"Taper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... door of his room, when suddenly his ear caught the sound of slow and stealthy footsteps upon the stairs. His own lamp was unlit, but a dim glimmer came from a moving taper, and a long black shadow travelled down the wall. He stood motionless, listening intently. The steps were in the hall now, and he heard a gentle creaking as the key was cautiously turned in the door. The next instant there came a gust of cold air, the taper was extinguished, ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... body of dusky clouds, that was much too dense for any borrowed rays to penetrate. Here and there, a straggling gleam appeared to find its way through a covering of vapour less dense than the rest, and fell upon the water like the dim illumination of a distant taper. As the wind was fresh and easterly, the sea seemed to throw upward from its agitated surface, more light, than it received; long lines of white, glittering foam following each other, and lending, at moments, a distinctness ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... sorcerer that her husband would be king, and she joined him in acts of witchcraft in order to bring this about. She was condemned (October, 1441) to do penance by walking three successive days in a white sheet and carrying a lighted taper, starting each day from St. Paul's and visiting certain churches. Her husband, says the chronicler Grafton, "took all patiently and said little." Still retaining some power in the Council, he lived ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... I watched the brilliant figures swimming in the glow of wax candles. Face after face could be singled out as beautiful, and the scant dresses revealed taper forms. Madame de Ferrier's garments may have been white or blue or yellow; I remember only her satin arms and neck, the rosy color of her face, and the powder on her hair making it white as down. Where this assembly was collected from ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... real rapture of gloomy expectation, which the whole world would not have persuaded him to disappoint. The clock struck twelve, the owl screeched from the ruined battlement, the door was opened by the sexton, who, by the light of a glimmering taper, conducted the despairing lover to a dreary aisle, and stamped upon the ground with his foot, saying, "Here the young lady ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... door where its keeper introduces its food, its mind, when awake, appears to be constantly occupied about "creature comforts." In the course of the day it laps up with its darting tongue, and sucks in through its long taper snout a dozen eggs, and almost the whole of a rabbit, chopped into a fine mince-meat. With such dainty fare, and with the anxious attention which it receives from its sagacious curators, it is scarcely surprising that it thrives; and when the warm weather comes, it will be a fine sight ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... sleeves that covered the arm to the wrist. The tunic was purple in color, like the candys, or robe, but striped or mixed with white. The lower limbs were encased in trousers of a crimson hue. On his feet the the king wore shoes like those of the Medes, long and taper at the toe buttoned in front, and reaching very high up the instep: their color was deep yellow or saffron. [PLATE ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... of the prisoner gleamed like the flash of an expiring taper, wild and fitful, on our entering forms. He was dreadfully altered,—I should scarcely have recognized him through the gloomy shade of his long-neglected hair, and thick, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... came, I was minded to repair to my lover; but, being the worse for wine, I knew not when going to her whither I went, so my drunkenness turned me into a by street called Syndic Street;[FN523] and the while I walked up that street behold, I caught sight of an old woman faring with a lighted taper in one hand, and in the other a folded letter.—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the arched entrance,—which, as is often the case with Roman entrances, was as accessible at midnight as at noon,—he groped his way to the broad staircase, and, lighting his wax taper, went glimmering up the multitude of steps that led to Hilda's door. The hour being so unseasonable, he intended merely to knock, and, as soon as her voice from within should reassure him, to retire, keeping his explanations ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and arranges fresh festivals; trade flourishes under his rule, and the people find themselves well off, in spite of the many taxes laid upon them. But what are the people? a vulgar multitude who, like the gnats, fly towards every thing brilliant, and, so long as the taper burns, will continue to flutter round it, even though they burn their wings in doing so. Let Pisistratus' torch burn out, Phanes, and I'll swear that the fickle crowd will flock around the returning nobles, the new light, just as they now do ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the whole history of the Russian campaign, for it is the preface I ought to read in order to be able to understand the book. And, then, in conclusion, tell me what the good Lord has done, and whether He will now employ His old Blucher. I feel as though an altar-taper had been suddenly lighted in my heart, and as though an organ were playing in my head. I must collect my thoughts. Speak, Scharnhorst, for you see this surprising news may make me insane." He pressed his hands against his temples ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... the young man up-stairs, Mrs. Sandford put on a shawl, and, by the time he had reached the second flight, she opened a door, and lighted the gas with a taper, saying,— ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... his conscience would not let him rest till he had renounced the heresies in which he had been brought up. The news spread fast. At all the coffeehouses it was told how the prime minister of England, his feet bare, and a taper in his hand, had repaired to the royal chapel and knocked humbly for admittance; how a priestly voice from within had demanded who was there, how Sunderland had made answer that a poor sinner who had long ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... you know. They are not like your wax taper at all; they are little wax matches, that burn just long enough to seal one or two letters; Miss Allen showed me how she used them. Hers were in a nice little box, just like the inkstand on the outside; and there was a place to light the matches, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... charge of the baggage, to their rooms. Gabrielle caught sight of her favourite lute, and desired a page to bring it to her, that she might see if the precious instrument had been injured by the sea-voyage. As she bent over it with earnest attention, and her taper fingers ran up and down the strings, a smile, like the dawn of spring, passed over the dark countenances of Biorn and his son; and both said, with an involuntary sigh, "Ah! if you would but play on that lute, and sing ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... mould of races, —that you may look in vain for verification of ethnological assertions.... No: the heel does not protrude;—the foot is not flat, but finely arched;—the extremities are not large;—all the limbs taper, all the muscles are developed; and prognathism has become so rare that months of research may not yield a single striking case of it.... No: this is a special race, peculiar to the island as are the shapes of its peaks,—a mountain race; and mountain races are comely.... ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... to smoke only this once. That is, I didn't mean to at first, but after I got to smoking I thought it would be a good plan to taper off." ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... he tried to place in her hand a blessed candle, symbol of the celestial glory with which she was soon to be surrounded. Emma, too weak, could not close her fingers, and the taper, but for Monsieur Bournisien would have ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... in a point be attached to the conductor of an electrical machine, electricity escapes in large quantities from the point. A continuous current is thus kept up and the flame of a taper, if placed in front of the current, is blown in a horizontal direction. Wind is thus manufactured on a ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... said, And from his wallet drew a human hand, Shrivelled and dry and black. And fitting, as he spake, A taper in his hold, Pursued: "A murderer on the stake had died. I drove the vulture from his limbs and lopt The hand that did the murder, and drew up The tendon strings to close its grasp, And in the sun and wind Parched ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... and sixty is the whole range of the maxima of the present race of trotting horses. The same thing is seen in the running of men. Many can run a mile in five minutes; but when one comes to the fractions below, they taper down until somewhere about 4.30 the maximum is reached. Averages of masses have been studied more than averages of maxima and minima. We know from the Registrar-General's Reports, that a certain number of children—say ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... Advance into that brilliant country, and you draw in life at every pore—a thousand merry figures come to meet you: maidens clad in the gay costumes of the elder time, all fluttering with ribbons, rosy cheeks and lips!—maidens who smile, and with their taper fingers point at those who follow them; gay shepherds, gallant in silk stockings and embroidered doublets, carrying their crooks wreathed round with flowers; while over all, the sun laughs gladly, and the breezes bear away ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... the front room, a slight, wavering light such as would be given by a small candle or taper. The blind was down, but the light shone dimly through. Outside in the garden, with his figure outlined against the luminous square, there stood a man, his back to the road, his two hands upon the window ledge, and his body rather bent as though he were trying to peep in past the blind. ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... corrugating his heavy brows as with a pang of fiercely resented, strongly borne pain. Still, the child had no doubt contrived to make her way into the great gloomy cavern of the grim Doctor's heart, and stole constantly further and further in, carrying a ray of sunshine in her hand as a taper to light her way, and illuminate the rude dark pit into which she so ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... then been with him—puzzled at the depth of the charm or spell over him, which lay, for a little while at least, in the mere absence of pain; once, especially, when an older boy taught him to make flowers of sealing-wax, and he had burnt his hand badly at the lighted taper, and been unable to sleep. He remembered that also afterwards, as a sort of typical thing—a white vision of heat about him, clinging closely, through the languid scent of the ointments put upon the place to ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... tower, where busy science plies Her vast antennae, feeling thro' the skies; That little vernier, on whose slender lines The midnight taper trembles as it shines, A silent index, tracks the planets' march In all their wanderings thro' the ethereal arch, Tells through the mist where dazzled Mercury burns, And marks the spot where ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... greater knowledge with very limited powers. His little circle of light is surrounded by a wall of darkness, which he strives to penetrate and lighten, now groping blindly on its verge, now advancing his taper light and peering forward; yet unable to go far, and even afraid to venture, in case ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... bridegroom's lack of means to support a wife, and partly from fear of giving offence to his family. In the dead of an August night, in 1744, the bridal party stole out of Mr Merrill's house, and made its way to the neighbouring church, where the ceremony was performed by the light of a taper concealed in the best man's hat. Thus, romantically and mysteriously, Elizabeth Chudleigh took her first matrimonial step, which was to lead to such ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... newly-disgorged wine are going on. Another flight of steps leads to the second tier of cellars, where the moisture trickles down the dank dingy walls, and save the dim light thrown out by the candles we carried, and by some other far-off flickering taper stuck in a cleft stick to direct the workmen, who with dexterous turns of their wrists give a twist to the bottles, all is darkness. On every side bottles are reposing in various attitudes, the majority in huge square ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... uneven roads, and when very great jolting strains may be met with, being stronger than those of class B design. The wheels are made with mild steel spokes, which are secured by metal straps in the recesses cut in the annular flanges on the boss, and by a taper bolt or rivet through the tire and rim. These spokes can be easily taken out and renewed when necessary by any unskilled person in a few minutes. The spokes being twisted midway of their length give greater strength to the wheel and power to resist side strains in pulling out of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various
... connection for lighting, so they carried candles, Anthony holding one aloft for himself and Bettina, and Delia coming after with a taper. Peter, like a flash of flame, slipped ahead of Delia and ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... good faith in them, something sweet and sympathetic, was after all a value, whether of their own humanity, their own special quality, or only of our innocence, never to be renewed; but I light this taper to the initiators, so to call them, whom I remembered, when we had left them behind, as if they had given us a silver key to carry off and so to refit, after long years, to sweet names never thought of from then till now. Signor Leon Javelli, in whom the French and the Italian charm ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... lonely church, or dreary hall, Where fancy paints the glimmering taper blue, Where damps hang mouldering on the ivy'd wall, And sheeted ghosts ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... see them afterwards?" Charles resumed, in a sharp, eager whisper. "In our dreams, man? Or when the watchman cries, and we awake, and the monks are singing lauds at St. Germain, and—and the taper is low?" ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... move. She conjured him, as he valued her esteem, to flee from that spot, and to return to it no more. He pressed her hand to his devoted lips. "What would become of her?" she emphatically exclaimed, clasping her taper fingers in distrust and doubt. "You will be mine, dear Margaret," was the wild reply, and the taper fingers easily relaxed—gave way—and got confounded with his own. After the lapse of four-and-twenty hours, reason ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... indeed, were all the plays Mrs. Behn marshalls forth in this preface. The scene particularly referred to is Act ii, I: 'Oedipus enters, walking asleep in his Shirt, with a Dagger in his Right-Hand and a Taper in his Left.' A little after 'Enter Jocasta, attended with Lights, in ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... tombs With popes and kings in their porphyry wombs, All famishing in expectation Of the main-altar's consummation. For see, for see, the rapturous moment Approaches, and earth's best endowment Blends with heaven's; the taper-fires Pant up, the winding brazen spires Heave loftier yet the baldachin; The incense-gaspings, long kept in, Suspire in clouds; the organ blatant Holds his breath and grovels latent, As if God's hushing finger grazed him, (Like Behemoth when he praised him) At the silver bell's shrill tinkling, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... sat there came a low, choking sound, but it died away in her throat, and with her hands locked so firmly together that the taper nails made indentation in the tender flesh, she listened, while ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... writing-table in his study when Klaus came in. "I'm just sealing up the letter with the money for Martin Bruvold," he said, setting the taper to a stick of sealing wax. "I've signed it: 'From ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... her Luke on their way from Navarre to Andalusia. She dressed her hair high on the top of her head, displaying thus both the graceful curve of her snowy neck and the shape of her pretty head. She wore earrings in her small ears, and the taper fingers of her rough but clean hands were covered with rings. Lastly, Frasquita's voice was as sweet as a flute, and her laugh was so merry and so silvery it seemed like the ringing of bells on Saturday of Glory or ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... sun or blazing taper's light: The moonbeamed landscape and tempestuous night Alone she loves; and oft with glimmering lamp Near graves new opened, or midst dungeons damp, Drear forests, ruined aisles and haunted towers, Forlorn she roves ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... pain he might give to the former, by thus dallying with his affections, that he even did not think upon the risk of involving his own daughter in the perils of an unfortunate passion; as if her predilection, which could not escape his attention, were like the flame of a taper which might be lighted or extinguished at pleasure. But Providence had prepared a dreadful requital for this keen observer of human passions, who had spent his life in securing advantages to himself by artfully working ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... achieved there; but far away to the west, where Nature received him on her flowery lap, beside his own Avon; in the shades where his genius first grew familiar with the shapes of beauty, sublimity, and terror, and whither he retired at last 'to husband out life's taper' amid the common charities of home; to this spot it is that you must repair, if you would drink freshly of that well-spring of associations which hallows the footsteps of England's immortal dramatist. In like manner, one might say, that it is not in the sumptuous galleries ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... figure was by the altar now to light the candles for Vespers; a taper was in his hand, and the spot of light at the end moved like a star against the gilding and carving. Ralph turned ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... hall was not pleasant. The red wall-paper was soiled and torn, and weird shadows flickered from the small gas taper that blinked from the ceiling. There were suggestions of old dinners, stale fried potatoes and pork in all the corners, and one moving toward the stairs seemed to stir them up and set them going again ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... panting, staggered to the window, which he opened a little way by passing his hands under the blind, and held his face there to breathe the fresh air before hurrying-back to his writing table. Here he struck a match, lit a taper, and, taking it up, moved toward the closet door like one in a dream, but stopped short, blew out the light, and plunged into ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... of the people of Canada, against the military force of the Empire of Great Britain. The sovereign of our mighty realm tolerates in no land any dispute of her authority, and this mad uprising will be crushed as I might stamp put the feeble splutter of a bed-room taper. There are without the intervention of outside force at all, enough of brave and loyal whitemen to overthrow this scurvy miscreant; and my immediate task is to do the little that lies in my power to incite them to their duty. When my ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... be repeated with a wax taper instead of the bullet, with a view of separating the light from the caloric. For this purpose a transparent plate of glass must be interposed between the mirrors; for light, you know, passes with great facility through glass, whilst the transmission of caloric is almost ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... sail Approaching, and upbraid the tardy gale, There list at midnight, till is heard no more, Below, the echo of his parting oar, There hang in fear, when growls the frozen stream, [v] To guide his dangerous tread, the taper's ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... compounds containing hydrogen are readily decomposed by the gas; for example, a piece of paper dipped in turpentine inflames in an atmosphere of chlorine, producing hydrochloric acid and a copious deposit of soot; a lighted taper burns in chlorine with a dull smoky flame. The solution of chlorine in water, when freshly prepared, possesses a yellow colour, but on keeping becomes colourless, on account of its decomposition into hydrochloric acid and oxygen. It is on this property that its ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... with her small taper finger on her lip, "it's the fairies I'm after—the 'good people,' nurse Bridget has told me so much about. I am sure there must be some of them in this still, shady place. I've found their 'rings' in ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... companions, always widely different, was particularly so at the present moment. Miss Haviland, with her chin gracefully resting on one folded hand, and her calm and beautiful, but now deeply-clouded brow, shaded by the white, taper fingers of the other, was abstractedly gazing into the glowing coals on the hearth before her, while the gentle, but less reflective McRea, with a countenance disturbed only by the passing emotions of sympathy that occasionally flitted over it, as she glanced at the downcast face of her ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... lies below the horse's "knee" thus corresponds to the middle finger in ourselves, what has become of the four other fingers or digits? We find in the places of the second and fourth digits only two slender splint-like bones, about two-thirds as long as the cannon-bone, which gradually taper to their lower ends and bear no finger joints, or, as they are termed, phalanges. Sometimes, small bony or gristly nodules are to be found at the bases of these two metacarpal splints, and it is probable that these represent rudiments of the first and fifth toes. Thus, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of moulding usually made at the caps and bases of round pillars, to taper or hance the round ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... grass held sacred by the Hindoos and freely used at their religious ceremonies. Its leaves are very long and taper to a ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... a precipitous morass to the river's brink. A slender pine-tree spanned the screaming foam and bent midway to touch the water. The surge beat upon the taper trunk and gave it a rhythmical swaying motion, while the feet of the packers had worn smooth its wave-washed surface. Eighty feet it stretched in ticklish insecurity. Frona stepped upon it, felt it move ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... chamber and pleasant the light, Tranquil and innocent, tender and calm; Sweet are the thoughts that approach us at night, Sweet as the breeze with its perfumy balm. And if I am reading the happy Word, Or saying my prayers by the taper's glow, I wish that my Harry had this preferr'd To the painted toys ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... these cigars? They're some I've just got out from London, but I'm not quite satisfied with them myself," he grumbled, pushing toward me the silver box and its attendant taper. ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... beneath them, there are four little calcareous beads (as may be known by their dissolving with effervescence in any acid, and breaking easily under the needle); these are the 3/2000ths of an inch in their larger external diameter; they are rather deeply imbedded in the outer integument, and taper a little downwards ending in a concave terminal point, into which a minute tubulus enters, like those passing into and through the valves of ordinary Cirripedia: along the axis of imbedment, they are ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... Abate, with slow and measured steps, bearing the holy cross. Immediately followed a litter, on which lay the dying person covered with a white veil, borne along and surrounded by nuns veiled in white, each carrying in her hand a lighted taper. Last came the friars, two and two, cloathed in black, ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... much to say of the main-de-gloire and the chandelle magique. Widespread among thieves is the belief in the "magic taper." At Meesow, in the Regenwald district of Pomerania, these tapers are made of the entrails of unborn children, can only be extinguished with milk, and, as long as they burn, no one in the house to be robbed ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... is making the wealthy Jews forsake the synagogue for the opera-house, or the gentility chapel, in which a disciple of Mr. Platitude, in a white surplice, preaches a sermon at noon- day from a desk, on each side of which is a flaming taper. It is making them abandon their ancient literature, their "Mischna," their "Gemara," their "Zohar," for gentility novels, "The Young Duke," the most unexceptionably genteel book ever written, being the principal favourite. ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... had nothing to cheer the gloom of a very large apartment—the walls of which (now dotted all over by the melancholy rays of the rush-light, as they struggled through the holes of the box) were of dark-brown wainscoat—but one solitary wax taper. There lay coats, trousers, linen, books, papers, dressing-materials, in dire confusion, about the room. In despair I set me down at the foot of the bed, and contemplated the chaos around me. My energies were paralyzed by the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... leading to his own chamber. Once there, he closed and barred the door. He kindled a light, and flinging the letter on the table, he sat and contemplated its exterior and the great red seal that gleamed in the yellow light of his taper. ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... the bringing in of a candle discovers the vanity of their fears. For this exposure of supernatural agents upon a stage is truly bringing in a candle to expose their own delusiveness. It is the solitary taper and the book that generates a faith in these terrors: a ghost by chandelier light, and in good company, deceives no spectators,—a ghost that can be measured by the eye, and his human dimensions made out at leisure. The sight of a well-lighted house, and a well-dressed audience, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... farther door with quivering lips, or sighed when it opened, and emitted merely a councillor or a marquis. Several times a masked lady flitted through the crowd, with a bow here and the honour of her taper fingers there. The windows were open, the summer air entered; and the murmur of the throng without, mingling with the stir of talk within, seemed to add to the light and colour ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... adopted to get rid of the Evil Spirit, but she knew this much, that he was laid in Llyn-y-Geulan-Goch, and that he was to remain there until a lighted candle, which was hidden somewhere in the church, when the Spirit was overcome, should go out. Often and again had she searched for this taper, but failed to discover it, but she supposes it is still burning somewhere, for the Evil One has not yet escaped ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... follow, and taking a lighted taper, led the way into a room at the back of his shop. Ombos pottered about with the taper on the end of a rod; suddenly a big overhead chandelier burst into light and I ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... the stringency of these three precepts is the unbroken continuity which they require. To rejoice, to pray, to give thanks, are easy when circumstances favour, as a taper burns steadily in a windless night; but to do these things always is as difficult as for the taper's flame to keep upright when all the winds are eddying round it. 'Evermore'—'without ceasing'—'in everything'—these qualifying words give the injunctions of this text ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... thoughts and a laboured style. Addison was not insensible to these charms, and he felt the seductive art of Cicero when he said, that "there is as much difference in apprehending a thought clothed in Cicero's language and that of a common author, as in seeing an object by the light of a taper, or by the light of ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... together, are gathered round it. Draw but a little circle above the clustering housetops, and you shall have within its space everything, with its opposite extreme and contradiction, close beside. Where yonder feeble light is shining, a man is but this moment dead. The taper at a few yards' distance is seen by eyes that have this instant opened on the world. There are two houses separated by but an inch or two of wall. In one, there are quiet minds at rest; in the other, a waking conscience that one might think would trouble ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... he does for you!" cried the baron, pressing together the points of his ten taper fingers. "Had he but let you conclude your career at Oxford, I have heard enough of your scholarship to know that you would have taken high honours, been secure of a fellowship, have betaken yourself with content to a slow and laborious profession, and ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and vinaigrettes that you could hold to your nose to keep you from fainting when you saw a dandy. Oh! I can tell you that Mr. Nonesuch understood keeping a toy shop; there were plenty of carriages always in front of it, plenty of taper fingers pulling over his wares, and plenty of husbands and fathers who returned thanks that New ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... fall pleasant things everywhere. On the Marseilles quilt a gorgeous silk coverlet lay folded. On the dressing-table a confusion of vases and bottles, in coloured glass and painted china, were mixed up with combs and brushes and fans and watch pockets and taper stands. The table in the middle of the floor was heaped with elegant books and trinkets and work-boxes and writing implements; and book stands and book shelves were about, and soft foot cushions were dropped on the ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... do? One thing only de Launay could have done: what he said he would do. Fancy him sitting, from the first, with lighted taper, within arm's length of the Powder-Magazine; motionless, like old Roman Senator, or bronze Lamp-holder; coldly apprising Thuriot, and all men, by a slight motion of his eye, what his resolution was:—Harmless ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... in readiness, with three horses saddled and equipped for the journey. The company were quickly mounted on three spirited horses, and reached Cherry Valley at eleven o'clock P. M.—a place Nelly had never seen before. No cottage window showed the light of a taper; but the light of the full moon fell in tranquil loveliness upon the rounded hill-tops, and the glittering stars added their beauty to the heavens, while the green forest and flowering shrubbery clothed the earth with beauty, and the sweet-scented clover perfumed the surrounding ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... a fine show, even in the dim, unsteady light of the single taper that burned in its tumbler of oil close beside the bed. Indeed, when it arose in all its splendor, ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... Ramsay, taking up her hand, which lay listless at her side, and playing with her taper fingers, "you really think William of ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... a shaded taper and opened the door leading from his master's chamber, the wind was heard howling through the long passages, ready to burst ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... to you, or perhaps he will do so. If he does, don't believe him. I have done him no ill, and wish him none. He is a worthless boaster and a babbler. He does not really honour you, and merely plays the hypocrite. But I honour you from my heart; and, behold, I place a taper before you!" Sometimes incidents occur which display a still more curious blending of the two religions. Thus a Tcheremiss, on one occasion, in consequence of a serious illness, sacrificed a young foal ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... many persons seriously believed had been created for the accommodation of men happily endowed with a fondness for showing their greatness, which was the case with the aspiring Don Fernando, whose light was no taper burning in a small space. The letter set forth, with many flourishes, the necessity for showing proper respect to one so distinguished in the political world. And this the major held to be a significant ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... a taper waning fast! Use it, man, well whilst it doth last: Lest burning downwards it consume away, Before thou hast commenced the labour of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various
... saw the jewels come back, one by one, ring added to ring on the little taper fingers, the rubies for the neck, and the pendent yellow earrings. Though Lizzie was in mourning for her father, still these things were allowed to be visible. The countess was not the woman to see them without inquiry, and she inquired vigorously. She threatened, stormed, and ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Eugippius's life of St. Severinus. The reader finds how the man who had secretly celebrated a heathen sacrifice was discovered by St. Severinus, because, while the tapers of the rest of the congregation were lighted miraculously from heaven, his taper alone would not light; and passes on impatiently, with regret that the biographer omits to mention what the heathen sacrifice was like. He reads how the Danube dared not rise above the mark of the cross which St. Severinus had cut upon the posts of a timber chapel; how a poor man, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... collarless dress of pale blue print she wore revealed her smooth, slender throat; her sleeves were rolled up above her elbows and the hand which guided the bow of her violin was perhaps the most beautiful thing about her, perfect in shape and texture, firm and white, with rosy-nailed taper fingers. One long, drooping plume of lilac blossom lightly touched her hair and cast a wavering shadow over the flower-like face ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Sultan himself hath chosen this beauty for Her Majesty—she who perchance will never mount him, scorning to do aught that would make the blood flow warmer through the veins;—going daily to San Nicolo with her taper and knowing naught of pleasure in life; unless it verily pleaseth her to grieve! What availeth it to her that ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... dressing-rooms, libraries, bedrooms, drawing-rooms, oratories, all crowded into the space of a hearthrug. The first night, I remember, with my books and maps about me, I wanted light; they brought me a taper, and immediately from out of the silent Desert there rushed in a flood of life unseen before. Monsters of moths, of all shapes and hues, that never before perhaps had looked upon the shining of a flame, now madly thronged into my tent, and dashed through the fire of the ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... weather with increasing ease. With such a destination, what mattered a little buffeting of wind or a sprinkle of cold water? I recalled Flora's image, I took her in fancy to my arms, and my heart throbbed. And the next moment I had recognised the inanity of that fool's paradise. If I could spy her taper as she went to bed, I might ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... minstrel sang songs to the accompaniment of the harp, and the young ladies danced in couples and repeated at intervals the minstrel's songs. Sometimes the torch-dance was performed; in this each performer bore in his hand a long lighted taper, and endeavoured to prevent his neighbours from blowing it out, which each one tried to do if possible (Fig. 184). This dance, which was in use up to the end of the sixteenth century at court, was generally ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... gone off," cried the boy, drawing a deep long breath, as he eagerly looked round the deck and up at the rigging of the smart schooner, whose raking taper masts and white canvas gave her quite the ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... of the house was now in darkness, but a smaller room adjoining it was lit by candles, and by a tiny taper floating before a crucifix. In the light of the candles Chesterton made out a bed, a priest bending over it, a woman kneeling beside it, and upon the bed the little figure of a boy who tossed and moaned. As Chesterton halted and waited hesitating, the priest ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... madam. You have had a most fatiguing day. Permit me!" said Mr. Force, and he lighted a wax taper and put it ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... fancy dress, in one of the circus costumes, and was full of all manner of dreadful accessories; the stage smile, the made-up beauty, the tortured hair: but there was no difficulty in recognising it. A trembling like palsy seized upon him as he gazed at it: then he lit his taper once more, and with a prayer upon his quivering lips burnt it. The ring he twisted up in paper, and carried out with him in his hand till he reached the muddy, dark-flowing river, where he dropped it in. Thus all relics and vestiges of her, poor creature, God forgive ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... earl sat and watched the young man (for he could not be thirty yet), struck down thus in the prime of his days—carried away into the other world—while he himself, with his frail, flickering taper of a life, remained. Wherefore? At length, in a whisper, he called "Helen!" and she came and knelt beside the ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Every wax taper was lighted in the silver candelabra, and the dim old mirrors multiplied their lights on every side. A great wood fire threw a cheerful glow over the portraits and the frescoed ceiling. All the linen covers had been taken ...
— The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows Johnston
... The taper had burnt out. We lay side by side striving to sleep, while distress of mind and a wounded heart brought the tears into ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... cold chisel should never be ground to a long, tapering point, like a wood chisel. The proper taper for a wood chisel is 15 degrees, whereas a cold chisel should be 45 degrees. A drifting chisel may have a longer taper than one used ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... first be liberated by acting upon the substance with a stronger acid, and then applying the lime-water test. The presence of large quantities of carbonic acid in a gaseous mixture can be readily detected by plunging into the vessel a lighted taper, which will be immediately extinguished. This ought always to be adopted in a brewery, where many fatal accidents have happened through workmen going down into empty fermenting vats and wells without ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... with three others to assist, and in another minute or two the end of the tall taper stick was dropped into the hole and fixed there. A hole had been already bored in the top and a rope rove through it, to which Lumley soon attached the corners of a ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... praise—in particular Disston & Sons (fig. 53) for "improvements in the form of the handles, and in the mode of fixing them to the saw." The Disston saw also embodied an improved blade shape which made it "lighter and more convenient by giving it a greater taper to the point." Sheffield saws, once supplied to most of the world, were not exhibited at Philadelphia, and the British expert lamented that our "monopoly remains with us ...
— Woodworking Tools 1600-1900 • Peter C. Welsh
... alike, and both got off easily. Public confession and penance in one or more specifically designated churches, usually in the nearest parish church, constituted the customary penalty.[51] In a few instances it was coupled with the requirement that the criminal should stand in the pillory, taper in hand, at several places at stated times.[52] The ecclesiastical records are so full of church penances that a student is led to wonder how effectual they were in shaming the penitent into better conduct. It may well be guessed that most of the criminals were not sensitive souls that ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... were I killed and that letter found on me, your Highness would thereafter be too surely guarded to make escape possible, and his Highness Prince Sobieski would himself incur the Emperor's hostility. So when I had made sure that those five men were joined against me, I twisted that letter into a taper and before their faces lit my ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... the street, wear an English silk hat, not one of the taper crowned variety popular in the "movies." And wear it on your head, not on the back of your neck. Have your overcoat of plain black or dark blue material, for you must wear an overcoat with full dress even in summer. Use a plain white ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... mother; her age I guess, Thirteen summers, or something less; Girlish bust, but womanly air; Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair, Lips that lover has never kissed; Taper fingers and slender wrist; Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade; So they painted the little maid. On her hand a parrot green Sits ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... bound. Long and capacious as a shipwright forms Some bark's broad bottom to outride the storms, So large he built the raft; then ribbed it strong From space to space, and nailed the planks along. These formed the sides; the deck he fashioned last; Then o'er the vessel raised the taper mast, With crossing sail-yards dancing in the wind: And to the helm the guiding rudder joined (With yielding osiers fenced to break the force Of surging waves, and steer the steady course). Thy loom, Calypso, for the future ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... no wish a brother's love to share"— I did not read thy features dreamingly, And peer into thine eye's deep azure, there Searching another's depths, in revery! I did not press, all passionless, thy hand Or idly dally with thy taper finger, Or coldly gaze, for I could not withstand The high and holy hope ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... reveries, like life itself, must end, Gilbert at length seemed to be aware of the reality of the unpretending bed in the corner. Having repeated the prayers which his piety suggested, he extinguished the almost exhausted taper, and threw himself upon the bed. He could not sleep, however; for, great as the fatigue of the day had been, the excitement was greater. His mind was perpetually recurring to the events at the spring, from which they wandered to his father's lonely and anxious chamber: now he remembered the ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... from the cruel-featured little idol his mother had brought in her bundle—the old Scythian Artemis, hanging there on the wall, side by side with the forgotten Ares, blood-red,—the goddess reveals herself to the lad, poring through the dusk by taper-light, as at once a virgin, necessarily therefore the creature of solitude, yet also as the assiduous nurse of children, and patroness of the young. Her friendly intervention at the act of birth ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... by even ten or twelve attendants; and instead of the usual bearers and sextons, hirelings of the lowest of the populace undertook the office for the sake of gain; and accompanied by only a few priests, and often without a single taper, it was borne to the very nearest church, and lowered into the first grave that was not already too full to receive it. Among the middling classes, and especially among the poor, the misery was still greater. Poverty or negligence induced most of these to remain in their dwellings or in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... battle of Lincoln was preceded by a trifling incident to which the chroniclers have attached importance. It was the Feast of the Purification; and at the mass which was celebrated at the dawn of day, when the King was holding a lighted taper in his hand it was suddenly extinguished. "This was an omen of sorrow to the King," says Hoveden. But another chronicler, the author of the Gesta Stephain, tells us, in addition, that the wax candle was suddenly relighted; and he accordingly argues that this incident was "a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... only reason that this bulging seems in some cases excessive is that only a comparatively small section of the shaft is seen at once in near views. One that I measured in the King's River forest was 25 feet in diameter at the ground, and 10 feet in diameter 200 feet above the ground, showing that the taper of the trunk as a whole is charmingly fine. And when you stand back far enough to see the massive columns from the swelling instep to the lofty summit dissolving in a dome of verdure, you rejoice in the unrivaled display of combined grandeur and ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... the 'fairest princess under sky,' so any of the fair sex will serve them to write about just as well as another. They take some awkward thing and dress her up in fine words, as children dress up a wooden doll in fine clothes. Perhaps a fine head of hair, a taper waist, or some other circumstance strikes them, and they make the rest out according to their fancies. They have a wonderful knack of supplying deficiencies in the subjects of their idolatry out of the storehouse ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... it is desirable to proceed only at a moderate rate, since demand for private construction will be abnormally high for some time. Our public works program should be timed to reach its peak after demand for private construction has begun to taper off. Meanwhile, however, plans should be prepared if we are to act promptly when the present extraordinary private demand begins to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the check and read every word on it twice—not because I needed to; I was playing for time to think. Then I twisted it up in a taper, held it to the blaze in the fireplace, and lighted a cigarette with it. Dad kept his finger-tips together and watched me without any expression whatsoever in his face. I took three deliberate puffs, picked up the ticket, and glanced along down its dirty green length. Dad never ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... its downy growth dyed black, and gummed (the cheek at the same time having been faintly tinged with rouge, the locks parted, perfumed, and curled, the waist duly compressed, a slight addition, if necessary, made to the breadth of the hips, and the feet confined by the most taper and diminutive chausserie imaginable), will just serve to give to the tout ensemble that one touch of the masculine character which, perhaps, it may be well ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... fear within his heart As I had, when the wind did part The jasmine-leaves, and there within The new-lit taper glimmered thin? ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... first that it yielded little to the eye, and that little seemed altogether beyond his comprehension. His gaze helplessly followed Celia and her candle about as she busied herself in the work of illumination. When she had finished, and pinched out the taper, there were seven lights in the apartment—lights beaming softly through half-opaque alternating rectangles of blue and yellow glass. They must be set in some sort of lanterns around against ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... feet long should be firmly fixed in the ground: three feet of the but-end should be sunk, secured by sleepers to keep it steady: it should be at least three quarters of a yard in girth at bottom, and taper gradually to the top to half that size. An iron rim is to be driven on the head of the pole to keep it from splitting, and then a spindle at least an inch in diameter, with a shoulder, is to be fixed in it; an iron wheel with four spokes turned up at the end ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... say "I am not," but the words would not come. She was jealous, jealous of the past, cut to the heart every time she noticed that Lady Newhaven's hair waved over her ears, and that she had taper fingers. ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... it might be a question whether all the light did not come from her first, in some way, and perhaps it did; but then Hazel was luminous, and she fluttered about with quick, happy motions, till like a little glancing taper she had shone upon and lit up everybody and everything; and Dorris was sunny with clear content, and Kenneth was blithe, and Desire was scintillant, as she always was either with snaps or smiles; and here came in beaming Miss ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... into the hall, and leaned over the circular railing, and peered down into the space below. Only an old-fashioned waxen taper burned in a cup of oil; it emitted a feeble and ghostly light. The large webs of the spiders quivered in a draught. They assumed strange distorted shapes and seemed to point long fingers ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... sunlight, Where disease and sorrow in garrets languished neglected. Night after night, when the world was asleep, as the watchman repeated Loud, through the gusty streets, that all was well in the city, High at some lonely window he saw the light of her taper. Day after day, in the gray of the dawn, as slow through the suburbs Plodded the German farmer, with flowers and fruits for the market, Met he that meek, pale face, returning ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... beautiful in death, And with a kiss recalls her fleeting breath, To tapers thus, which by a blast expire, A lighted taper, touch'd, restores the fire: She rear'd her swimming eye, and saw the light, And Guilford too, or she had loath'd the sight: Her father's death she bore, despis'd her own, But now she must, she will, have leave to groan: Ah! Guilford, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... within a chest, sealed with many seals, and since the king's death, it had been brought up by the nobles, who closely guarded both it and the queen, into her apartments, and there examined and replaced it in the chest. The next night, one of the queen's ladies upset a wax taper, without being aware of it, and before the fire was discovered, and put out, the corner of the chest was singed, and a hole burnt in the blue velvet cushion that lay on the top. Upon this, the lords had caused the chest to be taken down again ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... both past our youth! And, according to certain highly instructed scientists and philosophers, the senses and affections grow numb with age. I do not believe this theory myself—for the jejune love of youth is as a taper's flame to the great and passionate tenderness of maturity, when the soul, and not the body, claims its due; when love is not dragged down to the vulgar level of mere cohabitation, after the fashion of ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Wood, and stopped before a large mansion. A young lady sprang out; ran up the steps, and rang the bell impatiently. She was of the olive complexion, with a sharp profile: dark eyes with long lashes; narrow mouth with delicately sensuous lips; small head, feet, and hands, with long taper fingers; lithe and very slender figure moving with serpent-like grace. Oriental taste was displayed in the colors of her costume, which consisted of a white dress, close-fitting, and printed with an elaborate china ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... which overtop our actual life, and lead it up from grossness to glory, woman is the oracle and priestess. In the basic qualities of our nature man is stronger—woman, in those which, in grace, beauty, and sweetness, taper nicely toward its apex. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... presented Raymond with a lovely girl. It was curious to trace in this miniature model the very traits of its father. The same half-disdainful lips and smile of triumph, the same intelligent eyes, the same brow and chestnut hair; her very hands and taper fingers resembled his. How very dear she was to Perdita! In progress of time, I also became a father, and our little darlings, our playthings and delights, called forth a thousand new ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... of the run they were much larger. Spaniards grow in clusters, or patches, among the tussocks on the plains, and constitute a most unpleasant feature of the vegetation of the country. Their leaves are as firm as bayonets, and taper at the point to the fineness of a needle, but are not nearly so easily broken as a needle would be. No horse will face them, preferring a jump at the cost of any exertion, to the risk of a stab from the cruel points. The least touch of this green ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... a lurch and shook her feathers alow and aloft by way of chorus. "I like this kind of life very much; how gracefully this vessel moves; what a beautiful union of strength, proportion, lightness, in the taper masts, the slender ropes and stays, the full spread and sweep of her sails! Then how expansive the view, the calm ocean in its solitude, the receding land, the ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... the hour of noon a great silence falls upon the crowd, and the priests begin the Mass. At the moment when the 'Gloria in Excelsis' is reached, the Archbishop places a lighted taper in the bill of an artificial dove, and sends the dove down the wire to the car. Then all the bells in the city ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... me see, let me see; is not the leaf turned down Where I left reading? Here it is, I think. How ill this taper burns! ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... Chertsey bells are some of the finest in the country. The original curfew bell, which is supposed to have hung in the Abbey, tolled for the funeral of Henry VI, murdered a few hours before in the Tower of London, and hurried to Chertsey to be buried "without priest, clerk, torch or taper, singing or saying." According to the safer chronicles, the dead king's body was ferried to the Abbey by water. But Shakespeare in Richard III sends the corpse through London streets "borne in an open coffin; gentlemen bearing halberds to guard ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... burns the taper in yon lofty ha', Yet nought now shines bright where her shade doesna fa'; My Peggy was pure as the dew-drops o' May, But Peggy, sweet Peggy, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Both it and the wall were slimy with dampness, giving no secure hold to hand or foot. The pathway mounted steadily, and apparently pursued a straight course, but no opening showed itself in the distance, and the light of his taper penetrated but a little way into the blackness. As he glanced backward his shadow loomed in a gigantic and almost unrecognisable form, following him waveringly like a malevolent spirit. His footsteps woke hollow reverberations; the water gurgled and sobbed, and an odor suggestive ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... Fig. 2, showing the relations of the disks, C, and the abutment disks, B, and gear. The piston disks and gear are attached to the driving shaft, H, and the abutment disks and gear are attached to the shaft, K. These shafts, H and K, as above stated, run in taper phosphor-bronze bearings, which are adjustable for wear or other causes by the screw-caps, O. The whole mechanism is kept rigidly in place by the flanged hub, r, bolted securely to the cylinder head, F. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... been immediate, and imprisonment inevitable. Keeping it, therefore, entirely to himself, he concealed it from every eye during the day, and at night, after the family had gone to bed, he sat up, lighted his taper, and, when every thing was still and silent about him, ventured, only then, to read over the paper, and to get by heart the most important parts of the intelligence regarding England; and he afterwards transmitted ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... 'prentice days, who has recorded that she never saw him look so pleasant. Arrived at the door of Notre Dame, where the clerk was awaiting him, he descended from the tumbril without assistance, took a lighted wax taper weighing two pounds in his hand, and did penance, kneeling, bareheaded and barefooted, a rope round his neck, repeating the words of the death-warrant. He then reascended the cart in the midst of the cries and execrations of the populace, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... of men, Where throngs of knights and barons bold, In weeds of peace high triumphs hold, With store of ladies, whose bright eyes Rain influence, and judge the prize Of wit or arms, while both contend To win her grace whom all commend. There let Hymen oft appear In saffron robe, with taper clear, And pomp, and feast, and revelry, With mask, and antique pageantry; Such sights as youthful poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream. Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakspeare, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... pray and long, but are not allowed to reach, came flowing into her heart. She almost thought that she could hear her lost Jeannie's voice calling down the gale, and her strong imagination began to paint her hovering like a sea-bird upon white wings high above the mainmast's taper point, and gazing through the darkness into the soul of her she loved. Then, by those faint and imperceptible degrees with which thoughts fade one into another, from Jeannie her thought got round to Eustace Meeson. ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... but labor began to overcome him; his breath grew short, and his knees trembled, and he was on the point of lying down, in resignation to his fate, when he beheld, through the brambles, the glimmer of a taper. He advanced toward the light, and finding that it proceeded from the cottage of a hermit, he called humbly at the door, and obtained admission. The old man set before him such provisions as he had collected for himself, on which Obidah fed ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... and for me, Thy most long-suffering master, bring In April, when the linnets sing And the days lengthen more and more At sundown to the garden door. And I, being provided thus. Shall, with superb asparagus, A book, a taper, and a cup Of ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the interior. The little atrium was empty, and dark with smoke. Feeling for the door which led to the sleeping-rooms, he saw the gleaming flame of a small lamp, and approaching it saw the lararium in which was a cross instead of lares. Under the cross a taper was burning. Through the head of the young catechumen, the thought passed with lightning speed that that cross sent him the taper with which he could find Lygia; hence he took the taper and searched for the sleeping-rooms. He found ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... since become, New York was far, very far from approaching its present splendor and magnificence, which entitle it to vie with the most brilliant capitals of the world. Even then the ships of all nations were to be found at its wharfs, but the taper masts rising into the sky, formed not a cordon so immense as that which now, like a forest stripped of its leaves, girts it round. Nor from even its most fashionable portions, the residence and resort of the wealthy and the gay, had all the humbler buildings, which belonged to its ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... brimful, how the taper flame shines, Which, when moisture is wanting, decays; Replenish the lamp of my life with rich wines, Or else there's an end of ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... Witch of Ely, was burned at Smithfield, a canon of Westminster died in the Tower, and a third culprit was hung, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. The duchess was brought from Westminster, and landed at the Temple Stairs, from whence, with a tall wax taper in her hand, she walked bareheaded to St. Paul's, where she offered at the high altar. Another day she did penance at Christ Church, Aldgate; a third day at St. Michael's, Cornhill, the Lord Mayor, sheriffs, and most of the Corporation following. She was then banished ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... faithful." Quick the young lads from the village Brought the fire upon the birch-bark, Brought it on the tips of pine-wood; And the fire and smoke commingled Roll and roar about the hero, Blackening the suitor's visage, And the hostess speaks as follows; "Bring the fire upon a taper, On the waxen tapers bring it!" Then the maidens did as bidden, Quickly brought the lighted tapers, Made the suitor's eyeballs glisten, Made his cheeks look fresh and ruddy; Made his eyes of sable color Sparkle like the foam of waters, Like the ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... dunghills and vast outhouses half ruined; and looking on this dainty prospect, an immense, old, shadeless, glaring, stone chateau, with half its windows blinded, and green damp crawling lazily over it, from the balustraded terrace to the taper tips of ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... how he had found his way from the hall to his lodging. Neither he nor Rex spoke during the quarter of an hour they employed in reaching the street door, but Rex's arm was aching with the effort of sustaining and directing his companion. He lit a taper and prepared to help him up the stairs. But the sight of the familiar entrance recalled Greif to himself and dissipated the first stupor of his grief. He ascended the steps firmly, though he went like a man overcome with fatigue, to whom every movement ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... let herself out of the room in the dark. He slipped on some clothing and followed. At the farther end of the corridor, where the clash of flint and steel would be out of the hearing of one in the bed-chamber, she struck a light. He stepped aside into an empty room till she had lit a taper and had passed on to her boudoir. In a minute or two he followed. Arrived at the door of the boudoir, he beheld the door of the private recess open, and Barbara within it, standing with her arms clasped tightly round the neck ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... that my mother—who looked upon that Crucifix with eyes that were very different from mine—would be at pains in the evening when lights were fetched to set a taper at such an angle as was best calculated to produce the effect upon which the sculptor had counted. What satisfaction it can have been to her to see reflected from that glazed wound the light which ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... performed I carried the taper (nota bene) and some pieces of gold to the Bishop who performed the grand mass, and who was sitting in an arm-chair near the altar. The prelate intended to have given them to his assistants, the priests of the King's chapel; but the monks of Saint Denis ran to him with great eagerness, ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... middle height of women, both exquisitely formed, with figures delicate and slender, yet full withal, and voluptuously rounded, with the long taper hands, the small and shapely feet and ankles, the swan-like necks, and classic heads gracefully set on, which are held to denote, in all countries, the predominance of gentle blood; when seen at a distance, and judged ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... was silent in the death-chamber. The night-taper was placed behind a screen; and the fire-light flickered with a tremulous motion on the richly-carved, antique furniture, black and polished by age, and creeping upwards, threw long, wavering shadows on the wall. ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... degraded from sacred orders by the Lord Bishop of Marseilles, his diocesan, and afterwards condemned to make honorable amends one audience day, having his head and feet bare, a cord about his neck, and holding a lighted taper in his hands—to ask pardon of God, the king, and the court of justice—then, to be delivered into the hands of the executioner of the high court of law, to be taken to all the chief places and cross-roads of this city ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... tomb. A large procession, headed by the Czar, the Czarina, and all the chief nobility of the court, followed in the funeral train. The Czar and all the other mourners carried in their hands a small wax taper burning. The ladies were all dressed in black silks. It was said by those who were near enough in the procession to observe the Czar that he went weeping all ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... In Noel Vanstone's close, cramped handwriting, it filled two pages of letter-paper, and ended at the top of the third page. Instead of using an envelope, Mrs. Lecount folded it, neatly and securely, in the old-fashioned way. She lit the taper in the ink-stand, and returned the letter to ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... hand upon the balustrade, 190 Old Angela was feeling for the stair, When Madeline, St. Agnes' charmed maid, Rose, like a mission'd spirit, unaware: With silver taper's light, and pious care, She turn'd, and down the aged gossip led To a safe level matting. Now prepare, Young Porphyro, for gazing on that bed; She comes, she comes again, like ring-dove fray'd ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... the knee, and in the forearm, we have two groups of "benders" or flexors, and "straighteners" or extensors, as in the upper arm and leg, only slenderer and more numerous. They taper down into cord-like tendons at the wrist and ankle to fasten and to pull the hands and feet "open" and "shut," just as do the strings in the legs and arms of a puppet or mechanical doll, or the sinews in the foot ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... he desired him to observe that it was a symbol of marriage.—During the whole of the service two other acolytes were stationed in front of the bride and bridegroom, each holding in his hands a lighted taper; and near the conclusion, while they knelt before the altar, a pall of flowered brocade was stretched behind them, as emblematic of their union. Holy water was not forgotten; for, in almost every rite of the Catholic church, the mystic sanctification by water and ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... Old Man of the Sea, to be sure!" answered one of the damsels. "He has fifty daughters, whom some people call very beautiful; but we do not think it proper to be acquainted with them, because they have sea- green hair, and taper away like fishes. You must talk with this Old Man of the Sea. He is a sea-faring person, and knows all about the garden of the Hesperides; for it is situated in an island which he is often in the habit ...
— The Three Golden Apples - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... glaring, from the footmen's liveries to the bunches of red carnations; and the blazing electric lights confused her brain. She, the little country mouse, accustomed only to old William's gentle shufflings, and the two tall silver candlesticks with their one wax taper in each! ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... No! 'twas a vision! his hour was not yet, And waking, he turn'd on his pallet of straw, And a form by his side he could never forget, By the pale misty light of a taper he saw. "'Tis I! 'tis thy Winifred!"—softly she said, "Arouse thee, and follow—be bold, never fear! There was danger abroad, but my errand has sped, I promised to save thee—and lo ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... seen, And on Palm Sunday bore his bough of green. His only pastime was to hunt the boar Through tangled thickets of the forest hoar, Or with his jingling mules to hurry down To some grand bull-fight in the neighboring town, Or in the crowd with lighted taper stand, When Jews were burned, or banished from the land. Then stirred within him a tumultuous joy; The demon whose delight is to destroy Shook him, and shouted with a trumpet tone, "Kill! kill! and let the ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... decency forbade that positive orders for departure should be passed from mouth to mouth. The heads of the stables, therefore, agreed with the people who were in the King's room, that the latter should place a lighted taper near a window, and that at the instant of the King's decease one of them ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... the laughing group. The old lady was the only one among them whom she did not know,—a new arrival. Just then Miss Stanley looked round, saw her, and signalled smilingly to her to come and join them. Slowly she walked towards the little party, still twirling the card in her taper fingers. ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... through the dark room with perfect ease, struck a match, lighted a taper and went swiftly and softly about. He touched the taper to one candle after another,—they seemed to be everywhere,—and won from the dark a faint twilight, that yielded slowly to a growing mellow splendor of light. I have often watched the ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson |
