White stuff.
Any of various powdered narcotics, as cocaine, heroin, and morphine. “There’s a nice buck (good money) pushin‘ (selling) white stuff. Junkeys (addicts) are easy to clip (swindle).”
—Dictionary of American Underworld Lingo, Hyman E. Goldin, Editor in Chief, 1950.
White tin.
The silvered badge worn by uniformed policemen and precinct plainclothes men.
—Dictionary of American Underworld Lingo, Hyman E. Goldin, Editor in Chief, 1950.
Yellow tin.
A gold badge carried by headquarters detectives of upper grades, as precinct sergeants and lieutenants; a counterfeit gold badge used by extortionists.
—Dictionary of American Underworld Lingo, Hyman E. Goldin, Editor in Chief, 1950.
a piece of blue bottle glass to look through
“. . . twelve marbles, part of a jew’s-harp, a piece of blue bottle glass to look through, a spool cannon, a key that wouldn’t unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, the glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six firecrackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass doorknob, a dog collar but no dog, the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange peel and a dilapidated window sash.”
—Mark Twain, from Tom Sawyer, 1876.
a peculiarly beautiful book
“It was a peculiarly beautiful book. Its smooth and creamy paper, a little yellowed by age, was of a kind that had not been manufactured for at least forty years past. . . . The pen was an archaic instrument, seldom used even for signtures, and he had procured one . . . simply because of a feeling that the beautiful cream paper deserved to be written on with a real nib instead of being scratched with an ink pencil.”
—George Orwell, from 1984, 1949.
a red light
“1. Why is a red light used for danger?
Answer: Because a bright colour that cannot be confused with anything else is essential.
2. Why is a red light used for advertising restaurants, cinemas, drinks, shops, pills, and everything else?
Answer: See above.”
—Fougasse and McCullough, from You Have Been Warned: A Complete Guide to the Road, London, 1935.
If we stop to gaze upon a star
“If we stop to gaze upon a star
People talk about how bad we are
Ours is not an easy age
We’re like tigers in a cage
What a town without pity can do.”
—Gene Pitney (1941–2006), from Town Without Pity, a big hit in 1963.
“the prettiest experiment in physics”
“His lectures were . . . far more than a course of instruction in formal penmanship. His discourse roamed far and wide: stars, philosophy, folktales—anything might find a place in them. ‘He related his subject,’ as Noel Rooke said, ‘to everything in heaven and earth’ because he saw it as essentially part of a whole. Since writing was an activity of man, the question of man’s life on earth and the kind of universe in which he found himself had, for him, an essential connection with the work in hand. Therefore his lecture could embrace almost any subject and must have considerably widened the horizons of those students—and they were numerous—whose educations had been conventionally narrow. At one class he would explain to them his view that ‘our reasoning itself is a game, like our chess or our mathematics’ or that it was not self-contradictory to say that ‘we are predestined to have free will’. At the next, in speaking of the roundness of the letter O, he would describe the experiment with a soap film and a loop of thread—the prettiest experiment in physics—which is used to demonstrate that a perfect circle encloses the greatest area that a closed loop can contain.”
—Priscilla Johnston from Edward Johnston, 1959, a biography of her father, the great type designer.
the signal light
“As I thus communed with myself, the signal light sprang up. The rose-coloured light, couleur de rose, emblem of sanguine hope, and the dawn of a happy day.”
—Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–1873), “The Room in the Dragon Volant,” from his collection of supernatural tales, In a Glass Darkly.
the hilarity of extemporized comedy
“No more brilliant spectacle than this masked ball could be imagined. Among other salons and galleries, thrown open, was the enormous perspective of the “Grande Galerie des Glaces”, lighted up on that occasion with no less than four thousand wax candles, reflected and repeated by all the mirrors, so that the effect was almost dazzling. The grand suite of salons was thronged with masques, in every conceivable costume. There was not a single room deserted. Every place was animated with music, voices, brilliant colours, flashing jewels, the hilarity of extemporized comedy, and all the sprited incidents of a cleverly sustained masquerade.”
—Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–1873), “The Room in the Dragon Volant,” from his collection of supernatural tales, In a Glass Darkly.