"Tattoo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time had passed that it did not much matter. Grammont was pleased with his citation. It seemed to make it all right for him, somehow. It seemed to give him standing among his fellow patients. The hideous tattoo marks on his arms and legs, chest and back, which proclaimed him an apache, which showed him such every time his wound was dressed, were about to be overlaid with a decoration for bravery upon the field of battle. But still the General did not come. ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... rat-tat-tat and beat the tattoo before the lasses again, lest he should find himself westwards in the Blue Mountains before he was ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... in his passionate nature. Much as he loved Hamilton, he had no hesitation in using him, and our petted young hero was to learn what work meant for the first time in his life. He wrote most of the day, often half the night; but although he chafed angrily at the confinement, beat many a tattoo on the floor with his heels, and went for a hard ride more than once that he might keep his temper, the result was that mass of correspondence, signed "George Washington," which raised the commander of the American forces so high in the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... 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 carminative, Might be prescribed, with morphia, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... chandelier over our heads clinked together, as if they had been swept by a finger. More of the flowers came. We were pelted with them. And into the quiet that followed there came a light, fine but steady tattoo on the table in our midst. Then at last silence, and the medium in deep trance, and Mrs. Dane rapping ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... our warrant?" exclaimed Duncan Cameron. "Hut-tut! We'll teach him to respect warrants issued under authority of 43d King George III.," and the dictator of Fort Gibraltar fussed angrily among the papers of his desk and beat a threatening tattoo with knuckles ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... shower of blows descended on his back, which brought him on his knees, when, ordering him to pick himself up and follow, on pain of a further dose of the colt, Sam Coulson passed on. The sharp tattoo of a drum beaten rapidly sounded at the same time through the ship; but what it signified Paul in his ignorance could not tell, nor was there any one near him to ask. Bewildered and unable to see in the darkness, he tried in vain to gain the hatchway. He groped his way aft as fast as he ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... there was a lot of talk about who should go to the wheel. Jones worked himself into it, and laid aft in a clean rig when the Old Man called for a hand to the wheel. There he made the most of it, and hung gracefully over the spokes with his wrists turned out to show the tattoo marks. ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... in the grasp of Bottazzi and Madame Bottazzi. Galeotti then raised the drum in his hand, high above his head and against the curtain, and requested 'John' to beat it. 'John' pushed a hand against the drum and beat a muffled tattoo. All this was utterly out of the psychic's reach. The strife over the drum would seem to argue a complete and powerful figure behind ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... except for an entire want of animation, looks much like what he did in the railway-carriage—the same strong-looking man with well-marked cheek-bones, very thick brown hair and bushy brows, a skin rather tanned, and a scar on the bridge of the nose; very strong hands with a tattoo-mark showing on the wrist and an abnormal crop of hair on the back, running on to the fingers, but flawed by a scar or two. Add to this the chief thing you would recollect him by, an Elizabethan beard, and you will have all the particulars ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... pillows, the hectic passed from either gaunt and sallow cheek, leaving the red and blue tattoo marks visible in most ghastly distinctness, while the sweat poured in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... the accurate measurement of my "salle a manger." A chicken, with legs as blue as a Highlander's in winter, for my dinner; and the hours that all Christian mankind were devoting to pleasant intercourse, and agreeable chit-chat, spent in beating that dead-march to time, "the Devil's Tattoo," upon my ricketty table, and forming, between whiles, sundry valorous resolutions to reform my life, and "eschew sack ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... addressed "Mbolane," he politely replied "An," which in cannibal-land is considered good form. He could not, however, bring himself to admire Gondebiza, though the Monsieur Worth of Fanland had done his utmost for her. Still, she must have looked really engaging in a thin pattern of tattoo, a gauze work of oil and camwood, a dwarf pigeon tail of fan palm for an apron, and copper bracelets and anklets. The much talked of gorilla Burton found to be a less formidable creature than previous travellers had reported. "The gorilla," he, says, in his matter-of-fact way, "is a poor devil ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... but a flimsy barricade against a mob, especially if that mob be led by five-and-twenty stout-bodied seaman. We had shut it merely to gain time, and when the cudgels outside began to play tattoo upon its upper panels I looked for no more than a minute's respite at ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... in a sheltered bay. A number of large canoes came off to us, filled with natives, the skins of the older chiefs almost black, from the elaborate tattoo marks with which they were covered. Those of the younger people were, however, of a light brown hue, the skins of some indeed being quite fair. The heads of the chiefs were decorated with crowns made of long feathers; they ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... in the car ahead, sitting on the edge of the seat and looking as if he expected to be eaten alive, without salt, any minute. You could have told that he was from extremely elsewhere at first glance. He was as different as if he had worn tattoo-marks for trousers. He was a stout party with black-rimmed eyeglasses, side whiskers that you wouldn't have believed even if you had seen them, and slabs of iron-gray hair with a pepper-and-salt traveling cap stuck on top of his head like a cupola. ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... off her brown straw-hat, and was using it as a fan, keeping up a light tattoo with one foot upon the plank flooring. Her face was glowing with her four-mile walk in the hot sun, but she showed no signs of weariness. The position in which she stood was easy and graceful, but ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... shades of the night were coming apace, The tattoo had beat; the tattoo had beat. The noble one sprang from his dark hiding-place, To make his retreat; to ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... The "Lora Tattoo," or the Time of Tattooing, will be long remembered. An enthusiastic sitter celebrated the event in verse. Several lines were repeated to us by Hardy, some of which, in a sort of colloquial ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... punctures a preparation made from the kernel of the candle-nut, mixed with cocoa-nut oil, is rubbed, and the mark thus made is indelible. The operation is performed by a class of men whose profession it is, and they tattoo as much at a time as the person on whom they are operating can bear; which is not much, the pain and inflammation caused by tattooing being very great, sometimes causing death. Some of the chiefs were tattooed with an ornamental stripe down the legs, which gave them the appearance ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... 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 was ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... and part shepherd too: You scarce knew which, as, pausing with the pail Half filled with goat's milk, silently he drew An anvil forth, and reaching shoe and nail, Bared a red forearm, bringing into view Anchors and hearts in shadowy tattoo. ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... The Clown, making mirth for all the town, With his lips curved ever upward and his eyebrows ever down, And his chief attention paid to the little mule that played A tattoo on the dashboard with his heels, in ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... struggling through the clouds, and I could dimly discern the outline of the quaint gabled front of the house, with its mullioned windows, and masses of clinging ivy. Dismounting at the old stone porch, I seized the knocker and beat a mighty tattoo. There was no reply. Even the light had disappeared from the window almost simultaneously with the approach of our carriage wheels, and though I hammered for fully five minutes I failed to obtain the slightest response ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... 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
... a shaggy fell, his choicest tool a flake of stone; His best of orn'aments tattoo'd skin and holes to hang his bits ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... said Amelia, beating a tattoo of impatience, with one hand, on the door. "You've been up attic, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... Zealanders, a branch of the Malayo-Polynesian family. The New Zealanders surpassed all other people in the art of tattooing, to which their chiefs gave especial attention. Mete Kingi, as our picture shows, was no exception. Tattooing on the face they termed moko. The men tattoo their faces, hips, and thighs; the women their upper lips; for this purpose charcoal made from kauri gum is chiefly used. It has the blue color when pricked into the skin, growing lighter in shade in the course of years. The subject of our illustration embraced Christianity, and was much ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... said BULMER to me, while he inserted his thumbs in the arm-openings of his waistcoats, and drummed an approving tattoo upon his shining shirt-front, "my dear boy, I have always been your friend, and nobody knows it better than you. Many a time have I proved it to you, and I can honestly assure you that nothing gives me greater pleasure than to welcome you in ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... 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 ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... questions of Bess about how she liked Florida, if she had been there before, and other questions, which Bess answered mechanically. Her eyes were upon Linda as she stood at a window with her back to the room, her fingers beating a nervous tattoo on ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... 