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More "Stair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... then," he cried the next moment, seizing Drysdale by the arm, as a rush of men came through the passage into the quadrangle, shouting and tumbling along, and making in small groups for the different stair-cases. The Dean and two of the tutors followed, and the porter bearing a lantern. There was no time to be lost; so Tom, after one more struggle to pull Drysdale up and hurry him off, gave it up, and leaving him to his fate, ran across to ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... the landing-place to which the stair leads. God comes to such a man. He meets him indeed at all the stages, for there is a blessed communion with God, that springs immediately from remembering Him in His ways, and a still more blessed one that springs from rejoicing in His felt friendship and Fatherhood, and a yet more ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... surprise it turned quite easily. The heavy door swung inward on its ancient hinges with many a creak and groan, and she found herself in a little dark room thickly carpeted with the dust of years. From this room a winding staircase led upward, and Briar-Rose was just about to climb the stair when a sudden noise made her ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... wooden stair, a century at a step, and presently walked and talked, we seven Americans, in that elder Rome that most people know so much better than the one with St. Peter's and the Corso, because of the clinging nature of those early impressions which we construe for ourselves with ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... passer-by, stated that "Rowden and Owlett, Solicitors," would be found on the first floor. Helmsley paused, considering a moment—then, making up his mind that "Rowden and Owlett" would suit his purpose as well as any other equally unknown firm, he slowly climbed the steep and unwashed stair. Opening the first door at the top of the flight, he saw a small boy leaning both arms across a large desk, and watching the gyrations of two white mice in a ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... fallen tree, patting its trunk to signify a place for him at her side. Pointing at crevises in the canon wall, she began to tell him the names she and Imogene had given them—Bandit's Stair, Devil's Crack, Bear's Hole, and to enumerate those assigned the jutting points and knobs along the rim that by a stretch of the imagination bore a resemblance to animals or ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... moment the rest of the roof fell in, hiding the tower in spouts and veils of flame. Here they might not stay if they would live. Lifting her mistress in her strong arms, as she was wont to do when she was little, Emlyn found the head of the stair, so that when the wind blew the smoke aside for an instant, those below saw that both had vanished, as they thought ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... with half a dozen men walking behind it. In a trice, two of them had stretched a wire trellis across one wall of the drawing-room, and two more were trailing roses from floor to ceiling. Others tied the dark wood of the stair railing with tall Madonna lilies; then they hung garlands of flowers from corner to corner and, alas! could not refrain from framing the mirror in smilax, nor from hanging the chandeliers with that same ugly, funereal, and artificial-looking ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... said Draxy, as she stepped from the last stair, and standing close in front of him, lifted the new, sweet, softened eyes up to his. Draxy was as simple and sincere in this as in all other emotions and acts of her life. She had no coquetry in her nature. She had no distinct thought ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Mariage, old Baron von Moudenfels passed through the antechamber, where he found the valet, with slow and weary steps. Panting and resting on every stair, he descended the staircase, coughing, and moved slowly past the houses to the nearest carriage, into which he climbed with difficulty and sank with a ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach
... at Benton's side when Murphy, Smith and Brennan, in rapid succession came quickly up into the alley from the basement stair. Sharply Brennan ordered John to follow Murphy and Smith into the automobile while he remained with Benton, who stood poised with his finger on the trigger ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... he hurried from the room; stole down the stair; slipped on his overcoat, and hastily let ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... distress; for she found herself shut in a little space by buildings of varying heights. Behind her lay the difficult route over which she had come, and on the east uprose a steep bank or bluff. Against this was placed a nearly perpendicular sort of ladder, and this steep stair was the only visible outlet ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... attempted a descent upon Scotland. The Jacobites had risen; they were crying aloud for their prince, who remained concealed in Lorraine, when at last he resolved to set out and traverse France secretly. Agents, posted by the English ambassador, Lord Stair, were within an ace of arresting him, perhaps of murdering him. Saved by the intelligence and devotion of the post-mistress of Nonancourt, he embarked on the 26th of December at Dunkerque, too late to bring even moral support to the men who were fighting and dying for him. Six ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... I mean to recommend a night on the couch of the nose of Scotland, merely to improve the imagination. Who knows what dreams might be produced by a night spent in a mansion of so many memories! For aught I know, the iron door of the postern stair might open at the dead hour of midnight, and, as at the time of the conspiracy, forth might sally the phantom assassins, with stealthy step and ghastly look, to renew the semblance of the deed. There comes the fierce fanatic Ruthven, party hatred enabling him to bear the armour which ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... can. I certainly can help young folks to shift from the emotion of subjection to the emotion of elation. I had a puppy that we called Nick and thought I'd like to teach him to go up-stairs. When he came to the first stair he cried and cowered and said, in his language, that it was too high, and that he could never do it. So, in a soothing way, I quoted Virgil at him and placed his front paws upon the step. Then he laughed a bit and said the step wasn't as high as the moon, after all. So I patted him and called ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... stair-way led to the floor above, and there was a chambre-a-coucher, with a deep recess for the bed, the same to which she called her son Henri, as she lay dying, admonishing him to give up the thought of murdering Guise. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... appointments of inlaid woods, and carpeted with what to his feet felt like down. The tiny light which his guide bore before her half revealed, as they passed in their ascent, tall lengths of tapestry, and the dull glint of armor and brazen discs in shadowed niches on the nearer wall. Over the stair-rail lay an open space of such stately dimensions, bounded by terminal lines of decoration so distant in the faint candle-flicker, that the young country minister could think of no word but ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... the family is found, but when the master's work is done, the slave must find wood for himself if he has a fire. I have repeatedly known slave children kept the whole winter's evening, sitting on the stair-case in a cold entry, just to be at hand to snuff candles or hand a tumbler of water from the side-board, or go on errands from one room to another. It may be asked why they were not permitted to stay in the parlor, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... contrary," he says, "if you will do me the honour to precede," and motioned to the stair leading to the lantern story, which was roofed, but open on all sides, and along the seaward wall was a ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... it must be said, had filled Lady Barbara's mind. As long as she continued under Martha's care she could rest in peace, free from the dread of the drunken step on the stair or the rude bursting in of her chamber door. Free, too, from other deadly terrors which had pursued her, and of which she could not even think without a shudder, for try as she could she never forgot Dalton's willingness to turn their home into a ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... zenith rose its lengthening stair, While each great granite mountain lent a share To form a stepping base; Height upon height repeated seemed to rise, For pyramid on pyramid the strained eyes Saw take their ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... and his wife being old, were graciously allowed the privilege of living in the basement. As soon as he was informed his gold, silver and jewelry were found, amounting to one hundred and seventy pounds sterling, he was so exasperated for the moment that he seized his gun and rushed to the stair steps with the determination to kill Cornwallis, but his wife quickly followed and intercepted him, thus preventing the most deplorable consequences—the loss of his own life, and perhaps that of his family. But the prudent advice of his wife, "Heaven's last, best gift to man," had its ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... there was an eager footstep on the stair; I opened the door, and my aunt Mary burst into the room. It was a joyful meeting and a cheery bombardment of questions and answers concerning family matters ensued. By and by my ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was of apricot, with the bodice cut low and the skirt gathered in loops to show her white silk petticoat, which swelled from under a flowered stomacher so monstrously, that the tiny blue-heeled slipper upon the second stair seemed smaller than ever. Deep frills of lace fell from her short sleeves and a little lace cap was set on her thick ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... who come and go through the rank growths which cloak the earth in a Malay compound. 'Behold!' said Penghulu Mat Saleh once more. 'Come, let us ascend into the house.' And so saying he led the way up the stair-ladder of the dwelling where Haji Ali lived with his two sons Abas and Abdulrahman, and whence a month or two before Patimah had fled during the night-time with a deadly fear in her eyes, and the tale of a strange experience ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... each face, before afraid, The glowing light of joy displayed. Wife, maids and menfolks, girls and boys Surrounded with a seven-fold noise The giant rooster in the hall, Welcoming, looking, handling all. The man of God with jealous care Took me himself and climbed the stair To his own study, while the pack Came stumbling ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... content thee, child of care! There's satin shoon upon thy feet and emeralds in thy hair, And one there is who hungers for thy step upon the stair." ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... stop the way. With powdered lacquey and with charming bay; She sweeps the matting, treads the crimson stair. Her arduous function solely "to be there." Like Sirius rising o'er the silent sea. She hides her ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... overturns everything once in a generation, can a more senseless method be imagined than to educate a child as if he were never to leave his room, as if he were obliged to be constantly surrounded by his servants? If the poor creature takes but one step on the earth, if he comes down so much as one stair, he is ruined. This is not teaching him to endure pain; it is training him ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... done thy will. I have pierced the seas Where no Greek man may live.—Ho, Pylades, Sole sharer of my quest: hast seen it all? What can we next? Thou seest this circuit wall Enormous? Must we climb the public stair, With all men watching? Shall we seek somewhere Some lock to pick, some secret bolt or bar— Of all which we know nothing? Where we are, If one man mark us, if they see us prize The gate, or think of entrance anywise, 'Tis death.—We still have time to fly for home: Back to the galley quick, ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... INSTANCES,' he will build height after height, the solid, but imperceptible stair-way to his summit of knowledges, so that men shall tread its utmost floors without knowing what heights they are—even as they tread great nature's own solidities, without ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... received from them a piece of money with a commission to come and desire me, in their name, to step down and look at the patient. While she was delivering her message, they conveyed the sick person to the stair-head, and disappeared. I went, without staying till my servant had lighted a candle, and in the dark happened to stumble upon the sick person, and kick him down stairs. At length I saw he was dead, and that it was the crooked ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... hung his lance, and shield, and scimitar against the wall, and then followed the duenna, with silent steps, up a winding stair-case, to the apartment of Xarisa. Vain would be the attempt to describe the raptures of that meeting. Time flew too swiftly, and the Abencerrage had nearly forgotten, until too late, his promise to return a prisoner to the Alcayde of Allora. ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... meadow, with tall trees and bushes in it, and fowl perched in the trees and running through the grass, and sheep and kine and oxen and horses feeding down the meadow; and over the door at the top of the stair was wrought a great steer bigger than all the other neat, whose head was turned toward the sun-rising and uplifted with open mouth, as though he were lowing aloud. Exceeding fair seemed that house to Folk-might, ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... and white. Green open, white shut. Main stair, first corridor, seventh right, green ...
— The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge • Arthur Conan Doyle
... began plotting ill against him in her mind, thinking that by doing evil to him she might find favor with his enemies. Nevertheless, she kept this well to herself and received Robin with seeming kindness. She led him up the winding stone stair to a room which was just beneath the eaves of a high, round tower; but she would not let Little John come ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... tall and mean-looking houses, which seem to be toppling to their fall; and the pavement is strewn with garbage which is seldom cleared away. Many of the windows of the houses are broken; many of the doors hang ajar, for the floors are let out in flats, and there is a common stair for at least five and twenty families. It is a dreary-looking place, and the dwellers therein look as dreary ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... lamps. Sometimes tall candlesticks stood on pillars on each side of the figures. A staircase of stone, constructed in the wall near the chancel-arch, led to the rood-loft, and the blocked-up archway of this rood-stair frequently remains. The priest stood in the rood-loft to read the gospel and epistle, and sometimes preached there; official notices were read, and from it the bishop used to give the Benediction. The rood-cloth, or veil, hid the rood during Lent, and in some churches we have seen the ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... in her face the signs of ill-health for which he was prepared, and noticed with pain her tremulousness and shortness of breath after the stair-climbing. The friendship which had existed between them since his boyhood was true and deep as ever; Piers Otway could, as few men can, be the loyal friend of a woman. A reverent tenderness coloured his feeling towards Mrs. Hannaford; it was something ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... tower—the Keep. I believe you have not been in here before, Mr. Copplestone—just pay particular attention to this place. Here you see is the Keep, standing in the middle of what I suppose was the courtyard of the old castle. It's a square tower, with a stair-turret at one angle. The stair in that turret is in a very good state of preservation—in fact, it is quite easy to climb to the top, and from the top there's a fine view of land and sea: the Keep itself is nearly a hundred feet in height. Now the inside of the Keep is completely ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... door, which he had not noticed, he stumbled forward. His companions, supposing he had been pierced with a spear, pressed on after him, but each fell when they trod upon the door until a heap of men cumbered the stair. These were not unharmed, for with their long pikes the Scottish spearmen ran them through ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... the mother of the seven hardily. "You all are so kind to help me out all the time with everything. Course we are poor, but Jim makes enough to feed us, and every single child I've got is by fortune, just a hand-down size for somebody else's children. Five of 'em just stair-steps into clothes of Mis' Rucker's four, and Mis' Nickols saves me all of Bob's things to cut down, so I never have a mite of worry over any ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... walk into my parlor?" Said a spider to a fly; "'Tis the prettiest little parlor That ever you did spy. The way into my parlor Is up a winding stair, And I have many pretty things To show you when you're there." "O no, no," said the little fly, "To ask me is in vain; For who goes up your winding stair ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... was a narrow staircase, with a faded stair-carpet upon it. A door was partly open into a room on the right, but still there was nothing visible ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... faith beholds A golden stair, like that of old, whereon Fair spirits go and come; God's angels coming down on errands sweet, Our ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... leapt, but I restrained myself. The worthy apothecary went through the shop, climbed a stair, and, opening a door on the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... which issued occasional sounds of quarrelling voices and continual puffs of fetid air foul enough to sicken the strongest stomach. He went in, as one of the lost might go into Pandemonium, impelled by an imperious necessity. He mounted the ricketty and creaking stair, with the bannister half gone and the steps groaning beneath his tread as if they contained the spirits of the dead respectability that had left them half a century before. He had been told that the old woman lived on the third floor, and though he met no one ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... announced, and Mr Monckton taking Cecilia's hand, while Mr Morrice secured to himself the honour of Mrs Harrel's, Sir Robert and Mr Gosport made their bows and departed. But though they had now quitted the stage, and arrived at the head of a small stair case by which they were to descend out of the theatre, Mr Monckton, finding all his tormentors retired, except Mr Arnott, whom he hoped to elude, could not resist making one more attempt for a few moments' conversation with Cecilia; ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... first sight, the zig-zag path along what appears to be the perpendicular side of these steep, lofty rocks, appears perilous, not to say impracticable, but it is neither one nor the other. This mountain stair-case, called the Echelles de Baume, may be descended in all security by sure-footed people not given to giddiness; our driver, leaving his quiet horse for a time, shoulders one child, my companion shoulders another, I followed with the basket, and in ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... a twofold repentance; that by which we turn from nature to grace, and that by which we turn from the imperfections of a state of grace to glory. But this turning and turning still, displeases some much. They say it makes them giddy; but I say, Nothing like this to make a man steady. A straight stair is like the ladder that leads to the gallows. They are turning stairs that lead to the heavenly mansion. Stay not at their foot; but go up them, and up them, and up them, till you come to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... black drew herself up proudly. "Yes, one; better than killed. Wait." The women shrunk from her as she darted up the stair. They looked at each other wonderingly. The woman returned with something in her grasp. She flung it on the table. "It is an Indian's hand. His arm will shrivel to the bone. They will leave him some day to die in the sand." The women shuddered and drew back; the ...
— The Indian's Hand - 1892 • Lorimer Stoddard
... the breadth of the nave and aisles. The circular windows of the tower which look in the court, are perhaps to be referred to the eleventh century; and a smaller tower affixed against the south side, containing a stair-case and covered by a lofty pyramidical stone roof, composed of flags cut in the shape of shingles, may also be of the same aera. The others, of the more ancient windows, are in the early pointed style; and the portion from the gallery upwards is comparatively modern; having been added in ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... 1727 into "Patriots and Courtiers, which was in plain English, 'Whigs in place,' and 'Whigs out of place.'"[98] The assertion of disinterestedness met only with ridicule. In an interview with Queen Caroline, "when Lord Stair talked of his conscience with great solemnity, the queen (the whole conversation being in French) cried out: Ah, my Lord, ne me parlez point de conscience, vous me faites evanouir."[99] As personal advancement, and not the public service, was the ruling aim of statesmen, it ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... in the room as Alice Worthington glided out into the great hall. Standing on the lowest stair, she turned, a desolate and pathetic figure, with the golden hair rippling over the ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... and me together, As she left the attic, there, By the rim of the bottle labelled 'Ether,' And stole from stair ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... her own house to shed her apron and wash her hands, and then sallied over to view Mr. Clegg. The two friends mounted the stair together, and entered ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... steering post. She shot a quick glance downward, and to her alarm discovered not one, but three contraptions, all apparently designed to receive the pressure of a foot—if one could reach them—and as similar as the steps of a stair. This involved a further hesitation, and in automobiling he who hesitates invites a series of rapid experiences. By this time all Irene's attention was required to bring the car to some unanimity of direction. It was quite evident that it was running away. It was ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... of it, there was one man who knew that she had marked him, though she had borne herself towards him always with her stateliest grace. This man was his Grace the Duke himself. From the hour that he had stood transfixed as he watched her come up the broad oak stair, from the moment that the red rose fell from her wreath at his feet, and he had stooped to lift it in his hand, he had seen her as no other man had seen her, and he had known that had he not come but just too late, she would have been his own. ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... would they without full fain, Yet might they at the portal / but little vantage gain. Eke they within had gladly / gained the outer air; Nor up nor down did Dankwart / suffer one to pass the stair. ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... she pauses, Touches each well-known chair; Gazes from every window, Lingers on every stair. What have these months brought Bertha Now one more year is past? This Christmas Eve shall tell us, The third ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... Voison, midwife," stole quickly into a passage, the door of which was unfastened, and in which there was just so much light as enabled persons passing in or out to find their way along the narrow winding stair that led from the ground floor to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... What's a cavalryman for? Shall we?—I—can't believe it—some how," and Ray stopped, glanced inquiringly at the major, and then nodded toward the doorway of the third house on the row. The ground floor was occupied by Field as his quarters, the up-stair rooms ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... apartment, where my little Highland landlady, as dapper and as tight as ever, (for old women wear a hundred times better than the hard-wrought seniors of the masculine sex), stood at the door, TEEDLING to herself a Highland song as she shook a table napkin over the fore-stair, and then proceeded to fold it ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... lovely feet descend the cloudy stair, Great succour bringing to a world forlorn; On either side a man and woman share A common rapture, welcoming the dawn Of God's new day, the everlasting morn— Of such a day as shall from East to West Dispel the darkness, doing ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney
... Conquer." When the September day grows dim and some of the windows glow, you may look out, if you like, for Tony Lumpkin's red coat in the doorway or imagine Miss Hardcastle's quilted petticoat on the stair. ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... Richardson, who commanded, taking about thirty men with him, marched bravely up to them; and making his way with great resolution through the crowd, they flying, but throwing stones and hallooing at him, and his men. He seized the foot of the stair case; and then boldly went up, cleared the stair, and took six of the rabble in the very act, and so delivered the gentleman ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... my Uncle's foot on the stair ... his knock hurried the last sentence—here he is by me!—Understand what this would have led to, how you would have been proved logically my own, best, extreme want, my life's end—YES; dearest! Bless ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... right. That he should have thrown himself with all his heart into the storm of the Westminster election is most natural. But it is awful inverideed to find him, long after he had reached man's estate, indulging in back-stair intrigues with Whigs and Tories. It is, of course, absurd to charge him with deserting his first friends, the Whigs. His love and fidelity were given, not to the Whigs, but to the men who led them. Even after the death of Fox, he ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... was in advance, saw the last stair before him and stuck his head above the rocky sides of the stairway. Then he halted, ducked down and began to back up, so that he nearly fell with the buggy onto ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... I mounted the stair at the pier of Boulac, I found myself in the red dusky haze of an Egyptian atmosphere. It was near noon, and the rays of the hot sun trembled over the boundless Valley of the Nile on to the minarets of Cairo, and further ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... have liked to linger on that point of vantage, which afforded a fine view of the surrounding country; but their work was done, and he followed the others down the stair again, only pausing for a moment to secure poor Rogerson's identification disc as he ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... bread in the large tin box that stood on the stair-landing, I had some difficulty with the clasp. "Never mind that," said Mr. Burroughs, as he scraped the potato skins into the fire; "a Vassar girl sat down on that box last summer, and it's ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... few years later, says:—'At this time Satan used to terrify me much, and threatened to punish me if I discovered his wiles. It being my duty, as servitor, in my turn to knock at the gentlemen's rooms by ten at night, to see who were in their rooms, I thought the devil would appear to me every stair I went up.' Tyerman's Whitefield, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Save for the glimmer of the solitary candle all was in darkness; the bare floor, the paneled walls, echoed to his tread. On either hand squares of blackness proclaimed the open doors of large, empty rooms, and down the stair came a wind that bent the weak flame. The negro took the light from the hand of the man who had opened the door, and, pressing past his master, lit three candles in a sconce ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... and seemed not yet recovered from his late attack. Though most happy to see him at this alarming time, when I knew he could be most useful, as there is no one to whom the queen opens so confidentially upon her affairs, I had yet a fresh stair to see, by his anticipated arrival, though still lame, that he must have been sent for, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... Mademoiselle Bathilde if you wish to keep your heart, and give some sweetmeats to Mirza if you care for your legs;" and holding by the banister, he cleared the first flight of twelve steps at one bound, and reached the street door without having touched a stair. ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... back down-stairs and into his own room. He lay down without disturbing his wife, but he did not fall asleep. After what seemed to him a long time he heard a stealthy footstep on the stair, and again smelled the aroma of a cigar ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... had not hurt himself because two days previously he had ferociously stopped the odd-man of the works from wasting his time in mending just that identical stair, and had asserted that the stair was in excellent condition. Horrocleave, though Napoleonic by disposition, had a provincial mind, even a Five Towns mind. He regarded as sheer loss any expenditure on repairs or renewals or the processes of cleansing. His theory was that everything ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... Martin Stoner rose heavily to his feet and followed his ministering angel along a passage, up a short creaking stair, along another passage, and into a large room lit with a cheerfully blazing fire. There was but little furniture, plain, old-fashioned, and good of its kind; a stuffed squirrel in a case and a wall-calendar of four years ago ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... that mischief is meant." Just opposite the post office was a large house, in the topmost story of which we beheld a paper displayed, importing that apartments were to let; whereupon we instantly ascended the common stair, and having agreed with the mistress of the etage for the use of the front room for the day, we bolted the door, and the reporter, producing his pocket-book and pencil, prepared to take notes of the coming events, which were already casting their ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... was really as fine or finer than some of the smaller ones which I visited along the Loire last spring, and it was the more impressive because it was "alive"—inhabited—and furnished with the most magnificent appointments. The stair-hall particularly recalled some of those splendid old French ones, being in the same sort of yellow ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... erected on the side or end of a dwelling-house, without the written permission of the proprietor; and no tenant shall be entitled to remove from out the dwelling-house or offices possessed by him at the expiry of his lease, any roof, window, door, loft, stair, or other plenishing of a like fixed nature, even though furnished and put in by himself, unless his tack specially confers upon him such power; but the incoming tenant shall be bound to pay the outgoing tenant ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... upstairs she stumbled upon her dress, and as if to prevent doing it again, held it up, so as to show nearly to her knees. When she got on the top stair she turned round, and as if she had only just seen me, dropped her dress quickly. Another time she stooped and jutted out her bum, so that I saw a good deal up the clothes, whilst she pretended to be doing something ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... feeling the air with my outstretched hands as I groped along. In a little while I met with an obstruction—it was hard and cold—a stone wall, surely? I felt it up and down and found a hollow in it—was this the first step of the stair? I wondered; it seemed very high. I touched it cautiously—suddenly I came in contact with something soft and clammy to the touch like moss or wet velvet. Fingering this with a kind of repulsion, I soon traced out the oblong shape of a coffin Curiously enough, I was not affected much by the ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... author's corrected text of Don Quixote (Madrid, 1608), together with the first edition of the second part (Madrid, 1615), one hundred and ninety-two pounds; dedication copy to King Charles II. of the Institutions of the Law of Scotland, by Sir James Dalrymple of Stair, afterwards Viscount Stair, two volumes (Edinburgh, 1681), in a remarkably fine contemporary Scotch binding, with the royal arms in gold on the covers, two hundred and ninety-five pounds; a first edition ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... brown paws again, 45 We bid thee to thy vacant chair, We greet thee by the window-pane, We hear thy scuffle on the stair. ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... man of few words. She and James and Rab and I retired. I noticed that he and she spoke a little, but seemed to anticipate everything in each other. The following day at noon, the students came in, hurrying up the great stair. At the first landing-place, on a small well-known blackboard, was a bit of paper fastened by wafers and many remains of old wafers beside it. On the paper were the words—"An operation to-day. ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... follow and led the way silently past the others toward the stair shaft. Climbing to the top level was a heart-pounding task, but Mason almost ran up those steps. At the surface he leaned against a ...
— The Long Voyage • Carl Richard Jacobi
... garden containing more than five hundred native plants. It was one story high. At its front was a beautiful terrace, and there were extensive porticoes on the sides. Access to the building was gained by a 32-foot stair on the front, and by lateral ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... expeditions, therefore there was nothing unusual in his proceedings on the present occasion, but Signy detected a new fire in his eyes, and a twitching of the mouth that suggested ideas! Moreover, she had been on the stair when he came out of the lumber-room with his arms full of weapons, and Signy's soul was troubled about ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... I was immediately conscious of a sort of soft movement around me, as of shadowy shapes that passed and repassed. Once it seemed to me that a hand was laid on my shoulder and was not lifted, but instead dissolved into the other shadows around. The sudden striking of the clock on the stair landing completed my demoralization. I turned and fled upstairs, pursued, to my agonized nerves, by ghostly hands that came toward me from between the spindles of ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and saw that all was ruinous. Here stood a shatter'd archway plumed with fern; And here had fall'n a great part of a tower, Whole, like a crag that tumbles from the cliff, And like a crag was gay with wilding flowers: And high above a piece of turret stair, Worn by the feet that now were silent, wound Bare to the sun, and monstrous ivy-stems Claspt the gray walls with hairy-fibred arms, And suck'd the joining of the stones, and look'd A knot, beneath, of snakes, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... and saw that it was set centre-most a slab of alabaster, the size of the nether millstone. He strave at the stone till he pulled it from its place, when there appeared beneath it a souterrain with a stair. Presently he descended the flight of steps and came to a place like a Hammam, with four daises, the first full of gold, from floor to roof, the second full of emeralds and pearls and coral also from ground to ceiling; the third of jacinths ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... he found Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair To the dazed, muttering creatures underground Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound. At last, with sweat of horror in his hair, He climbed through darkness to the twilight air, Unloading hell behind him step ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... the first stanza of the "Lay" Scott repeats the line which occurs so often in "Christabel"—"Jesu Maria shield her well!" In the same poem, the passage where the Lady Margaret steals out of Branksome Tower at dawn to meet her lover in the wood, gliding down the secret stair and passing the bloodhound at the portal, will remind all readers of "Christabel." The dialogue between the river and mountain spirits will perhaps remind them of the ghostly antiphonies which the "Mariner" hears in his ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... down the shining stair Of clouds that fleck the summer sky, She kissed thee, saying, "Child, be fair, And madden men's hearts, even as I; Thou shalt love all things strange and sweet, That know me and are known of me; The lover thou shalt never meet, The land ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... be some curious stirs, Unless my fancy greatly errs, At restaurants and theatres When our distinctive turn-out Lines up with all the others there, And we look out with quite an air And order the commissionaire Kindly to put the little stair That hangs behind ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... liberty in twelve years." "If they are going to keep men in prison all their days, and torture them besides, they'll commit suicide or murder in prison. Look at Townley, who threw himself over the stair-railings at Pentonville and ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... climbing hour by hour the silver-shining stair That leads to God's great treasure-house, grew covetous; ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the passage above, a subdued whistle, and her son Jim came clattering down the stair. He glanced at his mother, a slight pucker between his handsome brows. She returned the look with one of ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... hall must be Bohemia, and the stair-carpet the sea, because then the aunts won't hear ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the lists took up Sir Mador, and led him to his tent, and the other knight went straight to the stair-foot where sat King Arthur; and by that time was the queen come to the king, and either kissed other heartily. And when the king saw that knight, he stooped down to him, and thanked him, and in likewise did the queen; and the king prayed him ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... half-way down the stair-case, holding Ursula March across her knees. The poor creature was insensible, or nearly so. She—we learnt—had been composed under the terrible discovery made when she returned to his room; and when all restorative means failed, the ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... were first narrated to, and, in 1788, written for the amusement of Miss Mary and Miss Agnes Berry. To the former of these ladies the public is indebted for a curious commentary on the Reminiscences, contained in extracts from the letters of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, to the Earl of Stair, now first published from the original manuscripts. Of the Reminiscences themselves it has been truly observed, that, both in manner and matter, they are the very perfection of anecdote writing, and make us better acquainted with the manners of George ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... to one of the gorgeous panels that decorated the wall, and touched a hidden spring. A door flew open, disclosing a stair heavily carpeted that led down to the huge vaulted ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... and me together, As she left the attic, there, 30 By the rim of the bottle labelled "Ether," And stole from stair to stair ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... Wealth enjoyed, and Charity bestowed. Pensive and thoughtful shall the wanderers greet Each splendid square, and still, untrodden street; Or of some crumbling turret, mined by time, The broken stair with perilous step shall climb, Thence stretch their view the wide horizon round, [14] By scattered hamlets trace its antient bound, And, choked no more with fleets, fair Thames survey Through reeds and sedge pursue ...
— Eighteen Hundred and Eleven • Anna Laetitia Barbauld
... compact," he remarked. "There is a little sitting-room down that stair, and a bathroom beyond. If the flowers annoy you, throw them out of the window. And if you prefer to bathe in the river to-morrow morning, Brooks here will show you the diving pool. I am wearing a ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... cried Tita, still supporting the angry old man, as he limped up the curved oaken stair. "You must not forget that these good signori who have preserved ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... chanced one time Mamma had gone away. Amanda she had left at home All by herself that day. Then someone rattled at the latch;— Amanda heard him there;— She heard him shutting fast the door And creeping up the stair;— ...
— Careless Jane and Other Tales • Katharine Pyle
... that he chose the precise moment he did, for as his head emerged above the last stair, he saw that the great shutters at the end of the south corridor were open, and a man stood before the window, evidently on the top rung of a ladder, trying the sash. It was locked to be sure, but at the instant Dan saw him, he raised his fist and smashed it. He was about to leap through ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... scarcely anything from France, deeply in debt, and with credit exhausted, she found herself entirely at the end of her resources. How thoroughly did the banished woman then realise the woes of exile—how hard it is to climb and descend the stranger's stair, experience the hollowness of his promise, and the arrogance of his commiseration. And, finally, as though fated to drain her cup of bitterness to the last drop, to learn that she, her long-loved bosom friend and royal mistress, who owed her, at the very least, a silent fidelity, had openly ranged ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... streams Running far-off within its inmost halls, The home of darkness, but the cavern mouth, Half overtrailed with a wanton weed Gives birth to a brawling stream, that stepping lightly Adown a natural stair of tangled roots, Is presently received in a sweet grove Of eglantine, a place of burial Far lovelier than its cradle; for unseen But taken with the sweetness of the place, It giveth out a constant melody That drowns the nearer echoes. Lower down Spreads out a little ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... scurvy disease had lain hold of my carcase, And death to my chamber was mounting the stair-case. I call'd to remembrance the sins I'd committed, Repented, and thought I'd for Heaven been fitted; But alas! there is still an old proverb to cross us, I found there no room for the sons of Parnassus; ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... place during the last summer. It was a glorious sunset in July, when after climbing a long and mazy turret-stair, we stood at the summit of Dundry Tower. A magnificent landscape of vast extent, stretching around on every point of the compass, burst almost simultaneously on the sight, embracing views of the Bristol Channel, the mountains of South Wales and Monmouthshire, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... made her way to Fifth Avenue and soon mounted a broad flight of steps to one of its most stately houses. The door yielded to her key, her thick walking boots clattered for a moment on the marble floor, but could not disguise the lightness of her step as she tripped up the winding stair and pushed open a rosewood door leading ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... time, he climbed the cellar stair, pushed open the door, and looked out. Partly in the bright sunlight and partly in the deep shadows, he resembled ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... strong water-sky and heavy bank showed the sea to be close at hand to the south, as well as a strong breeze behind it. We rattled on for Wolstenholme Island, reached under its lee by the evening, and edged away to the north, quickly opening out Cape Stair, and finding it to be an island, as the Cape York Esquimaux, on board the "Assistance," had led us to believe. Passing some striking-looking land, which, although like that of the more southern parts of Greenland, ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... He had lent his flag, and, in the flurry, some one dropped it overboard. D'ri saw it fall, and before we could stop him he had leaped into the sea. I hastened to his help, tossing a rope's end as he came up, swimming with one arm, the flag in his teeth. I towed him to the landing-stair and helped him over. Leaning on my shoulder, he shook out the tattered flag, its white laced with his ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... step and stood on the stair beside me, looking up at me very sweetly, and resting her hand lightly on my shoulder—a caress so frank and unconcealed that it meant no more then its innocent significance implied. But at that moment, by chance, I encountered Lois's ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... down the passage towards a doorway, through which she burst, screaming. The child, borne forward by our combined weight, tottered and fell almost across the threshold of this room, where a flight of stairs, lit by a dingy lamp, led up into obscure darkness. On the third stair under the lamp I caught a momentary vision of a dirty, half-naked boy standing with a drawn dirk in his hand, and with that, my foot catching against Meliar-Ann's body, I pitched past, head foremost, into the ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it ye slick off. I want to cut away the companion-hatch and run up a regular stair to the deck; then it's advisable to cut away at least half o' the main deck to heighten the gamin' saloon. But I guess the main point is to knock out half-a-dozen windows in the hold, for gas-light is plaguey dear, when it's ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... ascended from the entrance hall, they traversed the great wilderness of a house, through some obscure passages, and came to a low, ancient doorway. It admitted them to a narrow turret stair which zigzagged upward, lighted in its progress by loopholes and iron-barred windows. Reaching the top of the first flight, the Count threw open a door of worm-eaten oak, and disclosed a chamber that occupied the whole area of the ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... into the house all of you, if you can get in. The cows must go to the yard. Oh, Var-Vara!" she added, as she turned to her old nurse, who had just come out, attracted by the noise. "Have you heard? Oh, poor mamma! Do you think she will be safe?" and Elena rushed into the house, and up the stair of a wooden tower, from which she could see for miles round, a wide vista of field, ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... voice, sae smooth his tongue; His breath's like caller air; His very fit has music in't, As he comes up the stair. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... hasten back along the face of the precipice, stop where the rock offered foothold and begin slowly climbing almost vertically. At first, it was going up the tiers of a broken stone stair. Then, the weathered ledge gave place to slant shale. He saw Wayland dig his heels for grip, grasp a sharp edge overhead, and hoist himself to the overhanging branch of a recumbent pine; then, scramble ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... Jimmy, that I will," cried the little girl; "here, let us sit on this lowest stair; I don't think many people will be passing up now, and then I shall see mother when she ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... worth toiling up yon weary stair, to get sic a glimpse as that, of the brave auld town?" said honest P. Gregg. "I'm jest thinkin' I must enlarge the stair, or diminish mysel, before I can venture through that narrow pass again. An', my dear leddy, I can do neither the one ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... belaying-pin. Brook nimbly scrambled upon the upturned weather side of the companion. Evelin, exasperated by Mr Dale's ill-timed anxiety about his book, had stepped inside the companion-way and down a stair or two to summarily remove the obstructor, and the two were flung together to the bottom of the staircase. Blanche, left thus without a protector, clung convulsively for a moment to one of the open doors of the companion; but her strength failing her, she let go and fell backwards ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... we must have to-day, all but the running up and down. Build us houses up, and up, as high as they will stand; give us plenty of sky-parlors, but also plenty of steam-elevators to go to and from "my lady's chamber." It is not a wise economy to devote one's precious power to this enormous amount of stair-work. It is not a kind of exercise that is sanitive. The Evans House and Hotel Pelham, for instance, are very pretty Bostonianisms, but all their rooms within range of ordinary means are beyond the range of ordinary strength. The achievement of twenty flights a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... once more In wanhope and sorrow sore For his love-friend bright of face. None can help his evil case, None a word of counsel say. To the palace went his way; Step by step he climbed the stair; Entered in a chamber there. Then he 'gan to weep alone, And most dismally to groan, ...
— Aucassin and Nicolette - translated from the Old French • Anonymous
... are really getting on my nerves," said Anne. "She finished two new ones last week, stuffed and embroidered within an inch of their lives. There being absolutely no other cushionless place to put them she stood them up against the wall on the stair landing. They topple over half the time and if we come up or down the stairs in the dark we fall over them. Last Sunday, when Dr. Davis prayed for all those exposed to the perils of the sea, I added in thought 'and ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... opened the stair cupboard door to catch the opossum, you found a white china doll lying in it, no bigger than your finger. That was ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... would be long, he told himself, and in that other, beneficent inner twilight he worked on, packing the snow, and crawling gingerly up the perilous stair ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... her remonstrance by the shrill voice of a female, who stood on the same stair with the ensign, and whom, notwithstanding the great alteration in her dress, Fanny recognized to be Sally Bettesworth. Jilting Jessy ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... now broken up. Attwater leaned on a post, and kept Davis covered with a Winchester. One of the servants was hard by with a second at the port arms, leaning a little forward, round-eyed with eager expectancy. In the open space at the head of the stair, Huish was partly supported by the other native; his face wreathed in meaningless smiles, his mind seemingly sunk in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would show themselves, looking out like the faces of firefiends. Then they would retire a moment, only to come again and burst out with a fury that nothing could resist, a fury that raged and rioted till beams, rafters, flooring, and stair-ways were a black, ashy heap, sputtering and hissing toward the sky—a snake ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... their reclining chairs in their reception rooms, in their homes, in their litters abroad, at the Amphitheatre or at the Circus games, from neck to instep they are muffled up. If one catches a glimpse of a beauty's ankle as she goes up a stair, one is thrilled, one watches eagerly, one cranes ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... I found, to my dismay, that the pile of vests which I had left on my bed on going out the day before had been removed; and just as I was telling myself that no one else except Mrs. Abramovitch had a key to my door I heard shuffling footsteps on the stair, and knew that her husband ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... saying, the kind-hearted black set the bottle-candlestick upon the floor; and, passing down the stair again, left me ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... feet doth bare, And jealous of the listening air They steal their way from stair to stair, Now in glimmer, and now in gloom, And now they pass the Baron's room, As still as death with stifled breath! And now have reached her chamber door; And now doth Geraldine press down The rushes of the ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... the screen door. Within, it was cleaner than anything Agatha had ever seen. The stair-rail glistened, the polished floors shone. A neat bouquet of sweet peas stood exactly in the center of a snow-white doily, which was exactly in the middle of a shiny, round table. The very door-mat was brand new; Agatha would never have thought of ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... know more about it ere I let it pass forth from mine hands, or any strange eye fall upon it— Ha, in good time! I hear his step on the stair." ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... porter, moved to pity, has gone to give the message to his lady. Hynde Horn is watching the staircase at the rear of the stage, his heart in his eyes. The tapestries that hide it are drawn, and there stands the king's daughter, who tripped down the stair, ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... a circular stair, twisted round a central pillar, of which mention has already been made, and though short, is very dark even in bright daylight. But at night the blackness is inky and impenetrable, and Westray fumbled for an appreciable ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... of that province was not as averse from slavery as his brother of Nova Scotia. One of the most interesting and celebrated cases came before the Supreme Court of New Brunswick in Hilary Term, February 1800. Captain Stair Agnew who had been an officer in the Queen's Rangers settled opposite Fredericton. He was a man much thought of as is shown by his being chosen for thirty years to represent York County in the Legislature. He owned a slave ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... found Ellen, as usual, at her needle, and Paul in the arm-chair close by Alfred, both busied in choosing and cutting out pictures from Matilda's 'Illustrated News,' with which Harold ornamented the wall of the stair-case and landing. Mr. Cope sat down, and made them laugh with something droll about the figures that ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... chair, held his breath, listened, went on, found the hall, found the stairs, started up; the seventh stair creaked at his step, the ninth, the fourteenth. He was counting them automatically. At the third creak he paused again for over a minute—and in that minute he felt more alone than he had ever felt before. Between the lines on patrol, even when ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... were saved from the death-stricken ship, should meet together to say farewell. Early in the evening, the villagers, in their best Sunday clothes, began to assemble, and, before very long, the room and the passage-way and the stair-way were crowded. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... who has been here before,' said Nicholas, 'for he is tumbling up every stair. Come in, come in. In the name ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... tread—so it was with no slight gratification that we beheld the cad of an omnibus beckoning us to take our place on the outside of his buss. The luggage had been swung down in a lump through a hole in the floor, and by the time we reached the same level, by the periphrasis of a stair, every thing had been stowed away on the roof, where in a few moments we joined it; and careered through the streets of Bristol, for the first time in our lives. "Do you go to any hotel near the quay where the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... looked in, as down the throat Of some stupendous giant, and beheld No floor, but wide, worn, flights of steps, that led Into a dimness. When the eyes could bear That change to gloom, she saw flight after flight, Flight after flight, the worn long stair go down, Smooth with the feet of nations dead and gone. So she did enter; also she went down Till it was dark, and yet again went down, Till, gazing upward at that yawning door, It seemed no larger, in its height remote, Than a pin's ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... not insert his reply to the Query of MATFELONESIS, because we do not regard a newspaper paragraph as an authority. The story of Lord Stair being the executioner of Charles I. is related, we believe, in Cecil's Sixty Curious Narratives, an interesting compilation made by the late W. Hone, who does not, however, give ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various
... month (June) the days are long. Densuke was a coward; and for company had the corpse of the murdered Jusuke. To the poor cook the time passed was torture. He was continually going to the stair and calling down—"Danna Sama, has the time come?... Ah! The sky is light. The streets at night will be full of people with lanterns. Plainly O'Tento[u] Sama (the Sun) has forgotten to decline in the West. Alas! ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... brilliant spots of conscientious effort only made the stretches of bare, unpainted floor more evident. And that was not all. Traces of former spasmodic and individual efforts desecrated the present ideals. The doctor's pew had a pink-and-blue Brussels on it; the lawyer's, striped stair-carpeting; the Browns from Deerwander sported straw matting and were not abashed; while the Greens, the Whites, the Blacks, and the Grays displayed floor coverings as dissimilar as ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to fire, taking my time, centering each figure exactly. At each shot, one Jivro fell. I had fired but a score of times, and the white-robed creatures began to leave the lights, to cluster about the archway over the roof stair. ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... childish laughter rings on the narrow stair, And, from a silent corner, the murmur of a prayer Steals out, and then a love song, and then a bugle call, And steps that do not falter along the ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... Allan. "I saw that she was unhappy and I tried to cheer her up. I'll look out for the boy in every way I can." He took the little bag of chintz from the bench where he had laid it when he went with Christianna, and turned to the rude stair that led to his room in the half story. He was not kin to the tollgate keepers, but he had lived long with them and was very fond of both. "I'll be down in a moment, Aunt Sairy," he said. "I wonder when I'll smell or taste your gingerbread again, and I don't see how I am going to tell you and Tom ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... times and scenes. I walked to his lodgings with him, and promised to call with my wife on Mrs. Cobb the following day at 1 o'clock. We were there at the hour, when the servant, in answer to my request to take up our cards, stated that General Cobb had just fallen dead. I sprang up the stair, and saw his body lying on the floor of a room, his wife, dazed by the shock, looking on. A few minutes before he had written a letter and started for the office of the inn to post it, remarking to his wife that he would ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... said the little Fly, "To ask me is in vain; For who goes up your winding stair Can ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... a quick step without on the stair; the old man gave a relieved sigh, but when the door opened it was only ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... a large cottage, having around its door a slender gallery, at whose side went down a stair. Its chimnies were stout, and walls thick, its roof pitched very steep and clipped off short at the eaves; a garden of lilac-bushes and shrubs, some of which pressed their dark green against its spotless white-wash, surrounding ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... Tommy first comes into view on a dirty London stair, and he was in sexless garments, which were all he had, and he was five, and so though we are looking at him, we must do it sideways, lest he sit down hurriedly to hide them. That inscrutable face, which ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... alternate squares of black and white marble, was vast, sonorous, and contained a broad staircase leading to the first story. The walls of smooth stone offered not the least appearance of decay or dampness; the stair-rail of wrought iron presented no traces of rust; it was inserted, just above the bottom step, into a column of gray granite, which sustained a statue of black marble, representing a negro bearing a flambeau. This statue ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... original intentions. He recollected that he had seen a trunk in Harvey's room, and that the keys hung in the lock. An inconceivably short space of time served for him to seize the watch, to deposit it at the bottom of Harvey's trunk, and to quit the hotel by a back stair, which led by a short cut to the harbor. The whole transaction was done unperceived, and the wretch at least ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... half-floating they were led toward an opening in the roof from which a stair led downward. They passed down thus into the building's interior, lit by many windows. Norman glimpsed long halls ending in barred doors, guards here and there. Tube-lines ran along the walls and somewhere machines were throbbing dully. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... we made his acquaintance, seated himself in the opposite corner. How like Margery's voice the letter sounded, in that old hall at Lovell Tower!—so much so, that it seemed scarcely a stretch of fancy to expect her to glide down the stair which led from her chamber, where her child now lay sleeping. How well Richard could recall the scene when, six years before, she came softly down to receive from his hand the ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... grinning, "one sees that the Jew's stair was easier going for thee than Ortone." And he prodded ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... and sufficiently exclusive not to compromise Plank's possible chances for something better; in fact, the Saddle Club, into which Leroy Mortimer had already managed to pilot him, was one riser and tread upward on the stair he was climbing, though it was more of a lobby for other clubs than a club in itself. To be seen there was, perhaps, rather to a man's advantage, if he did not loaf there in the evenings or use it too frequently. As Plank carefully avoided ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... when will dawn that glorious day When you will softly mount my stair? My kin shall bring you on the way; I shall be first to greet you there. Ah, when will dawn that day of bliss When we before the priest ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... snow or ice, which in no inconsiderable degree contributed to increase the resistance of the deck to cold, and for the same purpose snowdrifts were thrown up along the vessel's sides. A stately ice stair was carried up from the ice to the starboard gunwale. A large tent made for the purpose at Karlskrona was pitched from the bridge to the fore, so that only the poop was open. Aft the tent was quite open, the blast and drifting snow having also free entrance ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... of the door; and then, with a strong effort of both her small white hands, she succeeded in moving the lock into its place. Then she turned quickly and hastened down the dusky corridor. At the opposite end a small winding stair led upwards into darkness. There were stains upon the lowest steps, just visible in the half light. Atossa gathered up her mantle and her under tunic, and trod daintily, with a look of repugnance on her ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... heart, sae smooth his speech. His breath like caller air; His very foot has music in't As he comes up the stair— And will I see his face again? And will I hear him speak? I'm downright dizzy wi' the thought, In ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... velvet pile carpet, for example, should not be brushed backwards. But on more obvious matters she will probably leave the 'thorough housemaid' to her own devices, the result of which is that the boards beside the stair-carpets are washed with soda the first morning, which takes the dirt off effectually—and the paint also. An hour or two before she was caught at this, she has, perhaps, utterly spoilt a polished grate or two by rubbing them with scouring paper ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... Norman church. That on the north side now leads into a stone gallery, erected in 1891 in the place of a dilapidated wooden structure, which runs first westward to the angle between the tower and north transept, then along the west face of the transept until it reaches a door leading into the stair turret, which may be seen from the exterior. At the bottom of this is a door opening into the transept. This stair turret projects slightly into the transept. The lowest stage of the tower consists of four arches and four massive piers. The arches have two plain orders. The piers have ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... a heavy step up the stair. He had but a moment in which to scramble back into the interior of the great stove, when the door opened and the two dealers entered, bringing burning candles with them to see ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... the tea-things away in her usual placid manner, but came back the next moment as if she had forgotten something, clearly the hat. With a slight deprecatory laugh she removed it and went hurriedly down the stair. Whatever had she been doing with it, I thought, and settled with a sigh of satisfaction once more to my work, now that the nightmare in red, a kind of mute scarlet "Raven," was gone from my room. How very quiet ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... hand of the hale man enclosed for a moment the feeble, burning one of the sufferer. Then John Girdlestone plodded heavily down the stair, and these friends of forty years' standing had said ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her rough untutored way that God's in His heaven and all's right with the world, sings at her work; she shows extraordinary activity when going about her duties. She does unusual things like remembering to polish the brasses every week—indeed you have only to step into the hall and glance at the stair-rods to discover the exact stage of her latest "affair." I remember that, when one ardent swain "in the flying corpse" went to the length of offering her marriage before he flew away, she cleaned the entire house down in her enthusiasm, and had actually got to the cellars before he vanished ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... however, reached the altar in triumph, for a hostile circle stood between. Giacobbe fought with his scythe, and, though wounded in several places, did not yield a hand's breadth of the stair which he had been the first to gain. Only two men were left to hold up the saint, whose enormous white head heaved and reeled grotesquely like a drunken mask. The men of Mascalico were ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... Constance, the irrepressible, who, leaning over the stair railing, sank the iron deep ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... was being prepared for the trial of the men who had lately attempted the Emperor's life, and a most theatrical display of justice was to be presented to the public. The richly carved stair-case, with Francis the First's salamanders squirming up and down it, was a relic worth seeing; but the parched pilgrims found the little pots of clotted cream quite as interesting, and much more refreshing, when they were served up at lunch (the pots, not the pilgrims), each covered with a fresh ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... other party, we passed around to the back of the far hill, and discovered it to go upward to the top at an easy slope, with many ledges and broken places, so that it was scarce more difficult than a stair to climb. And so, having climbed perhaps ninety or a hundred feet, we came suddenly upon the place which held the water, and found that they had not made too much of their discovery; for the pool was near twenty feet long by twelve broad, and so clear as though ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... few hours next morning, and found her very much weaker when she returned. Mrs. Bartram said she had tired herself writing a letter. She had a wide-awake air as if she were watching for something, and her ear seemed to catch every step on the stair-way. It was toward the ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... through the immense increase of business thus occasioned. It was sufficient for an informer to say that he suspected any person of concealing money in his house, and immediately'a search-warrant was granted. Lord Stair, the English ambassador, said, that it was now impossible to doubt of the sincerity of Law's conversion to the Catholic religion; he had established the inquisition, after having given abundant ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... in the underground of his subconsciousness, refusing realisation, yet all the time only too well divining. Some careless word, some unmuted compassion in voice, the stealthy wrapping of a pair of boots, the unaccustomed shutting of a door that ought to be open, the removal from a down-stair room of an object always there—one tiny thing, and he knows for certain that he is not going too. He fights against the knowledge just as we do against what we cannot bear; he gives up hope, but not effort, protesting in the only way he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... me, while in thought repeating The treasured memories thou alone dost share Hark! with hushed breath and pulses wildly beating I hear thy footstep bounding o'er the stair! ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... slidewalk as it glided past the Tower building and ran up the broad marble stair. At the huge main portal, Tom stopped and looked back over the Academy grounds. All around him lay the evidence of mankind's progress. It was the year 2353, when Earthman had long since colonized the inner planets, Mars and Venus, and the three large satellites, Moon ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... began to collect his books; even his supper of bread and milk was carried up to him there, for he refused to eat with his family for fear of interrupting his studies. It is a deplorable picture: the fumes of the hearty butcher's evening meal ascend the stair in vain, Henry is reading "Blackstone" and "The Wealth of Nations." If it were Udolpho or Conan Doyle that held him, there were some excuse. The sad life of Henry is the truest indictment of overstudy that ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... to the stair door, which was situated at one side of the living-room, and opened it. "Connie," he called, "Marjorie's come ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... very angry with Lord Stair because he believed that he had done him an ill office with the King of England, and prevented the latter from entering into the alliance with France and Holland. If that alliance had taken place ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... ways—the wild ducks' flight, the sweet smell of the balsam, the exquisite gallop of the deer, the powder of the frost, the sun and snow and blue plains of water, the thrilling eternity of plain and the splendid steps of the hills, which led away by stair and entresol to the Kimash Hills, the Hills of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not this was unconsciously forced into words by the vehemence of his passion, or whether the old Jewess heard, or pretended to hear, a footstep coming up the stair, she at all events sprang instantly to ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... fire-place, mistaking it for the door, yet their escape was at length happily effected—and half after twelve o'clock found our heroes ripe for mischief, and running for life down a dark alley in the direction of St. Andrew's Stair, hotly pursued by the landlady of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... away to be fined, or worse, amid the jeers of the bystanders, always ready to deal hardly with "the gipsy," at which precise moment the tall Duke Carl, like the flash of a trusty sword, had leapt from the palace stair and caused her to pass on in peace. She had half detected him through his disguise; in due time news of his reappearance had been ceremoniously carried to her in her little cottage, and the remembrance of her hung about ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... (They were but two stories from the pavement.) "But I'm not so sure about the rear apartment. We thought we heard a shot. Hadn't you better come up, officer? My wife is nervous about it. I'll meet you at the stair-head and show ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... Lilywhite, I see you hiding in the croft! By yon steep stair of ruddy light The sun is climbing fast aloft; What makes the stealthy, creeping chill That hangs about the morning still?" Tinkle, tinkle in the pail: "Some one saunters up the vale, Pauses at the brook awhile, Dawdles at the meadow stile— Well! if loitering ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... father, and to whom he deliberately gives a mother with a tarnished name—a mother who, from the initial wrong done to her and the stigma which deprives her of the society of women, will only too probably not stay her feet at the first wrong step, but be drawn down that dread winding stair which ends in the despair of a lost soul—this, I urge, would be utterly abhorrent to every even fairly right-thinking man, instead of the very common thing it is. Did we see it truly, it would be a not venial sin, ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... Craon's exact intelligence! For his satisfaction, I can tell him that numbers, even here, would believe any story full as absurd as that of the King and my Lord Stair; or that very one, if anybody will write it over. Our faith in politics will match any Neapolitan's in religion. A political missionary will make more converts in a county progress than a Jesuit in the whole empire of China, and will produce ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... impatience grew into anxiety, which in its turn became suspicion, until, unable longer to restrain herself, she got up, and, after listening with some evident surprise at the stair-head, cautiously stole down the stairs and peeped, through the chink left by the ill-fitting hinge of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... nearer the school, he took lodgings in Gower Street; but within a week a slight rough-house incident occurred that crippled most of the furniture in his room and deprived the stair-rail of its spindles. R. Browning, the Second, bank-clerk, paid the damages, and R. Browning, the Third, aged twenty, came back home, formally notifying all parties concerned that he had chosen a career—it was Poetry. He would woo the Divine ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... is on the stair," said Holmes, serenely. "I think, Watson, that you would do well to put that revolver where you can reach it." He rose and laid a written paper upon a side-table. "Now we are ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... says she. "Or is that noble prince within?" "He's up the stair wi his bonny bride, An monny a lord and ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... recorded in an interesting letter published in A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land, by W. R. Hughes, for the background of his drawing of "Durdles Cautioning Sapsea". There are, however, two other gatehouses, the "Prior's", a tower over an archway, containing a single room approached by a "postern stair", and "Deanery Gate", a quaint old house adjoining the Cathedral which has ten rooms, some of them beautifully panelled. Its drawing-room on the upper floor bears a strong resemblance to the room—as depicted by ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... half-timbered) building that forms the hospital encloses a spacious open quadrangle in the style common to hostelries. The carvings are very fine and varied, and add greatly to the beauty of the galleries and covered stair. The monastic charities founded by men of the old religion are now in the hands of the corporation for distribution among the poor of the town, and besides the old grammar-school founded by Henry VIII., with a yearly exhibition to each of the universities, and open ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... when we arrived. I could hear awful noises from behind the seal-cutter's shop-front, as if some one were groaning his soul out. Suddhoo shook all over, and while we groped our way upstairs told me that the jadoo had begun. Janoo and Azizun met us at the stair-head, and told us that the jadoo-work was coming off in their rooms, because there was more space there. Janoo is a lady of a freethinking turn of mind. She whispered that the jadoo was an invention to get money out of Suddhoo, and that the seal-cutter would go to a hot place when ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Ashe, while, murmuring something about hot water, she bustled off to the kitchen. "No, Guard, you must wait down here," said his mistress, as he rose to follow them; and with his feet on the bottom stair he stood still, gazing after them longingly, but ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... sound, Along the devious ways that wound O'er drawbridges, through moats, and showed The vast St. Lawrence flowing, belt The Orleans Isle, and sea-ward melt; Then by old walls with cannon crowned, Down stair-like streets, to where we felt The salt winds blown o'er ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... before a tall, dark tenement house, up whose narrow stair-way she proceeded to climb after stopping a moment ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... break any stair-climbin' records in an amateur contest, though, and when he does puff on to the last landin' he's purple behind the ears and ain't got breath enough left to make any kind of speech. So I tackles another ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... Lord Stair was the best bred man in Europe. "I shall soon put that to the test," said the king, and asking Lord Stair to take an airing with him, as soon as the door of the coach was opened he bade him pass and go in, ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... upon the topmost stair of the flight, when of a sudden the stillness of the house was broken by a loud knock upon the street door. Instantly—as though they had been awaiting it there was a stir of feet below and the bang of an overturned chair; then a shaft of yellow light fell athwart the darkness ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... of the last stroke was swelling and sinking in the air, when a heavy step sounded on the stair, and without even the ceremony of knocking, the door was pushed suddenly open, and the fellow, who had intruded upon him the evening before, entered the room. In one hand he held a rope and in the other ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... but the fear in her soul arose, For she thought of the golden Sigurd, and the compassing of foes, And great grew the dread of her maidens as they gazed upon her face: But she rose and looked not backward as she hastened from her place, And sought the King of the Niblungs by hall and chamber and stair, And bright was the pure mid-morning and the wind was ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... he half pitied and half despised. From the spot the eye took in a vast sweep of hill and dale: Bald Mountain, the most striking object in the near background, and beyond its dark, rugged mass the snowy summits of the Sierras, rising one above another, like gigantic stair-steps, leading up to the throne of the Eternal. This lonely height suited Lowry's strangely compounded nature. As a cynic, he looked down with contempt upon the petty life that seethed and frothed in the camps below; as a saint, he looked ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... you care for, then, in Ashfield?" said Phil. And at that moment a little burst of the singing of Rose came floating up the stair,—so sweet! so sweet! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... on his arm to shut out the light where he sat at the table he felt that he was nearer to loving the absent woman than he had ever been. For the vision of the Dermots' married happiness, of the deep affection linking husband and wife, of the children climbing the stair and smiling back at their parents, came vividly to him. And it haunted him in his sleep when in dreams tiny arms were clasped around his neck and baby lips touched ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... matter of course that the defender of original sin should reject the doctrine of perfectibility. "When man attains the highest point of civilisation," wrote Chateaubriand in the vein of Rousseau, "he is on the lowest stair of morality; if he is free, he is rude; by civilising his manners, he forges himself chains. His heart profits at the expense of his head, his head at the expense of his heart." And, apart from considerations of Christian doctrine, the question of Progress had little interest for the Romantic ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... something ready-made until she could order others in the establishment of her living with Dodge. Her close-fitting jacket, gloves, and a short cape of sables were collected; she gazed finally, thoughtfully, about the room, and then, with a subdued whisper of skirts, descended the stair. Arnaud was in the library, bending over the table that bore his accumulation of papers and serious journals. A lingering impulse to speak was overborne by the memory of what, lately, she had endured—she saw him at the ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... feet are heard climbing up the stair, and Ingrid's name is called. The door opens, and two flushed and breathless messengers stand on the threshold. "We've brung you a birfday present," they cry; "it's a book, and we made it all our own se'ves, and all the ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... staircase, covered with painted canvas. No one whose inexperience is less than mine can imagine to himself the impressions made upon me by surrounding objects. The height to which this stair ascended, its dimensions, and its ornaments, appeared to me a combination of all ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... it was but a few seconds, on the stair, under a smoky lamp, but her beauty filled the landing with radiance as her kindness did my soul.—It was but for a moment, all blessed moment, too brief, alas! Ah, Adrian, friend—old hermit in your cell—you have never known life, you who have never tasted a moment such as that! ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... domestic confusion caused by her illness, her brain was often remarkably clear, and she could reflect in long, sane meditations above the uneasy sea of her pain. In the earlier hours of the night, after the nurses had been changed, and Mary had gone to bed exhausted with stair-climbing, and Lily Holl was recounting the day to Dick up at the grocer's, and the day-nurse was already asleep, and the night-nurse had arranged the night, then, in the faintly-lit silence of the chamber, Constance ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... have done thy will. I have pierced the seas Where no Greek man may live.—Ho, Pylades, Sole sharer of my quest: hast seen it all? What can we next? Thou seest this circuit wall Enormous? Must we climb the public stair, With all men watching? Shall we seek somewhere Some lock to pick, some secret bolt or bar— Of all which we know nothing? Where we are, If one man mark us, if they see us prize The gate, or think of entrance anywise, 'Tis death.—We still have time to fly for ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... with the real human hair, There's the Teddy Bear left all alone, There's the automobile at the foot of the stair, And there is her toy telephone; We thought they were fine, but a little child's eyes Look deeper than ours to find charm, And now she's in bed, and the rag dolly lies Snuggled close on her little ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... found was a street which was used by horses as well as by men, and yet was made up of broad steps. It was a sort of stair-case going up a hill. At the top of it I found a woman leading a child by the hand. I asked her the name of the steps. She told me they were called "The Steps of ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... and as he came up, she reached out her hand, as if apologizing for having taken it from him when they entered the bungalow. He held it again as she led him down the hall to a door farthest from the stair. This she opened, and they entered. It was dark inside, and the girl withdrew her hand again, and Kent heard her moving across the room. In that darkness a new and thrilling emotion possessed him. The air he was breathing was not the air he had breathed in the hall. In it was the sweet scent ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... legs in the dark. They went on and on, and round and round the little corkscrew staircase - then through the bell-ringers' loft, where the bell-ropes hung with soft furry ends like giant caterpillars - then up another stair into the belfry, where the big quiet bells are - and then on, up a ladder with broad steps - and then up a little stone stair. And at the top of that there was a little door. And the door was ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... astonished, for there, before him, in a wide-open double row, stood the eight colored men, all dressed in black, with broad red sashes over their breasts and cockades of red paper in their hats. On the platform between the colored men was a bright red stair carpet, and this carpet led directly to where a carriage was in waiting. The carriage had four white horses, all decorated in red ribbons, and on the seat sat a ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... in, I think," he laughed. And, leaving the patient donkey for the moment to her fate, he led the way indoors. A match illumined for a moment the hallway, showing a ladder-like stair to a trap door above, and then, sputtering faintly in the musty air, went out. Since matches were scarce, he deftly made a torch of a paper from his pocket with better success. A brief glance into the room at their left showed signs of recent ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... lights. 'Tis no use waiting here. I must cross over, And take my stand in the corner by the door. But if he comes while I go down the stairs, And I not see? To make sure, I'll go gently Up the stair to the landing by ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... to, if not actually passing by the burglar, or whoever it might be who was acting so stealthily. But Farmer Minards must be roused somehow. This was the one thing Paul was certain of. Without making a sound he crept down another stair or two. Whoever it was down below, he had a light, for Paul could see a faint glimmer, and it came, he imagined, from the little room the farmer ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... came down the stair, wringing her hands: "He has slain the Earl o Murray, the flower ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... and closed the door. The gloom of the porch was deeper than ever as, stooping, he entered the narrow door that opened at the foot of the winding stair that leads to the first loft; from which a rude ladder-stair of wood, some five and twenty feet in height, mounts through a ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... have done so. Certainly I must have stayed there many hours. I was dull and confused, and yet on my guard, for when far into the night I heard noises below, I ran up the steeper steps which ascend to the steeple, where are the bells. Half-way up I sat down on the stair. The place was cold and the darkness deep. Then I heard the eight ringers down below. One said: "Never knowed a Christmas like this since Zeb Sanderaft died. Come, boys!" I knew it must be close on to midnight. Now they would play a Christmas carol. I used every Christmas to ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... "They have always been so," she would murmur: "they never loved man or woman but they forsook them. Je me vengerai, O oui, je me vengerai! I know them all: I know them all: and I will go to my Lord Stair with the list. Don't tell me! His religion can't be the right one. I will go back to my mother's though she does not love me. She never did. Why don't you, mother? Is it because I am too wicked? Ah! Pitie, pitie. O mon pere! I will make my confession"—and ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... grasped it closely, fearing it might fade away from him as it had done in his dream. She led him silently by another way from that by which he had entered, and together they passed through a small doorway that communicated with a narrow circular stair which wound round and round downwards until they came to another door at the bottom, which let them out in the moonlight at the foot of ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... Untouch'd by sorrow, and unsoil'd by sin— (Good heavens! the child is swallowing a pin!) Thou little tricksy Puck! With antic toys so funnily bestuck, Light as the singing bird that wings the air— (The door! the door! he'll tumble down the stair!) Thou darling of thy sire! (Why, Jane, he'll set his pinafore a-fire!) Thou imp of mirth and joy! In Love's dear chain so strong and bright a link, Thou idol of thy parents—(Drat the ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... stairway in the front of the vault room, there was a man crouched in the shadow of the passage way by the stairs at the back. This man, too, held a revolver in his hand, and, criminal or not, his face was as resolute as Pupkin's own. As he heard the teller's step on the stair, he turned and waited in the shadow of ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... he descended the winding stair and crossed the landing. One of Ascanio Bellegra's servants passed at that moment. Meschini looked at the fellow quietly, and even gave him a friendly smile, to test his own coolness, a civility which was acknowledged by a familiar nod. The ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... of the prison in New Bailey-street. The masonry was removed to the width necessary for the scaffold, which was then projected over the street, at the outer side of the wall. It was approached or ascended from the prison yard below, by a long wooden stair or stepladder, close alongside the wall on the inside. Against the wall on the inner side, on either hand of the scaffold, were erected platforms within about four feet below the wall coping. These platforms were filled with soldiers, "crouching down," ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... there was indeed!' said I. 'And what troubles me—I am not sure that the other has gone entirely away. By the time it got the length of the head of the stair the tread was ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... libraries, with tall, projecting bookcases forming deep recesses of dusty silence, fit graves for the old hates of forgotten controversy, the dead passions of forgotten lives. At the end of the room, behind the bust of some unknown eighteenth-century divine, an ugly iron corkscrew stair led to a shelf-lined gallery. Nearly every ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... England, crushed and quailing, Kicks his dove-bird down the stair, I shall trust, with faith unfailing, In my KAISER'S conquering air (Still I blame no man for thinking there must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... sense. It may be broadly analyzed as legislation for the construction of factories, for fresh air in factories, for general sanitary conditions, such as the removal of dust and noxious gases, white-washing, sanitary appliances, over-crowding, stair-cases, fire-escapes, and the prohibition of dangerous machinery. As has been said, it was begun in Massachusetts in the fifth decade of the last century, based originally almost entirely on the English factory acts, which were bitterly attacked by the laissez-faire ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... fling your bridges, Pioneers! Upon the ridges Widen, smooth the rocky stair,— They that follow far behind Coming after us, will find Surer, easier footing there; Heart to heart, and hand with hand, From the dawn to dusk of day, Work away! Scouts upon the mountain's peak,— Ye that see the Promised Land, Hearten ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... "Trained stair-climbers should be the healthiest as well as the most beautiful of women, yet," says Mrs. Russell, "a town of stairs given, and I will prophesy thin, eye-circled, cross-looking women." All of this is to be laid to the fact that ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... achievement, from the character of the country. It was conducted over pathless sierras buried in snow; galleries were cut for leagues through the living rock; rivers were crossed by means of bridges that swung suspended in the air; precipices were scaled by stair-ways hewn out of the native bed; ravines of hideous depth were filled up with solid masonry: in short, all the difficulties that beset a wild and mountainous region, and which might appal the most courageous ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... attempts to find them may lead to fanciful interpretations which tend to cloud, rather than to elucidate gospel truths. Bunyan very properly warns his readers against giving the reins to their imaginations and indulging in speculations like those fathers, who in every nail, pin, stone, stair, knife, pot, and in almost every feather of a sacrificed bird could discern strange, distinct, and peculiar mysteries.[3] The same remark applies to the Jewish rabbis, who in their Talmud are full of mysterious shadows. From these rabbinical flints some have thought to extract ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... quaffing fourteen cups of tea,—Eliza, all the while, as she supplied him, entreating him not to drink any more. After breakfast (it being the Sabbath) he drove his two cows and bull past the stoop, raising his stair, and running after them with strange, uncouth gestures; and the last word I heard from him was an exhortation: "Gentlemen, now all of you take your Bibles, and meditate on divine things,"—this being uttered with raised hands, and a Methodistical tone, intermingled, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... And all our life was honeymoon; We did not ask if it were sin, We did not go to kirk to know, We only loved and let the world Hum on its pelfish way below; Marked from our castle in the air, How pigmy its triumphal cars: Eight stories from the entry stair, But ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... path" proved to be very much like the stair of a ruined light-house, and would have seemed to most people almost as bad as going down the precipice itself. But Charlie and Harry Burton, though new to the rocks of the Severn, had had plenty of climbing elsewhere, while as for ...
— Harper's Young People, October 5, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... away until the hour of eleven had arrived, when the great stillness of the house betokened the time for retiring. Accordingly, the chamber-maid was summoned, and with a candle in each hand, she led the way up a wide stair-case, graced with twisted bannisters and of easy ascent, terminating on a long corridor, the floor full of uncertain undulations, running the entire length of the building. At the end was a door, which upon opening, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... soon evident. It took some seconds for my eye to penetrate the darkness, and then I saw a spiral stair ascending perpendicularly, apparently carved from the solid rock. Harry must have perceived it at the same moment, for he turned to me with ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... have not always been broken with impunity. Janet Dalrymple, daughter of the first Lord Stair, secretly engaged herself to Lord Rutherford, who was not acceptable to her parents, either on account of his political principles, or his want of fortune. The young couple broke a piece of gold together, and pledged their troth in the most solemn manner, the ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... dim light on the grass, like a glowworm, and then Arndt saw the elfin mound open again; but this time the palace looked like a dim, gloomy staircase. On the top stair stood the little Hill-man, holding the glowworm lamp, and making many low bows to his new master. Arndt glanced rather fearfully down the staircase; but then he thought of Reutha, and his love for her made him grow bold. He took upon himself a lordly ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... and the evening advanced in an unaccountable manner toward bedtime, so delightful were the hours of getting acquainted. When she felt they must break up, Aunt Janice led the way up the winding stair. ...
— The Quest of Happy Hearts • Kathleen Hay
... herself in holy prayer To worship ever the All Fair; She coins her heart in largess golden, And beggars self on her altar-stair. ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... half-way up the stair, he stopped short, on seeing the two lovers sitting close to each other, the one weeping, and the other trying to console her. There was such an air of infantine candour about them both, and both seemed so miserable, that the hard heart ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... more regiments, and march with all expedition into Germany, in order to reinforce Mareschal Duc de Noailles, who was then encamped with his army on the side of the river Mayne, to watch the motions of the English, Hanoverians, Austrians, and Hessians, under the command of the Earl of Stair. We began our march accordingly, and then I became acquainted with that part of a soldier's life to which I had been hitherto a stranger. It is impossible to describe the hunger and thirst I sustained, and the fatigue ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... the darkness, at the foot of the stair which he knew must lead up into the house, he looked back to see a man come out of the cellar, his figure just dimly seen by the light from within and below, and over the man's shoulders were swung a ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... witness ye, whose thoughts that day In Yarrow's groves were centred, Who through the silent portal arch Of mouldering Newark enter'd; And clomb the winding stair that once Too timidly was mounted By the last Minstrel—not the last!— ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... barge for Whitehall Stair; Salute th' Exchequer Barons there, Then summon round thy civic chair To dinner Whigs and Tories— Bid Dukes and Earls thy hustings climb; But mark my work, Matthias Prime, Ere the tenth hour the scythe of Time ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... pull heem out tout suite An' Emmeline she's helpin' too for place heem on de feet, An' affer dat de ole man's tak' de young peep down de stair, W'ere he is go couch right off, ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... her. The flight was not discovered until nearly three-quarters of an hour after Clarissa had eloped with her baby down that darksome stair. Mrs. Brobson, luxuriating in tea, toast, and gossip before the nursery fire, and relieved not a little by the absence of her one-year-old charge, had been unconscious of the progress of time. It was only when the little clock upon the chimney-piece chimed the half-hour ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... space behind the screen of rags. The old man raked the fire together with an old stair-rod, and having trimmed his smoky lamp (for it was night), with the stem of his pipe, put it into his ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... true his words, sae smooth his speech, His breath's like caller air! His very foot has music in't, As he comes up the stair. And will I see his face again? And will I hear him speak? I'm downright dizzy with the thought,— In ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... Pecheur arose and went forth and Sir Percival followed him. And King Pecheur brought Sir Percival to a certain tower; and he brought him up a long and winding stair; and at the top of the stairway was a door. And King Pecheur opened the door and Sir ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... restraints and comparative poverty of her northern kingdom, and able to surround herself with the splendour she loved out of her French dowry, rode out in all her bravery up the Canongate, where every outside stair and high window would be crowded with spectators, and through the turreted and battlemented gate to the grim fortress on the crown of the hill, making everything splendid with the glitter of her cortege and her own smiles and unrivalled charm. ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... so true a priestess, nor one so pure," he thought, and a strange feeling of sadness came over him, and he thanked her rather abruptly for showing him her treasure, and they went silently back through Sir Timothy's rooms, and down the stair; and in the Italian parlor he said ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... at random, scarcely hearing her chatter, and listening, listening each instant for his step or voice on the stair. ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... one hand on his chair, his blanched face strained, listening. Again! Is it a footstep or simply a delusion of the ear? He rises, pushes aside the curtains into the inner library, where the lamps have almost burnt away, creeps up the wooden stair, and into the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to the beach had made her giddy when she descended with leisure for such dismay; but now, with the tempest flattening her against the stair-case, and her gossamer clutching and clinging to everysurface, and again twisting itself about her limbs, she clambered down as swiftly and recklessly as Barlow himself, and followed over the beach beside ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sunshine, in through the shaded court, up the stair with its painted lords and ladies looking down upon them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... the gallery was weeping silently behind her thick veil, and her worn hand clutched the desk in front of her convulsively. Presently she arose and made her way down the stair, almost unnoticed. Two or three times Luc tried to speak, but could not. "Lift me up," ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that in my heart (which is very open to affection for his gentle kind) there sprung up in a moment a real love for him. Suddenly he lowered his head, and turned eagerly his regard towards the corner of the court-yard where descended the stair-way from the gallery on which I stood; and from this quarter came towards him a smiling, pleasant-faced Indian lad of eighteen or twenty years old, whose dress was a cotton shirt and cotton trousers, ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... outside alone. Gentlemen, it was two hours before I saw her face again. How she got back into the house I do not know. It was not by the garden door, for my eye seldom left it; yet at or near half-past one I heard her voice on the stair above me and saw her descend and melt into the crowd as if she had not been absent from it for more than five minutes. A half-hour later I saw her with Frederick again. They were dancing, but not with the same spirit as before, and even while I watched them they separated. ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... mouth twisted. He saw the little silver box lying there, open, exposed, upon the grass, glittering against the dull green. He turned to the window with desperate, hunted eyes. Already he fancied that he heard their steps upon the stair. He stood, his body flung back, his hands pressing upon the table. "They shan't take me. . . . They shan't take me." The door turned, slowly opened. It was Mrs. Ridge with a duster. He gave a little sigh and rolled over, tumbling back ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... horsemanship. equivocar vr. to mistake. erguir to erect, raise up straight. erial m. unfilled ground. ermita hermitage. esbirro bailiff, guard. escalera staircase. escalon m. step of a stair. escapar vr. to escape. escape m. escape, flight; a todo —— at full speed. escarabajo beetle. escarbar to scratch. escarlata scarlet. escaso scanty, defective, slight. escena scene. esceptico skeptical. esclavo, -a slave. escoba broom. Escocia Scotland. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... though it began brightly, had long been overcast, and the clouds now spat down a few spiteful drops upon us, besides that the east-wind was very chill; so we descended the winding tower-stair, and went next into the garden, one side of which is shut in by almost the only remaining portion of the old city-wall. A part of the garden-ground is devoted to grass and shrubbery, and permeated by gravel-walks, in the centre of one of which is a beautiful stone vase of Egyptian sculpture, that ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in want of a husband now, Then will it please her to step below?" The cat runs quickly up the stair, And lets her tail fly here and there, Until she comes ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... word Martin Stoner rose heavily to his feet and followed his ministering angel along a passage, up a short creaking stair, along another passage, and into a large room lit with a cheerfully blazing fire. There was but little furniture, plain, old-fashioned, and good of its kind; a stuffed squirrel in a case and a wall-calendar ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... see in the lamp-light, Descending the broad hall-stair, Grave Alice and laughing Allegra, ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... step on the stair, and the rustle of skirts, and here was Darthea, pale and grave, but more full in bud, and, I thought, more ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... to break up and prevent our meeting and take the conductors in charge, a very large crowd assembled, both friendly and unfriendly, for the Publicans and their hangers-on were there "to see the fun," and to help in "baiting" the Missionary. Punctually, I ascended the stone stair, accompanied by another Missionary who was also to deliver an address, and announced our opening hymn. As we sang, a company of Police appeared, and were quietly located here and there among the crowd, the ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... made in the church basement, which was the usual scene of the festivity, the minister had offered the use of his house. The long table ran through the doorway between parlour and study, and another was set in the passage outside, with one end under the stairs. The stair-rail was wreathed in fire-weed and early golden-rod, and Temperance texts in smilax decked the walls. When the first course had been despatched the young ladies, gallantly seconded by the younger of the "Sons," helped to ladle out and carry in the ice-cream, which stood in great pails ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... on his heel, and leaving his company behind as a guard, headed toward a stair which led upward from one side of the amphitheatre, and which was protected by a door of heavy, grilled metal work. The stairway seemed to be spiral, and was all enclosed. Kirby realized that it must ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... some years, and then to die—it was so trivial and so material. But now the narrow walls seem in an instant to have fallen, and a boundless horizon stretches around me. And everything appears beautiful. London Bridge, King William Street, Abchurch Lane, the narrow stair, the office with the almanacs and the shining desks, it has all become glorified, tinged with a golden haze. I am stronger: I step out briskly and breathe more deeply. And I am a better man too. God knows there was room for it. But I do try to make an ideal, and to live up to it. I feel ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... an undertone. "You may thank the gods that your kind heart did not betray you into hiding the girl here. I trembled for her and for ourselves. But there is not a sign of her; neither here nor on the secret stair. What a morning—and what a day must follow! There lies Caesar's lion. If his suspicion that it has been poisoned should be proved true, woe to this luckless city, woe to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... course of time I became personally acquainted with each stair in the Queen Anne Street house, and especially with those in the main flight. Business, or pleasure, often compelled me to keep late hours, and on such occasions, on arriving home, I would naturally try to reach my room as quietly as possible. ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... wife's preceding him, the figure was not observed by De Chaulieu till he was lifting his foot to place it on the top stair; the sudden shock caused him to miss the step, and, without uttering a sound, he fell back, and never stopped till he reached the stories at the bottom. The screams of Natalie brought the concierge from below and the maids from above, and an attempt was made to raise ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... there was a comparatively large open space, the centre occupied by a hatchway, which made a convenient seat for about twenty persons, while barrels, coils of rope, and the carpenter's bench afforded perches for perhaps as many more. The canteen, or steerage bar, was on one side of the stair; on the other, a no less attractive spot, the cabin of ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was to remain in absolute silence, motionless, tense, where he was on the stair, and to trust to the chance that the woman did not look up. But Miss Baylis neither looked up nor down: she reached a landing, turned along a corridor with decision, and marched forward. A moment later Spargo heard a sharp double ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... thin, ethereal form. Across the open space they struggled, through the furious bufferings of the gale, sometimes on their feet, sometimes on their hands and knees, till they came to the great wall where a stairway ran up it to an outlook tower. Up this stair they climbed slowly since at times the weight of the wind pinned them against the blocks of stone, till at length they reached its crest and crept into the shelter of the hollow tower. Hence, looking through the loopholes in the ancient masonry, they saw a fearful ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... the building, were completely circular within, and contained the winding stair of the mansion; and whoso ascended them, when the winter wind was blowing, seemed rising by a tornado to the clouds. Midway between the towers was a heavy stone porch, with a Gothic gateway, surmounted ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... flashed upon the sconce and armor and polished floor. Holly and mistletoe, rosemary and bay, and all the decorations of an old-time English Christmas were tastefully arranged. A burst of laughter ran through the hall, as through the ample doorway, and down the broad stair, trooped the Motley train of the Lord of Misrule to open the Christmas revels. A fierce and ferocious-looking fellow was he, with his great green mustache and his ogre-like face. His dress was a gorgeous parti-colored jerkin ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... dim and darkened; Gloom, and sickness, and despair, Dwelling in the gilded chambers. Creeping up the marble stair, Even stilled the voice of mourning— For ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... the projecting steps of a staircase. Three steps were of necessity to project into the boudoir: they are therefore made triangular steps; and instead of being rested on the floor, as usual, they are made fast at their broad end to the stair door, swinging out and in, with that. When it shuts, it runs them under the other steps; when open it brings them out to their proper place. In the kitchen garden, are three pumps, worked by one horse. The pumps are placed in ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... between the old English gentleman and him who ought to be the modern representative of that name, as there is between a racer and a hack, a fine spaniel and a cross of the terrier and bull dog. In our days of polish and refinement, we had a Lord Stair, a Sedley, a Sir John Stepney, a Sir William Hamilton, and many others, as our ambassadors, representing our nation as the best bred in the world; and by their grace and amiability, gaining the admiration of the whole continent. We had, in remoter times, our Lords ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... bold, imperious, master spirit was this, demanding her love and life as if they were his by natural right. It was as though she had been newly roused by a faint knock at the door; and now, before her foot was set upon the stair that led down to the entering guest, ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... crossed it to a stairway of chestnut wood whereof every newel-post was surmounted by the crest of a swan, and searched the saloons above, where also there was wreck and ruin. Then, still mounting the stair, they came to the bed-chambers. From one of these they retreated hastily, since on entering it hundreds of flies buzzing in a corner advised them that something lay there which they did not ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... by a winding stair to the top of one of the towers, where there was a small room ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... never have an idea what the Groac'h's palace was like. It was all made of shells, blue and green and pink and lilac and white, shading into each other till you could not tell where one colour ended and the other began. The staircases were of crystal, and every separate stair sang like a woodland bird as you put your foot on it. Round the palace were great gardens full of all the plants that grow in the sea, with ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... this day appointed, and so the prince my brother has come to prove his valor, and to say that, if any of the knights here assembled choose to meet him in the joust, he will encounter them, one by one, at the stair of Merlin, by the Fountain of the Pine. And his conditions are these: No knight who chances to be thrown shall be allowed to renew the combat, but shall remain prisoner to my brother; but if my brother be overthrown he shall depart out of the country, leaving me as the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... She and James and Rab and I retired. I noticed that he and she spoke little, but seemed to anticipate everything in each other. The following day, at noon, the students came in, hurrying up the great stair. At the first landing-place, on a small well-known blackboard, was a bit of paper fastened by wafers and many remains of old wafers beside it. On the paper were the ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... if by chimney or if by stair he crept, But sure enough he visited the room where Nelly slept. He brought a golden orange, and a monkey red and blue, That climbed a little wooden stick in a way I couldn't do. He hung them in Nell's stocking, and ...
— Christmas Roses • Lizzie Lawson
... was no companion-way up from the cabin puzzled me a little, for I knew nothing of the internal arrangements of steamships; but presently I found a passage leading forward, and by that I came to the stair to the deck of which ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... Roland feared to call, "Denasia!" He hesitated at the foot of the narrow stair and then went softly to the door. All within was still as the grave, but a glimmer of pale light came from under the ill-fitting door. He might be mistaken in the room, but he resolved to try. He turned the handle and there was an instant movement. He went forward and Denasia stood erect, facing ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the house went on diligently; whatever might help it to make a better impression, or afford greater comfort to the expected guests, was carefully done. Mrs. Englefield even talked of getting a new stair-carpet, but contented herself with having the old one taken up and put down again, the stairs washed, and the stair-rods brightened; the spare room, the large corner chamber looking to the north and west, was scrupulously swept and dusted; furniture rubbed; little ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... the umbrellas aren't caught in the stair rail. I saw a beautiful umbrella broken in half like ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... on the bottom stair, at the same time peering aloft. He saw nothing, yet as he proceeded upward every inch of the way was perceptible to his inner feelings. The staircase was cold, dismal, and deserted, but it seemed to him, in his exaltation of soul, like a ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... Don Quixote (Madrid, 1608), together with the first edition of the second part (Madrid, 1615), one hundred and ninety-two pounds; dedication copy to King Charles II. of the Institutions of the Law of Scotland, by Sir James Dalrymple of Stair, afterwards Viscount Stair, two volumes (Edinburgh, 1681), in a remarkably fine contemporary Scotch binding, with the royal arms in gold on the covers, two hundred and ninety-five pounds; a first edition of Robinson Crusoe, three ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... without haste, stepping stately and firm; his chin raised, his face (as he entered the lamplight) strongly illumined, his mouth set hard. There was never a wink of change in his expression; without looking to the right or left, he mounted the stair, passed close to Archie, and entered the house. Instinctively, the boy, upon his first coming, had made a movement to meet him; instinctively he recoiled against the railing, as the old man swept by him in a pomp of indignation. Words were needless; he knew all - perhaps more than all - and the ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... guns, having discovered that Italians were fond of all kinds of noises. The next instant they felt the ground under their feet move up and down and from side to side with confused motion. A sudden great cry arose. One moment and down every stair, out of every door, like animals from their holes, came men, women, and children, with a rush. The ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... a sign, and a stair was brought, and then she called to me, and I mounted and sat beside her in the golden half-castle under the canopy of royal snakes. The girl who stood behind in attendance fanned us both with perfumed feathers, and at a word from Phorenice the mammoth was turned, bearing ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... to cheer vociferously, and almost instantly all the audience followed their example. The procession was on its way through the hall, and in half a minute Lord Provost Chambers, in his official robes, mounted the platform stair; then Principal Sir David Brewster and Lord Rector Carlyle, both in their gold-laced robes of office; then the Rev. Dr. Lee, and the other professors, in their gowns; also the LL.D.'s to be, in black gowns. Lord Neaves and Dr. Guthrie were there in an LL.D.'s black gown and blue ribbons; Mr. Harvey, ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... peaceful house. A single story above the ground-floor, with four windows from which the panes shine cheerfully in the first rays of the sun, and upon the red-tiled roof two attics with pointed gable. The door, which one reaches by a broad stone stair, is framed by two vines, their vigorous branches stretching up to the side of the windows, yielding to the hand, when September is come, their velvety, ruby bunches. Behind the house, a little ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... on the bench in the sun, came one of Eleanor's tirewomen to bid him wait on her mistress. He rose at once and followed her through the hall and up the winding stair, along a gallery hung with wondrous story-telling tapestry, to the bower where Eleanor sat with two of her women busied ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... coming in the door, Please come gently, very gently! Micky might be on the floor! Fact, he might be anywhere! Near the hallstand, by the stair! Hush! step gently, very gently! When ...
— The Bay and Padie Book - Kiddie Songs • Furnley Maurice
... she cried suddenly, "the Boojum will catch us," and picking up her skirts she fairly flew down the narrow stairs. Orde could hear the light swish of her draperies down the hall, and then the pat of her feet on the stair ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... the jeweller, giving him a good kick between two features that luckily were not made of glass. The apprentice tumbled over on to a stair in a way that induced him to discontinue his studies in the language of chests. The shepherd, accompanied by the good jeweller, carried all the baggage to the water-side without listening to the high eloquence of the speaking wood, and having tied several stones to ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... the Prince's rooms. He had just come in, and was opening his letters, while having a cigarette in the smoking-room. A door, covered by curtains, led to a back stair which opened into the courtyard. Cayrol had gone up that way, feeling sure that by so doing he ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
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