"Taper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... facing audience, a long seat with a high back and pew- like ends. At the rise of the curtain, Thomas Rigby, the rubicund landlord, is lighting with a taper the candles that stand on the mantelshelf, the buttons on his plum-colored waistcoat twinkling in the gleam. He has only lighted one when the door is pushed open, and there enter two young British lieutenants, mere lads, whose scarlet cloaks, exaggerated lace wrist ruffles, and brilliant gold ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... increased thickness of the bone which is growing inward and has not the digital impressions of the convolutions which are marked wherever the brain is in an active growing condition. The criminal's skull must be studied by post mortem examination, and the most effective method is by placing a taper through the foramen magnum at the bottom of the skull which will reveal the more active organs by the translucency and thinness of the bones, while the inactive organs are indicated by their opacity and thickness, as in the following ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... with her small taper finger on her lip, "it's the fairies I'm after—the 'good people,' nurse Bridget has told me so much about. I am sure there must be some of them in this still, shady place. I've found their 'rings' in the ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... weeds of Peace high triumphs hold, 120 With store of Ladies, whose bright eies Rain influence, and judge the prise Of Wit, or Arms, while both contend To win her Grace, whom all commend. There let Hymen oft appear In Saffron robe, with Taper clear, And pomp, and feast, and revelry, With mask, and antique Pageantry, Such sights as youthfull Poets dream On Summer eeves by haunted stream. 130 Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonsons learned Sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespear ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... briefly ruled the house and chilled the air in it. Her son's overthrow had struck at the heart of her vitality and presaged her own swift doom. All lesser interests had dwindled and grown poor; her life seemed flickering out like a taper in the breeze. Now grief had something to leaven it. Something had set up a screen between her and the wind of unmerciful events. There was a possibility, not of reprieve, but of a message from the unseen good, and for a moment the candle of her life burned steadily. Since the dead could not return, ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... of the old man. With the distinctly pleasurable sensation of being still alive he found himself standing upright upon an uneven floor of masonry. He thrust out his arms and touched sides of mossy rock. Then just before him a pale flame flickered. The old man had kindled a little taper that hardly did more than make shallow hollows in the darkness ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... fumbling and imprecations loud and deep, Kendal succeeded in striking a match and finding the overturned bit of wax taper, which he hastily lighted, peering cautiously into the inky ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... salon—the same great dusky fresco in the concave ceiling. The daughter is not rich, I suppose, any more than the mother. The furniture is worn and faded, and I was admitted by a solitary servant, who carried a twinkling taper before me up the ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James
... an excellent describer of the world, has made mention of it in the second book of his work, saying: "There is a great island situated in the surge of the northern Ocean, Scandza by name, in the shape of a juniper leaf with bulging sides that taper down to a point at a long end." Pomponius Mela also makes mention of it as situated in the Codan Gulf of the sea, with Ocean ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... to impart All the secrets of her heart; Various is my bulk and hue, Big like Bess, and small like Sue: Now brown and burnish'd like a nut, At other times a very slut; Often fair, and soft, and tender, Taper, tall, and smooth, and slender: Like Flora, deck'd with various flowers, Like Phoebus, guardian of the hours: But whatever be my dress, Greater be my size or less, Swelling be my shape or small, Like thyself I shine in all. Clouded ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... through the vessel until the atmospheric air is replaced by hydrogen. This is determined by collecting some of the gas which bubbles through the water in the basin in a test-tube and testing it by means of a lighted taper. ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... which were long, He had twenty-four packs, Which was coming it strong, Yet I state but the facts; And we found on his nails, which were taper, What ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... could think of to persuade her daughter to alter her decision, and, when this failed, to extract the answer to the momentous conundrum, which Edna knew her mother too well to confide to her, so that at length she was obliged to take up her bedroom taper and retreat, with a Parthian prediction that such folly would be ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... interposed El Carnicerin with calm deliberation. "Who gave you a taper to bear at ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... and rocks, and streams, and strange, new races of men;—these are incidents in which the authentic history of the discovery of our Continent excels the specious wonders of romance, as much as gold excels tinsel, or the sun in the heavens outshines the flickering taper. E. Everett. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... works construction, it is desirable to proceed only at a moderate rate, since demand for private construction will be abnormally high for some time. Our public works program should be timed to reach its peak after demand for private construction has begun to taper off. Meanwhile, however, plans should be prepared if we are to act promptly when the present extraordinary private demand begins to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... latter rather affected to despise his literary reputation; and in this, perhaps, the great Congreve was not far wrong. A touch of Steele's tenderness is worth all his finery; a flash of Swift's lightning, a beam of Addison's pure sunshine, and his tawdry playhouse taper is invisible. But the ladies loved him, and he was ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... light of a wax taper flickering over it; the strange, solemn beauty of that serene brow and ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... near the quarantine station. Neither the porters nor servants of this establishment were there to help us, and we were obliged to carry our own baggage to the building, where we were shown into empty rooms. We could not even get a light. I had fortunately a wax taper with me, which I cut into several pieces and gave to ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... three times as large and coarse as those of the boy who had carried the thrush before, but they seemed to him three times more light and tender—they were handy and kind, and this goes farther than taper fingers. ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Bordereau's room was open and I could see beyond it the faintness of a taper. There was no sound—my footstep caused no one to stir. I came further into the room; I lingered there with my lamp in my hand. I wanted to give Miss Tita a chance to come to me if she were with her aunt, as she must be. I made no noise to call her; I only waited to see if she would not notice ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... the table; the shutters were still closed, although day peeped in the divisions; and the great room was lighted only with a single taper and the shining of the fire. Close in the chimney sat two men. The one that was wrapped in a cloak and wore boots, I knew at once: it was the bird of ill omen back again. Of the other, who was set close to the red embers, and made up into ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Then I looked down and saw something which made me feel that we were far from the world in a sense and to a degree that I cannot easily describe. I saw that the almost straight lines of the tall elm trees diminished a little in perspective as they fell. I was used to seeing parallel lines taper towards the sky. But to see them taper towards the earth made me feel lost in space, ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... or both lines assume a curvilinear shape. For a notable example, the vertical section of the Duke of York's column in Waterloo Place, from all points of view, appears to bulge at the point of sight, and to taper upwards by a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... one entered, the sanctuary light shone as a star out of a night of darkness; in a near-by chapel, a candle sputtered itself away, and a woman—whether old or young one could not see—lighted a fresh taper. Sometimes a man knelt and told his beads, sometimes two women entered and separated for their differing needs and prayers. Sometimes one sat in meditation, or knelt, unmoving, for a space of time; once a child brought a new candle to Saint Antony; always some one came or some one went, ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... formalities have been performed. The religious ceremony takes place in a temple: the pair, after listening to a lengthy harangue from one of the attendant priests, approach the altar, where large tapers are presented to them; the bride, instructed by the priest, lights her taper at the sacred censer on the altar, and the bridegroom, igniting his from hers, allows the two flames to combine, and burn steadily together, thus symbolizing the perfect unity of the marriage state; and this completes ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... 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 must we live the peasant ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... having placed upon his desk a taper in a glass globe, looked at the clock. "Half-past nine," said he. "Mahal ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... said, And from his wallet drew a human hand, Shrivelled and dry and black. And fitting, as he spake, A taper in his hold, Pursued: "A murderer on the stake had died. I drove the vulture from his limbs and lopt The hand that did the murder, and drew up The tendon strings to close its grasp, And in the sun and wind Parched it, ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... the barber's; and, taking out the false key, (which, though made of baser metal, was almost as bright as the original), put it carefully into his waistcoat pocket. He then stopped at an oil and candle shop, and bought a wax taper and a box of matches. "The garden door's safest: I'll chance it with the garden-door," thought Mat, as he sat down in the shaving-shop chair, and ordered the barber to operate ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... Shall I open a flask? No? Well, then, I trust that you have no objection to tobacco-smoke, to the mild balsamic odor of the Eastern tobacco. I am a little nervous, and I find my hookah an invaluable sedative." He applied a taper to the great bowl, and the smoke bubbled merrily through the rose-water. We sat all three in a semicircle, with our heads advanced, and our chins upon our hands, while the strange, jerky little fellow, with his high, shining head, puffed uneasily in ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of fire that was prevalent there; and janet's replying that she had been making tinder down in the kitchen, of my old shirt. But there were no other clothes in my room than the odd heap of things I wore; and when I was left there, with a little taper which my aunt forewarned me would burn exactly five minutes, I heard them lock my door on the outside. Turning these things over in my mind I deemed it possible that my aunt, who could know nothing of me, might suspect I had a habit of ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... 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 a large piece of it, which might choke him. ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... darksome passage all alone, The taper's flame, by envious current blown, Crouched low, and eddied round, as in affright, So challenged by the vast and hostile night, Then down I held the taper; — swift and fain Up climbed the ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... duke of treason, and he specially charged that his wife had attempted to destroy the life of the king by witchcraft. The duchess was condemned on this charge, and it is said that, by way of penance, she was sentenced to walk barefoot through the most public street in London with a lighted taper in her hand. Some other persons, who were accused of being accomplices in this crime, were put ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... grace like a woman—no lovely sloped shoulders, no beautiful bosom, no sweeping curve of robe down to the feet. No softness of cheek, or silky hair, or complexion, or taper fingers, or arched eyebrows; no sort of style whatever. They were mere wooden figures; and, in ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... mind the day of her first communion, and how pretty she had been at vespers, with her white veil and her large wax-taper, whilst the girls were all taking their places in a row around the choir, and the bell ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... of 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 ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... solemnity; for it was impossible to keep an act of so extraordinary a nature very private. When the Virgin was brought into the new church, she was placed on a tabernacle by four of the most ancient monks; the King held also a large lighted taper, on which his banner and arms were emblazoned, and being followed by the nobles and cavaliers of his court, joined in the procession; and having placed themselves in proper order in the great cloyster of the church, the monks ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... place it upon the finger of the lady, he desired him to observe that it was a symbol of marriage.—During the whole of the service two other acolytes were stationed in front of the bride and bridegroom, each holding in his hands a lighted taper; and near the conclusion, while they knelt before the altar, a pall of flowered brocade was stretched behind them, as emblematic of their union. Holy water was not forgotten; for, in almost every rite of the ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... took the copper taper stands, one in either hand, and held them aloft. But first he placed his long dagger, not back in his belt, but between his teeth with the handle towards his right hand. Even then in some strange ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... harvest. A spike which has no beard is called polled (muticus), for, when the spike is first forming, the beard, like the horns of a young animal, is not apparent but lies hid like a sword in its scabbard under a wrapping of foliage which hence is called the sheath. When the spike is mature its taper end above the grain is called the frit, while that below, where the spike joins the straw culm, ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... flavour which is peculiar to all British spirits. Or the liquor may be deprived of its alcohol, by heating a portion in a spoon over a candle, till the vapour ceases to catch fire on the approach of a lighted taper. The residue thus obtained, of genuine French brandy, possesses a vinous odour, still resembling the original flavour of the brandy, whilst the residue, produced from sophisticated brandy, has a peculiarly disagreeable smell, resembling gin, or the ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... and design of a dignity almost Dantesque. Facing the visitor, as he enters the sepulchral chamber, this small sarcophagus—small in dimensions, but in impressiveness how great!—rivets him at once under the taper's fitful light. Raised on a rude basement, the body of the monument figures the entrance to a vault; in the centre, painted in colours that have nearly faded, appears a doorway, within the threshold of which four female figures gaze wistfully ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... life of St. Severinus. The reader finds how the man who had secretly celebrated a heathen sacrifice was discovered by St. Severinus, because, while the tapers of the rest of the congregation were lighted miraculously from heaven, his taper alone would not light; and passes on impatiently, with regret that the biographer omits to mention what the heathen sacrifice was like. He reads how the Danube dared not rise above the mark of the cross ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... etc., at present, until we see how the other alterations answer." In another he says: "I have done a Cicero without any plaits—the different segments meeting exactly. The fitting the drills into the spindle by a taper of 1 in 6 will do. They are perfectly stiff and will not unscrew easily. Four guide-pullies answer, but there must be a pair for the other end, and to work with a single hand, for the returning part is always cut upon some part or ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... Alice then he would not for a moment have doubted the nature of her feelings toward himself. She did not cry out, nor faint, but her face turned white as the dress she wore, while her hands pressed so tightly together, that her long, taper nails left ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... Clarinda, that simply staggers the reader with the shameless and heartless way in which it speaks of Jean Armour. 'I am dissatisfied with her—I cannot endure her! I, while my heart smote me for the profanity, tried to compare her with my Clarinda. 'Twas setting the expiring glimmer of a farthing taper beside the cloudless glory of the meridian sun. Here was tasteless insipidity, vulgarity of soul, and mercenary fawning; there, polished good sense, heaven-born genius, and the most generous, the most delicate, the most tender passion. I have ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... long-extended realms and rueful wastes; Where nought but silence reigns, and night, dark night, Dark as was Chaos ere the Infant Sun Was rolled together, or had tried its beams Athwart the gloom profound! The sickly Taper By glimmering through thy low-browed misty vaults, Furred round with mouldy damps, and ropy slime, Lets fall a supernumerary horror, And only serves to make Thy night ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... forward as they are. Mrs. Jawleyford threw aside her silk apron, and took a hasty glance of her face in the old eagle-topped mirror in the still-room; the young ladies discarded their coarse dirty pocket-handkerchiefs, and gently drew elaborately fringed ones through their taper fingers to give them an air of use, as they took a hasty review of themselves in the swing mirrors; the housemaid hurried off with a whole armful of brown holland; and Jawleyford threw himself into attitude in an elaborately carved, richly ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... that letter found on me, your Highness would thereafter be too surely guarded to make escape possible, and his Highness Prince Sobieski would himself incur the Emperor's hostility. So when I had made sure that those five men were joined against me, I twisted that letter into a taper and before their faces lit my ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... all gone off," cried the boy, drawing a deep long breath, as he eagerly looked round the deck and up at the rigging of the smart schooner, whose raking taper masts and white canvas gave her quite the look ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... 