"Lamplight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I could not see his face in the gloom of the alley, but I had caught one glimpse of it by the lamplight within, and knew what had detained him upstairs. Honest man, he was starving, and had been praying up there ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... round him, his white hair glistening in the lamplight, his delicate face, so old and yet so eager, the smile on his kind lips, and all the details of his Dean's dress—apron and knee-breeches, slender legs and silver buckles—thrown out in sharp relief ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she at any rate felt different, as if something had happened to her. Left to herself for the evening she sat a while under the lamp, her hands empty, her usual avocations unheeded. Then she rose and moved about the room, and from one room to another, preferring the places where the vague lamplight expired. She was restless and even agitated; at moments she trembled a little. The importance of what had happened was out of proportion to its appearance; there had really been a change in her life. What it would bring with it was as yet extremely ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... unconscious man, whom he at this time on the previous day believed dying, had his children on his lap, and was caressing them with every mark of affection. Although he still appeared to be very much of an invalid, and his complexion had a sallow and unnatural hue, even in the lamplight, it was difficult to believe that twenty-four hours before he had appeared to be in extremis. When he arose and greeted Roger with a courtesy that was almost faultless, the young fellow was tempted to rub his eyes as if all were a dream. Mrs. ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... announced, looking around her with something between a shiver and a deliberate shake of her cloak. It was the same furred cloak in which she had come ashore from the Milo. Spray clung to it; and there was spray, too, on her hair. It shone in the lamplight. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Cicely's face,—every one in the room saw it,—a white, pure light, like no other light on earth, unless it was something like that wonderful new light—that has a soul. It was something like that clear white light, falling through a soft shade. It was jest as plainly visible to us as the lamplight at the ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... twilight walk, just after our arrival, through its gloomy fortress streets, up to the piazza, where the impendent houses lowered like bastions, and all the masses of their mighty architecture stood revealed in shadow and dim lamplight. Far and wide, the country round us gleamed with bonfires; for it was the eve of the Ascension, when every contadino lights a beacon of chestnut logs and straw and piled-up leaves. Each castello ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... as they wilted their collars and watched the faintly diverting round of some lazy August cabaret. But it was cold outside, with wind around the edges of the tall buildings and December just up the street, so better far an evening together under the soft lamplight and a drink or two of Bushmill's, or a thimbleful of Maury's Grand Marnier, with the books gleaming like ornaments against the walls, and Maury radiating a divine inertia as he rested, large and ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... path of lamplight. It marked a bed of yellow tulips with a broad band; they stood motionless, ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... into the lamplight, and presently began to read aloud. The scene became intimate and domestic. Delia very silent, sat in a deep arm chair, some pretence at needlework on her knee, but in reality doing nothing but look into the fire, and listen to Winnington's ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... illuminating all the interior of the dusky mirror in which she had been wont to gaze at it. There she beheld another countenance, of a man well stricken in years, a pale, thin, scholar-like visage, with eyes dim and bleared by the lamplight that had served them to pore over many ponderous books. Yet those same bleared optics had a strange, penetrating power, when it was their owner's purpose to read the human soul. This figure of the study and the cloister, as Hester Prynne's womanly ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... England I entered London. I cannot attempt to record the sensations which thronged my mind as the din and tumult of that mighty city awoke me from a sound sleep I had fallen into in the corner of the chaise. The seemingly interminable lines of lamplight, the crash of carriages, the glare of the shops, the buzz of voices, made up a chaotic mass of sights and sounds, leaving my efforts at thought vain ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... sight of these that checked his flow of speech. It was the look on Mamie's face as he caught sight of it in the lamplight. The White Hope was sitting at the table in the attitude of one who has heard the gong and is anxious to begin; while Mamie, bending over him, raised her head as the two men entered and fixed ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... if his ideal is so poor, that he fancies man's welfare to consist in immediate happiness; if he means to paint a great man and paints only a greedy one, he is a mischievous writer and not the less so, although by lamplight and amongst a juvenile audience, his coarse scene-painting should be thought very grand. He may be true to his own fancy, but he is false to Nature. A writer, of course, cannot get beyond his own ideal: but at least he should see that he works up to it: and if it is a poor one, ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... she said, with a very regal gesture. She was not carelessly dressed, as she had been earlier in the day. From hair to silken hose and white kid shoes she was immaculate, and she wore rouge and powder now. In that yellow lamplight (carefully placed, no doubt) she was certainly good-looking. In fact, she was good-looking at any time, and only no longer able to face daylight with the tale of youth. Her eyes were weapons, nothing ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... about them? They were of both sexes—that was put beyond doubt; they were garbed as the first of them in something translucent and grey. It had been quite easy in the lamplight to see the bare form of the woman whom I first saw in Gaylord's Rents. It was plain to me that her companions were in the same kind of dress. I don't think they had girdles; I think their arms and legs were bare. I should describe ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... hand had barely reached the knob of the street door, when it opened and a man in a rubber coat entered, and stopped short in the centre of the room, where he stood blinking rapidly in the lamplight. I heard the rain drip with a soft pattering sound from his coat to the floor, and when he wheeled about, after an instant in which his glance searched the room, I saw that his face was flushed and his eyes swimming and bloodshot. There was in his look, as I remember it now, something of the ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... right at the spot, and I saw him as well as I should have seen him in daylight. I knew his voice, too; could have sworn to it anywhere; and I would almost have sworn to him by his splendid diamond ring. It flashed in the lamplight." ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the hair on his forehead grow in a roll-shaped bow across the head. He is well built, though rather short, and behaves with natural politeness. His voice is soft, his look gentle and in the doorway his dark figure shines in the lamplight like ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... movements undoubtedly played no small part in the unsuspecting confidence which he inspired. Out of the light he turned, strolling easily, down the long stretch of black pavement with its few checkers of lamplight here and there, and the empty, silent street of the little country town at his side. It was a very dark, moonless night, and the air was almost quite still. Looking upward, he could see a rare star or two twinkle, but ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... table, made bright spots of color for the eye to dwell on. When she had left her seat and stood lighting my lamp, one must have been under the yoke of a terrible passion indeed, not to admire her faintly flushed transparent hands, the girlish charm of her attitude, the ideal grace of her head, as the lamplight fell full on her pale face. Night and silence added to the charms of this industrious vigil and peaceful interior. The light-heartedness that sustained such continuous toil could only spring from devout submission and the lofty ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... even humorous aspects of the tragedy; he has a quick sense of the effective which enables him to touch in many haunting pictures—the delusive peace of a sunny Autumn day among the Bosnian mountains; the face of KING PETER seen for a moment by lamplight amid a crowd of refugees; and countless others. More than a passing mention also is due to the many quite admirable snapshots with which the volume is illustrated. The author seems successfully to have communicated his own gifts of observation ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... the corner, his pale face glistening in the lamplight of the street, the Honourable Richard Durwent lay ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... opened the door. The lamplight fell across porch and steps, and in a broad white band even to the gate and sidewalk. There was a motor-car slowing down ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... caught and wrenched Colendorp's figure, the snow gave between his feet, and he plunged forward heavily into the gorge of the Kofn river. The broken snow, whirled up in a great cloud by the eddying gusts, shone in the lamplight for a second like a wild toss of spray, then settled again upon the narrow terrace, obliterating all marks there. A window overhead was pushed open, but already the band of light upon the snow was gone, and nothing remained for Valerie's eyes but a chaos of gloom. ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... to the coach. By this time the horses were nearly extricated. Two of them stood steaming in the lamplight, with their sides going at twenty bellows' speed. The guard would not let him have one of the coach lamps, but gave him a small lantern of his own. When he returned with it, he found Ericson and ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... remained still long enough for the astonished Powell to stammer out an indistinct: "What do you mean? I don't understand." Then, with a low 'Good-night' glided a few steps, and sank through the shadow of the companion into the lamplight below which did not reach higher than the turn of ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... many years to listen to the playing of Jacques Tremblay: on the white porch, in the summer evenings, with bleeding-hearts abloom in the garden; or by the winter fire, while the pale blue moonlight lay on the snow without, and the yellow lamplight filled the room with homely radiance. In the fourth year after her marriage she died, and Jacques stood ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... like one whose love had rushed out glowing with seraphic fire, to be frozen to death in a more than wintry cold: she now walked lonely without her love. In the evenings, he was expected to continue his drawing by lamplight; and at night he was conducted by Teufelsbuerst to his chamber. Not once did he allow him to proceed thither alone, and not once did he leave him there without locking and bolting the door on the outside. But he felt nothing except the coldness ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... speaking to him across the waves of many years, and saying, 'Clarke, Mary will see the God Pan!' and then he was standing in the grim room beside the doctor, listening to the heavy ticking of the clock, waiting and watching, watching the figure lying on the green chair beneath the lamplight. Mary rose up, and he looked into her eyes, and his ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... flung up at him, blood-drabbled face pale and drawn by the flaring lamplight. "A multi-millionaire! Death? I should worry! Help myself? ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... the house, and when Startsev saw in the lamplight her face, and her sad, grateful, searching eyes fixed upon him, he felt ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... there, and you, and you, Happiness crowned the night; I too, Laughing and looking, one of all, I watched the quivering lamplight fall On plate and flowers and pouring tea And cup and cloth; and they and we Flung all the dancing moments by With jest and glitter. Lip and eye Flashed on the glory, shone and cried, Improvident, unmemoried; And fitfully and like a flame ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... reappear, but the house remained in darkness; and, after a moment's deliberation, he realized its meaning. The door of the blind man's room must be opposite the window, and probably it was the opening of it that had revealed the lamplight in the hall. The thought suggested the fact that the rancher had ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... military college, and thence direct to the Eastern Empire; and he promised himself a variety of delights in this world for exploration. Swinging his cane, he took his way westward. It was a mild evening, already dark, and now and then threatening rain. The succession of faces in the lamplight stirred the Lieutenant's imagination; and it seemed to him as if he could walk for ever in that stimulating city atmosphere and surrounded by the mystery of four million private lives. He glanced at the houses, and marvelled what ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a darkness which equaled that of the night on which he had carried the limp and drink-saturated Clay Levins to his wife, Trevison was dismounting at the door of the gun-man's cabin. A little later, standing in the glare of lamplight that shone through the open doorway, he was reassuring Mrs. Levins and asking for her husband. Shortly afterward, he was talking lowly to Levins as the latter saddled his pony ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... young man by the arm and led him, almost by main strength, close to the lighted window of the station. It was late, and the afternoon was gloomy. Here, by the lamplight streaming through the window, he could see his face more clearly. He looked ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... gleaming arm gained an enchanting picture-like distinctness. There was jessamine at her waist and among the gold of her hair; the crystals on her neck, and on the little shoe thrown forward beyond her dress, caught the lamplight. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... movement, and Jessy realized by his expression that he had suddenly become oblivious of her presence. She had no doubt about the reason, for just then Evelyn Chisholm had entered the room. The lamplight fell upon her as she crossed the threshold, and Jessy recognized unwillingly that she looked surprisingly handsome. Handsome, however, was not the word Vane would have used. He thought Evelyn looked exotic: highly cultivated, strangely refined, as though she ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... did not stay. His long shadow and the confused mass of lesser shadows behind him drifted down the white moonlight, past the yellow bars of lamplight that gleamed from the doorways. It seemed as if he were bound to go somewhere and would ...
— The Sad Shepherd • Henry Van Dyke
... a pleasant supper, they took a turn about the walls with the moon sinking over beyond Silbury, and then went in and sat by lamplight before a brightly fussy wood fire and smoked. There were long ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... him an odor of the earth and forest that seemed to choke her and make it difficult to breathe; and—what she noticed with a climax of almost uncontrollable alarm—upon his face beneath the lamplight shone traces of a mild, faint glory that made her think of moonlight falling upon a wood through speckled shadows. It was his new-found happiness that shone there, a happiness uncaused by her and in which she ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... hot with indignation. She sat radiantly fair in the lamplight, her strong, well-shaped hands lying one on top of the other in her lap. . . "Odious creature," she thought. Her face coloured with sudden anger. "You have scared my maid out of her senses," she said aloud. ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... sapphire, with the nets and poles of the distant fish weirs scattered here and there about the placid water like bits of fairy embroidery. And then to end his walk by turning in at the Phipps' gate; the lamplight in the cozy dining room shining a welcome and Martha's pleasant, attractive face above the teacups. It was like coming home, like coming to a real home, his home. He dreaded to think of leaving it—even for his loved science and the promised "great plan" which the Institute people were to present ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... wide contrast between her spectral appearance and all my recollections of the real person. The spectral face, which I often saw looking in upon me, in my study, when the door was ajar, and visible only in the uncertain lamplight, or peering over me in the moonlight solitude of my bed-chamber, when I was just waking from sleep, was uniformly subject to, and expressive of, some terrible hate, or yet more terrible anguish. Its first appearance was startling in the extreme. It was the face of one of the fabled furies: ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the man to his feet. As he arose he lowered his crossed arms, exposing the bestial face of Beauty Smith. The dog-musher let go of him precipitately, with action similar to that of a man who has picked up live fire. Beauty Smith blinked in the lamplight and looked about him. He caught sight of White Fang and ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... hand, knives flashed in the glare of the lamplight, curses and threats were in scores of mouths, while some of the vast surging ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... bound in my veins, my mouth became dry, my eyes hot; a sense of something insupportable took possession of me. I sprang to my feet, and then I sat down again. I cast a quick glance round me beyond the brief circle of the lamplight, but there was nothing there to account in any way for this sudden extraordinary rush of sensation, nor could I feel any meaning in it, any suggestion, any moral impression. I thought I must be going to be ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... any case," Roncivalli responded, and with that he thrust his head between the window-sill and the blind, and peeped out into the river. The lamplight took him from behind and illuminated the tips and edges of his hair, his beard, and his mustache, so that they shone bright gold, though he was a man of darkish complexion. As he turned his head sideways the white of his eye gleamed like an opal, and bending suddenly he looked ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... girl, with her golden hair in the lamplight, and her white arms a little raised to rest her locked hands on the chair. Like some superb actress of tragedy, some splendid and sullen prisoner at the bar. The slender figure in the dull wrapping of satin, and the white ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... the discolored pearl and looked at it closely. He put it on the scales and weighed it carefully, measured it, and scrutinized it as closely as he could in the lamplight, but he knew himself that these were devices to gain time. The pearl showed all too clearly a flaw that would make it valueless. Every one waited for his verdict. He was conscious that his voice was a little shaky, but he answered as steadily as ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... he muttered. "Perhaps he was a missionary, after all. Well, I can't lose any more time here. Thanks to Tom Fordham, I've got my bearings pretty straight. I'll bet Tom wishes he was with me now. I fancy I can see him grinding away at old Herodotus by lamplight." ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... pack of children. Wood and peat fires were burning everywhere; the great chimneypieces in the drawing-room, the arms of Elizabeth over the hall fire, the stucco birds and beasts running round the Hall, showed dimly in the scanty lamplight (we shall want about six more lamps!)—and the beauty of the marvelous old place took us all by storm. Then through endless passages and kitchens, bright with long rows of copper pans and molds, we made our way out into the gardens among the clipped yews and cedars, and had ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Bennoch proposed a walk, and we set forth. We rambled pretty extensively about the streets, sometimes seeing the shapes of old edifices dimly and doubtfully, it being an overcast night; or catching a partial view of a gray wall, or a pillar, or a Gothic archway, by lamplight. . . . . The clock had some time ago struck eleven, when we were passing under a long extent of antique wall and towers, which were those of Baliol College. Mr. D——— led us into the middle of the street, and showed us a cross, which was paved into it, on a level with the rest of the road. This ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Jane Bristol's dress; and she stood forth embarrassed in the firelight, clad in soft, pale-blue chiffon in simple straight lines blending into the white throat in a little round neck, and draping the white girlish, arms. The firelight and lamplight glimmered and flickered over the softly waved brown hair, the sweet, serious brow, the delicate, refined face; and Jane Bristol lifted two earnest deep-blue eyes, and looked at Julia Cloud. Then between them flashed a look of ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... she felt him all over, gazed at the rosy face whenever a tantalising flash of lamplight permitted, then kissed and kissed, till the boy awoke more fully, with another 'Mamma! Mamma,' putting his hand to feel for her chain, as if to identify her. Then with a coo of content, 'Mite has papa and mamma,' and he seemed under the necessity of ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in silence, but, though the messenger and Breckenridge retired shortly after the meal, Grant sat writing until late in the night. Then, he stretched his arms wearily above his head, and his face showed worn and almost haggard in the flickering lamplight. ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... another pause, and she might have been felt as facing it while, through lamplight and dusk, through the breath of the mild, slightly damp southwest, she met his eyes without evasion. Yet she had at the end of another minute debated only to the extent of saying: "I won't pretend I don't think it would ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Allen leaned back in his chair, patting the arm of it with one hand, and surveyed the neatly piled money and the three buckskin sacks on the desk before him. Then he stood up, very erect and stern in the yellow lamplight. ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... distance between them, yet she seemed immeasurable spaces away. Against the bright background of the conservatory her form stood dark, the outlines softened by semi-transparent edges of drapery. But the dull red lamplight lit duskily up the folds of her robe, her golden ornaments, and the black tarns, her eyes. She appeared to waver between the light of heaven and the ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... the purple down, Where the single lamplight gleams. Know ye the road to the Merciful Town That is hard by the Sea of Dreams— Where the poor may lay their wrongs away, And the sick may forget to-weep? But we—pity us! Oh, pity us! We wakeful; ah, pity us!— ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... enormous rat, steadily glaring at him with baleful eyes. He made a motion to it as though to hunt it away, but it did not stir. Then he made the motion of throwing something. Still it did not stir, but showed its great white teeth angrily, and its cruel eyes shone in the lamplight with an added vindictiveness. ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... nearly filled up by a dining table with a red cloth. On the mantel above the empty fireplace were candlesticks with dangling crystals that glittered red and yellow and purple in the lamplight, in front of a cracked mirror that seemed a window into another dingier room. The paper was peeling off the damp walls, giving a mortuary smell of mildewed plaster that not even the reek of beer and tobacco ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... he was cravenly thankful that the lamplight was dim, and that his chair was in the shadow. This was more than he had bargained for; more by the price of ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... a great piece of work, here, alone, and by lamplight. You are a brave man, and I honour you." Then his voice broke. "I'd give every day of my miserable life to be able to do this once more, just once, but I haven't the nerve, Clay"; the hand that the young doctor held trembled. "I haven't ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... lamplight became as if by mutual consent a general rendezvous. Three gray-clad policemen, tough, clean-shaven men with keen eyes and square jaws, stood there, revolvers in one hand, night sticks in the other. Smith, hatless and muddy, joined them. John and the ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... at first at the unusual lamplight, but then calmly proceeded to take off his jacket and ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... beside the trundle-bed, And one long ray of lamplight shed Athwart the boyish faces there, In sleep so pitiful and fair; I saw on Jamie's rough, red cheek A tear undried. Ere John could speak, "He's but a baby too," said I, And kissed him as we hurried by. Pale, patient Robbie's angel ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... a cry that pierced curtains and doors, and brought Fraeulein and half-a-dozen servants to her help. One of the men brought a lamp, and among them they lifted the smitten figure. Oh, God! how ghastly the face looked in the lamplight!—the features drawn to one side, the ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... just going to use my advantage, which you won't dispute,"—the pistol described an eloquent circle, gleaming in the lamplight—"to levy on you a little legitimate blackmail. Don't be alarmed; I shan't hit you any harder than ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... The lamplight fell on her hair. It was brown where the light flashed over it, and lay in rippling waves around her temples in a splendid coil down the arch of her neck, and shining in strong contrast through the gauzy dark sheen of her black gown. But where the light ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... upon the verandah, and continuing his walk there, presently came opposite the windows of the library. There he saw Daisy seated at the table, reading. Her hand was over her brow, and Mr. Randolph did not feel satisfied with the sober lines of the little mouth upon which the lamplight shone. Once, too, Daisy's head went down upon her book, and lay there a little while. Mr. Randolph did not feel like talking to her just then, or he would have liked to go in and see what she was studying. But while ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... underneath Her whelmed Aurora's shade. But in that space When lay she dumb beside her trampled wreath, Like an unburied body mid the tombs, Feeling against her heart life's bitter probe For life, she saw how children of her race, The many sober sons and daughters, plied, By cottage lamplight through the water-globe, By simmering stew-pots, by the serious looms, Afield, in factories, with the birds astir, Their nimble feet and fingers; not denied Refreshful chatter, laughter, galliard songs. So like Earth's indestructible ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... officers in pale blue uniforms, handing coffee to the ladies, or taking from silver dishes carried by children the delicious macaroons which are to Nancy what Madeleines are to Commercy. Imagine long windows opening into a garden: rosy lamplight streaming out, silver moonlight streaming in; music; the wonderful voice of a man (Julian O'Farrell) singing the "Marseillaise," the "Star-Spangled Banner," and "Tipperary." Then into the midst of this breaking the tiresome ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... confirmation of my first conjecture? Lamplight at noonday, in a mansion thus deserted, and in a room which had been the scene of memorable and disastrous events, was ominous. Hitherto no direct proof had been given of the presence of a human being. How to ascertain his presence, or whether ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... the proffered match and lit the two bracket lamps, fastened to the walls of the dining room. The room, seen by the lamplight, was shiplike, but as decidedly not shipshape. The chronometer on the mantel was obscured by a thick layer of dust. The three gorgeous oil paintings—from the brush of the local sign painter—respectively representing ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... localities, on passing which the policeman, even in broad daylight, cannot refrain from turning his head a little backwards—as though some bedevilments must necessarily be taking place directly he has passed—where, in musty back parlours, by furtive lamplight, with doors barred, bolted, and sheeted with iron, some wretched, cheating gambling goes on at unholy hours. Chicken-hazard is scotched, not killed; but a poor, weazened, etiolated biped is that ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... there emerged the light and graceful form of a young female. She held in her left hand a little basket, of the contents of which (for it was empty) she had apparently just disposed; and, as she stepped across the road, the lamplight fell on a face in the first bloom of youth, and characterised by an expression of childlike innocence and candour. It was a face regularly and exquisitely lovely, yet something there was in the aspect that saddened you; you knew not why, for it was not sad itself; on the ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... bareness lay wrapped in a kindly shadow through which glinted diamond sparks from much-scrubbed tin. "It's nice—" Beryl meditated. She loved this hour, she loved the singing tea-kettle and the smell of strong soap and her mother's face in the lamplight, with all the loud noises of the street hushed, and the ugliness outside hidden by the closed door, against the paintless boards of which had been nailed a flaming poster inviting the nation's youth ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... had it not been for his unpleasant expression, at once knowing and suspicious. The other Horace immediately recognised as Monsieur Linders; and a moment afterwards he perceived little Madeleine, sitting nestled close up to her father's side. The lamplight shone on her curly head and innocent mignonne face as she watched the game with eager eyes; it was piquant, and she was marking for her father, and when he had a higher score than his opponent, she laughed and clapped her hands ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... he saw that there was a light in Madeleine's window. She was at home, then. He imagined her sitting quiet and busy in her pleasant room, which, except for the ring of lamplight, was sunk in peaceful shadow. This was what he needed: an hour's rest, dim light, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the bow-window on the ground floor was closely shuttered. Raffles admitted himself with his latch-key, and I squeezed past him into a very narrow hall. I did not hear him shut the door, but we were no longer in the lamplight, and he pushed softly past me ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... very few moments Pat found himself before a hulk of an adobe. It was a long, rambling structure, somehow forbidding, and he blinked as he stared with faint apprehension at the lamplight streaming out of two windows. Directly the man dismounted and, making the reins fast to a post, walked toward the house. For a moment Pat saw his tall figure silhouetted in the doorway, to the accompaniment of a quiet ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... once as one of those in her calendar," the girl went on, "but she seems to recognize your supernatural qualities only by lamplight. I am a little bit proud that I can detect ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... by this welcome rope, and at the same time being assisted by the two men, the boy quickly gained the open doorway, where he stood blinking in the bright lamplight, while mud and water ran from him in streams. He faced the occupants of the boat, who, standing a few steps back in the room, regarded him with undisguised wonder, not unmixed with suspicion. On the table behind them stood a small, gaudily-dressed object, ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... for the gift. But to go back to the salon. Allowing that you had gathered all your men and women together, what would you do with them? Make them talk? They would all with one accord begin to flirt. Your salon would become a glorified Peliti's—a 'Scandal Point' by lamplight." ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... things like small bits of jelly, on which the whales feed. As soon as he heard this he got a bucket and hauled some sea-water aboard, and for the next ten days he was never done working away with the sea-water; pouring it into tumblers and glasses; looking through it by daylight and by lamplight; tasting it, and boiling it, and examining ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... light of which was just sufficient to show a slender, well-bred figure in an ordinary medical black frock-coat, whose head, quite silvered with age, was bent over neat piles of notes. This gentleman looked up for an instant as they entered, and the lamplight fell on his glittering spectacles and long, clean-shaven face—a face which would have been simply like an aristocrat's but that a certain lion poise of the head and long cleft in the chin made it look more like a very handsome actor's. It was only for a flash that his face was thus lifted. ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... out upon the verandah, and continuing his walk there, presently came opposite the windows of the library. There he saw Daisy seated at the table, reading. Her hand was over her brow, and Mr. Randolph did not feel satisfied with the sober lines of the little mouth upon which the lamplight shone. Once too, Daisy's head went down upon her book and lay there a little while. Mr. Randolph did not feel like talking to her just then, or he would have liked to go in and see what she was studying. ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... he goes with dusky rustling gown. His steps are soft, his hands are white and fine; And still he bears the goblet on whose crown A hundred jewels in the lamplight shine; And ever from its edges dripping down Falls with dark stain the rich and lustrous wine, Wherefrom through all the chamber's shadowy deeps A deadly ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... down—you're delayin' the game," said the Stockman. The Banker shoved over three stacks of patriotically assorted colors and made a memorandum. The Five howled mockery and derision, the cards danced and beckoned luringly in the mellow lamplight, the Judge pulled his coat-tail, the Major Premise tugged. Steve sat down, pulling ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... better by lamplight—in London, at least. Though Marie is clean—really clean, as the French are. Why do you look at the flowers so critically? Marie got them all fresh in ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... writing-table. The sight of his last unfinished sentence, abruptly abandoned in the centre of a neatly written page of manuscript, had fascinated him, and as he sat there idly with the loose sheet in his hands, holding it so that the lamplight might fall upon its very legible characters, an idea flashed into his brain,—an idea which had persistently eluded him for days. With the sudden stimulus of a purely mental activity, he had hastily thrown aside his outdoor garment, and had written for several hours with a readiness and ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sink very low. So quiet was he, that his aunt could hardly understand him, and any one who had seen the boisterous, lively boy at Ashton Grange, would hardly have known him as the same one who was sitting so quietly before the drawing-room fire in the lamplight. He was sitting there in dreamy fashion with a very sad, heavy heart, when his aunt asked him what was his bedtime. A fortnight ago, if this question had been put to Arthur, he would not have given the same answer that he did now. Then he ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code
... before they were thrown to the wild beasts. On one occasion, rising from a banquet, he called for his slippers, which were kept by the slaves while the guests reclined on the purple couches, and so impatient was he for the sight of death, that, walking up and down his covered portico by lamplight with ladies and senators, he then and there ordered some of his wretched victims to be beheaded in ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... was speaking, the man's glance strayed from her flashing eyes to the face of a tarnished, smoke-blackened portrait that showed indistinct in the dull lamplight of the little room. Chloe's glance followed MacNair's, and as the little clock ticked sharply, both stared in silence into the lean, lined features of ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... past nine in the evening when Salemina and I drove to Holyrood, our humble cab-horse jogging faithfully behind Lady Baird's brougham, and it was the new experience of seeing Auld Reekie by lamplight that called up these gay visions of other days,—visions and days so thoroughly our mental property that we could not help resenting the fact that women were hanging washing from the Countess of Eglinton's former windows, and popping their ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... yourself a plaster mask of Dante in the red lamplight, with a forest of silver-white hair above the brows. Blindness intensified the expression of bitterness and sorrow in that grand face of his; the dead eyes were lighted up, as it were, by a thought within that ...
— Facino Cane • Honore de Balzac
... old withered woman spoke a smile glimmered on her countenance like lamplight on the wall of a sepulchre. The lady trembled and cast her eyes upward to the verge of the basin, as if meditating to return with her purpose unaccomplished. But it ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... large a share in developing the anarchies of my subsequent dreams: an agency which they accomplished, 1st, through velocity at that time unprecedented—for they first revealed the glory of motion; 2dly, through grand effects for the eye between lamplight and the darkness upon solitary roads; 3dly, through animal beauty and power so often displayed in the class of horses selected for this mail service; 4thly, through the conscious presence of a central intellect, that, in the midst of vast distances [Footnote: ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... memory came the two women of my dream of long ago. How deeply that dream had impressed itself upon my mind! And then there flashed across my brain the image of Marjie, as she looked the night when she stood in the doorway with the lamplight on her brown curls, and it became clear to me that she was safe at home. Oh, the joy of that moment! The unutterable thankfulness that filled my soul was matched in intensity only by the horror that fills it even now when I think of a white woman in Indian ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter |
