licking-out

Updated: May 9, 2025

Over Benson hangs a white haze of limestone, gritty with train and foundry smoke. At night, the lime-kilns, spotted with white deposits, burn redly, showing through their open doors like great, inflamed diphtheretic throats, tongues of flame bursting and licking-out.

- The Best Short Stories of 1917: and the Yearbook of the American Short Story