"Sconce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... despite of the maxim, cherished by all true knights, that 'fair play is a jewel,' hastened to take advantage of the hero's fall; but, as he stooped to give a fatal blow, Peter Stuyvesant dealt him a thwack over the sconce with his wooden leg, which set a chime of bells ringing triple bob-majors in his cerebellum. The bewildered Swede staggered with the blow, and the wary Peter seizing a pocket-pistol, which lay hard by, discharged it full at the head of the reeling ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... cried the men, compassionating his thinly covered skull, and twisting their own ringlets, glossy and luxuriant, though unconscious of Macassar. "A thousand pities that so fine a fellow should have a sconce like ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... gentleman ketching a reg'lar hyst; a long gentleman, for instance, with his legs in the air, and his noddle splat down upon the cold bricks. A hyst of itself is bad enough, without being sniggered at: first, your sconce gets a crack; then, you see all sorts of stars, and have free admission to the fire-works; then, you scramble up, feeling as if you had no head on your shoulders, and as if it wasn't you, but some confounded disagreeable feller in your clothes; yet the jacksnipes all grin, as if the misfortunes ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... throwing a darkness, as if from the branch of a sconce, over the forehead of a fair girl.—They are not married yet, and I do not think they will be. But I loved the youth who loved her. How he started! It ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... draperies, tinkling in time with the movements of an otherwise noiseless tread, there sounded ever the faint note of the little bell. At the toe of shoes otherwise silent, there peeped in and out the flash of diamonds, and in the dark masses of her hair, shifting as she trod beneath each new sconce in turn, and catching more and more brilliance as she advanced, there smoldered the flame of a mass of scintillating gems. A queen's raiment was that of this unknown beauty, and she herself might have been ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... uncomfortable pause for some moments after she had seated herself, during which Ruth noted how, as the candle-light from the sconce behind fell upon her father's head, each silvery hair seemed to ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... HIS MARK"—he signed last year, And now he signs John Smith, J.P. We'll hold our inquest NOW, we three; I'll be your coroner for once; I think old Oswald ought to be Our foreman—Jones is such a dunce,— There's more brain in the bloodhound's sconce. ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... interested, but in the very act of turning over to look at his enemy, and to find out whom he was addressing, he fell into a deep sleep. The next time he came back to consciousness it was dark, except for a sickly burning oil lamp on a sconce fixed against a wall at a little distance. He began to be aware of the fact that he was amazingly hungry, and the memory of what he imagined to have been his last meal came back to him. He ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... wet, and he was newly dazzled with the light. But when he had wiped his eyes, he drew a deep breath of relief and looked about him. The room was unfurnished save for a littered table and some chairs, and a gaudy picture of the Virgin that hung on the wall. On each side of it was a sconce, in which a slovenly candle guttered. A woman was perched on a corner of the table, a heavy shawl over her head. Under it the dark face, propped in the fork of her hand, glowed sullenly, and her bare, white arm was like ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... developing itself on the return voyage. The captain had to be imprisoned in his own state-room, where he committed suicide in a terrible manner by tearing his throat open with the point of a candlestick or sconce. The second mate, who was as coarse a brute as a common sailor could be, took command, and as he at once got drunk, and kept so, the passengers rose, confined him, and gave the command to the third, who was ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... jackals which I had heard, and I was not aware of their presence until I heard the water, which they had drawn up in their trunks and were pouring into their mouths, dropping into the fountain. I then peeped from my sconce with a beating heart, and beheld two enormous bull elephants, which looked like two great castles, standing before me. I could not see very distinctly, for there was only starlight. Having lain on my breast some time taking my aim, I let fly at one of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Eve. The great hall of Hatfield House gleamed with the light of many candles that flashed upon the sconce and armor and polished floor. Holly and mistletoe, rosemary and bay, and all the decorations of an old-time English Christmas were tastefully arranged. A burst of laughter ran through the hall, as through the ample doorway, and down the broad stair, trooped the ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... the domestic altar of the fireplace, with its huge hobs and boiler, and its hinged arm above the smoky mantel-shelf for roasting. The plain kitchen table is opposite the fire, at her elbow, with a candle on it in a tin sconce. Her chair, like all the others in the room, is uncushioned and unpainted; but as it has a round railed back and a seat conventionally moulded to the sitter's curves, it is comparatively a chair of state. The room has three doors, one on the same side as the fireplace, ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw |
