"Gaslight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... now," he said, just before they could reach Cohen's door; and Mordecai paused, looking up at him with an anxious fatigued face under the gaslight. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... us ill at ease. Even in the dim gaslight he clashed on my notions of a yachtsman—no cool white ducks or neat blue serge; and where was the snowy crowned yachting cap, that precious charm that so easily converts a landsman into a dashing mariner? Conscious that this impressive uniform, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... if the night were only fair, that they might go out into the moonlight and leave the screen doors open that we might play close together, you and I, in the gaslight." ...
— A Book Without A Title • George Jean Nathan
... had some pieces of gold in his pocket that rang a chime of pleasure. While Maurice, with his elbow upon the table, told him his tales of love, Amedee gazed out upon the sidewalk at the women who passed by in fresh toilettes, in the gaslight which illuminated the green foliage, giving a little nod of the head to those whom they knew. There was voluptuousness in the very air, and it was Amedee who arose from the table and recalled to Maurice that it was Thursday, and that there was a fete that night at Bullier's; and ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... by a tapping at his door, and jumped up to realize by his watch and the still burning gaslight that it was nine o'clock. But the intruder was only a waiter with a letter which he had brought to Randolph's room in obedience to the instructions the latter had given overnight. Not doubting it was from the captain, although the handwriting ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... usual pace. And so I slept uneasily and thought. Then it began to dawn upon me that the air was heavy, and dank, and cold. I put back the clothes from my face, and found, to my surprise, that all was dim around. The gaslight which I had left lit for Jonathan, but turned down, came only like a tiny red spark through the fog, which had evidently grown thicker and poured into the room. Then it occurred to me that I had shut the window before I had come to bed. I would have got out to make ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... six hours long. Has made personal studies of the life she interprets, having at various times apprenticed herself as waitress, saleswoman, and factory-girl. Author of "Just Around the Corner," "Every Soul Hath Its Song," "Gaslight Sonatas." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... who would endure all the little petulancy, and vagaries, and excesses of her wayward but affectionate temper, all these things were present to her mind. And to be Mistress Jones, who could look all the world in the face, this—as compared with the gaslight of a theatre, which might mean failure, and could only mean gaslight—this, on the present occasion, did tempt her sorely. Her moods were very various. There were moments of her life when the gaslight had its charm, and in which she declared to herself that she was willing to run all the chances ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... ruffians of every description, who would cheerfully have cut any man's throat simply for the sake of his clothes. All around me was a sea of swarthy faces with insolent, sinister eyes that flashed and glittered in the gaslight. I was pushed, jostled, and cursed, and the bare thought of having to spend a whole night amid such a foul, cut-throat horde filled me with dismay. Yet what could I do? Clearly nothing, until the morning, when I should be able to explain my position to the British Consul. The knowledge that ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... brush were brought into play, and the oil all removed. Then a long dry polishing, and the restoration was complete. Certainly no other Smalltowner had such a wooden knife; and it was indeed beautiful. Black in a cross light, red in direct light, and kaleidoscopic by gaslight. Ah, such a prize! The family knew that something strange was transpiring, but what no one had an inkling. They must wait patiently, and they did. The Spectator proudly appeared, his prize in hand. 'See there!' he cried in triumph, and they all looked ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... was at one time supposed that he had learned his business. Eighteen years of what is called 'tuition' had relieved him of the dangerous knowledge. His artist lodgers would sometimes reason with him; they would point out to him how impossible it was to paint by gaslight, or to sculpture ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... is," he replied, "and screeching owls in every brain. You can't get quit." Then, lowering his voice, "I am haunted, and yet live here in this Moated Grange! The difference is this: in the town the gaslight and eternal clatter distract a man like me who is plagued from within; here I find some concord between the inside and the out, only the owls in the inside are ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... policy for the votaries of gaslight pleasures to maintain that there is no baneful result arising from a constant pursuit of such distractions, but, however wise this attitude may be, I hardly think it can rely upon the sanction of our conscience. It is certainly not sound ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... but visibly of fragile build, was standing on the landing under the gaslight. She sprang forward, flung her arms round Knight's neck, and uttered ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... acquiring wisdom, and from it the word "don't" had been deliberately dropped. His excursion into the halls of learning, brief as it had been, had convinced him that books could teach him only words, whereas he craved experiences, ideas, adventures. Adventure comes at night; pleasure walks by gaslight. Young Briskow told himself that he had missed a lot of late hours and would have to work diligently to catch up, but he undertook the effort with ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... goes to bed, but everybody is eternally sitting up, waiting for Jack. This exploration was among a labyrinth of dismal courts and blind alleys, called Entries, kept in wonderful order by the police, and in much better order than by the corporation: the want of gaslight in the most dangerous and infamous of these places being quite unworthy of so spirited a town. I need describe but two or three of the houses in which Jack was waited for as specimens of the rest. Many we attained by noisome passages so ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... less dangerously to the material element. It is neat and enticing everywhere. There is the sitting room where Mr. Rayne spent his long, thoughtful night under the gaslight with Robert Edgeworth's letter lying between his numbed fingers. The fire burns there cheerfully now—there is no other light than that cast by the fitful flames which leap and dwindle in shadows through the twilight ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... She carried the youngster in her arms, sound asleep, and it wasn't till she stepped under the gaslight that she seen us. ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... had never known it, so I had to introduce myself afresh. The contrast between his flashy clothes and my frowsy, wretched-looking appearance, as I saw ourselves in the mirrors on either side of me, made me sorely ill at ease. The brilliancy of the gaslight chafed my nerves. It was as though it had been turned on for the express purpose of illuminating my disgrace. I was longing to go away, but Gitelson fell to questioning me about my affairs once more, and this time he did so with such unfeigned concern that I told ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... literature of pamphlets and so forth, dealing with the case of the shop assistants. They have a great grievance in what they call the living-in system. The employers herd them in dormitories over the shops, and usually feed them by gaslight in the basements; they fine them and keep an almost intolerable grip upon them; make them go to bed at half-past ten, make them go to church on Sundays,—all sorts of petty tyrannies. The assistants ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... girl!" whispered Lisle, and he went noiselessly away. A dim gaslight burned halfway up the stairs and guided him to his room. He had only to softly open and close his door, and all was well. Judith had not been awakened by the catlike steps of the man who was not old Fordham. She had fallen asleep very happily, with a vague sense of hopefulness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... was young; and above all she had the freshness, the uncontaminated bloom, the subdued brilliancy of nature's most perfect growing things. It was in the deep clear eyes, in the satin sheen of her bare shoulders under the sordid gaslight; it was in the strong smooth lips, delicately shaded from salmon colour to the faintest peach-blossom; it was in the firm oval of her face, in the well-modelled ear, the straight throat and the curving neck; ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... When Laura and the Senator arrived, about half past nine or ten in the evening, the place was already pretty well crowded, and the white-gloved negro servant at the door was still receiving streams of guests.—The drawing-rooms were brilliant with gaslight, and as hot as ovens. The host and hostess stood just within the door of entrance; Laura was presented, and then she passed on into the maelstrom of be-jeweled and richly attired low-necked ladies and white-kid-gloved and steel pen-coated gentlemen and wherever she moved she was ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... with impatience to begin their ballet, much excited by the music, gaslight, and gay dresses, which made it seem like "a truly ball." All welcomed Jessie, and she soon forgot the cheap slippers, mended gloves, and old dress, as she gayly led her troop through the pretty dance with so much grace and skill ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... faces looking out of the forest of long hair, moustache, and whisker—those two cold yet bold, trustless yet presumptuous visages— were the same faces, the very same that, projected in full gaslight from behind the pillars of a portico, had half frightened me to death on the night of my desolate arrival in Villette. These, I felt morally certain, were the very heroes who had driven a friendless foreigner beyond her reckoning ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Billy was hitching up a horse in the stable, Satan went out in the yard and lay with his nose between the close panels of the fence—quite heart-broken. When he saw his old friend, Hugo, the mastiff, trotting into the gaslight, he began to bark his delight frantically. The big mastiff stopped and nosed his sympathy through the fence for a moment and walked slowly on, Satan frisking and barking along inside. At the gate Hugo ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... We are above the chatter of a wretched spot, a narrow life. Down there, nothing is not ridiculed that is not some phase of a provinciality. The dances in certain houses, the faces of some conceited club, long-spun names, business or gossip, or to drive a double carriage, are the gaslight boundaries of existence! Pah! it is a courtyard, bounded by four square walls, a path or two to walk in, and the eyes of busybodies to order our doings and sneer us out of our souls. How they deny us that the centre of the systems is immeasurably off there in Pleiades! What fools we are. We ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... abbess was a baroness ex officio, and the revenue at the dissolution of the monasteries was L1084. There remains a perpendicular turreted gateway. There is also an ancient market-house, used as a town-hall. Victoria Gardens form a public pleasure-ground, and there are recreation grounds. The Gaslight and Coke Company's works at Beckton are in the parish, and also extensive rubber works. At the mouth of the Roding (Barking Creek) are great sewage works, receiving the Northern Outfall sewer from London. There are also chemical ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... as restless as a wild beast in a cage. Something would not let him be at peace. So he rose, dressed, and went out. As soon as he turned the corner, he could see Mrs. Elton's house. It was visible both by intermittent moonlight above, and by flickering gaslight below, for the wind blew rather strong. There was snow in the air, he knew. The light they had observed last night, was burning now. A moment served to make these observations; and then Hugh's eyes were arrested by the sight of something else — a man walking up and down the ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... laughed Markeld, gripping the proffered fingers with a warmth which pleased their owner. The latter found himself admiring, too, the erect figure, the clean face, the clear eyes; he told himself with pleasure that the Prince looked as well by daylight as by gaslight—a tribute to his youth and the way he had ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... body, so as to take advantage of a dim ray from the nearest gaslight, he was aware that the woman, shorter and stouter than Miss Bruce, had muffled herself in a cloak, and was ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... something like a sneer, too, from yonder gipsy woman who passes by, with bold bright face, and swinging hip, and footstep stately and elastic; far better dressed, according to all true canons of taste, than most town-girls; and thanking her fate that she and her "Rom" are no house-dwellers and gaslight-sightseers, but fatten on free ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... Saint Michel you stumbled against a young man, enveloped likewise in a cloak, and following rapidly the course of the Seine in a direction opposite to yours? The shock was violent, and nailed us both to the spot. Do you remember that having scrutinized each other under the gaslight, you exclaimed, "Raymond," and opened your arms to embrace me; then, seeing the cold and reserved attitude of him who stood silently before you, how you changed your mind and went your way, laughing at the mistake but struck by ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... threshold stood a tall figure in classical drapery. His eyes might have deceived him in the omnibus; but here, in the crude gaslight, he could not be mistaken. It was the statue he had last seen in Rosherwich Gardens—now, in some strange and ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... at the name his wife raised her hand as if to silence him. As she did so the gaslight struck on the gold of ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... violin-case he hurried down the street, then halted to pity the flowers massed pallid under the gaslight of the market-hall. For himself, the sea and the sunlight opened great spaces tomorrow. The moon was full above the river. He looked at it as a man in abstraction watches some clear thing; then he came to a standstill. It was useless to hurry to his train. ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... slip a louis-d'or into his snuff-box whenever it came to his turn to preside over the money department; he was found out by another employe asking him casually for a pinch of snuff, and seeing the money gleam in the gaslight. These croupiers are the most extraordinary race of men it is possible to conceive. They seem to unite the stoicism of the American Indian to the politeness of the Frenchman of the ancien regime. They are never seen to smile, and wear the same impassive countenance whether the banque is gaining ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... by the window, a slim figure in a clinging silk gown, which alone explained Mrs. Dolan's distrust. The gaslight was turned very low, and her hat shadowed her face, but could not hide its startling beauty, could not mar the brilliancy of the skin, nor dim the wonderful eyes of this modern Delilah. For ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... She did not look around the church much, or she would have recognized a familiar face on the east side. It was Clarence Mayfair's; he was paler than usual, and his light curly hair looked almost artificial in the gaslight. There was something sadder and more manly in his expression, and his eyes were fixed on Beth with a reverent look. How pure she was, he thought, how serene; her brow looked as though an angel-hand ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... patience. There were not two women in the world like that; it was impossible. She was in England, and alone—free! What did it mean? Should I run to her, or hide away? I glanced over my shoulder where the black shadows of the tunnel were only dimly lit by the feeble gaslight. I could steal away, and she would never see me. Yet as I thought of it, the grimy, barren street and the solemn-looking building faded away before my eyes. The sun and wind burned my face; the wind, salt with ocean spray, and echoing ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... probably based on a comparison of the treatment by the several Attic masters. The tragedies of Seneca have as a rule been strongly censured for their rhetorical colouring, their false passion, and their total want of dramatic interest. They are to the Greek plays as gaslight to sunlight. But in estimating their poetic value it is fair to remember that the Roman ideas of art were neither so accurate nor so profound as ours. The deep analysis of Aristotle, which grouped all poets who wrote on a theme under the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... of the house, Monsieur Hulot called a milord and drove to one of those pretty modern houses with double doors, where everything, from the gaslight at ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... as a general thing it is confined to the public rooms, and the unfortunate wight who longs to see beyond the end of his nose is forced to wrestle with dripping candles and unclean lamps, known only by tradition in our native land. The gaslight, which is a common necessary in the simplest private dwelling in an American city, is here a luxury scarcely attainable save by the very wealthiest. And we do not know how precious our gaslight is till we have lost it. To sit in a dim parlor where four lighted candles struggle vainly to disperse ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... and the gaslight shining full upon her pale, Phidian face, showed no trace of trepidation. Only the pathetic patience of a sublime surrender was visible on her frozen features. The eyes preternaturally large and luminous were raised far above the sea of heads, and their strained ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... gas was lit here and there where burners were available. Over our heads was no arrangement for lighting. We bent lower in semi-obscurity. In the blending of twilight and gaslight the room became mysterious, a shadowy corridor. Figures grew indistinct, softened and blurred. The exhausted air surrounded the ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... its lump of sugar, carried with it a sort of graveyard cheer. The engineer apprentices would have nothing to say to us, nor indeed to the bagman; but talked low and sparingly to one another, or raked us in the gaslight with a gleam of spectacles. For though handsome lads, they were all (in the Scots ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... me when, in about twenty minutes, I saw Wetter coming toward the cafe. I had taken a table far back from the street, and he did not see me. The glaring gaslight gave him a deeper paleness and cut the lines of his face to a sharper edge. He was talking with great animation, his hands moving constantly in eager gesture. I was within an ace of springing forward to greet him—so my heart went out to him—but the sight of ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... still in the darkening twilight; but the distant roar of the world surged without, and a gaslight shone flickering through the branches of the trees, and fell on the rich dress spread on the couch, and the ornaments on the toilet-table. There was a sense of oppression, and of being pursued by the incongruous world, and Dr. May sighed to silence ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... natural to him. A very close observer, however, might have seen his eyes dilate and even flash with some sudden emotion when his brother's wife passed him and her brilliant diamonds, his gift, sparkled in the bright gaslight. The setting was rather peculiar, but Mrs. Tracy liked it for the peculiarity, and had never had it changed. She was very proud of her diamonds, they were so large and clear, and she had the satisfaction of knowing that there were no finer, if as fine, in town. ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... Dulcie paid two dollars per week. On week-days her breakfast cost ten cents; she made coffee and cooked an egg over the gaslight while she was dressing. On Sunday mornings she feasted royally on veal chops and pineapple fritters at "Billy's" restaurant, at a cost of twenty-five cents—and tipped the waitress ten cents. New York presents so many temptations for one to run into extravagance. She had her ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... was allowed to enter the chill unlighted chamber, where the unhappy lady had been lying for hours in the gloom of a London Winter's daylight and gaslight. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... dives and screams after the coffee urn and the ice pitcher, and various unattainable things—for there were unattainable things, even for Pliny Hastings. Oh, the times and times in his young life that he had cried for the beautiful round moon, and got it not! And even gaslight and firelight had hitherto eluded his eager grasp; but he had learned no lessons from his failures, and still pitched and dived after impossibilities in the most insane fashion. To-day he looked with ...
— Three People • Pansy
... changes I've gone through. I can hardly believe it myself when I look back. However I'm quite sure I have got on; that's my great comfort. It is a strange blind sort of world, that's a fact, with lots of blind alleys, down which you go blundering in the fog after some seedy gaslight, which you take for the sun till you run against the wall at the end, and find out that the light is a gaslight, and that there's no thoroughfare. But for all that one does get on. You get to know the sun's light ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... differences;—of a peacock's and a lark's cry, and their differences;—of the redness in a blush, and in rouge, and their differences;—of the whiteness in snow, and in almond-paste, and their differences;—of the blackness and brightness of night and day, or of smoke and gaslight, and their differences, etc., etc. But for the Perception of Beauty, I always used Plato's word, which is the proper word in Greek, and the only possible single word that can be used in any other language by any man who understands ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... the minister and her husband, Mrs. Laurance with her brilliant wrappings was the most prominent of the group, and in the blaze of the gaslight looked at least thirty-five; a woman of large proportions compactly built, with broad shoulders that sustained a rather short thick neck, now exposed in extreme decollete style, as if to aid the unsuccessful elongation of nature. Her sallow complexion was dark, almost bistre, and the strongly ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... slackened. While still some distance off, his eye sought out and distinguished the windows of the room in which Esther awaited him. Through the broken slats of the Venetian blinds he could see the yellow gaslight within. The parlour beneath was in darkness; his landlady had evidently gone to bed, there being no light over the hall-door either. In some apprehension he consulted his watch under the last street-lamp ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... however, the carriage called, for our evening was drawing to its close; that of our friends, I suppose, was but just commencing, as London's liveliest hours are by gaslight, but we cannot learn the art ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... for their gratification if he should chance to possess them, he is thrown utterly on his own resources, and these rarely extend beyond drinking and gambling. Both these pursuits are more fitted for gaslight than daylight, and if indulged in too freely during the day, pall in the evening, so that he has literally nothing to do from breakfast till dinner. He cannot race or play cricket quotidianally, so that he soon returns ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... Sir Arthur, looking away, "a reflection from the gaslight, probably. But come, Vane, what is all this about? Sit down and tell me. And, by the way, I want to hear the story of this new acquaintance of yours. Take a cigar; that ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... in the world; It was like a transformation trick in a pantomime. They were there one moment,—palpably there, walking, with the gaslight full upon their faces,—and the next moment they were gone. There was no door near, no window, no staircase; it was a mere slip of barren platform, tapestried with big advertisements. Could ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... he—and by the dim gaslight she could see the flash of his teeth revealed by his wide smile—"My little Elodie, you have genius. You have given me an idea that may make my fortune. What can ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... at lightning speed, I asked the man whether he owned that fine turnout or worked on wages. "I own it myself," he said curtly. Therefore, when I alighted, I slipped round behind the sledge and scrutinized it thoroughly under the gaslight. The back was decorated with a monogram and a count's coronet in silver! After that I never asked questions, but I always knew what had happened when I picked up very comfortable equipages at very reasonable rates in places which were between gas lanterns and ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... street). Still there! For full an hour he has not budged beyond the circle of yon lamp-post's rays! The gaslight falls upon his crimson hose, and makes a steely glitter at his thigh, while from the shadow peers a hatchet-face and fixes sinister malignant eyes—on whom? (Shuddering.) I dare not trust myself to guess! And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... gaslight shone, disclosing Aphrodite—somewhat disarranged by the panic—standing smiling in front of the erstwhile Voodoo. She looked down at his feet. There, sure enough, one huge member was unshod and stockingless; the elastic-slit congress gaiter, lost in the shuffle, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... street, but the noise made the night cheerful; and so did the church clock near, which struck the quarters; and so did the light of the street lamps, which came through the blind and fell upon my little bed. We had very little light, except gaslight and daylight, in our street; the sunshine seldom found its way to us, and, when it did, people were so little used to it that they pulled down the blinds for fear it should hurt the carpets. In the room my sister and I called our nursery, however, we always welcomed it with blinds ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... fierce terrible oaths which bind members of Trades' Unions to any given purpose. Then under the flaring gaslight, they met together to consult further. With the distrust of guilt, each was suspicious of his neighbour; each dreaded the treachery of another. A number of pieces of paper (the identical letter on which the caricature had been drawn that very morning) were torn up, and one ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... ray of the lamps ahead, the fork of the lightning, the flickering gaslight there at the crossroads, they were all the color of gold and like gold—of a flame that burned. Yes, he must have money. No matter what the voice, ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... room to which day and night were the same, Mr. Pascoe was always to be found bending over his hobbing foot, under a tiny yellow fan of gaslight which could be heard making a tenuous shrilling whenever the bootmaker looked up, and ceased riveting. When his head was bent over his task only the crown of a red and matured cricketing cap, which nodded in time to his hammer, ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... to make an Academician, and only one to make an artist.' In that sneer lay all his weakness and his strength. Grave friends (in those days it was the fashion) talked to him of 'Dame Nature.' 'Damn Nature!' retorted Aubrey Beardsley, and pulled down the blinds and worked by gaslight on the finest days. But he was a real Englishman, who from his glass-house peppered the English public. No Latin could have contrived his arabesque. The grotesques of Jerome Bosch are positively pleasant company beside many of Beardsley's inventions. ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... as the late dawn began to mingle with the gaslight, she found her brother sleeping quietly, his hand clasping Mildred's. To her slight expression of surprise the young girl returned a clear, steadfast look, and said calmly, "When your brother awakes he has some explanations to make. I ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... whirl swiftly before us under the softened gaslight. I say a score of forms—but each is double—they would have made two score before the dancing began. Twenty floating visions—each male and female. Twenty women, knit and growing to as many men, undulate, sway, and swirl giddily before ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... room; the candle guttering, kept dropping on the King's hand, but being unwilling to disturb the artist, the King held on, while the painter, intent on his work, proceeded without noticing it. Many of our English artists paint by gaslight; but the tones of the flesh are not benefited, gas shedding a white cool light compared ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... my watch, since you want to know. There was just time. I took that notebook, and ran down the stairs on tiptoe. Have you ever listened to the pit-pat of a man running round and round the shaft of a deep staircase? They have a gaslight at the bottom burning night and day. I suppose it's gleaming down there now.... The sound dies out—the ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... evening, however, everything was artificial and in keeping with the gaslight. The ladies were conscious of their toilets, conscious of themselves, looking for admiration rather than hearty enjoyment. Even the older boys and girls, who had been joyous children in the morning, were now small ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... is a place of light and shade. It is artificial in every brick and stone, in the pose of every stall, the lettering of every advertisement. And it flourishes by gaslight; by day it is ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... would not go wrong, thinking that he would ask a policeman whom he saw, and hesitating because he feared that the man would want to know his business. Then, of a sudden, he heard a woman scream, and knew that it was Ruby's voice. The sound was very near him, but in the glimmer of the gaslight he could not quite see whence it came. He stood still, putting his hand up to scratch his head under his hat,— trying to think what, in such an emergency, it would be well that he should do. Then he heard the voice distinctly, 'I won't;—I ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... perhaps of her days of innocence; perhaps of the mother at whose feet she had once knelt in prayer. But she was far away, in thought, from that scene of infamy of which she was a part; for, in the glare of the gaslight, a tear struggled through her eyelashes, and glittered like a ray from heaven piercing ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... principally by women; they were of a ripe age, I was glad to observe, and certainly robbed England of none of its very moderate supply of feminine loveliness by their deeper than tomb-like interment. As you approach (and they are so accustomed to the dusky gaslight that they read all your characteristics afar off), they assail you with hungry entreaties to buy some of their merchandise, holding forth views of the Tunnel put up in cases of Derbyshire spar, with a magnifying-glass at one end ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... everywhere, and the wet pavement glistened in the gaslight, while the oppressive warmth of the almost impalpable rain lay heavily over the streets and seemed to obscure the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... boulevard, one evening, I caught a glimpse of her as she passed under the gaslight, with watchful and eager eyes, dragging her feet over the sidewalk. I saw her pale face on the street-corner, while the rain wet the flowers in her hair, and heard her soft voice calling to the men, while her flesh shivered ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... stands by the mantel laughing undisguisedly at her partner, rather than with him, yet so good-humoredly that he cannot take offense, but rather laughs with her. Lackadaisical Gertrude, whose face is so perfect in the daytime, looks pale and insipid by gaslight, and timidly walks through the dance. Stout, good-natured Minna smiles and laughs, never quite completing a sentence, partly from embarrassment, partly because she hardly knows how; but still so sweet and amiable that one ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... for persons who have never seen in their lives a cloud vanishing on a mountain-side, and whose conceptions of mist or vapor are limited to ambiguous outlines of spectral hackney-coaches and bodiless lamp-posts, discern through a brown combination of sulphur, soot, and gaslight, there is yet some hope; we cannot, indeed, tell them what the morning mist is like in mountain air, but far be it from us to tell them that they are incapable of feeling its beauty if they will seek it for themselves. But if you ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... on foot, treading gingerly in pumps, escorted by linkmen with flaring golden torches, and preceded by tipsy but assiduous ruffians armed with shovels, who, with many a lusty oath and horrid imprecation, cleared a thin thread of path between the towering walls of snow that sparkled faintly in the gaslight. ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... of our lighting. I say "our" because this was a branch of Henry's work in which I was always his chief helper. Until electricity has been greatly improved and developed, it can never be to the stage what gas was. The thick softness of gaslight, with the lovely specks and motes in it, so like natural light, gave illusion to many a scene which is now revealed in all ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... Righteousness arose with healing in His wings. There have been many ages when the dense gloom of a heartless immorality seemed to settle down with unusual weight; there have been many places where, under the gaslight of an artificial system, vice has seemed to acquire an unusual audacity; but never probably was there any age or any place where the worst forms of wickedness were practiced with a more unblushing effrontery than in the city of Rome ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... themselves to him simultaneously. Travelling from town to town, conducting rehearsals and concerts, he wrote whenever and wherever he could—one number in an inn at Passau, the Elbe scene and the Dance of the Sylphs at Vienna, the peasants' song by gaslight in a shop one night when he had lost his way in Pesth, the angels' chorus in Marguerite's apotheosis at Prague (getting up in the middle of the night to write it down), the song of the students, "Jam ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... aptitude entirely, and the nature of his material accorded little with the size of the structure and the orchestral frame. And, then, are not these confessions of intimate experiences, these moonlight sentimentalities, these listless dreams, &c., out of place in the gaslight glare of concert-rooms, crowded with audiences brought together to a great extent rather by ennui, vanity, and idle curiosity than by love ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... sadly as this idea occurred to him, and she pressed his arm and smiled up at him, her face ruddy in the gaslight. ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... clung to him like the feathers of a drenched fowl. He shook and wheezed and panted, and gripped the air with tremulous fingers, and through the rents in his clothing his white flesh gleamed in the gaslight. ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... the deepest and coldest of our greens, and is permanent. It is too cold, and looks even more so at night. In use it needs the addition of some yellow which holds its own at night, such as yellow ochre, or the painting will be impossible in gaslight, and ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... ten months; and I smiled at the fashionable sunlight in the Park, the dusty cavalcades; and I loved to shock my friends by bowing to those whom I should not bow to; above all, the life of the theatres, that life of raw gaslight, whitewashed walls, of light, doggerel verse, slangy polkas and waltzes, interested me beyond legitimate measure, so curious and unreal did it seem. I lived at home, but dined daily at a fashionable restaurant; ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the candle. The stair was steep, and the march long. We halted at the second landing, and entered a gaunt, grimy passage. All the way up we had not heard a single sound of life, nor seen a human being, nor so much as passed a gaslight. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... tearoom, and these were divided by a small landing, where spare cups and saucers and teapots were stacked. From the upper flight the lower was invisible. Lucilla, descending, was unaware therefore of the gentleman coming up until she met him on the square of landing beneath the unshaded gaslight. He held a great, loose bunch of long-stalked violets in his hand; and he was, of course, Lucilla's partner at the heavenly dance, ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... the click of balls; the jolly conversation at the club, and glass after glass of that cold amber beer. The large freedom of the city streets at night, the warm saloons on every corner, the barrooms with their pyramids of bottles flashing in the gaslight—these were the things that made a man's life amusing. And here he was cooped up in a little cage in the suburbs ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... engagement in Cuba has many disadvantages which an open-air engagement has not. Seated in an uncongenial arm-chair, the conventional lover may enjoy the society of his betrothed any hour of the day or evening, but he may not meet her by gaslight alone, nor may he exhibit his passion in a demonstrative manner, save in the presence of others. Warned by these objections, Cachita and I have agreed to keep our own counsel, and court in this al fresco way. Besides, it is the Cuban custom for a lady to sit ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... night of that day, while the hammers were still ringing by gaslight in the unfinished shop; while Brown and Jones were still busy with the goods, and Mrs. Jones was measuring out to the shop-girls yards of Magenta ribbon, short by an inch, Robinson again walked down to the bridge. "The bleak wind of March ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... representing the government," is the maxim of the law; and, in addition, we invite your attention to the singular fact that of the two officers who bore testimony in this matter, one asserts that the hall wherein Payne sat was illuminated with a full head of gas; the other, that the gaslight was purposely dimmed. The uncertainty of the witness who gave the testimony relative to the coat of Payne may also ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... of seeing Paris besides roaming up and down before the blazing shop-windows, and lounging by daylight or gaslight along the crowded and gay boulevards; and one of the best is to go to the Bois de Boulogne on a fete-day, or when the races are in progress. This famous wood is very disappointing at first to one who has seen the English parks, or who remembers ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... project, and Owen had caught at it. Idleness had never been his fault, and he wanted severe engrossing labour to stun pain and expel thought. He was urgent to know what standard of attainments would be needful, and finding Robert ignorant on this head, seized his hat, and dashed out in the gaslight to the nearest bookseller's for a treatise ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who had first seen light, and that gaslight, in a block in lower Manhattan which has since been given over to a milk-station for a highly congested district, had the palate, if not the purse, of the cosmopolite. His digestive range included borsch and chow main; ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... concealed by a white veil which fell straight from the head. Now the white figure, with a noiseless, gliding motion, was crossing the room toward the white desk. It stopped, lifted a hand which crept toward the gaslight. With this motion, the veil fell away from the face. The gaslight shone upon it; he could see it in ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... matron, will yer, and send one of your men around for the house surgeon." The sergeant leaned forward comfortably on his elbows, with his hands under his chin so that the gold lace on his cuffs shone effectively in the gaslight. He believed he had a sense of humor and he chose this ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... the ceiling of the car from the top, and by its light we steamed into Skibbereen. I expected Skibbereen to be a small assemblage of mud huts, but was surprised to find it a large town of tall houses. As the bus rattled along through one gaslight street after another, I kept asking ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall |
