"Taper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... hour when happy faces Smile around the taper's light; Who will fill our vacant places? Who will sing our ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... repeatedly through melted wax, till stiff and smooth, makes a good taper, for use in sealing letters. It can be twined in fanciful forms, and ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... the light of joy which had lent its most transcendent charms to that heavenly face, was gone. Charles was by her side in a moment. He had her hand clasped in his, while his disengaged one was wound tenderly around her taper waist. ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... a faint suggestion of light in that deeply hidden place, and Young struck a match that he might see to begin his explorations. "Well, I'll be shot," he exclaimed, as the wax-taper shed its clear light around us, "if here ain't a conductor's lantern hangin' up all ready for us, an' a can o' kerosene oil!" As he lighted the lantern, and the letters F. C. C. showed clearly on the glass, he added, in a tone of still greater amazement: ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... elder brother, the Lord Ferdinand, Is come to visit you, and sends you word, 'Cause once he rashly made a solemn vow Never to see you more, he comes i' th' night; And prays you gently neither torch nor taper Shine in your chamber. He will kiss your hand, And reconcile himself; but for his vow He dares not ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... 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 ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... officiating 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 her ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... put dreams into thy slumbering mind? Who, with bright Fear's lean taper, crossed a hand Athwart its beam, and stooping, truth maligned, Spake so thy spirit speech should understand, And with a dread "He's dead!" awaked a peal Of frenzied bells along the vacant ways Of thy poor earthly heart; waked thee to steal, Like dawn ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... o' the taper Bows toward her; and would under-peep her lids, To see th' enclosed lights, now canopied Under these windows, white and azure, lac'd With blue of heaven's ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... been burning the midnight taper, And of new policies deem yourself shaper; If at the world you're a green-gosling gaper, Or of old "JUNIUS," juvenile aper; Bumptious Scotch Duke, or irate Irish Draper, Crammed with conceit, which must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... shrubbery; in so black a night it might have been remarked for miles; and I blamed myself bitterly for my incaution. How much more sharply when I reached the place! One of the candlesticks was overthrown, and that taper quenched. The other burned steadily by itself, and made a broad space of light upon the frosted ground. All within that circle seemed, by the force of contrast and the overhanging blackness, brighter than by day. And there was the blood-stain in the midst; and a little farther ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which they were about to make them: though none of the Society were in Malacca, and that the plague was there violently raging, yet the whole nobility, and all the body of the clergy, came with James Pereyra to the shore, to receive the blessed body, each with a waxen taper in his hand, and carried it in ceremony to the church of Our Lady of the Mount, followed by a crowd of Christians, Mahometans, and Idolaters, who on this occasion seemed all to be ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... she, "without thy aid I am lost; for I love deeply. I have no parents, and they say I am sold to the demon. Oh, take pity on me! save me, if it be true: and if it is but the saying of the wicked, let my soul know the truth; and when I offer thee my taper at the altar of Notre Dame, prove to me that my ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... a niche in the wall. They cannot avoid imputing some share of foulness to them that are for scouring the chamber; and the civilized male, keeping his own chamber locked, quite shares their pale taper's view. The full-blooded to the finger-tips, on the other hand, are likely to be drawn to the subject, by noble inducement as often as by base: Nature at flood being the cause in either instance. This young ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... already set off to look for Grinsell's accomplice. Taper in hand he went quickly from room to room; joined by the squire's servants, he searched every nook and cranny of the house, examining doors and windows, opening cupboards, poking at curtains—all in vain. At last, at the end of a dark corridor, ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... the sunlight's gold; Her hands are featly formed, and taper; Her—well, the rest ought not be told In any modest family paper. Fair as Ischomache, and bright As Brimo. Quaeque queen ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... breathe his last sigh. But on such an occasion decency forbade that positive orders for departure should be passed from mouth to mouth. The heads of the stables, therefore, agreed with the people who were in the King's room, that the latter should place a lighted taper near a window, and that at the instant of the King's decease one of them should ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... trees, Where first our marriage-vows were given, With merry peals shall swell the breeze And point with taper spire ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... "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 ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... I guess, Thirteen summers, or something less; Girlish bust, but 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 painted the little maid. On her hand a parrot green ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... the knee, and in the forearm, we have two groups of "benders" or flexors, and "straighteners" or extensors, as in the upper arm and leg, only slenderer and more numerous. They taper down into cord-like tendons at the wrist and ankle to fasten and to pull the hands and feet "open" and "shut," just as do the strings in the legs and arms of a puppet or mechanical doll, or the sinews in the ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... the night of the 11th of May that the Countess sat at her child's bedside. She had brought up a taper with her, and there she sat watching the sleeping girl. Thoughts wondrously at variance with each other, and feelings thoroughly antagonistic, ran through her brain and heart. This was her only child,—the one thing that there was for her to love,—the only ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... themselves taken by surprise, they could not make him understand that they had not prepared this interruption. Besides, ere they could exchange looks, to the amazement of the assembly, three women, 'en chemise', with naked feet, each with a cord round her neck and a wax taper in her hand, came through the door and advanced to the middle of the platform. It was the Superior of the Ursulines, followed by Sisters Agnes and Claire. Both the latter were weeping; the Superior was very pale, but her bearing was firm, and her eyes were fixed and tearless. She knelt; ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... related in what manner I lost my sleep during my youth. I had since that time contracted a habit of reading every night in my bed, until I found my eyes begin to grow heavy. I then extinguished my wax taper, and endeavored to slumber for a few moments, which were in general very short. The book I commonly read at night was the Bible, which, in this manner I read five or six times from the beginning to the end. This evening, finding myself less disposed to sleep ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the other hand his male kinsfolk and neighbours, with not a few of the other citizens, and a due proportion of the clergy according to his quality, assembled without, in front of the house, to receive the corpse; and so the dead man was borne on the shoulders of his peers, with funeral pomp of taper and dirge, to the church selected by him before his death. Which rites, as the pestilence waxed in fury, were either in whole or in great part disused, and gave way to others of a novel order. For not only did no crowd of women surround the bed of the dying, but many passed from this ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... of the axe, wielded by brawny arms, the strong door presently fell with a crash into the room, and stepping over its fragments, the assailants stood in the presence of the occupants. By a taper, which was burning on a small table, the apartment was sufficiently lighted to make all ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... office pay, And smooth my passage to the realms of day; See my lips tremble and my eye-balls roll, Suck my last breath and catch my flying soul! Ah no—in sacred vestments may'st thou stand, The hallowed taper trembling in thy hand, Present the Cross before my lifted eye, Teach me at once and learn ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... 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 with fatigue, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... sauvages, and went out. The faces of many girls were brilliant with vermilion; others were blacked, their robes, leggings, and skin dresses glittering with beads and quill-work. Rings and bracelets of shining brass encircled their taper arms and fingers, and shells dangled from their ears. Indeed, all the finery collectable was piled on in barbarous profusion, though a few, in good taste through poverty, wore a single band and but few rings, with jetty hair parted in the middle, from the forehead ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... threatened building. Vinicius sprang to the interior. The little atrium was empty, and dark with smoke. Feeling for the door which led to the sleeping-rooms, he saw the gleaming flame of a small lamp, and approaching it saw the lararium in which was a cross instead of lares. Under the cross a taper was burning. Through the head of the young catechumen, the thought passed with lightning speed that that cross sent him the taper with which he could find Lygia; hence he took the taper and searched for the sleeping-rooms. He found one, pushed aside ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... whom he next approached, and supposed to be an attendant on the other, was below the middle size, and her legs were so disproportionably short, that, when she moved, she must have waddled along; her elbows were drawn in to touch her long taper, waist, and the air of her whole body was an affectation of gentility. Death could not alter the rigid hang of her limbs, or efface the simper that had stretched her mouth; the lips were thin, as if nature intended she should mince her words; her nose was small, and sharp at the end; and the forehead, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... upon the pink one, because that matched the color of the paper she had been using; and so she took out a pink taper, and set it in the candlestick. It fitted very snugly, so there was no danger of its ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... then comes a young man, and after a reverence to the pagoda he goes wandering round, looking for someone, maybe; and then comes an old man with his son. They stop at the little stalls on the stairs, and they have bought there each a candle. The old man has a plain taper, but the little lad must have one with his emblem on it. Each day has its own sign, a tiger for Monday, and so on, and the lad buys a candle like a little rat, for his birthday is Friday, and the father and son go on to the platform. There ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... he did hate to part with that uniform. Simply couldn't seem to do it all at once, but had to taper off gradual. First off he was only going to sport it two days a week, but whenever he could invent a special occasion, out it came. He even got him a Sam Browne belt, which was contrary to orders, ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... of it; yet it is supported." God supports it. We must know that God is great, that God is good; and trust, where we cannot see.—Returning home from Leipzig once, he is struck by the beauty of the harvest-fields: How it stands, that golden yellow corn, on its fair taper stem, its golden head bent, all rich and waving there,—the meek Earth, at God's kind bidding, has produced it once again; the bread of man!