"Oil lamp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he had given it into Philip's hands. The oil lamp was hung straight above them. Its light flooded the table between them, and from Philip's lips, as he stared at the snare, there broke a gasp of amazement. Pierre had expected that cry. He had at first been disbelieved; now his face burned with triumph. It seemed, for a space, as if Philip ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... A dim oil lamp in a niche sufficiently lighted the staircase, and, by the friendly aid of its glimmering beams, they had found their way up to the landing tolerably well, and had not thought of the necessity of having lights with which ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... said that not one atom of the whole economy of Nature is unaffected by it, and that we and all the animal kingdom, in common with trees and plants, derive health and vigor therefrom. This glorious natural light leaves our best gas, electricity, oil lamp, and all our multiplicity of candles, immeasurably behind. But although we cannot hope to equal, in all its beneficent results, the effects of daylight, or to perfectly replace it, we can more perfectly make the lighting of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various
... did belong to me, but I am a long way behind on it. Dey lets me stay here and pay what I kin. I rents a room to an old lady fer 75 cents a week. I buys oil and wood wid it. De lights has been cut off. I uses a oil lamp fur light. Lights done cut off. I can't pay light rent, no sir, I haint been able to pay ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... right. In each of the other walls a door. Under the window at the right a small platform. Upon it a cobbler's bench and a small table. On the latter a stand upholding three spheres of glass filled with water. Near them stands an unlit coal-oil lamp. In the corner, left, a brown tile oven surrounded by a bench and kitchen ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... to see that some of our high singers are not here this evening." The old singing master from his place behind the stand surveyed the gathering, squinting uncertainly by the light of the oil lamp. High on the wall it hung without chimney, its battered tin reflector dimmed by soot of many nights' accumulation. He picked up the notebook from the little stand which served as pulpit for the preachers on Sundays, and casually remarked, "We kinda look to the high singers to help us through, ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... and fill an oil lamp, or put on a gas mantle, OR Clean, oil and know how to repair the belt of a sewing machine, OR Lay a fire in a fireplace and tell what ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... outside Nan's window as it could be. She lit her oil lamp and dressed swiftly, running at last through the cold parlor and sitting room into the kitchen, where the fire in the range was burning briskly and the coffee pot was on. Tom and Rafe were there comfortably getting into thick woolen ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... By the light of an oil lamp Black Jack was putting the final touches to the clean-up. Two gold pans, heaped high with the mingled black sand and gold dust, as it came out of the sluices, were drying on the Yukon stove, and the superintendent was engaged in separating the precious ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... him musing over a seal oil lamp. He was not in a very happy mood. He was weary of orientalism and mystery. He longed for the quiet of his little old town, Chicago. Wouldn't it be great to put his feet under his old job and say, "Well, Boss, what's the dope to-day?" Wouldn't it, ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... helplessly staring at him as he turned up the wick of an oil lamp that stood on a mantelpiece littered with a mess of small things, and he caught a sight of my face when there was more light, and as he shut the door on us he laughed—laughed as if he knew that he had me in a trap. And before he spoke ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... lounge in the little back office, dead to the world. Amos sat by the window sobering up until the grey of the morning. The sleeping man roused, and Amos gave him another half goblet of whisky followed by a sip of water. He had drawn the blinds and left the coal-oil lamp burning when it grew light, lest the sleeping man should arouse and discover ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... becoming a grotesque shrunken figure, what with his meager naked legs and his ashen eager face and thin dust-colored throat rising above the collarless neckband of the garment. He blew out the flame of the oil lamp which burned on a reading stand at the left side of his bed and extinguished the two candles which stood on a ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... flats—on, winding in a slow ascent through the gloomy grandeur of the Hex River Poort, with its iron-bound heights rearing in mighty masses from the level valley bottom. Then it grew dark, and, the dim oil lamp being inadequate for reading purposes, Laurence ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... of satisfaction Mr. Pomeroy hurried his unwilling companion towards the inn. The streets were dark; only an oil lamp or two burned at distant points. But the darkness of the town was noon-day light in comparison of the gloom which reigned in Mr. Thomasson's mind. In the grasp of this headstrong man, whose temper rendered him blind to obstacles ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... the week were given up to lectures. At 11 P.M. the acetylene lights were put out, and those who wished to stay up had to depend on candle-light. The majority of candles, however, were extinguished by midnight, and the night watchman alone remained awake to keep his vigil by the light of an oil lamp. ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... "is what I call my den," throwing open a door leading into a rear room and lighting a hanging oil lamp. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... in a short-legged reed chair, with a grip-sack open on his knees. His coat and vest were off, and the light from the oil lamp at his side made his linen shirt ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... giggling and screeching of bar-maids, and the scolding and imperious commands of the host, they proved that the green bush had not lied, for the wine really did come from a freshly opened cask just brought up from the cellar. But as the niche was illumined only by the tiny oil lamp burning beneath the image of the Virgin, bedizened with flowers and gold and silver tinsel, fastened against the wall, Biberli asked the weary bar-maid for a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was crowded. Indeed, they were all crowded. Nevertheless, it was better to stand in the warmth than to walk about stiff-limbed in the slush and falling snow. We went into the next estaminet we came to. We entered the main room. An oil lamp was hanging from the ceiling. In the middle there was a long table and soldiers were seated round it, squeezed tightly together, eating eggs and chips and drinking wine or coffee. We leaned up against the wall with a number ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... passed. She was even more scared, if that were possible, when two officers, obviously of high rank, came forward in the hall to greet her, and one addressed her in Arabic as Colonel Lawrence. Luckily one oil lamp per wall was doing duty in place of electric light, or there might have been an awkward incident. She had presence of mind enough to disguise her alarm by a fit of coughing, bending nearly double ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... in and, quickly striking a light, placed between himself and a flickering oil lamp a small glass globe filled with water. He sat down upon his bench and commenced work in earnest on an unfinished pair of shoes. He hammered, and pulled, and stretched, and pegged, and sewed, and all this time, had there been any one present, they might have observed that, though Nick ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... apparatus I have spoken of. It was simply an oil lamp with several wicks, and a couple of saucepans, a kettle, and frying-pan to fit over it. The crude oil drawn from the last fish we had ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... small oil lamp with a brass base and stem, and a lovely-shaped glass shade. Mrs. Tomlinson informed her it was another auction bargain that cost fifty cents. Being so expensive they put it on the parlor mantel ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... falling dusk. The corners of the great room were in darkness. Beneath the elevated desk, behind which sat Coleman, Bluxome, the secretary, lighted a single oil lamp, the better to see his notes. In the interest of the proceedings a general illumination had not been ordered. Within the shadow, the door opened and Charles Doane, the Grand Marshal of the Vigilantes, advanced three steps into ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... to his knees beside his father. His pleasant, youthful face was drawn to mummy-like wanness. His eyes glowed with curious intensity, as they devoured the beloved features of the old man. The rays from the oil lamp cast a melancholy glow over the furniture of a bygone society, in this characteristic parlor of an old Southern mansion. But their effect upon the ghastly features of Colonel Henderson Jarvis presaged only too well the tragedy which ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... coming Leonie sat back with the light of the oil lamp full on her face as she stared at the clutter on ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... laugh, echoed by a lighter one, showed that the visitors had encountered only what they had expected, and after this brief episode they continued their journey upwards with a firmer sense of security; a smoky oil lamp on the first floor landing guided their footsteps by casting a flickering light on the narrow stairway, whereon slime and filth crept unchecked through the broken crevices ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... place suggested the presence of a modest and comfortable prosperity—a general prosperity —perhaps one might strengthen the term and say universal. There were no fine houses, no fine furniture. There were no decorations. Tallow candles furnished the light for the bedrooms, a whale-oil lamp furnished it for the parlor. Native matting served as carpeting. In the parlor one would find two or three lithographs on the walls—portraits as a rule: Kamehameha IV., Louis Kossuth, Jenny Lind; and may be an engraving or two: Rebecca at the Well, Moses smiting the rock, Joseph's servants ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... kitchen was illuminated only by a small oil lamp, placed on the corner of the table, near the arm-chair, his poor grandmother had instantly perceived the wretched condition of her grandson, and had partly divined, partly brought ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... found any better way until, about a hundred years ago, Sir Humphry Davy noticed something which other people had not observed. He discovered that flame would not pass through fine wire gauze, and he made a safety lamp in which a little oil lamp was placed in a round funnel of wire gauze. The light, but not the flame, would pass through it; and all safety lamps that burn oil have been made on this principle. The electric lamp, however, is now in general use. The miner wears it on his cap, and ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... blankets on a waterproof sheet laid on a bed of reeds formed the bed of its owner, with a canvas kit-bag stuffed with his limited wardrobe serving as a pillow. There were several upturned boxes to be used as seats, and a larger box served the purpose of a table and supported a tiny oil lamp. There was not even the usual wood stove connected up to the protruding stove-pipe. A smouldering fire was burning between two large sandstone blocks, which, in turn, supported a cooking pot. An uncultured Indian of the forests would ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... your knife," she said, kneeling beside the smoky oil lamp; and without a word he drew his claspknife from his pocket, opened the blade, and held the handle toward her. She took it from him, and then knelt motionless for an instant looking at the diamond, which shone like a star in her hollowed palm. Presently she stooped and kissed it, ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... removed from my face I was half sitting, half lying, in an arm-chair in a strange room which was lighted by an oil lamp that hung from the ceiling above. In front of me stood M. Arthur ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... from Montreal, Adele," said the mother, bending over her sick daughter. Doctor Chalmers drew near the bed, and as the light from the coal-oil lamp fell across Adele's face, he could not help but think how beautiful she ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... at him with a sudden rush of gratitude. By the dim light of the oil lamp that still flickered feebly in the carriage overhead, she could see his face; and she knew by the look in those truthful eyes that he really meant it. He really meant he was glad he'd come on and exposed himself to this risk, which he might otherwise have avoided, ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... end was narrow, of course, and when he held the light before it, he could not see past the body of the lantern. He opened the latter, took out the little oil lamp carefully and thrust it into the hole. He could see now, as he carefully examined the bricks; and he was easily convinced that he had not entered a cross wall. Nevertheless, when he had been working with the bar, he had not detected any change in the sound, as he thought he must ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... whole outline of the house could be traced through the enveloping darkness: two of the windows were lighted from within, and an oil lamp, flickering feebly, was fixed in a recess just above the door. The welcome words: "Chambres pour voyageurs. Aristide Briot, proprietaire," greeted Maurice's wearied eyes as he drew rein. Good luck was apparently attending him for, thus picking his way across fields, he had evidently struck an out-of-the-way ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... it on the counter when one of the men took it from his hand and held it under the hanging oil lamp. ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... a darkish, gusty night, and a small fire burned in the open fireplace. Shadows danced on the walls, and every now and then the wind came and tapped at the windows impatiently. On the closed sewing-machine an oil lamp burned, turned rather low. Peter sat in a rocking-chair drawn close to his mother's bedside and dozed fitfully, waking to watch the face on the pillow. It was very quiet there in the poor room, with the clock ticking, and the soft sound ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... and would not burn. She said they lied, and she would see to them later, and she went into the chamber she used for a sleeping apartment, and trod on something more on the floor in the dark; those good-for- nothing hussies of slaves had not lit her palm-oil lamp, and mentally forming the opinion that they had been out flirting during her absence, and resolving to teach them well the iniquity of such conduct, she sat down on her bed into a lot of messy stuff of a clammy, damp nature. Now this fairly roused her, for she is a notable ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... oil lamp made the interior look warm and attractive, particularly because Marian was standing by the side of Tim, smiling tenderly down at him. Across from her Bonsecours stood, also smiling, but with a look of weariness—perhaps it was unhappiness. The bearers were grinning, as the little sergeant ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... the lights at the post went out and both the man and the child were deep in sleep. Then Jan stopped. There was the fire of a keen wakefulness in his eyes as he carefully unfastened the strings of his instrument, and held it close to the oil lamp, so that he could peer down through the narrow ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... hole; a bed of wattles in a corner, and in the centre a greasy table with a three-legged stool and a crazy chair beside it. The floor was black with age and filth, and broken everywhere by rat-holes. She set her noisome, smoking oil lamp on the table, and with some apology for the rudeness of the chamber she asked in tones almost defiant if ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... the end of the passage was ajar. It opened on a bare little place, once perhaps the surgery of some doctor in small practice, but now a bedroom. A door gave at the farther side on a tiny verandah, and this and the one window were wide open. An oil lamp stood on a table by the bed and revealed a crowd of people. A man lay on the camp-bed, lying aslant for he was too long for it. A sheet covered his lower limbs, but his breast and shoulders had been bared. The head was nearest to the entrance, ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... oil lamp shed a sickly glow for a short distance; but, for the most part, the streets were very dim and dark. Lights gleamed in a good many upper windows still; but below—where the shutters were all ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the assistant engineer of the Trinity House. It is practically impossible to compare photo-metrically and directly the flame of the candle with these sun-like lights. A light of intermediate intensity—that of the six-wick Trinity oil lamp—was therefore in the first instance compared with the electric light. The candle power of the oil lamp being afterwards determined, the intensity of the electric light became known. The numbers given in the table prove the superiority of the Alliance machine over that of Holmes. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... punchers gathered around the table playing draw-poker under the light of a flaring oil lamp. McCabe extended a breezy invitation to Buck to join them, which he accepted promptly, drawing up an empty box to a space made for him between Slim and Butch Siegrist. With scarcely a glance at the group, Jessup selected ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... The solitary oil lamp in the centre of the court had been blown out, either by the violence of the wind or the act of some inhabitant who had excellent reasons for objecting to his residence being rendered too conspicuous; and the only light which fell upon the broken and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... platform last Saturday evening devouring the latest war news under the dim oil lamp, a voice behind me said, in broad rural accent, "Bill, I say, W.G. is dead." At the word I turned hastily to another column and found the news that had stirred him. And even in the midst of world-shaking events it stirred me too. For a brief moment I forgot the war and was back in that ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... dark, the next I knew, the room was strange to me; A Crucifix hung on the wall, before which a single, dim oil lamp was burning, before this was a monk at prayer;—it seemed like a dream to me, it could ...
— A Napa Christchild; and Benicia's Letters • Charles A. Gunnison
... already was under full headway. The floor swayed and groaned, and the building fairly rocked under the rhythmic assault of more than twenty pairs of stamping, shuffling feet. A smoking oil lamp supplied a dull, smoky haze so that it was difficult for friends to recognize each other from opposite ends of the room. All eyes, including those of the dancers, had been turned to the newcomers as the Overlanders filed in and took seats on benches ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... help himself. A sudden turn in the path which he was following, however, revealed one of the councilor's windows aglow with light, and as he pressed quietly around the end of the building the sound of a low voice came to him through the open door. Cautiously he approached and peered in. A large oil lamp, the light of which he had seen in the window, was burning on a table in the big room but the voice came from the little closet into which Obadiah had taken him the preceding night. For several minutes he crouched and listened. He heard the ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... Samuel's little house was occupied that night when the soft quilts were spread out, and the family and their guests lay down to rest. Naomi and Jonas were cuddled in a corner next their mother. But when Ezra came in late from feeding Michmash, the dim light of the little oil lamp, that burned each night in all but the poorest of Jewish homes, showed him a floor so crowded with soundly sleeping guests that he knew not how to reach his own bed spread at his ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips
... of labor, in the dingy werkstube in Johannis Strasse; lighted by the single flicker of an oil lamp, with the workboard for a writing-desk, let me endeavour to collect some few scattered details about the ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... my towel, I ran to open the door, but hardly had I done so when I remained petrified and dumb with surprise, hardly able to believe my own eyes. There stood the Breton twisting his battered cap nervously between his bony fingers. The little oil lamp, which we always kept lighted at night in the passageway, illuminated his pale ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... there fell the first snow of the season. A little had for days been lying upon the hilltops of Anvil, but none nearer. The only fire in my room was an oil lamp upon which I heated water upon going home at night; but with plenty of blankets and wool clothing I was comfortable with ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... pulls himself together, an' goin' t' th' bo'sun's bunk, leans over an' examines it. He poked about f'r a bit, put his fingers into a stream of suthin' that was fallin' from th' bunk to th' floor, an' then by th' light o' th' swingin' oil lamp, I see his face turn a blazin' crimson. I see him take suthin' outer th' bed, an' then he swings round an' ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... oil lamp filled the apartment despite the cold air that came in through the open window. It was evident, therefore, that this lamp had been left alight, and had continued to burn until the oil had ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... have coal oil lamp dey used to use homemake candles. Dey'd kill de brutes and keep and save all de tallow and one day was set off to make de candles. All de neighbors come and dey have kind of party and eat and things. Sometime dey make three, four hunnerd candles in one day and ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... difficulty we have to deal with is artificial lighting. Whether we employ candle, oil lamp, or gas, we may be certain that the atmosphere of our rooms will become contaminated by the products of combustion, and health must suffer. In order that such may be obviated, it must be an earnest hope that ere long such improvements will be made in electric lighting, that it may become generally ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... no mistaking the seriousness of her voice. Mr. Harris extinguished the oil lamp, covering the chafing dish clumsily with a discordant, disagreeable sound. Mrs. Cheever and Mrs. Enos Jackson swung about abruptly, Maude Lille rose a little from her seat, while the men imitated these movements of expectancy with a ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... way, at first downwards, and then, with the passage sloping upwards, he found his farther progress stopped by a quantity of loose stones and crumbled down earth, upon which, by the direction of the man who followed close behind, he set down a strong-smelling oil lamp, filled the basket pushed to him, and realised for the first time in his life what must be the life of a miner toiling in ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... surmounted by a Chinese candle. A Chinese candle is made from the castor bean, and is fixed to the candlestick by running the iron pin on the latter into a hollow straw in the end of the candle. Then we also had a Chinese oil lamp. The upper vessel is simply a little earthenware saucer, containing a little oil, and in it lie some threads of cotton (a cotton wick). This is made to project over the edge of the saucer and is then lighted. ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... table the oil lamp sputtered and burned lower. Out in the stable the horse repeated its former challenging whinny. Once again through the partition the listener caught the choking wail of pain, and the muffled sound of the doctor's ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... in his hand. Once or twice he smote his stick smartly upon the ground. He timed his pace to hers, keeping close, his eyes upon her straight slender figure. When they reached the lane they walked together until they came to the highway, which they followed to the house. An oil lamp marked the walk that led through Mrs. ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... the others were grouped about the door, talking or listening to the rain, she sat near a table on which burned a small unshaded oil lamp, studying out some grievous problems to her, ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... pale yellow light of the oil lamp on the Commandants desk fell on the military faces, figures and trappings of the men in the room. The shuffling tramp of soldiers in the dark street below died away in the direction of the river. I felt the military ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... just outside the door, in the feeble light of an oil lamp, grouped around the Mayor and ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... in a drawing-room hung with yellow silk, heavy with the smell of dead leaves and oil lamp. Something murmured soothingly in the background and overcame the noises in his head. He thought he heard horses' feet on wet gravel and a voice singing about ships and flocks and grass. It passed close to the ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... oil lamp upon the table threw a weird, uncertain light over the old room, flickering upon the carved oak panelling, and casting strange, fantastic shadows from the high-elbowed, straight-backed furniture. My sister's white, anxious face stood ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... them were seated at the long table, bottle and mug in hand, and the gloomy place was poorly lighted by a swinging whale-oil lamp. Jack Cockrell crept unnoticed into a corner and was giddy and almost helpless with nausea. It seemed ages before Captain Wellsby's legs appeared in the hatchway and he came down into the cabin, bringing a shower ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... lasted far into the day. It was now close upon twilight—the hour of the Angelus. Very solemnly, the red-headed brats rose from the floor and formed a semicircle. Namgay Doola laid his gun against the wall, lighted a little oil lamp, and set it before a recess in the wall. Pulling aside a curtain of dirty cloth, he revealed a worn brass crucifix leaning against the helmet-badge of a long forgotten East India regiment. 'Thus did my father,' he said, crossing himself clumsily. The wife and children followed ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... storey (rere) of his (Bloom's) house the light of a paraffin oil lamp with oblique shade projected on a screen of roller blind supplied by Frank O'Hara, window blind, curtain pole and revolving shutter manufacturer, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the laws of evolution, constantly apprehending the finer forces of nature—the tallow-dip, the candle, the oil lamp, years later a more refined type of oil, gas, electricity, the latest tungsten lights, radium—and we may be still only at the beginnings. Our finest electric lights of today may seem—will seem—crude and the quality of their light even more crude, ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... hand seemed to drop a canopy over the vista, and it was night. Bartley lighted the oil lamp and sat staring out into the darkness. From below came the rattle of dishes. Presently Bartley heard heavy, deliberate footsteps ascending the stairway. Then a clanging crash and a thud, right outside his door. He flung the door open. Senator Steve was rising from the flattened ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the man shooting the girl through the heart. Overcome by remorse and filled with respect for the dead, he reverently raised the corpse, laid it along the floor by the wall at the back of the cottage and covered it with a sheet. He placed an oil lamp on the floor so that the head, the breast, the hips, the knees and the toes caught the light, while shadows fell in the depressions between. He knelt in prayer and then crept from the solemn scene on ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... his friends. Conversation, however, was not one of his strong points. He volunteered no remarks after seating himself opposite to Nootka, who handed him a walrus rib which she had just cooked over the oil lamp. Had Nootka been a civilised girl she might have been suspected of conveying a suggestion to the youth, for she was very fond of him, but, being an Eskimo of the Far North, she knew nothing about ribs ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... and heavy the air is!" said Luella, as we followed the winding passage in the dim illumination that came from an occasional gas-jet or oil lamp. ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... friends with the voyagers, and subsequently these Tchuktches welcomed the foreigners. The description given of the natives and their dwellings is curious. They live in large tents, which enclose sleeping-places or a kind of inner chambers, heated and lighted by an oil lamp. In these inner rooms the native women sit, with very little clothing on. In summer a fire is kept burning in the centre of the hut, and the smoke goes up through a hole in the roof. In winter there is no fire, and presumably the hut is closed against the outer air. The Greenlanders and Tchuktches ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... for locomotives has been experimented with. It includes the parabolic reflection of the regular light with an arc-lamp in place of the oil lamp. An incandescent lamp may be used in the same place, but has no great advantage over oil as ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... cigarette between his fingers, staring at the wind-blown flame of his coal-oil lamp. Judith was doing this as she did everything that she set her two hands on, thoroughly and with her whole heart and soul. In that lay the key to her character. There was no half-way with her. When she gave, it was open-handedly, with no reservation; ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... door and saw Sylvia standing there. She was on the threshold and the light reached to her. Sylvia moved into the low-roofed room. It was a big, long room, bare, and with a raftered ceiling, and since one oil lamp lighted it, it was full of shadows. To Chayne it had a lonely and a dreary look. He thought of his own house in Sussex and of the evening he had passed there, thinking it just as lonely. He felt perhaps at this ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... with instant favor. They clambered out of bed and lit the small oil lamp, wrapping themselves in quilts and petticoats impartially, for the air was growing chilly. The next three hours were the longest any of the three had ever known. In spite of fortune telling, and a thrilling story which ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... a light: "a dead dog, Fritz." An exclamation of wonder escaped me as I fell on my knees. At the same instant Sapt muttered, "Ay, there's a lamp," and, stretching up his hand to a little oil lamp that stood on a bracket, he lit it, took it down, and held it over the body. It served to give a fair, though unsteady, light, and enabled us to see what lay ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... in his hand. It was a small oil lamp, with uncovered flame. As he finished speaking, he held it out towards our hero, peering into his face. With a bound like a panther, George darted forward and seized the spluttering light. Giving one powerful twist, he wrenched it from the villain's hand, and, turning it upside down, a huge ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... nearly down to the ground, and the door was so low that the family had to creep in on their hands and knees, when they went in and out. There was no one at home but an old Lapland woman, who was cooking fish by the light of a train-oil lamp. The reindeer told her all about Gerda's story, after having first told his own, which seemed to him the most important, but Gerda was so pinched with the cold that she could not speak. "Oh, you poor things," said the Lapland woman, "you have a long way to go yet. You must travel more than a ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... weather, and although intended chiefly as a place of out-look, it nevertheless had sundry conveniences which made it little short of a veritable habitation. Among these were a small stove and a swinging oil lamp which, when lighted, filled the interior with a ruddy glow that quite warmed one to look at. A low door at one end of the hovel faced the sea, and there was a small square hole or window beside it, through which the end of a telescope generally protruded, for ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... High Street, hard by the Leycester Hospital, they came to the doorway of a small shuttered shop, over which by the light of a street lamp one could read the legend, "J. Marvin, Secondhand Bookseller." The girl opened the door with a latchkey. An oil lamp burned in an office at the back of the shop—if that can be spoken of as a separate room which was, in fact, entirely walled off with books laid flat and rising in stacks from the floor. The place, in fact, suggested a cave or den rather than a shop, with stalagmites of piled ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... visible through the panes. In the centre back a door opens into Halla's bed-chamber, which is separated from the "badstofa" by a thin board partition. A small table-leaf is attached by hinges to the partition. A copper train-oil lamp is fastened in the doorcase. Over the nearest bedsteads a cross-beam runs at a man's height from the floor; from this to the roof-tree is half of a man's height. Under the window stands a painted chest. Carved wooden boxes are pushed in under the ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson
... trader's house the father and son sat smoking in silence, waiting for the girl's return. A coconut-oil lamp, placed in the centre of a table, showed that the evening meal ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... below. Only one little oil lamp was burning, on a rock shaped like an altar in one corner. It cast leaping shadows that looked like ghosts on the smooth, uneven walls. The whole place was hardly more than twenty feet wide each way. There was no furniture, not even the usual mats—nothing but naked rock to lie or sit on, ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... they finally emerged from the black curtain of oil. "Of all the messy stuff! Betty, you look as though an oil lamp had exploded in ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... that stretched away down the dormitory—two parallel lines in long perspective; my comrades huddled under their blankets in shapeless masses, gray or white according as they lay near or far from the windows; the smoky glimmer of the oil lamp half-way down the room; and at the end, in the deeper shadows, the enclosure of yellow curtains surrounding the ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... of disuse. He carried Pauline up the stairs, which groaned and bent under his steps and pushed open a door. There was a broken chair, a table, a cot, a washstand, with pitcher and bowl, and a small oil lamp set in a ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... not care even if the clock did strike nine just as they stopped at their own gate. The night was dark and the bride could not distinguish the exterior of the house, neither was the interior plainly discernible, lighted as it was with an oil lamp, and a single tallow candle. But she scarcely thought of this, so intent was she upon the beautiful face of the crippled boy, who sat in his armchair, eagerly awaiting ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... earnest now. The corners of the room were in darkness. Beneath Coleman's desk Bluxome, the secretary, had lighted an oil lamp the better to see his notes. In the interest of Keith's testimony the general illumination had not been ordered. Outside the tiny patch of yellow light the men of Vigilance sat motionless, listening, their shadows dim and huge ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... apartment, in which we could all move about conveniently. Round a hearth on which was boiling tea in copper kettles, they had made a kind of wooden frame, on which each of us found a cup, pipe, and tobacco pouch, and instead of the oil lamp which had formerly given us light, we were now ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... little tug came screaming around, and before any of the passengers on the deck above had any idea of what was happening, Mr. Hamilton Fynes was on board the Anna Maria, and on his way down the river, seated in a small, uncomfortable cabin, lit by a single oil lamp. ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and Birkenshead were down in the little cabin, reading by the dull light of a coal-oil lamp. When the vessel began to toss so furiously, the elder man rose and paced fussily to and fro, rubbing his fingers through his iron-gray hair. His companion was too much engrossed by his paper to heed him. He had a small, elegantly shaped figure,—the famous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... ground, and about two o'clock, when the watchmen grew drowsy and were a long while between their rounds, the frightened murderers carried the stiffened body up the lane and placed it bolt upright, near a dim oil lamp, at a neighbour's door. There the watchmen found it; but there was no clue to guide them, for nearly every house in the lane was infamous. Years after, two ruffianly fellows who were confined in the King's Bench were heard accusing each other of the murder in Shire Lane, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... late that evening before Doggie could find an opportunity of slipping, unobserved, through the open door into the house kitchen dimly illuminated by an oil lamp. ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... as the woman had quitted the room, Lamont returned to his contemplation of the beautiful face of the girl lying so white and still on the wooden settee, as revealed to him by the light of the swinging oil lamp directly over ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... I found two doors facing me, and foresaw the possibility of error; but I was relieved from the burden of choosing by the sudden appearance at one of them of Bareilles himself. The place was lit only by an oil lamp, and, for a reason best known to himself, he did not look directly at me, but stood with his head half-turned as he said, "Well, Martin, is ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... the hedge, and kicked the dogs away. We couldn't see much inside, for the moon wasn't up then, but they led us to a house, and made us go up a ladder on to a verandah and into a nice wooden room, where there was a civilised oil lamp on a bracket, and several women and children sitting and lying about on ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... inquiry. She climbed a flight higher, and rang again. There was a long and ominous pause, in which her heart beat fast; if Maurice did not live here either, she would drop where she stood. She was about to ring a second time, when felt slippers and an oil lamp moved along the passage, the glass window was opened, and a woman's face peered out at her. Yes, Herr Guest lived there, certainly, said Frau Krause, divided between curiosity and indignation at having to rise from bed; ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... in character. There was a short, narrow, gloomy lane or street, shut in between lofty dwelling houses, the lane often dark, always filthy, without sidewalks, a gutter running through the centre, over which, suspended from a rope, hung a dim oil lamp or two—such was the Rue St. Maur, in the Faubourg St. Germain. It was a gloomy approach certainly. But a tall porte cochere opened, and suddenly the whole scene changed. Within those high walls, so forbidding in aspect, there lay charming ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... day's labor, of whatever it consisted, was over. Wanaha had just lit the oil lamp which served her in ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... two tin cans (baking powder boxes will answer) and make holes in the lids large enough to admit a thermometer. Blacken one box in the flame of an oil lamp. Fill both with boiling water and put in a cool place. Test with a thermometer from time to time. Which ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... variety of Argand lamp (the brightest oil lamp of the period) especially designed to ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... property. It is the average home of colored people living in this section, two stories, small front yeard, enclosed with wooden picket fence. A large coal stove in front room furnishes heat. In recent years electricity has supplanted the overhead oil lamp. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... December has arrived; and very dark and chill it must have seemed to our ancestors. No gaslights illuminated the streets, here and there a feeble oil lamp helped to make the darkness visible, when the oil was not frozen: the roads were deep with mud, and everything outside was cold and cheerless. But within the farmer's kitchen the huge logs burned brightly, and the Christmas holidays were ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... of Mrs. Pearce's front room was fully displayed at ten o'clock at night when a powerful oil lamp stood on the middle of the table. The harsh light fell on the garden; cut straight across the lawn; lit up a child's bucket and a purple aster and reached the hedge. Mrs. Flanders had left her sewing on the table. There were ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... On this an armful of brushwood was placed; and the match applied, it began to burn with cheerful crackling laughter and pleasant flame, filling the room with a fragrant perfume. For all other light a feeble oil lamp twinkled high up on the wall, and a candle burned on the table where ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... a pleasant journey which began at ten o'clock on the evening of June 6. Two Arabs led me on my mule slowly and solemnly through the narrow streets of Baghdad in the warm summer night. An oil lamp flickered dully here and there, but the bazaars were brisk and lively. Here sat thousands of Arabs, talking, eating, drinking, and smoking. It was the month of fasting, when nothing is ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... repeated, disturbed the stillness of an empty street of small wooden houses. The night was very dark, but the square mass of the tanner's house could just be discerned, black and solid against the sky. The rays of a solitary oil lamp straggled faintly across the roadway, and showed a man with a large bundle on his back standing on the doorstep of that house, knocking as if he were afraid of the ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin |
