Do we say taper or tapir

taper 338 occurrences

They bound their brows with garlands of flowerets sweet and bright, In one hand each a cane-stalk bore, in one a taper white, And the clarions began to blow, and trump and Moorish horn, And whoop and shout and loud huzzas adown the street were borne.

THOMAS PARNELL FROM A NIGHT-PIECE ON DEATH By the blue taper's trembling light, No more I waste the wakeful night, Intent with endless view to pore The schoolmen and the sages o'er; Their books from wisdom widely stray, Or point at best the longest way.

Below me trees unnumbered rise, Beautiful in various dyes: The gloomy pine, the poplar blue, The yellow beech, the sable yew, The slender fir, that taper grows, The sturdy oak with broad-spread boughs; And beyond the purple grove, Haunt of Phillis, queen of love!

By clearer taper lit, a cleanlier board Receives at supper hour her tempting hoard; The chamber hearth with fresher boughs is spread, And whiter is the hospitable bed.

A single taper in the vale profound Shifts, while the Alps dilated glimmer round; 1832.]

Then he turned with the taper in his hand and beckoned to Marcos and Juanita to come forward to the rails where two stools had been placed in readiness.

Someone brought in a lighted wax taper, and the strange man, gazing on the face of the sleeping child, asked: "Can she remain?

A plain table was laid for supper in the middle of the room, a wax taper burned on the mantel lighting up the interior of the Puritan's home.

He sat at a table on which burned a taper, and his wife and children were gathered about listening.

Get me a taper in my study, Lucius.

Sometimes the torch-dance was performed; in this each performer bore in his hand a long lighted taper, and endeavoured to prevent his neighbours from blowing it out, which each one tried to do if possible (Fig. 184).

When the taper faintly dwindles Like the pulse within the vein, That to gay and merry measure Ne'er may hope to bound again, Let the shadows gather round me While I sit in silence here, Broken-hearted, as an orphan Watching by his father's bier.

The lightning was the taper bright, The thunder was the melody, To which they danced with horrid glee.

Ah! when the friendly taper gloweth, Once more within our narrow cell, Then in the heart itself that knoweth, A light the darkness doth dispel.

MEPHISTOPHELES FAUST How far from yon sacristy, athwart the night, Its beams the ever-burning taper throws, While ever waning, fades the glimmering light, As gathering darkness doth around it close!

Vast, simple, awful in dimensions and height, just beginning to grow tall at the point where our proudest steeples taper out, it fills the whole soul, pervades the vast landscape over which it reigns, and, like Niagara and the Alps, abolishes that five- or six-foot personality in the beholder which is fostered by keeping company with the little life of the day in its little dwellings.

Lovely creatures with their taper fingers had been brewing a flag for us.

The pilgrims kept the 'holy vigil'that is to say, they passed an entire night in prayer before the relics with a lighted taper either fixed at their side or carried in the hand.

On this a gunwale, rising a foot above the water, is fixed, and the stem and stern taper to a point, the latter being much higher than the other, and ornamented with fret-work and gilding.

The doctor's kindest wishes e'er attend His beauteous patient, may he hope his friend; And prays that no corrosive disappointment May mar the lenient virtues of his ointment; Of which, a bit not larger than a shot, Or that more murd'rous thing, "a beauty spot," Warmed on the finger by the taper's ray, Smear o'er the eye affected twice a day.

[Elizabeth enters, meanly clad, carrying her new-born infant; Isentrudis following with a taper and gold pieces on a salver.

As he sat there, one would have thought that he was about to commence a course of study; and yet in the marble paleness of his features, and in the listless and languid eye, there was evidence that life in the boy was like an expiring taper, flickering in the socket.

Even so with the babe, life's feeble taper seemed to revive and emit a brilliant glare for a moment, the lips parted, the eyes wandered from object to object, and seemed to survey all the room contained, gazing most earnestly upon the face of the little sister, so soon to follow him, then wearily closing them with a slight struggle, the spirit passed away.

I like to shut myself up, close my eyes, and fancy one of the creatures of my imagination, with taper and rose-tipped fingers, playing with my hair, touching my cheek, or resting its little snowy-dimpled hand on mine.

Inadvertently the man bearing the lighted taper rested his arm for a moment against the stones.

tapir 72 occurrences

Elsewhere they often prey on the tapir.

If in timber, however, the jaguar must kill it at once, for the squat, thick-skinned, wedge- shaped tapir has no respect for timber, as Colonel Rondon phrased it, and rushes with such blind, headlong speed through and among branches and trunks that if not immediately killed it brushes the jaguar off, the claws leaving long raking scars in the tough hide.

In it the houndsa motley and rather worthless lotand the rest of the party were ferried across to the opposite bank, while Colonel Rondon and I stayed in the boat, on the chance that a tapir might be roused and take to the river.

One day while paddling in a canoe on the river, hoping that the dogs might drive a tapir to us, they drove into the water a couple of small bush deer instead.

On the morning of January 9th we started out for a tapir-hunt.

Many trails led through the woods, and especially along the borders of the swamp; and, although their principal makers had evidently been cattle, yet there were in them footprints of both tapir and deer.

The tapir makes a footprint much like that of a small rhinoceros, being one of the odd-toed ungulates.

They would chase tapir or deer or anything else that ran away from them as long as the trail was easy to follow; but they were not stanch, even after animals that fled, and they would have nothing whatever to do with animals that were formidable.

This instinct of taking to the water, by the way, is quite explicable as regards both deer and tapir, for it affords them refuge against their present day natural foes, but it is a little puzzling to see the jaguar readily climbing trees to escape dogs; for ages have passed since there were in its habitat any natural foes from which it needed to seek safety in trees.

The tapir was coming down-stream at a great rate, only its queer head above water, while the dugouts were closing rapidly on it, the paddlers uttering loud cries.

As the tapir turned slightly to one side or the other the long, slightly upturned snout and the strongly pronounced arch of the crest along the head and upper neck gave it a marked and unusual aspect.

Then we made out the tapir clambering up the bank.

My bullet went into its body too far back, and the tapir disappeared in the forest at a gallop as if unhurt, although the bullet really secured it, by making it unwilling to trust to its speed and leave the neighborhood of the water.

We were not in time to head it, but fortunately some of the dogs had come down to the river's edge at the very point where the tapir was about to land, and turned it back.

We were more than half the breadth of the river away from the tapir, and somewhat down-stream, when it dived.

We had very nearly given up the tapir when it suddenly floated only a few rods from where it had sunk.

Little we cared, as the canoe raced forward, with the tapir and the buck lying in the bottom, and a dry, comfortable camp ahead of us.

When we reached camp, and Father Zahm saw the tapir, he reminded me of something I had completely forgotten.

When, some six years previously, he had spoken to me in the White House about taking this South American trip, I had answered that I could not, as I intended to go to Africa, but added that I hoped some day to go to South America and that if I did so I should try to shoot both a jaguar and a tapir, as they were the characteristic big-game animals of the country.

We lived well, with plenty of tapir beef, which was good, and venison of the bush deer, which was excellent; and as much ordinary beef as we wished, and fresh milk, tooa rarity in this country.

They went in a rowboat to which the motor had been attached, and at night on the way back almost ran over a tapir that was swimming.

From some such ancestral type the highly specialized one-toed modern horse has evolved, while during the uncounted ages that saw the horse thus develop the tapir has continued substantially unchanged.

It was much the most highly specialized of the two, and in the other continental regions where both were found the horse outlasted the tapir.

From unknown causes the various genera and species of horses died out, while the tapir has persisted.

Two of them disappeared on the track of a tapir and we saw them no more; one of the others promptly fled when we came across the tracks of our game, and would not even venture after them in our company; the remaining one did not actually run away and occasionally gave tongue, but could not be persuaded to advance unless there was a man ahead of him.

Do we say   taper   or  tapir