"Taper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... alms, in which she bestowed her whole revenue on the poor, she was truly the mother of all the distressed; though her father's castle was two miles from the church of our Saviour at Morzelle, she went thither early every morning, with a maid to carry a lantern before her; and the wax taper being once put out, is said to have miraculously lighted again at her prayers, whence she is usually represented in pictures with a lantern. She died on the 8th of January, not in 670, as Miraeus says, but in 712, and was buried at Ham, near Villevord. In the reign of Charlemagne, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... took a shaded taper and opened the door leading from his master's chamber, the wind was heard howling through the long passages, ready to burst into ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... generally denies him beard, so he shaves what a sailor would term the fore and after part of his head. He reaps his hirsute crop dry, using no lather. His cue is pieced out by silken braid, so interwoven as gradually to taper into a slim tassel, something like a Missouri mule-driver's "black snake" whip-lash. To lose this cue is to lose caste and standing among his fellows. No misfortune for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... pilgrim, ascetic, even the butcher and candlestick maker. And while we do not know it, really we are working together for one end hidden now in the divine economy of far-off destiny and justice.... To me the wonder of wonders is that I may some day light a little taper in your upper chamber myself, and kneel together with you before the same window to worship. Only, dear Heart, please get your deity named before ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... the saw is not approximately parallel to the axis of the log the grain of the lumber cut is not parallel to the edges and is termed diagonal. This is likely to occur where the logs have considerable taper, and in this case may be produced if sawed parallel to the axis of growth instead of parallel to ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... resounded in the desolate room, scantily lighted with the dim taper—no laughter as the queen and the princess put on their strange, fearful attire. It was no masquerade, but a dreadful, horrible reality; and as they looked at each other wearing the costume of revolutionists, tears ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... would have been immediate, and imprisonment inevitable. Keeping it, therefore, entirely to himself, he concealed it from every eye during the day, and at night, after the family had gone to bed, he sat up, lighted his taper, and, when every thing was still and silent about him, ventured, only then, to read over the paper, and to get by heart the most important parts of the intelligence regarding England; and he afterwards transmitted the invaluable present to some secret friend, who, in the ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... splendour—it was the pre-trapeze age, and we were caught by mild marvels, even if a friendly good faith in them, something sweet and sympathetic, was after all a value, whether of their own humanity, their own special quality, or only of our innocence, never to be renewed; but I light this taper to the initiators, so to call them, whom I remembered, when we had left them behind, as if they had given us a silver key to carry off and so to refit, after long years, to sweet names never thought of from then till now. Signor Leon Javelli, in whom the French and the Italian charm appear to have ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... think for slaves, to enjoy the chase and the race-ground, to extol their pedigree, and traduce labor, and lead retainers to war—would be a government for the few over the many, an aristocracy of blood and privilege, of curled moustache and taper fingers; but not a republic of patriots, of self-made men, of equal privilege and just laws. It would be a return to semi-barbarism, to the age of Louis XIV., or ...
— Government and Rebellion • E. E. Adams
... ground, 325 AEneas with the busy crew he found, Planning new structures for the rising town. Bright with a radiant gem his sword hung down, A mantle graceful o'er his shoulder thrown With sparkling gold and Tyrian purple shone. 330 'Twas Dido's present: thro' the blushing thread The docile gold her taper fingers led. The god accosts him.—"With uxorious care The walls of Carthage does AEneas rear, Himself forgotten and his future state? 335 But he that reigns—the pow'r who next to Fate, Roles Earth and Heav'n, and moves them with a nod, ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... tent there were heaps of luxuries—dining-rooms, dressing-rooms, libraries, bedrooms, drawing-rooms, oratories, all crowded into the space of a hearthrug. The first night, I remember, with my books and maps about me, I wanted light; they brought me a taper, and immediately from out of the silent Desert there rushed in a flood of life unseen before. Monsters of moths, of all shapes and hues, that never before perhaps had looked upon the shining of a flame, now madly thronged ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... Washington Monument, sending up a huge spout of dust that veiled it from his eyes. Instinctively Dick shot toward the scene. Slowly the dust subsided, and then a yell of exultation broke from Dick's lips. The noble shaft still stood, a slim taper pointing to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... give up thy nature to fly out and mingle among men. Then the years that would have belonged to thee will be contracted to half the span of the ephemeral fly, that lives but a day: one night, and thy life-taper shall be blown out—the leaves of the tree will wither and be blown away, to become green ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... is indeed an object deserving of particular admiration. It is next to that of Strasburg in height; being 432 feet of Vienna measurement. It may be said to begin to taper from the first stage or floor; and is distinguished for its open and sometimes intricate fretwork. About two-thirds of its height, just above the clock, and where the more slender part of the spire commences, there is a ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... Ramsay, taking up her hand, which lay listless at her side, and playing with her taper fingers, "you really think William of Nassau is ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... effect will be if an imperfect pivot is fitted into an unround hole jewel, and to demonstrate its action more clearly let us exaggerate the defects. Suppose we pick a perfectly round jewel and insert into the opening a three-cornered piece of steel wire, in shape somewhat resembling the taper of a triangular file. We find that this triangular piece of steel will turn in the jewel with the same ease that the most perfect cylindrical pivot will. Now suppose we change the jewel for one that is out of round and repeat the experiment. We now find that ...
— A Treatise on Staff Making and Pivoting • Eugene E. Hall
... lighted taper in hand, the laughing Fandor closed the two leaves of the door with the utmost care, and went forward whistling a marching tune. His objective was a certain little staircase leading to the top story of the Palais, and this he mounted with vigorous determination. There was no likelihood of chance ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... streets and arranges fresh festivals; trade flourishes under his rule, and the people find themselves well off, in spite of the many taxes laid upon them. But what are the people? a vulgar multitude who, like the gnats, fly towards every thing brilliant, and, so long as the taper burns, will continue to flutter round it, even though they burn their wings in doing so. Let Pisistratus' torch burn out, Phanes, and I'll swear that the fickle crowd will flock around the returning nobles, the new light, just as they ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a brother's love to share"— I did not read thy features dreamingly, And peer into thine eye's deep azure, there Searching another's depths, in revery! I did not press, all passionless, thy hand Or idly dally with thy taper finger, Or coldly gaze, for I could not withstand The high and holy hope which bade ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... tunic streams to his very feet. He is girt in the Greek style, and a cloak covers either arm down to the wrists. The rest of the cloak hangs down in graceful folds. His lyre is fastened by an engraven baldric, which holds it close to the body. His hands are delicate and taper. The left touches the strings with parted fingers, the right is in the attitude of one that plays and is approaching the lyre with the plectrum, as though ready to strike as soon as the voice ceases for a moment to sing. Meanwhile the ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... sicknesse all the yeare. When every one receyved hath this odour, great and small, Then one takes up the pan with Coales, and Franckensence, and all, Another takes the loafe, whom all the rest do follow here, And round about the house they go, with torch or taper clere, That neither bread nor meat do want, nor witch with dreadful charme Have powre to hurt their children, or to do their cattell harme. There are, that three nightes onely do perfourme this foolish geare, To this intent, and ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... Isaac Newton's papers, by his little dog 'Diamond' upsetting a lighted taper upon his desk, by which the elaborate calculations of many years were in a moment destroyed, is a well-known anecdote, and need not be repeated: it is said that the loss caused the philosopher such profound grief that it seriously injured his health, and ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... to be all buttress, but here such an impression could never for a moment be gained, for the chapel filling each bay completely masks the widest portion of the adjoining buttresses. The upper portions are so admirably proportioned that they taper up to a comparatively slight finial ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... lantern," said Gregorios. "You did not know that? A long time afterwards the man who opens the towers confessed that when he had gone up with the brothers and the kavass he had found that his taper was burnt out. He picked up the kavass's lantern and carried it down, meaning to return with the next party of foreigners. No other foreigners came, and when he went up to find the Patoffs they were gone and the carriage was gone. He kept the lantern, ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... acted very well, causing ignition. With carbonic acid the results were still more striking. A mixture of three volumes of that gas with one of hydrogen caused ignition of the platina, yet that mixture would not continue to burn from the jet when attempts were made to light it by a taper. A mixture even of seven volumes of carbonic acid and one of hydrogen will thus cause the ignition of cold spongy platina, and yet, as if to supply a contrast, than which none can be greater, it cannot burn at a taper, but causes the extinction of the latter. On the other hand, ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... formed three columns of steamers and sailing vessels in tow; and brigade followed brigade. The shallow water of the sound was scarcely ruffled by a breeze. It lay like a field of silver before the furrows of the fleet. The tall, taper masts of the schooners pointed like needles to the sky under which they moved. The aisles between the three columns of ships were unbroken through the whole length of the fleet, which extended for two miles over the surface of the sound, and advanced with such ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... to trade awhile. It so chanced one day that he locked his shop and went home, and in the night there came to the bazar an artful thief disguised in the habit of the merchant, and pulling out keys from his sleeve, said to the watchman of the market, "Light me this wax-candle." The watchman took the taper and went to light it,—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... was awakened. Thorstan Black stood by the bed with a taper. She gaped at him, cold to ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... upward into the pot instead of horizontally. The inner ends are secured in position by one or two cords extending to the center frame. The funnels are about 11 or 12 inches deep, and therefore extend about halfway to the center of the pot. They taper rapidly and form a strongly inclined plane, up which the lobsters must climb in their search for the bait. A two-strand manila twine is most commonly used for the funnels. Cotton is also used, but is more expensive ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb
... exquisitely cooked rice and another mountain of chapatis, which are something like brown pancakes. The dishes stood in four rows, each row containing twelve dishes; and between the rows burned three aromatic sticks of the size of a small church taper. Our part of the hall was brightly lit with green and red candles. The chandeliers which held these candles were of a very queer shape. They each represented the trunk of a tree with a seven-headed cobra wound ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... encounter. It was reduced to its original dimensions, within the compass of a single city; and depending for its preservation on the fortune of a siege, it was extinguished at a blow; and the brand, which had filled the world with its flames, sunk like a taper ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... passing shape of Feliu, making for the beach—a broad and bearded silhouette, bending against the wind. Still the waxen Virgin smiled her Mexican smile,—but now she was only seven inches high; and her bead-glass eyes seemed to twinkle with kindliness while the flame of the last expiring taper struggled for life in the earthen socket at ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... an estrade. The ladies of the emirs, viziers, those of the sultan's bed-chamber, and several other ladies of the court and city, were placed on each side, a little lower, every one according to her rank, and richly dressed, holding a large wax taper in her hands. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... saw not this: each wreath of smoke Appeared to him but as the magic vapour Of some alchymic furnace, from whence broke The wealth of worlds (a wealth of tax and paper): The gloomy clouds, which o'er it as a yoke Are bowed, and put the Sun out like a taper, Were nothing but the natural atmosphere, Extremely wholesome, though ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... still, she confronted me, and I now observed that she was not so tall as from below I had imagined. She was, in fact, of a short stature rather, but of proportions so exquisite that she conveyed an impression of some height. In her hand she held a taper by whose light she had been surveying herself in her mirror at the moment of my advent. Her unbound hair of brown fell like a mantle about her shoulders, and this fact it was drew me to notice that she was in her ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... the name of Hedge Taper, and used to be called Torch, because the stalks were dipped in suet, and burnt for giving light at funerals and other gatherings. "It is a plant," says the Grete Herball, "whereof is made a manner of lynke if it ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... same great dusky fresco in the concave ceiling. The daughter is not rich, I suppose, any more than the mother. The furniture is worn and faded, and I was admitted by a solitary servant, who carried a twinkling taper before me up the ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James
... saw the notary look over the will, while Schmucke lighted a taper (Pons watching her reflection all the while in a mirror). She saw the envelope sealed, saw Pons give it to Schmucke, and heard him say that it must be put away in a secret drawer in his bureau. Then the testator asked for the key, tied it to the corner of ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... had been placed by her own hands in the upper part of the bag, so that the books should not weigh on them, and had been carefully protected by wrappings of cotton wool. Taking them out, one by one, Herbert found a delicate china candlestick (intended to hold a wax taper) broken into two pieces, in spite of the care that had been taken to preserve it. Of no great value in itself, old associations made the candlestick precious to Sydney. It had been broken at the stem and could be easily ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... conclusion nor the means of attaining to it. Man works from ignorance towards greater knowledge with very limited powers. His little circle of light is surrounded by a wall of darkness, which he strives to penetrate and lighten, now groping blindly on its verge, now advancing his taper light and peering forward; yet unable to go far, and even afraid to venture, in case ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... long, and in bignesse answerable, hauing a horne of two yards long growing out of the snoute or nostrels. [Sidenote: The finding of an Vnicornes horne.] This horne is wreathed and straite, like in fashion to a Taper made of waxe, and may truely be thought to be the sea Vnicorne.[68] This home is to be seene and reserued as a Iewell by the Queenes Maiesties commandement, in ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... and retired through one of the draped openings. In his hand he held the taper with which he had lighted the lamps. In order that the draperies should not be singed he had to hold them widely apart. For it had not occurred to Hassan to extinguish the taper. The Egyptian mind is complex ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... other essential points, is likewise at one with him in his views on human knowledge, or, as he terms it, wisdom, which is the source of the highest good within the reach of man. The only light which we have to guide us through the murky mazes of existence, is at best but a miserable taper which serves only to render the eternal darkness painfully visible. "I set my heart to learn wisdom and understanding. And my heart discerned much wisdom and knowledge.... I realised that this also is but a grasping of wind."[121] The scenes it reveals in the moral ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... bosom. Even friendship is extinct. Your love for me has prompted me to this task; but I would not have complied if it had not been a luxury thus to feast upon my woes. I have justly calculated upon my remnant of strength. When I lay down the pen the taper of life will expire; my existence will terminate with ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... glorious; Et bonum quo antiquius, eo melius. If you, born in these latter times, When wit's more ripe, accept my rhymes, And that to hear an old man sing May to your wishes pleasure bring, I life would wish, and that I might Waste it for you, like taper-light. This Antioch, then, Antiochus the Great Built up, this city, for his chiefest seat; The fairest in all Syria, I tell you what mine authors say: This king unto him took a fere, Who died and left a female heir, So buxom, so blithe, and full of face, As heaven had lent her all his grace; ...
— Pericles Prince of Tyre • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... busy craftsmen and the o'er-labour'd hind Forget the travail of the day in sleep: Care only wakes, and moping pensiveness; With meagre discontented looks they sit, And watch the wasting of the midnight taper. Such vigils must I keep, so wakes my soul, Restless and self-tormented! O, false Hastings! Thou hast destroy'd my peace. [knocking without. What noise is that? What visitor is this, who, ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... it so difficult to wait when she had so much to say. But she only fidgeted a little as mamma scrawled off an address in letters which Quillie thought would cover half her copy-book, then the little taper was lighted, the wax was melted, the pretty crest was imprinted on the seal, and mamma turned with a relieved ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... with three others to assist, and in another minute or two the end of the tall taper stick was dropped into the hole and fixed there. A hole had been already bored in the top and a rope rove through it, to which Lumley soon attached the corners of ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... Ptolemaeus, an excellent describer of the world, has made mention of it in the second book of his work, saying: "There is a great island situated in the surge of the northern Ocean, Scandza by name, in the shape of a juniper leaf with bulging sides that taper down to a point at a long end." Pomponius Mela also makes mention of it as situated in the Codan Gulf of the sea, with Ocean lapping ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... breasts seraphic glow: 320 Thou, Abelard! the last sad office pay, And smooth my passage to the realms of day; See my lips tremble, and my eyeballs roll, Suck my last breath, and catch my flying soul! Ah, no!—in sacred vestments may'st thou stand, The hallow'd taper trembling in thy hand, Present the cross before my lifted eye, Teach me at once, and learn of me to die. Ah, then thy once-loved Eloisa see! It will be then no crime to gaze on me. 330 See from my cheek the transient roses fly! See the last sparkle languish in my eye! ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... throngs of Knights and Barons bold, In weeds of Peace high triumphs hold, 120 With store of Ladies, whose bright eies Rain influence, and judge the prise Of Wit, or Arms, while both contend To win her Grace, whom all commend. There let Hymen oft appear In Saffron robe, with Taper clear, And pomp, and feast, and revelry, With mask, and antique Pageantry, Such sights as youthfull Poets dream On Summer eeves by haunted stream. 130 Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonsons learned ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... brought up his two children, Fanny and Felix, in the Lutheran faith. Between the brother and sister there existed the most intimate understanding and affection, lasting through their entire lives. Both were musically gifted, possessing delicate hands and taper fingers that were often spoken of as if made expressly ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... Amelia Island which is a quarter of a mile long with a medium depth of three feet and a breadth of nearly five. That of Bear's Point covers sixty acres of ground, that of Anercerty Point one hundred, and that of Santa Rosa five hundred. Others taper to a great height. Turtle Mound, near Smyrna, is formed of a mass of oyster shells attaining a height of nearly thirty feet, and the height of several others is more than forty feet.[119] In all of them bushels of shells have already been found, ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... manifesting their joy by all sorts of games and jokes during the whole course of the march. When at length we had reached a small rising ground overlooking my village the procession stopped, and every one who had a part to act in the ceremony received a taper, which was forthwith lighted. The procession then moved on with slow and measured steps, headed by my uncle, who, assisted by my other uncle from the Three Churches, sang psalms as they walked forward, amidst all the noise of the surrounding lookers-on. The Russian ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... Still, the child had no doubt contrived to make her way into the great gloomy cavern of the grim Doctor's heart, and stole constantly further and further in, carrying a ray of sunshine in her hand as a taper to light her way, and illuminate the rude dark pit into which she so ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... master seized the wax taper. "Pardon me, my lord," says he. "What! a servant do it, when your son is in the room? Ah, par exemple, my dear father," said he, laughing, "you think there is no politeness left among us." And he ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... exquisite beauty of form was there, but the light of joy which had lent its most transcendent charms to that heavenly face, was gone. Charles was by her side in a moment. He had her hand clasped in his, while his disengaged one was wound tenderly around her taper waist. ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... performed. The religious ceremony takes place in a temple: the pair, after listening to a lengthy harangue from one of the attendant priests, approach the altar, where large tapers are presented to them; the bride, instructed by the priest, lights her taper at the sacred censer on the altar, and the bridegroom, igniting his from hers, allows the two flames to combine, and burn steadily together, thus symbolizing the perfect unity of the marriage state; ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... was leaving the chapel, she saw the younger of the Mehudins, Claire, the dealer in fresh water fish, come in. The girl lighted a taper at the candelabrum, and then went to kneel behind a pillar, her knees pressed upon the hard stones, and her face so pale beneath her loose fair hair that she seemed a corpse. And believing herself to be securely screened from observation, she gave way to violent emotion, and wept hot tears with ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... mistress), who induced her to accuse Lord Hastings of want of allegiance to the lord protector. The duke of Gloucester commanded the instant execution of Hastings; and, accusing Jane Shore of having bewitched him, condemned her to wander about in a sheet, holding a taper in her hand, and decreed that any one who offered her food or shelter should be put to death. Jane continued an outcast for three days, when her husband came to her succor, but he was seized by Gloucester's myrmidons, and Jane ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... a visible reality! Unlighted as yet, unpeopled, but gorgeous, multiform, sentinelled, and ready, it needed but the touch of the taper to set forth all the glories of art and wealth tenfolded by self-sacrifice for a hallowed cause. Here was the Bazaar, and yonder, far away on the southern border of Tennessee, its wasted ranks still spruce in their tatters, the battery; iron-hearted Bartleson in command; its six yellow daughters ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... of these walls were stretching its whole width between us! Besides—we are both past our youth! And, according to certain highly instructed scientists and philosophers, the senses and affections grow numb with age. I do not believe this theory myself—for the jejune love of youth is as a taper's flame to the great and passionate tenderness of maturity, when the soul, and not the body, claims its due; when love is not dragged down to the vulgar level of mere cohabitation, after the fashion of the animals in a farmyard, but rises to the best height of human sympathy and intelligent comprehension. ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... his lodging. Neither he nor Rex spoke during the quarter of an hour they employed in reaching the street door, but Rex's arm was aching with the effort of sustaining and directing his companion. He lit a taper and prepared to help him up the stairs. But the sight of the familiar entrance recalled Greif to himself and dissipated the first stupor of his grief. He ascended the steps firmly, though he went like a man overcome with fatigue, to whom every movement is difficult. ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... probably in consequence of inordinate precautions, had left no mark upon his hands; and the Maletroit hand was famous. It would be difficult to imagine anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in design; the taper, sensual fingers were like those of one of Leonardo's women; the fork of the thumb made a dimple protuberance when closed; the nails were perfectly shaped, and of a dead, surprising whiteness. It rendered his aspect tenfold more redoubtable, that a man with hands like these should ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his mother had implanted in his heart. Then, when the daylight began to wane, and the moon and stars already grew beautiful in their places in the firmament, he would pass into the subterranean vaults of the edifice, trembling as his little taper scarcely dispelled the dull, solemn gloom, and listening with breathless attention for the voices of those guardian spirits whose fabled habitation was made in the apartments of the sacred place. Or, when the multitude had departed for their amusements and their homes, he would steal ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... fainting on the Duchess' skirt. She ordered her servants to fan him and to throw water in his face, and he regained consciousness just as one of the carts was passing. It was drawn by four oxen, completely covered with black cloth, and attached to each horn was a lighted wax taper. Leading the oxen were two demons with such horrible, frightful faces that Sancho shut his eyes tightly after having got one glance of them. An old, worthy-looking man with a long, snow-white beard sat on a raised seat on the cart; and when he passed Don Quixote he said in a deep voice: ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a very valuable gold watch, a gold watch chain, 2 gold watch keys, a gold seal, a silver mustard pot and spoon, a silver salt stand, a scent bottle, a china basket, 3 china jugs, a china cup and saucer and mug 2 taper candlesticks, a ring stand, 2 spill cups, a card stand, a lamp, a claret jug, a pair of decanters, 6 hock glasses, 14 claret glasses, 6 finger glasses, and a set of china tea things. The donor has found true riches and peace to his soul in the Lord Jesus; and he is thus led to send ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... width of 5 inches, while the bottom piece has a width of 4 inches at the forward section. The deck measures 3-1/2 inches at the stern, while the bottom piece measures 4-1/2 inches at the stern. This produces a half-inch taper on each side of the stern. A half-inch taper is also produced on ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... the way of making several implements or weapons is not entirely clear. We got several obsidian maces or lance-heads—one about ten inches long—which were taper from base to point, and covered with taper flutings; and there are other things which present great difficulties. I have heard on good authority, that somewhere in Peru, the Indians still have a way of working obsidian by laying a bone wedge on ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... carts, covered with round awnings, and containing sides of pork hung on each side of the vehicle over a bed of straw. Seen from the back end, the interiors of the carts looked like recesses of some tabernacle, like some taper-lighted chapel, such was the glow of all the bare flesh they contained. And on the beds of straw were lines of tin cans, full of the blood that had trickled from the pigs. Thereupon Florent was attacked ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... refined in breasts seraphic glow; Thou, Abelard! the last sad office pay, And smooth my passage to the realms of day; See my lips tremble and my eye-balls roll, Suck my last breath and catch my flying soul! Ah no—in sacred vestments may'st thou stand, The hallowed taper trembling in thy hand, Present the Cross before my lifted eye, Teach me at once and learn of me ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... created Oedipus and his wife Jocasta. It was extraordinarily popular, as, indeed, were all the plays Mrs. Behn marshalls forth in this preface. The scene particularly referred to is Act ii, I: 'Oedipus enters, walking asleep in his Shirt, with a Dagger in his Right-Hand and a Taper in his Left.' A little after 'Enter Jocasta, attended with Lights, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... fare. Fairies you have by scores in flesh-coloured tights, spangles, and paucity of petticoats; gnomes of every description, from the gigantic glittering diamond beetle, to the grotesque and dusky tadpole. Epicene princes, whose taper limbs and swelling busts are well worth the scrutiny of the opera-glass—dragons vomiting at once red flames and witticisms about the fountains in Trafalgar Square—Dan O'Connell figuring in the feathers of a Milesian owl—and the Seven Champions of Christendom ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... light of the small taper there was a mutual search for it—why mutual Miss Gascoigne best knew. It was she who picked it up, and before she had delivered it back she had clearly seen it all— handwriting, seal and tinted envelope, with the initials "E. U." ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... elder of the two men lean over the bed and raise one of the sleeper's eyelids with his thumb. The nurse took up a lighted taper by the table beside her and passed it in front of the opened eye. The man closed the eyelid, and turned and said something to the Countess and the other man. The Countess nodded and smiled, not quite as a man likes to see a woman smile, and, with a swift glance ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... and watched the young man (for he could not be thirty yet), struck down thus in the prime of his days—carried away into the other world—while he himself, with his frail, flickering taper of a life, remained. Wherefore? At length, in a whisper, he called "Helen!" and she came and knelt beside the ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... you've gathered them for me, I know!' said Cynthia, sitting down and beginning to feed herself daintily, touching them lightly with the ends of her taper fingers, and dropping each ripe berry into her open mouth. When she had eaten about half she ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the children was sick and Gussie had not told him? The last thought sent him flying up the stairs three steps at a time, and he reached the flag room door so breathless that he could scarcely turn the knob. The bed was empty. Only a wee taper from the Christmas tree burned ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... a small sombre room within, with a bare yellow-washed floor and ragged curtains at the little window. In a corner was a diminutive altar draped with threadbare lace. The red glow of the taper lighted a cheap print of St. Joseph and a brazen crucifix. The human element in the room was furnished by a little, wizened yellow woman, who, black-robed, turbaned, and stern, sat before an uncertain table ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... "Peste!" said he in a vicious whisper. But the other laid his hand on his shoulder and whispered, "Look to the front." He looked, and, his own candle being out, saw a glimmer on ahead. He crept towards it. It was a taper shooting a feeble light across a small aperture. They caught a glimpse of what seemed to be a small apartment. Yet Edouard recognized the carpet of the tapestried room—which was a very large room. Creeping a yard nearer, he discovered that it was the tapestried ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... not wait for any one. In another minute, a bouncing and scratching was heard on the stairs, and a white bulldog rushed in, a gem in his way; for his brow was broad and massive, his skin was as fine as a lady's, and his tail taper and nearly as thin as a clay pipe. His general look, and a way he had of going 'snuzzling' about the calves of strangers, were not pleasant for nervous people. Tom, however, was used to dogs, and soon became friends with him, which evidently pleased ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... flowing blue robes and red caps; then follow musicians, and the squires of the Doge in black velvet; then the guards of the Doge, two chancellors, the secretary of the Pregadi, a deacon clad in purple and bearing a wax taper, six canons, three parish priests in their sacerdotal robes, and the Doge's chaplain dressed in crimson. The grand chancellor is known by his crimson vesture. Two squires bear the Doge's chair and ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... this taper burns! Ha! who comes here? I think it is the weakness of mine eyes That ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... weather, as I intend it must be, in a recess in the garden. I was going to tell you that my house is so monastic, that I have a little hall decked with long saints in lean arched windows, and with taper columns, which we call the Paraclete, in ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... fingers fine, The sea-shell tint of their taper tips, The sight of them stirred my blood like wine, Oh, to hold them ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... who falls per force into the reptile's mouth, so do I plunge into its columns, read it with desperation, and when the poison has circulated, throw it away in despair. If I am reminded to say grace at dinner, I commence "My Lords, and gentlemen;" and when I seek my bed, as I light my taper, I move "that the House do now adjourn." The tradesmen's bills are swelled by my disease into the budget, and the checks upon my banker into supplies. Even my children laugh and wonder at the answers ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... stalwart, strapping Hindoo before you. He turns round, and lo, a bashful maiden. Her eyes are stained with henna (myrtle juice) or antimony. Her long-hair neatly smoothed down is tied into a knot at the back, and glistens with the pearl-like ornaments. The taper arm is loaded with armlets and bracelets. The very toes are bedecked with rings. The bodice hides the taper waist and budding bosom, the tiny ear is loaded with jewelled ear-rings, the very nose is not forgotten, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... host o'erthrown upon Pavia's plains, That, bound for Naples, halts upon its way: As an ill-nourished lamp or taper wanes, For want of wax or oil, with flickering ray. Lo! the king leaves his sons in Spanish chains, And home returns, his own domain to sway. Lo! while in Italy he leads his band, Another wars upon ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... hills and rocks and streams, and strange new races of men. These are incidents in which the authentic history of the discovery of our continent exceeds the specious wonders of romance, as much as gold excels tinsel, or the sun in the heavens outshines the flickering taper. ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... had taken her down to Walton in mid-July; she had chanced to meet Melusine there, and the two had embraced as sisters should. It is to be owned that her adoption by Charles Street had restored her credit with her family more certainly than any white sheet and taper which she could have supported would have done. Her mother was highly gratified, though she affected a shrug when good Mr. Percival, in the simplicity of his heart, overflowed with the joy of it. "Sancie in Berkeley Square—where Lord Rosebery lives: think of that, my dear!" And ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... stood a large pitcher of iced water; a square case-bottle of cut crystal filled, as the flavor which pervaded the whole room sufficiently demonstrated, with superb old Antigua Shrub; several large rummers corresponding to the fashion of the bottle; a twisted taper of green wax, and a small silver plate with six or ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... have a superstition in the East, That Allah, written on a piece of paper, Is better unction than can come of priest, Of rolling incense, and of lighted taper: Holding, that any scrap which bears that name In any characters its front impress'd on, Shall help the finder thro' the purging flame, And give his toasted feet a ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... more, glancing with careful, uninterested nonchalance at the gas-burners which exploded one after another with a little plop under the application of the maid's taper. The white table gleamed more whitely than ever under the flaring gas. People at the end of the room away from the window instinctively smiled, as though the sun had begun to shine. The aspect of the dinner was changed, ameliorated; ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... interest, till Dundas drew up his chair opposite at the table. There the light from the tallow dip, guttering in the centre, fell upon his handsome face and eyes, his carefully tended beard and hair, his immaculate cuffs and delicate hand, the seal-ring on his taper finger. ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... increases in diameter the bundles become broader and broader toward the outside, and taper to a point toward the centre, appearing wedge-shaped, the inner ends projecting into the pith. The outer limits of the bundles are not nearly so distinct, and it is not easy to tell when the phloem of the bundles ends and the ground ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... lifted the lantern now, and I was striving to touch the wax taper to the wick, with imminent danger ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... By thinking else than that thy love was true. But I obtain no response to my cries, Making within my soul all void, and cold, And comfortless. Ay, empty, as this grate, Of life, wherefrom the fire has well nigh fled, Leaving but chasmed ugliness and ruin: And weak as faltering of these taper flames Half sunken in their sockets, by whose gleam I see, though faintly, where my books stand ranged Most mute; though sometime eloquent to me; And where my pictures hang with other forms Instinct from what I know: where ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... running stream's chieftain[93] Is trailing to land, So flabby, so grimy, So sickly, so slimy,— The spots of his prime he Has rusted with sand; Crook-snouted his crest is That taper'd ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... calcareous beads (as may be known by their dissolving with effervescence in any acid, and breaking easily under the needle); these are the 3/2000ths of an inch in their larger external diameter; they are rather deeply imbedded in the outer integument, and taper a little downwards ending in a concave terminal point, into which a minute tubulus enters, like those passing into and through the valves of ordinary Cirripedia: along the axis of imbedment, they are often 4/2000ths of an inch in length. These calcareous ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... the clergy began to leave the church, the lower orders coming first. All, in surplices, covered their heads with their caps, under the porch; and each one held a large, lighted wax taper; those at the right in their right hand, and those at the left in their left hand, outside the rank, so there was a double row of flame, almost deadened by the brightness of the day. First were representatives from the great seminaries, the parishes, ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... shall see them afterwards?" Charles resumed, in a sharp, eager whisper. "In our dreams, man? Or when the watchman cries, and we awake, and the monks are singing lauds at St. Germain, and—and the taper ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... a gate where honeysuckle grew, and above, on the low-dormered roof, a white pigeon sat preening its feathers. Up the main street, where a few sunken bricks of a vanished pavement were still visible, an old negro woman, sitting on the stone before her cabin, lighted her replenished pipe with a taper, and leaned back, smoking, in the doorway, her scarlet handkerchief making a spot of ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... shaking with malaria, caught in the rice-fields, and hardly able to hold the taper in his trembling hands, hesitated at ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Cristobal; or so thought the lad. He had no money to spend, and little but pain for his holiday-cheer. A patch here and there in his worn clothes was the best present his thrifty mother was able to make; always excepting the little variegated taper, which few were too poor ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... from those that deck Thy taper fingers, white brow or neck; Young girl, a rose from thy glossy hair, One inch of that lace so costly and rare, Would give food and heat, and cheerful light To that wretched home, for at ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... not know,—a new arrival. Just then Miss Stanley looked round, saw her, and signalled smilingly to her to come and join them. Slowly she walked towards the little party, still twirling the card in her taper fingers. ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... they have dragged the mouldering carcass of paganism from the grave, animated her lifeless form with a spark stolen from the sacred altar, arrayed her in the spoils of Christianity, re-lighted her extinguished taper at the torch of revelation, dignified her with the name of natural religion, and exalted her in the temple of reason, as a goddess, able, without divine assistance, to guide mankind to truth and happiness. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Bordereau's room was open and I could see beyond it the faintness of a taper. There was no sound—my footstep caused no one to stir. I came further into the room; I lingered there with my lamp in my hand. I wanted to give Miss Tita a chance to come to me if she were with her aunt, as she must be. I made no noise to call her; I only waited to see ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... himself represents him in a dark doublet having wide sleeves and a square collar closed in front. His thumb is in his pallet, and the other hand, with fingers taper and delicate as those of a hand by Van Dyck, holds one of his brushes. The smooth face, with regular features, is pale and thoughtful, and with the womanliness of the aspect increased from the dark hair, which is divided slightly to one ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... audience, a long seat with a high back and pew- like ends. At the rise of the curtain, Thomas Rigby, the rubicund landlord, is lighting with a taper the candles that stand on the mantelshelf, the buttons on his plum-colored waistcoat twinkling in the gleam. He has only lighted one when the door is pushed open, and there enter two young British lieutenants, mere lads, whose scarlet cloaks, exaggerated ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... how Hymen's taper-light Shows you how much is spent of night. See, see the bridegroom's torch Half wasted in the porch. And now those tapers five, That show the womb shall thrive, Their silv'ry flames advance, To tell all prosp'rous chance Still shall crown the happy life Of ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... Noah, has suffered himself to be cajoled by that most beguiling of all beguiling little divinities, Miss Walter, of The Transcript. We have been looking all over her article with the aid of a taper, to see if we could discover a single syllable of truth in it—and really blush to acknowledge that we cannot. The adorable creature has been telling a parcel of fibs about us, by way of revenge for something ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... continental fashion, as he remembered it in the case of a great, stern, burly ecclesiastic in Florence. The coffin stood on tressels in the aisle of Chapelizod church; and, of all persons in the world, he and Charles Nutter stood side by side as chief mourners, each with a great waxen taper burning in one hand, and a ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu |
