"Gaslight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like magnitude, were the struggles of a disquieted mind. Pettitt had a very large family to maintain, and did nothing but paint, paint from morning till night, except for half-an-hour after his light lunch, when he read the "Times." As the great picture did not advance very rapidly, he worked by gaslight after the short London winter day, and often pursued his terrible task till the early hours of the morning, when exhausted nature could resist no longer, and be fell asleep on a little iron bed in the studio. There were ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... walked to the open window and stood a moment looking into the dusky void of the street, where a turbid gaslight alone represented social animation. For some time neither of these young persons spoke; Caspar lingered near the chimney-piece with eyes gloomily attached. She had virtually requested him to go—he knew that; but at the risk of making himself ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... which I had to encounter in doing so, one that might appear trivial enough occasioned me no little annoyance. The inevitable rouge, rendered really indispensable by the ghastly effect of the gaslight illumination of the stage, had always been one of its minor disagreeables to me; but I now found that, in addition to rouged cheeks, my fair theatrical contemporaries—fair though they might be—literally ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... he said; but at the name his wife raised her hand as if to silence him. As she did so the gaslight struck on ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... feeble gaslight shone, disclosing Aphrodite—somewhat disarranged by the panic—standing smiling in front of the erstwhile Voodoo. She looked down at his feet. There, sure enough, one huge member was unshod and stockingless; the elastic-slit congress gaiter, lost in the shuffle, lay out of the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... introduce myself afresh. The contrast between his flashy clothes and my frowsy, wretched-looking appearance, as I saw ourselves in the mirrors on either side of me, made me sorely ill at ease. The brilliancy of the gaslight chafed my nerves. It was as though it had been turned on for the express purpose of illuminating my disgrace. I was longing to go away, but Gitelson fell to questioning me about my affairs once more, and this time he did so with such unfeigned concern that I told him the whole cheerless story ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... bosom flashed fitfully in the yellow gaslight, as he slowly said, "And now you know all your ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... project, and Owen had caught at it. Idleness had never been his fault, and he wanted severe engrossing labour to stun pain and expel thought. He was urgent to know what standard of attainments would be needful, and finding Robert ignorant on this head, seized his hat, and dashed out in the gaslight to the nearest bookseller's for ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... front with clouded windows had a placard outside bearing the announcement: "Olympia Theatre, 10-cent show. Will open next Saturday evening with the following special scenes: 1—The Poor Artist. 2—London by Gaslight. 3—A Day on the Overland Limited." At the door of the store just being renovated for a picture show stood a man, tying some printed bills to an awning rod for passers by to take. Ralph approached ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... loaded with heaped-up plates of bread-and-butter and cake. Steaming urns of tea stood at each end, surrounded by cups and saucers. The walls had been prettily decorated with holly and evergreens, and the red berries glistened in the gaslight. The platform at the end of the room had been taken away, and in its place stood an enormous tree covered with toys and parcels. Several of the children were standing round it in groups, for the most part in silence, as though overawed with the unusual sight. Some of the bolder ones ventured nearer ...
— Willie the Waif • Minie Herbert
... The facts are these: about four o'clock on Christmas morning, Peterson, who, as you know, is a very honest fellow, was returning from some small jollification and was making his way homeward down Tottenham Court Road. In front of him he saw, in the gaslight, a tallish man, walking with a slight stagger, and carrying a white goose slung over his shoulder. As he reached the corner of Goodge Street, a row broke out between this stranger and a little knot of roughs. One of the latter knocked off the man's ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... if the night were only fair, that they might go out into the moonlight and leave the screen doors open that we might play close together, you and I, in the gaslight." ...
— A Book Without A Title • George Jean Nathan
... had submerged the horizon. A mist must have hidden the stars in the firmament; the vault above seemed opaque and heavy like lead; and yonder in front the houses of the Trastevere had long since been asleep. Not one of all their windows glittered; there was but a single gaslight shining, all alone and far away, like a lost spark. In vain did Pierre seek the Janiculum. In the depths of that ocean of nihility all sunk and vanished, Rome's four and twenty centuries, the ancient Palatine and the modern Quirinal, even the giant dome of St. Peter's, blotted out from ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... melody, Dickie Hudson's face under the gaslight expressed a rapt and spiritual delight, ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... advance of the professor, responded to my greeting in his customary gruff, almost suspicious manner, and passed on, turning down the collar of his overcoat. His heavily bearded face was as gloomy-looking as ever in the light of the single flickering gaslight. ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... and the wet pavement glistened in the gaslight, while the oppressive warmth of the almost impalpable rain lay heavily over the streets and seemed to obscure the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... your attention to the singular fact that of the two officers who bore testimony in this matter, one asserts that the hall wherein Payne sat was illuminated with a full head of gas; the other, that the gaslight was purposely dimmed. The uncertainty of the witness who gave the testimony relative to the coat of Payne may also be ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... had first seen light, and that gaslight, in a block in lower Manhattan which has since been given over to a milk-station for a highly congested district, had the palate, if not the purse, of the cosmopolite. His digestive range included borsch and chow main; ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... thing it is confined to the public rooms, and the unfortunate wight who longs to see beyond the end of his nose is forced to wrestle with dripping candles and unclean lamps, known only by tradition in our native land. The gaslight, which is a common necessary in the simplest private dwelling in an American city, is here a luxury scarcely attainable save by the very wealthiest. And we do not know how precious our gaslight is till we have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... of course, that Bessie's evening dress was of a color that looked well by gaslight, and no objection was made ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... pointed toward the zenith for about eight minutes, on a day when there is a bright blue sky. On taking the apparatus into the dark room and viewing the impression by gaslight, it will be found that the markings, which are quite clear at one end, have entirely faded out by the time the middle division is reached. The last division clearly marked is noted. Five strips cut from sensitized glass plates, ten centimeters long and two and a half in width, are ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... seeing Paris besides roaming up and down before the blazing shop-windows, and lounging by daylight or gaslight along the crowded and gay boulevards; and one of the best is to go to the Bois de Boulogne on a fete-day, or when the races are in progress. This famous wood is very disappointing at first to one who ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... not express all his thoughts. If he had revealed them fully he would have described a bright fireside in a small and humble but very comfortable room, with a smiling face that rendered sunshine unnecessary, and a pair of eyes that made gaslight a paltry flame as well as an absolute extravagance. That the name of this cheap, yet dear, luminary began with an N and ended with an a, is a piece of information with which we think it ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... lotus, and required specimens. But the indomitable will of the man, to whose wishes neither oceans nor deserts opposed successful barriers, finally triumphed, and the coveted treasures fully repaid their price as they glistened in the gaslight, perfect as their prototypes slumbering on the bosom of the Nile, under the blazing midnight stars of rainless Egypt. Several handsome rosewood cases were filled with rare books—two in Pali—centuries old; and moth- eaten volumes and valuable MSS.—some ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... As the gaslight in the bedroom was not satisfactory Elizabeth went into the sitting-room or study, as the students were accustomed to call it, to finish her dressing. Nancy came to the door just as Elizabeth put on the ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... of a wretched spot, a narrow life. Down there, nothing is not ridiculed that is not some phase of a provinciality. The dances in certain houses, the faces of some conceited club, long-spun names, business or gossip, or to drive a double carriage, are the gaslight boundaries of existence! Pah! it is a courtyard, bounded by four square walls, a path or two to walk in, and the eyes of busybodies to order our doings and sneer us out of our souls. How they deny us that the centre of the ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... childish, unreasonable, that I should speak sharply to Bettina, and equally unreasonable that fear and horror and sickening suspicion should possess me, but possessed I was by sensations hitherto unexperienced, and for a moment the gaslight from the lamp on the opposite street corner wavered and circled in a confusing, bewildering way. Sudden revelations, sudden realizations, were unsteadying me. Was Selwyn really some one I did not know? Was his life less single than I believed it? Hateful, ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... house more than once in her walks, and she knew that Griggs lived high up in the fifth story. It might be already too late. She hesitated and looked up and down the pavement. A young French officer of Zouaves was coming towards her; his high wrinkled and varnished boots gleamed in the gaslight. He had a black beard and bright young eyes, and was smoking a cigarette. He was looking at her and slackened his pace as he came near. She left her place and walked swiftly past ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... adventurers, native and foreign, for a shelter, safe, if squalid. It is somewhere near that court at the mouth of which he stands. He looks round: the policeman is baffled; the coast clear. He steals forth, and pauses under the same gaslight as that under which Guy Darrell had paused before,—under the same gaslight, under the same stars. From some recess in his rags he draws forth a large, distained, distended pocket-book,—last relic of sprucer days,—leather of dainty morocco, once elaborately ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is," he replied, "and screeching owls in every brain. You can't get quit." Then, lowering his voice, "I am haunted, and yet live here in this Moated Grange! The difference is this: in the town the gaslight and eternal clatter distract a man like me who is plagued from within; here I find some concord between the inside and the out, only the owls in the inside are ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... tapping at his door, and jumped up to realize by his watch and the still burning gaslight that it was nine o'clock. But the intruder was only a waiter with a letter which he had brought to Randolph's room in obedience to the instructions the latter had given overnight. Not doubting it was from the captain, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... great showy sculpture, in whatever profuse exhibition or of whatever period or school, without some renewal of that charmed Thorwaldsen hour, some taste again of the almost sugary or confectionery sweetness with which the great white images had affected us under their supper-table gaslight. The Crystal Palace was vast and various and dense, which was what Europe was going to be; it was a deep-down jungle of impressions that were somehow challenges, even as we might, helplessly defied, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... along at lightning speed, I asked the man whether he owned that fine turnout or worked on wages. "I own it myself," he said curtly. Therefore, when I alighted, I slipped round behind the sledge and scrutinized it thoroughly under the gaslight. The back was decorated with a monogram and a count's coronet in silver! After that I never asked questions, but I always knew what had happened when I picked up very comfortable equipages at very reasonable rates in places which ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... Gaslight brings direful havoc to good eyes, especially when the flame is in a mood to flicker and splutter, as gas sometimes does. Take a faint, wavering light and a piece of embroidery and you have as fine