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 ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... visitors began to arrive. Several ladies and officers dropped in during the evening; they sat on the piazza enjoying the serenade until the shrill piping of the fifes and rattle of the drums sounding tattoo sent the musicians off to bed and numerous pairs of white trousers scurrying towards the cadet barracks. They watched the simultaneous "dousing of the glim" in the long facade as the clock struck ten and the three taps of ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... ye, me merry, merry men," boomed the voice of Gerald Moore, with a slightly Celtic roll of the "r's," as he drummed impatiently on the shutter of the cabin window, while his companion, Jack Blake, performed a similar tattoo on the adjoining window. "Faith, and it was daylight hours ago, and ye ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... fast, as such tidings always do, and Aunt Plenty was constantly employed in answering inquiries, for her knocker kept up a steady tattoo for several days. All sorts of people came: gentlefolk and paupers, children with anxious little faces, old people full of sympathy, pretty girls sobbing as they went away, and young men who relieved their feelings by swearing at all emigrants in general and Portuguese ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... Salariki were firmly insistent upon. In the end the natives won and Kosti was summoned to carry on board the chest which the servants had brought. Having seen it carried safely inside the spacer, the aliens departed, but Van Rycke was frowning and Jellico's fingers were beating a tattoo on his belt as ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... at Dr. Grey's door, without arousing him, and the third time she beat a tattoo that would have broken even heavier ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... weakness dribbled down his face and splashed on to the pavement. As for his head, it throbbed as if a giant hammer were within it, and some demon were rattling the interior of his skull and were dancing a tattoo upon his ear-drums. ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... became the trained groom, was for his horses, and he was rubbing them down and bedding their stalls for the night when the sergeant of the battery guard, lantern in hand, appeared at the door. It was not yet tattoo, but by this time the darkness was intense, the heavens were hid, and the wind was moaning about the stables and gun-shed and whistling away over the dismal expanse of flat, wet, ditch-tangled fields towards the swamp. But the cockney's spirits were blithe as the ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... found straggling after the beating of the tattoo; or who may be found in a convict's hut, is to be detained; and information of him immediately given to the ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... depends on the promptness of our decision. You, Picart, go to the cure and order him to ring the alarm-bell, in order to get together the people, to whom I am going to announce the news. You, Torchebeuf beat the tattoo throughout the whole neighborhood as far as the hamlets of Gerisaie and Salmare, in order to assemble the militia in the public square. You, Pommel, get your uniform on quickly, just the coat and cap. We are going to the ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... her heat, feeling, not only astonished but worried him a little. She was standing there now beating a tattoo on the window pane. He wondered what she was thinking about. The experience as to Ann revealed Katie to him as having thought about things he would not have dreamed she was thinking about. What in the world did she mean by saying she'd like to be a deserter herself? ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... and a fragment of the brick chimney, where swallows build their nests from year to year. A wilderness of weeds, tall and luxuriant, springs up to hide the stone over which Jacob Cochrane stepped daily when he issued from his door; and the polished stick with which three-year-old Patty beats a tattoo may be a round from the very chair in which he sat, expounding the Bible according to his own vision. The thickets of sweet clover and red-tipped grasses, of waving ferns and young alder bushes hide all of ugliness that belongs to the deserted spot and serve as ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... That stick played a tattoo that made Stacy sore in more senses than one. Instead of burrowing deeper into the cedar boughs, he got up hastily. In his desperation he seized the Professor's feet, giving a mighty tug ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... but he might as well have tried to dam up a spring, as to keep his confidence from overflowing at the first words of kindness. He seized her hand, and his fingers during a moment of nervous indecision beat a tattoo upon her glove—then he let ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... it was hot! So thick and fast the solid shot Upon our iron armor played, It kept, like thunder, a kind of time— Devil's tattoo or gallopade— That, like an awful, awful rhyme, Rang in the ear; And they sent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... cloudy and a wind came sighing from the north, tossing the girl's hair and tugging at the careless folds of her dress, but she heard nothing save the devil's tattoo that rang in her head, and felt nothing beyond the pain at throat and breast, which in time became so bitter that the tears were wrung from her dry eyes, and she began to weep in a pitiful woman fashion, as if her heart would burst. The first drops ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... inwardly in 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, with a precursory ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... numberless; began with the echo of the morning gun (or before) and ended not till the three taps of the drum at night. The cadets had gone into camp by this time; and the taps of the drum were quite near, as well as the shrill sweet notes of the fife at reveille and tattoo. The camp itself was a great pleasure to me; and at guardmounting or parade I never failed to be in my place. Only to sit in the rear of the guard tents and watch the morning sunlight on the turf, and on the ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Jinnie first heard that he wished to see her, she thought her heart could beat no faster, but his words made that small organ tattoo against her sides like the flutter of a bird's wing in fright. She could do something for him! Oh, what joy! What ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... above the whistling wind, I heard the welcome rain,— A fusillade upon the roof, A tattoo on the pane: The keyhole piped; the chimney-top A warlike trumpet blew; Yet, mingling with these sounds of strife, A ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... seems to be beyond doubt that men and women began to ornament, mutilate, paint, and tattoo themselves chiefly in order to make themselves attractive to the opposite sex—that they might court successfully, or ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... ask that Mr. Loring should come to see me," railed Nevins. "I have important matters—papers and messages from my wife, and he holds aloof. By God, Gleason! you tell him for me that if he can't treat me decently, and come to see me before tattoo this night, I demand that he hand back those diamonds and ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... 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, ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... mirthful on the ginger-wine; keeping up a continual buzz, like a colony of bees, sadly itching to be at something—a wish that is not to be realized at once, for little Miss Newsoince is going to do that eternal tattoo, the "Rataplan:"—yes, there she is, in Tom's felt-hat and polonaise, as "La Vivandiere," thumping upon an empty band-box with two knitting-pins, singing, as some of the mammas say, very prettily; but as the boys, who have heard it many times before, designate ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... 695. Tattoo, taps, mess, sick, church, recall, issue, officers', captains', first sergeants', fatigue, ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... married women one in front and one behind, but women who have already had a child wear two in front, one over the other. A similar remark applies to tattooing and kindred ornamentations of the body and its members. Among the women of the Bajansi on the middle Congo, for example, a certain form of tattoo indicated that the woman had borne a ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... me as I came after visiting hours and was not introduced. On all subsequent nights they were persevering and relentless; I was bitten until portions of my body appeared as if recovering from a Polynesian tattoo. They used to get inside my under clothing by some mysterious way and when there they walked up and down like sentries on duty and bit at every other step. It was impossible to flee from them, and they appointed their ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... The tattoo had already been beaten with wooden sticks on a wooden board, when two men encountered each other in one of the streets leading into ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... from the arsenal of them in his breast-pocket, and with it was beating a noiseless tattoo on his open left palm. With an effort he met ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... staircase: in renewed excitement he hurried down the hall and, regardless of the consequence, beat a quick tattoo with his ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... the music started up. The line was formed, the procession advanced, 'Zekiel and Quincy bringing up the rear. As Quincy took the last wrister from the pan that the Professor held, the latter turned quickly away and beat a tattoo on the bottom of the pan with his knuckles and cried out, "Gentlemen will please find their partners. The wristers become ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... fire answered the tattoo of the machine-gun, and the sharp ping of bullets striking on the dome could be plainly heard. An occasional shot kicked up a spurt of white dust from the concrete, but the machine-gun kept up a steady rattle of fire and the soldiers kept their heads almost at the ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... moustaches, but the stories of Ainu covered with hair like a bear are quite unjustified by facts. Men and women alike cut their hair level with the shoulders at the sides of the head, but trim it semicircularly behind. The women tattoo their mouths, arms, and sometimes their foreheads, using for colour the smut deposited on a pot hung over a fire of birch bark. Their original dress is a robe spun from the bark of the elm tree. It has long sleeves, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... suggested Jack, and, nothing loath, Mark assented. The two lads broke into a run, but, as they leaped forward, the man also increased his pace, and they could hear his feet pounding out a tattoo on the hard road. ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... What a fuss and a bother, forsooth, was made By that man-tormentor, Gustavus, the Swede, Whose camp was a church, where prayers were said At morning reveille and evening tattoo; And, whenever it chanced that we frisky grew, A sermon himself from the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... like the fog that stretched along the bosom of the Potomac, and enfolded the valley of the Shenandoah. A drizzling rain had set in at twilight, and, growing bolder with the darkness, was beating a dismal tattoo on the tent—the tent of Mess 6, Company A, —th Regiment, N. Y. Volunteers. Our mess, consisting originally of eight men, was reduced to four. Little Billy, as one of the boys grimly remarked, had concluded to remain at Manassas; Corporal Steele we had to leave at Fairfax Court-House, ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... live in tents, and are regarded with contempt even by the peasantry. Their women tell fortunes, tattoo, {189} and sell small-wares; the men work in iron (quincaillerie). They are all adroit thieves, and noted as such. The men may sometimes be seen going around the country with monkeys; in fact, they appear to be in all respects the same people ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... delinquents' names called over; then follows supper, after which the cadets are free till 8, at which time there is a call to quarters, and every cadet is required to retire to his own room and study till 9-1/2, when the tattoo is beat; at 10, there is a roll of the drum, at sound whereof every light must be out ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... the knocker and knocked sharply. There was no response, and he repeated the summons, but again without effect. Thereupon, with a muttered exclamation, he grasped the knocker a third time and executed a veritable tattoo upon the door. When this had proceeded for about ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... eyed each other. Then I took a step forward. The glittering head rose higher. Off in the ferns there beat a warning tattoo—the loud whir of the snake's tail ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... had permitted her grandmother to continue her sententious advice, while she herself sat tapping her feet on the floor, and performing the most rapid variations of that air which is called the Devil's Tattoo, burst out, at length, to the elder lady's surprise, with an outbreak of indignation, a flushing face, and a voice ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... table—with its white table-cloth and its decanter and wine-glasses, the faces of her father and mother eloquent with the appeal of a thousand memories. The clock ticked on loudly, fiercely, like a summoning drum; the rain beat an impatient tattoo on the window-panes, the wind rattled the doors and casements. "Go forth, go forth," they called, "go forth where your lover waits you, to bear you of into the new and the unknown." And the louder they called the louder Reb Shemuel trolled his hilarious ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... lively tattoo with his blackthorn stick on the panels of the door. For five minutes this continued, interspersed with occasional loud calls for Karospina. At last the siege was raised. After preliminary unboltings, unbarrings, and the rattling of the chain, Gerald saw before him a middle-aged ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... benefit of their services in working their vessels along the Slave Coast. And in order to prevent any Kruboy being carried off as a slave by mistake, which would have prejudiced these useful allies, the slavers persuaded them always to tattoo a band of basket-work pattern down their foreheads and out on to the tip of their broad noses: this is the most extensive bit of real tattoo that I know of in West Africa, and the Kruboys still keep the fashion. Their next tutors were the ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... as powerless to turn as if he had been paralyzed from head to foot. Down he went, straight as an arrow. There followed a splash as his head struck the water of the ditch, the lad's feet beating a tattoo in the air while his head was stuck fast in the mud at ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... forty thousand troops which had been slowly gathering there for weeks. A stormy and wet day changed to brightness as the Royal party arrived and the town was found to be prettily decorated and filled with enthusiastic people. A great Tattoo was held in the evening with massed bands and myriad torch-lights, but with not very ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... I mean—knew him. He was one of the sailor boys on Joby's van. You remember their helping us with the luggage at Indian Queens'? He showed me his tattoo marks that day." ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... drum's sad roll has beat The soldier's last tattoo— No more on earth's parade shall meet That brave and fallen few. On Fame's eternal camping ground Their silent tents are spread And glory guards with solemn sound The ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... dead man's chest. Hey! ho! and a bottle of rum!" Faith, that's a chorus I can rattle off with zest. Gratefully it clatters upon DAVY'S tym-pa-num, Like a devil's tattoo from Death's drum! Fi! Fo! Fum! These be very parlous times for old legends of the sea. VANDERDECKEN is taboo'd, the Sea Sarpint is pooh-pooh'd, but 'tis plain as any pikestaff they can't disestablish Me! DADDY ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... 