"Taper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an hour before dawn, and by broad sun-up had made eight or ten miles, and were in the midst of a sparsely settled country. I had a pretty heavy knapsack; it was laden with provisions—provisions for the king to taper down on, till he could take to the coarse fare of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... shall live with thee inclosed, I will loathe my pen and paper Art shall never be supposed, Sloth shall quench the watching taper. ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... been persuaded by a sorcerer that her husband would be king, and she joined him in acts of witchcraft in order to bring this about. She was condemned (October, 1441) to do penance by walking three successive days in a white sheet and carrying a lighted taper, starting each day from St. Paul's and visiting certain churches. Her husband, says the chronicler Grafton, "took all patiently and said little." Still retaining some power in the Council, he lived until ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... 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 heaven's ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... rainbow, wreathe her round, from the snowy breast to the finely rounded limbs half buried in billowy cushions; the attitude is the very poetry of repose, languid it may be, but glowing life thrills beneath that flower-soft exterior, from the varying cheek and flashing eye, to the henna-dyed taper fingers, that capriciously play with her rosary of beads. The blaze of sunshine is round her kiosk, but she sits in the softened shadow so dear to the painter's eye. And so she dreams away the warm hours in such a calm of thought within, and sight or sound without, that she starts ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... production. In resuming public works construction, it is desirable to proceed only at a moderate rate, since demand for private construction will be abnormally high for some time. Our public works program should be timed to reach its peak after demand for private construction has begun to taper off. Meanwhile, however, plans should be prepared if we are to act promptly when the present extraordinary private ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and rugged ground she sinks, And soon her seeking had been ended there, But through the trees a fearful glimmer shrinks, And of a hermit's dwelling she is 'ware: At the dull pane a dull-eyed taper blinks, Drowsed with long vigils and ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... people Nino conducted to the little entrance at the back of the Pantheon, and the sacristan struck a light to show them the way to the door of the church. Then he put out his taper, and let them ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... The muscles which move the bones by their contraction taper for the most part, as before mentioned, into tendons. These are commonly very strong cords, like belts or straps, made up of white, ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... each having ninety-six sides, the perimeter of the upper plane corresponding with a circle of eight feet diameter, that of the lower plane being six feet. The corresponding sides of these planes are connected by flat taper mirrors composed of thin glass silvered on the outside. When the reflector faces the sun at right angles, each mirror intercepts a pencil of rays of 32.61 square inches section, hence the entire reflecting surface receives the radiant heat of an annular sunbeam of 32.61 x 96 3,130 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... insensible to these charms, and he felt the seductive art of Cicero when he said, that "there is as much difference in apprehending a thought clothed in Cicero's language and that of a common author, as in seeing an object by the light of a taper, or by the light of ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... wish a brother's love to share"— I did not read thy features dreamingly, And peer into thine eye's deep azure, there Searching another's depths, in revery! I did not press, all passionless, thy hand Or idly dally with thy taper finger, Or coldly gaze, for I could not withstand The high and holy ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... of a class of beings whose degradation has distracted the political wisdom of our happy country, from its conquest to the present day. "There's something in it," again mutters Mr. Scranton, as he enters his room, lights his taper, and with his elbow resting on the table, his head supported in his hand, sits ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... belonged sat down upon a divan and bade Al-Rashid sit over against him and signed to Ja'afar and Masrur to take their places in due degree,[FN115] whilst the negroes and the eunuchs stood expecting their commands for suit and service. Presently was brought to them a huge waxen taper which lighted up the whole of the hall and the young house-master accosted the King and said to him, "Well come and welcome and fair welcome to our guests who to us are the most esteemed of folk and may Allah honour their ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... a taper in his hand, immediately went, with a pale face and trembling steps, to the place appointed for him beside the corpse, where ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... light, Goodliest of all, is by such love inspired, That all your world craves tidings of its doom: Within, there is the lofty light, endow'd With sapience so profound, if truth be truth, That with a ken of such wide amplitude No second hath arisen. Next behold That taper's radiance, to whose view was shown, Clearliest, the nature and the ministry Angelical, while yet in flesh it dwelt. In the other little light serenely smiles That pleader for the Christian temples, he Who did provide Augustin of his lore. Now, if thy mind's eye pass from light ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... burnt so long as to leave a tolerably large wick, blow it out; a dense smoke, which is composed of hydrogen and carbon, will immediately rise. Then, if another candle, or lighted taper, be applied to the utmost verge of this smoke, a very strange phenomenon will take place. The flame of the lighted candle will be conveyed to that just blown out, as if it were borne on a cloud, or, rather, it will seem like ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... plays of Corpus Christi oft was seen, And on Palm Sunday bore his bough of green. His only pastime was to hunt the boar Through tangled thickets of the forest hoar, Or with his jingling mules to hurry down To some grand bull-fight in the neighboring town, Or in the crowd with lighted taper stand, When Jews were burned, or banished from the land. Then stirred within him a tumultuous joy; The demon whose delight is to destroy Shook him, and shouted with a trumpet tone, "Kill! kill! and let the Lord find out ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... upper division, linear; the seed organs are longer; the calyx tubular, having five minute teeth, being striped and grooved; the whole head, or whorl, is supported by a leafy bract, the leaflets being of a pale green colour, tinted with red. The leaves are ovate-cordate, or broadly lance-shaped, taper-pointed, toothed, rough, and slightly wrinkled, and they have short stalks. The stems are square, grooved, and hard. The whole plant exhales a powerful but pleasant odour. The habit is branching, that of the root progressive, not only increasing rapidly, but such parts on the ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... 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 it ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... he carried in both hands, extended, after the similitude of a pre-historic monkey making a votive offering—something dark-red and pot-bellied, and more immense than I had dreamed it could look. A cluster of cropped leaves crowned it, a taper root, a foot long, depended from ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... at this sort of thing only a few years," said Hallowell. "I rather think it will not be many years now before we shall not even need the initial germ of life to enable us to create but can do it by pure chemical means, just as a taper is lighted by ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... room the tyrant call'd by night, Where thick and gloomy grates shut out the light; From the low roof a smoky taper hung, And wide around its ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... games are different from those of the men. She has a sport of wand-throwing which develops fine muscles of the shoulder and back. The wands are about eight feet long, and taper gradually from an inch and a half to half an inch in diameter. Some of them are artistically made, with heads of bone and horn, so that it is remarkable to what a distance they may be made to slide over the ground. In the feminine game ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... teeth of the wind and pendulous labor of rolling, the three cutters joyfully took the word to go. With a creak, and a cant, and a swish of canvas, upon their light heels they flew round, and trembled with the eagerness of leaping on their way. The taper boom dipped toward the running hills of sea, and the jib-foreleech drew a white arc against the darkness of the sky to the bowsprit's plunge. Then, as each keen cut-water clove with the pressure of the wind upon ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... curve and taper spars of the vessel, and began to wonder at the way in which she seemed to grow as they drew nearer; or was it that the boat in which he was gliding ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... taper, high spire or pyramid, raised perpendicularly, and terminating in a point, to serve as an ornament to some open square; and is very often covered with inscriptions or hieroglyphics, that is, with mystical characters or symbols used by the Egyptians ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... would be large enough, but I suppose it would be just as easy, perhaps easier, to make a two-inch bore,—the auger would be more apt to get clogged and cramped in a smaller hole; then a reamer and a circular joint-plane, to make your joints,—the taper end of one log is to be fitted into the bore of the next, you know. You will also need some apparatus for holding your log and directing the rod, so that you sha'n't bore out, but make your holes meet in the middle, ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... details with little taper-finger touches of nicety, but she could not judge as well as he of generalities and the final scope of combinations. It was doubtful if Abigail ever fairly appreciated ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Embraces Cypress taper-waist; cools feet on wavy breast of rill; Smiles in the Nargis love-lorn eyes, and joys the ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... to. Upon the table stood two great gilt candelabra bearing many candles, a fragment of the spoil of Cartagena. Nevil, taking from its socket the one lighted taper, began to apply the flame to its waxen fellows. As the chamber grew more and more brilliant, the friar, standing with folded arms, made no motion to break the profound stillness, but with the lighting of the last candle ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... must go," said Monsignore Catesby to Lothair, and he gently but irresistibly pushed him into his place. "You know you promised to support her. You had better take this," he said, thrusting a lighted taper into his hand; "it is usual, and ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... clasps her, beautiful in death, And with a kiss recalls her fleeting breath, To tapers thus, which by a blast expire, A lighted taper, touch'd, restores the fire: She rear'd her swimming eye, and saw the light, And Guilford too, or she had loath'd the sight: Her father's death she bore, despis'd her own, But now she must, she will, have leave to groan: Ah! Guilford, she began, and would have spoke; But sobs ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... far, southern swamps have a great width of base, from which they narrow so rapidly in the first seven or eight feet of their height, and thence upward taper so gradually, that it is almost or quite impossible for an axe-man, standing at their roots, to chop through the great flare that he finds abreast of him, and bring the trees down. But when the swamps are deep in water, the swamper may paddle up to these trees, whose narrowed waists ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... not well rigged for drifting before a breeze, which was what he was now doing. He had merely to keep the canoe before the wind, steering so as to clear the bold headland of White Horse which rose blue from the water's edge far in front of him. Though the wind was light, the canoe being so taper and sharp at the prow, and the sail so large in comparison, slipped from the shore faster than he at ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... sad, sad voice! Each word the poor girl spoke in answer, froze her hearer's blood, as though that gentle breath had been the ice-blast of the pole. "I do not know, mother," she replied, "but I have such a pain here." She pressed her hands slowly over her brow, and with her white taper fingers put back the loosened hair. Then in hurried accents whispered,—"Do not tell him—do not let them take me away—but God help me, mother!" she added wildly: "I think I am MAD!" and it was true. She sank beneath her first ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... the generous sweep of his deep elastic belly, nobly pulped out with rich nurture, showed what the power of his brain must be, and seemed to undulate, time for time, with the vibrant vigilance of his large wise eyes. His latter end was consistent also. An elegant taper run of counter, coming almost to a cylinder, as a mackered does, boldly developed with a hugeous spread to a glorious amplitude of swallow-tail. His colour was all that can well be desired, but ill-described by any poor word-palette. Enough ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... provided with small grooves for the purpose of keeping the knife-edges in oil and protected from the weather. The knife-edges are each 6 in. long, 2-11/16 in. deep from point to back, 2 in. wide at the back, and taper 50 with the horizontal, starting on a line 1 in. from the back. The point is rounded to conform to a radius of in. The back of each is 2 in. longer than the edge, making a total length of 10 in., and is ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... his pocket for his matches as he lay prone, he struck a light, and held the burning taper beyond him as far as he could reach. All that he saw was a dark and horrible abyss. He struck another match with the same result. He seized a piece of loose rock, rolled it over the edge, and waited for the sound of its lodgment at the bottom. He ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... soul of me is dead, and I know not but that at any moment I may flicker out like a spent taper, and become as one of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... jewels come back, one by one, ring added to ring on the little taper fingers, the rubies for the neck, and the pendent yellow earrings. Though Lizzie was in mourning for her father, still these things were allowed to be visible. The countess was not the woman to see them without inquiry, and she inquired vigorously. She threatened, stormed, and ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... 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 children—say from one to two dozen—die every year in England from drinking ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... ghost of a smile, which only brought out the sadness of her face, as a taper in a crypt reveals its ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... time they did not get off so easily. The mayor, Adam Stable, was removed, and Nicholas Brembre appointed in his place. A fresh election of aldermen took place,(613) and the City did penance for the recent insult to the duke's escutcheon by offering, at the king's confidential suggestion, a wax taper bearing the duke's arms in St. Paul's. Even that did not satisfy him; nay, it was adding insult to injury (he said), for such an act was an honour usually paid to one who was dead! The citizens were in despair, and doubted if anything would satisfy ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... from them before the servants of the family, in which case, detection would have been immediate, and imprisonment inevitable. Keeping it, therefore, entirely to himself, he concealed it from every eye during the day, and at night, after the family had gone to bed, he sat up, lighted his taper, and, when every thing was still and silent about him, ventured, only then, to read over the paper, and to get by heart the most important parts of the intelligence regarding England; and he afterwards transmitted the invaluable present to some secret friend, who, in the same manner, dared ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... wrapped his cloak around him, and ushering his guest from the room, led the way down-stairs. He carried a bit of wax taper, which he held low to the steps, frequently stopping and warning the Prince to be careful. It was night when they went out. The air was sharp and cold, and Saracinesca buttoned his greatcoat to his throat as he strode by the side of ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... the hall. Taking a solitary light, which stood on the supper-table, I descended the winding stair-case; but before I had reached the vaulted passage leading to the statue of the blessed Jeanne of France, a blast of wind extinguished my taper. I hastily remounted the stairs, to light it again at the chimney; but judge of my feelings, when, on arriving at the entrance to the armory, I beheld the Seneschal and his lady, who had descended from their frames, and seated themselves ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... 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 soul in the Lord ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... analogies and handsome dubious eggs called possibilities. Will saw clearly enough the pitiable instances of long incubation producing no chick, and but for gratitude would have laughed at Casaubon, whose plodding application, rows of note-books, and small taper of learned theory exploring the tossed ruins of the world, seemed to enforce a moral entirely encouraging to Will's generous reliance on the intentions of the universe with regard to himself. He held that reliance to be a mark of genius; and certainly it is no mark to the contrary; genius ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... stumbled up the broad staircase at the head of which a servant now awaited, taper in hand, to conduct him to the ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... having something, "I design'd him this which is now a-cutting: Upon an altar dedicated to Love, divers hearts transfix'd with arrows and darts are to lye broiling upon the coals; and upon the steps of it, Hymen ... in a posture as if he were going to light [his taper] to the altar; when Cupid is to come behind him and pull him by the saffron sleeve, with these words proceeding from his mouth: Nondum peracta sunt praeludia";[330] a statement that is only too true and in which Loveday summarizes unawares the truest criticism levelled at these romances. ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... letter still exists, and its appearance indicates the terror into which it threw the earl. It reached him at midnight. With it came a summons to attend the privy council. He read it apparently by the light of a taper, and with such agitation that the sheet caught fire. The scorched letter still exists, and is burnt through at the most critical part of its story. The poor old earl learned enough to double his terror, and lost the section that would have alleviated it. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... breathed her latest sigh, if it had been so permitted her. Closing the Bible she had been reading, she placed the sacred volume under her arm, and taking up a small bundle, containing her slender preparations for travel, extinguished the taper, and then descending by a secret staircase, passed through a door, fashioned externally like a cupboard, and entered a summer-house, where she found old Crouch ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... introduction, it has somewhat deteriorated; and, as now grown, differs to some extent from the description given above. The roots are smaller, seldom rise more than two or three inches above the soil, and taper directly from the crown to the point. A judicious selection of roots for seed, continued for a few seasons, would undoubtedly restore the variety to its ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... altogether please him, but which he could not well resist, as it was meant most kindly, nicknamed him Dolly. Poor fellow!—he was long remembered afterwards. I forget what his particular complaint was, but he gradually sunk; and at last went out just as a taper might have done, exposed to such gusts of wind as blew in that tempestuous region. He died in the morning; but it was not until the evening that he was prepared for a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... Flaunting and red, You shall wear waxen white Taper instead. What if now, otherwhere, Birds are beguiled, You shall yet nestle The little Christ-Child. Ah! the strange splendor The fir-trees shall know! And so, Little evergreens, grow! Grow! Grow! Grow, little ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... is familiarly known that a taper will not burn where carbonic acid exists in any considerable quantity, or when there is a marked deficiency of oxygen. From this originated the judicious practice of sinking a lighted candle into a well or pit before ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... work, guessing that it was the bread which they had promised us, and so it proved, and done up with great neatness in a long roll of tarpaulin, which had been wrapped around both the loaves and the rope, and lashed very securely at the ends, thus producing a taper shape convenient for passing over the weed without catching. Now, when we came to open this parcel, we discovered that my hint had taken very sound effect; for there were in the parcel, besides the ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... thing! It would take only a few minutes and would be something to do to pass the time. Softly we slipped through the iron gate; lightly we hastened along the shining wet street; under the shadow of the Cathedral, whose spire seemed to taper to the sky; down narrow, winding Henwood Street till we reached the ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... on tiptoe for a flight: With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white, And taper fingers catching at all things To bind them all about with ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... same evening, 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 story of ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... however, that the convexity is to be very slight, and that the shaft is not to bulge in the centre, but to taper from the root in a curved line; the peculiar character of the curve you will discern better by exaggerating, in a diagram, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the man who had secretly celebrated a heathen sacrifice was discovered by St. Severinus, because, while the tapers of the rest of the congregation were lighted miraculously from heaven, his taper alone would not light; and passes on impatiently, with regret that the biographer omits to mention what the heathen sacrifice was like. He reads how the Danube dared not rise above the mark of the cross which St. Severinus had cut upon the posts of a timber chapel; how a poor man, going out to drive ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... French-Canadians reside on the shore. The most prominent objects on the horizon were the great churches that have the customary gilded spire and the clusters of white cottages about them. The shore rises steeply and the farms taper back into the forests that crown the hills of the background, which rise fully one thousand feet above the sea. On our left hand as we left the Basin were huge clay or sandstone cliffs cut away by the fierce swells of the Gulf. A lighthouse crowned the Point, with ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... valley, the mountains often dip to the river-bed, in precipices of gneiss, under the ledges of which wild bees build pendulous nests, looking like huge bats suspended by their wings; they are two or three feet long, and as broad at the top, whence they taper downwards: the honey is much sought for, except in spring, when it is said to be poisoned by Rhododendron flowers, just as that, eaten by the soldiers in the retreat of the Ten Thousand, was by the flowers of the ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... tool, made in a few minutes, and very convenient in this business. Any one can make it. Get a piece of narrow hoop-iron, (steel would be better,) three-fourth inch wide, five inches long; taper from one side three inches from the end to a point; then grind each edge sharp; make three or four holes through the wide end, to admit small nails through it in the handle, which should be about two feet long and about half an inch square. Armed with this weapon, ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... health. Seldom was the body followed by even ten or twelve attendants; and instead of the usual bearers and sextons, hirelings of the lowest of the populace undertook the office for the sake of gain; and accompanied by only a few priests, and often without a single taper, it was borne to the very nearest church, and lowered into the first grave that was not already too full to receive it. Among the middling classes, and especially among the poor, the misery was still greater. Poverty or negligence ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... far, far more than her duty to herself; it was her duty to this man, finished, mature, yet full of unawakened possibility; it was her duty to that large, vague world that his life touched, a world where her young faiths and vigors would bring a light such as her mother's gay little taper could never spread. These thoughts, and others, flashed through Imogen's mind, with the swiftness and exactitude of a drowning vision. Yet, after the long moment of vivid realization, it was at its ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... came to her that he had asked for no caress. He was going unassoiled to his God, with the divine indifference of the dying. Only his imagination looked backward and forward. And she thought, "It is a little light flame that I have lit with my own taper that has gone out—that has gone out—and presently the grave will extinguish that." She sat quiet and sombre in the growing darkness, and presently ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... right of a 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." So saying, he ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... The taper burneth in your closet, sir. 35 Searching the window for a flint, I found This paper, thus seal'd up; and I am sure It did not lie there when I ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... the 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 ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... trident-shaped sort of candlestick, another with cymbals, a lot of little boys, and two young ecclesiastics of some sort in the yellow satin copes (contrasting queerly with the familiar tarboosh of common life on their heads), these carried little babies and huge wax tapers, each a baby and a taper. They marched round and round three times, the cymbals going furiously, and chanting a jig tune. The dear little tiny boys marched just in front of the priest with such a pretty little solemn, consequential air. Then ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... the glimmering taper's light, Illumes and cheers our way; And still, as darker grows the night, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... clerk is the last representative of the minor orders which the ecclesiastical changes wrought in the sixteenth century have left us. Prior to the Reformation there were sub-deacons who wore alb and maniple, acolytes, the tokens of whose office were a taper staff and small pitcher, ostiaries or doorkeepers corresponding to our verger or clerk, readers, exorcists, rectores chori, etc. This full staff would, of course, be not available for every country church, ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... offence to his family. In the dead of an August night, in 1744, the bridal party stole out of Mr Merrill's house, and made its way to the neighbouring church, where the ceremony was performed by the light of a taper concealed in the best man's hat. Thus, romantically and mysteriously, Elizabeth Chudleigh took her first matrimonial step, which was to lead to ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... then the door was sharply closed, and the queerly acting girl faced Dyke Darrel once more. She looked weirdly beautiful, with a mass of golden hair falling below her taper waist, her face white as the winter's snow, almost too white ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... everything," he said, "if thou wilt but look ever upon me thus," and he placed his arms about that taper waist, and drew her willing form still nearer to his side, until her head fell upon his shoulder. "There will be no more a dark side to our picture ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... still higher throne, with three golden crowns upon her head, and she was surrounded with priestly state. On each side of her were two rows of candles, the biggest as thick as a tower, down to the tiniest little taper. Kings and emperors were on their knees before her, ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... watched our pursuers, first one raised a mast and a long taper yard, then another, and they were soon under all sail standing after us. The breeze increased; we gave a cheer, hoping soon to get well ahead of them. Still on they came, and it seemed very doubtful whether we should succeed. I believe that some of the crew would rather have ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... and thy glorious creatures forever!" What an awful anomaly in our being were it, if that prayer were to be denied! And what would the memory of friends be, so sweet and solemn now,—what would it be, but as the taper which the angel of death extinguishes ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... vast teocallis to Tonatiuh, over whose apex the struggling rays fell red and presageful. Dulled by the stained glass windows, the light that filled the semi-circular chapel at "The Lilacs", was chill and sombre, until the fair sacristan held a taper over the tall wax candles on each side of the altar, whence a mellow radiance soon streamed over all; flashing along the golden letters under the cross, and upon the gilded pipes of the little organ. On the marble steps in front of the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... gold. Kneeling on the marble floor, he removed a golden shield, and showed us the hole in the rock of Calvary, where the cross was planted. Close beside it was the fissure produced by the earthquake which followed the Crucifixion. But, to my eyes, aided by the light of the dim wax taper, it was no violent rupture, such as an earthquake would produce, and the rock did not appear to be the same as that of which Jerusalem is built. As we turned to leave, a monk appeared with a bowl of sacred rose-water, which ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... of the dying evening and the solemn hills into the elegant throne-room. The second song was the cry of a lonely fisherman on the river at midnight, and as he sang it he brought the mystery of broad starlit waters into the taper-lit, gilded hall. The third song was the song of the happy lover in the orchard at dawn. And when he sang it he brought the smell of dewy leaves and grass, the soaring radiance of spring and early morning, to that powdered and silken assembly. The Court applauded him, but they were astonished ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... afornseid she was yoyned be alle the spriualte assent to penaunce; to comen to London fro Westm' on the Moneday next suynge and londe at the Temple brigge out of here barge, and there[128] she tok a taper of wax of ij^{lb} in here hond, and wente so thorugh Fletstrete on here foot and hoodles unto Poules, and there she offred up here taper at the high auter; and on the Wednesday nest suenge she ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous
... discomfited, or would stand his ground only to find defeat." Then they say that the woman would be blessed who should be loved by one who is so powerful in arms, and who above all others may be recognised as a taper among candles, as a moon among the stars, and as the sun above the moon. He so won the hearts of all that the prowess which they see in him made them wish that he had taken their lady to wife, and that he were master ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... funeral service was performed I carried the taper (nota bene) and some pieces of gold to the Bishop who performed the grand mass, and who was sitting in an arm-chair near the altar. The prelate intended to have given them to his assistants, the priests of the King's ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and a peanut-girl Like little Fauns began to caper; His hair was all in tangled curl, Her tawny legs were bare and taper; And still the gathering larger grew, And gave its pence and crowded nigher, While aye the shepherd-minstrel blew His pipe, and struck ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... by immersing in it various combustibles in a state of inflammation. I found that phosphorus would continue lighted at about two feet from the bottom, whilst a sulphur match went out a few inches above, and a wax taper at a ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... flash a man seemed to be floating in the air in front of me, and I dropped the box in my amazement. Again with tremulous fingers I struck the flint against the steel, and this time I lit not only the tinder but the wax taper. I held it up, and if my amazement was lessened my horror was increased ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... his lodging. Neither he nor Rex spoke during the quarter of an hour they employed in reaching the street door, but Rex's arm was aching with the effort of sustaining and directing his companion. He lit a taper and prepared to help him up the stairs. But the sight of the familiar entrance recalled Greif to himself and dissipated the first stupor of his grief. He ascended the steps firmly, though he went like a man overcome with fatigue, to whom every movement is difficult. ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... 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 ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... between us! 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 ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... liveries, and the fifty Comandadori in their flowing blue robes and red caps; then follow musicians, and the squires of the Doge in black velvet; then the guards of the Doge, two chancellors, the secretary of the Pregadi, a deacon clad in purple and bearing a wax taper, six canons, three parish priests in their sacerdotal robes, and the Doge's chaplain dressed in crimson. The grand chancellor is known by his crimson vesture. Two squires bear the Doge's chair and the cushion of cloth of gold. And the Doge—the ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... little matters to this 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 confess itself ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... a gentleman, with enormous shirt collars and heavy spectacles. In his arms rests a colossal volume, upon which his attention is riveted, and against the brim of his napless hat is stuck a lighted taper. He stumbles along with uneven step, and occasionally pauses for the purpose of giving tongue to his profound cogitations. The crowd jeer him as he passes, but he is unmoved, and the expression of ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... cannot show us that it depends on oxygen. To prove this we must make experiments as by obtaining pure oxygen and pure nitrogen (which, mixed in the proportion of one to four, form the air) in separate vessels, and then plunging a burning taper into the oxygen—when it will blaze fiercely; and again plunging it into the nitrogen—when it will be extinguished. This shows that the greater part of the air does nothing to keep the fire alight, except by diminishing its intensity and so making it last longer. Experiments are more perfect ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... before you. He turns round, and lo, a bashful maiden. Her eyes are stained with henna (myrtle juice) or antimony. Her long-hair neatly smoothed down is tied into a knot at the back, and glistens with the pearl-like ornaments. The taper arm is loaded with armlets and bracelets. The very toes are bedecked with rings. The bodice hides the taper waist and budding bosom, the tiny ear is loaded with jewelled ear-rings, the very nose is not forgotten, but is ornamented with a golden circle, bearing on its circumference a ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... of S. Domenico (anciently S. Michele) has a pointed Venetian door, with a relief in the tympanum of S. Michael weighing souls, with the Devil pulling the scale down, an armed angel at one side, and a woman with a lighted taper at the other. On the lintel are a Virgin and Child, and several saints in little panels also spreading ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... about a smell of fire that was prevalent there; and janet's replying that she had been making tinder down in the kitchen, of my old shirt. But there were no other clothes in my room than the odd heap of things I wore; and when I was left there, with a little taper which my aunt forewarned me would burn exactly five minutes, I heard them lock my door on the outside. Turning these things over in my mind I deemed it possible that my aunt, who could know nothing of me, might suspect I had a habit of running away, and took precautions, on that ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... thousand taels, equal to $1,500 in American gold. They are extremely massive, more like miniature junks than the shape we are accustomed to associate with the idea of a coffin, the head being higher than the foot, and the lines of the sides swelling gently with very little taper. The boards of the sides and headpiece are at least three inches thick, elaborately carved, and gilded in Chinese characters. The colors are various, black and red predominating. As the body is kept in this massive shell for several months after decease, and in the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... they 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
... 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... the taper. Looking into the cavity, by the dim and flickering light, they both detected a dark object at the bottom of it. 'I think I can reach the thing,' the manager remarked, 'if I lie down, and put ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... knew the conclusion nor the means of attaining to it. Man works from ignorance towards greater knowledge with very limited powers. His little circle of light is surrounded by a wall of darkness, which he strives to penetrate and lighten, now groping blindly on its verge, now advancing his taper light and peering forward; yet unable to go far, and even afraid to venture, in ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... "without thy aid I am lost; for I love deeply. I have no parents, and they say I am sold to the demon. Oh, take pity on me! save me, if it be true: and if it is but the saying of the wicked, let my soul know the truth; and when I offer thee my taper at the altar of Notre Dame, prove to me that my ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... confidence—passed quickly over his face, the light in his eyes went out, and he rose from his stool with a short, dissatisfied sigh, which was repeated once or twice as he put away his work and arranged his tools. He made the rounds of the workshop, looked to the fastenings of the windows, lighted a taper, and then extinguished the lamp. He threw a loose overcoat over his shoulders without passing his arms through the sleeves, and went out into the street. Glancing up at the windows of his house opposite, he saw that the lights were burning brightly, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... incidents in which the authentic history of the discovery of our Continent excels the specious wonders of romance, as much as gold excels tinsel, or the sun in the heavens outshines the flickering taper. E. Everett. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Lord Longlegs determined its altitude; Herr Spider measured its circumference at the base and computed the circumference at its top by a mathematical demonstration based upon the warrant furnished by the uniform degree of its taper upward. It was considered a very extraordinary find; and since it was a tree of a hitherto unknown species, Professor Woodlouse gave it a name of a learned sound, being none other than that of Professor Bull Frog translated into the ancient ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and the fragrant lime trees, and the leaves and branches waved and distributed coolness; then they bent and parted, and the ship sailed through the midst of them, through the sea, and through the air; and every church taper became a star, and the wind sang a psalm tune, and all ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... her, taught thee? Thy mother!—Heaven rest her!—Thy good mother! She could read men and women by their hands And feet!—And here's a hand!—A fairy palm! Fingers that taper to the pinky tips, With nails of rose, like shells of such a hue, Berimmed with pearl, you pick up on the shore! Save these the gloss and tint do ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... soft, as it were made on purpose to take hearts, and handle them without hurting! These taper fingers too, and even joints so supple, that methinks I mould them as they pass through mine: nay, in my conscience, though it be nonsense to say it, your hand ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... his friend in readiness, with three horses saddled and equipped for the journey. The company were quickly mounted on three spirited horses, and reached Cherry Valley at eleven o'clock P. M.—a place Nelly had never seen before. No cottage window showed the light of a taper; but the light of the full moon fell in tranquil loveliness upon the rounded hill-tops, and the glittering stars added their beauty to the heavens, while the green forest and flowering shrubbery clothed the earth ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... bill of fare. Fairies you have by scores in flesh-coloured tights, spangles, and paucity of petticoats; gnomes of every description, from the gigantic glittering diamond beetle, to the grotesque and dusky tadpole. Epicene princes, whose taper limbs and swelling busts are well worth the scrutiny of the opera-glass—dragons vomiting at once red flames and witticisms about the fountains in Trafalgar Square—Dan O'Connell figuring in the feathers of a Milesian owl—and the Seven ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... singing and laughing as they follow the winding, rugged path half way up the heights. The red-brown feet and ankles must be as strong as they are shapely; the arms holding aloft the water jars are well moulded and taper finely to the wrist; splendid freedom is in every motion and a grace their fairer sisters have forgotten. I see the admiration in Baron de ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... Mary, not Venus that is meant. They offer mountains of wax candles to the saints to preserve them, although one man confides to his neighbor in a whisper that if he ever gets to land he will not pay one penny taper on his vow. Again, in the Colloquy on the New Testament, a young man is asked what he has done for ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith |
