"Taper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... myriads of those wax tapers first used in Saturn's temple of old lit up the street like magic and the last game of all began, for every man and woman and child strove to put out another's candle, and the long, laughing cry, 'No taper! No taper! Senza moccolo!' went ringing up to the darkling sky. Long canes with cloths or damp sponges or extinguishers fixed to them started up from nowhere, down from everywhere, from window and balcony ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... between my fingers. A cigar was in my mouth. Should I light it with the check? It was for $1,000. After all, it was more than I had ever before held in my hand at once. But what was a paltry thousand, aye a paltry ten thousand, to a man's pride? I bit off the end of my cigar, creased the check into a taper, and struck a match. I watched it burn and burn. I struck another. I held it within an inch of the check, but for the life of me I could not ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... the horns are triangular, the sharp edge being to the front; they are about ten or eleven inches in circumference at the base where they touch, then, sweeping like a demi-crescent backwards, they taper to a fine point in a length of about 12 to 14 inches. The male has at times a very strong odour. The female is smaller, and of a reddish-brown or fulvous drab above, with a dark streak down the back, whitish below; the ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... dark These 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 ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... interest, till Dundas drew up his chair opposite at the 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)
... 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 is difficult. ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... rest, a firm, round figure, no angles, everything, including elbows, in curves; blooming cheeks and smooth-skinned, taper-fingered hands tanned a very honest brown,—the hands of ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... Isaac Newton's papers, by his little dog "Diamond" upsetting a lighted taper upon his desk, by which the elaborate calculations of many years were in a moment destroyed, is a well-known anecdote, and need not be repeated: it is said that the loss caused the philosopher such profound grief that it seriously injured ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... his family, some dating back to 1681 and 1702, and methinks I can see Lovecraft poring over these time-stained bits o' bookish lore as the monks of old followed the printed lines with quivering fingers in the taper's uncertain, flickering light. For Lovecraft appeals to me as a bookworm—one of those lovable mortals whose very existence seems to hang on the numbered pages of a heavy, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... them for me, I know!' said Cynthia, sitting down and beginning to feed herself daintily, touching them lightly with the ends of her taper fingers, and dropping each ripe berry into her open mouth. When she had eaten about half she stopped ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... soon safely moored, and the door of the building unlocked; and by the light of a wax taper, which we had brought on purpose, we found ourselves in a large empty room, without any fire-place. A heap of dead wood was soon collected at the entrance; and a glorious fire lighted up the small enclosure which surrounded the building, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... darke, how doost thou know 'tis he? Mart. Vpon his bloody finger he doth weare A precious Ring, that lightens all the Hole: Which like a Taper in some Monument, Doth shine vpon the dead mans earthly cheekes, And shewes the ragged intrailes of the pit: So pale did shine the Moone on Piramus, When he by night lay bath'd in Maiden blood: O Brother helpe me with thy fainting hand. If feare hath made thee faint, as mee it hath, Out of this ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... erroneous names tiger and hyaena, given 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 ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... coal furnace, to a white-heat,—to a point just as near the melting as can be attained without actually dropping apart,—and then passed between three sets of rollers, each of which elongates the barrel, reduces its diameter, and assists in forcing it to assume the proper size and taper. The metal by this process is firmly compacted, becoming wholly homogeneous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... still, she confronted me, and I now observed that she was not so tall as from below I had imagined. She was, in fact, of a short stature rather, but of proportions so exquisite that she conveyed an impression of some height. In her hand she held a taper by whose light she had been surveying herself in her mirror at the moment of my advent. Her unbound hair of brown fell like a mantle about her shoulders, and this fact it was drew me to notice that she was in her night-rail, and ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... are frequently used as antidotes for these poisons. Binz found that dogs that have been stupified with alcohol could be awakened with coffee. It may thus be prescribed for hard drinkers to counteract the baleful excitability produced by alcohol; in fact, many topers taper off after a long debauch with coffee containing small amounts of alcoholic beverages. Considering its ability to counteract the slow intoxication of tobacco, it may be inferred that coffee is indispensable ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... word in the vestibule, A touch of taper fingers, A scent of roses, sweet and cool, When she has gone ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... connection for lighting, so they carried candles, Anthony holding one aloft for himself and Bettina, and Delia coming after with a taper. Peter, like a flash of flame, slipped ahead of Delia and was lost ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... altar of that church standeth over the place where St. Austin wrote with his staff by the well, and yet unto this day may no woman come in to that church. But there was a noble woman that said that she was not guilty in offending St. Austin, and took a taper in her hand and went for to offer it in the said church; but the sentence of Almighty God may not be revoked, for as soon as she entered the church her bowels and sinews began to shrink and she fell down dead in ensample of all other women; ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... swim before her in a quivering haze. Her strained eyes were fixed upon those other figures bringing up the rear—those men in the garb of the penitent, each bearing a fagot on his shoulder, and carrying a lighted taper ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... days by year-old children. This is the first cathedral we ever saw, and none ever so impressed us since. Vast, simple, awful in dimensions and height, just beginning to grow tall at the point where our proudest steeples taper out, it fills the whole soul, pervades the vast landscape over which it reigns, and, like Niagara and the Alps, abolishes that five- or six-foot personality in the beholder which is fostered by keeping company with the little life of the day in its little dwellings. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... life itself, must end, Gilbert at length seemed to be aware of the reality of the unpretending bed in the corner. Having repeated the prayers which his piety suggested, he extinguished the almost exhausted taper, and threw himself upon the bed. He could not sleep, however; for, great as the fatigue of the day had been, the excitement was greater. His mind was perpetually recurring to the events at the spring, from which they wandered to his father's lonely and anxious chamber: now he remembered ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... two, and found some large rolls of street posters, which had been left there by some disappointed canvasser the year before, and which had accompanied one cell of the cabin in its travels. Dane is a prompt man, and, in a minute more, he had locked the door behind him, had struck a wax taper which he had in his cigar-box, had rolled the paper roll out on the floor, to serve as a pillow. In five minutes more, covered with his heavy coat, he lay on the floor, sleeping as soundly as he had slept the year before, ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... backbone. Now, my boy, you really must not keep me any longer with all this nonsense about Mollie. I have to go up to Rosendale, you know; Mrs. Cardell begged me to sit with her a little, and I am late now. Mollie will give you your tea. Come—have you forgiven your mother?' passing her white taper fingers over his ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... over him, which lay, for a little while at least, in the mere absence of pain; once, especially, when an older boy taught him to make flowers of sealing-wax, and he had burnt his hand badly at the lighted taper, and been unable to sleep. He remembered that also afterwards, as a sort of typical thing—a white vision of heat about him, clinging closely, through the languid scent of the ointments put upon the place to make ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... not taper; Genus *Condylostoma the peristome is widest at the end of the body; the ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins
... kind of pyramid some sixty feet in height. Old King Carnival, in effigy, was placed at the apex of the pyramid, and the interior was filled with comestibles that would set the whole erection in a blaze as soon as a taper was applied. When the signal was given, bells pealed and trumpets sounded glad farewell to the customs of the ancient carnival. The procession set forth from San Marco on Palm Sunday (led by white-robed children with garlands on their heads), and went round the city till ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... capillaire-berry pie an' bake-apple jelly. 'Twas pretty, too, t' see the way she had arrayed the table. There was flowers from the hills flung about on the cloth. An' in the midst of all—fair in the middle o' the blossoms an' leaves an' toothsome plenty—was a white cake with one wee white taper burnin' as bright an' bold as ever a candle twice ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... 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 ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... you never will, if you listen to our old-fashioned friend next door, who has been halting between two opinions all his life:—will neither make an honest fat lump of it, as I do, nor plunge down and taper with you. But nothing can be done without an effort: ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... chain fell with a rattle, and gripping his bag tightly, he walked into a large ill-smelling hall of which he could only just see the ceiling. There was no light but the nickering taper held by the man, and by its uncertain glimmer Shorthouse turned to examine him. He saw an undersized man of middle age with brilliant, shifting eyes, a curling black beard, and a nose that at once proclaimed him a ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... in love—put out My senses, leave me deaf and blind, Swept by the tempest of your love, A taper in a ...
— Love Songs • Sara Teasdale
... lighted. It was broken, as if someone had stepped upon the larger end; but the label, a bright red band of paper, was still upon it. The wrapper had somewhat spread; but the pointed end had been bitten off, half an inch up on the taper. ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... evidently betokened the crisis of the show. And indeed the chapters of canons, the clergy and bishops, the pages and chamberlains, the representatives of the city, and the gentlemen of the king's chamber now appeared, and finally the king himself, who, bare-headed and carrying a taper, followed the magnificent statue of the Virgin. The contrast was striking: after the grey-headed monks and pale novices came brilliant young captains, affronting heaven with the points of their moustaches, riddling the latticed windows with killing glances, following the procession in an absent-minded ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sailors, Irishmen, Hessian boots, little boys, beadles, policemen, tall life-guardsmen, charity children, pumps, dustmen, very short pantaloons, dandies in spectacles, and ladies with aquiline noses, remarkably taper waists, and wonderfully long ringlets, Mr. Cruikshank has a special predilection. The tribe of Israelites he has studied with amazing gusto; witness the Jew in Mr. Ainsworth's "Jack Sheppard," and the immortal Fagin of "Oliver Twist." Whereabouts lies the comic vis in these ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... passage she stopped to open a door and, putting her finger to her lip, signed to Undine to enter. In the taper-lit dimness stood two small white beds, each surmounted by a crucifix and a palm branch, and each containing a small brown sleeping child with a mop of hair and a curiously finished little face. As the Princess stood gazing on their innocent slumbers she seemed ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... noises in the house, and looking through a crack in the flooring he saw the charcoal-burner asleep, his wife almost in a faint, and by the side of the newly-born babe three old women dressed in white, each holding a lighted taper in her hand, and all talking together. Now these were the three Soudiche or ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... booke giuen, him. The Exorcistes, serued to commaunde euille sprites oute of menne, and in token therof, had a lesse booke giuen them. The Acholite, had the bearyng and the orderyng of the Tapers, Candelstickes, and Cruettes at the Altare: and therfore had a Candelsticke, a Taper, and two emptie Cruorettes deliuered hym. The Subdeacon, mighte take the offring, and handle the Chalice, and the Patine, carie theim to the Altare, and fro the Altare, and giue the Deacon Wine ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... fan-shaped into a great oval of green and gray growths. It was the hub of an oblong wheel, and from it, at regular distances, like spokes, ran the outgoing canyons. Here a dull red color predominated over the fading yellow. The corners of wall bluntly rose, scarred and scrawled, to taper into towers and serrated ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... had been 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 ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... shapely enough, but disfigured with sundry scars and bruises inflicted by hammer and chisel. Her look of pride in her wounds was comically in contrast to her companion's distress, as his glance wandered from the little hard-worked fingers to his own white hands,— almond-nailed, soft-palmed, taper-fingered, the hands of a man who has lived an idle life, and known little or nothing of the reality of work. Nan's eyes followed his, and she laughed in amused fashion. "Mine look like the man's, and yours like the woman's! The contrast makes mine browner ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the calcination of the mercury in this experiment, and which was reduced to 5/6 of its former bulk, was no longer fit either for respiration or for combustion; animals being introduced into it were suffocated in a few seconds, and when a taper was plunged into it, it was extinguished as if it had ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... of a wondering smile flickered over the old man's wrinkled countenance, like the reflection of a passing taper-flame ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... derivations from the Minoan and Mycenaean columns seems most improbable. There are two essential parts in the Doric column, the shaft and the capital (the Greeks did not use any base for this order). The Minoan columns taper downwards instead of upwards, an utterly unconstructional form, and though in the palace of Knossos and at Tiryns columns of this shape appear to have been used to carry lintels, the stone columns on either side of the entrance to the Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae were used for decorative ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... that once My Lady had eliminated herself from my field I did not see but that Daniel and I might taper off into at least an armed neutrality. If he continued to nag me, it would be wholly of his own free will. He had ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... 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 ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the guilty; therefore He was the companion of outcasts; therefore He spoke tenderly and lovingly to those whom society counted undone; therefore He loved to bind up the bruised and the broken-hearted; therefore His breath fanned the spark which seemed dying out in the wick of the expiring taper, when men thought that it was too late, and that the hour of hopeless profligacy was come. It was that feature in His character, that tender, hoping, encouraging spirit of His which the prophet Isaiah fixed upon as characteristic. "A bruised reed ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... of those artificial helps are summed up by the Jesuit And. 