a recipe for premature ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... by gaslight, the fog of late November wrapping the town as in some monstrous blanket till the trees of the Square even were barely visible ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... other applications; a lady will often say that a dress which looks very well in the daylight does not answer in the evening. The reason is that the dress is intended to show certain colours which exist in the sunlight; but these colours are not contained to the same degree in gaslight, and consequently the dress has a different hue. The fault is not in the dress, the fault lies in the gas; and when the electric light is used it sends forth beams more nearly resembling those from the sun, and the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... mantel laughing undisguisedly at her partner, rather than with him, yet so good-humoredly that he cannot take offense, but rather laughs with her. Lackadaisical Gertrude, whose face is so perfect in the daytime, looks pale and insipid by gaslight, and timidly walks through the dance. Stout, good-natured Minna smiles and laughs, never quite completing a sentence, partly from embarrassment, partly because she hardly knows how; but still so sweet and amiable that one cannot find fault with her for so trifling a misfortune. At this point, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... faint gaslight outside, and the watchers could see her figure and profile black against the slight illumination. All was still and silent as the grave when they began ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... his hand, and without hesitation threw the coins far out into the river. Then he looked around. There was not a soul in sight. He drew a handful of money from his pocket and flung it away—a little shower of gold flashing brightly in the gaslight for a moment. He went through his pockets carefully and found an odd half sovereign and some silver. Away they went. Then he moved back to a seat ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... the parcel from his son's hand, turned it round and round under the gaslight, laid it down, and dismissed it with a flick as of contempt for his incompetence. At that ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... noise made the night cheerful; and so did the church clock near, which struck the quarters; and so did the light of the street lamps, which came through the blind and fell upon my little bed. We had very little light, except gaslight and daylight, in our street; the sunshine seldom found its way to us, and, when it did, people were so little used to it that they pulled down the blinds for fear it should hurt the carpets. In the room my sister and I called our nursery, however, we always welcomed ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... astounded to see me that I felt shyer than usual. But they looked quite cadaverous in the early gaslight, and perhaps that accidental circumstance exaggerated the ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... I have to strain my purse to bring up everything else to suit the clothes, as naturally gaslight, a leg of mutton, and two vegetables do not make a good foreground to bare shoulders and a white vest! And I'd rather fund the cash as ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... old piping favourite, save where two wires had been pushed apart to hold its lump of sugar, carried with it a sort of graveyard cheer. The engineer apprentices would have nothing to say to us, nor indeed to the bagman; but talked low and sparingly to one another, or raked us in the gaslight with a gleam of spectacles. For though handsome lads, they were all (in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... landing, where spare cups and saucers and teapots were stacked. From the upper flight the lower was invisible. Lucilla, descending, was unaware therefore of the gentleman coming up until she met him on the square of landing beneath the unshaded gaslight. He held a great, loose bunch of long-stalked violets in his hand; and he was, of course, Lucilla's partner at the heavenly ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... but visibly of fragile build, was standing on the landing under the gaslight. She sprang forward, flung her arms round Knight's neck, and uttered ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... passes by, with bold bright face, and swinging hip, and footstep stately and elastic; far better dressed, according to all true canons of taste, than most town-girls; and thanking her fate that she and her "Rom" are no house-dwellers and gaslight-sightseers, but fatten on free air ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... paper on an original plan published in America was the John Donkey. The editors of the paper were G. G. (Gaslight) Foster and Thomas Dunn English. Foster was a reporter on the North American who had written sketches of New York, notably the account of the illuminated clock of the Seward House, and who had been brought ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... have not surpassed me in this, respect; for you recollect those cold winter days when I arose at "five o'clock in the morning," not, however, to meet Corydon, but to attack the Gradus ad Parnassum of Clementi by gaslight, in my desire to accomplish eight hours of practice undisturbed by visitors. At seven, however, I used to meet with an interruption from my German professor. Poor man! I now pity his old rheumatic limbs stumbling over the ice and snow to be with me at that unreasonable ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... still in the darkening twilight; but the distant roar of the world surged without, and a gaslight shone flickering through the branches of the trees, and fell on the rich dress spread on the couch, and the ornaments on the toilet-table. There was a sense of oppression, and of being pursued by the incongruous world, and Dr. May sighed to silence ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... when, in about twenty minutes, I saw Wetter coming toward the cafe. I had taken a table far back from the street, and he did not see me. The glaring gaslight gave him a deeper paleness and cut the lines of his face to a sharper edge. He was talking with great animation, his hands moving constantly in eager gesture. I was within an ace of springing forward to greet him—so ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... majority of men are striving, and which fill the souls of millions with selfish and sordid thoughts. But let the light in on these earthly prizes, and how apt they are to turn out tinsel and brass! Finery that is quite resplendent by gaslight often appears tawdry and poor in the rays of the morning sun. So when the realities of life are felt by the soul, when the mind's supreme need of truth and of the fellowship with God are realized, then do the dollars and crowns for which this poor ...
— Joy in Service; Forgetting, and Pressing Onward; Until the Day Dawn • George Tybout Purves
... gaslight flared against the bare walls and ceiling. Sheila's hat and coat and muff lay on the bed where she had thrown them. She stood, looking at Babe. Her face was flushed, her eyes gleamed, that slight exaggeration of her chin was ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... her husband, Mrs. Laurance with her brilliant wrappings was the most prominent of the group, and in the blaze of the gaslight looked at least thirty-five; a woman of large proportions compactly built, with broad shoulders that sustained a rather short thick neck, now exposed in extreme decollete style, as if to aid the unsuccessful elongation ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... he had some pieces of gold in his pocket that rang a chime of pleasure. While Maurice, with his elbow upon the table, told him his tales of love, Amedee gazed out upon the sidewalk at the women who passed by in fresh toilettes, in the gaslight which illuminated the green foliage, giving a little nod of the head to those whom they knew. There was voluptuousness in the very air, and it was Amedee who arose from the table and recalled to Maurice that it was Thursday, and that there was a fete that night at Bullier's; and ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... months; and I smiled at the fashionable sunlight in the Park, the dusty cavalcades; and I loved to shock my friends by bowing to those whom I should not bow to. Above all, the life of the theatres—that life of raw gaslight, whitewashed walls, of light, doggerel verse, slangy polkas and waltzes—interested me beyond legitimate measure, so curious and unreal did it seem. I lived at home, but dined daily at a fashionable restaurant: at half-past eight I was at the theatre. Nodding ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... things by which I was surrounded, my eye was caught by a bundle of rags lying on the counter, as if they had just been brought in and left there. From mere idle curiosity, I looked close at the rags, and saw among them something like an old cravat. I took it up directly and held it under a gaslight. The pattern was blurred lilac lines running across and across the dingy black ground in a trellis-work form. I looked at the ends: one of them was ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... is unknown would feel a sense of dread and melancholy, on finding himself in the labyrinth of little streets which lie round that blaze of light reflected even from the sky. Dense blackness is here, instead of floods of gaslight; a dim oil-lamp here and there sheds its doubtful and smoky gleam, and many blind alleys are not lighted at all. Foot passengers are few, and walk fast. The shops are shut, the few that are open are of a squalid kind; a dirty, unlighted wineshop, or a seller of underclothing ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... sit for hours together on the bench behind the counter, with his big head lolling drowsily against the mirror, whilst he watched Rose uncorking the bottles and giving a wipe here and there with her duster. And in spite of the somniferous effects of the wine fumes and the warm streaming gaslight, he would keep his ears open to the sounds proceeding from the little room. At times, when the voices grew noisier than usual, he got up from his seat and went to lean against the partition; and occasionally he even pushed the door open, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... its centre, but I had no means of taking any accurate measures for determining this point. Its colour was quite white, not pearl-colour, nor yellow, nor red, and the rays had a vivid and flickering appearance, somewhat like that which a gaslight illumination might be supposed to assume if formed into a similar shape.... Splendid and astonishing, however, as this remarkable phenomenon really was, and although it could not fail to call forth the admiration and applause of every ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... why they used Samson batteries rather than dry cells; perhaps they were concerned with the mounting cost of the machine and were making use of parts already on hand.[26] A coil, possibly from an old gaslight igniter system, accompanied the Samson batteries under the seat. This original coil ...
— The 1893 Duryea Automobile In the Museum of History and Technology • Don H. Berkebile
... club, and glass after glass of that cold amber beer. The large freedom of the city streets at night, the warm saloons on every corner, the barrooms with their pyramids of bottles flashing in the gaslight—these were the things that made a man's life amusing. And here he was cooped up in a little cage in the suburbs like ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... falls no one is ready. When the footlights are brightest they are blown out; and what the name of the play is no one knows. If there sits a spectator who knows, he sits so high that the players in the gaslight cannot hear his breathing. Life may be painted according to either method; but the methods are different. The canons of criticism that bear upon the one cut cruelly upon ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... rosewood table. But the strain was kept up; fresh glasses were supplied; fresh bottles drained; the waiters looked on, wondered where all this would end, and pointed to the ruin of the costly service. The brilliant gaslight shone on a scene of recklessness pitiable indeed. All were young men, and, except Eugene, all unmarried; but they seemed familiar with such occasions. One or two, thoroughly intoxicated, lay with their heads on the table, unconscious of what passed; others struggled to sit upright, yet the ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... of the party already assembled at Mrs. Cole's and as the door was opened to her, a loud chorus of shouting laughter met her ears and she was laid hold of by a dozen hands and dragged forward under the gaslight. ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... sorry-looking bride-groom," I thought as I surveyed myself in the little mirror at the office. It was Friday night, and we were shutting up. We had worked late by gaslight, all the clerks had gone home long ago, and only the porter remained, half asleep on a chair in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... In this evanescence of our contemporary architecture lies the hope for an eventual regeneration of American towns. In the city and village of the future, life will be so bosomed in beauty that there will be less need of artificial beauty-seeking and gaslight pleasures. A healthy local pride will be fostered and community life come into its ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... be sure that my boy cousin (5 years old) might not find us out, even though she should consent. Once when we three were in the hay-loft a wave of lust rolled over me, but I made no proposal. Night and gaslight greatly increased my libido. On one occasion my aunt had gone to the village for ice-cream, and L. and I were left alone in the dining-room. I took her on my lap and had a powerful erection. I almost asked her to play sexually with me ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... with his sleeves rolled up, a scot-and- lot freeholder, three or four seamstresses, the young woman who brought home the washing, and so on. The interest of these gazers in some proceedings within, which by reason of the gaslight were as public as if carried on in the open ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... delivered his inquisitive compatriot. On another occasion we were the guests of J. Meredith Read, then our Minister to Athens, where we met Prevost Paradol. But at this time there suddenly came over me a distaste for operas, theatres, dinners, society—in short, of crowds, gaslight, and gaiety in any form, from which I have never since quite recovered. I had for years been fearfully overdoing it all in America, and now I was in the reaction, and longed for rest. I was in that state when ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... sadly as this idea occurred to him, and she pressed his arm and smiled up at him, her face ruddy in the gaslight. ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... of plunder for a long time with security. He used to slip a louis-d'or into his snuff-box whenever it came to his turn to preside over the money department; he was found out by another employe asking him casually for a pinch of snuff, and seeing the money gleam in the gaslight. These croupiers are the most extraordinary race of men it is possible to conceive. They seem to unite the stoicism of the American Indian to the politeness of the Frenchman of the ancien regime. They ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... opposite. I thought at first it was the face of a girl, and then, as I looked again, it might have been the face of an old woman. One could not distinguish the colouring. In any case, the cold, blue gaslight would have made ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... wise policy for the votaries of gaslight pleasures to maintain that there is no baneful result arising from a constant pursuit of such distractions, but, however wise this attitude may be, I hardly think it can rely upon the sanction of our conscience. It is certainly not sound truth. For the abnormal life ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... is not for the few women who remonstrate from luxurious parlors, sitting upon sofas, in the glare of the gaslight, changing and choosing their phrases, but for the great class of laboring women in the country that I appeal for this redress. I appeal for the women who have been struggling on in these Government offices, doing the same work ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... teeming with the scum of the earth, ruffians of every description, who would cheerfully have cut any man's throat simply for the sake of his clothes. All around me was a sea of swarthy faces with insolent, sinister eyes that flashed and glittered in the gaslight. I was pushed, jostled, and cursed, and the bare thought of having to spend a whole night amid such a foul, cut-throat horde filled me with dismay. Yet what could I do? Clearly nothing, until the morning, when ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... Lisle, and he went noiselessly away. A dim gaslight burned halfway up the stairs and guided him to his room. He had only to softly open and close his door, and all was well. Judith had not been awakened by the catlike steps of the man who was not old Fordham. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... the door wide open, and the gaslight streaming in revealed to him the aspect of the cells arranged for Australian voting. The rails were all in their places, and the election might take place the very next day. It instantly occurred to Dane that he might save the five cents which otherwise he would have ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... of their eyes had been dilated to the utmost in order to follow the movements of the apparition in the nearly complete darkness, and the first effect of the sudden blaze of gaslight was to dazzle them so completely that they had actually to grope their ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... Sun of Righteousness arose with healing in His wings. There have been many ages when the dense gloom of a heartless immorality seemed to settle down with unusual weight; there have been many places where, under the gaslight of an artificial system, vice has seemed to acquire an unusual audacity; but never probably was there any age or any place where the worst forms of wickedness were practiced with a more unblushing effrontery than in the city of Rome ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... language with a complex grammar and copious vocabulary well adapted to the expression of the thoughts incident to their customs and status of culture, and they have no more difficulty in conveying their thoughts with their language by night than Englishmen have in conversing without gaslight. An example from each of three eminent authors has been taken to illustrate the worthlessness of a vast body of anthropologic material to which even the ...
— On Limitations To The Use Of Some Anthropologic Data - (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (pages 73-86)) • J. W. Powell
... black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... it. Neither should I on my side prove very tardy in reply, as you are one to whom I find there is something to say when I sit down with a pen and paper. I have a good deal of enforced evening leisure, as it is seldom I can paint or draw by gaslight. It would not be right in me to refrain from saying that to meet with one so "leal and true" to myself as you are has been a consolation amid much discouragement.... I perceive you have had a complete poetic career which you have left behind to strike out into wider waters.... The passage on Night, ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... across which troops of swallows swooped and darted, twittering softly on the wing. Near the western horizon the golden glow of sunset still lingered. It was a night for poets to sing of, a night to revel in and to remember; but it was assuredly not a night for study. Gaslight heated one's room to the boiling point. Closed windows meant suffocation; open ones—since there are no screens in the Harding boarding house—let in troops of fluttering ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... last meeting of the Gaslight and Coke Company, Mr. George Livesey said many things with a view to inspire confidence of the future in the minds of timid gas proprietors. Among others he mentioned the advances now being made by invention in regard to improved appliances for developing the illuminating power of coal gas, with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... by the afternoon post, very much delayed on account of the snow. He came back to the gaslight, opening one. A full letter, written closely; but he had barely glanced at it when he hastily folded it again, and crammed it into his pocket. If ever a movement expressed something to be concealed, that did. And Lady Hartledon was gazing at him ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... were earnestly conversing in that subdued light, afforded by the lowered gaslight, Tim Bolton crept in through the door unobserved by either, tiptoed across the room to the secretary, snatched the will and a roll of bills, and escaped without ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... was at one time supposed to be a solid body instead of a hole. You can easily watch the pupil changing in size, according to the brightness of the light, from a mere pin-point in very bright sunlight or gaslight, up to the size of the butt-end of a lead pencil in the dark or in a ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... that go with almost everything. At the same time there should be depth and passion. The professor understands exactly the sort of eye the lady means. But it will be expensive. There is a cheap quality; the professor does not recommend it. True that it passes muster by gaslight, but the sunlight shows it up. It lacks tenderness, and at the price you can hardly expect it to contain much hidden meaning. The professor advises the melting, Oh-George-take-me-in-your-arms- and-still-my-foolish-fears brand. It costs a little more, ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... is human nature. How often the night's convivialities are followed by despondent morning reflections! In the evening we grow valiant over the inspiriting converse and the inspiring glass; in the morning we are tame and calculating. The artificial gaslight disappears, and the sober, grey morning breaks in upon our reason. If the sunshine only ripened one-half the good resolves and high purposes formed at night over the social glass, what a harvest of good deeds there would be! Yes, and if the evening dissipations did not obliterate ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... the window-sill, In the cold gaslight burning gaily red Against the luminous blue of London night, These flowers are mine: while somewhere out of sight In some black-throated alley's stench and heat, Oblivious of the racket of the street, A poor old ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... infinitely picturesque in these dim vaults by night. Sentries were posted at every turn. Their guns gleamed in the gaslight. Sleepers were lying in their blankets wherever the stones were softest. Then in the guard-room the guard were waiting their turn. We have not had much of this scenery in America, and the physiognomy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... other strong growers are admitted. In a cut state the flowers are very useful; they are strongly scented, something like the lilac, with just a suspicion of Valerian in it. I ought not to omit mention of its extra brightness as seen by gaslight—this fact adds much to ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... turn on the gas when you are ready for it. Go around the room once or twice rubbing your feet along the carpet. When you come around to the gaslight touch the point of the wire and if the gas is turned on, the light will flare right up as if it had been lit ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... preceded by tipsy but assiduous ruffians armed with shovels, who, with many a lusty oath and horrid imprecation, cleared a thin thread of path between the towering walls of snow that sparkled faintly in the gaslight. ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... the initiative had been hers, how hard he had striven against being ensnared, he did blame her, a good deal more than he could very well admit to this friend, whose single-hearted devotion made his own mere mingling of infatuation and passion seem artificial as gaslight in the blaze of dawn.—But knowing so much, he must ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... down, the kettle set on the hob, and Mrs. Brangwen began towards sunset to prepare the first meal. Ursula and Gudrun were slaving in the bedrooms, candles were rushing about. Then from the kitchen came the smell of ham and eggs and coffee, and in the gaslight, the scrambled meal began. The family seemed to huddle together like a little camp in a strange place. Ursula felt a load of responsibility upon her, caring for the half-little ones. The ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... her aged employer with affection and with profound respect. Mrs. Maldon made a striking, tall, slim figure, sitting erect in tight black, with the right side of her long, prominent nose in the full gaslight and the other heavily shadowed. Her hair was absolutely black at over seventy; her eyes were black and glowing, and she could read and do coarse crocheting without spectacles. All her skin, especially round about the eyes, was yellowish brown and very deeply ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... dissolution of the monasteries was L1084. There remains a perpendicular turreted gateway. There is also an ancient market-house, used as a town-hall. Victoria Gardens form a public pleasure-ground, and there are recreation grounds. The Gaslight and Coke Company's works at Beckton are in the parish, and also extensive rubber works. At the mouth of the Roding (Barking Creek) are great sewage works, receiving the Northern Outfall sewer from London. There are also ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... o'clock, however, the carriage called, for our evening was drawing to its close; that of our friends, I suppose, was but just commencing, as London's liveliest hours are by gaslight, but we cannot learn the art ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... companion, "there is that lady again; we must have passed quite close to her. She was looking after us, I saw her face in the gaslight—and I never want to ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... into the drawing-room about tea-time, with muddy boots and his hat on, he found her lying on the sofa, prostrated with nervous headache. The days closed in early then, and she had had the fire lighted and the curtains drawn, but could not bear the gaslight because of her head. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... rather you did the last," he said; and I rose, leaned my elbow on the corner of the mantel nearest the gaslight, rested my head on my empty hand, so as to shade my eyes from the intensity of the brilliant burner near me, and with the awe creeping over me with which the old astrologers read the horoscope of the midnight stars, I looked, and saw—only a wonderfully faithful copy of the portrait ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... the candle guttering, kept dropping on the King's hand, but being unwilling to disturb the artist, the King held on, while the painter, intent on his work, proceeded without noticing it. Many of our English artists paint by gaslight; but the tones of the flesh are not benefited, gas shedding a white ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... peacefully, but a new quarrel started around the box office. The actors and actresses stood there in a close group so that only their heads and faces, shining with the grease used to wash off the paint, were visible in the gaslight. They were all shouting for money and demanding their overdue salaries. They shook their fists threateningly at the cashier's window, their eyes flashed lightning, and their ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... of the lamps ahead, the fork of the lightning, the flickering gaslight there at the crossroads, they were all the color of gold and like gold—of a flame that burned. Yes, he must have money. No matter what the voice, he must ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... are rorty young dogs. The half-guinea topper, "as worn by the Prince of Wales" (ah, how many a meal has it not cost!), warmed before the fire, brushed and polished and coaxed, shines resplendent. The second pair of trousers are drawn from beneath the bed; in the gaslight, with well-marked crease from top to toe, they will pass for new. A pleasant evening to you! May your cheap necktie make all the impression your soul can desire! May your penny cigar be mistaken for Havana! May the barmaid charm your simple heart by addressing ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... Steel," whispered the other, consulting the card, as the gentleman advanced up the steps toward them, the gaslight gleaming in his silver hair, and throwing his ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... with surprise, that she was pretty, with small regular features; her eyes quick and bright, like a bird's. Under the gaslight her hair was the ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... Beautiful Barbara Song of the Silken Shroud A University for Wales Griefs Untold I Will Dawn and Death Castles in the Air The Withered Rose Wrecks of Life Eleanor New Year's Bells The Vase and the Weed A Riddle To a Fly Burned by a Gaslight To a Friend Retribution The Three Graces The Last Rose of Summer The Starling and the Goose The Heroes of Alma A Kind Word, a Smile, or a Kiss Dear Mother, I'm Thinking of Thee The Heron and the Weather-Vane The Three Mirrors The Two Clocks Sacrifical: on the Execution ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... records of Rome, engraved upon bronze tablets, were kept. The place is now converted into an architectural museum, where all the most interesting sculptured fragments found in the Forum are preserved, and are exhibited by gaslight owing to the darkness. These buildings, it must be remembered, form the back of the Capitol fronting the Forum. Strictly speaking, they do not belong to the Forum, which should be traced only from ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... the pine woods, and the big black shadows fluttered about me like butterfly bogies, and I wasn't afraid. I threw my arms about, and ran, and jumped, and breathed! Oh!" she exclaimed, "after holding your breath for twenty-four hours, in a house full of gaslight and groans, you learn what it is to be able to breathe freely out under the stars in the blessed dark. And there was a little crescent moon above the ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... slow respirations, holding her breath with a risen breast, and letting it go with a long sigh. Now and then she looked with an ashamed and furtive glance from her mother's gray head and Lydia's busy fingers to Sally's absorbed face under the opaque white globe of the gaslight, almost as if she feared that the enchantment that held heart and brain would ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... to Betty as if never before in all her life had she tasted anything so delicious as that tea and toast and soft boiled egg cooked by this wonderful girl on a gaslight and served on a chair. She wanted to cry again over her gladness at being here. It didn't seem real after all the trouble she had been through. It couldn't last! Oh, ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... parlor houses distributed in the most fashionable parts of the city; there are the bar houses; there are the dance houses; and there are the miserable basements where this traffic is seen in its hideous deformity, divested of the gaslight glare and tinsel of the high-toned seraglios. The internal arrangements of the palatial bagnios are in many instances sumptuous, magnificent and suggestive. The walls of these seductive arsenals, too, are frequently of a color calculated to throw the most becoming shade over the ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... the late dawn began to mingle with the gaslight, she found her brother sleeping quietly, his hand clasping Mildred's. To her slight expression of surprise the young girl returned a clear, steadfast look, and said calmly, "When your brother awakes he has some explanations to ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... the first in Glasgow, was projected, and the company having been formed, the directors advertised for a superintendent and foreman, to whom they offered a "liberal salary." Though Beaumont had never seen gaslight before, except at the illumination of his father's colliery office after the Peace of Amiens, which was accomplished in a very simple and original manner, without either condenser, purifier, or gas-holder, and though he knew nothing of the art of gas-making, he had the courage ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... her hair was collected. It might certainly be boasted of Miss Waddington that she was a beauty of the morning rather than of the night; that her complexion was fitted for the sun rather than for gaslight. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... drawer where the manuscript lay buried, Lucine gathered up note-book and fountain-pen and departed for the library. She walked slowly through the long apartment, glancing into alcove after alcove only to find every chair occupied on both sides of the polished tables that gleamed softly in the gaslight. Finally she discovered one of the small movable steps that were used when a girl wished to reach the highest shelf. Capturing it she carried it to the farther end of a narrow recess between two bookcases and doubled her angular length into a cozy heap for ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... he would not go wrong, thinking that he would ask a policeman whom he saw, and hesitating because he feared that the man would want to know his business. Then, of a sudden, he heard a woman scream, and knew that it was Ruby's voice. The sound was very near him, but in the glimmer of the gaslight he could not quite see whence it came. He stood still, putting his hand up to scratch his head under his hat,— trying to think what, in such an emergency, it would be well that he should do. Then he heard ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... The gaslight flashed on Irene's hair as it hung over the side of the sofa; he stooped, and pressed his lips to the floating curls, and went down to the library, smiling grimly at his own folly. Without delay he wrote two letters, and was dating a third, when ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... patronizing prime ministers, and a "much indebted muse." Of anything between these and eternal bliss he was but rarely and moderately conscious. Often, indeed, he sinks very much below even the bishopric, and seems to have no notion of earthly pleasure but such as breathes gaslight and the fumes of wine. His picture of life is precisely such as you would expect from a man who has risen from his bed at two o'clock in the afternoon with a headache and a dim remembrance that he has added to his "debts ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... spoke she stepped backward a pace or two, resting herself for a moment against the footboard of the bed—full in the gaslight. And he ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... tries to pass—his law examination, finds himself in precisely the same situation, only he does not gallop round a ring, under brilliant gaslight, to the music of a full band. He sits upon a hard chair in semi-darkness with his face to the wall, and the only sound he hears is the creaking of the inspectors' boots. For in all the wide, wide world there are no such creaky boots as those ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... on the edge of the couch in the middle of the room under the brilliant gaslight, her hands forgotten in her lap, her brows arched high, her eyes on the floor. Then her head beginning to ache, a new sensation for her, she thought she should bind a wet handkerchief to it as she had ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... eyes. He seemed eager, but honestly eager. At that moment I believed it was a diamond he was trying to sell. Yet I am a poor man, a hundred pounds would leave a visible gap in my fortunes and no sane man would buy a diamond by gaslight from a ragged tramp on his personal warranty only. Still, a diamond that size conjured up a vision of many thousands of pounds. Then, thought I, such a stone could scarcely exist without being mentioned ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... sound came from the stage, the unlit footlights, the scattered desks of the orchestra. It was only high overhead in the third gallery, round the domed ceiling where nude females and children flew in heavens which had turned green in the gaslight, that calls and laughter were audible above a continuous hubbub of voices, and heads in women's and workmen's caps were ranged, row above row, under the wide-vaulted bays with their gilt-surrounding adornments. Every few seconds an ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... I began to get intimate with Jenkin; last came Colvin. Then, one black winter afternoon, long Leslie Stephen, in his velvet jacket, met me in the SPEC. by appointment, took me over to the infirmary, and in the crackling, blighting gaslight showed me that old head whose excellent representation I see before me in the photograph. Now when a man has six friends, to introduce a seventh is usually hopeless. Yet when you were presented, you took to them and they to you ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... strangers did not come; the familiar faces of the morning service all turned up in their accustomed places every evening. They were faces which confused and disheartened Theron in the daytime. Under the gaslight they seemed even harder and more unsympathetic. He timorously experimented with them for an evening or two, ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... certainly had a powerful fancy for him: the mean phrase is good enough, even although the phantom of Lenorme roused in her all the twilight poetry of her nature, and the presence of Liftore set her whole consciousness in the perpendicular shadowless gaslight of ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... It was only three or four blocks up to the Central, and Beth was never timid. She did not look around the church much, or she would have recognized a familiar face on the east side. It was Clarence Mayfair's; he was paler than usual, and his light curly hair looked almost artificial in the gaslight. There was something sadder and more manly in his expression, and his eyes were fixed on Beth with a reverent look. How pure she was, he thought, how serene; her brow looked as though an angel-hand had smoothed it in her slumber. She ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... Basil was now forty-two, and his moustache was well sprinkled with gray. Isabel was thirty-nine, and the parting of her hair had thinned and retreated; but she managed to give it an effect of youthful abundance by combing it low down upon her forehead, and roughing it there with a wet brush. By gaslight she was still very pretty; she believed that she looked more interesting, and she thought Basil's gray moustache distinguished. He had grown stouter; he filled his double-breasted frock coat compactly, and from time to time he had the buttons set forward; ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... said Father Brown, as the doctor walked briskly to the gate. He had left the front door open, so that a shaft of gaslight fell upon them. In the light of this Brown opened the envelope ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... a wish that it were more worthy of regret, into the hands of my successor, with my parting benediction. Within its twilight precincts I have often prayed for light, like Ajax, for the daylight found scanty entrance, and the gaslight never illuminated its dark recesses. May it prove to him who comes after me like the cave of the Sibyl, out of the gloomy depths of which came the oracles which shone with the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Leeds, October 17; all these together have made me put off leaving a little longer. Since yesterday we have been in the midst of a genuine London fog. It is now 10 A. M. and even darker than it was two hours ago, when we dressed and breakfasted by gaslight. I saw smoky, foggy days here last March but they could not compare with this, and yet the people say, "O, this is nothing to what ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... inventive brain? Perhaps when he stopped and looked at the jeweller's window he said to himself: "There is jewellery there worth a million francs. If it were all mine I would sell it and go back to Belgium. What joy I could give to my poor mother, who is blinding herself with work by gaslight, and I could help my sister to get married." Or perhaps he was an inventor, and he thought to himself: "Ah, if only I had the money which that jewellery represents I could bring out my invention myself, instead of selling my patent to some highly esteemed rascal, who will buy it from me ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... such night counterbalanced, in Titmouse's estimation, a whole year of his previous obscurity and wretchedness! The theatre over, they would repair to some cloudy tavern, full of noise and smoke, and the glare of gaslight—redolent of the fragrant fumes of tobacco, gin, and porter, intermingled with the tempting odors of smoking kidneys, mutton-chops, beefsteaks, oysters, stewed cheese, toasted cheese, Welsh rabbits; where those who are ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren |
