"Taper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that he locked his shop and went home, and in the night there came to the bazar an artful thief disguised in the habit of the merchant, and pulling out keys from his sleeve, said to the watchman of the market, "Light me this wax-candle." The watchman took the taper and went to light it,—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... pleasure dies; Where yet they all the town-alert can see, And distant plough-boys pacing o'er the lea. These and the tasks successive masters brought - The French they conn'd, the curious works they wrought; The hours they made their taper fingers strike Note after note, all dull to them alike; Their drawings, dancings on appointed days, Playing with globes, and getting parts of plays: The tender friendships made 'twixt heart and heart, When the dear friends had nothing to impart: ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... Jack and the breakfast, and not wait for any one. In another minute, a bouncing and scratching was heard on the stairs, and a white bulldog rushed in, a gem in his way; for his brow was broad and massive, his skin was as fine as a lady's, and his tail taper and nearly as thin as a clay pipe. His general look, and a way he had of going 'snuzzling' about the calves of strangers, were not pleasant for nervous people. Tom, however, was used to dogs, and soon became ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... closed her 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 ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... 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 ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... extraordinary brilliancy of his complexion, which shamed with its whiteness that of all fair ladies round, save where open on each cheek a bright red spot gave warning, as did the long thin neck and the taper hands, of sad possibilities, perhaps not far off; possibilities which all saw with an inward sigh, except she whose doting glances, as well as her resemblance to the fair youth, proclaimed her at once his ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... a cigarette by touch, and opening his match-box, Sam struck a little wax taper, began to light his cigarette, and naturally held the flame so near his face that, as he knelt there, it was well illumined for the benefit of the prowler, who crouched close and stared hard, expecting moment ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... coming to this remote country mansion at one o'clock at night? While Herman Brudenell paused in expectancy, taper in hand, Jovial once more opened the ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... their departure was one of the most glowing that the climax of a long series of summer heats could evolve. The wide expanse of landscape quivered up and down like the flame of a taper, as they steamed along through the midst of it. Placid flocks of sheep reclining under trees a little way off appeared of a pale blue colour. Clover fields were livid with the brightness of the sun upon their deep red flowers. All waggons and ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East. Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning's flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself,—and not a taper lighted at the hearth-stone of the race, which pales before the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... 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 rooms glitter ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... up the Mersey, I reconnoitred the shores with a telescope. My eye dwelt with delight on neat cottages, with their trim shrubberies and green grass-plots. I saw the mouldering ruin of an abbey overrun with ivy, and the taper spire of a village church rising from the brow of a neighboring hill;—all were ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... has been nor will be in any danger of ruin, the germ, viz., the Judaic idea of God, the great radiation through which the Deity kept open His communication with man, apparently must more than once have approached an awful struggle for life. This solitary taper of truth, struggling across a howling wilderness of darkness, had it been ever totally extinguished, could probably never have been reillumined. It may seem an easy thing for a mere human philosophy to recover, and steadily ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... demure look of a young woman who might shriek at the sight of a man in his shirt-sleeves. Which shows that it is exceedingly unsafe to judge by appearances,—of a woman, especially. The slender figure showed that the physical indications in the delicately rounded arm, the taper fingers, and shapely feet were justified by the proportionate development of the rest of her anatomy. Nature had been gentle rather than generous. Mlle. Fouchette was in demand for ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... the pot instead of horizontally. The inner ends are secured in position by one or two cords extending to the center frame. The funnels are about 11 or 12 inches deep, and therefore extend about halfway to the center of the pot. They taper rapidly and form a strongly inclined plane, up which the lobsters must climb in their search for the bait. A two-strand manila twine is most commonly used for the funnels. Cotton is also used, but is ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb
... that letter found on me, your Highness would thereafter be too surely guarded to make escape possible, and his Highness Prince Sobieski would himself incur the Emperor's hostility. So when I had made sure that those five men were joined against me, I twisted that letter into a taper and before their faces lit my pipe ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... Where flames refined in breasts seraphic glow; Thou, Abelard! the last sad office pay, And smooth my passage to the realms of day; See my lips tremble and my eye-balls roll, Suck my last breath and catch my flying soul! Ah no—in sacred vestments may'st thou stand, The hallowed taper trembling in thy hand, Present the Cross before my lifted eye, Teach me at once and learn of ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... his enmity? Typee or Happar? I asked within myself. I started, for at the same moment this identical question was asked by the strange being before me. I turned to Toby, the flickering light of a native taper showed me his countenance pale with trepidation at this fatal question. I paused for a second, and I know not by what impulse it was that I answered 'Typee'. The piece of dusky statuary nodded in approval, and then murmured 'Motarkee!' ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... magnificently, in the splendor of her great refusal; then she turned to the writing-table at which she had been seated when I came in. Her sealing-taper was still alight, and she held her brother's ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... ottoman where Edith sat there came a low, choking sound, but it died away in her throat, and with her hands locked so firmly together that the taper nails made indentation in the tender flesh, she listened, while ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... of Sir 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 ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... vast teocallis to Tonatiuh, over whose apex the struggling rays fell red and presageful. Dulled by the stained glass windows, the light that filled the semi-circular chapel at "The Lilacs", was chill and sombre, until the fair sacristan held a taper over the tall wax candles on each side of the altar, whence a mellow radiance soon streamed over all; flashing along the golden letters under the cross, and upon the gilded pipes of the little organ. On the marble steps in front of the altar were two baskets filled with white camellias, and great ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... but the hair was much lighter, loose, soft, and wavy; the natural fairness of the complexion was shown by the whiteness of the upper part of the forehead, though the rest of the face, as well as the small taper hands, were tanned by sunshine and sea-breezes, into a fresh, hardy brown, glowing with ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Scandza, which we left above. Claudius Ptolemaeus, an excellent describer of the world, has made mention of it in the second book of his work, saying: "There is a great island situated in the surge of the northern Ocean, Scandza by name, in the shape of a juniper leaf with bulging sides that taper down to a point at a long end." Pomponius Mela also makes mention of it as situated in the Codan Gulf of the sea, with ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... in a wizard's car Through yon blue ether, I were able To fashion of a little star A taper for my Helen's table;— "What then?" she asks me with a laugh— Why, then, with all heaven's luster glowing, It would not gild her path with half The light her ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... mountain, While the vale is full of night, And a wanderer, looking for the east, Rejoicing in the sight. A taper burning dimly Amid the dawning grey, And a maiden lifting up her head, And lo, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... taper waist becomes an object of ambition, and the stays are laced more closely than ever. This is still done gradually, and, at first, imperceptibly to the parties. The effect, however, though slow, is sure; and the powers of endurance thus exercised come in time to bear, ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... guard-house to taste the soldier's soup; the guard-house is notified and the soup seasoned for the royal palate. Have you seen those pictures in religious books, where a little communicant, with his bow on his arm and his taper in his hand, all combed and curled, goes to assist a poor old man lying on his wretched pallet with the whites of his eyes turned up to the sky? These charitable visits had the same conventional stage-setting and ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... cries, Making within my soul all void, and cold, And comfortless. Ay, empty, as this grate, Of life, wherefrom the fire has well nigh fled, Leaving but chasmed ugliness and ruin: And weak as faltering of these taper flames Half sunken in their sockets, by whose gleam I see, though faintly, where my books stand ranged Most mute; though sometime eloquent to me; And where my pictures hang with other forms Instinct from what I know: where friends portrayed Like ghosts loom on me from another world. ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... open a bottle of catchup (No. 439), essence of anchovy (No. 433), &c., throw away the old cork, and stop it closely with a new cork that will fit it very tight. Use only the best superfine velvet taper-corks. ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... belonged sat down upon a divan and bade Al-Rashid sit over against him and signed to Ja'afar and Masrur to take their places in due degree,[FN115] whilst the negroes and the eunuchs stood expecting their commands for suit and service. Presently was brought to them a huge waxen taper which lighted up the whole of the hall and the young house-master accosted the King and said to him, "Well come and welcome and fair welcome to our guests who to us are the most esteemed of folk and may Allah honour their places!" Hereupon he began ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... Jean-Victor, that is all, for I am a foundling, and my only happy remembrance is of my earliest childhood, at the Asylum. The sheets were white on our little beds in the dormitory; we played in a garden under large trees, and a kind Sister took care of us, quite young and as pale as a wax-taper—she died afterwards of lung trouble—I was her favorite, and would rather walk by her than play with the other children, because she used to draw me to her side and lay her warm thin hand on my forehead. But when I was twelve years old, after my first communion, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... strong emotions to the spot, though it be a wilderness, where the ashes of those we have loved repose. Where the heart has laid down what it loved most, there it is desirous of laying itself down. No sculptured marble, no enduring monument, no honorable inscription, no ever-burning taper that would drive away the darkness of the tomb, can soften our sense of the reality of death, and hallow to our feelings the ground which is to cover us, like the consciousness that we shall sleep, dust to dust, with the ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... others sat, and blotting out the prospect of half the church with her flaring brim and flaunting feathers. The worshippers came and went, and while the monk preached and reposed a man crept dizzyingly round the cornice with a taper at the end of a long pole lighting the chandeliers, while two other men on the floor kindled the candles before the altars. As soon as their work was completed, the monk, as if he had been preaching against time, sat definitely ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... 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 ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... Strype Was a dear friend and lover of the PIPE; He us'd to say, one pipe of Kirkman's best Gave life a zest. To him 'twas meat, and drink, and physic, To see the friendly vapour Curl round his midnight taper, And the black fume Clothe all the room, In clouds as dark as science metaphysic. So still he smok'd, and drank, and crack'd his joke; And, had he single tarried He might have smok'd, and still grown old in smoke: But RICHARD married. His wife was one, who carried ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... blue taper's trembling light, No more I waste the wakeful night, Intent with endless view to pore The schoolmen and the sages o'er: Their books from wisdom widely stray, Or point at best the longest way. I'll seek a readier path, and go Where wisdom's ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... overspread with the stillness of the grave. The lights within the chapel threw a rich glow through the painted windows; and here and there, from a few scattered casements in the vast pile of St. Agnes, streamed a few weak rays from a taper or a lamp, indicating the trouble of a sick bed, or the peace of prayer. But these rare lights did but deepen the massy darkness of all beside; and Paulina, with her attendant, had much difficulty in making her way to the appointed ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... him what I would have done, and he said that it was no long business, and took his tools into a corner and lighted a wax taper and began to work by its light. The sword stood by my chair as I ate my supper at the head of the long tables where my ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... its plains and forests, and hills and rocks and streams, and strange new races of men. These are incidents in which the authentic history of the discovery of our continent exceeds the specious wonders of romance, as much as gold excels tinsel, or the sun in the heavens outshines the flickering taper. ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... round it. Draw but a little circle above the clustering housetops, and you shall have within its space everything, with its opposite extreme and contradiction, close beside. Where yonder feeble light is shining, a man is but this moment dead. The taper at a few yards' distance is seen by eyes that have this instant opened on the world. There are two houses separated by but an inch or two of wall. In one, there are quiet minds at rest; in the other, a waking conscience that one might think ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... the Chinese Room; the sun streams through the windows, illuminating the wondrous golden dragons standing out in bold relief from the burnished lacquer work, decorating still further with light and shade the delicate silk embroideries thin taper hands have woven with infinite pains. The walls are hung with rice paper, depicting the conventional scenes of ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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
... communities. All the better, some one will say. Alas! alas! It is making the wealthy Jews forsake the synagogue for the opera-house, or the gentility chapel, in which a disciple of Mr. Platitude, in a white surplice, preaches a sermon at noon- day from a desk, on each side of which is a flaming taper. It is making them abandon their ancient literature, their "Mischna," their "Gemara," their "Zohar," for gentility novels, "The Young Duke," the most unexceptionably genteel book ever written, being the principal favourite. ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... ground of sorrow,' where all the evil influences of the world feel free to tempt them. In all the dark night that may yet await them, when men shall so beset them as to threaten the sustaining influence of patriotism, grant from the dawn eternal the lighted taper of hope that shall throw its beams athwart the darkness, and furnish a cheering glimpse of the fair end of all things. Watch with thine all seeing eye and nail with thine omnipotent hand the machinations ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... Plan,—humanitarian, sage, pilgrim, ascetic, even the butcher and candlestick maker. And while we do not know it, really we are working together for one end hidden now in the divine economy of far-off destiny and justice.... To me the wonder of wonders is that I may some day light a little taper in your upper chamber myself, and kneel together with you before the same window to worship. Only, dear Heart, please get your deity ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... in a livelier tone than usual, but it was like the last kindling of the taper in its oil-less socket — for instantly the paleness of death overspread his face, and after a feeble effort to vomit, with convulsions, the natural effect of great loss of blood, he ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... from those that deck Thy taper fingers, white brow or neck; Young girl, a rose from thy glossy hair, One inch of that lace so costly and rare, Would give food and heat, and cheerful light To that wretched home, ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... examine," said the young lad to the porter. Then the porter lifted a taper, and, followed by the young lad, began to make the tour of the church. There was not a moment to lose. Chicot softly opened the door of the confessional, slipped in, and shut the door after him. They passed close by him, and he could see ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... repair to my lover; but, being the worse for wine, I knew not when going to her whither I went, so my drunkenness turned me into a by street called Syndic Street;[FN523] and the while I walked up that street behold, I caught sight of an old woman faring with a lighted taper in one hand, and in the other a folded letter.—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... weighty, often harassing, the gay reaction, the hearty unceremonious recognition on both sides, the warm welcome to the gentle avant courier. This was not a great queen, but a gleeful girl at the height of her happiness, who stroked with white taper hand the sleek black head, looked eagerly into the fond eyes, perhaps went so far as to hug the humble friend, stretching up fleet shapely paws, wildly wagging a slender tail, uttering sharp little yelps of delight to greet her. What wealth of cherished associations, of thrice ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... the lady's name, Miss Wilmot and I made attempts to entertain each other. Her person was tall, her shape taper, her complexion delicate, and her demeanour easy. Her remarks were not profound, but they were delivered without pretension. She was more inclined to let the conversation die away than to sustain it by that flux of tongue, which afflicted the ear at the house of the Ellis's. Her countenance ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... a camel's hide, had covered a water-skin with a burnoose for a pillow, and had left, near it, a coiled wax-taper and a box of matches. Abdullah untwined his turban, loosened his sash, felt something escape him, fell on his knees, groped, felt a paper, rose, went to the tent's door, recognized the invoice which the old man had given him, went ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... step-ladder, and by this Roland, following his guide, descended into what seemed a cavern. The air was not foul, as one might suppose, but there was an earthy smell which at first was disagreeable enough to the nostrils of our hero. Taking a taper, which was left burning below, The Lifter led the way for a considerable distance, and then turning to the right entered a sort of aperture or pocket in the clayey wall to his right. The flickering of the light here revealed a small bed; and setting down ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... 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
... groundsel (Senecio vulgaris) is in its normal condition two or three times shorter than the involucre, and cylindrical for its whole length, but it frequently happens that the fruits become as long as the involucre itself, and taper from the base upwards, so as to become beaked. Under this head may also be mentioned the fleshy bulbils that are found in the capsules of Crinum, Amaryllis, and Agave. These are true seeds enormously dilated.[509] In these seeds the outer ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... he is when he finds it delivered by a Person of an ordinary Genius. For there is as much Difference in apprehending a Thought cloathed in Cicero's Language, and that of a common Author, as in seeing an Object by the Light of a Taper, or by the Light of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the dark room with perfect ease, struck a match, lighted a taper and went swiftly and softly about. He touched the taper to one candle after another,—they seemed to be everywhere,—and won from the dark a faint twilight, that yielded slowly to a growing mellow splendor of light. I have ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... to give up its dead. The east grew whiter, and light broke dimly over the waste of waves, and faintly showed them where the "Gull" had struck. There was not much left of the little craft,—only a few timbers and the taper point of a mast, wedged in between some outlying rocks, which the sea thundered over. It was a dreary sight,—the vast, immeasurable waste lashed into foam, and dimly discerned through the gray gleaming of the dawn, with the bit of wreck ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... gleaming taper's light, Adorns and cheers the way: And still, as darker grows the ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... church, and, putting on their vestments, commenced the services of the day; the abbot himself celebrated high mass, assisted by brother Elfget the deacon, brother Savin the sub-deacon, and the brothers Egelred and Wyelric, youths who acted as taper-bearers. When the mass was finished, just as the abbot and his assistants had partaken of the holy communion, the Danes burst into the church. The abbot was slain upon the holy altar by the hand of the Danish king Oskytal, and the other priests and monks were ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... was over, the Jesuit took the book of the Gospels and the holy water sprinkler, and went slowly out of the chapel, while the old man followed him, with the holy water basin in one hand and a taper in the other. Then the police director left his hiding place, and stooping down, so as not to be seen, he crept to the chapel window, where he cowered down carefully, and the young man followed his example. They were now looking straight on his ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... creepy. 'Tis fitting place for some dark deed to be committed. The horse in the stable, I dare say, belonged to some belated traveler caught like ourselves in a storm afar from an inn. Marked you how she answered me not when I spoke on't? How the wind howls, and how blue the taper burns! 'Sblood! I'd sooner ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... at the bed as they passed it. But while Lucy, Blanche and Caroline still remained behind, Rose gave a final look round, for she wanted to leave the room in order. She drew a curtain across the window, and then it occurred to her that the lamp was not the proper thing and that a taper should take its place. So she lit one of the copper candelabra on the chimney piece and placed it on the night table beside the corpse. A brilliant light suddenly illumined the dead woman's face. The women were horror-struck. They ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... "craping up to thim top storeys in the ayvil hours." The gas and the electric light were off the house, and she fairly evoked a gruesome vision of her march through the great grey rooms—so many of them as there were too!—with her glimmering taper. Miss Staverton met her honest glare with a smile and the profession that she herself certainly would recoil from such an adventure. Spencer Brydon meanwhile held his peace—for the moment; the question ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... Fading is the taper waist— Shapeless grows the shapely limb, And although securely laced, Spreading is the figure trim! Stouter than I used to be, Still more corpulent grow I— There will be too much of me In ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... All was silent in the death-chamber. The night-taper was placed behind a screen; and the fire-light flickered with a tremulous motion on the richly-carved, antique furniture, black and polished by age, and creeping upwards, threw long, wavering shadows on the ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... be possessed with double pomp, To guard a title that was rich before, To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is wasteful ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... dissolved and thinned, and were as taper gleams of curved light across the water in their ascent of the heavens. When they were gone Noorna, exclaimed, 'Now for the dish of pomegrante grain, O Baba Mustapha, and let nothing delay ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... stretch oneself on the straw, covering the head with handkerchief or towel to isolate it from the searching stench of fermenting straw, and sleep. Fouillade, master of his time to-day, being on neither guard nor fatigues, decides. He lights a taper to seek among his belongings, and unwinds the coils of his comforter, and we see his emaciated shape, sculptured in black ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... wax taper standing at his elbow, drew a letter from the folds of his sash, slowly unfolded and held it to ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... countenances from being seen; nor in the constant interruptions and screams which were going on in the small crowded room, as wafting handkerchiefs, puffs of wind, or veritable extinguishers, fastened to long sticks, and coming from nobody knew where, put out taper after taper as ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of the prisoner gleamed like the flash of an expiring taper, wild and fitful, on our entering forms. He was dreadfully altered,—I should scarcely have recognized him through the gloomy shade of his long-neglected hair, and thick, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... place panting, staggered to the window, which he opened a little way by passing his hands under the blind, and held his face there to breathe the fresh air before hurrying-back to his writing table. Here he struck a match, lit a taper, and, taking it up, moved toward the closet door like one in a dream, but stopped short, blew out the light, and plunged into the ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... stooped over, and recovering the Idiot's bill from under the table, called the maid, and ostentatiously requested her to hand it to the Idiot. He, taking a cigarette from his pocket, thanked the maid for the attention, and rolling the slip into a taper, thoughtfully stuck one end of it into the alcohol light under the coffee-pot, and lighting the cigarette with it, walked ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... family, turned aside and made for the main thicket. To cut off its retreat, the army made a sudden flank movement, headed the enemy, grasped it by the curly tail, and sought to lift it into his arms, but the curly tail straightened out, and, being exceedingly thin as well as taper, slipped from his hand. Need we say that the little pig came to the ground with a remonstrative squeal? It also rolled over. Otto, unable to check himself, flew past. The pig rose, diverged, and resumed its headlong flight. Otto doubled, came close up ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... the crooked intentions, the adherent unhandsomeness and the direct crimes; for all things are laid up safely, and tho we draw a curtain of cobweb over them, and a few fig-leaves before our shame, yet God shall draw away the curtain, and forgetfulness shall be no more, because, with a taper in the hand of God, all the corners of our nastiness shall be discovered. And, secondly, it signifies this also, that not only the justice of God shall be confest by us in our own shame and condemnation, ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... specifically designated churches, usually in the nearest parish church, constituted the customary penalty.[51] In a few instances it was coupled with the requirement that the criminal should stand in the pillory, taper in hand, at several places at stated times.[52] The ecclesiastical records are so full of church penances that a student is led to wonder how effectual they were in shaming the penitent into better conduct. It may well be guessed that most of the criminals were not sensitive souls that ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... at her, solemn, watchful, seeming for that fleeting instant quite alien. And why, Telzey thought, should the old question of what Tick-Tock really was pass through her mind just now? After her rather alarming rate of growth began to taper off last year, ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... 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 ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... the very soul of me is dead, and I know not but that at any moment I may flicker out like a spent taper, and become as one ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... was written upon gilt-edged paper With a neat little crow-quill, slight and new;[ar] Her small white hand could hardly reach the taper, It trembled as magnetic needles do, And yet she did not let one tear escape her; The seal a sun-flower; "Elle vous suit partout,"[85] The motto cut upon a white cornelian; The wax was superfine, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... thought only of the fire. If we could once raise fuel for that, the vessel would not be of so much importance—we might contrive to heat a flat, thin stone, and melt some of the fat in that way. If we could not make fine candles, we might dip some wick in the grease, and thus have a kind of taper that would serve almost as well. I knew we had wick—I remembered the long hempen string which Ossaroo has got, and I knew that that would serve admirably for the purpose. All that would be easy enough—at least it appeared so—all except the stuff ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... remained there seated in its chair during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and the greater part of the sixteenth centuries. And indeed, it might have been there still but that in 1577 some children, curious about it and anxious to see a thing so wonderful, thrust a lighted taper into the tomb through one of the holes in the marble, when mummy, vestments, chair and all were consumed, and in a moment nothing remained but ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... the manipulation of the conductor's baton, it may be well to state that the stick itself should be light in weight, light in color, and from sixteen to twenty inches long. It must be thin and flexible, and should taper gradually from the end held in the hand to the point. Batons of this kind can be manufactured easily at any ordinary planing mill where there is a lathe. The kinds sold at stores are usually altogether too thick and too heavy. If at any time some adulating ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... you've gathered 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
... 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 ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... in time for their six o'clock dinner. On the day week after my first visit she was out of Fisher's hands, and as I left her late that afternoon I thought I had never seen a prettier little craft. Her tall, slim, taper spars had a jaunty little rake aft, and were encumbered with only so much rigging as was absolutely necessary to prevent them from going over the side. Her yards, though light, were of immense spread, and the new suit of sails with which she had been fitted fore and aft, and which had been stretching ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... which did not altogether please him, but which he could not well resist, as it was meant most kindly, nicknamed him Dolly. Poor fellow!—he was long remembered afterwards. I forget what his particular complaint was, but he gradually sunk; and at last went out just as a taper might have done, exposed to such gusts of wind as blew in that tempestuous region. He died in the morning; but it was not until the evening that he was prepared ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... 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
... Sandwich, and all the rights that arise therefrom, on either side of the haven; so that when the tide is highest and fullest, and there be a ship floating as near the land as possible, and there be a man standing upon the ship with a taper-axe in his hand, whithersoever the large taper-axe might be thrown out of the ship, throughout all that land the ministers of Christ's church should enjoy their rights. This year went King Knute to Rome; and the same year, as soon as he ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... 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 peaks and ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... treasure. The fifth light, Goodliest of all, is by such love inspired, That all your world craves tidings of its doom: Within, there is the lofty light, endow'd With sapience so profound, if truth be truth, That with a ken of such wide amplitude No second hath arisen. Next behold That taper's radiance, to whose view was shown, Clearliest, the nature and the ministry Angelical, while yet in flesh it dwelt. In the other little light serenely smiles That pleader for the Christian temples, he Who did provide Augustin of his lore. Now, if thy mind's eye pass ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... almost dark. The expense of lighting, had no doubt to be considered, for for several days past no candle or taper was to be had for money. And no doubt the kindness of a motorist of the Red Cross had been appealed to for the supply of all the candles which lit up the altar. This was indeed resplendent. The vestry had been ransacked for candlesticks, and ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... incredulity, upon her face. Some one, a man, had stepped into the dim-lit room and was fumbling with the lock, his eyes fixed upon them, meanwhile, over his shoulder. The light from the windows had faded, the faint illumination from the taper before the shrine was insufficient fully to pierce the gloom. But on the instant of his interruption all triumph and hope, all thoughts of love, fled from Norvin's mind, bursting like iridescent bubbles, at a touch. The flesh along his ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... a-cutting: Upon an altar dedicated to Love, divers hearts transfix'd with arrows and darts are to lye broiling upon the coals; and upon the steps of it, Hymen ... in a posture as if he were going to light [his taper] to the altar; when Cupid is to come behind him and pull him by the saffron sleeve, with these words proceeding from his mouth: Nondum peracta sunt praeludia";[330] a statement that is only too true and in which Loveday summarizes unawares the truest criticism levelled at these romances. ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... But one of the most remarkable weapons of the period was the sting of the Pleuracanthus, another great placoid of the age of gigantic fishes. It was sharp and polished as a stiletto, but, from its rounded form and dense structure, of great strength; and along two of its sides, from the taper point to within a few inches of the base, there ran a thickly-set row of barbs, hooked downwards, like the thorns that bristle on the young shoots of the wild rose, and which must have rendered it a weapon not merely of destruction, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... he was slender in form, and delicate in appearance. He had been sick, and even now, he was not quite well. His little taper fingers rested upon the window-sill, while his grandmother opened her little Bible and began to read. Caleb sat still in her lap, with a serious ...
— Caleb in the Country • Jacob Abbott
... vinaigrettes that you could hold to your nose to keep you from fainting when you saw a dandy. Oh! I can tell you that Mr. Nonesuch understood keeping a toy shop; there were plenty of carriages always in front of it, plenty of taper fingers pulling over his wares, and plenty of husbands and fathers who returned thanks that New ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... believe him. I have done him no ill, and wish him none. He is a worthless boaster and a babbler. He does not really honour you, and merely plays the hypocrite. But I honour you from my heart; and, behold, I place a taper before you!" Sometimes incidents occur which display a still more curious blending of the two religions. Thus a Tcheremiss, on one occasion, in consequence of a serious illness, sacrificed a young foal to our Lady ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... has two calcareous jaws, hemispherical, flat before, and angular behind. The shell is taper, winding, penetrating ships and submarine wood, and was brought from India into Europe, Linnei System. Nat. p. 1267. The Tarieres, or sea-worms, attack and erode ships with such fury, and in such numbers, as often greatly to endanger them. It is said that our vessels have not ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... the predominance of large tracts of land in the northern regions, while in the south is a vast expanse of ocean. In the north continental masses form an almost continuous belt around the icy sea, while in the southern hemisphere the continents taper down into a broad extent of frigid waters. In the north the plains of Siberia and of the Hudson's Bay territories, warmed by the sunbeams of summer, become at that season centers of radiating heat, while the antarctic lands, of small extent, isolated in the midst of a polar ocean and chilled by cold ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... be used at sea. He also gives some professional hints for the guidance of gunners. He tells us (and Sir Richard Hawkins confirms him) that no sea-cannon ought to be more than seven or eight feet long; that they ought not to be taper-bored, nor honey-combed within the bore, and that English ordnance, the best in Europe, was sold in his day for twelve ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... spinster had in her composition a strong vein of the superstitious, and was pleased, among other fancies, to read alone in her chamber by a taper fixed in a candlestick which she had formed out of a human skull. One night, this strange piece of furniture acquired suddenly the power of locomotion, and, after performing some odd circles on her chimneypiece, fairly leaped on the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... roundish taper pods, divided into two or three cells, full of small whitish seeds. When this fruit is fresh, it has a penetrating acrid smell; to the taste it is extremely pungent, and produces a most painful burning in the mouth. They are occasionally imported dry, and ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... I will put it into rough English for you.—"I couldn't help laughing to hear one fellow bawling out, so that he might be sure to be heard, a promise to Saint Christopher of Paris—the monstrous statue in the great church there—that he would give him a wax taper as big as himself. 'Mind what you promise!' said an acquaintance that stood near him, poking him with his elbow; 'you couldn't pay for it, if you sold all your things at auction.' 'Hold your tongue, you donkey!' said the fellow,—but softly, so that Saint Christopher ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... draft because of known mental deficiency; and, of those who reached {280} the camps, many, being illiterate, did not take the Alpha test. It is for this reason that the graph for drafted men stops rather short at the lower end; to picture fairly the distribution of intelligence, it should taper off to the left, beyond the ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... all come to be thanked for guillotining that man yesterday. Monferrand owes that wretched fellow a fine taper; for in the first place his bomb prolonged the life of the Barroux ministry, and later on it made Monferrand prime minister, as a strong-handed man was particularly needed to strangle Anarchism. What ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... us the hole in the rock of Calvary, where the cross was planted. Close beside it was the fissure produced by the earthquake which followed the Crucifixion. But, to my eyes, aided by the light of the dim wax taper, it was no violent rupture, such as an earthquake would produce, and the rock did not appear to be the same as that of which Jerusalem is built. As we turned to leave, a monk appeared with a bowl of sacred rose-water, which he sprinkled ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... from Navarre to Andalusia. She dressed her hair high on the top of her head, displaying thus both the graceful curve of her snowy neck and the shape of her pretty head. She wore earrings in her small ears, and the taper fingers of her rough but clean hands were covered with rings. Lastly, Frasquita's voice was as sweet as a flute, and her laugh was so merry and so silvery it seemed like the ringing of bells on Saturday of Glory ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Tendons. The muscles which move the bones by their contraction taper for the most part, as before mentioned, into tendons. These are commonly very strong cords, like belts or straps, made up of white, ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... its naves. In the pictures of the Early Masters the complexion of holy women becomes transparent as Paschal wax, and their hair is pale as golden grains of frankincense, their childlike bosoms scarcely swell, their brows are rounded like the glass of the pyx, their fingers taper, their bodies shoot upwards like delicate columns. Their beauty becomes, as it were, liturgical. They seem to live in the fire of stained glass, borrowing from the flaming whirlwind of the rose-windows the circles of their aureoles. The ardent blue ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... easily. The mayor, Adam Stable, was removed, and Nicholas Brembre appointed in his place. A fresh election of aldermen took place,(613) and the City did penance for the recent insult to the duke's escutcheon by offering, at the king's confidential suggestion, a wax taper bearing the duke's arms in St. Paul's. Even that did not satisfy him; nay, it was adding insult to injury (he said), for such an act was an honour usually paid to one who was dead! The citizens were in ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... "The taper flames and hearthfire shine Grew smoke-hazed to a lurid light, And songs on subjects not divine Were warbled forth ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... might give her curiosity the food it longed for. But Margaret read and reread the note, and tore it up into very small pieces, thoughtfully; and, as an afterthought, she burned them one by one over a wax taper till nothing was left. Then she sent her maid away and fell to thinking. But that did not help her much; and the warm sun stole through the windows, and the noise in the street prevented her from sleeping, for she was unused to the sound of wheels after the long weeks at sea. And so ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... with better success. A brief glance into the room at their left showed signs of recent occupancy. His quick survey marked an oil lamp in the corner, which, upon investigation, proved to be in working order, so he lit it with the end of his expiring taper. ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... Washington Monument, sending up a huge spout of dust that veiled it from his eyes. Instinctively Dick shot toward the scene. Slowly the dust subsided, and then a yell of exultation broke from Dick's lips. The noble shaft still stood, a slim taper ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... harvest. A spike which has no beard is called polled (muticus), for, when the spike is first forming, the beard, like the horns of a young animal, is not apparent but lies hid like a sword in its scabbard under a wrapping of foliage which hence is called the sheath. When the spike is mature its taper end above the grain is called the frit, while that below, where the spike joins the straw culm, is ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... night of the 8th February, Darnley awoke Durham: he thought he heard footsteps in the apartment beneath him. Durham rose, took a sword in one hand, a taper in the other, and went down to the ground floor; but although Darnley was quite certain he had not been deceived, Durham came up again a moment after, saying he ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE |
