"Taper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of fir; the fir copses are encircled by a loose hedge of box, fading and yellowish, while the larch tops were filled with sweet and tender green. Like the masts and yards of a ship, which are gradually hidden as the sails are set, so these green sails unfurling concealed the tall masts and taper branches of the fir. Afar the great hills were bare, wind-swept and dry. The glass-green river wound along the plain, and the sea bloomed blue under the sun, blue by the distant shore, darkening like a, level cloud where a dim ship marked the horizon. A blue sky ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... a man 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 to his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... have three white stripes: our sailors caught one, but it got away again. The mole here is larger than in Europe; the upper part of the body is of a greyish brown, the lower part an ash grey; the legs are covered with a white fur, and the taper tail is one-fifth of the length of the body. A shrew-mouse also was caught. Two or three kinds of large cats are said to have been seen; a mustela, something of the nature of the Lutreola, was shot near the Rio Sacramento. The sea-otter still abounds here, but ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... a lot of Archer," Beamish remarked, "but I never thought so much of him as that night we drew lots for who should put Coburn out of the way. When he drew the long taper he never as much as turned a hair. That's the last time we had a full meeting, and we never reckoned that ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... his big bed in the middle of the library. The blinds were drawn up to the tops of the long, narrow windows, that the last gleam of light might enter, but the room was full of shadows, save where a taper flickered on a small ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... becom'st thy bed! Fresh lily, And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch— But kiss, one kiss—'Tis her breathing that Perfumes the chamber thus: the flame o' th' taper Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids To see th' enclosed lights now canopied Under the windows, white and azure, laced With blue of Heav'ns own tinct—on her left breast A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops I' th' bottom ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... dunghills and vast outhouses half ruined; and looking on this dainty prospect, an immense, old, shadeless, glaring, stone chateau, with half its windows blinded, and green damp crawling lazily over it, from the balustraded terrace to the taper tips of ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... in a point be attached to the conductor of an electrical machine, electricity escapes in large quantities from the point. A continuous current is thus kept up and the flame of a taper, if placed in front of the current, is blown in a horizontal direction. Wind is thus manufactured on a ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... darkness when Barrant reached Flint House. A faint ray of light flickered from the kitchen window on the giant cliffs, like a taper from a doll's house. He approached the window by a line of rocks which guarded it ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... him shut in an empty room for half an hour; yet with all his refinements, and his air of being as dainty a gentleman as any spark of quality, he had a gross passion for the kitchen, and after nibbling sweet cakes delicately out of his mistress's taper fingers, he would waddle through a labyrinth of passages, and find his way to the hog-tub, there to wallow in slush and broken victuals, till he all but drowned himself in a flood of pot-liquor. It was hard ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... there were heaps of luxuries—dining-rooms, dressing-rooms, libraries, bedrooms, drawing-rooms, oratories, all crowded into the space of a hearthrug. The first night, I remember, with my books and maps about me, I wanted light; they brought me a taper, and immediately from out of the silent Desert there rushed in a flood of life unseen before. Monsters of moths, of all shapes and hues, that never before perhaps had looked upon the shining of a flame, now ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... will, when these two barrels is emptied—I've often thought of doin' some sich matter; and, ag'in and ag'in, has Dolly and Blossom advised me to fall into the plan; but it's hard to give up old habits, all at once. If I could only taper off on a pint a day, for a year or so, I think I might come round in time. I know as well as you do, Bourdon, that sobriety is a good thing, and dissipation a bad thing; but it's hard to ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... and above, on the low-dormered roof, a white pigeon sat preening its feathers. Up the main street, where a few sunken bricks of a vanished pavement were still visible, an old negro woman, sitting on the stone before her cabin, lighted her replenished pipe with a taper, and leaned back, smoking, in the doorway, her scarlet handkerchief making a spot of colour ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... himself in the glass"to make it somewhat decent. And now let us set to breakfastwith what appetite we may. Well may I say to Hector, as Sir Isaac Newton did to his dog Diamond, when the animal (I detest dogs) flung down the taper among calculations which had occupied the philosopher for twenty years, and consumed the whole mass of materialsDiamond, Diamond, thou little knowest the mischief ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 chapel; but the monks of Saint Denis ran to him with great eagerness, exclaiming ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and mustache 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[5] 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, that a man with hands like these should keep them ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... free, Spectacled the limpid eye, Little will be left of me, In the coming by-and-by! Fading is the taper waist - Shapeless grows the shapely limb, And although securely laced, Spreading is the figure trim! Stouter than I used to be, Still more corpulent grow I - There will be too much of me In ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... moujik about it. He called his kinsfolk together, and held counsel with them. They determined on this; to keep awake on a certain night, and to spy out who it was that came to suckle the babe. So at eventide they all lay down on the floor, and beside them they set a lighted taper ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... mark at certain distances a guiding point, through which, at one side E and A, and on the other G and D, I bore preliminary holes with hand bit No. 12 (on tool plate), square, absolutely, through to the other cheek of peg-box. After all are done, in brace bit 29, position 28, I place taper bit 59, and cut, E, A, D, G, finishing approximately for ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... keep no other wines. Shall I open a flask? No? Well, then, I trust that you have no objection to tobacco-smoke, to the mild balsamic odor of the Eastern tobacco. I am a little nervous, and I find my hookah an invaluable sedative." He applied a taper to the great bowl, and the smoke bubbled merrily through the rose-water. We sat all three in a semicircle, with our heads advanced, and our chins upon our hands, while the strange, jerky little fellow, with his high, shining head, puffed ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sanctity as possible was thrown into the face, and mirth and pleasantry were avoided as marks of a carnal mind. The young competitors for academical learning were led to examination, through rooms hung with black, and illuminated by so faint a taper, that it only served to make darkness visible. This obscurity was a prelude to a fearful questioning by a Saint, "with half a dozen night-caps on his head, and religious horror in his countenance"[3], who asked him whether ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... cannot hold it at arm's length from us and look at its lines of configuration. Nor of a life can we in any measure determine the success by what we behold of it. It is to us at best but a truncated spire, whose want of completion may be the greater because of the breadth of its base, and its slow taper, indicating the lofty height to which it is intended to aspire. The idea of our own life is more than we can embrace. It is not ours, but God's, and fades away into the infinite. Our comprehension is finite; we ourselves infinite. ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... Julian, how your praises cheered Our poor endeavours! sure, all hearts are ope Lofty and low, wise and unwise, to praise. Even the departed spirit hovers round Our blessings and our prayers; the corse itself Hath shined with other light than the still stars Shed on its rest, or the dim taper, nigh. My father, old men say, who saw him dead And heard your lips pronounce him good and happy, Smiled faintly through the quiet gloom, that eve, And the shroud throbbed upon his grateful breast. Howe'er it be, many who tell the tale Are good and happy ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... the sun or blazing taper's light: The moonbeamed landscape and tempestuous night Alone she loves; and oft with glimmering lamp Near graves new opened, or midst dungeons damp, Drear forests, ruined aisles and haunted towers, Forlorn she roves and ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... priest of the day arrived, bearing with him the holy apparatus of the last mysterious ceremony of the church. The shoulders of Salvator were laid bare, and anointed with the consecrated oil; some prayed fervently, others wept, and all even still hoped; but the taper which the Doctor Catanni held to the lips of Salvator while the Viaticum was administered, burned brightly and steadily! Life's last sigh had transpired, as religion performed ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... magic, everyone has lighted his or her taper, and looks anxiously towards the altar-screen, where preparations are being made by the priests to go to Joseph of Arimathea's garden, as the disciples and women did of old to visit the tomb where Christ was buried. This they do by forming a ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... ease. With such a destination, what mattered a little buffeting of wind or a sprinkle of cold water? I recalled Flora's image, I took her in fancy to my arms, and my heart throbbed. And the next moment I had recognised the inanity of that fool's paradise. If I could spy her taper as she went to bed, I might ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inner recess of this was supposed to hold a relic of Buddha—some whispered a finger, some a piece of the great teacher's robe; but whatever the holy emblem, both place and shrine were surrounded with a veil of superstitious mystery and held in awe. A lonely taper burned before the shrine, dimly lighting a small opening covered with ground glass and disclosed above a written warning to all passers-by to stop and offer prayer or else ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... Alabama are even more remarkable. There is one on Amelia Island which is a quarter of a mile long with a medium depth of three feet and a breadth of nearly five. That of Bear's Point covers sixty acres of ground, that of Anercerty Point one hundred, and that of Santa Rosa five hundred. Others taper to a great height. Turtle Mound, near Smyrna, is formed of a mass of oyster shells attaining a height of nearly thirty feet, and the height of several others is more than forty feet.[119] In all of them bushels of shells have already been found, although a ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... afterwards how he had found his way from the hall to his lodging. Neither he nor Rex spoke during the quarter of an hour they employed in reaching the street door, but Rex's arm was aching with the effort of sustaining and directing his companion. He lit a taper and prepared to help him up the stairs. But the sight of the familiar entrance recalled Greif to himself and dissipated the first stupor of his grief. He ascended the steps firmly, though he went like a man overcome ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... the Jesuit took the book of the Gospels and the holy-water sprinkler, and went slowly out of the chapel, while the old man followed him, with a holy-water basin in one hand and a taper in the other. Then the police director left his hiding place, and stooping down, so as not to be seen, he crept to the chapel window, where he cowered down carefully, and the young man followed his example. They were now looking straight on ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... family, some dating back to 1681 and 1702, and methinks I can see Lovecraft poring over these time-stained bits o' bookish lore as the monks of old followed the printed lines with quivering fingers in the taper's uncertain, flickering light. For Lovecraft appeals to me as a bookworm—one of those lovable mortals whose very existence seems to hang on the numbered pages of ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... forming a deep V-shaped cleft in the face of the rocky cliff. This rift ran, from the upper edge of the ravine, nearly down to the water, and penetrated into the Pit side, to a distance of some forty feet. Its opening was, at least, six yards across; and, from this, it seemed to taper into about two. But, what attracted my attention, more than even the stupendous split itself, was a great hole, some distance down the cleft, and right in the angle of the V. It was clearly defined, and not unlike an arched doorway in shape; though, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... far from the world in a sense and to a degree that I cannot easily describe. I saw that the almost straight lines of the tall elm trees diminished a little in perspective as they fell. I was used to seeing parallel lines taper towards the sky. But to see them taper towards the earth made me feel lost in space, like a ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... still, revealing the little briberies and oppressions of which he is not innocent. But who of us 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
... cigarette by touch, and opening his match-box, Sam struck a little wax taper, began to light his cigarette, and naturally held the flame so near his face that, as he knelt there, it was well illumined for the benefit of the prowler, who crouched close and stared hard, expecting moment by moment to ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... you Taper into a point the ruffled ends Of my loose locks 'twixt both your humid lips. My hair is fallen ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... "The more the natives progress the more nearly they'll equal our abilities. I wouldn't want anything to happen to our overall plans. As it is now, their abilities taper off at sixty and they reach senility at seventy or eighty. I think until the end we ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... morning, returning to my quarters at Mr Finnie's in time for their six o'clock dinner. On the day week after my first visit she was out of Fisher's hands, and as I left her late that afternoon I thought I had never seen a prettier little craft. Her tall, slim, taper spars had a jaunty little rake aft, and were encumbered with only so much rigging as was absolutely necessary to prevent them from going over the side. Her yards, though light, were of immense spread, and the new suit of sails with which she had been fitted fore and aft, and which ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... Betterton created Oedipus and his wife Jocasta. It was extraordinarily popular, as, indeed, were all the plays Mrs. Behn marshalls forth in this preface. The scene particularly referred to is Act ii, I: 'Oedipus enters, walking asleep in his Shirt, with a Dagger in his Right-Hand and a Taper in his Left.' A little after 'Enter Jocasta, attended with ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... 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 will. He had ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... was cheery; it might be a question whether all the light did not come from her first, in some way, and perhaps it did; but then Hazel was luminous, and she fluttered about with quick, happy motions, till like a little glancing taper she had shone upon and lit up everybody and everything; and Dorris was sunny with clear content, and Kenneth was blithe, and Desire was scintillant, as she always was either with snaps or smiles; and here came ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... slaves, to enjoy the chase and the race-ground, to extol their pedigree, and traduce labor, and lead retainers to war—would be a government for the few over the many, an aristocracy of blood and privilege, of curled moustache and taper fingers; but not a republic of patriots, of self-made men, of equal privilege and just laws. It would be a return to semi-barbarism, to the age of Louis XIV., or ...
— Government and Rebellion • E. E. Adams
... estate there is a small wood called Losel's, of a few acres, that was lately furnished with a set of oaks of a peculiar growth and great value; they were tall and taper-like firs, but standing near together had very small heads, only a little brush without any large limbs. About twenty years ago the bridge at the Toy, near Hampton Court, being much decayed, some trees were wanted for ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... With the distinctly pleasurable sensation of being still alive he found himself standing upright upon an uneven floor of masonry. He thrust out his arms and touched sides of mossy rock. Then just before him a pale flame flickered. The old man had kindled a little taper that hardly did more than make shallow hollows in the ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... down as 2.20. From five to ten 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 ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... bad but charming English; "you need make no mystery of it. You wish to marry my sister-in-law. C'est un beau choix. A man like you ought to marry a tall, thin woman. You must know that I have spoken in your favor; you owe me a famous taper!" ...
— The American • Henry James
... 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 ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... marshal, and the tipstaffs, and "all the company they could make," "with bills and glaives;" and in the midst of these armed officials, six men marching in penitential dresses, one carrying a lighted taper five pounds' weight, the others with symbolic fagots, signifying to the lookers-on the fate which their crimes had earned for them, but which this time, in mercy, was remitted. One of these was Barnes; the other five were "Stillyard men," ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... dark, triumph when the bringing in of a candle discovers the vanity of their fears. For this exposure of supernatural agents upon a stage is truly bringing in a candle to expose their own delusiveness. It is the solitary taper and the book that generates a faith in these terrors: a ghost by chandelier light, and in good company, deceives no spectators,—a ghost that can be measured by the eye, and his human dimensions made out at leisure. The sight of a well-lighted house, and a well-dressed audience, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... Ignorance. O thou, whose idle knee Rocks earth into a lethargy, And with thy sooty fingers hast benight The world's fair cheeks, blow, blow thy spite; Since thou hast puffed our greater taper, do Puff on, and out the lesser too. If e'er that breath-exiled flame return, Thou hast not blown as it will burn. Sweet Phosphor, bring the day: Light will repay The wrongs of night: sweet Phosphor, ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... Massot, "they've all come to be thanked for guillotining that man yesterday. Monferrand owes that wretched fellow a fine taper; for in the first place his bomb prolonged the life of the Barroux ministry, and later on it made Monferrand prime minister, as a strong-handed man was particularly needed to strangle Anarchism. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... comfortable, 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, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... the sentence of death which he had passed upon himself had been carried into effect. He had felt himself falling, and then there had been sudden darkness. Like a dim taper flickering in the night, the spark of life began to kindle again. At first he was conscious of but one truth-that he was not dead. Where he now was, in this world or some other, what he now was, he did not know; but the essential ego, Alford Graham, had not ceased ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... which it speaks of Jean Armour. 'I am dissatisfied with her—I cannot endure her! I, while my heart smote me for the profanity, tried to compare her with my Clarinda. 'Twas setting the expiring glimmer of a farthing taper beside the cloudless glory of the meridian sun. Here was tasteless insipidity, vulgarity of soul, and mercenary fawning; there, polished good sense, heaven-born genius, and the most generous, the most delicate, the most tender ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... church among the trees, Where first our marriage-vows were given, With merry peals shall swell the breeze And point with taper spire to Heaven. ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... desirable to proceed only at a moderate rate, since demand for private construction will be abnormally high for some time. Our public works program should be timed to reach its peak after demand for private construction has begun to taper off. Meanwhile, however, plans should be prepared if we are to act promptly when the present extraordinary private demand begins ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... taper-light, Torchlight, no-light: Darkness at the shut of day, And lions roaring, Their wrath pouring In wild waste places ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... romance than anything Disraeli had previously written. There are scenes and characters in the story which will live in English literature. Thackeray could hardly have created more living portraits than "Rigby," "Tadpole," and "Taper," or "Lord Monmouth." These are characters which are household words with us like "Lord Steyne" and "Rawdon Crawley." The social pictures are as realistic as those of Trollope, and now and then as bright as those of Thackeray. The love-making is tender, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... there. The center was wide to the sky, that the rain might fall and the stars shine within it. The altars were brilliant with memorial tablets, the green, red, and gold flower vases, and sandalwood taper-holders, so familiar to me, and all about were the written prayers of devotees, soliciting the favor of Heaven, asking success in business, or the averting of illness. They were evidently painted by the bonze of the fane, for his slab of India ink was on a table nearby, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... privilege of 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 ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... and ambitious woman, whose mind was so accomplished, and who had queened it so well at the Chateau d'Anzy, now condescending to household cares and sewing for the coming infant, moved the poor lawyer, who had just left the bench. And as he saw the pricks on one of the taper fingers he had so often kissed, he understood that Madame de la Baudraye was not merely playing ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... of large tracts of land in the northern regions, while in the south is a vast expanse of ocean. In the north continental masses form an almost continuous belt around the icy sea, while in the southern hemisphere the continents taper down into a broad extent of frigid waters. In the north the plains of Siberia and of the Hudson's Bay territories, warmed by the sunbeams of summer, become at that season centers of radiating heat, while the antarctic lands, of small extent, isolated in the midst of a polar ocean and chilled by ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... 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 ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Egyptian capital, and the blustering winds of the Gulf and the sea, the soft and delicate air of the Midian shore acted like a cordial. For the first time after leaving Alexandria, I felt justified in taper de l'oeil with the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... name of their old home. In 1224 the Cistercians resigned the Monastery of St. Saviour, Dublin, which had been erected for them by the same Earl, to the Dominicans, on condition that they should offer a lighted taper, on the Feast of the Nativity, at the Abbey of St. Mary, as an acknowledgment of the grant. The Mayor of Dublin, John Decer (A.D. 1380), repaired the church, and adorned it with a range of massive pillars. The friars of this house were as distinguished ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... by thy scorn, O murderess, I am dead, And that thou think'st thee free From all solicitation from me, Then shall my ghost come to thy bed, And thee, feign'd vestal, in worse arms shall see: Then thy sick taper will begin to wink, And he, whose thou art then, being tired before, Will, if thou stir, or pinch to wake him, think Thou call'st for more, And, in false sleep, will from thee shrink; And then, poor aspen wretch, neglected thou Bathed in a cold quicksilver sweat wilt ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... adhere to the frame, etc., at present, until we see how the other alterations answer." In another he says: "I have done a Cicero without any plaits—the different segments meeting exactly. The fitting the drills into the spindle by a taper of 1 in 6 will do. They are perfectly stiff and will not unscrew easily. Four guide-pullies answer, but there must be a pair for the other end, and to work with a single hand, for the returning part is always cut upon some part ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... of all dates tell us that makers thereof have never been wanting. In 1730, one Thomas Swarbrick made the organ for St. Mary's Church, Warwick, and the Directory for 1836 gives the name of Isaac Craddock (the original maker of the taper penholder), who repaired and in several cases enlarged the instruments at many of our places of worship, as well as supplying the beautiful organ for St. Mary's, at Coventry.—The tale has often been told of the consternation caused by the introduction of a barrel organ into ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... light, As if it had but newly come Up from some subterranean palace, The haunt of fairy or of gnome, With its waxen taper still alight, And beaming in its leafy chalice, That lit the revellers down below, When the nights were long, and the moon was low You might have heard, far-off and sweet, The sound of the elfin revelries, Like a bugle ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... all over in two hours—three at the outside—the battle really won or lost in the first ten minutes, if you only knew it: when you get in your first strokes, really defining your composition and planting your big high light and your big dark. It is all right after that. You can taper off on the little lights and darks, saving your wind, so to speak, sparring for your next supplementary ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... the human is a condition in which the burning taper we call Life flickers and smoulders and smokes. Thirty years ago it was an example of the most hopeless idiocy. Whole populations were afflicted with it. But neither man of science, nor bigot-fanatic, ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... ideals and sweeps them together and melts them into one glowing and glorious conception of the God of power, wisdom and love. But even then the heart whispers: "He is that, and infinitely more than that, even as the sun is more than the little taper man has made." But if the reason and memory, through misuse, furnish but few of the truths about God, and if the imagination has been weakened in its power, then how poor the ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... myriads of those wax tapers first used in Saturn's temple of old lit up the street like magic and the last game of all began, for every man and woman and child strove to put out another's candle, and the long, laughing cry, 'No taper! No taper! Senza moccolo!' went ringing up to the darkling sky. Long canes with cloths or damp sponges or extinguishers fixed to them started up from nowhere, down from everywhere, from window and balcony to the street below, and from the street to the low balconies above. Put out at ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... very far from approaching its present splendor and magnificence, which entitle it to vie with the most brilliant capitals of the world. Even then the ships of all nations were to be found at its wharfs, but the taper masts rising into the sky, formed not a cordon so immense as that which now, like a forest stripped of its leaves, girts it round. Nor from even its most fashionable portions, the residence and resort of the wealthy and the gay, had all the humbler buildings, which belonged to its origin, disappeared. ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... very 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 ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... Isabel away. Her sobs were not to be borne. And very soon she felt Antonia's white face and silent companionship to be just as unendurable. She would be alone. Not even Rachela would she have near her. She put out all the lights but the taper above a large crucifix, and at its foot she sat down in tearless abandon, alone with her reproaches ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... you.—"I couldn't help laughing to hear one fellow bawling out, so that he might be sure to be heard, a promise to Saint Christopher of Paris—the monstrous statue in the great church there—that he would give him a wax taper as big as himself. 'Mind what you promise!' said an acquaintance that stood near him, poking him with his elbow; 'you couldn't pay for it, if you sold all your things at auction.' 'Hold your tongue, you donkey!' said the fellow,—but softly, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... large, and beaming, softened by long eyelashes, lips full and rosy red, yet finely chiseled, and teeth of dazzling whiteness. She is dressed in black, as if in mourning; on one hand is a black glove; the other hand, ungloved, is small, exquisitely formed, with taper fingers and blue veins. She has just put it up to adjust her clustering black locks. I never saw female hand more exquisite. Really, if I were a young man, I should not be able to draw the portrait of this ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... tiptoe for a flight, With wings of gentle flush: o'er delicate white, And taper fingers catching at all things To bind them ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... void,"—something like that,—words descriptive of Shelley—they haunt me whenever I would recall Kristofer Hansteen. Perhaps to those who had known him in his youth, before his body was consumed like a half-spent taper, he might have seemed less spirit-like; but when I met him, three years ago this coming August, his eyes were already burning with ethereal fires, the pallor of waste was on the high, fine forehead, the cough racked him constantly, and there was upon the whole being the unnameable ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... embedded deeply enough to be perfectly firm during the strain of the play. It will probably need to be about three feet below the surface. A pole should measure seven and a half inches in circumference at the ground, and should taper toward its upper end. A black stripe should be painted around it six ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... the glass down with a mirthless laugh. "Of course, I won't, if you insist. I intended to taper off—a chap can't turn teetotaler the way he turns a handspring." He eyed the glass with a sudden intensity of longing. "Let's begin to-morrow. Nobody starts a new life at two A. M. And—it's ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... 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 ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... of a fairer race about him. Inadvertently his mistress began to teach him characters of letters; but she was stopped by the advice of her husband, because it was thought inimical to the interest of the master to teach his slave. But having lighted the taper of knowledge in the mind of the slave boy, it was forever beyond human power to put it out. The incidents and surroundings of young Douglass peopled his brain with ideas, gave wings to his thoughts and order to his ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... running of loose pulleys and their belts, controlled from any point. Send for catalogue. Taper Sleeve Pulley ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... all those natural powers which shape the mould of races, —that you may look in vain for verification of ethnological assertions.... No: the heel does not protrude;—the foot is not flat, but finely arched;—the extremities are not large;—all the limbs taper, all the muscles are developed; and prognathism has become so rare that months of research may not yield a single striking case of it.... No: this is a special race, peculiar to the island as are the shapes of its ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... period he was in a wretched state of health, being constantly attacked by various extraordinary diseases. He describes himself as not growing at all, and as resembling a very delicate and pale wax taper. In 1760 he passed in the class of rhetoric, and succeeded, moreover, in recovering his Ariosto, but read very little of it, partly from the difficulty he found in understanding it, and partly because the continued breaks in the story disgusted him. As to Tasso, he had never ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... speedily recovered. As her taper fingers hovered, Like a tender benediction, in a little bit of fish, Further to impair digestion, she brought up the Eastern Question. By that time I fully echoed that other ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... at t'other, accordin' to the humour she was in, for she was a'most a grand bit of stuff was Happy, she'd put an edge on a knife a'most. She was a rael steel. Her figur' was as light as a fairy's, and her waist was so taper and tiny, it seemed jist made for puttin' an arm round in walkin'. She was as active and springy on her feet as a catamount, and near about as touch me-not a sort of customer too. She actilly did seem as if she was made out of steel springs and ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... immersed in domestic business. Her ladyship's correspondence and visiting list, her ladyship's household bills and ledgers; her ladyship's Diary and Memorandum-book (bound in scarlet morocco); her ladyship's desk, envelope-case, match-box, and taper candlestick (all in ebony and silver); her ladyship herself, presiding over her responsibilities, and wielding her materials, equal to any calls of emergency, beautifully dressed in correct morning costume, blessed with perfect health both of the secretions ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... she stopped to open a door and, putting her finger to her lip, signed to Undine to enter. In the taper-lit dimness stood two small white beds, each surmounted by a crucifix and a palm branch, and each containing a small brown sleeping child with a mop of hair and a curiously finished little face. As the Princess stood gazing on their innocent slumbers she seemed for a moment like a third ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... (the cheek at the same time having been faintly tinged with rouge, the locks parted, perfumed, and curled, the waist duly compressed, a slight addition, if necessary, made to the breadth of the hips, and the feet confined by the most taper and diminutive chausserie imaginable), will just serve to give to the tout ensemble that one touch of the masculine character which, perhaps, it may be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... The fire at first had been attributed to treachery, but on investigation it proved to be entirely accidental. The queen on retiring to her prayers had ordered her lady in attendance to remove a light burning near her couch, lest it should prevent her sleeping. Through heedlessness, the taper was placed in another part of the tent near the hangings, which, being blown against it by a gust of ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... declined, and, 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
... no further admonition, but 'tumbled up' at once, and proceeded to dress himself by the light of the taper, which Mr Squeers carried ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... forehead, the eyes of crazy goat, and on his chubby cheeks the delicate tints of a shiny crusty Beaucaire roll. On all the grand Alpine excursions it was to him that the Club entrusted its banner, and his childish soul had vowed to the P. C. A. a fanatical worship, the burning, silent adoration of a taper consuming itself before an ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... natural, and as unexpectedly 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 hearthstone of the race, which pales before the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... town of the nameless name, To the marching troops in the street she came, And she held high her boy like a taper flame ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... one. Beheld far off, they part As God and devil; bring them to the mind, They dull its edge with their monotony. To know one element, explore another, And in the second reappears the first. The specious panorama of a year But multiplies the image of a day,— A belt of mirrors round a taper's flame; And universal Nature, through her vast And crowded whole, an infinite paroquet, Repeats ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and the wide riband which tied his queue were of the same rich shade of dark green. The most delicate ruffles filled the front of his swan's-down vest and fell over his hands, which were remarkably white and small and taper-fingered, like a fine lady's. His white silk stockings and his low shoes were held by silver buckles. So looked Philip Alston, Gentleman,—and so he was called,—as he stood in the great room of Cedar House on that night of October, nearly a ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... civic wood-rangers choose the ailantus-tree for a bouquet-holder to the close-pent inhabitants of towns? Nothing can be more graceful, certainly, than the ellipses arched by the boughs from its taper stem. Few contrivances more umbrageous than the combination of its long, feathery foliations into its perfection of a parasol. But there are times in the dank, hot nights of midsummer, when the ailantus ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... exclaimed. "Anything the matter, Nat?" and getting up quickly he struck a match and lit a little wax taper that he always carried in the brass match-box, part of which ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... 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 ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... 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, and he guessed that his wife and daughter ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... busy hum of men, Where throngs of knights and barons bold, In weeds of peace high triumphs hold, With store of ladies, whose bright eyes Rain influence, and judge the prize Of wit or arms, while both contend To win her grace whom all commend. There let Hymen oft appear In saffron robe, with taper clear, And pomp, and feast, and revelry, With mask, and antique pageantry; Such sights as youthful poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream. Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakspeare, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... imperious gesture with which she pointed to the picture, had now risen and was looking. The candle, which had remained upon the platform of the steps, illumined the nude woman like a taper in front of an altar, whilst the whole room around remained plunged in darkness. He was at length awakening from his dream, and the woman thus seen from below, at a distance of a few paces, filled him with stupefaction. Who had ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... said Master Heatherthwayte, "with chrism and taper and words and gestures to destroy the ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... skin friction is fallacious. Distinction, also, is not made, but should be clearly drawn between skin friction, pure and simple, on smooth surfaces, and the friction due to pressure. Too often the bearing value on irregular surfaces as well as the bearing due to taper in piles, and lastly the resistance offered by binding, enter into the determination of so-called skin friction formulas. The essential condition of sinking a caisson is keeping it plumb; and binding, which is another way of writing increased bearing ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem
... darkness over me, an internal darkness, not to be dispelled by gas. When at last I found an empty bench, I sank into it like a bundle of rags, the world seemed to swim away into the distance, and my consciousness dwindled within me to a mere pin's head, like a taper on ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... womanly air; Smooth, square forehead, with uprolled hair; Lips that lover has never kissed; Taper fingers and slender wrist; Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade; So they ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... cherish, while yet the taper glows, And the fresh flow'ret pluck ere it close; Why are we fond of toil and care? Why choose the rankling thorn ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... and, beginning to cry immediately, was taken home. Green was next, and all eyes turned upon him, for he was a noted hand. He advanced to the table with great sangfroid, and, turning back the wrists of his coat, exhibited his beautiful sparkling paste shirt buttons, and the elegant turn of his taper hand, the middle finger of which was covered with massive rings. He took the box in a neglige manner, and without condescending to shake it, slid the dice out upon the table by a gentle sideway motion—"sixes!" ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... paper, skeleton, shadow, anatomy, spindleshanks^, lantern jaws, mere skin and bone. middle constriction, stricture, neck, waist, isthmus, wasp, hourglass; ridge, ghaut^, ghat^, pass; ravine &c 198. narrowing, coarctation^, angustation^, tapering; contraction &c 195. V. be narrow &c adj.; narrow, taper, contract &c 195; render narrow &c adj.; waste away. Adj. narrow, close; slender, thin, fine; thread-like &c (filament) 205; finespun^, gossamer; paper-thin; taper, slim, slight-made; scant, scanty; spare, delicate, incapacious^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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 roll about the apartment. Mrs. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... to 180 pulsations per minute. Although unable to speak from her excessive suffering, she bore every duty perfectly in mind. On the evening of the 26th, she said to her friend, 'Today is the ninth day, you must pay for the wax taper and novena at the chapel of St. Anne.' She was alluding to a novena which she had asked to have made for her intention, and she was afraid lest her friends should forget it. On the 27th, at two o'clock ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... denied the milk of its mother's breast. Vouchsafe that she resemble her hapless parent in nothing but a chaste life. And thou, celestial warrior, that didst deliver the maiden out of the serpent's mouth, if I have ever lit humble taper on thine altar, and set before thee offerings of gold and incense, be, I implore thee, her advocate. Be her advocate to such purpose, that in every turn of fortune she may be enabled to count on thy good help.' Here she ceased, torn to her very heart-strings, with a ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... reparation of them, that he be previously degraded from sacred orders by the Lord Bishop of Marseilles, his diocesan, and afterwards condemned to make honorable amends one audience day, having his head and feet bare, a cord about his neck, and holding a lighted taper in his hands—to ask pardon of God, the king, and the court of justice—then, to be delivered into the hands of the executioner of the high court of law, to be taken to all the chief places and cross-roads of this city of Aix, and torn with red-hot pincers in ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... gently on each taper, Wistful, small ghosts steal out of shrouded corners— And, like a line of vague enchanted mourners, Great shadows sway like ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... had tightened upon him (as their way is with a boy having six weeks' holiday); but still they could not make his legs look big, though they showed them sharp and muscular. Below them were brisk little sinewy calves in white silk hose, with a taper descent to ankles as fine as a lady's, and insteps bright with large silver buckles. Yet that which surpassed all the beauty of the clothes was the vigor of the man inside them, who seemed to quicken and invigorate ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... that the books should not weigh on them, and had been carefully protected by wrappings of cotton wool. Taking them out, one by one, Herbert found a delicate china candlestick (intended to hold a wax taper) broken into two pieces, in spite of the care that had been taken to preserve it. Of no great value in itself, old associations made the candlestick precious to Sydney. It had been broken at the stem and could be easily mended so as ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... later 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 prospectors, packers and occasionally ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... a visible reality! Unlighted as yet, unpeopled, but gorgeous, multiform, sentinelled, and ready, it needed but the touch of the taper to set forth all the glories of art and wealth tenfolded by self-sacrifice for a hallowed cause. Here was the Bazaar, and yonder, far away on the southern border of Tennessee, its wasted ranks still spruce in their tatters, the battery; iron-hearted Bartleson ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... dressing, she put in order her bedroom, which formed a sort of free passage between the studio and a small dining room to the kitchen beyond. Then, going into the studio, she lit a wax taper and was in the act of touching off the brass candlesticks that lighted the room when three knocks sounded on the door and a Mr. Flanders, a broker, compact, nervously alive, well groomed, entered with the informality ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... indeed burnt my mouth so, that I did not relish my meals for some time after. Even when I had become quite well and strong again, I wondered how the sailors could really like such stuff; but many of them had a jug of it, besides the Greenlander, which they brought along to sea with them, to taper off with, as they called it. But this tapering off did not last very long, for the Jamaica was all gone on the second day, and the jugs were tossed overboard. I ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... called polled (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
... paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... wonderful full moon shone down upon them with a marvellous lustre, and there was a pleasant air, soft and warm, from the forest, and, what with the scores of bright waxen tapers that stood in silver candlesticks upon the table (each taper sparkling as bright as any star), the night was made all illuminate like to some singular mid-day. There was set before them a plenty of divers savory meats and of several excellent wines, some as yellow as gold, and some as red as carbuncle, and they ate and they drank and they ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... of a young woman who might shriek at the sight of a man in his shirt-sleeves. Which shows that it is exceedingly unsafe to judge by appearances,—of a woman, especially. The slender figure showed that the physical indications in the delicately rounded arm, the taper fingers, and shapely feet were justified by the proportionate development of the rest of her anatomy. Nature had been gentle rather than generous. Mlle. Fouchette was in demand for angels and ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... the door, right to the other side of the cabin," said Mr Frewen, and, drawing back some distance, he ran at the panel, raised his foot, struck it just above the handle, and it was driven right off, and he saw Miss Denning standing there, pale and large-eyed, holding a little taper in her hand, while in the bed-place lay her brother, gazing at us wildly, but for his countenance to change and become restful and calm as he saw that he was in ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... 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
... him with a miserable smile. He stood before her; she lifted off the green silk covering under which the body was lying; and by the dim light of a taper, he saw before him, not without a secret shudder, the stiffened image of himself. Charlotte pointed to a chair, and there they sat opposite each other, without speaking, through the night. Ottilie was still lying motionless on Charlotte's knee; she breathed ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... apartment prepared for their reception. The demeanor of these fair companions, always widely different, was particularly so at the present moment. Miss Haviland, with her chin gracefully resting on one folded hand, and her calm and beautiful, but now deeply-clouded brow, shaded by the white, taper fingers of the other, was abstractedly gazing into the glowing coals on the hearth before her, while the gentle, but less reflective McRea, with a countenance disturbed only by the passing emotions of sympathy ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... deftly made a torch of a paper from his pocket with better success. A brief glance into the room at their left showed signs of recent occupancy. His quick survey marked an oil lamp in the corner, which, upon investigation, proved to be in working order, so he lit it with the end of his expiring taper. ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... two readers went up, one after the other, into the same pulpit, and, between them, they read the processes and pronounced the sentences, the person standing before them, with the alcayde, and holding a lighted taper in his hand. Dellon, in turn, heard the cause of his long-suffering. He had maintained the invalidity of baptismus flaminis, or desire to be baptised, when there is no one to administer the rite of baptism by water. He had said that images ought not to be adored, and that an ivory ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... slandering me to you, or perhaps he will do so. If he does, don't believe him. I have done him no ill, and wish him none. He is a worthless boaster and a babbler. He does not really honour you, and merely plays the hypocrite. But I honour you from my heart; and, behold, I place a taper before you!" Sometimes incidents occur which display a still more curious blending of the two religions. Thus a Tcheremiss, on one occasion, in consequence of a serious illness, sacrificed a young foal to our Lady ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... follow, and taking a lighted taper, led the way into a room at the back of his shop. Ombos pottered about with the taper on the end of a rod; suddenly a big overhead chandelier burst into light and I stood ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... unsatisfying. It would be well for all to learn the lesson (not least he for whom the ceremony is primarily intended), which is symbolically taught when a Pope is crowned. The Master of the Ceremonies takes a lighted taper in one hand, and in the other a reed with a handful of flax fastened to it. The flax flares up for a moment, and then the flame dies away into thin, almost imperceptible, ashes, which fall at the Pontiff's feet, as the choir chant the ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... times say the rosary, (Fifty, 'twill be a poser, eh?) But by it you'll enter heaven; As each hour doth pass, Turn the hour glass, Till the time of midnight's near; On the stroke of midnight This taper light, Your conscience will then be clear.' He left the cell, and he walked until He joined Old Nick on the top of the hill. It was five o'clock, and the setting sun Showed the work of the Devil already begun. St Cuthman was rather fatigued by his walk, And caring but little for brimstone ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... 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, ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... newspapers,—for it was his habit to light his own fire occasionally when he worked unusually late at night or early in the morning. He relighted his fire now as cleverly as any housemaid in Bloomsbury, and stood watching it till it burned briskly. Then he lit a taper, and went downstairs to the professional torture-chamber. The tall horsehair chair looked unutterably awful in the dim glimmer of the taper, and a nervous person could almost have fancied it occupied ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... induced her to accuse Lord Hastings of want of allegiance to the lord protector. The duke of Gloucester commanded the instant execution of Hastings; and, accusing Jane Shore of having bewitched him, condemned her to wander about in a sheet, holding a taper in her hand, and decreed that any one who offered her food or shelter should be put to death. Jane continued an outcast for three days, when her husband came to her succor, but he was seized by Gloucester's ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... that women and girls above thirteen years of age use the weed in the form of quids. A magnificent Hebe, arrayed in satin and flashing in diamonds, "puts you back with one delicate hand, while with the fair taper fingers of the other she takes the tobacco out of her mouth previous to your saluting her." A European visiting Paraguay for the first time is rather astonished at the conduct of the fair beauty, but such is the force of custom that the squeamishness of the new-comer ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... on the dim obscurity around him! Thee! rapt in thy 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 The tender chords that tie my soul To earth. Yes, I must die, I feel that I must ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French |