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 beside the ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... not come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too late—and when the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bed-ward) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures—and when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome—and when you presented it to me—and when we were exploring the perfectness ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... width between us! Besides—we are both past our youth! And, according to certain highly instructed scientists and philosophers, the senses and affections grow numb with age. I do not believe this theory myself—for the jejune love of youth is as a taper's flame to the great and passionate tenderness of maturity, when the soul, and not the body, claims its due; when love is not dragged down to the vulgar level of mere cohabitation, after the fashion of the animals in a farmyard, but rises to the best height ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... the purest Eros reigns with a too despotic power, and mild affection is apt to sneak away into some corner of the temple on whose shrine Love has descended. This mild affection is but a little twinkling taper, that will burn steadily on, perhaps unseen amidst the dazzling glory of Love's supernal lamp, to be found shining benignantly when the ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... near the Washington Monument, sending up a huge spout of dust that veiled it from his eyes. Instinctively Dick shot toward the scene. Slowly the dust subsided, and then a yell of exultation broke from Dick's lips. The noble shaft still stood, a slim taper ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... the same Thought, which presents it self in a great Writer, from what he is when he finds it delivered by a Person of an ordinary Genius. For there is as much Difference in apprehending a Thought cloathed in Cicero's Language, and that of a common Author, as in seeing an Object by the Light of a Taper, or by ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... sermon, "what can we conceive of God's providential love? It is a thought beyond conception, it is a light transcending vision. There is no object on earth or in heaven, that can well represent the truth of its wisdom, the touch of its tenderness, or the attraction of its power. The sun is but a taper, reflecting its glory; the sea is but a globule, describing its breadth and depth. It runs the circle of the universe, without interruption, and without end. It is particular as it is impartial; it is melting and sweet, as it is mighty and sublime; and it holds you and me, and it holds ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... to it by the early settlers. The muzzle is rather elongated, the ears short and erect, and the pupils elliptical, corresponding with its leaping, predaceous habits; if it had the characteristic brush instead of a long taper tail, its figure would bear a considerable resemblance to that of the fox. The female is much smaller, but more active and supple in its movements than the male. They prey upon kangaroos, opossums, bandicoots, and other native animals; hunting ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... 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 ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... Sir Godfrey; at which the Chaplain smiled reproachfully, and shook a long transparent taper finger at his patron in a very playful manner, ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... rod terminating in a point be attached to the conductor of an electrical machine, electricity escapes in large quantities from the point. A continuous current is thus kept up and the flame of a taper, if placed in front of the current, is blown in a horizontal direction. Wind is thus manufactured on a small ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... Brown, coolly, taking his wife's hand and showing her wedding-ring; 'and what just fits one of my Wife's taper fingers I am quite sure we could never ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... following is your bill of fare. Fairies you have by scores in flesh-coloured tights, spangles, and paucity of petticoats; gnomes of every description, from the gigantic glittering diamond beetle, to the grotesque and dusky tadpole. Epicene princes, whose taper limbs and swelling busts are well worth the scrutiny of the opera-glass—dragons vomiting at once red flames and witticisms about the fountains in Trafalgar Square—Dan O'Connell figuring in the feathers of a Milesian owl—and the Seven Champions of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... likeness of vast teocallis to Tonatiuh, over whose apex the struggling rays fell red and presageful. Dulled by the stained glass windows, the light that filled the semi-circular chapel at "The Lilacs", was chill and sombre, until the fair sacristan held a taper over the tall wax candles on each side of the altar, whence a mellow radiance soon streamed over all; flashing along the golden letters under the cross, and upon the gilded pipes of the little organ. On the marble steps in front of the altar were two baskets filled with ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... a small, wide-mouthed bottle, covered with a card or cork. To this cover fasten a piece of bent wire with a taper on the end. Light the taper and lower it into the jar. It will burn a few seconds and then go out. Raise and light it again, and it will be extinguished as soon as it is plunged into the bottle. This shows that the oxygen of the air is used up by burning ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... Perfumes the chamber thus. The flame o' the taper Bows toward her; and would underpeep her lids To see the enclos'd lights, now canopied Under those windows, white and azure, lac'd With ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... him and signed to Ja'afar and Masrur to take their places in due degree,[FN115] whilst the negroes and the eunuchs stood expecting their commands for suit and service. Presently was brought to them a huge waxen taper which lighted up the whole of the hall and the young house-master accosted the King and said to him, "Well come and welcome and fair welcome to our guests who to us are the most esteemed of folk and may Allah honour ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... been so glad that she believed in her old friend; for if she hadn't had, at such a pass, somebody or other to believe in she should certainly have stumbled by the way. Discretion had ceased to consist of silence; silence was gross and thick, whereas wisdom should taper, however tremulously, to a point. She betook herself to Lancaster Gate the morning after the colloquy just noted; and there, in Maud Manningham's own sanctum, she gradually found relief in giving an account of herself. An account of herself was one of the things that she had long been in the ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... producing an upright body, smooth and even bark, ample leaf, sweet blossom, the delight of bees, and a goodly shade at distance of eighteen, or twenty five foot. They are also very patient of pruning; but if it taper over much, some of the collateral boughs would be spar'd, or cut off, to check the sap, which is best to be done about Midsummer; and to make it grow upright, take off the prepondering branches with discretion, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... the heavy leathern curtain which separates this back entrance from the portico. One of these men, a tall fellow with an ugly scowl, came forward, holding a pair of keys in his hand, and after a moment's parley with the kavass unlocked a heavily ironed door, lighting a taper ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... their dissolving with effervescence in any acid, and breaking easily under the needle); these are the 3/2000ths of an inch in their larger external diameter; they are rather deeply imbedded in the outer integument, and taper a little downwards ending in a concave terminal point, into which a minute tubulus enters, like those passing into and through the valves of ordinary Cirripedia: along the axis of imbedment, they are often 4/2000ths of an inch in length. These calcareous beads or rudimental valves ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... was cheery; it might be a question whether all the light did not come from her first, in some way, and perhaps it did; but then Hazel was luminous, and she fluttered about with quick, happy motions, till like a little glancing taper she had shone upon and lit up everybody and everything; and Dorris was sunny with clear content, and Kenneth was blithe, and Desire was scintillant, as she always was either with snaps or smiles; and here came in beaming Miss Craydocke, and gay Asenath and her handsome ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... magnificent canopy, ... supported by four princes of the blood.... After the host walked the king.... Francis I. on that day wore no crown, nor robe of state." With "head uncovered, his eyes cast on the ground, and in his hand a lighted taper," the king of France appeared "in the character of a penitent."(339) At every altar he bowed down in humiliation, not for the vices that defiled his soul, nor the innocent blood that stained his hands, but for the deadly sin of his subjects who had dared to condemn the mass. Following him ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... the bed, a cold perspiration pouring from me. In the darkness on the other side of the hut I heard sounds of furious struggling. Luckily I kept my head. Just by me was a chair on which were matches and a rush taper. I struck a match and held it to the taper. Now in the growing light I could see two forms rolling one over the other on the floor, and from between them came the flash of steel. The fat melted and the light burnt up. It was Indaba-zimbi ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... bag he bound with a pack strap, leaving a loop to sling over his shoulder. I also bound my half a blanket with a pack strap, thinking as I did so that I soon might want to eat the strap. And then, when George and I had filled our waterproof boxes with wax taper matches, and placed a handful of pistol cartridges in our pockets, we were ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... but which, from a certain sucking sound which about this time began to be heard from the bottom, appeared to be giving notice that it would soon require replenishment from a certain canister which, together with a lighted taper, stood ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... joyous, foolish mumming came—the carnival mumming that as a boy I had loved so well, and that, ever since I had come and stitched under my Apollo and Crispin, I had never been loth to meddle and mix in, going mad with my lit taper, like the rest, and my whistle of the Befana, and all the salt and sport of a war of wits such as old Rome has always heard in midwinter since the seven nights ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... two children, kneeling upon the rocky side, looked over into a deep hole, which seemed, so far as the taper would throw its feeble rays downwards, ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... man-of-war, its sails neatly furled, and its trim rigging, dark hull, and taper spars, perfectly reproduced in the ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... point on sorrow's chart The line of pain a wretch must still pursue, To end the struggles of a bleeding heart, And grace the triumph misery owes to you How poor your pow'r!—where fortitude, serene, But smiling views the glimmering taper shine; Time soon shall dim, and close the wearied scene, Bestowing solace e'en on woes like mine. Ah! stop your course—too long I've felt your chain, Too long the feeble influence of its pow'r; The heir of grief ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... Lean'd on his staff to lengthen out the tale; Oft have his lips the grateful tribute breath'd, From sire to son with pious zeal bequeath'd. When o'er the blasted heath the day declin'd, And on the scath'd oak warr'd the winter-wind; When not a distant taper's twinkling ray Gleam'd o'er the furze to light him on his way; When not a sheep-bell sooth'd his listening ear, And the big rain-drops told the tempest near; Then did his horse the homeward track descry, [s] The track ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... carbonic acid in a state of combination, the gas must first be liberated by acting upon the substance with a stronger acid, and then applying the lime-water test. The presence of large quantities of carbonic acid in a gaseous mixture can be readily detected by plunging into the vessel a lighted taper, which will be immediately extinguished. This ought always to be adopted in a brewery, where many fatal accidents have happened through workmen going down into empty fermenting vats and wells without first taking ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... me to 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 ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... At the poor hoof's protesting as it stamped Idly the granite? Let me glide unseen From thy proud presence: well may'st thou be queen Of all those strange and sudden deaths which damped So oft Love's torch and Hymen's taper lit For happy marriage till the maidens paled And perished on the temple-step, assailed By—what except to envy must man's wit Impute that sure implacable release Of life from warmth and joy? But death ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... valuable gold watch, a gold watch chain, 2 gold watch keys, a gold seal, a silver mustard pot and spoon, a silver salt stand, a scent bottle, a china basket, 3 china jugs, a china cup and saucer and mug 2 taper candlesticks, a ring stand, 2 spill cups, a card stand, a lamp, a claret jug, a pair of decanters, 6 hock glasses, 14 claret glasses, 6 finger glasses, and a set of china tea things. The donor has found true riches and peace to his soul in the Lord ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... seemed to me as if his very glance had become dim. I arose hastily, and approaching his bed, inquired if he wished for a drink; he made a slight movement of his eyelids, as if to thank me, and at that instant the first ray of the rising sun shone in on his bed. Then the eyes lighted up, like a taper that flashes into brightness before it is extinguished—he looked as if saluting this last gift of his Creator; and even as I watched him for a moment, his head fell gently on the side, his kindly heart ceased to beat. He had thrown off the burden ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... where she spent two months with her Luke on their way from Navarre to Andalusia. She dressed her hair high on the top of her head, displaying thus both the graceful curve of her snowy neck and the shape of her pretty head. She wore earrings in her small ears, and the taper fingers of her rough but clean hands were covered with rings. Lastly, Frasquita's voice was as sweet as a flute, and her laugh was so merry and so silvery it seemed like the ringing of bells on Saturday of Glory ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... girls who had died because their loves had been unfortunate,—as small wax tapers whose lights are quenched if a breath of wind blows upon then too strongly. But then Lily was in truth no such slight taper as that. Nor was she the stem that must be broken because it will not bend. She bent herself to the blast during that week of illness, and then arose with her form still straight and graceful, and ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... was silent in the death-chamber. The night-taper was placed behind a screen; and the fire-light flickered with a tremulous motion on the richly-carved, antique furniture, black and polished by age, and creeping upwards, threw long, wavering shadows on the wall. Amidst this solemn twilight, a table spread with ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... and gathered himself up until he appeared to taper from his stem like a florist's bouquet, and all the upper part of him was pink and trembling with emotion. Arthur may one day attain corpulence; he ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the hall-lamp had not been lit, so I took a wax taper from the writing-table and, lighting it, proceeded to escort them up the staircase. Some spirit of mischief prompted me by a sudden movement to let the light be blown out. In an instant the hand of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... the columns, a taper was burning, before which knelt a woman, making a vow; the dim flame seemed lost in the vagueness of the arches. Gaud experienced there the feeling of a long-forgotten impression: that kind of sadness and fear that she had felt when quite ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... 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," ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... way from the hall to his lodging. Neither he nor Rex spoke during the quarter of an hour they employed in reaching the street door, but Rex's arm was aching with the effort of sustaining and directing his companion. He lit a taper and prepared to help him up the stairs. But the sight of the familiar entrance recalled Greif to himself and dissipated the first stupor of his grief. He ascended the steps firmly, though he went like a man overcome with fatigue, to whom every movement ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... He set the glass down with a mirthless laugh. "Of course, I won't, if you insist. I intended to taper off—a chap can't turn teetotaler the way he turns a handspring." He eyed the glass with a sudden intensity of longing. "Let's begin to-morrow. Nobody starts a new life at two A. M. ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... mean to smoke only this once. That is, I didn't mean to at first, but after I got to smoking I thought it would be a good plan to taper off." ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... look at her husband, but presently rose and took her place before the tea-tray. She was thinking that she had never seen him so disagreeable. Lydgate turned his dark eyes on her and watched her as she delicately handled the tea-service with her taper fingers, and looked at the objects immediately before her with no curve in her face disturbed, and yet with an ineffable protest in her air against all people with unpleasant manners. For the moment he lost the sense ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... having ink on my fingers and a chastened look of woe on my clear-cut Grecian features, I might have poured No. 1 hard wheat and buckwheat flour out of my long taper ears every night, if I had stuck to the profession. Still, as I say, it was for another man's best good that I resigned. The head miller had no control over himself and the proprietor had rather set his heart on my resignation, so ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... moodier Lara, Through the world, as prowls the bat, And habitually wear a Cypress wreath around my hat: And when Death snuffs out the taper Of my Life, (as soon he must), I'll send up to every paper, "Died, T. Mivins; ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... young nymphs, usually so reserved and so easily frightened, become, for this week, as bold and free as so many dragoons. They enter the house, without being announced, open the drawers, visit the secretaries, ransack the cupboards. Pirates, with taper fingers, they put into their baskets and reticules all the valuables they can lay their hands on. Objects of art they are sure to seize, more especially if they are made of the precious metals. It is who shall adorn her reposoir with gold and bronze vases, with enamelled cups, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... fellow mortal, you will hasten to clear your conscience by such an act before the bells announce the hour of its birth. As the stars appear in the heavens, tiny oil lamps are lighted in every house, and among all devout Roman Catholics the image of the Virgin is illuminated with a taper. ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... takes advantage of his absence upstairs to explore it. Under her is Lord Pharanx, certainly in bed, probably asleep. Hester, trembling all over in a fever of fear and excitement, holds a lighted taper in one hand, which she religiously shades with the other; for the storm is gusty, and the gusts, tearing through the crevices of the rattling old casements, toss great flickering shadows on the hangings, which frighten her to death. She has ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... particular taper-light of discrimination too far when I say that there is, to the Celtic mind at least, something humorously naive and childlike in Goethe, mixed in, queerly enough, with all his rich, mellow, and even worldly, ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... conscience would not let him rest till he had renounced the heresies in which he had been brought up. The news spread fast. At all the coffeehouses it was told how the prime minister of England, his feet bare, and a taper in his hand, had repaired to the royal chapel and knocked humbly for admittance; how a priestly voice from within had demanded who was there, how Sunderland had made answer that a poor sinner who had long wandered from the true Church implored her to receive and to absolve him; how the doors ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... smoke Appeared to him but as the magic vapour Of some alchymic furnace, from whence broke The wealth of worlds (a wealth of tax and paper): The gloomy clouds, which o'er it as a yoke Are bowed, and put the Sun out like a taper, Were nothing but the natural atmosphere, Extremely wholesome, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... table. There the light from the tallow dip, guttering in the centre, fell upon his handsome face and eyes, his carefully tended beard and hair, his immaculate cuffs and delicate hand, the seal-ring on his taper finger. ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... words in a livelier tone than usual, but it was like the last kindling of the taper in its oil-less socket — for instantly the paleness of death overspread his face, and after a feeble effort to vomit, with convulsions, the natural effect of great loss of blood, ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... put out, and the gloom of the room was only lightened by a single bed-room taper, which, as it stood near the door, only served to render palpable the darkness of the further end of the chamber. For half an hour Lord Cashel walked to and fro, anxious, wretched, and in doubt, instead of going to his room. How he wished that Lord Ballindine had married his ward, and taken her ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... here, these many empty days I thought to pack with Credos and Hail Marys So close that not a fear should force the door— But still, between the blessed syllables That taper up like blazing angel heads, Praise over praise, to the Unutterable, Strange questions clutch me, thrusting fiery arms, As though, athwart the close-meshed litanies, My dead should pluck at me from hell, with eyes Alive in ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... beautiful in death, And with a kiss recalls her fleeting breath, To tapers thus, which by a blast expire, A lighted taper, touch'd, restores the fire: She rear'd her swimming eye, and saw the light, And Guilford too, or she had loath'd the sight: Her father's death she bore, despis'd her own, But now she must, she will, have leave to groan: Ah! Guilford, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... Schottus. I remember that Monsieur Huygens (author of the pendulum), who brought up the learned father of that incomparable youth Monsieur de Zulichem, who used to prescribe to me the benefit of his little wax taper (a type whereof is, with the history of it, in some of our Registers) for night elucubrations, preferable to all other candle or lamp light whatsoever. And because it explodes all glaring of the flame, which by no means ought to dart upon the ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... 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 lo I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... 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 chapel; but the monks of Saint Denis ran to him ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... women,—have taken up and borne aloft, as if on hands and shoulders, the one chance human body that is brought in to land, and the long spur, from which man's dancing cordage wastes by degrees, find yields its place to long, green streamers, much like those that clung to this tall, taper tree when it stood ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... myself on her beautiful smooth and white belly and pressed against the hair of her mount. With her long taper fingers she guided my prick—I trembled in every limb and almost felt sick with excitement—but when I felt the delicious sensation caused by the insertion of my skinned pintle between the smooth warm oily folds ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... mayor, Adam Stable, was removed, and Nicholas Brembre appointed in his place. A fresh election of aldermen took place,(613) and the City did penance for the recent insult to the duke's escutcheon by offering, at the king's confidential suggestion, a wax taper bearing the duke's arms in St. Paul's. Even that did not satisfy him; nay, it was adding insult to injury (he said), for such an act was an honour usually paid to one who was dead! The citizens were in despair, ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... tomb. A large procession, headed by the Czar, the Czarina, and all the chief nobility of the court, followed in the funeral train. The Czar and all the other mourners carried in their hands a small wax taper burning. The ladies were all dressed in black silks. It was said by those who were near enough in the procession to observe the Czar that he ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... 'tis my doom, love's undershrieve, Why this reprieve? Why doth my she-advowson fly Incumbency? To sell thyself dost thou intend By candle's end, And hold the contrast thus in doubt, Life's taper out? Think but how soon the market fails, Your sex lives faster than the males; And if, to measure age's span, The sober Julian were th' account of man, Whilst you live by the fleet ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... 