"Torchlight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and bantams, and ducks, and turkeys, but not one goose! "No geese but ourselves," said Mrs. Peterkin, wittily, as they returned to the house. The sight of this procession roused up the village. "A torchlight procession!" cried all the boys of the town; and they gathered round the house, shouting for the flag; and Mr. Peterkin had to invite them in, and give them cider and gingerbread, before he could explain to them that it was only his family ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... other evening, while he was conversing with several gentlemen at one of the hotels, a dilapidated individual reeled into the room and halted in front of the stove, where he made wild and unsuccessful efforts to maintain a firm position. He evidently had spent the evening in marching torchlight processions of forty-rod whisky down his throat, and at this particular time was decidedly and disreputably drunk. With a sly wink to the crowd, as much as to say, "We'll have some fun with this individual," ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... and when I reached the plain I found his tent ready to entertain me. The most sumptuous dinner his resources afforded was served in his audience tent; we had a grand acrobatic and dramatic entertainment of the soldiers and a torchlight retraite, and he gave me rugs to cover me, without which I must have suffered severely, for, though in June, it was bitterly cold at Omalos, and I had brought only one rug to sleep on. We returned together next day after I had visited the great ravine of Agios Rumeli, the most magnificent ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... with him. The faces below, too, were so very ridiculous—some of the people staring up in the air, and others at the rock where the echo came from; some having their mouths wide open, others their eyes starting, and all looking unlike themselves in the torchlight. His mirth was stopped ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... that and our promise to meet her, we forgot every bit about it till half-past four! You see, it was election day, and we were frightfully busy. After the fifth hour recitation we hurried into the ragged blue overalls that we had worn in one of the torchlight parades. Lila punched up the crown of an old felt alpine hat, and I battered my last summer's sailor till it looked disreputable enough. Then we rushed over to the gymnasium to ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... welcome were rude, assuredly it was a hearty one. Kind wishes and blessings poured in on every side, and even our own happiness took a brighter coloring from the beaming looks around us. The scene was wild; the lurid glare of the red torchlight, the frantic gestures, the maddening shouts, the forked flames rising amidst the dark shadows of the little hamlet, had something strange and almost unearthly in their effect; but Lucy showed no touch of fear. It is true she grasped my hand a little ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Windsor, and Prince George of Denmark went to meet him there by desire of the queen. In the relation of the journey given by one of the prince's attendants, he states, "We set out at six in the morning, by torchlight, to go to Petworth, and did not get out of the coaches (save only when we were overturned or stuck fast in the mire) till we arrived at our journey's end. 'Twas a hard service for the prince to sit fourteen hours in the coach that day without eating any thing, and passing through the worst ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... deception, and led him to suppose that his time would be chiefly spent in the fascinating amusements and adventures arising from hunting the forest in search of deer and other game, pigeon and duck-shooting, spearing fish by torchlight, and voyaging on the lakes in a birch-bark canoe in summer, skating in winter, or gliding over the frozen snow like a Laplander in his sledge, wrapped up to the eyes in furs, and travelling at the rate of ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... and drew forth his sabre; it gleamed in the torchlight—the Moors bowed their heads in fanatic reverence—the santon sprang from the stone, and passed into the ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... than that of Montgolfier. It was a great success; it rose and remained suspended at a height of 100 feet, in which state it was conveyed with acclamation to the Place des Victoires, where it rested and underwent some repairs. At midnight it was conveyed in solemn procession by torchlight, and guarded by a detachment of horse, to the Champ de Mars, where, on the following day, the whole world of Paris turned out to witness another ascent. The balloon went up to the sound of cannon, and in two minutes ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... bags that were neatly arranged at the bottom of this stone-built chest. And the canvas that I had reached and pulled at had easily parted, and through the rent showed the dull gleam of gold coin as the torchlight flared upon it. ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... in the torchlight, sparkling on the poet's page; Virgin honey of Hymettus, distilled from the lips of the orator; A savor of sweet spikenard, anointing the hands of liberality; A feast of angel's-food set upon the tables of religion. She is seen in the tear of sorrow, ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... proceeded to the church of the Madonna del Papalo, where the Duke of Gandia and Cardinal Gian Borgia were buried, to render thanks for this new favour accorded to her house by God; and in the evening, accompanied by the same cavalcade, which shone the more brightly under the torchlight and brilliant illuminations, she made procession through the whale town, greeted by cries of "Long live Pope Alexander VI! Lang live the Duchess of Ferrara!" which were shouted aloud by heralds ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... disputes and resort to the sword, then generally worn by well-dressed men. Swords were, therefore, prohibited by Nash in the public rooms; still they were worn in the streets, when Nash, in consequence of a duel fought by torchlight, by two notorious gamesters, made the law absolute, "That no swords should, on any account, be worn ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... thou, O lover, that art on the watch, Where, on the banks of the forgetful streams, The pale indifferent ghosts wander, and snatch The sweeter moments of their broken dreams,— Thou, when the torchlight gleams, When thou shalt see the slow procession, And when thine ears the fitful music catch, Rejoice, for thou ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... the killing of the bullock at the house of the bridegroom - the present of meat and fowls, meal and spices, to the bride - the gold and silver - that most imposing part of the ceremony, the walking of the bride by torchlight to the house of her betrothed, her eyes fixed in vacancy, whilst the youths of her kindred sing their wild songs around her - the cup of milk and the spoon presented to her by the bridegroom's mother - ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... paraded in the square, torchlight processions were started on Saturday nights, when the boys of the town went crying and whooping behind the march of the flares. Artists were sent for from Paris, took train to Nancy, and were driven laboriously ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... conspicuously well-to-do as on anything else—which as the last resort shrinks from radicalism. In spite of the yellow press, in spite of all the Socialist and Anarchist talk, in spite of corruption and brass bands and torchlight processions, when the people as a whole is called upon to speak the final word, that word has never yet been wrong. Perhaps some day it will be, for all peoples go mad at times; but the nation is normally sound and sane, with a sanity that is peculiarly ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... Coxeter two men were talking Spanish; they were gesticulating, and seemed to be disagreeing angrily as to what course to pursue. Presently one of them suddenly produced a long knife which glittered in the torchlight; with it he made a gesture as if to show the other that he meant to cut his way through the crowd towards the spot, now railed off with rope barriers, where the boats were being got ready for ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... sometimes of the vast succession of troubled scenes and fierce faces that had passed before her since she had quitted that city. At one moment she beheld the travelling equipages and far-stretching array of her own party, with their military escort filing off by torchlight under the gateway of ancient cities; at another, the ruined villages, with their dismantled cottages,—doors and windows torn off, walls scorched with fire, and a few gaunt dogs, with a wolf-like ferocity in their bloodshot eyes, prowling about the ruins,—objects that ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the camp, the second chief was packing the stolen treasure on the camels by torchlight. Whenever he stumbled over a dead body he muttered a curse, and when his work was finished he sought his comrade. Women in chains wept loudly, not so much on account of their imprisonment—they took that almost as ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... be conceived than the effect of the torchlight on the massive pillars and low-browed roof of the subterranean church. Nor were the figures inappropriate to the scene. Lilly, with the mosaical rods in his hand, which he held at a short distance from the floor, moving first to ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... before we had harvested our watery fields of grain, and where we had now returned for the duck-hunting. All was well with us. Ducks were killed in countless numbers, and in the evenings the men hunted deer in canoes by torchlight along the shores of the lake. But alas! life is made up of good times and bad times, and it is when we are perfectly happy that we ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... mistook it for distaste of his theme. "Pardon me, ladies," said he, "for introducing a subject tabooed in polite society. I called for a very different purpose. One novelty remains for me in Rome. I have never seen the statues of the Vatican by torchlight. Some Americans are forming a party for that purpose to-morrow evening, and if you would like to join them, it will give me great pleasure ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... sergeant, I believe; some sergeant of the same regiment. They are to be married to-morrow evening; and it is to be by moonlight and torchlight, and everything odd; up on that beautiful hill where we were the other day, where the trees and the tents make such a pretty mingling with red caps and ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... to the number of two hundred persons in all, "generally proper handsome men and fair-haired." Whitlocke, who was naturally called in by the Protector on this occasion, describes with unusual gusto the reception of the Embassy. There was a magnificent torchlight procession of coaches, most of them with six horses, to convey the Ambassador and his suite from Tower Wharf, where they landed, to Sir Abraham Williams's house in Westminster; there were feastings and other entertainments, at the Lord Protector's charge, for three ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... recruited from all the jails of Paris, surrounded the carriages, which I at length understood to be those of the royal family. They had attempted to escape to the frontier, had been arrested, and were now returning as prisoners. I caught a glimpse, by the torchlight, of the illustrious sufferers, as they passed the spot where I stood. The Queen was pale, but exhibited that stateliness of countenance for which she was memorable to the last; she sat with the Dauphiness pressed in her arms. The King looked overcome with exhaustion; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... melons were planted among the corn, and the meadow which lay between never exhausted its store of wonders. Besides, there were eggs to hide at Easter; cherries and strawberries in May; fruit all summer; fishing parties by torchlight; lobelia and sumac to be gathered, dried and sold for pocket money; and in the fall, chestnuts, persimmons, wild grapes, cider, and the grand butchering after frost came, so that all the pleasures I knew were incidental to a farmer's ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... wolf is a great coward. I have heard the hunters say, that they never attack any one, unless there is a great flock together and the man is alone and unarmed. My uncle used to go out a great deal hunting, sometimes by torchlight, and sometimes on the lake in a canoe, with the Indians; and he shot and trapped a great many wolves and foxes and racoons. He has a great many heads of wild animals nailed up on the stoup ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... make a house-to-house canvass; it will not make and keep a record of the name, business and preference of every voter; it will not have trained proselyters at work; it will not organize clubs; it will not descend to the brutish level of the torchlight procession; it will not employ the agonizing brass bands; it will not send out men on election day whose business it is to see that every voter gets to the polls at least once, and more ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... regardless of the singing of all the rest, it was chanting the Magnificat anima mea Dominum. Long-drawn, sustained, and of brazen quality, it calmly defied all other din, and as the crowd drew nearer Gilbert saw through the torchlight the thin white face of a very tall man in the midst, with half-closed eyes and lips that wore a look of pain as he sang—the face, the look, the voice of a man who in the madness of liquor was still ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... opened the gate and, Yasmini leading, they passed through a double line of Rajput noblemen, who drew their sabers at some one's hoarse command and made a steel arch overhead that flashed and shimmered in the torchlight. Beyond that one order to draw sabers none spoke a word. Tess looked straight in front of her, afraid to meet the warrior eyes on either hand, lest some one should object to a foreigner in their midst on such a night ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... torchlight unsteady The dead and the dying seem one— What! trembling and paling already, Before your dear mission's begun? These wounds are more precious than ghastly— Time presses her lips to each scar, While she chants of that glory which vastly Transcends ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... pleasure. He and your mother were evidently as much charmed with Pascagoula, and its surroundings, as I was. Both were the picture of happiness. They engaged in many amusements, of which I was incapable, and could only look on and laugh at—such as catching crabs, and speering flounders by torchlight. They bathed and swam, too, (the latter with a life-preserver), but they were afraid to venture out too far, on account of sharks, which were occasionally seen near the shore. At a certain season of the year there was frequently heard, near the bath-houses, a strain of music, like the Aeolian ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... I will go out this evening—I will go by torchlight to Saint-Germain: I will breakfast there to-morrow, and will return to Paris by three o'clock. Will ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... on the young man's shoulder and looked into his eyes by the torchlight, without power to speak a word, but Nazarius divined the question which was dying on his ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... special mass, by torchlight, and is for the repose of the soul of Titian, who is buried there. You may never have an opportunity to see such a sight again—come with us," and Enrico held out his strong ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... latter's house and sit down to smoke and talk, while Sipi the Fat pounds more kava for them to drink. Then mats are unrolled and every one lies down; and as they sleep the sun touches the sea-rim, swarms of snowy gulls and sooty terns fly shoreward with lazily flapping wing to roost, a gleam of torchlight shows here and there along the village paths, and the island ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... takes the place of honour beside the master of the house. He is treated with marked attention and respect. The family are at pains to entertain him; they sing their best songs for his amusement, and after midnight a numerous band of men and maidens escorts him by torchlight, with songs and ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... general slimness and slovenliness of our department. Every one gives our drooping eagle a kick. This is all wrong. We can't send our greatest wonders and triumphs to Europe. There is neither room nor opportunity in the building for showing off one of our political torchlight processions, or a vigilance-committee hanging, or a Chicago or Boston fire, or a steamboat blow-up, or a railway smash-up. Were the present chief of the commission a man of originality and talent, he might even now save the national reputation by bundling all the pumps, churns, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... lay my bones among you." The next day he died, and to the surrounding monks, as the last sacrament was administered, he said, "If I had served God as diligently as I have done the king, He would not have given me over in my gray hairs." The remains were interred by torchlight before daybreak on St. Andrew's Day, 1530, and to show the vanity of all things earthly tradition says that after the destruction of the abbey the stone coffin in which they were buried was used as a horse-trough for ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... fall? I thought I heard a cry back there," said the tall young lady peering suspiciously into the group; but all seemed serene in the fitful torchlight. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... Islip Chapel. Queen Elizabeth, in her tattered velvet robes, is still one of the most famous. They were formerly far more numerous. A waxen figure of the deceased, dressed in the habit worn whilst living, was, in the case of any royal or notable personage, very frequently carried as part of the torchlight funeral procession and, after the obsequies, left over the grave to serve as ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... beneath, and soon after it sunk into a low murmur, as if some matter of importance was in agitation. For some moments she sat in lingering terror, when she heard footsteps advancing towards the chamber, and a sudden gleam of torchlight flashed upon the walls. 'Wretched girl! I have at least secured you!' said a cavalier, who now entered the room. He stopped as he perceived Julia; and turning to the men who stood without, 'Are these,' said he, 'the fugitives you have taken?'—'Yes, my lord.'—'Then you have ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... I glanced back into the room the sights revealed by the flickering torchlight convinced me that our sufferings were almost light in comparison with those of others. I saw one man, a few paces behind me, turn purple in the face, as if some one were strangling him. Two or three others had already fainted from the heat, and I heard some one whisper that ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... ordered his light-armed troops to ascend the heights over the road during the night, driving before them oxen with burning fagots tied to their horns, giving the appearance of an army marching by torchlight. The plan was successful. The Romans abandoned the road and marched for the heights, along which they supposed the enemy were going. Hannibal, with a clear road before him, continued his march with the bulk of his army. The next morning he recalled ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... music and song is heard from half a hundred windows, no city can boast a spectacle more animated. At ten o'clock the streets are deserted. Pesth is exceedingly proper and decorous as soon as the darkness has fallen, although I do remember to have seen a torchlight procession there during the Russo-Turkish war. The inhabitants were so enthusiastic over the arrival of a delegation of Mussulman students from Constantinople that they put ten thousand torches in line and marched until a late hour, thinking, perhaps, that the lurid light on the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... walls, pierced by numberless richly ornamented windows, and surmounted by small turrets, form a beautiful boundary on the right; while a third party are planted on the left, in the open space, beneath the dormitory, the torchlight flashing ruddily upon the hoary pillars and groined arches sustaining ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... wear such grand clothes and can make such a noise without anybody telling them to shut up," answered Bert, whose knowledge of firemen was based upon a torchlight procession of them he had seen one night, and their management of a fire that had not long before taken place in the near neighbourhood, and of which he ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... and two men with naked weapons rushed into the room. Even as they came, the outer door was hammered fiercely, and the Abbot's comrades hearing it, and seeing the torchlight, turned and fled. Not so the terrible Abbot: wild with rage and pain, he spurned his dead comrade, chair and all, across the room, then, as the men faced him on each side with kindling eyeballs, he waved his ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... and at tavern banquets, at meetings here and meetings there, barbecues, dinners, races, militia musters, gatherings at crossroads and in the open fields, by daylight and by candlelight and by torchlight, Republican doctrine was expounded, and Federalist doctrine made answer. The clash of the brazen shields was loud. It was a forensic people and a plastic time. He who could best express his thought might well, if there were ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... were the disciples in a group; they were excited, but no man was ever calmer than he. The torchlight beat redly upon him, giving his hair a tint ruddier than was natural to it; yet the expression of the countenance was as ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... dead. Wrapped in his soldier's cloak, laid in a rough box, the body was carried that night to the Ursuline Convent, where a bursting bomb had scooped a great hole in the floor. Sad-eyed nuns and priests crowded the chapel. By torchlight, amid tears and sobs, the body ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... full of splendid masks, of singers, and of buffoons, chanting scandalous verses. They were accompanied by men on horseback. Apart from the Carnival, the Romans seem to have been the first to discover the effect of a great procession by torchlight. When Pius II came back from the Congress of Mantua in 1459, the people waited on him with a squadron of horsemen bearing torches, who rode in shining circles before his palace. Sixtus IV, however, thought ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... funeral procession, which came mechanically chaunting by, with an indistinct show of dirty vestments, lurid torches, swinging censers, and a great cross borne before a priest. He was an ugly priest by torchlight; of a lowering aspect, with an overhanging brow; and as his eyes met those of Mr Dorrit, looking bareheaded out of the carriage, his lips, moving as they chaunted, seemed to threaten that important traveller; likewise the action of his hand, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... our unsuspecting brothers and sisters in Delhi—it were good for that man if he had not been born. He had notice such as might have wakened the dead early in the afternoon (2 or 3 o'clock P.M., I believe), and yet, at the end of a long summer day, torchlight found him barely putting his foot into the stirrup. And why into the stirrup at all? For what end, on what pretence, should he ever have played out the ridiculous pantomime and mockery of causing the cavalry to mount? Two missions there were to execute on that fatal night—first, to save ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... the red torchlight, From the trouble of morning grey, They stripped the White Horse of the grass As they strip it ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... Performances, representing the last events in the life of Christ, are enacted in the churches or streets in such a way as to remind one of the old miracle plays or mysteries. A few days before Good Friday, a torchlight procession takes place by night from one church to another, in which is carried a large wooden image of Christ bent under the weight of the cross. The chief members of the government assist, and the whole slowly moves to the sound ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... music, speeches and transparencies emphasized the fact that woman's evolution from the campfire of the savage into a new era was commemorated. Twenty-eight parades were a feature of the open air demonstrations. There were besides numbers of torchlight rallies; street dances on the lower East Side; Irish, Syrian, Italian and Polish block parties; outdoor concerts, among them a big one in Madison Square, where a full orchestra played, opera singers sang ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... first opening of the Engis cave,* (* Schmerling part 1 page 30.) where the best-preserved human skulls were found; and, after thus gaining access to the first subterranean gallery, to creep on all fours through a contracted passage leading to larger chambers, there to superintend by torchlight, week after week and year after year, the workmen who were breaking through the stalagmitic crust as hard as marble, in order to remove piece by piece the underlying bone-breccia nearly as hard; to stand for hours with one's feet in the mud, and with water ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... This barkeeper thinks there hasn't been such another stir here in years, as his coming is going to raise. —And I've always noticed this peculiarity about a dead barkeeper—he not only expects all hands to turn out when he arrives, but he expects to be received with a torchlight procession." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wen[t] to press last week we paused to entertain a torchlight procession of the Young Imperialists' Flambeau [C]lub, which was collecting a campaign contribution in the semblance of our alfalfa stack. The spectacle of citizens taking an active [p]art in the issues before their country ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... tumbling away into the farther darkness. Nearer and nearer the thing came, till its long sides began to glow with spots of light which mirrored themselves in the river and attended the monster like a torchlight procession. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... that government alone is good "which seeks to attain the permanent interests of the governed by evolving the character of its citizens." To put the matter brutally, politics, despite the lofty sentiments on the transparencies in torchlight processions, had only to do with the belly, not ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... do be lifted, an' what it means I dinnaw; but this here I know, Jawn, that all arnychists is inimies iv governmint, an' all iv thim ought to be hung f'r th' first offence an' bathed f'r th' second. Who are they, annyhow, but foreigners, an' what right have they to be holdin' torchlight procissions in this land iv th' free an' home iv th' brave? Did ye iver see an American or an Irishman an arnychist? No, an' ye niver will. Whin an Irishman thinks th' way iv thim la-ads, he goes on ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... statistics and other printed matter, which were much more serviceable nowadays than in the past. He said that formerly the average voter flung everything into the waste-basket and went to the polls simply on the strength of party prejudice fortified by the glamour of a torchlight procession, but that now he read and thought, and refused to support the party candidate merely because he was the party candidate. He deluged the community with copies of my letter of acceptance, and three days later overwhelmed the postal service ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... the evening, she hoisted the curtain with a vigorous jerk, and looked forth: it was not a very beautiful scene; long rows of brick houses stretched away on either side, relieved at intervals by the street lamps and loafers, which, as they appeared at a distance, reminded her of a torchlight procession she had witnessed once in Peonytown, when the Hickory Club turned out with twenty torches and a colored lantern. Having satisfied her eyes with the view, she attempted to draw down the curtain, and found that it would ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Haydon, "not easily. The ground is hard, and running a line by torchlight is a very different thing from running it by daylight. I hope to goodness we can make good headway before the dawn, for with the first peep of day they'll be after us as fast as they ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... listened with straining ears and frightened eyes, fire-rimmed by the flickering torchlight. A sound came from afar—a sound not unmelodious but singular beyond power of language to express—a whisper of sinister significance to him who knew its meaning, of sheer mystery to all others. A murmur filled the air, a murmur of undefined noises still far distant. They might have ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... arrival a babe was born to the queen and to her exceeding joy it was a son. Count von Eily, hearing "that a king and friend was born to him," had bonfires lighted, and a torchlight procession on the ice that same night, and early in the morning came the Archbishop of Gran to christen the child. The queen wished her faithful Helen to be godmother, but Helen refused in favor of some lady whose family it was probably needful to propitiate. She took off the little ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... jewelled lustre by the solar fires. Night drops her black curtain suddenly, with no intervening veil of twilight to temper Earth's plunge into darkness. Great stars hang low in the sombre sky, and the open interiors of Malay huts, aglow with lamp or torchlight, produce Rembrandtesque effects, revealing brown inmates cooking or eating ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... windows of the great fore-room flung bands of yellow torchlight out upon the lawn, and I knew that Tarleton's court was set again. At that the pains of hell gat hold upon me and I did pray as I had never prayed before that God would grant me this one boon—to stand beside her in this time of trial; to give me tongue of eloquence ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... nearly touching the sea-rim, I was so close to the south-end of Tog, that I could see the spars of a ship lying at anchor in the bay called Pio. And then when the sun had set I could see the lights of many canoes catching flying-fish by torchlight. ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... head of a large army, advanced rapidly into Upper Germany. Castles and cities surrendered as he advanced, and so rapid was his progress, that he came near taking the emperor captive. Charles was obliged to fly, in the middle of the night, and to travel on a litter by torchlight, amid the passes of the Alps. He scarcely left Innspruck before Maurice entered it—but too late to gain the prize he sought. The emperor rallied his armies, and a vigorous war was carried on between the contending parties, to the advantage of ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... of leap frog various tricks are attempted by the leader, as in the game of "stump master." Each of the boys following is expected to do as the leader or to drop out and become "down" himself. "Torchlight" is to jump with one hand only, using the other to wave his cap as if it were a torch. In "hats on deck" each jumper in turn is supposed to leave his cap on "down's" back. Naturally the last one over may have a large pile of hats to clear. If he disturbs any of them or knocks them off, ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... which led into the town, we entered the fort by a similar approach, and crossing the moat by a narrow bridge we plunged into a dark hole directly opposite; then passing by torchlight through some small caves which were entered by very low portals, we began to ascend the inclined plane which wound up the interior of the rock, and which gradually became steeper till it ended in a flight ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... sank again into his seat. At last, about ten o'clock, and just as Dantes began to despair, steps were heard in the corridor, a key turned in the lock, the bolts creaked, the massy oaken door flew open, and a flood of light from two torches pervaded the apartment. By the torchlight Dantes saw the glittering sabres and carbines of four gendarmes. He had advanced at first, but stopped at the sight of ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... under the presidency of Admiral Lagercrantz. Among those who were present may be mentioned his Majesty the King, the Crown Prince, Prince Oscar, Oscar Dickson, and Baron von Otter, Minister of Marine. On the evening of the same day there was a torchlight procession by pupils of the Technical High School. On the 27th there was a gala-play, to which all the Vega men were invited. On the 28th at a festive meeting of the Academy of the Sciences, a medal struck on account of the Vega expedition was ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... cities, fair to see and busy with the hum of men. In the one were weddings and wedding-feasts, and they were going about the city with brides whom they were escorting by torchlight from their chambers. Loud rose the cry of Hymen, and the youths danced to the music of flute and lyre, while the women stood each at her house ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... through the swamp in agony of mind and body that we saw the light of many torches amid the trees ahead of us, and in their smoky glare witnessed the flight of hundreds of bats. The moonlight creeping dimly through the mist, and the torchlight—how do you say?—enflaming the vegetation, created a scene like that of Inferno, in which naked figures danced wildly, uttering ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... refuge than to make forthwith for the cellar where the treasures of the Bracciano fam- ily no doubt lay hid. As light of foot as Camilla sung by the Latin poet, he flew to the entrance to the Baths of Vespasian. The torchlight already flickered on the walls when Rinaldo, with the readiness be- stowed on him by nature, discovered the door concealed in the stone- work, and suddenly vanished. A hideous thought then flashed on Rinaldo's brain ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... for words unspoken, he commented nervously on the sensation of unreality with which these tropic scenes inspired him, and Rachael, who longed to withdraw her hand from his arm, told him of an entertainment peculiar to the Islands, a torchlight hunt for land-crabs, which once a year travel down from the mountains to the sea, to bathe and shed their shells. Words hastened. Before she drew breath she had arranged a hunt for the night of the 10th of April, and received his promise to be one of her guests. They were ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... and other theatrical managers, were ever on the lookout for plays to suit cash customers, and of course, the Bard of Avon had first call, because his plays went on the various stages like a torchlight procession, while those of his so-called compeers, struggled through the acts and scenes with only the flicker and sputter of tallow ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... gone, we approached the spot," continued the aged knight of Senville, "and found foot marks in the snow, which, from the previous fall, lay lightly on the ground, for the storm of tonight had hardly set in. There were marks of one of our parties, and we saw by torchlight strange footprints, as if they had been tracked by two or three daring foes—we thought we ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... who, with no womanly, but with a royal spirit, let call in haste a great number of the friends and servants of Messer Torello and made ready all that behoved unto a magnificent banquet. Moreover, she let bid by torchlight many of the noblest of the townfolk to the banquet and bringing out cloths and silks and furs, caused throughly order that which her husband had sent to bid her do. The day come, Saladin and his companions ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... witness the struggle and victory of South Carolina. However, it was clear that the enthusiasm and confidence of the people were no longer what they had been. Several dull and costly weeks had passed since the passage of the secession ordinance. Stump-speeches, torchlight-processions, fireworks, and other jubilations, were among bygone things. The flags were falling to pieces, and the palmettos withering, unnoticed except by strangers. Men had begun to realize that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... especially when you get into the neighbourhood of Lake Titicaca, you will find that we have not all perished. Furthermore, it is said—with what truth I know not—that when Atahuallpa fell into the hands of the Conquistadors, and was strangled by torchlight in the great plaza of Caxamalca, many of the nobles who had been with him fled with their families into the heart of the mountains, and, establishing themselves in a certain secret place, set to work, at the bidding of one Titucocha, a priest of the Sun, to build a new City of ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... test, My first, befitting me who so had seen: 'Forsake the Christ thou sawest transfigured, Him Who trod the sea and brought the dead to life? {305} What should wring this from thee?'—ye laugh and ask. What wrung it? Even a torchlight and a noise, The sudden Roman faces, violent hands, And fear of what the Jews might do! Just that, And it is written, 'I forsook and fled': {310} There was my trial, and it ended thus. Ay, but my soul had gained its truth, could grow: Another ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... and the mist. A hackman preyed upon me. I was put into an ancient ark and trundled on through the queer, irresolute, contradictory old streets, beside the lovely bay, all aglow with the lighted yachts, as a Southern swamp is with fire-flies. A torchlight procession met and escorted me. To this hour I am at a loss to know whether this attention was a delicate tribute on the part of the city of Newport to a distinguished guest, or a parting attention from the company who sail the Jane Moseley, ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... the king, and Wakungu appointments were made to celebrate the feats of the day. Then the royal cutler brought in dinner-knives made of iron, inlaid with squares of copper and brass, and goats and vegetables were presented as usual, when by torchlight we were dismissed, my men taking with them as many plantains ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... aware that the Plutocrats have arranged for a torchlight parade for to-night, as a counter demonstration to your meeting?" one ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... honest action; as well have expected charity from two angry litigants. They left the fair, not fatigued, but tired of ill-doing, and spent the remainder of their time over dinner until the evening when they recommenced their pranks by torchlight. After the peddlers, they commenced operations on the ladies of the town, to whom, by a thousand dodges, they gave only that which they received, according to the axiom of Justinian: Cuiqum jus tribuere. "To every one his own juice;" ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... to-night, and look at the place where you are some day to live. Come, and I will row you on the lake. You remember what you said in your letter that you dreamt?—that we were floating over the shadow of the Abbey to the nuns at work by torchlight felling the cypress, and they handed us each a sprig. Why, darling, it was the best omen in the world, their felling the old trees. And you write such lovely letters. So pure and sweet they are. I love the nuns for having ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was a suggestion of terrific irresistibility in the very slowness of its progress; to the eager fancy it might have been the veritable recreation of some prehistoric monster, the illusion being heightened by the torchlight that flickered uncertainly over the rounded bellies of the shields of greenish leather and was reflected redly from ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... In the house opposite me lives a young scholar; we do not know each other. At dead of night I am awakened by a great noise and a strange crackling under me. If it were mice, they must have been having a torchlight procession for the room was brilliantly illuminated. I rush to the window, the bright flame from the story under me leaps up to where I stand. My window-panes burst about my head, and a vile cloud of smoke rushes in on me. There being no great pleasure under the ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... Lunel, from Nismes, and even from Montpellier. As many as forty thousand persons are said to have resorted to the services during Cavalier's sojourn at Calvisson. The plains resounded with preaching and psalmody from morning until evening, sometimes until late at night, by torchlight. ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... holds we shall be at Southampton tomorrow evening. I shall get out the cargo by torchlight, for with this wind I don't want to lose an hour. I don't know how much there will be to take in, but I reckon anyhow that we shall be off by nine o'clock in the morning, and if we have luck shall ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... sister-Empress, and gave balls, banquets, and receptions in her honour. From St Petersburg she continued her journey to Poland, and made a conquest of Prince Radzivill, who exhausted his purse and ingenuity in devising entertainments for her, including the excitement of a bear-hunt by torchlight. ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... means of exciting religious emotion were employed in the ancient Church as they are at this day, but not employed alone. Torchlight there was, as there is now; but the torchlight illumined Scripture histories on the walls, which every eye traced and every heart comprehended, but which, during my whole residence in Venice, I never saw one Venetian regard for an instant. I never heard from any one the most languid expression ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... nothing in your life that you have tried to bury, and the obstinate thing will not be buried, but meets you again when you come away from its fancied grave. I remember an old castle where they tell us of a foul murder committed in a vaulted chamber with a narrow window, by torchlight one night; and there, they say, there are the streaks and stains of blood on the black oak floor; and they have planed, and scrubbed, and planed again, and thought they were gone—but there they always are, and continually up comes the dull reddish-black ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... denunciations of the molders. Ancient personal antagonisms that had been slumbering started to their feet. Torrini fell out of favor, and in the midst of one of his finest perorations uncomplimentary missiles, selected from the animal kingdom, had been thrown at him. The grand torchlight procession on the night of the ninth culminated in a disturbance, in which many men got injured, several badly, and the windows of Brackett's bakery were stove in. A point of light had pierced the darkness,—the trades were ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... slope to the stockade, they were collected in a group; one held the light, another was on his knees in their midst, and I saw the blade of an open knife shine in his hand with varying colours in the moon and torchlight. The rest were all somewhat stooping, as though watching the manoeuvres of this last. I could just make out that he had a book as well as a knife in his hand, and was still wondering how anything so incongruous had come in their possession when the ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we go in for fish. There are schnapper, rock-cod, mullet, mackerel, and herring, or species that answer to those, to be had for very little trouble. There are also soles, which we catch on the mud-banks and shallows at night, wading by torchlight, and spearing the dazzled fish as they lie. When we make a great haul we salt, dry, or smoke the capture for lasting use. The endless oyster-beds, and other shell-fish, we rarely touch, they are not worth the time and ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... village as Whig headquarters; were mounted on wheels, were drawn from place to place, and lived in by Whig stump speakers. Great mass meetings were held, and the whole campaign became one of frolic, song, and torchlight processions. [19] The people wanted a change. Harrison was an ideal popular candidate, and "Tippecanoe [20] and Tyler too" and a Whig ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... portal, and the doors of the wedding-chamber were clashed; and at morn they cried the wail, and Hymenaeus put to silence changed into a voice of lamentation; and the same pine-brands flashed their torchlight before the bride-bed, and lit the ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... have," said Michael. "And then after the concert there was the torchlight procession, with the bonfire on the top ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... piece of poetry on the wall of a smashed-up chateau, and I have copied it exactly as I found it. The writing was on a darkened wall, and while I copied it my guide held a torchlight up to it. The place passes as "Dead Cow ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... fragrant oil, And plait our garlands gathered from the grave, And wear the wreaths that sprung from out the brave. But lo! night comes, the Mooa[371] woos us back, The sound of mats[372] are heard along our track; 30 Anon the torchlight dance shall fling its sheen In flashing mazes o'er the Marly's[373] green; And we too will be there; we too recall The memory bright with many a festival, Ere Fiji blew the shell of war, when foes For the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... a jutting boulder, Strong took from his pocket a paper, which he read as follows under the flickering torchlight: ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... hand they stepped out on the floor. Young and old, lads and maidens, thronged eagerly about them. Had she not been so happy, perhaps she would not have been so fair. But as she stood there in the warm flush of the torchlight, with her rich blond hair waving down over her shoulders, and with that veiled brightness in her eyes, her beauty sprang upon you like a sudden wonder, and her presence was inspiration. And Gunnar saw her; she loved him: what cared he for all the world beside? Proudly ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... soon as the wind kind of softened down, I wished he would go and pick the horse. He did so, and at midnight a party of friends carried me into town on a stretcher. It was quite an ovation. To think of a torchlight procession coming way out there into the woods at midnight, and carrying me into town on their shoulders in triumph! And yet I was once only a ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... very well, and we at Weymar have taken cordial interest in your serenade and the torchlight procession. What a pity "Double Peps" was there no longer! He would have drummed and ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... homeless misery about the streets, with nothing but his bagpipes and his dog, got intoxicated at last, as such men always do, if they can, in times of such extreme and awful danger, and laid down upon the steps of a public building and went to sleep. The cart came along in the night, by torchlight, and one of the men who attended it, inserting the point of his fork under the poor vagabond's belt, tossed him into the cart, bagpipes and all. The dog did all he could to defend his master, but in vain. The cart went thundering on, the men walking along by its side, examining the ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... subtle or thoroughly natural... Velasquez ripened with age and practice; Greco was rather inclined to get rotten with facility." Mr. Ricketts says that "his pictures might at times have been painted by torchlight in a cell of the Inquisition." Richard Ford in his handbook of Spain does not mince words: "Greco was very unequal... He was often more lengthy and extravagant than Fuseli, and as leaden as cholera morbus." Ritter speaks of ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... carried on by torchlight, and occupied some hours. Towards midnight, the trampling of a large body of horse was heard. Arms were hastily snatched up and steel caps thrust on and, pike in hand, they thronged to defend the entrance. Francois ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... was almost strengthened at this moment, by the flashing of a strong and sudden light across the ceiling of the chamber, and the trampling of a body of troops by torchlight, entering the Castle gates. A squadron of dragoons had arrived, escorting a carriage. Even my glance at the buildings of the Castle-square could scarcely recall me to the truth of the locality; until ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... at caps, and that he would shortly be on the trail of the great lions of the Atlas. A deafening hurrah greeted this assertion. Whereupon more egg-nogg, bravoes, handshaking, slappings of the shoulder, and a torchlight serenade up ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet |
