"Gaslight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but a new quarrel started around the box office. The actors and actresses stood there in a close group so that only their heads and faces, shining with the grease used to wash off the paint, were visible in the gaslight. They were all shouting for money and demanding their overdue salaries. They shook their fists threateningly at the cashier's window, their eyes flashed lightning, and their voices were hoarse ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... Righteousness arose with healing in His wings. There have been many ages when the dense gloom of a heartless immorality seemed to settle down with unusual weight; there have been many places where, under the gaslight of an artificial system, vice has seemed to acquire an unusual audacity; but never probably was there any age or any place where the worst forms of wickedness were practiced with a more unblushing effrontery than in the city of Rome under ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... However I'm quite sure I have got on; that's my great comfort. It is a strange blind sort of world, that's a fact, with lots of blind alleys, down which you go blundering in the fog after some seedy gaslight, which you take for the sun till you run against the wall at the end, and find out that the light is a gaslight, and that there's no thoroughfare. But for all that one does get on. You get to know the sun's light better and better, and to keep out of the blind alleys; and I am surer and ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... to hold its lump of sugar, carried with it a sort of graveyard cheer. The engineer apprentices would have nothing to say to us, nor indeed to the bagman; but talked low and sparingly to one another, or raked us in the gaslight with a gleam of spectacles. For though handsome lads, they were all (in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... two dollars per week. On week-days her breakfast cost ten cents; she made coffee and cooked an egg over the gaslight while she was dressing. On Sunday mornings she feasted royally on veal chops and pineapple fritters at "Billy's" restaurant, at a cost of twenty-five cents—and tipped the waitress ten cents. New York presents so many temptations for one to run into extravagance. ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... As the gaslight in the bedroom was not satisfactory Elizabeth went into the sitting-room or study, as the students were accustomed to call it, to finish her dressing. Nancy came to the door just as Elizabeth put ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... faces change; and there are gabbling and babbling; and Burley's head sinks in his bosom, and he is silent. And up starts a wild, dissolute, bacchanalian glee for seven voices. And the smoke-reek grows denser and thicker, and the gaslight looks dizzy through the haze. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wretched everywhere, and the wet pavement glistened in the gaslight, while the oppressive warmth of the almost impalpable rain lay heavily over the streets and seemed to obscure the light ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... After begging his supper, and while Uncle Billy was hitching up a horse in the stable, Satan went out in the yard and lay with his nose between the close panels of the fence—quite heart-broken. When he saw his old friend, Hugo, the mastiff, trotting into the gaslight, he began to bark his delight frantically. The big mastiff stopped and nosed his sympathy through the fence for a moment and walked slowly on, Satan frisking and barking along inside. At the gate Hugo stopped, and raising one huge paw, playfully struck it. The gate flew open, and with ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... from his son's hand, turned it round and round under the gaslight, laid it down, and dismissed it with a flick as of contempt for his incompetence. At that ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... Brown, as the doctor walked briskly to the gate. He had left the front door open, so that a shaft of gaslight fell upon them. In the light of this Brown opened the envelope ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... the counter, as if they had just been brought in and left there. From mere idle curiosity, I looked close at the rags, and saw among them something like an old cravat. I took it up directly and held it under a gaslight. The pattern was blurred lilac lines running across and across the dingy black ground in a trellis-work form. I looked at the ends: one of them ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... in a small room to which day and night were the same, Mr. Pascoe was always to be found bending over his hobbing foot, under a tiny yellow fan of gaslight which could be heard making a tenuous shrilling whenever the bootmaker looked up, and ceased riveting. When his head was bent over his task only the crown of a red and matured cricketing cap, which nodded in time to his ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... one another's eyes. He seemed eager, but honestly eager. At that moment I believed it was a diamond he was trying to sell. Yet I am a poor man, a hundred pounds would leave a visible gap in my fortunes and no sane man would buy a diamond by gaslight from a ragged tramp on his personal warranty only. Still, a diamond that size conjured up a vision of many thousands of pounds. Then, thought I, such a stone could scarcely exist without being mentioned in every ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the earth, ruffians of every description, who would cheerfully have cut any man's throat simply for the sake of his clothes. All around me was a sea of swarthy faces with insolent, sinister eyes that flashed and glittered in the gaslight. I was pushed, jostled, and cursed, and the bare thought of having to spend a whole night amid such a foul, cut-throat horde filled me with dismay. Yet what could I do? Clearly nothing, until the morning, when I should be able to explain my position to the British Consul. The ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... through the hangings of the doorway to the next room. There he had no gaslight; the window-shades, however, were not drawn so closely but that a little daylight entered. He removed the robe and stuffed it under the ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... everything. At the same time there should be depth and passion. The professor understands exactly the sort of eye the lady means. But it will be expensive. There is a cheap quality; the professor does not recommend it. True that it passes muster by gaslight, but the sunlight shows it up. It lacks tenderness, and at the price you can hardly expect it to contain much hidden meaning. The professor advises the melting, Oh-George-take-me-in-your-arms- and-still-my-foolish-fears brand. It costs a little ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... never choose another cloth pattern at night. I ordered a new suit of dittos for the garden at Edwards', and chose the pattern by gaslight, and they seemed to be a quiet pepper-and- salt mixture with white stripes down. They came home this morning, and, to my horror, I found it was quite a flash-looking suit. There was a lot of green with bright ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... Asmodeus, 'avail themselves of every opportunity to exhibit their treasures, down to their silver, china, and linen. They are fond of jewels, the most showy being especially in favor. But I would not warrant that all those gems that flash in the gaslight are genuine stones. There is such a demand now for California diamonds that, very likely, many sets now adorning the wives of lucky speculators are mingled with worthless imitations. Time is necessary to learn how to distinguish precious stones from spurious ones, and few persons ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... thoroughfares where shops abound, the sordid struggle with poverty shows itself unreservedly on the filthy pavement; gathers its forces through the week; and, strengthening to a tumult on Saturday night, sees the Sunday morning dawn in murky gaslight. Miserable women, whose faces never smile, haunt the butchers' shops in such London localities as these, with relics of the men's wages saved from the public-house clutched fast in their hands, with eyes that devour the meat they dare not buy, with eager fingers that touch it covetously, as the fingers ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... general shouting, yells of "Death to Louis Philippe!" were to be heard. Then, all at once, in the gaslight, I saw the policemen's swords twinkle, pinking people in all directions. Soon the troops came hurrying up with fixed bayonets, and the rabble took to their heels at the sight of them. This crowd had just come back from Vincennes, whither it had gone to demand the heads of Charles ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... like crude candour and independence. And as they walked on again, though they were linked together, she certainly appeared less desirable to him than she had done when she was circling round the hall in Wilson's arms with her bright draperies glowing between the gaslight ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... muffled up, but visibly of fragile build, was standing on the landing under the gaslight. She sprang forward, flung her arms round Knight's neck, and ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... evening, he accompanied his brother to the gate with an air of endurance and clemency; being in a bland temper and graciously disposed to overlook the tears. In the flaring gaslight of the Lodge, several Collegians were basking; some taking leave of visitors, and some who had no visitors, watching the frequent turning of the key, and conversing with one another and with Mr Chivery. The paternal entrance made a sensation ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... to gaslight, and Parson Jack still paced the streets, intending but still deferring to find a dinner and a night's lodging. He had shaken hands with Major Bromham in a mood of curious exaltation. He had decided almost without a struggle. ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... her; his head was turned away, and there was a suspicious lump in his throat, that made him know better than to attempt speech. He was standing at that moment under one of the wall-texts that the gaslight illumined until it glowed, and the words stood out ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... after I was 13. With her I greatly desired to satisfy myself, but I could not be sure that my boy cousin (5 years old) might not find us out, even though she should consent. Once when we three were in the hay-loft a wave of lust rolled over me, but I made no proposal. Night and gaslight greatly increased my libido. On one occasion my aunt had gone to the village for ice-cream, and L. and I were left alone in the dining-room. I took her on my lap and had a powerful erection. I almost asked her to play sexually with me in the barn, but instead I spoke of an imaginary girl, the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... he said; but at the name his wife raised her hand as if to silence him. As she did so the gaslight struck on the gold ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... "Ah, if the night were only fair, that they might go out into the moonlight and leave the screen doors open that we might play close together, you and I, in the gaslight." ...
— A Book Without A Title • George Jean Nathan
... secretary's mansion. When Laura and the Senator arrived, about half past nine or ten in the evening, the place was already pretty well crowded, and the white-gloved negro servant at the door was still receiving streams of guests.—The drawing-rooms were brilliant with gaslight, and as hot as ovens. The host and hostess stood just within the door of entrance; Laura was presented, and then she passed on into the maelstrom of be-jeweled and richly attired low-necked ladies and white-kid-gloved and steel pen-coated gentlemen and wherever she moved she was followed by ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... front with clouded windows had a placard outside bearing the announcement: "Olympia Theatre, 10-cent show. Will open next Saturday evening with the following special scenes: 1—The Poor Artist. 2—London by Gaslight. 3—A Day on the Overland Limited." At the door of the store just being renovated for a picture show stood a man, tying some printed bills to an awning rod for passers by to take. Ralph ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... were brought into play, and the oil all removed. Then a long dry polishing, and the restoration was complete. Certainly no other Smalltowner had such a wooden knife; and it was indeed beautiful. Black in a cross light, red in direct light, and kaleidoscopic by gaslight. Ah, such a prize! The family knew that something strange was transpiring, but what no one had an inkling. They must wait patiently, and they did. The Spectator proudly appeared, his prize in hand. 'See there!' he cried in triumph, and they ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... man is," he replied, "and screeching owls in every brain. You can't get quit." Then, lowering his voice, "I am haunted, and yet live here in this Moated Grange! The difference is this: in the town the gaslight and eternal clatter distract a man like me who is plagued from within; here I find some concord between the inside and the out, only the owls in the inside are more ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... provost or chief magistrate for the time; to the sheriff of the county; to the bailie residing nearest the place; to the dean of guild; to the members of fire-engine committee of commissioners of police; to the moderator of the high constables; and also to the managers of the different gaslight companies. ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... entirely, and the nature of his material accorded little with the size of the structure and the orchestral frame. And, then, are not these confessions of intimate experiences, these moonlight sentimentalities, these listless dreams, &c., out of place in the gaslight glare of concert-rooms, crowded with audiences brought together to a great extent rather by ennui, vanity, and idle curiosity ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... this an excellent joke. Yes of course she could make a conquest; by gaslight she was still passably goodlooking. If she succeeded he advised her to dine at the Capucin, where there was ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... the darkening twilight; but the distant roar of the world surged without, and a gaslight shone flickering through the branches of the trees, and fell on the rich dress spread on the couch, and the ornaments on the toilet-table. There was a sense of oppression, and of being pursued by the incongruous world, and Dr. May sighed to silence all around, and ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... "By men's gaslight she looks forty-two. Any woman could just instinctively see through everything from her wig to her waist, and that's why she has grown to ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... disappearance in the world; It was like a transformation trick in a pantomime. They were there one moment,—palpably there, walking, with the gaslight full upon their faces,—and the next moment they were gone. There was no door near, no window, no staircase; it was a mere slip of barren platform, tapestried with big advertisements. ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... not express all his thoughts. If he had revealed them fully he would have described a bright fireside in a small and humble but very comfortable room, with a smiling face that rendered sunshine unnecessary, and a pair of eyes that made gaslight a paltry flame as well as an absolute extravagance. That the name of this cheap, yet dear, luminary began with an N and ended with an a, is a piece of information with which we think it unnecessary to ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... conversing in that subdued light, afforded by the lowered gaslight, Tim Bolton crept in through the door unobserved by either, tiptoed across the room to the secretary, snatched the will and a roll of bills, and escaped without ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... of the beauty of our lighting. I say "our" because this was a branch of Henry's work in which I was always his chief helper. Until electricity has been greatly improved and developed, it can never be to the stage what gas was. The thick softness of gaslight, with the lovely specks and motes in it, so like natural light, gave illusion to many a scene which is now revealed in all its ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... which he lodged his pace involuntarily slackened. While still some distance off, his eye sought out and distinguished the windows of the room in which Esther awaited him. Through the broken slats of the Venetian blinds he could see the yellow gaslight within. The parlour beneath was in darkness; his landlady had evidently gone to bed, there being no light over the hall-door either. In some apprehension he consulted his watch under the last street-lamp he passed, to find comfort in assuring himself it was only ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... vengeful ghosts, the greater part of whose hopes and passions were recorded and gathered there; when in the dark the dead hands of forgotten men were stretched from their dusty graves to fumble once more for their old title deeds; at night, when it was lit up by flaring gaslight, the hollow mockery of this dissipation was so apparent that people in the streets, looking through the illuminated windows, felt as if the privacy of a family vault had been ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... introduce myself afresh. The contrast between his flashy clothes and my frowsy, wretched-looking appearance, as I saw ourselves in the mirrors on either side of me, made me sorely ill at ease. The brilliancy of the gaslight chafed my nerves. It was as though it had been turned on for the express purpose of illuminating my disgrace. I was longing to go away, but Gitelson fell to questioning me about my affairs once more, and this time he ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... suddenly widened; a blaze of flaring gaslight dazzled his eyes; he heard all round him the shouting of innumerable voices. For the first time since he had been in London, he found himself in one of ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... constantly growing more acute. Mill after mill closed, and the dark, quiet buildings stood among the starving people like monuments of despair. No one indeed can imagine the pathos of these black deserted factories, that had once blazed with sunlight and gaslight and filled the town with the stir of their clattering looms and the traffic of their big lorries and wagons and the call and song of human voices. In their blank, noiseless gloom, they too seemed ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... several ways of seeing Paris besides roaming up and down before the blazing shop-windows, and lounging by daylight or gaslight along the crowded and gay boulevards; and one of the best is to go to the Bois de Boulogne on a fete-day, or when the races are in progress. This famous wood is very disappointing at first to one who has seen the English parks, or who remembers the noble trees and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... I do," said Sir Arthur, looking away, "a reflection from the gaslight, probably. But come, Vane, what is all this about? Sit down and tell me. And, by the way, I want to hear the story of this new acquaintance of yours. Take a cigar; that ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... other, consulting the card, as the gentleman advanced up the steps toward them, the gaslight gleaming in his silver hair, and throwing his ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... a friend to turn on the gas when you are ready for it. Go around the room once or twice rubbing your feet along the carpet. When you come around to the gaslight touch the point of the wire and if the gas is turned on, the light will flare right up as if it had been ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... bosom flashed fitfully in the yellow gaslight, as he slowly said, "And now you know all your part. Will you ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... cheers for the Queen. Part of the troops had already embarked, their marching and embarkation being witnessed by multitudes with the utmost interest and enthusiasm. The chief sight was the departure of the Guards, the Grenadiers leaving by gaslight on the winter morning, the Fusiliers marching to Buckingham Palace, where at seven o'clock the Queen and the Prince, with their children, were ready to say good-bye. "They formed line, presented arms, and then cheered us very heartily, and went off cheering," ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... bright gaslight of the little room as she spoke. There was another girl sitting beside Lucy, who got up with a shy manner and shook hands ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bottle on the window-sill, In the cold gaslight burning gaily red Against the luminous blue of London night, These flowers are mine: while somewhere out of sight In some black-throated alley's stench and heat, Oblivious of the racket of the street, A poor old ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... Still there! For full an hour he has not budged beyond the circle of yon lamp-post's rays! The gaslight falls upon his crimson hose, and makes a steely glitter at his thigh, while from the shadow peers a hatchet-face and fixes sinister malignant eyes—on whom? (Shuddering.) I dare not trust myself to guess! And yet—ah, no—it cannot be myself! I am so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... something like a sneer, too, from yonder gipsy woman who passes by, with bold bright face, and swinging hip, and footstep stately and elastic; far better dressed, according to all true canons of taste, than most town-girls; and thanking her fate that she and her "Rom" are no house-dwellers and gaslight-sightseers, but fatten on free air upon ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... the strain was kept up; fresh glasses were supplied; fresh bottles drained; the waiters looked on, wondered where all this would end, and pointed to the ruin of the costly service. The brilliant gaslight shone on a scene of recklessness pitiable indeed. All were young men, and, except Eugene, all unmarried; but they seemed familiar with such occasions. One or two, thoroughly intoxicated, lay with their heads on the table, unconscious of what passed; others struggled to sit upright, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... teapots were stacked. From the upper flight the lower was invisible. Lucilla, descending, was unaware therefore of the gentleman coming up until she met him on the square of landing beneath the unshaded gaslight. He held a great, loose bunch of long-stalked violets in his hand; and he was, of course, Lucilla's partner at the heavenly ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... a wise policy for the votaries of gaslight pleasures to maintain that there is no baneful result arising from a constant pursuit of such distractions, but, however wise this attitude may be, I hardly think it can rely upon the sanction of our conscience. It is ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... whose physical resources are nearly at an end. For a long time he sits quite still, holding his wife's hand, saying nothing, for he has nothing more to say. A high screen behind the couch on which they rest cuts off the gaslight; only the firelight plays fitfully upon the two faces. Suddenly the brightness falls away, and over that foreshadowing of death, now only three days ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... was the journey from town, with all the curious sensation of parting at the theatre doors, and returning from that shining world of gaslight, and ladies' dresses, into the dimness of the railway, the tedious though not very long journey, the plunging of the carriage through the blackness of the night; and along with these the questions of Mr. Derwentwater, so unlike him, so uncalled-for, as Jock could ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... things I tell, But the truth thereof I know full well, Though how may not be stated; But I swear to you that the maiden took A sort of half-breed, thin stove-hook, And heated it well in the gaslight there. And thrust it into her head, or hair. Then she took something off the bed, And hooked it onto her hair, or head, And piled it high, and piled it higher, And drove it home with staples of wire! And the young ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... carriage called, for our evening was drawing to its close; that of our friends, I suppose, was but just commencing, as London's liveliest hours are by gaslight, but we cannot learn the art ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... ever occur to you how many subjects for the highest order of poetry lie unnoticed all about us? Take that chandelier, for example, the prismatic drops of which are dull in the shade, but sparkle with all the colors of the rainbow in the gaslight. Might not those hidden splendors be compared to that genius whose brilliancy is alone evoked by ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... was interrupted by the sudden opening of the door and the hurried entry of a tall and somewhat slender fair-haired lad clad in oilskin jumper, leggings, and "sou'-wester" hat, which glistened in the gaslight; while, as he stood in the doorway for a moment, dazzled by the abrupt transition from darkness to light, the water trickled off him and speedily formed a little pool at his feet ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... own body, so as to take advantage of a dim ray from the nearest gaslight, he was aware that the woman, shorter and stouter than Miss Bruce, had muffled herself in a ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... The yellow gaslight that came with an effect of difficulty through the dust-stained windows on either side of the door gave strange hues to the faces and forms of the three women who stood gabbling in the hallway of the tenement. They made rapid gestures, and in the background ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... noisy street, but the noise made the night cheerful; and so did the church clock near, which struck the quarters; and so did the light of the street lamps, which came through the blind and fell upon my little bed. We had very little light, except gaslight and daylight, in our street; the sunshine seldom found its way to us, and, when it did, people were so little used to it that they pulled down the blinds for fear it should hurt the carpets. In the room my sister and I called our nursery, however, we always welcomed it with blinds ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... retired into the outer room; the candle guttering, kept dropping on the King's hand, but being unwilling to disturb the artist, the King held on, while the painter, intent on his work, proceeded without noticing it. Many of our English artists paint by gaslight; but the tones of the flesh are not benefited, gas shedding a white cool light ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... him, and this evening he had some pieces of gold in his pocket that rang a chime of pleasure. While Maurice, with his elbow upon the table, told him his tales of love, Amedee gazed out upon the sidewalk at the women who passed by in fresh toilettes, in the gaslight which illuminated the green foliage, giving a little nod of the head to those whom they knew. There was voluptuousness in the very air, and it was Amedee who arose from the table and recalled to Maurice that it was Thursday, ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... silly, childish, unreasonable, that I should speak sharply to Bettina, and equally unreasonable that fear and horror and sickening suspicion should possess me, but possessed I was by sensations hitherto unexperienced, and for a moment the gaslight from the lamp on the opposite street corner wavered and circled in a confusing, bewildering way. Sudden revelations, sudden realizations, were unsteadying me. Was Selwyn really some one I did not know? Was his life less single than I believed it? Hateful, ugly, ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... had seemed lonely by gaslight, what must Ralph Flare have said of it next morning, as he sat in his old place and watched the ouvriers at breakfast? They came in, one by one, with their baton of brown bread, and called for two sous' worth of coffee and milk. The men wore blouses of blue and white, and jested after the ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... of tea, armchair, and slippered ease. The fragrance of the meal is already on the air, and through the darling twilight comes the muffin-man and the cheery tinkle of his bell—one of the last of a once great army of itinerant feeders of London. Gaslight and firelight leap on the spread table, glinting against cups and saucers and spoons, and lighting, with sudden spurts, the outer gloom. A sweet warmth fills the room—the restful homeliness imparted by a careful, but not too careful, woman. The wallpaper is flaring, but very clean. The ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... of Mrs. Flanagan's parting benedictions in the moonlit street. He did not pause till he was at the door of the oyster-room. He paused then, to make way for a tipsy company of four, who reeled out—the gaslight from the bar-room on the edges of their sodden, distorted faces—giving three shouts and a yell, as they ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... streets, and finally diverging among the almost infinite ramifications of London thoroughfares, contains a young man, who sits gazing through the window at the rapidly passing range of houses and shops with curiously fixed vision. The face, as momentarily revealed by the beaming of a brilliant gaslight, is chiefly remarkable for clear dark eyes rather deeply set, and a firm closure of the lips. He scarcely alters his posture during the miles of driving through wildernesses of brick and stone: ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... air, which may have left something to eat behind it. They look upon old shoes, wrecks of kettles and saucepans, and fragments of bonnets, as a kind of meteoric discharge, for fowls to peck at. . . . Gaslight comes quite as natural to them as any other light; and I have more than a suspicion that, in the minds of the two lords, the early public-house at the corner has superseded the sun. They always begin to crow when the public-house shutters ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... proffered fingers with a warmth which pleased their owner. The latter found himself admiring, too, the erect figure, the clean face, the clear eyes; he told himself with pleasure that the Prince looked as well by daylight as by gaslight—a tribute to his youth and the ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... its unsteady character, and secondly, by reason of the great excess of the more refrangible rays. Both objections undoubtedly hold good where the alleged causes exist; but we can now show you a light which is certainly as steady as the ordinary gaslight—indeed more steady in an apartment where even feeble currents of air circulate; and I am sure you will readily acknowledge that the latter objection is disposed of when I assure you that our light presents the only example with which I am acquainted ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... door wide open, and the gaslight streaming in revealed to him the aspect of the cells arranged for Australian voting. The rails were all in their places, and the election might take place the very next day. It instantly occurred to Dane that he might save the ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... first water! One such night counterbalanced, in Titmouse's estimation, a whole year of his previous obscurity and wretchedness! The theatre over, they would repair to some cloudy tavern, full of noise and smoke, and the glare of gaslight—redolent of the fragrant fumes of tobacco, gin, and porter, intermingled with the tempting odors of smoking kidneys, mutton-chops, beefsteaks, oysters, stewed cheese, toasted cheese, Welsh rabbits; where those who are chained ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... now," he said, just before they could reach Cohen's door; and Mordecai paused, looking up at him with an anxious fatigued face under the gaslight. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... outgrown such toys Of simulated stature, face, and speech: It also peradventure may outgrow The simulation of the painted scene, Boards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume, And take for a worthier stage the soul itself, Its shifting fancies and celestial lights, With all its grand orchestral silences To keep the pauses ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... balls; the jolly conversation at the club, and glass after glass of that cold amber beer. The large freedom of the city streets at night, the warm saloons on every corner, the barrooms with their pyramids of bottles flashing in the gaslight—these were the things that made a man's life amusing. And here he was cooped up in a little cage in the suburbs like a ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... the counter, with his big head lolling drowsily against the mirror, whilst he watched Rose uncorking the bottles and giving a wipe here and there with her duster. And in spite of the somniferous effects of the wine fumes and the warm streaming gaslight, he would keep his ears open to the sounds proceeding from the little room. At times, when the voices grew noisier than usual, he got up from his seat and went to lean against the partition; and occasionally he even pushed ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... repels the passions of men. There are the splendid parlor houses distributed in the most fashionable parts of the city; there are the bar houses; there are the dance houses; and there are the miserable basements where this traffic is seen in its hideous deformity, divested of the gaslight glare and tinsel of the high-toned seraglios. The internal arrangements of the palatial bagnios are in many instances sumptuous, magnificent and suggestive. The walls of these seductive arsenals, too, are frequently of a color ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... girls, the boy clerks and so forth, stirred by mysterious intimations, spend their first-earned money upon collars and ties, chiffon hats, smart lace collars, walking-sticks, sunshades or cigarettes, and come valiantly into the vague transfiguring mingling of gaslight and evening, to walk up and down, to eye meaningly, even to accost and make friends. It is a queer instinctive revolt from the narrow limited friendless homes in which so many find themselves, a going ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... o'clock that Ursula Egremont's cab stopped at St. Ambrose's Road. She had missed the express train, and had to come on by a stopping one. But here at last she was, with eyes even by gaslight full of loving recognition, a hand full of her cab-fare, a heart full of throbbing hope and fear, a voice full of anxiety, as she inquired of the astonished servant, 'Louisa, Louisa, how is Aunt Ursel!' and, without awaiting the reply, she opened ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... threshold stood a tall figure in classical drapery. His eyes might have deceived him in the omnibus; but here, in the crude gaslight, he could not be mistaken. It was the statue he had last seen in Rosherwich Gardens—now, in some strange and wondrous ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... work. The room was hot. The gaslight burned. Against his temples it beat harsh air, harsh light, the acrid smells of his ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... girl!" whispered Lisle, and he went noiselessly away. A dim gaslight burned halfway up the stairs and guided him to his room. He had only to softly open and close his door, and all was well. Judith had not been awakened by the catlike steps of the man who was not old Fordham. She had fallen asleep very happily, with a vague sense of hopefulness and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... soon brought some grog; and the talk was for some time all about painting. Bertin showed some studies, and begged Musadieu to take the one that pleased him best; Musadieu hesitated, disturbed by the gaslight, which deceived him as to tones. At last he chose a group of little girls jumping the rope on a sidewalk; and almost at once he wished to depart, and to ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... dined together in the place on the previous evening, the arrangement of the hall had been considerably changed. The palms alone remained in their places around the four sides, and their long spiked leaves and gigantic fans cast fantastic shadows under the brilliant gaslight. The broad marble floor was cleared of furniture and strewn with sawdust, some fifty chairs being arranged at the upper end of the room, around and behind the fountain, whose tiny stream rose high into the air and tinkled as it fell back again into the basin below. A few small tables remained ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... infinitely picturesque in these dim vaults by night. Sentries were posted at every turn. Their guns gleamed in the gaslight. Sleepers were lying in their blankets wherever the stones were softest. Then in the guard-room the guard were waiting their turn. We have not had much of this scenery in America, and the physiognomy of volunteer military life is quite distinct from anything ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... once patient and submissive, kept sharply turning their heads in Mme Bron's direction every time she came down from the theater overhead, for on such occasions she was the bearer of replies. Indeed, she had but now handed a note to a young man who had hurried out to open it beneath the gaslight in the vestibule, where he had grown slightly pale on reading the classic phrase—how often had others read it in that very place!—"Impossible tonight, my dearie! I'm booked!" La Faloise sat on one of these chairs at the back of the room, between the table and the stove. He seemed bent ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... on the edge of the couch in the middle of the room under the brilliant gaslight, her hands forgotten in her lap, her brows arched high, her eyes on the floor. Then her head beginning to ache, a new sensation for her, she thought she should bind a wet handkerchief to it as she had often done for her aunt; but the water which the ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... Mabille, for instance,—and the things which give it its first charm are all innocent and artistic. Exquisite beds of lilies, roses, gillyflowers, lighted with jets of gas so artfully as to make every flower translucent as a gem; fountains where the gaslight streams out from behind misty wreaths of falling water and calla-blossoms; sofas of velvet turf, canopied with fragrant honeysuckle; dim bowers overarched with lilacs and roses; a dancing-ground under trees whose branches bend with a ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... wanted to put her back against the wall, or get into an angle, like a cornered animal, and use her teeth and claws against Valentine, that menacing figure with an angel's face. And what disgusted and drove Cuckoo almost mad as she lay there in the crude gaslight was the abominable fact that she was desperately afraid of Valentine. There was something about him which filled her not only with intense horror, but with something worse than horror,—intense fear. Why, she had all three gas-burners alight because, having ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... compatriot. On another occasion we were the guests of J. Meredith Read, then our Minister to Athens, where we met Prevost Paradol. But at this time there suddenly came over me a distaste for operas, theatres, dinners, society—in short, of crowds, gaslight, and gaiety in any form, from which I have never since quite recovered. I had for years been fearfully overdoing it all in America, and now I was in the reaction, and longed for rest. I was in that state when one could truly say that life would be tolerable but for its amusements. ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... been directed towards that quarter, thronged with adventurers, native and foreign, for a shelter, safe, if squalid. It is somewhere near that court at the mouth of which he stands. He looks round: the policeman is baffled; the coast clear. He steals forth, and pauses under the same gaslight as that under which Guy Darrell had paused before,—under the same gaslight, under the same stars. From some recess in his rags he draws forth a large, distained, distended pocket-book,—last relic of sprucer days,—leather of dainty morocco, once ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... black coat and white cravat, wearing a chain around his neck, wandered up and down the antechamber, according to custom, his shoes covered with the dust from the carpet trodden upon by so many people, either applicants or functionaries. The gaslight burning in broad day as in the offices in London was reflected on the cold walls that shone like marble. Doors ornamented with gilt nails and round, ivory knobs and without locks, were noiselessly swinging to ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... a queer dream, but not half so queer as what followed; for, after a while, she woke up and went right on dreaming just the same. That was very strange. How could it be anything else than a dream, to be taken up by gaslight and dressed all in her little street coat and hat before breakfast, to be made to drink milk and eat when she wasn't hungry, to be petted and cried over and half crushed in mamma's arms, to be taken by papa out into the cool, clear dawning, with the ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... come here? Leave us at once; don't you see? don't you know?" and he pointed toward Julia, whose face showed so plainly in the gaslight. ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... "When it comes to slush and a whitewash brush, I don't think you're a match for him. But perhaps you don't intend to choose the same weapons." Ricker pulled down the green-lined pasteboard peak that he wore over his forehead by gaslight, and hitched his chair round to his desk again, and Maxwell knew that he was ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... a Welshwoman's Hat Shadows in the Fire The Belfry Old Beautiful Barbara Song of the Silken Shroud A University for Wales Griefs Untold I Will Dawn and Death Castles in the Air The Withered Rose Wrecks of Life Eleanor New Year's Bells The Vase and the Weed A Riddle To a Fly Burned by a Gaslight To a Friend Retribution The Three Graces The Last Rose of Summer The Starling and the Goose The Heroes of Alma A Kind Word, a Smile, or a Kiss Dear Mother, I'm Thinking of Thee The Heron and the Weather-Vane The Three ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... chair up to the window and installed her comfortably. He himself was thinking of Isaac's face under the gaslight, as he had seen him stepping away from ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... excuse for it, inasmuch as the girl made much the same impression on Basil Ransom. He had never seen such an odd mixture of elements; she had the sweetest, most unworldly face, and yet, with it, an air of being on exhibition, of belonging to a troupe, of living in the gaslight, which pervaded even the details of her dress, fashioned evidently with an attempt at the histrionic. If she had produced a pair of castanets or a tambourine, he felt that such accessories would have ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... dashed along at lightning speed, I asked the man whether he owned that fine turnout or worked on wages. "I own it myself," he said curtly. Therefore, when I alighted, I slipped round behind the sledge and scrutinized it thoroughly under the gaslight. The back was decorated with a monogram and a count's coronet in silver! After that I never asked questions, but I always knew what had happened when I picked up very comfortable equipages at very reasonable rates in places which were between gas lanterns and near ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... & Co. It was something in the twine and cordage way. There were everywhere great coils of ropes and bales of twine, and the dark rooms had a tarry smell. Mr. Fletcher was in his office, a little space partitioned off in the rear, with half a dozen clerks working by gaslight, and a little sanctum where the senior partner was commonly found ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner |
