Tiffin

“ The climate makes them indolent. They enjoyed their “siesta” smoking cigarettes and drinking iced lemonade.
We had tiffin in the dining-room. The Dutch cooking does not please me. Tiffin always begins with the traditional “reistafel,” a dish of chipped meat and rice, without any seasoning to it. The meat is lean and unsavoury, and the dairy products are very bad. The cattle in Java are very small, looking more like goats than cows. The natives are not exacting in this country, cocoa-nuts serve them both as food and drink; they eat the pulp and drink the milk. ”

“ In racing parlance, all level finishes are called dead-heats.
Tied up, given over, finished; also married, in allusion to the hymeneal knot, unless a jocose allusion be intended to the “halter” (altar) . See BUCKLED, term in use among costermongers and street folk generally.
Tiff, a pet, a fit of ill humour.
Tiffin, a breakfast, déjeûner à la fourchette.—Anglo-Indian Slang.
Tiffy, easily offended, apt to be annoyed.
Tiger, a parasite; also a term for a ferocious woman; a boy employed to wait on gentlemen—one who waits on ladies is a page. ”

“ Here are they an unfailing index of the severer virtues; for, in Tiverton, there is no housewife who, in her spring cleaning, omits to set in order this outer pale of the temple. Long before the merry months are well under way, or the cows go kicking up their heels to pasture, or plants are taken from the south window and clapped into chilly ground, orderly passions begin to riot within us, and we "clear up" our yards. ”

“ The fishpond stream is very doleful, and wants to dance with daffodils if they would come and teach it. How happy we are in our native streams. A thunder-storm swelled the Tiber yesterday, and it rolled over its mill weirs in heaps, literally, of tossed water, the size of haycocks, but black brown like coffee with the grounds in it, mixed with a very little yellow milk. In some lights the foam flew like cast handfuls of heavy gravel. The chief flowers here are only broom and bindweed, and I begin to weary for my heather and for my Susie ”

“ That morning, no one in Tiverton Hollow had gone out of the house, save to shovel paths, and do the necessary chores. The road lay untouched until ten o'clock, when a selectman gave notice that it was an occasion for "breakin' out," by starting with his team, and gathering oxen by the way until a conquering procession ground through the drifts, the men shoveling at intervals where the snow lay deepest, the oxen walking swayingly, head to the earth, and the faint wreath of their breath ascending and cooling on the air. ”

“ There was his corn to be hoed, his parsley to be weeded, there was his orphan family of young partridges to be cared for. And Tiff, after some considerable consideration, resolved to take them along with him in a basket; thinking, in the intervals of devotion, he should have an abundant opportunity to minister to their wants, and superintend their education. Then he went to one of his favorite springes, and brought from thence, not a fatted calf, to be sure, but a fatted coon, which he intended to take with him, to serve as the basis of a savory stew on the camp-ground. ”

“ Once upon a time a cow and a tigress lived in a jungle and were great friends, they were never separated. Now in those days tigers did not eat flesh, but grazed like cattle, so the tigress never thought of doing any harm to her friend the cow. The tigress had given birth to two men children who were growing up fine and sturdy lads. One afternoon the cow and the tigress went down to a stream to drink, the cow went into the stream and drank and the tigress drank lower down. ”

“ The white cow allowed the Tigress to approach to within about eighty yards before she appeared to notice her danger, and at first seemed to be fascinated by the appearance of the brute creeping towards her, and it was only when the Tigress commenced to increase her pace to a trot that the cow made off. ”

“ The exhibition of these two animals concluded by the lion lying down on his side, when the keeper stretched himself to his whole length upon him, and then calling to the tigress she jumped upon the man, extended herself with her paws upon his shoulders, placed her face sideways upon his, and the whole three lay quiescent till the keeper suddenly slipped himself off the lion’s side, with the tigress on him, and the trio gambolled and rolled about on the floor of the den, like playful children on the floor of a nursery. ”

“ For big Carp have an enormous swallow, soft penny rolls being mere mouthfuls, bolted with ostrich-like celerity. So to prevent the immediate disappearance of these bonnes bouches, bread, in the form of larger balls than the most capacious Carp can take into his gullet, is baked until it becomes as hard as biscuit, and with these balls the Carp are regailed. Throw one into the lake, and you will quickly have an idea of the enormous Carp population it contains. For no sooner does the bread touch the water than it is surrounded by hundreds of these fish, which dart to it from all sides. ”

“ CXI. The Tiger Cub and the Calf.
A Tigress and a Cow used to graze in a dense jungle, and they were both with young. They became great friends and agreed that they would marry their [321] children to each other. In the course of time the tigress gave birth to a she-cub and the cow to a bull-calf. They kept the young ones in the same place and used to go and graze together, and then return at the same time to suckle their young. On their way back they used to drink at a certain river, the tigress up the stream and the cow lower down. ”

“ The herd then faces about, returns, and ranges itself in order of battle; so strongly does the odour, in all cases, attach itself to the human footstep, even though, as is most frequently the case, the foot itself is not naked. In the same way, too, the tigress, which is the dread of the other wild beasts, and which sees, without alarm, the traces even of the elephant itself, is said at once, upon seeing the footsteps of man, to carry off her whelps. How has the animal acquired this knowledge? ”

“ Timmy Tiptoes sat out, enjoying the breeze; he whisked his tail and chuckled—"Little wife Goody, the nuts are ripe; we must lay up a store for winter and spring." Goody Tiptoes was busy pushing moss under the thatch—"The nest is so snug, we shall be sound asleep all winter." "Then we shall wake up all the thinner, when there is nothing to eat in spring-time," replied prudent Timothy.
When Timmy and Goody Tiptoes came to the nut thicket, they found other squirrels were there already. ”

“ After she had likewise opened this door she found, close to the entrance of it, a cage decorated with gold and all manner of costly jewels, and within it, on a perch, there stood a white bird.
“‘I have lost a calf,’ said the maiden, ‘and am come hither to seek it.’ At these words the bird said, ‘If thou wilt become my wife I will find the calf for you, but not without.’ But the maiden said, ‘That may not be; among men birds are looked upon but as wild creatures. ”

“ With its snout the pig finds and roots out the savory titbit buried in the ground; the mole in like manner discovers and digs up the plump white worm. To reach it amid a network of roots and under a considerable thickness of soil, the animal has its fore paws, which spread out like large strong hands with exceptionally tough nails. ”

“ No sooner does he reach the branches, than with bill and claws, aided by an astonishing sagacity, he fastens one end of the moss to a twig, with as much art as a sailor might do, and takes up the other end, which he secures also, but to another twig a few inches off, leaving the thread floating in the air like a swing, the curve of which is perhaps seven or eight inches from the twigs. ”

“ We have dissected a great many Dippers at one time and another from many different localities, and have always been much impressed with the uniform similarity of the contents of their stomachs—a little grit and the remains of insects and worms. We have, however, known the Dipper in exceptional cases to prey upon small fish, but are convinced, by the experience of a lifetime, that such food is taken so rarely as scarcely to deserve mention at all. ”

“ Swainson remarks:—"The apparent disproportion of the bill is one of the innumerable instances of that beautiful adaptation of structure to use which the book of nature everywhere reveals. The food of these birds consists principally of the eggs and young of others, to discover which nature has given them the most exquisite powers of smell." Again, the nests in which the Toucan finds its food are often very deep and dark, and its bill, covered with branches of nerves, enables the bird to feel its way as accurately as the finest and most delicate finger could. ”

“ Then he sat down and sorted out the fish he had thus caught, filling his basket with the largest, and throwing away those which were poor.
All this the boy saw from behind the tioba tree, where he lay hidden. And having seen he fled the place, for he feared the man who did such things as these.
Now it came to pass that at supper that night all ate of the fish which had been caught, save only the boy. And though many asked him, "Why eatest thou not? Art fasting?" he refused even to touch with his fingers the fish which the man had caught. ”

“ Now, twig snapping is the great index to all that passes in the wilderness. Curiously enough, no two animals can break even a twig under their feet and give the same warning. The crack under a bear’s foot, except when he is stalking his game, is heavy and heedless. The hoof of a moose crushes a twig, and chokes the sound of it before it can tell its message fairly. When a twig speaks under a deer in his passage through the woods, the sound is sharp, dainty, [7] alert. It suggests the plop of a raindrop into the lake. ”

“ They are laid upon their backs, either close to the fire, or upon the red wood-ashes, until the thick shell becomes so hot to the animal within that he desperately stretches out both legs and neck, in the vainest of endeavours to extricate himself from the walls of his burning house. The tender-hearted cook watches his opportunity, and when it is evident that, in ordinary phrase, the poor terrapin ‘cannot contain itself,’ or in other words, will no longer draw back his head into such a living furnace—the knife descends, and the head is cut away. ”

“ He sent her the magnificent skin of a tiger he had shot in India, and sometimes it pleased her to crouch on this, sensuously delighted by the contact, while remembering with a curious mingling of emotions how Kneedrock had declared her to be the reincarnation of just such another creature of the jungle, cruel, remorseless, blood-lusting—a tigress in the guise of a woman. ”

“ The royal striped Bengal Tigress has again whelped three fine cubs, (April 22,) two males and one female; the males are white, but striped; the female resembles the tigress, and, singular to observe, she fondles them with all the care of an attentive mother. The sire of the young cubs is the noble [Pg 279] male lion. This remarkable instance of subdued temper and association of animals to permit the keeper to enter their den, and introduce their young to the spectators, is the greatest phenomenon in natural philosophy. ”

“ Thus, when a pair of migratory birds have arrived in the spring, they prepare to build their nest, making a careful reconnaissance of the place, and observing the character of the season. If it be a windy one, they thatch the straw and leaves on the inside of the nest, between the twigs and the lining; if it be very windy, they get pliant twigs, and bind the nest firmly to the limb of the tree, securing all the small twigs with their saliva. ”

“ Tipar, dry land ploughed up to plant paddy in the same way as corn is planted in Europe. Contradistinguished from Sawah and Humah, which see.
Tipatĕr, stuck fast in mud or mire. See Patĕran.
Tiplĕk, a long narrow basket with a spring door to close it, set in rivers to catch fish and especially eels. When the fish has got well in he pulls at a bait, whereby be closes the door behind him. ”

“ An evidence of the primitive character of the country is furnished by the circumstance that large beasts of prey are constantly met with there, as well as other kinds of wild animals. Bear's flesh comes into the market at Tiflis for sale, like beef with us, and at no higher price. ”

“ The light tabby Persian, matched with a female Abyssinian, would give unexpected surprises, so with the dark blue Archangel; a well-ticked blue would not only be a novelty, but an elegant colour hitherto unseen. A deep red tabby might result in a whole colour, bright red, or a yellow tint. I have seen a cat nearly black [107] ticked with white, which had yellow eyes. It was truly a splendid and very beautiful animal, of a most recherché colour. Matched with a silver-gray tabby, a silver-gray tick is generally the sequence. A yellow-white will possibly prove excellent. ”

“ Tibert replied, “You speak like a noble gentleman; and me-thinks it is best now to go forward, for the moon shines as bright as day.”
“Nay, dear cousin,” said the fox, “let us take the day before us, so may we encounter with our friends; the night is full of danger.”
“Well,” said the cat, “if it be your pleasure, I am content; what shall we eat?”
Reynard said, “Truly my store is small; the best I have is a honey-comb, pleasant and sweet; what think you of it?”
To which Tibert replieth, “It is meat I little respect, and seldom eat; I had rather have one mouse than all the honey in Europe.” ”

“ One slug of that stuff, as prepared by Tib, would send the average striped cat or lion off to slumber-land for several minutes, and the patient on awaking was usually very docile. Tib always claimed he could construct a repeating-rifle that would carry enough of the nectar to lay low any male elephant that ever waved tusks. ”