—In the garden at Wittenburg one evening at sunset, a little bird was perched ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... souls, and a few children of God belonging to the state church come. Another brother was also added to our number about a fortnight ago, so that we are now two-and-twenty altogether, who break bread. This is a small company certainly, but though it be only like a taper on a candlestick, yet there is some light, however little, and I trust that, with God's blessing, this light will be more and more bright in Germany, where it is so much needed. The Lord is also blessing my ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... altar. Unless you strain your eyes, or lamps are burning, side chapels pass unnoticed. If you are looking for inscriptions or want to admire the old master's picture, with which every church claims to be endowed, you must get the verger with his taper. Altars are gaudily decorated and statues bejeweled and be (artificial) flowered in Hispano-Italian fashion. The mairie, reconstructed from an ancient palace or castle, was more interesting. Beside the mairie a ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... taper-light, Torchlight, no-light: Darkness at the shut of day, And lions roaring, Their wrath pouring In wild ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... beg pardon! Have you been long here?" said the most soft and insinuating voice, while the speaker passed his taper fingers across his brow, as if to dissipate the traces of ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... giuen, him. The Exorcistes, serued to commaunde euille sprites oute of menne, and in token therof, had a lesse booke giuen them. The Acholite, had the bearyng and the orderyng of the Tapers, Candelstickes, and Cruettes at the Altare: and therfore had a Candelsticke, a Taper, and two emptie Cruorettes deliuered hym. The Subdeacon, mighte take the offring, and handle the Chalice, and the Patine, carie theim to the Altare, and fro the Altare, and giue the Deacon Wine and water, out of the Cruettes. And therfore the Bishoppe ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... venerable sweetness. Age, probably in consequence of inordinate precautions, had left no mark upon his hands; and the Maletroit hand was famous. It would be difficult to imagine anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in design; the taper, sensual fingers were like those of one of Leonardo's women; the fork of the thumb made a dimple 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... edible than muffin. She bowed her pretty head in token of her entire perception of my wishes, and, leaving the room with the agility of a fawn, returned in a short time, laden with a tray, from the level surface of which rose a tall coffee-pot that continued to taper till it kissed with its old fashioned lid her jet ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... must go," said Monsignore Catesby to Lothair, and he gently but irresistibly pushed him into his place. "You know you promised to support her. You had better take this," he said, thrusting a lighted taper into his hand; "it is usual, and ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... England, as he stands on some eminence, and looks down on its rich landscape of golden grain and waving cornfield, sees no feature more beautiful than its simple churches, whose white taper fingers point upward, amid the greenness and bloom of the distant prospects, as if to remind one of the overshadowing providence whence all this luxuriant beauty flows; and year by year, as new ones are added to the number, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... 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 ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... implanted in his heart. Then, when the daylight began to wane, and the moon and stars already grew beautiful in their places in the firmament, he would pass into the subterranean vaults of the edifice, trembling as his little taper scarcely dispelled the dull, solemn gloom, and listening with breathless attention for the voices of those guardian spirits whose fabled habitation was made in the apartments of the sacred place. Or, when the multitude had departed for their amusements and ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... when Newton was attending divine service, his dog Diamond upset a lighted taper on his desk and destroyed some papers representing the work of years. Newton is reported merely to have exclaimed: "O Diamond, Diamond, little do you know the mischief you have done me!" But, nevertheless, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... where others sat, and blotting out the prospect of half the church with her flaring brim and flaunting feathers. The worshippers came and went, and while the monk preached and reposed a man crept dizzyingly round the cornice with a taper at the end of a long pole lighting the chandeliers, while two other men on the floor kindled the candles before the altars. As soon as their work was completed, the monk, as if he had been preaching against time, sat definitely down and left us to the rapture of the perfected ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... of them, in his cap and gown, had a taste in the matter! That was the prime of art, sir. The sun stood high in heaven, and his broad and equal blaze made the darkest places bright and the dullest eyes clear. We live in the evening of time! We grope in the gray dusk, carrying each our poor little taper of selfish and painful wisdom, holding it up to the great models and to the dim idea, and seeing nothing but overwhelming greatness and dimness. The days of illumination are gone! But do you know I fancy—I fancy"—and he grew suddenly almost familiar in this visionary fervour—"I ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... heath, at midnight seen, No more the windows ranged in long array (Where the tall shaft and fretted arch between Thick ivy twines) the taper'd rites betray. ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... an improvised concert. Climbing the piano-stool, she went over the notes with her little taper fingers, touching the keys in a light, knowing way, that proved her a musician's child. Then I must play for her, and let the dance begin. This was a wondrous performance on her part, and consisted at first in hopping up and down on one ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... connection for lighting, so they carried candles, Anthony holding one aloft for himself and Bettina, and Delia coming after with a taper. Peter, like a flash of flame, slipped ahead of Delia and was lost ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... he rushed in under the before-mentioned walls, which were adorned with jagged nails, to make crossing on them unpleasant for the Englebourn boys. Against one of these Tom's line severed, and the waters closed over two beauteous flies, and some six feet of lovely taper gut. ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... spoke were a part of the procession esteemed very glorious by the Florentine populace; and being perhaps chiefly a kind of hyperbole for the all-efficacious wax taper, were also called ceri. But inasmuch as hyperbole is impracticable in a real and literal fashion, these gigantic ceri, some of them so large as to be of necessity carried on wheels, were not solid but hollow, and had their surface made not solely of wax, but of wood and pasteboard, gilded, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... remained there seated in its chair during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and the greater part of the sixteenth centuries. And indeed, it might have been there still but that in 1577 some children, curious about it and anxious to see a thing so wonderful, thrust a lighted taper into the tomb through one of the holes in the marble, when mummy, vestments, chair and all were consumed, and in a moment nothing remained but a ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... young forehead on the stone; The dark shade gloomed an instant on her head; And 'twixt her taper fingers pearled and shone The single tear ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... wand'rings round this world of care, In all my griefs—and GOD has given my share— I still had hopes my latest hours to crown, 85 Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down; To husband out life's taper at the close, And keep the flame from wasting by repose. I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, Amidst the swains to show my book-learn'd skill, 90 Around my fire an evening group to draw, And tell of all I felt, and all I ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... far from being a well-shaped creature: it appears disproportioned. Its back is long and hollow; and its tail does not taper so gracefully as in some other animals of the cat kind. Its legs are short and stout; and although far from clumsy in appearance, it does not possess the graceful tournure of body so characteristic of some of its congeners. Though considered ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... homologues of the wings extend wholly across the interior of the food bowl, and have the forms of triangles with smaller triangular spurs at their bases. The wings are extended at right angles to the axis of the body, and taper uniformly to the rim of the bowl. The smaller spurs near the union of the wings and body represent the posterior part of the latter, and between them are the tail-feathers, their number being indicated by ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... kindle my taper, And called to the Maid to remind her; And what should she bring me for paper But Gally i.o. the Grinder. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... anchor heave, And close upon my thunder-pulsing breast, O ship, Thou would'st tremble, nor repine, That being mine, Thy spars, Like long pale lights of falling stars, Plunged in the Stygian blackness of the sea, And to billowy ruin cast Thy tall and taper mast, Rushed shrieking headlong down to an abyss. O ship! O love! if Death Were such sure portion, thou could'st not refuse But thou would'st choose As mine to die, and call such choosing bliss; For thou for me Wert plann'd ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... to the taper fly, Bees on flowers will cluster; Keep a loving maid who can From love's golden lustre! Fear you lest that beacon light From your arms should lure me? Well I know without my help You can not secure me. ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... cascades. On older trees still than these, huge lobes of fungi grew like lungs. Here, as everywhere, the Unfulfilled Intention, which makes life what it is, was as obvious as it could be among the depraved crowds of a city slum. The leaf was deformed, the curve was crippled, the taper was interrupted; the lichen eat the vigor of the stalk, and the ivy slowly strangled to ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... token of his enmity? Typee or Happar? I asked within myself. I started, for at the same moment this identical question was asked by the strange being before me. I turned to Toby, the flickering light of a native taper showed me his countenance pale with trepidation at this fatal question. I paused for a second, and I know not by what impulse it was that I answered 'Typee'. The piece of dusky statuary nodded in approval, and then murmured ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... gentlemen who have nothing to do but think for 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 even of ...
— Government and Rebellion • E. E. Adams
... would Have cradled as the Baby of her Eye. In Rose and Musk she wash'd him—to his Lips Press'd the pure Sugar from the Honeycomb; And when, Day over, she withdrew her Milk, She made, and having laid him in, his Bed, Burn'd all Night like a Taper o'er his Head. ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... utter a sigh of relief, but he did not even wince, only stood motionless as his tyrant took the wax taper, held it to his cigar till it burned well, and then extinguished it by placing the little wick against the black man's bare arm, before pitching the wax to the man, who caught it ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... 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 ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... flickering taper's ray To light departing feet, my shadowed way You brighten with your faith. Faith makes the man Alas, that my poor foolish age outran Its early trust in God! The death of art And progress follows, when the world's hard heart Casts out religion. 'Tis ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Henry held the taper. Looking into the cavity, by the dim and flickering light, they both detected a dark object at the bottom of it. 'I think I can reach the thing,' the manager remarked, 'if I lie down, and put my ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... 