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... against invading seas. Between him and his home there was the road to cross and the meadow to wade through. It must, as he guessed, be eleven o'clock. His father and Hannah Macaulay would be in bed. He would have to rouse them with cautious tapping upon ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... woman's nature, sphere, destiny, were thoroughly digested, and any speaker that did not come up to her exact ideal, was taken delicately to task when her turn came to speak. As some one remarks, "she had a playful way of tapping a speaker in a public meeting, as a skillful driver touches his horses with the tip end of his whip." Once, says Wendell Phillips, she tried the experiment on me when I had ventured to say that one of the drawbacks to the movement, was the indifference of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... hopefully, he turned his head again and again towards the glare of light above Omdurman. He could no longer hear the tapping of the drums, that was some consolation. But he was in a country of silence, where men could journey swiftly and yet make no noise. There would be no sound of galloping horses to warn him that pursuit was at his heels. Even at that moment the ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... Cato was tapping up the dotted stairway with his bow. "Now what are they?" asked ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... There was no sign from within. It wanted a few minutes to midnight. Should he make his presence known in any way? By tapping gently at the window? Since nothing of this sort had been arranged, it might arouse Marcolina's suspicions. Better wait. It could not be much longer. The thought that she might instantly recognize ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... himself knew what that submission cost him. For while their spears were crossed, the head of Aldobrandino's tapping his opponent's shield, it was with a weak and wavering touch; while Richard's had found a joint in the armour of the knight of Atlas, and had he not generously and dexterously withdrawn his lance, Aldobrandino by the very force ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... silently listening for strains of music. In the stillness of the forest they heard nothing but the songs of the birds, broken occasionally by the caw of a crow or the tapping of a woodpecker. But it was good to stop chattering for a while in this peaceful place, and Billie, lying on her back looking up into the interlacing branches ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... he can to protect his gardens, his orchards, his fields and forests, but if the birds did not help him the insects that work by night and day—tapping at the root, boring inside the bark, piercing the very heart of the plant, chewing off the under side of leaves, nipping off the buds—would make the earth bare and brown instead of green and blooming. Yet House People, both ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... daruber? Und ich sollte wirklich diese Blodsinnigen, dies grobe Rindvieh hereinlassen? In den hulflosen Umstanden meiner gnadigen jungen Damen?—Unsinn! (Pause—thinking.) Wohlan! Ich werde sie mal beschutzen! Sollte man nicht glauben, dass sie einen Sparren zu viel hatten? (Tapping her skull significantly.) Was sie mir doch Alles gesagt haben! Der Eine: Guten Morgen! wie geht es Ihrem Herrn Schwiegervater? Du liebe Zeit! Wie sollte ich einen Schwiegervater haben konnen! Und der Andere: 'Es thut mir sehr leid dass Ihrer Herr Vater meinen Bruder nicht gesehen ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of eventually tapping the mountain lake near which Jo was wont to camp and bringing the water down to irrigate such portions of desert land as might require it; for there were places where three hundred feet of boring had not developed a drop of the precious fluid. The promoter had an engineer's estimate ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... points by tapping them off on his fingers with the stem of his unlighted pipe. Now he shoved the pipe back in his pocket and clasped ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... statements of fact and heavily unresponsive to the spirit. Professor Frazer, younger than half a dozen of the plow-trained undergraduates, thin of hair and sensitive of face, sitting before them, with one hand in his pocket and the other nervously tapping ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... The words were strangled in her throat, and she fell to tapping her foot rhythmically against the fender. Her eyes were moist; this was so different from the talk she ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... of the tale; the dread for each and all of a mutiny headed by his ruthless favourite, John Silver. Indeed, terror, whether caused by the eccentric furies of Mr. William Bones, mariner, or of the awful blind Pew with his tapping staff, runs through the volume as the dominant motive. But there is so much else: the many landscapes, so various and so vivid; the humour of the Doctor and the Squire, the variety of the seamen's characters; the Man of the Island, with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... assist me,' he began, tapping impatiently on the table with his fingers. 'Go and speak for ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... a crisp organdie, with a high blue sash. With her bobbed hair and pink cheeks she was not unlike a painted doll. She carried a little blue fan with lacquered sticks, and she tapped the table as she talked to Major Prime. The tapping was the only sign of her ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... visits from Solomon Owl when Solomon has a fine appetite. To be sure, Farmer Green isn't happy when Solomon steals some of his fine chickens, and neither are the chickens for that matter. But Solomon doesn't have all the fun on some one else. Oh no! Reddy Woodpecker knows how to tease him by tapping with his bill on Solomon's wooden house in the daytime, when every owl likes to sleep and dream of all the nice frogs and fat chickens they are going to feast on the next night, and then, out comes ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey
... "but he will not—I know he will not." She then led the way to a low door, through the seams of which light was visible, and, tapping gently, pronounced the word "Andrew." As soon as the door was opened—"Here is a stranger," said she, addressing the young man who acted as porter; "and when I grow richer I will endeavour to reward you, if you would get your greatcoat and shew him the road; ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... pat my foot," answered Kitty; and in fact the charming simpleton on shore, having perfected her attitude, was tapping the ground nervously with the ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... tapping, to which I responded, and then as I listened to the hollow sound I knew what had been wrong. I had been boring through the board just where it was backed by one of the uprights which gave ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... herself at his feet, exclaiming, "O master, master, do buy my mother too!" The man gazed for a moment on the beautiful face upturned to his, with a look which made the lashes droop over her pleading eyes, and tapping her cheek with ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... said Mae, smiling up at him. "This has done me good." She pushed the brown hair back from her forehead and drew some deep breaths and leaned back in her chair, still tapping her eager, half-tired foot against the floor, while Norman fanned her with ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... of this sort inside one of the churches. There was a short morning service, and when the parson entered Jude came down from his ladder, and sat with the half-dozen people forming the congregation, till the prayer should be ended, and he could resume his tapping. He did not observe till the service was half over that one of the women was Sue, who had perforce accompanied ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... dreadful surroundings, "I'm sadly afraid that all this means the end of Murray Frobisher, and a mighty unpleasant end it promises to be. No escape possible either," he went on, carefully making a tour of the apartment, and at intervals tapping on the walls with an iron tool which he had picked up, in an endeavour to obtain some idea of their thickness, and so to judge as to the possibility of digging himself out, if he were left alone long enough. But the results were ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... my young friend," observed the School-master, "is as fragile as this cup"—tapping his coffee-cup. "The countryman of whom you speak is up and doing long before you or I or your successful merchant, who has waxed great on noise as you put it, is awake. If the early bird catches the worm, what ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... private consultation, and the assembly waited for the verdict in a hush through which one might have counted the heart-beats sounding in tumultuous rhythm; but the girlish prisoner still kept her defiant attitude—tapping the pavement impatiently with her tiny booted foot—as making light of any crime that might be imputed ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Culture, whose golden precept: "BE PERFECT IN REGARD TO WHAT IS HERE AND NOW," had appealed powerfully to her earnest exalted nature, she failed to observe the signals of her pet ring-doves cooing on the ledge outside. Finally their importunate tapping on the glass arrested her attention, and she raised the sash and scattered a handful of rice and millet seed; whereupon a cloud of dainty wings swept down, and into the library, hovering around her sunny head, and pecking the food from her open palms. One dove seemed particularly attracted by ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... near our own house. I well remember, when a little boy, the family were sometimes waked up in the dead of night by an express, with the report that the Indians were at hand. The express came softly to the door and by a gentle tapping raised the family. This was easily done, as an habitual fear made us ever watchful, and sensible to the slightest alarm. The whole ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... I would leap from my mattress, and stand furtively gazing and listening, thrown, without any visible cause, into extreme agitation. But the lights would disappear from the upper rooms, the sounds of footsteps and talking give place to snores, the watchman begin his nightly tapping with his stick, the garden grow brighter and more mysterious as the streaks of light vanished from the windows, the last candle pass from the pantry to the hall (throwing a glimmer into the dewy garden as it did so), and the stooping figure of Foka (decked ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... speaking to familiar mate, "Keep on your own side, do, Grey Pate:" The snake then to the other side, As one rebuked, seems to glide; And now again advancing nigh, Again she hears the infant cry, Tapping the snake, "Keep further, do; Mind, Grey Pate, what I say to you." The danger's o'er—she sees the boy (O what a change from fear to joy!) Rise and bid the snake "good-bye;" Says he, "Our breakfast's done, and I Will come again to-morrow day:" Then, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... shrugged his shoulders, sat down, and leaning back in his chair stared up at pale-faced Barnabas, tapping the table-edge softly with the barrel ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... ponderous, neat, clean-shaven, with his smooth hair, hardly thinned, smelling, no doubt, of the best hair-wash, and a pink paper in his hand. Well, he didn't change! And for perhaps the first time in his life Soames felt a kind of sympathy tapping in his waistcoat for that sardonic kinsman. With his weight, his perfectly parted hair, and bull-like gaze, he was a guarantee that the old order would take some shifting yet. He saw George move the pink paper as if inviting him to ascend—the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... up Georgina's hand to make it do the tapping, thinking it would please her to give her a share in the invitation, but in her touchy frame of mind it was only an added grievance to have her knuckles knocked against the pane, and her wails began afresh as the old man, answering ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... arose in Denham's mind whether he should ask to see this play, as, no doubt, he was expected to do. He looked rather stealthily at Rodney, who was tapping the coal nervously with a poker, and quivering almost physically, so Denham thought, with desire to talk about this play of his, and vanity unrequited and urgent. He seemed very much at Denham's mercy, and Denham could not help liking ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... water he seemed to be able to think more clearly. That tapping in the cellar yesterday! What had that been? He must look and see. Yes, that was really what he had come about. Perhaps the men were down there yet hidden away. He opened the cellar door and listened. Doggone it ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... to attend on the Captain's pleasure. He did not see the sneer of contempt which passed all round the room, from the first clerk to the articled gents, from the articled gents to the ragged writers and white-faced runners, in clothes too tight for them, as he sate there tapping his boot with his cane, and thinking what a parcel of miserable poor devils these were. The miserable poor devils knew all about his affairs. They talked about them over their pints of beer at their public-house clubs to other clerks of a night. Ye gods, what do not attorneys and attorneys' ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the fire Sat, her nightcap in; Father, in easy chair, Gloomily napping, When at the window-sill Came a light tapping! ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... remark that, so far as I know, they were very good babes—they were as good as ordinary babes. I really have not time to go into their history. You will find it all in the story-books. They died in the woods, listening to the woodpecker tapping the hollow beech-tree. It was a sad fate for them, and I pity them. So, I hope, ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... in a Southern city tells me of a red-headed woodpecker that drums upon a lightning-rod on his neighbor's house. Nearly every clear, still morning at certain seasons, he says, this musical rapping may be heard. "He alternates his tapping with his stridulous call, and the effect on a cool, autumn-like morning ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... come to pass was by reason of the presence of this blind woman who walked tap-tapping, led by a little dog; a blind woman who for some reason had ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... except at a particular period of its growth, which, incredible as it may appear, they seemed to me to be able to ascertain within an hour or two. Others are still more capricious in their tastes; and after gathering together a heap of the nuts of all ages, and ingeniously tapping them, will first sip from one and then from another, as fastidiously as some delicate wine-bibber experimenting glass in hand among his dusty demi-johns ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... welcome in my family, I think," said Cohen, putting down his hat and becoming his former self. "And you've been punctual. Nothing like a little stress here," he added, tapping his side pocket as he sat down. "It's good for us all in our turn. I've felt it when I've had to make up payments. I began to fit every sort of box. It's bracing to the mind. Now then! let us ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... "everybody knows that Arden is a most beautiful region; even the toads there have precious jewels in their heads. And if you range the forest freely you may chance to find also the White Doe of Rylstone and the goat with the gilded horns that told fortunes in Paris long ago by tapping with his hoof on ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... said Jones, turning round to the amiable girl, and tapping her on the shoulder, with the confiding smile and tender playfulness of the accepted lover, as he was,—"Jane, you said, I think, that you should like to get a sight of that spunky opponent of Mr. Peters, whom we were talking ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... red in the face, and he trod fast and angrily, tapping the pavement with his stick. He was very ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... it will, uncle,' replied William, tapping his foot as he lounged in a green morocco easy-chair; 'and so, because you have set your fancy upon having these two estates enclosed together in a ring-fence, you wish that I should also be enclosed in ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... appeals strongly to the sense of the mystery of conflicting personality. Next to this is Treasure Island, one of the best romances of adventure ever written. Readers who cannot feel a thrill of genuine terror when the blind pirate Pew comes tapping with his cane have missed a great pleasure. One-legged John Silver, in his cheerful lack of all the ordinary virtues, is a character that puts the fear of death upon the reader. The opening chapter of this story is one of the finest things in all ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... she's teched up here," one of the girls explained, tapping her forehead. "They say it was the old sweat-shops put her out of her mind, and I guess it's so, all right. My mother knows two ladies that was made crazy sewing pants up to Sternberg's. But that was long ago, ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... short flaps, with quiescent intervals between the series. The flaps are usually four, sometimes five or six. I am sure he counts them. You have seen a pursy gentleman in black hurrying along the street and tapping his boot with a cane, as though keeping time. Fancy this gentleman in the air, dressed in feathers, his coat-skirt sheared off alarmingly short and square, and looking like a cherub in jet, all head and wings,—although John ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... him, and walked over to the window where he stood tapping on the glass, attempting to dislodge the snow which had spread itself out like a blanket across the panes. "Poor devil," he said, "I pity him, whoever he is. He can find no place of shelter in all the three hundred and twenty miles ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... our bedroom door, when a man and a girl came out with two large pails in their hands, and we watched them proceed to a cart with a barrel in it, which was in a corner of the yard; we had been wondering what was in the barrel and were glad to see them commence tapping it, when lo! out spouted the blood-red wine with which they actually half filled their pails before they left the spot. This was as Italy should be. After dinner, too, as we stroll in the showy Italian sort of piazza near the inn, ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... the people she met on board (including the charming young man upon whom you would already have congratulated her), of how he and she bought curios at Port Said, of her arrival, of her sister's children and their quaint sayings, of Singapore and its sights, of Malaya and how she was taken to see the tapping on a rubber plantation—here I picture a gleam of revived interest, possibly financial in origin, appearing in your face—of the club, of dinner parties and a thousand other details, all highly entertaining to herself and involving ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... shook from the stalks as he moved, coloring the rusty blue of his overalls white, and melting ice-cold, wet him through to the skin on arms and shoulders and knees. Swiftly, two motions to the ear, he kept up a tapping like the regular blows of a hammer, as the ears struck the sideboard. Fifteen taps to the minute, you would have counted; a goodly ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... Ivanovna tried to appear to be disdainfully unaware of it, she raised her voice and began at once speaking with conviction of Sonia's undoubted ability to assist her, of "her gentleness, patience, devotion, generosity and good education," tapping Sonia on the cheek and kissing her warmly twice. Sonia flushed crimson, and Katerina Ivanovna suddenly burst into tears, immediately observing that she was "nervous and silly, that she was too much upset, that it was ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... reply. Off these two went, amid the tears of the whole plantation, and we heard no more of them for some time. One night we were startled to hear the dogs howling down in the pasture-lot, always to the Southern heart a forewarning of death. A few nights thereafter, my mother heard a tapping on the kitchen window, and, on going to the door, saw Uncle Isaac standing there—alone. "What in the world are you doing here?" was the question of my mother. "Whar's mistis'?" was the interrogative answer. My mother went ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... La belle Meronville, tapping his grace playfully on the arm, in order to do which she was forced to lean a little harder upon Clarence's, which she had not yet relinquished—"Fi ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rises, and goes to him; he has taken a cigarette out of the box on the table, and stands there, with his head bent, tapping the cigarette against his hand.] Women only talk "like this," as you call it, to their lovers. They talk "like that" to their husbands—and that's why the husbands never know. That's why the husbands are always ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... eleven. You are animated by a real desire to get out of literature all that literature will give. And in that aim you keep on reading, year after year, and the grey hairs come. But amid all this steady tapping of the reservoir, do you ever take stock of what you have acquired? Do you ever pause to make a valuation, in terms of your own life, of that which you are daily absorbing, or imagine you are absorbing? Do you ever satisfy yourself by proof that you are ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... came nearer. Through the hurrying of eager feet and the clamor of glad voices was a tap-tapping on the wainscot and a thumping on ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... Annie exclaim, as one of these gossips passed through the gate, after putting her through a more minute inquisition than usual. And he heard dainty shoe-heels impatiently tapping along the hall, and when she brought in a bouquet of fresh flowers he saw in her ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... that Isobel might ask him some questions about this story of Bathurst leaving the army, went off hastily as soon as Captain Forster had left. Isobel sat impatiently tapping the floor with her foot, awaiting the Doctor, who usually came for half an hour's chat ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... she soon acquired such dexterity that she was almost always on the old tombstone before Silvere had time to stretch out his arms. She would laugh at her own strength and agility as, for a moment, with her hair in disorder, she remained almost breathless, tapping her skirt to make it fall. Her sweetheart laughingly called her an impudent urchin. In reality he much admired her pluck. He watched her jump over the wall with the complacency of an older brother supervising the exercises of a younger one. Indeed, there was yet much that ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... patience! Ah, blessed St. Anthony, what these Americans are! Listen. For what you shall do, I do not inquire. The question is to me what I"—he emphasized the pronoun by tapping himself on the breast—"I, Jose Santierra, will do. Well, I shall tell you. To-day, nothing. To-morrow, nothing. For a week, for a month, nothing! After, ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... education would rather be called a rascal, than accused of deficiency in the graces.' Mr. Gibbon, who was present, turned to a lady who knew Johnson well, and lived much with him, and in his quaint manner, tapping his box, addressed her thus: 'Don't you think, Madam, (looking towards Johnson,) that among all your acquaintance, you could find one exception?' The lady ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... antics and dancing performances, with or without the accompaniment of music, vocal or instrumental; and by instrumental music is here meant all sounds other than vocal made habitually and during the more or less orderly performances; as, for instance, drumming and tapping noises; smiting of wings; and humming, whip-cracking, fan-shutting, grinding, scraping, and horn-blowing sounds, produced as a rule by ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... and he occupied himself for a time with ham and his own thoughts. He became aware of a series of jangling concussions on the table. He craned his neck and discovered that Mr. Voules was standing up and leaning forward over the table in the manner distinctive of after-dinner speeches, tapping upon the table with a black bottle. "Ladies and gentlemen," said Mr. Voules, raising his glass solemnly in the empty desert of sound he had made, and paused for a second or so. "Ladies and gentlemen,—The ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... tapping the soggy bit of vellum which he held in his hand, "the trouble with this map is, not that it is not genuine, but that it's too old. This map," he paused for emphasis, "this map was made in ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... for Dudley Hamilt to come—he will nevaire find me—" She scarcely spoke to the Major. Poor Major! He walked the deck, his thin cane, tap, tap, tapping and his great caped coat bundled tight ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... doubt that presently I heard an unexpected sound. Yet if indeed it had been a laugh she clipped it short, for in almost the same moment she was looking large-eyed at me and tapping my sleeve impulsively with her fingers, just as David does when he suddenly ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... into the fight like a lion, you go out like a lamb. By Saint Paul! this is not in accordance with the De Gamelyn traditions. Take up thy arms! Come along!" said the stranger tapping him on the shoulder with a barbed shaft trimmed with ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... little time you will be dazzling; you will be ready to produce. A governess! It is more likely that you will be a duchess; and then you will laugh at everybody—except me," said Madame di Forno-Populo, tapping her breast with her delicate fingers, ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... one day, staring greedily out at the lumpy rock-ribbed road; silent, perforce, and tapping the arms of her chair with nervous intensity. Suddenly she called out, "Mary! Mary Ames! Come here quick! There's somebody ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... in the corner of the room, and took down an old, quaintly-shaped silver cup, which had been an heirloom in their family, and was the only piece of plate which their modern domestic establishment could boast; and with this, down cellar she tripped, her little heels tapping lightly on each stair, and the hum of a song coming back after her as she sought the cider-barrel. Up again she came, and set the silver cup, with its clear amber contents, down by the fire, and then busied herself in making ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... at once recognized the efforts of the heroic firemen by tapping a keg of beer, which he distributed among them ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... the principal key of the gas-jets a little so as to obtain the best possible flame, and every now and then running to the door which opened to the outer chambers, as he fancied that he heard some one tapping at the street entrance. The whole effect of the preparations suggested something between a concert and the reception of a deputation, and no one would have suspected that a party of young men were about to engage in a serious ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... Squeers, choking the last boy in her hurry, and tapping the crown of his head with the spoon to restore him. "Here, you Smike; take away ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... asked myself this question, with an unerring premonition that the time would soon come when my mother and I would be separated, I heard her tapping lightly at the door. She was not in the habit of leaving her guests, and I was surprised and perplexed at ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... weight, (as well it may, for Bridget is a burden like Behemoth,) Simon's heart goes thump so loud, that it was a wonder the poor woman never heard it. That heart in its hard pulsations sounded to me like the carpenter hammering on her coffin-lid: I marvel that she did not take it for a death-watch tapping to warn her of her end. But no: Simon held his hand against his heart to keep it quiet: he was so very fearful the pitapating would betray him. Never mind, Simon; don't be afraid; she is fast asleep already; and her snore is to thee as it were ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... was he on his occupation, that it was a full minute before he became aware of a small boy standing at his open door, and tapping modestly. As he looked up and met the eyes of the already doubtful Dick, both boys inwardly thought, "I rather like that fellow"—a conclusion which, as far as Dick was concerned, made it still more difficult for him to broach the subject of ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... "Ah," said Rupert, tapping Daniel lightly on the head, "a man with a brain like this can't develop a taste for the real thing. I've seen him shaking over jokes that made me want to cry, but you mustn't expect too much of him. ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... time, though the chief of the force, the celebrated Inspector Blunt was just on the point of leaving for his home. He was a man of middle size and compact frame, and when he was thinking deeply he had a way of kniting his brows and tapping his forehead reflectively with his finger, which impressed you at once with the conviction that you stood in the presence of a person of no common order. The very sight of him gave me confidence and made me ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... introduce you to some fresh partners. There are plenty of people anxious to know you!" she said to Bevis archly. Then, tapping Mavis with her fan, she continued, laughing, "Naughty girl! You mustn't keep him all to yourself! I really can't! ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... set in the wall at the foot of the bed. Now which was the foot of the bed? I'll try both ends." He did so, tapping on the woodwork with his knuckles. Presently he found a hole where there had once been a ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... responded the minister, sitting erect and tapping the carpet nervously with his foot. "Only you must understand that I will take the whole matter to the Quarterly Conference in July. I already see a good many other interesting questions about the financial management of this church which ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... Mrs. Archibald. "The next thing he will be tapping at her window. I will go out and speak my mind ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... The quavering boyish whistle came from the third whare on his left, and, in an instant, he had reached the hut and was gently tapping on the door. Dick might not be alone, but that chance had to be risked, for time ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... faced by a wall. This suited me to a T. All serene! Having allowed Jim nice time to get comfortably sat down to his evening meal, I gently pulled the string, with the result that there was a gentle tapping at the door. Jim naturally answered my knock, and he seemed rather put about to find that his ears had evidently deceived him. So he slammed the door to and went inside—I guessed to resume his seat at the tea table. Then I "tolled" again and once more ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... wall. On the table a stuffed bird of prey. As the windows are open the curtains are flapping in the wind; and kitchen cloths, aprons and towels, that are hung on a line by the hearth, move in the wind, whose sighing can be heard. In the distance the noise of a waterfall. There is an occasional tapping on ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... Fort from morning till noon and from evening till the night, devising vain things in his heart, and croaking war-songs when Lalun sang on the City wall. As he grew more acquainted with the Subaltern he unburdened his old heart of some of the passions that had withered it. "Sahib," he used to say, tapping his stick against the parapet, "when I was a young man I was one of twenty thousand horsemen who came out of the City and rode round the plain here. Sahib, I was the leader of a hundred, then of a thousand, then of ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... would have permitted it, Artie, if I hadn't compelled you; for I've got all the prudence and common sense of the family bottled up here in my own forehead,' said the old man, tapping his bulging brow significantly. 'I don't deny that Oxford may be an excellent school for Greek and Latin, and philosophy, and so forth; but if you want prudence and sagacity and common-sense it's a well-known ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... saw a funny, little, old man standing over him, who kept one of his eyes shut all the time, and looked out of the other with the queerest twinkle in the world. He had a knotty stick in his hand, and was tapping Simon over ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... pattern for her to follow. She had that all mapped out in her brain, and followed it instinctively. I asked her to describe the way the rug would look when finished, and she said, "No can tell. Me know here," tapping her forehead. I liked the way the weaving was begun, and so I squatted there in the sunshine for two hours trying to get her to talk. Finally I gave her ten dollars for the rug when it should be finished and little by little she began to tell me the things I wanted to ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... Not at all. She was ugly; big mouth, big teeth, no figure, nothing at all," indicating a luxuriant bosom by sweeping his hands over his chest. "A pole, a post! But for the voice—ACH! She have something in there, behind the eyes," tapping his temples. ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... dinner tray, Tapping the shoulder of the nighest guest, With a peculiar smile, which, by the way, Boded no good, whatever it express'd, He ask'd the meaning of this holiday; The vinous Greek to whom he had address'd His question, much too merry to divine The ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... little back-office, or board-room, in one of the airiest little streets of the City of London, when this necessity became apparent to him. Mr Clearemout did not appear to have much to do at that particular time, for he contented himself with tapping the arm of his easy-chair with the knuckles of his right hand, while he twirled his gold watch-key with his left, and ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... As the goat went tapping up the steps a stir within announced the dreaded demonstration. Warwick did not seem to hear it; he stood looking far across the trampled plain and ruined town toward the mountains shining white against ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... absence," Olive said, tapping the letter in her lap. "No doubt he was summoned without any previous warning. Of course, he is a mere tool for his master. They will hardly dare ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... as though appealing to Dartrey, and Dartrey accepted the challenge, swinging a little around in his chair and tapping his cigarette against the table, ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... broken utterances were suddenly arrested: there was a tapping at the outer door—and Lionel turned frightened, anxious eyes ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... Milly's toilet, and was a very useful lady's maid, chatting in her own way all the time; and, at last, tapping Milly under the chin with her ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... her good-bye and started down the trail, his stick tapping against the old logging-cable stretched from tree to tree beside ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne |