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 eyes, it seems very ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... her excellent defence) of convicting her of witchcraft, and confederating with her lover to destroy him. He then attacked her on the weak side of frailty. This was undeniable. He consigned her to the severity of the church: she was carried to the bishop's palace, clothed in a white sheet, with a taper in her hand, and from thence conducted to the cathedral, and the cross, before which she made a confession of her only fault. Every other virtue bloomed in this ill-fated fair with the fullest vigour. She could not resist the solicitations ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... wine are going on. Another flight of steps leads to the second tier of cellars, where the moisture trickles down the dank dingy walls, and save the dim light thrown out by the candles we carried, and by some other far-off flickering taper stuck in a cleft stick to direct the workmen, who with dexterous turns of their wrists give a twist to the bottles, all is darkness. On every side bottles are reposing in various attitudes, the majority in huge square piles on their sides, others in racks slightly tilted, others, again, ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... don't let's fool ourselves!" she interrupted his protest impatiently. "Weeks ago, weeks ago!—we said that we would see each other less, that it would taper off. We tried. It's no use! If we were in different cities—in different families, even! I tell myself that it will grow less and less," she added presently, as the man watched her in silence, "but oh, my God!—how long the ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... intervals of uninterrupted intercourse with his mother had implanted in his heart. Then, when the daylight began to wane, and the moon and stars already grew beautiful in their places in the firmament, he would pass into the subterranean vaults of the edifice, trembling as his little taper scarcely dispelled the dull, solemn gloom, and listening with breathless attention for the voices of those guardian spirits whose fabled habitation was made in the apartments of the sacred place. Or, when the multitude had departed for their amusements and their homes, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... dark," Spear lighted a taper and they softly opened the door. Benito slept; beside him drowsed a red-shirted miner slumped upon a chair. Adrian shook him, ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... wife Jocasta. It was extraordinarily popular, as, indeed, were all the plays Mrs. Behn marshalls forth in this preface. The scene particularly referred to is Act ii, I: 'Oedipus enters, walking asleep in his Shirt, with a Dagger in his Right-Hand and a Taper in his Left.' A little after 'Enter Jocasta, attended with Lights, in ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... (pl. VII, 1 and 2), so called because of their shape. Their bases are triangular and hollowed out; their sides taper upwards and terminate in points which are bent slightly backwards, and they have each two projections, one pointing forwards (pl. VII, 3) and the other outwards and backwards (pl. VII, 4). It will be convenient to have a special name for the projections pointing outwards ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... pillars, low at the sides of the rooms, and up to sixty feet in the middle. These are all gilt, and show "architectural refinements," for the teak trees they are made of are not absolutely straight, and they have an entasis that is quite natural where they taper away into the golden gloom of the sloping timber roofs. The rooms are lofty, and all on one floor, because the Burmese do not like to live in rooms with people above. There are infinite intricacies of gilded teak carving, and some ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... had no wish a brother's love to share"— I did not read thy features dreamingly, And peer into thine eye's deep azure, there Searching another's depths, in revery! I did not press, all passionless, thy hand Or idly dally with thy taper finger, Or coldly gaze, for I could not withstand The high and holy ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... of a length most happily proportioned to their thickness; these we saw at Athens; but when they were cut anew at Rome and polished, they did not gain so much in embellishment, as they lost in symmetry, being rendered too taper and slender. Should any one who wonders at the costliness of the Capitol visit any one gallery in Domitian's palace, or hall, or bath, or the apartments of his concubines, Epicharmus's ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... are sweet peas on tiptoe for a flight: With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white, And taper fingers catching at all things To bind them ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... it has somewhat deteriorated; and, as now grown, differs to some extent from the description given above. The roots are smaller, seldom rise more than two or three inches above the soil, and taper directly from the crown to the point. A judicious selection of roots for seed, continued for a few seasons, would undoubtedly restore the variety to ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... finished, I folded it up, and lighted a taper to seal it. Old Mrs Culpepper, who was in the room, croaked out, "No, no; you must show it to Medea." But I paid no attention to her, and having sealed my letter, put on my hat, and walked out to the post-office. I dropped it into ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... lagoon lies a man-of-war, its sails neatly furled, and its trim rigging, dark hull, and taper spars, perfectly reproduced in ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... soul; now that he had his secret shared, and some hope in front of him, he seemed like a new man, his feet went lightly on the earth, and his breath was good to him again. Yet was terror still at his elbow; and ever and again, as the wind blows out a taper, hope died in him, and he saw the flames toss and the red fire burn ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and stept to her closet, methought she let fall the wax taper in her return; and then [O metamorphosis still stranger than the former! what unaccountable things are dreams!] coming to bed again in the dark, the young lady, to her infinite astonishment, grief, and surprise, found mother H. turned into a young ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... "Where is she, She I love these many years?" He heard no echo calling faintly: "Lo, she lieth cold and pale, And her smile so calm and saintly Heeds not grieving sob or wail— Heeds not the lilies strewn upon her, Pure as she is, and as white, Or the solemn chanting voices, Or the taper's ghastly light." But silent still was the ancient forest, Silent were the gloomy trees, He only heard the wailing sound Of the summer breeze, That sadly played ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... there be (of London visitants) that find it. The still small voice is surely to be found there, if any where. A sounding board is merely there for ceremony. It is secure from earthquakes, not more from sanctity than size, for 'twould feel a mountain thrown upon it no more than a taper-worm would. Go and see, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... carefully. In Noel Vanstone's close, cramped handwriting, it filled two pages of letter-paper, and ended at the top of the third page. Instead of using an envelope, Mrs. Lecount folded it, neatly and securely, in the old-fashioned way. She lit the taper in the ink-stand, and returned the letter ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... ancient coins being jocularly supposed to prevent him from visiting that place, for fear, as it is said, of breaking his shins against it. To hold a candle to the Devil; to be civil to any one out of fear: in allusion to the story of the old woman, who set a wax taper before the image of St. Michael, and another before the Devil, whom that saint is commonly represented as trampling under his feet: being reproved for paying such honour to Satan, she answered, as it was uncertain which place she should go to, heaven or ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... already dismissed his attendants, and in a mood of deep dejection he was standing before a large mirror; a taper was burning dimly beside him. There was a gentle tap at his door. Undine used to tap thus when she wanted playfully to tease him "It is all fancy," said he to himself; "I must seek my ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... on that joyous day would have been complete had his mother been present, when in the presence of the old priest who had instructed Adrienne in her catechism, Sulpice stood forward and took by its velvet shield the taper that seemed so light to him, and awkwardly held the wafer that the priest extended to him. It was a great event in Grenoble when the leader of the Liberal Party, who headed the list at the last election, was seen being married like a believing bourgeois. The organ pealed forth ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... the lead with a lighted taper. Of course, when he was well inside the small flame gave a very pale glow; but those behind could see it. Then Lance followed with another light at about the middle of the Indian file, and Otto Sitz brought up ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... my face is thin, my mind is firmly fixed So to fire my golden buds that they shall excel all beside, But how know I, who'll put them in jewelled cup? Whose taper fingers will leisurely give them to the ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... about eight or ten feet above ground, and the under part of the floor, closed with bamboos, is used as a store: I descended. Anyone who could have seen me—a white man, a European, the child of another hemisphere—wander by night, with a taper in my hand, about the hut of a Tinguian Indian, would have been really surprised at my audacity, and I may almost say, my obstinacy, in seeking out danger while pursuing the wonderful and unknown. But I went on, without reflecting on the strangeness of my conduct: as the Indians say: "I was ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... the trackless heath, at midnight seen, No more the windows ranged in long array (Where the tall shaft and fretted arch between Thick ivy twines) the taper'd rites betray. ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... his big bed in the middle of the library. The blinds were drawn up to the tops of the long, narrow windows, that the last gleam of light might enter, but the room was full of shadows, save where a taper flickered on a small table which held ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... accomplished, and who had queened it so well at the Chateau d'Anzy, now condescending to household cares and sewing for the coming infant, moved the poor lawyer, who had just left the bench. And as he saw the pricks on one of the taper fingers he had so often kissed, he understood that Madame de la Baudraye was not merely playing at ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... there is a small wood called Losel's, of a few acres, that was lately furnished with a set of oaks of a peculiar growth and great value; they were tall and taper-like firs, but standing near together had very small heads, only a little brush without any large limbs. About twenty years ago the bridge at the Toy, near Hampton Court, being much decayed, some trees were wanted for the repairs that were fifty feet long without bough, and would ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... says, 'The young heifers of North Devon, with their taper legs, the exact symmetry of their form, and their clear coats of dark red, are pictures of elegance.' Their superiority for grazing and draught was proved by the high prices demanded for them, but they were not equally esteemed as dairy animals,[749] though of late years this ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... presence of Miss Dale illuminated him as the burning taper lights up consecrated plate. Deeply respecting her for her constancy, esteeming her for a model of taste, he was never in her society without that happy consciousness of shining which calls forth the treasures of the man; and these it is no exaggeration to term unbounded, when all ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "Out went the taper as she hurried in; Its little smoke in pallid moonshine died: She closed the door, she panted, all akin To spirits of the air and visions wide: No utter'd syllable, or woe betide! But to her heart, her heart was voluble, Paining with eloquence her balmy side; As though ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... eyes then in exhaustion, and fell into a doze, so that she appeared to be dead. And her master and mistress remained there a little while, by the faint light of a taper, watching with great compassion that admirable mother, who, for the sake of saving her family, had come to die six thousand miles from her country, to die after having toiled so hard, poor woman! and she was so honest, ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... playing a grand game of "round ball," for it was a half-holiday. The clear, silvery tones of the bell were heard, and we stopped to listen. Was it a fire? No, the ringing was not vehement enough. A meeting of the church? In a moment we should know. As the bell ceased, we looked up to the white taper spire to catch the next sound. One stroke. It was a death, then,—and of a man. We listened for the age tolled from the belfry. Fifty-five. Who had departed? The sexton crossed the green on his way to the shop to make the coffin, and informed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... battle when you came to pull my walls of strength down about my ears. Look! On my desk is a letter I was writing to you. No; you shall not read it! No one shall ever know what it contains." She darted to the desk, snatched up the sheets of paper and held them over the waxed taper. He stood in the middle of the room, a feeling of intense desolation settling down upon him. How could he ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... was but the light of a wax taper flickering over it; the strange, solemn beauty of that serene brow and ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... mid-July; she had chanced to meet Melusine there, and the two had embraced as sisters should. It is to be owned that her adoption by Charles Street had restored her credit with her family more certainly than any white sheet and taper which she could have supported would have done. Her mother was highly gratified, though she affected a shrug when good Mr. Percival, in the simplicity of his heart, overflowed with the joy of it. "Sancie in Berkeley Square—where Lord Rosebery lives: think of that, my dear!" And Mrs. Percival, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... a letter, blew out the candle which had enabled him to do so, and exchanging a look with Wordsworth, began to admire in silence the undulating thread of smoke which slowly arose from the expiring wick, when Crabbe put on the extinguisher. Anne laughed at the instance, and inquired if the taper was wax; and being answered in the negative, seemed to think that there was no call on Mr. Crabbe to sacrifice his sense of smell to their admiration of beautiful and evanescent forms. In two other men I should have said, 'Why, it is affectations,' with Sir Hugh Evans ['Merry Wives of ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the sea blew in, which bent back the flame of the taper in his hand, and then across the threshold stepped the youngest son. He was still a sailor and clad in sailor blue, and there was a cutlass in his belt. So shaken with joy was the merchant that for some time he could ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... letters, mamma, you know. They are not like your wax taper at all; they are little wax matches, that burn just long enough to seal one or two letters; Miss Allen showed me how she used them. Hers were in a nice little box just like the inkstand on the outside; ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... approached, and supposed to be an attendant on the other, was below the middle size, and her legs were so disproportionably short, that, when she moved, she must have waddled along; her elbows were drawn in to touch her long taper, waist, and the air of her whole body was an affectation of gentility. Death could not alter the rigid hang of her limbs, or efface the simper that had stretched her mouth; the lips were thin, as if nature intended she should mince her words; her nose was small, and sharp ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... farther door with quivering lips, or sighed when it opened, and emitted merely a councillor or a marquis. Several times a masked lady flitted through the crowd, with a bow here and the honour of her taper fingers there. The windows were open, the summer air entered; and the murmur of the throng without, mingling with the stir of talk within, seemed to add to the light and colour of ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... choristers were singing Miserere before the high altar when I went in. There was no congregation but a few old women on chairs and old men kneeling on the pavement. After a while a long train of young girls, walking two and two, each with a lighted taper in her hand, and all dressed in black with a white veil, came from behind the altar, and began to descend the nave; the four first carrying a Virgin and child upon a table. The priests and choristers arose from their knees and followed ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... guides of conduct, and virtue is indeed a superstition if life ends at the grave. This is the conclusion which the philosophy of negation must accept at last. Such is the felicity of those degrading precepts which make the epitaph the end. If the life of Burnes is as a taper that is burned out then we treasure his memory and his example in vain, and the latest prayer of his departing spirit has no more sanctity to us, who soon or late must follow him, than the whisper of winds that stir the leaves of ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... back look for look he seemed incapable of continuing. But she turned away, somewhat confused, and slowly he continued: "One time I discovered that in us all there is a secret temple, with a very small but highly prized altar lighted by a tiny taper flame, where we keep just our own little treasures—our wonderful selves." She glanced up in some surprise, but this time he was staring at the ground. "In some, its door is studiously, carefully locked; in others, its paths of approach are overgrown with weeds and almost ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... Isabel away. Her sobs were not to be borne. And very soon she felt Antonia's white face and silent companionship to be just as unendurable. She would be alone. Not even Rachela would she have near her. She put out all the lights but the taper above a large crucifix, and at its foot she sat down in tearless abandon, alone with ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... bright gem, The glance whereof to others had been more, Than to thy famish'd mind the wide world's store: So wretched is it to be merely rich! Witness thy youth's dear sweets here spent untasted, Like a fair taper, with his ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... hands were about 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
... or so thought the lad. He had no money to spend, and little but pain for his holiday-cheer. A patch here and there in his worn clothes was the best present his thrifty mother was able to make; always excepting the little variegated taper, which few were ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... hieroglyphics perhaps, or the papyrus that they wrapped round mummies. Personally, Beatrix is one of those blondes beside whom Eve the fair would seem a Negress. She is slender and straight and white as a church taper; her face is long and pointed; the skin is capricious, to-day like cambric, to-morrow darkened with little speckles beneath its surface, as if her blood had left a deposit of dust there during the night. Her forehead is magnificent, though rather daring. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... had been placed by her own hands in the upper part of the bag, so that the books should not weigh on them, and had been carefully protected by wrappings of cotton wool. Taking them out, one by one, Herbert found a delicate china candlestick (intended to hold a wax taper) broken into two pieces, in spite of the care that had been taken to preserve it. Of no great value in itself, old associations made the candlestick precious to Sydney. It had been broken at the stem and ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... the heartless young matron as she graciously extended the tips of her taper fingers and smiled her most enchanting smile which the young gallant more than graciously acknowledged as he sprang into the cab awaiting him at the ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... which the ecclesiastical changes wrought in the sixteenth century have left us. Prior to the Reformation there were sub-deacons who wore alb and maniple, acolytes, the tokens of whose office were a taper staff and small pitcher, ostiaries or doorkeepers corresponding to our verger or clerk, readers, exorcists, rectores chori, etc. This full staff would, of course, be not available for every country church, and for such parishes a clerk and a ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... 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 ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... twinkling taper's gleam, Her bed she seeks, of me to dream, But ere she sleeps she kneels to pray For one ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... her desk, and lighting a taper, tied and sealed the packet; then she opened the wardrobe, drew out a despatch-box, and deposited the letters within it. As she did so, it struck her with a flash of irony that she was indebted to Gus Trenor for the means of ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... —that you may look in vain for verification of ethnological assertions.... No: the heel does not protrude;—the foot is not flat, but finely arched;—the extremities are not large;—all the limbs taper, all the muscles are developed; and prognathism has become so rare that months of research may not yield a single striking case of it.... No: this is a special race, peculiar to the island as are the shapes of its peaks,—a mountain race; and mountain races are comely.... ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... the trees, Where first our marriage-vows were given, With merry peals shall swell the breeze And point with taper spire to Heaven. ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... wonderful full moon shone down upon them with a marvellous lustre, and there was a pleasant air, soft and warm, from the forest, and, what with the scores of bright waxen tapers that stood in silver candlesticks upon the table (each taper sparkling as bright as any star), the night was made all illuminate like to some singular mid-day. There was set before them a plenty of divers savory meats and of several excellent wines, some as yellow as gold, and some as red as carbuncle, and they ate and they drank and ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... spar on which you have been perched whilst gazing so dreamily over the ship's quarter, give the last half of your grog to the old lad at the wheel, peep in on the compass, find she heads about west-north-west, and, well satisfied, descend the stair. The steward lights the waxen taper which fixes on a branch before your glass; when, having performed such ceremonies as you delight in, thank God and sleep: and thus ends the ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... soft, alluring. The tower is pale, almost ethereal, at the end of the vista. Its great clock, pricked out with golden lamps, seems scarce a third of the way up its side. The white walls rise on, and on, with here and there a spot of gold, and taper into nothing. They are lost in the gloom of coming night. But still they must go on, for far aloft you see the lantern glowing like a star, hung between earth and heaven. In this twilight hour of blue and gold the tower is the mighty guardian spirit of the scene, sending down sonorous word of the ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... by the Hindoos and freely used at their religious ceremonies. Its leaves are very long and taper to a needle-like point. ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... dissipated such a sum of money, for the treasury of the Beat-al-mal, or charity fund, is intended to afford mouthfuls to the poor, and not bellyfuls to the imps of the devil.—That fool who can illuminate the day with a camphorated taper must soon feel a want of oil ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... Anastasia was just as beautiful. In the middle of the floor stood a coffin filled with roses. "The Lord Christ is pictured there in the form of a beautiful rose," said my mother; and the priest announced, "Christ is risen!" All the people kissed each other: each one had a burning taper in his hand, and I received one myself, and so did little Anastasia. The bagpipes sounded, men danced hand in hand from the church, and outside the women were roasting the Easter lamb. We were invited to partake, and I sat by the fire; a boy, ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... a man of simple mind, Gamaliel Nibbs by name, Whose early faith in human kind Burned like a Vestal flame; No wind of doubt that stirs the dust Fluttered that bright and constant taper; But oh, he had his dearest trust Pinned ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... and 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 fashion I noted how terrible ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... presently a candle is fixed by an attendant sprite,—the slave of the tallow candle,—and the wand, so to speak, tapers off towards the handle. A propos of "tapers off"—the question occurs to me, later on, as we pass through labyrinths of dark passages, where should I be in the case of "taper off"? Beautiful title for sensational story—"Lost in ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... of which Tito spoke were a part of the procession esteemed very glorious by the Florentine populace; and being perhaps chiefly a kind of hyperbole for the all-efficacious wax taper, were also called ceri. But inasmuch as hyperbole is impracticable in a real and literal fashion, these gigantic ceri, some of them so large as to be of necessity carried on wheels, were not solid but hollow, and had their surface made not solely of wax, but of wood and pasteboard, gilded, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... might be in one; but because the stem and stern ought to be strong, this whole line is made of two small trees lashed together with the thick ends outwards, as in fig. 1, where AB is a lithe clean little willow-tree, and ab another similar one. They are lashed together at their taper ends. ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... on this festival. Mass was performing in several of the splendid chapels, whose rich decorations of paintings and sculpture are but once a year revealed to the light, save from the obscure glimmering of the wax-taper, which is carried by the guide, to occasional visitors. It is astonishing what a vast amount of expense is here ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... high, and all are very graceful, this species being considered the most beautiful of the numerous birch family. The leaves, which are just coming out, are two or three inches long and about half as wide; they taper to a point and have serrate, or sawlike, edges. The wood is firm and durable, and is much used for cattle-yokes as well as for bedsteads and chairs. The large trees yield a great quantity of sweetish sap, ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... life at every pore—a thousand merry figures come to meet you: maidens clad in the gay costumes of the elder time, all fluttering with ribbons, rosy cheeks and lips!—maidens who smile, and with their taper fingers point at those who follow them; gay shepherds, gallant in silk stockings and embroidered doublets, carrying their crooks wreathed round with flowers; while over all, the sun laughs gladly, and the breezes bear away the merry voices, sprinkling on the air ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... one spark Of pity in that steel-grey glance which gleamed 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 ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... shape of Feliu, making for the beach—a broad and bearded silhouette, bending against the wind. Still the waxen Virgin smiled her Mexican smile,—but now she was only seven inches high; and her bead-glass eyes seemed to twinkle with kindliness while the flame of the last expiring taper struggled for life in the earthen socket ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... upon the tippet. His beard and moustache were the pink of venerable sweetness. Age, probably in consequence of inordinate precautions, had left no mark upon his hands; and the Maletroit hand was famous. It would be difficult to imagine anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in design; the taper, sensual fingers were like those of one of Leonardo's women; the fork of the thumb made a dimpled protuberance when closed; the nails were perfectly shaped, and of a dead, surprising whiteness. It rendered ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is brimful, how the taper flame shines, Which, when moisture is wanting, decays; Replenish the lamp of my life with rich wines, Or else there's an end of my blaze, ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley |
