"Tattoo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... words also we have received, one by one, from various languages, which sometimes have not bestowed on us more than this single one. Thus 'hussar' is Hungarian; 'caloyer', Romaic; 'mammoth', of some Siberian language;{14} 'tattoo', Polynesian; 'steppe', Tartarian; 'sago', 'bamboo', 'rattan', 'ourang outang', are all, I believe, Malay words; 'assegai'{15} 'zebra', 'chimpanzee', 'fetisch', belong to different African dialects; the last, however, ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... forward. Jawn fingered the lever with a lover's caress. He knew old "eleven," every foot of her, every tube, bolt, and strap. As they cleared the yards, he threw her wider and wider open until she was lunging and lurching madly. The cinders beat a tattoo upon the cab, and Jim Weeks crowded up into the corner. The fireman, a strapping young fellow, threw in great shovels of coal with the regularity of a machine, pausing only to wipe his forehead with the back of his hand as the heat ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... disliked to be questioned. On the arm of his chair he beat with his fingers a quick, brief tattoo. ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... ship rides gently at her anchor. The Loo rock rises fifty feet perpendicular from the water, at so short a distance, that we can hear the drum beat tattoo in the small, inaccessible castle, on its summit. This rock is the outpost of the city of Funchal. The city stretches along the narrow strip of level ground, near the shore, with vine-clad hills rising ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... Foote, Maryland, Paul became an excellent hunter, and was out with my papa nearly every day, bringing home plenty of quail and other game. He was a happy dog, taking great interest in garrison life, always attending retreat and tattoo with the officer of the day, and even going the rounds with him on his tour of inspection after midnight. No weather was too bad for Paul, who knew every note of the bugle, and was always on hand ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... house flung slim black shadows across the low adobe buildings and splashed the tip of their shade in the dust-cloud that filled with haze the corral a hundred yards away. Sing Pete stepped from the door and beat a tattoo on the iron triangle suspended by a piece of wire from the lowest branch of a mesquit tree at the corner of the house, announcing by the metallic clamor that the work of the day was finished and supper was ready and waiting. Parker swung back the heavy gate at the corral ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... spasmodic banging of your own guns sounding in the nearer positions five, ten, perhaps fifteen times in the minute. Suddenly, from over the distant hills, to left or right, there breaks out the roll of a great kettledrum, ever so far away. Someone is playing the tattoo softly and very quickly. If it is nearer, and especially if it is German, it sounds as if he played it on an iron ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... 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, ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... was engaged in this second assault, with windows smashing to right of them and to left of them, with glass falling all around them, and the staves of old ash-barrels playing a devil's tattoo about them, the devoted band of editors, reporters, and copy-readers worked nobly on. They had confidence in their leader that their hour would come. Their first duty was to get out the paper. After that they looked ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... very late, the "tattoo" having sounded long since, summoning all truant soldiers into barracks; so, the Captain, declaring that his landlady would "haul him over the coals" for stopping out so late, stumped away chuckling down the parade ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... years of famine are fled, When, sick for a spoonful of aught that was tuneful, We've sorrowed as over the dead For Music, forlorn and unfriended, Gone down into glimmerless gloom, While rude "rag-time" revels were dancing a devils' Tattoo on her tomb. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... crowd, lay on the deck farther aft. One was on top of the other, his fingers clutching the gullet of his helpless opponent. The agony of the man underneath found expression only in the drumming heels that beat a tattoo on the floor. The spasmodic feet were shod in Oxford tans of an ultra-fashionable cut. No doubt the owner of the smart footwear had been pulled down as he was escaping to ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... wear a petticoat and a jacket. The men wear a turban, a loose robe, and a jacket; they tie up their hair in a knot behind, and tattoo their legs, by pricking their skin, and then putting in black oil. They have the disagreeable custom of smoking, and of chewing a stuff called "coon," which they ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... 