"Rushlight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spots it is a common thing for the wake wail to be sung over the boddy each night it be in the house as also for a rushlight to be kept alight from sunset to sunrise and for the death watchers for to tend the dead throw the night owther in the same room or in one so held that those watching could see the corpse, and they due at this day deggle the quilt and floor with ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... a glimmer of something in the eyes that redeemed their vagueness. A rushlight seen shining through a night of mist upon a desolate mountain-side might have meant as little or as much to eyes that saw it. Saxham saw it, and it meant much to him. His great chest lifted on a wave of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... head form to itself of Friedrich as King or Man? A trifling Adventure of that poor individual, called Linsenbarth CANDIDATUS THEOLOGIAE, one of the poorest of mortals, but true and credible in every particular, comes gliding by chance athwart all that; and like the glimmer of a poor rushlight, or kindled straw, shows it us for moments, a thing visible, palpable, as it worked and lived. In the great dearth, Linsenbarth, if I can faithfully interpret him for the modern reader, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... bed as the darkness began. Everybody did so. Old Numa Pompilius himself, was obliged to trundle off in the dusk. Tarquinius might be a very superb fellow; but we doubt whether he ever saw a farthing rushlight. And, though it may be thought that plots and conspiracies would flourish in such a city of darkness, it is to be considered, that the conspirators themselves had no more candles than honest men: both parties were ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the prophets of old, or in moments of ecstatic communion with the Divine Intelligence. To the mystic all that concerns our deeper needs transcends logic and defies analysis. In his estimate the human reason is a feeble rushlight which can at best cast a flickering and uncertain ray on the grosser concerns of life, but which only serves to intensify the darkness which surrounds ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... said Mrs Tremayne to herself. "She has mistaken a rushlight for the sun, and she thinks her horizon wider than that of any one else. She is despising Lysken, at this moment, as a shallow, prosaic character, who cannot enter into the depth of her feelings, and has not attained the height of her experience. ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... fraud, whose every utterance is a lie—do you know that these crawling skulks (and there are millions of them in the world), do you know they are all as much superior to you as the sun is superior to rushlight you honorable, brave-hearted, unselfish brute? They are MEN, you know, and MEN are the greatest, and noblest, and wisest, and best beings in the whole vast eternal universe. Any man will tell ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... policy to prove my sincerity. I valued my life, and I had but to look at the men to reckon that it would not be worth a rushlight if they suspected I was not doing my best to find them a safe asylum among the islands in the Pacific. Accordingly, I fetched one of the charts, placed it upon the skylight, where those who gathered about me could ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... flavoured, certainly, but sound and wholesome, as we discovered on trial, and more acceptable to our palates than beer. To work, therefore, the dame and her maidens went, and in half an hour we saw before us, on a nice clean cloth, and by the flame of a farthing rushlight, half a dozen eggs, sundry lumps of pork, some rye-bread and butter, and a flask of white wine. They did not continue long in the order of their integrity. The eggs disappeared in a twinkling. Several fierce inroads were made into the bread and butter, ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... Kennyetto sounded nearer. Woods gave place to stump-fields in which the young corn sprouted, silvered by the stars. Across a stony pasture we saw a rushlight burning in a doorway; and, swinging our horses out across a strip of burned stubble, we came presently to Stoner's house and heard the noise of the stream rushing ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... Sleeps in the lily-bell, and all The violet hills are lost in gloom. O risen moon! O holy moon! Stand on the top of Helice, And if my own true love you see, Ah! if you see the purple shoon, The hazel crook, the lad's brown hair, The goat-skin wrapped about his arm, Tell him that I am waiting where The rushlight glimmers ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... followed it. A hand which I could see but not feel was laid on mine. All was darkness in the room, and before me, but the hand guided me two paces forward, then by a sudden pressure bade me stand. I heard the sound of a curtain being drawn behind me, and the next moment the cover of a rushlight was removed, and a feeble but sufficient ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... was growing very muzzy and sleepy, and nodding over his liquor, with half-extinguished eye, suddenly gleamed up like an expiring rushlight. ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... on how much they have given up for God, I begin to wonder whether those self-denying ones have realized the joy and satisfaction which God wants to give to the fully consecrated heart. If they have, it is strange for them to talk of rushlight sacrifices whilst they are bathed in the sunlight ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... dauntless in the teeth of the gale as in the face of death. There was the yearning to know More, to seek it, to follow it over earth's ends, though the quest led to the abyss of a watery grave. What did they want, these fool fellows, following the rushlight of their own desires? That is just it. They didn't know what they sought, but they knew there was something just beyond to be sought, something new to be known; and because Man is Man, they set ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... Moon, consisting of Essays and Critiques." London, 1804. Of no value. After shining feebly like a rushlight for about two months, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... really rather a pretty picture which he saw. To begin with the tent had been lit up with the little rushlight lamps they call in India chiraghs—tiny saucers which can be made of mud in which a cotton wick floats in a few drops of oil—and a row of these outlined the mule trunk throne. Then Meroo's misshapen limbs had been hidden under a chain corselet and helmet, ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... good appetite, while he was going to be punished for his misconduct. At once were all their little hands put out to prevent Mr. Random's resolution of taking him away, but all their petitions were in vain. Richard was forced into an empty cellar, and left with no other companion than a glimmering rushlight. Here he was told he might do as much mischief as he pleased. The iron bars kept him from getting out on one side, and the door was padlocked on the other. In this dilemma he marched round and round, crying, with his little ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... bully succeeded in throwing him off his life would not be worth a rushlight, for Shan was a rough fighter and would not hesitate to kick him brutally, if he did not shoot him to death before the boys could come ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... cup of chocolate, which a servant was handing to the Reverend Doctor Gaster, into the nape of the neck of Sir Patrick O'Prism. Sir Patrick, rising impetuously, to clap an extinguisher, as he expressed himself, on the farthing rushlight of the rascal's life, pushed over the chair of Marmaduke Milestone, Esquire, who, catching for support at the first thing that came in his way, which happened unluckily to be the corner of the table-cloth, drew it instantaneously with him to the floor, involving plates, cups and saucers, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... she lives for ever. Such promised to be the case with William the Testy, who grew tough in proportion as he dried. He had withered, in fact, not through the process of years, but through the tropical fervor of his soul, which burnt like a vehement rushlight in his bosom, inciting him to incessant broils and bickerings. Ancient traditions speak much of his learning, and of the gallant inroads he had made into the dead languages, in which he had made captive a host of Greek ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... in his top-floor back, spinning by rushlight his web of beauty, was greater than the finest critical intelligence that ever lived. The one, for all his poor technique, was stammering over something God had whispered to him, the other merely destroying thoughts invented ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... eye. He grasps by the top an immense fool's cap, Which he calls a philosophaster-trap: And rightly enough, for while these little men Croak loud as a concert of frogs in a fen, He first singles out one, and then another, Down goes the cap—lo! a moment's pother, A spirit like that which a rushlight utters As just at the last it kicks and gutters: When the cruel smotherer is raised again Only snuff, and but ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... neighbour hood of L—- Road (I will not go so far as to say that the minister of Christ Church did it designedly, if he did, and with the idea of stopping the work of education among the Gipsy children—it is certain that this farthing rushlight has mistaken his calling) to such an extent that a friend wrote to me, stating that the next time I went to the neighbourhood of N—- Hill I "must look out for a warm reception," to which I replied, that "the sooner I had it the ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... at a table where burned a rushlight that glowed among the splendour of her hair, for her head was bowed above ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... me!" but Parsons himself says: "Ah! to see 'Corbaccio' acted to perfection, you should have seen Shuter. The public are pleased to think that I act that part well, but his acting was as far superior to mine as Mount Vesuvius is to a rushlight." ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... appeared from the direction of the wind. Her hair was disheveled. She wore a dark cloak over her parti-coloured night kimono. By the dim light of the andon (a rushlight in a square paper box), Asako could see that the cloak ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... your glass, my trusty friend, And fill it sparkling to the brim— A flowing bumper, bright and strong— And push the bottle back again; For what is man without his drink? An oyster prison'd in his shell; A rushlight in the vaults of death; A ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... to the wood-splinter, and a forerunner of the candle, was the rushlight. In burning wood man noticed that a resinous or fatty material increased the inflammability and added greatly to the amount of light emitted. It was a logical step to try to reproduce this condition by artificial means. As a consequence rushes were cut and soaked in water. They were ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... a it is her day-gown, and dark; the back of the chair in b is treated more ornamentally; in a a plain frilled nightcap is hung on the chair, changed in b to a more grotesque and "Gamp-like" headgear. Nothing can be better in a than the effect of light from the rushlight on the floor. This is helped by the lady's figure, which is darkened in a, and thrown out by the white curtains behind. Mr. Pickwick's face in a is not good, and much improved in b. It will be noted that ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... further than the middle of the nave, where there was hardly a soul, and took a chair beside a solitary rushlight which looked amid the vague gloom of the inaccessible architecture like a lighthouse at ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... with a prepared teat; and a small pap saucepan, for use by day. Of the lamp we need hardly speak, most mothers being acquainted with its operation: but to those to whom it is unknown we may observe, that the flame from the floating rushlight heats the water in the reservoir above, in which the covered pan that contains the food floats, keeping it at such a heat that, when thinned by milk, it will be of a temperature suitable for immediate use. ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... make the door fast now, Poyser; Alick's been come in this long while," said Mrs. Poyser, rising with an appearance of relief from her low chair. "Get me the matches down, Hetty, for I must have the rushlight burning i' my ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... barbarous collocation, till there steal forth that horrible Papce! which means more on your lips than I am sure it ever did when Latin was a live language, and Papce a natural and unpedantic ejaculation!—no, I would sooner blunder through the dark by myself a thousand times than light my rushlight at the lamp of that ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with great deference the commands of Daniel Don, the butler. This boy was called John Dickson. The Pit was his domicile, as well as his work-room, and he made it also a 'study;' for having earned a rushlight by running messages, or doing extra work for his neighbours, he might be found at night, as long as the light would last, poring over a book. In this way he had, unknown to others, while still a mere boy, read through that vast quarry of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... locked, and, in a moment, he stood in the living-room which he had left little more than an hour before. It was untenanted, but not in darkness; a rushlight, set in an earthen vessel on the hearth, flung long shadows on the walls and ceiling, and gave to the room, so homely in its every-day aspect, a sinister look. The door of Gentilis' room was shut; probably he was asleep. That at the foot of the ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... whether morning or night is most conducive to the strongest and clearest moral impressions. The Grecian sage confessed that his labours smelt of the lamp. In like manner did Mrs. Caudle's wisdom smell of the rushlight. She knew that her husband was too much distracted by his business as toyman and doll- merchant to digest her lessons in the broad day. Besides, she could never make sure of him: he was always liable to be summoned to the shop. Now from eleven at night until seven ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... reputation? Mrs. Lennox's name is just as clean wiped out of the list of worthies as if she had never been born; and Miss Reid, though she was once actual flesh and blood, "rival in miniature and at large" of the celebrated Rosalba, she is as if she had never been at all; her little farthing rushlight of a soul and reputation having burnt out, and left neither wick nor tallow. Death, too, has overtaken copious Guthrie and circumstantial Ralph. Only a few know whereabouts is the grave where lies laborious Carte; and yet, O wondrous power of genius! Fielding's men and women are alive, though ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gospelside (of a church), nightside, countryside, wayside, brookside, and I know not how many more? Is the first half of these words a possessive? Or is it not rather a noun impressed into the service as an adjective? How do such words differ from hilltop, townend, candlelight, rushlight, cityman, and the like, where no double s can be made the scapegoat? Certainly Milton would not have avoided them for their ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... we are not afraid to own that we rather enjoy her ignis fatuus course, dragging the weak and the vain and the selffish [Transcriber's note: sic], through mud and mire, after her, and acting all parts, from the modest rushlight to the gracious star, just as it suits her. Clever little imp that she is! What exquisite tact she shows!—what unflagging good humour!—what ready self-possession! Becky never disappoints us; she ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... nebulosity; cloud &c 353; eclipse. aurora, dusk, twilight, shades of evening, crepuscule, cockshut time^; break of day, daybreak, dawn. moonlight, moonbeam, moonglade^, moonshine; starlight, owl's light, candlelight, rushlight, firelight; farthing candle. V. be dim, grow dim &c adj.; flicker, twinkle, glimmer; loom, lower; fade; pale, pale its ineffectual fire [Hamlet]. render dim &c adj.; dim, bedim^, obscure; darken, tone down. Adj. dim, dull, lackluster, dingy, darkish, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... eyes has kept the tear: All in a wintry night from far he came To soothe the sorrows of a suffering dame, Whose husband robbed him, and to whom he meant A lingering, but reforming punishment: Home then he walked, and found his anger rise When fire and rushlight met his troubled eyes; But these extinguished, and his prayer addressed To Heaven in hope, he calmly ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... hard, and the agent's harder than the times: there's two of them, the under and the upper; and they grind the substance of one between them, and then blow one away like chaff; but we'll not be talking of that, to spoil your honour's night's rest. The room's ready, and here's the rushlight." ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... did not tell us such horrid stories," said she, as she laid the rushlight on the table; "I'll be dhramin' all ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... except for that he would have a headache all day long; it must be said, also, that from his gains he bought sheep's hearts for Gargousse, the big ape eating raw meat like a very cannibal. But I see that the honorable assembly asks for Gringalet (Walking Rushlight); here he ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... but never mind that. All are not great stars in the church; you may be only a little rushlight see ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... light which beats upon the throne is as a rushlight in comparison with the electric glare which our newspapers now focus upon the public man in Lee's position. His character has been subjected to that ordeal, and who can point to a spot upon it? His clear, sound judgment, personal courage, untiring activity, genius for war, absolute devotion ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... he kindled a rushlight. The peat fire had long gone out and left only a heap of white ashes. The gruel by the bed had been spilled and was lying on the floor. Only the jug of water was ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... reluctantly. He would have liked to push on if only to lull thought by the monotony of their march. Moreover during these last two hours, some faint rushlight of hope had been kindled in his mind which made all delay irksome. He himself would not believe that his friend John Lattery, with all his skill, his experience, had slipped from his ice-steps like any tyro; Michel, ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... conduct, looked at from without, appears that of a hideous royal ogre, or blind anthropophagous Polyphemus fallen mad. Looked at from within, where the Polyphemus has his reasons, and a kind of inner rushlight to enlighten his path; and is not bent on man-eating, but on discipline in spite of difficulties,—it is a wild enough piece of humanity, not so much ludicrous as tragical. Never was a royal bear so led about before ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... wind blew up, sawing and fretting through the oaks in a way I remembered. The wildfire roared up, one last time in one sheet, and snuffed out like a rushlight, and a bucketful of stinging hail fell. We heard the Boy walking in the Long Slip—where I first ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... supernatural; and as two suns cannot shine together in the same sphere with equal splendour, so I affirm, and will prove with my body, that your mistress, in comparison with mine, is as a glow-worm to the meridian sun, a rushlight to the full moon, or a stale mackerel's eye to a pearl of orient." "Harkee, brother, you might give good words, however. An we once fall a-jawing, d'ye see, I can heave out as much bilgewater as another; and since you besmear my sweetheart, Besselia, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... enough to make her head reel had she been ascending them for the first time. 'Nine o'clock!—nine o'clock! How uneasy she must be!' and as she spoke, she opened with her latch-key the door of a wretched garret, in which dimly burned a rushlight, whose flickering flame scarcely seemed to render visible the scanty ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... and movement was added to the crowd. The sellers of moccoletti entered on the scene. The moccoli, or moccoletti, are candles which vary in size from the pascal taper to the rushlight, and which give to each actor in the great final scene of the Carnival two very serious problems to grapple with,—first, how to keep his own moccoletto alight; and secondly, how to extinguish the moccoletti of others. The moccoletto is like life: man has found ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... lace-room, and gained her bread and the chickens' corn each day by winding the thread round the bobbins; and at nightfall when she had plodded home through the darksome roads and over the sodden turf, and had lit her rushlight and sat down to her books, with her hand buried in her hair, and her eyes smarting from the strain of the lace-work and her heart aching with that new and deadly pain which never left her now, she would read—read—read—read, and try and store her brain with knowledge, ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... still it was not damp. On one side it had a bed of heather stalks, on the other there was something dark which felt like cold meat. The man came grunting in behind me, clinking his leg-irons. After groping about in a corner of the room he lighted a stinking rushlight by means ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... quiet house with the Chubb key;—think of them, the hypocrites, taking off their insidious boots before they slink upstairs, the children sleeping overhead, the wife of their bosom alone with the waning rushlight in the two-pair front—that chamber so soon to be rendered hateful by the smell of their stale cigars: I am not an advocate of violence; I am not, by nature, of an incendiary turn of mind: but if, my dear ladies, you are for assassinating ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... enveloped in roquelaures, has to descend from his bedroom; finds the street covered with 'four or five thousand citizens in their shirts.' (Dumouriez, Memoires, ii. 109.) Here and there a faint farthing rushlight, hastily kindled; and so many swart-featured haggard faces, with nightcaps pushed back; and the more or less flowing drapery of night-shirt: open-mouthed till the General say his word! And overhead, as always, the Great Bear is turning so quiet round Bootes; steady, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... brushing what ladies call their "back hair." However the unconscious middle-aged lady came into that room, it was quite clear that she contemplated remaining there for the night; for she had brought a rushlight and shade with her, which with praiseworthy precaution against fire, she had stationed in a basin on the floor, where it was glimmering away, like a gigantic lighthouse, in a particularly small piece ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... the giant bulk of Orizaba, but far more beautiful to me. Beneath them lay the village of Beechcot, with its farmsteads and cottages casting black shadows upon the moonlit meadow, and here and there a rushlight burning dimly in the windows. I had kept that scene in my mind's eye many a time during my recent tribulations, and had wondered if ever I should see it again. Now that I did see it, it was far more beautiful than ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... bade him walk in, and turning the door-handle he saw the top-hatted figure sprawled in solitary gloom along a caneless chair, reading a newspaper by the twinkle of a rushlight. Nehemiah sprang up with a bark of joy, making his gigantic shadow bow to the visitor. From chimney-pot to coat-tail he stretched unchanged, and the same celestial rapture illumined his ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... lights; and his wife was clothed in a golden garment, and sat upon a very high throne, and had three golden crowns on, all in the greatest priestly pomp; and on both sides of her there stood two rows of lights of all sizes—from the size of the longest tower to the smallest rushlight, and all the emperors and kings were kneeling before her ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... three crowns on her head, while around stood all the pomp and power of the Church. On each side were two rows of burning lights of all sizes; the greatest as large as a tower, and the smallest no larger than a rushlight. ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... stars, one of the most brilliant is Sirius, or the Dog-star, which it is calculated gives just one-twenty-millionth part of the light of the sun, or about as much as that of a farthing rushlight. It would seem that such a shabby degree of brilliancy was hardly worth having; but when it is remembered that it takes three years to come, it really seems hardly worth while to travel so far to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... the merest chance that I found it out, sir," Mrs. Tynn said to him. "I happened to wake up, and I thought how quiet my mistress was lying; mostly she might be heard ever so far off when she was asleep. I got up, sir, and took the rushlight out of the shade, and looked at her. And then I saw what had happened, and went and called ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... recollection of the sea, dates at the ghostly time of midnight. The wind had been increasing and increasing, since sunset, till it contemptuously blew out our fire in the cabin, as if the stove with its artful revolving chimney had been nothing but a farthing rushlight. When I climbed on deck, we were already in ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... a number of rushlight holders taken from districts widely apart, it becomes evident that there was a striking similarity between the earlier types. The smiths everywhere seem to have fashioned a simple contrivance by which the rushlight or early candle could be held upright, and then, to give the "stick" solidity, the ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... slight click, but concluded at once that it was nothing but a further fall of the latch, and was glad it was no louder. The same moment she saw, by the dim rushlight, the signs of struggle which the room presented, and discovered that Richard was gone. Her first emotion was an undefined agony: they had murdered him, or carried him off to a dungeon! There were the bedclothes ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... tongue proposed the health of Richard and Lucy Feverel, of Raynham Abbey! and that mankind should not require an expeditious example of the way to accept the inspiring toast, he drained his bumper at a gulp. It finished him. The farthing rushlight of his reason leapt and expired. He tumbled to the sofa ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was passing near Smithfield, I was surprised at observing the sign of 'The Cow and Snuffers;' and whilst I was endeavouring to throw some light upon this subject, and puzzling myself in endeavouring to discover how it was possible for a Cow to snuff a Candle, or even a farthing rushlight; nay, even how it could happen that so strange an association should take place, I was diverted from my study on turning round, to find that some artist had exercised his ingenuity in painting a Goat in Jack Boots. At first ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... all her stalks; but she was still proud, and tried to think that all this was said only out of envy. What should an old death's-head moth know, whose eyes were so weak that a farthing rushlight blinded them? ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... that Seaton's watchtower was not many yards from it; then, as the tool-house was only lighted from above, he bored a hole in the wooden structure, and through this he watched, and slept, and watched. He used to sit studying theology by a farthing rushlight till the lady's bedtime, and then he watched for her shadow. If it appeared for a few moments on the blind, he gave a sigh of content and went to sleep, but awaked every now and then to see that all ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... De Vlierbeck might have been seen seated in the principal saloon of Grinselhof, near a little lamp, with his elbows on the table. The apartment was dark and dreary, for the feeble rushlight illuminated but a single spot and cast the distant and lofty ceiling into vague obscurity. The flickering flame threw long and sombre shadows over the wall, while a line of old portraits in the panels seemed to fix their stern and immovable eyes on the table. Amid ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... to bed," said little Peter, rubbing his drowsy eyes. So his mother took him into the bedroom and lighted the rushlight. Then she undressed him and put him to bed. And Peter had hardly touched the pillow ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... pleased wonder at the sight. "Ye daft auld wife!" she said, answering a thought that was not; and she blushed with the innocent consciousness of a child. Hastily she did up the massive and shining coils, hastily donned a wrapper, and with the rushlight in her hand, stole into the hall. Below stairs she heard the clock ticking the deliberate seconds, and Frank jingling with the decanters in the dining-room. Aversion rose in her, bitter and momentary. "Nesty tippling puggy!" she thought; and the next ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson |
