Reading lamp

“ Lighting.—Lighting our rooms is a matter of much importance. A student lamp, or shaded incandescent light, should be used for reading. Shades must be provided so that the eyes are protected from direct light. ”

“ A lamp, invented by a very learned man, Sir Humphrey Davy, is used when there is a risk of fire-damp. It is closely surrounded with very fine wire-gauze, through which neither the flame of the candle nor the gas can pass, yet the light can get out almost as well as through the horn of a common lantern. ”

“ A miniature floor lamp about four feet in height with an appropriate shade provides an excellent lamp for reading purposes because it may be placed by the side of a chair or moved about independent of other furniture. A tall floor lamp often serves for lighting the piano, but small piano lamps may be found which are decorative as well as serviceable in illuminating the music without glare. ”

“ There was a soft rug, also of rose-color, and a fine clock, shaped like a state capitol, on the mantel. There was a silver gong in the clock which made beautiful music. There was a nice reading table with books on it, and a lamp. The lamp had a shade made up of queerly-shaped bits of material like onyx, and a fringe of rose-colored beads. Yet for all this, it did not seem a pleasant room. You could feel that something was wrong. You know, there are always so many things in a room which you cannot see. ”

“ I have seen a grey blue sky at the earliest moment when street lamps were alight at all, and radiant against the light grey of its invisible and equal clouds an electric lamp has been reared: an electric lamp of cold white light, pure and keen, and armed with intense and splendid arrows that would pierce day itself. Light grey sky and thrilling lamp together make—or so it seems to me—one of the most beautiful sights that eyes can see—the most refined, most severe, and most exquisite. ”

“ And her sweet red lips on these lips of mine
Burned like the ruby fire set
In the swinging lamp of a crimson shrine,
Or the bleeding wounds of the pomegranate,
Or the heart of the lotus drenched and wet
With the spilt-out blood of the rose-red wine. ”

“ The light of the lamp falls full upon her face and bust and hands, its shade leaving the rest of her person and almost the whole of the room in a soft shadow. She seems like a luminous figure evoked by the imagination from amid the vague shadows of fear. ”

“ Something looks staringly out of the darkness of the narrow corner, and when he brings the lamp near it springs back noiselessly and is transformed into a tall dark shadow which dances and laughs—so quaintly dances and laughs on the round beams of the walls. ”

“ For every excellent thing, peerless though it may be, can still be diverted to the wrong ends. A lighted lamp in the hands of an ignorant child or of the blind will not dispel the surrounding darkness nor light up the house—it will set both the bearer and the house on fire. Can we, in such an instance, blame the lamp? ”

“ Night by night, when the only light in the glen was the school-house lamp, of use at least as a landmark to solitary travellers—who miss it nowadays, for it burns no more—she hovered over him, nor did she deride his hopeless efforts, but rather, as she saw him go from black to gray and from gray to white in her service, were her luminous eyes sorrowful because she was not for him, and she bent impulsively toward him, so that once or twice in a long life he touched her fingers, and a heavenly spark was lit, for he had risen higher than himself, and that is literature. ”

“ Would a lamp, in a dark room be of any benefit to a man if he had no means of lighting it, or any means whereby to touch the light to cause it to shine? None whatever, he would be just as well without the lamp. ”

“ The lamp is the symbol of light and clearness of vision. Used in its figurative sense it is as old as civilization, for the ancients held the sign of a lamp to mean the power of imagination, illuminating the future. ”

“ A lamp, whose light is softened by a clouded shade, stands on an ebony table, between the sofa and the mirror, and around the lamp are clustered fruits and flowers, two long necked glasses, and a bottle of Bohemian glass, blue, veined with gold. A single picture, suspended against the dark hangings, alone relieves the sullen grandeur of the place. ”

“ These lamps, filled with seal oil, are kept burning day and night till the festival is over. They are believed to light the shades on their return to [pg 052] their old home and back again to the land of the dead. If any one fails to put up a lamp in the clubhouse and to keep it burning, the shade whom he or she desires to honour could not find its way to the place and so would miss the feast. ”

“ O happy lamp! to serve Him with never ceasing light!
O happy flame! to tremble forever in His sight!
I leave the holy quiet for the loudly human train,
And my heart that He has breathed upon is filled with lonely pain. ”

“ I asked in a deadened voice, taking the lighted lamp out of the binnacle, and raising it to his face.
“An ugly business.”
He had rather regular features; a good mouth; light eyes under somewhat heavy, dark eyebrows; a smooth, square forehead; no growth on his cheeks; a small, brown moustache, and a well-shaped, round chin. His expression was concentrated, meditative, under the inspecting light of the lamp I held up to his face; such as a man thinking hard in solitude might wear. ”

“ If we trim our lamps so that we have light in our house, that light will shine through our windows, and give light to those that are not in the house. But remember, love of the light alone can trim the lamp. ”

“ The lamp must be lit, the loin girded; she must no longer pass among the living as a gentle phantom. She must help all these people who belonged to her; she must by her valour and devotion compensate for what they were denied; she must inspire and fortify. But what was to breathe life into her? Love—even such love as she had for Andrée—had not done it. ”

“ Save for the pale, ghostly reflection of a street lamp there was no light, and her hand groped instinctively toward the electric switch, then conquering the impulse, she closed the door and stole forward. Her movements were now swift, cautious, yet fearless. It was as though a long-pent-up energy had at last found its outlet, and the sudden light from the table-lamp lit up a face whose beauty and passionate and stern resolution might have belonged to some classic figure of tragedy. ”

“ If you want a really brilliant, clear, white light, you must trim the lamp yourself. A small piece of pale blue or neutral-tint glass, interposed between the lamp and the microscope, has a wonderful effect in diminishing the yellow hue which belongs more or less to all artificial lights which are produced by the combustion of oil or fat. We have no doubt but that in a few years we shall be rid of the clumsy and dirty machines that we call lamps, and have substituted for them the pure brilliancy of the electric light. ”

“ The lamp beside my bed is a dull bit of bronze which does not poke itself into your sleepy eye, yet you know that it fits the need, not only for light but for satisfaction to the eyes after the light comes. ”

“ In the same grey volume, which troubled Henry Champney with premonitions, we read, near the beginning of Chapter XVIII., entitled “Light”: “Two lamps have mainly given me what light I have. I suppose many men, if not every man, has known them. One seemed to shine from overhead, a hanging flicker becoming a larger glow,—the Lamp of Knowledge. There are no better moments than when its flame leaps at the opening of a new vista. ”

“ It is securely fastened to the table, which in its turn is fastened to the floor, and the light is supplied by a small incandescent lamp within the chimney, but concealed by the shade. The visitor never imagines that it is an electric lamp, and naturally thinks that it would be impossible for a kerosene lamp to be inverted without disaster, so that this adds to the deception materially. ”

“ A lamp had at that instant been brought into one of the front rooms of the house he was contemplating, and the glimpse he thus caught of the interior attracted his eyes and even arrested the gaze of the impatient Edgar. For the woman who held the lamp was no common one, and the face which showed above it was one to stop any man who had an eye for the beautiful, the inscrutable, and the tragic. ”

“ In diffused lighting, the lamp is covered, as by frosting, so that the rays of light are broken up and so scattered that no direct ray shines into the eyes, and there is no bright spot of light in the room. ”

“ The torch, the candle, the lamp, the gas-light, the electric light,—these are the steps of the development of the lamp. And how marvelous a growth it is! How great the triumph over darkness! In the beginning a piece of wood burns with a dull flame, and fills the dingy wigwam or cave with soot and smoke; now, at the pressure of a button, the house is filled with a light that rivals the light of day, with not a particle of smoke or soot or harmful gas. Are there to be further triumphs in the art of lighting? Are we to have a light that shall drive out the electric light? ”

“ It is a wintry evening, and everything is swathed in an unusually thick fog, in which the gas lamps in the streets show dimmer and dimmer as they recede in the distance. As the curtain goes up, a lamplighter is seen descending his ladder from a lamp-post, where he has just lit the lamp at the corner of the house. ”

“ And while I quite believe, thank God! that there are many of us who may feel and know that our lamps are not going out, sure I am that there are some of us whom everybody but themselves knows to be carrying a lamp that is so far gone out that it is smoking and stinking in the eyes and noses of the people that stand by. ”

“ We are reduced to ourselves. Our vision has no longer the visible for limit, but the invisible for its cell. Homogeneous, close, impassive, compact, in the bosom of this obscurity the lamp is clear and definite. It appears full of life, it contains its own oil. By virtue of its flame it is able to drink itself. It attests that of which all the [Pg 176] abyss is the absence. As it has taken a sufficient supply in the evening, it will last until rosy light is in the sky, until the dispersing of vapors like the fumes of new wine. ”

“ The modern lamp may be said to be an improved means of grace, as it will hold out much longer, and shed a far more attractive light for the sinner, whose return, by its genial light, is, even to the end, so greatly desired. ”

“ He turned the leaves rapidly, then pointed with his finger to a verse; and Tip read, "Thy word is a lamp to my feet."
"Oh," he said, with a bright look, "that is the kind of lamp you mean!"
"That is it; and, my boy, I want you to take this for your lamp. There is no place on the whole road so dark but that it can light you through, if you try it. When you don't understand it, there is always Jesus to go to, you know." ”

“ In the evening we are gathered together beneath our luminous star in the study, for we have a large hanging astral lamp, which beautifully illumines the room, with its walls of pale yellow paper, its Holy Mother over the fireplace, and pleasant books, and its pretty bronze vase on one of the secretaries, filled with ferns. ”

“ Her lamp, which is seen at the entrance of her house, is one long stem illuminated by the flame. She, too, is like this lamp. Her emaciated body would be nothing without her ardent face. Her serenity can only come from work well done and confidence in the future. ”

“ We seldom consider what life would be without our wonderful methods of illumination which turn night into day, and prolong the hours of work and pleasure. Yet it was not until the nineteenth century that the marvelous change was made from the short-lived candle to the more enduring oil lamp. Before the coming of the lamp, even in large cities like Paris, the only artificial light to guide the belated traveler at night was the candle required to be kept burning in an occasional window. ”

“ This keeper remarked that the centre of the flame should be exactly opposite the centre of the reflectors, and that accordingly, if he was not careful to turn down his wicks in the morning, the sun falling on the reflectors on the south side of the building would set fire to them, like a burning-glass, in the coldest day, and he would look up at noon and see them all lighted! When your lamp is ready to give light, it is readiest to receive it, and the sun will light it. ”

“ The design of the lamp was admirable in itself, but, in my opinion, what added much to the beauty of the whole, was that round the body of the crystal lamp there was carved in cataglyphic work a lively and pleasant battle of naked boys, mounted on little hobby-horses, with little whirligig lances and shields that seemed made of vine-branches with grapes on them; their postures generally were very different, and their childish strife and motions were so ingeniously expressed that art equalled nature in every proportion and action. ”

“ From an artistic point of view, one of the worst methods of lighting a room is by pendant lamps, collected in single centres in large numbers. The lights ought to be distributed in different portions of the room, and so shaded that the light is received only by reflection from surrounding objects. Ornamental effects are frequently produced by means of candle lamps in which a small incandescent lamp, imitating the flame of a candle, is placed upon a white porcelain tube as a holder, and these small units are distributed and arranged in electroliers and brackets. ”

“ Rather close fitting round shades, nearly the same size at top and bottom, made of painted parchment give a decorative touch and sufficient light. As one does not need an especially bright light in a hall, a beautiful lamp can be made of one of the fine old alabaster vases which many people have by dropping an electric bulb in it. ”