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 felt gratified ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... she had turned towards Florent and looked at him; then she looked at Gavard, who was beating a tattoo with his finger-tips on the marble table. She smiled at them, as though inviting them to ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... strong, and active. Their complexion is clear brown, but many differ little in this respect from the lower orders in Europe. The climate renders clothing unnecessary, but they tattoo their entire bodies so regularly (each arm and leg, for example, exactly like its fellow), that the effect is by no means bad. The way of arranging the hair varies, and fashion is as despotic in the Marquesas as in other countries. Some wear necklaces of red beads, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Injuns to go on the warpath," Gene announced disgustedly, coming out upon the porch where the rest of the boys were foregathered, waiting for the ringing tattoo upon the iron triangle just outside the back door which would be the supper summons. "They're too lazy to take the trouble—and, besides, they're scared of dad. I was talking to Sleeping Turtle just now—met him down there past the ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... from fore and aft of both boats; and the boys waved their campaign hats, while they sent back hearty cheers in answer to the many good wishes shouted after them by the crowd ashore, while Bobolink blew cheery blasts on his bugle, and Bluff Shipley would have beaten a lively tattoo on his drum, only it had been decided best to leave ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... shaggy fell, his choicest tool a flake of stone; His best of ornaments tattood skin and holes to hang his ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... the closing door of a room overhead had shut them from his ears, he stood there, with puckered brows and pursed-up lips, drumming with his finger-tips a faint tattoo upon the framework of the shattered lid; then he walked over to the skeleton case, and silently regarded the gruesome ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... ears; narrow and dome-shaped palate; irregularly placed teeth; prominent parietal bones; two symmetrical depressions on the occiput; congenital flat-footedness; and a sullen facial expression. His arms were covered with tattoo marks. Sense of pain somewhat diminished. Sympathetic reactions could not be elicited. Wassermann reaction with blood ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... Powers, would be ensconced at the home of Mrs. Fogel, his mother. Mollie Bent was there, and girl like, was delighted over the romance being enacted under that roof. The heart of the Indian maid was beating a happy tattoo under her civilian dress. ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... that cowboys are rather sleepy-headed in the morning and it is a part of the cook's job to get them up. The next I knew, Herman had a tin pan on which he was beating a vigorous tattoo, all the time hollering, "We haf cackle-berries und antelope steak for breakfast." The baby was startled by the noise, so I attended to him and then dressed myself for breakfast. I went down to the little spring to wash my face. The ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... but he called attention to his presence by three raps of his tail on the floor. Elsa laughed, and went through the form of shaking his huge paw,—an attention which he acknowledged by a prolonged caudal tattoo. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... moment two little, futile, frenzied fists began to beat a mad tattoo on Jo Hertz's broad back. Jo tried to turn in the crowd, all ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... events that followed the appearance of Sir Patrick and his companions in the room—was Geoffrey. The only change visible in him was a change in the handling of his walking-stick. Instead of tracing patterns on the carpet, it beat a tattoo. For the rest, there he sat with his heavy head on his breast and his brawny arms on his knees—weary of it by anticipation ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... little at a nonplus, as he never had undergone the operation which he had described. Fortunately for the support of his veracity, it happened that during one of his piratical excursions, in an idle fit, he had permitted one of his companions to tattoo a small mermaid on ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... remark: "As to their psychology, what struck us first was the exaggeration of their modesty; not in a single case would the men allow us to examine their genital organs or the women their breasts; we examined the tattoo-marks on the chest of one of the women, and she remained sad and irritable for two days afterward." They add that in sexual and all other respects these people are highly moral. (Lombroso and Carrara, Archivio di Psichiatria, 1896, vol. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Timothy Toad chuckled, Gerty Gartersnake giggled, Wallie Woodpecker beat a tattoo on wood, Billie Bumblebee buzzed and Winnie ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... brawl. What had once been the street was now a quarry of broken bricks, with here and there vast circular craters as though a gigantic oak-tree had been torn out of the earth by the roots. And now the weird silence was broken by sounds as of some one playing a lonely tattoo with his fingers upon a hollow wooden board, but the player was invisible, and as we looked at each other the sound ceased as suddenly as it began. Our practised ear told us that somewhere near us a machine-gun ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... pleasant. Her light, gray-green eyes had a petulant look; her thin, red lips a petulant droop. She was restless; something about her moved always. Either her long slender fingers adjusted her hair or her long slender feet beat a tattoo. And ever her figure shifted from one fluid pose to another. She wore jewels in her elaborately arranged hair, jewels about her neck, on her wrists, on her fingers. Her green draperies were embroidered in beads. She was, in fact, ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... finished their meal and drifted back to their various employments. The hammers began again their merry tattoo; and the wrangling voices of dice-throwers replaced the shouts of the bathers. Except for these, however, the place was still. The sun shone hotly, and the trees appeared to nap in ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... door 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 towards ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... in the nightcap, about whom he professed to have such a tender interest. The hypocrite was looking and listening with all his might in the direction of George's apartments, striding about the room, upsetting the chairs, beating the tattoo, biting his nails, and showing other ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gold would be gone soon, too. But there was another and greater necessity than either of those driving him on, and, opening the gate, he quickly knocked upon the door. It was low but heavy, a repeated and insistent knock, like the muffled tattoo of a drum, and at last Miss Grayson answered, opening the door a scant four inches and ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... and declaring that if turkey should ever be put upon the table again he would eat nothing but the stuffing. When Donald found that the wishbones were sticking into his neck like so many hornet stings, he made up his mind that he would run for the house. Finally the wishbone tattoo stopped, and when he looked around, the gobbler, who was twenty feet away, said: "When a Thanksgiving turkey dies, his ghost comes down here to Wishbone Valley to join his ancestors, and it never after leaves the valley. You will now know why every spring the turkeys steal down ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... 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 battle, which took place fifty ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... built, of pleasing countenance, and white; but because they adorn their bodies with figures from head to foot, when they are young and have sufficient strength and energy to suffer the torment of the tattooing; and formerly they tattooed themselves when they had performed some act of valor. They tattoo themselves by pricking the skin until the blood comes, with sharp, delicate points, according to designs and lines which are first drawn by those who practice this art; and upon this freshly-bleeding surface they apply a black powder, which is never effaced. They do not tattoo the body all at the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... out of the darkness and at that instant I made a discovery. Leith was not alone. Keeping time with the clatter of the shoes was a softer tattoo that told me that a barefooted runner was racing beside the man ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... towards Boleskey's. He looked up at the window, more than half expecting to see Rozsi there; but she was not, and he noticed with faint surprise that the window was not open; the plants, too, outside, looked singularly arid. He knocked. No one came. He beat a fierce tattoo. At last the door was opened by a man with a reddish beard, and one of those sardonic faces only to be seen on shoemakers of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... hand went out instinctively to silence the interruption. "Sh-h!" she warned, but the Frenchman seemed not to have heard and continued his narrative, while his hand beat a nervous tattoo on the arm ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... general was desirous of further information. He sat at the pine table in his plainly furnished tent, looking thoughtfully into the frank and handsome face of the young officer, his fingers beating a tattoo on the table-top. The general's eyes were sombre, even sad at times. Beneath them lay lines of care and sorrow. His voice was low, his manner grave, courteous, even cold. He was studying his man and discussing in his mind how far ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... flew to a maple limb, And drummed a tattoo that was fun for him, "No breakfast here! It's too hard for that." He said, as down on his tail he sat, "Just listen ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... But tattoo had not sounded that still and starlit evening when a strange story was in circulation about the post, brought up from the trader's store by pack-train hands who said they were there when Mr. Blakely came in and asked for Hart—"wanted ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... sound, too—a thunderous flapping and thrashing in the tree-top, the furious battering, falling tumult of broken branches and blindly beating wings, drumming convulsively in descent. Then came a thud; a feathery tattoo on the ground; silence in ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... The fronts were a riot of color. 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 as near as is possible ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... like a great engine through underbrush and over windfalls, his nose up to try the wind, his broad antlers far back on his mighty shoulders, while the dead tree that opposes him cracks and crashes down before his rush, and the alders beat a rattling, snapping tattoo on his branching horns,—when you see him thus, something within you rises up, like a soldier at salute, and says: "Milord the Moose!" And though the rifle is in your hand, its deadly muzzle never rises ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... first breathless efforts to stand against the weather, I was so confused that I looked out to sea for the wreck, and saw nothing but the foaming heads of the great waves. A half-dressed boatman, standing next me, pointed with his bare arm (a tattoo'd arrow on it, pointing in the same direction) to the left. Then, O great Heaven, I saw it, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... I did na know it?" answered Nick, his heart beginning to beat tattoo as he stared through the peep-hole in ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... colonized by the Spaniards was Sebu. [214] From there the conquest was started and continued in all the neighboring islands. Those islands are inhabited by people, natives of the same islands, called Vicayas; or by another name, Pintados—for the more prominent of the men, from their youth, tattoo their whole bodies, by pricking them wherever they are marked and then throwing certain black powders over the bleeding surface, the figures becoming indelible. But, as the chief seat of the government, and the principal Spanish settlement, ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... 