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More "Tat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Stokeses under them when we heard the Lewises giving the recall signal. A good gunner gets so he can play a tune on a Lewis, and the device is frequently used for signals. This time he thumped out the old one—"All policemen have big feet." Rat-a-tat-tat—tat, tat. ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... tat," the philosophical Gibney reminded him. "We can't expect to get away with everything, Scraggsy, old kiddo." The words were scarcely out of his mouth before the Maggie's mainmast and about ten feet of her ancient railing were trailing alongside. Mr. Gibney whistled softly ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... next morning the whole Leon household was roused by a thunderous double rat-tat at the door. Addie was even heard to scream. A housemaid knocked at Raphael's door and pushed a telegram under it. Raphael jumped out of bed and read: "Third of column more matter wanted. Come ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... There's my wife now, she never has an answer at her tongue's end; but if I offend her, she's sure to scarify my throat with black pepper the next day, or else give me the colic with watery greens. That's an awful tit-for-tat." Here the vivacious ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... other away. Well, I dare say we do. Yes, 'come to think of it,' as they say in America, we do. But what shall I tell you? Practically we all know it and allow for it and it's as broad as it's long. What's London life after all? It's tit for tat!" ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... the rat-tat-tat. We all gazed expectantly at the closed door. Glancing at Holmes, I saw his face turn rigid, and he leaned forward in intense excitement. Then suddenly came a low guggling, gargling sound, ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the Porte-Cocher at the Hotel d'Hollande had not received their morning opening, when a tremendous loud, long, protracted rat-tat-tat-tat-tan, sounded like thunder throughout the extensive square, and brought numerous nightcapped heads to the windows, to see whether the hotel was on fire, or another revolution had broken out. The maitre d'hotel screamed, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... to say, whether of the twain, the wife or the husband, had had the most of his company during the night. But this I would say to you, dear my ladies, that whoso gives you tit, why, just give him tat; and if you cannot do it at once, why, bear it in mind until you can, that even as the ass ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... led me astray.' 'Go thy ways,' answered she; 'the fault was not in thee, but in my husband, for that he did what he did in his shop, and God hath retaliated upon him in this world.' And it is related that the goldsmith, when his wife told him how the water-carrier had used her, said, 'Tit for tat! If I had done more, the water-carrier had done more.' And this became a current byword ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... completed, being interrupted by a thundering rat-tat-tat at the front door, followed by a pealing at the bell, which indicated that the visitor was manfully following the printed injunction to "Ring also." The door was opened and a man's voice was heard in the hall-a loud, confident voice, at the sound of which Mr. ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... position. The hump still appeared, and the balls still flew around it, until the Dutchman losing all patience, raised his head above the gunnel, and in a tone of querulous remonstrance, called out, 'Oh now! quit tat tamned nonsense, tere, will you!' Not a shot was fired from the boat. At one time, after they had partly regained the current, Captain Ward attempted to bring his rifle to bear upon them, but so violent was the agitation of the boat, from the furious ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... sailed as a general thing but fish, a pair of canoeists could not be thus vulgarly explained away; we were strange and picturesque intruders; and out of people's wonder sprang a sort of light and passing intimacy all along our route. There is nothing but tit- for-tat in this world, though sometimes it be a little difficult to trace: for the scores are older than we ourselves, and there has never yet been a settling-day since things were. You get entertainment pretty much in proportion as you give. As long as ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the slant beams of the setting sun shot their golden arrows through the healthy purple clusters of lilacs that veiled the windows. There had been a shower that filled them with drops of rain, which every now and then tattooed, with a slender rat-tat, on the window-sill, as a breeze would shake the leaves and bear in perfume on its wings. Sweet, fragrance-laden airs tripped stirringly to and fro about the study-table, making gentle confusions, fluttering ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... lad! poor dear lad!" he went on. "I had no spite again' him. I didn't want to drownd him. It weer only tit for tat; he chucked me in, and I chucked him in, and it's all on account o' they zammon.—There goes another. Always a-temptin' a man to come and catch 'em—lyin' in the pools as if askin' of ye.—Oh, I say, do open your eyes, lad, and speak! They'll zay I murdered ye, and ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... compelled to keep them open, and follow his every movement as, darting past me, he left the roadway, and, leaping several of the smaller obstacles that barred his way, finally disappeared behind some of the bigger boulders. I then heard the loud rat-tat of drums, accompanied by the shrill voices of fifes and flutes, and at the farther end of the Pass, their arms glittering brightly in the silvery moonbeams, appeared a regiment of scarlet-clad soldiers. ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... The rat-a-tat at the door was now constant. Judge Bowman and old Dr. Wallace and four or five of the young men, with the young girls, entered, all with expressions of delight at Oliver's return home, and later, with the air of a Lord High Mayor, Colonel John Clayton, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... highly developed, completely automated and efficient system, mainly buried cables domestic: nationwide cellular telephone system; buried cable international: 3 channels leased on TAT-6 coaxial submarine cable (Europe to ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... wireless cabin roared with the undiminishing rat-tat-tat of his spark explosions, and Manila, a navy man of the old school, rattled back a ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... telephone in the lower hall, a rare visitor, Crowder or a college friend. This was why, when a knock fell on the door, he looked up, surprised. It was an unusual knock, soft and low, not like the landlady's irritated summons, or Crowder's brusque rat-tat. In answer to his "Come in," the door swung slowly back and ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... non-pear-bearing peach-tree in the columns of their valuable journal? This is the drift of the fault found with Thackeray. He is not Fenelon, he is not Dickens, he is not Scott; he is not poetical, he is not ideal, he is not humane; he is not Tit, he is not Tat, complain the eminent Dabs and Tabs. Of course he is not, because he is Thackeray—a man who describes what he sees, motives as well as appearances—a man who believes that character is better than talent—that there is a worldly weakness superior to worldly wisdom—that Dick Steele ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... wish to extenuate the Count's transgressions; but—but on the other side ... I wouldn't put my hand in the fire ... well, that there hadn't been tit for tat ... with the young champion...." Mr. Letterblair unlocked a drawer and pushed a folded paper toward Archer. "This report, the result of discreet enquiries ..." And then, as Archer made no effort to glance at the paper or to repudiate the suggestion, the lawyer somewhat flatly continued: "I ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... preaking her heart with ta one hand while you'll pe clapping her head with ta other," said the piper. "Ton't be taking her into your house to pe telling her she can't see. Is it that old Tuncan is not a man as much as any woman in ta world, tat you'll pe telling her she can't see? I tell you she can see, and more tan you'll pe think. And I will tell it to you, tere iss a pape in this house, and tere was pe none when ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... Stain-eraser, the Mighty Detergent, the Magic Cleanser. And the stain of race is not the only one that money makes white as snow. So the old gentleman one day remarked to some friends who drank wine with him, that he would geeve one ten tousant tollare, begare, to te man tat maree his oltest daughtare, Mathilde. Eh bien, te man must vary surelee pe w'ite and re-spect-ah-ble. Of course this confidential remark soon spread abroad, as it was meant to spread abroad. ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... for tat if she does," he said. "But I thought——" He did not finish; did not say that he had thought Christine cared too much for him ever to give a thought to another fellow. He turned his head against the cushions and pretended to sleep, and ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... temple-keepers stood speechless, having nothing but a few weak and rotten shreds of argument in reply. But the king's son rejoiced in spirit and with glad countenance magnified the Lord, who had made a path, where no path was, for them tat trusted in him, who by the mouth of a foeman and enemy was establishing the truth; and the leader of error had proved a defender of the ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... a treacherous thing, I grant, to betray you, Rody," said Hanlon; "an' if I was in your place, I'd give him tit for tat. An', by the way, talkin' of the Prophet—not that I say it was he betrayed you—for indeed now it wasn't—bad cess to me if it was—I think you wanst said you knew more about ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... issued against such ruffian warfare by both Van Rensselaer and Brock, the sentries chance shots at each other through the dark. Drums beat reveille at four in the morning, and the rub-a-dub-dub of Queenston Heights is echoed by rat-tat-too of Lewiston, though river mist hides the armies from each other in the morning. Iron baskets filled with oiled bark are used as telegraph signals, and one may guess how, when the light flared up of a night on the Canadian heights, ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... with clumsy knives and old guns. That is the whole strength of our Christian civilisation, that it does fight with its own weapons and not with other people's. It is not true that superiority suggests a tit for tat. It is not true that if a small hooligan puts his tongue out at the Lord Chief Justice, the Lord Chief Justice immediately realises that his only chance of maintaining his position is to put his tongue out at the little hooligan. The hooligan may or may not have any respect at all for ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... law of tit-for-tat! And I will persevere till I have attained my end, unless you should become extremely ugly.—I shall succeed; and I will tell you why," he went on, resuming his attitude, and looking at Madame Hulot. "You will not meet with such an old ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... saucy air suits her. She is delighted with herself for having called Mrs. Bethune "horrid," and given him such a delicious tit-for-tat. She looks full of fun and mischief. There is no longer an atom of rancour about her. Rylton, in spite of himself, acknowledges her charm; but what does she mean by this sudden sweetness—this sudden sauciness? Is she holding out the olive-branch to him? If so, he will accept it. After all, ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... most famous of the twelve paladins of Charlemagne. To give a "Roland for an Oliver" is to give tit for tat, to give another as good a drubbing ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... pressure sometimes disturbed the serenity of the Norwegian can readily be conjectured, especially when it is considered that the average Northman is by no means indisposed to have a little brush with his neighbor now and then. But in such an event the Germans usually gave tit for tat, and that with a vengeance. On one occasion they killed a bishop in the presence of the king; at various other times they burned monasteries over the heads of the inmates; and frequently they sheltered criminals, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... right to say tat same 'fore lang time." And Sandy's face was dark with a subdued passion that Peter might have known to be dangerous, but which he continued to aggravate by contemptuous expressions ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... believe in "hants" or "conjurin'". It seems Sid Scott was a "mean nigger", [HW: and] everyone was afraid of [HW: him]. He was cut in two by the saw mill and after his funeral whenever anyone pass his house at night that could hear his "hant" going "rat-a-tat-tat-bang, bang, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... kitchen door behind him when the clatter and stamp of a horse's hoofs were heard Outside, followed by an impatient rat-a-tat-tat on the knocker. ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the same direction as their own flight, making probably for Bombay or Karachi. The chances were that such a vessel in these waters was British, so Smith steered towards it, shouting to Rodier that they might perhaps arrange a tit-for-tat with ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... size fresh run from the sea. The foaming Black Water tumbled headlong over its rocks and down its narrow channel. DONALD, the big keeper, stood industriously upon the bank arranging flies. "I hef been told," he observed, "tat ta English will be coming to Styornoway, and there will be no more Gaelic spoken. But perhaps it iss not true, for they will tell many lies. I am a teffle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... fire, and directly he started sweeping we would be down like a flash, and wait till Fritz quit. Fat would be in a shell hole almost as soon as the first shot was fired, and would laugh at Bink looking for a hole to hide in. Bink would get sore; all you could hear was the rat-tat-tat of the machine gun and in between "Tee hee, tee hee" from Fat as he lay and watched Bink crawling around looking for a hole. Some of the boys would lie in the hole and wave their legs in the air hoping to get a bullet through them so that they could get back ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... a buck, you would not break mine, I warrant, unless it were tit for tat," said my grandfather; thereby putting me to more confusion than Dolly, who laughed with ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... as he was telling himself that, there came to the door a loud knock, the peculiar rat-tat-tat of a telegraph boy. But before he had time to get across the room, let alone to the front door, Ellen had rushed through the room, clad only in ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... familiar enough for "using bad grammar," which the book-keeper very likely did; but the explanation may be more remote. "Like a ghost from the tomb" though not "quoted" is, of course, his beloved Shelley's ("The Cloud"). "Biped knock" merely "double"—the peculiar rat-tat which postmen have mostly forgotten or not learnt—perhaps regarding it as a badge of slavery like "tips." The Fatal Dowry—attributed to (Field and) Massinger, and spoilt by Rowe into his nevertheless ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... prisoners in the back drawing-room tried to effect their escape by the door which opened on the stairs; but, alas! it was locked on the outside, and it was evident, from the soliloquy of Mr Bristles, that their retreat was cut off through the front room. A knock—the well-known rat, tat, tat, of the owner of the mansion—now completed their perplexity; and, in a moment more, they heard the steps of several ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... sir, if you please! I can get away from here without tearing myself, which is more than you can boast. Any fool can see why you are here. Stop, I take that back, sir! I don't play tit-for-tat with ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... they were so rude, As leave them neither clothes nor food, Then burnt their houses to conclude; 'T was tit for tat. How can her nainsell e'er be good, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... upasritya, &c.—Ke/k/id anuk/ri/tes tasya /k/api smaryate iti /k/a sutradvayam adhikara/n/antara/m/ tam eva bhantam anubhati sarva/m/ tasya bhasa sarvam ida/m/ vibhatity asya/h/ /s/rute/h/ parabrahmaparatvanir/n/ayaya prav/ri/tta/m/ vadanti. Tat tv ad/ris/yatvadigu/n/ako dharmokte/h/ dyubhvadyayatana/m/ sva/s/abdad ity adhi kara/n/advayena tasya prakara/n/asya brahmavishayatvapratipadanat jyoti/sk/ara/n/abhidhanat ity adishu parasya brahma/n/o ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... they want to 'run' guns at all," he said. "The tit-for-tat style of politics seems a fairly foolish one.... I think I shall go back to Ireland to-morrow, Gilbert. I feel as if I ought to be there. This business won't end where it is now. I know what John Marsh and Galway and Mineely are ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... There was a rat-tat at the door, the sound of a letter falling on the mat, and Fanning the postman passed on. George leaned back quickly so that he might not see him. Mr Griffith fetched the letter, opened it with trembling hands.... He gave ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... that there bird was like this," he began. "It were about half after four in the morning, summer before last, an' I was just having what I may call my beauty sleep, when all of a sudding there came a most thundering rat-a-tat-tat at the door. ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... fourteen or fifteen years ago, boys did not take to playing billiards, but they do now. Look at that little villain, Richards. He has just cleared the table, and done it with all the coolness of a professional marker. The young scoundrel ought to have been in bed two hours ago, for I hear that tat of his is really a good one. Not that it will make any difference to him. That sort of boy would play billiards till the first bugle sounds in the morning, and have a wash and turn out as fresh as paint, but it won't last, Doolan, not in this climate; ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... la digestion de la viande, rsulte de l'action du suc gastrique acide sur le tissu connectif qui se dissout d'abord, et qui, par sa liqufaction, dsagrge les fibrilles. Celles-ci se dissolvent ensuite en grande partie, mais, avant de passer l'tat liquide, elles tendent se briser en petits fragments transversaux. Les 'sarcous elements' de Bowman, qui ne sont autre chose que les produits de cette division transversale des fibrilles lmentaires, peuvent tre prpars ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... said Henry, "we fairly reek with prosperity, and we're going to double our business. That is, unless you Leaguers stop all forms of amusement but tit-tat-toe ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... enemy, which brought a constant shower of balls around it. In vain he shifted his position. The lump still appeared, and the balls still flew around it, until the Dutchman, losing all patience, raised his head above the gunnel, and in a tone of querulous remonstrance, called out, "Oh, now I git tat nonsense, tere,—will you!" Not a shot was ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... 'Now, Murtagh, tit for tat; ye will be telling me one of the old stories of Finn-ma-Coul.' 'Och, Shorsha! I haven't heart enough,' said Murtagh. 'Thank you for your tale, but it makes me weep; it brings to my mind Dungarvon times of old—I mean the times we were ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... She might have put on the other candlestick. [He goes to mantel and takes it. A rat-tat-tat at street-door.] Who can that be? [Running to KATHLEEN'S door, holding candlestick forgetfully low.] Kathleen! There's ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... was he in these unhappy self-communings, that he did not hear a vigorous "rat-tat-tat" on the door of the little back parlor. A repetition of the performance aroused him, and to his call, "Come in," ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... la ville, tait tomb en route dans une embuscade de voltigeurs corses[2]. Aprs une vigoureuse dfense, il tait parvenu faire sa retraite, vivement poursuivi et tiraillant de rocher en rocher. Mais il avait peu d'avance sur les soldats, et sa blessure le mettait hors d'tat de gagner le maquis avant ...
— Quatre contes de Prosper Mrime • F. C. L. Van Steenderen
... takes no exercise whatever. At ten she has a heavy supper, and retires to bed between one and two in the morning. She likes very strong brandy." And in this last sentence we have the true secret of her undoing. The Royal Princess was, even tat this early age, a confirmed dipsomaniac, with her brandy bottle always by her side; and was seldom sober, ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... the fir bush in the pasture stood an old apple tree, all alone by itself. On a dead branch was Ya-rup the Flicker. He was using the hard shell of the dead branch for a drum. "Rat, a tat, tat," he went faster and faster, till the beats ran into one long resounding roll. Then he stopped and screamed, "Kee-yer, kee-yer!" Perhaps he meant, "Well ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... began to whisper awe-stricken questions to each other; and at last John the Piper could not restrain his curiosity. "What in ta name of Kott is tat sort of Kallic?" he asked, with some look of fear in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... panted Kathrien. "He actually wants to buy our home—our gardens! Oh!" slipping for a moment back into the Dutch that was ever nearer to her heart than English, "Stel je zoon brutali tat!" ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... not teach that Release is due to the knowledge of a non- qualified Brahman.—the meaning of 'tat tvam asi.' ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... hour's delay they at last moved on, descending the hill. The fog that was dispersing on the hill lay still more densely below, where they were descending. In front in the fog a shot was heard and then another, at first irregularly at varying intervals—trata... tat—and then more and more regularly and rapidly, and the action at the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... to and fro; Hits were given and hits were met; "Chickamauga, Feds—take off your hat" "But the Fight in the Clouds repaid you, Rebs" "Forgotten about Manassas yet" Chatting and chaffing, and tit for tat, Mosby's ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... Malevole, the chief character in The Malcontent. 'Why not Malevole in folio with us, as Jeronimo in decimo sexto with them? They taught us a name for our play: we call it: "One for Another."' (That is to say, we give them 'Tit for Tat.') ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... and more anxiously than ever. The tell-tale thump of the oars had ceased. The only sounds in the bayou were the trickle of water from the tidal pools, the wind in the tree-tops, the rat-tat-tat of a woodpecker, and the scream of a bob-cat. With a foolish air of chagrin, Trimble Rogers rubbed ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... Russell Ministry had been defeated upon the Militia Bill ("my tit-for-tat with John Russell," as Palmerston called it), the victors were very unlikely to hold office for long. In spite of Disraeli's praise of Free Trade during the General Election, a right-about surprising and disconcerting ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... "rat-tat-tat-tated" close to us, and three rockets, like a flight of startled birds, rose suddenly together on ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... inlet at and near its head, the largest of which, Tat-lim-in, we ascended about one-eighth of of a mile to rapids, with the canoe, and three miles further on foot, finding a succession of rapids, shoals and log-jambs. Ma-min River, about sixty feet wide and filled with logs to near its mouth, empties into the south-eastern part ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... what the next move will be," I commented, when the avenger had gone, not too stricken in spirit. "It begins to look as though the enemy would stick at little, and we can't go on giving tit for tat." ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... pronounced. "Auf you go up te hill, tere ist te house I put up mit te moofers. First house. All convenient. You sthay tere. I coom along in te mornin'. Tere ist more as feefty famblies sthop mit tat house. Oh, nien, I don't keep ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... and, shutting the window, turned my attention to Little Lottie. It was not long before my tea-kettle was singing merrily. I was about to sit down to the first meal in my new abode, when an insinuating rat-tat sounded on the door. I opened it to find the ill-looking young fellow leaning languidly against the door-jamb, ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... matter over and over, vainly convincing myself that the situation had cleared. Notwithstanding all my effort, I somehow felt that an incentive had vanished, leaving a gap. The affair now had simmered down to plain temper and tit for tat. I championed ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... silence in the nursery. Nurse had gone downstairs to her supper, leaving the night-light as usual upon the washing-stand in the corner of the room. Suddenly Bobby sprang up, his cheeks flushed a deep crimson, his little heart galloping wildly, There was no possible mistake this time. A sharp rat-tat on ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... off he ish tet. Dey say he ish oud mid his het, und tat looksh mighty pad. But one ting ish goot; dey cotch ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... peaceful. He began to take observations with the [v]sextant, which shook in his trembling hand. Presently a loud buzzing was heard in the sky, followed by the measured crackling of a machine gun; from the hull of the boat came a sharp rat-a-tat, as if some one was throwing dry peas on it. A hydroplane ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... Dan's ear, and another spurted up the chalk dust a few feet ahead of Dennis, and as the vicious rat-tat of the machine-gun farther down the trench opened, they found themselves at the edge of a deep ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... puffs appear in its path, the dynamite shells of our guns finding their range. Boom! boom! rat-ta-tat-boom-rat-ta-tat is the music that greets our ears and every hill is a tremble under the shock of thousands of rounds ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... curled still more deeply, as after a pause, he replied: "Or excommunication and a fitting punishment will fall upon you and the vagabond doctor. Tit for tat. We have grown tender-hearted, and it is long since a Jew has been burned ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Eastcheap, and calls them "Ephesians," he probably meant soldiers called fethas ("foot-soldiers"), and hence topers. Malone suggests that the word is a pun on pheese ("to chastise or pay one tit for tat"), and means "quarrelsome fellows." ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... hall: the nighest ever I come Wuz stan'in' sentry in the sun (an', fact, it seemed a cent'ry) A ketchin' smells o' biled an' roast thet come out thru the entry, An' hearin' ez I sweltered thru my passes an' repasses, A rat-tat-too o' knives an' forks, a clinkty-clink o' glasses: I can't tell off the bill o' fare the Gin'rals hed inside; 110 All I know is, thet out o' doors a pair o' soles wuz fried, An' not a hunderd miles away from ware this child wuz posted, A Massachusetts ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Steel readily. "Tit for tat, Mr. Ware. You did a little business on your own account, and said nothing to ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... youth and respected reader would hand over his correspondence to his parents; and, perhaps, there is no greater test of a man's regularity and easiness of conscience, than his readiness to face the postman. Blessed is he who is made happy by the sound of the rat-tat! The good are eager for it: but the naughty tremble at the sound thereof. So it was very kind of Mrs. Pendennis doubly to spare Pen the trouble of hearing or answering letters during ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... been no scented letter, and she saw how he started at every creak of the garden-gate, as he waited for the last post. When at length a step was heard crunching on the gravel, he rushed from the room, and Mrs. Cohn heard the hall-door open. Her ear, disappointed of the rat-tat, morbidly followed every sound; but it seemed a long time before her boy's returning footstep reached her. The strange, slow drag of it worked upon her nerves, and her heart grew sick ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... I said, to carry them into the other room, where there was a little shelf with a curtain in front on purpose for them, as we only kept our nicest books in the drawing-room, when this rat-a-tat ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... followed, as Carrie thought it was Mr. Perkupp. I thought it was Mr. Franching.—I whispered to Sarah over the banisters: "Show them into the drawing-room." Sarah said, as the shutters were not opened, the room would smell musty. There was another loud rat- tat. I whispered: "Then show them into the parlour, and say Mr. Pooter will be down directly." I changed my coat, but could not see to do my hair, as Carrie was occupying ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... very good for you to know what it feels like to be left behind," rubbed in Diana. "You never told us about that gipsy trail dodge. Tit for tat's my motto." ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... filed through the village the reflections of star-shells threw weird lights on half-ruined houses; an occasional shell screamed overhead, to burst with a dull, echoing sound within the shattered walls of former cottages; and one could hear the rat-tat-tat of machine-guns. These had a nasty habit of spraying the village with indirect fire, and it was, as always, a relief to enter the recesses of Wood Street without having any one hit. This communication trench dipped into the earth at right angles to the "Boulevard" Street. We clattered ...
— Attack - An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 • Edward G. D. Liveing
... stealthy knocking at his door. He was not unaccustomed to late visitors, as he was known to live at his chambers, and to work after office-hours; but the knocking of to-night was not the loud rollicking rat-a-tat of his jolly-good-fellow friends or clients. If he had been a student of light literature, and imbued with the ghostly associations of the season, he would have gone to his door expecting to behold a weird figure clothed in the vestments of the last century; or an old woman in ruff and ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... not a better, more willing animal than she is. But she is naturally a more irritable constitution than the black horse; flies tease her more; anything wrong in the harness frets her more; and if she were ill-used or unfairly treated she would not be unlikely to give tit for tat. You know that many high-mettled ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... afar rekindled her fainting spirits. Listening more attentively, she was assured imagination had not deceived her; it was the faint patter of a horse's hoofs. Nearer it drew; quicker beat her pulses. Moreover, it was the rat-a-tat of galloping. Some one was pursuing the coach on horseback. Impatient to glance behind, she ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... and beating their bedsteads with so much violence that every one expected they would fall in pieces." For an hour together, as the worthy Mr. Mompesson repeated to his wondering neighbours, this infernal drummer "would beat 'Roundheads and Cuckolds,' the 'Tat-too,' and several other points of war, as cleverly as any soldier." When this had lasted long enough, he changed his tactics, and scratched with his iron talons under the children's bed. "On the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... I fear I made but an indifferent bad ploughboy when walking, and found a difficulty in dealing with my hands, not knowing how ploughboys are wont to carry them. So I came round in front of the house, and gave a rat-tat on the door, while my pulse beat as loud inside of me as ever did the knocker without. The sound ran round the building, and backwards among the walks, and all was silent as before. I waited a minute, ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... agitated me and disturbed my rest. I lay tossing on my bed, planning every detail of poor Constant's end. The hours dragged slowly and wretchedly on toward the misty dawn. I was racked with suspense. Was I to be disappointed after all? At last the welcome sound came—the rat-tat-tat of murder. The echoes of that knock are yet in my ear. 'Come over and kill him!' I put my night-capped head out of the window and told her to wait for me. I dressed hurriedly, took my razor, and went across to 11 Glover Street. As I broke open the door of the bedroom in ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... bear my wife and take of the other such pleasure as I may.' 'And I,' quoth another, 'do likewise, for that if I believe that my wife pusheth her fortunes [in my absence,] she doth it, and if I believe it not, still she doth it; wherefore tit for tat be it; an ass still getteth as good as he giveth.'[132] A third, following on, came well nigh to the same conclusion, and in brief all seemed agreed upon this point, that the wives they left behind had no mind to lose time in their ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... closed with him at once, ashamed and humbled at this miserable chaffering, glad also to get a little money now and then. But this time he was obstinate, and took to insulting the picture-dealer, who, giving tit for tat, all at once dropped the formal 'you' to assume the glib 'thou,' denied his talent, overwhelmed him with invective, and taxed him with ingratitude. Meanwhile, however, he had taken from his pocket three ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... may concern, take notice,' shouted the Jack-in-a-box, at this point, 'that the rule of this honourable court is tit for tat.' ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... dass der Erfinder den Eisenring einfach mit isoliertem Drahte bewickelte und in geeigneter Weise auf der Welle befestigte und so den ganzen Anker vor den Polen des Feldmagneten rotieren liess. In der Tat[6] wurde dadurch dieselbe, von ihm wohl[7] nicht vorhergesehene Wirkung erzielt, als wenn der Eisenkern oder die Drahtspirale fr sich allein rotierten. Durch die Einwirkung der Pole des Feldmagneten werden nmlich[8] auch in dem rotierenden Ringe zwei feststehende ...
— German Science Reader - An Introduction to Scientific German, for Students of - Physics, Chemistry and Engineering • Charles F. Kroeh
... "Rat-a-tat!" came a knock on the door of the hollow stump bungalow, where Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, lived in the woods with Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, his ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... satellites in Mexico's system of international telecommunications in the Western Hemisphere. Statsionar - Russia's geostationary system for satellite telecommunications. submarine cable - a cable designed for service under water. TAT - Trans-Atlantic Telephone; any of a number of high-capacity submarine coaxial telephone cables linking Europe with North America. telefax - facsimile service between subscriber stations via the public switched telephone network or the international Datel network. ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... he sat in the train he kept turning that little bit of gossip over and over, and tasting it. It lasted him all the way from St. Pancras to Drayton Parva. Sir Peter did not greatly care for women's gossip; but he liked his own. And really the provocation had been intense. It was tit for tat, quid pro quo, what was sauce for the goose—the goose again! Ha! ha! ha! It was a good thing for Sir Peter that Vance had given him another ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... A thundering rat-tat-tat at the hall door brought Jones to his feet. He heard the door answered, a voice outside saying "N'k you" and the door shut. It was some parcel left in. Then he heard Mrs. Henshaw descending the kitchen stairs and all was quiet. He turned to the bookcase, ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... remembrancer. But Mrs. Moggs never exulted over his defeat; and, though once compelled to harshness, continued to be to Montezuma a most excellent wife. The shop looks lively now—and the bell to the door is removed; for Moggs, with his rat-tat-tat, is ever at his post, doing admired execution on the dilapidated boots and shoes. The Moggses prosper, and all through the efficacy of a bucket of cold water. We should not wonder if, in the end, the Moggs family were to become rich, through the force of industry, and without ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... and went on, hoarse with passion. "To the marrow of your bones you are false, all of you! You do not cog your dice, perhaps, but you bubble your friends with finesses, and are as much sharpers at heart as the lowest tat-mongers in Alsatia. You empty our purses, and cozen our women with twanging guitars and jingling rhymes, and laugh at us because we are honest and trust ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Omer and Joram. All the mixed mirth and sadness of the story are skilfully drawn into the handling of this portion of it; and, amid wooings and preparations for weddings and church-ringing bells for baptisms, the steadily-going rat-tat of the hammer on the coffin ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... a measured "rat-a-tat-tat" on his drum and strode toward the entrance to the stable, followed by Washington and Lafayette, the "Army," and the docile Hero. Lady Washington scrambled from the hay-loft to the top of the grain-bin, drew her fine silk mantle about her, and smiled graciously down upon the assembled ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis
... aware of a pair of riders walking their horses toward us, and apparently struggling to suppress their amusement at the mishap to the old gentleman, which they must have witnessed. In truth, Mr. Ghyrkins, who was stout and rode a broad-backed obese "tat," can have presented no very dignified appearance, for he was jerked half out of the saddle by the concussion, and his near leg, returning to its place, had driven his nether garment half way to his knee, while the large felt hat was settling back on to his head at a rakish angle, and ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... Rat-a-tat-tat! Jack hardly comprehended what this new noise meant when it grew in volume. Then a horseman rode into the yard at ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... given than in the Catholic Church. "Two can play at that," was often in my mouth, when men of Protestant sentiments appealed to the Articles, Homilies, or Reformers; in the sense that, if they had a right to speak loud, I had both the liberty and the means of giving them tit for tat. I thought that the Anglican Church had been tyrannised over by a party, and I aimed at bringing into effect the promise contained in the motto to the Lyra, "They shall know the difference now." I only asked to be allowed to ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... after her; and there came the loud rat-tat of the lawyer at the front door. They ran into the drawing-room and Eglantine opened the window gently. The detective knocked at the back door; the lawyer knocked again, louder. Pollyooly leaned out of the window, ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... palatable. First, the hull is cracked and removed, and the kernel pounded or ground into a fine meal. In the Yosemite Valley and at other Indian camps in the mountains, this is done by grinding with their stone pestles or metats (may-tat's) in the ho'yas or mortars, worn by long usage in large flat-top granite rocks, one of which is near every Indian camp. Lower down in the foothills, where there are no suitable large rocks for ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... her from his corner and thought: "She is pretty; so much the better. Tit for tat, my comrade. But if they begin again to annoy me with you, it will get somewhat hot at the ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... himself in a tree, right in front of the owl's door, and Johnnie began throwing acorns at it. "Rat-a-tat-tat!" went the acorns ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Adventures • Howard R. Garis
... [Footnote 13: 'Tat Savitur varenyam bhargo devasya dhimahi, dhiyo yo nah prakodayat.'—Colebrooke, 'Miscellaneous Essays,' i. 30. Many passages bearing on this subject have been collected by Dr. Muir in the third volume of his ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... when he told her of the letter he had written. "How could you be so hard upon the poor man?" "Perhaps the lady may think that I have been hard upon her," Sir Francis had replied. "Perhaps she will know the meaning of tit for tat. Perhaps she will understand now that one good turn deserves another. It was not that I cared so much for her," he said. "I'd got to feel that she was far too virtuous for me, too stuck up, you'll understand. I wasn't at all disappointed when she played me that trick. She didn't turn out ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... made it very comfortable for herself in a hole in a tree. It was safe and dry, and stayed warm the greater part of the night because the sun shone on the entrance all day long. Once, early in the morning, she had heard a woodpecker rat-a-tat-tatting on the bark of the trunk, and had lost no time getting away. The drumming of a woodpecker is as terrifying to a little insect in the bark of a tree as the breaking open of our shutters by a burglar would be to us. But at night she was safe in her lofty ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... am to read the Proof sheets. The edition is of Seven Hundred and Fifty; which Fraser thinks he will sell. With what joy shall I then sack up the small Ten Pounds Sterling perhaps of "Half-Profits," and remit them to the man Emerson; saying: There, Man! Tit for tat, the reciprocity not all on one side!—I ought to say, moreover, that this was a volunteer scheme of Fraser's; the risk is all his, the origin of it was with him: I advised him to have it reviewed, as being a really noteworthy Book; "Write you a Preface," ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... sound! The grey-headed woodpecker tapping the hollow tree! Blind and dumb might well be envied now. See! that thing rests on two line-tubs, full of tow-lines. A most malicious wag, that fellow. Rat-tat! So man's seconds tick! Oh! how immaterial are all materials! What things real are there, but imponderable thoughts? Here now's the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made the expressive sign of the help and hope of most endangered life. A life-buoy of ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... like a Cretan.' Cf. the English saying 'to give tit for tat'. Erasmus means that he gave the messenger full measure of conversation ...
— Selections from Erasmus - Principally from his Epistles • Erasmus Roterodamus
... he lifted the knocker and let it fall. The rat-tat sounded hollowly, but there was no response. Constans looked longingly at the wall, but without some special appliance, such as a notched pole or grappling-hooks, it was unscalable. There were no ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... Critical occasions [Footnote: Essays p. 118.]. Now what he means by a mans breaking his Face there, unless he is to run his Nose against a Post, I can't imagine; and therefore will set it down for a Blunder—And so there's Tit for Tat, and the Dice in my hand still. But poor Sancho is horribly unfortunate agen, for by and by he catches him answering the Curate, who threatens him for calling him Finisher of Fornication, and Conjunction Copulative, with ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... 'mong the living yet A printer of the old Gazette. Who plied the typographic trade Ably in Bytown's first decade. And taught the art of Caxton well, And thoroughly to John George Bell, Who in our village made a racket, In the old columns of the Packet, Where every one got "tit for tat" From dear departed "Old White Hat!" Who thought Reformers could not err, And laid the lash on Dawson Kerr, Whom he in bitter hues did paint A sinner, and called him "the saint." A journal of more modern date Than the Gazette, who's early fate, Was Phoenix-like to rise resplendent From ashes ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... under the impression that all fear of pursuit was at an end, and Reuben was amazing us by an account of the excitement which had been caused in Havant by our disappearance, when through the stillness of the night a dull, muffled rat-tat-tat struck upon my ear. At the same moment Saxon sprang from his horse and listened ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cultivate their pleasure. The days when they came home in a rage, it was on her that they vented it. Go it! hammer away at the animal! She had a good back; it made them all the better friends when they yelled together. And it never did for her to give them tit-for-tat. In the beginning, whenever one of them yelled at her, she would appeal to the other, but this seldom worked. Coupeau had a foul mouth and called her horrible things. Lantier chose his insults carefully, but they often hurt ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... a loud rat-tat at the front-door. David went out and brought in a telegram. It was addressed to Kathleen. She opened it in some surprise, and read the contents slowly. There was amazement on her face; a feeling of consternation stole into ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... for the tat of the 'Cheshire cat,'" laughed Madame Lafarge, a French-American Corinne with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... the door! Rat-tat at the door! Here are valentines one, two, three; There is one for Harry, and one for Will, And a big one for girlie, see! Wildly she flies o'er the nursery floor, Never was girlie so happy before, As she shouts in her baby glee— "Oh! I've got a valentine, all come, look! As big as the sheet ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous
... my industry. I played as heartily as I worked, but I studied with a will, too, and passed a score of mates. That was easy enough, for home study was never dreamed of by most of them, and leisure hours in school were passed in marking "tit-tat-to" upon slates or eating apples under the friendly shelter ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... bad as that then? Oh well, there are other girls just as pretty as Arline; and you've always been a great favorite with them, Paul; but hold on, why not let me try to straighten this thing out? You've helped me all right; and tit for tat ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... Tit-tat-toe! My first go; Three jolly butcher boys all in a row! Stick one up, Stick one down, Stick one in ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... spoken when there was a loud rat-tat at the front door, and Jack Glover hastened into the hall to answer. But it was not the policeman he had expected. It was a girl in a big sable coat, muffled up to her eyes. She pushed past Jack, crossed the hall, and ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... factories in England and were quite unaccustomed to seeing the damage that one hundred pounds of high explosive can do to the delicate anatomy of the human being; panic seized them; but a greater fear possessed them when Jimmie's orders burst upon them like the rat-tat-tat of a machine gun; they marched as if on parade into the trenches, recently dug behind the hangars; then Jimmie, smoking an occasional cigarette, strolled up and down in front during the ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... to show that they supported his views. Hence his interpretation often seems forced and perverse. The most extraordinary instance of this is his explanation of the celebrated phrase in the Chandogya Upanishad Sa atma tat tvam asi. He reads Sa atma atat tvam asi and considers that it means "You are not that God. Why be so conceited as to suppose that you are?"[598] Monotheistic texts have often received a mystical and pantheistic interpretation. The Old Testament ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... substantial temporalities. However, the pair made the best of their future that circumstances permitted, and the interview was at length drawing to a close when there came, without the slightest forewarning, a smart rat-tat-tat upon ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... gun "rat-tat-tat-tated" close to us, and three rockets, like a flight of startled birds, rose suddenly ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... rat-tat at the door, the sound of a letter falling on the mat, and Fanning the postman passed on. George leaned back quickly so that he might not see him. Mr Griffith fetched the letter, opened it with trembling hands.... He gave a ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... knock—these things agitated me and disturbed my rest. I lay tossing on my bed, planning every detail of poor Constant's end. The hours dragged slowly and wretchedly on towards the misty dawn. I was racked with suspense. Was I to be disappointed after all? At last the welcome sound came—the rat-tat-tat of murder. The echoes of that knock are yet in my ear. 'Come over and kill him!' I put my night-capped head out of the window and told her to wait for me. I dressed hurriedly, took my razor, and went ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... wait till Fritz quit. Fat would be in a shell hole almost as soon as the first shot was fired, and would laugh at Bink looking for a hole to hide in. Bink would get sore; all you could hear was the rat-tat-tat of the machine gun and in between "Tee hee, tee hee" from Fat as he lay and watched Bink crawling around looking for a hole. Some of the boys would lie in the hole and wave their legs in the air ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... the boy, 'but they calls me "Tat" for short, because I used to hang about outside Tattersall's and run errands. I picked up most of my education there. There ain't many of 'em as can teach me anything.' He broke off short in his confidences at the sound of a heavy shuffling footstep on the stairs. 'Oh, my!' he cried, 'this ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... inwardly. No Dovenilid could be so obviously superior and still only a lowly student. Well, considering Harrison's qualifications, it might still not be tit for tat. ...
— Citadel • Algirdas Jonas Budrys
... the telephone in the lower hall, a rare visitor, Crowder or a college friend. This was why, when a knock fell on the door, he looked up, surprised. It was an unusual knock, soft and low, not like the landlady's irritated summons, or Crowder's brusque rat-tat. In answer to his "Come in," the door swung slowly back and in ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... was a slight rat-tat, That put their Joys to rout; Out ran the City Rat; His guest, ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... very first night at my new billet, about 2 a.m., by the rat-a-tat of a kettle-drum, and two dreary notes continuously repeated by a bugle. It was the alarm for a fire at a farmhouse about half a mile from town. Our men from the hospital helped to get most of the furniture out, and were standing around watching the farmhouse and barns burn down, when the 17 Brigade ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... little wireless cabin roared with the undiminishing rat-tat-tat of his spark explosions, and Manila, a navy man of the old school, rattled back a series of ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... "Tit for tat," exclaimed. Bumpus; "what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. After this we'll call it off, fellows, remember. It was give and take, and now the slate's ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... his hands together. He had been angry to begin with; yes— he would confess it—very angry. But he had overcome it and risen to his reputation. The town had been mistaken in thinking it could put fun on him. It was tit-for-tat again, and the laugh still ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... innumerable dinners he had to eat his way through. Tossing the reins to the gentleman who sat next him, he jumped out of the wagonette—it was hung with placards of "Vote for Turnham!"—and gave a loud rat-a-tat at ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... he in these unhappy self-communings, that he did not hear a vigorous "rat-tat-tat" on the door of the little back parlor. A repetition of the performance aroused him, and to his call, "Come in," Mash, the cook, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... was another "Pshaw!" But Mrs. Peck went on: "When you've lived opposite to people like that for a long time you feel as if you had some rights in them—tit for tat! But she didn't take it up today; she didn't speak to me. She knows who I am as well as ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... was good, I fear I made but an indifferent bad ploughboy when walking, and found a difficulty in dealing with my hands, not knowing how ploughboys are wont to carry them. So I came round in front of the house, and gave a rat-tat on the door, while my pulse beat as loud inside of me as ever did the knocker without. The sound ran round the building, and backwards among the walks, and all was silent as before. I waited a minute, and was for knocking again, thinking there might be no one in the house, and then heard a light ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... Foreign Service Corps. Its C.O. has been boasting that it's en tat de partir, and Bayley's going to take him at his word and have a kit-inspection this afternoon in the Park. I must tell their drill-hall. Look over yonder between that brewery chimney and the ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... charter as settling the true meaning of the corresponding clause of Magna Carta, on the principle tat laws and charters on the same subject are to be construed with reference to each other. See 3 Christin's Blackstone, ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... o'clock, or more, for the twilight had come down, and my books and little pictures were looking misty, when a rat-tat-tat rang at the door. I didn't hear the car, for the road was muddy, I suppose; but I straightened myself up in my arm-chair, and drew my breviary towards me. I had read my Matins and Lauds for the following day, before dinner; I always ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... of their valuable journal? This is the drift of the fault found with Thackeray. He is not Fenelon, he is not Dickens, he is not Scott; he is not poetical, he is not ideal, he is not humane; he is not Tit, he is not Tat, complain the eminent Dabs and Tabs. Of course he is not, because he is Thackeray—a man who describes what he sees, motives as well as appearances—a man who believes that character is better than talent—that there is a worldly weakness superior ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... conversation. Presently one of the men advanced to the door and began to rap and call the name of our host. Then I knew their errand was not hostile; but the weird effect of that regular alternate rapping and calling ran through my dream all the rest of the night. Rat-tat, tat, tat,—La Chance; rat-tat, tat,—La Chance, five or six times repeated before La Chance heard and responded. Then the door opened and they came in, when it was jabber, jabber, jabber in the next ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... here you are at Saxon's and my wedding supper. We're just goin' to take all your good wishes to heart, we wish you the same back, and when we say it we mean more than you think we mean. Saxon an' I believe in tit for tat. So we're wishin' for the day when the table is turned clear around an' we're sittin' as guests at your weddin' supper. And then, when you come to Sunday dinner, you can both stop Saturday night in the spare bedroom. I guess I was wised up when ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... it very comfortable for herself in a hole in a tree. It was safe and dry, and stayed warm the greater part of the night because the sun shone on the entrance all day long. Once, early in the morning, she had heard a woodpecker rat-a-tat-tatting on the bark of the trunk, and had lost no time getting away. The drumming of a woodpecker is as terrifying to a little insect in the bark of a tree as the breaking open of our shutters by a burglar would be to us. But at night she was safe ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... one time. And 'tis you killed my father, who was a soldier of the first Emperor, not to speak of my youngest son, Francois, whom you killed last month near Exreux. I owed this to you, and I've paid you back. 'Tis tit for tat!" ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... sound, and, recognizing the delicate 'rat-tat' of her husband's knock, did not answer, indifferent whether he came in or no. He entered noiselessly. If she did not let him know she was awake, he would not wake her. She lay still and watched him sit down astride of a chair, cross his arms on its back, rest his chin on them, and fix ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Rat-tat-tat at the door next afternoon, and little Pansy ran to open it, expecting to see the postman, but the knocking was only a bit of Tom's fun. Frank had left for Hull the evening before to meet him, and here was Tom the sailor, tall and bonny and dark. Pansy jumped into his arms like a baby, Aralia ...
— Crusoes of the Frozen North • Gordon Stables
... there's a grand tit-for-tat going through all nature. Why, sir, the pleasures of the far South, to a man of art and enterprise like you, far exceed this poor, plain region. Take the roof off slavery and the blacks have rather the best of it; the whites would think so if they could see ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... a kiss toward the window and started down the path. She was just going to open the gate when she heard a "rat-tat-tat" behind her. ...
— The Wreck • Anonymous
... autres, un beau dimanche de fte et de grand soleil, il m'arriva pour la promenade dans un tat de toilette tel que nous en fmes tous pouvants. Vous n'avez jamais rien rv de semblable. Des mains noires, des souliers sans cordons, de la boue jusque dans les cheveux, presque ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... tel tat de choses, l'opinion que vous a communique M. le Comte de Strmer, nous a paru celle qui offre le plus de chances de succs. Cette opinion est d'ailleurs conforme aux vues que j'ai t dans le cas de vous dvelopper sur la ...
— Correspondence Relating to Executions in Turkey for Apostacy from Islamism • Various
... my husband, for that he did what he did in his shop, and God hath retaliated upon him in this world.' And it is related that the goldsmith, when his wife told him how the water-carrier had used her, said, 'Tit for tat! If I had done more, the water-carrier had done more.' And this became a current ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... of canoeists could not be thus vulgarly explained away; we were strange and picturesque intruders; and out of people's wonder sprang a sort of light and passing intimacy all along our route. There is nothing but tit- for-tat in this world, though sometimes it be a little difficult to trace: for the scores are older than we ourselves, and there has never yet been a settling-day since things were. You get entertainment pretty much in proportion as you give. As long as we were a sort ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... when the Dame Lebrun set off, in company with M. Grimod, to visit it. She spent six weeks there, during which she wrote several letters to her husband, and cherished his answers as before. But we shall not follow the example of the Memoire, in repeating all these tit-for-tat endearments, but pursue our own object, which is to trace the style of occupation of people of their rank. And here we must observe, that, as far as we see in this process, the whole occupation of the Grimods and others was to make tours for their pleasure, and get up fetes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... Patrick Carr and Samuel Caldwell, who also had come to put out a fire, were dying, and six others were wounded. The soldiers were reloading their guns, preparing for another volley. Robert heard the rat-a-tat of a drum, and saw the Twenty-Ninth Regiment march into the street from Pudding Lane, the front rank kneeling, the rear rank standing, with guns loaded, bayonets fixed, and ready ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... The rat-tat-tat of gunfire suddenly ceased. Jack could no longer cover the spot where the two Huns were hiding behind the tree-trunks, and consequently it would be a sheer waste ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... we could put a spoke in Allingford's wheel, and pay out him and a lot of those other prigs like Oaks and Rowlands, I couldn't have told you; but now the thing's as easy as pat. They'll find out they haven't cold-shouldered me at every turn and corner for nothing. I'll give them tit for tat, and after Christmas, when I've left this beastly place, I'll write and tell them ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... general assessment: highly developed, completely automated and efficient system, mainly buried cables domestic: nationwide cellular telephone system; buried cable international: 3 channels leased on TAT-6 coaxial submarine cable (Europe ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... it's been very good for you to know what it feels like to be left behind," rubbed in Diana. "You never told us about that gipsy trail dodge. Tit for tat's my motto." ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... hear them at all, especially if he happened to be playing his 'cello at the time. So that this morning he was considerably startled, when, having finished his letter to the Duchess de la Santoisie, a long and persistent rat-tat-tatting echoed noisily through the house, like the smart, quick blows of a carpenter's hammer—a species of knock that was entirely unfamiliar to him, and that, while so emphatic in character, suggested ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... with insolent familiarity. I jerked my head in hurriedly, and, shutting the window, turned my attention to Little Lottie. It was not long before my tea-kettle was singing merrily. I was about to sit down to the first meal in my new abode, when an insinuating rat-tat sounded on the door. I opened it to find the ill-looking young fellow leaning languidly against the door-jamb, ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... declares, the receipt of his friend's "heart- engendered lines" of congratulation. "No grocer's apprentice, after his first month's permitted riot, was ever sicker of figs and raisins than I of hearing about the Remorse. The endless rat-a-tat-tat at our black-and-blue bruised doors, and my three master-fiends, proof-sheets, letters, and—worse than these—invitations to large dinners, which I cannot refuse without offence and imputation of pride, etc., oppress ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... the Colonel had been silent also—for what could he say?—but suddenly all four started in their saddles, and Sadie gave a sharp cry of dismay. In the hush of the night there had come from behind them the petulant crack of a rifle, then another, then several together, with a brisk rat-tat-tat, and then after an interval, ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... vessels, the tympanum, and the cymbals. The formula of an Attis initiate was "I have eaten from the tympanum, I have drunk from the cymbals." As I have remarked above, the food thus partaken of was a Food of Life—"Die Attis-Diener in der Tat eine magische Speise des Lebens aus ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... mark the places where the youth of her allies fell, avenging outrage. Seas, even when calmest, were to become terrible, and men's heart-beats, a bit sluggish with the fatty degeneration of a sluggard peace, to quicken and then to throb with the rat-a-tat-tat, the rat-a-tat-tat of the most peremptory, the most reverberating call to arms in ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... 'I've got a word or two to say to you. I ain't kickin' at your givin' me tit for tat, or tryin' to. Turn about's fair play, if you can call the turn. But it's against my principles to allow anybody to beat me on a business deal. Do you suppose,' he says, 'that I'd have paid your robber's prices without a word if I hadn't had somethin' up my sleeve? Why, man,' says he, 'I ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... pointed to the box. There was a sound that seemed to come from inside. Something made a rat, tat, tat on ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... to begin. Dawson gave us a few seconds of apprehension, and then laughed grimly. From his waistcoat pocket he drew a key, and the fetters were removed almost as quickly as they had been clapped on. "Tit for tat," said he. "You have had your fun with me. Fair ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... Green Forest he found Drummer the Woodpecker making a great racket on the hollow limb of an old chestnut. Sammy sat down near by and listened. "My, that's fine! I wish I could do that. You must be practising," said Sammy at the end of a long rat-a-tat-tat. ...
— The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum • Thornton W. Burgess
... taken a personal nature, in which I am not disposed to indulge. I don't think that anything will be gained by such accusations and comparisons. It strikes me that the last speaker is trying to give tit for tat because his candidate lost at the last election; but I am one of those who believe that criminations and recriminations avail nothing, and I move that we proceed to ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... may stand this sort of treatment—I won't. I have a pull over you. Ah! I'm not such a fool, after all, perhaps, as you thought. I have it, and hang me, but I'll make use of it! You have blasted my life, and thought it good fun, no doubt. I'll see if I can't give tit-for-tat and spoil your little game, my haughty lady, with your white face and your cursed high-handed airs. Yet, how I loved them—how I loved them! Must I never see a woman again without that queenly beauty coming between me and my share of ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... Phxdria, you retort With Pamphila. If ever she suggest, 'Do let us have in Phudria to our revel:' Quoth you, 'And let us call on Pamphila To sing a song.' If she shall praise his looks, Do you praise hers to match them: and, in fine, Give tit for tat, that ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... dinner with us, and of an evening he had the run of the smoking room. After ten p.m. the 'open sesame' to our door was a rattle on the letter box and Louis' fancy for the mysterious was whetted by this admittance by secret sign, and we liked his special rat-a-tat for it was the forerunner of an hour or two ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... made up their minds to spend Christmas without us; particularly Lisbeth Mary—that's my daughter, Daniel's wife—with her mother to comfort her, an' the firelight goin' dinky-dink round the cups and saucers on the dresser. I pictured the joy of it, too, when Sam or Daniel struck rat-tat and clicked open the latch, or maybe one o' the gals pricked up an ear at the sound of their boots on the cobbles. I 'most hoped the lads hadn't been thoughtful enough to send on a telegram. My mind ran on all this, sir; and then for a moment it ran back to myself, ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in its own grounds, and was girt round with a very high stone wall topped with broken glass. A single narrow iron-clamped door formed the only means of entrance. On this our guide knocked with a peculiar postman-like rat-tat. ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... A rat-tat-tat-tat ensued, and the Earl of Harcourt was announced. When he had paid his compliments to Mrs. Cholmondeley, speaking of the lady from whose house he was just ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... bride? Would blacksmiths brown Into smithereens smite the solid old renown? Rivetting the bolts in the iron-clad's shell, Hark to the hammers with a rat-tat-tat; "Handier a derby than a laced cocked hat! The Monitor was ugly, but she served us right well, Better than the Cumberland, a beauty ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... often in my mouth, when men of Protestant sentiments appealed to the Articles, Homilies, or Reformers; in the sense that, if they had a right to speak loud, I had the liberty to speak out as well as they, and had the means, by the same or parallel appeals, of giving them tit for tat. I thought that the Anglican Church was tyrannized over by a mere party, and I aimed at bringing into effect the promise contained in the motto to the Lyra, "They shall know the difference now." I only asked to be allowed to ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... tenement. I know I have no right to do this without saying, "By your leave," but item-hunters the world over do likewise, so I feel little squeamishness about it. Moreover, when I come back I find the Indians are playing " tit-for-tat" against me. Not only are they curiously examining the bicycle as a whole, but they have opened the toolbag and are examining the tools, handing them around among themselves. I don't think these Piutes are smart or bold enough to steal nowadays; their intercourse ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... countenance for very anger, but his orators and temple-keepers stood speechless, having nothing but a few weak and rotten shreds of argument in reply. But the king's son rejoiced in spirit and with glad countenance magnified the Lord, who had made a path, where no path was, for them tat trusted in him, who by the mouth of a foeman and enemy was establishing the truth; and the leader of error had proved a ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... saw how he started at every creak of the garden-gate, as he waited for the last post. When at length a step was heard crunching on the gravel, he rushed from the room, and Mrs. Cohn heard the hall-door open. Her ear, disappointed of the rat-tat, morbidly followed every sound; but it seemed a long time before her boy's returning footstep reached her. The strange, slow drag of it worked upon her nerves, and her heart ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... under his breath, and, in a mechanical fashion, began to build little castles with the draughts. He was just about to add to an already swaying structure when a thundering rat-tat-tat at the door dispersed the draughts to the four corners of the room. The servant opened the door, and the next moment ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... ferocity springing from the instinct of a lower civilisation—as when a farm-dog leaps upon us in the road—our first instinct is to fall back and meet him on the ground of his own savagery, to give him an exact tit for his tat. But can you not see that, as we do this, and in proportion as we do it, we allow him to impose himself on us and relinquish our main advantage? It is idle to practise a higher moral code, if we abandon it hurriedly as soon as it is ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... have put on the other candlestick. [He goes to mantel and takes it. A rat-tat-tat at street-door.] Who can that be? [Running to KATHLEEN'S door, holding candlestick forgetfully low.] Kathleen! ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... then crying might even be beneficial. The effect on the breathing is very much the same in both cases, and there is a curious similarity in the action of the diaphragm and the mechanical character of the expulsion of the breath. Looking tat a person from behind, one cannot tell whether he is laughing or crying. Both produce relaxation of the nerves, both increase the activity of the lungs, and both involve a form of gymnastics for the ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... a traveller over the dusty highroad. He was thirsty and tired. He saw the well, and he went up to the door of the tumble-down house and knocked, rat-tat-tat! ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... of the case were so well proven, that the apothecary's man was as glad to have been robbed as the others were vexed at having committed such a nasty theft. However, they comforted themselves with the hope that they might some day give him tit for tat."—Ed. ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... daughter: 'My dear Melanie, we have fallen up to our necks in the mire, we cannot be very particular about the hand that is to drag us out. Lorand will never come back again, Gyali has deceived us; but only tit for tat,—for we deceived him with that tale of the regained property in which only one man believes,—honorable Sarvoelgyi. If you accept his offer, you will be a lady of position, if not, you can come with me as a wandering actress. We can take our revenge upon them, for ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... they're begun, things soon will come about, And ve shall be the upper class, and turn the others out; Their laws ve'll execute ourselves, and raise their hevelation, That's tit for tat, for they'd make that the only recreation Of ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... already, found it was only ten minutes past four, and dismissed the supposition with a sigh. "I don't—think—I want—" she was beginning slowly, when, of a sudden, there came a tremendous rat-tat-tat on the schoolroom door; the handle was not turned, but burst open; a blast of chilly air blew into the room, and in the doorway stood a tall, handsome youth, with square shoulders, a gracefully poised head, and Peggy Saville's eave-like brows ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... proficiency had made eyes unnecessary. She tatted while she read, tatted while she taught, tatted while she watched the potatoes boiling for dinner. Some even asserted that they had seen her tat on horseback with all the diligence attributed to Bertha the beautiful queen of old Helvetia, who spun from a distaff fastened to the saddle of ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... chilt, Jeannie; but young Malcolm and old Tuncan hasn't made teir prayers yet, and you know fery well tat she won't sell pefore she's made her prayers. Tell your mother tat she'll pe bringin' ta blackin' when she comes to ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... The whole business took place under cover of darkness. After an hour and a half's trudging, up hill and down dale, we got to the allotted spot and began our work. The night was alive with noises—ear-splitting reports of big guns, the shrieks and whistles of shells in transit, and the rat-tat-tat of machine-guns. Now and again the darkness would be illuminated by the glare of star-shells. I think I mentioned to you before the mournful desolation of this war-scarred countryside—land without grass, without trees, without houses, nothing more now than a wilderness, ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... du Hautoy will settle his property on Francoise, you shall sign a deed of partnership with Sechard in two days. I shall not be married for a week after the contract is signed, so we shall both be within the terms of our little agreement, tit for tat. To-night, however, we must keep a close watch over Lucien and Mme. la Comtesse du Chatelet, for the whole business lies in that. . . . If Lucien hopes to succeed through the Countess' influence, I have ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... together to the farm of our uncle Richard, who was of the Episcopal Church, for the celebration of Christmas; for many of his persuasion, at that time, regarded "Thanksgiving" pretty much as the Highlander, in Scott's novel, did "ta little government Sunday, tat tey call ta Fast." He was a well-to-do farmer, at a place within easy reach of the town in which we lived, and where very few were at all rich, even according to the former moderate standard of wealth, and most people were poor, or at least depended on their daily labor for their daily bread. ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... in a supplicating voice, not even noticing the tit-for-tat of the young man, "consider economy, and later we may be able to ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... Durchlaucht werden sich zweifelsohne mit uns erfreuen, dass der kleine Printz (PRINZ) Fritz nuhnmero (NUNMEHR) 6 Zehne (ZAHNE) hat und ohne die geringste incommoditet (-TAT). Daraus kann man auch die PREDESTINATION sehen, dass alle seine Bruder haben daran sterben mussen, dieser aber bekommt sie ohne Muhe wie seine Schwester. Gott erhalte ihn uns noch lange zum trohst (TROST), in dessen Schutz ich dieselbe ergebe und ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... to be our last march to Pretoria. We had the good fortune to be in the advance party. Soon after starting the Duke of Norfolk's horse fell in a hole and put his thigh out, so he lost the fun, for it was not long before, from the hills ahead of us, came rap, rap, and then the rat-tat-tat-tat of a machine gun. We dismounted, advanced extended, and opened fire. I aimed at the hills, so I know I hit something. The Boers retiring, we (that is the battalion) occupied one kopje and then another, ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... out of my mouth afore they did ring, and if they 'ad been selling muffins they couldn't ha' kept it up harder. And all the time the umberella was doing rat-a-tat tats on the gate, while a voice— much too loud for the ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... "Lors que Bauldoyn Prince Chre||stien tat fameux & renomme tenoit || l'Empire de Constatinople, assavoir || en Pan de l'incarnation de nostre || Saulueur mil deux cens soixante & || neuf, deux nobles & prudes ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... air suits her. She is delighted with herself for having called Mrs. Bethune "horrid," and given him such a delicious tit-for-tat. She looks full of fun and mischief. There is no longer an atom of rancour about her. Rylton, in spite of himself, acknowledges her charm; but what does she mean by this sudden sweetness—this sudden sauciness? Is she holding out the olive-branch to him? If so, he will accept ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... Uji, in the province of Yamashiro, there lived, about six hundred years ago, a young samurai named It[o] Tat['e]waki Norisuk['e], whose ancestors were of the H['e][:i]k['e] clan. It[o] was of handsome person and amiable character, a good scholar and apt at arms. But his family were poor; and he had no patron among ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... means if she could, by other means if she must. She smiled a little as she thought how easily she could have conquered him had she chosen to be less scrupulous in the use of her weapons. She could have won him at "Wake Robin" if some silly Quixotism hadn't steeled her breast against him—more than tat, she knew that in spite of herself she would have won him if it hadn't been for Hermia. Hermia had discovered a remarkable faculty for unconsciously interfering with her affairs. Unconsciously? ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... eyes, but was compelled to keep them open, and follow his every movement as, darting past me, he left the roadway, and, leaping several of the smaller obstacles that barred his way, finally disappeared behind some of the bigger boulders. I then heard the loud rat-tat of drums, accompanied by the shrill voices of fifes and flutes, and at the farther end of the Pass, their arms glittering brightly in the silvery moonbeams, appeared a regiment of scarlet-clad soldiers. At the head rode a mounted officer, after him came the band, and then, four abreast, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... The Malcontent. 'Why not Malevole in folio with us, as Jeronimo in decimo sexto with them? They taught us a name for our play: we call it: "One for Another."' (That is to say, we give them 'Tit for Tat.') ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... still appeared, and the balls still flew around it, until the Dutchman, losing all patience, raised his head above the gunnel, and in a tone of querulous remonstrance, called out, "Oh, now I git tat nonsense, tere,—will you!" Not a shot was ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... page With descriptions of her rage— (I might say that she went a bit too fur!) When he smiled and murmured: "Shoo!" "There is one thing I can do!" She answered with a wrathful kind of purr. "You may shoo me, and it suit you, But I feel my conscience bid Me, as tit for tat, to ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... things. They told us not to spend our time out of school tatting and making eyelet embroidery, when there were neighborhoods to be awakened and citizens to be made. That suits me fine, for I can't tat anyway. One of the girls tried to show me, but gave it up after three or four tries. She said some could learn, and some couldn't. It ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... Three little taps—rat, tat, tat! Surprised, Gombauld turned his eyes towards the door. Nobody ever disturbed him while he was at work; it was one of the unwritten laws. "Come in!" he called. The door, which was ajar, swung open, revealing, from the waist upwards, the form of ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... those in Norfolk-street would have half the house go together. It would be too much for your description therefore: and I suppose, tat when you think fit to declare your marriage, you will hardly ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Ralph, turning to his friend, old Arthur. 'Precisely what made me consider the thing so fair and easy. There is no obligation on either side. You have money, and Miss Madeline has beauty and worth. She has youth, you have money. She has not money, you have not youth. Tit for tat, quits, a match ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... thinking of taking my native, the man I hired just after I got here. He is a very good fellow, and made himself very useful, while I was ill. I picked up a tat for him, yesterday, for a few rupees. I know that your man would do very well for us both but, sometimes, when you make a village your headquarters and ride to visit others from it, I may not feel well enough to go with ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... orders us to do something; Reason (the balance of faculties) directs; and the strongest motive controls. Modern Science, by the discovery of Radiant Matter, a fourth condition, seems to conciliate the two schools. La dcouverte dun quatrime tat de la matire, says a Reviewer, cest la porte ouverte linfini de ses transformations; cest lhomme invisible et impalpable de mme possible sans cesser dtre substantiel; cest le monde des esprits entrant sans absurdit dans la domaine des hypothses scientifiques; ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... eminent furnishers of funerals, Mr. Mould and Messrs. Omer and Joram. All the mixed mirth and sadness of the story are skilfully drawn into the handling of this portion of it; and, amid wooings and preparations for weddings and church-ringing bells for baptisms, the steadily-going rat-tat of the hammer ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Guns. Those few remaining of the fighting Earthmen farther up the valley, no longer menaced by the futile fliers, had come down to help their weaponless brethren. Wat's voice was shrill in the land, yelling, exhorting, screaming. A familiar rat-a-tat-a-tat came down the wind. The submachine gun was spitting steel-jacketed death. Where was Joan? Hilary ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... boys goes to fightin' dey trains near de place where am de big field for to train hunerds of sojer boys. I likes dat, 'cause de drums goes, 'ter-ump, ter-ump, ter-ump, tump, tump,' and de fifes goes, 'te, te, ta, te, tat' and plays Dixie. One day Young massa trainin' dem sojers and he am walkin' backwards and facin' dem sojers, and jus' as him say, 'Halt,' down he go, flat on he back. Right away quick, him say, ''Bout face,' 'cause ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... Livelihood or ADPL [Frederick FUNG Kin-kee, chairman]; Citizens Party [Alex CHAN Kai-chung]; Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong or DAB [MA Lik, chairman]; Democratic Party [LEE Wing-tat, chairman]; Frontier Party [Emily LAU Wai-hing, chairwoman]; Liberal Party [James TIEN Pei-chun, chairman] note: political blocs include: pro-democracy - Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood, Democratic Party, Frontier Party; pro-Beijing ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Palmerston enjoyed, as he expressed it, his "tit-for-tat with Johnny Russell" and helped the Tories to defeat his late chief in a measure for reorganizing the militia as a precaution against possible aggression from France. The ministry had not saved itself by the ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... pounding on the wall hard by. We paused to listen. It was quite impossible to locate the sound, which ceased almost immediately. Our first thought was that the telephone men were drilling a hole through the wall into my study. Then came the sharp rat-a-ta-tat once more. Even as we looked about us in bewilderment, the portly facade of Ludwig the Red moved out of alignment with a heart-rending squeak and a long thin streak of black appeared at the inner edge of the frame, growing wider,— and blacker ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... visage, while his friend was speaking, had undergone a series of contortions indicative of a wild conflict of feelings in his breast, "well, well, I am a goose, and deserved the buffet. After all, I did call you a liar, so we are quits, Biarne—tit for tat. Come, let us shake hands and go up to Leif's cottage. You said Freydissa was ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... mounting the stone stairs. Not like that of the postman. A visitor, perhaps, to the other flat on the topmost landing. But the final pause was in this direction, and then came a sharp rat-tat at the door. Amy rose immediately and went ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... there was to do was to wait for the 2nd of August to come, and that was hard to do. Finally it came. That afternoon when the two-coached train rolled up to the little red station at Dobbinsville, Jake Benton stood on the depot platform. His heart beat a rat-a-tat-tat against his chest. As the train slowed up and Jake saw through its window the face of a man corresponding to the picture he had seen in his holiness paper, his emotions refused to yield to control. He jumped high ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison
... the key to Ladysmith—Platrand, whence now and again came the sharp rat-tat of the Metford, followed ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... from his corner and thought: "She is pretty; so much the better. Tit for tat, my comrade. But if they begin again to annoy me with you, it will get somewhat hot at the ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... regularity, almost like that of a machine, with which the routine of duty is conducted on board a man-of-war, every officer and man, from the captain down to the smallest "powder-monkey," was in his proper place and at his station before the rat-tat-tat of the drum had ceased reverberating fore and aft; albeit, most of the hands had only recently joined the ship, while some, indeed, had never ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the old law of tit-for-tat! And I will persevere till I have attained my end, unless you should become extremely ugly.—I shall succeed; and I will tell you why," he went on, resuming his attitude, and looking at Madame Hulot. "You will not meet with such an old man, or such a young lover," he said after a pause, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... sir," said the woman hastily just as there was a little rat-tat at the brass knocker of the outer ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... (1494), whose views were, on many points, those of John Knox. In 1493-1495 James dealt in the usual way with the Highlanders and "the wicked blood of the Isles": some were hanged, some imprisoned, some became sureties for the peacefulness of their clans. In 1495, by way of tit-for-tat against English schemes, James began to back the claims of Perkin Warbeck, pretending to be Richard, Duke of York, escaped from the assassins employed by Richard III. Perkin, whoever he was, had probably been intriguing between Ireland ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... Meshech Little, hesitatingly, as if his logic didn't convince himself. "They wuz gonter lick us. They'd a had us licked by this time. It's tit for tat." ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... Noggin, with Mr. Chrome, who had a new flag, walked out upon the parade-ground. The musicians struck up Yankee-Doodle. How it stirred the hearts of everybody,—the sharp, shrill notes of the fife,—the roll, the rattle, and the rat-a-tat-tat of the drum, and the clanging of the bell, and the sight of that flag, its crimson folds and fadeless stars waving in the evening breeze! Never had it looked so beautiful. The little boys swung their caps and cheered, the women waved their handkerchiefs, and the men hurrahed in an ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... was your age." It is not thought an answer at all, if the young man retorts: "My venerable sir, so I shall most probably think when I am yours." And yet the one is as good as the other: pass for pass, tit for tat, a Roland ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for it sir," said Disco. "It's lucky you have always carried the physic in your pockets, 'cause you'll need it, an' it's lucky, too, that I am here and well enough to return tit for tat and nurse you, 'cause you'll have that 'ere pain in your spine creep up your back and round your ribs till it lays hold of yer shoulders, where it'll stick as if it had made up its mind to stay there for ever an' a day. Arter that you'll get cold an' shivering like ice—oh! doesn't ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... up suddenly to listen. A queer "rat, tat, tat," detached itself from the other night noises. Beppi was sound asleep, and she rolled him gently into the nest of leaves, then she listened again. The ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent
... chercher de la poudre la ville, tait tomb en route dans une embuscade de voltigeurs corses[2]. Aprs une vigoureuse dfense, il tait parvenu faire sa retraite, vivement poursuivi et tiraillant de rocher en rocher. Mais il avait peu d'avance sur les soldats, et sa blessure le mettait hors d'tat de gagner ...
— Quatre contes de Prosper Mrime • F. C. L. Van Steenderen
... some of the professed diners-out, who take every opportunity of paying for their dinner beforehand; every body freezes with the chilling sensation of dinner deferred, and "curses, not loud but deep," are imprecated on the Honourable Sniftky. At last, a prolonged rat-tat-tat announces the arrival of the noble beast, the lion of the evening; the Honourable Sniftky, who is a junior clerk in the Foreign Office, is announced by the footman out of livery, (for the day,) and announces himself a minute after: he comes in a long-tailed coat and boots, to show ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... Scaife laughed, Lovell looked first at him and then at Caesar. It came to me that Lovell was primed to say something. At any rate, he turned to Caesar, and said slowly, 'Tit for tat. If I do this for you, will you do something for me?' And Caesar spoke up as usual, without a second's hesitation, 'Of course I will.' And then Scaife laughed again, just as Lovell said, 'All right, I'll give Verney his "cap" before ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... Duncan, looking at Harry's and Reggie's somewhat battered faces as they passed; 'so there hass peen a fight between you two young gentlemen, and Mr. Allan hass been helping you. I wass thinking from Mr. Allan's looks these last days tat there would pe some mischief pefore ferry long! It iss ahl right, Miss Marjorie, it iss ahl right,' he said soothingly, in response to her glance; 'we hev made the Kelpie an hour and a quarter late, whateffer. That iss ferry good, although Rob says he will pe thinking ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... woods, and was never so happy as when surrounded by their solitude. The cawing of the crows, the tapping of the sapsucker, the rat-tat-tat of the bold red-headed woodpecker inviting insects in the rotten limb to look out, and he gobbled up, the frisking of the red squirrel as he darted like a flash around to the other side of a tree trunk—-all these and more he noted as ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... by, three; I was growing anxious, and debating if I should write again, when there came a loud rat-tat at the door, and a reply-paid telegram was handed in, addressed to ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... his breath, and, in a mechanical fashion, began to build little castles with the draughts. He was just about to add to an already swaying structure when a thundering rat-tat- tat at the door dispersed the draughts to the four corners of the room. The servant opened the door, and the next moment ushered ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... himself to another slice of beef, "you are in the wrong box—planted in Queer Street, as we say in London; for if you care a d—n about my daughter's respectability, you will never muzzle her father on suspicion of theft—and so there's tit for tat, my old gentleman!" ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was gloomy. Not long after eight the housemaid brought in a lighted lamp, and set it, as usual, upon the little black four-legged table in the drawing-room. And in the same moment the knocker of the front door sounded a vigorous rat-tat-tat, a ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... village the reflections of star-shells threw weird lights on half-ruined houses; an occasional shell screamed overhead, to burst with a dull, echoing sound within the shattered walls of former cottages; and one could hear the rat-tat-tat of machine-guns. These had a nasty habit of spraying the village with indirect fire, and it was, as always, a relief to enter the recesses of Wood Street without having any one hit. This communication trench dipped into the earth at ...
— Attack - An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 • Edward G. D. Liveing
... painter closed with him at once, ashamed and humbled at this miserable chaffering, glad also to get a little money now and then. But this time he was obstinate, and took to insulting the picture-dealer, who, giving tit for tat, all at once dropped the formal 'you' to assume the glib 'thou,' denied his talent, overwhelmed him with invective, and taxed him with ingratitude. Meanwhile, however, he had taken from his pocket three successive five-franc pieces, which, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... of the afternoon of the day before the marriage, there was the loud rat-tat-tat of the brass knocker, announcing a visitor. But visitors had been constant since the arrival of Cornelia and Anna, and Katherine did not much trouble herself as to whom it might be. She was standing upon a ladder, pinning among the evergreens and scarlet berries rosettes ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... re-distributed in divisions, to each of which a separate duty was assigned. Tom and his men marched with the second brigade of the first division. Communication was kept up the whole of the way with Zulla, and a telegraph wire laid down. On the 20th of March Sir Robert led forward his forces to Tat. From this station he began a rapid advance on Magdala. Hitherto every movement had been ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... A sharp rat-tat at the door of her sitting-room recalled Diana's wandering thoughts to the present. She threw a glance of half-comic dismay at the state of her sitting-room—every available chair and table seemed to be strewn with the contents of the trunks she was unpacking—and then, with a resigned ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... the situation had mastered the audience, a strong pair of hands, far back in the church, came together with an explosive clap. Like the rat-rat-tat of a quick-firing gun was the appreciative volley of recognition from the solitary applauder. It went rolling and crackling through the church defiantly, derisively, appreciatively. Halfway up the aisle a softer pair of ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... there came the loud rat-tat of the lawyer at the front door. They ran into the drawing-room and Eglantine opened the window gently. The detective knocked at the back door; the lawyer knocked again, louder. Pollyooly leaned out of the window, weighing her chances. She saw that to get to the ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... many a worthy youth and respected reader would hand over his correspondence to his parents; and, perhaps, there is no greater test of a man's regularity and easiness of conscience, than his readiness to face the postman. Blessed is he who is made happy by the sound of the rat-tat! The good are eager for it: but the naughty tremble at the sound thereof. So it was very kind of Mrs. Pendennis doubly to spare Pen the trouble of hearing or ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... typographic trade Ably in Bytown's first decade. And taught the art of Caxton well, And thoroughly to John George Bell, Who in our village made a racket, In the old columns of the Packet, Where every one got "tit for tat" From dear departed "Old White Hat!" Who thought Reformers could not err, And laid the lash on Dawson Kerr, Whom he in bitter hues did paint A sinner, and called him "the saint." A journal of more modern date Than the Gazette, who's ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... loss a brisk fire of explosive missives which continued unchecked for some weeks. Speaking quite candidly, and dropping the language of the Press Bureau for the moment, there has never been a time when the postman's rat-tat has ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... Her first birds—the bluebird, the song sparrow, the robin, the red-shouldered starling—are here or soon will be. The crows have a more confident caw, the sap begins to start in the sugar maple, the tiny boom of the first bee is heard, the downy woodpecker begins his resonant tat, tat, tat, on the dry limbs, and the cattle in the barnyard low long and loud with wistful ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... or 'stroke of policy,' as cruel as it was cowardly. Lord Palmerston's approval of this outrage, without the knowledge of either the Queen or Lord John Russell, procured him his dismissal from the cabinet. Two months later, however, Palmerston 'gave Russell his tit-for-tat,' defeating ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... willing animal than she is. But she is naturally a more irritable constitution than the black horse; flies tease her more; anything wrong in the harness frets her more; and if she were ill-used or unfairly treated she would not be unlikely to give tit for tat. You know that many ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... conscious, though he did not open his mouth. The handcuffs which had chafed Martin's wrists for so many hours were still dangling from his left arm. He slipped them off, and, with no gentle hand, forced his prisoner's wrists together behind him and ironed them tightly. Tit for tat, thought Martin; and he made certain that Ichi would not wriggle his wrists ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... on my ole man, an' husband an' wife am me. Hit didn't turn out bad as I s'posed it would, bress tat ar son-in-law ob mine, but I keeps a tinkin' it all ober, an' I'se 'jected, I is; an' dar's no use ob shoutin' glory wen you doan feel glory." Then she told the whole story, which kept Ella on pins and needles, for, while she felt ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... said Disco. "It's lucky you have always carried the physic in your pockets, 'cause you'll need it, an' it's lucky, too, that I am here and well enough to return tit for tat and nurse you, 'cause you'll have that 'ere pain in your spine creep up your back and round your ribs till it lays hold of yer shoulders, where it'll stick as if it had made up its mind to stay there for ever an' a day. Arter that you'll get cold an' shivering like ice—oh! doesn't ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the province of Yamashiro, there lived, about six hundred years ago, a young samurai named It[o] Tat['e]waki Norisuk['e], whose ancestors were of the H['e][:i]k['e] clan. It[o] was of handsome person and amiable character, a good scholar and apt at arms. But his family were poor; and he had no patron among the military nobility,—so that his ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... not be ketting to ta inside of her," returned the seer. "Ah, my poy! where ta light kets in, ta tarkness will pe ketting in too. This now, your whole pody will pe full of tarkness, as ta Piple will say, and Tuncan's pody tat will pe full of ta light." Then with suddenly changed tone he said, "Listen, Malcolm, my son! Shell pe ferry uneasy till ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... at my industry. I played as heartily as I worked, but I studied with a will, too, and passed a score of mates. That was easy enough, for home study was never dreamed of by most of them, and leisure hours in school were passed in marking "tit-tat-to" upon slates or eating apples under the friendly shelter of ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... impossibilities seemed to overwhelm every succeeding though successless suggestion. At the critical moment when it appeared perfectly clear to me either that I was fit for nothing or nothing was fit for me, the authoritative "rat-tat" of the general postman closed the argument, and for a brief space distracted the intense contemplations ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... June in the year '84, he was interrupted whilst equipping himself for dinner abroad, by a thunderous rat-tat-tat. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... places where the youth of her allies fell, avenging outrage. Seas, even when calmest, were to become terrible, and men's heart-beats, a bit sluggish with the fatty degeneration of a sluggard peace, to quicken and then to throb with the rat-a-tat-tat, the rat-a-tat-tat of the most peremptory, the most reverberating call to arms in the history ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... like a gallows. Round this shoulder of the house, and into the main yard (that turn'd churlishly toward the hillside), the wind howled like a beast in pain. I climb'd off Molly, and pressing my hat down on my head, struck a loud rat-tat on ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... It is only your family calling with some of their friends. I entered Grangioia Castle abruptly; now it is tit for tat." ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... completely automated and efficient system, mainly buried cables domestic: nationwide cellular telephone system; buried cable international: 3 channels leased on TAT-6 coaxial submarine cable (Europe ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... lay the key to Ladysmith—Platrand, whence now and again came the sharp rat-tat of the Metford, followed by the Mauser's ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... matters into train, Could hardly overload the brain With too excessive rations, Since just to ask if two and two Really make four? or, How d' ye do? And get the fit replies thereto In the tramundane rat-tat-too, Might ask a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... was only tit for tat; but he felt bitterly how even his past rose up against him. He had fought and sacrificed everything to improve the conditions in his branch; and the machines were the discouraging answer that the development gave to him and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... wrist, and nailed against the oak as a warning to malefactors—extended itself in a kind of grim appeal to everybody. It seemed to possess strange fascinations for all seafaring folk; and when there was a man-of-war in port the rat-tat-tat of that knocker would frequently startle the quiet neighborhood long after midnight. There appeared to be an occult understanding between it and the blue-jackets. Years ago there was a young Bilkins, one Pendexter Bilkins—a sad losel, we fear—who ran away to try his fortunes before the mast, ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... columns of their valuable journal? This is the drift of the fault found with Thackeray. He is not Fenelon, he is not Dickens, he is not Scott; he is not poetical, he is not ideal, he is not humane; he is not Tit, he is not Tat, complain the eminent Dabs and Tabs. Of course he is not, because he is Thackeray—a man who describes what he sees, motives as well as appearances—a man who believes that character is better than talent—that ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... never completed, being interrupted by a thundering rat-tat-tat at the front door, followed by a pealing at the bell, which indicated that the visitor was manfully following the printed injunction to "Ring also." The door was opened and a man's voice was heard in the hall-a loud, confident voice, at the sound of ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... gloomy. Not long after eight the housemaid brought in a lighted lamp, and set it, as usual, upon the little black four-legged table in the drawing-room. And in the same moment the knocker of the front door sounded a vigorous rat-tat-tat, a ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... is not correctly printed in any of the texts that I have seen. The Burdwan Pandits read tat-samim. This I think, is correct, but then asasada in the singular when the other verbs are all dual seems to be correct. The poet must have used some other verb ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... in passing, and without a trace of emotion. Such are the effects of the first chapter of Genesis, and, in fact, of the whole of the Jewish conception of nature. The standard recognized by the Hindus and Buddhists is the Mahavakya (the great word),—"tat-twam-asi" (this is thyself), which may always be spoken of every animal, to keep us in mind of the identity of his inmost being with ours. Perfection of morality, ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... my chilt, Jeannie; but young Malcolm and old Tuncan hasn't made teir prayers yet, and you know fery well tat she won't sell pefore she's made her prayers. Tell your mother tat she'll pe bringin' ta blackin' when she comes to look to ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... darkness. Below is a wonderful sight. Down on the flats, in a huge semi-circle, lights are rising and falling. They are very brilliant, going up for a few seconds and then dying down. Sometimes a dozen are in the air at one time. There are the dull thuds of explosions and an occasional rat-tat-tat. I have seen nothing like it, but the nearest comparison would be an enormous ten-mile railway station in full swing at night, with signals winking, lamps waving, engines hissing and carriages bumping. It is a terrible place down yonder, a place which will live as ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rattled her needles very fast, while her fingers wandered aimlessly about among the stitches. Mrs. Rosenberg detected the cheat at once; and, as she was needing the money for the socks, she scolded Mandoline soundly, and pelted her pretty little hands, rat, tat, tat, with a ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May
... Rat-tat-tat-tattle thru the street I hear the drummers makin' riot, An' I set thinkin' o' the feet 115 Thet follered once an' now are quiet,— White feet ez snowdrops innercent, Thet never knowed the paths o' Satan, Whose comin' step ther' ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... the kitchen door behind him when the clatter and stamp of a horse's hoofs were heard Outside, followed by an impatient rat-a-tat-tat on ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... see it's been very good for you to know what it feels like to be left behind," rubbed in Diana. "You never told us about that gipsy trail dodge. Tit for tat's my motto." ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... the "Rat-a-tat Quir-r-k, tat-tat" of the great crimson-crested woodpecker hammering just for noisy fun on the wide cornice of the "mansion," with the summer sun shining in through the window, and the five o'clock bell pealing sharply from ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889 • Various
... Bumps had dedicated fifteen years of practice until expert proficiency had made eyes unnecessary. She tatted while she read, tatted while she taught, tatted while she watched the potatoes boiling for dinner. Some even asserted that they had seen her tat on horseback with all the diligence attributed to Bertha the beautiful queen of old Helvetia, who spun from a distaff fastened to the saddle of her ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... evening, and the slant beams of the setting sun shot their golden arrows through the healthy purple clusters of lilacs that veiled the windows. There had been a shower that filled them with drops of rain, which every now and then tattooed, with a slender rat-tat, on the window-sill, as a breeze would shake the leaves and bear in perfume on its wings. Sweet, fragrance-laden airs tripped stirringly to and fro about the study-table, making gentle confusions, fluttering papers on moral ability, agitating treatises on the great ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... might have put on the other candlestick. [He goes to mantel and takes it. A rat-tat-tat at street-door.] Who can that be? [Running to KATHLEEN'S door, holding candlestick forgetfully low.] Kathleen! ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... a funny dream!—perfectly bewild'rin'!— Last night, and night before, and night before that, Seemed like I saw the march o' regiments o' children, Marching to the robin's fife and cricket's rat-ta-tat! Lily-banners overhead, with the dew upon 'em, On flashed the little army, as with sword and flame; Like the buzz o' bumble-wings, with the honey on 'em, Came an eerie, cheery chant, chiming ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley
... sweeping we would be down like a flash, and wait till Fritz quit. Fat would be in a shell hole almost as soon as the first shot was fired, and would laugh at Bink looking for a hole to hide in. Bink would get sore; all you could hear was the rat-tat-tat of the machine gun and in between "Tee hee, tee hee" from Fat as he lay and watched Bink crawling around looking for a hole. Some of the boys would lie in the hole and wave their legs in the air hoping to get a bullet through them so that they could get back to "Blighty," ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... taking my native, the man I hired just after I got here. He is a very good fellow, and made himself very useful, while I was ill. I picked up a tat for him, yesterday, for a few rupees. I know that your man would do very well for us both but, sometimes, when you make a village your headquarters and ride to visit others from it, I may not feel well enough to go with you; and then he would come in very handy, for he has picked up a good many ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... disturbed the serenity of the Norwegian can readily be conjectured, especially when it is considered that the average Northman is by no means indisposed to have a little brush with his neighbor now and then. But in such an event the Germans usually gave tit for tat, and that with a vengeance. On one occasion they killed a bishop in the presence of the king; at various other times they burned monasteries over the heads of the inmates; and frequently they sheltered criminals, or demolished entire dwellings in order to obtain ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... down, yet longed to do it, for she felt as if she had received a box on the ear, and involuntarily put her hand up to it. The touch of an ear-ring consoled her, and suggested a way of returning tit for tat ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... of the big knocker, but the maid was much longer in answering his rat-tat-tat than Jessie's feeble ring; and only a sense that they were not in their own house, and must not take liberties, restrained the children from opening the door themselves. They could not resist running out into the hall to ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... Yes, 'come to think of it,' as they say in America, we do. But what shall I tell you? Practically we all know it and allow for it and it's as broad as it's long. What's London life after all? It's tit for tat!" ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... at one time. And 'tis you killed my father, who was a soldier of the first Emperor, not to speak of my youngest son, Francois, whom you killed last month near Exreux. I owed this to you, and I've paid you back. 'Tis tit for tat!" ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... up opposite our chambers, and a few moments later a brisk step ascending the stairs heralded a smart rat-tat at our door. Flinging open the latter, I found myself confronted by a well-dressed stranger, who, after a quick glance at me, peered inquisitively over my ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... long time since I wrote to you, but neither have you been quite so zealous a correspondent this summer, so it is tit for tat. ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... when on a never-to-be-forgotten afternoon toward the end of April, I sat mooning disconsolately in my private room and a timid rat-tat at the outer door of the apartment roused Theodore from his brutish slumbers. I heard him shuffling up to the door, and I hurriedly put my necktie straight and smoothed my hair, which had become disordered despite the fact that I had only indulged in ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Mould and Messrs. Omer and Joram. All the mixed mirth and sadness of the story are skilfully drawn into the handling of this portion of it; and, amid wooings and preparations for weddings and church-ringing bells for baptisms, the steadily-going rat-tat of the hammer ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... meetings. All there was to do was to wait for the 2nd of August to come, and that was hard to do. Finally it came. That afternoon when the two-coached train rolled up to the little red station at Dobbinsville, Jake Benton stood on the depot platform. His heart beat a rat-a-tat-tat against his chest. As the train slowed up and Jake saw through its window the face of a man corresponding to the picture he had seen in his holiness paper, his emotions refused to yield to control. He jumped high in the air, and shouted ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison
... Ausfhrung dieser Idee stellten sich jedoch unberwindliche Schwierigkeiten entgegen, so dass der Erfinder den Eisenring einfach mit isoliertem Drahte bewickelte und in geeigneter Weise auf der Welle befestigte und so den ganzen Anker vor den Polen des Feldmagneten rotieren liess. In der Tat[6] wurde dadurch dieselbe, von ihm wohl[7] nicht vorhergesehene Wirkung erzielt, als wenn der Eisenkern oder die Drahtspirale fr sich allein rotierten. Durch die Einwirkung der Pole des Feldmagneten werden nmlich[8] ...
— German Science Reader - An Introduction to Scientific German, for Students of - Physics, Chemistry and Engineering • Charles F. Kroeh
... Coons I wanted a knife to make the pen. The same Indian got his scalping knife; he gave it two or three little whets and gave it to me. I then told Coons I wanted some ink. Coons says, "Ink—ink; what is tat? I ton't know what ink is." He had no name for ink in Indian or English. I told him to tell the Indian to get me some gunpowder and water and a spoon and I would make the ink myself. The Indian did so. I knew very ...
— Narrative of the Captivity of William Biggs among the Kickapoo Indians in Illinois in 1788 • William Biggs
... loved physical exercise. In England I did the roughest sort of farmwork. I'm stronger than I look. I think I'd rather play one of those rat-tat-tat instruments than—than ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... mice an extraordinary number in all this mine-region. I went back to the standing, and at one point in the ground, where there was a windlass and chain, lowered myself down a 'cut'—a small pit sunk perpendicularly to a lower coal-stratum, and here, almost thinking I could hear the perpetual rat-tat of notice once exchanged between the putt-boys below and the windlass-boys above, I proceeded down a dipple to another place like a standing, for in this mine there were six, or perhaps seven, veins: and there immediately I came upon the acme of the horrible drama of this Tartarus, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... further, the promise (also made in the same section) that by the knowledge of one thing all things are to be known could not be considered as fulfilled. It, moreover, is not possible (while, however, it would result from the absolute oneness of 'tat' and 'tvam') that to Brahman, whose essential nature is knowledge, which is free from all imperfections, omniscient, comprising within itself all auspicious qualities, there should belong Nescience; and that it should be the substrate of all those ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... Highlands they were so rude, As leave them neither clothes nor food, Then burnt their houses to conclude; 'T was tit for tat. How can her nainsell e'er be good, To think ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... of his nest, To see the cold winter come in, Tit for tat, what matter for that, He'll hide his head under ...
— Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes • Various
... sweeping low across the roof, with strange scrapings and bamboo mutterings. But they hardly ever broke and fell. In the evening, however, and in the night, after a terrific storm, a sharp, unexpected rat-tat-tat-tat, exactly like a machine-gun, would smash in on the silence, and two or three of the great grasses, which perhaps sheltered Dutchmen generations ago, would snap and fall. But the Indians and Bovianders ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... by the door which opened on the stairs; but, alas! it was locked on the outside, and it was evident, from the soliloquy of Mr Bristles, that their retreat was cut off through the front room. A knock—the well-known rat, tat, tat, of the owner of the mansion—now completed their perplexity; and, in a moment more, they heard the steps of several persons rushing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... the two most famous of the twelve paladins of Charlemagne. To give a "Roland for an Oliver" is to give tit for tat, to give another as good a ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... very minute, "Rat-tat-tat" sounded Grannie's stick on the woodwork of the room where the ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... and protracted sounds.] Roll. — N. roll &c. v.; drumming &c. v.; berloque[obs3], bombination[obs3], rumbling; tattoo, drumroll; dingdong; tantara[obs3]; rataplan[obs3]; whirr; ratatat, ratatat- tat; rubadub; pitapat; quaver, clutter, charivari[obs3], racket; cuckoo; repetition &c. 104; peal of bells, devil's tattoo; reverberation &c. 408. [sound of railroad train rolling on rails] clickety-clack. hum, purr. [animals that hum] hummingbird. [animals ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... headlong flight in company of a broken rabble. Reaching Dunkeld in an exhausted condition early in the following morning, he and a few comrades found shelter in the house of a friend. But as they sat, about to fall to on a much needed meal, down the little street came the "rat-tat-tat" of a drum, and past the window swaggered an unkempt Highland drummer, halting at intervals to hurl defiance at all Whigs, and a challenge to them to fight the famous Highland champion, Rory Dhu Mhor. And this is something after the fashion of what Ringan and ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... "Story of Hyjuaje, the tyrannical Governor of Coufeh, and the Young Syed." For the difference between the "Sayyid" (descendant of Hasan) and the "Sharif," derived from Husayn, see vol. v. 259. Being of the Holy House the youth can truly deny tat he belongs to any place or race, as will be seen ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... Ministry had been defeated upon the Militia Bill ("my tit-for-tat with John Russell," as Palmerston called it), the victors were very unlikely to hold office for long. In spite of Disraeli's praise of Free Trade during the General Election, a right-about surprising and disconcerting to his colleagues, the returns ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... these unhappy self-communings, that he did not hear a vigorous "rat-tat-tat" on the door of the little back parlor. A repetition of the performance aroused him, and to his call, "Come in," Mash, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... the dealings with him. He got his answer, but not from Peter, and, being a Frenchman, smiled, bowed again, and discreetly left the room; for Elsie, turning to Peter cried: "Did you do it—even the wattle?" and kissed him heartily. He kissed her back, and caught hold of Julie. "Tit for tat," he said to her under his breath, holding her arms; "do you remember our first taxi?" Then, louder: "Julie Is responsible for most of it," ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... to take observations with the [v]sextant, which shook in his trembling hand. Presently a loud buzzing was heard in the sky, followed by the measured crackling of a machine gun; from the hull of the boat came a sharp rat-a-tat, as if some one was throwing dry peas on it. A hydroplane ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... the Dame Lebrun set off, in company with M. Grimod, to visit it. She spent six weeks there, during which she wrote several letters to her husband, and cherished his answers as before. But we shall not follow the example of the Memoire, in repeating all these tit-for-tat endearments, but pursue our own object, which is to trace the style of occupation of people of their rank. And here we must observe, that, as far as we see in this process, the whole occupation of the Grimods and others was to make tours for their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... at Harry's and Reggie's somewhat battered faces as they passed; 'so there hass peen a fight between you two young gentlemen, and Mr. Allan hass been helping you. I wass thinking from Mr. Allan's looks these last days tat there would pe some mischief pefore ferry long! It iss ahl right, Miss Marjorie, it iss ahl right,' he said soothingly, in response to her glance; 'we hev made the Kelpie an hour and a quarter late, whateffer. That iss ferry good, although ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... trade Ably in Bytown's first decade. And taught the art of Caxton well, And thoroughly to John George Bell, Who in our village made a racket, In the old columns of the Packet, Where every one got "tit for tat" From dear departed "Old White Hat!" Who thought Reformers could not err, And laid the lash on Dawson Kerr, Whom he in bitter hues did paint A sinner, and called him "the saint." A journal of more modern date Than the Gazette, who's early fate, Was Phoenix-like to rise resplendent From ashes ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... as I may.' 'And I,' quoth another, 'do likewise, for that if I believe that my wife pusheth her fortunes [in my absence,] she doth it, and if I believe it not, still she doth it; wherefore tit for tat be it; an ass still getteth as good as he giveth.'[132] A third, following on, came well nigh to the same conclusion, and in brief all seemed agreed upon this point, that the wives they left behind had no mind to lose time in their husbands' ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... conned the matter over and over, vainly convincing myself that the situation had cleared. Notwithstanding all my effort, I somehow felt that an incentive had vanished, leaving a gap. The affair now had simmered down to plain temper and tit for tat. I championed nothing, ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... of her rage— (I might say that she went a bit too fur!) When he smiled and murmured: "Shoo!" "There is one thing I can do!" She answered with a wrathful kind of purr. "You may shoo me, and it suit you, But I feel my conscience bid Me, as tit for tat, to boot you!" ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... and such absurd reasoning have been constantly uppermost with him. "Blood for blood", and "life for life", and such like balanced jingles, have passed current in people's mouths, from legislators downwards, until they have been corrupted into "tit for tat", and acted on. ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... knives and old guns. That is the whole strength of our Christian civilisation, that it does fight with its own weapons and not with other people's. It is not true that superiority suggests a tit for tat. It is not true that if a small hooligan puts his tongue out at the Lord Chief Justice, the Lord Chief Justice immediately realises that his only chance of maintaining his position is to put his tongue out at the little hooligan. The hooligan may ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... etc. She takes no exercise whatever. At ten she has a heavy supper, and retires to bed between one and two in the morning. She likes very strong brandy." And in this last sentence we have the true secret of her undoing. The Royal Princess was, even tat this early age, a confirmed dipsomaniac, with her brandy bottle always by her side; and was seldom sober, from ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... fightin' dey trains near de place where am de big field for to train hunerds of sojer boys. I likes dat, 'cause de drums goes, 'ter-ump, ter-ump, ter-ump, tump, tump,' and de fifes goes, 'te, te, ta, te, tat' and plays Dixie. One day Young massa trainin' dem sojers and he am walkin' backwards and facin' dem sojers, and jus' as him say, 'Halt,' down he go, flat on he back. Right away quick, him say, ''Bout face,' 'cause him don't want dem sojers ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... in the sacred vessels, the tympanum, and the cymbals. The formula of an Attis initiate was "I have eaten from the tympanum, I have drunk from the cymbals." As I have remarked above, the food thus partaken of was a Food of Life—"Die Attis-Diener in der Tat eine magische Speise des Lebens aus ihren ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... 1725: TAT. 16.—After having resided for some time at the house of his uncle, Cornelius Ford[158], Johnson was, at the age of fifteen, removed to the school of Stourbridge, in Worcestershire, of which Mr. Wentworth ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... fix together, bind up together together; embody, reembody^; roll into one. attach, fix, affix, saddle on, fasten, bind, secure, clinch, twist, make fast &c adj.; tie, pinion, string, strap, sew, lace, tat, stitch, tack, knit, button, buckle, hitch, lash, truss, bandage, braid, splice, swathe, gird, tether, moor, picket, harness, chain; fetter &c (restrain) 751; lock, latch, belay, brace, hook, grapple, leash, couple, accouple^, link, yoke, bracket; marry &c (wed) 903; bridge ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... answered she; 'the fault was not in thee, but in my husband, for that he did what he did in his shop, and God hath retaliated upon him in this world.' And it is related that the goldsmith, when his wife told him how the water-carrier had used her, said, 'Tit for tat! If I had done more, the water-carrier had done more.' And this became a current byword among ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... temporalities. However, the pair made the best of their future that circumstances permitted, and the interview was at length drawing to a close when there came, without the slightest forewarning, a smart rat-tat-tat upon the ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... yourself. I didn't want to have to lie for her. I felt that to be too much for me. A man of course is always expected to do it—to do it, I mean, for a woman; but not a woman for another woman; unless perhaps on the tit-for-tat principle, as an indirect way of protecting herself. I don't need protection, so that I was free to 'funk' you—simply to dodge your test. The responsibility was too much for me. I gained time, and when I came back the need of ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... before the door of six-eighteen and took a deep breath. At the first brisk rat-tat of her knuckles on the door there had sounded a shrill "Come in!" But before she could turn the knob the door was flung open by a kimonoed mulatto girl, her eyes all whites. The girl began to jabber, incoherently but Martha Foote passed on through the little ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... hands together. He had been angry to begin with; yes— he would confess it—very angry. But he had overcome it and risen to his reputation. The town had been mistaken in thinking it could put fun on him. It was tit-for-tat again, and the laugh still with ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... keep de ball a-rollin', boys, an' each one do his best To make de wurld a happy one—for dat's how man is blest. Do unto oders all around de t'ing what's good and true, An' oders, 'turning tit for tat, will do de same to you. Chorus—Oh ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... we hesitate? What provocation more do we propose to wait for? They have added Slave States by a coup d'tat: shall we wait until they have added Cuba and Mexico? They are forcing slavery upon the Territories: must we wait until they have succeeded? They have violated one solemn compact: how many more must they break before ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... or, to pursue the comparison, if anybody lifted him up, he would hammer away with surprising rapidity. He had the tic-douloureux occasionally, and then he might be said to be muffled, because he did not make quite as much noise as at other times, when he would go on prosing, rat-tat-tat the same thing over and over again. He had never been married; but he was still on the look-out for a wife with money. He had a life interest worth about 300l. a year—he was exceedingly vain, and inordinately ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... room. It was done in green and white with Monagrams on the toilit set. He had a tiny white bed with a green quilt and a picture of the Nativaty and one of Windsor Castle on the walls. The sun was shining over all these things as Mr Salteena opened his sleepy eyes. Just then there was rat tat on the door. Come in called Mr Salteena and in came Edward Procurio ballancing a tray very cleverly. He looked most elegant with his shiny black hair and pale yellow face and half shut eyes. He smiled in a very mystearious and superier way as he placed the tray ...
— The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan • Daisy Ashford
... he begun to rebuke Michael, when "rat-tat" went the iron ring that hung at the door. Some one was knocking. They looked out of the window; a man had come on horseback, and was fastening his horse. They opened the door, and the servant who had been with the gentleman ...
— What Men Live By and Other Tales • Leo Tolstoy
... massing of rebels. The resonant, heavy moaning of massive wheels was like the rumble of a gun carriage. And, too, there was the drumming of many hoofs upon the road. Barlow's ear told him it was the rhythmic beat of cavalry horses, not the erratic rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... again down one side, and then on a corner, but always on the edge. Nor was it a regular and monotonous rapping; it was curiously varied. One performance that I carefully noted down at the moment reminded me of the click of a telegraph instrument. It was "rat-tat-tat-t-t-t-t-rat-tat,"—the first three notes rather quick and sharp, the next four very rapid, and the last two quite slow. After tapping, the bird always seemed to listen. Often while I was watching one at his hammering, a signal of the same sort would come from a distance. Sometimes my bird ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... when there was a loud rat-tat at the front door, and Jack Glover hastened into the hall to answer. But it was not the policeman he had expected. It was a girl in a big sable coat, muffled up to her eyes. She pushed past Jack, crossed the hall, and walked straight into ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... passed by, three; I was growing anxious, and debating if I should write again, when there came a loud rat-tat at the door, and a reply-paid telegram was handed ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... "Tat's ferry pad language, Meester Steve Young, sir. Ton't you try to imitate ta gran' Gaelic tongue, pecause she can never to it. She'd have to pe porn north o' Glasgie to speak ta gran' Gaelic ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... with him. For the first time in his existence he found himself humming or whistling an accompaniment to the rat-tat- tat of his hammer on the sole-leather. No hour of the twenty-four hung heavily on him. In the rear of the cottage was a bit of ground, perhaps forty feet square, with an old elm in the centre, under which Dutton liked to take his nooning. It was here he used to play ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... modern life. The General Post Office is a vast mechanism for the distribution of tragedy, comedy, melodrama, and farce throughout the country and throughout the world. To whose door has not Destiny come in the disguise of a postman, and slipped its decree, with a double rat-tat, into the letter-box? Whose heart has not sickened as he heard the postman's footstep pass his door without pausing? Whose hand has not trembled as he opened a letter? Whose face has not blanched as he took in its import, almost without reading the ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... barrens, illy clothed, with deep snow to wallow through, it seemed to me absolutely certain that such an attempt would end in exhaustion and death, so we restrained our impatience and waited. On scraps of paper we played tit-tat-toe; we improvised a checkerboard and played checkers. These pastimes broke the monotony of waiting somewhat. No matter what we talked about, our conversation always drifted to something to eat. We planned sumptuous banquets we were to have at that uncertain period "when we ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... auchty years and twa, Te twenty-tird o' May, man; She twell amang te Heelan hills, Ayont the reefer Spey, man. Tat year tey foucht the Sherra-muir, She first peheld te licht, man; Tey shot my father in tat stoure— ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... foolish child!' but though Stella was eagerly pointing and explaining, 'Tat Tella's boat—tat Tedo's—tat brothers—tat Angel,' and so on, the word foolish was not directed to the little one, but to the gray eyes heavy with unshed tears, that rested wistfully upon a wreck that had caught upon a nail ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "Fat is tat you say? Dare you cock your peaver? I will teach you, sir, Fat is coot pehaviour! You shall not exist For another day more; I will shoot you, sir, Or stap you with ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... logically, when an old gentleman waggles his head and says: "Ah, so I thought when I was your age." It is not thought an answer at all, if the young man retorts: "My venerable sir, so I shall most probably think when I am yours." And yet the one is as good as the other: pass for pass, tit for tat, a Roland ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... moaning, which gradually increased in volume and pitch until presently it became a high, penetrating, blood-curdling screech. This continued for perhaps half an hour, the drum beats never ceasing their monotonous rat-tat-tat. ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... not visit the Priory that day, but on the morrow, after lunch, I took my heavy stick and strode up the gravel path and gave a very important rat-a-tat-tat at the great oak door. The servant who answered my summons informed me, much to my disappointment, that both Mr. Johnson and his son had gone to Liverpool the previous day, the former to see the latter ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... it, and everybody laughs at her for it; but she can't help it, she always was so from a child, and supposes she always shall be,—with remote and minute particulars. And she ends by saying that perhaps he does not like people to tat, or knit, or embroider, or whatever. And he says, oh, yes, he does; what could make her think such a thing? but for his part he likes boating rather better, or if you're in the woods camping. Then she lets him take up one corner of her work, and perhaps touch her fingers; ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... continuous roar, now slackens till the reports separate. Now, after one and a half hours, the fight seems to be concentrating towards the village opposite. A haze of smoke hangs over the place. The guns thunder. The enemy's Maxim-Nordenfelt goes rat-tat-tat a dozen times with immense rapidity. 'Come in,' says a Tommy of the Grenadiers who has come to our hill for orders; and indeed it sounds exactly like some one knocking at a street door. Now the under-current of rifle fire becomes horrible in its rapidity. ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... alongside the alleged remains of the werwolf, and waited to see if the noises would recommence. I was thus waiting in a listless sort of way, my back bent, my elbows on my knees, looking at the floor and thinking of nothing in particular, when there came a loud rat, tat, tat of knuckles on the window-pane. I immediately turned in the direction of the noise and encountered, to my alarm, a dark face looking in at me. At first dim and indistinct, it became more and more complete, ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... up hill and down dale, we got to the allotted spot and began our work. The night was alive with noises—ear-splitting reports of big guns, the shrieks and whistles of shells in transit, and the rat-tat-tat of machine-guns. Now and again the darkness would be illuminated by the glare of star-shells. I think I mentioned to you before the mournful desolation of this war-scarred countryside—land without grass, without trees, without ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... unexpectedly late one afternoon, between a hard day's personal canvassing and another of the innumerable dinners he had to eat his way through. Tossing the reins to the gentleman who sat next him, he jumped out of the wagonette—it was hung with placards of "Vote for Turnham!"—and gave a loud rat-a-tat at the door. ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... Haufe, die Heerschar umdrngte ihn 4915 Der bermtigen Mnner, nicht achteten sie die Missetat, Hefteten mit eisenharten Banden seine Hnde zusammen, Seine Arme mit Fesseln. Nicht war ihm so furchtbare Pein Zu ertragen Not, Todesqual Zu erdulden, solche Marter; aber fr die Menschheit tat er es, 4920 Weil die Erdgeborenen er wollte erlsen, Heil entnehmen der Hlle fr das Himmelreich, Fr die weite Welt des Wohlseins; deshalb widersprach er auch nicht Dem, was mit trotzigem Willen sie ihm wollten antun. Da wurde darber frech das bermtige Volk ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... a sound, and, recognizing the delicate 'rat-tat' of her husband's knock, did not answer, indifferent whether he came in or no. He entered noiselessly. If she did not let him know she was awake, he would not wake her. She lay still and watched him sit down astride of a chair, cross his arms ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the Porte-Cocher at the Hotel d'Hollande had not received their morning opening, when a tremendous loud, long, protracted rat-tat-tat-tat-tan, sounded like thunder throughout the extensive square, and brought numerous nightcapped heads to the windows, to see whether the hotel was on fire, or another revolution had broken out. The maitre d'hotel screamed, the porter ran, the chef ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... he said, "I hope, whenever you feel like karrelling,[A] or being as cross as bears, you will 'member what the Bible says 'bout loving one another. Gipsey fighted my tat to-day, and pulled some of her fur out; but he's only a dog, and I readed in ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... looking at his watch sometimes, and humming tunes, and playing rat-a-tat-tat upon the table. He says he don't ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... were not of the flogging kind, but connected with some way of giving Master Pomp tit for tat by means of a scare; but my invention was rather at fault, and idea after idea was dismissed as soon as formed. They were not pleasant ideas, some of them, and they were all wanting in the element ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... 'Hr ti me catw elcet' a:.mousoi; Ouc' umn eoeponoun, tos de m' eoepistamenois Eis eoemoioe anqrwpos trismurioi oi d' aoenariqmoi Ouoedeis tat' auoed cai ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... stoppage in Cheapside. The light came sparkling in among the scarlet runners, as if the churchyard winked at Mr Mould, and said, 'We understand each other;' and from the distant shop a pleasant sound arose of coffin-making with a low melodious hammer, rat, tat, tat, tat, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... TAT - Trans-Atlantic Telephone; any of a number of high-capacity submarine coaxial telephone cables linking ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... turning to his friend, old Arthur. 'Precisely what made me consider the thing so fair and easy. There is no obligation on either side. You have money, and Miss Madeline has beauty and worth. She has youth, you have money. She has not money, you have not youth. Tit for tat, quits, a ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... last night when Dan got sick," said Felix maliciously. Felicity had told him at tea that night he was getting fatter than ever. This was his tit-for-tat. "You were pretty glad to leave it ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... for more than an hour before the arrival of the ladies. Dear Mary complained of feeling sore and stiff in every limb. I had advised her to lie down on the sofa and try to sleep. I did the same, and happily we both dozed off, and never awoke until the loud rat-tat of arrival at the house door roused us up. I told Mary to hide all appearance of pain, and only to say, as an excuse for going early to bed, that we had gone further afield than we at first intended, and that she was very ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... my mood, when on a never-to-be-forgotten afternoon toward the end of April, I sat mooning disconsolately in my private room and a timid rat-tat at the outer door of the apartment roused Theodore from his brutish slumbers. I heard him shuffling up to the door, and I hurriedly put my necktie straight and smoothed my hair, which had become disordered despite the fact that I had only ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... business some day. But where I'm going to take you now is into a brand new camp which I ordered built last spring. It's within a mile of the State Forest border. Eve won't know tat it's Harrod property. I've a hatchery there and the State lets me have a man in exchange for free fry. When I get there ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... I should saunter into Tat's' like a swell, and ask them if they couldn't find me a raw colt to try my hand on for a wager. Say I had laid a hundred I would quiet down the most vicious quadruped they could find in ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... developed, completely automated and efficient system, mainly buried cables domestic: nationwide cellular telephone system; buried cable international: 3 channels leased on TAT-6 coaxial submarine cable (Europe ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... en vers franais/ par/ A. Regnault/ Bibliothcaire et archiviste honoraire du Conseil D'tat/ Membre de l'Acadmie de Lyon/ Auteur d'une histoire du Conseil D'tat,/ D'un Voyage en Orient (Grce, Turquie, Egypte)/ Et de notices historiques sur Moscou et Saint-Ptersbourg/ Tome premier/ Paris/ Amyot, Librairie-Editeur/ 8, rue de la Paix, 8/ Et la librairie, Galignani/ 224, rue ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... to the Articles, Homilies, or Reformers; in the sense that, if they had a right to speak loud, I had the liberty to speak out as well as they, and had the means, by the same or parallel appeals, of giving them tit for tat. I thought that the Anglican Church was tyrannized over by a mere party, and I aimed at bringing into effect the promise contained in the motto to the Lyra, "They shall know the difference now." I only asked to be allowed to show them ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... gift is said to be of the quality of passion. In an unfit place and at an unfit time, the gift that is made to an unworthy object, without respect, and with contempt, is said to be of the quality of darkness. OM, TAT, SAT, this is said to be the three-fold designation of Brahma. By that (Brahma), the Brahmanas and the Vedas, and the Sacrifices, were ordained of old. Therefore, uttering the syllable OM, the sacrifices, gifts, and penances, prescribed by the ordinance, of all utterers ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... his Face, especially upon some Critical occasions [Footnote: Essays p. 118.]. Now what he means by a mans breaking his Face there, unless he is to run his Nose against a Post, I can't imagine; and therefore will set it down for a Blunder—And so there's Tit for Tat, and the Dice in my hand still. But poor Sancho is horribly unfortunate agen, for by and by he catches him answering the Curate, who threatens him for calling him Finisher of Fornication, and Conjunction Copulative, with Excommunication, ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... remark was another "Pshaw!" But Mrs. Peck went on: "When you've lived opposite to people like that for a long time you feel as if you had some rights in them—tit for tat! But she didn't take it up today; she didn't speak to me. She knows who I am as well as she knows her ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... j/n/anam upasritya, &c.—Ke/k/id anuk/ri/tes tasya /k/api smaryate iti /k/a sutradvayam adhikara/n/antara/m/ tam eva bhantam anubhati sarva/m/ tasya bhasa sarvam ida/m/ vibhatity asya/h/ /s/rute/h/ parabrahmaparatvanir/n/ayaya prav/ri/tta/m/ vadanti. Tat tv ad/ris/yatvadigu/n/ako dharmokte/h/ dyubhvadyayatana/m/ sva/s/abdad ity adhi kara/n/advayena tasya prakara/n/asya brahmavishayatvapratipadanat jyoti/sk/ara/n/abhidhanat ity adishu parasya brahma/n/o bharupatvavagates ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... I've no wish to extenuate the Count's transgressions; but—but on the other side ... I wouldn't put my hand in the fire ... well, that there hadn't been tit for tat ... with the young champion...." Mr. Letterblair unlocked a drawer and pushed a folded paper toward Archer. "This report, the result of discreet enquiries ..." And then, as Archer made no effort to glance at the paper or to repudiate the suggestion, the lawyer somewhat flatly continued: ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... of footsteps in the hall. She glanced at the clock, wondering if it could possibly be the postman already, found it was only ten minutes past four, and dismissed the supposition with a sigh. "I don't—think—I want—" she was beginning slowly, when, of a sudden, there came a tremendous rat-tat-tat on the schoolroom door; the handle was not turned, but burst open; a blast of chilly air blew into the room, and in the doorway stood a tall, handsome youth, with square shoulders, a gracefully poised ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... she laughed. "It is like playing tit, tat, toe, to talk to you," she exclaimed. "I might have known ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... Tit for tat is logic all the world over. By the way, what has become of the rest of the maxim: we never hear it {122} now. When I was a boy, in some parts of the country at least, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... grunted suddenly and pointed to the box. There was a sound that seemed to come from inside. Something made a rat, tat, tat on the ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... warm from head to foot under another soft, subdued laugh. At the rat-tat-tat of the knocker her ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... remembers Bob killing the cat and tying its tail to the fence to see him kick before he died. He and Bob and a lot of the fellows all together in Smith's field, I think he said. Bob knew Smith. And the way they played tit-tat-too on the window pane on All Hallows' Eve, and they got caught that night too." (At Barking, where my uncles lived as children, there is a field called Smith's field, but my Uncle does not remember the cat incident.) ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... into this inlet at and near its head, the largest of which, Tat-lim-in, we ascended about one-eighth of of a mile to rapids, with the canoe, and three miles further on foot, finding a succession of rapids, shoals and log-jambs. Ma-min River, about sixty feet wide and filled with logs to near its mouth, empties into the south-eastern ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... slopes as steep as a roof sometimes, and reminding one a bit of our Oregon Cascades on a much-reduced scale. You must imagine snow waist-deep, the heights furrowed with trenches, the frosty balsam stillness split with screaming shells and shrapnel and the rat-tat-tat of machine guns; imagine yourself floundering upward with winter overcoat, blanket, pack, rifle, and cartridge-belt—any one who has snow-shoed in mountains in midwinter can fancy what fighting meant in a place like this. ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... through the village the reflections of star-shells threw weird lights on half-ruined houses; an occasional shell screamed overhead, to burst with a dull, echoing sound within the shattered walls of former cottages; and one could hear the rat-tat-tat of machine-guns. These had a nasty habit of spraying the village with indirect fire, and it was, as always, a relief to enter the recesses of Wood Street without having any one hit. This communication trench dipped ...
— Attack - An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 • Edward G. D. Liveing
... hand. Her first birds—the bluebird, the song sparrow, the robin, the red-shouldered starling—are here or soon will be. The crows have a more confident caw, the sap begins to start in the sugar maple, the tiny boom of the first bee is heard, the downy woodpecker begins his resonant tat, tat, tat, on the dry limbs, and the cattle in the barnyard low long and loud with wistful looks toward ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... "You played a trick on them by pulling their tails, so this is only tit-for-tat, and I'm glad the monkeys had ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Cochrane was about to fire again. But they heard the hysterical rat-tat-tat of firing. It seemed no nearer, but it could ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... counted. Another had fled from flames and might be ignored for some moments, anyhow. But a blast-bolt struck the ship's metal hull only feet from Calhoun, and he whipped around to the other side and let loose a staccato rat-tat-tat of fire which emptied the rifle of ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... Hindustanee dada; Latin, atta, tatta; Greek atta, tatta; Albanian, Albania, at, atti; Calabria and Sicily tata; Celtic, Welsh tad; Cornish and Bret tat; Irish, daid; Gaelic daidein; English (according to Skeats of Welsh) dad, daddy; Old Slav, tata otici; Moldavian tata; Wallachian tate; Polish tatus; Bohemian, Servian Croatian otsche; Lithuanian teta; Preuss thetis; Gothic ata; Old Fries ...
— The Dakotan Languages, and Their Relations to Other Languages • Andrew Woods Williamson
... heartily as I worked, but I studied with a will, too, and passed a score of mates. That was easy enough, for home study was never dreamed of by most of them, and leisure hours in school were passed in marking "tit-tat-to" upon slates or eating apples under the friendly shelter ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... started in their saddles, and Sadie gave a sharp cry of dismay. In the hush of the night there had come from behind them the petulant crack of a rifle, then another, then several together, with a brisk rat-tat-tat, and then ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... mechanism for the distribution of tragedy, comedy, melodrama, and farce throughout the country and throughout the world. To whose door has not Destiny come in the disguise of a postman, and slipped its decree, with a double rat-tat, into the letter-box? Whose heart has not sickened as he heard the postman's footstep pass his door without pausing? Whose hand has not trembled as he opened a letter? Whose face has not blanched as he took in its import, almost without reading ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... mirth and sadness of the story are skilfully drawn into the handling of this portion of it; and, amid wooings and preparations for weddings and church-ringing bells for baptisms, the steadily-going rat-tat of the hammer on the coffin ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... duties, and rural leadership and community spirit and lots of things. They told us not to spend our time out of school tatting and making eyelet embroidery, when there were neighborhoods to be awakened and citizens to be made. That suits me fine, for I can't tat anyway. One of the girls tried to show me, but gave it up after three or four tries. She said some could learn, and some couldn't. It was ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... Woodpecker making a great racket on the hollow limb of an old chestnut. Sammy sat down near by and listened. "My, that's fine! I wish I could do that. You must be practising," said Sammy at the end of a long rat-a-tat-tat. ...
— The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum • Thornton W. Burgess
... mine when it was forfeit, and at greater risk. Look at your hand, it will remind you. It was but tit for tat. And, friend Rames, this day I came near to being eaten by a worse crocodile than that which dwells ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... the wide open woods, and was never so happy as when surrounded by their solitude. The cawing of the crows, the tapping of the sapsucker, the rat-tat-tat of the bold red-headed woodpecker inviting insects in the rotten limb to look out, and he gobbled up, the frisking of the red squirrel as he darted like a flash around to the other side of a tree trunk—-all these and more he noted as he pushed ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... mistress, 'You are lying! you are lying!' When he shakes her, interrupts her while she is speaking, and says such hard things to her that at last she flies into a rage, has enough of it, becomes hard and mad, and thinks of nothing but of giving him tit for tat and of paying him out in his own coin; does not care a straw about destroying his happiness, sends everything to the devil, and talks a lot of bosh which she certainly does not believe. And then, because there is nothing so ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... soon as it was heard, some one of the sailors forward struck a large bell which hung on the forecastle; and having observed that how many times soever the man astern rang his bell, the man forward struck his—tit for tat,—I inquired of this Floating Chapel sailor, what all this ringing meant; and whether, as the big bell hung right over the scuttle that went down to the place where the watch below were sleeping, such a ringing every little while would not ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... there in a rat-tat-tat in the dead of night which rouses the imagination and fills the mind with suggestions which we had rather not harbour when in the dark and alone? Deborah Scoville was not superstitious, but she had keen senses and mercurial spirits and ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... at his watch sometimes, and humming tunes, and playing rat-a-tat-tat upon the table. He says he don't mind waiting ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... coup d'tat, Paine sunk out of sight. The First Consul might have examined with interest the iron bridge, but could never have borne with the soiled person and the threadbare principles of the philosopher of two hemispheres. Bonaparte loved neatness and elegance, and disliked idologues and bavards, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... the Proof sheets. The edition is of Seven Hundred and Fifty; which Fraser thinks he will sell. With what joy shall I then sack up the small Ten Pounds Sterling perhaps of "Half-Profits," and remit them to the man Emerson; saying: There, Man! Tit for tat, the reciprocity not all on one side!—I ought to say, moreover, that this was a volunteer scheme of Fraser's; the risk is all his, the origin of it was with him: I advised him to have it reviewed, as being a really noteworthy Book; "Write you ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... anxiously than ever. The tell-tale thump of the oars had ceased. The only sounds in the bayou were the trickle of water from the tidal pools, the wind in the tree-tops, the rat-tat-tat of a woodpecker, and the scream of a bob-cat. With a foolish air of chagrin, Trimble Rogers rubbed his ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... Oliver, the two most famous of the twelve paladins of Charlemagne. To give a "Roland for an Oliver" is to give tit for tat, to give another as good ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... of the new year outside grow stronger and more pungent. At last one day comes daylight, where the snow has melted from the opening in front of you, and with the daylight comes the notes of birds and the ringing of the woodpecker—rat-tat-tat-tat! rat-tat-tat-tat!—from a tree near by. But even these signs that the spring is at hand again would not tempt you out if it were not for another feeling that begins to assert itself, and will not let you rest. You find you are hungry, horribly ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... we debated on our tactics. We had no muskets, though swords were rife enough in Dalness, so a stand and a defence by weapons was out of the question. M'Iver struck on a more pleasing and cleanly plan. It was to give the MacDonalds tit for tat, and decoy them into the house as their friends had decoyed us into it, and leave them there in durance while we went ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... see why you should sigh about that," answered Colonel Faversham. "I mean to be kind to you as long as I live, and I hope that will be a good many years yet. But there's nothing like tit for tat, you know, Bridget. Come, now, my darling, I want you to ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... through the Highlands they were so rude, As leave them neither clothes nor food, Then burnt their houses to conclude; 'T was tit for tat. How can her nainsell e'er be good, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... machine gun "rat-tat-tat-tated" close to us, and three rockets, like a flight of startled birds, rose suddenly together on ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... in Allingford's wheel, and pay out him and a lot of those other prigs like Oaks and Rowlands, I couldn't have told you; but now the thing's as easy as pat. They'll find out they haven't cold-shouldered me at every turn and corner for nothing. I'll give them tit for tat, and after Christmas, when I've left this beastly place, I'll write and ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... the good, thoughtful little missionary to the foreigner, Susan. I suppose you wanted to stay at home and tat socks while Bobbie and I dined and wined—not," was the very unappreciative answer that was made to her by ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... her for it; but she can't help it, she always was so from a child, and supposes she always shall be,—with remote and minute particulars. And she ends by saying that perhaps he does not like people to tat, or knit, or embroider, or whatever. And he says, oh, yes, he does; what could make her think such a thing? but for his part he likes boating rather better, or if you're in the woods camping. Then she lets him ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sot on my ole man, an' husband an' wife am me. Hit didn't turn out bad as I s'posed it would, bress tat ar son-in-law ob mine, but I keeps a tinkin' it all ober, an' I'se 'jected, I is; an' dar's no use ob shoutin' glory wen you doan feel glory." Then she told the whole story, which kept Ella on pins and needles, for, ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... as the Woodcutter Chief was sitting in his house, the postman came to the door—Rat-tat. The footman brought in a letter, and the Woodcutter Chief opened it. He read it through, and laughed. Then he waved it in the air, and said, "Let them come." As he waved the letter in the air, all the snuff fell out of it upon his nose. The Woodcutter gave a ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... of them, to mark the places where the youth of her allies fell, avenging outrage. Seas, even when calmest, were to become terrible, and men's heart-beats, a bit sluggish with the fatty degeneration of a sluggard peace, to quicken and then to throb with the rat-a-tat-tat, the rat-a-tat-tat of the most peremptory, the most reverberating call to arms in the history of ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... heard the Lewises giving the recall signal. A good gunner gets so he can play a tune on a Lewis, and the device is frequently used for signals. This time he thumped out the old one—"All policemen have big feet." Rat-a-tat-tat—tat, tat. ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... was in perfect harmony with the remainder of the establishment. The paint was off; the woodwork was scratched and dented; the knocker was red with rust. When Sydney took it in his hand I was conscious of quite a little thrill. As he brought it down with a sharp rat-tat, I half expected to see the door fly open, and disclose some gruesome object glaring out at us. Nothing of the kind took place; the door did not budge,—nothing happened. Sydney waited a second or two, then knocked again; another second or two, then another knock. There was ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... among which we were sleeping. A night attack was evidently under way, and it is always an eerie sensation. We correctly surmised that the Turks were in retreat from Khan Baghdadi and had run into our outposts. In a few minutes we were replying in volume, and the rat-tat-tats of the machine-guns on either side were continuous. The enemy must have greatly overestimated our numbers, for in a short time small groups started surrendering, and before things had quieted we had twelve hundred prisoners. The cavalry formed a rough prison-camp ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... it was stupid. Rata-tat-tat! Those were the sounds of that battle summer, Till the earth seemed a parchment round and flat, And every footfall the tap of a drummer; And day by day down the Avenue went Cavalry, infantry, all together, Till my pitying angel one day sent My fate in ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... same direction as their own flight, making probably for Bombay or Karachi. The chances were that such a vessel in these waters was British, so Smith steered towards it, shouting to Rodier that they might perhaps arrange a tit-for-tat with ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... and stopped his way; so we did with him what he tried to do to us, driving square athwart his bows as his bowsprit came thrusting in between our fore and main masts, when we lost not a moment in lashing the spar to our main rigging. But, after all, it resolved itself into tit for tat, for the other fellow put his helm hard aport and just managed to drive square athwart our stern, where he raked us most unmercifully for fully five minutes, until he drove clear, bringing down all three of our masts before he left us. ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... last. Mrs. Ready had been absent on a visit to London; and the moment she heard of the intended emigration of the Lyndsays to Canada, she put on her bonnet and shawl, and rushed to the rescue. The loud, double rat-tat-tat at the door, announced an arrival ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... would be a repetition of the many winters he had spent in Florida with Aunt Mary. After a few months at home they would migrate with the robins. He would meet the same people he had seen all summer. They would complain of the Southern cooking and knit and tat while they babbled amiably of themselves and the members of their family and their doings. The men would smoke and compare business experiences when they had finished flaying the Administration. Discontent grew within him as he reviewed it. ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... precisely as if we fought them with clumsy knives and old guns. That is the whole strength of our Christian civilisation, that it does fight with its own weapons and not with other people's. It is not true that superiority suggests a tit for tat. It is not true that if a small hooligan puts his tongue out at the Lord Chief Justice, the Lord Chief Justice immediately realises that his only chance of maintaining his position is to put his tongue out at the ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... echoes were startled by a loud knocking on the door: rat, tat, tat, tat, tat, tat, ratta, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... march in front of what looked like a face of cliff, they had come opposite to the mouth of the gully, in which, screened by scrub and boulders, 3,000 chosen dervishes, under Hamid Wad Hussein, of the Baggaras, were crouching. Tat, tat, tat, went the rifles of three mounted infantrymen in front of the left shoulder of the square, and an instant later they wore spurring it for their lives, crouching over the manes of their horses, ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... que Bauldoyn Prince Chre||stien tat fameux & renomme tenoit || l'Empire de Constatinople, assavoir || en Pan de l'incarnation de nostre || Saulueur mil deux cens soixante & || neuf, deux nobles & ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... frigate, wife, his bride? Would blacksmiths brown Into smithereens smite the solid old renown? Rivetting the bolts in the iron-clad's shell, Hark to the hammers with a rat-tat-tat; "Handier a derby than a laced cocked hat! The Monitor was ugly, but she served us right well, Better than the Cumberland, a beauty and ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... sang by Dan's ear, and another spurted up the chalk dust a few feet ahead of Dennis, and as the vicious rat-tat of the machine-gun farther down the trench opened, they found themselves at the edge of a deep crump-hole, into which ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... hand of an old neighbor of mine whose name I won't mention even at this late day. I will not turn state's evidence notwithstanding the Statute of Limitations has run, as N.V. Creede advises me, against any one but Dick McGill—and the reason for my exposing him is merely tit for tat. Ma Fewkes could not unclasp the hands; but she produced an effect just ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... over his correspondence to his parents; and perhaps there is no greater test of a man's regularity and easiness of conscience, than his readiness to face the postman. Blessed is he who is made happy by the sound of the rat-tat! The good are eager for it: but the naughty tremble at the sound thereof. So it was very kind of Mrs. Pendennis doubly to spare Pen the trouble of hearing or answering letters during ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... child!' but though Stella was eagerly pointing and explaining, 'Tat Tella's boat—tat Tedo's—tat brothers—tat Angel,' and so on, the word foolish was not directed to the little one, but to the gray eyes heavy with unshed tears, that rested wistfully upon a wreck that had caught upon a nail ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... moaning of massive wheels was like the rumble of a gun carriage. And, too, there was the drumming of many hoofs upon the road. Barlow's ear told him it was the rhythmic beat of cavalry horses, not the erratic rat-a-tat, ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... around it. In vain he shifted his position. The lump still appeared, and the balls still flew around it, until the Dutchman, losing all patience, raised his head above the gunnel, and in a tone of querulous remonstrance, called out, "Oh, now I git tat nonsense, tere,—will you!" Not a shot was ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... sound. Guns. Those few remaining of the fighting Earthmen farther up the valley, no longer menaced by the futile fliers, had come down to help their weaponless brethren. Wat's voice was shrill in the land, yelling, exhorting, screaming. A familiar rat-a-tat-a-tat came down the wind. The submachine gun was spitting steel-jacketed death. Where was ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... 'but they calls me "Tat" for short, because I used to hang about outside Tattersall's and run errands. I picked up most of my education there. There ain't many of 'em as can teach me anything.' He broke off short in his confidences at the sound of a heavy shuffling footstep on the stairs. 'Oh, my!' he cried, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... but young Malcolm and old Tuncan hasn't made teir prayers yet, and you know fery well tat she won't sell pefore she's made her prayers. Tell your mother tat she'll pe bringin' ta blackin' when she comes to look ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... went all together to the farm of our uncle Richard, who was of the Episcopal Church, for the celebration of Christmas; for many of his persuasion, at that time, regarded "Thanksgiving" pretty much as the Highlander, in Scott's novel, did "ta little government Sunday, tat tey call ta Fast." He was a well-to-do farmer, at a place within easy reach of the town in which we lived, and where very few were at all rich, even according to the former moderate standard of wealth, and most people were poor, or at least depended on their daily labor for their daily bread. ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... the woman hastily just as there was a little rat-tat at the brass knocker of the outer door, ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... paying tit for tat," said the old fellow. "When I was in South Wales your people laughed at my folks and country, so when I meet one of them here I serve him out as I was served ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... do with us, you know," continued the old gentleman, when he had diverted Bean's attention from the interesting map. "Never do at all; not at all; not-tat-tall. Preposterous! My ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... the wrong box—planted in Queer Street, as we say in London; for if you care a d—n about my daughter's respectability, you will never muzzle her father on suspicion of theft—and so there's tit for tat, my old gentleman!" ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... down do te boddom tere vill pe von lesh drue shentleman in de vorlt, zir. Ant tat ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... tyrannical Governor of Coufeh, and the Young Syed." For the difference between the "Sayyid" (descendant of Hasan) and the "Sharif," derived from Husayn, see vol. v. 259. Being of the Holy House the youth can truly deny tat he belongs to any place or race, as will be seen in ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... second story, with its lattice-windows, projecting over the first; and the door, which is perhaps arched, provided on the outside with an iron hammer, wherewith the visitor's hand may give a thundering rat-a-tat. ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... so I thought when I was your age." It is not thought an answer at all, if the young man retorts: "My venerable sir, so I shall most probably think when I am yours." And yet the one is as good as the other: pass for pass, tit for tat, a Roland ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I was growing anxious, and debating if I should write again, when there came a loud rat-tat at the door, and a reply-paid telegram was handed in, addressed to ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... I jerked my head in hurriedly, and, shutting the window, turned my attention to Little Lottie. It was not long before my tea-kettle was singing merrily. I was about to sit down to the first meal in my new abode, when an insinuating rat-tat sounded on the door. I opened it to find the ill-looking young fellow leaning languidly against the door-jamb, ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... more inclined to laugh over a thing of the sort. You was gettin' off what you called a good one on old Tight-fist just now by puttin' this chap on his track, and I reckon you'd have no call to git mad if Welborne made it tit for tat an' fired back at you. You wouldn't be justified in killin' 'im, you know, if he was to take a notion to send you a big bouquet o' flowers out o' his gyarden all tied up in black ribbon with a cyard sayin' he's sorry to hear of the sad ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... that right and left, probably, we keep giving each other away. Well, I dare say we do. Yes, 'come to think of it,' as they say in America, we do. But what shall I tell you? Practically we all know it and allow for it and it's as broad as it's long. What's London life after all? It's tit for tat!" ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... first night at my new billet, about 2 a.m., by the rat-a-tat of a kettle-drum, and two dreary notes continuously repeated by a bugle. It was the alarm for a fire at a farmhouse about half a mile from town. Our men from the hospital helped to get most of the furniture out, and were standing around watching the farmhouse ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... us; particularly Lisbeth Mary—that's my daughter, Daniel's wife—with her mother to comfort her, an' the firelight goin' dinky-dink round the cups and saucers on the dresser. I pictured the joy of it, too, when Sam or Daniel struck rat-tat and clicked open the latch, or maybe one o' the gals pricked up an ear at the sound of their boots on the cobbles. I 'most hoped the lads hadn't been thoughtful enough to send on a telegram. My mind ran on all this, sir; and then for a moment it ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... He got his answer, but not from Peter, and, being a Frenchman, smiled, bowed again, and discreetly left the room; for Elsie, turning to Peter cried: "Did you do it—even the wattle?" and kissed him heartily. He kissed her back, and caught hold of Julie. "Tit for tat," he said to her under his breath, holding her arms; "do you remember our first taxi?" Then, louder: "Julie Is responsible for most of it," and he kissed ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... and Mr. Noggin, with Mr. Chrome, who had a new flag, walked out upon the parade-ground. The musicians struck up Yankee-Doodle. How it stirred the hearts of everybody,—the sharp, shrill notes of the fife,—the roll, the rattle, and the rat-a-tat-tat of the drum, and the clanging of the bell, and the sight of that flag, its crimson folds and fadeless stars waving in the evening breeze! Never had it looked so beautiful. The little boys swung their caps and cheered, the women waved their handkerchiefs, and the men hurrahed in an outburst ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... there was a loud rat-tat at the front door, and Jack Glover hastened into the hall to answer. But it was not the policeman he had expected. It was a girl in a big sable coat, muffled up to her eyes. She pushed past Jack, crossed the hall, and ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... my chair to go and look at him, and with a candle in my hand I leaned over him. Seeing him breathing quietly I felt reassured, when he coughed a third time. It gave me such a shock tat I started backward, just as one does at sight of something horrible, and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... hang together, lump together, hold together, piece together [Fr.], tack together, fix together, bind up together together; embody, reembody^; roll into one. attach, fix, affix, saddle on, fasten, bind, secure, clinch, twist, make fast &c adj.; tie, pinion, string, strap, sew, lace, tat, stitch, tack, knit, button, buckle, hitch, lash, truss, bandage, braid, splice, swathe, gird, tether, moor, picket, harness, chain; fetter &c (restrain) 751; lock, latch, belay, brace, hook, grapple, leash, couple, accouple^, link, yoke, bracket; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a handmaid, whatever her fingers be at, Will run like a puss when she hears a rat-tat: So Lucy ran up—and in two seconds more Had questioned the ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... discarded; new plans were hot-beds for new doubts; and impossibilities seemed to overwhelm every succeeding though successless suggestion. At the critical moment when it appeared perfectly clear to me either that I was fit for nothing or nothing was fit for me, the authoritative "rat-tat" of the general postman closed the argument, and for a brief space distracted the intense contemplations of my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the present situation of Russia. The czar took occasion to engage in negotiations not only with Thibet, but with Afghanistan also, at the very moment when England was suffering her most serious disasters and embarrassments of recent history, and is getting tit for tat. Before Colonel Younghusband's expedition was dispatched the British ambassador at St. Petersburg was instructed to inquire if the Russian government had any relations with Thibet or any interests there, and was officially informed that it had not, and hence the etiquette ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... and take of the other such pleasure as I may.' 'And I,' quoth another, 'do likewise, for that if I believe that my wife pusheth her fortunes [in my absence,] she doth it, and if I believe it not, still she doth it; wherefore tit for tat be it; an ass still getteth as good as he giveth.'[132] A third, following on, came well nigh to the same conclusion, and in brief all seemed agreed upon this point, that the wives they left behind had no mind to lose time in their ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... dieser Idee stellten sich jedoch unberwindliche Schwierigkeiten entgegen, so dass der Erfinder den Eisenring einfach mit isoliertem Drahte bewickelte und in geeigneter Weise auf der Welle befestigte und so den ganzen Anker vor den Polen des Feldmagneten rotieren liess. In der Tat[6] wurde dadurch dieselbe, von ihm wohl[7] nicht vorhergesehene Wirkung erzielt, als wenn der Eisenkern oder die Drahtspirale fr sich allein rotierten. Durch die Einwirkung der Pole des Feldmagneten werden nmlich[8] auch in dem rotierenden ...
— German Science Reader - An Introduction to Scientific German, for Students of - Physics, Chemistry and Engineering • Charles F. Kroeh
... utterly impossible, then crying might even be beneficial. The effect on the breathing is very much the same in both cases, and there is a curious similarity in the action of the diaphragm and the mechanical character of the expulsion of the breath. Looking tat a person from behind, one cannot tell whether he is laughing or crying. Both produce relaxation of the nerves, both increase the activity of the lungs, and both involve a form of gymnastics for the diaphragm and ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... a sharp rat-tat-tat at the door which opened into the street. Somehow the commonplace, trivial interruption produced on both a strange, even startling effect. It suddenly produced in their minds a feeling of apprehension, as though there was whispered in their ears, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... vexing the young children, and beating their bedsteads with so much violence that every one expected they would fall in pieces." For an hour together, as the worthy Mr. Mompesson repeated to his wondering neighbours, this infernal drummer "would beat 'Roundheads and Cuckolds,' the 'Tat-too,' and several other points of war, as cleverly as any soldier." When this had lasted long enough, he changed his tactics, and scratched with his iron talons under the children's bed. "On the 5th of November," says the Rev. Joseph ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
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