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Torchlight   Listen
noun
Torchlight  n.  The light of a torch, or of torches. Also adjectively; as, a torchlight procession.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Torchlight" Quotes from Famous Books



... causes thus my bosom's throes, whose eager fire within me glows, whose light upon my spirit flows, Love's goddess needs that night should close; that brightly she may reign and shun the torchlight vain. ...
— Tristan and Isolda - Opera in Three Acts • Richard Wagner

... steward of the steamer made his appearance upon the field of Mr Bundle's operations, escorted by half a dozen of the backwoodsmen, and stepping into the torchlight, held up the very coffee-pot which the shameless Yankee had sold to the leather-jacketed man of Missouri. The pot had been filled with boiling water, which was now oozing out comfortably and deliberately at every side and corner of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... The dusky mass of slaves had swayed forward with one low, deep, bestial growl. Crouched for the spring, they were yet held in leash by the menace of the pistols, leveled upon them and gleaming in the torchlight, and by the restraining gesture and voice of Luiz Sebastian. In the crowd of servants, now quite separated from the slaves, was noise and confusion, and behind the Turk, standing midway between the parties, was forming ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... to play before the king, and Wakungu appointments were made to celebrate the feats of the day. Then the royal cutler brought in dinner-knives made of iron, inlaid with squares of copper and brass, and goats and vegetables were presented as usual, when by torchlight we were dismissed, my men taking with them as many plantains as they ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... this piece of poetry on the wall of a smashed-up chateau, and I have copied it exactly as I found it. The writing was on a darkened wall, and while I copied it my guide held a torchlight up to it. The place passes as "Dead Cow Farm" on all ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene

... heard the fishermen, who were fishing by torchlight, talking over the good deeds of the young prince; and she was happy to think that she had saved his life when he was drifting about on the waves, half dead, and she could not forget how closely ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... field music and colours, and when darkness fell and the street lights were turned on, the shriek of the fifes and the clamour of the drums and the rhythmic tramp of marching feet reminded me of a torchlight political ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell

... bold and numerous were the fish in the lakes and rivers he was used to fish in, that they could be taken by the hand, with a crooked pin and coarse thread, or wooden spear; but that was in the lower province; and oh, what glorious tales I have heard him tell of spearing fish by torchlight!" ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... lateral passages within it, apparently communicating with other caverns; and at the farther end, which was almost buried in obscurity, there was a gleam seemingly occasioned by the reflection of the torchlight upon water. On the right hand stood a pile of huge stones, disposed somewhat in the form of a Druidical altar, on the top of which, as on a throne, sat the demon hunter, surrounded by his satellites—one of whom, horned and bearded like a satyr, had clambered the roughened sides of the ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... before daylight, we hauled the boat up on the beach, and made ourselves comfortable for the night. About one o'clock, the trooper who was on watch, awakened us with the news that there was a light out at sea. We thought at first it could only be some blacks in their canoes, spearing fish by torchlight, but it gradually drew nearer and nearer, until at last we could distinguish the distant sound of voices, and the faint rattle of the iron cable as it flew ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden

... the laughter in mirthful repetition, like the ripple of the water-brook upon the shining pebbles of the stream. Peering out as far as the line of the torchlight pierced into the darkness, he beheld two beautiful young females smiling on him. Their countenances appeared to be perfectly white, like ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews

... the remainder of the day, which was answered with spirit and effect by the garrison, and that part of major McMahon's command that had regained the fort. The savages were employed during the night (which was dark and foggy,) in carrying off their dead by torchlight, which occasionally drew a fire from the garrison. They nevertheless succeeded so well, that there were but eight or ten bodies left on the field, and those close under the influence of the fire from the fort. The enemy again renewed the attack on the morning of the first inst., ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake

... still leaning on the Bryanite's arm. While the procession swayed around him, he gazed across the gate as a man who had lost his bearings. No glint of torchlight reached his cavernous eyes; but the sight of Mr. Raymond's surpliced figure standing behind Taff's shoulder in the full glare seemed to rouse him. He lifted a fist and ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... fellow formally declared that he was sick of banging away at caps, and that he would shortly be on the trail of the great lions of the Atlas. A deafening hurrah greeted this assertion. Whereupon more egg-nogg, bravoes, handshaking, slappings of the shoulder, and a torchlight serenade up to midnight before ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... been conspicuous for the attention he had given to the words of the speaker. His countenance had changed with each passing emotion, until it settled into a look of deadly malice. As Magua ended he arose and, uttering the yell of a demon, his polished little axe was seen glancing in the torchlight as he whirled it above his head. The motion and the cry were too sudden for words to interrupt his bloody intention. It appeared as if a bright gleam shot from his hand, which was crossed at the same moment by a dark and powerful line. The former was the tomahawk ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... in the torchlight, sparkling on the poet's page; Virgin honey of Hymettus, distilled from the lips of the orator; A savor of sweet spikenard, anointing the hands of liberality; A feast of angel's-food set upon the tables ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head

... not. He took with him a hazy impression of a vast, vaulted hall filled with a ruddy glare of torchlight, a raving rabble of gorgeously attired natives in its centre. Then the opening received him and he found himself in a black hole of an underground gallery—a place that reeked with the dank odours ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... contemplated no infraction of loyalty to the suzerain from whom he held his power. Roger Mastrangelo, Henry Barresi, and Niccoloso of Ortoleva (knights), and Niccolo of Ebdemonia were proclaimed captains of the people with five counsellors. By the glare of torchlight on the bloody ground, amid the noise and throng of the armed multitude, and with all the sublime pomp of tumult, the republican magistrates were inaugurated. Trumpets and Moorish kettle-drums sounded, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... P.M. the cattle arrived by torchlight, together with the troops and baggage. Some of the Lobore carriers had already deserted on the road, which had ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... the molders. Ancient personal antagonisms that had been slumbering started to their feet. Torrini fell out of favor, and in the midst of one of his finest perorations uncomplimentary missiles, selected from the animal kingdom, had been thrown at him. The grand torchlight procession on the night of the ninth culminated in a disturbance, in which many men got injured, several badly, and the windows of Brackett's bakery were stove in. A point of light had pierced the darkness,—the trades were ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... torchlight procession with which the Berlin students honoured the beloved and respected brothers, and which we watched from the Grimms' windows because they were higher than ours. But there is a yet brighter light of fire in my memory. It was shed by the burning opera house. Our mother, who liked to have ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the second chief was packing the stolen treasure on the camels by torchlight. Whenever he stumbled over a dead body he muttered a curse, and when his work was finished he sought his comrade. Women in chains wept loudly, not so much on account of their imprisonment—they took that almost as a matter of course—but because their master was being murdered in the tent. So ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger

... Whig headquarters; were mounted on wheels, were drawn from place to place, and lived in by Whig stump speakers. Great mass meetings were held, and the whole campaign became one of frolic, song, and torchlight processions. [19] The people wanted a change. Harrison was an ideal popular candidate, and "Tippecanoe [20] and Tyler too" and a ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... as the wind kind of softened down, I wished he would go and pick the horse. He did so, and at midnight a party of friends carried me into town on a stretcher. It was quite an ovation. To think of a torchlight procession coming way out there into the woods at midnight, and carrying me into town on their shoulders in triumph! And yet I was once only a ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... vanished. The gold rim vanished also; still there appeared to be no disposition among the party to leave the scene. Twilight began to shimmer, and now the stars trembled forth from the dusky sky. At last night settled on the landscape, and the girls expressed a wish to see the hollow lighted up with torchlight. Scattering ourselves amongst the trees of the bank, some splinters of the pitch pine were procured, and matches kindled each splinter into thick crimson flame. I clambered up as far as the basin of the first "bound" of the "Deer," and looked down to enjoy the scene. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... torches leading the way,— we proceeded by a path through the forest to his house, which stood on a slight elevation above the river. It was a thatched one-storied building, with a walled-in courtyard on one side, and surrounded by a garden of considerable extent, as far as I could judge by the torchlight. ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... Doctors' movement, were, it would seem on looking back, scarcely so mildly mannered, so peacefully inclined as those who now sit placidly beside 'the sweet girl graduates' of our day, on the class-room benches, and acknowledge the reign of the lady doctor as an accomplished fact. A torchlight procession of modern times is apparently a cheerful and picturesque function, smiled on by the authorities, and welcomed as a rather unique means of doing honour to a new Lord Rector or some famous guest of the city or the University. In Mr Stevenson's time, a torchlight procession ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black

... sat in black darkness. But the quiet, steady hustling and pushing and gurgling went on just the same. He knew that there were elephants all round Kala Nag, and that there was no chance of backing him out of the assembly; so he set his teeth and shivered. In a Keddah at least there was torchlight and shouting, but here he was all alone in the dark, and once a trunk came up and touched ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling

... on they found the whole country in a blaze of enthusiasm. No one who saw the scene would have doubted for a moment that the South was an ardent unit in support of its cause. By day the troop trains were wildly cheered as they passed; at night bonfires blazed on the hills and torchlight processions paraded the streets of the towns. As no cannon were at hand to salute the incoming volunteers, blacksmith anvils took their place, ringing with the blows of hammers swung by muscular arms. Every station was a throng ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... had held rolled across the thick carpet on the ground, while the rich red wine ran in a slow stream towards the curtains of the door. His face was livid and his eyes like coals of blue fire, his fair locks and his long golden beard caught the torchlight and shone about him like a glory, as he stood up to his grand height and faced the king. Darius never quailed nor moved; his look met Zoroaster's with fearless boldness. Zoroaster spoke first, in low accents of ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... fall? I thought I heard a cry back there," said the tall young lady peering suspiciously into the group; but all seemed serene in the fitful torchlight. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... great bell, which usually tolls for a fellow, should not toll, and that the body should be privately buried at six A.M. in the fellows' burial-ground. The students immediately posted up placards that the great bell should toll, and that the funeral should be by torchlight. They carried the point. Almost all the students attended the corpse to the grave in scarfs and hatbands at their own expense, and when the funeral oration was pronounced they flew in wild excitement ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... taper-light, Torchlight, no-light: Darkness at the shut of day, And lions roaring, Their wrath pouring In ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare

... friend of his mother's. We were received with the most whole-hearted hospitality, and Una and I stayed all night, and Mr. O'Sullivan brought Mr. Hawthorne and Julian back, because Mr. Hawthorne did not wish to stay. I stayed ostensibly to go to a torchlight festival in an ice glen, but I wished more to see the O'Sullivans than the festival. We had a charming visit. Mrs. Field carried me to the scene of the sacrifice of Everell in "Hope Leslie," for it is upon her estate,—a superb hill ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... as the guns boom far, Don John of Austria is going to the war; Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold; Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums, Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various

... looking at the lantern as if drawn by the blaze, her great eyes bright as a deer's when it stands fascinated by a torchlight a ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... spot they gave him, with the cool green earth above, Where I saw the torchlight glitter on the tears of widowed love, And we left his garlands fading;—to redeem that moment's pain, Would that ye were yet in chaos, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... refused to enter the hospital, so we brought out a couple of trestles, laid the litter upon them, and the surgeon set his arm and dressed his wounds by torchlight, when he was lifted into a dhoolie, and his bearers again prepared to start ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty

... most fastidious portion of the English society that makes its winter season in Italy. He dined several times at our house (I was living with my sister and her husband); under his guidance we went to see the statutes of the Vatican by torchlight; and he came out once or twice in the summer of that year to visit us at our ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... South Dakota boasts another limestone cavern of peculiar beauty, through whose entrance also the wind plays pranks. It is called Jewel Cave because many of its crystals are tinted in various colors, often very brilliantly. Under torchlight the effect ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... fowler, spreads his nets with care, And deep-toned warning both our hearts have heard, Even as the old-time low-bell held each bird Suddenly trembling, nestling pair by pair Dark in the covert, till a blinding glare Of torchlight and a clamorous shouted word Dazed their bright eyes, and terrified wings upwhirred To baffled blundering in the ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet

... the spot," continued the aged knight of Senville, "and found foot marks in the snow, which, from the previous fall, lay lightly on the ground, for the storm of tonight had hardly set in. There were marks of one of our parties, and we saw by torchlight strange footprints, as if they had been tracked by two or three daring foes—we ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... go in for fish. There are schnapper, rock-cod, mullet, mackerel, and herring, or species that answer to those, to be had for very little trouble. There are also soles, which we catch on the mud-banks and shallows at night, wading by torchlight, and spearing the dazzled fish as they lie. When we make a great haul we salt, dry, or smoke the capture for lasting use. The endless oyster-beds, and other shell-fish, we rarely touch, they are not worth the time ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... refuge than to make forthwith for the cellar where the treasures of the Bracciano fam- ily no doubt lay hid. As light of foot as Camilla sung by the Latin poet, he flew to the entrance to the Baths of Vespasian. The torchlight already flickered on the walls when Rinaldo, with the readiness be- stowed on him by nature, discovered the door concealed in the stone- work, and suddenly vanished. A hideous thought then flashed on Rinaldo's brain like lightning ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... wider circle, which seemed to me recruited from all the jails of Paris, surrounded the carriages, which I at length understood to be those of the royal family. They had attempted to escape to the frontier, had been arrested, and were now returning as prisoners. I caught a glimpse, by the torchlight, of the illustrious sufferers, as they passed the spot where I stood. The Queen was pale, but exhibited that stateliness of countenance for which she was memorable to the last; she sat with the Dauphiness pressed in her arms. The King looked overcome ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... tell," replied Oliver; "but I saw the party by torchlight, and I can make bodily oath to the bonnets I made for them since last Innocents'. They are of a quaint device, and I ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... forth his sabre; it gleamed in the torchlight—the Moors bowed their heads in fanatic reverence—the santon sprang from the stone, and passed into the centre ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... all three and interwove them in so brilliant a manner that he carried the audience by storm. He was at once engaged for the next concert, and made such success that he was accompanied to his hotel by a torchlight procession, and his carriage drawn ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee

... me, the light of many torches; presently after, the sound of wheels reached me, and the slow tread of feet, and soon I had joined myself to the rear of a sordid, silent, and lugubrious procession, such as we see in dreams. Close on a hundred persons marched by torchlight in unbroken silence; and in their midst a cart, and in the cart, on an inclined platform, the dead body of a man—the centre-piece of this solemnity, the hero whose obsequies we were come forth ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... marriet," said Mrs O'Rorke, "an we'll not be forgettin' it the night. It's tar bar'ls we'll be burnin'—they'll be expectin' it, to be sure—an' a torchlight procession out ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick

... of Devil-work at Apaiang had been as follows:—It chanced we were benighted at the house of Captain Tierney. My wife and I lodged with a Chinaman some half a mile away; and thither Captain Reid and a native boy escorted us by torchlight. On the way the torch went out, and we took shelter in a small and lonely Christian chapel to rekindle it. Stuck in the rafters of the chapel was a branch of knotted palm. "What is that?" I asked. "O, that's Devil-work," said the Captain. "And what is Devil-work?" I inquired. "If ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... they had the advantage of him, as Guy accidentally discovered, for the wicked eyes blinked in the torchlight and the monster's actions showed that his powers of sight ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon

... him to see a great torchlight procession, and many of the men who carried torches remembered afterward a stout man who stood near a lamp-post and held on his shoulder a handsome little shouting boy, who waved his cap ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... anxiously, a certain chief of police in a small town upstate was telling feverishly over the telephone of a posse having killed a monster lizard by torchlight, having discovered it in the act of devouring a cow. The lizard was eight feet high, walked on its hind legs, and had a collar of solid gold about its neck. And jewel importers, in New York, were in anxious conference about a flood of untraced jewels upon the market. Their ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... followed a tortuous course through the valley, and when at last I came to what I assumed to be the gate-lodge, a thunderous ebony cloud crested the hill-top above, and its edge, catching the burning rays of the sun, glowed fiercely like the pall of Avalon in the torchlight. Through the dense ranks of firs cloaking the slopes a breeze presaging the coming storm whispered evilly, and here in the hollow ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... the cave was formed, lay in nearly horizontal strata; and, at the bottom of Cudjo's stairs, they came upon another level floor. It was smooth and free from rubbish. A gray vault glimmered above their heads in the torchlight. The walls showed strange and grotesque forms in bas-relief, similar to those of the first gallery: here a couchant lion, so distinctly outlined that it seemed as if it must have been chiselled by human art; an Indian sitting in a posture of woe, with his face buried in ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... sportive toil, Anoint our bodies with the fragrant oil, And plait our garlands gathered from the grave, And wear the wreaths that sprung from out the brave. But lo! night comes, the Mooa[371] woos us back, The sound of mats[372] are heard along our track; 30 Anon the torchlight dance shall fling its sheen In flashing mazes o'er the Marly's[373] green; And we too will be there; we too recall The memory bright with many a festival, Ere Fiji blew the shell of war, when foes For ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... banquets, and receptions in her honour. From St Petersburg she continued her journey to Poland, and made a conquest of Prince Radzivill, who exhausted his purse and ingenuity in devising entertainments for her, including the excitement of a bear-hunt by torchlight. ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... in turning the effect was that of their flashing up as I looked. Then I saw that the birches among them were all set with candles, whose pale yellow flames lighted them with a most chaste fire, just as in the old days of torchlight enthusiasm over political campaigns we used to put rows of them in the windows on the night that the parade was to pass. Seeing all that I felt as if autumn were again triumphantly elected, and we all ought to take off our ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... president continued throughout the evening. It was a regular torchlight procession. Irish, Germans, French, Scotch, all the heterogeneous units which make up the population of Maryland shouted in their respective vernaculars; and the "vivas," "hurrahs," and "bravos" ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... physical handicap had rather cut him off from companionship on equal terms with his fellows. Now, however, he could enter with zest in their sports and societies. At the very beginning of his Freshman year he showed his classmates his mettle. During the presidential torchlight parade when the jubilant Freshmen were marching for Hayes, some Tilden man shouted derisively at them from a second-story window and pelted them with potatoes. It was impossible for them to get at him, but Theodore, who was always stung at any display of meanness— and it was certainly ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... company of buffoons; after them four janissaries, carrying silver maces; then the male friends, bearing colored lanterns and perfumed torches, raised on gilded poles; then the females, among whom I saw some beautiful Madonna faces in the torchlight; and finally the bride herself, covered from head to foot with a veil of cloth of gold, and urged along by two maidens: for it is the etiquette of such occasions that the bride should resist being taken, and must be forced every step of the ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... womanly, but with a royal spirit, let call in haste a great number of the friends and servants of Messer Torello and made ready all that behoved unto a magnificent banquet. Moreover, she let bid by torchlight many of the noblest of the townfolk to the banquet and bringing out cloths and silks and furs, caused throughly order that which her husband had sent to bid her do. The day come, Saladin and his companions arose, whereupon Messer ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... for words unspoken, he commented nervously on the sensation of unreality with which these tropic scenes inspired him, and Rachael, who longed to withdraw her hand from his arm, told him of an entertainment peculiar to the Islands, a torchlight hunt for land-crabs, which once a year travel down from the mountains to the sea, to bathe and shed their shells. Words hastened. Before she drew breath she had arranged a hunt for the night of the 10th of April, and received his promise to be one of her guests. They were not so happy as they had ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... torches; and an awful silence signalized the approach of the pageant; but when it was up, and the bodies were borne past, especially when the ghastly countenances of the sufferers were under eye plainly visible in the red torchlight, the outburst of grief and rage in every form, groans, curses, prayers, was terrible, and the amazing voice, such by unity of utterance, went with the dead, and followed after them until at last the Hippodrome was reached. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... seen by torchlight that the pinnace was clear of the ship and that the men with their guns and spikes were holding off the natives. I had seen, too, a spear flash across the space of open water and cut down one of the men. But already ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... for themselves the props and scaffoldings necessitated by the change of the staircase, the square wooden funnels down which the rubbish was thrown into the carts stationed in the street. The sight of men working by torchlight—for there were day workmen and night workmen—arrested all the idlers and busybodies in the street; gossip, based on these preparations, proclaimed a sumptuous ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... a few nights, during the blossoming season of wheat, and the fly will be destroyed and the crop saved, in the worst weevil-season that ever occurred. In the absence of pitch-pine, some other light can be devised—as, balls of rags dipped in turpentine and sulphur, as in a torchlight procession. Something can be devised that will burn brilliantly for an hour: this will not cost fifty cents an acre, during the weevil-season, and will prove almost a ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... till after night in the spring and fall of the year. They ploughed with oxen and mules and horses all. He said how they would rest the teams and feed and still they would go on doing something else. They tromped cotton at night by torchlight. Tromped it in the wagons to get off to the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... way to the flash of torches in the fragrant darkness of an Italian night. There is a scurry of feet along a dark alley, a scuffle at the end, and the genial rotundity of Brother Lippo Lippi's face, impudent, brilliant, insuppressible, leers into the torchlight. Fra Lippo Lippi is not less true and vivacious than the Andrea, if less striking as an example of Browning's dramatic power. Sarto is a great poetic creation; Browning's own robust temperament provided hardly any aid in delineating the emaciated soul whose gifts had thinned down ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... before we had harvested our watery fields of grain, and where we had now returned for the duck-hunting. All was well with us. Ducks were killed in countless numbers, and in the evenings the men hunted deer in canoes by torchlight along the shores of the lake. But alas! life is made up of good times and bad times, and it is when we are perfectly happy that we should ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... said, striding forward. His almost human face was stern under the torchlight. "You have seen our warriors. You know now that you cannot stand against them. The word has spread to all our lands. My entire people are prepared ...
— Warrior Race • Robert Sheckley

... with extended arms and gleaming eyes towards the fugitive. She gasped for breath, her face turned suddenly to a livid paleness, the torchlight fell upon her distorted features, she looked unearthly at that fearful moment; but the divinity of mercy had now braced the determination of the young Goth to meet all emergencies. His bright steady eye quailed ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... church, with the Princes of the blood, the nobles, knights, and magnates of the land, three cannons were fired; and at nine of the clock in the evening, the princely corpse was carried first into the count's chamber, then to the knights' chamber, from thence to the grand state-hall, by torchlight, by twenty-four nobles, and from that to the castle square, which was entirely covered with black cloth. Here it was laid down, and sixty students from the university of Grypswald, and forty boys from the town-school, sung the burial psalms ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... undoubtedly was, which coarser minds might misunderstand. On one day, the initiated went in procession to the sea-coast, where they underwent a purification by bathing in the sea. On the fifth night there was the torchlight procession; and, by a touch of real life in him, we gather from the first page of Plato's Republic that such processions were popular spectacles, having a social interest, so that people made much of attending them. There was the procession of the sacred basket filled ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... made into soldiers; women, too, weeping tears of joy down on the faces of the children for whom they had not dared to hope for aught but death. There are gaunt men, pallid with loss of blood, whose great eyes shine weirdly amid the torchlight and whose thin hands tremble with weakness as they grip the sinewy, grimy hands of the Highlanders. These are the wounded of the long siege who have crawled out from the hospital up yonder, as many of them as could compass the exertion, with a welcome to their deliverers. ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... present at Nelson's funeral, then reading the services. Beyond the tomb of Nelson, in a ghastly ghost-befitting chamber hung with the velvet which surrounded his lying in state at Chelsea, and on which, by the flickering torchlight, we see emblazoned the many Orders presented to him by foreign sovereigns, is the funeral car of Wellington, modeled and constructed in six weeks, at an expense of L13,000, from ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... lapsing once more into his customary picturesque speech, "that these old boys that burned those Salem witches was pretty well thought of in Salem—deacons in the church, and all such; p'ticular elect, and held up to the kids for high moral examples? had the plumb universal approval in those torchlight efforts of theirn?" ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... to the Conciergerie; here he wrote a letter while he waited the hour of execution, which was to take place the same evening, by torchlight: ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... curtain with a vigorous jerk, and looked forth: it was not a very beautiful scene; long rows of brick houses stretched away on either side, relieved at intervals by the street lamps and loafers, which, as they appeared at a distance, reminded her of a torchlight procession she had witnessed once in Peonytown, when the Hickory Club turned out with twenty torches and a colored lantern. Having satisfied her eyes with the view, she attempted to draw down the curtain, and found that it ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... is now known of this saint is that he was honoured in Perth in Catholic ages as the patron saint of bakers. On December 10, known as St. Obert's Eve, the bakers of that city were accustomed to pass through the streets in procession by torchlight, playing pipes and beating drums, and wearing various disguises. One of their number used to wear a dress known as "The Devil's Coat." Another rode on a horse shod with men's shoes. In its {178} primitive form this pastime ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett

... eyes halfway. From a point in his anatomy a degree or two south of his diaphragm, a sensation of the most warm congratulation began to pervade his famished system: as if (he thought) his domestic economy were organising a torchlight procession by ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... giggling and a whispering all round, as hand in hand they stepped out on the floor. Young and old, lads and maidens, thronged eagerly about them. Had she not been so happy, perhaps she would not have been so fair. But as she stood there in the warm flush of the torchlight, with her rich blond hair waving down over her shoulders, and with that veiled brightness in her eyes, her beauty sprang upon you like a sudden wonder, and her presence was inspiration. And Gunnar saw her; she loved him: what cared he for all the world ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... after Miss Lind's arrival in Boston, there was a display of fireworks, in her honor, in front of the Revere House, which was followed by a torchlight procession by the Germans of the city. At Philadelphia, they were met by such a dense throng of people that it was with the greatest difficulty that they pressed through the crowds to their hotel. Jenny was suffering from a very severe headache ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... Mr. Thomas E. Ellis was a Liberal Whip at this time.] who brought him to address the quarrymen of Blaenau Festiniog, or like Mabon—William Abraham—miner, bard, and orator, who organized a gigantic torchlight procession of his own constituents in the Rhondda Valley to welcome Sir Charles and Lady Dilke, and who, at Lydney, when Sir Charles finally accepted their invitation, congratulated the Forest of Dean on having secured the services ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... not, racing in full cry to the homes of our unsuspecting brothers and sisters in Delhi—it were good for that man if he had not been born. He had notice such as might have wakened the dead early in the afternoon (2 or 3 o'clock P.M., I believe), and yet, at the end of a long summer day, torchlight found him barely putting his foot into the stirrup. And why into the stirrup at all? For what end, on what pretence, should he ever have played out the ridiculous pantomime and mockery of causing ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... cedars. Cedars enough for the purpose were not to be found in Somersetshire. They were therefore collected in London, and sent down by land carriage. Relays of labourers were hired; and the work went on all night by torchlight. No man could be more abstemious than Pitt; yet the profusion of his kitchen was a wonder even to epicures. Several dinners were always dressing; for his appetite was capricious and fanciful; and at whatever moment ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the grating of oars, and the creaking of cables, rang the voice of Demetrius; and at his word a dozen ready hands put each command into action. The narrow, easy-moving yacht caught the current; a long tier of white oars glinted in the torchlight, smote the water, and the yacht bounded away, while a parting flight of arrows left misery and death ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... one night at supper, when M. Menou proposed a stag-hunt by torchlight. I caught eagerly at the idea, and he at once gave orders to make the needful preparations. The two Mexicans begged to be allowed to accompany us; but almost before they had proffered the request, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... occasions, and there is no holiday-making. Performances, representing the last events in the life of Christ, are enacted in the churches or streets in such a way as to remind one of the old miracle plays or mysteries. A few days before Good Friday, a torchlight procession takes place by night from one church to another, in which is carried a large wooden image of Christ bent under the weight of the cross. The chief members of the government assist, and the whole slowly moves to the sound of muffled ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... ending of the Crimean War our village was illuminated. Rows of tallow candles in every window, fireworks in a vacant field, and a torchlight procession! Old John marched at its head in full regimentals, straight as a ramrod, the hero of the night. His son had been promoted for bravery on the field. After John came a dozen gray militiamen of Queenston Heights, ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson

... Levant, he watched the train puffing slowly to the station that lay in the shadow of Theseus' Temple, but his eyes at the same tune strained across the haze toward Eleusis Bay, and while his ears caught the tramping feet of the long Torchlight Procession, some power of his remoter consciousness divined the forms of hovering gods, expressions of his vast Mother's personality with which, in worship, this ancient people had believed it possible to merge themselves. The significant truths that lay behind the higher Mysteries, degraded ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... run a special train, without cost, out of the main station—Chehaw, five miles away—to meet him. He arrived on the school grounds about nine o'clock in the evening. Some one had suggested that we give the General a "pine-knot torchlight reception." This plan was carried out, and the moment that his carriage entered the school grounds he began passing between two lines of lighted and waving "fat pine" wood knots held by over a thousand students and teachers. The whole ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington

... went at once to the theatre. There I was happy to learn that the advance sale was good and the prospects for the evening's performance A1. We opened to a full house, and the audience appeared to enjoy the entertainment. The following evening did not pan out quite so well, in consequence of a torchlight procession through the streets and a big Grand Army parade. The night after—our farewell performance. Great Scott! A rainstorm thinned the attendance to the proportions of a fashionable church in the metropolis during summer, when the popular preacher is absent ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville

... disadvantage, with the cravens on the Rhine, who, while sympathising with her, dared not raise weapon on her behalf against so powerful an over-lord as the warlike Archbishop. The scarlet cross of the Crusader on his broad breast seemed to her swimming eyes to blaze with lambent flame in the yellow torchlight. She dared not trust her voice to answer him, fearing its faintness might disown the courage with which she had held her castle for so long, and he, seeing that she struggled to hold control of herself, standing there ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr

... for its own sake, always, should we love the light, but for the sake of what it illumines. The fire on the mountain shines brightly, but there are few men on the mountain; and more service may often be rendered by the torchlight, there where the crowd is. It is in the humble lives that is found the substance of great lives; and by watching the narrowest feelings does enlargement come to our own. Nor is this from any repugnance these feelings inspire, but because they no longer ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck

... department. Every one gives our drooping eagle a kick. This is all wrong. We can't send our greatest wonders and triumphs to Europe. There is neither room nor opportunity in the building for showing off one of our political torchlight processions, or a vigilance-committee hanging, or a Chicago or Boston fire, or a steamboat blow-up, or a railway smash-up. Were the present chief of the commission a man of originality and talent, he might even now save the national reputation by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... castle, to protect it from those who threatened to carry it away by the pocketful. A wall has also been put around the present "castle" (more properly, house). This was done some years ago, I was told by the butler, after a torchlight procession of a thousand enthusiastic admirers had come down from Liverpool and trampled Mrs. Gladstone's ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... were the disciples in a group; they were excited, but no man was ever calmer than he. The torchlight beat redly upon him, giving his hair a tint ruddier than was natural to it; yet the expression of the countenance was as usual all ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... success mocked him; for the coronation took place on the senseless dead body. The head was wreathed with laurel; a magnificent toga delayed for a while the shroud; and a procession took place through the city by torchlight, all the inhabitants pouring forth to behold it, and painters crowding over the bier to gaze on the poet's lineaments, from which they produced a multitude of portraits. The corpse was then buried in the church ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... know, in spite of all that and our promise to meet her, we forgot every bit about it till half-past four! You see, it was election day, and we were frightfully busy. After the fifth hour recitation we hurried into the ragged blue overalls that we had worn in one of the torchlight parades. Lila punched up the crown of an old felt alpine hat, and I battered my last summer's sailor till it looked disreputable enough. Then we rushed over to the gymnasium to join our gang ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz



Words linked to "Torchlight" :   visible light



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