"Tat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lots of things. They told us not to spend our time out of school tatting and making eyelet embroidery, when there were neighborhoods to be awakened and citizens to be made. That suits me fine, for I can't tat anyway. One of the girls tried to show me, but gave it up after three or four tries. She said some could learn, and some ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... criminal: and in which such speeches and such absurd reasoning have been constantly uppermost with him. "Blood for blood", and "life for life", and such like balanced jingles, have passed current in people's mouths, from legislators downwards, until they have been corrupted into "tit for tat", and acted on. ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... non-pear-bearing peach-tree in the columns of their valuable journal? This is the drift of the fault found with Thackeray. He is not Fenelon, he is not Dickens, he is not Scott; he is not poetical, he is not ideal, he is not humane; he is not Tit, he is not Tat, complain the eminent Dabs and Tabs. Of course he is not, because he is Thackeray—a man who describes what he sees, motives as well as appearances—a man who believes that character is better than talent—that there is a worldly weakness superior ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... see it's been very good for you to know what it feels like to be left behind," rubbed in Diana. "You never told us about that gipsy trail dodge. Tit for tat's my motto." ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... evening of June in the year '84, he was interrupted whilst equipping himself for dinner abroad, by a thunderous rat-tat-tat. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... seconds even I thought that the game had been played and that serious business was about to begin. Dawson gave us a few seconds of apprehension, and then laughed grimly. From his waistcoat pocket he drew a key, and the fetters were removed almost as quickly as they had been clapped on. "Tit for tat," said he. "You have had your fun with me. Fair ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... and there came the loud rat-tat of the lawyer at the front door. They ran into the drawing-room and Eglantine opened the window gently. The detective knocked at the back door; the lawyer knocked again, louder. Pollyooly leaned out of the window, weighing her chances. She saw that to get to the ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... puffs appear in its path, the dynamite shells of our guns finding their range. Boom! boom! rat-ta-tat-boom-rat-ta-tat is the music that greets our ears and every hill is a tremble under the shock of thousands ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... the woman hastily just as there was a little rat-tat at the brass knocker of the ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... you should sigh about that," answered Colonel Faversham. "I mean to be kind to you as long as I live, and I hope that will be a good many years yet. But there's nothing like tit for tat, you know, Bridget. Come, now, my darling, I want you ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... he passed a mountain homestead he beat his rat-tat-tat to bring the girls out, and they stood and hung about and gaped after ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... through the same channel, requesting the lawyer to inform me, in writing, whether he and his clients had or had not decided on taking my advice. I directed him, with jocose reference to the collision of interests between us, to address his letter: "Tit for Tat, Post-office, West Strand." ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... irritable constitution than the black horse; flies tease her more; anything wrong in the harness frets her more; and if she were ill-used or unfairly treated she would not be unlikely to give tit for tat. You know that many ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... parabrahmanukara/h/ smaryate ida/m/ j/n/anam upasritya, &c.—Ke/k/id anuk/ri/tes tasya /k/api smaryate iti /k/a sutradvayam adhikara/n/antara/m/ tam eva bhantam anubhati sarva/m/ tasya bhasa sarvam ida/m/ vibhatity asya/h/ /s/rute/h/ parabrahmaparatvanir/n/ayaya prav/ri/tta/m/ vadanti. Tat tv ad/ris/yatvadigu/n/ako dharmokte/h/ dyubhvadyayatana/m/ sva/s/abdad ity adhi kara/n/advayena tasya prakara/n/asya brahmavishayatvapratipadanat jyoti/sk/ara/n/abhidhanat ity adishu parasya brahma/n/o bharupatvavagates /k/a purvapakshanutthanad ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... another general and very successful mode of taking them. It is performed by a native, with a tat-tat-ko, or long rod, tapering like a fishing rod, but longer, and having a piece of string at the end, with a slip noose working over the pliant twig which forms the last joint of the rod. [Note 74: Plate 4, fig. 1. (not reproduced in this etext)] This ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... or beat a scout, Or black a waiter's eye. Of all the clubs,—the Clippers, Screws, The Fly-by-nights, Four Horse, and Blues, The Daffy, Snugs, and Peep-o-day, Tom's an elect; at all the Hells, At Bolton-Row, with tip-top swells, And Tat's men, deep he'd play. His debts oft paid by Snyder's{24} pelf, Who paid at last a debt himself, Which all that live must pay. Tom book'd{25} the old one snug inside, Wore sables, look'd demure and sigh'd Some few short hours away; Till from the funeral return'd, Then Tom with expectation burn'd ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... he slammed the kitchen door behind him when the clatter and stamp of a horse's hoofs were heard Outside, followed by an impatient rat-a-tat-tat on the knocker. ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... such ruffian warfare by both Van Rensselaer and Brock, the sentries chance shots at each other through the dark. Drums beat reveille at four in the morning, and the rub-a-dub-dub of Queenston Heights is echoed by rat-tat-too of Lewiston, though river mist hides the armies from each other in the morning. Iron baskets filled with oiled bark are used as telegraph signals, and one may guess how, when the light flared up of a night on the Canadian heights, scouts carried word to the officers on the American ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... by stupid people who regret the disappearance of sharp, stern, peremptory punishments, and lament the softness of the rising generation. If punishment must be inflicted, it should be done good-naturedly and robustly as a natural tit-for-tat. Anger should be reserved for things like spitefulness and dishonesty and cruelty. There is nothing more utterly confusing to the childish mind than to have trifling faults treated with wrath and indignation. It is true that, in the world of ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... highly developed, completely automated and efficient system, mainly buried cables domestic: nationwide cellular telephone system; buried cable international: 3 channels leased on TAT-6 coaxial submarine cable (Europe to ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... his breath, and, in a mechanical fashion, began to build little castles with the draughts. He was just about to add to an already swaying structure when a thundering rat-tat- tat at the door dispersed the draughts to the four corners of the room. The servant opened the door, and the next moment ushered in ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... tat if she does," he said. "But I thought——" He did not finish; did not say that he had thought Christine cared too much for him ever to give a thought to another fellow. He turned his head against the cushions and pretended to sleep, and presently ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... him was, he declares, the receipt of his friend's "heart- engendered lines" of congratulation. "No grocer's apprentice, after his first month's permitted riot, was ever sicker of figs and raisins than I of hearing about the Remorse. The endless rat-a-tat-tat at our black-and-blue bruised doors, and my three master-fiends, proof-sheets, letters, and—worse than these—invitations to large dinners, which I cannot refuse without offence and imputation of pride, etc., oppress me so much that my spirits quite sink under it. I have never ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... there was a loud rat-tat at the front door, and Jack Glover hastened into the hall to answer. But it was not the policeman he had expected. It was a girl in a big sable coat, muffled up to her eyes. She pushed past Jack, crossed the hall, and walked ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... similarly robbed, they have a clear right to Malevole, the chief character in The Malcontent. 'Why not Malevole in folio with us, as Jeronimo in decimo sexto with them? They taught us a name for our play: we call it: "One for Another."' (That is to say, we give them 'Tit for Tat.') ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... Premier: I will be prepared to believe anything of The Times, but really I do not tink it has ever suggested tat."—Daily Mail. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... bandied to and fro; Hits were given and hits were met; "Chickamauga, Feds—take off your hat" "But the Fight in the Clouds repaid you, Rebs" "Forgotten about Manassas yet" Chatting and chaffing, and tit for tat, Mosby's clan ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... "Tit for tat," the philosophical Gibney reminded him. "We can't expect to get away with everything, Scraggsy, old kiddo." The words were scarcely out of his mouth before the Maggie's mainmast and about ten feet of her ancient railing were trailing alongside. Mr. Gibney ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... She might have put on the other candlestick. [He goes to mantel and takes it. A rat-tat-tat at street-door.] Who can that be? [Running to KATHLEEN'S door, holding candlestick forgetfully low.] Kathleen! ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... hour and a half's trudging, up hill and down dale, we got to the allotted spot and began our work. The night was alive with noises—ear-splitting reports of big guns, the shrieks and whistles of shells in transit, and the rat-tat-tat of machine-guns. Now and again the darkness would be illuminated by the glare of star-shells. I think I mentioned to you before the mournful desolation of this war-scarred countryside—land without grass, without trees, without houses, nothing more now than a wilderness, ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... flash, and wait till Fritz quit. Fat would be in a shell hole almost as soon as the first shot was fired, and would laugh at Bink looking for a hole to hide in. Bink would get sore; all you could hear was the rat-tat-tat of the machine gun and in between "Tee hee, tee hee" from Fat as he lay and watched Bink crawling around looking for a hole. Some of the boys would lie in the hole and wave their legs in the air hoping to get a bullet through them so that they could ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... behaved like a Cretan.' Cf. the English saying 'to give tit for tat'. Erasmus means that he gave the messenger full ...
— Selections from Erasmus - Principally from his Epistles • Erasmus Roterodamus
... is of Seven Hundred and Fifty; which Fraser thinks he will sell. With what joy shall I then sack up the small Ten Pounds Sterling perhaps of "Half-Profits," and remit them to the man Emerson; saying: There, Man! Tit for tat, the reciprocity not all on one side!—I ought to say, moreover, that this was a volunteer scheme of Fraser's; the risk is all his, the origin of it was with him: I advised him to have it reviewed, as being a really noteworthy Book; "Write you a Preface," said he, "and I will reprint it";—to ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... up their minds to spend Christmas without us; particularly Lisbeth Mary—that's my daughter, Daniel's wife—with her mother to comfort her, an' the firelight goin' dinky-dink round the cups and saucers on the dresser. I pictured the joy of it, too, when Sam or Daniel struck rat-tat and clicked open the latch, or maybe one o' the gals pricked up an ear at the sound of their boots on the cobbles. I 'most hoped the lads hadn't been thoughtful enough to send on a telegram. My mind ran ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... headlong flight in company of a broken rabble. Reaching Dunkeld in an exhausted condition early in the following morning, he and a few comrades found shelter in the house of a friend. But as they sat, about to fall to on a much needed meal, down the little street came the "rat-tat-tat" of a drum, and past the window swaggered an unkempt Highland drummer, halting at intervals to hurl defiance at all Whigs, and a challenge to them to fight the famous Highland champion, Rory Dhu Mhor. And this is something after the fashion of what Ringan and his weary comrades ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... before tat day!" sharply bolted out M'Nab, "and was spoken since tat day by a bigger nation tan England ever was, or ever will be! ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... minutes the little wireless cabin roared with the undiminishing rat-tat-tat of his spark explosions, and Manila, a navy man of the old school, rattled back a series ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... up opposite our chambers, and a few moments later a brisk step ascending the stairs heralded a smart rat-tat at our door. Flinging open the latter, I found myself confronted by a well-dressed stranger, who, after a quick glance at me, peered inquisitively over my shoulder into ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... successor, he was turned out-of-doors by Brigham Young with the taunting words, "Brother Sidney says he will tell our secrets, but I would say, ' 'O don't, Brother Sidney! Don't tell our secrets—O don't.' But if he tells our secrets we will tell his. Tit for tat! President Fairchild's argument that several of the original leaders of the fanaticism must have been "adequate to the task" of supplying the doctrinal part of the book, only furnishes additional proof ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... for tat of the whole business come to me, and I couldn't help rubbing it in a little. 'As a sartin acquaintance of mine once said to me,' I says, 'you look a good deal handsomer up there than you ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to rebuke Michael, when "rat-tat" went the iron ring that hung at the door. Some one was knocking. They looked out of the window; a man had come on horseback, and was fastening his horse. They opened the door, and the servant who had been with the ...
— What Men Live By and Other Tales • Leo Tolstoy
... us lay the key to Ladysmith—Platrand, whence now and again came the sharp rat-tat of the Metford, followed ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... as he was telling himself that, there came to the door a loud knock, the peculiar rat-tat-tat of a telegraph boy. But before he had time to get across the room, let alone to the front door, Ellen had rushed through the room, clad only ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... inwardly. No Dovenilid could be so obviously superior and still only a lowly student. Well, considering Harrison's qualifications, it might still not be tit for tat. ...
— Citadel • Algirdas Jonas Budrys
... rose from my chair to go and look at him, and with a candle in my hand I leaned over him. Seeing him breathing quietly I felt reassured, when he coughed a third time. It gave me such a shock tat I started backward, just as one does at sight of something horrible, and let ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... returned from Marseilles, when the Dame Lebrun set off, in company with M. Grimod, to visit it. She spent six weeks there, during which she wrote several letters to her husband, and cherished his answers as before. But we shall not follow the example of the Memoire, in repeating all these tit-for-tat endearments, but pursue our own object, which is to trace the style of occupation of people of their rank. And here we must observe, that, as far as we see in this process, the whole occupation of the Grimods and others was to make tours for their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... fowlin', and huntin' kills time; and gout, aperplexy, dispepsy, and blue devils kills them. They are like two fightin' dogs, one dies of the thrashin' he gets, and t'other dies of the wounds he got a killin' of him. Tit for tat; what's sarce for the goose, is sarce ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... pe preaking her heart with ta one hand while you'll pe clapping her head with ta other," said the piper. "Ton't be taking her into your house to pe telling her she can't see. Is it that old Tuncan is not a man as much as any woman in ta world, tat you'll pe telling her she can't see? I tell you she can see, and more tan you'll pe think. And I will tell it to you, tere iss a pape in this house, and tere was pe none ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... Blind Nicholas Nye The Pigs and The Charcoal Burner Five Eyes Grim Tit for Tat Summer Evening ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... She smiled a little as she thought how easily she could have conquered him had she chosen to be less scrupulous in the use of her weapons. She could have won him at "Wake Robin" if some silly Quixotism hadn't steeled her breast against him—more than tat, she knew that in spite of herself she would have won him if it hadn't been for Hermia. Hermia had discovered a remarkable faculty for unconsciously interfering with her affairs. Unconsciously? ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... hitting the mark, it would have to proceed from an act of reflection. Now, laughter is simply the result of a mechanism set up in us by nature or, what is almost the same thing, by our long acquaintance with social life. It goes off spontaneously and returns tit for tat. It has no time to look where it hits. Laughter punishes certain failing's somewhat as disease punishes certain forms of excess, striking down some who are innocent and sparing some who are guilty, ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... thought when I was your age.' It is not thought an answer at all, if the young man retorts: My venerable sir, so I shall most probably think when I am yours.' And yet the one is as good as the other: pass for pass, tit for tat, a Roland ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... paying for their dinner beforehand; every body freezes with the chilling sensation of dinner deferred, and "curses, not loud but deep," are imprecated on the Honourable Sniftky. At last, a prolonged rat-tat-tat announces the arrival of the noble beast, the lion of the evening; the Honourable Sniftky, who is a junior clerk in the Foreign Office, is announced by the footman out of livery, (for the day,) and announces himself a minute after: he comes in a long-tailed coat and boots, to show his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... The resonant, heavy moaning of massive wheels was like the rumble of a gun carriage. And, too, there was the drumming of many hoofs upon the road. Barlow's ear told him it was the rhythmic beat of cavalry horses, not the erratic rat-a-tat, ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... his breath, and, in a mechanical fashion, began to build little castles with the draughts. He was just about to add to an already swaying structure when a thundering rat-tat-tat at the door dispersed the draughts to the four corners of the room. The servant opened the door, and the next moment ushered ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... exercise whatever. At ten she has a heavy supper, and retires to bed between one and two in the morning. She likes very strong brandy." And in this last sentence we have the true secret of her undoing. The Royal Princess was, even tat this early age, a confirmed dipsomaniac, with her brandy bottle always by her side; and was seldom sober, from rising ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... Steel readily. "Tit for tat, Mr. Ware. You did a little business on your own account, and said nothing to me. I ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... complete horror of the situation had mastered the audience, a strong pair of hands, far back in the church, came together with an explosive clap. Like the rat-rat-tat of a quick-firing gun was the appreciative volley of recognition from the solitary applauder. It went rolling and crackling through the church defiantly, derisively, appreciatively. Halfway up the ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... no, that I could'nt, refuse any one who asked me so pretty as that lady did you. If she had been angry, and commanded you back, why bad begets bad, and tit for tat you know, and I should not so much have wondered: but, Miss, you should not vex her. No, don't be angry with an old man, I have seen so much of the evils of young folks taking their own way. Look here, young lady," said the weather beaten sailor, as he pointed ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... know, that on the morrow as he wended his way to the piazza, the boy would have been puzzled to say, whether of the twain, the wife or the husband, had had the most of his company during the night. But this I would say to you, dear my ladies, that whoso gives you tit, why, just give him tat; and if you cannot do it at once, why, bear it in mind until you can, that even as the ass gives, so ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... tat you say? Dare you cock your peaver? I will teach you, sir, Fat is coot pehaviour! You shall not exist For another day more; I will shoot you, sir, Or stap ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... Knox. In 1493-1495 James dealt in the usual way with the Highlanders and "the wicked blood of the Isles": some were hanged, some imprisoned, some became sureties for the peacefulness of their clans. In 1495, by way of tit-for-tat against English schemes, James began to back the claims of Perkin Warbeck, pretending to be Richard, Duke of York, escaped from the assassins employed by Richard III. Perkin, whoever he was, had probably been intriguing between Ireland and Burgundy since 1488. He ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... got that there bird was like this," he began. "It were about half after four in the morning, summer before last, an' I was just having what I may call my beauty sleep, when all of a sudding there came a most thundering rat-a-tat-tat at the door. ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... "Tit for tat," exclaimed. Bumpus; "what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. After this we'll call it off, fellows, remember. It was give and take, and ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... with its lattice-windows, projecting over the first; and the door, which is perhaps arched, provided on the outside with an iron hammer, wherewith the visitor's hand may give a thundering rat-a-tat. ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... most famous of the twelve paladins of Charlemagne. To give a "Roland for an Oliver" is to give tit for tat, to give another as good a drubbing as ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Rat-tat at the door! Rat-tat at the door! Here are valentines one, two, three; There is one for Harry, and one for Will, And a big one for girlie, see! Wildly she flies o'er the nursery floor, Never was girlie so happy before, As she shouts in her baby glee— "Oh! I've got a valentine, ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous
... sentiments appealed to the Articles, Homilies, or Reformers; in the sense that, if they had a right to speak loud, I had the liberty to speak out as well as they, and had the means, by the same or parallel appeals, of giving them tit for tat. I thought that the Anglican Church was tyrannized over by a mere party, and I aimed at bringing into effect the promise contained in the motto to the Lyra, "They shall know the difference now." I only asked to be allowed to show them ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... it sir," said Disco. "It's lucky you have always carried the physic in your pockets, 'cause you'll need it, an' it's lucky, too, that I am here and well enough to return tit for tat and nurse you, 'cause you'll have that 'ere pain in your spine creep up your back and round your ribs till it lays hold of yer shoulders, where it'll stick as if it had made up its mind to stay there for ever an' a day. Arter that you'll get cold an' shivering like ice—oh! ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... louder came the rat-tat-tat. We all gazed expectantly at the closed door. Glancing at Holmes, I saw his face turn rigid, and he leaned forward in intense excitement. Then suddenly came a low guggling, gargling sound, and a brisk drumming upon woodwork. Holmes sprang frantically across the room and pushed at ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... Rat-a-tat-tat at the first dim hint of dawn went the chamberlain's knuckles upon the door. To Nick it seemed scarce midnight yet, so sound had been ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... you? I'd rather err on the safe side, seems to me. Do let's be polite, at least! Yes, I'll knock," and a timid rat-tat-tat, made by a small kid-covered knuckle, announced the first visit of the present owner of ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... with so much violence that every one expected they would fall in pieces." For an hour together, as the worthy Mr. Mompesson repeated to his wondering neighbours, this infernal drummer "would beat 'Roundheads and Cuckolds,' the 'Tat-too,' and several other points of war, as cleverly as any soldier." When this had lasted long enough, he changed his tactics, and scratched with his iron talons under the children's bed. "On the 5th of ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... planting Stokeses under them when we heard the Lewises giving the recall signal. A good gunner gets so he can play a tune on a Lewis, and the device is frequently used for signals. This time he thumped out the old one—"All policemen have big feet." Rat-a-tat-tat—tat, tat. ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... as the Woodcutter Chief was sitting in his house, the postman came to the door—Rat-tat. The footman brought in a letter, and the Woodcutter Chief opened it. He read it through, and laughed. Then he waved it in the air, and said, "Let them come." As he waved the letter in the air, all the snuff fell out ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... The rat-a-tat at the door was now constant. Judge Bowman and old Dr. Wallace and four or five of the young men, with the young girls, entered, all with expressions of delight at Oliver's return home, and later, with the air of a Lord High Mayor, Colonel ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... dressed myself in clean clothes. Then came a little reading from a tiny book that had been in Labrador before, and a good deal of thinking. Just after 9 A.M. I lay down to go to sleep again. I had not realised it before, but I was very tired. My eyes had closed but a moment when rat-a-tat-tat on the mixing pan announced breakfast. Joe had prepared it, and the others came straggling out one by one looking sleepy and happy, enjoying the thought of the day's rest, the more that it was the kind of day to make it impossible ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... given, with the wilds of Canada for the scene. The young Highlander was said to be dirking pigs, while the father was keeping guard. "Phat's keeping out the licht, fayther?" shouts the son.—"If ta tail preaks, tou 'lt fine tat," were ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... never would act at all when Ricciarelli, the first man, was to be in dialogue with her.(623) Her fevers grow so high, that the audience caught them, and hissed her more than once: she herself once turned and hissed again—Tit pro tat geminat phoy d'achamiesmeyn—among the treaties which a secretary of state has negotiated this summer, he has contracted for a succedaneum to the Mingotti. In short, there is a woman hired to sing when the other shall ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... you would not break mine, I warrant, unless it were tit for tat," said my grandfather; thereby putting me to more confusion than Dolly, who laughed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... hoarse with passion. "To the marrow of your bones you are false, all of you! You do not cog your dice, perhaps, but you bubble your friends with finesses, and are as much sharpers at heart as the lowest tat-mongers in Alsatia. You empty our purses, and cozen our women with twanging guitars and jingling rhymes, and laugh at us because we are honest and ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... she never had been in it; not to me. And still I conned the matter over and over, vainly convincing myself that the situation had cleared. Notwithstanding all my effort, I somehow felt that an incentive had vanished, leaving a gap. The affair now had simmered down to plain temper and tit for tat. I championed nothing, ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... at last. Mrs. Ready had been absent on a visit to London; and the moment she heard of the intended emigration of the Lyndsays to Canada, she put on her bonnet and shawl, and rushed to the rescue. The loud, double rat-tat-tat at the door, announced an arrival ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... say you will, but that won't do now. 'Tit for tat,' Mr Boatswain, and hang all favours," replied Gascoigne, who was steering the boat, having been sent on shore for the others. "In bow—rowed of all." The boat was laid alongside—the relentless Gascoigne caught up his boat-cloak as the other officers rose to go on ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... wrath, etc. Asuyate is equivalent to dhikkaroti. Janah is explained by the commentator as parikshakah but it would be better to take it as standing for people generally. Tasya is an instance of the genitive for the accusative. Tat refers to nindyam karma, sarvatah means sarvashu yonishu. Janayati Janena dadati. The object of the verse is to show that sinful acts produce fear both ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Vaishnavas as the three Prasthanas or starting-points of philosophy and he had to show that they supported his views. Hence his interpretation often seems forced and perverse. The most extraordinary instance of this is his explanation of the celebrated phrase in the Chandogya Upanishad Sa atma tat tvam asi. He reads Sa atma atat tvam asi and considers that it means "You are not that God. Why be so conceited as to suppose that you are?"[598] Monotheistic texts have often received a mystical and pantheistic interpretation. ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... Sanskrit ata, tata; Hindustanee dada; Latin, atta, tatta; Greek atta, tatta; Albanian, Albania, at, atti; Calabria and Sicily tata; Celtic, Welsh tad; Cornish and Bret tat; Irish, daid; Gaelic daidein; English (according to Skeats of Welsh) dad, daddy; Old Slav, tata otici; Moldavian tata; Wallachian tate; Polish tatus; Bohemian, Servian Croatian otsche; Lithuanian teta; Preuss thetis; Gothic ata; Old Fries tate; O. H. G. tato; Old ...
— The Dakotan Languages, and Their Relations to Other Languages • Andrew Woods Williamson
... warm clouds and the sea quiet and peaceful. He began to take observations with the [v]sextant, which shook in his trembling hand. Presently a loud buzzing was heard in the sky, followed by the measured crackling of a machine gun; from the hull of the boat came a sharp rat-a-tat, as if some one was throwing dry peas on it. A hydroplane was circling ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... an hour Cochrane was about to fire again. But they heard the hysterical rat-tat-tat of firing. It seemed no nearer, but it could only be ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... thing, I grant, to betray you, Rody," said Hanlon; "an' if I was in your place, I'd give him tit for tat. An', by the way, talkin' of the Prophet—not that I say it was he betrayed you—for indeed now it wasn't—bad cess to me if it was—I think you wanst said you knew more about ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... a word or two to say to you. I ain't kickin' at your givin' me tit for tat, or tryin' to. Turn about's fair play, if you can call the turn. But it's against my principles to allow anybody to beat me on a business deal. Do you suppose,' he says, 'that I'd have paid your robber's prices without a word if I hadn't had ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of this remark was another "Pshaw!" But Mrs. Peck went on: "When you've lived opposite to people like that for a long time you feel as if you had some rights in them—tit for tat! But she didn't take it up today; she didn't speak to me. She knows who I am as well as she knows her ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... d'etat, or 'stroke of policy,' as cruel as it was cowardly. Lord Palmerston's approval of this outrage, without the knowledge of either the Queen or Lord John Russell, procured him his dismissal from the cabinet. Two months later, however, Palmerston 'gave Russell his tit-for-tat,' defeating him over a ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... of it! I should saunter into Tat's' like a swell, and ask them if they couldn't find me a raw colt to try my hand on for a wager. Say I had laid a hundred I would quiet down the most vicious quadruped they ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... viande, rsulte de l'action du suc gastrique acide sur le tissu connectif qui se dissout d'abord, et qui, par sa liqufaction, dsagrge les fibrilles. Celles-ci se dissolvent ensuite en grande partie, mais, avant de passer l'tat liquide, elles tendent se briser en petits fragments transversaux. Les 'sarcous elements' de Bowman, qui ne sont autre chose que les produits de cette division transversale des fibrilles lmentaires, peuvent tre prpars et isols l'aide du suc gastrique, ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... TAT - Trans-Atlantic Telephone; any of a number of high-capacity submarine coaxial telephone cables linking Europe ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... branches of the fir-trees, Canada sparrows fluting their clear call from the tree tops, flycatchers darting and tumbling in their zig-zag, erratic flights, and sometimes a big golden-wing woodpecker running up and down a tall, dead trunk which stood close by, and rat-tat-tat-tatting in a most businesslike and determined manner. But the Child was not, as a rule, so interested in birds as in the four-footed kindreds. Just now, however, a bird came on the scene which interested him extremely. It was a birch-partridge (or ruffled grouse) hen, accompanied by a big ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... and the ring. And he remembers Bob killing the cat and tying its tail to the fence to see him kick before he died. He and Bob and a lot of the fellows all together in Smith's field, I think he said. Bob knew Smith. And the way they played tit-tat-too on the window pane on All Hallows' Eve, and they got caught that night too." (At Barking, where my uncles lived as children, there is a field called Smith's field, but my Uncle does not remember the cat incident.) "Aunt ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... he said, "is, that my father will make it smooth with me, and not acknowledge her: so that whenever I go to him, I shall have to leave her, and tit for tat—an abominable existence, like a ball on a billiard-table. I won't bear that ignominy. And this I know, I know! she might prevent it at once, if she would only be brave, and face it. You, you, Lady Judith, you ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and it is always an eerie sensation. We correctly surmised that the Turks were in retreat from Khan Baghdadi and had run into our outposts. In a few minutes we were replying in volume, and the rat-tat-tats of the machine-guns on either side were continuous. The enemy must have greatly overestimated our numbers, for in a short time small groups started surrendering, and before things had quieted we had twelve hundred prisoners. ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt |
