Chapter Touch At to Tracy of T by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Tournemine (3 syl.). That's Tournemine. Your wish was father to the thought. Tournemine was a Jesuit of the eighteenth century, of a very sanguine and dreamy temperament.

Tours Geoffrey of Monmouth says: “In the party of Brutus was one Turones, his nephew, inferior to none in courage and strength, from whom Tours derived its name, being the place of his sepulture. Of course, this fable is wholly worthless historically. Tours is the city of the Turones, a people of Gallia Lugdunensis.

Tout (pronounce towt). To ply or seek for customers. “A touter” is one who touts. (From Tooting, where persons on their way to the court held at Epsom were pestered by “touts.”

“A century or two ago, when the court took up Its quarters at Epsom ... [many of] the inhabitants used to station themselves at the point where the roads fork off the Epsom by Tooting and Merton, and `tout' the travellers to pass through Tooting. It become a common expression for carriage-folk to say, `The Toots are on its again.' ”- Walford: Greater London, vol. ii. p. 530.

Tout Ensemble (French). The whole massed together; the general effect.

Tout est Perdu Hormis L'Honneur is what Francois I. wrote to his mother after the battle of Pavia.

Tout le Monde Everyone who is anyone.

Tower of Hunger Gualandi. (See Ugolino. )

Tower of London The architect of this remarkable building was Gundulphus, Bishop of Rochester, who also built or restored Rochester keep, in the time of William I. In the Tower lie buried Anne Boleyn and her brother; the guilty Catherine Howard, and Lady Rochford her associate; the venerable Lady Salisbury, and Cromwell the minister of Henry VIII.; the two Seymours, the admiral and protector of Edward VI.; the Duke of Norfolk and Earl of Sussex (Queen Elizabeth's reign); the Duke of Monmouth, son of Charles II.; the Earls of Balmerino and Kilmarnock, and Lord Lovat; Bishop Fisher and his illustrious friend More.

Towers of Silence Towers in Persia and India, some sixty feet in height, on the top of which Parsees place the dead to be eaten by vultures. The bones are picked clean in the course of a day, and are then thrown into a receptacle and covered with charcoal.

“A procession is then formed, the friends of the dead following the priests to the Towers of Silence on Malabar Hill.”- Col. Floyd-Jones.

    The Parsees will not burn or bury their dead, because they consider a dead body impure, and they will not suffer themselves to defile any of the elements. They carry their dead on a bier to the Tower of Silence. At the entrance they look their last on the dead, and the corpse- bearers carry the dead body within the precincts and lay it down to be devoured by vultures which crowd the tower. (Nineteenth Century, Oct., 1893, p. 611.)

Town (A) is the Anglo-Saxon tún, a plot of ground fenced round or enclosed by a hedge; a single dwelling; a number of dwelling-houses enclosed together forming a village or burgh.

“Our ancestors in time of war ... would cast a ditch, or make a strong hedge about their houses, and houses so environed ... got the name tunes annexed into them (as Cote-tun, now Cotton, the cote or house fenced in or tuned about; North-tun, now Norton ... South-tun, now Sutton). In troublous times whole `thorpes' were fenced in, and took the name of tunes (towns) and then `stedes' (now cities), and `thorpes' (villages), and burghs (burrows) got the name of townes.”- Restitution, p. 232.

Town and Gown Row (A), A collision, often leading to a fight, in the English universities between the students or gownsmen, and non-gownsmen- principally bargees and roughs. (See Philistines. )

Toyshop of Europe (The). So Burke called Birmingham. Here “toy” does not refer to playthings for children, but small articles made of steel. “Light toys” in Birmingham mean mounts, small steel rings, sword hilts, and so on; while “heavy steel toys” mean champagne-nippers, sugar-cutters, nut-crackers,