Tapster

“ Bon. As punctual, sir, as I am in the age of my children. I'll show you such ale!—Here, tapster [Enter Tapster] broach number 1706, as the saying is.—Sir, you shall taste my Anno Domini.—I have lived in Lichfield, man and boy, above eight-and-fifty years, and, I believe, have not consumed eight-and-fifty ounces of meat.
Aim. At a meal, you mean, if one may guess your sense by your bulk.
Bon. Not in my life, sir: I have fed purely upon ale; I have eat my ale, drank my ale, and I always sleep upon ale. ”

“ Tapster's round, prominent eyes were shadowed with a great horror and an even greater surprise. He stood staring at the man before him, his hands clasped in a wholly unconscious gesture of supplication.
The constable gradually edged himself backward into the dining-room. Realizing that he must take on himself the onus of decision, he gave a quiet look round.
"If that's the case," he said firmly, "we had better bring her in here; that sofa that you have there, sir, will do nicely for her to be laid upon while they try to bring her round. We've got a doctor already."
Mr. Tapster bent his head ”

“ A groat, quoth the Tapster; there ’tis, said the Countrey-man, laying it down, and so he went out of the Room, the Tapster staide behinde to bring away the Flaggon and Silver Cup, but though he found the Flaggon, yet the Cup was not to be found, wherefore he hastily runs out and cries, Stop the man. The Countrey-man was not in such haste, but that he quickly stopt of himself ”

“ Tapster felt entitled to blame and sometimes almost to hate his kind brother and sister. To them both, or rather, to Maud, he really owed the break-up of his life; for, when all was said and done, it had to be admitted (though Maud did not like him to remind her of it) , that Flossy had met the villain while staying with the William Tapsters at Boulogne. Respectable London people should have known better than to take a furnished house at a disreputable French watering-place, a place full of low English! ”

“ Maud had declared, very early in the day, that there should be as little communication as possible between the kitchen and the nursery, but Mr. Tapster sometimes found himself in secret sympathy with the two women whose disagreeable duty it was to be always with his three turbulent children.
Mr. Tapster frowned and stared gloomily into the fire; then he suddenly pulled himself together rather sharply, for the door behind him had slowly swung open. This was intolerable! The parlor-maid had again and again been told that, whatever might have been the case in her former places, no door in Mr. ”

“ His neighbours could not be made to hate Rowan as he hated him. They would not declare the young man to be the very Mischief, as he did. But that idea of a rival brewery was distasteful to them all. Most of them knew that the beer was almost too bad to be swallowed; but they thought that Tappitt had a vested interest in the manufacture of bad beer;—that as a manufacturer of bad beer he was a fairly honest and useful man;—and they looked upon any change as the work, or rather the suggestion, of a charlatan. ”

“ I heard the snapping of my companion's flint, and the red glow of the tinder paper leaped suddenly into the clear yellow flame of the taper. At first I could only see that stern, emaciated face, like some grotesque carving in walnut wood, with the ceaseless fishlike vibration of the muscles of his jaw. The light beat full upon it, and it stood strangely out with a dim halo round it in the darkness. Then he raised the taper and swept it slowly round at arm's length so as to illuminate the place in which we stood. ”

“ Tad hoped his own fellows might keep close to their camp. He wondered if the Rangers would be able to trace the bandits to their lair, or if the former even knew the outlaws had returned to that locality again. The words of Tucker answered his question.
"Well, we outrode them, Cap," said Tucker.
"Yes, but if you hadn't made a fool of yourself and tried a pot shot on McKay they wouldn't have known we were anywhere about. That was a fool play on your part, Dunk. Your temper will be the death of you. We'll be lucky if it isn't the death of the whole outfit. ”

“ Tapeur, m. (familiar) , needy man who lives on small loans which he procures from acquaintances.
Il va, il revient, il arpente le trottoir. Il a la guigne aujourd’hui ... celui-ci couperait peut-être dans le pont? mais quoi! il a déjà casqué hier ... il désespère, car il entend partir derrière lui, de toutes les tables, ce mot cruel: attention! voilà le tapeur!—Richepin.
Tapeuse de tal (popular) , prostitute. See Tal.
Tapin, m. (popular) , drum; drummer. Ficher un ——, to give a blow. Ficher le —— (obsolete) , to importune. ”

“ Another friend of Pinch's was Mark Tapley, a rakish, good-humored fellow, whose one ambition was to find a position so uncomfortable and dismal that he would get some credit for being jolly in it. Tapley was an assistant at The Blue Dragon, the village inn, whose plump, rosy landlady was so fond of him that he might have married her if he had chosen to. But, as Tapley said, there was no credit in being jolly where he was so comfortable, so he left The Blue Dragon and went off, too, to London. ”

“ Spencer Tucker grasped the pie with one hand and his friend's fingers with the other, and for a few moments was silent from the hurried deglutition of viand and sentiment. “YOU'RE a white man, Patterson, anyway,” he resumed. “I'll take your horse, and put it down in our account, at your own figure. As soon as this cursed thing is blown over, I'll be back here and see you through, you bet. I don't desert my friends, however rough things go with me.” ”

“ Tucker, suddenly. "Why not at the time? Why," she demanded almost fiercely, turning from the one to the other, "has this been kept from me?"
"I'll tell ye why," said Patterson, sinking with crashed submission into a chair. "When I found he wasn't where he ought to be, I got to lookin' elsewhere. I knew the track of the hoss I lent him by a loose shoe. I examined, and found he had turned off the highroad somewhere beyond the lagoon, jist as if he was makin' a bee line here."
"Well," said Mrs. Tucker breathlessly. ”

“ Whatever may have been the real influence of this unfortunate man upon his fellows, it seemed to find expression in a singular unanimity of criticism. Patterson looked at him with a half dismal, half welcoming smile. "Well, you are a h—ll of a fellow, ain't you?"
Spencer Tucker passed his hand through his hair and lifted it from his forehead, with a gesture at once emotional and theatrical. "I am a man with a price on me!" he said bitterly. "Give me up to the sheriff, and you'll get five thousand dollars. ”

“ Suddenly he raised his head, drew back, and thrust his hand into his bosom with a theatrical gesture.
“What's to keep me from killing Poindexter in his tracks?” he said wildly.
“Nothin' but HIS shooting first,” returned Patterson, with dismal practicality. “He's mighty quick, like all them army men. It's about even, I reckon, that he don't get ME first,” he added in an ominous voice.
“No!” returned Tucker, grasping his hand again. “This is not your affair, Patterson; leave him to me when I come back.” ”

“ The story of Our Lady's taper there has a picturesque wildness, of which later ages may admire the legendary beauty, being relieved by three centuries of incredulity from the necessity of raising harsh alternatives of truth or falsehood. An image of the Virgin had been found, it was said, standing at the mouth of the Tivy river, with an infant Christ in her lap, and the taper in her hand burning. ”

“ Patterson. All were silent. “Students of the Belle Air Academy and citizens generally, I have the honor to announce to you that my friend, Mr. Dogberry, is about to supersede Mr. Sears. We must form a procession and place him in our midst, the post of honor, and then to mine host’s.” So speaking, Mr. Patterson descended, followed by Dogberry and myself. The students gave their candles to the negroes to hold, joined their hands, and danced round Dogberry with the wildest glee, while he received it all in drunken dignity. ”

“ Patty, with her face not one whit less white than any of the others, laid the smoking rifle on the table, and spoke with a tremulousness not usual to her.
"Mrs. Tucker, some vile plot has been hatched to rob this house while your master is away. That pack doesn't hold finery as Fanny was at first led to believe, but it holds a man, and I have shot him."
With trembling hands and colourless lips Mrs. Tucker, with the help of her maids, cut away the oilcloth that bound the pack together, and disclosed the face of a short sturdy man, it was the face of the late coachman, Timothy Smith! ”

“ Referring to the second method, all that is necessary in setting a former or taper attachment bar is to set it out of line with the lathe shears to half the amount of taper that is to be turned, the bar being measured along a length equal to that of the work. Turning tapers with a bar or taper-turning attachment possesses the advantage that the tailstock not being set over, the work centres are not thrown out of line with the live centres, and the latter are not subject to the wear explained with reference to Fig. ”

“ But Tappitt, when he saw his own poker in his own hand, was afraid of it. If a woman attack a man with a knife, the man will be held to have fought fairly, though he shall have knocked her down in the encounter. And so also with an old man, if he take a poker instead of a stick, the world will refuse to him the advantage of his gray hairs. Some such an idea as this came upon Tappitt—by instinct, and thus, though he still held the poker, he refrained his hand.
"The man must be mad this morning," said Rowan, standing firmly before him, with his two hands fixed upon his hips. ”

“ Though the action of taps resembles in some respects that of common dies, the results achieved are better, partly because the backing off is generally superior, partly because taper taps are commonly used to start a screw hole. Tapered solid dies are also used in some kinds of turret work with the same object, namely, to facilitate the work of an inherently badly formed tool. ”

“ To try a taper into its place, we either make a chalked stripe along it from end to end, smoothing the chalked surface with the finger, or else apply red marking to it, and then while pressing it firmly into its place, revolve it backwards and forwards, holding it the while firmly to its seat in the hole; we move the longest outwardly projecting end up and down and sideways, carefully noting at which end of the taper there is the most movement. ”

“ The smile slowly faded from Tucker's face, that now looked quite rigid in the moonlight. He put down his glass and walked to the window as Patterson gloomily continued, “But that's nothing to you. You've got ahead of 'em both, and had your revenge by going off with the gal. That's what I said all along. When folks—especially women folks—wondered how you could leave a woman like your wife, and go off with a scallawag like that gal, I allers said they'd find out there was a reason. ”

“ But, in the goodness of his heart, he calculated too much upon his adversary’s weakness, and forgot that drunken men who have lost the power of walking steadily, can often run. Watching his time, Simon Tappertit made a cunning show of falling back, staggered unexpectedly forward, brushed past him, opened the door (he knew the trick of that lock well) , and darted down the street like a mad dog. The locksmith paused for a moment in the excess of his astonishment, and then gave chase. ”

“ Simon Tappertit, who had at first implicitly believed that the locksmith’s daughter, unable any longer to suppress her secret passion for himself, was about to give it full vent in its intensity, and to declare that she was his for ever, looked extremely foolish when she said these words;—the more so, as they were received by Hugh and Dennis with a loud laugh, which made her draw back, and regard him with a fixed and earnest look. ”

“ Lieutenant Ainsley laughed. "That's true enough," he admitted; "although I fancy going out on patrol in this weather and on this part of the line would be enough to make Mark Tapley himself grouse. However, it's all in the course of a lifetime, I suppose."
He completed the fastening of his mackintosh, felt that the revolver on his belt moved freely from its holster, and that the wire nippers were in place, pulled his soft cap well down on his head, grunted a "Good-night," and dropped on his hands and knees to crawl out of the dug-out. ”

“ Taps for general use by hand are frequently used to tap holes that do not pass entirely through the work; hence, the taper tap must have a short length of taper so that the second tap may be enabled to carry a full thread as near as possible to the bottom of the hole without carrying so heavy a cut as to render it liable to breakage, and the second or plug tap must in turn have so short a length of its end tapered that it will not throw too much duty upon the bottoming tap. ”

“ Mr. Tattersall had very practical ideas about such things, and when inspecting his cattle whilst they were fattening, was often overheard to say, "Eat away, my good creature! eat away, and get fat soon. The butcher is waiting for you, and I want money."
Mr. Tattersall's prosperous career arose in a great measure from a successful speculation in Scotland. Having heard that a Scotch nobleman's stud was to be sold there, he applied to a friend to [Pg 397] go his halves in the purchase. "If you will find money, for I have none," said he, "I will find skill, and you shall have a good thing." ”