"Lamp-post" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was particularly exciting. The infuriated crowd, through some chance, got started against one man, either for words he uttered, or perhaps without any cause at all, and were proceeding to hang him at once to a neighboring lamp-post, when he was rescued by a few heroic policemen, who placed him in their midst and fought their way slowly and amid ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... two yellow brick cottages belonging to Captain Hagberd, one inhabited by himself the other by the Carvils. A lamp-post in front. The red roofs of the town in the background. A sea-wall ...
— One Day More - A Play In One Act • Joseph Conrad
... it mattered little what. I think we turned a corner. I think she struck a lamp-post or a tree. At all events, the buggy went over; and, scooped into the top, and dragged, and blinded, and stunned, I ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... wait for any answer, but swung back his two iron arms and then brought them forward with a sweep on to the back of the necks of the two policemen. They went down and forward as if a lamp-post had fallen on them, but were up again in a second. But before they could rise Hefty set his teeth, and with a gurgle of joy butted his iron helmet into McCluire's back and sent him flying forward into a snow-bank. Then he threw himself on him and buried him under three hundred ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... forth. He carried his head very high, and he would now and then shake it in that manner peculiar to the equine race. Angel and I followed closely with occasional caracoles, and cavortings, and scornful blowings through the nostrils. All three shied at a lamp-post. It needed no second glance to perceive that we were mettlesome steeds out for exercise, and ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... a case of foreign body in the axilla that was taken for a necrotic fragment of the clavicle. The patient was a boy of sixteen, who climbed up a lamp-post to get a light for his bicycle lamp; his feet slipped off the ornamental ledge which passed horizontally around the post about four feet from the ground, and he fell. In the fall a lead pencil in his waistcoat ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Leicester Square presented a drab and dingy appearance. The blaze of lights from the surrounding theatres shone on wet streets and slippery pavements. A drunken woman who had been ejected from the public-house at the corner stood leaning against a neighbouring lamp-post; her hat had fallen askew, stray, ragged wisps of hair hung about her face, from time to time she lifted up her voice and shouted at the children who had gathered in a ring to watch her antics. Life was horribly, ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... miss," she said after a pause; "even that seems queer enough, but Mr. Rivers can explain matters himself to my missis. Here's a nice 'ansom with a steady horse. Stop, driver, please, stop! Draw up here by the lamp-post. Now, miss, shall I get in first and ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... came to a stand close to the lamp-post against which the flute-player leaned, but he made no move to open the door. The light flared on his ashen face, showing it curiously apathetic. His instrument dangled from ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... Baron turned up his collar and sucked his cigar lugubriously, and Mr Bunker seemed unusually thoughtful. They had walked nearly as far as Piccadilly Circus when they were pulled up by a cab turning down a side-street. There was a lamp-post at the corner, and under it stood a burly man, his red face quite visible as they came up to ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... prince or princess expected with more anxiety. Madame Bauche was up and dressed long before the hour, and was heard to say five several times that she was sure he would not come. The capitaine was out and on the high road, moving about with his wooden leg, as perpendicular as a lamp-post and almost as black. Marie also was up, but nobody had seen her. She was up and had been out about the place before any of them were stirring; but now that the world was on the move she lay hidden like ...
— La Mere Bauche from Tales of All Countries • Anthony Trollope
... Ann Wicklow, who had a burning desire in her bosom to behold even the outside shell of her friend's new grandeur, undertook very disinterestedly to accompany them. Anthony's strict injunction held them due at a lamp-post outside Boyne's Bank, at half-past three o'clock in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was consid'able of a talkin'-point with me all right when I was takin' the part of a canned knight. They used to congregate together in the valley between my shoulder-blades, an' I'd get off an' back up again a lamp-post, but it wa'n't no use. I couldn't reach 'em, an' the' ain't no way on earth to scare 'em. Finally I hit upon a plan of wearin' a couple o' feet o' chain down the back o' my neck an' givin' it a jerk now an' again. It was only just moderately comfortable; but I had the satisfaction of knowin' ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... that brief interview. As he took the single turning he came into the full blast of the veering, irresolute storm. The street was solitary and full of the sound of the blown trees, wild and uplifting. Far down the figure of a woman wavered before the wind across the zone of a blurred lamp-post. She was coming toward him. He bent his head and lowered his umbrella and lost sight of her as they approached, she with the storm behind her, driven with hardly more resistance than the last year's blackened leaves that blew with her, he assailed by it and making the best way ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... journey the young men met with many narrow escapes. Courage came naturally to Etienne. 'I was not the least moved,' he writes in his diary, 'when surrounded by people and soldiers, who lavished their abuses upon us, and threatened to hang me to the lamp-post. I coolly stood by, my hands in my pockets, being provided with three pairs of pistols, two of which were double-barrelled. I concluded to wait to see what they would do, and resolved, after destroying ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... a wheezy old hand-organ behind them began a familiar melody, and Peace beheld the player, a bent, white-haired, blind man, sitting in the shadow of a lamp-post on the edge of the curbing, slowly, patiently turning the crank of the little machine. She was at his side in an instant, staring into the sightless face with her great, brown, pitying eyes. His clothes were very shabby, his cheeks were pinched and pale; his cup, she noticed, stood ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... can you best employ yourself, Martin, while I am absent. Suppose you were to give me your idea of a monument to a Lord Mayor of London, or a tomb for a sheriff, or your notion of a cow-house to be erected in a nobleman's park. A pump is a very chaste practice. I have found that a lamp-post is calculated to refine the mind and give it a classical tendency. An ornamental turnpike has a remarkable effect upon the imagination. What do you say to beginning with ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... thing as blue devils, or repentance, or satiety. I had great fun giving him authentic accounts of London. I told him that to see the people boxing in the streets was a constant source of amusement to us; that in November you saw every lamp-post on London Bridge with a man hanging from it who had committed suicide—and he believed everything. Did you ever read any of the works of Janin?—No? well, he has been for twenty years famous in France, and he on his side has never heard ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... to admit of the transaction of all its business by the general office. To meet the necessities of the town, and to insure the rapid dispatch of the postal business, about 700 "lamp-post boxes," or iron boxes attached to the posts of the street lamps, are scattered through the city. Letters for the mails and for delivery in the city are deposited in these boxes, from which they are collected by the letter-carriers ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... vain he resists for hours, now addressing them and now imposing silence. Armed bands, coming from the Faubourgs Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau, swell the crowd; they take aim at him; others prepare the lamp-post. He then dismounts and endeavors to return to the Hotel-de-Ville, but his grenadiers bar ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a man—one whose voice was quiet but intense. "We've attended to his case, Williams. He's toeing the moonlight from a lamp-post. Want to see?" ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... street. He stood by a lamp-post for a few minutes engaged in thought and then he turned and plunged into a small notion and news shop. A red-haired young woman, eating gum-drops, came and looked freezingly at him across the ice-bound steppes of ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... every last cent of it. Then, while some of them held him, the others smashed all his bottles until the black juice ran over the tailboard like a dark waterfall, and they hurled his high silk hat on the top of the lamp-post, yelling,— ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... rest up the deserted road, imitating and keeping pace, as far as I could, with their rapid and yet lady-like step, until at length I saw a lamp-post and a policeman standing under it. I had made up my mind. Until we reached them we were all equally demure and silent and swift. When we reached them I suddenly flung myself against the railings and roared out: 'Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! Rule Britannia! Get ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... remove, or destroy a milestone, mile-board, or guide-post erected upon a public way, or wilfully deface or alter the inscription on any such stone or board, or extinguish a lamp, or break, destroy, or remove a lamp, lamp-post, railing, or posts erected on a street or other public place; for if you do you are liable to six months' imprisonment or a fine ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... the grocery for mother; I thought I knew the way but I got mixed up, and stopped under a lamp-post, to think. Pretty soon a woman came along and put a white letter in a box; so I thought I'd save trouble if I put mother's grocery list in, and I did. A man in gray clothes came along, and unlocked it, and took the letters all out. I told him 'bout my list, and he laughed, and gave it to me, ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... Professor Fish in person, would willingly have made a fuss of him, if it had been possible. But Smith was not amenable to polite attentions. To attempts to render him particular consideration he opposed a barren inertia; one could as easily have been obliging to a lamp-post. The man's consciousness seemed to exist in a vacuum; he lived in a solitude to which the kindly Doctor could never penetrate. Once, certainly, his persistent geniality won him a rebuff. It was at breakfast, and he was following his custom of endeavoring to trap Smith into conversation. ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... passing under a lamp-post, and the woman suddenly turned and glared at me with a look of such wild terror that for an instant I involuntarily glanced round me under the impression that some terrible peril, unseen by ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... Gallery off Cork Street, however, he paid his shilling, picked up a catalogue, and entered. Some ten persons were prowling round. Soames took steps and came on what looked to him like a lamp-post bent by collision with a motor omnibus. It was advanced some three paces from the wall, and was described in his catalogue as "Jupiter." He examined it with curiosity, having recently turned some of his attention to sculpture. 'If that's Jupiter,' ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... fast to the lamp-post: the night was warm, and hot as she was, she would take no hurt. Then I followed Martha up ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... me with pleasant news, told in his slangy New York boy vernacular. One day he would exclaim: "Oh, I'm getting on prime! I got such a smile off her this morning as I went by the window!" Another day he wanted counsel how to get a valentine to her—because it was too big to shove in a lamp-post, and she might catch him if he left it on the steps, rang the bell and ran away. Daniel wrote his own valentine; but, despite its originality, that document gave him no such comfort as Billy got from his twenty- five cents' worth of embossed paper, pink cupids and doggerel. Finally ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... amusement. Not that this yarn is lacking in adventure; indeed it is concerned with the Gallipoli campaign, from the landings until the evacuation, and anything more adventurous it would be hard to imagine. In reading this story of The Orphan, The Lamp-post, Bubbles, The Hun, Rawlins and The Pink Rat, one feels that the author actually knows these "snotties," with their high courage, animal spirits and elementary humour. It is in fact history spiced with fiction. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... the corner of her street and walked rapidly toward the house. He had no definite object, but with the blood of romantic ancestors who had serenaded beneath magnolia trees pounding in his veins, he thought it likely he would take up his stand under the opposite lamp-post and remain there all night. The reportorial ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... of Mr Vanslyperken, as he walked back to the boat. His reverie was, however, broken by his breaking his nose against a lamp-post, which did not contribute to his good-humour. "Yes, yes, Frau Vandersloosh, we will see," muttered Vanslyperken; "you would kill my dog, would you? It's a dog's life I'll lead you when I'm once secure of you, Madame Vandersloosh. ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Then he realised (in some odd way) that the silence was rather a living silence than a dead one. Directly outside the door stood a street lamp, whose gleam gilded the leaves of the tree that bent out over the fence behind him. About a foot from the lamp-post stood a figure almost as rigid and motionless as the lamp-post itself. The tall hat and long frock coat were black; the face, in an abrupt shadow, was almost as dark. Only a fringe of fiery hair against the light, ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... the lawn and out to the sidewalk. I don't very often like the things Tom says, but I thought it was clever of him to think of going to ask Harry Goward about the letter, and I told him so to encourage him. He thanked me very politely, and then he stopped and braced his back against the lamp-post on the corner and "fixed me with a stern gaze," as ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... that God provides for those He brings into the world. The French Revolution will compare with the revolution that is to come, that must come, that is inevitable, as a puddle on the road-side compares with the sea. Men will hang like pears on every lamp-post, in every great quarter of London, there will be an electric guillotine that will decapitate the rich like hogs in Chicago. Christ, who with his white feet trod out the blood of the ancient world, and promised Universal Peace, shall go out in a cataclysm of blood. The neck of mankind ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... not move the curtain or they will suspect we are watching them. Look a little to the left, by the lamp-post. The other you can catch a glimpse of if you ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... from the window and undress when he caught sight of a figure tacking from one pavement to the other up Keppel Street. Mark watched its progress, amused at the extraordinary amount of trouble it was giving itself, until one tack was brought to a sharp conclusion by a lamp-post to which the figure clung long enough to be recognized as that of the Reverend George Edward Mousley, who had been tacking like this to make the harbour of the Mission House. Mark, remembering the letter which had been written to the Bishop of Warwick, ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... fright. "I have a presentiment," he declared emphatically. "It may be that what I am talking about will not occur this morning. It may be put off until tonight but I will be hanged. Everyone will get excited. I will be hanged to a lamp-post on Main Street." ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... tattoo, In lieu of expressing the feelings which lay Quite too deep for words, as Wordsworth would say; Then, without going through the form of a bow, Found myself in the entry—I hardly know how, On doorstep and sidewalk, past lamp-post and square, At home and upstairs, in my own easy-chair; Poked my feet into slippers, my fire into blaze, And said to myself, as I lit my cigar, "Supposing a man had the wealth of the Czar Of the Russias to boot, for the rest of his days, On the whole, do you ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... her with a closer attention than any driver should give to his companion. The result was a violent swerve to the far side of the road, barely missing a lamp-post. ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... walking about a town, where at the corners of all the streets and squares and the beginning and end of every bridge and viaduct; the entrance to a palace or a public office; the gateway to a market or a subway, a park or a garden; the foot of a lamp-post or a statue; a curbstone running round an open space, or a wall abutting on a roadway, the same thing is always found for the purpose of keeping off the wheels of vehicles as they roll by,—a round stone: ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... street, the sun shone brightly, a fresh wind was blowing and somebody was flying a kite far away across the field. There were very few people on foot and no carriages. The road belonged to them, and they rushed to it with a loud hallo. The one who reached the lamp-post at the ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... man brushed heavily against me, and then hurried on in the other direction. I had unbuttoned my coat to look at my watch under the lamp-post, and after he struck against me I clapped my hand to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... doing quite eight miles an hour and the steepest declivity was yet to come. Further, the dropping of the left-hand shafts jerked the van to the left, and Denry dropped the other pair only just in time to avoid the sudden uprooting of a lamp-post. The four points of the shafts digging and prodding into the surface of the road gave the pantechnicon something to think about for a few seconds. But unfortunately the precipitousness of the street encouraged ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... draws attention to needs he cannot supply. In after-years we may have perhaps a newer and more daring Arts and Crafts Exhibition. In it we shall not decorate the armour of the twelfth century but the machinery of the twentieth. A lamp-post shall be wrought nobly in twisted iron, fit to hold the sanctity of fire. A pillar-box shall be carved with figures emblematical of the secrets of comradeship and the silence and honour of the State. Railway signals, of all earthly things the most poetical, the coloured stars ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... about 'ere for ten minutes," said Mr. Kidd, as they reached the Monument, "and then foller on. When you pass a lamp-post 'old your handkerchief up to your face. And wait for us at the corner of your road till we ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... of the summer twice gone by as it pitched through the "roaring forties." He remembered trying to make his way back towards that corner—where the horses went down—there were friends there—and that big policeman—he'd help. The lamp-post leaned over and tapped him hard on top of the head. He tried to grapple it, but the right arm would not answer. Then his feet shot out from under him on the icy pavement, and the curb flew up and struck him a violent blow at the base of ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... slowly, for he hoped with all his heart that she would call him back. At the next lamp-post he stopped and looked over his shoulder. He thought she might beckon to him—he was willing to forget everything, he was ready for any humiliation—but she had turned away, and apparently had ceased to trouble about him. He ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... struck out with my best foot foremost (the best one at snow-shoes, I mean), and the sledd came after me as lightly as a dog might follow; and Annie, with the lanthorn, seemed to be left behind and waiting like a pretty lamp-post. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... triumph swelling high in his heart. Overhead the storm-clouds gathered ominously. First with a patter, then with a drenching flood, the prisoned rain burst its bars, and dashed clamouring down to the free earth. He paused, umbrellaless, under a glimmering lamp-post. The hurrying steeds of a carriage, passing at great speed, dashed the gathered slush of the street over his dark-blue Melton over-coat. The imprecations of the coachman and his jeers mingled strangely ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 18, 1890 • Various
... hanging myself over the first lamp-post; but, after a leetle consideration, I determined to confound Madam Trot, and all other fickle fair ones, by that very night marrying Miss Diana. I hastened on, rushed precipitately into the shop, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... lamp-post into which he steered me was poorly rooted. He looked at the wreckage of the glass globe on the grass, and declared he had taken as much of the theory of motoring as he could absorb in ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolitic. It is said, that twenty-four millions ought to prevail over two hundred thousand. True; if the constitution of a kingdom be a problem of arithmetic. This sort of discourse does well enough with the lamp-post for its second: to men who MAY reason calmly, it is ridiculous. The will of the many, and their interest, must very often differ; and great will be the difference when ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... with warmth; "they are getting to demand things as their right, and they are insolent. The last time I drove down in that quarter I was insulted by their manner. What are you going to do with such people? One big fellow who was leaning against a lamp-post growled, 'You'd better stay in your own palace, miss, and not come prying round here.' And a brazen girl cried out: 'Shut yer mouth, Dick; the lady's got to have some pleasure. Don't yer see, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... evening I was walking back and forth in front of our house, though I knew it a great risk, when a man overtook me, cleared his throat as if to speak, and passed on to the lamp-post, which had made one limit of my walk. I did not shorten my path, and when I came up to the post he again cleared his throat as if to speak, and next time stepped out, lifted his ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... think anything about it at all. When Mr. Scruby hurries down the room in that way he looks as the man looked when he was hurrying under the lamp-post. I am not disposed to ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... term hangs a tale apropos of the President. Its origin was low, but humorous. A benevolent gentleman pierced a crowd to its center to see there, on the pavement under a lamp-post, a poor woman, curled in a heap, with a satisfied grin on her flushed face, breathing brokenly. "What's the matter?" eagerly inquired the compassionate man. A bystander removed his pipe from his mouth, and with it pointed ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... at night when I entered the principal street in Albany, and, as the lady predicted, a watchman came to me and asked why I was out that time of night. I gave him Mr. Stot's letter. He stood beside a lamp-post and read it, when he seemed satisfied, and said, "I know the man; come with me and I'll take you to his house." I followed him a long way, till at last he stopped before a large house, and rang the bell. Mr. Williams came to the ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... man, alive or dead. But he won't object to waiting, unless he wants to rouse suspicion. Now I do object." And here Dick laughed. "Why," he went on, "with your way of doing things, they'd have to arrest a hundred witnesses every time a lorry ran into a lamp-post." ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... cannot help making love to you, just for one little intense minute; there is a certain Communistic temper always adhering in true love which WILL occasionally break out and behead all the Royal Proprieties and hang Law to the first lamp-post: it is even now so, my heart is a little '93, 'aux armes!' Where is this minister that imprisons us, away from our friends, in the Bastile of Separation, let him die, — and as for Silence, that luxurious tyrant that collects all the dead for his taxes, behold, I am even now pricking ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... manner with the managing clerk of an attorney at the door; and in Curling the wigmaker's melancholy shop, where, from behind the feeble glimmer of a couple of lights, large serpents' and judges' wigs were looming drearily, with the blank blocks looking at the lamp-post in the court. Two little clerks were playing at toss-halfpenny under that lamp. A laundress in pattens passed in at one door, a newspaper boy issued from another. A porter, whose white apron was faintly visible, paced up and down. It would be impossible to conceive a place more dismal, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... out to play one morning, and saw a little knot of people gathered around a lamp-post. There was a notice on it—a new order from the chief of police. You pushed into the crowd, and stared at the placard, but you could not read. A woman with a ragged shawl looked down upon you, and said, with a ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... him a moment to reach his pupil's side, and lifting the limp form in his arms, carried him to the sidewalk, under the lamp-post. ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... soap or candles printed on the cover lying on the ground, and taking a saw he cut the Taylor in two, nailing "Tay" up on the corner house. Strange to say, it is "Tay" Street to-day, after fifty-five years, but instead of being on the house it is painted on a lamp-post. Clay Street had the honor of having the first cable street cars, but I did not see any on my ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... a lamp-post when a charge of grape went through the lamp. Remembering the story in "Peter Simple," and that "lightning never strikes twice in the same place," I remained quiet, when there came at once another, smashing what was left of the glass about ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... amidst the cheering of the population; but the other three sank to rise no more. By this time the coach, with the coachman and guard, had been thrown on the pavement, where the depth of water was less; and there the guard was seen clinging to the top, and the coachman hanging by his hands to a lamp-post, with his toes occasionally touching the box. In this perilous state they remained till another boat came and relieved them, when the guard and the mails were landed in safety. Great indignation was ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... when the occupant of the meditative hydrant demanded to know what single merit could be found in Mr. FECHTER'S acting, his only answer was a suggestion from a prosaic policeman that he cease to put idiotic questions to the unoffending lamp-post. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... after some lady or other, but I never knew him to read before. It is a dangerous symptom. He reads with one eye, while the other sweeps the horizon to catch a glimpse of her. By the way, that would be a splendid idea for a district policeman; if he stood under a lamp-post in citizen's dress reading a book, no criminal would suspect his identity, and he could keep one eye on the printed page, and devote the other to the cause of justice. But to return to our sallow mutton, or black ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... those days at 181a Campden Hill Gardens. It is the house opposite the third lamp-post on the right as you walk east. It was of brick and slate, with a party-wall, and two spikes were wanting to the iron railings. When the telegram came I was sitting in my study writing a discussion on the atomic theory of Krelli of Balmoral. I at once changed the Woking ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... come naturally to the subject of antiques, let us pause here, under a convenient lamp-post, and discuss the ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... respectively) though not eaten, is agreeable to the public taste and, though not exported, profitable to the general welfare. That the legitimate relation of the tree to justice was no discovery of Judge Lynch (who, indeed, conceded it no primacy over the lamp-post and the bridge-girder) is made plain by the following passage from Morryster, who antedated ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... few minutes for us to jump into a hack, and drive at full speed to the office of the Globe newspaper, where the report was apparently confirmed. A great crowd in a state of eager excitement besieged the doors, and presently a man mounted on a lamp-post read the words, "Sebastopol is taken! The Russian fleet burnt! Eighteen thousand killed and wounded. Loss of the Allies, two thousand five hundred." This news had been telegraphed from Boston, and surely the trembling tongue of steel had never before told ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... fell on a notice on the door. There was no necessity to read it, he knew its purport: the restaurant was closed on midsummer-day; he had forgotten it. He felt as if he had run with his head into a lamp-post. He was furious; first of all with the proprietor for closing, then with himself for having forgotten that the restaurant would be closed. It seemed to him so monstrous that he could have forgotten an incident of such importance, that he couldn't believe it and racked his brain to find someone on ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... local prophet from the neighbouring mountain-peak, does not strike the eye as having anything uncanny about it. At least I imagine that it requires rather careful scrutiny before the eerie curl of a chimney pot, or the elfin wink of a lonely lamp-post brings home to the startled soul that it is really the City of a Fearful Folk. That the inhabitants are not human in the ordinary sense is quite clear, yet it has only just begun to dawn on me after staying a week in the Town of Unreason with its monstrous ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... afternoon, leaning from my window, I saw him pass down the street, walking tremulously and carrying the bag. Each time he passed a lamp-post he shrank a little, as though expecting it to strike him, or maybe ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... was right under the lamp-post this end of the bridge that I stood when I challenged. Lieutenant Rollins answered for them and passed them out. He was sitting beside Mr. Sutton as they drove up, then jumped out and gave me the countersign and bade ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... citizenship, let us a little more soberly and strictly ask ourselves what it actually does keep her out of. It does definitely keep her out of the collective act of coercion; the act of punishment by a mob. The human tradition does say that, if twenty men hang a man from a tree or lamp-post, they shall be twenty men and not women. Now I do not think any reasonable Suffragist will deny that exclusion from this function, to say the least of it, might be maintained to be a protection as well as a veto. No candid person will wholly dismiss the proposition that the idea ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... strode to the window and in a dazed way stared at the lamp-post which was sticking out its flaming little tongue to the night. Why was I mocked? There was no mocking and there should have been no bitterness. Of that there was none ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... forced to own that, upon this point, Washington so far lags shamefully in the rear of Paris. Our grandest 'log-rolling' in finance is, to the colossal operations of Gambetta, Leon Say, and De Freycinet, as is the ordinary iron lamp-post of New York to ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... said Spider, and crossing to the window, he unlatched it stealthily and lifted it high, "if I ain't back inside of ten minutes, bo, nip out through here and hike; wait for me at the lamp-post across the lot over there—it'll be ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, "Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... difficult to elude all their ingenuities. When a man did something free and frantic and entirely his own, a horrible thought struck him afterwards; it might have been predicted. Whenever a duke climbed a lamp-post, when a dean got drunk, he could not be really happy, he could not be certain that he was not fulfilling some prophecy. In the beginning of the twentieth century you could not see the ground for clever men. They ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... for the night he pulled me out, and by the aid of the feeble light of a neighbouring lamp-post, made a hasty examination of my exterior and interior. Having apparently satisfied himself as to my value, he put me and the pipe back into his dreadful pocket, from which, even yet, the fumes of the "soldier" had not faded, and ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... never been to a Virginia summer resort, so you couldn't understand that there is something about a Virginia summer resort that just seems to make any man better than none at all. You get so bored, you know, that you'd flirt with a lamp-post if there wasn't anything human around; and when you haven't laid eyes on a real sure enough man for several months, it's surprising how easy it is to take up with the imitation ones. Of course, I don't mean ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... exact geographical relation to Preston Street. He walked westwards along the promenade. "Why am I doing this?" he asked himself again and again. "Why don't I go home? I must be mad to be doing this." Still his legs carried him on, past lamp-post after lamp-post of the wind-driven promenade, now almost deserted. And presently the high lighted windows of the grandest hotels were to be seen, cut like square holes in the sky; and then the pier, which had flung a string ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Christendom, woman has no political rights, is not a citizen in full; she has no voice in making or administering the laws, none in electing the rulers or administrators thereof. She can hold no office—can not be committee of a primary school, overseer of the poor, or guardian to a public lamp-post. But any man, with conscience enough to keep out of jail, mind enough to escape the poor-house, and body enough to drop his ballot into the box, he is a voter. He may have no character—even no money; that is no matter—he is male. The noblest woman has no voice in the State. Men ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... lives of twenty thousand human beings!" the professor said to himself many times a day, with the joy of the scientist. "I'm being first assistant to the world's greatest meddler. That young man is headed for a place as one of the world's leaders, or for a lamp-post and a rope.... ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... dark and cold. A hateful autumn rain was drizzling as though through a sieve. Podzharov leaned his elbow on a lamp-post and abandoned himself to a ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... some vent, some victim for its wrath. I saw a crowd catch a poor fellow at the corner of Magazine and Common Streets, whose crime was that he looked like a stranger and might be a spy. He was the palest living man I ever saw. They swung him to a neighboring lamp-post; but the Foreign Legion was patrolling the town in strong squads, and one of its lieutenants, all green and gold, leaped with drawn sword, cut the rope, and saved the man. This was one occurrence; there were many like it. I stood in the rear door of our store, Canal Street, soon ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... your mouth, deary, before you slip and fall into it! Don't be bitter! You can't have all the men there are. You're envious!" "Me, envious!" Rosario retorted. "Envious of your reputation, I suppose,—the best in the Cabanal, as even the lamp-post knows! Thanks! I'm a decent woman, I am, I never tried to get another girl's husband!" "And whose husband could you get with that sculpin-face? No, dearest, no one is jealous of you!" And Rosario, growing paler than ever, sunk her nails into her clenched hands, while Dolores, her fists ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... artist, the invaders have reached the vicinity of the great clubs, and are wreaking vengeance on that special Tory club—White's—while Brooks's over the way is a scene of rejoicing. The figures hanging from the lamp-post are those of Canning and Jackson, while Pitt, firmly lashed to the Tree of Liberty, is ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... Brent, the figure of an eager and determined man swinging up the street, and pulling out his watch under every lamp-post. And in his haste, in the darkness of a midblock, he ran into another solid body clad in high boots and an old army ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... pulled through. We rented an apartment, furnished, at $15 per month and buckled in. I might say that the rent didn't have to be paid in advance or we wouldn't have moved in. My soul mate—otherwise husband—worked as a truckman, a taxi driver, a cement lamp-post worker, a chauffeur, a night watchman, a salesman, a cook and a dish-washer. In five years we moved twenty different times, an average of once every three months (not because we wished to skip our rent, but because ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... one another. Presently we saw a jackass laden with vegetables come swimming down the street, carried along by the current. He was swept away into a large open drain, and disappeared. The peasant who owned him, and who had also been carried away, only saved himself from a like fate by clinging to a lamp-post. In one hour there fell more water than there falls in Paris during the two wettest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... of the scenery I had so far witnessed on the Amazon was the narrow Foro da Jararaca. From the lamp-post—it cannot in all honesty be called a lighthouse—of Mandy, we made for the other lamp-post of Capin; and from this for the third lamp-post of Arrozal, navigation being most difficult in that part. From there ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... of Johnson's was, that he would never pass a lamp-post without touching it, and would go back miles upon his way to repair an omission. Surely great wit to madness is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... again. "Your lawyers will no doubt communicate with us in due course. And, if you take my advice," he concluded, with another of his swift changes of manner, "you'll get 'em to settle out of court, for, between me and you and the lamp-post, you haven't an earthly!" ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... as I could endure the tension of the straps I would hold out, and hope for a tree or a pole. Perhaps it might rain, and my wet clothes would then become so heavy that I would descend as low as the top of a lamp-post. ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... his cheek indicated that the exhilaration of the quid was not wanting to his inner man, but the solace he drew from it appeared pitifully trifling. Now and then he would pause, rest his person against a lamp-post, or the front of some emporium, and shake his head despondently, like one most fearful of the consequences of ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... what a tremendous thing it is to know every trivial detail of twelve hundred miles of river and know it with absolute exactness. If you will take the longest street in New York, and travel up and down it, conning its features patiently until you know every house and window and door and lamp-post and big and little sign by heart, and know them so accurately that you can instantly name the one you are abreast of when you are set down at random in that street in the middle of an inky black night, you will then have a tolerable notion of the amount and the exactness ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... massive against the steel-gray sky, A tram-car, full of home-bound travellers, clattered past over rails that shone with the peculiarly frostbitten gleam that seems to herald snow. Across the river, everything was dark and mysterious, except for an occasional lamp-post and the dim illumination of the wharves. It was a depressing prospect, and the thought crossed her mind that to the derelicts whose nightly resting-place was a seat on the Embankment the view must seem even ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... tall cuirassiers surged by in silence, sombre faces turned towards the west, where the white flag flew on the ramparts. Heavier, denser, more suffocating grew the crush; an ambulance broke down, a caisson smashed into a lamp-post, a cuirassier's horse slipped in the greasy depths of the filth, pitching its steel-clad rider to the pavement. Through the Place d'Alsace-Lorraine, through the Avenue du College and the Place d'Armes, passed the turbulent torrent of men and horses and cannon. The Grande Rue ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... no question of doing anything else," he said, with a laugh that sounded uneasy. "She will have nerves until she sees a lamp-post again. She is going ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... after him, and wondering at his, strange conduct, when he was recalled to himself by the voice of the deceased, who had struggled to his feet, and was holding on to the lamp-post, swaying to and fro. 'I wan' g'ome,' he said in a thick voice, 'St. Kilda.' He then tried to get into the cab, but was too drunk to do so, and finally sat down again on the pavement. Seeing this, Royston ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... I told you how it would be—not the slightest use staying here!... I can't see anything except a lamp-post and the top of a soldier's bearskin!... We might just as well have stopped at home! (Viciously.) Where all the people come from, I don't know! I'm sure we were here ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various
... shop, baby linen shop or some nonsense of that sort, so it was plain for what she had popped her watch; but what cared I? I continued to sing most beautifully. I lunged gayly with my stick at a lamp-post and missed it, whereat a street-urchin grinned, and I winked at him and slipped twopence down ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... describe their position accurately afterwards; but, by the time she turned, the vision and the dream would be upon her as a rule, and she would walk in a world of fancy, utterly oblivious of red pillar-boxes, green shutters, or anything else on earth, until she was brought up wondering by a lamp-post, tree, or some unoffending person with whom she had collided in her abstraction; then she would have to ask her way; but she was slow to find it by direction; and all the time she was wandering about, Aunt Victoria would be worrying herself with fears for her ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... with him (for he had wounded two men), and even called out to those in front, to bring him forth and hang him on a lamp-post. But Gabriel was quite undaunted, and looked from Hugh and Dennis, who held him by either arm, to Simon Tappertit, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... journey, but regard for our word forbids my relating it. Suffice it to say, we saw the "frowning fortifications," we "flanked" the "invincible army," and, at ten o'clock that night, planted our flag (against a lamp-post) in the very heart of the hostile city. As we alighted at the doorway of the Spotswood Hotel, the Judge ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... dark and raised his hand to rap on the panel of the door, but thought better of it and, turning, walked back to the interested Crewe, who stood in the shadow of a lamp-post watching ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... you think was the first person who broke this spell of silence? The ruffian whom I had fought under the lamp-post. He is a scissors-grinder it seems, and rang to know if I had a job for him. I could not help grinning at him when I opened the door and saw who it was. He showed no sign of recognising me, however, which is hardly ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... And we are in a Fog! Cabbin' it, Council? Ah! each absent Member May be esteemed a vastly lucky dog! The streets are up—of course! No Irish bog Is darker, deeper, dirtier than that hole SP-NC-R is staring into. On my soul, M-RL-Y, we want that light you're seeking, swarming Up that lank lamp-post in a style alarming! Take care, my JOHN, you don't come down a whopper! And you, young R-S-B-RY, if you come a cropper Over that dark, dim pile, where shall we be? Pest! I can hardly see An inch before my nose—not to say clearly. Hold him ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... unsettled the alderman. This proved to the alderman that the active use of a revolver incurred serious perils. It proved to him that nearly anything might happen with a revolver. He might aim at a lamp-post and hit the town hall clock; he might mark down a burglar and destroy the wife of his affections. There were no limits to what could occur. And so he resolved never to shoot any more. He would still carry the revolver; but for his old English gentlemanliness he would ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... with its grocer's shop at the corner, its Baths and Public Library, the sudden little black dips into the areas as the houses followed one another, the lamp-post opposite their window that had always excited him because it leaned inwards a little as though it would presently tumble. He remembered the fat short cook with the pink cotton dress who wheezed and blew so when she had to climb the stairs. He remembered the rooms ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... his post again—the parish lamp-post at the corner of the lane—awaiting the "Favourite" omnibus, that is to bear him to the City. He is trying to arrange the thousand and one little commissions he has to execute for Mrs. Brown. How many he remembered or forgot we know not; but that day he purchased a ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... lived in the third house in the terrace, counting from the lamp-post at the corner of Buckland Street, where, running parallel to Cardigan Street, it tumbles over the hill and is lost to sight on its way to Botany Road. It was a long, ugly row of two-storey houses, the model ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... Americans say, "went beyond the limit." I asked the senator how he accounted for Americans, well educated as they are, taking up these strange impostors. "Well," he replied, puffing on a big cigar, "between you and me and the lamp-post it's on account of the kind of schooling they get. I didn't get much myself—I'm an old-timer; but I accumulated a lot of 'horse sense,' that has served me so well that I never have my leg pulled, and I notice that all these 'suckers' are graduates from something; but don't take this as gospel, ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... before, he saw, through the ivy, two policemen walking between one lamp-post and the next. They did not see him. Moreover, anything that might happen inside the house appeared to be to them a ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... office, and returning within half an hour, was even more alarmed than Mr. S. had appeared to be. He said the excitement was very great, and that he believed if the crowd discovered my business, they would hang me to a lamp-post; I must not leave the office till I started for the train. What did I propose to do? I ought not to think of sailing ...
— The Supplies for the Confederate Army - How they were obtained in Europe and how paid for. • Caleb Huse
... his horses, and, what he probably regarded much more than either, himself, into the very heart of what he pronounced a counter-revolution. My courier, freighted with despatches, which might have been high treason to the majesty of the mob, and who saw nothing less than suspension from the first lamp-post in their discovery, protested, with about the same number of sacres; and my diplomatic beams seemed in a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... till you hear him. We can a' come up here as angry as hell, ready to string him up to the nearest lamp-post; but after he has spoken an' slaivered ower us for a while, we begin to feel differently, an' finally gang awa hame wi' our minds made up that we are the salt o' the earth. Man, it tak's a' the sting oot o' bein' dune, to be dune sae well an' ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... Linkinwater, or the inferior lovers of this particular locality, had been awakened and kept alive by any refreshing associations with leaves, however dingy, or grass, however bare and thin. The city square has no enclosure, save the lamp-post in the middle: and no grass, but the weeds which spring up round its base. It is a quiet, little-frequented, retired spot, favourable to melancholy and contemplation, and appointments of long-waiting; ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... could give the office to whomsoever he chose. The first was a herring's head, which could emit light in the darkness. He remarked that it would be a great saving of oil if they placed him on the lamp-post. Number two was a piece of rotten wood, which also shines in the dark. He considered himself descended from an old stem, once the pride of the forest. The third was a glow-worm, and how he found his way there the lamp could not imagine, yet there he was, and could really give light as well as the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the morning, the worthy Mrs. Robins was awakened by a stentorian voice in the street below demanding to know "Was ist das Deutsche Vaterland?"—a somewhat vexed question which the owner of the said voice was propounding to the solitary lamp-post of Kennedy Place. On descending the landlady discovered that the author of this disturbance was a fashionably dressed gentleman, who, upon closer inspection, proved to her great surprise to be none other than the usually demure part proprietor of her fourth floor. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... getting lost. The very first time he went out alone he got lost! Told not to go off the block, he walked as far as the corner of Leonard Street, put his arm around the lamp-post, swung himself in a circle, had his head turned the wrong way, and marched off, at a right angle, along the side street, with no home visible anywhere, and not a familiar sign in sight. A ship at sea without a rudder, a solitary wanderer in the Great American Desert without a compass, could not ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... 'reverends' step in and stop him, then let me tell you I'm about ready to pull up stakes and go out West, where there's patriotism and decency still, and where they'd hang one of these foreign anarchists to the nearest lamp-post, yes, sir, and this fellow Frazer, too, if he encouraged them in their crank notions. Got no right in the country, anyway. Better deport 'em if they ain't satisfied with the way we run things. I won't stand for preaching anarchism, and never ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... flying from every window, from every roof, from every lamp-post. The people ran by the carriage cheering. Their shout was a ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... place. "There is only one thing for you to do, my dear Reid. You must get drunk directly." I declared, with reason, that I had drunk too much already, and crept away to my bed, which happily was close at hand. For at least two days after that incident I smelt like a newly-painted lamp-post, but I have always felt grateful to the careless dog of a servant for not having served me up oxalic acid or vitriol in place of the turpentine. After that affair I do not think I ever went back to the Century Club. It was bad enough to be bored by the irrepressible ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... corner of the block in which the theatre stood they seized a man who looked like a Southerner and hung him to the lamp-post. Two heroic policemen fought their way to his side ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... throw down the log and liberate our prisoner. But between you and me and the lamp-post, Elmer, I don't believe that's going to happen. 'Cause why? Well, it's my honest belief that this Italiano woman's got all the nerve there is in that crowd. ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... him to the front door to give him a little air, and he stood still on the pavement, quite stupefied. For the first time in his life, he snapped at nobody who went by; and, oh, dear, he hadn't even the heart to smell a lamp-post!" ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... near to the very house itself. He haunted Orange Street, could be seen lounging against a lamp-post opposite the High School, looked once into the very garden of the Coles, Jeremy watching him with beating heart from the schoolroom window. It was incredible to Jeremy that no one else of the house perceived him; but no one ever mentioned him, and this ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... would be the result in the Strand if no pedestrian could stop his progress within three yards, but by anchoring to a lamp-post, and even then swinging round with force. Why, there would be scarcely a coal-heaver who would not be whitened by collision with some baker's boy. Ladies in full sail would be run down, and dandies would be sunk by ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... anchored against the roots of a lamp-post. When Ellis saw the upper half of the lamp-post bent down at right angles, and pieces of glass covering the pavement, he could not believe that he and his dogcart had done that, especially as neither the mare, nor the dogcart, ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... twinkling beneath his flapping overcoat, and covered the first fifty yards in such promising fashion that he was able to strike the revolving rim a series of smart raps with his umbrella before the wind had recovered its breath. Then suddenly up leapt the hat, cannoned from a lamp-post on to the railings of the Queen Street Gardens, from them across the pavement into the gutter, and there, getting nicely on edge, careered like a hoop, with the thud of Heriot's footsteps growing ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... with his hand to his side, and lean against a lamp-post. "I can't, of course, do the Scotch the way Harry Lauder does it," ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... against a lamp-post in an attitude of deepest dejection, looking down into the gutter as if he expected to see there some help arise to aid ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... stammering. The whole world of his experience collapsed under him. "But I didn't!" he at last brought out; he looked extraordinarily foolish. Manna aped his expression. "Ugh! Bugh! Take care, or you'll freeze to the ground and turn into a lamp-post! There's nothing on the hedge here that will throw ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... where Gimblett inserted the iron-wood gag in his mouth. The sound produced by his breathing through it (which appeared to be done with great difficulty) resembled a low, indistinct whistle. Gimblett led him to the lamp-post in the yard, and I saw that the victim of his wanton tyranny was the poor blind wretch Mooney. Gimblett placed him with his back against the lamp-post, and his arms being taken round, were secured by handcuffs round the post. I was told that the old man was to remain in this condition for three ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... take the spirit of Sheridan's excellent advice to his son, and say he has touched it, but as a rule he takes the trouble to go down and do it. I was escorted for this festal ceremony by a resident, and leaning against that southernmost lamp-post was a Scot in an abject state of drunkeness, and as Stevenson says of a similar personage, "radiating dirt and humbug." Nigh at hand was another drunkard, sitting pipe in mouth on an upturned petroleum-tin, and the ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... way before she met any one of whom she liked to ask direction. At last she saw an elderly man standing under a lamp-post, reading a letter. Draxy studied his face, and then stopped quietly by his side without ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... front of the churches to be removed laughed heartily, and cried, "Hello! Where are you going? Running? Good-bye!" Fortunately they could not see our faces, for it was very dark. One stopped us under a lamp-post and wanted us to go back. He said he knew we were to be attacked, for the Confederates were within five miles; but we were as safe at home as at the Asylum. He was a very handsome, respectable-looking man, though dirty, as Yankee soldiers always are, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... Talking little—Anthony in careless, casual questions, the other two with provincial economy of phrase and burden—they sauntered past another corner, and another. In the middle of a block they stopped beneath a lamp-post. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... resumed: "It might have been different if she had been older, more experienced and had really cared for him. But how could she care? The child's nature is dormant. She does not know what love is. He is very nice, I have not a word to say against him, not one, but a lamp-post would be quite as capable of arousing her affection. She accepted him, I grant you that and you may well ask why. I know I asked myself the same thing, until I remembered that Mr. Austen offered to take me to Niagara Falls and I married him just to go there. At the time ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... sorry I can't stay any longer with you. I'm going North," and would sidle off, halting suddenly with a dramatic rattle of her rigging. "As I was just going to observe," she would begin, as gravely as a drunken man addressing a lamp-post. The rest of the sentence (she acted her words in dumb-show, of course) was lost in a fit of the fidgets, when she behaved like a puppy chewing a string, a clumsy woman in a side-saddle, a hen with her head cut off, or ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... to the praise of California, Willie Britt is on record as saying that he'd rather be a busted lamp-post on Battery Street than the Waldorf-Astoria. I said once that I'd rather be sick in California than well anywhere else. I'm prepared to go further. I'd rather be in prison in California than free anywhere else. San Quentin is without doubt the most delightfully situated prison ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... every night—I'd rather be a miserable little burro, kicked and cuffed by a Mariposa Chinaman—I'd rather be a dog and bay the moon in the city of Oakland, or a toad and feed upon the vapors of a dungeon at San Quentin—I'd rather be a lamp-post on the corner of Montgomery Street, San Francisco, and be leaned against, and hugged, and kissed alternately by every loafer out of the Montgomery saloon—I'd rather be any of these than a human being compelled to live permanently in Europe, with a palace in every city, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... what? Say, I'm so slow I couldn't catch the hour-hand on a clock. I'm simply stationary as they grow;. A lamp-post race could beat me round the block. You needn't think you're such an Alfred G., To motor ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin
... of exultation from the mob, and in another second the wretched Augusta was pressed, together with the lady's maid, who began to scream with fright, right up against a lamp-post, while a crowd of eager faces, mostly unwashed, were pushed almost into her own. Indeed, so fierce was the crowd in its attempt to get a glimpse of the latest curiosity, that she began to think that she would be thrown down and trampled under foot, when timely relief arrived in the shape of two policemen ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... case, I don't see why I shouldn't try it, if I can be of any use to you." From the calmness of his manner you would have supposed that salaried appointments hung on every lamp-post, ready to drop into the mouths of ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... withdraws it. The Judge and Mr. Snivel, each in turn, shake the landlady by the hand, and emerge into the street. They have scarce stepped upon the sidepath when the report of a pistol resounds through the air. The ball struck a lamp-post, glanced, passed through the collar of Judge Sleepyhorn's coat, and brushed Mr. Snivel's fashionable whiskers. Madame Ashley, successor to Madame Flamingo, shrieks and alarms the house, which is suddenly thrown into a state of confusion. Acting upon the maxim ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... leaving for the High School, did he in the sour morning, through an easterly haur, behold him "whom he saved from drowning," and whom, with better results than in the case of Launce and Crab, he had taught, as if one should say, "thus would I teach a dog," dangling by his own chain from his own lamp-post, one of his hind feet just touching the pavement, and his body ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... a duck, you've had it handed to you all right," he gasped. "How did you get it? Did you foul a lamp-post, or bump a rock, ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... confounded lamp-post? Won't stand still; whirls round like a wind-mill or a church-steeple, or suthin. B'lieve it's drunk, sure's ...
— Three People • Pansy
... in its full intensity. The whole machinery of man's work and operations was at a standstill. The shops were closed; no car rattled o'er the stony street; no throb of life was anywhere. A belated cat, a stranger to milk and mice, and with tail still erect as a lamp-post to accentuate the body's decay, would now and then cross the tile-line. The houses wore a funereal aspect. The cabs, enrobed in Red Crosses, awaited an unwelcome fare—a mangled pedestrian. Spectral horseman ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... the notion. I expect it'll be a disapp'intment to some o' you that my name hain't 'Williams,' but it hain't. And maybe you won't think nigh as much o' me when I tell you furder 'at I was obleeged to 'dopt the name o' 'Williams' onc't to keep from bein' strung up to a lamp-post, but sich is the facts. I was so extremely unfortunit onc't as to kill a p'ticular friend o' mine, and he forgive me with his dyin' breath, and told me to run while I could, and be a better man. But he'd spotted ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... happily as it could possibly go, until the last strains of "God save the King" had been played, and the audience filed out of the hall on to the crowded pavement, and then, with a throb of disgust, Claire recognised the figure of a man who was standing directly beneath a lamp-post, his black eyes curiously scanning the passing stream—Major Carew! He had evidently been told of the girls' destination, and had come with the express purpose of meeting them coming out. For the moment, however, they were unrecognised, and Claire gave a quick swerve to the right, hurrying ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a wheezy accordion and he relieved the monotony of the evening with some German airs. The big shed was unlighted, save as each man was his own lamp-post. Each made his own bed by the light of the lamp on his cap. As he undressed, the cap was the last article to be set aside and the extinguishing of the smoky, flickering blaze the last act of ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... better for them. With marriage, they get it. My sister has often tried to persuade me to marry, drop my life, adopt the social entity, and worship the god of respectability. I'd sooner put a rope round my neck and swing from the nearest lamp-post. And so, you see, I'm no fit company for you. I don't live the sort of life you'd choose a man to live. I'm not really the sort of man you take me for in the least. At dinner, this evening, you called me a gentleman. ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... large four-storeyed house, they turned again before going in. I leant against a lamp-post near the fountain and listened for their footsteps on the stairs. They died away on the second floor. I advanced from the lamp-post and looked up at the house. Then something odd happened. The curtains above were stirred, and a second after a window opened, a head popped out, and two singular-looking ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun |