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 ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... put aside his pipe and sits with an arm on his chair-back, beats a tattoo on the ground with his right foot as if he were not particularly pleased with the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Mrs. Gordon, when she had read the few anxious sentences. "Look here, Dick;" and Dick, who was beating a tattoo upon the window-pane, turned listlessly and asked, "Pray, madam, what ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... ship-shape, he lit a pipe and pulled an enormous watch from his fob. The vessels he had passed since entering the harbour's mouth seemed one and all asleep. But a din of horns, kettles, and tea-trays, and a wild tattoo of door-knockers, sounded along the streets behind the stores and houses that lined the water-side. Already the town-boys were ushering ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... strangest effect upon Sinfi. Her lips, which usually wore a peculiarly proud and fearless curve, quivered, and were losing the brilliant rosebud redness which mostly characterised them. The little blue tattoo rosettes at the corners of her mouth seemed to be growing more distinct as she gazed in the water through eyes dark and mysterious as Night's, but, like Night's own eyes, ready, I thought, to call up the throbbing ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... ecstasies. So much so, that she could not wait to beat the tattoo and effect any alterations. But having succeeded, while conversing with her cousins, in devising a stanza in her mind, she promptly inscribed it on the first piece of paper that came to hand. "I have," she remarked, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... 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 ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... Welcome Hotel has invented an ingenious system of calling sleepy guests. The other night a man left instructions that he wished to be called early. Next morning he was disturbed by a loud tattoo upon the door. "Well?" he demanded sharply. "I've got a message for you, sir." Yawning until he strained his face, the guest jumped out of bed and unlocked the door. The bellboy handed him an envelope and then went away quickly. ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... only earthenware plate, smashed it up, and there 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
... of a father's bleeding heart, of the crushing of proud hopes, of the impiety of youth, and the lonesomeness of old age. And then, rather disconnectedly, beating a tattoo with the fingers of his big hand on the top of the table, he spoke of the constraint in which he found himself with reference to the opulent owner of the mill. He told Daniel he had gone on a man's note, had been suddenly obliged to redeem ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... swelling here is different—sonorous, tense, elastic; On it you might a tattoo beat, with fingers or with a stick. There's costiveness and atrophy, with features Hippocratic; When these appear, there's much to fear, all safety is erratic. Although a cordial laxative, mix'd up with some ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... answer, leaving her to infer that she had good reason for her fears. As they passed the only store which the Valley boasted, Kitty came rushing out, a bright new tin saucepan dangling at her side like a drum. It was tied by a piece of twine, and she was beating a tattoo upon it with a long-handled iron spoon. Keith followed, his ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of such trees the evening effect was a thing to remember for a lifetime. The regimental camps were all alive with diversions of different sorts from the time of the halt at the end of a march till tattoo sounded. Each had its trained pet animals, and the soldiers exhausted their skill and patience in teaching these varied tricks. One regiment had a pair of bull-terrier dogs that played a game which ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... journeying. Perhaps, if 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, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... The fronts of the joss houses and the restaurants were brightened with many colored lanterns, quaint carved gilded woodwork, potted plants and dwarf trees. Up and down these narrow streets every hour in the twenty-four you could hear the gentle tattoo, for he seemed never to sleep, never to be in a hurry and always moving. Stop on any corner five minutes and the sight was like a moving picture show. It was hard to make yourself believe that you were not in China, for ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... up in his throat, fearing lest the steady chugging should suddenly stop and the game be thrown by default. But no, it was keeping on in perfect rhythm, sounding in Perk's ear something like the tattoo of a machine-gun in action and sending out its swarm of leaden missiles—a sound that had long ago become so familiar to his ears as never to be forgotten, despite the ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... well-proportioned, though if anything a bit too slender—a bit too graceful; and he was, if anything, a bit too well groomed. He had light hair, and moustache. He had cold eyes that smiled; cold lips that smiled. He stood in the doorway, trying to accustom his eyes to the gloom within, the while playing a deft tattoo upon his booted calf with light crop that he carried in his ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... them to exchange a single word just then, owing to the riot of sound that came from beyond. The thunder bellowed, the wind roared, trees could be heard at intervals crashing to the ground, and the rain beat a terrible tattoo on the rock ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... would not be insulted either, and followed her upstairs. Thereupon Mademoiselle Therese's anger knew no bounds, and finding that Marie had taken refuge beside her aunt in the study, she began to beat a lively tattoo ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... not a little from their finery! The eyebrows and eyelids are dyed black while the children are very young, and they frequently paint themselves with dark-blue streaks of a finger's breadth over the eyebrows, and with spots on the forehead. The adult women tattoo their breasts, foreheads, noses, or temples with red, white, or yellow colours, according as they are particularly attached to one or the other deity. Many wear amulets or miniatures hung round their necks, so that I at first thought they were Catholics, and ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... is possible that he will never hear the end, to fix in his eyes and ears the delicious memory of parliamentary sittings with their sea of bald or apoplectic foreheads, their confused noise of rustling papers, the cries of attendants, wooden knives beating a tattoo on the tables, private conversations from amid which the voice of the orator issues, a thundering or timid solo with a ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... lost Home Rule 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 ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... more enlightened Indians of Quito, dyeing it a dull brown by means of achote juice. The men wear a strip of this around the loins, and the women a short skirt. On feast-days, or when musquitoes are thick, the men add a little poncho and pantaloons. They do not properly tattoo, but color the skin with achote or anatto. This substance, which serves so many purposes in this part of the world, is the red powder which covers the seeds contained in the prickly bur of the Bixa orellana. The pigment is an article of commerce ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... Mogul. At length recovering from the shock of being thus addressed by a woman, he leaned forward and asked with satirical politeness, "What will the lady have?" "I wish to speak to the question under discussion," said Miss Anthony calmly, although her heart was beating a tattoo. Turning to the few rows of men in front of him, for the women occupied the back seats, he inquired, "What is the pleasure of the convention?" "I move she shall be heard," said one man; this was seconded by ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the doctor's minute seemed unending. He shuffled his feet impatiently along the gravel-path, and beat a tattoo with his fingers on the panels of the door, muttering under his breath words betraying an impatient and agitated mind; and when at last the doctor joined him, ready for departure, the strain of suspense was so great that both tears and ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... different from what I had allowed for; stead of being fixed so I could take my own time if I wanted to, and see all the fun, and have Mary Jane at my back to save me and set me free when the close-fit come, here was nothing in the world betwixt me and sudden death but just them tattoo-marks. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... us how he fought with a shark under water in the South Seas, and stabbed it with the knife in his right hand, just as the monster's teeth were closing on his other arm. And to make his story more vivid he bared his great shaggy arm, and showed us an ugly white scar among the tattoo marks above the elbow. Another man told us how he had stood beside Nelson on the "Victory," just as the admiral received his death-wound; and it never occurred to us to wonder how a man of not more than thirty-five could have been present at that famous ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... morning gown and morocco slippers, with a Penang Lawyer hugged close under his right arm, or borne like a royal sceptre before him, plucking at every tuft as he paced about, and drumming such a tattoo upon the shoulders of the unlucky wight, whose ground was not completely chopped, and grass fairly uprooted, as made the whole brush dance ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... the boy, and 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
... pick-handles upon the backs, shoulders, sometimes heads of rioters. It was like a systematic tattoo. Coleman's voice was heard directing, here and there, cool and dispassionate. A couple of locomotive headlights threw their glare upon the now ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... tattoo with her heels upon the floor, shutting her fists, the thumbs tucked inside. She closed her eyes, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... for Niagara in one of these coaches; a 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 ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... went away ten year ago and left Joab to run the store (and a proper mess he made of things!) I found a feller down in the South End of Boston and he fixed me up with this tattoo work for twenty-five dollars. Course, I didn't dare show it none here—kep' my sleeves down an' my throat-latch buttoned all winds and weathers. ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... shut his eyes. 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
... to land at an isolated point. No men were near to defend the place, or to whom warning could be given. A bright thought struck one of the girls. Accustomed to play the drum, she well knew how to beat the call to arms, and no sooner had this thought entered her mind, than she began a tattoo, calling her sister to take the fife as an accompaniment. Together they marched toward the shore, careful to keep hidden by the rocks, among whose intricacies they wound back and forth, the sound of their instruments falling upon the enemy's ears, now far, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the hurricane hit, as did schooner after schooner in swift succession. The sea, white with fury, boiled in tiny, spitting wavelets. The deck of the Malahini vibrated under the men's feet. The taut-stretched halyards beat a tattoo against the masts, and all the rigging, as if smote by some mighty hand, set up a wild thrumming. It was impossible to face the wind and breathe. Mulhall, crouching with the others behind the shelter ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... sound that sent cold finger-tips laying a tattoo up and down his spine. It was the intake of some one's ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... was the veteran of a dozen real-estate booms, during which he had drafted agreements at all hours of the day and night, improvising as his office the back room of a liquor saloon or the cigar counter of a barber shop; and, in default of any other writing material, he was quite prepared to tattoo a brief though binding agreement with gunpowder on the skin ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... figures, and being placed upon the body, were, by a single blow of the hammer, made to leave their indelible impression. I observed a few the handles of which were mysteriously curved, as if intended to be introduced into the orifice of the ear, with a view perhaps of beating the tattoo upon the tympanum. Altogether the sight of these strange instruments recalled to mind that display of cruel-looking mother-of-pearl-handled things which one sees in their velvet-lined cases at the elbow ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... already up and astir. The smoke of the campfires, into which they were throwing everything superfluous, made the eyes smart. It was cold and dark. The officers were hurriedly drinking tea and breakfasting, the soldiers, munching biscuit and beating a tattoo with their feet to warm themselves, gathering round the fires throwing into the flames the remains of sheds, chairs, tables, wheels, tubs, and everything that they did not want or could not carry away with them. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... benefit of a small something in long white clothes, that lay face downward under a little blanket of very blue new flannel, and which something Aunt Roxy, when not otherwise engaged, constantly patted with a gentle tattoo, in tune to the steady trot of her knee. All babies knew Miss Roxy's tattoo on their backs, and never thought of taking it in ill part. On the contrary, it had a vital and mesmeric effect of sovereign force against colic, and ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is a tattoo mark. It is too indefinite for a gilded device. And I should say further that the tattooing is done in vermilion, as carbon tattooing ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... a loud tattoo and the trumpeter blew a call that startled the squaws and the children into shrieks; the braves were quicker in hiding their astonishment. Then Smith and Newport walked forward, Newport holding the ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... fire beating the devil's tattoo upon the chimney-piece, and ever and anon turning his glance towards Lilburne, who seemed ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... distinguished by the thin, straggling growth of beard and moustache which adorns their Asiatic progenitors. The labrets of the men are offset by the long pendant earrings of the women, which are made from H.B. Co. beads and shells brought by Alaska Indians from the Pacific, It is only the women who here tattoo their faces, the three long stripes extending from lower lip to the chin. The men crop their hair in the style of the tonsure of the monk. Neither man nor woman provides any head covering except the hood of the artikki or smock, which hood, fringed with waving ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... their maintenance, decoration, and furnishing; of the 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 palace,—that of the officers ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... knowledge. The exposure of Mr. Baigent's unscrupulous partisanship by Mr. Hawkins, and the address to the jury by Sir John Coleridge, followed in due course, and then a few family witnesses, including Lady Radcliffe, were heard, who deposed, among many other matters, to the famous tattoo marks on Roger's arm; and, finally, the jury declared that they were satisfied. Then the Claimant's advisers, to avoid the inevitable verdict for their opponents, elected to be non-suit. But, notwithstanding these tactics, Lord Chief-Justice Bovill, under his warrant, immediately committed the ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... tattoo; the only people in the hills who tattoo are certain tribes of the Bhoi country which are really Mikir. These tattoo females on the forehead when they attain the age of puberty, a straight horizontal line being drawn from the parting of ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... his actions, and the very sights and sounds of a stricken field were dear to his soul. Nothing had such power to stir his pulses as the rebel yell. "I remember," says a staff-officer, "one night, at tattoo, that this cry broke forth in the camp of the Stonewall Brigade, and was taken up by brigades and divisions until it rang out far over field and woods. The general came hastily and bareheaded from his tent, and leaning on a fence near by, listened in silence to the ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... infant period of humanity, when we used to run about with nothing on but a long, loose robe, and liked to have our feet bare. And then came the rough, barbaric age, the boyhood of our race. We didn't care what we wore then, but thought it nice to tattoo ourselves all over, and we never did our hair. And after that the world grew into a young man and became foppish. It decked itself in flowing curls and scarlet doublets, and went courting, and bragging, and ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... moment pregnant with possibility. The doomed creature summons its last ounce of physical might. Down drops the head till the hot blast of nostrils flings up the mouldering soil of the ages. The great split hoofs stamp a furious tattoo. They claw at the loose earth. Then, like a flash, an avalanche of rage is flung ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... our new baits.[10] Before the lines were properly 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 as it ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... 