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 blinking ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... turkey-hunting! I meant to have gone down to the farm-house after tea, and inquired about the safety of my prizes, but Kate wanted to play chess. Peter couldn't, and Peggy wouldn't; I had to, of course, and we played late. Kate had such pretty hands; long taper fingers, rounded to the tiniest rosy points; no dimples, but full muscles, firm and exquisitely moulded; and the dainty way in which she handled her men was half the game to me;—I lost it; I played wretchedly. The next day Kate went with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... and precocious piety, proved the exact counterpart of her brother. Soon after her confinement, Francesca had a vision which impressed her with the belief that God would one day claim this child as His own. She saw a dove of dazzling whiteness, bearing in its beak a tiny lighted taper, enter the room; and after making two or three circles in the air, it stooped over Agnese's cradle, touched her brow and limbs with the taper, gently fluttered its wings, and flew away. Looking upon this as ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... held sacred by the Hindus, and was abundantly used in all their religions ceremonies. Its leaves are very long, and taper to a sharp needle-like point, of which the extreme acuteness was proverbial; whence the epithet applied to a clever man, 'sharp as the point of Ku[s']a-grass.' Its botanical name ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... glimmering taper's light, Illumes and cheers our way; And still, as darker grows the night, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... into the vast church which the crusaders had built to enclose all the sacred ground, and little lights broke the darkness here and there, without dispelling it, but the poor Christian who led Gilbert had a taper in his hand. The knight came first to the deep-red stone whereon Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea anointed the body of the Lord for burial, and there kneeling down, he set his shield and sword before him and prayed that he might yet use them well. Then the man took him ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... great heaps round a kind of pyramid some sixty feet in height. Old King Carnival, in effigy, was placed at the apex of the pyramid, and the interior was filled with comestibles that would set the whole erection in a blaze as soon as a taper was applied. When the signal was given, bells pealed and trumpets sounded glad farewell to the customs of the ancient carnival. The procession set forth from San Marco on Palm Sunday (led by white-robed children with garlands on their heads), and ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... hand at a glance. He would have recognised it, in that forest solitude, by its symmetry and whiteness, its delicacy and its fullness; but one of the taper fingers wore a ring that, of late, Maud had much used; being a diamond hoop that she had learned was a favourite ornament of her real mother's. It is not surprising, therefore, that he seized the ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... Oh! And look! [She paints to a rounded metal object lying in the bin, close to where the taper was] It's a bomb! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the 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 ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... awhile. It so chanced one day that he locked his shop and went home, and in the night there came to the bazar an artful thief disguised in the habit of the merchant, and pulling out keys from his sleeve, said to the watchman of the market, "Light me this wax-candle." The watchman took the taper and went to light it,—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... face of the earth, white as the face of the dead. He ran full speed along the river bank as one pursued by the tide, though, even then, his footfall was not so rapid as the beating of his heart. The distant lights through the fog seemed to him like a procession of taper-bearers at a funeral; he did not know how this idea arose, but it terrified him, for behind it again he saw death. Then he came upon silent figures hastening ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... that the colleges are numerous, well endowed, and provided with ample means for turning out mediocre priests. The monasteries devote themselves to the education of little monks. They are taught from an early age to hold a wax taper, wear a frock, cast down their eyes, and chant in Latin. If you wish to admire the foresight of the Church, you should see the procession of Corpus Christi day. All the convents walk in line one ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... pharmaceuticals, and special-purpose machines, will therefore be more reliant on export markets at the same time they are being squeezed by the strong franc. Consequently, growth in machinery and equipment investment, for example, is expected to taper off. On the other side, import growth in 1997 also is likely to be lower than the 1995 rate of 6.6%, but higher ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... eyes whose living lustre shed the heat Of bright meridian day; the heavenly mould Of that angelic form; the hands, the feet, The taper arms, the crisped locks of gold; Charms that the sweets of paradise enfold; The radiant lightning of her angel-smile, And every grace that could the sense beguile Are now a pile of ashes, deadly cold! And yet I bear to drag ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... the mean time, lay in a kind of trance; and her father, when the prayers were over, ran down stairs for some wine, a cordial being necessary to recover her: the Friar, at the same time, ordered him to light and bring with him a consecrated taper; for hitherto they had no light but that of the vision, which was still strong enough to discover every thing in ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... of the organ attracted the attention of Monte-Leone and increased his excitement. He crossed the church, went down the nave, and approached a lateral chapel where a taper was burning with a flickering light. The Count entered the chapel. Those who had seen him amid the brilliant society of Naples, or amid the awful judicial ordeal to which he had just been subjected, and which ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... 