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 ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... Gorgonian eyes; Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise Out of the cave this hideous light had cleft, And he comes hastening like a moth that hies 30 After a taper; and the midnight sky Flares, a light ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Kneeling on the marble floor, he removed a golden shield, and showed us the hole in the rock of Calvary, where the cross was planted. Close beside it was the fissure produced by the earthquake which followed the Crucifixion. But, to my eyes, aided by the light of the dim wax taper, it was no violent rupture, such as an earthquake would produce, and the rock did not appear to be the same as that of which Jerusalem is built. As we turned to leave, a monk appeared with a bowl of sacred rose-water, which he sprinkled on our hands, bestowing a double ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... stranger secured the door; and, first examining the lower room with great care, he cautiously ascended the ladder. June, as soon as it became dark, had closed the loops of the principal floor, and lighted a candle. By means of this dim taper, then, the two females stood in expectation, waiting to ascertain the person of their visitor, whose wary ascent of the ladder was distinctly audible, though sufficiently deliberate. It would not be easy to say which was the more astonished on finding, when the stranger ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... a hundred and sixty is the whole range of the maxima of the present race of trotting horses. The same thing is seen in the running of men. Many can run a mile in five minutes; but when one comes to the fractions below, they taper down until somewhere about 4.30 the maximum is reached. Averages of masses have been studied more than averages of maxima and minima. We know from the Registrar-General's Reports, that a certain number of children—say from one ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... and fuming and frothing and foaming and yet remaining so cool and clear that a quick fancy would discover thousands of banished fountains under that agitated and impatient surface. Both ends of the island are as much alike as its sides are dissimilar. They taper off almost to a distinct bladepoint of rock, in which a mere doll's flagstaff of a pine-tree grows; then comes a small detached rock, with a small evergreen on it, then a still smaller rock, with a tuft of grass, then a line of partially submerged ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... to this remote country mansion at one o'clock at night? While Herman Brudenell paused in expectancy, taper in hand, Jovial once more opened ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... "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 ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... 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 ceased ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... of some good ship appears A friendly light, which moderates their fears; New courage from reviving hope they take, And climbing o'er the waves that taper make, On which the hope of all their lives depends, As his on that fair Hero's hand extends. 150 The ship at anchor, like a fixed rock, Breaks the proud billows which her large sides knock; Whose rage restrained, foaming higher swells, And from ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... from their eyes. Several times, as Madame Claes rested from her writing, Marguerite said: "Mother?" then she dropped as if choking; but the mother, occupied with her last thoughts, did not ask the meaning of the interrogation. At last, Madame Claes wished to seal the letter; Marguerite held the taper, turning aside her head that she might not ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... you can be permitted to participate in the fifth libation, we must enjoin on you one year's penance as a trial of your faith and humility, which you will perform under the direction of the Junior and Senior Wardens, with the skull in one hand, and a lighted taper in the other; which is to teach you that with faith and humility you should cause your light so to shine before men, that they, seeing your good works, may glorify our Father, which is ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... has touched the painted windows; The yellow dawn creeps down the storied panes; Already, in the early solemn twilight, The sanctuary's taper softly wanes. ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... the twinkling taper's gleam, Her bed she seeks, of me to dream, But ere she sleeps she kneels to pray For one who loves ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... of nature, which alone is to be blamed; unless we are to join in the blame the ministers who placed such a twinkling taper as a "shining light" in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... see the effect, Regina took a taper from the Murrhine cup on the mantle, and standing on a chair lighted the cluster of burners shaped like Pompeian lamps, in the chandelier nearest the grate; then went back to the rug before the fire, and ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... melancholy silence, Scholastique left her old wooden chair, fixed a taper on the end of a candlestick, lit it, and placed it near a small waxen Virgin, sheltered in her niche of stone. It was the family custom to kneel before this protecting Madonna of the domestic hearth, and to beg her kindly watchfulness during the coming night; but on this evening Gerande ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... about of medium height. A fourth lamp showed me her hands, small, firm, white; also I could catch a glimpse of her arm, as it lay outstretched, her fingers clasping a fan. So I knew her arms were round and taper, hence all her limbs and figure finely molded, because nature does not do such things by halves, and makes no bungles in her symmetry of contour when she plans a noble specimen of humanity. Here was a noble specimen of what ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... meal, she and Mr. Hazel worked for a wager. Her taper fingers went like the wind, and though she watched him, and asked questions, she never stopped plaiting. Mr. Hazel was no carpenter, he was merely Brains spurred by Necessity. He went to work and sawed off four short ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... happy harvest grain. While with many-colored leaves, Glitters the garland on the sheaves; For the mower's work is done, And the young folks' dance begun! Desert street, and quiet mart;— Silence is in the city's heart; And the social taper lighteth; Each dear face that home uniteth; While the gate the town before ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller |