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' as A wud a dirty broth of a brat of a boy with the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... 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 ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... for his sabre, partly drawing it from its scabbard; but Schmitz gave him no chance to use it. Like a famished wolf he seized his enemy by the throat, throttling him, and, dropping his cane, with his clenched fist he dealt him several fearful blows on forehead and mouth, winding up with a tattoo that sounded like the beating of a drum on the man's skull. A violent push made Roth stumble and fall ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... when killing and capturing was rife, the tattooing was for the purpose of the identification of a captive. It was customary to change the name of a captive, and as he was sold and resold, the only way to identify him was by his tattoo marks. ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... head to toe for scratches, cuts, bruises, moles, tattoo marks. Everything about the hair, eyes, teeth, nose, ears, and other parts, is written down. The height, the age, the muscular development, are ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... seven guests to breakfast, instead of two. It was good to hear them, the lively tink, tink-a-tink of their little bills on the tin plate in a merry tattoo, as I ate my own tea and trout thankfully. I had only to raise my eyes to see them in a bobbing brown ring about my bounty; and, just beyond them, the lap of ripples on the beach, the lake glinting far away in the sunshine, and a bark canoe fretting at the landing, swinging, ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... dressing-gowns and the opposing seconds were examining the bandages upon their hands. Clancy wore bright green trunks, which if his name had failed would have betrayed his lineage, and his great chest and arms were covered with designs in tattoo. Jerry wore dark trunks. And as his wonderful arms and torso were exposed to view, a murmur of approval went over the audience. In spite of his training in the open his skin was still very white beside ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... back of the head, partially stunning me and knocking me to the deck. My first thought was that something had carried away aloft; but even as I went down, and before I struck the deck, I heard the devil's own tattoo of rifles from the boats, and twisting sidewise, I caught a glimpse of the sailor who was standing guard. Two big niggers were holding his arms, and a third nigger from behind was ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... walls and the dim kerosene lamp, even Sam's unmelodious snore in the back room, sent no gloom to his soul. It had been a happy evening. It had cost him a hard struggle to restrain the emotion which he had felt at times; and when he withdrew, soon after the trumpets sounded tattoo, and the ladies fell to discussing him, as women will, there was but one verdict,—his manners ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... effect of lowering his spirits. It might well have been the abode of monsters or demons in a child's wonder tale, creatures that only dared to come out under cover of darkness. He groped for the bell-handle, or knocker, and finding neither, he raised his stick and beat a loud tattoo on the door. The sound echoed away in an empty space on the other side and the wind moaned past him between the pillars as if startled at his audacity. But there was no sound of approaching footsteps and no one came to open the door. ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... well. We are too impatient to listen. Instead of being attentive and eager to drink in the story or the information, we have not enough respect for the talker to keep quiet. We look about impatiently, perhaps snap our watch, play a tattoo with our fingers on a chair or a table, hitch about as if we were bored and were anxious to get away, and interrupt the speaker before he reaches his conclusion. In fact, we are such an impatient people that we have no time for anything excepting to push ahead, to elbow our way through the crowd ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... clothes were of the very finest sea-cloth, and well cut. The buttons on his scarlet waistcoat were new George guineas; and the buttons on his coat were of silver, very beautifully chased. His shoes had big silver buckles on them, and there was a silver buckle to the flap of his grey slouch hat. The tattoo marks on his left hand were covered over by broad silver rings, of the sort the Spanish onion-boys used to sell in Dartmouth, after the end of the war. He looked extremely handsome in his fine clothes. I wondered how I could ever have been afraid ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... a wonderful picture as she sat on the wooden bedstead, her bare feet playing a tattoo on the wooden floor, while her clean clothes seemed absolutely to shine against the darkness ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie |