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 give up ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... of tears succeeded to this transport; and the image of the beauteous Matilda rushing in spite of him on his thoughts, he lay on the ground in a conflict of penitence and passion. Ere he could recover from this agony of his spirits, the Princess Hippolita with a taper in her hand entered the oratory alone. Seeing a man without motion on the floor, she gave a shriek, concluding him dead. Her fright brought Frederic to himself. Rising suddenly, his face bedewed with tears, he would have rushed from her presence; but Hippolita stopping him, conjured ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... stood in Brower's pasture, just clear of the woods. When the sun rose, one could see its taper shadow stretching away to the foot of Woody Ledge, and at sunset it lay like a fallen mast athwart the cow-paths, its long top arm a flying pennant on the side of Bowman's Hill. In summer this bar of shadow moved ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... yet, in the absence of more authentic testimony, afford a pretty accurate glimpse at the real nature of those events, however they may have been disguised by fiction and misstatement. Where tradition is our only guide we must follow implicitly, satisfied that her taper was lighted at the torch of Truth, though it may gleam doubtfully and partially through the mists and errors of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... No! 'twas a vision! his hour was not yet, And waking, he turn'd on his pallet of straw, And a form by his side he could never forget, By the pale misty light of a taper he saw. "'Tis I! 'tis thy Winifred!"—softly she said, "Arouse thee, and follow—be bold, never fear! There was danger abroad, but my errand has sped, I promised to save thee—and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... 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
... time to time I tended the saw, and thus I began a training in mechanics which has been useful to me in my profession as a patent lawyer. Heywood also invented a wheel for bringing staves to a bevel and taper, for the construction of barrels systematically. Mr. Heywood remained in town eight or ten years, when he moved to Claremont, N. H., where he died at the age of eighty years or more. He was thoroughly upright, but he had ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... responsible for the confidence granted to her thus upon credit, and a strong ambition was excited in her mind to justify the high opinion her superior friend had formed of her. She determined to become all that she was believed to be; as the flame of a taper suddenly rises towards what is held over it, her spirit mounted to the point ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... means seek the elevation of a class of beings whose degradation has distracted the political wisdom of our happy country, from its conquest to the present day. "There's something in it," again mutters Mr. Scranton, as he enters his room, lights his taper, and with his elbow resting on the table, his head supported in his hand, sits ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... "The taper flames and hearthfire shine Grew smoke-hazed to a lurid light, And songs on subjects not divine Were warbled ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... growths. It was the hub of an oblong wheel, and from it, at regular distances, like spokes, ran the outgoing canyons. Here a dull red color predominated over the fading yellow. The corners of wall bluntly rose, scarred and scrawled, to taper into towers and serrated peaks ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... greater than those of the substances which cast them, but light is a spherical congeries of pyramids, whose very apexes are the sun itself, and hence the system shines with uninterrupted light. But if the light we use is but a paltry and narrow taper, most objects will cast a shadow wider ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... fully dressed, in an easy chair, with a slip of paper, which looked like a map, upon his knee, and his forehead sunk forward upon his hand in deep thought. I stood, dumb with astonishment, watching him from the darkness. A small taper on the edge of the table shed a feeble light, which sufficed to show me that he was fully dressed. Suddenly, as I looked, he rose from his chair, and walking over to a bureau at the side he unlocked it and drew out one of the drawers. From this he took ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... it a bad practice to give him any hard, unyielding substance, as it tends to harden the gums, and, by so doing, causes the teeth to come through with greater difficulty. I have found softer substances, such as either a piece of wax taper, or an India-rubber ring, or a piece of the best bridle leather, or a crust of bread, of great service. If a piece of crust be given as a gum-stick, he must, while biting it, be well watched, or by accident he might loosen ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... How bravely thou 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' ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... his fingers. He lifted it to his lips and kissed it reverently. Then he laid it down before the gilded gateway of the sanctuary, with the thought in his mind that perhaps her foot might touch it as she passed and make it sacred. Then he lit a taper at a lamp, and in obedience to the order given him by Father Hieronymus the previous night, he carried the tiny flame to each of the candles on the altar, till all were lighted. This task done, he prostrated himself on the steps before the ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... and resigned myself entirely to the will of God; he gave, and he can take away. Picture to yourself the state of alarm, care, and anxiety in which I have been kept for the last fortnight. She died without being conscious of any thing—her life went out like a taper. Three days ago she confessed, received the sacrament and extreme unction; but since that time she has been constantly delirious and rambling, until this afternoon at twenty-one minutes after five, when she was seized with convulsions, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... You have had a most fatiguing day. Permit me!" said Mr. Force, and he lighted a wax taper and put it ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... Fleet prison to St. Paul's Cathedral. The warden of the Fleet was there, and the knight 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," undistinguishable ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... together, and raising her eyes to Heaven, she said: "I am the Immaculate Conception." On two other occasions, at somewhat long intervals, April 7 and July 16, she again appeared: the first time to perform the miracle of the lighted taper, that taper above which the child, plunged in ecstasy, for a long time unconsciously left her hand, without burning it; and the second time to bid Bernadette farewell, to favour her with a last smile, and a last inclination of the head full of charming politeness. This made ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Meanwhile Sabine, taper in hand, entered her brother's room. "Good-night, Traugott," nodded she. "Wohlfart has been with you this evening; how ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... breath, and ought to be understood by every one. Assuming the ground upon which a building is to be built to be of uniform density, the width of the foundation should be in proportion to the load, the foundation should taper equally on each side, and the center of the foundation should be under the center of pressure. In other words, it is as fatal to success to have too much foundation under the light load as it is too little ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... in long tresses on her shoulders, not less transparently white. She wears a gown of rich silk, opening in front to display a chemisette of the most delicate cambric, which is scarcely less delicate than her skin. Her slender arms are without bracelets, and her taper fingers without rings. As she stands behind the queen, holding her majesty's fan and gloves, she is obliged, from her deafness, to lean her fair face with its sunny hair first to the right side, then to the left, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... a distinct and important significance in marking off nuances of political parties, it appears that it does not follow as an inevitable sequence that because a man sits behind the Ministerial bench he is therefore a Taper or a Tadpole, or that because he takes up his quarters below the gangway he is a John Hampden. The distinction is more strongly marked on the Liberal side; but even there there are some honest men who usually obey the crack of the Whip. On the Conservative side the gangway ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... Gaston eagerly, so soon as the door had closed behind the three, and Raymond had coaxed the dim taper into its feeble flicker — "Father, we have come to thee for counsel — for help. Father, chide us not, nor call us ingrate; but it has come to this with us — we can no longer brook this tame and idle life. We are not of the peasant stock; why ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... 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 chicken-hawk. If old Cran, was to slip ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... curve and taper spars of the vessel, and began to wonder at the way in which she seemed to grow as they drew nearer; or was it that the boat in which he was ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... less a youth of either sex, to read "A Strange Manuscript" without feeling that wonderful charm that stole over us all when children upon the perusal of our favorite adventures. The cathedral clock may chime the fast-speeding hours, and the midnight taper burn to its socket, but this rare volume will remain before the eager eyes until the ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... funeral service was performed I carried the taper (nota bene) and some pieces of gold to the Bishop who performed the grand mass, and who was sitting in an arm-chair near the altar. The prelate intended to have given them to his assistants, the priests of the King's ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the tawny vapour That the City lanes have uprolled, Behind whose webby fold on fold Like a waning taper ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... of my life, to be almost every hour of it miserably in love with some one; and my last flame happening to be blown out by a whiff of jealousy on the sudden turn of a corner, I had lighted it up afresh at the pure taper of Eliza but about three months before,—swearing, as I did it, that it should last me through the whole journey.—Why should I dissemble the matter? I had sworn to her eternal fidelity;—she had a right to my whole ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... his taper, when Aramis, who had watched through his curtains the last glimmer of light in his friend's apartment, traversed the corridor on tiptoe, and went to Porthos's room. The giant, who had been in bed nearly ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... her card of matches, and breaking off one of them, soon had a tiny taper which lit up their ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... 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 madly thronged into my tent, and dashed ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... young heifers of North Devon, with their taper legs, the exact symmetry of their form, and their clear coats of dark red, are pictures of elegance.' Their superiority for grazing and draught was proved by the high prices demanded for them, but they were not equally esteemed as dairy animals,[749] though of late years ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... magazines. He had written a good deal of graceful verse, and one or two pretty idyllic stories, and there were people who looked very hopefully on him as a rising light of literature. His sudden accession to wealth had almost buried the poor taper of his genius when the hands of Love triumphant took it suddenly at the time of that lazy lounge beneath the awning, and gave it a chance once more. He was meditating, as lovers will, upon his own unworthiness ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... silhouette, bending against the wind. Still the waxen Virgin smiled her Mexican smile,—but now she was only seven inches high; and her bead-glass eyes seemed to twinkle with kindliness while the flame of the last expiring taper struggled for life in the earthen socket at ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... by train, and I let him in gently myself. I had been so much absorbed in the coming experiment that I passed the ruins in going to meet him, almost without thought, if you can understand that. I had my lantern; and he showed me a coil of taper which he had ready for use. "There is nothing like light," he said, in his scoffing tone. It was a very still night, scarcely a sound, but not so dark. We could keep the path without difficulty as we went along. As we approached the spot we could ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... observed in his official intercourse with men. It was written by his own hand, a secretary copying as he wrote. When finished, the original was put into an envelope, which the secretary was about to seal with a wafer; but this Nelson would not permit, directing that taper and wax should be brought. The man sent was killed before he could return. When this was reported to the admiral, his only reply was, "Send another messenger;" and he waited until the wax came, and then saw that particular care was exercised to make a full and perfect ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... the red color comes! The Sultan himself hath chosen this beauty for Her Majesty—she who perchance will never mount him, scorning to do aught that would make the blood flow warmer through the veins;—going daily to San Nicolo with her taper and knowing naught of pleasure in life; unless it verily pleaseth her to grieve! What availeth it to her that she ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... calendar for months and years. There are some counsel who pocket fees and costs to the tune of twenty thousand a year. We know many a Quirk, Gammon and Snap, who realize an undoubted "ten thousand a year," with no Tittlebat Titmouse for a standing annoyance. And we can taper off on the finger many who do not realize five hundred a year, and work like negro slaves at that: they are continually rough hewing, but ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... very imposing effect. The King's chaplain, Benedict Bishop of Bangor, in his pontifical dress, carried the consecrated Host to the walls of the town, preceded by thirty-two chaplains, each in full canonicals, and attended by as many esquires, one of whom bore a lighted taper before each priest. As soon as the parties were sworn on the elements, the townsmen were assured that they need fear no acts of wrong or violence, for the King wished rather to preserve than to destroy his ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... pale; and he was slender in form, and delicate in appearance. He had been sick, and even now, he was not quite well. His little taper fingers rested upon the window-sill, while his grandmother opened her little Bible and began to read. Caleb sat still in her lap, with a serious ...
— Caleb in the Country • Jacob Abbott
... mighty power, Charmer of an idle hour, Object of my warm desire Lip of wax, and eye of fire, And thy snowy taper waist With my finger gently braced, And thy pretty smiling crest With my little stopper pressed, And the sweetest bliss of blisses Breathing from thy balmy kisses, Happy thrice and thrice again Happiest he of happy men, Who, when again the night returns, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... how much he had written: he had written, and of his own accord—as Carolyn made a point of from the first. There is an algebraic formula expressive of the truth that "1" is an infinitely greater number of times than "0." And a single small taper is infinitely greater in point of light and cheer than none at all. Carolyn's little world underwent illumination, and she with it. She promptly soared to ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... Connected with Saharan female dress is naturally that of female beauty. The beau ideal of an Arab beauty, according to the Arabian poets Havivi and Montannibi, is, that "Her person should be slender like the bending rush, or taper lance of Yemen." This is also the beau ideal of female beauty amongst Touaricks. I have seen no fat fed-up women amongst Touaricks, like those in such esteem and the bon-ton of the Moors. The enbonpoint of Mooresses is well known, and ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... With carbonic acid the results were still more striking. A mixture of three volumes of that gas with one of hydrogen caused ignition of the platina, yet that mixture would not continue to burn from the jet when attempts were made to light it by a taper. A mixture even of seven volumes of carbonic acid and one of hydrogen will thus cause the ignition of cold spongy platina, and yet, as if to supply a contrast, than which none can be greater, it cannot burn at a taper, but causes the extinction ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... earl sat and watched the young man (for he could not be thirty yet), struck down thus in the prime of his days—carried away into the other world—while he himself, with his frail, flickering taper of a life, remained. Wherefore? At length, in a whisper, he called "Helen!" and she came and knelt ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... throw an interesting side-light, also, upon another oft-observed phenomenon in psychical research. I refer to the fact that apparitions ("ghosts") are nearly always seen to be clear and distinct as to the head and upper portions of the body, while they taper off to vapour and "filmy nothingness" in the lower limbs, so that often the feet are not visible at all. While this may be due in part to the fact that the observer's attention is not directed ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... the third century, now wreathed and garlanded with luxuriant ivy. Beside these ruins I descended into the Catacombs by an ancient staircase, at the foot of which my guide provided me with a long twisted wax taper, calculated to last out my visit. A short distance from the entrance, I came to a vestibule surrounded with loculi or rock-hewn graves. The walls were plastered, and covered with rude inscriptions, scratched with a pointed iron instrument. These were done by pilgrims and devotees in later ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... it was finished, I folded it up, and lighted a taper to seal it. Old Mrs Culpepper, who was in the room, croaked out, "No, no; you must show it to Medea." But I paid no attention to her, and having sealed my letter, put on my hat, and walked out to the post-office. I dropped it into the box, and, on returning, found Mr Culpepper ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat |
