"Ceiling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... auspices in 1933, 1934 and 1935, but the people of this country, by an overwhelming vote, are in favor of having the Congress—this Congress—put a floor below which industrial wages shall not fall, and a ceiling beyond which the hours of industrial ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... confess that the breakfast-room is far cosier. The room, in the first place, is of reasonable dimensions; it is hung with Flemish tapestries from designs by Van Eyck representing the Four Seasons, but the walls and ceiling are panelled in oak, and over the mantel carved in bas-relief the inevitable ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... first on one side, and then on the other, and then, by way of variety, turned on his back, with his magenta nose pointing perpendicularly towards the ceiling; but it was all of no use. Do what he would, he couldn't get to sleep, and at last, not long after daybreak, he tumbled out of bed and proceeded ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... operation, and locked the press; but there was no need for any particular hurry, as the discreet Peg seldom knew the bell was rung unless she happened to cast her dim eyes upwards, and to see it shaking against the kitchen ceiling. After a short delay, however, Peg tottered in, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... library, where the Colonel had business to transact with Richards, while the ladies and children proceeded with their explorations. It was rather awful at first in the twilight gloom of the great hall, with a painted mythological ceiling, and cold white pavement, varied by long perspective lines of black lozenges, on which every footfall echoed. The first door that they opened led into a vast and dreary dining- room, with a carpet, forming a crimson roll at one end, and long ranks of faded leathern ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the birds warbling over it, and windows on every side, giving upon a fair garden within the house. The old man brought him into one of the parlours, which was variegated with many-coloured marbles, the ceiling thereof being decorated with ultramarine and glowing gold; and the floor bespread with silken carpets. Here he found ten Shaykhs in mourning apparel, seated one opposite other, weeping and wailing. He marvelled ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... women in evening dress, all bound for one or other of the gay restaurants or theaters close by. And then the theater itself! To walk from the street to the gaily lighted lobby, its walls paneled from floor to ceiling with great mirrors that reflect lovely women and distinguished men. Then in the theater where the rich carpet deadens every footfall and you feel rather than hear the murmur of many voices speaking softly—the ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... Through green elm arches and maple leaves,— Old homesteads sacred to all that can Gladden or sadden the heart of man, Over whose thresholds of oak and stone Life and Death have come and gone There pictured tiles in the fireplace show, Great beams sag from the ceiling low, The dresser glitters with polished wares, The long clock ticks on the foot-worn stairs, And the low, broad chimney shows the crack By the earthquake made a century back. Up from their midst springs the village spire With the crest ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... At five o'clock, M. Destange stated that he was going out. Shears remained alone in the circular gallery that ran round the library, half-way between floor and ceiling. It was growing dark and he was preparing to leave, in his turn, when he heard a creaking sound and, at the same time, felt that there was some one in the room. Minute followed slowly upon minute. And, suddenly, he started: a shadow ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... showed itself and the gleam of the firelight was reflected from it, Avon leaned his own rifle against the door at his side, quickly drew his revolver from the holster at his hip, sprang forward like a cat, and seizing the muzzle of the gun threw it upward toward the ceiling. ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... consisted, as has been mentioned, of but a single remaining apartment, with walls of logs, from whose chinks the clay, with which they had been originally plastered, had long since vanished, with here and there a fragment of a log itself, leaving a thousand gaps for the admission of wind and rain. The ceiling of poles (for it had once possessed a kind of garret) had fallen down under the weight of the rotting roof, of which but a small portion remained, and that in the craziest condition; and the floor ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... In the old oak hall Preparations were made for the Christmas ball. Gay garlands were hung from ceiling and wall; The Yule log was laid, the tables arrayed, And the Lady Lorraine and her whole cavalcade, From the pompous old steward to the scullery-maid, Were all in a fluster, Excitement and bluster, And everything shone with a ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... earth. The very room in which Voltaire uttered his famous prediction—that "the time would arrive when the Bible would be regarded only in the light of an old curiosity,"—is now used for a Bible depository, and is "piled to the ceiling with that rare old book." Copies of the Bible have been multiplied a million fold, and scattered broadcast over the earth. The other witness,—the church, has since then, also, been greatly magnified. In this age of missions and Bibles, the number of believers ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... their eyes over the walls and ceiling without being able to see where the wonder would happen, for the childish and cunning Huns used to amuse their guests with ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... train before his journey was completed, as he felt it impossible to sit in the carriage and look at the alarm bell without pulling it. I have watched him seated in the smoking-room of the club we both attended, in which the star-light in the centre of the ceiling was shaded by a rather primitive screen of stretched tissue paper, gazing at it for half-an-hour at a time, and eventually taking all the coins out of his pocket to throw them one after another at ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... in the Palace of Justice in Rome there is a remarkable chamber where visitors are sometimes taken. The remarkable thing about it is the decorations. The ceiling and walls and even the floors are covered with strangely painted frescoes. That is, they seem strange as one enters. They seem grotesque. They do not harmonize. They are out of touch with each other, and make a bewildering maze of confusion. ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... the eyes of these dreamers, we should have seen their tidy little wooden house disappear, and two-story brick with a cast-iron fence in front of it take its place; we should have seen a three-globed gas-chandelier grow down from the parlor ceiling; we should have seen the homely rag carpet turn to noble Brussels, a dollar and a half a yard; we should have seen the plebeian fireplace vanish away and a recherche, big base-burner with isinglass windows take position and spread awe around. And ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... parlor had its own slightly pathetic cachet. The walls and ceiling had been painted by rather a bad artist from Florence at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but the furniture was good of its kind—a strange dark orange lacquer and gilt—and here most of the treasures which had not yet been disposed of for daily bread, were hoarded ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... still turned to the ceiling. Carlos, standing behind his chair, opened his mouth a little in a half smile. I was really angry with O'Brien by that time, with his air of omniscience, superiority, and self-content, as if he were talking to a child or someone very ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... very much abused. I can't say but what Nancy had pretty much the same idea; for when the young ones were all in bed at last, she took her knitting and sat down the other side of the fire, sort of turning her head round and looking up at the ceiling, as if she were trying her best to forget I was there. That was a way she had when I was courting, and we went along to huskings together, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... went with her to the library; in the center of the broad square room stood the tree, its slender tip just escaping the ceiling. ...
— Patricia • Emilia Elliott
... examining tall bottles of sugar-stick, accustomed receptacles apparently for the pen. Helayna's raven fringe showed traces of a dive into the flour-bin. Mrs. Coolahan remained motionless in the midst, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, an exposition of suffering and of eternal remoteness from ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... walked up and down the narrow gangway which runs from end to end of the police-vans. Day had broken, the four sergents de ville inhaled the outside air and gazed at the passing country through a species of port-hole which borders each side of the ceiling of the passage. Suddenly a loud voice issued from one of the cells which had remained closed, and cried out, "Hey! there! it is very cold, cannot I relight my ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... lamp shone out; and even on the furthest shelf, high up under the ceiling, one could count every single last. "That's a regular sun!" said the young master, and he put his hand to his face; "why, good Lord, I believe it warms the room!" He was quite flushed, and his ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the gravelly mud, and the momentary clatter of hoofs upon some rocky outcrop in the road. Conversation had ceased; the light-hearted young editor in the front seat, more than suspected of dangerous levity, had relapsed into silence since the heavy man in the middle seat had taken to regarding the ceiling with ostentatious resignation, and the thin female beside him had averted her respectable bonnet. An occasional lurch of the coach brought down a fringe of raindrops from its eaves that filmed the windows and shut out the sodden prospect ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... low tunnel, with a roof that will give a purchase to the ambulatory nipples of the back. The larva therefore changes its manner of boring utterly: yesterday, the gallery, suited to a wandering life in the thickness of the wood, was a wide burrow with a very low ceiling, almost a slot; to-day the passage is cylindrical: a gimlet could not bore it more accurately. This sudden change in the system of road-making on behalf of the coming insect once more suggests for our meditation the eminent degree of foresight possessed ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... gone away early in the night, being frightened to death, she said, to seek more genial companionship than mine. So I was alone, with the blending light of the early dawn and that of the lamp burning feebly from the ceiling. I sat up in my berth and cautiously unstitched the lining in the breast of my jacket. Here, months ago, when I first began to foresee this emergency, and while I was still allowed the use of my money, I had concealed one by one a few five-pound notes of the Bank of England. I counted them over, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... the room by clapping his hands and saying "Sho!" he passed up the narrow aisle of benches, replacing the forgotten arithmetic, and picking up from the desks here and there certain fragmentary pieces of plaster and crumbling wood that had fallen from the ceiling, as if this grove of Academus had been shedding its leaves overnight. When he reached his own desk he lifted the lid and remained for some moments motionless, gazing into it. His apparent meditation however was simply ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... far down into his pockets and laid his head back, gazing up at the ceiling. "What puzzles me," he mused, "is the attraction such a woman has, at the start, for such ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... the entrance hall was roomy with an old-fashioned fireplace in the corner, the drawing-room contained an abundance of those nooks and corners beloved of modern decorators, and Peggy fairly capered about with exultation when she entered the dining-room and beheld panelled oak walls and a frescoed ceiling. ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... beautiful, with great glass doors at either end, through which shine the courtyards where bamboos fray the sunlight and geraniums glare red. The floor is of soft red tiles, oiled and polished like glass, the walls are washed grey-white, the ceiling is painted with pink roses and birds. This is half-way between the outer world and the interior world, it ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... The little man's point was everywhere upon him and he thrusting blindly at the air. He might have been pinked a score times over, he was for all he knew. And then on a sudden his own point touched something. Next moment it was struck up to the ceiling. Some one called out "A hit." He saw the two seconds standing between the swords and a red scratch ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... otherwise. She had hardly time to greet Rose and the doctor before the boys were about her, each clamouring for her to see his gift and rejoice over it with him, for "little Mum" went halves in everything. The great horns skirmished about her as if to toss her to the ceiling; the war clubs hurtled over her head as if to annihilate her; an amazing medley from the four quarters of the globe filled her lap, and seven excited boys all ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... back to Germany with their name on. My friends said naturally they expected them to take food and wine and even a change of clothing, but in their own home the German officers quartered there had taken the very carpets off the floor and the chandeliers from the ceiling, and old carved cupboards that had been in the family for generations, and sent them back to Germany. They all begged me to make these facts public when I got back to England. Writing letters was useless as they never got through. Other ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... bestowed around him all the things he best liked to live among. Enormous glass cases, filled with the illustrations of science, and not less of the philosopher's investigating patience, lined all the room; except where dark-filled shelves of books ran up between them from the floor to the ceiling. A pleasant cloth-covered table, with books and philosophical instruments, stood towards one side of the room, a little table with a lamp at the other; and scattered about, all over, were big stout comfortable ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... Sanspareil. During their speeches Captain Salt sat perfectly silent, either resting his head on his hands and stifling his yawns as though politely concealing his weariness, or drumming quietly with his fingers on the table and staring up at the ceiling like ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... cheerful blaze, the interior of the Projectile looked like a comfortable little chamber, with its circular sofa, nicely padded walls, and dome shaped ceiling. ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... old colonial kitchen, with its corner fireplace, wide and roomy, and bricked to the ceiling, Mr. Clemcy led the way. It was a big room, and not used for its original purpose; being filled with cabinets, and shelves on which reposed some of the most beautiful specimens of china and various relics and curiosities and mementos of travel, Miss Salisbury thought she had ever seen. And ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... like a flash, the dim room began to frown again, and Phil to draw his breath heavily, when the girl came back as suddenly bringing an apple and a length of string. Mounting a chair, she fixed one end of the string to the lath of the ceiling by the peck, the parchment oatcake pan, and the other end she tied to the ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... heavy odour of wine, and food, and perfumes, with the sunny grace and cleanliness of Greek houses. Against the wall stood presses and chests fretted with fantastic Oriental carving; illuminated rolls of parchment lay in heaps in a corner; a lamp of strange form hung from the ceiling, and shed a dim and lurid light upon an object which chilled the youth's blood for a moment—a bracket against the wall, on which, in a plate of gold, engraven with mystic signs, stood the mummy of an infant's head; one of those teraphim, from which, as Philammon knew, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... stairs into a basement. This basement was divided into a dining-room at the right of the stairs and a kitchen at the left. Both rooms were plastered and whitewashed—the plaster laid directly upon the earth walls, as it used to be in dugouts. The floor was of hard cement. Up under the wooden ceiling there were little half-windows with white curtains, and pots of geraniums and wandering Jew in the deep sills. As I entered the kitchen I sniffed a pleasant smell of gingerbread baking. The stove was very large, with bright nickel trimmings, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... as a clerk in the Post Office," said Fanny very boldly. Amaldina shook her head sadly. The Marchioness clasped her hands together and raised her eyes to the ceiling with a look of supplication. Were not her darlings to be ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... opened the door and slipped into the room. It was a room like his own at all points, only lower in the ceiling, and containing a bed. A woman was standing with her back to the window, as if she had just turned about from looking into the churchyard. It was Kate. She had been expecting Philip, and waiting for him, but she seemed to be overwhelmed with confusion. ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... face and the singularly piercing eye who sits facing us,"—Blanco paused,—"is the Duke Louis Delgado. He is the nephew of the late King of Galavia, and if—" the Spaniard gave an expressive shrug, and watched the smoke ring he had blown widen as it floated up toward the ceiling—"if by any chance, or mischance, Prince Karyl, who is to be crowned at Puntal three days hence, should be called to his reward in heaven, the gentleman who sits there would be crowned King of Galavia in ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... on his back and stared at the darkness that hid the ceiling. Ah! A profuse perspiration had broken out on his neck and chest. To give himself more air he pulled down the too generous supply of bed clothes, and in imagination he ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... his eyes toward the ceiling. What was it that was dangling above him, with its point almost touching his head? It was a sharp sword, and it was hung by only a single horse-hair. What if the hair should break? There was danger every moment that it would ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin
... Mallery at your service," responded Theodore, tossing his boy aloft until he tried to reach the ceiling and yelled with glee. While Winny, after glancing at her husband's face and noting his moved look, answered simply: "We ...
— Three People • Pansy
... sovereign, who knelt, kissed the Gospels, then was escorted processionally into the sanctuary. His prie-dieu was placed at fifteen feet from the altar, on a platform, about which was a magnificent canopy hung from the ceiling of the Cathedral. ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... the next story. These two rooms are rented to a commercial college. This door opposite admits you to the hall, which has seats for nine hundred persons. It is extremely simple, but the tints of the walls and ceiling are delightful, and you have only to listen to those members of the —— Club, who have leased it for their concerts, to realize that its acoustic ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... radicals showed their faces at a port-hole in a door, after which they passed guards with masklike helmets. In a few seconds they found themselves in a brilliantly lighted hall, very large and commodious except for the heavy pillars which supported its low ceiling. It ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... cheek-bones wide apart, chin and forehead melting into the cheeks to complete the perfect round, and the nose, broad and pudgy, equidistant from the circumference, flattened against the very centre of the face like a dough-ball upon the ceiling. Perhaps that is why I hated him, for truly he had become an offense to my eyes, and I believed the earth to be cumbered with his presence. Perhaps my mother may have been superstitious of the moon and looked upon it over the wrong shoulder ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... fine frenzy rolling, Glances from ceiling to floor, from floor to ceiling; And, as imagination bodies forth The form of things unknown, the upholsterer's pencil Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing A ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... for a moment or two round my shelves, I remembered that the book was in the dining-room. I left Pasquale and went downstairs. I knew it was on one of the top shelves near the ceiling. Now, my dining-room is lit by one shaded electrolier over the table, so that the walls of the room are in deep shadow. This has annoyed me many times when I have been book-hunting. I really must have some top lights put in. To stand on a chair and burn wax matches in order to find a particular ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... resemblance to a human form, or rather shadow, than to anything else. As it stood, wholly apart and distinct from the air and the light around it, its dimensions seemed gigantic, the summit nearly touching the ceiling. While I gazed, a feeling of intense cold seized me. An iceberg before me could not more have chilled me; nor could the cold of an iceberg have been more purely physical. I feel convinced that it was not the cold caused by fear. As I continued ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... bit startled at so novel a suggestion but assented with a nod. In a twinkling the operator had suspended a roller-screen from the chandelier dependent from the ceiling, pulled down the window shades and attached his projecting ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... hollow jaw and sunken eye, ill beseeming the richness of his mother church! Ah, why so slow, thou meagre doctor? See how the archdeacon, speechless in his agony, deposits on the board his cards, and looks to heaven or to the ceiling for support. Hark, how he sighs, as with thumbs in his waistcoat pocket he seems to signify that the end of such torment is not yet even nigh at hand! Vain is the hope, if hope there be, to disturb that meagre doctor. With care precise he places every card, weighs well the value of each mighty ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... the mats and boards all taken up, so that we walked over the rafters. But strange to see how hard matter the plaister of Paris is that is there taken up, as hard as stone! And pity to see Holben's work in the ceiling blotted on and only whited over! My wife this day with Hales, to sit for her hand to be ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... lasted for over seven years—the autobiographer has little to say; nothing, indeed, except that he "cannot omit mentioning" that anecdote with which everybody, I suppose, who has ever come across the briefest notice of Sterne's life is familiar. The schoolmaster "had the ceiling of the schoolroom new-whitewashed, and the ladder remained there. I, one unlucky day, mounted it, and wrote with a brush, in large capital letters, LAU. STERNE for which the usher severely whipped me. My master ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... of smoke to the ceiling, and then said, with a laugh like a gurgle: "I'm not likely to, though. That eternal dun was here again to-day. I had to tell him that the marriage would come off in a year certain. That was the only ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... oot o't: it's my hoose," said Miss Horn, in a low, hoarse voice, restrained from rising to tempest pitch only by the consciousness of what lay on the other side of the ceiling above her head. "I wad as sune lat a cat intill the deid chaumer to gang loupin' ower the corp, or may be waur, as I wad lat yersel' intill 't Bawby Catanach; an' there's ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... nearly full of beautiful serpents, some of them as long as a man. You would have revelled in those worms! They were neatly disposed about the sides of the cave, an even dozen in each berth, and some odd ones swinging from the ceiling in hammocks, like sailors. By the time I had counted them roughly, as they lay, it was dark, and snowing like the mischief. There was no getting back to head-quarters that night, and there was room for ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... up-stairs, across another and a loftier hall with an imitation groined ceiling, and into a large room at the back of the house, which by virtue of a case of morocco bound books, clearly not often disturbed, was the library. The young man flung himself into a chair behind an immense flat-topped desk and ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... figure drawn up, poised, erect, her head thrown back, and her eyes fixed on the Elder's face. The silence of the great audience was so intense that the buzzing of flies circling around and around near the ceiling could be heard, while the people all leaned forward as with one emotion, their eyes on the principals before them, straining to ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... with me for all that," replied Sidonia. "Listen, I shall re-enter my room, and tap on the ceiling. Look where I strike and you will find the traces of a trap which used to be there, and has since been fastened up. Find the means of removing the piece of wood which closes the hole, and ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... part of the sash by frames with mosquito gauze, so that the sun and air found free admission, and yet our little rover could not pass out. On the first sunny day he took an exact survey of our apartment from ceiling to floor, humming about, examining every point with his bill,—all the crevices, mouldings, each little indentation in the bed-posts, each window-pane, each chair and stand; and, as it was a very simply furnished seaside apartment, his scrutiny was soon finished. We wondered, at first, what this ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... between them and the small salons in the rear were of fabrics specially made for the purpose. They had an old gold ground and large, raised figures of conventional design in a darker shade, with dark red threads. The tier fronts, ceiling, and proscenium were of a light color, the aim having been to obtain a prevailing tint of ivory. Amid the filigree designs of the pilasters, which carried the work above the curtain opening, were pictures of singing and playing cherubs, and back ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... which the shock must have been nearly or quite vertical. "The damage inflicted on buildings included within this band was," he says, "very characteristic of the nature of the shock; the walls having received but slight injury, whilst almost every floor and ceiling had been totally destroyed. In fact," he adds, "many houses would have required no other repairs than the replacing of the divisions between the different storeys." The shaded central area in Fig. 15 represents this ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... the Doxology, or numbering the books in the Bible, or some other such device as we deemed within the pale of religious employments. When all these failed, and it still wanted an hour of meeting time, we looked up at the ceiling, and down at the floor, and all around into every corner, to see what we could do next; and happy was he who could spy a pin gleaming in some distant crack, and forthwith muster an occasion for getting down ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... into the circulating library. On three sides of the room were bookcases reaching to the rather low ceiling. For the rest, the place was provided with a ladder to be used in gathering such fruits of literature as hung out of reach. And then there was a big, thick book, in which the diligent and reliable young man of Protestant faith was to enroll the ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... fruits of various kinds (amongst which cucumbers and carrots are enumerated) were hung from festoons of ivy, bay, rosemary, and different flowers, the whole lavishly sprinkled with gold spangles: the ceiling was painted like a sky, with stars, sunbeams, and clouds, intermixed with scutcheons of the royal arms; and a profusion of glass lustres illuminated the whole. In this enchanted palace the French ambassadors were entertained by the maiden queen at several splendid banquets, while her ministers were ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... the Dauphin, passing other white-gloved lackeys, each a separate perfection of punctiliousness; and passed through a marble hallway, muted with rugs of the Orient, and came into a vast high chamber, large as a theater—marble walls and ceiling, tapestries, moulded plaster and gilt in moderation, silken ropes instead of handrails on the stairways, electric lights so shaded that each looked a huge but softly unobtrusive pearl. The chamber was pervaded by, was ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... from adjoining buildings, was very considerably damaged, however only to such an extent as to allow its restoration to the original condition. The roof frame is burned to the beginning of the curve of the dome. The inner ceiling has prevented the fire from spreading to the inner part of the church, containing rich art treasures. Above the choir, however, the inner ceiling gave way, thereby partially damaging the upper part of the rococo altar of stone which was without ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... page 216 of this work, allusion will be found by name to some of the brilliant wits who graced this festive board, and gave a lustre to the feast. In the old place of meeting the identical gridiron on which Richards and Loutherbourg operated was to be seen attached to the ceiling, emblematical of the origin of the society, which may now be considered as the only relic left of that social intercourse which formerly existed in so many shapes between those who were distinguished for their noble birth ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... at the bottom of the ladder. These trenches are badly sited, badly constructed, difficult of access from the rear, and swarming with large, fat, unpleasant flies, of the bluebottle variety. They go to sleep, chiefly upon the ceiling of one's dug-out, during the short hours of darkness, but for twenty hours out of twenty-four they are very busy indeed. They divide their attentions between stray carrion—there is a good deal hereabout—and ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... by a Saracenic cloister, from the ceiling of which an occasional lamp threw a gleam upon some Eastern arms hung up against the wall. This passage led to the armoury, a room of moderate dimensions, but hung with rich contents. Many an inlaid breastplate, many a Mameluke scimitar and Damascus ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... do at all," murmured the youth in some dismay, for it seemed that one more movement would carry down the entire ceiling below. He tried to retreat. There was a great cracking sound, and before he could help himself the young fireman went sprawling into the room below in the midst of a ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... to lay a course or two of brick in mortar against each floor, filling the space between the inner base board and the outer covering entirely full and solid, leaving never the faintest hint of the beginning of a chance for mice. Then when you hear the dear little creatures galloping over the ceiling, driving hickory-nuts before them and making noise enough for a whole battalion of wharf rats, there will be a melancholy satisfaction in knowing that you did your best to keep them out, and these brick courses will make the house warmer by ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... him, which were very well calculated to augment his confusion. He saw divers skeletons hung by the head, the stuffed skin of a young alligator, a calf with two heads, and several snakes suspended from the ceiling, with the jaws of a shark, and a starved weasel. On another funeral table he beheld two spheres, between which lay a book open, exhibiting outlandish characters, and mathematical diagrams. On one side stood an ink-standish with paper; and ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... The ceiling of the new room was to be adorned by the paintings of the best masters in Venice, and it became of great importance to raise the light near that gorgeous roof, as well as to keep the tone of illumination in the Council Chamber serene; ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... to see if Thornton really looked like a lunatic, but I got no satisfaction from him, for I had once seen a man who might have been his brother, and then I had been playing cricket against an asylum. He was lying back in his chair gazing at the ceiling, and I pulled Omar Khayyam out of the case and put it on the table for Jack to see. Then I sat down and waited for results, but I had to make no end of signs before he would take any notice of the book, for he was in such a state of despondency that I believe he thought ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... build a nest somewhere on the outskirts of my solar plexus, and two hours later they had about 233 children attending the public school in my medusa oblongata; and every time school would let out for recess I would go up in the air and hit the ceiling ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... "we must have some money to-night. I'll treat you, and give you a pound each," and rising, he placed his tumbler in the middle of the table, and wished for twenty pounds. No sooner had he wished than a ball of fire came through the ceiling, and the twenty sovereigns fell into the tumbler. Everyone was taken aback, and there was a noise as if a bomb had burst, and the fireball disappeared, and rolled down the garden path, the landlord following it. After this they each drank what they liked, and ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson
... so to speak, of the place where you enter the house, that ceiling is, in fact, the ceiling of the second floor, not the first. The two floors are made one here; so that ascending this turning stairs, you seem going up into a kind of soaring tower, or lighthouse. At the second landing, midway up the chimney, is a mysterious door, entering to a mysterious ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... understanding considering them, which approves the work and acquiesces in it. The passions, and the imagination which principally raises them, have here very little to do. When a room appears in its original nakedness, bare walls and a plain ceiling: let its proportion be ever so excellent, it pleases very little; a cold approbation is the utmost we can reach; a much worse proportioned room with elegant mouldings and fine festoons, glasses, and other merely ornamental furniture, will make the imagination revolt against the reason; it will ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... vertically, helicopter wings fluttering like a soaring hawk's. Up to the passenger air lane at nine thousand: higher to twelve, the track of the international and supply ships; higher still, to the fourteen thousand ceiling of the antiquated machine. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... sister, play at forfeits and twilight, and blindman's buff. These innocent gambols they carried on in the wide entrance hall. Some flags had been hung, to please Milly, against the heavy beams of the ceiling, and the gardener had filled every niche and ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... and led the way to what had been the billiard room of "The Billows," but which was the laboratory of "The Monstrosity." The first thing my eyes fell upon were two gleaming metal objects suspended from chains let into the ceiling. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... long room with a low ceiling, dirty floor with no carpet on, a few old chairs, with and without backs, and a walnut table that looked as if it once had leaves. In one corner was a clock, that stopped some time before the war commenced, as the old man afterwards told us, and in the ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... ceiling with wide-spread hands. "There's no poetry in his soul," he mourned, "no blood in his veins!" He faced Don scornfully. "Donald P. Gilbert is your name, my son, and the P stands for Practical. All right, then, draw up a chair ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... such sacrilege of her library had taken place for years; not since her Uncle Reuben had come home from China. The waves of smoke must have caught the expression on her face, for she had hardly reached Oliver's chair before they began stealing along the ceiling in long, slanting lines until they reached the doorway, when with a sudden swoop, as if frightened, and without once looking back, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and placed a greasy box of matches on the top of the container; she read for a moment out of a filthy, begrimed devotionary printed in large type; she repeated several prayers with her eyes raised to the ceiling, then began to undress. The night was stifling; in that hole the heat was horrible. Petra got into bed, crossed herself, put out the lamp, which smoked for a long time, stretched herself out and laid her head upon the pillow. A worm in one of the pieces ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... reasonable tone of this amazing project. Mr. Blunt sat by very detached, his eyes roamed here and there all over the cafe; and it was while looking upward at the pink foot of a fleshy and very much foreshortened goddess of some sort depicted on the ceiling in an enormous composition in the Italian style that he let fall casually the words, "She will manage it ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... from his mouth and gazed blankly at the ceiling for a few moments in silence. "His Majesty?" he ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... knee in his hands, gazing blandly at the ceiling and, in judicial fashion, summing up his relative's failings and virtues, when he was interrupted. And the interruption was a startling one. Martha Phipps sprang to her feet and faced him, her cheeks crimson and her ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... what you—we think sir. What matters is what Uncle Hugh thought." He turned to Mrs. Shirley with an extraordinary softening of tone. "Couldn't you keep it? When he died ... in the room over this"—with a little gasp her glance flew to the ceiling as though this topographical detail had brought her a sharp realization of that long-past scene—"he made us promise that you should have it, all of it. He felt that you needed it; he worried ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... inconvenient, but also just as quaint, as on the day of their erection. There were gloomy recesses enough, but there were likewise graceful carvings, mottoes, rare tracery and wood-work; while, strange to say, in several chambers grotesque wooden birds were suspended from the ceiling like malformed ducks, conveying at first no idea of the Holy Dove which the old lords had desired to symbolize, yet probably in those unquiet days their best conception of this emblem ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... staircases, columns, statues, groups, bas-reliefs, vases, and pictures were scattered here and there in rich profusion, besides cascades and fountains innumerable. The large salon, octagonal in shape, had a high, vaulted ceiling, and its flooring of mosaic looked like a rich carpet embellished with birds, butterflies, arabesques, fruits, ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... so absorbed as to render him unconscious of all that passed around his person. Ludlow saw, with pain, that blood discolored the deck at his feet, and that a seaman lay dead within reach of his arm. The rent plank and shattered ceiling showed the spot where the destructive ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... we more quickly get into our clothing and step outside. The hallway and rooms were piled with debris. Plaster, laths, broken pictures, and furniture lay in shapeless confusion on every hand. We came to the staircase. Part was gone; every step was likewise covered with the ruins of broken ceiling and wall. Devastation was everywhere, everywhere. Trusting the Lord, I landed safely on that tottering staircase, Reba quickly following; and soon we were with the frightened population out on the streets, gazing, well-nigh speechless, at the awful ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... this same skyscraper, "that fellow sent the message about the easterly breeze that blew west and I located the station at that hotel. This morning I went over to see how the place looked. It's a wonderful hotel, that one; palm garden in the middle of it, marble columns, fountain, painted sheet iron ceiling that'd make you dizzy to look at, and the finest dressed people you ever ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... retorted the Governor. But the mayor's stare was again wide-open and compelling, and His Excellency's gaze shifted to Mac Tavish and then jumped off that uncomfortable object and found refuge on the ceiling. ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... next morning long before the rising-bell sounded its shrill summons through the long corridors. When she opened her eyes she gazed at the ceiling above in perplexity. She still seemed to feel the tossing motion of the boat, and half believed the bell to be the call to the table, where she should again hear the cheery voice of Harris and meet the tolerant smile of Mrs. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... fine series is that by Pinturicchio in the Church of S. Maria del Popolo, at Rome (in the third chapel on the right). It is comprised in five lunettes round the ceiling, beginning with the Birth of the Virgin, and is remarkable for ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... however, which moved and taught her more than all the rest—the lamp, namely, that hung from the ceiling, which she always saw alight, though she never saw the flame, only the slight condensation towards the centre of the alabaster globe. And besides the operation of the light itself after its kind, the indefiniteness of the globe, and the softness of the light, giving her the feeling as if her eyes ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... contained. The state which Oxford especially displayed on solemn occasions rivalled that of sovereign princes. When her Chancellor, the venerable Duke of Ormond, sate in his embroidered mantle on his throne under the painted ceiling of the Sheldonian theatre, surrounded by hundreds of graduates robed according to their rank, while the noblest youths of England were solemnly presented to him as candidates for academical honours, he made an appearance scarcely less regal than that which his master made in the Banqueting ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... exclaimed Mr. Stevens, and his pale eyes, much wider, now wandered up from the Persian rug beneath his boots to the elaborately carved ceiling above his head. ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... were masterly paintings of great folk, globes showing all the stars fast in the sky, and drawings of the world and all its parts, so real that one could see the savages in the New World hanging to the under side by their feet, like flies upon the ceiling. How they stuck was more than Nick could make out; and where they landed if they chanced to slip and fall troubled him a deal, until in the sheer multiplication of wonders he could not wonder ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... stood a little ajar, and through the crack Leothric entered and tried to continue straight on, but could get no farther, for the whole room seemed to be full of festoons of ropes which swung from wall to wall and were looped and draped from the ceiling. The whole chamber was thick and black with them. They were soft and light to the touch, like fine silk, but Leothric was unable to break any one of them, and though they swung away from him as he ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... ceiling in a church in Cadiz the scaffolding broke and he fell, injuring himself so seriously that ...
— Stories Pictures Tell - Book Four • Flora L. Carpenter
... to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons. It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... agony than pen could describe, even were it guided by the mind of Dante. Who can feel the horrors of the horrible malady, aggravated as it is by the almost ever-abiding consciousness that it is self-sought. Hideous faces appeared on the wall and on the ceiling and on the floors; foul things crept along the bedclothes, and glaring eyes peered into mine. I was at one time surrounded by millions of monstrous spiders that crawled slowly over every limb, whilst the beaded drops of perspiration would start to my brow, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... blazing peat-fire scattered capering shadows across the smooth, stone floor, flickered among the dim rows of hams suspended from the ceiling and on the panelled cupboards of dark, glistening oak. A servant-girl, spreading the cloth for supper, clattered her clogs in and out of the kitchen: old Mrs. Garstin was stooping before the hearth, tremulously turning some girdle-cakes that ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... most attractive room in the house was the library, and she passed some of the happiest hours of her life in its quiet recesses. Here, every bit of wall-space, half way to the ceiling upon three sides, was given over to books; while the fourth, that opposite the door, contained a most artistic fireplace, above which, in lieu of the sometime mirror, the chimney had been divided to insert a window, one perfect sheet of plate glass, almost as clear as the ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... still in a chair against the wall, beside the old clock, and stared about him; at the hams and bunches of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling; at the chiffonnier, with its red baize doors under a brass trellis-work; at the high wooden settle, the framed funeral cards, and the two or three coloured prints, now brown with age, which Reuben had hung up twenty years before, to celebrate his marriage. Hannah was propitiated ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cellar. A fruit cellar should be underneath some other building rather than the dwelling, or a fruit house may be built entirely above the ground. A house to keep fruit properly must be built upon the principle of a refrigerator. Its walls, floor, and ceiling should be double, and the space between filled with sawdust. The doors and windows should be double; and as light is undesirable, the windows should be provided with shutters. There should be a small stove for use if needed to keep a ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... protested Bart, and he picked her up in his arms and jumped her toward the ceiling of the low shack as if she were a little girl—but then, to be sure, she ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... of December 4, there was a heavy fall of snow and in the morning we awoke to find ourselves in fairyland. We were living in a great white palace, with ceiling and walls of filmy glittering webs. The long, delicate strands of gray moss which draped themselves from tree to tree and branch to branch were each one converted into threads of crystal, forming a filigree ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... around. He did not know this place. The gleaming white metal of walls and ceiling was unfamiliar. There was a slight, persistent tingling vibration in everything ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... round the room. It was very like her old one at the cottage, and its sloping ceiling and bare white walls seemed familiar and homelike; it was a comfort, too, to see that its tiny window looked towards the hills. As she observed all this she took off her bonnet, and was immediately startled by a ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... the small office listened to that tirade in embarrassed silence. Jason Bolt fidgeted in his chair and grew pink to the tips of his ears. Herman Krech, as became a tactful bystander, gazed at the floor, stared at the ceiling, studied the glowing tip of his cigar, peered through the grimy window at the uninspiring view of Hambleton and generally comported himself with discretion and savoir faire. Inwardly, he was wondering if he had any right to inflict this termagant tanner on his unsuspecting ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... love is to be in death, to be dead—which is preposterous: corpses don't love. Presently we shall see that Isolda died in a state of exaltation akin to the state of being in love; but that does not establish the thesis. Blake, for hours before he died, shouted till the ceiling rang for joy to think that he was soon to be with God: does that prove that mysticism and death are one? Mr. Chamberlain, in his exegesis of Tristan, will have it that Wagner composed the opera to demonstrate the ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... a vapor emanating from the body, as the "death-damp" increased, and outer "awareness" failed. This vapor seemed to adhere together until it stood near the head, rounded and nearly reaching the ceiling. Then the "spirit form" passed out from the top of the head, was inclosed in the ball of "vapor," and together they ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... the Russian ambassador, Count Orloff, whose gigantic figure was all in a blaze with jewels, and in whose demeanour the untamed ferocity of the Scythian might be discerned through a thin varnish of French Politeness. As he stalked about the small parlour, brushing the ceiling with his toupee, the girls whispered to each other, with mingled admiration and borror, that he was the favoured lover of his august mistress; that be had borne the chief part in the revolution to which she owed her throne; and that his huge hands, now glittering with diamond rings, had given the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... rooms in the dungeon. The one they put me in was about five by eight. It has steel walls and ceiling, and a granite floor. The only light that comes in passes through a slit in the door. The slit is an inch wide and five inches long. It doesn't give much light, because the door is thick. It's about four inches thick, and is made of oak and sheet-steel, ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... the curiosities of the town, was at the end of the garden, to which it opened through a glass door. Picture a large room hung from floor to ceiling with firearms and swords; weapons from every country in the world. Guns, carbines, rifles, blunderbusses, knives, spears, revolvers, daggers, arrows, assegais, knobkerries, knuckledusters and I ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... no reply as he sat down upon the ground by his mother's side. He was too happy to take offence at anything she might say. He had heard a great piece of news through the stove-pipe hole in the ceiling of the little bedroom. Empty had a reputation to sustain, and his conscience never troubled him as to how ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... the Roses, and rebuilt in the later fashion, with a friendly-looking front, containing two large windows, and a porch projecting between them. The hall reached to the top of the house, and had a waggon ceiling, with mastiffs alternating with roses on portcullises at the intersections of the timbers. This was the family sitting and dining room, and had a huge chimney never devoid of a wood fire. One end had a ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... read the paragraph; folded up the paper, and placed it on the couch beside him; looked at the ceiling; glanced round the room; turned his keen eyes ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... a long, narrow room, with a low whitewashed ceiling, across which ran two beams. A pot-pourri stood on the little table in the centre, and there were two beds, ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... brilliantly lighted, saffron-papered room, in which a dozen card-tables were arranged, and thence into the receiving room. This was a large room, with a splendidly inlaid and polished floor, the walls covered with crimson satin, the cornices heavily incrusted with gold, and the ceiling beautifully painted in arabesque. The massive fauteuils and sofas, as also the drapery, were of crimson satin with a profusion of gilding. The ubiquitous portrait of the Emperor was the only picture, and was the same you see everywhere. This crimson room had two doors ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the right sort of summer day? Beyond the bar steamers could just be seen emitting their long, smoky ribbons over the water, that from the distance seemed so close to the sky as to be merely a first floor with that blue mottled ceiling. A few daring swimmers would work their way out in canoes, taking the rollers at constant risk of submersion, then come sailing in like a shot, never making a break in the dash until past the bathers, and out on the very beach each little ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... In her terror she dared not open her eyes for fear of seeing on all hands the hideous images on the walls and ceiling. Merciful gods! If her flight from the Serapeum and the rescue of Diodoros by Andreas had really been but a dream, then the door might open at any moment, and the Egyptian Zminis or his men might come in to drag ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... crossbow and one of the boar spears. The bed itself was very low, framed of wood, thick and solid; the clothes were of the coarsest linen and wool; there were furs for warmth in winter, but these were not required in May. There was no carpet, nor any substitute for it; the walls were whitewashed, ceiling there was none, the worm-eaten rafters were visible, and the roof tree. But on the table was a large earthenware bowl, full of meadow orchids, blue-bells, and a bunch ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... began to float up like a faintly seen balloon, till it died right away. And all was still but the um-um-um of the great beetle or chafer which had passed in through the window, and began circling round just below the whitewashed ceiling, against which its wings brushed from time to time with a faint fizz, till all at once Rodd started ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... through which the breeze play'd. O'er the smooth wooden floor, polished dark as a glass, Fragrant white Indian matting allowed you to pass. In light olive baskets, by window and door, Some hung from the ceiling, some crowding the floor, Rich wild flowers pluck'd by Lucile from the hill, Seem'd the room with their passionate presence to fill: Blue aconite, hid in white roses, reposed; The deep belladonna its vermeil disclosed; And the frail saponaire, and the ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... that she would be discreet. She has been indiscreet, past belief, and she is to be turned out,—most deservedly. Heaven and earth! Where shall I find a roof for her head?" Trevelyan as he said this was walking about the room with his hands stretched up towards the ceiling; and as his friend was attempting to make him comprehend that there was no intention on the part of any one to banish Mrs. Trevelyan from the Clock House, at least for some months to come,—not even till after ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... in Cross Street, Redruth; those still live who saw the gas-pipes conveying gas from the retort in the little yard to near the ceiling of the room, just over the table; a hole for the pipe was made in the window frame. The old window is now replaced by a new frame."—Life of ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... by machines of various patterns. At the far end, where the tower was erected, there was another doorway, and passing through it they clambered up the steep stone stairs, which finally led them to a small room at the top, above which was an iron-girdered ceiling supporting a huge water-tank, to which supplies were pumped no doubt from the river. Having groped their way in the semi-darkness to this spot, they barred the door of the room by driving a wedge in above the latch, and then, thoroughly tired out after their long tramp and ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... Public Credit on her throne in Grocers' Hall, the Great Charter over her head, the Act of Settlement full in her view. Her touch turned every thing to gold. Behind her seat, bags filled with coin were piled up to the ceiling. On her right and on her left the floor was hidden by pyramids of guineas. On a sudden the door flies open. The Pretender rushes in, a sponge in one hand, in the other a sword which he shakes at the Act of Settlement. The beautiful Queen sinks down fainting. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... as statues, and his compeers designed carvings and gildings for state carriages, and painted pictures upon the panels. Painters of divine pictures designed cartoons and borders for tapestries, and wreaths and garlands for ceiling pilasters. ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... gentleman, the prisoner's counsel, who had a great bundle of papers before him: and nearly opposite another wigged gentleman with his hands in his pockets, whose whole attention, when Mr. Cruncher looked at him then or afterwards, seemed to be concentrated on the ceiling of the court. After some gruff coughing and rubbing of his chin and signing with his hand, Jerry attracted the notice of Mr. Lorry, who had stood up to look for him, and who quietly nodded and sat ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... Ormond Quay.[4] The coachman stopt; she look'd, and swore The rascal had mistook the door: At coming in, you saw her stoop; The entry brush'd against her hoop: Each moment rising in her airs, She curst the narrow winding stairs: Began a thousand faults to spy; The ceiling hardly six feet high; The smutty wainscot full of cracks: And half the chairs with broken backs: Her quarter's out at Lady-day; She vows she will no longer stay In lodgings like a poor Grisette, While there are houses to be let. Howe'er, to keep her spirits up, She sent for company ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... himself beside her on the sofa, looked up wisely into the corner of the ceiling, and said, after a pause, "Is crystal ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... midst of this hilarity there sounded suddenly a jangling and creaking of wires in the neighborhood of the ceiling, followed by a clang. ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... iron shot of three or four inches diameter on the mouth of a clean, dry, glass bottle. By a fine silken thread from the ceiling right over the mouth of the bottle, suspend a small cork ball, about the bigness of a marble; the thread of such a length that the cork ball may rest against the side of the shot. Electrify the shot, and the ball will be repelled to the distance of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... some other nautical luxuries, which his pay enabled him to procure without trespassing upon the funds supplied by the generosity of his uncle. He then returned to his father, who had finished the wine and biscuits, and had his eyes fixed upon the ceiling of the room; and calling a hackney coach, drove to the direction which his uncle had pointed ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... have distinguished anything but various tools of uncouth make and shape, great bunches of rusty keys, fragments of iron, half-finished locks, and such like things, which garnished the walls and hung in clusters from the ceiling. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens |
