"Basement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of having filth inside a house besides having dirt in heaps. Old papered walls of years' standing, dirty carpets, uncleansed furniture, are just as ready sources of impurity to the air as if there were a dung-heap in the basement. People are so unaccustomed from education and habits to consider how to make a home healthy, that they either never think of it at all, and take every disease as a matter of course, to be "resigned to" when it comes "as from the hand of Providence;" or ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... thunder-swell Far flew the shot, far flew the shell Red Havoc on the blast! Then as the flashing cannon sowed Their iron crop brave Nelson rode, His bridle bit all foam, Up to the gunners, and said he: "Batter yon mansion down for me"— "Basement, and walls, and dome!" And better to sharpen those gunners' wits, "Five guineas," he cried, "for each shot that hits!"— ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... and Franklin Jones, Benjamin Fraser, son of Benjamin Pantier By Daisy Fraser, some of lesser note, And secretly conferred. But in the hall Disorder reigned and when the marshal came And found it so, he marched the hoodlums out And locked them up. Meanwhile within a room Back in the basement of the church, with Blood Counseled the wisest heads. Judge Somers first, Deep learned in life, and next him, Elliott Hawkins And Lambert Hutchins; next him Thomas Rhodes And Editor Whedon; next him Garrison Standard, ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... continues to require the best defense in the world—a defense which is suited to the sixties. This means, unfortunately, a rising defense budget—for there is no substitute for adequate defense, and no "bargain basement" way of achieving it. It means the expenditure of more than $15 billion this year on nuclear weapons systems alone, a sum which is about equal to the combined defense budgets of our ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the monument is beautifully laid out as an ornamental garden, and abundantly provided with rare flowers and shrubbery, all tended with loving care. The monument stands on an elevated site, and consists of a massive basement-story, three-sided, above which rises a light and elegant Grecian temple,—a mere dome, supported on Corinthian pillars, and open to all the winds. The edifice is beautiful in itself; though I know not what peculiar appropriateness it may ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... had sold the old house of Christopher's father, an immense brownstone mansion a few squares away, and lived in a modern, flat-faced gray-stone house that rose five stories from the beautifully arranged basement entrance. There were stone benches at the entrance, and a great iron grill, and two potted trees, and the small square windows were leaded, and showed blossoming plants inside. The three long windows above gave upon a little-used formal ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... luncheon time. They lived still in the same house on Madison Avenue to which Aunt Mary and Uncle Tom had been invited to breakfast on the day of Honora's arrival in her own country. It had a wide, brownstone front, with a basement, and a high flight of steps leading up to the door. Within, solemnity reigned, and this effect was largely produced by the prodigiously high ceilings and the black walnut doors and woodwork. On the second floor, the library where the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... however, I came to sketch out plans for the great work which I have long intended some day to write, and of which I completed the first map during my stay at Ottawa, I found that I must go to Australia before getting very far through with the book, and that I could not be even so much as certain of my basement and groundwork ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... We had taken her home with us in '59, and sent her to a training-school for teachers in Dublin, so that she was quite competent on our return to take the management of the girls' school. We had eight girls in the house, and a few day-scholars from the town. Lessons used to go on in a room on the basement, where of course I was superintendent, and they learnt sewing in the afternoon. Julia was a very gentle mistress, and I was feeling very happy about my girls, when I found to my sorrow that Julia had an admirer, and I must make up my mind to ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... office and got the inspector of nuisances to come up to the house, and when he smelled around a spell he said there was dead rats in the main sewer pipe, and they sent for plumbers, and Ma went out to a neighbors to borry some fresh air, and when the plumbers began to dig up the floor in the basement I came over here. If they find any of that limberger cheese it will go hard with me. The hired girls have both quit, and Ma says she is going to break up keeping house and board. That is just into my hand. I want to board at a hotel, where you can have a bill-of-fare, ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... without helmet or tunic, came running up the steps from the basement, which was used ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... overture of many days to Sidney the following day. They met in the locker-room in the basement where the street clothing for the ward patients was kept. Here, rolled in bundles and ticketed, side by side lay the heterogeneous garments in which the patients had met accident or illness. Rags and tidiness, filth and ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... great convenience to the ladies visiting the Capitol, has since been removed; and a small, dark, inaccessible room on the basement floor set aside for ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... battlements are decorated with lines and rosettes—similar in principle to those shown above in fig. 106—that can hardly be reconciled with the notion that their form is the result of haste on the part of the artist. In the Assyrian Basement Room in the British Museum there is an interesting bas-relief representing Assyrian soldiers busy with the demolition of a fortified wall, probably of some city just taken. The air is thick with the materials thrown ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... de udder ba'el I jest ca'aed down de cellar full er oishters. De tar'pins was in dis box—seben ob 'em. Spec' dat rapscallion crawled ober de fence?" And Chad picked up the basket with the remaining half dozen, and descended the basement steps on his way through the kitchen to the front door above. Before he reached the bottom step I heard him break ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... dwelling upon what is itself debasing, but to let its lower faculties have a chance to air and exercise themselves. After the first and second floor have been out in the bright street dressed in all their splendors, shall not our humble friends in the basement have their holiday, and the cotton velvet and the thin-skinned jewelry—simple adornments, but befitting the station of those who wear them—show themselves to the crowd, who think them beautiful, as they ought to, though the people ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... nice news, wasn't it? Just as I was settling in my head to buy that Seventy-second Street place, and alter the basement into ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... for a reasonable amount in my restaurant, and the hotel will look after your laundry. But not a cent do you get out me. And, if you want your shoes shined, you can pay for it yourself in the basement. If you leave them outside your door, I'll instruct the floor-waiter to throw them down the air-shaft. Do you understand? Good! Now, is there anything ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... his captive, with whom he had made no attempt to exchange a syllable, and led him to the block-house: The door which communicated with the basement of this building was always open, in readiness for refuge in the event of any sudden alarm. He entered, caused the lad to mount by a ladder to the floor above, and then withdrawing the means of retreat, he turned the key ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... hole, and because spring will find a way, even down in the bargain basement of the Titanic Store, which is far below the level of the mole, Sadie Barnet, who had never seen a wood anemone and never sniffed of thaw or the wet wild smell of violets, felt the blood rise in her veins like ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... house in that older part of New York in which Godmother herself lived—only further south. But it was a remodelled house; the old, high "stoop" had been taken away, and one entered, from the street level, what had once been a basement dining-room but was now a kind of reception hall. Here they left their wraps in charge of a well-bred maid whom Godmother called by name and seemed to know. And then they went up-stairs. Mary Alice was "all panicky inside," but she kept ...
— Everybody's Lonesome - A True Fairy Story • Clara E. Laughlin
... however, ran out after him asking: "What do you require?" but with a grateful glance up at the first floor in remembrance of Captain R—'s examination room (how easy and delightful all that had been) he bolted down a flight leading to the basement and found himself in a place of dusk and mystery and many doors. He had been afraid of being stopped by some rule of no-admittance. However he was ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... of several layers. Lowermost we find the cells of the rete Malpighii. As some criterion of the activity with which these are acting, it may be noted that with the ordinary stains their nuclei take the dye intensely. The cells of this layer rest upon a basement membrane separating the epidermis from the corium. At this stage the corium has a perfectly ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... fight. He was much interested, and the book slipped to the floor. When she finished he said, "You're a daisy every day. Go now and rest yourself." Then snatching the balls from her, he called us and ran down to the basement. But he was not quick enough though to escape her arm. She caught him to her and kissed him repeatedly. He was the baby and pet of the family, and he loved her dearly, though he spoke impatiently to her oftener than either of ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... is equivalent to an English house of 520 qr. steep. The whole space occupied is the area necessary for kilns, malt and barley stores, engine and boiler house, and fans. No additional area is required for germinating floors, as ten germinating cases, A, are placed in the basement below the kilns and stores. The building is of brick, with the internal walls below the ground line resting upon cast iron columns and rolled joists. The germinating cases, A A, are of iron; the bottoms are double. One of perforated plate ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... out. Gavrilo looked round. The restaurant was in an underground basement; it was damp and dark, and reeked with the stifling fumes of vodka, tobacco-smoke, tar, and some acrid odor. Facing Gavrilo at another table sat a drunken man in the dress of a sailor, with a red beard, all over coal-dust and tar. Hiccupping every minute, he was droning a song all ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... nightcap had caught up a bundle from among the feet of the horses, and had laid it on the basement of the fountain, and was down in the mud and wet, howling over ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... When you entered, the narrow staircase cramped you into the little parlor opening out of the hall; and back of the parlor was the dining-room. Overhead were two chambers, and overhead again were two chambers more; in the basement was the kitchen. The house seemed absurdly large to people who had been living for the last seven months in one room, and the view of the Back Bay from the little bow-window of the front chamber added all ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... before going to breakfast. He waited for another, but as none seemed forthcoming, he shouldered his box and walked down Nassau street till he reached a basement over which was the sign, FREE LUNCH. He went downstairs and entered a dark basement room. On one side was a bar, with a variety of bottles exposed. At the lower end of the apartment was a table, containing a couple of plates of bread and butter and slices of cold meat. This was the free ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... Carl said. "He bribed his way in. See, New York was bombed flat. Where the old UN buildings were, it's still hot. So The Guide donated a big tract of land outside St. Louis, built these buildings—we're in the basement of one of them, right now, if you want a good laugh—and before long, he had the whole organization eating out of his hand. They just voted him into power, ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... in the basement of the house limewashing a cellar. Crass called him up and gave him the necessary instructions, chief of which was to get back again as soon as ever he could. The boy ran off, and while they were waiting for him to come back the ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... and facility the attitude of a prejudiced and hostile critic, show how cold facts and indisputable figures reversed my judgment, and end with a life-like picture of myself heading frantically in a No. 16 'bus for the bargain basement, haunted by the terror that I might be too late. With what dignity—even majesty—did I not invest an ordinary transaction in lingerie, when I spoke of 'the policy of this great House'! Yes, I believed I knew what ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... originally a nodule of rock, but out of this a platform has been formed artificially of earth gathered from the port, and this platform was converted in Roman times into a fort. On one side may be seen a curious contrivance for resisting the outward pressure of the earth heaped up within. The basement wall has not buttresses thrust forth, but consists of a series of semicircular concave depressions in its face. In Mediaeval times a strong castle with circular towers was erected on the ancient basement, that ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... basement first, broken in the middle by a broad arched passage, called the Porta Pompae, over which, on an elevated tribunal magnificently decorated with insignia and legionary standards, the consul sat in the place of honor. On both sides of the passage the basement ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... being is a kind of factory. The engine and the works and all the various machines are kept in the basement, and he sends down orders to them from time to time, and they do the work which has been conceived up in the headquarters. He expects the works down below to keep on doing these things without his taking any particular ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... also in the chamber behind, there were columns. A series of columns surrounded this building, and at either end was a portico, eight columns wide, and two deep. There were two pediments, or gables, of flat pitch, one at each end. The whole stood on a basement of steps; the building, exclusive of the steps, being 228 ft. long by 101 ft. wide, and 64 ft. high. The columns were each 34 ft. 3 in. high, and more than 6 ft. in diameter at the base; a portion of the shaft and of the capital of one is in the ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... the energy and activity of its employees. Superintendent Leach reached it shortly after the shock and found a number of men already there, whom he stationed at points of vantage from roof to basement. The fire apparatus of the Mint was brought into service and help given by the fire department, and after a period of strenuous labor the flames were driven back. The peril for a time was critical, the windows on Mint Avenue taking fire and also those on the rear ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... dat's willin' to he'p mek dis comin' Chris'mus a real sho 'nough one, 'll 'blige me by meetin' me in de basement of de chu'ch aftah services. De brothahs kin go 'long home ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... school in Boston was in the basement of Park Street Church. Hermann Clarke, son of our minister, Rev. James Freeman Clarke, was a fellow pupil. Afterward I went to the Mayhew Grammar School, connected in my mind with a mild chastisement for imitating a trombone when a procession passed by. The only other punishment ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... in military fashion, and marched off to the hall, where Roy heard him speak in a cheering, authoritative voice to the new-comers, and then came out to march across to the stables, which were in the basement of the east side of the castle, with their entrance between the building and the court; but the gate-way that had opened into the court-yard had been partly closed up when that was turned into a flower-garden, and the archway ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... a type apparently common in the older work of this region. It is square and covered with a hip roof. The front is divided into three bays, the centre and wider one crowned with a low gable or pediment. The main floor is high, leaving a basement below and no cellar; and the front door, an illustration of which we give herewith, is reached by a double flight of steps protected by an iron railing. Many of the houses are provided with high fences and massive ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 04, April 1895 - Byzantine-Romanesque Windows in Southern Italy • Various
... the family pored long, while Ona spelled out its contents. It appeared that this house contained four rooms, besides a basement, and that it might be bought for fifteen hundred dollars, the lot and all. Of this, only three hundred dollars had to be paid down, the balance being paid at the rate of twelve dollars a month. These were frightful sums, but then they were ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... an hour earlier than was really necessary. Jack had asked them, over the telephone, to drop around, as he had to go out to his father's mill before he could attend the meeting in the church, where a room in the basement had been kindly loaned to them ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... Ames, the school board secretary, took Mel down to the District Office and offered to help look for the records. The old building was stifling hot and dusty with summer disuse. But down in the cool, cobwebbed basement they found it.... Alice's records from the third grade on up through the ninth. On every one: heart, o.k.; lungs, normal. Pulse and blood pressure readings were ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones
... was waiting for me, and opened the front door as I came up the steps, thus saving me the necessity of ringing. The house seemed strangely quiet. The French cook was evidently down in the basement, and we had probably all the upper part to ourselves, unless Summertrees was in his study, which I doubted. Podgers led me directly upstairs to the clerk's room on the third floor, walking on tiptoe, with an elephantine air of silence ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... small library; rooms for the librarian, for apparatus, and also another large theatre. The ground-floor consists of rooms for lectures, the Professor's offices, laboratory, museum, a spacious cloister 213 feet by 24; rooms for the anatomical school, &c. In the basement are other apartments for the anatomical schools, for the chemical laboratory, the students' common room, kitchen, stewards' room, refreshment rooms, housekeeper's room, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... case a refrigerator is not available, it will be necessary to resort to other means of keeping milk cool. A cool cellar or basement is an excellent substitute, but if milk is kept in either of these places, it must be tightly covered. Then, too, the spring house with its stream of running water is fully as good as a refrigerator And ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... among which—having been made timid by much adversity—you had need to be very, very careful if your hand was in no one's. The house itself was wonderful: a house of real brick and very lofty. If you started in the basement you could go "upstairs" three distinct times in it before you reached the top. He had never imagined such a house for any but kings to live in. Within were many rooms; he hardly could count them all; and regal furnishings, gay with colour; ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... entrance both Laniers passed to their hiding-place in the basement, under the trapdoor. Soon followed the strange procedure resulting in the release of these two murderous villains, while their intended victim, who had confessed, still ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... a door into the hall of the house, so that the manager is not obliged to go out into the street in order to go to business. There are no living-rooms on the ground floor, and the house has no basement. ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... composed of 28 coupled corinthian columns has the most splendid effect, the basement story being perfectly simple, whilst the central mass of the building which forms the gateway is crowned by a pediment of stones, each 52 feet in length and three in thickness; all is vast, all is grand about this noble ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... she ordered her to build before evening a beautiful castle, and to furnish it all from garret to basement. Helena sat down on the rocks which had been pointed out to her as the site of the castle, feeling very depressed, but at the same time with the lurking hope that the kind Fairy would come once ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... mechanics had been brought from Quebec, and no one was permitted to see their work nor to learn what they were doing. Their work was to be in the basement, which had been excavated ten feet deep, the massive walls reaching down until they rested upon solid rock. The building was seventy-five feet square. A furnace occupied the center of the basement. Next, in front, was a beautiful office, finished in hardwood, exquisitely polished, and ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... more in that meeting than a stranger would have known of. In the splendid dining room where we sat, which was forty feet in length and floored with tiles of Italian marble, as was the entire large basement, it was impossible not to notice the unpainted casing of one side of a window, and also the two immense patches of common gray plaster on the beautifully frescoed walls, which covered holes made ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... Between the walls and the precipice, there was a narrow pathway about six feet wide; by day, the passage would have been dangerous; but, by night, it was a perilous enterprize. The walls of the farm took an extensive sweep, the path crept round their entire basement, and to follow it to the end, in the darkness, only two paces from the edge of a perpendicular chasm, was no very easy task, even for as practiced a horseman as myself. Nevertheless, I did not hesitate, but boldly urged my horse between the walls of the farm-house and the abyss of the Voladero. ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... "On May 23rd 1865, a thunderstorm of great violence passed very close to the Observatory. After one flash of lightning, I was convinced that the principal building was struck. Several galvanometers in the Magnetic Basement were destroyed. Lately it has been remarked that one of the old chimneys of the principal building had been dislocated and slightly twisted, at a place where it was surrounded by an iron stay-band led from the Telegraph Pole which was planted upon the leads of the Octagon ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... mistress of all. They used to kiss my nose, and wipe my paws with an embroidered handkerchief. I was called 'Ami—dear Ami—sweet Ami.' But afterwards I grew too big for them, and they gave me away to the housekeeper. So I came to live in the basement storey. You can look into that from where you are standing, and you can see into the room where I was master; for I was master at the housekeeper's. It was certainly a smaller place than upstairs, but I was more comfortable, ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... with its entrancing triumph of the chain of mirrors arranged (during the providential absence of those in authority) from the night nursery, down two flights of stairs, to the store-room in the basement? I know a reviewer whom nothing, but moral cowardice restrained from testing the possibility of this delightful plan by personal experiment. Fireworks too—Mr. SMITH has remembered them with a proper regard that ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... mistress of the cast-off robes of the firm of Hahn & Lohman is one of those stage tragedies that never have a public performance. Josie had been one of those little girls who speak pieces at chicken-pie suppers held in the basement of the Presbyterian church. Her mother had been a silly, idle woman addicted to mother hubbards and paper-backed novels about the house. Her one passion was the theatre, a passion that had very scant opportunity ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... kitchen. Belle, the maid, had been given the second floor back, in order to be near to her young mistress. Bitzer, the Blakes' man-of-all-work,—like McGann, a discharged soldier,—slept in the basement at the back of the house, and there was he found, blinking, bewildered and only with difficulty aroused from stupor by a wrathful sergeant. The cook's story, in brief, was that she was awakened by Mrs. Blake's voice at her door and, thinking Belle was sick, she jumped up and found ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... palace of the Princess Irene, of whom we will now speak.[Footnote: During the Crimean war a military hospital was built over the basement vaults and cisterns of the palace here described. The hospital was destroyed by fire. For years it was then known as the "Khedive's Garden," being a favorite resort for festive parties from the capital. At present the promontory and the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... that splendid clothing-house made of glass and iron, and filled from basement to roof with beautiful suits of clothing of all kinds," said Fritz delightedly. "A man could go in there in a morning-gown, and come out in a quarter of an hour dressed like a gentleman from head to foot. Father told me of a splendid ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... home by way of my neighbor's, and found Calico in the basement curled up asleep with her babies. She roused and purred questioningly as we bent over the basket, and watched with concern, but with no anxiety, as two of her seven were lifted out and put inside a hat upon a table. She was perfectly ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... in tones despotic, I must dig 'neath basement floors, Lest diseases called zymotic Enter in at all my pores. PARKES, of sanitation master, Wanted "purity and light;" I'm content to risk disaster, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various
... telephonic studies, and then he tried an arrangement somewhat different from the first. He used a tin tube, Figs. 3 and 4, and covered it with wire, the ends of which were soldered to the tongue of copper. With this instrument, he states, he frequently conversed with his wife from the basement of his house to the third floor, where she was confined ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... from the rest of the block, save in its air of thrift and cleanliness, and the brass plate on the door bore the name, "Industrial League House." It was evidently a settlement with resident workers, for a troop of boys was straggling down into the basement, where a gymnasium had been established, and several young women were standing in the hall discussing some matter connected with sterilized milk. At the right of the wide hall there was a large, old-fashioned double parlor, ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... of Percy Reed, diamond-dealer, Rua do Ouvidor, was a corner-building, almost the exact counterpart of a dozen edifices on the same square. The basement was of polished blocks of black and white marble, and the upper portion faced with blue and white porcelain tiles. From above, the front rooms looked out through bow-windows at small balconies with brass-knobbed railings and thick glass floors; those in rear looked through ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... mistaken draftsman has deliberately represented the printers at work within the consecrated walls of the church itself, I may be permitted to say, on behalf of the painter, that he has erected his press not even on the basement of one of the Abbey chapels, but in an upper story, a beautiful screen separating the workplace from the more sacred part of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... Broadway he swerved into Seventh Avenue, then after a few blocks turned into a side street, quickened his pace, and at last dived down into a basement under a saloon. ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... Richard Humble is kneeling at a small altar, or prie-Dieu, with his two wives behind him, the second wearing a conical hat, his sons and daughters being represented in bas-relief on the north and south sides of the basement. On the altar side there are also some verses, by an unknown author, in which human life is compared to "the damask rose and blossom on the tree," with other images of its vanity and shortness. There is a dash of Elizabethan vigour in the versification, mixed with a certain ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... he appeared the old) king had not been many days on the throne when he remembered the immense treasure of which his parent had been possessed. Sending every one away on one pretext and another, he searched the palace from attic to basement, peeped into all the drawers his father had used, turned over every document, sounded every wall, bored holes in the wainscot, ripped up the bark, and covered himself with dust in his furious endeavours to find it. But though he did this twenty times, though he examined ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... to think of that big bright space-poor glamor basement stretching around everywhere underneath. Did you remind Smitty to put a new bulb in ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... and his umbrella and opened cautiously the door. Outside all was silent. Johnny stealthily descended; in the passage paused again. Voices sounded from the basement. Feeling like an escaped burglar, Johnny slipped the latch of the big door and peeped out. A policeman, pasting, turned and looked at him. Johnny hastily drew back and closed the door again. Somebody was ascending from the kitchen. Johnny, ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... he could bear it no longer. He knew where the water-bucket stood, and stepping from his bed, he groped his way down the long stairs to the basement. The spring moon was low in the western horizon, and shining through the curtained window, dimly lighted up the room. The pail was soon reached, and then in his eagerness to drink, he put his lips to the side. Lower, lower, ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... were located under the stairs, down in the basement of the mill, in a dark and dingy corner. When Fred arrived there, he saw standing beside one of the machines a medium sized man with small gray eyes, that were shaded with immense bushy brows nearly an inch in length. His features were dull and expressionless, ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... about one hundred and fifty in width. The lower part of the wall was constructed of solid stone masonry; the upper portion of dried brick. This upper and frailer part, crumbling into earth, has completely buried the stone basement. The Turks of to-day quarry the stone from these old ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... unlike that of the causeway, erected upon a sculptured basement, starts from the foot of the terrace and runs quite round the temple, with arms, or ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... got to be so exceedingly unreasonable, that he could scarcely bear to see or touch any object that was not gold. He made it his custom, therefore, to pass a large portion of every day in a dark and dreary apartment, under ground, at the basement of his palace. It was here that he kept his wealth. To this dismal hole—for it was little better than a dungeon—Midas betook himself, whenever he wanted to be particularly happy. Here, after carefully locking the door, he would ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... wiser) Midas had got to be so exceedingly unreasonable that he could scarcely bear to see or touch any object that was not gold. He made it his custom, therefore, to pass a large portion of every day in a dark and dreary apartment, underground, at the basement of the palace. It was here that he kept his wealth. To this dismal hole "for it was little better than a dungeon" Midas betook himself whenever he wanted to be particularly happy. Here, after carefully locking the door, he would take a bag of gold coin, or a gold cup as big as a ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... Jimmy came into our house, and into the front basement; Aunt Elsie and Aunt Ruth were both up stairs; so we had the two lower stories all ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... kitchen odors. Long corridors, echoing with noise, led away from each landing. Doors, painted yellow, gaped open, smeared black around the latch from dirty hands. A sink on each landing gave forth a fetid humidity, adding its stench to the sharp flavor of the cooking of onions. From the basement, all the way to the sixth floor, you could hear dishes clattering, saucepans being rinsed, pots being scraped ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... of these fortresses was built at Azuchi, in Omi, under the auspices of Oda Nobunaga. Commenced in 1576, the work was completed in 1579. In the centre of the castle rose a tower ninety feet high, standing on a massive stone basement seventy-two feet in height, the whole forming a structure absolutely without precedent in Japan. The tower was of wood, and had, therefore, no capacity for resisting cannon. But, as a matter of fact, artillery can scarcely be said to have ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... returning to the markets by way of the Rue Vauvilliers, he heard Claude Lantier calling to him. The artist was going down into the basement of the poultry pavilion. "Come with me!" he cried. "I'm ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... bell, and I went down dark stairs to the basement and to breakfast, wondering if I should be able to recognize Miss Jamison; for I had caught but a glimpse of my new landlady on my arrival the previous midnight. Wrapped in a faded French flannel kimono, her face smeared with cold cream, her ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... miles around. The second home, Otsego Hall, built in 1798, was of bricks which were made at the outlet of the lake. It had seventy feet of frontage by fifty-six of depth, and had two stories with attic and basement. The main hall measured twenty-four by forty-eight feet and the rooms on either side were twenty feet wide. Otsego Hall is said to have been of the exact, generous proportions of the Van Rensselaer Manor House at Albany, New York, where Judge Cooper was a frequent visitor. His own Hall ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... temples piled on temples upward glide, A mass of colors like the rainbow hues, Thus proudly rise from breezy avenues. The brazen gates lead to the temple's side, The stairs ascend and up the stages glide. The basement painted of the darkest blue Is passed by steps ascending till we view From them the second stage of orange hue And crimson third! from thence a glorious view— A thousand turrets far beneath, is spread ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... those mischievous creatures would make! In the first place it would accomplish the destruction of these little canaries of ours which now flit about this lovely disordered room, perching confidently upon folios and bric-a-brac and hopping blithely over the manuscripts and papers on the table. In the basement against the furnace, three beautiful fleecy little chickens have just hatched out. How long do you suppose it would be before that wicked little kitten discovered and compassed the demolition of those innocent baby fowls? Then again there are rabbits in the stable and very tame pigeons and ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... is also the great English workshop for swords, guns, and other small-arms, and here are turned out by the million Gillott's steel pens. Over all these industries presides the magnificent Town Hall, a Grecian temple standing upon an arcade basement, and built of hard limestone brought from the island of Anglesea. The interior is chiefly a vast assembly-room, where concerts are given and political meetings held, the latter usually being the more exciting, ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... exclaimed. "You have been good enough to place me on my guard as to the talk my quiet course of life is causing. Pray add to your kindness by coming with me to my house and exploring it from attic to basement. You will then see that there are no grounds for scandal, and that the shadows you fancy you saw on the blind are not those ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... where to find the main body of the guard, to the officer commanding which Captain Todd was each night introduced. Double sentries were placed in the shrubbery all around the mansion, and the main body of the guard was posted in a vacant basement-room, from which a staircase led to the upper floors. A person entering by the main gate and walking up to the front door of the Executive Mansion during the night could see no sign of a guard; but from the moment ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... house in Grosvenor Gardens was wondering discontentedly what she was going to do with herself until tea-time, when she heard the sound of a bell ringing far down in the basement. Despite the grand drawing-room, despite the rich rustle of her grey silk dress, this great lady peeped from behind the curtain, and saw a ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... way up the path, and planted ourselves on a flower-plot under the drawing-room window. The light came from thence; they had not put up the shutters, and the curtains were only half closed. Both of us were able to look in by standing on the basement, and clinging to the ledge, and we saw—ah! it was beautiful—a splendid place carpeted with crimson, and crimson-covered chairs and tables, and a pure white ceiling bordered by gold, a shower of ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... explained to Musa the function of this tobacco shed, where he would hang his lathes of long-leafed tobacco to cure from August through November. The tobacco seedlings were already sprouting in Mason jars on the sunporch window-sills. The bank-barn's basement was also dedicated to tobacco. Here, in midwinter, Aaron and Martha and Waziri would strip, size, and grade the dry leaves for sale in Datura. Tobacco had always been a prime cash-crop for Levi, Aaron's father. After testing the bitter native leaf, Aaron knew that his ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... Turks as the capital of the province immediately after the conquest, and considerably enlarged, appears very probable, and the towers which flank the bridge were probably built at that period or a little earlier, though the eastern one is said to be raised upon a Roman basement. ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... regularly to hear the words of wisdom of this great teacher. They brought copybooks with them and a little bottle of ink and a goose quill and wrote down what seemed to be important. One day it rained. The teacher and his pupils retired to an empty basement or the room of the "Professor." The learned man sat in his chair and the boys sat on the floor. That was the beginning of the University, the "universitas," a corporation of professors and students during the Middle ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... Stuart, from the spring in the grotto of Pan; it is a matter of gratulation alike to the antiquarian and the lover of the picturesque, that these have been spared. From the amount of excavation necessary to arrive at its basement, it is clear that this portion of the town must have been raised, by ruins and atmospheric deposits, at least eight or nine ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... windows, but there are many others whom we know. There is the Italian barber whose brother dropped dead while shaving a customer. You would never imagine, to see the simple and unaffected way in which he comes out to take the air once in a while, standing on the steps of his basement, and twirling his tin-backed comb in idle thought, that he had had such a distinguished death in his family. But I don't let him ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... the inevitable consequence of the thaw. Both the schooner and the tartan were entirely destroyed. The basement of the icy pedestal on which the ships had been upheaved was gradually undermined, like the icebergs of the Arctic Ocean, by warm currents of water, and on the night of the 12th the huge block collapsed en ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... at the rest of the rooms, from basement to attic, we came to the conclusion that the dining room contained any effects which might belong to the Count. And so we proceeded to minutely examine them. They lay in a sort of orderly disorder on ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... over two or three steep hills, directly above the sea, in a promiscuous, many-colored, noisy fashion. It is a watering-place, pure and simple; every house has an expensive little shop in the basement, and a still more expensive set of rooms to let above stairs. The houses are blue, and pink, and green; they stick to the hillsides as they can, and being near Spain, you try to fancy they look Spanish. You succeed perhaps, even a little, and are rewarded ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... had lived with them for the last ten years. One pleasant Monday morning she rose early and did the family washing before breakfast, which had been prepared by Mrs. Townsend and Adrianna, as was their habit on washing-days. The family were seated at the breakfast table in their basement dining-room, and this maid, whose name was Cordelia, was hanging out the clothes in the vacant lot. This vacant lot seemed a valuable one, being on a corner. It was rather singular that it had not been built ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... grammar grades, and the high school, were in beautiful brick buildings side by side at this end of Milton. The little folk had a large play yard, as well as basement recreation rooms for stormy weather. The Parade Ground was not far away, and the municipality of Milton did not ornament the grass plots there with "Keep ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... fire-place, there will always be pure air in your sick-room. The air coming from furnaces, which unfortunately have become so general, is good for nothing, especially when taken from the worst place in the house, the cellar or basement. I consider the worst kind of stoves better than the best kind of furnaces; only take care not to heat the stove too much, or to exclude the outer air, which is indispensable to supply the air drawn off by the stove for feeding the fire. The difference between a furnace and ...
— Hydriatic treatment of Scarlet Fever in its Different Forms • Charles Munde
... moving a stack of charts from one of the classrooms to the basement when bells all over the building set up a tremendous clangor. Immediately the quiet evacuation dissolved into an uproar, with men running and shouting and the ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... all—were helping themselves. Henry Lawrence was one of the politicals under George Clerk. When the news of this affair came to him I was present. It was in a white marble loggia in the palace, where was a white marble chair or throne on a basement. Lawrence was sitting on this throne in great excitement. He wore an Afghan choga, a sort of dressing-gown garment, and this, and his thin locks, and thin beard were streaming in the wind. He always dwells in my memory ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... who, at seventeen, was to drown in a pleasure canoe; Snow Horton—clandestinely present—daughter of a neighborhood dentist and forbidden to play with the "boarding-house children"; Flora and Roy Kemble, twins; and little Harry Calvert, who would creep up like a dirty little white mouse from the basement kitchen. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... very first of her own reforms, becomes, in the men of '89, an "organized brigandage." "There is an economy of truth," said Burke. "Semiramis," like Romeo, "hung up philosophy," and the bust of her "preceptor," Voltaire, accompanied Fox to the basement! ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... presence he would regret his meditations. But it would be but temporary. What profits a man to gain the world, if he lose his peace of mind? "What! I unhappy among all this kingly paraphernalia, and with a queen wife?" he would ask himself, going down into the basement to replenish the furnace. With every shovelful of coal he would curse himself for ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... monotony. The school liked the little British church at Fossato. It was so utterly different from anything to which they had been accustomed in England or America. To begin with it was not an ecclesiastical building at all, but simply a big room in the basement of the Hotel Anglais. The walls had been exquisitely decorated by a French artist with conventionalized designs of iris in purple and gold, and through the windows there was a gorgeous peep over the bay. The girls used to ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil |
