"Taper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... or ship-worm, has two calcareous jaws, hemispherical, flat before, and angular behind. The shell is taper, winding, penetrating ships and submarine wood, and was brought from India into Europe, Linnei System. Nat. p. 1267. The Tarieres, or sea-worms, attack and erode ships with such fury, and in such numbers, as often greatly to endanger them. It is said that our vessels have not ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... then in exhaustion, and fell into a doze, so that she appeared to be dead. And her master and mistress remained there a little while, by the faint light of a taper, watching with great compassion that admirable mother, who, for the sake of saving her family, had come to die six thousand miles from her country, to die after having toiled so hard, poor woman! and she was so honest, so ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... Lady had eliminated herself from my field I did not see but that Daniel and I might taper off into at least an armed neutrality. If he continued to nag me, it would be wholly of his own free ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... girl did not jam down the cover in that "movie" way common to runaways, rather she paused, glanced furtively about the gloomy place, and finally taking a candle from a very high shelf, lighted the taper, evidently for some delicate task in the way of gathering up ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... into a laugh. "Use what you like, poor, patient, plodding little pussy; leave me to follow my own ways. You've not resolved, as I have, to win the crown of Success. You were never made to shine, unless it be like some little taper, giving its quiet light in a cottage; while I mean to dazzle the world some day, like the ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... the taper Bows toward her; and would under-peep her lids, To see th' enclosed lights, now canopied Under these windows, white and azure, lac'd With blue of ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... with the refusal on her very lips, fished it out with her taper fingers. She eyed it with a sort of tender horror. The sight of it made her feel faint a moment. She told him so, and that she would keep it to her dying day. Presently her delicate finger found something was written on it. She did not ask him what it was, but withdrew, and examined ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... these last words in a livelier tone than usual, but it was like the last kindling of the taper in its oil-less socket — for instantly the paleness of death overspread his face, and after a feeble effort to vomit, with convulsions, the natural effect of great loss of blood, he sunk ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... eyes stared at her, solemn, watchful, seeming for that fleeting instant quite alien. And why, Telzey thought, should the old question of what Tick-Tock really was pass through her mind just now? After her rather alarming rate of growth began to taper off last year, ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... 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 acolytes ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... learns wisdom in these matters? The Naik soon comes to feel that if justice were done to merit, he would be a Havildar. After he has attained that proud distinction, he retires to "husband out life's taper at its close" in the same old hut, amidst the same conglomerate of relations, but nephews and nieces, and grandchildren have taken the place of uncles and aunts and parents. The buffalo and the pariah dog are apparently the ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... ankle-deep in mud, with steaming 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 the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... communicating to mankind the glad tidings of life and immortality. I know that they have dragged the mouldering carcass of paganism from the grave, animated her lifeless form with a spark stolen from the sacred altar, arrayed her in the spoils of Christianity, re-lighted her extinguished taper at the torch of revelation, dignified her with the name of natural religion, and exalted her in the temple of reason, as a goddess, able, without divine assistance, to guide mankind to truth and happiness. But we also know, that all her boasted pretensions are vain, the offspring ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... town of the nameless name, To the marching troops in the street she came, And she held high her boy like a taper flame Burning ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... medium height. A fourth lamp showed me her hands, small, firm, white; also I could catch a glimpse of her arm, as it lay outstretched, her fingers clasping a fan. So I knew her arms were round and taper, hence all her limbs and figure finely molded, because nature does not do such things by halves, and makes no bungles in her symmetry of contour when she plans a noble specimen of humanity. Here was a noble specimen ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... in love—put out My senses, leave me deaf and blind, Swept by the tempest of your love, A taper in a rushing wind. ...
— Love Songs • Sara Teasdale
... barracks, the institutions of learning, the traktirs, the bath-houses—even in the drinking cellars and gambling-hells. Scarcely a bridge or corner of a street is without its shrine, its pictured saint and burning taper, before which every by-passer of high or low degree bows down and worships. It may be said with truth that one is never out of sight of devotees baring their heads and prostrating themselves before these sacred images. All distinctions ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... key-hole and saw the two sisters come into their room, preceded by the polite Don Francisco, who carried a taper, and, after lighting a night-lamp, bade them good night and retired. Then my two beauties, their door once locked, sat down on the sofa and completed their night toilet, which, in that fortunate climate, is similar to the costume of our first mother. Lucrezia, knowing that I was waiting ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... 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! Ha! Who ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... Marriage of St. Catherine, our illustration shows how skilfully Correggio painted hands. The drooping fingers of the Saviour taper delicately, with long almond-shaped nails. Pilate's hand has slender, flexible fingers like those of some dainty woman, and might be mated with that of Mary Magdalene. It is apparent that the study of hands and feet interested our painter more than that of faces. We shall lose much ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... inn, the woodfire burning bright, The solitary taper's flickering light, The lowly couch, the casement swinging free,— My noblest friend, was this a place for thee? No fitting place! Yet there, from all apart, We poured forth mind for mind and heart for heart, Ranging from idle words and tales of mirth To the deep mysteries of heaven and earth ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... contain a little less than 10 cubic inches of oxygen; and of those 10 inches, one-eighth is converted into carbonic acid gas on passing once through the lungs*, a change which is sufficient to prevent air which has only been breathed once from suffering a taper to burn ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... it is wider at the stern than the deck piece. The deck piece has a maximum width of 5 inches, while the bottom piece has a width of 4 inches at the forward section. The deck measures 3-1/2 inches at the stern, while the bottom piece measures 4-1/2 inches at the stern. This produces a half-inch taper on each side of the stern. A half-inch taper is also produced on the ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... division between week-day and Sabbath, thanking God who divideth holiday from working-day, and light from darkness. Over a brimming wine-cup he made the blessing, holding his bent fingers to a wax taper to make a symbolical appearance of shine and shadow, and passing round a box of sweet-smelling spices. And, when the chanting was over, the child was given to sip of the wine. Many delicious mouthfuls of wine were associated in ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... led to her apartments. Esmond stood by the fireplace, blankly staring after her. Indeed, he scarce seemed to see until she was gone, and then her image was impressed upon him and remained forever fixed upon his memory. He saw her retreating, the taper lighting up her marble face, her scarlet lip quivering, and her shining golden hair. He went to his own room and to bed, but could not get to sleep until daylight, and ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... you take the advantage? Must you be perjured because I was tempting? It is true, I let you in by stealth by night, whose silent darkness favoured your treachery; but oh, Philander, were not your vows as binding by a glimmering taper, as if the sun with all his awful light had been a looker on? I urged your vows as you pressed on,—but oh, I fear it was in such a way, so faintly and so feebly I upbraided you, as did but more advance your perjuries. Your strength increas'd, but mine ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... Veronica into the vaults beneath the church, which are illuminated on this festival. Mass was performing in several of the splendid chapels, whose rich decorations of paintings and sculpture are but once a year revealed to the light, save from the obscure glimmering of the wax-taper, which is carried by the guide, to occasional visitors. It is astonishing what a vast amount of ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... 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 ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... being started too late to see our ladies before morning. However, at two that night, my saddle laid under my head, and haversack under the saddle, I fell asleep with all Gallatin for my bedchamber, the courthouse square for my bed, the sky for my tester, the pole-star for my taper, hogs for mosquitoes and a ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... that he locked his shop and went home, and in the night there came to the bazar an artful thief disguised in the habit of the merchant, and pulling out keys from his sleeve, said to the watchman of the market, "Light me this wax-candle." The watchman took the taper and went to light it,—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East. Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning's flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself,—and not a taper lighted at the hearth-stone of the race, which pales before the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... most magazines. He had written a good deal of graceful verse, and one or two pretty idyllic stories, and there were people who looked very hopefully on him as a rising light of literature. His sudden accession to wealth had almost buried the poor taper of his genius when the hands of Love triumphant took it suddenly at the time of that lazy lounge beneath the awning, and gave it a chance once more. He was meditating, as lovers will, upon his own unworthiness and the all-worthy attributes of the divine Lilian. And it came to him to do something—such ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... had in her composition a strong vein of the superstitious, and was pleased, among other fancies, to read alone in her chamber by a taper fixed in a candlestick which she had formed out of a human skull. One night, this strange piece of furniture acquired suddenly the power of locomotion, and, after performing some odd circles on her chimneypiece, fairly leaped on the floor, and continued to ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Caroline, gave her a sense of shame; and even when the service was over, and they entered the choir, these thoughts had not so passed away as to enable her to give full admiration to the exquisite leafy capitals and taper arcades of the Lady Chapel. Perhaps, too, there was a little perverseness in her inability to think that this ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... 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
... eye had caught a gleam of something to the left of the last pillar. He snuffed the wavering taper with his fingers and leaned forward. A face grew out of the ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... does it up ship-shape; but if he, with malice aforethought, lays deliberate plans, he finds it the most awkward traverse to work in the world to follow them—but I did not know this. I sat by the table, and in my embarrassment kept pushing the solitary taper farther and farther from me, until at last over it went, and was extinguished upon ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... to dwell there in all seasons, Like a taper burning day and night, Near to the child Jesus and the Virgin, In that home ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... 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 digits. Thus the part of the ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... vicar was sitting in a chair, leaning his chin on the knobbed handle of his umbrella. He rose and lit a taper for her with a match from a little green pot on the table. And Mrs Lawford, with trembling fingers, sealed the letter, as he directed, ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... Behold! how Hymen's taper-light Shows you how much is spent of night. See, see the bridegroom's torch Half wasted in the porch. And now those tapers five, That show the womb shall thrive, Their silv'ry flames advance, To tell all prosp'rous chance Still shall crown ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... I beg pardon! Have you been long here?" said the most soft and insinuating voice, while the speaker passed his taper fingers across his brow, as if to dissipate the traces of ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... cura came from the sacristy and lighted two candles on the altar. Then he turned with the taper in his hand and beckoned to Marcos and Juanita to come forward to the rails where two stools had been placed in readiness. The cura went back to the sacristy and returned, followed by the bishop in ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... lamp is 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 my ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... show that there are now alive in this country 213 persons who are over one hundred years old. Of these 147 are women, the alleged stronger sex being thus only able to show 66 specimens who are managing to still "husband out life's taper" after the lapse of a century. The preponderance of centenarians of the supposed weaker sex has led to the revival of some amusing theories tending to explain this phenomenon. One cause of the longevity ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... blue taper's trembling light, No more I waste the wakeful night, Intent with endless view to pore The schoolmen and the sages o'er: Their books from wisdom widely stray, Or point at best the longest way. I'll seek a readier path, and go Where wisdom's surely ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... had tried to quit, but the desire for it was so strong that I would go back to it; and when I tried to "taper off," I would make ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... that sun-blistered morning, the bookkeeper Case "blew in for a bottle," as he expressed it; remarked with engaging frankness that he believed he had still a day or so in which to taper, and would be home and on deck if the Apaches didn't get him meantime; and, being delicately invited to state where he had spent the night, replied as frankly as before, "Down at Jose Sanchez's," meaning thereby the down-stream resort two miles distant, where ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... pilgrim into the castle hall, Where brightly burned the fire, and many a taper tall. On a seat he sat him down, and made him right good cheer. His eyes around the hall cast the hero ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... or a taper's light Thine eyes, and not thy noise, wak'd me; Yet I thought thee (For thou lov'st truth) an angel at first sight, But when I saw thou saw'st my heart And knew'st my thoughts beyond an angel's art, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... moustache were the pink of venerable sweetness. Age, probably in consequence of inordinate precautions, had left no mark upon his hands; and the Maletroit hand was famous. It would be difficult to imagine anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in design; the taper, sensual fingers were like those of one of Leonardo's women; the fork of the thumb made a dimpled protuberance when closed; the nails were perfectly shaped, and of a dead, surprising whiteness. It rendered his aspect tenfold more redoubtable, ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... appear In saffron robe, with taper clear, And pomp, and feast, and revelry, And mask, and antique pageantry; Such sights as useful poets dream On summer eves, ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... developed out of lawn tennis. A wooden pole extending 10 feet above the surface is placed in a vertical position and firmly imbedded in the ground. The pole must be 7-1/2 inches in circumference at the ground and may taper to the top. Six feet above the ground a black band 2 inches wide is painted around the pole. The court is a smooth piece of sod or clay similar to a tennis court, but a piece of ground 20 ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... gold; Her hands are featly formed, and taper; Her—well, the rest ought not be told In any modest family paper. Fair as Ischomache, and bright As Brimo. ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... the Mhor as the Mob supplied appropriate growls at intervals; indeed, so much did Antony's eloquence inspire Mhor that, when Jock shouted, "Light the pyre!" (a sentence introduced to bring in the charade word), instead of merely pretending with an unlighted taper, Mhor dashed to the fire, lit the taper, and before anyone could stop him thrust it among the dry twigs, which at once began to light and crackle. Immediately all was confusion. "Mhor!" shouted Jean, as she sprang towards the stage. "Gosh, Maggie!" Jock yelled, as he grabbed the burning twigs, ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... length most happily proportioned to their thickness; these we saw at Athens; but when they were cut anew at Rome and polished, they did not gain so much in embellishment, as they lost in symmetry, being rendered too taper and slender. Should any one who wonders at the costliness of the Capitol visit any one gallery in Domitian's palace, or hall, or bath, or the apartments of his concubines, Epicharmus's ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the prime of art, sir. The sun stood high in heaven, and his broad and equal blaze made the darkest places bright and the dullest eyes clear. We live in the evening of time! We grope in the gray dusk, carrying each our poor little taper of selfish and painful wisdom, holding it up to the great models and to the dim idea, and seeing nothing but overwhelming greatness and dimness. The days of illumination are gone! But do you know I fancy—I fancy"—and he grew suddenly almost familiar in this visionary ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... this hollow Cylinder K is to contain the Sand, and by being drove round very quick to and fro by means of a small Wheel, which may be mov'd with ones foot, serves to grind the Glass: The other Mandril is shap'd like this, but it has an even neck instead of a taper one, and runs in a Collar, that by the help of a Screw and a joynt made like M in the Figure, it can be still adjustned to the wearing or wasting neck: into the end of this Mandril is screwed a Chock N on which with Cement or Glew ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... the bowl of a long clay pipe which he was smoking, but which, from a certain sucking sound which about this time began to be heard from the bottom, appeared to be giving notice that it would soon require replenishment from a certain canister which, together with a lighted taper, stood upon the ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... hour was the winter twilight before the family came together for their supper, for at that hour the lamplighter went his rounds and threw a golden string of dots upon the street. He drove an old thin horse and he stood on the seat of the cart with up-stretched taper. But when the world grew dark the flare of the fire was enough for the child to read, for he lay close against the hearth. And as the shadows gathered in the room, there was one story chiefly, of such intensity ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... seconds, then, in about a hundred 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... taper burns upon the toilet,—just bright enough to give the cognizance of something in woman's shape and in negligent attire scribbling near it. Thou needst not tap her on the shoulder; she need not look up and smile a welcome to the friendly vision. She knows that thou art here; ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... forth adown the stairs; and following silent, noiseless like a wraith was Janet, expectant, eager; for she felt she was to see the opening of a great battle. Constance led the way, carrying a taper. As they traversed some passage, their ears caught the sound of music. They listened a moment, then Constance proposed they snuff the candle and draw near the sound; "for very like the beaux were having an orgy," she said. And Katherine, full of adventure and ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... interesting side-light, also, upon another oft-observed phenomenon in psychical research. I refer to the fact that apparitions ("ghosts") are nearly always seen to be clear and distinct as to the head and upper portions of the body, while they taper off to vapour and "filmy nothingness" in the lower limbs, so that often the feet are not visible at all. While this may be due in part to the fact that the observer's attention is not directed to the lower ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... dark magnificence, I call At this still midnight hour, this awful season, When on my bed in wakeful restlessness, I turn me, weary: while all around, All, all, save me, sink in forgetfulness, I only wake to watch the sickly taper that lights, Me to my tomb. Yes, 'tis the hand of death I feel press heavy on my vitals; Slow sapping the warm current of existence; My moments now are few! e'en now I feel the knife, the separating knife, divide ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... $1,000. After all, it was more than I had ever before held in my hand at once. But what was a paltry thousand, aye a paltry ten thousand, to a man's pride? I bit off the end of my cigar, creased the check into a taper, and struck a match. I watched it burn and burn. I struck another. I held it within an inch of the check, but for the life of me I could not ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... a flickering taper's ray To light departing feet, my shadowed way You brighten with your faith. Faith makes the man Alas, that my poor foolish age outran Its early trust in God! The death of art And progress follows, when the world's hard heart Casts out religion. 'Tis the human brain Men worship ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... into niches. Three of these were filled with statues of gigantic proportions. Their beauty was Grecian, their deformity Egyptian, their tout ensemble French. In the fourth niche the statue was veiled; it was not colossal. But then there was a taper ankle, a sandalled foot. De L'Omelette pressed his hand upon his heart, closed his eyes, raised them, and caught his ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Baptist in the Wilderness, little girls with angels' wings and crowns, the monks of the various orders, and civilian penitents of all sorts in cloaks or dress-coats, hooded or bareheaded, and carrying each a lighted taper. The corridors under the Imperial Palace and the New and Old Procuratie were packed with spectators; from every window up and down the fronts of the palaces, gay stuffs were flung; the startled doves of St. Mark perched upon the cornices, ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... lay before them, and they relaxed not their knit brows. Now and then, one of them, after gazing vacantly about the room for ten or fifteen minutes, would attack the sheet before him with fiercest energy; then the energy would taper off, and the paragraph halt, the writer peruse it dubiously, then angrily tear off the sheet and hurl it to the floor. All around them lay these snowballs of ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... about midnight, when silence rested on the monastery, and the priests were all wrapped in slumber, Chan, with a lighted taper in his hand, stole with noiseless footsteps along the dark passages into the chamber of death where his beloved lay. Kneeling beside the coffin with a heart full of emotion, in trembling accents he called upon Willow to listen to the ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... to 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
... a moodier Lara, Through the world, as prowls the bat, And habitually wear a Cypress wreath around my hat: And when Death snuffs out the taper Of my Life, (as soon he must), I'll send up to every paper, "Died, T. Mivins; ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... snow, that lies Amidst the living rafters on the back Of Italy congeal'd when drifted high And closely pil'd by rough Sclavonian blasts, Breathe but the land whereon no shadow falls, And straightway melting it distils away, Like a fire-wasted taper: thus was I, Without a sigh or tear, or ever these Did sing, that with the chiming of heav'n's sphere, Still in their warbling chime: but when the strain Of dulcet symphony, express'd for me Their soft compassion, more than ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... of simple mind, Gamaliel Nibbs by name, Whose early faith in human kind Burned like a Vestal flame; No wind of doubt that stirs the dust Fluttered that bright and constant taper; But oh, he had his dearest trust Pinned ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... a word. He lighted a taper and burned the letter. "He has his way to make," he said ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... look that kindled 'Neath those drooping, straining eye-lids, Searching mid the blast and darkness, For some helper in her anguish, Searching, kindling look, that settled Into heavy, deadly slumber, As the waning taper flashes Once, to ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... the butler picked up the candle and beckoned me to follow him. We passed through the empty corridors of the house, a long line of pictured Buggams looking upon us as we passed, their portraits in the flickering light of the taper assuming a strange and life-like appearance, as if leaning forward from their frames ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... and made her profession five months after. As a preparation for this solemn act, she made a public confession in the presence of the community. She also recited her faults, kneeling, and wearing a cord about her neck, and bearing a lighted taper in her hands. Mere Helene de St. Augustin lived only six years in her convent at Meaux, and died on December 20th, 1654, at the age of fifty years, leaving the memory ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... wish to dally with the mooted question of the difference between realism and romanticism—in the perplexing mazes of which many a fine little talent has been snuffed out like a flickering taper in a gust of wind—there are a score or more volumes that you will find in any large library, in which the whole matter is thrashed out unsatisfactorily. However, if you wish to spend a half-hour profitably and pleasantly, read Robert Louis Stevenson's short chapter, A Note on Realism, to be ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... on my fingers and a chastened look of woe on my clear-cut Grecian features, I might have poured No. 1 hard wheat and buckwheat flour out of my long taper ears every night, if I had stuck to the profession. Still, as I say, it was for another man's best good that I resigned. The head miller had no control over himself and the proprietor had rather set his heart on my resignation, so ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... naught but fish out of this Tigris, but now it yieldeth nothing but apes." Then he looked at the second ape and saw him fair of form and round of face with pendants of gold in his ears and a blue waistcloth about his middle, and he was like unto a lighted taper. So he asked him, "What art thou, thou also, O ape?"; and he answered, saying, "O Khalif, I am the ape of Ab al-Sa'dt the Jew, the Caliph's Shroff. Every day, I give him good-morrow, and he maketh a profit of ten gold pieces." Cried the Fisherman, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... easy couches. These pleasant little abodes, in which the greatest cleanliness is everywhere observable, are all surrounded by cultivated gardens. In the evening, they are lighted by the oily nuts of the taper-tree, fastened ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... received the Blessed Sacrament with his trusty Leopold; the door of the Purgatory was unlocked, each was provided with a taper, and then with the blessing of the abbot they were left in total darkness, and the door bolted behind them. Both wandered on in the cave, hearing faintly the chanting of the monks in the church, till the sound died away. They traversed several passages, lost their ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 was lost in ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... his estate, all went well with me for years. The idea of detection never once entered my brain. Of the remains of the fatal taper I had myself carefully disposed. I had left no shadow of a clew by which it would be possible to convict, or even to suspect me of the crime. It is inconceivable how rich a sentiment of satisfaction arose in my bosom as I reflected upon my absolute security. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... The taper had burnt out. We lay side by side striving to sleep, while distress of mind and a wounded heart brought ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... gauze sleeves and hid her shoulders under an embroidered cape. Her curls, a l'Anglaise, struck her as too fly-away; she subdued their airy lightness by putting on a very pretty cap; but, with or without the cap, would she have known how to twist the golden ringlets so as to show off her taper fingers to admiration? ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... of the valleys below it to the south. It breeds at Mussoorie in May and June, selecting holes in the forest trees, generally large oaks, which it lines with dry grass and feathers. The eggs are from three to five, of a pale greenish blue, shape ordinary, but somewhat inclined to taper to the smaller end. This species usually arrives from the valleys of the Dhoon about the middle of March; and, until they begin to sit on their eggs, they congregate every morning and evening into small flocks, and roost together in trees near houses; in the ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... spread throughout his frame. As tropic storms strike languid forests, swaying, threshing, rending trees this way and that, so a mighty rush of fury swept him. Slowly at first, then faster, the almost forgotten taper flame of manliness that flickered on the altar of his inmost being leaped higher, until it blazed as a consuming fire. The eyes of his soul were open; the strength of his soul grasped the sword of Humanity to strike for this child, and the thousands like her, whose injury was ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... must be remembered in looking for this that it is the same tendril which should be examined, and not two different ones. It will then be seen that the tendril, after forming a spiral one way, lengthens out like a tiny green wax taper, and afterwards turns the other. Sometimes it resumes the original turn before reaching a branch to cling to, and may thus be said to have revolved in three directions. The dusty celandine grows under the bushes; and its light green leaves seem to retain the white dust from the road. Ground ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... wretch—but the action did not escape the quick eye of his companion, who, though trembling with undiminished terror, was yet mistress of all her senses, and perceived the ill-advised nature of his design. With a motion equally involuntary and sudden with his own, her taper fingers grasped his wrist, and her eyes bright with dewy lustres, were directed upward, sweetly and appealingly to those which now bent themselves down upon her. In that moment of excitement and impending terror, a consciousness of her situation and a sense of shame which ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... gentleman to the son of a clod-breaking peasant, I derogate from my sphere, even as the blessed sun would derogate should he condescend to compare and match his golden beams with the twinkle of a pale, blinking, expiring, gross-fed taper. But no consideration of rank shall prevent my avenging the insult thou hast offered me. We bear a smooth face, observe me, Sir Villagio, before the worshipful inmates of yonder cabin, and to-morrow we try conclusions with our swords." ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... unhandsomeness and the direct crimes; for all things are laid up safely, and tho we draw a curtain of cobweb over them, and a few fig-leaves before our shame, yet God shall draw away the curtain, and forgetfulness shall be no more, because, with a taper in the hand of God, all the corners of our nastiness shall be discovered. And, secondly, it signifies this also, that not only the justice of God shall be confest by us in our own shame and condemnation, but the evil of the sentence shall be received into us, ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... was thirty-five or fifty years of age, I could not say. He was tall, had a large forehead, straight nose, a clearly cut mouth, beautiful teeth, with fine taper hands, indicative of a highly nervous temperament. This man was certainly the most admirable specimen I had ever met. One particular feature was his eyes, rather far from each other, and which could take in nearly a quarter of ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... the consequences. The stranger secured the door; and, first examining the lower room with great care, he cautiously ascended the ladder. June, as soon as it became dark, had closed the loops of the principal floor, and lighted a candle. By means of this dim taper, then, the two females stood in expectation, waiting to ascertain the person of their visitor, whose wary ascent of the ladder was distinctly audible, though sufficiently deliberate. It would not be easy to say which ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... the grace of every step, pose, gesture. One would not have wanted her white neck a mite less full or her beautiful arms more slender. Never were hands more exquisite than hers, and it was a joy to look at them when she threaded her needle or adjusted her gold thimble to her taper middle finger as she sewed away on the little night-drawers or fashioned ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... sister still might be, but no longer wholly her own. Over the hearts of the purest Eros reigns with a too despotic power, and mild affection is apt to sneak away into some corner of the temple on whose shrine Love has descended. This mild affection is but a little twinkling taper, that will burn steadily on, perhaps unseen amidst the dazzling glory of Love's supernal lamp, to be found shining benignantly ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... Taper, the priest's son, commenced playing a polka, and the ladies went into the ballroom; the old butler and two footmen brought wax candles and basins of water, and the old ladies began to tell fortunes. A troupe of mummers tumbled in, ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... moulding usually made at the caps and bases of round pillars, to taper or hance the round part ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... audience, a long seat with a high back and pew- like ends. At the rise of the curtain, Thomas Rigby, the rubicund landlord, is lighting with a taper the candles that stand on the mantelshelf, the buttons on his plum-colored waistcoat twinkling in the gleam. He has only lighted one when the door is pushed open, and there enter two young British ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... lost a little of its warm rich tint; the soft rings of hair were drawn away under her veil; her hands were thin, and as waxen as the taper she held. An unearthly beauty ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... bag he had been using to carry food. This bag he bound with a pack strap, leaving a loop to sling over his shoulder. I also bound my half a blanket with a pack strap, thinking as I did so that I soon might want to eat the strap. And then, when George and I had filled our waterproof boxes with wax taper matches, and placed a handful of pistol cartridges in our pockets, we were ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... the hour when happy faces Smile around the taper's light; Who will fill our vacant places? Who ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... wax lights will be necessary. If these are not lighted in you, your particular faculties will not benefit others in the least. The stars have not thought of this; they suppose that you and every other light must be a wax taper: but I must go down now." So he laid ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... A'Dale and I were strolling beside the cathedral, when a small party of idle boys and ragamuffins happened to come that way intent on mischief, if they could possibly achieve it. One of them with a grave air walked up to the old woman's table, and, taking a taper in one hand and a saint in the other, inquired the price of the articles. A ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... very valuable gold watch, a gold watch chain, 2 gold watch keys, a gold seal, a silver mustard pot and spoon, a silver salt stand, a scent bottle, a china basket, 3 china jugs, a china cup and saucer and mug 2 taper candlesticks, a ring stand, 2 spill cups, a card stand, a lamp, a claret jug, a pair of decanters, 6 hock glasses, 14 claret glasses, 6 finger glasses, and a set of china tea things. The donor has found true riches and peace to his ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... (muticus), for, when the spike is first forming, the beard, like the horns of a young animal, is not apparent but lies hid like a sword in its scabbard under a wrapping of foliage which hence is called the sheath. When the spike is mature its taper end above the grain is called the frit, while that below, where the spike joins the straw culm, is called ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... a broad low room, full of soft colours and the warm glow of highly polished wood. Walls, curtains, and carpet were all of powder-blue; an old rose fabric covered what seats there were; an apple-green coverlet filled up the symphony. That taper elegance which modern craftsmanship can give mahogany was most apparent, lending the usual suite unusual comeliness. A great pier-glass flashed in a corner, upon a little table beside a deep chair a bowl of roses sweetened ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... to the chapel attended only by myself. She desired me beforehand to request one of my relations, who was her chaplain, to celebrate a mass for her at five o'clock in the morning. It was still dark; she gave me her arm, and I lighted her with a taper. I left her alone at the chapel door. She did not return to her room until the ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... away. I am glad that conference is coming. I shall see the bishop, and have you removed to some other part of the Lord's vineyard. You are too plain a Pulpit for such an elegant Pew. Just look at your big hands and feet. We want a spiritual guide whose fingers taper to a fine point, and one who could wear, if need be, a lady's shoe. Get out, with your great paws and clodhoppers! We want in this church a Pulpit that will talk about heaven, and make no allusion ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... the general effect. There are the same precious pictures on the walls of the salon—the same great dusky fresco in the concave ceiling. The daughter is not rich, I suppose, any more than the mother. The furniture is worn and faded, and I was admitted by a solitary servant, who carried a twinkling taper before me up ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James
... moment, turned by habit into the doorway of the sitting-room which I knew so well, lifting my feet to avoid stumbling on its step, and passing into the room found my way through the gloom to the wide fireplace where I took my stand. Lily watched me enter, then following me, she lit a taper at the fire which smouldered on the hearth, and placed it upon the table in the window in such fashion that though I was now obliged to take off my hat, my face was ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... is far from being a well-shaped creature: it appears disproportioned. Its back is long and hollow; and its tail does not taper so gracefully as in some other animals of the cat kind. Its legs are short and stout; and although far from clumsy in appearance, it does not possess the graceful tournure of body so characteristic of some of its congeners. Though considered ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... 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, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... laboured. The rest of those artificial helps are summed up by the Jesuit And. Schottus. I remember that Monsieur Huygens (author of the pendulum), who brought up the learned father of that incomparable youth Monsieur de Zulichem, who used to prescribe to me the benefit of his little wax taper (a type whereof is, with the history of it, in some of our Registers) for night elucubrations, preferable to all other candle or lamp light whatsoever. And because it explodes all glaring of the flame, which by no means ought to dart upon the ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... his books and worldly treasures around him. As he sat there, one would have thought that he was about to commence a course of study; and yet in the marble paleness of his features, and in the listless and languid eye, there was evidence that life in the boy was like an expiring taper, flickering in the socket. He soon asked to go out in his little carriage. His grandfather, whom he very much loved, placed him in it, and carefully avoiding every stone, drew him to a spot commanding the entire landscape. The tide was up and the sun was shining ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
... conversation to-morrow evening at nine-oclock, in your cabinet. He will be masked. He begs you to permit him to keep his mask until he shall be satisfied that he is seen by no one else. Should the strangeness of this request not permit you to accept it, place a lighted taper in your window opening on the quai des Orfevres and no one will come. The writer knows that he addresses a man of courage and honor, who never is terrified by mere forms when he looks for important results. It is also known that this man, though protected by wise precautions, made necessary ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... which they call Pattoo Pattoas; some made of wood, some of bone, and others of Stone. Those made of wood are Variously shaped, but those made of bone and Stone are of one shape, which is with a round handle, a broadish blade, which is thickest in the Middle and taper'd to an Edge all round. The use of these are to knock Men's brains out, and to kill them outright after they are wounded; and they are certainly well contrived things for this purpose. Besides these Weapons they Throw ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... Besides—we are 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 the animals in a farmyard, but rises to the best height of human sympathy ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... of God; he gave, and he can take away. Picture to yourself the state of alarm, care, and anxiety in which I have been kept for the last fortnight. She died without being conscious of any thing—her life went out like a taper. Three days ago she confessed, received the sacrament and extreme unction; but since that time she has been constantly delirious and rambling, until this afternoon at twenty-one minutes after five, when she was seized ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... live plants. These were cultivated in his garden at Malvern House, Sydenham, and when they flowered I examined the plant and found that it differed from other forms of M. arvensis in the taste, in the acuminate segments of the calyx of the flower, and in the longer leaf stalks; the leaves also taper more toward the base. Dr. Franchet, the greatest living authority on Japanese plants, to whom I sent specimens, confirmed my opinion as to the variety deserving a special name, and M. Malinvaud, a well known authority on mints, suggested ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... and 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 their grip ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Circuit and Paris-Madrid type. Then the 1912 types, with taper wing and modern type wing. The 1913 types, the "clipped wing," flown by the late Mr. Hamel, one of the standard tandem types now in use. About the same time came the "parasol." 1914-15 came a little biplane like a Nieuport, and the "destroyer" type ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... case of a great, stern, burly ecclesiastic in Florence. The coffin stood on tressels in the aisle of Chapelizod church; and, of all persons in the world, he and Charles Nutter stood side by side as chief mourners, each with a great waxen taper burning in one hand, and a white pocket-handkerchief ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... poplar, tall and taper, Reachest up on high; Like a preacher pointing upward— Upward to the sky. Thou, O holly, with thy berries, Gleaming redly bright, Comest, like a pleasant friend, When the dying year hath end, Comest to the Christmas party, round ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... Dessalines was alone in a dimly-lighted apartment of Government-house—dimly-lighted except by the moon, shining in full at the range of windows which overlooked the gardens, so as to make the one lamp upon the table appear like a yellow taper. For most of the long hours that she had sat there, Therese had been alone. Denis had entered, before his departure homewards, to ask what tidings he was to carry to Pongaudin from her. Father Laxabon had twice appeared, to know if he could not yet see Genifrede, ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... foe cringed to them, The Scottish Sailors, and the Northern Shipmen; Fated they Fell. The Field lay gory With Swordsmen's blood Since the Sun rose On Morning tide a Mighty globe, To Glide o'er the Ground, God's candle bright, The endless Lord's taper, till the great Light Sank to its Setting. There Soldiers lay, Warriors Wounded, Northern Wights, Shot over Shields; and so Scotsmen eke, Wearied with War. The West Saxon onwards, The Live-Long day in Linked order Followed the ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... priests now returned to the church, and, putting on their vestments, commenced the services of the day; the abbot himself celebrated high mass, assisted by brother Elfget the deacon, brother Savin the sub-deacon, and the brothers Egelred and Wyelric, youths who acted as taper-bearers. When the mass was finished, just as the abbot and his assistants had partaken of the holy communion, the Danes burst into the church. The abbot was slain upon the holy altar by the hand of the Danish king ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... fitted for life's finer offices, ah, the pity of it, the pity of it!... But let me set down the whole sad story as it dawned upon me this afternoon in that unearthly church. I was later than the hour appointed; vespers were over and a server, taper in hand, was gradually transforming the gloom of the high altar into a blaze of light. With a strange sense of completion I took my place next to the chair by which Lorimer, with bowed head, was kneeling, ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... in the church-square. There she joined the little girls of her school; and, arm in arm, they walked along past the dark houses and the silent trees, each whispering her own tale: about her new dress, her veil, her white shoes, her long taper with golden bows; about flowers ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... ascending tree after tree, and climbing every branch, apparently in search of birds' nests. They are very fond of eggs; and the tame ones, which are often kept as pets, play havoc amongst the poultry when they get loose. They are about the size of a hare, with a taper snout, strong tusks, a thick hairy coat, and bushy tail. When passing down this road, I at times saw the fine curl-crested curassow (Crax globicera), as large as a turkey, jet black, excepting underneath. This ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... he had hitherto devoted his life, he wore, like Milton's Adam, his wavy hair down to his shoulders. In his youth, it had been thick and curling; now it was thinner and straighter, yet curled where it lay. His hands were small, with the taper fingers that indicate the artist, while his thumb was that of the artizan, square at the tip, with the first joint curved a good deal back. That they were hard and something discoloured was not for Dorothy to ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... paleness of his countenance indicating a strange mixture of determination and superstitious awe. He quitted the cabinet with the unhesitating step of one resolved to obtain mastery over himself; the legislator of etiquette, and the regulator of bodies, each with a lighted taper, followed him with fear and trembling. The keeper of the keys had already retired to rest; Baumgarten was despatched by the king to awaken him, and to order him forthwith to open the doors of the council-chamber. Unbounded was the worthy keeper's surprise ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... to and fro, like witches in a whirlwind; fifty different calls—tastes—orders and fancies, are being served, but Capt. Fussy is attended to, a servant seizes his valise and a taper, and in the most winning ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... wonted firmness. Ah! how dark Thy long-extended realms, and rueful wastes! Where nought but silence reigns, and night, dark night, Dark as was chaos, ere the infant Sun Was roll'd together, or had tried his beams Athwart the gloom profound.—The sickly taper, By glimmering through thy low-brow'd misty vaults (Furr'd round with mouldy damps, and ropy slime), Lets fall a supernumerary horror, And only serves to make thy night more irksome. 20 Well do I know thee ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... seraphic glow; Thou, Abelard! the last sad office pay, And smooth my passage to the realms of day; See my lips tremble and my eye-balls roll, Suck my last breath and catch my flying soul! Ah no—in sacred vestments may'st thou stand, The hallowed taper trembling in thy hand, Present the Cross before my lifted eye, Teach me at once and learn ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... strand again alternately over a strand and under a strand of the rope, and then taper off by halving the strands before tucking the third time, and again halve them before ...
— Knots, Bends, Splices - With tables of strengths of ropes, etc. and wire rigging • J. Netherclift Jutsum
... the shore, waiting for the sea to give up its dead. The east grew whiter, and light broke dimly over the waste of waves, and faintly showed them where the "Gull" had struck. There was not much left of the little craft,—only a few timbers and the taper point of a mast, wedged in between some outlying rocks, which the sea thundered over. It was a dreary sight,—the vast, immeasurable waste lashed into foam, and dimly discerned through the gray gleaming of the dawn, with the bit of wreck swaying in the wares, where those lives ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... entertained, and the signora was just opening her mouth to say, "Of course the padre has forgotten all about us," when they heard in the distance a faint footstep approaching, and the padre appeared with a taper in one hand and a magnificent red silk coverlet in the other. "For the signora's bed," he explained, and went to leave it in the bedroom. Then he came and sat down, apologizing for having left them so long, and commenced what would have been for his listeners a most interesting ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... the copper taper stands, one in either hand, and held them aloft. But first he placed his long dagger, not back in his belt, but between his teeth with the handle towards his right hand. Even then in some strange fashion I noted how terrible looked this grim dark man holding the candles ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... conferring under certain conditions the same advantages as were to be gained by the great pilgrimage to Rome. The pilgrims kept the 'holy vigil'—that is to say, they passed an entire night in prayer before the relics with a lighted taper either fixed at their side or carried in the hand. The pilgrimage and the ancient association of St. Foy were ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... purchase, and had not come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too late—and when the old bookseller, with some grumbling, opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bedwards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures—and when you lugged it home wishing it were twice as cumbersome—and when you presented it to me; and when we were exploring the perfectness ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... In ambush for the dark, And a traveller in the vale below Rejoicing like a lark; A taper nearly vanished Amid the dawning gray, And a maiden lifting up her head, ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... go, plunged in feelings of awe: they enter the oratory; the solitary window is curtained; in the obscurity, feebly dispelled by the mysterious glimmer of the lamp, through the deep stillness, fitfully broken by the flaring of the taper, they were gazed down upon from every side by the dark images of the Saviour, the Holy Mother of God, and the Holy Saints. From them there seems to breathe a chilly air as of another world: here thou canst not hide thyself from their glances; from every side they follow thee in the slightest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... cloth, which fell like folds of drapery, and softly retired to rest herself. Her uncle, on coming into the room at the dawn of morning, beheld the great Leonidas still sleeping, and his arm most lovingly encircling the churn dash, which no doubt in his dreams he mistook for the taper waist of Grace, when the loud laugh of the old man and his "helps," who had now risen, roused him. He got up and looked round him, but, with the Spartan firmness of his name-sake, said nothing, but went right off and married his cousin Prudence ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... wand'rings round this world of care, In all my griefs—and God has given my share— I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown, Amidst those humble bowers to lay me down; To husband out life's taper at its close, And keep the flame from wasting by repose. I still had hopes—for pride attends us still— Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill, Around my fire an evening group to draw, And tell of all I felt and all I saw. And as a hare, whom hounds and horns ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... interruption to "affairs of the State," always weighty, often harassing, the gay reaction, the hearty unceremonious recognition on both sides, the warm welcome to the gentle avant courier. This was not a great queen, but a gleeful girl at the height of her happiness, who stroked with white taper hand the sleek black head, looked eagerly into the fond eyes, perhaps went so far as to hug the humble friend, stretching up fleet shapely paws, wildly wagging a slender tail, uttering sharp little yelps of delight ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... superstition in the East, That Allah, written on a piece of paper, Is better unction than can come of priest, Of rolling incense, and of lighted taper: Holding, that any scrap which bears that name In any characters its front impress'd on, Shall help the finder thro' the purging flame, And give his toasted feet ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... and overspread with the stillness of the grave. The lights within the chapel threw a rich glow through the painted windows; and here and there, from a few scattered casements in the vast pile of St. Agnes, streamed a few weak rays from a taper or a lamp, indicating the trouble of a sick bed, or the peace of prayer. But these rare lights did but deepen the massy darkness of all beside; and Paulina, with her attendant, had much difficulty in making her way to the appointed ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... argument, the question of the possibility, value, or utility of an external revelation,—whether the truths it is to communicate be absolutely unknown till it reveals them only not known, which you confess was your own case. If your natural taper of illumination is stuck into a dark lantern, and its light only can flash upon the soul when some Mr. Newman kindly lifts up the slide for you; or if your internal oracle, like a ghost, will not speak till it is spoken to; or, like a dumb demon, awaits to find a voice, and ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... holding a long lighted taper, stand for hours making the sign of the Cross, while the gorgeously-robed priest chanted the service and made sundry waves with his hands and gave certain swings with the incense-burner. The responses were made by ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... me send away Joe, the under-gardener. He being gone, she whispers in my ear how she hath plotted to fright his lordship and Marian into very convulsions of further conviction, by appearing to them at the door o' the blue room in her night-gown, with a taper in her hand and her face chalked. What she desired o' me was, that I should come to the blue room with her, and there remain while she played off this pretty fantasy on my ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... 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 stood blinking ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... that the light came from a death-taper, with which was a vessel of water for ceremonial purification, and a napkin, here being all the preparations for tahara (washing); and suddenly, in a near room, arose the clamorous dole of shivah (the seven mourning-days), Rachel weeping for her children, ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... to where his long, limber, trout rod was resting on three hooks, all ready with winch, taper line, and cast, under the eaves of the ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... would oft forget their Rulers' faults, And waste in ancient lore the midnight taper, Inquire if Orpheus first produced the Waltz, How Gas-lights differ from the Delphic Vapor. Whether Hippocrates gave Glauber's Salts, And what the Romans wrote on ere obey'd paper,— This night the subject of ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton |