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 am ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... in a frenzy of sudden fun. And then, as suddenly as it had risen in the night, the clamor of voices died away. A single shout came up the river. Carrigan thought he heard a low rumble of laughter. A tin pan banged against another. A dog howled. The flat of an oar played a tattoo for a moment on the bottom of a boat. Then one last yell from a single throat—and the night ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... will go to him yourself, and tell him you know the whole story, and do whatever your tact and goodness suggest to set the matter right." She bent forward with her arms folded on her lap, looking up at him eagerly as she spoke, and beating a "devil's tattoo," with her slender feet, on the ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... ever passed the mill without a visit, and of course Charles Stuart always explored it all with a fine air of proprietorship. So they scrambled over the silent place with its sweet smell of running water and fresh sawdust. They beat a clamorous tattoo upon the big circular saw, they went down to the lower regions and explored the dark hole where the big water-wheel hung motionless, with only the drip, drip of water from the flume above. They ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... Timothy Toad chuckled, Gerty Gartersnake giggled, Wallie Woodpecker beat a tattoo on wood, Billie Bumblebee buzzed and Winnie ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... He raised his head, swallowed a 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 ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... infectious; the aged Delmia's eyes also began to gleam with religious enthusiasm, while her trembling hand caused the crutch to keep up a soft tattoo on the floor. ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... arranged a Tattoo for the evening," he announced in conversation with the Canadian Officer the day ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... sinister expression. He had a neck of unusual size, and the fat ran in ridges to the back of his scalp, worked up by his collar as he moved his head rapidly with every sentence. He seemed altogether unable to sit still or control himself. His boots—brown tops with narrow patent vamps—beat a tattoo upon the floor. No wonder that Felicia shrunk into the corner of her lounge! I felt that it was impossible for me to sit and watch them any longer. I rose ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... happen. The Duke, the 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
... 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 you in person to ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... right at him, with a savage, exulting cry, and struck at him with all his heart, and soul and strength. The oak staff came down on Ghysbrecht's face with a frightful crash, and laid him under his mule's tail beating the devil's tattoo with his heels, his face streaming, and his ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... apparently—had been waiting for, for the next moment the guns of our port battery crashed forth, one after the other, while our port Maxim— the only one of the two that could be brought to bear—started its savage thud-thudding tattoo, and in less than half a minute the ship was enveloped in a cloud of acrid smoke which, hanging motionless in the stagnant air, effectually cloaked the approach of the attacking force, and as effectually prevented anything ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... birthmarks," ses the woman, speaking very slow—and I could see she was afraid of making a mistake and losing me—"but he's got tattoo marks. He's got ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... at the door of her flat with that light, cheery tapping of her nails, like a fairy tattoo, which usually brought her mother running to let her in. She was conscious, almost with a physical sensation, of her mother; wanted to hold her close and, in the ecstasy of that caress, squeeze the office weariness from ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... 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 tables on which the bleeding ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... infantry soldiers. Others hovered above the fight, their men ever and again firing shots down at some chance exposure below. The firing came in paroxysms; now there would be a watchful lull and now a rapid tattoo of shots, rising to a roar. Once or twice flying machines, as they circled warily, came right overhead, and for a time Bert gave himself body and soul ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... of a 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 ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... or the delighted Mrs. Tony and dashed up the stairs to her own little room which looked out over the whole of Ramble Valley. It was warm with the March sunshine and the leafless boughs of the creeper that covered the end of the house were tapping a gay tattoo on the window panes to the music of ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... knife flew far from my hand. There was nothing else for me but to seize him by the loose skin of the neck with both hands, and hold on like "grim death," keeping him at arm's length, while his paws beat a tattoo to a double quick time on my breast and body, stripping my garments into ribbons in a most workmanlike manner, and ornamenting my sensitive skin with a variety of lines and characters, done in red—a process which I did not care to prolong, however, ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... checked in at the Io with his cargo I don't think I ever saw a happier mech. His relay banks were beating a tattoo like someone had installed an accordion in his chest. Before either of us could break the bad news to him he was hotfooting it ...
— The Love of Frank Nineteen • David Carpenter Knight
... of the Judge, put his foot on the first round of the political ladder as candidate for the legislature. At the same time Janey returned from the school in the East, where she had been "finished," and David's heart beat an inspiring tattoo every time he looked at her, but he was nominated by a speech-loving, speech-demanding district, and he had so many occasions for oratory that only snatches of her companionship were possible ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... would be a music teacher, and the calls sounded so much alike to the uncultivated ear, that it was no wonder that everybody got the calls mixed. In camp we got so we could tell "assembly," and "surgeon's call," and "tattoo," and quite a number of others, but the calls of battle were Greek to us. The bugle sounded down in the woods, and the sergeant turned to me and asked, "Fhat the divil is that I dunno?" I was satisfied it ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... tattoo sounded, but as before it produced no results. So Elmer opened the door, which he saw had been fashioned in the rudest way from boards, and hung upon ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... of the cantonment main-guard at Bangalore one day in the month of June, 182-. Tattoo had just beaten; and I was sitting in the guard-room with my friend Frederick Gahagan, the senior Lieutenant in the regiment to which I belonged, and manager of the amateur theatre of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... and for several minutes Mary played a tattoo on her machine. Then she keyed down quietly and, setting her transmitter at its maximum, she turned it ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... N' danger on this wad of fat an' laziness an' lies." (Thud . . . thump . . . and a double tattoo.) He threw the instrument of castigation aside and spinning the hulk of flesh and sprawling legs erect, began applying the sole of his boot. "A'll no take m' fist t' y' as A wud t' a Man! A'll treat y' ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... 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 floated flat on the surface of the water, and the canoe drifted ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... he's sure goin' to get th' goold-headed cane he's longed f'r since he come over. But they all fin'lly land on rockin'-horses an' dolls, an' suspindhers that r-run pink flowers into their shirts an' tattoo thim in summer. An' they conceal their grief Chris'mas mornin' an' thry to look pleasant with ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... were known to Chalmers as savages in feathers and war-paint. Now, clothed and in their right mind, the wild, savage look all gone, they form part of the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ and are members of His Church. Many of the pastors who preside at the Lord's Table bear on their breasts the tattoo marks that indicate that their spears had been imbrued with human blood. Now sixty-four of them, thanks to Mr. Chalmers' influence, are teachers, preachers and missionaries.' They, too, having listened, proclaim; having received, give; having heard, say; having been auditors, have now ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... to describe, the motion is faster than the eye can follow, and the "phut, phut" noise of the exhaust sounds like the tattoo of a drum. Almost every gasoline motor vehicle carries its own electric plant, either a set of batteries or more commonly a little magneto dynamo, which is run by the shaft of the motor. Electricity is used to make the spark that explodes the gas at just the right moment in the cylinders. All ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... and springlike. I heard the first sparrow sing that morning and the first screaming of the circling hawks, and about seven o'clock the first drumming of my little friend. His first notes were uncertain and at long intervals, but by and by he warmed up and beat a lively tattoo. As the season advanced he ceased to lodge in his old quarters. I would rap and find nobody at home. Was he out on a lark, I said, the spring fever working in his blood? After a time his drumming grew less frequent, and finally, in the middle of April, ceased entirely. Had some accident befallen ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... most entertaining, and took a great interest in all our belongings. I, coming last, seemed to excite keen delight, though he was naturally a little shy of his captors; he patted me on the chest, felt my shirt and arms, and was greatly taken by a tattoo on one of them. Grinning like any two Cheshire cats, he showed his approval by "clicking" his tongue with a side shake of the head, at the same time snapping his thumb and finger. Breaden, too, came in for Sir John's approval, and was similarly ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... 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 ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... 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 ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... a much more imposing tribe than any of the Indians they had seen. The men were taller and more robust, more fearless and self-respecting, even arrogant in their deportment. The women were a strapping lot. Some of them wore the blue line tattoo on the lower lip, showing them to be married women; others, young girls not uncomely to look upon. All were clad in the fur garments of the North, even though it now was summer-time, the date of their arrival being July 8th. Over the fur garments ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... arms they tattoo a Raindragon, and the character 'Bamboo'—thinking never of the ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... 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 younger members of the tribe. Painting the face has a definite and ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... her hand and hailing the youthful navigator. The forward end of the one by twelve inch board was reluctantly headed for shore, and slowly idled in. As the child reached land, he was grasped by the angry and anxious mother, who beat a merry tattoo on a tender portion his ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... fibre round their waists were their only clothing, but some had wreaths of flowers and green leaves round their heads, and most of them wore mother-of-pearl shells, beads, &c., round their necks and in their ears. They do not tattoo, but brand their skins. All five came, and presently three more, and then another; but seeing a large double canoe with perhaps twenty men in her coming close, we stood away. Two of our visitors chose to stay, and we have them ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... old Major was a faithful worshipper must have looked upwards approvingly upon the constancy of Pendennis's martyrdom. There are sufferers in that cause as in the other: the negroes in the service of Mumbo Jumbo tattoo and drill themselves with burning skewers with great fortitude; and we read that the priests in the service of Baal gashed themselves and bled freely. You who can smash the idols, do so with a good courage; but do not be too fierce with ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... herself back in her chair and showed them a scornful shoulder, compressing indignant lips to a straight, unlovely line, and beating out the devil's tattoo with her slipper. ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... his face went ruminative and then sad. With a sudden indrawing of breath he freed himself from his reverie, and bending over from his saddle patted a buckskin neck in affectionate tattoo. Tawny ears turned backward in appreciative fellowship, but without any break in a plodding dog-trot. Though the rider's aspect might say with the desert that time was nothing, the pony's expressed a logical purpose. Thus the speed of their ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... of pasture land which lay between them and the meeting-house in the village. They reached it just as Gran'ther Wattles, looking very grave and important, came out on the church steps and beat a solemn tattoo upon a drum to call the people together. They came from different directions across the fields and through the one street of the village, looking anxious for fear they should be late, yet not daring to desecrate the Sabbath by any appearance ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... deference, being recognized as of the same genus with the great guns which then constituted a ship's broadside. On one occasion they were incautiously left out overnight on the drill-ground. Between tattoo and taps, 9.30 to 10 P.M., was always a half-hour of release from quarters. There was mischief ready-made for idle hands to do. The guns were taken in possession, rushed violently to and fro in mock drill performance, and finally taken ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... want me 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 ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... 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 no pretext for fault-finding. It was impossible to conceive more nerve or spirit, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... of wind, stronger than the others, pricked his face and grains of sand rolled down his neck. The leather of his saddle emitted strange noises as if a fairy tattoo was being beaten upon it and he raised his hand and pointed off toward the east. The others looked and saw what had appeared to be a fog rise out of the desert and intervene between them and the sun. As ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... was least unhappy, for he took to his bed and slept through the entire period, with the exception of certain little intervals which he devoted to meals. The Doctor sat quietly by an upper window playing the devil's tattoo on ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... Tuisco, the Indian Dyu.[9-1] So much the more do all means invented by the red race to record and transmit thought merit our careful attention. Few and feeble they seem to us, mainly shifts to aid the memory. Of some such, perhaps, not a single tribe was destitute. The tattoo marks on the warrior's breast, his string of gristly scalps, the bear's claws around his neck, were not only trophies of his prowess, but records of his exploits, and to the contemplative mind contain the rudiments ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... Then at night, "tattoo," when the company officers go out to receive the report of "all present and accounted for"—and shortly after that, the mournful "taps," a signal for the barrack ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... The rolling tattoo of goat-skin drums filled the royal reception-hall of King M'tesa, as the great tyrant entered with his chiefs. M'tesa, his dark, cruel heavy face in vivid contrast with his spotless white robe, sat heavily down on his stool of State, while brazen trumpets sent to him from England ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... the man also scratch his though he takes much more pains over his hair, combing and smoothing it in order to divide it well in front and display the tattoo ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... gate. Sunfish scrambled with his feet for secure footing, found it and waded up to the front door. The water was a foot deep on the porch. Thurston beat an imperative tattoo upon the door with the butt of his quirt, and shouted. And Mona's voice, shorn of its customary assurance, ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... beating a tattoo as loud as that in the soldiers' quarters, as we sped across the black space which had baffled us so long, and not another sound did we hear save the splashing ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... 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 and imitative to abandon them. These become ritual. Custom ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... above all the device of rhyme, is essentially immature and childish: the use by poets of rhythmical beat and verbal assonance is simply the endeavour to captivate what is a primeval and even barbarous instinct. The pleasure which children take in beating their hands upon a table, in rapping out a tattoo with a stick, in putting together unmeaning structures of rhyme, is not necessarily an artistic thing at all; what lies at the root of it is the pleasure of the conscious perception of similarity ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... forward. The rather pretty girl who had mustered the nerve to come as a bearded lady trembled with excitement, thinking to be rewarded for an evening's hideousness. The man who had spent the afternoon having tattoo marks painted on him skulked on the edge of the crowd, blushing furiously when any one told him he was sure to ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... were talking of our unpleasant duties, I meant to tell you that one of them is to tattoo a D—for deserter—on the breast of some poor homesick fellow. After that his head is shaved; then the men laugh as he is drummed out of the ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... 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
... beings to believe that their regard can be otherwise than flattering to an animal; but I did see one man intelligent enough to receive this impression. He was a decent and a good-tempered young person, and he had beaten a prolonged tattoo on the glass with the handle of his umbrella, murmuring at the same time vague words of cajolery. Then, as the cat remained motionless, absorbed in revery, and seemingly unconscious of his unwarranted attentions, he turned ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier |
