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Taps   /tæps/   Listen
Taps

noun
1.
(military) signal to turn the lights out.  Synonym: lights-out.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Taps" Quotes from Famous Books



... rather unofficer-like ideas of what was becoming, and suspected of the not very gentlemanly practice of wearing noiseless rubber shoes. That intimation of his approach was conveyed by us from room to room by concerted taps on the gas-pipes was fair war; nor did our opponents seem to mind what they could not but clearly hear. Indeed, I think most of them were rather glad to find evidences of order and propriety prevailing, where possibly but for those kindly signals they ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... all day and has not mind enough to turn off the tap, he is considered a very serious case. If this test were put to our license lawmakers, I fear they would have to go to the incurable ward. They have for many years been picking up drunkards from the gutters and opening taps for them to keep on pouring into the streets. Under this system the saloon keepers are playing ten-pins. You know in playing ten-pins there is a long alley, at one end of which stand the pins, while at the other stands the player with a ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... having begun as a workman, and ended as a bourgeois. He was a simple man, of genial company. To the end of his life he used to go of an evening to the public-house as to an informal club. In the privileged bar-parlour, behind the taps and glasses, he sat with his friends and the shopkeepers, talking of local things. But it is not to be supposed that because his life was from end to end a humble one, though prosperous even outwardly after its kind, Crome was deprived of the companionship most fitted to his genius, the stimulus ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... opportunity some other time. If I come for you to-night will you go out canoeing with me, just you alone? And please get permission to stay out as long as you like, as the Counsellor in our lodge will be away to-night and if I'm not in when 'Taps' blows nobody will ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey

... set out pretty early, three of us and a baby, who could not well be left behind. The wife of the man who owned the cart had undertaken to mind the business, and the other babies, upon condition of having the keys of all the taps left with her. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... gives yer the ditherums, it do. Bad enough if you 'ave to wolf one, but it fair gives yer beans when 'tis two. The wictims waltz round, looking white, wishing someone would just spill their wet, And—there's 'ardly a glass "returned empty" but wot shows its 'eel-taps, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various

... pirate life was led along the east coast in the days of Captain Kidd. Portugal captured the place, but the Arabs drove her out again. Now England is making Mombasa into a mighty big trading center, and as the Uganda Railway taps the Cape-to-Cairo, which is about done, ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney

... parties in the road, and at grey dawn we were entering the city of Cork; the boy sleeping in the car, and the horse led by me. I paid at the custom-gate for my butter, and passed on through the city unnoticed. A few gentle taps brought the gentleman, who undertook to have me conveyed out of the country, to the door. I introduced myself; was admitted, and conducted to a bedroom, where everything was prepared for my reception. Thus I found myself in the very heart of the city of Cork, ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... Nowell. It ought to lead up to some very important request. But it doesn't. I simply want a job on your ice-cart. It will give me the best opportunity I know of to go into homes and tell mothers to boil the water which comes out of those dirty taps; after I unscrew the faucets I won't have to argue much. I told Colonel Dodd in his office to look out for me! That may have been bluster. I am a nobody. But I'm on his trail, and there is one thing I can do to start with! I can help save the lives of a few children. ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... of the long room was a succession of small alcoves, each with an important-looking chair and mirror and shelves, a white basin, water-taps and rubber tubes. Settled, in comfort, Mrs. Condon's hair was spread out in a bright metal tray fastened to the back of the chair, and the attendant, a moist tired girl in a careless waist, sprayed the ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... gentle taps of a fan I awake my surprised mousme; and, curious to catch her first impressions, I announce my departure. She starts up, rubs her eyelids with the backs of her little hands, looks at me, and hangs her head: something like an expression of ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... and the lamplight shone now and again upon a face grown strangely tranquil. His thought was so absorbing that when it became necessary to verify the name of a street, he looked at it for a time before he read it; when he came to a crossing, he seemed to have to reassure himself by two or three taps, such as a blind man gives, upon the curb; and, reaching the Underground station, he blinked in the bright circle of light, glanced at his watch, decided that he might still indulge himself in darkness, and ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... consents, and hurries through the whole Potpourri with a confident, conceited air, to the great despair of Dominie. At the choral, the aunt taps him on ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck

... Somebody loaned us a victoria, and thus the trip was short. A deep-mouthed bell in the church tower rang out ten slow strokes as I threw back the shutters after putting out my light. The military bugles took up the sound with "taps," and the figure of the sentry on the bridge was a moving patch of ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... you cross the Arizona line you discover that you have entered the climate belt. As your train whizzes past the monument that marks the boundary an earnest-minded passenger leans over, taps you on the breastbone and informs you that you are now in California, and wishes to know, as man to man, whether you don't regard the climate as about the niftiest article in that line you ever experienced! At the hotel the young lady of the ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb

... told them that she was in terror about their father, for, as she sat looking out the window in the moonlight, a huge raven with fiery eyes lit on the sill, and tapped three times on the glass. They told her their story, which only added to their anxiety, and as they stood talking, taps came to the nearest window, and they saw the bird again. A few days later news reached them that Mr. Ross-Lewin had died suddenly in Dublin. ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour

... autumnal music which the farmer loves to hear. Two of these—Gilbert's and Sam's—kept time with each other, one falling as the other rose; but the third, quick, loud, and filling all the pauses with thundering taps, was wielded by the arm of Deb. Smith. Day by day, the pile of wheat-sheaves lessened in the great bay, and the cone of golden straw rose higher in the barn-yard. If a certain black jug, behind the barn-door, needed frequent replenishing, Gilbert knew that the strength of its contents passed ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... somewhat similar ones—were resorted to by a "spirit" in his attempt to convey the word watch—perhaps to remind the sitter of a particular watch he used to wear. The medium might well proceed as follows: "He taps his stomach, and looks at a spot over his left side.... He seems to wish to convey the impression that he suffered much from his bowels—perhaps a cancer on the left side. Yes, he seems to be taking ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington

... Yes," he said, taking his wife by the waist and striking her with little taps, under an emotion of joy which lighted up his features, "I did not wish to tell you of this matter till it was all cooked; but to-morrow it will be done,—that is, perhaps it will. Here it is then: Roguin has proposed a ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... place in the room, at least he can show his learning by pointing out the spot. In the waving of good-byes he is expert and takes a legitimate pride, and upstairs he has learnt that there are new delights. He himself can turn on the taps in the bathroom, and he can set every article in the proper place ready for use. All children love their bath, and if interest and good temper has been so far preserved, without a break, it will be ill-fortune if even the drying process is not carried off without a hitch. Afterwards, for ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron

... feet! The auld thief was fairly catched in the very height o' his proud conquest, an' put down by an auld carl. He could feign nae mair, but, gnashing on Robin wi' his teeth, he dartit into the air like a fiery dragon, an' keust a reid rainbow o'er the taps o' ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... in the pew just in front. She gave him three pretty hard taps on the back of his head, and when he looked round, she pretended to be asleep. What ...
— The Little Nightcap Letters. • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... if anything happens not down on the books she'll come past your hiding-place, and give two taps like this" (tapping). "In that case you'll wait till ...
— Jerry's Reward • Evelyn Snead Barnett

... spoke in answer: "O my son, my dearest Ahti, Do thou not go forth to battle! In the house is beer in plenty, In the barrels made of alder. And behind the taps of oakwood. 70 It is seasoned now for drinking, And all ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... town band gets on the square On concert night you'll find me there. I'm right beside Elijah Plumb, Who plays th' cymbals an' bass drum; An' next to him is Henry Dunn, Who taps the little tenor one. I like to hear our town band play, But, best it does, I want to say, Is when they tell a tune's ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... nature was brilliantly illustrated a year later. Being invited to spend the day with a playmate of his own age, he built a big fire with newspapers in the bath room, turned on all the taps, pretending that they were the hydrants, and then ran through the hall, banging a dustpan and shouting "fire" at ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley

... it might act with regularity, the apparatus must be kept in perfect order; so each morning Michel visited the escape regulators, tried the taps, and regulated the heat of the gas by the pyrometer. Everything had gone well up to that time, and the travelers, imitating the worthy Joseph T. Maston, began to acquire a degree of embonpoint which would have rendered them unrecognizable if their imprisonment had been prolonged ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... the same day I had asked her as to the agencies at work in producing the taps so constantly heard at Spiritualistic Seances. "You don't use spirits to produce taps," she said; "see here." She put her hand over my head, not touching it, and I heard and felt slight taps on the bone of my skull, each sending a little electric thrill down the spine. She then carefully ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... temperance drinks are open here during the summer months. I notice a good number of people going to and from a large one, the entrance of which is so wide and high that it realizes the idea of "open house," and within which there are a great number of taps from which soda-water, ready mingled with all the various ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... he does anything much: taps the barometer, advises the gardener, fusses with fowls, potters in the garden, teaches the dog tricks. It makes him happy to feel himself rushed, and to go carrying unopened letters at tea-time. They have no children. Mrs. Jowett is ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... had a large family whom he could scarcely keep; and there were several daughters amongst them. The loveliest was the youngest daughter; who was very beautiful indeed. One evening in autumn, in bad weather, the family sat round the fire; and there came three taps at the window. The father went out to see who it was, and he found only a great White Bear. And the White Bear said, "If you will give me your youngest daughter, I will make you rich." So the peasant went in and asked his daughter if she ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce

... grooms endeavor to keep back the crowd:—the owners of the horses give their orders to the microscopic monkeys who are to ride. . . . . . The riders are raised by one leg into the saddles; they gather up the reins; the drum taps; they are ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... issue, as Chaplain Muller reports, the Crown-Prince is visibly gravitating, with all his weight and will. The very GNADENWAHL is settled; the young soul (truly a lover of Truth, your Majesty) taps on his ceiling, my floor being overhead, before the winter sun rises, as a signal that I must come down to him; so eager to have error and darkness purged away. Believes himself, as I believe him, ready to undertake that Oath; desires, however, to see it first, that he may maturely study ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... General Hendricks, revived by the pomp of the occasion, heading the troop of ten veterans of the Mexican War, and General Ward, in his regimentals, were inconsequential compared with the colonel. And his oration at the graves, after the bugles had blown taps, kept the multitude in tears for half an hour. John Barclay's address at the Opera House that afternoon—the address on "The Soldier and the Scholar"—was so completely overshadowed by the colonel's oratorical flight that Jane teased her husband about the ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... fly to the moon. But these motors would take you a long way. As for stunts like diving, circling, dipping, playing dead and the like, you never saw the like. I only hope we go out soon. I learn there's a new raid on the taps." ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry

... wanderings round the world had picked up sufficient knowledge of steam-power to shovel fuel into the furnace and regulate the water-level by the feed valve and pump. The small engine, more reliable and quite as powerful as a hundred men, was in perfect order. It abounded in valves and taps, but Walker's ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... others benefited me immensely. This room-mate was Henry W. Slocum, since so signally distinguished in both military and civil capacities as to win for his name a proud place in the annals of his country. After taps—that is, when by the regulations of the Academy all the lights were supposed to be extinguished, and everybody in bed—Slocum and I would hang a blanket over the one window of our room and continue our studies—he guiding me around scores of stumbling-blocks in Algebra and ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... warning to every one that at that moment the ship had gone to the bottom? The sea always sends word of its evil doings; when the bread-winner is taken his family hear a shutter creak, or three taps on the windows that look on to the sea—there are ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... although it is so much harder to cut. You may find it necessary to use the mallet for the greater part of the blocking out, but it need not be much used in finishing. A series of short strokes driven by gentle taps of the mallet will often make a better curve than if the same is attempted without ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack

... or artesian well has two points that makes it worth the cost. There is no question of purity or of quantity. It taps subterranean water which is unaffected by local causes of contamination or ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... most lugubrious spirit," Mrs. Ormiston broke in. "I wish the baby a long life and a merry one, in defiance of all prophecies and traditions belonging to his paternal ancestry. Go on, Mr. March, you're shamefully neglecting your duty. No heel taps." ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... into the heavy rubber suits—the engineers are already dressed—and inflate at the air-pump taps. G.P.O. inflators are thrice as thick as a racing man's "flickers," and chafe abominably under the armpits. George takes the wheel until Tim has blown himself up to the extreme of rotundity. If you kicked him off the c. p. to the deck ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... Prince de Joinville passes his time doing all sorts of wild things. One day he turned on all the taps and flooded the apartments. Another day he cut all the bell ropes. A sign that he is bored and does not know what to ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo

... glad and joyful.' But while discoursing about young ladies, we'll have to illustrate the four states as well. At the end of this recitation, we'll have to drink the 'door cup' over the wine, to sing an original and seasonable ballad, while over the heel taps, to make allusion to some object on the table, and devise something with some old poetical lines or ancient scrolls, from the Four Books or the Five Classics, or with ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... current enters the wires of the first circuit, as it were, and returns along the wires of the second circuit. There are several ways of doing it. One is to use retardation or choke-coils bridged across the two metallic circuits at both ends, with taps taken from the middle points of each. But the more desirable method is the one you saw me install this afternoon. I introduced repeating-coils into the circuits at both ends. Technically, the third circuit is then taken off from the ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... said, holding it out to his companion; "and of the very highest order of civilization. Whoever heard of people rich enough to wear silver heel-taps." ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben

... are some things which even a popular prefect cannot achieve. The affair was discussed in all its details by the tired forty as they consumed much cocoa and cake in the sitting-room, and even later, when the running of many bath-taps proclaimed loudly the fact that forty tired bodies were being refreshed, scraps of conversation floated over the ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett

... was speedily hurled to the ground: and Jem, who had thrown himself upon him, was apparently searching about for some weapon to put a bloody termination to the conflict, when the trampling of a horse was heard at the door, three taps were repeated slowly, one after the other, and a call resounded ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... party separated, each to find those trifles which had not been shipped already. A few taps of the drum gave the necessary signal to the soldiers, and in a ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... mm. at right angles and press the short piece into the short cut. Turn the long end of the wire sharply, also at right angles, and sink it into the long channel so that it emerges from about the centre of the cut end of the aluminium wire (Fig. 63). A few sharp taps with a watch maker's hammer will now close in the sides of the two channels over the wire and hold ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... he'll have to be a dab at drunken drivel, And he'll have to be a daisy at sick gush, To turn on the taps of swagger and of snivel, Raise the row-de-dow heel-chorus and hot flush. He must know the taste of sensual young masher, As well as that of aitch-omitting snob; And then—well, I'll admit he is a dasher, Who, as Laureate (of the Halls) is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various

... came in and announced breakfast, leading the way himself to what was known in the school as the "Dining Hall." It scarcely deserved so high-sounding a name perhaps, being a long low room on the basement floor, with a big fireplace, fitted with taps, and baking ovens, which provoked the suspicion that it had begun existence ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... form a circle. One is chosen to be "it" and runs on the outside. He taps another player, who quickly runs in opposite direction. The place he left remains vacant until one or the other shall have returned to it first. The unsuccessful player continues the running. The players upon meeting may exchange greetings, bow to each ...
— Games and Play for School Morale - A Course of Graded Games for School and Community Recreation • Various

... bent, it appeared, upon penetrating still farther into the wilderness to another cattle farm. Then, left alone with Cousin Egbert, I was not long in discovering that, strictly speaking, he had no establishment. Not only were there no servants, but there were no drains, no water-taps, no ice-machine, no scullery, no central heating, no electric wiring. His hut consisted of but a single room, and this without a floor other than the packed earth, while the appointments were such as in any civilized country would have ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... this time," said the captain; "he oughter be if you gave him one of your love taps, Anne," he ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt

... There is the chicaclina, a striped viper, of beautiful colours—the coralillo, a viper of a coral colour, with a black head—the vinagrillo, an animal like a large cricket. You can discover it, when in the room, by its strong smell of vinegar. It is orange-coloured, and taps upon the person whom it crawls over, without giving any pain, but leaving a long train of deadly poison—I have fancied that I smelt vinegar in every room since hearing this—the salamanquesa, whose bite is fatal: it is shaped like a lizard—the eslaboncillo, which throws ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... way; and to exercise his vivacity upon them openly, and without reserve. Thus, he made them butts, in a double sense, and while he emptied them with great address, caused them to ring with sundry well-administered taps, for ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... water. Good by; and, whenever you are thirsty, remember that I keep a constant supply, at the old stand. Who next? O, my little friend, you are let loose from school, and come hither to scrub your blooming face, and drown the memory of certain taps of the ferule, and other school-boy troubles, in a draught from the Town Pump. Take it, pure as the current of your young life. Take it, and may your heart and tongue never be scorched with a fiercer thirst than now! There, my dear child, put ...
— A Rill From the Town Pump (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... sugaring, the warm days and the freezing nights when the earth stirs in her sleep and the taps drip from red sunrise to red sunset. Old and young went to the camps, the women and children boiling and graining, the squads of men posted in guards round about. And after that the days flew so quickly that it seemed as if the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... husband, is writing a poem of which a part is given in the first stanza—which is therefore put in italics. The action proper begins with the second stanza. The soul of the dead woman taps at the window in the shape of a night-butterfly or moth—imagining, perhaps, that she has still a voice and can make herself heard by the man that she loves. She tells the story of her wandering in space—privileged to ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn

... attention from the silent windows (they are generally silent; or if a face looks out, it is not the beloved one which is in his mind night and day, day and night) and scans the faces around him, with sad, eager eyes. Then, stopping short in his playing, he taps sharply on his fiddle, and asks in a clear voice if any one has seen or heard of a blind child, with beautiful brown hair, clear blue eyes, and the most wonderful ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards

... dashed and brewed and ineffectually stummed again into a senatorial exordium in the House of Lords, I found all the high flavor and mantling of my honors tasteless, flat, and stale. Unluckily, the new tax on wine is felt even in the greatest fortunes, and his Grace submits to take up with the heel-taps ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... uninviting fluid as though it were nectar fit for the gods. Heavens, how we did drink! Then when we had done drinking we tore off our clothes and sat down in the pool, absorbing the moisture through our parched skins. You, Harry, my boy, who have only to turn on a couple of taps to summon "hot" and "cold" from an unseen, vasty cistern, can have little idea of the luxury of that muddy ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... and was no more but as a thing of dream that had passed. And one came awake to a light and wholesome world furnished with such solidly comforting facts as soaps and razors and hot and cold saltwater taps; and subsequently one left one's stateroom to see, at the breakfast table, leaden-eyed and flushed of countenance, an amorphous lump of humid flesh in shapeless garments of soiled white duck, the author ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... reckon the good old doctor saw I was frightened, and he began laughing heartily and saying some kind things about my general appearance. He requested me to stand up straight, then gave me two or three little sort of "love taps" on the chest, turned me round, ran his hands over my shoulders, back, and limbs, laughing and talking all the time, then whirled me to the front, and rendered judgment on me as follows: "Ah, Capt. Reddish! I only wish you had a hundred ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... the dough an' calls his number. He may be Rockefeller, or a tough from the Bowery, it don't make no difference to me; all I want is his goods an' his number, see? But a bettor of the right sort slips in an' taps me for odds to a thousand. Nat'rally I'm interested, because he parts with the thousand as though it was his heart's blood. I size him up. There ain't no time fer the writin' down of earmarks, though most like I could point ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... which was warm and creamy-coloured and glittering with massive silver and mysterious with up-to-date conveniences. There he was left to his own devices, and felt like a small boy finding out how it works. For even the mere turning on of the taps was ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... forgetfulness of the past. Hour after hour whiled away. The tiny lights in the natives' shacks along the opposite shore began to go out and grow fewer and fewer until the closing day had died safely away into the solemn night. As usual, "taps" were blown at ten o'clock and things on the island grew very quiet. Days—yes, weeks—seemed to crowd themselves into those long hours. Would he ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey

... on beating; though after hearing a tap or two he shook his head and, taking up the drum, let out the slings and put them over his own head. Then he squared his shoulders and threw out his chest, and bringing up his elbows in a line with his chin he beat two taps loudly with each stick, slowly at first and gradually faster and faster till the taps blended together in a long, loud roll. Then he stopped and grinned at the children, who were staring with amazement and delight; ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue

... Torrington's. Quite a boy and girl affair. Twenty-four of us had dinner in the worst corner of the room. I can hear the old lady ordering the dinner now. Charles with a long menu. She shakes her head and taps him on the wrist with her fan. 'Monsieur Charles, I am a poor woman. Give me what there is—a small, plain dinner—and charge me at your minimum.' The dinner was very small and very plain, the champagne was horribly sweet. My partner talked of a new drill, his last innings ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... broke forth. He stopped again to puff and blow a little, from his toil up the steep steps. Then all at once, as the rough music of his clicking sabots and the playful taps of his cane ceased, the laugh on his mobile lips melted into seriousness. He lifted his cane, pointing to the cemetery just above us, and to the gravestones looking down over the hillsides between ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... sharp draught, and the tar is better carried forward into the furnace. A regular feed of tar is required, and considerable difficulty seems to have been experienced in obtaining this. So long as we employed ordinary forms of taps or valves, so long (even with filtration) did we experience difficulties with the flow of viscous tar. But on the construction of valves specially designed for the regulation of its flow, the difficulty immediately disappeared, and there is no longer the slightest trouble on this account. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various

... one in the wrong room, linking together, in all, some two-score bed-chambers. There were no salons or reception-rooms, there was never a bath-room, there wasn't even running water aside from two hallway taps, one to each storey. The honoured guest and the exacting went to bed by lamplight: others put up with candlesticks: gas burned only in the corridors and the restaurant— asthmatic jets that, spluttering ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... the trained fiction writer possess imagination, they think in plots, they have learned how to picture vivid, dramatic incidents, and they know a story when it comes up and taps them on the shoulder. Furthermore, they know where to look for ideas, and how to twist them to plot uses. In every one of these points of special knowledge both the dramatist and the trained fiction writer have the advantage over the untrained novice, for the essence of ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... end of the second year I had been promoted from corporal to be a cadet first sergeant, so that I was fourth in command over a company of seventy. Although this gave me the advantage of a light after "taps" until eleven o'clock, my day was so taken up with roll-calls, riding and evening drills and parade, that I never seemed to find time to cram my mechanics and chemistry, of which latter I could never see any possible benefit. How a ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... had been stretched on the floor, simultaneously grabbed his companion by the skirts and wound their arms about his knees: and so in a trice both heroes were brought to ground. Even so they fought on until quieted by two judicious taps with the hilt of the boatswain's cutlass. I honestly thought he had killed them, but was assured they were merely stunned for the time. The boatswain, it appeared, was an expert, and had already administered the same soothing medicine to ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... "Were they hard taps?" inquired Lucille, reappearing from behind the flagon. "I hate them myself, even on the funny-bone or knuckles—but on the ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... Taps is the signal for extinguishing lights; it is usually preceded by call to quarters by such interval as prescribed by ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... permission Mr. Knight entered the house and stepped into a cloak-room that opened out of the hall. Being curious, Sir John followed him. Mr. Knight shut the door and, supporting himself against the frame of a marble wash-basin with gilded taps, said: ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... follows an account of a fairly good seance—taps on the marble table, reading pellets, describing persons, etc., until I thought Foster was tired of the interview and was feigning sleep to end it. All of a sudden he sprang to his feet with such an expression of horror and consternation ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... and talked with him and he to them—people he had loved and people he had long forgotten, some of whom he had thought were dead. One of them he could have sworn he had seen buried in a deep trench, and covered with branches of palmetto. He had heard the bugler, with tears choking him, sound "taps;" and with his own hand he had placed the dead man's campaign hat on the mound of fresh earth above the grave. Yet here he was still alive, and he came with other men of his troop to speak to him; ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... individual. There are always individuals who aspire to greater heights than the one they occupy at any given moment, but in a slave society, they are slapped back into place if they act hastily. Just as the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind can be king if he taps the ground with a cane, so the gifted individual can gain his ends in a slave society—provided he thinks out the consequences ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett

... cruelly voluble, but their volubility taps the evil humour of the universal human disease. Their thoughts are our thoughts, their obsessions, our obsessions. Let no one think, in his vain security, that he has a right to say: "I have no part in this morbidity. I am different ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... party or a ball and it is even worse, for young ladies talk politics, prefer discussion to flirtation, and will rather win a partner over to their political opinions than by their personal charms. If you, as a Tory, happen to stand up in a cotillion with a pretty Whig, she taps you with her fan that she may tap your politics; if you agree, it is "En avant deux," if not, a "chassez croisee." Every thing goes wrong—she may set to you indeed, but hers is the set of defiance, and she ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... trenches in France by a raiding party of Germans, a guard of French infantrymen, in their picturesque uniforms of red and horizon blue, stood on one side and a detachment of American soldiers on the other while the flag-wrapped coffins were lowered into the grave, as a bugler blew taps and the batteries nearby fired minute guns. The French officer commanding in the sector paid an eloquent tribute to the fallen Americans, his words being punctuated by the roar of the guns and the whistle of ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... you vary it. Nobody knocks like you. I suppose no two people would make three taps just the same." She was far too polite to yawn; but she made as much of the movement as she could not control, and then put a mark in her book, and laid it down. A very different girl, indeed, was she from her younger sister; a stranger would never have ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... 30th of October, 1914, again the Wuerttembergers advanced to the attack. They waded through sloppy fields from the bridgeheads at St. George and Schoorbakke, and by means of table taps, boards, planks and other devices crossed the deeper dykes. So furious was the attack pressed home that they won the railway line and held their ground. They were to do some severe fighting, however, for next day French-Belgian and African ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... generally arranged between two young men who have sisters to exchange. "The young woman's opinion is not asked." When the young man is ready to "propose" to the girl he has bartered his sister for, he walks up to her equipped as for war—ready to parry her "love-taps" if she feels inclined that way. "After a little fencing between the pair the woman, if she has no serious objections to the man, quietly submits." If she has "serious objections," what happens? The same writer ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... nothing get by dat blockade. So Mr. Sammy, he make de likker by de barrels. Dem dat had wagins come and fotch it off, as many barrels as de mules could draw, fer de soldiers. I drunk much as I wanted. De drum taps say, 'tram lam-lam, following on de air. De sperrits lift me into a dance, like dis, (he danced some) 'cept I was light on my foots den—atter ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... at a speed very different from his ordinary lounging gait. Very soon he came to a small drug-store, weather-beaten and grimy of exterior but very bright within, where everything seemed in a perpetual state of glitter, from the multitudinous array of bottles and glassware upon the shelves to the taps and knobs of the soda fountain. Yet nowhere was there anything quite so bright as the shrewd, twinkling eyes of the little grey-haired man who greeted Ravenslee with a ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol

... paper is worth the most careful study; it reveals not a little of his real nature, and unfolds very curiously the secret of his work, the vitality and abiding power of his own creations; how he "invented a certain Costigan, out of scraps, heel-taps, odds and ends of characters," and met the original the other day, without surprise, in a tavern parlor. The following is beautiful: "Years ago I had a quarrel with a certain well-known person (I believed a statement regarding him which his friends imparted to me, and which turned out to be ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... himself. It is polite to make a bow and place one hand at the side of the cup while this operation is being performed. The host then gives the signal to drink and the cups are emptied instantaneously, being often turned bottom upwards as a proof there are no heel-taps. Many Chinamen, however, cannot stand even a small quantity of wine; and it is no uncommon thing when the feast is given at an eating-house, to hire one of the theatrical singing-boys to perform vicariously such heavy drinking as may be required by custom or exacted by ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles

... not rent in pieces out of respect, but out of derision; and the remnants were not highly valued except for what they would fetch in the rag shops. It is rather like alluding to the obvious connection between the two ceremonies of the sword: when it taps a man's shoulder, and when it cuts off his head. It is not at all similar for the man. These scraps of puerile pedantry would indeed matter little if it were not also true that the alleged philosophical resemblances are also of these two kinds, either proving too much or ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... conscience if she did not give him up to the law? One lady proposed that we should all go round to the nearest police-station and added that a case of this kind, if proved, would do more to dispell doubts on spirits than all the successful raps, taps, turns and tables. Being the only person in the window at the time, I strained my eyes up and down Brook Street to see the murderer, but there was not a ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith

... they made grim faces when, all too soon, the retreat call from the barracks sounded, and away they would have to go on the double quick, to be at post by the time of roll call, and in bed at sound of taps. ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... over it here and there, and the ivy and weeds adding picturesqueness to what would otherwise be commonplace; in an elevated niche on the right, a figure of the Virgin in white robes and blue sash; in front, on the left, a covered marble cistern, with taps; and innumerable crutches and candles, were all the unsuperstitious eye could see. But to those poor wretches gathered round in prayer, influenced by the "light- headed" dreams of a poor swineherd, the spot was the holiest of holy ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough

... dispensing-room outside, a long shed of corrugated iron run up against the garden wall and lined with honey-colored pine. Under a wide stretch of window was a work table. At one end of this table was a slab of white marble; at the other a porcelain sink fitted with taps and sprays for hot and cold water. From the far end of the room where the stove was came a smothered roar of gas flames. On the broken inner wall were shelves fitted with drawers of all sizes, each with its label, and above them other shelves with row after row of jars. Near ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... laughs—it is Christmas eve. He taps one tentatively on the bulging shirt. "What ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... and lemon sours and foaming drinks that you take out of long straws. There is such a laughing and a talking as you never heard, and the girls are all in white and pink and cambridge blue, and the soda fountain is of white marble with silver taps, and it hisses and sputters, and Jim Eliot and his assistant wear white coats with red geraniums in them, and it's just ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock

... needn't have things that are merely grotesque. What do you say? I can think of nothing more devastating, more utterly smug than that hideous style—cabinets covered all over with swans' heads, like bath-taps!" ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... that brick wall raised to the nth power of impressibility. The occultist will point you to a universal medium as much above the cinema film as that is above the brick or stone, and in which are stored up the memoria mundi. It is this sensitized envelope of the planetary atom that your sensitive taps by means of his clairvoyant, psychometric and ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial

... outcome of the German attack on Mombasa. Tanga is a post of considerable importance in German East Africa, and lies midway between Zanzibar and Mombasa. It is the seaport of an important railway line which connects it with Moshi, lying among the foothills of Kilimanjaro (18,700 feet) and which taps most of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... arrival of the imperial procession the grand-master of ceremonies taps on the floor with his ivory wand of office to attract attention, and the guests thereupon range themselves along the two sides of the hall, the ladies to the right and the gentlemen to the left. Suddenly the folding-doors at the further end of the hall are flung open, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

... although I stand a little aside from the noise and heat of the battle, I work for it with heart and brain as busily, and to better purpose, let us hope, than when I was a much younger man. I am still a conspirator, and a conspirator I shall remain till Death taps me on the shoulder and serves me with his last great writ of ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... note that each of the four movements of this exercise has a distinct sound. The dropping of the toe, the stamping of the ball of the foot, of the heel, and of the flat foot, each creates a separate and distinct sound. I have named these sounds "taps," and it is the various combinations of these sounds that are used so effectively in musical comedy dances, in tap, step, and American specialty dancing (sometimes called clogging), as well as in some of our choicest ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... is premeditated. It is eloquence itself! The light of heaven playing on her beautiful face betrays the passion of it—the rich pallor! One hand resting on the back of the seat taps upon the iron work, the other is ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... between the visible taps of a hammer, is, to my mind, exactly like the relation of succession between the tangible taps; the unlikeness between red and blue is a mental phenomenon of the same order as the unlikeness between rough and smooth. Two points visibly distant ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... chats on confidingly; a rose Taps at the window, as the sunlight throws A brilliant, jostling checkerwork of shine And shadow, like a Persian-loom design, Across the homemade carpet—fades,—and then The dear old colors are themselves again. Sounds drop in visiting from everywhere— ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley

... taps, mess, sick, church, recall, issue, officers', captains', first sergeants', fatigue, ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... hollers. Then she went through the most blood-curdling pantomime ever was, I reckon. First she comes up to me and taps me on the chest and says, ''Edge.' Then she goes creeping round the room on tiptoe, p'inting out of the winder all the time as much as to say she was pertending to walk through the woods. Then she p'ints to one of the stumps we used for chairs and screeches ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... Stuart, who was transported from England to Australia for forgery. It is not worth while to go into details on account of this man, for he confessed to crimes enough to hang him a dozen times. On the morning of July 11th, 1851, the taps on the bell of the Monumental Engine House summoned the entire Vigilance Committee. The prisoner was then allowed two hours grace, during which time the Rev. Dr. Mills was closeted with him in communion. After the expiration ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley

... be. Your vote was worth something then. I remember when Horsley put up against Palmer. A rare man was Palmer! Why, that Palmer drove down with a coach-and-four and postilions, and he kept us all alive for a week. He'd kiss the children in the streets, and he'd set all the taps free in any inn that he went into. It's all purity and ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman

... on by land, very few people thought about the sea. They took it for granted that the sea was calm; and there was no need, as there is in many houses when the creeper taps on the bedroom windows, for the couples to murmur before they kiss, "Think of the ships to-night," or "Thank Heaven, I'm not the man in the lighthouse!" For all they imagined, the ships when they vanished on the sky-line dissolved, like snow ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... last of the term, Jolly was bidden to wine with 'one of the best.' After the second toast, 'Buller and damnation to the Boers,' drunk—no heel taps—in the college Burgundy, he noticed that Val Dartie, also a guest, was looking at him with a grin and saying something to his neighbour. He was sure it was disparaging. The last boy in the world to make himself ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... 6, three graves were dug. On one side of them stood a line of poilus in their uniforms of horizon blue and red, and on the other a line of American soldiers in khaki. The flag-covered caskets were lowered, as the bugler sounded "taps," and ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... Falls Church. No such stirring scenes had been witnessed here since the days of the civil war. Troop trains arriving or departing, drills at camp and practice marches through the town, martial music from many bands, reveille and taps, all contributed to impress the town folk with the fact that the ...
— A Virginia Village • Charles A. Stewart

... great game go on forever, serene in its power to bring out the best that is in us, and when the Great Bugler sounds the silver-sweet call of taps for all too many, there will still be those who in their turn will answer the call of reveille to carry on the traditions of the great day ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... his cannonade,—if Christianity with its charity,—if Trade with its money,—if Art with its portfolios,—if Science with her telegraphs through the deeps of space and time, can set his dull nerves throbbing, and by loud taps on the tough chrysalis can break its walls and let the new creature emerge erect and free,—make way, and sing paean! The age of the quadruped is to go out,—the age of the brain and of the heart is to come in. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... entire politeness). This is not the highest kind of speculation, I confess, but it is a gossip which amuses some folks. A brisk and honest small-beer will refresh those who do not care for the frothy outpourings of heavier taps. A two of clubs may be a good handy little card sometimes, and able to tackle a king of diamonds, if it is a little trump. Some philosophers get their wisdom with deep thought, and out of ponderous libraries; I pick up my small crumbs of cogitation at a ...
— English Satires • Various

... you can keep from telling him, Ethel dear? Try! And I will be your slave forever!" Steps are heard on the stairs outside. "Oh, there he comes!" She dashes out of the door, and closes it after her, a moment before the maid- servant, followed by Mr. Ransom, taps at it. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Cecil says, somewhat indignantly. She and Molly and one or two of the men are rather apart. "To hear her going in for simple sentiments is quite too much for me. When one looks at her, one cannot help——" She pauses, and taps her foot upon the ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... away, and, beckoning to his staff officer to join us, stumped onward to the garrison. The prolonged wail of the bugle, aided by the rising night wind, sent the solemn strains of taps sailing down the dimly-lighted valley, and with staring eyes old Folsom stood gazing after the departing officers, then whirled about toward the tents. There in front of Dean stood Pappoose, her hands clasped lightly over the ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King

... not a ray of light visible, but, happily, sight is not the only sense with which we are endowed, and Marie's ears were as keen as her eyes. Giving the three signal taps upon one of the tightly closed window-blinds, she waited a reply. But the girls were not expecting taps from that quarter, and at once became suspicious. But precious moments were fleeing, and Marie was becoming desperate, so, flinging prudence to the winds, she gave ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... warning cry of "ishra ankra" for a "crank," and could give the pencil taps telegraphing from counter to counter that a notorious "pill" or an "I'll-come-back-again" was bearing down on the department. She seemed to know by instinct when she could offer to send a toy C.O.D. for a stranger without fear ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... with his fingers on the table. And the drumming, at first vague and of no significance, gradually took on, of itself as it seemed, a definite rhythm. There was a variation, too, in the strength of the taps—now they fell light, now they struck hard. Scrope was quite unconsciously beating out upon the table a particular tune, although, since there was but the one note sounded, Wyley could get no more than an elusive hint of ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... that only in the centre, whence the tiles slanted downwards on either side to the beams by which the floor was supported. The entrance was by a step-ladder, and through a trap-door, against which, when he reached it, Paco gave two very slight but peculiar taps. Thereupon a bolt was cautiously withdrawn, and the trap raised; the muleteer completed the ascent of the steps, entered the loft, and found himself face to face ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... trying to attain it. His impulsiveness, however, led him sometimes into personal efforts at discipline where the results were at least doubtful. He would sometimes go out through the camps in the evening, and if he saw a tent lighted after "taps," or heard men singing or talking, he would strike loudly on the canvas with the flat of his sword and command silence or the extinguishment of the light. The men, in good-humored mischief, would try different ways of "getting even" with him. One that ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... ponderous slap on one side of my face with the big broad hand that was uninjured, which made me reel and tumble down; but a second blow, a backhander on the opposite side of my head, brought me up again, "all standing." Still, although I felt these gentle taps, I could not help grinning, which, of course, increased his ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... the assassin, we see, issuing from it, a whole band, some twenty in a line, who emerge from the darkness of the abandoned walls, each trotting on his little donkey and each followed by the inevitable Bedouin driver, who taps with his stick upon the rump of the beast. They are returning to Cairo, their visit ended, and exchange in a loud voice, from one ass to another, more or less inept impressions in various European languages. . . . And look! There is even amongst them the almost proverbial belated ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... Cha taps and calls, while I take off my shoes upon the worn wooden steps of the temple; and after a minute of waiting, we bear a muffled step approaching and a hollow cough behind the paper screens. They slide open; and an old white-robed priest appears, and motions ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... the regimental band, sitting on the sidewalks before the cafes, or dancing with the girls in the parks. Then a time came when the village streets were lonely and dark and we knew that the bugle had sounded taps. And so in due course we came to the end of the day's journey, at the end of a spur of the railroad, near one sector of the Verdun front. There we found a field hospital of four thousand beds. And when there is to be renewed French activity on the Verdun sector, the first ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White

... him, and don't say a word, but just ask him for your month's salary. Then he will open the door of business himself—safe. I'll drink his health. He's not a bad sort, Cheetham: only he'd sell his soul for money. I hate such rubbish. Here's 'Perdition to the lot; and no heel-taps.'" ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... restless life, and had more in him than he had training to unfold either in speech or act; a man eager, had he known how, to do service in the cause of his much-loved mankind; wrote "Leaves of Grass," "Drum-Taps," and "Two ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Sarah Judd was sitting in her room reading a book, her work for the day being over, she heard a succession of little taps against her window-pane. She sat still, listening, until the taps were repeated, when she walked straight to the window, drew the shade and threw tip the sash. O'Gorman's face appeared in the opening and the girl put a hand on each of his cheeks ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)

... inspection of the effects of the storm. He then strangled him, somewhere, and placed him in the quicklime in the Sapsea vault, locked him in, and went to bed. Next, according to Mr. Proctor, Durdles, then, "lying drunk in the precincts," for some reason taps with his hammer on the wall of the Sapsea vault, detects the presence of a foreign body, opens the tomb, and finds Drood in the quicklime, "his face fortunately protected by the strong silk shawl with which Jasper has intended ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang

... answered, between taps of his noisy hammer, "it's foolish of you to take it so to heart, and look on nothing but the dark side. Of course, it is dreadful to be burned out of house and home, but it might have been lots worse. All the down-stairs furniture was ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston

... furnished by the voice or face of bystanders have been counted in, those who have the fullest acquaintance with the phenomena admit that in good mediums there is a residuum of knowledge displayed that can only be called supernormal: the medium taps some source of information not open to ordinary people. Myers used the word "telepathy" to indicate that the sitter's own thoughts or feelings may be thus directly tapped. Mrs. Sidgwick has suggested that if living minds can be thus tapped telepathically, so possibly may the ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... hospital where Mullins lay muttering and tossing in his feverish sleep; then, meeting Wren and Graham on the way, had tramped over to call on Blakely, thinking, perhaps, to chat a while and learn something. Soon after "taps" was sounded, however, the youngster joined the little group gossiping in guarded tones on the porch at Captain Sanders', far down the row, and, in response to question, said that "Bugs"—that being Blakely's briefest nom de guerre—must be convalescing rapidly, he "had no use for his ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... Bat, after he had pondered over this scene for some time, "that seems to be taps ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre

... the express purpose of ventilation?" I continued tapping with the hammer. I noticed one peculiarity, that it was only when I held the box in a particular position, and tapped at a certain spot, there came the answering taps from within. "I tell you what it is, Pugh, what I hear is ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various



Words linked to "Taps" :   bugle call, lights-out, armed services, armed forces, military, military machine, war machine



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